Murray Leinster

by The Best of Murray Leinster (1976)

  ‘But a truly healthy organism finds ways to rid itself of parasites,’ Mors said calmly; ‘or at least to keep them in tolerable subjugation. Do you doubt that our country is a healthy organism?’

  It was encouraging talk, but his fellow prisoners were not convinced. Most of them had been seized in their homes. Only one was fully dressed. The mayor had on an overcoat over his nightshirt; his hairy shanks and bare feet left him utterly without dignity. Other leading citizens were unshaven, uncombed and in every possible stage of dishabille; all were certain their humiliation was a bad omen.

  ‘To be sure,’ conceded Surgeon General Mors practically, ‘our country has only four million people, and our enemy has fifty. But we have planned our nation carefully. In nature, not all creatures defend themselves with tooth and claw. There is a specialized defense for every type of creature, as I myself pointed out to our president. There must be, as I insisted to him, some form of defense for every type of nation, so that it may survive. And I may say that he later told me that he considers our nation’s survival certain. So, since this province is necessary if our nation is truly to survive, the invaders will have to be turned out of it.’

  ‘But when?’ asked a prisoner despairingly.

  ‘The wheat harvest should begin in three weeks,’ said Mors meditatively. ‘It will be a great blow to our country if our enemy seizes the wheat harvest. I should say that we must have victory for our country in less than three weeks. Probably within ten days.’

  His companions stared at him. But Surgeon General Mor^ did not look like someone envisioning a spectacular military triumph for his country. He looked like someone sick at heart from some knowledge he concealed within him.

  Depression stayed with the prisoners. They increased in number as the day wore on. Typically, to the conquerors the conquered seemed somehow less than human. Many of the later prisoners had been beaten after their arrest. On the second day the schoolhouse was crowded. More of the new prisoners were beaten. On the third day there was a barbed-wire fence around the schoolhouse and food for the prisoners was contemptuously dumped inside it in bulk for them to distribute themselves. Surgeon General Mors organized a committee for the purpose, and to protest against unnecessary ill-treatment and humiliations.

  On the fourth day two men arrived so badly beaten that they were unconscious, and died even as Surgeon General Mors tried - without drugs or any equipment - to revive them.

  The newcomers reported conditions in the province. The invaders were methodically looting the captured territory. Their obvious purpose was to increase the riches of their country by impoverishing the province they had added to it. Machinery was being shipped back in a steady stream. Manufactured products were requisitioned from merchants. Kantolia had been the richest province in its small nation. When the invaders finished, it would be the most poverty-stricken in Europe.

  That was not all. The troops of the invaders were quartered in private homes as well as in public buildings. Nearly every Kantolian family had its quota of invaders, to be fed at the householder’s own expense. And while the enemy troops were required to practice strict discipline in relation to their officers, no such strictness was enforced as regarded civilians. A citizen whose home was only looted was considered fortunate.

  The outside world remained unconcerned. Of course no news went out from Kantolia. Censorship and a tightly sealed frontier took care of that. But what sparse, illicit radio news newcomers brought in to the prisoners indicated that the outside world was not too much disturbed by the rectification of an unimportant frontier in a remote comer of Europe.

  There was a diplomatic crisis among the Big Four powers. Surgeon General Mors’ government had made a dignified protest and a formal appeal to the United Nations, but the achievement of atomic energy control by that organization had been so precarious a matter, and was maintained by so unstable a balance of bargains, that a controversial question like the seizure of Kantolia might wreck the entire framework of international accord if pressed at the present time. Consideration of the matter had been postponed. The invaders had an indefinite period in which forcibly to remold the province’s citizenry nearer to their heart’s desire, to teach them to clamor dutifully for the maintenance of their new nationality lest worse things befall.

  Strangely, though, no new prisoners arrived after the fourth day. Almost the last to arrive told, sobbing, of the fact that fresh troops had been pouring into Kantolia almost from the instant of its seizure, and that now a monstrous army was ready to overwhelm the rest of the nation of which Kantolia had been a part.

