Badge of Infamy

by Lester Del Rey

  VII

  Plague

  Dr. Feldman leaned back from his microscope and lighted another brackyweed. He glanced about the room and sighed wearily. Maybe he'd beenbetter off when he had no friends and couldn't risk the safety of othersin an effort to do research that was the highest crime on two worlds.

  The evidence of his work was hidden thirty feet beyond his formerlaboratory in Jake's village, with a tunnel that led from anotherroot-cellar. The theory was the old one that the best place to avoiddiscovery was where you had already been discovered. If their spies hadidentified his former hangout, they'd never expect to have him set upresearch nearby. It was a nice theory, but he wasn't sure of it.

  Jake looked up from a cot where he'd been watching the improvisedculture incubator. "Stop tearing yourself to bits, Doc. We know thedanger and we're still darned glad to have you here working on this."

  "I'm trying to put myself together into a whole man," Doc told him. "ButI seem to come out wholly a fool."

  "Yeah, sure. Sometimes it takes a fool to get things done; wise men waittoo long for the right time. How's the bug hunt?"

  Doc grunted in disgust and swung back to the microscope. Then he gave upas his tired eyes refused to focus. "Why don't you people revolt?"

  "They tried it twice. But they were just a bunch of pariahs shipped hereto live in peonage. They couldn't do much. The first time Earth cut offshipments and starved them. Next time the villages had the answer tothat but the cities had to fight for Earth or starve, so they whippedus. And there's always the threat that Earth could send over unmannedwar rockets loaded with fissionables."

  "So it's hopeless?"

  "So nothing! The Lobbies are poisoning themselves, like cutting offMedical service until they cut themselves out of a job. It's just amatter of time. Go back to the bugs, Doc."

  Doc sighed and reached for his notes. "I wish I knew more Martianhistory. I've been wondering whether this bug may not have been whatkilled off the old Martians. Something had to do it, the way theydisappeared. I wish I knew enough to make an investigation of thoseruins out there."

  "Durwood!" Jake had propped himself on an elbow, staring at Doc insurprise.

  Doc scowled. "Clive Durwood, you mean? The archeologist who dug up whatlittle we know about the ruins?"

  "Yeah, before he went back to Earth and started living off his lectures.He came here again three years ago and dropped dead in Edison on the wayto some other ruins. Heart failure, they called it, though it was morelike the two old farmers who ran themselves to death last month. I sawhim when they buried him. His face looked funny, and I think he hadthose little specks, though I may remember wrong." He grimaced. "Mars istough, Doc; it has to be. Some of the plant seeds Durwood found in theruins grew! Maybe your bugs waited a million years till we came along."

  "What about the farmers? Did they meet Durwood?"

  Jake nodded. "Must have. He lived in their village most of the time."

  Doc went through his notes. He'd asked for reports on all deaths, and hefinally found the account. The two old men had been nervous and fidgetyfor weeks. They were twins, living by themselves, and nobody paid muchattention. Then one morning both were seen running wildly in circles.The village managed to tie them up, but they died of exhaustion shortlyafter.

  It wasn't a pretty picture. The disease might have an incubation periodof nearly fifteen years, judging by the length of time it had taken tohit Durwood. It must spread from person to person during an earlycontagious stage, leaving widening circles behind Durwood and thosefirst infected. When matured, any other sickness would set it off, withfew symptoms of its own. But without help, it still killed its victims,apparently driving them madly toward frenzied physical effort.

  He studied the culture on a slide again. He'd tried Koch's method to geta pure strain, splattering the bugs onto a native starchy root andplucking off individual colonies. About twenty specimens had beentreated with every chemical he could find. So far he'd found a fewthings that seemed to stop their growth, but nothing that killed them,except stuff far too harsh to use in living tissue.

  He had nearly forty cases of deaths that showed symptoms now, and hewent back over them, looking for anything in common that went back tento twenty years before death. There were no rashes nor blisters. A fewhad had apparent colds, but such were too common to mean anything.

  Only one thing appeared, about fourteen years before their deaths. Thepeople interviewed about the victims might be vague about most things,but they remembered the time when "Jim had the jumping headache."

  "Jake," Doc called, "what's jumping headache? Most people seem to haveit some time or other, but I haven't run across a case of it."

  "Sure you have, Doc. Mamie Brander's little girl a few weeks ago. Feelslike your pulse is going to rip your skull off, right here. Can't eatbecause chewing drives you crazy. Back of your head, neck and shouldersswell up for about a week. Then it goes away."

