The Plague, Pestilence & Apocalypse MEGAPACK™

by Robert Reed

  “I can’t go on!” Baker cried . The terrors seemed to be swiftly

  closing in .

  “Take my hand a moment longer,” said Sam . “Inspect these more

  distant paths . There are many of them that will be agreeable to you .”

  Baker felt calmer now in the renewed presence of Sam Atkins .

  He passed the branching pathway that Sam had forbidden, that

  had seemed so bright . He sensed now why Sam had cautioned him

  against it . Far down, in the depths of it, he glimpsed faintly a dark

  ugliness that he had not seen before . He shuddered .

  Directly ahead there seemed to be the opening of a corridor of

  blazing brightness . Baker’s calmness increased as he approached .

  “This one,” he said .

  He heard nothing, but he sensed Sam Atkins’ smile, and nod of

  approval .

  He remembered now for the first time why he had wanted to

  die . It was to avoid the very terrors by which he had been pursued

  through the dark corridor . All this had happened before, and he had

  gone down the pathway Sam had forbidden . Somehow, like a circle,

  it had come back to this very point, to this forgotten experience for

  which he had been willing to die rather than endure again .

  It was very bewildering . He did not understand the meaning of

  it . But he knew he had corrected a former error . He was back in the

  world . He was alive again .

  Sam Atkins looked up at his companions through eyes that

  seemed all but dead . “He’s going to make it,” he said . “We can get

  the car out and pick up Baker now .”

  They used Sam’s panel truck, which had a four-wheel drive and

  mud tires . Nothing else could possibly get through . Fenwick left his

  own car at Ellerbee’s .

  It was still raining lightly as the truck sloshed and slewed through

  the muck that was hardly recognizable now as a road . For an hour

  THE GREAT GRAY PLAGUE, by Raymond F. Jones | 709

  Sam fought the wheel to hold the car approximately in the middle

  of the brownish ooze that led them through the night . The three men

  sat in the cab. Behind them, a litter and first-aid equipment had been

  rigged for Baker . Sam told them nothing would be needed except

  soap and water, but Fenwick and Ellerbee felt it impossible to go off

  without some other emergency equipment .

  After an hour, Sam said, “He’s close . Just around the next bend .

  That’s where his car went off .”

  Baker loomed suddenly in the lights of the car . He was standing

  at the edge of the road . He waved an arm wearily .

  Fenwick would not have recognized him . And for some seconds

  after the car had come to a halt, and Baker stood weaving uncertainly

  in the beam of the lights, Fenwick was not sure it was Baker at all .

  He looked like something out of an old Frankenstein movie . His

  clothes were ripped almost completely away . Those remaining were

  stained with blood and red clay, and soaked with rain . Baker’s face

  was laced with a network of scars as if he had been slashed with

  a shower of glass not too long ago and the wounds were freshly

  healed . Blood was caked and cracked on his face and was matted in

  his hair .

  He smiled grotesquely as he staggered toward the car door .

  “About time you got here,” he said . “A man could catch his death of

  cold standing out here in this weather .”

  Dr . William Baker was quite sure he had no need of hospitaliza-

  tion, but he let them settle him in a hospital bed anyway . He had

  THE GREAT GRAY PLAGUE, by Raymond F. Jones | 710

  some thinking to do, and he didn’t know of a better place to get it

  done .

  There was a good deal of medical speculation about the vast

  network of very fresh scars on his body, the bones which X rays

  showed to have been only very recently knit, and the violent internal

  injuries which gave some evidence of their recent healing . Baker

  allowed the speculation to go on without offering explanations . He

  let them tap and measure and apply electrical gadgets to their heart’s

  content . It didn’t bother the thinking he had to get done .

  Fenwick and Ellerbee came back the next day to see him . The

  two approached the bed so warily that Baker burst out laughing .

  “Pull up chairs!” he exclaimed . “Just because you saw me looking a

  shade less than dead doesn’t mean I’m a ghost now . Sit down . And

  where’s Sam? Not that I don’t appreciate seeing your ugly faces, but

  Sam and I have got some things to talk about .”

  Ellerbee and Fenwick looked at each other as if each expected

  the other to speak .

  “Well, what’s the matter?” demanded Baker . “Nothing’s hap-

  pened to Sam, I hope!”

  Fenwick spoke finally. “We don’t know where Sam is. We don’t

  think we’ll be seeing him again .”

  “Why not?” Baker demanded . But in the back of his mind was

  the growing suspicion that he knew .

  “After your—accident,” said Fenwick, “I went back to the farm

  with Ellerbee and Sam because I’d left my car there . I went back to

  bed to try to get some more shut-eye, but the storm had started up

  again and kept me awake. Just before dawn a terrific bolt of light-

  ning seemed to strike Sam’s silo . Later, Jim went out to check on his

  cows and help his man finish up the milking.

