than she had ever experienced on her incredibly distant home planet, and with them was a growing degree of loneliness so acute that it felt like an intense, physical hunger.
But she was not liked or wanted on far Sommaradva, and here, at least, they had taken positive measures to welcome her, so much so that she had to remain in this terrible place if only to discharge the obligation. And she would try to learn as much as she could before the hospital rulers decided that she was unsuitable and sent her home.
She should start learning now.
Was the hunger real, she wondered, rather than imaginary? She had not been able to eat to repletion during the earlier visit to the dining hall because her mind had been on matters other than food. She began to plan the route there, and to the location of her first lecture in the
morning, from her present position. But she did not feel like another trip along the hospital’s weirdly populated corridors just yet. She was very tired, and the room had a limited-menu food dispenser for trainees who did not wish to interrupt their studies by going to the dining hall.
She referred to the list of foods suited to her metabolism and tapped for medium-to-large portions. When she was feeling comfortably distended, she tried to sleep.
The room and the corridor outside were full of quiet, unidentifiable sounds, and she did not know enough to be able to ignore them. Sleep would not come and she was beginning to feel afraid again, and to wonder if her thoughts and feelings were of the kind to interest the wizard O’Mara, and that made her even more fearful for her future at Sector General. While still lying at rest, physically if not mentally, she used the ceiling projection facility of the communicator to see what was happening on the entertainment and training channels.
According to the relevant information sheet, ten of the channels continuously screened some of the Galactic Federation’s most popular entertainment, current interest, and drama programs with a translator output, if required. But she discovered that while she could understand the words that the different physiological types were saying to and about each other, the accompanying actions were in turn horrifying, mystifying, ridiculous, or downright obscene to Sommaradvan eyes. She switched to the training channels.
There she had a choice of watching displays of currently meaningless figures and tabulations on the temperatures, blood pressures, and pulse rates of about fifty different life-forms, or surgical operations in progress that were visually disquieting and not calculated to lull anyone to sleep.
In desperation, Cha Thrat tried the sound-only channels. But the music she found, even when the volume was reduced to bare audibility, sounded as if it were coming from a piece of malfunctioning heavy machinery. So it was a great surprise when the room alarm began reminding her, monotonously and with steadily increasing volume, that it was time to awaken if she required breakfast before her first lecture.
CHAPTER 4
T he lecturer was a Nidian who had been introduced as Senior Physician Cresk-Sar. While it was speaking, it prowled up and down the line of trainees like some small, hairy, carnivorous beast, which meant that every few minutes it passed Cha Thrat so closely that she wanted to either fold her limbs in defensive mode or run away.
“To minimize verbal confusion during meetings with other-species entities,” it was saying, “and to avoid inadvertently giving offense, it is assumed that all members of the medical and support staff who do not belong to your own particular species are sexless. Whether you are addressing them directly or discussing them in their absence, you will always think of them as an ‘it’. The only exception to this rule is when an other-species patient is being treated for a condition directly related to its sex, in which case the doctor must know whether it is male or female, or one of the
But she was not liked or wanted on far Sommaradva, and here, at least, they had taken positive measures to welcome her, so much so that she had to remain in this terrible place if only to discharge the obligation. And she would try to learn as much as she could before the hospital rulers decided that she was unsuitable and sent her home.
She should start learning now.
Was the hunger real, she wondered, rather than imaginary? She had not been able to eat to repletion during the earlier visit to the dining hall because her mind had been on matters other than food. She began to plan the route there, and to the location of her first lecture in the
morning, from her present position. But she did not feel like another trip along the hospital’s weirdly populated corridors just yet. She was very tired, and the room had a limited-menu food dispenser for trainees who did not wish to interrupt their studies by going to the dining hall.
She referred to the list of foods suited to her metabolism and tapped for medium-to-large portions. When she was feeling comfortably distended, she tried to sleep.
The room and the corridor outside were full of quiet, unidentifiable sounds, and she did not know enough to be able to ignore them. Sleep would not come and she was beginning to feel afraid again, and to wonder if her thoughts and feelings were of the kind to interest the wizard O’Mara, and that made her even more fearful for her future at Sector General. While still lying at rest, physically if not mentally, she used the ceiling projection facility of the communicator to see what was happening on the entertainment and training channels.
According to the relevant information sheet, ten of the channels continuously screened some of the Galactic Federation’s most popular entertainment, current interest, and drama programs with a translator output, if required. But she discovered that while she could understand the words that the different physiological types were saying to and about each other, the accompanying actions were in turn horrifying, mystifying, ridiculous, or downright obscene to Sommaradvan eyes. She switched to the training channels.
There she had a choice of watching displays of currently meaningless figures and tabulations on the temperatures, blood pressures, and pulse rates of about fifty different life-forms, or surgical operations in progress that were visually disquieting and not calculated to lull anyone to sleep.
In desperation, Cha Thrat tried the sound-only channels. But the music she found, even when the volume was reduced to bare audibility, sounded as if it were coming from a piece of malfunctioning heavy machinery. So it was a great surprise when the room alarm began reminding her, monotonously and with steadily increasing volume, that it was time to awaken if she required breakfast before her first lecture.
CHAPTER 4
T he lecturer was a Nidian who had been introduced as Senior Physician Cresk-Sar. While it was speaking, it prowled up and down the line of trainees like some small, hairy, carnivorous beast, which meant that every few minutes it passed Cha Thrat so closely that she wanted to either fold her limbs in defensive mode or run away.
“To minimize verbal confusion during meetings with other-species entities,” it was saying, “and to avoid inadvertently giving offense, it is assumed that all members of the medical and support staff who do not belong to your own particular species are sexless. Whether you are addressing them directly or discussing them in their absence, you will always think of them as an ‘it’. The only exception to this rule is when an other-species patient is being treated for a condition directly related to its sex, in which case the doctor must know whether it is male or female, or one of the
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