The compleat collected s.., p.647
The COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works, page 647
One of its hands moved to rest very gently on Mannen's shoulder and even more quietly it said, "I have professional, and personal, reasons for wanting to know."
Once again Lioren searched his mind in silence for the right words until he was ready to speak.
"With respect, Major O'Mara," Lioren said carefully, "some of the words that passed between us contained nonpersonal information that may be revealed, but only if the patients give their agreement to my doing so. Regrettably the rest, which I expect is of primary interest to you as a psychologist, I cannot and will not divulge."
O'Mara's face had again deepened in color while Lioren was speaking, but gradually it lightened again. Then suddenly the Chief Psychologist twitched its shoulders in the peculiarly Earth-human fashion and left the room.
Chapter Fifteen
"YOU ASK questions," the Groalterri said, "endlessly."
In such a massive creature it was impossible to detect changes of expression, even if the gargantuan features were capable of registering them, and the nonverbal signals he had been able to learn were few. Lioren had the feeling that this was not going to be a productive meeting.
"I also answer questions," Lioren said, "for as long as they are asked."
Around and below him the tightly curled tentacles stirred like great, organic mountain ranges caught in a seismic disturbance, and became still again. Lioren was not unduly worried, because the tantrum of his first visit had not been repeated.
"I have no questions," the patient said. "My curiosity is crushed by a great weight of guilt. Go away."
Lioren withdrew to indicate his willingness to obey, but only by a short distance to show that he still wanted to talk.
"Satisfying my curiosity," he said, "makes me forget my own guilt for a time, as does satisfying the curiosity of others. Perhaps I could help you to forget your guilt, for a while, by answering the questions you do not ask."
The patient did not move or speak, and Lioren, as he had done when previously faced with this form of negative reaction, took it as a reluctant acquiesence and went on talking.
The Groalterri was physiologically unsuited to travel in space, so he talked about one of the other species who were similarly hampered and others for whom star travel should have been impossible but was not. He spoke of the great strata creatures of Drambo, whose vast bodies could grow like a living carpet to cover the area of a subcontinent, who used as eyes the millions of flowers that made of their backs a lightsensitive skin, and who, in spite of the vegetable metabolism that made physical movement so slow, had minds that were quick and sharp and powerful.
He told of the vicious, incredibly violent and mindless Protectors of the Unborn, who neither slept nor ceased fighting from the moment they were born into their incredibly savage environment until they died because of the weakness of age and the inability to protect themselves from their lastborn. But within that organic fighting and killing machine there was an embryo whose telepathic mind was rich and full and gentle, taught as it was by the telepathy of its unborn brothers, and whose ability to think was tragically destroyed after its long gestation by the process of birth.
"Protectors of the Unborn have been brought to this hospital," Lioren went on, "where we are trying to devise ways of birthing their offspring without the consequent mind destruction, and of training these newly born not to attack and kill everyone on sight."
While Lioren had been speaking, the Groalterri remained still and silent. He resumed, but gradually his subject was changing from descriptions of the physiological attributes of the beings who made up the Federation to the philosophical viewpoints which joined or sometimes separated them. He wanted to know what was troubling the patient, so the change was deliberate.
Lioren went on. "An act which is considered to be a great wrong by one species because of an evolutionary imperative or, less often, by a too-narrow philosophical education, can be viewed by another as normal and blameless behavior. Often the judge, who is never physically present but has others to speak for it, is an immaterial entity who is believed to be the all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-merciful Creator of All Things."
Below and around him the tentacles stirred restively, the eye that had been regarding him steadily closed, but there was no other reaction. Lioren knew that he was taking a risk by continuing in this vein, but there was suddenly a need within him to understand the mind of this great and greatly troubled being.
"My knowledge of this subject is incomplete," he continued, "but among the majority of the intelligent species it is said that this omnipotent and immaterial being has manifested itself in physical form. The physiological classifications vary to suit the environments of the planets concerned, but in all cases it manifests itself as a teacher and lawgiver who suffers death at the hands of those who cannot at first accept its teachings. But these teachings, in a short time or long, form the philosophical foundation of mutual respect, understanding, and cooperation between individuals of that species which eventually lead to the formation of a planetary and interstellar civilization.
"There are many beings who hold the belief that it is the same being in every case who, whenever its creation is threatened and its teachings are most needed, manifested or will manifest itself on all worlds. But the common factors in all these beliefs are sympathy, understanding, and forgiveness for past wrongs, whatever form they have taken and no matter whether they be venial or of the utmost gravity. The quality of this forgiveness is demonstrated by the manifestation's death, which is reported in all cases to be shameful and physically distressing. On Earth it is said that termination occurred after being attached with metal spikes to a wooden cross, and the Crepellian octopoids used what they called the Circle of Shame, in which the limbs are staked out at full extension on dry ground until death by dehydration occurs, while on Kelgia—"
"Small Lioren," the Groalterri said, suddenly opening its eye, "do you expect this omnipotent being to forgive your own grievous wrong?"
