by Damon Knight
“What’s this?” said Mrs. Neffield, coming forward alertly. “You’ve got to move us? What for?”
“We’re clearing out this corridor to make a hospital annex, Mrs. Neffield.”
“Well, I never heard of such a thing! I am certainly not going to move.”
“That’s perfectly all right, ma’am, but in that case you realize that you will be surrounded by people with an infectious disease.”
“Oh, my God!” said Mrs. Neffield. “Eulan, what are you waiting for?”
16
When the elevator stopped, she was still shaky and disoriented; her companion, Mrs. Murphy, was standing against the wall staring at the man on the floor and stuffing her fingers into her mouth.
“What happened?” she heard herself ask. Mrs. Murphy made an inarticulate noise.
The door slid open. “Come on,” she said, taking the other woman’s arm. “Let’s get out, Georgette, hurry!”
In the corridor, as the elevator door closed, Mrs. Murphy said, “He just—he just—”
“Did you see it?”
“Yes, didn’t you see it? He just fell down—”
“My back was turned. I felt all funny for a minute. Come on, dear, we’ll have to report this to somebody.”
“Is this the right floor?” Mrs. Murphy asked, looking around with a witless expression.
“Yes, the Signal Deck—see, right here. Come on, Georgette.”
They passed a steward with a cart; he was raising his hand to knock on a door beside a discreet brass plate that read MCKINLEY SUITE. The memory of something she had once known stirred in her, and she slipped out again, across the fuzzy void; and as the new avalanche of sensation struck him, he staggered and put his hand on the cart to steady himself. A woman was screaming, beside the body of another woman who lay sprawled on the floor, her skirts over her knees, eyeglasses beside her head.
Once he had quieted the screaming woman and turned her over to the two men with the stretcher who came to collect the other one, he was able to return his attention to his duties. The cart had been standing in front of the door for at least five minutes; the food would be cooling off, it was too bad.
He knocked on the door. Presently Mr. Winter opened it.
“Good afternoon, sir.” He wheeled the cart in. “I’m sorry for the delay, but there was an unfortunate incident in the corridor. A lady was ill. I had to call for security.”
“Is she all right now?”
“Yes, sir.” He noticed with keen interest the small gray-haired man in the wheelchair. “Good afternoon, Professor Newland. Here is your lunch finally.” He uncovered the tray and began laying out the dishes on the table.
“Did I hear you say someone was ill?”
“Yes, sir. Very unfortunate.” He was near enough now, and he slipped out, moved across the void and was in again, raising his head and hearing Winter’s voice: “Professor! Are you all right?”
“Yes,” he said. “What’s the matter with Kim?”
“He’s unconscious. I’d better call somebody.”
“First a woman in the hall, and now Kim. Do you suppose there’s some kind of contagion?”
He did not listen to the reply; he was absorbed in the complex network of his new host’s mind. He had expected that Newland would be interesting, and it was true: he was very interesting.
“Attention, all passengers and crew.” The voice echoed down the corridors. In the lounges and restaurants, the casino, the shopping mall, heads turned to look at television screens. A round, serious face. “This is Chief of Operations Bliss. I have to inform you that a possibly contagious disease has broken out on Sea Venture. The illness is marked by a sudden collapse. The patients are being cared for in our hospital, and they are in stable condition. There is no cause for undue alarm. You should be aware, however, that the illness is sometimes preceded by a temporary dizziness or a fainting spell. All those who have experienced anything of this kind in the presence of someone who has collapsed are asked to report to Dr. Wallace McNulty at his office on the Upper Deck. Further bulletins will be issued from time to time. Thank you for your cooperation.”
A blue-haired old woman, who heard this, put her bird’s-foot hand to her mouth.
“What’s the matter, Fran?” said her husband.
“Why, I felt faint, you remember—when that man fell down in the lobby?”
“Oh, my gosh. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything. I guess we’d better go find out, though. Do you think?”
“Oh, dear. I suppose so. And here I thought I was going on this trip to get away from doctors.”
