Complete Fiction (Jerry eBooks)

by Robert Abernathy

  Novik’s clear eyes dwelt briefly on his superior’s face, a look of sympathetic understanding for the haggard pallor, the tired lines about the older man’s mouth. “Right,” he nodded crisply.

  “I’ll be back by the time you’re ready,” said Euge. “Right now I have a chore to do.”

  “The Dictator’s here?”

  Euge frowned. “How did you know?”

  “It’s plain in your face . . . What are you going to tell him?”

  “Tell him? Why, what he’s come to hear.”

  THE DICTATOR WAS AS usual splendid in uniform. His was not a garish or offensive splendor, but beautifully tailored, pointed up with harmonizing gleams of bright metal, like the tasteful chromium ornaments of the luxurious modern cars and aircraft. The uniform made his somewhat stocky figure the epitome of the new age, ruled by the stars of technical perfection, beauty, and above all harmony. The Diktatura was the first government which had dared to assume total power over and total responsibility for the lives and happiness of its people. Under the sway of its master plan, guided by its ultimate ideology, all men and things harmonized, cooperated and coordinated; dissonances were forbidden. And the vast harmony of a nation found its summit and symbol in this one man, the almighty father of his people. Without his knowledge no sparrow fell to the ground in his borders, and in his files all the hairs of his subjects’ heads were numbered.

  The great Dr. Euge was only one among hundreds of millions whose work and rewards and recreations and very thoughts were arranged for their own benefit; but at the same time he was something more. As long as the Diktatura was not worldwide, there would be groups and nations in the clashing chaos beyond the frontier which plotted with envious hatred to destroy it. The earthly paradise must be defended; Euge’s position as a top scientist in a field vital to defense elevated him almost to the level of the politico-economic planners.

  THE DICTATOR GREETED Euge with a man-to-man warmth he did not use toward those to whom he was something much like a god. “Well, doctor, how is the health of your virus? And of those who have sampled it?”

  The scientist said quietly, “Of the sixteen specimens you sent me, all but one died within ten days after inoculation.”

  “Ah? And the one?”

  “That is the strange thing. It would seem that—the virus has some preference in victims.”

  The Dictator blinked, his most marked expression of surprise. “Explain!”

  Euge’s face was unreadable. “Before I go into details,” he suggested, “let us consider the nature of the perfect biological weapon.”

  “Perhaps you have discovered the perfect weapon?” The Dictator frowned; “you are being obscure.”

  “Then,” said Euge stolidly, “suppose I put it negatively. What is wrong with most biological weapons?”

  “They are treacherous.”

  “Exactly. Virus RM3 was our best development up to now; it has a contagion index and mortality rate of 100, with the psychological advantage of bringing about death in a rather repulsive fashion; it is easily produced and distributed, and there is no known counteragent. So it cannot be used as a weapon; it is too dangerous to the user.”

  “We were over that before,” said the Dictator. They had been, and he had found it hard to stomach. Especially when he reflected that the enemy, while it was improbable they had duplicated the creation of RM3, might have equally deadly weapons, which similar considerations would deter them from using—unless driven to suicidal retaliation. It was known, though, that the enemy had been fortunately slow in developing the technique of disease mutation—the methods of irradiation, centrifugal selection and automatic scanning which could produce and analyze thousands of cultures at a time, compress millions of years of micro-organic evolution into weeks or days.

  “The single case of immunity to RM4,” said Euge drily, “had no bases that became evident either at once or on the closest comparison of the physiological data, both pre-inoculation and post mortem. I was on the point of giving up and deciding to repeat the experiment, when it occured to me to contact the Political Police and ask for their dossiers on all the specimens. After a little delay, my request was granted—”

  “I know,” said the Dictator impatiently; “I approved it myself.”

  “Well—the fifteen men who died of RM4 were run-of-the mill criminals and political offenders—malcontents stupid enough to express themselves antisocially. But the survivor was a Witness of the Lord—a religious maniac, arrested for overstepping the limits of toleration in an impromptu sermon. A man of scanty intelligence, barely above the euthanasia level.