  Then it goes away--for fourteen years, until it comes back to kill!

  Doc stared at his charts in sudden horror. It was a new disease--thoughtto be some virus, but not considered dangerous. Selznik's migraine,according to medical usage; you treated it with hot pads and anodyne,and it went away easily enough.

  He'd seen hundreds of such cases on Earth. There must be millions whohad been hit by it. The patent-medicine branch of the Lobby had evenbrought out something called Nograine to use for self-treatment.

  "Something important?" Jake wanted to know.

  Feldman nodded. "How much weight do you swing in other villages, Jake?"

  "People sort of do me favors when I ask," Jake admitted. "Like swipingthose medical journals from Northport for you, or like Molly Badgergetting that job as maid to spy on Chris Ryan. Name it and I'll do mybest."

  Doc had a vague idea of village politics, but he had more importantthings to think of. Most of his foul mood had disappeared with the cluehe'd stumbled on, and his chief worry now was to clinch the facts.

  Feldman considered the problem. "I want a report on every case ofjumping headache in every village--who had it, when, and how old theywere. This place first, but every village you can reach. And I'll wantsomeone to take a letter to Chris Ryan."

  Jake frowned at that, but went out to issue instructions. Doc sat downat a battered old typewriter. Writing Chris might do no good, but somewarning had to be gotten through to Earth, where the vast resources ofMedical Lobby could be thrown into the task of finding the cause andcure of the disease. The connection with Selznik's migraine had to bereported. If something could blast the Lobby into action, it wouldn'tmatter quite so much what they did to him. He wasn't foolish enough toexpect gratitude from them, but he was getting used to the idea that hisdays were numbered. The plague was more important than what happened tohim.

  The letter had been dispatched by the time Jake returned. "Here's thedope for this village. Everybody accounted for except you."

  "Never had it, Jake." Feldman went down the list. "Most of it fourteenyears ago. That fits. About the only exceptions are the kids who seem toget it between the ages of two and three. Eighty-seven out ofninety-one!"

  He stared at the figures sickly. Most of the village not only had theplague but must be near the end of the incubation period. It looked asif most of the village would be dead before another year passed.

  "Bad?" Jake asked.

  "The first symptom of Martian fever."

  The old man whistled, the lines around his eyes tightening. "Must beme," he decided. "I'm the guy who must have brought it here, then. Iused to spend a lot of time with Durwood at his diggings!"

  There was a constant commotion all that day and the next as runners wentout to the villages and came back with reports. The variation fromvillage to village was only slight. Most of Mars seemed to have advancedcases of Martian fever.

  Without animals for investigation and study, real research wasdifficult. Doc also needed an electron microscope. He was reasonablysure that the disease must travel th
rough the nerves, but he had foundno proof beyond the hard lump at the base of the neck. There it was afair-sized organism. Elsewhere he could find nothing, until the blackspecks developed.

  His eyes ached from trying to see more than was visible in themicroscope. The tantalizing suggestions of filaments around the nucleimight be the form of plague that was contagious. They might even be thetrue form of the bug, with the bigger cell only a transition stage.There were a number of diseases that involved complicated changes in theorganisms that caused them. But he couldn't be sure.

  He finally buried his head in his hands, trying to do by pure thoughtwhat he couldn't do in any other way. And even there, he lackedtraining. He was a doctor, not a xenobiologist. Research training hadbeen taboo in school, except for a favored few.

  The reports continued to come in, confirming the danger. They seemed tohave the worst plague on their hands in all human history; and nobodywho could do anything about it even knew of it.

  "Molly reports that your letter got some results," Jake reported. "ChrisRyan brought home one of the electron microscopes and a bunch ofequipment from the hospital pathology room. Think she'll get anywhere?"

  Doc doubted it. Damn it, he hadn't meant for her to try it, though shemight have authority for routine experiments. But it was like her torefuse to pass on the word without trying to prove her own suspicion ofhim first.

  He tried to comfort himself with the fact that some men were immune, orseemed so; about three out of a hundred showed no signs. If thatimmunity was hereditary, it might save the race. If not....

  Jake came in at twilight with a grim face. "More news from Molly. TheLobby is starting out to comb every village with a fault-finder,starting here. And this hole will show up like a sore thumb. Betterstart packing. We gotta be out of here in less than an hour!"