CHAPTER 8

He thought I was lying,” said Hewlitt, trying to hide his anger. So did my parents, the few times I tried to tell them about it, and so do you.

Lieutenant Braithwaite studied him in silence for a moment before he said, “The way you have just told it, I can understand why. He had good medical and anatomical reasons for thinking you were lying and, because most people trust the members of the medical profession, your parents believed him rather than their, well, imaginative four-year-old son. I don’t know what or who to believe, because I wasn’t there and the truth can be a very subjective thing. I believe that you believe you are telling the truth, but that is not the same as me believing you are a liar.”

“You’re confusing me,” said Hewlitt. “Do you think I’m a liar but don’t want to come straight out and say it?”

Braithwaite ignored the question and said. “Did you tell your other doctors about the ravine incident?”

“Yes,” he replied, “but I stopped doing so. None of them were interested in hearing about my lucky escapes. The psychologists thought that it was all my imagination, just like you.”

“I suppose,” said Braithwaite, smiling, “they asked you whether or not you disliked your parents, and if so, how much? Sorry, but I have to ask, too.”

“You suppose right,” said Hewlitt, “and you’re wasting your time. Sure there were times when I disliked my parents, when they didn’t do or give me what I wanted or they were too busy to play with me and made me work on school stuff instead. This didn’t happen very often, only when something urgent came up and they were both busy. They were attached to the cultural-contact department in the nearby base, and both of them were in the Monitor Corps but didn’t wear the uniform often because they worked mostly from home. But I wasn’t neglected. My mother was nice and could be coaxed into doing things for me, and my father was harder to fool but was more fun. One or the other was usually at home, and they spent plenty of time with me once I’d done the schoolwork. But I always wanted more time with them. Maybe that was because I knew, somehow, that I was going to lose them and there wasn’t much time left. I really missed them. I still do.

“Anyway,” he went on, shaking his head in a vain attempt to lose those memories, “your psychological colleagues decided that I had been behaving like a selfish, scheming, and normal four-yearold.”

Braithwaite nodded and said, “The psychological trauma of losing both parents at the age of four can have long-lasting emotional effects. They were killed in a flyer crash and you survived it. How much can you remember about the accident, and your feelings about it then and now?”

“I can remember everything,” he replied, wishing that the other would change to a less painful subject. “At the time I didn’t know what was happening, but I found out later that we were flying over a forested area on the way to a weeklong conference in a city on the other side of Etla when there was a major malfunction. We were using the small aircraft flight level, five thousand feet, and there must have been a few minutes before we hit the trees. My mother climbed into the backseat where I was strapped and wrapped herself around me while my father tried to regain control. We hit hard and tree branches pushed through the floor and one side of the fuselage and I passed out. When they found us next day my parents were dead and I was completely unhurt.”

“You were very lucky,” said the psychologist quietly. “That is, if a kid who had just lost both parents could be considered lucky.”

Hewlitt did not reply, and after a moment Braithwaite went on, “Let’s go back to the tree you climbed, or believed that you climbed, and the fruit you are supposed to have eaten that gave you the severe stomach cramps. Was there ever a recurrence of those symptoms later, before or after the flyer accident?”

“Why should I tell you,” said Hewlitt, “when you are thinking that I imagined everything?”

“If it is any consolation to you,” said Braithwaite, “I haven’t decided what to think.”

“All right, then,” Hewlitt said, feeling that this was going to be another waste of time. “For the first few days after I fell into the ravine I felt nauseated every time I ate something, but not badly enough to upchuck, and after that with reducing frequency until it went away altogether. It came back for a short time after I moved to my grandparents’ place on Earth, but I suppose that could have been due to the change of food and cooking. On Etla and on Earth, no medical cause could be found for these mild attacks of nausea, and I first began to hear the phrase ‘the condition has a psychological component.’ It hadn’t happened for years until I tasted my first synthesized meal on Treevendar, and then it was mild and happened only once. Obviously it was my imagination.”

Braithwaite ignored the sarcasm and said, “Would you really like to know that it was your imagination, or would you rather not be sure? Think very carefully before you answer.

“If I’m imagining things,” said Hewlitt sharply, “I don’t want to be the only one who doesn’t know it.”

“Fair enough,” Braithwaite replied. “How well do you remember that tree you say you climbed on Etla, and the appearance of the fruit you may have eaten?”

“Well enough to draw a picture of it,” said Hewlitt, “if I could draw. Do you want me to try?”

