Work hurts

Work today was a bear. One of the ladies who was working called out, so instead of having 4 people working as we usually do, we only had 3. This meant there was no sitting down since we didn't have enough people to cover all four positions in the library (2 at the Circulation Desk, 1 at Reference, 1 in Children's). Since the librarian who was working was the Children's Librarian, she ran that room, and my co-worker and I covered the Circulation Desk. We also get someone in to cover the breaks (so we can eat, basically), and she stayed an extra two hours over her usual time. We were extremely grateful, as there was no way we could have done all our work without her being there.

In addition to the above problems, the library was extremely busy and we had a mountain of delivery items to check in, not to mention patron returns and the book drop. We were scrambling every minute of the day, and my back was already hurting at the beginning of the day. By the end, I was practically in tears from the pain. In the end, we had one bag of bookdrop that somehow got stuck in the back room and overlooked, and we almost forgot to do the money before we left the building. But other than that, everything got done. We got the patrons out in a timely manner (despite the usual few that think that the library's closing doesn't apply to them), and let me tell you, there were no people happier than we were when the library finally closed for the night.

I finished Diana Palmer's The Morcai Battalion, and found it fascinating. It was originally written less as a romance and more as a science fiction story, but there were still hints of romance scattered through the book. The main character is a physician named Lieutenant Commander Madeline Ruszel. She works for the Tri-Fleet space command, which is currently at war with a race called the Rojok. The Rojok are running out of room on their own planets for their planetary population, but instead of peacefully seeding their own colonies, they are attacking the colonies of others and stealing the minerals and things that they need from the fallen colonies.

The technology of the universe has advanced so that cloning is possible, but human society (called the Terrevegans because colonists from earth apparently settled on worlds orbiting Vega and lost contact with earth) looks down upon clones as less than human. Human clones are used as containers of organs for transplant and to be a clone in human society is to be, basically, a thing rather than a person.

While dealing with the aftermath of a Rojok attack on the mostly-clone settlement of Terramer, Madeline discovers, along with her commander, Holt Stern, that a diplomatic delegation from the Centaurian people, a cat-like race, were also attacked, along with a sci-archeology group from the Tri-Fleets. Along with the group were two of the children of the Centarian ruler. The boy is dying, and the girl was captured, along with two spheres holding the genomes of all the races in the federation. With these, the Rojoks can tailor diseases specific to each race and let them loose, so they must be retrieved.

Holt was injured when he searched for the scientists and royals, and is having massive headaches. Madeline, although it is forbidden, gives the boy child painkillers to ease his death. Shortly afterwards, a spaceship belonging to the military arm of the Centarians, the Holconchrom, arrives at the planet. The commander threatens to bring charges against Madeline when she returns to the Tri-Fleet HQ, and she is defiant because she only meant to help the child die peacefully.

When Holt's ship, the Bellatrix, leaves the planet, it is attacked by two Rojok ships. They manage to destroy one, and are only saved from destruction themselves when the Holconchrom ship returns to assist them. Nevertheless, the Bellatrix is too damaged to continue to fly, so the humans have no choice but to take refuge on the Centarian ship.

The Centarians are much stronger than humans, and look down on them as well. They do not allow women to serve in their military, so Madeline is alone on the ship, since the complement of Amazons, fighting women who serve in the military, were killed in the engagement on the Bellatrix. Madeline used to be an Amazon, but left that area of service to become a medic. She still has the attitude and fighting skills of her former post, however. It is hard for her to be the quiet female the Holconchom commander, Dtimun, commands her to be while on his ship.

Now, because men and women serve together in the Terravegan military, to prevent any unwanted "accidents" and fraternization, the men and women are mentally neutered with a combination of drugs and mental conditioning. However, it is possible for such conditioning to fail, and Madeline finds herself somewhat attracted to Dtimun in between periods of being enraged by his behavior. There is also the fact that all the members of the Holconchrom on the ship except for Dtimun are clones, but in Centari society, to be a clone is not looked down upon as it is by humans. After a single fight, the human is spaced, and the Centari is killed, the two crew generally avoid one another.

Holt Stern's actions on the ship set off warning alarms for Madeline. He seems to not care about his own people and to be setting them against the Centari. But for what reason? Madeline suspects he may be a clone of the real Holt Stern, made by the Rojok for infiltration purposes. Before she can act on her suspicions, the ship is captured by the Rojok. With Dtimun undergoing a physical change that happens to all Centari at the middle of their life, the humans and Centari must work together to escape when they are taken to the Rojok moon named Akhmau, which in their tongue means "torture and pain". A pet project of the Rojok emperor Mangus Lo, no one who enters there leaves. Can Madeline, Dtimun and the others escape with the missing genetic information and the missing princess, or will they be reduced to their component parts for the Rojok war machine?

