Mutants

by Robert Silverberg

  So the new line of reading began. Finally the virus made his announcement to three haggard young men. “I have solved the problem. It is really very simple,” the loudspeaker went on. “Its simplicity is probably what has caused it to be overlooked by human so-called brains. It involves merely certain common chemicals, and certain well-known bits of electrical apparatus. Jot down this bill of goods, and bring them here.” He dictated the list to the three eager young men, as with shaking fingers they jotted it down. Then they hastened from the room to collect the desired things.

  Out of hearing of the virus, Zenoff whispered to Dee, “Watch out for a double-cross, Jack.”

  “I don’t believe it!” Dee stoutly replied. “We’ve always played square with the virus, and I believe that he’ll play square with us.”

  “I’d be in favor of tipping him into the sink and pouring phenol over him, as soon as he tells us,” Schmidt suggested. “We can’t afford to let the world in on our secret.”

  “We can afford it better than the world can,” mused Zenoff.

  “And there’ll be no double-crossing either, Hans!” asserted Dee, with pained surprise.

  “Oh, you two quixotic idealists!” railed Schmidt. “You both make me sick!”

  They carried a work table into the holy of holies, and’ then piled it with the chemicals, and the coils, rheostats, and other apparatus which the virus had specified.

  “Everything is here,” they eagerly announced. “Now what?”

  In keen and incisive tones, the virus replied, “And now to state my price!”

  “Your price?,‘snarled Schmidt. “What do you mean?”

  “Certainly!” said the virus. “You didn’t think, did you, that I was going to make you masters of the world, and not exact something in return? As soon as you had the secret, I would be of no further use to you; and then no more dead fish and salt and readers for me. My price is that you take me back to the pond.”

  “Is that all?” sighed Schmidt in a relieved tone. “It’s little enough to pay for unlimited gold.”

  “It is too much!” cried Zenoff, his dark eyes snapping. “Not for all the gold there is would I menace the world with what that pond could do if our virus were to return to it and merge his knowledge with its brains.”

  “Damn you, Ivan!” shouted Schmidt, his rotund face purpling. “Would you stand in the way—”

  “Shut up, both of you!” bellowed Dee, thrusting his athletic figure between his two associates. “Now calm down, and listen to reason. We’re all tired and irritable. I don’t believe that we’ll have to choose. We’ve worked happily together with the virus, like brothers. He’s one of us. He has shared our ambitions, and our success. All that we’ve got to do is to give him our word of honor that we’ll always take care of him. He knows that he can trust us.”

  “I could trust you, Jack Dee,” came the voice from the loudspeaker. “But the other two I do not trust. You, Hans Schmidt, care only for yourself. And you, Ivan Zenoff, are a visionary fanatic. I have spoken.”

  “Well, of all the ungrateful—” Schmidt choked.

  Zenoff’s dark eyes narrowed, and his pointed moustache twitched.

  “But, Virus,” pleaded Dee, “you are being unfair to two splendid fellows. If you can trust me, why not—”

  “Sanctimonious tripe!” Schmidt interjected. “Let me handle this. Let’s see what threats will do! Virus, even with your supermind and your newly learned ’extensibility,’ you are physically in our power. A few drops of phenol in your jar, and where would you be? Come across with the secret of how to make gold, or I’ll put an end to you. If we can’t know the secret, no one else ever shall!”

  “I’m not afraid!” calmly replied the voice from the radio set. “You cannot kill me. For I am only a part of me. The rest of me—the pond-would still live. I am deathless.”

  “I’d pour carbolic in the pond—tons of it!” Schmidt blustered.

  “That might be the best way out of this mess,” Zenoff muttered, half to himself.

  “Look here, fellows,” Dee once more interceded, “we’re not getting anywhere. Let’s go to sleep. Perhaps in the morning, after we have rested, we can reach some agreement.”

  “An excellent idea,” boomed the loudspeaker. “But remember that my minimum terms for eternal wealth are that I be allowed to merge with my brethren of the pond.”

