The Second Science Fiction Megapack Page 23
The speaker clicked off. Calhoun said wryly:
“Unfortunately, I know what that means. The President has announced the government’s abdication in favor of Dr. Lett, and that the punishment for disobeying Lett is—madness.”
He drew a deep breath and shrugged his shoulders.
“Come along! Let’s get to work!”
CHAPTER IV
As it happened, the timing was critical, though Calhoun hadn’t realized it. There were moving lights on the highway to the city at the moment Calhoun and the grid operator went into the Med Ship and closed the air-lock door behind them. The lights drew nearer. They raced. Then ground cars came rushing through the gate of the spaceport and flung themselves toward the wholly peaceful little Med Ship where it stood seeming to yearn toward the sky. In seconds they had it ringed about, and armed men were trying to get inside. But Med Ships land on very many planets, with very many degrees of respect for the Interstellar Medical Service. On some worlds there is great integrity displayed by spaceport personnel and visitors. On others there is pilfering, or worse. So Med Ships are not easily broken into.
They spent long minutes fumbling unskillfully at the outer air-lock door. Then they gave it up. Two car loads of men went over to the control building, which now was dark and silent. Its door was not locked. They went in.
There was consternation. The interior of the control building reeked of antiseptic spray—the spray used when a para was discovered. In some cases, the spray a para used when he discovered himself. But it was not reassuring to the men just arrived from Government Center. Instead of certifying to their safety, it told of horrifying danger. Because despite a broadcast by the planetary president, terror of paras was too well-established to be cured by an official statement.
The men who’d entered the building stumbled out and stammered of what they’d smelled inside the building. Their companions drew back, frightened by even so indirect a contact with supposed contagion. They stayed outside, while a man who hadn’t entered used the police-car communicator to report to the headquarters of the planetary police.
The attempt to enter the ship was known inside, of course. But Calhoun paid no attention. He emptied the pockets of the garments he’d worn into the city. There were the usual trivia a man carries with him. But there was also a blaster—set for lower-power bolts—and a small thick-glass phial of a singular grayish fluid, and a plastic container.
He was changing to other clothing when he heard the muttering report, picked up by a ship-receiver tuned to planetary police wave length. It reported affrightedly that the Med Ship could not be entered, and the grid’s control building was dark and empty and sprayed as if to destroy contagion. The operator was gone.
Another voice snapped orders in reply. The highest authority had given instructions that the Med Ship man now somewhere in the capital city must be captured, and his escape from the planet must be prevented at all costs. So if the ship itself could not be entered and disabled, get the grid working and throw it away. Throw it out to space! Whether there was contagion in the control building or not, the ship must be made unusable to the Med Ship man!
“They think well of me,” said Calhoun. “I hope I’m as dangerous as Dr. Lett now believes.” Then he said crisply: “You say you’re a para. I want the symptoms: how you feel and where. Then I want to know your last contact with scavengers.”
* * * *
The intentions of the police outside could be ignored. It wouldn’t matter if the Med Ship were heaved out to space and abandoned. He was in it. But it couldn’t happen. The grid operator had brought away certain essential small parts of the grid control system. Of course the ship could be blown up. But he’d have warning of that. He was safe except for one thing. He’d been exposed to whatever it was that made a man a para. The condition would develop. But he did have a thick-glass container of grayish fluid, and he had a plastic biological-specimen container. One came from Dr. Lett’s safest pocket. It would be vaccine. The other came from the culture oven in the doctor’s laboratory.
The thick-glass phial was simply that. Calhoun removed the cover from the other. It contained small and horrible squirming organisms, writhing in what was probably a nutrient fluid to which they could reduce human refuse. They swarm jerkily in it so that the liquid seemed to seethe. It smelled. Like skunk.
The grid operator clenched his hands.
“Put it away!” he commanded fiercely. “Out of sight! Away!”
Calhoun nodded. He locked it in a small chest. As he put down the cover he said in an indescribable tone:
“It doesn’t smell as bad to me as it did.”
But his hands were steady as he drew a sample of a few drops from the vaccine bottle. He lowered a wall panel and behind it there was a minute but astonishingly complete biological laboratory. It was designed for microanalysis—the quantitative and qualitative analysis of tiny quantities of matter. He swung out a miniaturized Challis fractionator. He inserted half a droplet of the supposed vaccine and plugged in the fractionator’s power cable. It began to hum.
The grid operator ground his teeth.
“This is a fractionator,” said Calhoun. “It spins a biological sample through a chromatograph gele.”
The small device hummed more shrilly. The sound rose in pitch until it was a whine, and then a whistle, and then went up above the highest pitch to which human ears are sensitive. Murgatroyd scratched at his ears and complained:
“Chee! Chee! Chee!”
“It won’t be long,” Calhoun assured him. He looked once at the grid operator and then looked away. There was sweat on the man’s forehead. Calhoun said casually: “The substance that makes the vaccine do what it does do is in the vaccine, obviously. So the fractionator is separating the different substances that are mixed together.” He added, “It doesn’t look much like chromatography, but the principle’s the same. It’s an old, old trick!”
