Alien Emergencies - James White [305]
“We will be attacking it,” he concluded, “with a major cesarean procedure through the carapace rather than in the abdominal area, without benefit of anesthesia, and I expect that there will be enough pain and confusion in its mind to make it forget that its body is not in motion, at least for the relatively short time it will take to complete the operation.”
Murchison was staring at him, her face expressionless but as pale as her white uniform. The full meaning of what he had just been saying dawned on Conway, and he felt sick and ashamed. The words were in direct contradiction to everything he had been taught as a healer and a bringer of comfort. You must be cruel to be kind, someone had told him once, but surely they had not meant this cruel.
“The Earth-human DBDG component of my mind,” Thornnastor said slowly, “is feeling shock and disgust at such unheard-of behavior.”
“This DBDG,” Conway said, tapping himself angrily on the chest, “feels the same way. But your taped DBDG never had to deliver a Protector.”
“Neither,” Thornnastor said, “has anyone else.”
Murchison was about to speak when there was a double interruption.
“The birth opening is beginning to widen,” the Kelgian charge nurse reported, “and there is a small change in the position of the fetus.”
“The emotional radiation from both entities is reaching a peak,” Prilicla said on the communicator. “You will not have long to wait, friend Conway. Please do not distress yourself. Your clinical thinking is usually trustworthy.”
The Cinrusskin invariably said the right thing, Conway thought gratefully as Thornnastor followed him to the operating frame.
They checked the underside first, moving as close as they could while still avoiding the Protector’s wildly thrashing legs and the Hudlar who was jabbing at them with a metal bar to reproduce the attacks of the small, sharp-toothed predators of its home world. The musculature associated with the limbs was in constant, writhing motion, and in the medial area the birth opening was slowly lengthening and widening.
For the recorders, Conway said, “Junior will not be coming out this way. Normally, a cesarean procedure calls for a long, abdominal incision through which the fetus is removed. That course is contraindicated in this case for two reasons. It would involve cutting through several of the leg muscles, and because this being is incapable of resting a damaged limb while healing takes place, the clinical injury would never heal and the limbs concerned would be permanently affected. Secondly, we would be going in very close to the two glands which, we are virtually certain, contain the secretions which reverse the prebirth paralysis and obliterate the mind. Both, as you can see in the scanner, are connected to the umbilical and are compressed, and their contents discharged into the fetus, during the later stages of the birth process. In this physiological classification, a traditional cesarean entry would almost certainly compress these glands prematurely, and the purpose of the operation, the delivery of an intelligent Unborn, would be defeated. So we’ll have to do it the hard way, by going through the carapace at an angle which will cause minimum disturbance to the underlying vital organs.”
While the charge nurse had been positioning the Protector for the operation, the movements of the Unborn had been imperceptible, but now the scanner showed a slow, steady motion toward the birth canal. He forced himself to walk around to the other side of the operating frame, when his instinct was to break into an undignified gallop; then he checked that Thornnastor and Murchison were in position and said quietly, “Immobilize