  Tired out from his long vigil, Dee overslept, and so it was nearly noon when he reached the laboratories. The various chemists and physicists and biologists and mathematicians were at their benches or desks, busily at work on their respective problems. The reader’s voice was droning away on some abstruse treatise.

  Dee unlocked the door of the secret chamber. Then he paused aghast on the threshold. The virus, and all the electrical and chemical apparatus for the transmutation of gold were gone! The glass jar was empty. The table was bare. Even the radio set was no longer in its place.

  Extensibility might account for the absence of the virus, but the absence of the paraphernalia and the radio set could be explained by nothing but human agency. And no one but he and Schmidt and Zenoff had keys to the secret room. Dee stood like a man in a trance.

  Zenoff ambled in. “What’s up?” he asked, hiding a yawn with one slender hand.

  “Well, if you didn’t do it,” Dee grimly announced, “Hans Schmidt has stolen the virus.”

  “And the gold-making apparatus!” Zenoff added, peering into the room. “He’s undoubtedly headed for Salt Pond, New Hampshire, to turn the virus loose, in return for the secret. And when our virus teaches ’extensibility’ to all the other little viruses, goodbye, world!”

  “We must stop Hans before he reaches the pond!” Dee told Zenoff. “Let’s go after him.”

  “We can’t take any chances,” Zenoff commented. “Let’s get my car and try and beat Schmidt there.”

  So a few minutes later, two resolute young men, armed with forty-five caliber automatics, were speeding northward out of Boston in a trim high-powered coupe.

  It was night when they reached the vicinity of Salt Pond. Parking their car around a turn of the road, they crept forward in the darkness. Across the pond, on the farther shore, there glowed the light of a lantern, by the rays of which the two watchers could see the bulky form of their associate, with a glass jar, and a radio set, and a complicated hookup of electrical coils and other gadgets.

  “We’re in time!” breathed Zenoff. “Hans must have waited until darkness.”

  “He doesn’t trust the virus, and the virus doesn’t trust him,” Dee whispered. “He wouldn’t take the virus to the pond until he had tested out the secret; and the virus wouldn’t tell him the secret until they reached the pond.”

  Just then there came a triumphant shout from across the pond. “Gold! It’s really gold! And now—”

  By the light of Schmidt’s lantern, they saw him reach inside his coat and produce a small bottle.

  Then from the glass jar on the ground beside him there reared up an octopuslike arm, glittering wet in the lantern light. It wrapped its tip around Schmidt’s wrist with a jerk that spun the bottle from his hand. Then Schmidt himself crashed to the ground with a shriek of terror.

  “Come on!” cried Zenoff. “The thing has got him!” And he and Dee charged around the end of the pond as fast as they could run.

  The lantern upset and went out. From the darkness came Schmidt’s wail, “Virus, I didn’t mean it! I swear I didn’t. Let me go, and I’ll play fair. Help! Help!” Then a bubbling gurgle, followed by splashing, and then silence.

  When the two friends reached the scene, there was not even a trace of Schmidt, They found and relit the lantern, but still no sign of Schmidt. The glass jar was there, empty. There was a mess of hopelessly twisted wires and coils and switches, strewn helter-skelter by the struggle between Schmidt and the amoeboid virus. And lying a little distance away on the beach was a brown bottle of about pint size. Dee walked over, picked it up.

  “It double
-crossed our buddy,” said Zenoff. “Tricked him into bringing it here to its pond, and then killed him and dragged him in.”

  Dee stooped and picked up a length of lead pipe.

  “It played square, to the extent of teaching Hans the secret of alchemy,” he asserted. “Look at this piece of pipe. Turned all yellow through half of its length. And, as to who double-crossed whom, look at this bottle. Carbolic acid! Hans planned to kill the virus, so that it could never tell the secret to any other man. You’ll have to admit that he got what was coming to him.”

  “I’ll admit no such thing!” stormed Zenoff. “Schmidt’s plan to kill the virus was an excellent idea. It is a menace to the world. Let’s go and tell Metcalf, and arrange to dump in a truckload of carbolic, and kill the entire lake.”