Part of this book revolves around a common sci-fi conceit, namely, that clones are "not real humans". Actually, they are. They may be a physical copy of a person, but they grew and are made up of real cells. In fact, having a clone is like having an identical twin, and nobody is claiming that one half of a set of identical twins "are not real humans", so that always pisses me off. On the other hand, it is a pretty standard sci-fi trope, and the humans in the book (at least Madeline) have overcome their prejudice against clones by the end of the book, so that made it more tolerable for me to read. I liked it well enough that I will definitely read the next one when it comes out.

The other book I read today is "The Genocidal Healer" by James White. It is about Lioren, a doctor who accidentally caused the deaths of nearly 10,000 aliens named the Cromsag, nearly all that was left of their race. Lioren feels a great deal of guilt for its actions, and wishes to be put to death for them. It calls for a tribunal to punish its guilt, but after hearing the evidence, the tribunal instead sentences him to work for the psychology section at Sector General, under its Human head, O'Mara.

O'Mara, while feeling some sympathy for what Lioren is feeling, knows that too much sympathy is corrosive to the soul and emotions, and instead assigns Lioren to investigate a doctor on the Sector General staff named Seldal, a Nallajim. The Nallajim are bird-like bipeds with extremely flexible beaks once used to pluck insect predators from their bodies, but now used for manipulators. Since Lioren is forbidden to speak to Seldal directly, he instead starts by investigating through Seldal's patients, under the guise about asking for their experiences at the hospital. Through this he meets the former Diagnostician Manning, who is dying and lonely.

Doctors at Sector General work not on their own species, but on other species. They do this by using "tapes", which are the memories and knowledge of doctors of other species downloaded so it can be shared. People under the influence of the tapes gain not only the alien doctor's memories and knowledge, but also much of its personality, including its hopes and dreams (and fantasies, which can be distressing because of the other alien's extremely alien body). Diagnosticians work with many species and with many tapes at once, which means they must have extremely stable personalities.

Manning reveals to Lioren that after a point, the diagnostician deals with the personalities inhabiting it by making friends with them. And now that he is dying, the tapes have been removed, leaving him alone in his body for the first time in many years, with nothing to contemplate but his own death. As a result, he is snappish and ill-tempered. But after talking with Lioren, he decides to do something about it, to go on teaching and passing on his knowledge.

After Lioren's success with Mannen, Seldal wishes to speak with him, and asks Lioren to speak to another of his patients, an Alien of a race called the Groalterri, the only of its kind known. It will not speak to any of those at the hospital, but seems depressed.

Lioren agrees to speak to it, and finds out it is offended that its words are being recorded. Lioren tells the nurse in the ward to turn off the recorder and to erase any records of its speech. When she does so, the Groalterri does speak to Lioren a little. Lioren attempts to draw it out by talking about its own situation, with the Cromsag. Finally, the Groalterri gives Lioren its name, Hellishomar the Cutter, and says it has committed a sin.

While Lioren researches what a sin is and the common religions of the known races, it eventually draws Hellishomar out. It seems that Hellishomar is what is called a small, an offspring of a much larger race called the Parents. The Small are virtually immune to disease and illness, but the Parents are not. The Small care for their parents when they succumb to disease by going inside the body of the larger aliens and cutting away diseased tissue and parasites, then flaming the remains to ash. In this way, they ensure that the Parents live much longer, healthier lives.

However, even the Small must eventually grow up and become Parents themselves. Parents will contact the Small through mental telepathy and instruct them on how to become Parents themselves. But even though Hellishomar is old enough, he has not been contacted and assumes it is some sin he has committed that has led to him not being contacted. Lioren has an idea that it may be some physical defect that has led to this point, since when Hellishomar was injured, the Parents made sure to contact the Monitor Corps so it could be saved.

He attempts to investigate the sentient races who have telepathy, only to find out that they are extremely few. Nevertheless, he determines that there must be some sort of defect in Hellishomar that may be corrected by surgery to restore its telepathic faculty. How this happens, and the result, encompass the rest of the book.

I always enjoy James White's books, as he comes up with such unusual plots and introduces readers to alien viewpoints in his books. For example, a human smile is seen by Lioren as a "baring of teeth". And the human viewpoint isn't always the best or most correct one. Also, by setting up aliens as the main characters, we get to see all the races in the Sector General Universe, from a new and intriguing point of view. Fans of both science fiction and medical stories will find something to enjoy in the Sector General universe.

Next up on the reading list: Giants of Frost by Kim Wilkins.