The Sheep Look Up

by John Brunner

  “Turismo?” offered Angela McNeil.

  “But he’s been in the country over two weeks,” Mabel Bollinger objected. “Even in Brazil I never had it longer than three or four days.”

  “Well, we have a doctor right here,” Dorothy Black said practically.

  Doug bit his lip. “I’ll see if I can help,” he said, but sounded doubtful. “Phil, do you keep any specifics for diarrhea? Chlorhydroxyquinoline, say?”

  “Well—uh—no. I generally use khat, and we could hardly offer him that. I mean it’s not legal. Honey, you got anything for the kids?”

  “Not right now,” Denise said. “I used up the last lot. Meant to get some more but in all this rush I forgot.”

  “Khat, did you say?” Dorothy inquired. “What does that have to do with it?”

  “Entrains constipation as a side effect,” Doug answered. And snapped his fingers. “Side effect! Yes, I think I have something in my bag.”

  “If it’s not impolite of me,” he murmured a minute later, “you do know I’m a doctor, don’t you?”

  Katsamura flushed sallow rose.

  “Swallow two of these—not with tap-water, I got you some bottled water from the kitchen. Here. Tomorrow I’ll arrange for Phil Mason to deliver you something better, but this will help for a few hours.” Slipping a little white packet into the other’s hand.

  Alone again, Katsamura reflected that this was most sound, most sensible, calculated to reduce the risk of later and worse embarrassments. It was known there were substantial funds behind the Prosser bid, if not as great as those at Chicago. This had led to acceptance of the dinner invitation in a private home and other unstrictly protocolic gestures.

  He decided suddenly: I will recommend the Colorado franchise go to these people. I should like it to go to them. Most uncommercial. Antibusinesslike. Not allow personal bias to interfere with better judgment. Even so.

  How long for the tablets to work? It was to be hoped another two minutes would not spoil the dinner. Hastily he lifted the toilet lid again.

  THE TRIAL RUNS

  Latro, California: “Terrible diarrhea, Doctor, and I feel so weak!”/“Take these pills and come back in three days if you’re not better.”

  Parkington, Texas: “Terrible diarrhea... .”/“Take these pills...”

  Hainesport, Louisiana: “Terrible ...” “Take ...”

  Baker Bay, Florida ...

  Washington, DC. ...

  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania ...

  New York, New York ...

  Boston, Massachuetts ...

  Chicago, Illinois: “Doctor, I know it’s Sunday, but the kid’s in such a terrible state—you’ve got to help me!”/“Give him some junior aspirin and bring him to my office tomorrow. Goodbye.”

  Everywhere, USA: a sudden upswing in orders for very small coffins, the right size to take a baby dead from acute infantile enteritis.

  MAY

  GRAB WHILE THE GRABBING’S GOOD

  When I came here there was nothing to be seen

  But the forest drear and the prairie green.

  Coyotes howled in the vale below

  With the deer and the bear and the buffalo,

  To my whack-fol-the-day, whack-fol-the-do,

  Whack-fol-the-day-fol-the-didy-o!

  So I took my axe and I cut the trees

  And I made me a shack for to lie at ease,

  With the walls of log and the roof of sod

  And I gave my thanks at night to God,

  To my whack ...

  And I took my gun and my powder-horn

  And I killed the varmints that stole my corn.

  With meat and bread I had a good life,

  So I looked for a woman who would be my wife,

  To my whack ...

  When he was a boy I taught my son

  To use the plow and the hoe and the gun.

  The fields spread out as the trees came down—

  There was room at last for a little town,

  To my whack ...

  There’s a church of clapboard with a steeple,

  And Sunday morning it’s full of people.

  There’s a bank, a saloon and a general store

  And a hundred houses weren’t there before,

  To my whack ...

  And now that I’m old and prepared to go

  There are cattle instead of the buffalo.

  They’ll carry my coffin to my grave

  Down roads they say they’re going to pave,

  To my whack...