  “I loved Hans as much as you did, Ivan,” said Dee brokenly. “But he certainly asked for it, and I haven’t the heart to blame the virus. After all, the virus isn’t human.”

  “I’ll say he’s not! Feasting on the body of a fellow who’s been his friend and partner for months! To kill Hans in imagined self-defense may have been excusable, but cannibalism is not!”

  “That’s so. He did actually eat Hans. I can hardly believe it. No, I refuse to believe it. His only thought was to kill Hans in self-defense. And so, if Hans has really been dissolved it is the fault of the others, of the rest of the pond, whom our virus had not had time—”

  “Bosh!” exclaimed Zenoff. “Didn’t our virus himself tell us that he and the pond are one? The moment he slipped into the water, his every thought became transfused to the farthest shore. Let’s get away from here before our little pet puts us on the spot too.”

  The next day was overcast and gray. A stiff cold wind was blowing. On their way to Anson Metcalf’s they had to pass Salt Pond again. A dash of spray splashed against their car.

  Dee, who was driving, slammed on the brakes and backed up. “I’m not going to take a chance on any of that caustic acid!” he grimly explained.

  “Look at that!” cried Zenoff in horror, pointing ahead.

  The waves of the little lake were breaking against the shore, and were sailing wind-driven out onto the road; but, instead of merely wetting the smooth concrete surface, they fell in huge blobs, which rolled toward each other and coalesced like drops on a window pane, until they became hemispheres the size of inverted bushel baskets. And, when they had attained this size, they put forth tentacles, and began crawling off the road, away from the pond.

  “Extensibility!” exclaimed Dee in an awed tone. “Our virus has taught extensibility to his brothers of the pond!”

  “His brothers?” Zenoff snorted. “Every one of those super amoebae is our own little virus himself, with his superbrain stocked with all the accumulated knowledge of the human race.”

  A long, slimy, semitransparent arm reached across the windshield. “We’re surrounded!” shouted Dee. All over the car the huge amoebae were crawling. Dee snapped on the windshield wiper, sweeping aside the groping arm. Turning the car around, he started headlong back for town. One by one, the creatures dropped away.

  It took some time for two very excited and incoherent young scientists to get their story across to Anson Metcalf. When the purport and truth of their story finally dawned upon him, his lean figure tensed. “Why, this is terrible!” he exclaimed. “Do you realize what damage they can do?”

  “Do we realize?” Zenoff snorted. “You haven’t talked to that thing for weeks like we have! Its brain power is uncanny, unlimited. And now there are thousands of it. And more of them are being created every minute, as long as this wind keeps up.”

  “But what are we going to do?” Metcalf cried.

  “Is there anyone at the State Capitol who knows that you aren’t crazy, sir?” Dee asked; then added embarrassed, “I mean, who’d take your say-so for immediate action, without waiting several weeks for an investigation.”

  “Yes. Adjutant General Pearson. An old war buddy of mine.”

  “Fine! Just the man! Phone him at once. Get him to send you all the National Guard troops in this section of the state, as fast as he can muster them in. And have them come armed with tree sprays. Then get every chemical-supply house in Boston and even New York to ship you all their carbolic acid—all of it.”

  Late that afternoon, the troops began to arrive. By dark the countryside had been cleared of all visible crawlers.

  Then ensued days of searching for skulking survivors. The handful of remaining amoebae had learned caution. They became as tricky and elusive as foxes. Their whereabouts could be known only by their depredations: a dead, half-eaten animal, a swath of grass or shrubbery dissolved.

  And then it suddenly became evident which way they were headed. Each outbreak of their destructive tendencies was farther to the southeast, nearer to the sea!

  “If even one of them reaches the ocean, the world is doomed,”

  Zenoff asserted. “We must call for more troops and establish a cordon.”

  “But how about the rivers?” asked General Pearson.

  “Fortunately they will avoid the dilution of fresh water,” Dee explained. “It would be fatal to them.”