  But Surgeon General Mors counted on his fingers and said bleakly, ‘The invasion cannot last more than ten days! But it is very terrible!’

  He had never been military in appearance. Now, five days without soap with which to wash, or a razor with which to shave, and with no change of garments at all, his looks were not imposing. He had torn up his undershirt to make bandages for beaten prisoners. The food was insufficient, and he had given of his own to those most terribly beaten and therefore weakest. The five days had told upon him. Yet he still possessed an odd dignity which could only have been the dignity of faith.

  Then, on the afternoon of the fifth day, one of the sentries outside the barbed-wire enclosure staggered, dropped his rifle against a tree and then clung to that tree in a spasm of weakness. And Surgeon General Mors saw it.

  He watched somberly until it was over. He looked heartsick and ill. But his eyes glowed doggedly as he turned and ran his eyes over the battered, dispirited figures in the concentration

  camp which was the first benefit conferred by the invaders.

  ‘1 must borrow a razor from someone,5 Mors told the mayor of Stadheim, who happened to be nearest him, ‘or a knife. At worst I shall have to break a pane of glass and try to shave with its edge. I am going to demand the surrender of the invading army.’

  He did not succeed in making the demand that day. It was late afternoon of the seventh day of the occupation before Surgeon General Mors was ushered into the presence of General Vladek. On the way from the schoolhouse, the stocky, untidy man had been marched through the streets of Stadheim. They were almost empty. They were dirty and unswept. Trash littered the sidewalks. He saw few civilians and no soldiers at all except his guard, until he arrived at the capitol building which was enemy headquarters.

  He saw an invading soldier there, a sentry, lying on the sidewalk in a curiously shapeless heap. Surgeon General Mors knew at the first glance that the man was dead.

  He looked more than ever sick at heart when he was ushered into the presence of General Vladek. The scene of this second interview was also the office of the provincial governor, but now the plebeian elegance of its furnishings had been corrected. Now it was a picture of efficiency. There were filing cabinets and wall maps, and an automatic facsimile machine in one comet hummed softly as it covered a slowly unreeling roll of paper with slighdy out-of-register typed orders, queries, lists and the like.

  General Vladek was slim and elegantly bemedaled as before. But now there was a nervous tic in his cheek. His face was queerly gray. He looked at Surgeon General Mors with a desperate grimness.

  ‘You are going to be shot,’ he said with a terrifying quietness, ‘if you answer my questions truthfully. If you do not answer them, you will not be shot. But you will beg very pitifully for a chance to reconsider and earn a firing squad! Do you understand?’

  Surgeon General Mors seated himself with great composure. His attempt at shaving had not been very successful. He was in

  every way a disreputable contrast to the invading general’s dapper splendor.

  ‘I asked for this interview,’ said Mors matter-of-factly, ‘to ask if you are prepared to surrender the troops under your command. You mentioned once that I was the ranking officer of my army in your hands. I doubt that you have captured any other. Sol seem to be the person to make the demand.’

  General Vladek made a violent gesture. Then he compos
ed himself. But he breathed quickly, and his cheek twitched, and his teeth showed when he smiled. He did not look conspicuously sane.

  ‘What is this epidemic?’ he demanded in deadly quietness. ‘My men die at the rate of ten thousand a day! Your citizens do not! We have lost thirty-five thousand men in four days, and so far not more than six civilians native to Kantolia have been stricken! What is it, Mars?’

  Surgeon General Mors leaned back in his chair. He showed no sign of triumph.

  ‘It would be an - organism we developed,’ he said heavily. ‘The official designation is CK-211. I understand that it is an artificial mutation, a variation on a fairly common bacterium. I have been told that it could be described as a dwarf form of one of the diplococci. It is hardly larger than a virus molecule. You would not expect me to be more precise.’

  General Vladek’s nostrils distended.