McNulty persuaded Frances Quincy and her husband to move into the isolation section. On the way she fell down senseless in the corridor, and he had another patient. An hour later the same thing happened all over again—a man this time, Chandragupta Devi, seventy-one. He had been passing in the hall when Mrs. Quincy was stricken. In he went.
McNulty fed his notes into the office computer. He had the places and approximate times of onset of all the patients, and they formed a coherent chain. The computer displayed them in the three-dimensional skeleton of Sea Venture, with colored lines between them. The lines started in the marine laboratory, went back into the crew quarters, then up to the Quarter Deck, then here and there in the passenger section. In almost every case he could match up the time when one victim collapsed with the time the next one felt dizzy. There were a few where the times didn’t match—three hours between Geller and Barlow, for instance—but that could be bad reporting or bad recollection.
What kind of epidemic was this, for God’s sake? It wasn’t spreading, it was being passed on to one victim at a time like the wand in a relay race. No wonder the experts couldn’t tell him anything. There had never been anything like this in the world before.
17
Wednesday morning word came from Bliss’s office that reporters from the networks wanted to interview McNulty. One of Bliss’s deputies brought down a TV camera, and McNulty went through his paces for NBC, CBS, ABC, and PBS. It took nearly an hour. That afternoon he had the privilege of watching himself on the evening news. After disposing of a freak auto accident in Los Angeles, the peace conference in Nairobi, and the weather in the Midwest, the blond newsperson said, “Last Friday a mysterious epidemic swept the floating city, Sea Venture, now in mid-Pacific waters.” An image of Sea Venture appeared on the rear screen, sparkling white under a smiling sky.
“Medical authorities are baffled. The only doctor on board is the resident physician, director of Sea Venture’s health services, Dr. Wallace McNulty. We talked to Dr. McNulty earlier today by satlink.”
The hideously enlarged image of McNulty’s face appeared in the screen. It smiled insincerely. Watching, McNulty winced.
“Dr. McNulty, what can you tell us about the state of the epidemic on Sea Venture?”
“It’s about the same,” said the bloated McNulty in a creaky voice. “We’re getting three to four cases a day.”
“And the nature of the disease has not been identified, is that correct?”
“That’s correct.”
“What are the symptoms, Dr. McNulty?”
“Sudden collapse, stupor.”
“In other words, the patient goes into a kind of coma?”
“Not a coma. They’re semiconscious, but they don’t respond.”
“What medications have you tried, Doctor?”
“Broad-spectrum antibiotics. They don’t do a thing.” There was a great technical phrase for you—really impressive.
“Dr. McNulty, you’re a general practitioner, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“And before you came to Sea Venture, you had a family practice in Santa Barbara?”
“Yes, that’s right.” McNulty was sweating all over again, remembering how he had feared, against all reason, that the next question was going to be, “Are you the Dr. Wallace McNulty who—?”
“Doctor, do you think a medical specialist would be able to
handle this epidemic better?”
“I don’t know what kind of specialist. It isn’t any known disease. I’ve consulted with epidemiologists and the top people in tropical diseases. We’ve run every test we can think of.” Defensive. Would anybody trust their life to this man, or even buy a used car from him?
“And nothing is helping?”
“Not so far.” Where was the reassurance, the fatherly glint of compassion in the eye? Why couldn’t he be like the doctors on “Life Squad”?
“Doctor, what kind of help would you like from the American people?”
“Well, you could pray for us.”
Great. A little touch of piety. If you can’t get competent medical attention, McNulty thought, you can always pray. The blond newsperson, staring earnestly into the camera, was saying, “Meanwhile, a downed reconnaissance airplane in Tel Aviv Crater—” McNulty turned the set off.
On Tuesday there was a satellite call from the President, carried by the public television screens throughout Sea Venture. Bliss’s voice was heard, but only the President’s face appeared. The President was in the Oval Office, behind the famous desk with its Mickey Mouse figures. “Captain Bliss, I want you to know that the hearts of the American people are going out to you in this terrible emergency.”
