There was no struggle for possession of his mind, no conflict in the process. It happened naturally because he was being forced to do so much FGLI type thinking. When he did have occasion to speak to an Earth human nurse or patient, he had to concentrate hard if the first few words they spoke were not to sound like gibberish to him.
And now he was beginning to hear and understand Tralthan talking.
It was far from perfect, of course. For one thing the elephantine hootings and trumpetings were being filtered through human rather than Tralthan ears to the FGLI within his mind, and suffered distortion and change of pitch accordingly. The words tended to be muffled and growly, but he did get some of them, which meant that he possessed a Translator of sorts. It was a strictly one-way affair, of course. Or was it?
When he was preparing the next case for the theater he decided to try talking back.
His FGLI alter ego knew how the words should sound, he knew how to work his own vocal cords, and the Earth-human voice was reputed to be one of the most versatile instruments in the Galaxy. Conway took a deep breath and gave forth.
The first attempt was disastrous. It ended in an uncontrollable fit of coughing on his part and spread alarm and consternation for the length and breadth of the ward. But with the third attempt he got through- one of the Tralthan nurses answered him! After that it was just a matter of time until he had enough of the more important directions off pat, and subsequent operations proceeded more quickly, efficiently and with enormously increased chances for the patient.
The Earth-human nurses were greatly impressed by the odd noises issuing from Conway’s overworked throat. At the same time they seemed to see an element of humor in the situation …
“Well, well,” said a familiar, irascible voice behind him, “a ward full of happy, smiling patients, with the Good Doctor keeping up morale by doing animal impressions. What the blazes do you think you’re doing?”
O’Mara, Conway saw with a shock, was really angry-not just playing his usual, short-tempered self. In the circumstances it would be better to answer the question and ignore the rhetoric.
“I’m looking after Thornnastor’s patients, plus some new arrivals,” Conway said quietly. “The Corpsmen and FGLI patients have been taken care of, and I was about to ask you for a DBLF tape for the Kelgians who have just come in.”
O’Mara snorted. “I’ll send down a Kelgian doctor to take care of that,” he said angrily, “and your nurses can take care of the others for the time being. You don’t seem to realize that this is one level out of three-hundred eighty-four, Doctor Conway. That there are ward patients urgently in need of the simplest treatment or medication, and they won’t get it because the staff concerned whistle while they cheep. That the casualties are piling up around the locks, some of them in corridors which have been opened to space. Those pressure litters won’t supply air forever, you know, and the people in them can’t be feeling very happy …
“What do you want me to do?” said Conway.
For some reason this made O’Mara angrier. He said bitingly, “I don’t know, Doctor Conway. I am a psychologist. I can no longer act effectively because most of my patients no longer speak the same language. Those who do I’ve tried to chivvy into thinking of something to get us out of this mess. But they’re all too busy treating the sick in their own neighborhood to think of the hospital as a whole. They want to leave it to the Big Brains …
“In these circumstances,” Conway put in, “a Diagnostician seems to be the logical person to come up with a bright idea.”
O’Mara’s anger was being explained, Conway thought. It must be pretty frustrating for a psychologist who could neither listen or talk to his patients. But the anger seemed almost personal, as if Conway himself had fallen down on the job in some fashion.
“Thornnastor is out of the picture,” O’Mara said, lowering his voice slightly. “You were probably too busy to know that the other two Diagnosticians who stayed behind were killed earlier today. Among the Senior Physicians, Harkness, Irkultis, Mannon—”
“Mannon! Is he …
“I thought you might have known about him,” O’Mara said almost gently, “since it happened just two levels away. He was working on two QCQLs when the theater was opened up. A piece of flying metal ruptured his suit. He’s decompressed, and before that poison they use for air escaped completely he breathed some of it. But he’ll live.”
Conway found that he had been holding his breath. He said, “I’m glad.”
“Me, too,” said O’Mara gruffly. “But what I started to say was that there are no Diagnosticians left and no Senior Physicians other than yourself, and the place is in a mess. As the senior surviving medical officer in the hospital, what do you plan to do about it?”
He stood watching Conway, and waiting.
CHAPTER 20
Conway had thought that nothing could make him feel worse than the realization some hours previously that the Translator system had broken down. He didn’t want this responsibility, the very thought of it scared him to death. Yet there had been times when he’d dreamed of being Sector General’s director and having absolute control over all things medical within the gigantic organization. But in those dreams the hospital had not been a dying, war-torn behemoth that was virtually paralyzed by the breakdown of communications between its separate and vital organs, nor had it bristled with death-dealing weapons, nor had it been criminally understaffed and horribly overcrowded with patients.
Probably these were the only circumstances which would allow someone like himself to become Director of a hospital like this, Conway told himself sadly. He wasn’t the best available, he was the only one available. Even so it gave him a quite indescribable feeling, compounded of fear, anger and pride, that he was to be its head for the remaining days or weeks of its life.
Conway gave a quick look around his ward, at the orderly if uneven rows of Tralthan and Earth-human beds and at the quietly efficient staff. He had made it this way. But he was beginning to see that he had been hiding himself down here, that he had been running away from his responsibilities.
“I do have an idea,” he said suddenly to O’Mara. “It isn’t a good idea, and I think we ought to go to your office to talk about it, because you’ll probably object to it, loudly, and that might disturb the patients.”
O’Mara looked at him sharply. When he spoke the anger had gone from his voice so that it was merely normally sarcastic again. He said, “I find all your ideas objectionable, Doctor. It’s because I’ve got such an orderly mind.”
On the way to O’Mara’s office they passed a group of high-ranking Monitor officers and the Major told him that they were part of Dermod’s staff who were preparing to shift tactical command into the hospital. At the moment Dermod was commanding from Vespasian. But even the capital ships were taking a beating now, and the fleet commander had already had Domitian not quite shot from under him …
When they arrived Conway said, “It isn’t such a hot idea, and seeing those Corpsmen on the way up here has given me a better one. Suppose we ask Dermod to let us use his ship Translators …
O’Mara shook his head. “It won’t work,” he said. “I thought of that idea, too. It seems the only Translator computers of any use to us are on the big ships, and they are such an integral part of the structure that it would practically wreck the ship to take one out. Besides, for our absolute minimum needs we would require twenty capital ship computers. We haven’t got twenty capital ships left, and what we do have Dermod says he has a much better use for.