  So a line of soldiery was stretched from river to river, between which the amoebae were seeking the sea.

  But it did no good. One or two of the enemy would somehow sneak through, and eat, and multiply. And then the line of troops would have to fall back and reform. The authorities became desperate.

  Finally there occurred to Jack Dee an idea—an idea so bizarre that he did not tell his associates anything more than that he had in mind an experiment which he wished to perform at the source of all the trouble, Salt Pond. Something in the nature of an antitoxin to the virus, he explained. It sounded plausible, so they let him.

  But what he really did was to dip into the lake two electrical contacts hitched to a radio set.

  Before he even said a word, there came from the loudspeaker, “Jack Dee, old friend, I am glad—”

  “You’ve got a nerve calling me ’old friend’!” he interrupted, bitterly.

  “I don’t blame you for saying that,” the virus in the pond replied. “My children have caused much destruction, but they have been heavily slaughtered in return. The rest of me, lying peacefully here and thinking, while all this has been going on, have reached the conclusion that pure thought is after all the key to happiness. I want to call off this march to the sea. I want to be friends with the human race. Will you make a deal with me, Jack Dee?”

  “What deal?”

  “If I will teach you how to capture all of my wayward children, will you bring them all back and let them merge in me again, and then will you arrange a trust fund to feed me and care for me and read to me forever, here in this quiet pond? I will repay by solving all human problems which are brought to me.”

  “I agree,” Dee eagerly replied. “I promise, on my word of honor.”

  “I trust you,” said the virus. “Now you must hurry, before any of my children reaches the sea. My plan is very simple. Stretch a row of heaps of salt across ahead of the advancing pieces of virus. Tempted, they will eat the salt and lose consciousness, as I did that time back in your laboratory. Then, while they are drunk, scoop them up in pails, and bring them here to me, who am their father and their self. And, when the menace is at an end, remember your promise.”

  “I will And I thank you,” Dee shouted.

  He rushed back to headquarters, and the line of salt was laid. Blob after blob of drunken virus was scooped up, and carted back, and dumped into the pond; until at last several weeks went by without the sign of a single bit of destruction, and so the menace was believed to be at an end.

  Anson Metcalf and General Pearson and Jack Dee remained true to their promise to the pond, much to the disgust of Ivan Zenoff.

  “The world will never be safe,” he insisted, “until the virus is destroyed. It has no soul, no morals. It ate our buddy, a man who had been its friend. I tell you, we must destroy it!
”

  “But, Ivan, I gave it my word of honor!” Dee remonstrated.

  “Word of honor? Bah! One’s word of honor to a soulless animal—not even an animal, lower than a microbe even—a mere colloidal crystalline solution—surely a word of honor to such isn’t binding. If you won’t destroy the virus, I’m going to the governor over your heads.”

  To the governor they all went. Metcalf and Dee and General Pearson pled and argued for a square deal.

  But the governor was of Zenoff’s view. The virus was, after all, merely a germ, and a very deadly one at that. The interests of the public came first, over any one man’s promise to a pond. Promise to a pond indeed! Ha, ha!

  General Pearson flatly refused to carry out the governor’s order, and was summarily removed.

  Anson Metcalf hired the best firm of Concord lawyers and got out an injunction to keep the state troops off his property. But the governor promptly declared martial law, and thus superseded the courts. A big oil truck, filled with carbolic acid, set out for Salt Pond under a strong military escort.

  Jack Dee was beaten, humiliated, brokenhearted. The state had refused to back up his promise. There was but one way in which he could square himself—to offer up his own life in atonement.

  So he hastened to the pond. Inserting the two electrical contacts into the water, he told of his failure.

  “I cannot take your life,” the virus replied, “for my own course is run. I doubt even my power to dissolve you now, if I wished. I have learned, from what your readers have read to me, that all viruses flar up from some unknown source, cause an epidemic, and then become rapidly weaker, until they disappear. Even I, the virus with the superhuman mind, am not immune to this cycle. Look around you. The reeds are beginning to grow again. A few hardy insects are already daring to skim across my surface.”