  “Those facts, however, were less interesting than the letter attached to the dossier. It stated that, after a review of the case inspired by my particular interest in it, the Political Police had concluded that the man’s arrest had been a mistake. You know that those fanatics, though not our most desirable elements, are mostly harmless and even useful, with their whatever is, is right theology. This one’s loyalty seems to have been beyond question.”

  The Dictator’s eyes glowed with a sudden energy. “When the Popo admits a mistake, there’s really been one!” His breath whistled between his teeth. “I—begin to—see.” He started pacing up and down the room. “The perfect weapon—an intelligent virus!”

  “Not intelligent,” denied Euge heavily. “The day we develop a thinking virus here—a thing I do not believe possible—I will call for an atomic bomb to be dropped on the laboratory. RM4, evolved from an encephalitic measles strain, attacks primarily the brain—as it seems now, only certain types of brains. Of course, the data are insufficient. Some of the lower animals tested were immune—but you can’t draw safe analogies between animals and men. I’ll need more human material.”

  “You’ll get it!” The Dictator halted and stood very straight, glittering impressively in his uniform. “How many—”

  “This time I will need a control . . .”

  3

  SO TWENTY-FIVE healthy privates of the Dictator’s Honor Guard, handpicked for courage, rigid honesty and selfless loyalty to the leader, were hospitalized and injected with potent doses of viciously lethal culture RM4-2197. They were told that it was a new immunization which would soon become regulation throughout the armed forces. And twenty-five prisoners, likewise healthy save for the twist in their minds that made them seditionists and rebels instead of Honor Guardsmen, received the same injection and were told the same story.

  The results were almost fantastically satisfactory. The twenty-five convicts died, one and all, with the uncontrolled spasms and twitchings, lapsing into stupor, that told of the virus’ progress in the higher nerve centers. Their isolated barracks, together with the unimportant orderlies who had cared for it and the victims, were sterilized, almost obliterated by caustic chemicals and flame. Meantime the Honor Guard in their separate quarantine rolled dice and exchanged dirty jokes and felt no ill effects.

  The Dictator had commanded that he be first to know the outcome; he, who fancied himself as a poet of human destiny, also liked to think that he had a scientific mind, and in this matter, on which the world’s future might hinge, he wished to make his own observations and draw his own conclusions. But promptly after receiving the news he visited Euge again to shower him with jubilant congratulations.

  “Now,” he announced fervently, “we must have a final experiment, to be wholly sure. One on a far grander scale than before—than any experiment ever was before! I want a large supply of Virus RM4, in sealed cylinders of five or six liters each, under pressure. Prepared as for military use, you understand. The rest I will take care of.”

  Euge bowed his head in acquiescence, and refrained from mentioning his mice.

  LONG ROWS OF GLASS cells where mice lived and died by ones and twos and threes, were in the contagion laboratory, where by Euge’s orders only he and Novik worked now. Less flamboyantly than the Dictator, Euge liked to be sure, and he repeated his experiments doggedly until the statistical result
s leveled off at well-defined norms.

  Infected mice, segregated in solitary confinement, developed symptoms and died in the ratio of sixty-five out of a hundred. Among similarly exposed animals distributed two to a cage, the mortality averaged somewhat over eighty-seven per cent. In threes, ninety-six per cent. And when he tried isolating a hundred mice, four to a cage, all of them died. In every case, if one mouse in a group took the disease, so did the rest.

  That was not unreasonable. Reexposure by contact with more susceptible specimens . . . But Euge played with his apparent immunes. He rigged a number of cages so that the occupants, their food and their water were constantly under a fine mist of virus poison. And only a couple of them died. Then,-with difficulty and some danger, working in armor, he opened the cages and shifted the living mice about, breaking up groups and creating new ones. In the next few days, the immunes’ mortality rate was better than forty per cent.