It was, of course. That different dissolved substances can be separated by their different rates of diffusion through wetted powders and geles had been known since the early twentieth century, but was largely forgotten because not often needed. But the Med Service did not abandon processes solely because they were not new.
Calhoun took another droplet of the vaccine and put it between two plates of glass, to spread out. He separated them and put them in a vacuum drier.
“I’m not going to try an analysis,” he observed. “It would be silly to try to do anything so complicated if I only need to identify something. Which I hope is all I do need!”
He brought out an extremely small vacuum device. He cleaned the garments he’d just removed, drawing every particle of dust from them. The dust appeared in a transparent tube which was part of the machine.
“I was sprayed with something I suspect the worst of,” he added. “The spray left dust behind. I think it made sure that anybody who left Government Center would surely be a para. It’s another reason for haste.”
The grid operator ground his teeth again. He did not really hear Calhoun. He was deep in a private hell of shame and horror.
The inside of the ship was quiet, but it was not tranquil. Calhoun worked calmly enough, but there were times when his inwards seemed to knot and cramp him, which was not the result of any infection or contagion or demoniac possession, but was reaction to thoughts of the imprisoned para in the laboratory. That man had gobbled the unspeakable because he could not help himself, but he was mad with rage and shame over what he had become. Calhoun could become like that—
* * * *
The loud-speaker tuned to outside frequencies muttered again. Calhoun turned up its volume.
“Calling Headquarters!” panted a voice. “There’s a mob of paras forming in the streets in the Mooreton quarter! They’re raging! They heard the President’s speech and they swear they’ll kill him! They won’t stand for a cure! Everybody’s got to turn para! They won’t have normals on the planet! Everybody’s got to turn para or be killed!”
The grid operator looked up at the speaker. The ultimate of bitterness appeared on his face. He saw Calhoun’s eyes on him and said savagely:
“That’s where I belong!”
Murgatroyd headed straight for his cubbyhole and crawled into it.
Calhoun got out a microscope. He examined the dried glass plates from the vacuum drier. The fractionator turned itself off and he focused on and studied the slide it yielded. He inspected a sample of the dust he’d gotten from the garments that had been sprayed at the south gate. The dust contained common dust particles and pollen particles and thread particles and all sorts of microscopic debris. But throughout all the sample he saw certain infinitely tiny crystals. They were too small to be seen separately by the naked eye, but they had a definite crystalline form. And the kind of crystals a substance makes are not too specific about what the substance is, but they tell a great deal about what it cannot be. In the fractionator slide he could get more information—the rate-of-diffusion of a substance in solution ruled out all but a certain number of compounds that it could be. The two items together gave a definite clue.
Another voice from the speaker:
“Headquarters! Paras are massing by the north gate! They act ugly! They’re trying to force their way into Government Center! We’ll have to start shooting if we’re to stop them! What are our orders?”
The grid operator said dully:
“They’ll wreck everything. I don’t want to live because I’m a para, but I haven’t acted like one yet. Not yet! But they have! So they don’t want to be cured! They’d never forget what they’ve done. They’d be ashamed!”
Calhoun punched keys on a very small computer. He’d gotten an index-of-refraction reading on crystals too small to be seen except through a microscope. That information, plus specific gravity, plus crystalline form, plus rate of diffusion in a fractionator, went to the stores of information in the computer’s memory banks somewhere between the ship’s living quarters and its outer skin.
A voice boomed from another speaker, tuned to public-broadcast frequency:
“My fellow-citizens, I appeal to you to be calm! I beg you to be patient! Practice the self-control that citizens owe to themselves and their world, I appeal to you…”
Outside in the starlight the Med Ship rested peacefully on the ground. Around and above it the grid rose like geometric fantasy to veil most of the starry sky. Here in the starlight the ground-car communicators gave out the same voice. The same message. The President of Tallien Three made a speech. Earlier, he’d made another. Earlier still he’d taken orders from the man who was already absolute master of the population of this planet.
Police stood uneasy guard about the Med Ship because they could not enter it. Some of their number who had entered the control building now stood shivering outside it, unable to force themselves inside again. There was a vast, detached stillness about the spaceport. It seemed the more unearthly because of the thin music of wind in the landing grid’s upper levels.
At the horizon there was a faint glow. Street lights still burned in the planet’s capitol city, but though buildings rose against the sky no lights burned in them. It was not wise for anybody to burn lights that could be seen outside their dwellings. There were police, to be sure. But they were all in Government Center, marshaled there to try to hold a perimeter formed by bricked-up apartment buildings. But most of the city was dark and terribly empty save for mobs of all sizes but all raging. Nine-tenths of the city was at the mercy of the paras. Families darkened their homes and, terrified, hid in corners and in closets, listening for outcries or the thunderous tramping of madmen at their doors.