  So I’m happy to know I made my mark

  On the land which once was drear and dark,

  And I’m happy to know my funeral prayer

  Will be heard in the land that was stark and bare,

  To my whack ...

  —“Boelker’s Camp Fire Songster,” 1873

  BLANKET

  “Where are they?” Gerry Thorne kept muttering all through Nancy’s funeral in the small Pennsylvania town where she had been born and her parents still resided. “Where are the mothers? It’s a fucking conspiracy!”

  Everyone understood he was overwrought; however, this language did not seem fitting while the substitute minister droned through the service. (The regular minister had enteritis.) So they pretended not to hear.

  It was not the guests he meant. There were a great many of those, some of them important and/or famous. Jacob Bamberley had flown east specially to attend, with Maud but without the children. (They had enteritis.) Minor officials from the embassies or UN delegations of countries which had been helped by Globe Relief were likewise in the chapel. Moses Greenbriar had intended to come but he and Elly were unwell. (Enteritis.) Old friends of the family who were prominent in the community, such as the mayor, and the principal of the school Nancy had attended (free today because it was closed through enteritis), were also on hand. But he didn’t mean them.

  “Christ, not even one reporter!” he muttered. “Let alone a TV team. And I kicked ABS in the ass over and over!”

  He was wrong. There was one reporter. A girl had been sent by a local weekly with a circulation of nearly twenty thousand.

  There was a slightly embarrassing incident just before the cremation, when a lady trying to slip away to the toilets fell in the aisle and—well, they did their collective best to ignore that, too. But eventually the coffin was consigned to the flames and they emerged under the yellow-gray sky.

  Gerry had been against cremation at first, because of the smoke. He’d changed his mind when he saw how she was scarred.

  The sun showed as a bright diffuse blur today; the weather had been exceptionally fine all week. Casting no shadow, face as white as paper, the muscles of his jaw standing out, Thorne kept on saying, “Where are the bastards? I’ll murder them for this!”

  “There is an epidemic, you know,” said Mr. Cowper, his father-in-law, who was very much one to maintain the proprieties and had been shuddering under his black suit throughout the service. “I’m told it’s very bad in New York.”

  His wife, who had also annoyed him by snuffling at his side loud enough to be heard by everyone in the chapel, not from grief but a head cold, excused herself for a moment. Usual trouble.

  “Epidemic, hell!” Thorne snapped. “It’s official pressure! They don’t like the stink I’ve been kicking up!”

  That was true enough, not just a boast. He had taken a savage pride in exploiting his status as a senior executive of Globe Relief to publicize Nancy’s death and the cause of it. In consequence resorts all down the Atlantic coast, and throughout the Caribbean, and as far into the ocean as Bermuda, were suffering tens of thousands of canceled bookings. Officials insisted that the quantity of Lewisite dumped in 1919 could not possibly affect so vast an area, and it was mere chance that trawling had brought up two separate batches, and in any case weathering rendered the stuff harmless in a day or two. It made no difference. Thorne had publicized at least one other death from the gas, previously concealed—he had traced relatives of
eight other victims, but someone was leaning on them and they wouldn’t talk—and that was good enough for the public, having been lied to once before. This year we take our vacation somewhere else. Where is there where Americans aren’t likely to be stoned by a howling mob? Spain, Greece? No, got to be out of range of the stench from the Med.

  Looks like we might as well stay home.

  The substitute minister, Reverend Horace Kirk, came to join them. “A very touching ceremony, Reverend,” said Mr. Cowper.

  “Thank you.”

  “I’ll sue the bastards, then,” Thorne said suddenly. “If that’s the way they want it!”

  Mr. Cowper touched his arm solicitously. “Gerry, you’re overwrought. Come home with us and try to relax.”

  “No, I’m going straight to my lawyers. If it takes every cent I have I’ll get back at the mothers who dumped that gas!”