  And in an adjoining storeroom, cleared for the purpose, Euge set up another and cruder experiment. Mice that had survived exposure to RM4 were imprisoned in sealed glass runs, and in the room at large were let loose the half-dozen lean alley cats that Novik had procured. The cats roamed hungrily about, mewed and clawed at the glass and had difficulty understanding that there was no way of getting at the mice. And the mice, likewise deceived, ran and squeaked in terror—and quickly succumbed to the convulsions and lethargy of encephalitis.

  But when he provided opaque shelters, where the mice could conceal themselves part of the time, most of them remained immune.

  The cats, Euge determined, were wholly immune; massive injections of the virus did no more than infuriate them. Sleeping fitfully in the small hours, he had nightmares in which the carnivora inherited an Earth from which men and rodents had vanished.

  That was only one of his nightmares. He was as phlegmatic as a man need be in his line of work, but now his peace of mind had gone glimmering, and he was at odds with his world. From the time when mature reflection had replaced the last sparks of youthful rebellion in him, he had been a faithful and coddled servant of the Diktatura, but now he was increasingly certain that his failure to make known his new data was treason. A fatalistic streak tried to comfort him, whispering that even if he spoke it would make no difference.

  Of only one thing was he sure: he wanted to know . . .

  THE DICTATOR TOOK some time in the preparation of the experiment. A city of twenty thousand people had to be isolated temporarily from the rest of the country, and unobtrusively surrounded with troups, guns and bombers, in case things went disastrously wrong.

  The isolation was accomplished.

  by means of a complete embargo on land and air transportation out of the test area, only an hour before a few small planes droned over the city, trailing an impalpable and invisible mist of virus-laden solution. The published and broadcast reason for the emergency measures was truthfully plausible—a threatened outbreak of disease, understood to be sleeping sickness. The difference in symptoms between ordinary encephalitis lethargica and that produced by RM4 was so slight that few if any of the doctors who were shipped into the city recognized anything peculiar in the cases they treated, apart from the high—100%—fatality. It was not necessary that they know any better, since they were only a part of the ardently pursued campaign to allay public suspicion and anxiety and prevent an undesirable panic.

  The soothing propaganda and example of the authorities, and the diligence of the Popo agents who swarmed in the stricken area, were so successful that no mass plague-terror reared its head, though the death toll during the three weeks it took for the epidemic to run its course climbed to almost a thousand.

  Several doctors and a couple of secret policemen contracted the disease, and, of course, died. That was fair enough, but a far more untoward incident came near marring the Dictator’s pleasure in his experiment.

  Chaber, the Popo chief, crossing the country on one of his frequent incognito tours, happened to be caught in the test city’s railway station by the travel interdict. It took him more than an hour to convince the distracted officials in charge of enforcing the ban that a man in his position was above such things, so that he and his aides were still there when the virus-carrying planes did their job.

  The Dictator, receiving belated word, was furious. A flying squad of Honor Guardsmen intercepted Chaber’s private train, ran it onto a siding and held the police chief and his staff there in something very like arrest. True, the Dictator sent a message to assure Chaber that the quarantine was a purely temporary result of someone else’s mistake, and that matters would soon be cleared up . . .

  For Chaber they never were. He died eight days later in the coma of RM4 infection. Most of his aides preceded or followed him by a day or so; and when the last radioed reports indicated that the contagion was spreading to the Guards, the Dictator gave horrified orders and the plague-infested train was set on fire by incendiary bombs.

  About the same time, past one o’clock in the morning, Dr. Euge was dragged out of bed and haled unceremoniously before the Dictator.

  The scientist listened dispassionately to his first news of Chaber’s misfortune and to excited demands for an explanation. He was more at peace with himself now than he had been for long; he was prepared to lie coldly and directly, to ensure the unfolding of events to their logical conclusion. But no lie seemed to be needed yet.

  “I would suggest,” said Euge calmly, “that you impound the deceased’s papers and personal effects, and subject them to rigorous examination. You may find the reason for his death—about which I know no more than you.”

