James White - The Genocidal Healer

“Wait here,” Lioren said briskly, “while I ask Charge Nurse for a sprayer. It would be less troublesome for all concerned if you made the observation gallery untidy instead of collapsing in the main ward. And up here we won’t risk spraying your smelly Hudlar nutrient onto its nice clean floor and patients.”

By the time he returned with the nutrient tank and sprayer, the Hudlar’s body had settled to the floor with its tentacles twitching feebly and only soft, untranslatable sounds coming from its speech membrane. Lioren used the sprayer expertly and accurately — in common with his fellow Monitor Corps officers, he had been taught to perform this favor for FROB personnel engaged in construction work in airless conditions — and within a few minutes it was fully recovered. Below them Seldal and its patient were no longer visible and the theater was emptying of its OR staff.

“That particular act of charity caused you to miss the end of the operation,” Tarsedth said, ruffling its fur disapprovingly at the Hudlar. “Seldal has left for the dining hall and won’t return until—”

“Your pardon, Tarsedth,” the Hudlar broke in, “but you are forgetting that I recorded the procedure in its entirety. I would be happy to have both of you view a rerun in my place after lectures.”

“No!” Tarsedth said. “Hudlars don’t use beds or chairs and there would be nowhere for a soft body like mine, or even Lioren’s, to relax. And my place is far too small to allow a couple of outsize thrennigs like you two inside. If it is that interested, Lioren can always borrow your tape sometime.”

“Or both of you could come to my room,” Lioren said quickly. “I have never seen a Nallajim surgeon perform and any comments you might make would be helpful to me.”

“When?” Tarsedth said.

He had arranged a time suitable for all three of them when the Hudlar said quietly, “Lioren, are you sure that talking about other-species surgery will not cause you emotional distress or that gossiping, for that is what we will be doing, with people outside your department will not get you into trouble with O’Mara?”

“Nonsense!” Tarsedth said. “Gossiping is the most satisfying nonphysical activity between people. We’ll see you then, Lioren, and this time I’ll make sure my overweight friend here remembers to bring a spare nutrient tank.”

When they had gone, Lioren returned the exhausted tank to the Charge Nurse, who needed to be reassured that the nutrient spray had not smeared the transparent wall of the observation gallery. He had often wondered why every ward’s Charge Nurse, regardless of size, species, or environmental requirements, was so fanatically insistent that its medical domain was kept at all times neat, orderly, and scrupulously clean. But only now had he begun to realize that, regardless of what the subordinate nursing staff might think of it personally, the ward of a Charge Nurse who demanded perfection in the minor details was particularly well suited to dealing with major emergencies.

Lioren felt symptoms of a minor and nonpainful discomfort in his stomach that was usually attributable to excitement, non-physical pleasure, or hunger — on this occasion he thought that it might be a combination of all three. He plotted a course that would take him as quickly as possible to the dining hall, intent on eliminating one of the possible causes, but he did not expect the symptoms to be entirely relieved, because he was thinking about his first nonsurgical case.

Abasing himself to the professional level of a couple of trainee nurses — and him a former Surgeon-Captain in the Monitor Corps — had not been as difficult as he had thought, nor had it shamed him to the degree he had expected and deserved. He was even pleased with himself for correctly deducing from Cresk-Sar’s report that Tarsedth would be observing Seldal’s operation. After lunch, in order to keep the entity Braithwaite happy, he would return to the office and deal with the remainder of the Senior Tutor’s report.

Altogether it promised to be a long, busy day and an even longer evening, during which he would view the recording of

Seldal’s operation and discuss the Nallajim’s procedure at length. Having been told of Lioren’s abiding interest in other-species surgery, the two nurses would be expecting many questions from him. In the circumstances it would be natural for the conversation to wander from the operation to the personality, habits, and behavior of the surgeon performing it. Everyone liked to gossip about their superiors, and the quantity of highly personal information available usually increased in direct proportion to the rank of the individual concerned. If he was careful, this information could be abstracted in such a way that neither his informants nor his case subject would be aware of what was happening.

As the beginning of a covert investigation, Lioren thought with a little shiver of self-congratulation, it was faultless.

“WITH Nallajims,” Tarsedth said while they were reviewing the Seldal operation late that evening, “I can never make up my mind whether I ’m watching surgery or other-species cannibalism.”

“In their early, precurrency days,” the Hudlar said, the modulation of its speaking membrane suggesting that its words were not to be taken seriously, “that was the only way a Nallajim doctor could obtain its fee from a patient.”

“I am filled with admiration,” Lioren said, “that a life-form with three legs, two not-quite atrophied wings, and no hands at all could become a surgeon in the first place. Or, for that matter, perform any of the other delicate manipulatory functions which led to the evolution of intelligence and a technology-based culture. They began with so many serious physiological disadvantages that—”

“They do it by poking their noses into the most unlikely places,” Tarsedth said, its fur rumpling with impatience. “Do you want to watch the operation or talk about the surgeon?”

Both, Lioren thought, but he did not speak the word aloud.

The LSVO physiological classification to which Seldal belonged was a warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing species which had evolved on Nallaji, a large world whose high rotational velocity, dense atmosphere, and low gravity in the intensely fertile equatorial regions had combined to provide an environment suited to the proliferation of avian life-forms. It had been an environment which enabled airborne predators to evolve which were large both in variety and size, but so heavily armed and armored that they had gradually rendered themselves extinct. Over the millennia while this incredibly violent process was working itself out, the relatively tiny LSVOs had been forced out of the skies and their high, vulnerable nests and had taken to the shelter of the trees, deep gullies, and caves.

Very quickly they had to adapt to sharing the ground with the small animals and insects which had formerly been their prey.

Gradually the Nallajim had lost the ability for sustained flight, and as a species they had progressed too far along the evolutionary path for their wings to become arms, or even for their wingtips to subdivide into the digits suitable for the fabrication of tools or weapons. But it was the savage, mindless, and continuing threat from insects large and small who infested, and by their sheer numbers dominated, the land as the giant avians interdicted the air that brought about the minor changes in bone structure and musculature of the beak that caused the Nallajim to develop intelligence.

Handless but no longer helpless, they had been forced to use their heads.

On Nallaji, the winged insects that swarmed and stung their prey to death were outnumbered by those that burrowed and laid eggs deep within the sleeping bodies of their victims. The only way these burrowing insects could be removed was by pecking them out with the long, thin, flexible Nallajim beak.