  ‘Ah-h-h-h!’ he said with deadly softness. ‘It is no normal plague! It is biological war! Too cowardly to fight as honorable men fight, your nation—’ sThere is no war between our countries,’ said Surgeon General Mors, prosaically, ‘and you invaded our country like a brigand, making your own rules for attack. So we made our own rules for defense. If you surrender the troops under your command, there is a good chance that we can save their lives. Have you given thought to the matter?’

  General Vladek’s cheeks twitched. His hands shookwith hate. ‘Tell me the truth,’ he said hoarsely, ‘and I will have you shot. I will concede so much! I promise that I will have you shot! But if you do not—’

  ‘I think you are being absurd, General,’ said Mors stolidly. ‘As I recall the details, death occurs on the third day after infection, usually within a few hours of the appearance of the first noticeable symptoms. Sulfa, streptomycin, and penicillin are ineffective against this particular strain, which was especially bred up to be resistant to such drugs. Also, from my recollection, the patient is infectious almost from the instant of his own infection. I think you understate your losses. Moreover, in an epidemic of this sort, the death rate should mount geometrically until natural immunes and the lack of susceptibles lower it.’

  Mors paused, and said inquiringly, sYou have ordered your men to abstain from all contact with the civil population?’

  General Vladek panted with fury.

  ‘I suspected intention when the plague began! My medical corps insisted that since only my men were infected, its cause must be contaminated supplies from home! I ordered my troops to subsist on local supplies and distributed our rations among the people - for revenge in case your spies in our supply system were responsible! But the rate of infection tripled! And your people do not die! My men die! Only my men.’

  Surgeon General Mors nodded. His eyes were somber, yet very resolute.

  ‘That is natural,’ he observed. ‘Our population is immune.’ Then he said explanatorily. ‘We have immunized practically our entire population against certain formerly prevalent diseases. And included in the injection given to each citizen was a fraction of a very interesting formula which produces immunity to diplococci in a quite new fashion.’

  The dapper General Vladek sat frozen and speechless, in a rage so murderous that he seemed almost calm.

  ‘It makes symbiosis possible,’ said Surgeon General Mors, in an interested tone. ‘It produces a condition under which the human body and the entire series of diplococci can live together. It does not produce the relationship. That requires the organisms, too. It merely makes the relationship possible. We have had practically no diplococci infections in our country for years back. Such diseases happen to be very rare among us. But the inoculation makes it possible for any of our inoculated citizens to establish a truly symbiotic relationship in case he encounters them. It is like the adjustment of intestinal flora and colon bacilli to us. They do not harm us, and we do not harm them. You follow the reasoning?’

  General Vladek’s voice was quite inhuman. ‘How were my men infected?’ he demanded. His voice cracked. ‘Tell me, how were my men infected? My medical corps says—’

  ‘We did not infect them,’ said Surgeon General Mors calmly. ‘We infected only our own population. On the morning of your invasion we spread the infection in the drinking water, in the food. We infected our own people - who could not be harmed by it - and then I came to you and warned you to keep your soldiers aloof from our people. I also advised you to get your troops out of our country for their own safety, but you would not believe me. Because you see’ - his tone was absolutely commonplace - ‘every citizen of our country is now a carrier of the plague of which your soldiers die. A carrier. Not suffering from it, but able to give it to anyone not immunized against it. You have heard of typhoid carriers. We are a nation of carriers, bearers of the plague which is destroying your army.’

  General Vladek looked like an image of frozen, despairing rage. His face was gray. His cheek twitched. He had led an invading army triumphandy into this province.

  Then without one shot being fired, his army had ceased to be an army, and a sentry lay dead on the street before his headquarters.