  Euge cooled his heels under house arrest for twenty-four hours before he was summoned again to the Dictator’s presence. The leader was himself again; he greeted Euge with that warm smile which had made more impressionable men fall at his feet in adoration.

  “You were right, doctor. The man was, if not an actual traitor, at least a potential one; he was slily subverting the loyalty of his immediate subordinates, with the idea of making himself paramount in the government. His death becomes a striking demonstration of your virus value.” A new shadow passed over the Dictator’s face as lie recalled how he had trusted Chaber. “I think,” he mused aloud, “we will prepare RM4 injections for ail the more strategically placed personnel of the Political Police and—yes, the Guards too. Eventually, it would be a good idea to blanket the whole country with the virus.” The Dictator brightened again. “For the rest, the results of the large-scale test were highly gratifying.”

  “Indeed,” said Euge without surprise.

  “You can study the figures if you like. Comparison of the death-list with police files shows that the vast majority of the affected were people with criminal records or known deviationist tendencies. A city rid of human vermin at one stroke! Now nothing can stop us.”

  “No,” said Euge.

  THE DIKTATURA WORKED fast. The new mass-production forced-culture techniques obviated the difficulties of producing great quantities of the new virus within a short period, and when the armed forces received the order for the minor operation of occupying two small, ideologically hostile countries on the border, there was already enough RM4 on hand for a major war.

  In that lightning trial campaign, the new weapon was still used sparingly and with caution. In combination with more conventional offensive measures, it proved itself nobly. The Diktatura’s shock troops rolled into cities of the dead, saw whole countrysides unpeopled almost overnight by the mutant plague. Few of the invaders, picked, loyal men that they were, succumbed; but even after the guns had fallen silent, the pestilence continued to stalk unchecked and uncheckable among the subjected peoples.

  The Dictator weighed the reports that piled up on his desk. The plague’s existence and origin were no longer secrets to anyone whose knowledge or lack of it mattered. The Diktatura’s most potent rival had already closed its borders and begun a formidable mobilization. The time for a public announcement had arrived; the enemy wo
uld fear to believe it, but the revelation of the invincible weapon would do wonders for home morale.

  NOVIK WALKED THE streets in a daze, torn by recurring doubts. He had left the laboratory and flown to the capital without Dr. Euge’s knowledge, but now the image of the gray scientist, his approval of Novik, his trust in Novik, rose up to torment him. He could not even guess at Euge’s motives, but he felt morally certain they were against the nation’s interests. And the nation, he knew as everyone knew today, was on the threshold of war. Of Victory. That was the word that had been given them for years with their food and drink, held shining before them upon the straight and narrow way . . .

  The air was filled with Victory. It blared and glared from the public television screens on the street corners, in brazen anthems, in a familiar voice that swelled in triumphant oratory, battered its phrases into Novik’s numb consciousness.

  “Announcement to the people . . . the day, the hour are at hand . . . Victory! Against the corrupt and vicious barbarians, the slimy foes of progress, the enslavers of humanity . . . Victory!”

  From all the corners, from the big screens, glittered the Dictator, above the crowds that gathered and shoved each other and hurrahed his words. Novik stared with smarting eyes; his head buzzed and he could not assemble his thoughts. He turned away and plodded on, and on the next corner met again the voice and gestures of the leader, his compelling gaze from the glowing screen.

  “History demands that we prevail. If any fresh proof of that fact were needed—as all of you know that it is not—it would be provided by the new scientific discovery which at the same time reaffirms the fundamental, objective truth of our way of life and thought, and provides us with the ultimate weapon for enforcing our way on the backward regions of the world . . .

  “Only evil men, warped minds oppose us. The virus attacks such minds and completes the ruin which their own perversion has begun. Those who are clean and upright in thought and deed, loyal to their fatherland and the great idea of the Diktatura, have nothing to fear from it; they are immune. Therefore we can use it as a weapon without apprehension or compunction, for we shall only be wiping out the vermin of the Earth . . .”