“No,” the psychologist replied. He leaned sideways until he could reach the communicator keyboard with one hand and tapped briefly. When the screen lit up with the Sector General emblem, he said, “Library, nonmedical, vocal input, visual and translated vocal output, subject former Etlan Empire, planet Etla the Sick.”

“Please wait,” said the cool, impersonal voice of the library computer.

Surprised, Hewlitt said, “I didn’t know I could get the library on that thing, just the nurses’ station and the so-called entertainment channels.”

“Without the correct access codes, you can’t,” said Braithwaite. “But if you ever feel so bored that you want to browse, I could probably get you authorization. You won’t be given the codes for the medical library, though. When a case is thought to include a degree of hypochondria, the patient concerned should not be allowed access to a virtually unlimited number of symptoms.”

Hewlitt laughed suddenly in spite of himself and said, “I can understand why.”

Before Braithwaite could respond, the library voice said, “Caution. The Etla data is accurate but not yet complete. Following the large-scale police action taken against the then-Etlan Empire by the Monitor Corps, and the subsequent acceptance of its planets as members of the Galactic Federation twenty-seven standard years ago, the required transfer of Etlan botanical information to Central Records has been given a low order of priority owing to an intervening period of social unrest. The current situation is stable, the native intelligent life-form is physiological classification DBDG and nonhostile, and visits by other Federation citizens are encouraged. Please state your area of interest.”

A large-scale police action, Hewlitt thought. There had been a savage and mercifully short interstellar war fought between the Etlan Empire and the Federation, brought about by the need of the ruling group to maintain itself in power while diverting the attention of its citizens from its own shortcomings. But the function of the Monitor Corps was to maintain the Federation’s peace and not fight wars, so the response to the Etlan invasion of a whole galactic sector was a police action rather than a war. The fact that peace and stability had returned to the Etlan worlds meant that the Federation had won it.

“Etlan native flora,” said Braithwaite, interrupting Hewlitt’s cynical train of thought. “Specifically, a listing of all large fruitbearing trees, ten meters tall or higher, found in the south temperate zone. Display for twenty seconds’ duration unless requested otherwise.”

For some reason Hewlitt was beginning to feel uneasy. He looked at Braithwaite and opened his mouth to speak, but the lieutenant shook his head, pointed at the viewscreen, and said, “You described your tree as being very tall, but it may have looked tall because at the time you were a very small child. I thought it better to start with ten meters.”

It was like one of his childhood botany lessons, Hewlitt thought, a steady succession of tree pictures which in the present situation he found anything but boring. Most of them were strange to him, both in shape and foliage and in the fruit they bore, while others resembled the large bushes he had seen growing outside the garden fence. But one of them…

“That’s it!” he said.

“Hold: replay and expand data on the Pessinith tree,” said Braithwaite into the communicator. Then he said to Hewlitt, “It certainly looks like the tree you described: thick, twisted branches, with four thinner ones without bark at the top bearing the fruit clusters. And the color of the foliage is right for late summer when you climbed it. Library, run and repeat close-ups of the fruit showing seasonal growth and color changes.”

For several minutes he watched while the screen showed the fruit going through its cycle of green bud to small, dark brown sphere to the fully ripe, green-and-yellow-striped pear shape. It was so familiar that he had a twinge of remembered stomach cramps, and the feeling was so strong that he missed hearing the library computer’s boring recitation of the relevant nonvisual information.

“That is it,” he said again. “Definitely. Now do you believe me?”

“Well,” said Braithwaite, shaking his head in a way that suggested confusion as much as negation, “I now have another reason why that monitor medic didn’t believe you. And you haven’t been listening. That tree doesn’t reach the fruit-bearing stage until it is fifteen to twenty meters tall, and the fruit hangs from the topmost branches. If the tree was overhanging a ravine, and you fell from the top, you should have broken your stupid little four-year-old neck. Instead you escaped without a scratch.

“I suppose it is possible that intervening branches slowed your fall,” he went on, “or you fell into a thick bush before hitting the side of the ravine and rolling down. Stranger accidents have happened before now, and it would explain why you, an intelligent and seemingly well balanced person, are sticking to this incredible story. But that isn’t all you say you did. Don’t talk, Patient Hewlitt, just listen.”