  “By mid-morning we hadn’t heard anything from Sam and de-

  cided to go over and talk to him about what we’d seen him do for

  you . I guess it was eleven by the time we got there .”

  Jim Ellerbee nodded agreement .

  “When we got there,” Fenwick went on, “we saw that the front

  door of the house was open as if the storm had blown it in . We called

  THE GREAT GRAY PLAGUE, by Raymond F. Jones | 711

  Sam, but he didn’t answer, so we went on in . Things were a mess .

  We thought it was because of the storm, but then we saw that draw-

  ers and shelves seemed to have been opened hastily and cleaned out .

  Some things had been dropped on the floor, but most of the stuff was

  just gone .

  “It was that way all through the house . Sam’s bed hadn’t been

  disturbed . He had either not slept in it, or had gone to the trouble

  of making it up even though he left the rest of the house in a mess .”

  “Sounds like the place might have been broken into,” said Baker .

  “Didn’t you notify the sheriff?”

  “Not after we’d seen what was outside, in back .”

  “What was that?”

  “We wanted to see the silo after the lightning had struck it . Jim

  said he’d always been curious about that silo . It was one of the best

  in the county, but Sam never used it . He used a pit .

  “When we went out, all the cows were bellowing . They hadn’t

  been milked . Sam did all his own work . Jim called his own man to

  come and take care of Sam’s cows . Then we had a close look at the

  silo . It had split like a banana peel opening up . It hardly seemed

  as if a bolt of lightning could have caused it . We climbed over the

  broken pieces to look inside . It was still warm in there .
At least six

  hours after lightning—or whatever had struck it, the concrete was

  still warm . The bottom and several feet of the sides of the silo were

  covered with a glassy glaze .”

  “No lightning bolt did that .”

  “We know that now,” said Fenwick. “But I had seen the flash

  of it myself . Then I remembered that in my groggy condition that

  morning something had seemed wrong about that flash of lightning.

  Instead of a jagged tree of lightning that formed instantly, it had

  seemed like a thin thread of light striking upward . I thought I must

  be getting bleary-eyed and tried to forget it . In the silo, I remem-

  bered . I told Jim .

  “We went back through the house once more . In Sam’s bedroom,

  as if accidently dropped and kicked partway under the bed, I found

  this . Take a look!”

  THE GREAT GRAY PLAGUE, by Raymond F. Jones | 712

  Fenwick held out a small book . It had covers and pages as did

  any ordinary book. But when Baker’s fingers touched the book,

  something chilled his backbone .

  The material had the feel and appearance of white leather—yet

  Baker had the insane impression that the cells of that leather still

  formed a living substance . He opened the pages . Their substance

  was as foreign as that of the cover . The message—printing, or what-

  ever it might be called—consisted of patterned rows of dots, pin-

  head size, in color . It reminded him of computer tape cut to some

  character code . He had the impression that an eye might scan those

  pages and react as swiftly as a tape-fed computer .

  Baker closed the book . “Nothing more?” he asked Fenwick .

  “Nothing . We thought maybe you had found out something else

  when he worked to save your life .”

  Baker kept his eyes on the ceiling . “I found out a few things,” he

  said . “I could scarcely believe they were true . I have to believe after

  hearing your story .”

  “What did you find?”

  “Sam Atkins came from—somewhere else . He went back in the

  ship he had hidden in the silo .”

  “Where did he come from? What was he doing here?”

  “I don’t know the name of the world he was from or where it is

  located . Somewhere in this galaxy, is about all I can deduce from

  my impressions. He was here on a scientific mission, a sociological

  study . He was responsible for the crystals . I suppose you know that

  by now?” Baker glanced at Ellerbee .

  Jim Ellerbee nodded . “I suspected for a long time that I was being

  led, but I couldn’t understand it . I thought I was doing the research

  that produced the crystals, but Sam would drop a hint or a sugges-

  tion every once in a while, that would lead off on the right track and

  produce something fantastic . He knew where we were going, ahead

  of time . He led me to believe that we were exploring together . Do

  you know why he did this?”

  THE GREAT GRAY PLAGUE, by Raymond F. Jones | 713

  “Yes,” said Baker . “It was part of his project . The project con-

  sisted of a study of human reaction to scientific processes which

  our scientific culture considered impossible. He was interested in

  measuring our flexibility and reaction to such introductions.”

  Baker smiled grimly . “We sure gave him his money’s worth,

  didn’t we! We really reacted when he brought out his little cubes .

  I’d like to read the report he writes up!”

  “Why did he leave so suddenly?” asked Fenwick . “Was he

  through?”

  “No, that’s the bad part of it . My reaction to the crystals was a

  shock that sent me into a suicidal action—”

  Fenwick stared at him, shocked . “You didn’t—”

  “But I did,” said Baker calmly . “All very subconsciously, of

  course, but I did try to commit suicide . The crystals triggered it .