In the Med Ship the loud-speaker went on:
“I have told you,” said the rounded tones of the Planetary President—but his voice shook, “I have told you that Dr. Lett has perfected and is making a vaccine which will protect every citizen and cure every para. You must believe me, my fellow-citizens. You must believe me! To paras, I promise that their fellows who were not afflicted with the same condition will forget! I promise that no one will remember what…what has been done in delirium! What has taken place—and there have been tragedies—will be blotted out. Only be patient now! Only…”
* * * *
Calhoun went over his glass slides again while the computer stood motionless, apparently without life. But he had called for it to find, in its memory banks, an organic compound of such-and-such a crystalline form, such-and-such a diffusion rate, such-and-such a specific gravity, and such-an-such a refractive index. Men no longer considered that there was any effective limit to the number of organic compounds that were possible. The old guess at half a million different substances was long exceeded. It took time even for a computer to search all its microfilmed memories for a compound such as Calhoun had described.
He paced restlessly while the computer consulted its memory with faint whirrings of cooling blowers, and occasional chucklings as memory cubes full of exceedingly complex stereomolecules of recorded information were searched.
“Maybe,” Calhoun said, “this isn’t so much a new disease as a modification of a very old one. The very ancient Hate Disease—for the most important symptom of this particular malady is the hate it’s stirred up. I’ve seen a number of sick planets—but the hate index on this one earns it a record score.” He paused for a moment as the computer did an extra-special burping chuckle, and slipped in an entire new case of memory cubes. “Hm-m-m…if what we’re looking for is a vaccine against hate we’d really have something.
“But I’m afraid not. That’s too happy an outcome. We’ll just call this Hate Disease, Tallien Three strain. It’s standard practice,” Calhoun continued, “to consider that everything that can happen, does. Specifically, that any compound that can possibly exist, sooner or later must be formed in nature. We’re looking for a particular one. It must have been formed naturally at some time or another, but never before has it appeared in quantity enough to threaten a civilization. Why?”
Murgatroyd licked his right-hand whiskers. He whimpered a little—and Murgatroyd was a very cheerful small animal, possessed of exuberant health and a fine zest in simply being alive. Exposed to contagion, it was the admirable talent of his kind to react instantly and violently, producing antibodies so promptly that no conceivable disease could develop. Tormals were cherished and respected members of the Interstellar Medical Service because they could produce within hours antibodies for any possible infection, and the synthesis of such antibodies could be begun and any possible plague defeated. But Murgatroyd was not happy now.
“It’s been known for a long time,” said Calhoun impatiently, “that no form exists alone. Every living creature exists in an environment, in association with all the other living creatures around it. But this is true of compounds, too! Anything that is part of an environment is essential to that environment. So even organic compounds are as much parts of a planetary life system as…say…rabbits on a Terran type world. If there are no predators, rabbits will multiply until they starve.”
Murgatroyd said, “Chee!” as if complaining to himself.
“Rats,” said Calhoun somehow angrily, “have been known to do that on a derelict ship. There was a man named Malthus who said we humans would some day do the same thing. But we haven’t. We’ve take over a galaxy. If we ever crowd this, there are more galaxies for us to colonize, forever! But there have been cases of rats and rabbits multiplying past endurance. Here we’ve got an organic molecule that has multiplied out of all reason! It’s normal for it to exist, but in a normal environment it’s held in check by other molecules which in some sense feed on it; which control the population of this kind of molecule as rabbits or rats are controlled in a larger environment. But the check on this molecule isn’t working, here!”
* * * *
The booming voice of the Planetary President went on and on and on. Memoranda of events taking place were handed to him, and he read them and argued with the paras who had tried
to rush the north gate of Government Center, to make its inhabitants paras like themselves. But the Planetary President tried to make oratory a weapon against madness.
Calhoun grimaced at the voice. He said fretfully:
“There’s a molecule which has to exist because it can. It’s a part of a normal environment, but it doesn’t normally produce paras. Now it does! Why? What is the compound or the condition that controls its abundance? Why is it missing here? What is lacking? What?”
The police-frequency speaker suddenly rattled, as if someone shouted into a microphone.
“All police cars! Paras have broken through a building wall on the west side! They’re pouring into the Center! All cars rush! Set blasters at full power and use them! Drive them back or kill them!”
The grid operator turned angry, bitter eyes upon Calhoun.
“The paras—we paras!—don’t want to be cured!” he said fiercely. “Who’d want to be normal again and remember when he ate scavengers? I haven’t yet, but—who’d be able to talk to a man he knew had devoured…devoured—” The grid operator swallowed. “We paras want everybody to be like us, so we can endure being what we are! We can’t take it any other way—except by dying!”
He stood up. He reached for the blaster Calhoun had put aside when he changed from the clothes he’d worn in the city.
“…And I’ll take it that way!”
Calhoun whirled. His fist snapped out. The grid operator reeled out. The blaster dropped from his hand. Murgatroyd cried out shrilly, from his cubbyhole. He hated violence, did Murgatroyd.
Calhoun stood over the operator, raging:
“It’s not that bad yet! You haven’t yawned once! You can stand the need for monstrousness for a long while yet! And I need you!”