Star Healer

CHAPTER 8

The telepathic faculty had limitations, because the distress signal which triggered the joining was an audible rather than a mental one. It had to be telepathy by touch, then. He thought of the fine tendrils concealed by the coarse cranial hair. There were eight of them, which was more than enough to make contact with those of the beings pressed tightly around during a linkup.

He must have been thinking aloud, because Khone announced very firmly that such contact with another Gogleskan was acutely painful, and that the tendrils lay alongside those of the other group members but did not touch. Apparently the tendrils were organic transmitting and receiving antennae which operated by simple induction.

But the problem with telepathic races-and there were several of them in the Galactic Federation-was that the faculty worked only between members of the same species; with other races whose telepathic equipment operated on different frequencies or who did not possess the faculty, it worked rarely if at all. Conway had had a few experiences with projective telepaths-it was thought that Earth-humans had a latent ability but had evolved away from it- and the images he had received had been of short duration and accompanied by prior mental discomfort. It was also thought that races possessing a spoken and written language rather than a mental one tended to progress further and faster in the physical sciences.

The Gogleskans possessed both, and for some reason had been stopped dead in their cultural tracks.

“Is it agreed,” Conway asked, very impersonally and carefully because he was about to suggest something unpleasant, “that it is the instinctive linkup, when there is no longer a major threat to make it necessary, which is the basis of your problem? Is it further agreed that the tendrils, which are almost certainly the mechanism which initiates and maintains the group as a single entity, require close and detailed study if the problem is to be solved? However, a visual examination is not sufficient, and tests requiring direct contact would be necessary. These would include nerve conductivity measurements, the withdrawal of minute tissue samples for analysis, the introduction of external stimuli to ascertain if … Khone! None of these tests are painful!”

In spite of his hasty reassurance the Gogleskan was displaying signs of growing panic.

“I know that the thought of any kind of physical contact is distressing,” Conway went on quickly as he thought of a new approach, beautiful in its simplicity provided the personal dangers were ignored, “because there is an instinctive reaction to anyone or anything which might be a threat. But if it were demonstrated, on the instinctive as well as the cerebral level, that I am not a threat, then it might be possible for you to overcome this instinctive reaction.

“What I propose is this …

Wainright returned while he was talking. The Lieutenant stood listening, the tape gripped tightly in his hand, until Conway had finished. Then he said in a frightened voice, “Doctor, you’re mad.”

It took a much longer time to obtain the Lieutenant’s agreement than to get Khone’s, but finally Conway had his way. Wainright drew a litter from stores and the Doctor was placed on it and securely restrained with straps around the feet, legs, arms and body-the restraints had a quick-release capability which could be remotely operated by the Lieutenant; Wainright had insisted on that-and he was moved into Khone’s half of the observation compartment. The litter was set at a comfortable height for the Gogleskan healer to work, if it was able.

The idea was that if he could not physically examine Khone then the Gogleskan would examine Conway, while he was utterly helpless and incapable of any threatening behavior. It would accus torn the healer to the idea of physical examination and investigation against the time when it would be Conway’s turn. But that time, it soon became obvious, would be long delayed.

Khone approached him closely without too much distress and, under Conway’s direction, used the scanner with a fair degree of skill. But it was the instrument which touched him, not Khone itself. Conway remained absolutely still on the litter, moving only his eyes to watch Khone’s hesitant movements, or the Lieutenant, who was projecting his tape onto the big screen.

Suddenly he felt a touch, so light that it might have been a feather falling onto the back of his hand and then sliding off again. Then the touch was repeated, more firmly this time.

He tried not to move even his eyes lest Khone shy away, so he was aware from his peripheral vision of an expanse of stiff, Gogleskan hair and three of Khone’s manipulators, two of which were holding the scanner, moving along the side of his head. He felt another light touch in the area of the temporal artery; then very gently, the tip of a manipulator began exploring the convolutions of his ear.

Abruptly Khone withdrew, its membrane vibrating softly in muted distress.

Conway thought of the strength of the conditioning Khone had been fighting just to touch him the first time, and he felt an admiration for the dumpy little creature so great, and concern for its species as a whole so intense, that he found it difficult to speak for a few minutes.

