James White: Code Blue Emergency

“Now that I am here,” she ended, “I shall use my limited abilities, under direction, as best I can.”

O’Mara was looking at the ship ruler now. Chiang had taken its hand away from its eyes, but its pink face was a deeper color than she had ever seen before.

“The Sommaradvan contact was widening nicely,” Chiang said, “but it was at a delicate stage. We didn’t | want to risk refusing what seemed to them to be such a small favor. And anyway, we were pretty sure that they were giving Cha Thrat a hard time and we — I—thought she would be happier here.”

“So,” O’Mara said, still looking at the ship ruler, whose face was now an even deeper shade of pink, “we have not only a political appointee but an unwilling volunteer and possibly a misfit. And, out of a misplaced sense of gratitude, you tried to conceal the true situation from me. That’s great!”

It turned to face Cha Thrat again and said, “I appreciate your truthfulness. This material will be useful in the preparation of your psych profile but it does not, in spite of what your misguided friend may think, preclude your acceptance by the hospital provided the other requirements are satisfied. Those you will learn during training, which will begin first thing in our morning.”

The words were coming faster than before, as if O’Mara’s time for talking were limited, as it went on. “In the outer office you will be given an information package, maps, class schedules, general rules, and advice, all printed in the most widely used language on Sommar-adva. Some of our trainees will tell you that their first and most difficult test was finding their rooms.

“Good luck, Cha Thrat.”

As she was picking her way between the alien furniture toward the door, O’Mara was saying “I’m primarily interested in your postoperative emotional condition, Major Chiang. Have there been any waking fears, recurrent nightmares, unexplained episodes of tension, with or without accompanying perspiration, associated with the operation? Any feelings of drowning, strangulation, increasing and unreasoning fear of the dark? …”

Truly, she thought, O’Mara was a great wizard.

In the outer office, the Earth-human Braithwaite gave verbal as well as printed advice together with a white band to wear on one of her upper arms. It signified to all that she was a trainee, it said, laughing, and likely to become confused and lost. Should that happen she could ask any member of the hospital staff for directions. It, too, ended by wishing her well.

Finding the way to her room was a nightmare worse, she was sure, than any that Chiang might be relating to O’Mara. She needed directions on two occasions, and each time she asked groups of the silver-furred Kelgians who seemed to be everywhere in the hospital, rather than any of the great, lumbering monsters or the squishy beings in chlorine envelopes who crowded past her. But on both occasions, in spite of the respectful manner of her request, the information was given in a most rude and abrupt fashion.

Her immediate feeling was one of severe personal offense. But then she saw that the Kelgians were rude and short-tempered even to other members of their own species, and she decided that it might be better not to upbraid them for their extreme lack of politeness toward astranger.

When she at last located her room, the door was wide open and the Earth-human Timmins was lying prone on the floor and holding a small metal box that was making quiet noises and winking its lights.

“Just testing,” Timmins said. “I’ll be finished in a moment. Look around. The operating instructions for everything are on the table. If there is anything you don’t understand, use the communicator to call Staff Training, they’ll help you.” It rolled onto its back and got to its feet in a way that was physically impossible for a Som-maradvan, and added, “What do you think of the place?”

“I’m — I’m surprised,” Cha Thrat said, feeling almostJMIWCS WHII fflshocked by its familiarity. “And delighted. It’s just likfl my quarters at home.”

“We aim to please,” Timmins said. It raised one hand! in a gesture she did not understand, and was gone.

For a long time she moved about the small room ex-j amining the furniture and equipment, not quite believing i what she saw and felt. She knew that photographs and i measurements had been taken of her quarters in the war- j rior-surgeon level at the Calgren House of Healing, but ’ she had not expected such close attention to detail in the reproduction of her favorite pictures, wall coverings, ’ lighting, and personal utilities. There were differences, too, some obvious and others subtle, to remind her that this place, despite appearances to the contrary, was not on her home world.

The room itself was larger and the furniture more comfortable, but there were no joints visible in the construction. It was as if every item had been fabricated in one piece. All the doors and drawers and fastenings in the replicas worked perfectly, which the originals had never done, and the air smelled different — in fact, it did not smell at all.

Gradually her initial feelings of pleasure and relief were being diluted by the realization that this was nothing more than a tiny, familiar bubble of normality inside a vast, alien, and terrifyingly complex structure. The fear and anxiety she was beginning to feel were greater than she had ever experienced on her incredibly distant home planet, and with them was a growing degree of loneliness so acute that it felt like an intense, physical hunger.

But she was not liked or wanted on far Sommaradva, and here, at least, they had taken positive measures to welcome her, so much so that she had to remain in this terrible place if only to discharge the obligation. And she would try to learn as much as she could before the hospital rulers decided that she was unsuitable and sent her home.

She should start learning now. Was the hunger real, she wondered, rather than imaginary? She had not been able to eat to repletion during the earlier visit to the dining hall because her mind had been on matters other than food. She began to plan the route there, and to the location of her first lecture in the morning, from her present position. But she did not feel like another trip along the hospital’s weirdly populated corridors just yet. She was very tired, and the room had a limited-menu food dispenser for trainees who did not wish to interrupt their studies by going to the dining hall. She referred to the list of foods suited to her metabolism and tapped for medium-to-large portions. When she was feeling comfortably distended, she tried to sleep.

The room and the corridor outside were full of quiet, unidentifiable sounds, and she did not know enough to be able to ignore them. Sleep would not come and she was beginning to feel afraid again, and to wonder if her thoughts and feelings were of the kind to interest the wizard O’Mara, and that made her even more fearful for her future at Sector General. While still lying at rest, physically if not mentally, she used the ceiling projection facility of the communicator to see what was happening on the entertainment and training channels.

According to the relevant information sheet, ten of the channels continuously screened some of the Galactic Federation’s most popular entertainment, current interest, and drama programs with a translator output, if required. But she discovered that while she could understand the words that the different physiological types were saying to and about each other, the accompanying actions were in turn horrifying, mystifying, ridicu-lous, or downright obscene to Sommaradvan eyes. Sh switched to the training channels.

There she had a choice of watching displays of cur-rently meaningless figures and tabulations on the temper atures, blood pressures, and pulse rates of about fif different life-forms, or surgical operations in progress that were visually disquieting and not calculated to luJ anyone to sleep.