  “One understands how affected you’ve been by this tragedy,” Mr. Bamberley said, matching Mr. Cowper’s soothing tone. “But surely you must realize—”

  “Jack!”

  To everyone’s astonishment, the interruption came from Maud, who was stuffing into her sleeve the handkerchief she had soaked with tears during the service.

  “Gerry’s right!” she exclaimed. “It’s disgraceful! It’s disgusting! I don’t care how long ago they say they threw that stuff in the sea—it belongs to the government, and it’s killing people, and the government is responsible!”

  “Now, Maud dear—”

  “Jack, it’s all right for you! The worst thing that ever goes wrong for you is when some bug eats your precious what-you-call-ium thingumbobii! You don’t spend every hour of every day wondering which of the boys is going to fall sick next! That’s all I ever do, from one year’s end to the next—if it isn’t fits it’s fever, if it isn’t nausea it’s diarrhea! How long can we go on like this? It’s like living in hell!”

  She broke off, choked with sobs, and leaned blindly on the minister for support, which he awkwardly provided, while her husband stared at her as though he had never seen her before.

  Mr. Kirk coughed gently, which was a mistake. It was invariably a mistake nowadays, apparently, even in a small town, and Mr. Cowper had to take over Maud from him. But he recovered without losing his aplomb, and said, “Well, Mr. Thorne, though I’m not fully acquainted with the details of your sad loss—”

  “Aren’t you?” Thorne broke in. “That’s not my fault! I got it on TV, I put it in the papers and magazines!”

  “As I was about to say ...” Frigidly; we are still in the presence of a death and it’s not seemly to shout. “I do feel you’d be ill-advised to sue an organ of the government. The chance of securing compensation is bound to be small, and—”

  “The hell with compensation!” Thorne blasted. “What I want is justice! You can’t tell me that when they dumped that gas they didn’t know people would want to fish the ocean, bathe in it, build houses fronting on the beach! You can’t tell me the bastards didn’t know what they were doing—they just relied on not being around when the trouble started! So I’m going to make trouble! Before I’m through I’ll have those stinking generals fishing it up with their bare hands!”

  He spun on his heel and headed at a run toward his car.

  After a long pause Mr. Kirk said uncertainly, “I think it may rain, don’t you? Perhaps we should make a move.”

  “Ah—yes,” Mr. Cowper agreed. “One wouldn’t want to be caught in a shower, would one?”

  THUS FAR: NO FATHER

  Later, when they were alone, Mr. Bamberley snapped at Maud, “Well, what would you have me do with the boys—lock ’em up like Roland does with Hector, so he wouldn’t know what dirt looks like if he saw it?”

  THE ILL WIND

  Like most modern high-priced apartment blocks, the building where the Masons lived was protected by a sliding steel portcullis, bullet-proof glass, and a man with a gun on duty night and day. Doug McNeil presented his ID to the suspicious black who sat in the gas-proof booth today. It was a Saturday, which probably accounted for his not having seen this guard before. What with the soaring cost of living, especially food, a lot of people moonlighted jobs like this for evenings or weekends only.

  “You making a house call on a Saturday?” the guard said, disbelieving.

  “Why not?” Doug snapped. “There’s a sick kid up there!”

  “Well, hell,” the guard said, shaking his heavy head with its fringe of grizzled beard. He opened the grille. Doug was halfway to the elevators when the man called after him.

  “Say, doc!”

  He glanced around.

  “Doc, do you take—uh—colored patients?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  “Well, doc ...” Emerging shyly from his booth, as though afraid of being reprimanded. He was much older than he had looked at first sight, Doug realized; well preserved, but probably in his upper sixties. “It’s my wife. Nothing you can like put a finger on, if you see what I mean, but all the time she gets these like fits of weakness, so if it don’t cost too much ...?”

  Ending on a rising, hopeful note.

  Doug tried not to sigh. Without seeing the woman he could make his diagnosis: poor food leading to sub-clinical malnutrition, poor water leading to recurrent minor bowel upsets, general debility and the rest. But he said, “Well, I’m in the phone book. Douglas McNeil.”