“Apologies for the mental distress,” Conway said finally, “but it should lessen as the contacts are repeated. But audible distress signals are being generated even though you know that I have neither the wish nor the ability to endanger you. With your agreement the external door of this compartment should be closed lest members of your species within audible range think that you are being threatened and come to join with you.”

“There is understanding,” Khone said without hesitation, “and agreement.”

On the big screen the Lieutenant was playing back the tape which showed the dense mass of fossilized remains revealed by his deep probes, rotating the viewpoint and overlaying a scale grid so that a true idea of the shapes and sizes could be shown. Khone paid little attention to the display because, Conway realized, a species with such a primitive level of technology would not immediately comprehend the solid reality represented by a few thin lines on a dark screen. It was much more interested in the three-dimensional reality of the Doctor and it was approaching him again.

Conway, however, was intensely interested in the images on the screen.

He kept his eyes on it while two of Khone’s manipulators gently parted the hair on his scalp. To the Lieutenant, he said, “Those incomplete fossils look as if they have been torn apart, and I wouldn’t mind betting that if you ask that computer to reconstruct one of them using the data available from the Khone physiological material, you will have a recognizable presapient FOKT. But what is that … that overgrown vegetable hanging in the middle of them?”

Wainright laughed. “I was hoping you would tell me, Doctor. It looks like a deformed, stemless rose, with spikes or teeth growing from the edges of some of the petals, and it’s big.”

“The shape doesn’t make sense,” Conway said quietly as the Gogleskan shifted its attention to one of his hands. “As a mobile sea-dweller it should have fins rather than limbs, but there is no sign of streamlining along its direction of motion, or even a basic symmetry about its center of …

He broke off to answer a question from Khone regarding the hair on his wrist, and he took the opportunity of weakening the other’s conditioning a little more by suggesting that it perform a simple surgical procedure on him. It would involve removing a small area of hair, and using a fine needle in conjunction with the scanner to withdraw a small quantity of blood from a minor vein at the back of Conway’s hand. He assured Khone that the procedure would be painless and no harm would be done even if the needle were not positioned with complete accuracy.

He explained that it was the kind of test which was done countless times every day at Sector General on a wide variety of patients, and later analysis of the sample taken revealed a great deal about the condition of these patients, and in many cases, the data obtained was instrumental in curing them.

There would be very little direct physical contact involved in taking the sample, because Khone would be using the scanner, swab, scissors, and a hypodermic, he added encouragingly. Just as there would be minimal body contact if or when Conway performed similar tests on the Gogleskan.

For a moment Conway thought that he had rushed things too much, because Khone had backed away until it was pressing against the inside of the closed external door. It remained there, its hair twitching while it fought another battle with its conditioning, then it slowly returned to the litter. While he waited for it to speak, Conway took a quick look at the amazingly lifelike picture which was taking form on Wainright’s screen.

The Lieutenant had incorporated in the display all of the FOKT data as well as information he had gleaned earlier on the subsea vegetation of prehistoric times. The fossil remains, which the computer had reconstructed as slightly smaller versions of present-day Gogleskans, lay singly and in small, linked groups among the gently waving marine vegetation, lit by bright, greenish yellow sunlight which filtered down from the wave-wrinkled surface above. Only in the enormous, roselike object which lay in the center of the picture was there a lack of detail. An idea about it began to take shape at the back of Conway’s mind, but Khone spoke suddenly before it could form.

The Gogleskan was still not taking any interest in the screen.

“If this test were to cause pain,” Khone asked, “what would be the procedure then? And would it be preferable, in the present circumstances, for the blood sample to be taken by and from oneself?”

A helpful but cautious entity, this Khone, Conway thought, trying not to laugh. He said, “If a procedure is expected to cause discomfort, a quantity of the material contained in one of the phials colored in yellow and black diagonal bands is withdrawn and injected into the site. The quantity required is dependent on the period and degree of discomfort which one is expecting to cause.

“The material concerned is a painkiller for my species,” he went on, “as well as a muscle relaxant. But it is not required in this instance …

While he continued to give the directions for withdrawing the blood sample, he told Khone that it was much easier to perform such work on a subject other than oneself. He did not, at that time, make any mention of the fact that if he was to obtain a specimen of FOKT blood from Khone, the first thing he would have wanted to discover was if the yellow and black marked medication, or one of the other similar preparations in his supply, was suited to the Gogleskan metabolism. If one of them was suitable and there was an opportunity of injecting it, Khone would be left in such a painfree, relaxed, and massively tranquilized state that subsequent and more revealing tests would have been no problem at all.

