by LeMay, Jim
Matt Pringle made his living teaching the haves. In February of 2072, he had been living in Kansas City, Missouri for almost a year, teaching courses in English and cyber-communication to the next generation of technics at the university. He recorded most lecture classes to be attended by students on-line. Since the recording sessions were made at the first of each semester, his first few weeks were pretty hectic. By the second month, the pace was much more relaxed. For the rest of the semester, he only had a few discussion classes each week, homework and test results to evaluate, and occasional student consultations. For the most part he discouraged the latter since he didn’t care much for most students. The exceptions were those, all too rare (to him), who legitimately wanted to learn. He spent whatever time and encouragement with these students he deemed necessary.
The reason most students attended college, he knew, was not to obtain an education in the traditional sense of a century before. The purpose of education in that earlier time was to teach the ability to learn and reason, no matter the intended career path. So armed, graduates were prepared to tackle any future branching of that path. Modern education was only technical training along one specific career path, designed to land the graduates technical careers ensuring a lifetime of wealth. Only grudgingly, only when it was required, did they spend time in his classes. What was the point? Their techne future would not require them to read anything more sophisticated than the sports page, and their computers were supposed to do the thinking. He could read their attitudes from the way they skulked into and out of classes and from the long-suffering expressions when he dispensed homework assignments.
No, he hadn’t decided on a teaching career because he wanted to shape young minds. And certainly not for the money since, like most non-techne careers, teaching was not lucrative; most teachers either lived near the poverty line or took on additional jobs. He hadn’t even chosen teaching for the recognition. A person’s status was measured more in monetary terms than accomplishments. If his field paid poorly, he was viewed with contempt, no matter what his contribution to society.
Teaching only attracted him because of the free time it afforded. It was no longer a career that demanded much time, even on the university level, because so many classes were virtual – modern electronics made the teacher seem to appear before the students – so a series of lectures could be recorded for the whole semester in a few weeks. These lectures could be updated each semester as new knowledge or theories made revisions necessary. In fact, a small part of Matt’s income came from occasionally updating lectures for schools at which he had formerly taught.
Matt didn’t need to earn a lot of money. His parents worked as technics in a field highly in demand and commensurately remunerative, that of entertainment. Movies had mutated into a wonderland previously inconceivable. Long dead actors, brought to life through the magic of computers, performed convincingly with virtual electronic colleagues and with current, very alive performers, all acting together in settings that many times could exist only in cyberspace. His parents helped to create these virtual worlds in ways that Matt only vaguely understood and cared about not at all. Though he was about to turn thirty, they had never stopped sending him allowance checks, and it was understood that an inheritance sufficient to allow him to quit teaching altogether would some day be his, though not for a very long time. In their sixties, his parents had barely passed the midpoint of a normal life span.
If he had been willing to lower his tastes, the allowance would have permitted him a lifestyle of genteel poverty. While attending college, though, he had decided to pursue a little fuller lifestyle than the monthly checks could provide, to find a profession that wouldn’t take a lot of time but would provide a reasonable additional income.
His surroundings provided the answer almost immediately. His teachers were poor but well educated and the most interesting people he knew. He would become a teacher. Not even a full professor – that would take too many more years as a student.
Matt was an only child. His parents had never mistreated him, had not even seemed to dislike him. But he felt excluded from their lives, tolerated as just one more unwanted but unavoidable disturbance. When, as a child, he approached either of them with some childhood conundrum that seemed to need the expertise of an adult, they barely listened and then only in a distracted way, impatient for him to finish so they could return to more important affairs. When he became a taciturn rebellious teenager, they defeated him completely ... by completely ignoring him. Sullen defiance was not effective against those who don’t care.
He gladly stormed away to college. Since then he had seldom seen them, though they remained in contact irregularly electronically and he visited them occasionally at Christmas. Twice their vacations briefly crossed in Europe. Surprisingly, they had all seemed to enjoy each other’s company, though as usual the conversations revolved mostly around his parents’ current or proposed projects. Once, a girlfriend had accompanied Matt and, to his surprise, his mother messaged him a couple of weeks after they had met in Frankfurt to ask if there were any long range plans. He said no, they had just broken up. They hadn’t, but he didn’t want to share any part of his life with his parents. They had never cared up until now. Let it continue in that way.
In addition to the few serious scholars among his students, there was another type that caught his interest, those of the tall leggy female type. Though not outstandingly handsome, he knew he was good-looking enough to get by. Using this with a dash of erudition and his often acerbic ironic sense of humor, he sometimes attracted these young women’s interest. The relationships seldom worked for more than a few months. The current lover inevitably began to look upon his erudition as pedantry or his humor as too cynical. He could tell when they were getting ready to leave, and he was usually just as ready. A few had been difficult partings. He and Estelle had lived together for two years in San Diego, a record length of time, and he knew he could have kept her. And he had wanted to. He didn’t know why he let her go; he still thought of her at times, especially in the bouts of insomnia that had plagued him throughout his life.