After the patient's long silence the question took Lioren by surprise. "I don't ... What I mean is, there are others who believe that these teachers and lawgivers arise naturally in any intelligent culture which is in transition between barbarism and the beginnings of true civilization. On some worlds there have been many lawgivers, whose teachings vary in small details, not all of whose adherents believe them to be manifestations of an omnipotent being. All of these teachers advocated showing mercy and forgiveness to wrongdoers, and they usually died at the hands of their own people. Was there an entity of that kind, a great teacher and forgiver, in Groalterri history?"
The eye continued to regard him, but the patient's speaking membrane remained still. Perhaps the question had been offensive in some fashion, for it was plain that the Groalterri was not going to answer it. Sadly, Lioren ended, "I do not believe I can be forgiven because I cannot forgive myself."
This time the response was immediate, and utterly surprising.
"Small Lioren," the Groalterri said, "my question has brought a great hurt to your mind, and for this I am sorry. You have been engaging my mind with stories of the worlds and peoples of your Federation, and of their strangely similar philosophies, and for a time my own great hurt was diminished. You deserve more of me, and shall be given more, than a hurt in return for a kindness.
"The information I shall now give you, and this information only, you may relay to and discuss with others. It concerns the origins and history of the Groalterri and contains nothing that is personal to myself. Any previous or subsequent conversations between us must remain private."
"Of course!" Lioren said, so loudly that in his excitement he overloaded his translator. "I am grateful; we will all be grateful. But—but our gratitude to you is impersonal. Can you at least tell me who and what you are?"
He stopped, wondering if asking the other's name had been a mistake, perhaps his last mistake.
One of the creature's tentacles uncurled suddenly and its boney tip whistled past Lioren's head to strike the metal wall, where it made deafening, intermittent contact for a few seconds before being as quickly withdrawn.
At the center of one of the few-areas of plating left unscarred after its previous tantrum there was a perfect geometrical figure of an eightpointed star. The lines making it up were straight and of equal depth and thickness, something between a deep, bright scratch and a fine, shallow trench in the metal, and the lines of the figure were accurately joined without gaps or overlapping.
"I am Small Hellishomar the Cutter," it said quietly. "You, Lioren, would call me a surgeon."
Chapter Sixteen
HELLISHOMAR concentrated its attack on an area where the skin was thin and the underlying tissues soft, tearing into the flesh with all four blades until the bloody crater was large and deep enough to admit its body and equipment. Then it closed and sealed the flap of the entry wound behind it, switched on the lighting and eye-cover washers, checked the level of the flammables tank, and resumed burrowing.
This Parent was old, old enough to be the parent of Hellishomar's parent's parent, and the gray rot that afflicted the aged was already well established all over and deep within its gargantuan body. As was usual with Parents, it had concealed the early symptoms so as to avoid the days of severe pain and violence that surgery would entail until the visibly growing cancers had left it unable to move, and one of the passing Smalls had reported its condition to the Guild of Cutters.
Hellishomar was old for a Small as well as large for a Cutter, but its extensive knowledge and unrivaled experience more than made up for the damage caused by the size of the entry wounds it was forced to make; and here the deeper tissues were soft so that often he was able to squeeze through a single incision rather than hacking a bloody tunnel into perfectly healthy flesh.
Avoiding the larger blood vessels or heat-sealing those that could not be avoided, and ignoring the severed capillaries which would close naturally, Hellishomar cut rapidly and accurately without waste of time. During deep work the compressed air tanks had to be small, otherwise the entry wound would have been larger, the damage greater, and the progress slower.
Then suddenly it was visible, the first internal evidence of the growth, and precisely in the predicted position.
Lying diagonally across the newly deepened incision there was a thin, yellow tube whose tough walls and oily surface had enabled it to slide away from the blade tentacle. It pulsed faintly as it drew nutrient from the gray, necrotic growth spreading over the Parent's surface tegument to the heart-root, or roots, deep inside the body. Hellishomar changed direction to follow it down.
Within a few moments there was another yellow tube visible on one side of the tunnel, then another and another, all converging towards a single point below him. Hellishomar cut and squeezed through them until the heart-root itself lay exposed like a veined, uneven globe that seemed to glow with its own sickly yellow light. In size it was only a little smaller than Hellishomar's head. Quickly he excised a clear space all around and above it, severing in the process more than twenty of the rootlets and two thicker tubes which were the connections to secondaries. Then, taking up a position which would allow the heat and bloody steam to escape and disperse along the entry wound rather than stewing the Cutter in his own body fluids, Hellishomar attacked the foul thing with his burner turned up to full intensity.
Hellishomar did not stop until the heart-root was converted to ash, and then he gathered the ashes into a small pile and flamed them again. He followed the connector to the secondary, burning it behind him as he went, until he found another heart-root and removed that. When the external Cutters had completed their work, the fine root connections to the surface growths, severed at both ends and starved of nutrient, would wither and shrink so that they could be withdrawn from the Parent's body with the minimum of discomfort.
