James White: Major Operation

Or had been.

If Mannon was assisting Thornnastor, the Diagnostician-in-Charge of Pathology (and as such the hospital’s senior Diagnostician) in one of that august being’s projects, then Mannon had to be in good physical and mental shape-Diagnosticians were terribly choosy about their assistants. And everything the Chief Psychologist had told him pointed the same way. But then what had got into Mannon two days ago to make him behave as he had?

As the others talked Conway began to realize that the sort of evidence he needed might be difficult to gather. The questions he had to ask would require tact and some sort of theory to explain his line of investigation. His mind was still miles away when Mannon and Prilicla began rising to go. As they were leaving the table Conway moved closer to Prilicla and asked softly, “Any echoes, Doctor?”

“Nothing,” said Prilicla, “nothing at all.”

Within seconds their places at the table were taken by three Kelgians who draped their long, silvery, caterpillar bodies over the backs of the ELNT chairs so that their forward manipulators hung over the table at a comfortable distance for eating. One of the three was Naydrad, the Charge Nurse on Mannon’s theater staff. Conway excused himself to his friends and returned quickly to the table.

When he had finished talking it was Naydrad who spoke first. It said, “We would like to help, sir, but this is an unusual request. It involves, at very least, the wholesale betrayal of confidence …

“We don’t want names,” said Conway urgently. “The mistakes are required for statistical purposes only and no disciplinary action will be taken. This investigation is unofficial, an idea of my own. Its only purpose is to help Doctor Mannon.”

They were all keen to help their Chief, naturally, and Conway went on, “To summarize, if we accept that Senior Physician Mannon is incapable of gross professional misconduct-which we all do-then we must assume that his error was caused by an outside influence. Since there is strong evidence that the Doctor was mentally stable and free from all disease or physical malfunction it follows that we are looking for an outside influence-or more accurately, indications of the presence of an outside influence-which may be nonphysical.

“Mistakes by a person in authority are more noticeable, and serious, than those of a subordinate,” Conway went on, “but if these errors are being caused by an outside agency they should not be confined only to senior staff, and it is here that we need data. There are bound to be mistakes, especially among trainee staff-we all realize this. What we must know is whether there has been an overall or local increase in the number of these minor errors and, if so, exactly where and when they occurred.”

“Is this matter to be kept confidential?” one of the Kelgians asked.

Conway nearly choked at the idea of anything being kept confidential in this place, but the sarcasm was, fortunately, filtered out of his tone by the process of Translation.

“The more people gathering data on this the better,” he said. “Just use your discretion …

A few minutes later he was at another table saying much the same thing, then another and another. He would be late back to his wards today, but fortunately he had a couple of very good assistants-the type who just loved it when they had a chance to show how well they could do without him.

During the remainder of the day there was no great response, nor had he expected any, but on the second day nursing staff of all shapes and species began approaching him with elaborate secrecy to tell of incidents which invariably had happened to a third party. Conway noted times and places carefully while showing no curiosity whatever regarding the identities of the persons concerned. Then on the morning of the third day Mannon sought him out during his rounds.

“You’re really working at this thing, aren’t you, Conway,” Mannon said harshly, then added, “I’m grateful. Loyalty is nice even when it’s misplaced. But I wish you would stop. You’re heading for serious trouble.”

Conway said, “You’re the one in trouble, Doctor, not me.

“That’s what you think,” said Mannon gruffly. “I’ve just come from O’Mara’s office. He wants to see you. Forthwith.”

A few minutes later Conway was being waved into the inner sanctum by one of O’Mara’s assistants, who was trying hard to warn him of impending doom with his eyebrows while commiserating with him by turning down the corners of his mouth. The combination of expressions looked so ridiculous that Conway found himself inside before he realized it, facing a very angry O’Mara with what must have been a stupid grin on his face.

The psychologist stabbed a finger in the direction of the least comfortable chair and shouted, “What the blazes do you mean by infesting the hospital with a disembodied intelligence?”

“What …?” began Conway.

Are you trying to make a fool of yourself?” O’Mara stormed on, disregarding him. “Or make a fool out of me? Don’t interrupt! Granted you’re the youngest Senior in the place and your colleagues-none of whom specialize in applied psychology, let me add-think highly of you. But such idiotic and irresponsible behavior is worthy only of a patient in the psychiatric wards!

“Junior staff discipline is going to pot, thanks to you,” O’Mara went on, a little more quietly. “It is now becoming the done thing to make mistakes! Practically every Charge Nurse in the place is screaming for me-me! — to get rid of the thing! All you did was invent this invisible, undetectable, insubstantial monster-apparently the job of getting rid of it is the responsibility of the Chief Psychologist!”

O’Mara paused to catch his breath, and when he continued his tone had become quiet and almost polite. He said, “And don’t think that you are fooling anyone. Boiled down to its simplest terms, you are hoping that if enough other mistakes are made your friend’s will pass relatively unnoticed. And stop opening and closing your mouth-your turn to talk will come! One of the aspects of this whole situation which really troubles me is that I share responsibility for it in that I gave you an insoluble problem hoping that you might attack it from a new angle-an angle which might give a partial solution, enough to let our friend off the hook. Instead you created a new and perhaps worse problem!

“I may have exaggerated things a little because of excusable annoyance, Doctor,” O’Mara went on quietly, “but the fact remains that you may be in serious trouble over this business. I don’t believe that the nursing staff will deliberately make mistakes-at least, not of the order which would endanger their patients. But any relaxation of standards is dangerous, obviously. Do you begin to see what you’ve been doing, Doctor?”

“Yes, sir,” said Conway.

“I see that you do,” O’Mara said with uncharacteristic mildness. “And now I would like to know why you did it. Well, Doctor?”

Conway took his time about answering. This was not the first time he had left the Chief Psychologist’s office with his ego singed around the edges, but this time it looked serious. The generally held opinion was that when O’Mara was not unduly concerned over, or in some cases when he actually liked an individual, the psychologist felt able to relax with them and be his bad-tempered, obnoxious self, but when O’Mara became quiet and polite and not at all sarcastic, when he began treating a person as a patient rather than a colleague in other words, that person was in trouble up to his or its neck.

Finally, Conway said, “At first it was simply a story to explain why I was being so nosy, sir. Nurses don’t tell tales and it might have looked as if that was what I wanted them to do. All I did was suggest that as Doctor Mannon was in all respects fit, outside physical agencies such as e-t bacteria or parasites and the like were ruled out because of the thoroughness of our aseptic procedures. You, sir, had already reassured us regarding his mental condition. I postulated an … an outside, nonmaterial cause which might or might not be consciously directed.