  I’ll explain how in a minute, but since Sam Atkins was an ethical

  being he felt the responsibility for what had happened to me . He had

  to reveal himself to the extent of saving my life—and helping me

  to change so that the suicidal drive would not appear again . He did

  this, but it revealed too much of himself and destroyed the chance of

  completing his program . When he gets back home, he’s really going

  to catch hell for lousing up the works . It’s too bad .”

  Jim Ellerbee let out a long breath . “Sam Atkins—somebody from

  another world—it doesn’t seem possible . What things he could have

  taught us if he’d stayed!”

  Fenwick wondered why it had to have been Baker to receive this

  knowledge . Baker, the High Priest of the Fixed Position, the am-

  bassador of Established Authority . Why couldn’t Sam Atkins—or

  whatever his real name might be—have whispered just a few words

  of light to a man willing to listen and profit? His bowels felt sick

  with the impact of opportunity forever lost .

  “How did the crystals trigger a suicidal reaction?” asked Fenwick

  finally, as if to make conversation more than anything else.

  THE GREAT GRAY PLAGUE, by Raymond F. Jones | 714

  Baker’s face seemed to glow . “That’s the really important thing I

  learned from Sam . I learned that about me—about all of us . It’s hard

  to explain . I experienced it—but you can only hear about it .”

  “We’re listening,” said Fenwick dully .

  “I saw a picture of a lathe in a magazine a few months ago,” said

  Baker slowly . “You can buy one of these lathes for $174,000, if you

  want one . It’s a pretty fancy job . The lathe remembers what it does

  once, and afterwards can do it again without any instructions .

  “The lathe has a magnetic tape memory . The operator cuts the

  first piece on the lathe, and the tape records all the operations neces-

  sary for that production . After that, the operator needs only to insert

  the metal stock and press the start button .

  “There could be a million memories in storage, and the lathe

  could draw on any one of them to repeat what it had done before at

  any time in its history .”

  “I don’t see what this has got to do with Sam and you,” said

  Fenwick .

  Baker ignored him . “A long time ago a bit of life came into ex-

  istence. It had no memory, because it was the first. But it faced the

  universe and made decisions . That’s the difference between life

  and nonlife . Did you know that, Fenwick? The capacity to make

  decisions without pre-programming . The lathe is not alive because

  it must be pre-programmed by the operator . We used to say that

  reproduction was the criterion of life, but the lathe could be pre-

  programmed to build a duplicate of itself, complete with existing

  memories, if that were desired, but that would not make it a living

  thing .

  “Spontaneous decision . A single cell can make a simple binary

  choice . Maybe nothing more complex than to be or not to be . The

  decision may be conditioned by lethal circumstances that permit

  only a ‘not’ decision . Nevertheless, a decision is made, and the cell

  shuts down its life processes in th
e very instant of death . They are

  not shut down for it .

  “In the beginning, the first bit of life faced the world and made

  decisions, and memory came into being . The structures of giant

  THE GREAT GRAY PLAGUE, by Raymond F. Jones | 715

  protein molecules shifted slightly in those first cells and became a

  memory of decisions and encounters . The cells split and became

  new pairs carrying in each part giant patterned molecules of the

  same structure . These were memory tapes that grew and divided

  and spread among all life until they carried un-numbered billions of

  memories .

  “Molecular tapes . Genes . The memory of life on earth, since

  the beginning . Each new piece of life that springs from parent life

  comes equipped with vast libraries of molecular tapes recording the

  experiences of life since the beginning .

  “Life forms as complex as mammals could not exist without

  this tape library to draw upon . The bodily mechanisms could not

  function if they came into existence without the taped memories

  out of the ages, explaining why each organ was developed and how

  it should function . Sometimes, part of the tapes are missing, and

  the organism, if it endures, must live without instructions for some

  function. One human lifetime is too infinitesimally small to relearn

  procedures that have taken aeons to develop .

  “Just as the lathe operator has a choice of tapes which will cause

  the lathe to function in different ways, so does new life have a

  choice . The accumulated instructions and wisdom of the whole race

  may be available, except for those tapes which have been lost or

  destroyed through the ages . New life has a choice from that vast

  library of tapes . In its inexperience, it relies on the parentage for the

  selection of many proven combinations, and so we conclude certain

  characteristics are ‘dominant’ or ‘inherited,’ but we haven’t been

  able to discover the slightest reason why this is so .

  “A selection of things other than color of eyes, the height of

  growth to be attained, the shape of the body must also be made . A

  choice of modes of facing the exterior world, a choice of stratagems

  to be used in attaining survival and security in that world, must be

  made .

  “And there is one other important factor: Mammalian life is cre-

  ated in a universe where only life exists . The mammal in the womb