A muscle relaxed, he thought, his eyes going back to Wainright’s display, as opposed to a muscle in spasm! …

The large object centering the screen lacked the symmetry and structural repetition of a vegetable-it looked like a sheet of paper which had been crushed and twisted into a loose ball. But if that idea was correct, the predator must have pulled itself into that shape. Conway shivered in spite of himself.

That Gogleskan venom was potent stuff.

To Wainright, he said quickly, “How does this sound? The FOKT fossils were those beings who did not survive the initial attack of the creature, and some of them are linked, indicating that they were part of a larger group. This FOKT group-entity attacked or defended itself against the predator with its stings, all of them. The quantity of venom injected must have sent the beastie into multiple muscular spasm, and it must have literally tied itself into a knot as it died. Can you get your computer to unravel that knot?”

Wainright nodded, and soon the twisted, convoluted shape at the center of the screen was surrounded by a fainter image of itself which was slowly unfolding. This had to be the answer for that weird shape, Conway thought, because nothing else made sense. Occasionally he asked for expanded views of the enormous fossil’s skeletal structure, and each one supported his theory. But the Lieutenant was forced to reduce the size several times as the ghostly, unfolding image overran the edges of the screen.

“It’s beginning to look like a bird,” Wainright said. “Parts of the wing are very fragile. In fact, it seems to be all wing.”

“That’s because the fossil remains are of the skeleton and skin only,” Conway replied. “There must have been almost total wastage of muscle and soft tissue which was attached to that bone structure. In the areas where you are indicating the wing … Now you’ve got me thinking of it as a bird … The wing thickness should be increased by a factor of five or six. But with that bone structure the wing could not have been rigid. I’d say that it undulated rapidly rather than flapping, and propelled the beastie forward at great speed. And that lateral split in the wing inboard leading edges is interesting. It reminds me of the engine intakes of the old jet aircraft, except that these intakes have teeth …

He broke off because Khone was jabbing hesitantly at the back of his hand with the hypo. For the first time Conway understood what a patient had to go through at the hands of a trainee medical technician.

“The jointing at the base of the wings,” he went on when the Gogleskan had found the proper vein, “suggests that the mouths on the wing leading edges opened and closed as it swam, eating everything that got in its way and passing the food through two alimentary canals to the stomach housed in that cylindrical bulge along the center line. The tegument was thicker along the leading edges, and probably sting-proof, and the stomach was probably capable of dealing with the FOKT venom even though it is lethal when injected through softer areas of tegument into the bloodstream.

“The only defense the FOKTs could offer was to link up and present themselves as a solid wall in its path,” he continued excitedly. “Quite a few of them would die before the group entity folded around the predator and stung it to death. The incomplete fossil remains indicate that. But I hate to think of what it must have been like for the group-members as a whole while they were mentally linked to their dying friends …

He cringed inwardly as he thought of how they all must have suffered, and died, every time one of their group did so. And they would have done so many times if the predator’s attacks were a regular occurrence. What was worse, prior to an attack they all knew what was ahead of them through the minds of previous survivors- all the fear and pain and multiple dying by proxy.

At last he understood the severity of the racial psychosis which gripped the whole Gogleskan species. As individuals they feared and hated a joining, or any close physical or mental contact or cooperation which might lead to the possibility of a linkup. Subconsciously to join was to suffer remembered pain, pain which could only be assuaged by a blind, berserker rage which in turn blotted out the capacity to think or to control their actions. Their fear of that particular species of predator must have been extreme, and even though their old enemy was extinct or was still a sea-dweller, they had not been able to forget it or develop a less self-defeating method of self-defense.

The main trouble was that the defense mechanism was so hypersensitive, even after the elapsed millennia since it was needed, that it could be triggered by an imagined or potential threat as well as an actual one.

Khone had finally completed withdrawing the blood sample. The back of Conway’s hand felt like a pincushion, but he said highly complimentary things about the FOKT healer’s first off-planet surgical procedure, and meant every word of them. While the other was carefully transferring the contents of the syringe into a sterile phial, he returned his attention to the screen.

