“No, curious,” said Hewlitt. “And hungry. We haven’t eaten since—”
“In the short term,” the Padre broke in, “our hunger is not lifethreatening. I contacted the department from Nurse Lontallet’s room. O’Mara is in conference, this time by communicator with the waiting ships’ captains, but it left a message for us. The situation has worsened but so far the exact nature of the technical emergency has not been made public. At present there are three separate evacuation drills in progress, but as yet there are no ships at the boarding locks. The patients are complaining about the inconvenience, the medical staff know that something serious is going on and are wanting answers, and in spite of their efforts to project clinical calm, their uncertainty is being communicated to their patients and each other. Psychologically, this is a dangerous situation which must not be allowed to continue.”
“But what is the problem, exactly?” said Hewlitt. “Not enough ships for a complete evacuation, or what? Keep it a secret from me if you have to, but surely the other people here are used to emergencies, medical emergencies, at least, and would react better in conditions of full knowledge, even if the knowledge is frightening, than total ignorance.”
Lioren increased its pace along a clear section of corridor as it said, “Assembling enough ships to empty the hospital should not be a major problem, considering the Federation’s past response times on disaster-relief operations. It may be that they can’t talk about the problem because they don’t fully understand it themselves, or there is more than one problem.”
“Are you trying to confuse me,” said Hewlitt, “or give me some kind of clue?”
Lioren ignored the question and went on, “Prilicla reported nothing unusual from the dining hall. The virus creature was not occupying any of the diners whose emotional radiation it scanned, but due to its low stamina, it requires a lengthy period of rest before it will be able to resume the search. That leaves us as the only people who are able to detect the virus, O’Mara says, and we must find it with minimum delay. As well, from now on we are ordered to seal our helmets and use only suit air to avoid wasting time when changing environments.
“But that would save only a few minutes…” Hewlitt began, then ended, “Never mind.”
It was a stupid order, he thought, when all but two of the wards they would be visiting belonged to warm-blooded oxygenbreathers with similar atmospheric composition and pressure requirements as themselves. Maybe the emergency could affect the thinking of even the chief psychologist.
Their next ward was one of the few in Sector General-the Chalder section they had visited was another-where only one species of patient was treated. For the first time he was able to see, at close range and in horrendous, sharp focus rather than through a semitransparent chlorine envelope, not only one but a whole ward full of uncovered Illensan bodies. He was not surprised to find that none of them had harbored the virus, because he could not imagine any creature, no matter how desperate it was for a host, wanting to occupy a body like that.
Ward followed ward, as did the bewildering succession of patients and medical staff, many of them belonging to species he was meeting for the first time. There was no time to ask questions or wait for answers. None of the beings were as visually unpleasant as the Illensans and neither had any of them been former virus hosts. The speed of their visits aroused comment, as did the odor of chlorine emanating from their unnecessary protective suits, but the presence of the Padre insured that the remarks were polite. In the intervening corridors all of the people they met gave similar negative results.
“I’m beginning to wonder,” said Hewlitt, “if we aren’t deluding ourselves with our host-recognition capability. We have an indescribable-well, I suppose you could call it a fellow feeling for each other. But the feeling might be for each other and nobody else. And there is something wrong with this whole situation. I don’t know what it is exactly, but I think you know and could tell me.”
Lioren stopped so suddenly that Hewlitt had to take three paces backward. They seemed to have left the medical levels, because the people who passed them were wearing Maintenance coveralls and the doors and side corridors bore the interspecies symbols for power-transmission stations, heat-exchanger systems, and, above the opening just ahead of them, a radiation warning. He wondered what kind of ward he would find up here.
“Are you tired?” asked Lioren.
“No,” said Hewlitt. “Are you trying to change the subject?”
“As you may already have heard,” said the Padre, “I trained here as a medicbefore… What I’m trying to say is that I know my Earth-human physiology well enough to be aware of your physical limitations. By now you should be very tired as well as hungry. My next and final patient contact is classification VXTM. That is a radiation-eater and therefore completely unsuitable as a host entity for the virus. It is also a terminal case and is being visited for no other reason than that I visited it once and it requested as many subsequent visits as were possible. You may as well take this opportunity to eat or rest.”
“I’m not tired,” said Hewlitt. “Have you forgotten that the legacy left us by the virus is one of optimum health which presumably includes a body that operates at peak efficiency and is less subject to fatigue? Am I right in thinking that, following our recent high level of physical activity, you also are feeling less tired than you would normally have been?”
“I dislike arguing with you,” said the Padre, “especially when, as now, you are right. I have much on my mind and this is not an important matter. But very well, we are not as tired as we should be.”
It was clear that Lioren was irritated with him, probably for good and perhaps religious reasons so far as a padre making a sick call was concerned. He tried to apologize.
“I seem to have spent my whole life arguing,” he said, “usually with medics who were sure they were right and I was wrong. I’m sorry, it has become a bad habit that I should curb. If you have strong personal or religious reasons for not wanting my company on this visit, just say so. But I also feel that if we have checked all of your possible virus contacts together up to now, in the interests of consistency we should finish the job that way even though we may be wasting our time.
When the Padre did not respond, he laughed and went on, “As well, if you consider the Telfi radiation-eaters as unsuitable hosts, what about that ultra-low-temperature SNLU? Could a virus exist that close to absolute zero, and if it is an intelligentvirus, why would it want to?”
Lioren ignored his attempt at humor. It said, “I do not know enough about the virus creature’s motivations to be able to speculate about why it would do anything. And if you remember your home world’s natural history, there are many instances of simple forms of life surviving for extended periods under your polar ice layers, sometimes for millions of years.”
“And do you remember,” said Hewlitt, trying hard to control his own irritation, “my telling O’Mara that our virus creature passed through the fringes of a nuclear detonation? And that it survived the experience for more than twenty years before it infected me?”
They had to move aside quickly to avoid two Orligians in Monitor Corps uniforms who were driving their equipment litters like racing vehicles, but it was a few minutes before Lioren spoke.
“I do not remember that,” it said, “because I did not overhear that part of the meeting so that information is new to me. But there is a vast difference between the short burst of radiation sustained by the virus and the intense, lifelong exposure required by the Telfi. You are arguing with me again, but again you may be right. Very well, you may accompany me into the Telfi section.”