Alien Emergencies - James White [292]
Thornnastor had raised the eye which had been regarding its food to look at him. It said, “We were just talking about you. You seem to be adapting very well to your multiple tape problems, and now Murchison tells me that—”
“Yes,” Conway said quickly. He looked appealingly into the Tralthan’s one and Murchison’s two eyes and went on. “Please, I would greatly appreciate it if you would not discuss this very personal matter with anyone else.”
“I don’t see why not,” Thornnastor said, bringing another eye to bear on him. “Surely the matter is of intrinsic interest, and would no doubt prove enlightening to colleagues who have faced or are about to face similar problems. Sometimes your reactions are difficult to understand, Conway.”
He glared at Murchison, who, he felt, had been far too free in talking about her intrinsically interesting problems with her Chief. But she smiled sweetly back at him, then said to Thornnastor, “You’ll have to excuse him, sir. I think he is hungry, and hunger affects his sensorium as well as his blood sugar levels and sometimes makes him behave with a degree of irrationality.”
“Ah, yes,” the Tralthan said, returning the eye to its plate. “It has the same effect on me.”
Murchison was already tapping instructions into the food console for one of his visually noncontroversial sandwiches. He said, “Make it three, please.”
He was attacking the first one as Thornnastor, who had the advantage of being able to speak with all four of its mouths, went on. “It seems I must compliment you on the way you are adapting to operative procedures requiring other-species surgical data. Not only were you calling up this data with little or no delay; the indications are that you were initiating new procedures derived from a combination of different entities’ experiences. The OR Seniors were most impressed, I have been told.”
Chewing furiously, Conway swallowed and said, “It was the Seniors who did all the real work.”
“That isn’t the way Hossantir and Edanelt tell it,” Thornnastor said. “But I suppose it is in the nature of things that Seniors do most of the work and the Diagnostician-in-Charge gets most of the credit, or all of the discredit if things go wrong. And speaking of cases which might not go well, I would like to discuss your plans for the birth of your Unborn. The endocrinology of its parent and Protector is quite complex, and I am most interested in this one. However, I can foresee a few purely physical problems which…”
Conway nearly choked at the understatement, and it was a moment before he was able to speak.
“Must all verbal communication cease while it is eating?” said Thornnastor impatiently, using the mouth closest to Murchison. “Why wasn’t your species foresighted enough to evolve at least one additional orifice for the ingestion of food?”
“Pardon me,” Conway said, smiling. “I would be delighted to have any assistance and advice you can give me. The Protectors of the Unborn are the most untreatable life-form we’ve encountered, and I don’t think we have discovered all the problems yet, much less found solutions to them. In fact, I would be most grateful if your commitments would allow you to be present during the birth.”
“I thought you’d never ask, Conway,” Thornnastor rumbled.
“There are several problems,” Conway said, rubbing his middle gently and wondering if one of them was going to be an attack of indigestion through eating his food too quickly. Apologetically, he went on. “But right now my mind is still sensitized to the Hudlar material and the questions which have arisen as a result of my recent experiences in the Hudlar OR and Geriatric wards. The questions are psychological as well as physiological, and so insistent that I find it very difficult to clear my mind for consideration of the Protector case. This is ridiculous!”
“But understandable, considering