Kornbluth, Mary (Ed)

by [Anth] Science Fiction Showcase [v1. 0] [epub]

  The girl said faintly:

  “If you’d only come earlier...But it’s too late now! I...thought you came from the city.”

  “I was headed there,” said Calhoun.

  “They’ll kill you—”

  “Yes,” agreed Calhoun, “they probably will. But right now you’re ill and I’m Med Service. I suspect there’s been an epidemic of some disease here, and that for some reason the people in the city don’t want the Med Service to know about it. You seem to have... whatever it is. Also you had a very curious weapon to shoot me with.”

  The girl said drearily:

  “One of our group had made a hobby of such things. Ancient weapons. He had bows and arrows and - what I shot you with was a crossbow. It doesn’t need power. Not even chemical explosives. So, when we ran away from the city, he ventured back in and armed us as well as he could.”

  Calhoun nodded. A little irrelevant talk is always useful at the beginning of a patient-interview. But what she said was not irrelevant. A group of people had fled the city. They’d needed arms, and one of their number had “ventured” back into the city for them. He’d known where to find only reconstructions of ancient lethal devices - a hobby collection. It sounded like people of the civil-service type. Of course there were no longer social classes separated by income. Not on most worlds, anyhow. But there were social groupings based on similar tastes, which had led to similar occupations and went on to natural congeniality. Calhoun placed her, now. He remembered a long-outmoded term, “upper middle class” which no longer meant anything in economics but did in medicine.

  “I’d like a case-history,” he said conversationally. “Name?”

  “Helen Jons,” she said wearily.

  He held the mike of his pocket recorder to pick up her answers. Occupation, statistician. She’d been a member of the office force which was needed during the building of the city. When the construction work was finished, most of the workmen returned to the mother-world Dettra, but the office staff stayed on to organize things when colonists should arrive.

  The plague appeared among the last shipload of workmen waiting to be returned to the mother world. There were about a thousand persons in the city altogether. The disease produced, at first, no obvious physical symptoms, but those afflicted with it tended to be listless and lackadaisical and without energy. The first-noticed symptom was a cessation of gripes and quarrelings among the workmen. Shortness of breath appeared two days later. It was progressive. Deaths began in two weeks. Men sank into unconsciousness and died. By the time the transport-ship arrived from Dettra with colonists to be landed... it was to take back the workmen ... the physicians on the planet were grim. They described the situation by space phone. The transport returned to Dettra without removing the workmen or landing the colonists. The people left in the city on Maris III were self-quarantined, but they expected help.

  It was two months before another ship arrived. By then fewer than two hundred of the original thousand remained. More than half those survivors were already listless and short-breathed. A good ten per cent were in the beginning of that marked lethargy which deepened into coma and ended fatally. A desperate, gaunt, plague-stricken few still manned the landing grid.

  The ship came down. Men disembarked. There was no crowd to greet them. The survivors still in the city had scattered themselves widely, hoping to escape the contagion by isolating themselves in new and uncontaminated dwelling-units. But there was no lack of communication facilities. Nearly all the survivors watched on vision screens in contact with the landing grid.

  The newcomers did not look like doctors, nor act like them. Visiphone contact with the landing grid was immediately broken. It could not be restored. So the isolated groups spoke agitatedly to each other by the other visiphone contacts, exchanging messages of desperate hope. Then, new-landed men appeared at an apartment whose occupant was in the act of such a conversation with a group in the distant building. He left the visiphone on as he went to admit and greet the men he hoped were researchers, at least, come to find the cause of the plague and end it.

  The viewer at the other visiphone gazed eagerly into his friend’s apartment. He saw a group of the newcomers admitted. He saw them deliberately murder his friend and the survivors of his family.

  Plague-stricken or merely terrified people - in pairs or trios widely separated through the city - communicated in swift desperation. It was possible that there had been a mistake - a blunder; an unauthorized crime had been committed. But it was not a mistake. Unthinkable as such an idea was, there developed evidence that the plague on Maris III was to be ended as if it were an epizootic among animals. Those who had it and those who had been exposed to it were to be killed to prevent its spread among the newcomers.

  A conviction of such horror could not be accepted without absolute proof. But when night fell, the public power-supply of the city was cut off - communications ended. The singular sunset hush of Maris III left utter stillness everywhere - and there were screams which echoed among the city’s innumerable empty-eyed, unoccupied buildings.

  The scant remainder of the plague-survivors fled in the night. They fled singly, carrying the plague with them. Some carried members of their families already stricken. Some helped already-doomed wives or friends or husbands to the open country. Flight would not save their lives. It would only prevent their murder. But somehow that seemed a thing to be attempted.

  “This,” said Calhoun, “is not a history of your own case. When did you develop the disease ... whatever it may be?”

  “Don’t you know what it is?” asked Helen hopelessly.

