Alien Emergencies - James White [301]
To be born is to die, friends, the silent voice had said. My mind and my telepathic faculty are being destroyed, and I am becoming a Protector with my own Unborn to protect while it grows and thinks and tries to make contact with you.
Please cherish it.
The trouble with telepathic communication, Conway thought bitterly, was that it lacked the ambiguity and verbal misdirection and diplomatic lying which was possible with the spoken word. A telepathic promise had no loopholes. It was impossible to break one without a serious loss of self-respect.
And now the Unborn with whom he had experienced mind-to-mind contact was his patient, a Protector with the Unborn he had promised to cherish about to enter the highly complex and alien world of Sector General. He was still not sure how best to proceed—or, more accurately, which of several unsatisfactory options to adopt.
To nobody in particular he said suddenly, “We don’t even know that the fetus has grown normally in hospital conditions. Our reproduction of the environment may not have been accurate enough. The Unborn may not have developed sentience, much less the telepathic faculty. There have been no indications of…”
He broke off as a series of musical trills and clicks came from the ceiling above their heads, and from their translators came the words, “You may not be entirely correct in your assumption, friend Conway.”
“Prilicla!” Murchison said, and added unnecessarily, “You’re back!”
“Are you…well?” Conway asked. He was thinking of the Menelden casualties and the hell it must have been for an empath to be placed in charge of classifying them.
“I am well, friend Conway,” Prilicla replied, the legs holding it to the ceiling twitching slowly as it bathed in the emotional radiation of friendship and concern emanating from those below. “I was careful to direct operations from as great a distance as possible, just as I am remaining well clear of your patient in the outer ward. The Protector’s emotional radiation is unpleasant to me, but not so the radiation from the Unborn.
“Mentation of a high order is present,” the Cinrusskin went on. “Regrettably, I am an empath rather than a true telepath, but the feelings I detect are of frustration which is caused, I would guess, by its inability to communicate with those outside, together with feelings of confusion and awe which are predominating.”
“Awe?” Conway said, then added, “If it has been trying to communicate, we’ve felt nothing, not even the faintest tickle.”
Prilicla dropped from the ceiling, executed a neat loop, and fluttered to the top of a nearby instrument cabinet so that the DBLFs and DBDGs present would not have to strain their cervical vertebrae watching it. “I cannot be completely sure, friend Conway, because feelings are less trustworthy for the conveyance of intelligence than coherent thoughts, but it seems to me that the trouble may simply be one of mental overcrowding. During your original contact with the then Unborn and present Protector, the being had only three minds to consider, those of friends Murchison, Fletcher, and yourself. The other crew and medical team members were aboard Rhabwar and at extreme telepathic range.
“Here there may be too many minds,” the empath went on, “minds of a bewildering variety and degree of complexity, including two”—its eyes turned to regard Thornnastor and Conway—“which seem to contain a multiplicity of entities, and which might be truly confusing, and awe-inspiring.”
“You’re right, of course,” Conway said. He thought for a moment, then went on. “I was hoping for telepathic contact with the Unborn before and during the birth. In this case the assistance of a conscious and cooperating patient would be of great help indeed. But you can see the size of the operating room staff and technical support people. There are dozens of them. I can’t simply send them all away.”
Prilicla began to tremble again, this time in agitation over the additional worry it