James White - The Genocidal Healer

Five days later he received a reply stating that Tenelphi had been dispatched and was estimating Cromsag in thirty-five hours. It was carrying medication, as yet incompletely tested for long-term effects, which was a specific against the grosser, more life-threatening symptoms of the plague, and that the details of the pathological investigation and directions for treatment accompanied the medication.

During the excitement that ensued Lioren went over his plans for fast distribution. Dracht-Yur relented to the extent of allowing him to transfer from sick bay to the communications center of Vespasian, but not to risk compounding his injuries by traveling the air or surface of Cromsag in vehicles totally unsuited to the Tarlan physiology. But the general feeling of relief and euphoria lasted only until the arrival of Tenelphi.

The scout ship carried more than enough of the antiplague specific, which required only a single, intravenous application, to treat every Cromsaggar on the planet, but Lioren was forbidden to use it until additional field trials had been carried out.

According to Chief Pathologist Thornnastor, the physiological results following a minimum dosage had been very good, but there were indications of possibly damaging side effects. Symptoms of mental confusion and periods of semiconscious-ness had been observed. These might prove to be temporary, but further investigation was required.

The single injection was followed by a slight but continuing reduction in symptoms, a slow improvement in the vital signs, and evidence of tissue and organs regeneration throughout the body in the days which ensued. During the periods of semicon-sciousness the test subjects had requested and consumed food in quantities which, considering stomach size and the clinical condition of the patients involved, seemed unusually large. There was a steady increase in body weight.

The non-adult subjects had responded in similar fashion, including the periods of unconsciousnessness interspersed with episodes of semiconsciousness and mental confusion, except that with the young the food demand in relation to their smaller size had been greater. Daily measurement had shown a steady increase in growth, both in body mass and limb dimensions.

It was thought probable that with the gradual remission of the condition the non-adult patients, whose physical growth had been retarded by the plague, were returning to optimum size for their ages. The periods of unconsciousness and impaired thinking were in response to a demand by the body for maximum rest during these periods of regeneration and were of little clinical importance. The medication was being used in minimum quantities, but a very small increase in the dosage of one test subject resulted in a strengthening and acceleration of the effects already noted. In spite of the excellent physiological results so far, the associated episodes of mental confusion were cause for concern lest a side effect of the medication led to long-term brain damage.

Thornnastor apologized for sending medication that it had not completely cleared for use, but said that Lioren’s hyperspace radio signals had emphasized the urgency of the situation, and in order to save a few days’ transit time between the medication’s approval and its administration to the patients the final tests should be made concurrently on Cromsag and in Sector General.

“I have been instructed to conduct tests on a maximum of fifty Cromsaggar,” Lioren said, when he was relaying Thorn-nastor’s report to his senior medical officers. “The subjects are to include the widest possible variation in age and clinical condition, as well as minor variations in the dosage administered within that number. We are to pay particular attention to the mental state of these subjects during their periods of semiconsciousness, in the hope that their degree of confusion will be lessened when they are on their home world among others of their kind rather than in the strange and doubtless unsettling environment of Sector General. The initial test period will require ten days, followed by a further—”

“In ten days we would lose a quarter of the remaining population,” Dracht-Yur broke in suddenly, its barking speech sounding angry even through the translator, “which has already shrunk to two-thirds of the number alive when Tenelphi found this Crutath-accursed planet. They’re dying out there like, like …”

“That was my thought exactly,” Lioren said, omitting the reprimand the Nidian deserved for its bad manners, and making a mental note to check on the meaning of the word “Crutath.” “It is a thought which all of you share. But it is not because of our common feelings that I will disobey Thornnastor and ignore its recommendations. The decision is not yours. I will, of course, listen to your professional advice and accept it if it has merit, but the instruction to proceed and the responsibility for everything that ensues as a result will be entirely mine.

“This is what I am planning to do …”

There was no criticism of his plan because he had formulated it with great care and attention to detail, and — strangely, since it was coming from subordinates to a superior — the advice offered by many of them was personal rather than professional. They advised that he obey Thornnastor, but compromise by testing a few hundred, perhaps a thousand subjects instead of a mere fifty, saying that the course he was advocating would do nothing for any hopes he might have for future advancement. Lioren felt a strong temptation to do as they suggested, if only out of respect for the words of an entity said to be the foremost pathologist in the Federation rather than out of any selfish concern over his future career, but he was not sure that Diagnostician Thornnastor fully appreciated the urgency of the Cromsaggar problem. The hospital’s Chief of Pathology was a perfectionist who would never allow imperfect work to leave its department, and giving Lioren permission to assist with the test program was probably the only compromise that it was capable of making. But a great, hulking Tralthan whose data-crammed mind, it was said, permanently accommodated the brain recordings of at least ten other-species medical authorities could be forgiven for a certain amount of mental confusion.

The Cromsaggar death rate was climbing steadily toward two hundred a day, and treating a mere fifty of them with an unnecessary degree of caution when virtually the entire population could be given the chance to live instead of dying in a lingering and painful manner was, to Lioren’s mind, a great and a cowardly and a completely unacceptable wrong.

In this desperate situation he could accept imperfections even if Thornnastor’s department could not. The psychological effects that accompanied the cure might be temporary, and even if they were not then they, too, might be curable in time. But if the worst should happen and permanent mental harm was the result, it was highly unlikely that the condition would be transmitted to an offspring, because O’Mara itself had stated that the damage was nonphysical. Any Cromsaggar child born of cured but mentally deficient parents would grow up healthy and sane.

Or as sane, Lioren thought, as it was possible for any member of this bloodthirsty race to be.

He had told his staff that it must be an operation combining maximum effort with maximum urgency, and that every single Cromsaggar on the planet must be treated for effect rather than submitting them to time-wasting trials, and within an hour of the meeting’s end the plan was being implemented. On foot to the patients who were being housed close to the grounded Ves- pasian, and by sunace or air transpon to tne more distant shelters, the medication and supplies of synthetic nutrient were being distributed by every Monitor Corps entity available, which meant all but the capital ship’s watch-keeping and communications officers and those charged with the maintenance of the air and surface vehicles. Lioren, whose injuries were still hampering his mobility, divided his attention between communications and the sick bay, where he was the only medic on duty.