  “Not yet,” admitted Calhoun. “I’ve very little information. I’m trying to get more now.”

  What other information he had he’d gathered from a newly dead man in a field some miles away. He did not mention that at this moment.

  The girl went on, exhaustedly. The first symptom was listlessness, of which the victim was unconscious. One could pull out of it with an effort, but one wasn’t aware that anything was wrong. The listlessness progressed. One could realize it only by recognizing the more urgent, more violent effort needed to pay attention, and the discovery of weakness when one tried to eat. One did not feel discomfort - not even hunger or thirst. One had to summon increasing resolution even to become aware of the need to do anything at all.

  The symptoms were singularly like those of a man too long at too high an altitude without oxygen. They were even more like those of a man in a non-pressurized flier whose oxygen supply has been cut off. But such a man would pass out without realizing that he was slipping into unconsciousness. On Maris III the process was infinitely gradual. It was a matter of two weeks or more.

  “I’d been infected before we ran away,” she said drearily. “I didn’t know it then. Now I know I’ve a few more days of being able to think and act... if I try hard enough. But it’ll be less and less each day. Then I’ll stop being able to try.”

  Calhoun watched the tiny recorder roll its multiple-channel tape from one spool to the other as she talked.

  “You had energy enough to try to kill me,” he observed.

  He looked at the weapon. There was an arched steel spring placed crosswise at the end of a barrel like a sporting blast-rifle. Now he saw a handle and a ratchet by which the spring was brought to tension, storing up power to throw the missile. He asked:

  “Who wound up this crossbow?”

  Helen hesitated.

  “Kim ... Kim Walpole.”

  ‘You’re not a solitary refugee now? There are others of your group still alive?”

  She hesitated again, and then said:

  “Some of us came to realize that staying apart didn’t matter. We... couldn’t hope to live, anyhow. We... already had the plague. Kim is... one of us. He’s the strongest. He... wound up the crossbow for me. He... had the weapons to begin with.”

  Calhoun asked seemingly casual questions. She told him of a group of fugitives remaining together because all were
already doomed. There had been eleven of them. Two were dead, now. Three others were in the last lethargy. It was impossible to feed them. They were dying. The strongest was Kim Walpole, who’d ventured back into the city to bring out weapons for the rest. He’d led them, and now was still the strongest and - so the girl considered - the wisest of them all.

  They were waiting to die. But the newcomers to the planet -the invaders, they believed - were not content to let them wait. Groups and single hunters came out of the city and searched for them.

  “Probably,” said the girl dispassionately, “to burn our bodies against contagion. They... kill us so they won’t have to wait. And it just ... seemed so horrible that we ... felt we ought to defend our right to die naturally by... dying fighting. That’s why I... shot at you. I shouldn’t have, but—”

  She stopped, helplessly. Calhoun nodded.

  The fugitives now aided each other simply to avoid murder. They gathered together exhaustedly at nightfall, and those who were strongest did what they could for the others. By day, those who could walk scattered to separate hiding places, so that if one were discovered, the others might still escape the indignity of being butchered. They had no stronger motive than that. They were merely trying to die with dignity, instead of being killed as sick beasts. Which bespoke a tradition and an attitude which Calhoun approved. People like these would know something of the science of probability in human conduct. Only they would call it ethics. But the strangers - the invaders - the occupiers of the city were of another type. They probably came from another world.

  “I don’t like this,” said Calhoun coldly. “Just a moment.”

  He went over to Murgatroyd. Murgatroyd seemed to droop a little. Calhoun checked his breathing and listened to his heart. Murgatroyd submitted, saying only “Chee” when Calhoun put him down.

  “I’m going to help you to your rendezvous,” said Calhoun abruptly. “Murgatroyd’s got the plague now. I... exposed him to it, and he’s reacting fast. And I want to see the others of your group before nightfall.”

  The girl just managed to get to her feet. Even speaking had tired her, but she gamely though wearily moved off at a slant to the hillside’s slope. Calhoun picked up the odd weapon and examined it thoughtfully. He wound it up as it was obviously meant to be. He picked up the missile it had fired, and put it in place. He went after the girl, carrying it. Murgatroyd brought up the rear.

  Within a quarter of a mile the girl stopped and clung swaying to the trunk of a slender tree. It was plain that she had to rest, and dreaded getting off her feet because of the desperate effort needed to arise.

  “I’m going to carry you,” said Calhoun firmly. “You tell me the way.”

  He picked her up bodily and marched on. She was light. She was not a large girl, but she should have weighed more. Calhoun still carried the quaint ancient-type weapon without difficulty.

  Murgatroyd followed as Calhoun went up a small inclination on the greater hillside and down a very narrow ravine. Through brushwood he pushed until he came to a small open space where shelters had been made for a dozen or so human beings. They were utterly primitive - merely roofs of leafy branches over frameworks of sticks. But of course they were not intended for permanent use. They were meant only to protect plague-stricken folk while they waited to die.

