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doctor, in rapport with the brontosaur under the surface of the lake, reported that success or failure hung
in the balance. The patient had gone through what was to it a mind-wrecking experience, but the fact that
it was now in what it felt to be the safety of underwater where it had hitherto sought refuge from hunger
and attacks of its enemies was, together with the mental reassurances of Arretapec, exerting a
steadying influence.
At times hopefully, at others in utter despair, Conway waited. Sometimes the strength of his feelings
made him swear. It would not have been so bad, meant so much to him, if he hadn't caught that glimpse
of what Arretapec's purpose had been, or if he had not grown to like the rather prim and
over-condescending ball of goo so much. But any being with a mind like that who intended doing what it
hoped to do had a right to be condescending.
Abruptly the huge head broke surface and the enormous body heaved itself onto the bank. Slowly,
ponderously, the hind legs bent double and the long, tapering neck stretched upward. The brontosaurus
wanted to play again.
Something caught in Conway's throat. He looked to where a dozen bundles of succulent greenery lay
ready for use, with one already being manoeuvreed toward him. He waved his arm abruptly and said,
"Oh, give it the whole lot, it deserves them. .
"...so that when Arretapec saw the conditions on the patient's world," Conway said a little stiffly, "and
its precognitive faculty told him what the brontosaur's most likely future would be, it just had to try to
change it."
Conway was in the Chief Psychologist's office making a preliminary, verbal report and the intent faces
of O'Mara, Hardin, Skempton and the hospital's Director encircled him. He felt anything but comfortable
as, clearing his throat, he went on, "But Arretapec belongs to an old, proud race, and being telepathic
added to its sensitivity telepaths really feel what others think about them. What Arretapec proposed
doing was so radical, it would leave itself and its race open to such ridicule if it failed, that it just had to be
secretive. Conditions on the brontosaur's planet indicated that there would be no rise of an intelligent
life-form after the great reptiles became extinct, and geologically speaking that extinction would not be
long delayed. The patient's species had been around for a long time that armoured tail and amphibious
nature had allowed it to survive more predatory and specialized contemporaries but climatic changes
were imminent and it could not follow the sun toward the equator because the planetary surface was
composed of a large number of island continents. A brontosaurus could not cross an ocean. But if these
giant reptiles could be made to develop the psi faculty of teleportation, the ocean barrier would disappear
and with it the danger from the encroaching cold and shortage of food. It was this which Dr. Arretapec
succeeded in doing."
O'Mara broke in at that point: "If Arretapec gave the brontosaurus the teleportive ability by working
directly on its brain, why can't the same be done for us?"
"Probably because we've managed fine without it," replied Conway. "The patient, on the other hand,
was shown and made to understand that this faculty was necessary for its survival. Once this is realized
the ability will be used and passed on, because it is latent in nearly all species. Now that Arretapec has
proved the idea possible his whole race will want to get in on it. Fostering intelligence on what would
otherwise be a dead planet is the sort of big project which appeals to those high-minded types...
Conway was thinking of that single, precognitive glimpse he had had into Arretapec's mind, of the
civilization which would develop on the brontosaur's world and the monstrous yet strangely graceful
beings that it would contain in some far, far, future day. But he did not mention these thoughts aloud.
Instead he said, "Like most telepaths Arretapec was both squeamish and inclined to discount purely
physical methods of investigation. It was not until I introduced him to Dr. Mannon's dog, and pointed out
that a good way to get an animal to use a new ability was to teach it tricks with it, that we got anywhere.
I showed that trick where I throw cushions at the dog and after wrestling with them for a while it arranges
them in a heap and lets me throw it on top of them, thus demonstrating that simple-minded creatures
don't mind within limits, that is a little roughhousing "
"So that," said O'Mara, gazing reflectively at the ceiling, "is what you do in your spare time..
Colonel Skempton coughed. He said, "You're playing down your own part in this. Your foresight in
stuffing that hulk with tractor and pressor beams...
"There's just one other thing before I see it off," Conway broke in hastily. "Arretapec heard some of
the men calling the patient Emily. It would like to know why."
"It would," said O'Mara disgustedly. He pursed his lips then went on, "Apparently one of the
maintenance men with an appetite for early fiction the Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne to be
exact dubbed our patient Emily Brontosaurus. I must say that I feel a pathological interest in a mind
which thinks like that..." O'Mara looked as though there was a bad smell in the room.
Conway groaned in sympathy. As he turned to go, he thought that his last and hardest job might be in
explaining what a pun was to the high-minded Dr. Arretapec.
Next day Arretapec and the dinosaur left, the Monitor transport officer whose job it was to keep the
hospital supplied heaved a great sigh of relief, and Conway found himself on ward duty again. But this
time he was something more than a medical mechanic. He had been placed in charge of a section of the
Nursery, and although he had to use data, drugs and case-histories supplied by Thornnastor, the
Diagnostician-in-Charge of Pathology, there was nobody breathing directly down his neck. He could
walk through his section and tell himself that these were his wards. And O'Mara had even promised him
an assistant...!
"It has been apparent since you first arrived here," the Major had told him, "that you mix more readily [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]