He had met his latest tall shapely companion not in the classroom but in the university cafeteria. And she wasn’t a student; she was a doctor on the university hospital’s medical staff. Before long they were dating, and by the first of February he had moved into her fashionable condominium near the Country Club Plaza.
She was different from his other lovers in other ways. Instead of being several years younger than he was, she was older, thirty-three to his almost thirty. She wasn’t poor like many student lovers had been, though doctors didn’t command the high incomes of fifty years before. She was his intellectual equal and, unlike many in the medical profession, widely read outside her field.
And the sex was great.
Maybe Mercy’s a keeper, he thought at times. He found her name, Mercedes, delightfully old-fashioned, and Mercy a wonderfully appropriate sobriquet for a medical practitioner. But he never let himself think about the length of time the word, keeper, implied. He just wanted to enjoy her company for now and think about the future in the future.
In late February, Mercy came down with the flu, a very bad case. She took to bed, plied herself with appropriate medications, but by the next day was much worse.
She had made Matt sleep in the guestroom that night to avoid infection. When he went in to check on her the next morning, he was appalled. She was feverish, haggard, her lips cracked and dry, her eyes bloodshot. She thrashed around in the bed, almost incoherent.
“You’re going to the hospital,” he told her firmly, and she nodded, wide-eyed. She also knew something was terribly wrong. She was so weak he had to carry her to the car.
She was in the emergency room in twenty minutes and soon under the care of her colleague and former teacher, Dr. Scheid. Matt was left to pace the waiting room for over an hour. At last the old doctor appeared with a tired and rather ambiguous expression.
“What’s th
e matter?” demanded Matt. “She’s okay isn’t she? It’s just the flu, right?”
“We don’t know,” said Doctor Scheid, obviously quite concerned. “But we sure need to find out. She’s very ill.”
Two days later Mercy died.
* * * *
The morning following Mercy’s death, when Matt called at Doctor Scheid’s office, Scheid told Matt that Mercy had died of Chou’s Disease, named for the Chinese medical researcher who had isolated and identified it. It had started some time last year somewhere in China. Nobody knew exactly when or where because of that vast country’s impenetrably closed society.
The first cases reported outside of China had occurred in January in Japan. They weren’t immediately linked to those in China because of the paucity of information from the latter country. Disturbing reports emerged from Japan though.
Every one of the thirteen Japanese who had contracted it to date had died.
Scheid told Matt that a few cases had shown up in other parts of the world since those reported in Japan: Korea, India, and southeast Asia, then central Asia, Russia, and the Middle East. Just two weeks ago cases had been reported in port cities in Western Europe and, finally, in San Francisco. Mercy’s case was the first one encountered in middle America.
Matt remembered that she had flown to Seattle just two weeks before to attend a conference of some kind. Could she have encountered the disease there?
It wasn’t immediately clear how contagious the new disease was or exactly how it spread, but everyone that now contracted it was immediately quarantined. Of course no one knew how many people in the world’s rural areas or its cities’ teeming slums, for whom medical attention was largely unavailable, had become infected by the disease and passed it on. It turned out not to be universally fatal. A few patients in Asia had lived, but no one yet knew the survival rate.
Stunned by his personal grief, Matt hadn’t slept since Mercy’s death or thought of much else. As he listened to Scheid, however, an increasing sense of dread encroached on his grief. The sinister spreading epidemic might mean that Mercy’s death was the first of many. Would he, having been exposed to Mercy, soon contract this mostly-fatal disease? Then it struck him: why had he heard nothing of this before?
He glowered across the old man’s desk. “Just why the hell has this been kept a secret? And what is the goddamn medical establishment doing about it?” And to himself, Is Mercy dead because you’re not working on this?
Dr. Scheid didn’t react to Matt’s anger. With complete equanimity he said, “I’m sorry, Matt. Mercy’s catching this disease was a surprise to all of us. Hers was the first case to be documented in the Midwest so we simply weren’t prepared. The Office of Public Health and Science assures us ...”
“‘... that they’re on top of this,’” completed Matt, “‘and that they’ll have a cure in no time.’ Please don’t patronize me. I intend to find out what happened to Mercy and what this disease is all about. I can find out with or without your help.”
The old doctor’s demeanor stiffened. “I was also close to Mercy, Mr. Pringle.” (He was no longer “Matt".) “She was my student and then we worked closely together here in the hospital. I also want to know more about this disease and how it can be stopped. My interest in it is more profound even than yours. I have a mandate, after all, to save every life I can, others as well as poor Mercy’s. But keep in mind that the West has only known the existence of this infection for a matter of a month or two.
“I’ll admit that Public Health has been less than forthright about the situation than they could be. So far all they’ve told us is that this is a new bacterial infection of some kind, that antibiotics to combat it are near final development and that production is soon to begin. I’m confident of the pharmaceutical companies’ ability to find a cure for this. They haven’t failed in their fight against bacterial infections since the introduction of antibiotics a hundred and fifty years ago. Passage through the FDA is to be expedited due to the potential extremity we may face.
