"White, James - Sector General 06 - Star Healer.PDB" - читать интересную книгу автора (White James)

But when it came the answer was disappointing, and seemed to invite only more questions.
“It is not a creature with a definite physical form,” the FOKT said. “In the dreams there is a feeling of great danger, a formless threat from a fast-moving, ferocious entity which bites and tears and engulfs. It is a phantasm which frightens the young, and the thought of it distresses adults. The young may give way to their fears and join together for mutual comfort, because they lack the physical strength to inflict major damage to their surroundings. But adults must avoid such mental bad habits and remain mentally and physically apart.”
Baffled, Conway said, “Are you telling me that young Gogleskans may link together at will, but not the adults?”
“It is difficult to stop them doing so,” the FOKT replied. “But it is discouraged lest a habit develops which would be too difficult to break in adulthood. And while I realize that you are anxious to study the joining process without subjecting our artifacts to damage, to closely observe a joining between children without causing mental distress in the parents concerned, followed by an involuntary adult joining, would be impossible.”
Conway sighed. Khone was way ahead of him, because that would have been his next request. Instead, he said, “Does my race in any way resemble this phantasm of your youth?”
“No,” Khone replied. “But your close approach of yesterday, and in particular your physical contact with a Gogleskan, appeared to be a threat. The reaction and emission of the distress call was instinctive, not logical.”
Helplessly, Conway said, “If we knew exactly what was responsible for what is clearly a species-wide panic reaction, we could try to negate it. But what is this bogeyman of yours?”
The lengthy silence which followed was broken by Wainright clearing his throat. Hesitantly, he said, “Considering the vague description, the speed and silence of its approach, and the fact that it rends and engulfs its prey, could it have been a large, airborne predator?”
Conway thought about that while he charted the nerve connections between the thin, shining tendrils lying in the coarser hair and the small, mineral-rich lobe at the center of the brain where they originated. He said, “Is there fossil evidence for such a creature? And isn’t it possible, if this memory goes back to presapient times to the period when the FOKTs were sea-dwellers, that the predator was a swimmer rather than a flyer?”
The communicator was silent for a moment; then Wainright said, “I found no evidence of large avians on the few sites I examined, Doctor. But if we are going really far back to the time when all Gogleskan life was in the oceans, then some of it was very large indeed. There is an area of seabed which was thrown up fairly recently, in geological terms, about twenty miles south of here. I deepprobed a fossil-rich section which was once a deep subsea valley, meaning to work up a computer reconstruction whenever I had a few hours to spare. It made a very confusing picture, because a large number of the fossil remains are damaged or incomplete.”
“Distortion due to seismic activity, do you think?” Conway asked.
“It’s possible,” the Lieutenant said doubtfully. “But my guess would be that it was inflicted by a contemporary agency. But the tape is in my room, Doctor. Shall I fetch it and see if the pictures, confusing as they are to me, jog our friend’s racial memory?”
“Yes, please,” Conway said. To Khone he went on. “If the recollection is not too distressing, can you tell me the number of times you have joined with other adults in response to a real or imagined threat? And can you describe the physical, mental, and emotional stages before, during, and subsequent to a joining? I do not wish to cause you pain, but it is important that this process be studied and understood if an answer to the problem is to be found.”
It was obvious that the recollection was causing discomfort to Khone, and equally plain that the healer was going to cooperate to the best of its ability. Before yesterday, it told Conway, there had been three previous joinings. The sequence of events was, firstly, the accident or sudden surprise or physical threat which caused the being endangered to emit an audible distress signal which drew all of its fellows within hearing to it as well as placing them in the same emotional state. If one being was threatened then everyone within audible range was threatened and was under the same compulsion to react, to join and overcome the threat. Khone indicated the organ which produced the signal, a membrane which could be made to vibrate independent of the respiratory system.
The thought occurred to Conway that the membrane would have been even more effective under water, but he was too busy listening to interrupt.
Khone went on to describe the sense of increased safety as the body hair of the beings wove them together, and the pleasant, exciting feeling of increased intellect and awareness as the first few Gogleskans joined and shared minds. But that feeling died as more and more beings linked up and mentation became progressively more difficult and confused until it was submerged by the one, overwhelming need to protect the group by attacking anything and everything in the vicinity. Coherent thought at the individual level was impossible.
“...When the threat has been neutralized,” Khone went on, or the incident which initiated the fusion is over and even to the dim understanding of the group-entity no longer poses a threat, the group slowly breaks up. For a time the individuals feel mentally confused, physically tired, and ashamed of themselves and of the destruction they have caused. To survive as an intelligent race, every Gogleskan must strive to be a lonely person.
Conway did not reply. His mind was still trying to adjust to the sudden realization that the Gogleskans had telepathy.


CHAPTER 6


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.