  “Thanks, sir! Thanks a million!”

  He was still upset by the encounter when he entered the Masons’ apartment. Denise was so eager to greet him, she had all the locks open ready, the door on a mere security chain, and didn’t bar it as she rushed him inside.

  “Doug, thank God you’re here! I’ve had to change Harold’s bed twice since I called you!”

  Resignedly he followed her, and it was what he’d expected. Three minutes, and he’d written out a prescription the duplicate of—how many?—maybe ninety in the past week. Washing his hands, he recited the usual advice concerning diet and not worrying about minor stomach cramps.

  At which point Philip showed up demanding the verdict.

  “Not serious,” Doug said, throwing his towel at a hook.

  “Not serious! Doug, they’ve had to close schools all over the city, and every kid in this building seems to have it, and most of the adults, and—”

  “And babies sometimes don’t recover,” Doug snapped. “I know!”

  He caught himself. “Sorry,” he added, passing a tired hand over his eyes. “This is my sixth call today for the same thing, you know. I’m worn out.”

  “Yes, of course.” Philip looked apologetic. “It’s just that when it’s your own kids ...”

  “Yours aren’t babies any more,” Doug pointed out. “They should be fine in another few days.”

  “Yes, but ... Oh, I’m being stupid. Say, can you spare the time for a drink? There are some people here you might like to meet.”

  “I guess I need it,” Doug said wryly, and followed him.

  In the living-room: a plump, pretty, light-colored girl, perched shyly on the edge of a chair, and next to her a man several shades darker who sat with the characteristic stiffness that Doug instantly assigned to a back-brace. His face was vaguely familiar, and the moment Philip made the introductions he remembered where he’d seen it.

  “Mr. Goddard! Very glad to meet you, very glad indeed!” And to Denise as she handed him his regular vodka rickey, “Oh, thanks.”

  “Are your children okay, Mrs. Mason?” the girl asked.

  “Doug says they will be in a few days.”

  “What is it, this—this epidemic?” Pete inquired. “I had a touch of it myself last week. Which made for—uh—problems.” A self-conscious grin. “I don’t get around too fast right now, you see.”

  Doug smiled, but it was forced. Dropping into an armchair, he said, “Oh ... Basically it’s an abnormal strain of E. coli. A bug that ordinarily lives in the bowel quite happily. But the strains vary from place to place, and some get altered by
exposure to antibiotics and so forth, and that’s why you get diarrhea. It’s the same really as turismo, or as they call it in England ‘Delhi belly.’ You always adjust to the new strain, though. Sooner or later.”

  “But don’t babies ...?” That was Jeannie, hesitant.

  “Well, yes, they are vulnerable. They get dehydrated, you see, and of course their food squirts through the system so fast they—well, you get the picture.”

  Pete nodded. “But why is there so much of it right now? It’s all over the country, according to the news this morning.”

  “Somebody told me it was being spread deliberately,” Jeannie ventured.

  “Oh, really!” Doug snorted and sipped his drink. “You don’t have to invent enemy agents to explain it, for heaven’s sake! I’m no public health expert, but I imagine it’s a simple vicious circle process. You know we’re at the limit of our water resources, don’t you?”

  “No need to tell me,” Denise sighed. “We have a don’t-drink notice in force right now. Matter of fact, I suspect that’s why the kids caught this bug. They’re so proud of being able to go to the sink and help themselves to a glass of water ... Sorry, go on.”

  “Well, figure it yourself. With eight or ten million people—”

  “Eight or ten million?” Philip burst out.

  “So they say, and we can’t have hit the peak yet. Well, obviously, with that many people flushing the pan ten, fifteen, twenty times a day, we’re using far more water than usual, and at least half this country is supplied with water that’s already been used.”

  He spread his hands. “So there you are. Vicious circle. It’ll probably drag on all summer.”