In the silence the calm, impersonal voice of the library computer sounded clear and almost loud.“… While the fruit is ripening,” it was saying, “the spongy internal mass absorbs all of the juice and grows to fill the striped envelope which, before parturition, becomes tough and flexible. When the semiliquid, sponged-filled fruit strikes the ground, it bounces or rolls a short distance until chemical sensors in the skin indicate an underlying soil type suitable for germination, whereupon the area of skin in contact with the ground decomposes, enabling the sponge to release its liquid content and seeds into the soil and begin its own slower process of decomposition. This has a twofold purpose, in that the rotting spongy material promotes initial growth in the seeds, while the juice permeates the surrounding soil and inhibits or kills off competing growths.

“Warning,” it went on. “The fruit of the Pessinith tree is highly toxic to all known warm-blooded oxygen-breathing physiological classifications as well as the native Etlan life-forms of all species. It has been investigated for possible medicinal use in trace quantities without success. Two cubic centimeters of the juice ingested by an entity of average body mass, such as an adult Orligian, Kelgian, or Earth-human, causes a rapid loss of consciousness and termination within one standard hour, and three cubic centimeters would have the same effect on a Hudlar or Tralthan. The effect is irreversible and there is no known antidote…

“Thank you, Library,” said Braithwaite. His voice was calm, his face expressionless, but he hit the communicator’s cutoff key so hard that it might have been a mortal enemy. For a long moment the lieutenant stared at him without blinking. Hewlitt told himself that it was going to happen again, that another medical person was about to tell him that he had imagined everything. But when the psychologist spoke there was curiosity rather than disbelief in his voice.

“A few drops of Pessinith fruit juice will kill a fully-grown man,” he said calmly, “and you were a four-year-old child who sucked dry the contents of a whole fruit. Can you explain that, Patient Hewlitt?”

“You know I can’t.”

“Neither can I,” said the lieutenant.

Hewlitt took a deep breath and let it out slowly before he trusted himself to speak. He said, “I have been talking to you for over four hours, Lieutenant. Surely that is long enough for you to establish whether or not I am a hypochondriac. Tell me-and be truthful, not polite.”

“I’ll try to be both,” said the psychologist. He sighed, then went on, “You are not a simple case. There are episodes in your childhood that could have led to severe emotional disturbance in later life, but so far I have found nothing to indicate that any lasting psychological damage was done. Your personality is well integrated, your intelligence is above average, and you appear to be coming to terms with your initial xenophobia. Apart from being hypersensitive and constantly on the defensive because up to now nobody has believed that there is anything wrong with you…

“Up to now?” Hewlitt broke in. “Does that mean you are beginning to believe me?’’

Braithwaite ignored the question and went on, “Your behavior is not characteristic of a hypochondriac who, as we know, produces imaginary medical symptoms for psychological reasons, such as a need to attract attention or gain sympathy, or to escape some deeply concealed, nonphysical problem or event that the hypochondriac refuses to face and where illness is the only perceived defense. If the latter, and you were able to hide it from yourself for most of your life, and from me during a four-hour interview, then it must be something pretty terrible that you have made yourself forget. But I cannot believe that you are hiding anything like that from me. But neither can I believe that you ate Pessinith fruit or fell from that tree. That escape was not just incredibly lucky, it was downright miraculous!”

Braithwaite stared at him without blinking for what seemed a long time. Then he said, “The medical profession is not comfortable with miraculous occurrences, and neither am I. That is Lioren’s area of expertise. But even the Padre is unhappy with them, because it believes that the advances in medicinal science have rendered them obsolete. Do you believe in miracles?”

“No,” said Hewlitt firmly. “I have never been a believer in anything.”

“Right,” said Braithwaite. “At least that gets one nonphysical factor out of the way. But there is another that we should eliminate as well-specifically your early xenophobia. That may have been caused by an incident involving an off-worlder so frightening that you now refuse to remember it. I would like to conduct a test.”

“Can I refuse to take it?” said Hewlitt.

“You must understand,” said Braithwaite, again ignoring his question, “that this is not a psychiatric hospital. My department is responsible for maintaining the mental health of a staff comprising sixty-odd different life-forms, and keeping that bunch happy and out of each other’s hair, or whatever, is more than enough for us. The test will help me to decide whether to hand you back to Medalont for further medical investigation or recommend your transfer to a planetary psychiatric facility.”

Hewlitt felt the old anger and embarrassment and despair welling up in him again. From the Galactic Federation’s leading hospital he had expected something better. Bitterly, he said, “What are you going to do to me?”

“I can’t tell you,” said Braithwaite, smiling again. “It will be uncomfortable for you, not life-threatening but with a high level of stress, and I’ll try not to allow things to get out of control.”

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