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%20General%2011%20-%20Mind%20Changer.txt running of the department off your
hands so that you will have maximum time available for administrative work and
the really serious patients. There will be no bad feelings from any of them,
except possibly from Cerdal if it chooses to stay, because you they really
like. Relax, there s no need to give me your answer right now.
Prilicla stood up. It said,  I can give you my answer now. It is no.
 Please, little friend, said O Mara,  take time to think about it.
The empath clicked across the office floor on shaking Cmrusskin legs, then
paused inside the door to make a soft, trilling sound.
 Don t forget to say something nasty to me as I leave, friend O Mara it said,
 just so you can remain in character.
CHAPTER 27
Lieutenant Braithwaite kept his eyes firmly on the remains of a large helping
of synthetic steak, roasted potato slices, and mushrooms that no longer filled
his plate, thanking the DNA he had inherited from his parents, which enabled
him to indulge in the pleasures of overeating without suffering the penalty of
becoming overweight, so that his enjoyment would not be spoiled by the sight
of what Cerdal was eating. Because of the high level of background noise in
the dining hall, they had to raise their voices to be heard, but their strong
feeling of mutual irritation was making it very easy for them to shout at each
other between the periods of angry silence.
 Dr. Cerdal, we are competing for the same job, Braithwaite said after one of
them,  but that doesn t mean we have to dislike each other now or when one of
us, or perhaps neither of us, is successful. But lately you have been
displaying signs of a growing personal hostility toward me. Why?
 It s not only you, said Cerdal without looking up,  but you are particularly
irritating with your continual advice that is nothing but thinly veiled
criticism. You gave me a patient who is visually loathsome, unfriendly, and
has now refused even to speak to me. Tunneckis is, is impossible. I ve spent
days on end with it since it came out of surgery. You gave me the assignment
knowing that I would fail, fail both to provide therapy for a stupid,
uncooperative patient and to impress O Mara with my fitness for its position.
You and the others have shown me that strangers are not welcome here.
 That s ridiculous, said Braithwaite.  We re all strangers here, and some of
us are a lot stranger than others, at least until we get to know each other.
Lioren, Cha Thrat, or I could have taken the case, but you said that you had
never before treated a telepath and it would be a challenge. You specifically
asked for the assignment. I decided to give it to you.
 But without obtaining your superior s permission? said Cerdal.  It was
solely your own decision, correct?
 Yes, Braithwaite replied. He hesitated for a moment before going on,  As the
new administrator, O Mara has nondepartmental business to attend to at
present. You know this. He instructed me to take full responsibility for such
assignment decisions, which I did. Would you like to be relieved of the
Tunneckis case?
Cerdal looked up from its plate to stare at him for a moment; then it said,
 Is that what you want, Braithwaite, to see me fail? But no matter. Following
several days of attempted therapy
I ve come to regard the patient as a stupid, obdurate, disrespectful,
personally repulsive, and worthless being who should not have so much of my
time wasted on it. If O Mara had given me the assignment, he would have wanted
me to fail, too, just like the rest of you. And don t waste my time or insult
my intelligence with your lying, Earth-human protestations of innocence. And
now I
expect you ll run as fast as those long, misshapen Earth-human legs will carry
you to tell your chief exactly what I said with, I ve no doubt, a few
embellishments?
Braithwaite felt his face reddening. He opened his mouth to speak, then
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brought his teeth together again with an audible click as he tried to impose
calm on himself. In an angry Kelgian such a conversational exchange might have
been excusable, but his first assessment of Cerdal was that it was a cool,
self-assured, smoothtalking diplomat who was in complete control of its
emotions. That impression had been shared by everyone else in the department
during the job interview. So what he was seeing here was a serious, completely
uncharacteristic, and potentially dangerous change in behavior which was
verging on outright paranoia and possibly xenophobia. It was his duty to
report such sudden and uncharacteristic personality changes to O Mara. But he
didn t want to do that until he could also include the reason behind it.
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