  ‘We did not like to do it,’ said Surgeon General Mors, heavily. ‘But we had to defend ourselves. The soil of our nation is now deadly to your troops. If you murdered and burned every citizen of our country, our land would still be fatal to your men and to the settlers who might follow them. You cannot make use of Kantolia. You cannot make use of any of the rest of our country. And the loot you have sent back has spread infection in your cities. Couriers have carried it back and transmitted it before they died. The quislings you sent to your country to be rewarded for betraying their own - they were carriers, too. The plague must rage horribly in your nation. Other countries will close their frontiers in quarantine, if they have not already done so. Your nation is destroyed unless you let us save it. I beg that you will give us the power.’ Then Surgeon General Mors said very wearily: ‘I hope you will surrender your army, General Vladek. Your men, as our prisoners, will become our patients and we will cure them. Otherwise they will die. Permit us, and we will check the epidemic you created in your own country by invading us. We did not defend ourselves without knowing our weapon thoroughly. But you will have to give us the power to rescue you. You and your nation must surrender without conditions….’

  General Vladek stood up. He rang a bell. An officer and soldiers entered.

  ‘Take him out,’ panted General Vladek hoarsely. Then his voice rose to a scream. ‘Take him out and kill him!’

  The officer moved. Then there was a clatter. A rifle had dropped to the floor. One of the soldiers staggered. He reeled against one of the steel filing cases and clung there desperately. Sweat poured out on his face; he was ashen white. He knew, of course, what was the matter. He sobbed. He was already a dead man, though he still moved and breathed. Great tears welled out of his eyes.

  The other soldiers wavered - and fled.

  Surgeon General Mors stood beside a pigsty and argued patiently with a peasant who so far had stubbornly refused to permit the reinoculation of either his family or his cows. The dumpy little man in the badly fitting uniform said earnestly:

  ‘It is a matter of living together - what learned men call symbiosis. We defended our country with the other inoculations. Now we must defend all mankind with these! We do not want our people to be feared or hated. We want visitors from other nations to come and live among us in peace and safety, to have no fears about doing business with us. If other nations are afraid of us, we will suffer for it!’

  The peasant made fitful objections. Victory over the invaders, and the terms imposed upon them, had made him proud. But Surgeon General Mors’ patient arguments were gradually wearing him down.

  ‘Ah, but they made wax on us. That was different! We do not want any more wars. When you and your family and your cows have been inoculated, we will be that much further along toward the understanding that nations which are at peace can live together,’ said Surgeon General Mors earnesdy. Nations which are at
war only die together.’

  Time travel. A theme that fascinated Leinster, who made it the subject of a number of short stories. A collection of his stories on this theme appeared about sixteen years ago, and it was obvious that Leinster was aware of the paradoxes involved. Some of his 5solutions’ were ingenious in the extreme. In the present story it is the results, rather than the mechanics, of the operation, that are considered.

  The racket came on the air about eight o’clock, and at eight-five the business office of American Broadcasting went up in the air like a gyrocket, making similar shrill screaming noises. The row came from somewhere in Brooklyn, and there wasn’t a vision set in thirty miles - fifteen million customers - that could get anything but crazy streaks on its plate, or anything but a steady rasping noise on audio. It was just before the Melba Hour when Little Angy went on the air, and Little Angy was something the customers couldn’t do without. So when this noise started on the vision channels at this special time, the business office began to shriek and wring its hands, and every locator-car on the prowl went streaking.

  The racket wasn’t too hard to locate. Of course, like all short stuff, we had to chase it around corners. Mort and me, we went around one block three times before Mort realized that the whole block was one big warehouse and it had aluminum-foil insulation which was batting the stuff back and forth with a couple of fire-walls and vertical metal signs elsewhere. When we made a bigger circuit around it, we got back on the line and only had to track off three places where it was coming from two directions at once, and one where there were three steady beams of it from as many casual reflectors. But it didn’t help any that

  the business office was having hysterics on the car set, telling us that Little Angy would be going on in twenty minutes, in fifteen minutes, that there were already two thousand complaints, the mayor had called up to find out what was the matter and the Pinky-Pank company had already filed a penalty-daim on the ground of loss of coverage, and if something wasn’t done quick— And so on.