“But you have to keep in mind that I’m not a biochemist nor a medical researcher. I’m not qualified to contribute to any of the necessary antibiotic research or development. I’m a doctor. All I can do is to try to heal those that are stricken.” A sad smile. “And though it doesn’t help poor Mercy, I guarantee that I’ll be here to do that.”
He stood up. The consultation was over.
Matt also rose, shook Scheid’s hand, and left. He could expect no information from Scheid though he was utterly convinced that the old doctor knew far more than he let out. For all he knew, Mercy’s death had been among the first of a serious and perhaps catastrophic epidemic that could kill millions before it was checked. The sense of dread he had first felt in Scheid’s office intensified outside in the cold daylight.
* * * *
Matt had been somewhat surprised to learn that, despite her youth, Mercy had made specific arrangements to be carried out after her death. That was one of many things he had not known about her but part of their mutual attraction: each had valued his/her own privacy while respecting that right in the other.
She had arranged to be cremated and wished to have no memorial service. The cremation was held the day after her death, the afternoon following Matt’s discussion with Scheid. When Matt reached home in the evening, he received a call from Mercy’s brother Terence, saying he had just arrived in town and apologized for being late. Matt said there had been no ceremony so he had missed nothing. They arranged to meet for drinks at his hotel and then have dinner at a nearby steakhouse that Terence favored.
Matt had notified Terence, Mercy’s only surviving relative, of her death the previous afternoon, and he had just arrived from Amsterdam. Matt had only met Terence once when he had stopped over to visit Mercy on his way from Holland to San Francisco. The three of them had had dinner, and what little Matt knew of him came from that occasion and from what Mercy had subsequently told him. He was twelve years older than she. When Mercy had been thirteen, their parents had died in an automobile accident. Terence and his wife had raised her and helped her through college. Though Mercy and he were both originally from Kansas City, Terence, a biochemist, currently worked for a company in Holland involved somehow in genetic research.
Matt met Terence at the hotel about 5:00. He was a tall, rather stooped man in his mid-forties, thin though with the beginnings of a paunch. He was dressed in the modern European fashion in a dark rather severely-tailored suit that made him look more like an executive than a scientist. And indeed Mercy had told Matt that Terence had, against his will, been forced ever deeper into the management end of business and away from the research he loved. He looked rather weary and harassed.
“Sorry it took so long to get here, Matt,” he said as they shook hands. “Several cases of this horrible disease have been diagnosed over the last few days in Amsterdam. They put the passengers through some pretty extensive screening to prove we hadn’t been exposed to anyone infected before they allowed us on the plane. Not that I could have done anything for poor Mercedes in any case.”
To the formal Terence, Mercedes could no more have been Mercy than he could have been Terry.
“Sadly, that’s true, Terence,” said Matt.
Fortunately Terence was not one to waste time over small talk, so over cocktails Matt asked him the question that had been increasingly goading him ever since his conversation with Scheid.
“What do you know about this Chou’s Disease?” Matt asked. “Is it going to turn into a worldwide pandemic before it’s finally crushed?”
Terence sipped at his drink thoughtfully. “It’s very hard to say. Even though I’m a biochemist, I don’t work in the pharmaceutical field, and that has become such a closed discipline it’s hard to tell what’s going on there.”
“Why is that? I understand that this bug is some kind of bacteria. The medical field has been able to control bacteria for a long time hasn’t it? Why is this one so hard to control?”
Matt felt his stomach clench. He had hoped Terence would tell him that his fears of the afternoon were groundless.
“As far as controlling bacteria goes,” continued Terence, “we’re not as clearly in control as most people suppose.”
“What do you mean?” Matt asked. “I thought people only died of bacterial infections in third world countries.”
“That’s the common belief, but we humans have been locked in battle with bacteria throughout all of our time on earth and they’re not about to give in so easily.
“Think of our relationship with bacteria as an arms race. Arms races are common in nature. Predators and prey are always trying to counter each other’s advantages. Prey becomes faster, develops armor or coloration that matches its surroundings, or learns to live in large groups to evade predators. The predator develops larger fangs or claws or more acute senses or becomes faster or learns to hunt in groups. Some arms races are less recognizable. Which doesn’t mean they’re less important or deadly. The one going on between mankind and bacteria has lasted for ages beyond memory, from a time well before we became human beings. For most of that time we didn’t recognize it as such because bacteria were invisible to us.
“You must understand that bacteria are the oldest known type of life on earth. They live anywhere that is wet: in the water, in the air, in melting ice and snow, in boiling deep-sea thermal vents. The ground is saturated with them. You know that characteristic ‘earthy’ smell you get when you turn over the sod?” Terence chuckled. “No, you wouldn’t. You’re too much the urban boy to ever have experienced that smell. But if you ever do, you’re actually smelling bacteria. The point is that every place in the earth’s ecosystem that has organic material and a little dampness is swarming with bacteria.