  But there was disaster here. Calhoun saw it before the girl could. There were beds of leaves underneath the shelters. There were three bodies lying upon them. They would be those refugees in the terminal coma which - since the girl had described it - accounted for the dead man Calhoun had found, dead of starvation with food-plants all around him. But now Calhoun saw something more. He swung the girl swiftly in his arms so that she would not see. He put her gently down and said:

  “Stay still. Don’t move. Don’t turn.”

  He went to make sure. A moment later he raged. Because it was Calhoun’s profession to combat death and illness in all its forms. He took his profession seriously. And there are defeats, of course, which a medical man has to accept, though unwillingly. But nobody in the profession, and least of all a Med Ship man, could fail to be roused to fury by the sight of people who should have been his patients, lying utterly still with their throats cut.

  He covered them with branches. He went back to Helen.

  “This place has been found by somebody from the city,” he told her harshly. “The men in coma have been murdered. I advise you not to look. At a guess, whoever did it is now trying to track down the rest of you.”

  He went grimly to the small open glade, searching the ground for footprints. There was ground-cover at most places, but at the edge of the clearing he found one set of heavy footprints going away. He put his own foot beside a print and rested his weight on it. His foot made a lesser depression. The other print had been made by a man weighing more than Calhoun. Therefore it was not one of the party of plague-victims.

  He found another set of such footprints, entering the glade from another spot.

  “One man only,” he said icily. “He won’t think he has to be on guard, because a city’s administrative personnel - such as were left behind for the plague to hit - doesn’t usually have weapons among their possessions. And he’s confident that all of them are weak enough not to be dangerous to him.”

  Helen did not turn pale. She was pale before. She stared numbly at Calhoun. He looked grimly at the sky.

  “It’ll be sunset within the hour,” he said savagely. “If it’s the intention of the newcomers... the invaders to burn the bodies of all plague victims, he’ll come back here to dispose of these three. He didn’t do it before lest the smoke warn the rest of you. But he knows the shelters held more than three people. He’ll be back!”

  Murgatroyd said “Chee!” in a bewildered fashion. He was on all fours, and he regarded his paws as if they did not belong to him. He panted.

  Calhoun checked him over. Respiration away up. Heart-action like that of the girl Helen, His temperature was not up, but down. Calhoun said remorsefully:

  “You and I, Murgatroyd, have a bad time of it in our profession. But mine is the worse. You don’t have to play dirty tricks on me, and I’ve had to, on you!”

  Murgatroyd said “Chee!” and whimpered. Calhoun laid him gently on a bed of leaves which was not occupied by a murdered man.

  “Lie still!” he commanded. “Exercise is bad for you!”

  He walked away. Murgatroyd whined faintly, but lay still as if exhausted.

  “I’m going to move you,” Calhoun told the girl, “so you won’t be sighted if that man from the city comes back. And I’ve got to keep out of sight for a while or your friends will mistake me for him. I count on you to vouch for me later. Basically, I’m making an ambush.” Then he explained irritably, “I daren’t try to trail him because he might not back-track to return here!”

  He lifted the girl and placed her where she could see the glade in its entirety, but would not be visible. He settled down himself a little distance away. He was acutely dissatisfied with the measures he was forced to take. He could not follow the murderer and leave Helen and Murgatroyd unprotected, even though the murderer might find another victim because he was not trailed. In any case Murgatroyd’s life, just now, was more important than the life of any human being on Maris III. On him depended everything.

  But Calhoun was not pleased with himself.

  There was silence except for the normal noises of living wild things. There were fluting sounds, which later Calhoun would be told, from crawling creatures not too much unlike the land-turtles of Earth. There were deep-bass hummings, which came from the throats of miniature creatures which might roughly be described as birds. There were chirpings which were the cries of what might be approximately described as wild pigs - except that they weren’t. But the sun on Maris sank low toward the nearest hilicrests, and behind them, and there came a strange, expectant hush over all the landscape. At sundown on Maris III there is a singular period when the creatures of the day are silent and
those of the night are not yet active. Nothing moved. Nothing stirred. Even the improbable foliage was still.

  It was into this stillness and this half-light that small and intermittent rustling sounds entered. Presently there was a faint murmur of speech. A tall, gaunt young man came out of the brushwood, supporting a pathetically feeble old man, barely able to walk. Calhoun made a gesture of warning as the girl Helen opened her lips to speak. The slowly moving pair - the young man moving exhaustedly, the older man staggering with weakness despite his help - came into the glade. The younger helped the older to sit down. He stood panting.

  A woman and a man came together, assisting each other. There was barely light enough from the sun’s afterglow to show their faces, emaciated and white.

  A fifth feeble figure came tottering out of another opening in the brush. He was dark-bearded and broad, and he had been a powerful man. But now the plague lay heavily upon him.