The creature was completely unfolded now, and the Lieutenant had reduced the image again so that it would fit within the limits of the screen. Wainright had also added all the available data and theory on coloration, probable method of locomotion, and the wing-synchronized mouth and teeth movements. It moved slowly in the center of the big screen, a vast, dark gray, dreadful shape more than eighty meters across, undulating and flapping ponderously like an enormous, Earthly stingray, sucking in, tearing apart, and eating everything in its path.

This was the Gogleskan nightmare from their prehistoric past, and the figures of the reconstructed FOKT fossils were tiny blobs of color near the lower edge of the screen.

“Wainright!” Conway said urgently. “Kill that picture! …

But he was too late. Khone, its work completed, had turned to look at the screen-and was confronted with the three-dimensional picture of a moving and seemingly living creature which up until then had inhabited only its subconscious. In the confined space of the compartment its distress call was deafening.

Conway cursed his own stupidity as the panic-stricken Gogleskan stumbled about the floor within a few feet of his litter. Khone had shown little interest in the display when it had been a collection of fine lines, since it lacked the experience to appreciate the three-dimensional reality which they represented. But the Lieutenant’s final picture was much too realistic for any Gogleskan to view and remain wholly sane.

He saw the FOKTs dumpy body come toward him, then lurch past. Its multicolor hair was standing on end and twitching, its four stings were fully extended, dropletes of venom oozing from the tips, but the sound coming from its membranes seemed fractionally less deafening. Conway lay rigid, not even swiveling his eyes as the being moved away and then came back again.

The reduction in the volume of its distress call made it obvious that Khone was fighting its conditioning and Conway had to help it in the only way possible, by remaining absolutely motionless. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the Gogleskan stop, one of its stings only inches away from the side of his face and the stiff, bristling hair touching his coveralls. He could feel its breath puffing gently across his forehead and smell the faint, peppermint smell which seemed to be its body odor. Khone was trembling, whether with fear at the Lieutenant’s display or in indecision over whether or not to attack, Conway did not know.

If he stayed absolutely still, he told himself desperately, he should not represent a threat. If he moved, however, he knew with a dreadful certainty that the Gogleskan would sting him, instinctively, without thinking. But there was another aspect of the FOKT behavior pattern which he had forgotten.

They blindly attacked enemies, but any being who was not a threat and had managed to remain in such close physical proximity as Conway had done had to be a friend.

At times like this, friends linked up.

Conway was suddenly aware of the stiff bristles scratching against his clothing and trying to weave themselves into the fabric of his coveralls in the area of his neck and shoulder. The sting was still too close to the side of his face for comfort, but somehow it seemed to be less threatening. He held absolutely still, anyway. Then he saw, clearly because it was moving just two inches above his eyes, one of the long, fine tendrils. He felt it fall, feather-light, across his forehead.

A Gogleskan joining was mental as well as physical, Conway knew, but he did not foresee any more success for the telepathic linkup than for the physical one.

He was wrong.

It began as a deep, unlocalized itch inside his skull, and if his hands and arms had not been immobilized he would have been poking desperately at his ears with his fingers. He was aware, too, of a maddening confusion of sounds, pictures, and feelings which were not his own. He had experienced the same sensation many times, after taking extraterrestrial physiology tapes at the hospital, but on those occasions the alien impressions had been coherent and orderly. He felt now as if he were watching a tri-di show with sensory augmentation when the channel selector control was malfunctioning. The bright but chaotic images and impressions became more intense, and he wanted to close his eyes in the hope that they would go away, but he dared not even blink.

Suddenly the picture held steady and the feelings were sharp and clear, and for a few seconds Conway knew what it was like to be the intensely lonely and intellectually frustrated entity that was an adult Gogleskan. The breadth of intelligence and sensitivity of Khone’s mind awed him, and he was aware of the many ways in which the Gogleskan healer had used that mind, long before the Monitor Corps or Conway had arrived on Goglesk, to fight and circumvent the mind-destroying conditioning which their evolution had imposed on them.

