Alan E. Nourse Super Pack. Alan E. Nourse

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СКАЧАТЬ a moment Dal just stared at the little old man in black, and felt the fur on his arms and back rise up. A wave of panic flooded his mind. He knows! he thought frantically. He must be able to read minds! But he thrust the idea away. There was no way that the Black Doctor could know. No race of creatures in the galaxy had that power. And yet there was no doubt that Black Doctor Arnquist knew what Dal had been thinking, just as surely as if he had said it aloud.

      Dal shook his head helplessly. “I ... I don’t know what you mean.”

      “I think you do,” Doctor Arnquist said. “Please, Dal. Trust me. This is not the time to lie. The thing that you were planning to do at the interview would be disastrous, even if it won you an assignment. It would be dishonest and unworthy.”

      Then he does know! Dal thought. But how? I couldn’t have told him, or given him any hint. He felt Fuzzy give a frightened shiver on his arm, and then words were tumbling out of his mouth. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, there wasn’t anything I was thinking of. I mean, what could I do? If the council wants to assign me to a ship, they will, and if they don’t, they won’t. I don’t know what you’re thinking of.”

      “Please.” Black Doctor Arnquist held up his hand. “Naturally you defend yourself,” he said. “I can’t blame you for that, and I suppose this is an unforgivable breach of diplomacy even to mention it to you, but I think it must be done. Remember that we have been studying and observing your people very carefully over the past two hundred years, Dal. It is no accident that you have such a warm attachment to your little pink friend here, and it is no accident that wherever a Garvian is found, his Fuzzy is with him, isn’t that so? And it is no accident that your people are such excellent tradesmen, that you are so remarkably skillful in driving bargains favorable to yourselves ... that you are in fact the most powerful single race of creatures in the whole Galactic Confederation.”

      The old man walked to the bookshelves behind him and brought down a thick, bound manuscript. He handed it across the desk as Dal watched him. “You may read this if you like, at your leisure. Don’t worry, it’s not for publication, just a private study which I have never mentioned before to anyone, but the pattern is unmistakable. This peculiar talent of your people is difficult to describe: not really telepathy, but an ability to create the emotional responses in others that will be most favorable to you. Just what part your Fuzzies play in this ability of your people I am not sure, but I’m quite certain that without them you would not have it.”

      He smiled at Dal’s stricken face. “A forbidden topic, eh? And yet perfectly true. You know right now that if you wanted to you could virtually paralyze me with fright, render me helpless to do anything but stand here and shiver, couldn’t you? Or if I were hostile to your wishes, you could suddenly force me to sympathize with you and like you enormously, until I was ready to agree to anything you wanted—”

      “No,” Dal broke in. “Please, you don’t understand! I’ve never done it, not once since I came to Hospital Earth.”

      “I know that. I’ve been watching you.”

      “And I wouldn’t think of doing it.”

      “Not even at the council interview?”

      “Never!”

      “Then let me have Fuzzy now. He is the key to this special talent of your people. Give him to me now, and go to the interview without him.”

      Dal drew back, trembling, trying to fight down panic. He brought his hand around to the soft fur of the little pink fuzz-ball. “I ... can’t do that,” he said weakly.

      “Not even if it meant your assignment to a patrol ship?”

      Dal hesitated, then shook his head. “Not even then. But I won’t do what you’re saying, I promise you.”

      For a long moment Black Doctor Arnquist stared at him. Then he smiled. “Will you give me your word?

      “Yes, I promise.”

      “Then I wish you good luck. I will do what I can at the interview. But now there is a bed for you here. You will need sleep if you are to present your best appearance.”

      The Inquisition

      The interview was held in the main council chambers of Hospital Seattle, and Dal could feel the tension the moment he stepped into the room. He looked at the long semicircular table, and studied the impassive faces of the four-star Physicians across the table from him.

      Each of the major medical services was represented this morning. In the center, presiding over the council, was a physician of the White Service, a Four-star Radiologist whose insignia gleamed on his shoulders. There were two physicians each, representing the Red Service of Surgery, the Green Service of Medicine, the Blue Service of Diagnosis, and finally, seated at either end of the table, the representatives of the Black Service of Pathology. Black Doctor Thorvold Arnquist sat to Dal’s left; he smiled faintly as the young Garvian stepped forward, then busied himself among the papers on the desk before him. To Dal’s right sat another Black Doctor who was not smiling.

      Dal had seen him before—the chief co-ordinator of medical education on Hospital Earth, the “Black Plague” of the medical school jokes. Black Doctor Hugo Tanner was large and florid of face, blinking owlishly at Dal over his heavy horn-rimmed glasses. The glasses were purely decorative; with modern eye-cultures and transplant techniques, no Earthman had really needed glasses to correct his vision for the past two hundred years, but on Hugo Tanner’s angry face they added a look of gravity and solemnity that the Black Doctor could not achieve without them. Still glaring at Dal, Doctor Tanner leaned over to speak to the Blue Doctor on his right, and they nodded and laughed unpleasantly at some private joke.

      There was no place for him to sit, so Dal stood before the table, as straight as his five-foot height would allow him. He had placed Fuzzy almost defiantly on his shoulder, and from time to time he could feel the little creature quiver and huddle against his neck as though to hide from sight under his collar.

      The White Doctor opened the proceedings, and at first the questions were entirely medical. “We are meeting to consider this student’s application for assignment to a General Practice Patrol ship, as a probationary physician in the Red Service of Surgery. I believe you are all acquainted with his educational qualifications?”

      There was an impatient murmur around the table. The White Doctor looked up at Dal. “Your name, please?”

      “Dal Timgar, sir.”

      “Your full name,” Black Doctor Tanner rumbled from the right-hand end of the table.

      Dal took a deep breath and began to give his full Garvian name. It was untranslatable and unpronounceable to Earthmen, who could not reproduce the sequence of pops and whistles that made up the Garvian tongue. The doctors listened, blinking, as the complex family structure and ancestry which entered into every Garvian’s full name continued to roll from Dal’s lips. He was entering into the third generation removed of his father’s lineage when Doctor Tanner held up his hand.

      “All right, all right! We will accept the abbreviated name you have used on Hospital Earth. Let it be clear on the record that the applicant is a native of the second planet of the Garv system.” The Black Doctor settled back in his chair and began whispering again to the Blue Doctor next to him.

      A Green СКАЧАТЬ