In spite of the wipers that were laboring to keep the eye-covers clear, there was an increasing and irregular impairment of Hellishomar's vision. His movements were becoming slower, the strokes of his cutting blades less precise, and the quality of his surgery diabolical. He diagnosed the condition as a combination of heat exhaustion and asphyxiation and turned at once to begin cutting a path to the nearest breathing passage.
A sudden increase of resistance to the cutters indicated that he had encountered the tough outer membrane of a breathing passage. Carefully Hellishomar forced through an incision large enough to allow entrance to his head and upper body only so as to minimize bleeding from the wound, then stopped and uncovered his gills.
Water not yet warmed by the Parent's body heat washed past Hellishomar's overheated body, replacing the stale tanked air in his lungs and clearing both vision and mind. His pleasure was short-lived because a few moments later the flood of clear, gill-filtered water diminished to a trickle as the Parent changed to air-breathing mode. Quickly withdrawing the rest of his body from the wound, Hellishomar uncoiled his cutter-tipped tentacles to full extension, making the shallow, angled incisions in the breathing passage wall which would enable it to maintain position above the wound when the storm of inhaled air blew past.
The Parent's nerve network made it aware of everything that occurred in its vast body and the exact position of the events as they took place, and it also knew that wounds healed more readily in air than in water. As he expertly drew together the edges of the exit wound with sutures, Hellishomar wished that just once one of the great creatures would touch its mind, perhaps to thank him for the surgical intervention that would extend its life, or to criticize the Small selfishness which made it want thanks, or merely to acknowledge the fact of its existence.
Parents knew everything, but spoke of their knowledge to none but another Parent.
The wind of inhalation died and there was a moment of dead calm as the Parent prepared to exhale. Hellishomar made a final check on the wound sutures, released its grip on the wall, and dropped onto the soft floor of the breathing passage. There it rolled itself tightly into a ball of its own tentacles, and waited.
Suddenly its body was lifted and hurled along the breathing passage by a hurricane which coughed it onto the surface of the outside world ...
"THERE HELLISHOMAR had rested and replaced its consumables," Lioren went on, "because this Parent was old and large and there was still much work to do."
He paused so as to give O'Mara a chance to respond. When he had requested permission to make an immediate verbal report on his return from the Groalterri ward, the Chief Psychologist had expressed surprise in a tone which Lioren now recognized as sarcastic, but thereafter it had listened without interruption or physical movement.
"Continue," O'Mara said.
"I have been told," Lioren went on, "that the history of the Groalterri is composed entirely of memories handed down over the millennia. I have been assured of their accuracy, but archaeological evidence to support them is not available. The culture has, therefore, no presapient history, and in this respect my report must be deductive rather than factual."
"Then by all means," O'Mara said, "deduce."
No early historical records had been kept on the mineral-starved swamp and ocean world of the Groalterri, because the life span of its people was longer and their memories clearer and more trustworthy than any marks placed upon animal skins or layers of woven vegetation that would fade and rot long before the lives of the writers would be ended. Groalter was a large world that orbited its small, hot sun once every two and one-quarter Standard Years, and one of its gigantic intelligent life-forms would have had to be unhealthy or unfortunate indeed not to have witnessed five hundred such rotations.
It was only with the recent advent—recent as the Groalterri measured the passage of time—of Small technology that permanent written records had been kept. These were concerned principally with the discoveries and observations made by the scientific bases that had been established, with great difficulty and loss of Small life, in the heavy-gravity conditions of the polar regions. Groalter's rapid rotation gave low levels of gravity only in a broad band above and below the equator, where the tidal effects of its large satellite kept the vast, inhabited oceans and swamps constantly in motion, and this continuing tidal action had long since eroded away its few equatorial landmasses.
In time—a long time even as the Groalterri measured it—their great, uninhabited moon would spin closer until it and the mother planet collided in mutual destruction.
The Small made such advances in technology as were possible in their impermanent environment. And every day of their young lives they tried to control the animal nature within them so that they might arrive more quickly at the mental maturity of the Parents, who spent their long lives thinking great thoughts while they controlled and conserved the resources of the only world that, because of their great size, they could ever know.
"There are two distinct cultures on Groalter," Lioren continued. "There are the Small, of which our overlarge patient is a member, and the Parents, of whom even their own children know little."
Within their first Groalter year the Small were forced to leave the Parents, to be cared for and educated by slightly more senior children. This seeming act of cruelty was necessary to the mental health and continued survival of the Parents because, during their years of immaturity, the Small were considered to be little more than savage animals whose quality of mentation and behavior made them utterly repellent to the adults.
In spite of being unable to bear their violent and unsettling presence, the Parents loved them dearly and watched over their welfare at a distance.
But the mind of a Small of the Groalterri, when compared with the level of intelligence and social behavior possessed by the average member species of the Federation, was neither savage nor stupid. For many thousands of Earth-standard years, during their long wait between birth and achieving adulthood, they had been solely responsible for the development of Groalterri physical science and technology. During that period they had no communication with their elders, and their physical contacts were incredibly violent and restricted to surgical interventions aimed at prolonging the Parents' lives.