He was sure, because he was in Khone’s mind and the healer was sure, that its mind was nothing extraordinary so far as FOKT mental capacity was concerned. But their high intelligence could not be shared except by the slow, impersonal, and imprecise spoken language, and a true meeting of minds was possible only during the brief period between the initial linkup and the coarsening and confusion of intellect which immediately followed it. His admiration for this individual member of a race of intensely reluctant individualists was great indeed.

There is no coarsening or loss of definition in the thoughts we are exchanging.

The words which appeared in Conway’s mind were overlaid by feelings of pleasure, gratitude, curiosity … and hope.

The process of establishing the mental linkup between your people must trigger an area of your endocrine system which desensitizes the entire cerebral process, probably to reduce the pain which was suffered in prehistoric times following a linkup and during the predator attack. But I am not a Gogleskan, so the desensitizing mechanism is absent. However, a precise study of the endocrinology involved should be undertaken without delay and the gland isolated, and if surgical intervention is indicated.

Too late he realized where that line of thought was taking him and the wide-and to Khone frightening-surgical associations it opened up. With a tremendous mental effort the Gogleskan had adapted to the close presence and physical contact with an offworlder, and Conway knew precisely how much of an effort that had been. But now the healer was sharing Conway’s mind, sharing his thoughts and feelings and experience of entities who staffed or were being cured at Sector General and who made the seagoing nightmare from Goglesk’s past seem like a domestic pet by comparison.

Khone could not take it, and its distress signal, which had grown quieter over the past few minutes, roared out again at full, frantic intensity. But the little being was maintaining contact in spite of the alien nightmare its thought tendril was receiving, and Conway was suffering with it.

He tried to think reassuring thoughts, tried to make the Gogleskan’s mind as well as his own change the mental subject. He had blinked several times but had otherwise remained still, and he thought, or rather he hoped, that Khone would continue to treat him as an immobile and helpless nonthreat. But was it his imagination or had Khone’s appearance changed suddenly?

The stiff, multicolor hair was more clearly defined and the nearest sting had developed new highlights. For a moment his fear became even greater than Khone’s as he realized what was happening.

“No, don’t’ he began, as loudly as he could without moving his lips. But the Gogleskan membrane was vibrating too loudly for Wainright to hear him.

“I’ve opened the outer door, Doctor,” the Lieutenant shouted, the communicator volume turned high so that he would be heard over the noise Khone was making. “I’m cutting your restraints, now. Get out of there!”

“I’m not in danger,” Conway called, but his voice was drowned out by that earsplitting distress signal and the overamplified Wainright. And he was lying anyway, because when the straps dropped away he was in terrible danger.

He was potentially mobile again, no longer helpless, and had therefore become a threat.

In the instant before the tendril was withdrawn Conway knew that Khone did not want to sting him, but that made no difference at all to what was a purely reflex action. As he rolled desperately onto the floor, he felt the jab of the blunt point of the sting thudding into his shoulder. One of his ankles was entangled in the foot restraints as he tried to crawl away, and another jab tore his coveralls and scratched his thigh. Again he tried to crawl toward the outer entrance, but first his arm and then his leg doubled up in muscular spasm, and he toppled onto his side, unable to move and facing the transparent partition. The two affected limbs seemed to be on fire.

The muscles in his neck and in the area of the scapula were knotting in cramp, and the fire was spreading from the hip puncture to the abdominal muscles. He wondered if the venom would affect the involuntary muscle systems as well, specifically those operating his heart and lungs. If it did then he had not long to live. The pain was so intense that the thought did not frighten him as badly as it should have. Desperately he tried to think of something he should do before he passed out.

“Wainright he began weakly.

Khone’s distress call had reduced in volume, and the healer had not tried to sting him again-obviously he was no longer a threat. The Gogleskan stood a few feet from him, its hair agitated by its stings lying flat against its head, looking like a harmless multicolored haystack. He tried again.

“Wainright,” he said slowly and painfully. “The yellow and black phial. Inject all of it …

But the Lieutenant was not at the other side of the partition, and the connecting door was still closed. Maybe Wainright intended coming around to the external door to drag Conway out, but he could not move himself around to see. It was becoming difficult to see anything.

Before he passed out, Conway was aware of regular fluctuations in the lighting which reminded him of something. A heavy power drain, he thought weakly, of the kind required to punch a signal through hyperspace …