Final Diagnosis

CHAPTER 29

Not only was the ward cold and dark, but heavy shielding and sulation protected it from the trace quantities of radiation and heat given off by ship traffic in the vicinity of the hospital. There were no windows, because even the light that filtered in from the distant stars could not be allowed to penetrate to this area. The images that appeared on his display had been converted from the nonvisible spectrum, giving them the ghostly, unreal quality of fantasy, so that the scales covering the patients’ eight-limbed, starfish bodies shone coldly through the methane mist like multihued diamonds, making them resemble a species of wondrous, heraldic beast.

When he turned off his translator while moving between patients so as to listen to their natural voices, the sound was like nothing he had ever heard before. So clear and cold and beautiful were the sounds that he could almost imagine that he was hearing the musical, amplified chiming of colliding snowflakes. Even though there were no virus hosts in the ward, and Hewlitt doubted that anything other than an SNLU could survive for more than a few minutes in that environment, it surprised him how sorry he felt when the time came to leave.

Lioren’s next visit was to the quarters of an off-duty Melfan nurse called Lontallet. Again he was introduced and, after removing it from their suspect list of former virus hosts, he waited in the corridor while the other two went inside to talk.

The wait was neither long nor boring, because the corridor was invaded by a slow-moving column of patients. He counted thirty of them comprising five different oxygen-breathing species, several of whom were being transported in gravity litters. From the overheard conversations of the nursing attendants he discovered that it was both an evacuation drill and an utter shambles. The last of them was moving away when the Padre rejoined him.

“Did they pass by slowly enough for detection?” it asked. “Did you feel anything from them?”

“Yes,” said Hewlitt. “And no. Where to next?”

“To the dock airlock on Level One,” Lioren replied, “and calling on the wards and scanning all the passersby in the corridors between. We will have to work much faster now. No longer may we speak at length to any of the patients. A few words or a brief visual contact is all we can allow ourselves. Are you feeling tired?”

“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.”

“Thank you,” said Hewlitt. “After I see the patient the two of you will be left alone to speak in private.”

“That will not be necessary this time,” said the Padre. “The patient is close to death. Beyond its self-knowledge of that fact, it has not said that there is anything troubling its mind. As you would expect, all of the Telfi religions are based on various forms of sun worship, but it has not said whether or not it believes in any of them. All that it needs or wants at this time is contact with another intelligent creature, or creatures, who will listen to it and speak in the Language of Strangers until it is no longer capable of forming thoughts or words. While it is suffering all we can do is stay with it for a while and listen in the hope that we are doing some good.”

Lioren turned without warninginto a side corridor so that Hewlitt had to hurry to catch up. He said, “Wouldn’t the patient feel better if one of its friends were with it at a time like this?”

“Obviously,” said the Padre, “you know very little about the Telfi.”

“Not much,” said Hewlitt, feeling his face grow warm at the implication of ignorance. “I never expected to meet one socially, so there was no reason to learn more. I know they are radioactive, very dangerous, and, well, not approachable people.”

“Their environment is hostile,” said Lioren, “not the people. And very few Federation citizens need to meet or learn about the Telfi person-to-person, so your lack of knowledge is not a reason for you to feel offended. Before you meet this patient you will have to learn a little about how the Telfl live, and, more important in this case, how they die. Are you able to absorb knowledge while moving your lower limbs a little faster, I hope?”

“I’ll be able to keep up with you,” said Hewlitt.

Lioren ignored the deliberate ambiguity and went on. “I have promised to touch and listen to the last thoughts, if it still has the strength to articulate them for the translator, of the dying Telfl astrogator part Cherxic. So far we have had no success with our search for the virus. I want to take a little of the time we seem to be wasting to keep my promise.”

“And do you have a little time,” said Hewlitt, “to listen to me?”

“Yes,” said the Padre without hesitation. “For some time I have sensed in you an emotional disturbance, but whether it is anger directed at me because of unsatisfied curiosity or some more serious, personal concern that distresses you I do not know. If the latter, is the matter urgent? Either way I will listen, now or later, but you know as well as I do that now is not a good time. Can you tell me simply, and I hope briefly, what is troubling you?”

Hewlitt did not look at the other as he replied, “You are right, Padre. I am curious and angry with you for not satisfying my curiosity, and I am growing increasingly frightened by the fact that you have been forbidden to satisfy it. So I keep asking myself questions that I’m not qualified to answer, and worrying. There is something about this whole business that bothers me.”

