James White: Final Diagnosis

“As yet we have no information regarding your food preferences,” it said, “so we have selected a meal that is acceptable to many of the Earth-humans on the staff. It is composed of a brown, flat slab which is called steak, I think, with other lumpy vegetable objects. Before you start to eat, please wait until I attach some equipment to your body. The sensor on your chest lets the nurses’ station know how you are doing from moment to moment, and the translator, which I will hang around your neck, is programmed for the languages used by the ward patients and medical staff. It will let you know what everyone is saying about you and everyone else.

“I thought that you might feel more comfortable eating in visual privacy,” it went on, “at least until you settle in. That is why I have not raised your screens. I must leave now, but push the call button if you need anything. All right, Patient Hewlitt?”

“Yes, yes, thank you,” he said. “But, Nurse…

He broke off in confusion, not knowing why he felt so grateful to this monstrous creature and wanting to say more than a simple word of thanks. Maybe he could say something complimentary.

The nurse was backing through one of the overlapping sections of screen, and he could see that its body paint had left a large smear on the fabric. It stopped moving and said, “Yes, Patient Hewlitt?”

“Nurse,” he said awkwardly, “I didn’t expect something like you to be so, well, considerate toward me. I mean, you look like nothing on Earth…

“I should hope so,” said the Hudlar.

“I didn’t mean that to be taken literally,” he said. “I just wanted to say thanks and, and your body makeup looks very smart.”

The nurse made a small, untranslatable sound and said, “Hudlars do not use body decoration, Patient Hewlitt. That is my lunch.”

During his first night in the ward, Hewlitt could not sleep. His bed was very comfortable, the shaded light from his bedside was subdued, and he was more than tired enough because his watch was still set to ship rather than hospital time, and it was telling him that it was early afternoon of the day following his arrival. But his heavy eyes would not stay closed and he decided that, consciously as well as subconsciously, he must be terrified of losing consciousness in this place.

For what seemed like hours he lay listening to the night noises of the ward that drifted through his screens. The continuous sighing of the ventilation system that had been inaudible during the day seemed to grow louder by the hour, as did the quiet sound of the nurses’ feet, or whatever, as they attended to the patients. Occasionally he could hear the moaning or bubbling noises of patients in pain, although, considering the painkilling medication available, it was more likely to be the sound of extraterrestrial snoring.

In desperation he switched on the bedside viewscreen and, using an earpiece so as not to bring a nurse down on him for disturbing the other patients, he searched for the entertainment channels. Most of them were intended for other-species’ viewers, but even though his translator reproduced the dialogue, a Tralthan or Melfan situation comedy looked more like a horror play to him. When he found one that was designed for Earth-human viewing, the plot and dialogue were close to prehistoric. It should have sent him straight to sleep, but did not.

He returned to watching a Tralthan family performing weird, incomprehensible actions and saying banal things while doing them, until his screens opened to reveal a massive Hudlar body.

“You should be asleep, Patient Hewlitt,” it said in a voice so quiet that it barely reached him. “Is anything wrong?”

“Are you the nurse who brought me here today,” he asked, “or another one?”

“All the other nurses, including Leethveeschi, have been relieved,” it replied, “but my species is able to go for long periods without sleep and I will be completing the night duty. Tomorrow and the day after are my rest and study days so you will not see me until the day after, if you are still here. Your body sensors indicate raised levels of tension and fatigue. Why are you not sleeping?”

“I–I think I’m afraid to sleep,” he said, wondering why the admission of a weakness to an extraterrestrial seemed less embarrassing than it would to a human. “If I slept in this place I would have nightmares, and wake up again feeling worse. I suppose you know what nightmares are?”

“Yes,” said the nurse. It raised a forward tentacle and waved the tip in the direction of the ward beyond the screens. “You would have nightmares, about us?”

Hewlitt did not reply because he had already answered the question, and he was beginning to feel ashamed.

“If you go to sleep and have nightmares about us,” the nurse went on, “and then wake up to find that your nightmares have substance and are all around you, either suffering with you as fellow patients or trying to cure you, isn’t trying to stay wakeful a waste of time? Knowing that we will be here when you awaken might give your nightmare less force so that your mind might decide to dream about something more pleasant. Isn’t that a logical suggestion, Patient Hewlitt, and worth trying?”

Again, Hewlitt did not reply. This time it was because he was trying to come to grips with Hudlar logic.

“Besides,” said the nurse, “that Melfan quiz-forfeit show is injurious to mental health, regardless of the viewer’s species. Would you like to talk to me instead?”

“Yes — I mean, no,” said Hewlitt. “There are patients here who are sick and more in need of your attention. I have nothing wrong with me, at least not right now.

“Right now,” the nurse replied, “all of the other patients are quiet, comfortable, and stable and are being monitored in their sleep. You are awake, and, for a young and mentally active trainee nurse, night duty can be boring. Is there anything you would like to say or ask?”

Hewlitt stared at the great, six-tentacled monster with its speaking membrane rippling like a fleshy flag and the skin that covered its limbs and body like seamless armor. Then he said, “Your paint is beginning to flake again.”

“Thank you for the warning,” said the Hudlar, “but there is no risk. It will last until the day staff comes on duty.”

“I do not understand you,” said Hewlitt. “At least, not well enough to ask questions.”

“From your earlier words about my use of cosmetics,” said the nurse, “I thought that might be the case. Do you know why Hudlars use nutrient paint?”

He was not terribly interested in anything extraterrestrials did. But this one wanted to talk, if only to relieve its boredom, and listening to it might take his mind off the extraterrestrial menagerie around him. A case of listening to one known monster in order to forget his dread of the unknown others. And after all, it might be trying in its own way to reassure him.

“No,” he said. “Why, Nurse?”

The first thing he learned was that Hudlars did not have mouths. Instead they had what they called organs of absorption, and from there one question led to another.

The species had evolved to intelligence on a heavy-gravity world with a proportionately high atmospheric pressure. The lower reaches of its atmosphere resembled a thick, semiliquid soup filled with tiny, airborne forms of animal and vegetable life which were ingested by the absorption mechanism covering the Hudlars’ back and flanks; and, because they were an intensely energy-hungry species, the process was continuous. The home planet’s atmosphere was very difficult to reproduce, so that in off-world environments such as the hospital it had been found more convenient to spray them at regular intervals with a concentrated nutrient paint.