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mechanisms positioned between the projection screens which were designed to
beat, tear, and jab at the occupant with any desired degree of frequency or
force.
Everything possible had been done to make the new arrival feel at home.
As you are already aware, Conway went on, the Unborn, by virtue of its
telepathic faculty, is constantly aware of the events taking place outside its
parent. We are not telepaths and may not be capable of receiving its thoughts,
even during the period of intense mental stress which occurs just prior to
birth, when it is transmitting at maximum power because it knows that its mind
and personality are about to be obliterated.
There are several telepathic races known to the Federation, he continued,
his mind returning to its one and only contact with a telepathic
Unborn. These are usually species who have evolved this faculty so that their
common organic receiver/transmitters are automatically in tune. For this
reason telepathic contact between the members of different telepathic races is
not always possible. When mental contact occurs between one of these entities
and a nontelepath, it usually means that the faculty in the nontelepath is
either dormant or atrophied. When such contact occurs the experience can be
highly uncomfortable, but there are no physical changes in the brain affected,
nor is there any lasting psychological damage.
As he switched on the Rumpus Room s screens and began projecting the visual
record of that first, incredibly violent birth, his mind was adding the
extra-sensory dimension of his own, minuteslong telepathic contact with the
Unborn so soon to be born.
Conway was aware that his fists were clenched, and that beside him
Murchison s face was pale as she watched the screen. Once again the rampaging
Protector tried to get at them by battering at the partly open inner seal of
the air lock. The opening was five or six inches wide, just enough for the
pathologist, Rhabwar s injured Captain, and Conway to see and hear and record
everything which was happening. But their position was not a secure one. The
Protector s hard-tipped tentacles had already wreaked havoc in the lock
antechamber, tearing out sections of metal plating and deforming the
underlying structure, and the lock s inner seal was not all that thick.
Their only safety lay in the fact that the lock antechamber was weightless,
and the flailing tentacles of the Protector sent it spinning helplessly away
from every wall or obstruction they encountered, which simply increased its
anger and the savagery of its attack. It also made it more difficult to
observe the birth which was taking place. But the violence of the
Protector s attack was beginning to diminish. Weightlessness combined with
physical damage sustained during encounters with the ship s now-dead crew and
the subsequent malfunctioning of the on-board life-support system had left it
with barely enough strength to complete the birth process, which was already
well advanced as the parent spun slowly to give a good if intermittent view of
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the emergence of the Unborn.
Conway s mind was on an aspect of the birth which the recording could not
reproduce-the last few moments of telepathic contact with the fetus before it
left its parent and became just another vicious, insensate, completely
nonsentient young Protector- and for a moment he could not speak.
Thornnastor must have sensed his difficulty because it reached past him and
froze the picture. In its ponderous, lecturing manner it said, You can see
that the head and most of the carapace have appeared, and that the limbs which
project from it are limp and unmoving. The reason for this is that the
secretions which are released to reverse the prebirth paralysis of the Unborn,
and at the same time obliterate all cerebral activity not associated with
survival, have not yet taken effect. Up to this point the expulsion of the
Unborn is solely the responsibility of the parent Protector.
In the characteristically forthright manner of a Kelgian, one of the nurses
asked, Is the nonsentient parent to be considered expendable?
Thornnastor curled an eye to regard Conway, whose mind was still fixed
immovably on the circumstances of that earlier birth.
That is not our intention, the Tralthan said when he did not respond.
The parent Protector was once a sentient Unborn, and is capable of producing
anything up to three more sentient Unborn. Should the circumstances arise
where a decision is needed whether to assist the birth of the sentient infant
at the expense of the life of the presently nonsentient parent, or to allow
the birth to proceed normally so that we end with two nonsentient Protectors,
that must be the decision of the Surgeon-in-Charge.
If the latter decision was to be considered, it went on, with one eye still
fixed on Conway, it could be argued in support that with two Protectors, a
young and an old one who will both produce telepathic embryos in time, we will
have another chance or chances to solve the problem. But this would mean
subjecting the two FSOJs to lengthy gestation periods in a highly artificial
life-support system, which might have long-term ill effects on the new
embryos, and would simply mean deferring the decision. The whole procedure
would have to be repeated with, in all likelihood, the same decision having to
be taken by a different Surgeon-in-Charge.
Murchison s eyes were on him as well, and she was looking worried. Those last
few words had been something more than a not particularly direct answer to the
nurse s question; they were in the nature of a professional warning. Conway
was being reminded that he was still very much on probation, and that the
Diagnostician-inCharge of Pathology did not, in spite of its seniority, bear
the ultimate responsibility for this case. But still he could not speak.
You will observe that the Unborn s tentacles are beginning to move, but
slowly, Thornnastor continued. And now it is beginning to pull itself out of
the birth canal..
It had been at that moment that the soundless telepathic voice in Conway s
mind had lost its clarity. There had been a feeling of pain and confusion and
deep anxiety muddying up the clear stream of communication, but the final
message from the Unborn had been a simple one.
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-tomind 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.
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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
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