“Go on,” said Lioren, stopping before a rail containing Earthhuman radiation protection suits in various sizes. “Put one on without removing the garment you are wearing. It would be better if you talked while I help you to dress.”

It would also waste less time, he thought, but the Padre was too polite to say that.

“Right,” said Hewlitt. “So far as we know, the only beings to be infected or invaded by this virus creature were myself, my cat, Morredeth, you, and some other as yet unknown person or persons. It left us with a legacy of unusually good health and, for some reason, a strange ability to recognize former hosts. Why would it want to do that? And what exactly did it do to us?”

Without waiting for a reply he went on, “Is it telepathy, or an empathic faculty like Prilicla’s? We can’t receive each other’s thoughts or feelings with accuracy, so probably not. I don’t know enough about xenobiology or the behavior of extraterrestrial viruses, intelligent or otherwise, and nobody, yourself included, will answer questions. But am I right in thinking that the recognitive ability could only have come about as the result of a physical change of some kind within us? Was this invisible, two-way name tag that identifies us to other hosts merely a side effect and did something else happen, something the virus does to everyone it occupies? Has the long-term survival of the creature’s species got anything to do with it? Have we all been seeded by the thing and are busy growing virus- creature embryos?”

He had stopped moving and was standing balanced on one foot and with the other one pushed deep into the leg section of the radiation suit. The Padre was standing behind him, supporting the upper body section and not moving or speaking, either. The lengthening silence was broken by the Padre.

“I was forbidden to answer your questions,” Lioren said, “for the reasons you have already been given. It was to avoid causing you mental distress by listing our more frightening speculations. But I will not continue to withhold answers when it is plain that you are discovering them for yourself.”

Hewlitt was silent. He was no longer sure that he wanted his questions answered.

“You already know that the most important factor in the treatment of multispecies patients,” Lioren went on, “is that we can provide it without risk of cross-infection, because pathogens native to one world cannot be transmitted to a life-form that has evolved on another. We have derived much professional comfort from the fact that, throughout the explored galaxy, no exception has ever been found to this rule. Until now.”

“But the virus isn’t harmful,” Hewlitt protested. “It isn’t a disease. The opposite, in fact.”

“Yes,” said the Padre. “But it is still a virus, a form of multispecies pathogen, with all that that implies. Admittedly it seems to be an intelligent, perhaps a highly intelligent organism who intends no harm to anyone, but we cannot be sure of that. We may be mistaking a simple, selfish need to occupy and maintain a host in optimum health for altruism. Certainly that is a very comforting and reassuring thought, but in a place like Sector General we cannot afford to ignore the possibility that, whether its behavior is guided by intelligence and altruism or is the result of a highly evolved survival instinct, it is the worst medical nightmare that any of us can imagine.”

“I still don’t understand why you’re so worried,” said Hewlitt. “It only cures people.”

“You are forgetting what it has done,” said the other. “On six separate occasions that we know of it has crossed the species barrier. It has done so with ease and without triggering the host’s natural defenses, although later it hyperreacted to any medication or toxic material introduced into the host body. In essence it is a superpathogen, an organized, intelligent collection of viruses which is capable of modifying its structure to adapt and survive within a wide range of temperatures and the physiologies and metabolisms of an as yet unknown number of former hosts…”

“Wait,” said Hewlitt. “Did the medical team on Rhabwar know about this and deliberately keep it from me?”

“Yes,” said the Padre, “as soon as they realized Lonvellin’s personal healer was involved and you were no longer hyperreacting to new medication, but Prilicla didn’t want you to worry.

“On the way back from Etla,” he said, “I remembered Naydrad saying that my troubles were just beginning. I thought it was talking about something else.”

“It wasn’t,” said Lioren, and went on, “potentially an organism that can do all that is very dangerous indeed. It might not intend to harm anyone, but the mechanism that enables it to transfer so easily between species could also serve as a bridge that would allow the transmission of lethal pathogens between the species of its former hosts. If such an adaptable, multispecies strain were to get loose in the hospital it is possible that the virus creature could cure the victims as it has done on previous occasions, provided we could communicate and make our needs known to it. But it is only one individual who would be trying to cure patients one at a time, and if there were a hospital-wide epidemic that would not be fast enough. Sector General and possibly the entire Galactic Federation would be in very serious trouble.

“It would mean the end of our present free and open contact between planetary cultures,” Lioren ended, “and we would be forced back to inhabiting only our own home planets or, if we did go visiting, taking the most stringent decontamination precautions.”

“So that,” said Hewlitt, “is the reason why the evacuation ships have been forbidden to dock.”

This time he was not asking a question.