“That’s very good to know, sir.”
“And we realize, of course, that you’re doing everything that can be done. We have complete confidence in you, Captain.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“And I’ve asked my staff to keep me informed of every development, day or night, and, Captain Bliss, we’re having a special prayer meeting here tomorrow morning to ask for your safe recovery from this tribulation. And I know you’re going to come through all right.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Bliss.
“Good-bye for now, and God bless you all.”
The patients kept coming in, three a day, then four and five; the rooms in the isolation corridor were beginning to fill up. By the eighth day there were thirty-two victims. McNulty had left word with the night nurses to call him if there was any change, and every night he slept fitfully, expecting his phone to buzz, but it didn’t.
On Friday things got worse. Thomas LeVore, sixty-eight, saw a woman collapse at breakfast, got up, walked out of the restaurant accompanied by his wife, and collapsed himself two minutes later. His wife, who was hysterical, said that he had felt a momentary faintness and had been on his way to McNulty’s office to report. A similar thing happened to Mrs. Frank Ballantine, fifty-one, who had been near Mr. LeVore, and to Minoru Yamamoto, seventy-eight, and to four other people, all within the space of twenty minutes. Then there were no more cases until late that evening, when Mrs. Ora Abbott, fifty-nine, was carried in. Her husband told McNulty that she had felt faint in the corridor that morning—the same corridor where the other victims had collapsed—but had refused to go to McNulty’s office.
On his way across the lobby the following morning, McNulty noticed that the crowd was unusually thin. People seemed to be trying to avoid each other. There was a funny smell in the air. The Madison Restaurant looked only about half full. There was something different about the sound too; there were no raised voices and no laughter.
McNulty greeted the security guard in the isolation corridor. He looked into each of the patients’ rooms, read the charts, talked to Janice for a minute, and then got on the phone to Bliss.
“Mr. Bliss, I want to check something with you. Is attendance off in all the restaurants, or just the Madison?”
“It’s pretty much everywhere. Less on the lower decks. Room service say their phones never stop ringing. We’ve had to transfer staff to room service, but they’re still running hours behind. If you hadn’t rung me, Doctor, I was going to ring you. Could we do some sort of announcement that would reassure the passengers?”
“I was thinking the same thing. Listen, I know this sounds crazy, but I’d like you to tell people not to come in if they feel faint. They were dropping like flies yesterday, all in the same corridor.”
“I don’t quite understand,” Bliss said.
“I don’t either, but I do know people have been keeling over when they start to come here.” He told Bliss about Mrs. Abbott. “She wouldn’t come in, and she lasted longer than any of the others. It doesn’t make any sense, but for Pete’s sake let’s try it.”
“What would you suggest that I say?”
“Well, just that—hell, I don’t know—tell them the medical emergency is under control, and so forth, and they don’t have to report in if they feel faint anymore.”
Bliss’s sigh was clearly audible. “Very well, Doctor. I don’t know if it will do any good, do you?”
“No.”
Afterward, McNulty sat and examined the small, tight knot of panic inside him. The medical emergency was not under control. It was his responsibility, and he couldn’t do a thing. He had a growing number of patients who showed no sign of coming out of their stupor; for all he knew, they would never come out of it. It was hell looking at them in the morning—poor old Professor Newland, for instance, and that nice young couple, Julie Prescott and John Stevens, side by side, waxen and still.
18
Captain Hartman came down to breakfast as usual on Friday morning, and found himself alone in the sea of tablecloths except for a large young man seated two tables away. Presently a waiter came.
“Not much of a crowd today, is there?” Hartman said pleasantly.
“No, sir.” The waiter, an Indian, did not smile.
“Orange juice, poached eggs, toast—cool the toast before you bring it, please.” Hartman closed the menu. “Look, will you ask that young man if he’d mind my joining him? Not much sense in both of us eating alone.”
“Yes, sir.” The waiter bent over the young man’s table. He looked up, smiled faintly and gestured.
Hartman walked over. “Sorry if this is an intrusion. Hartman is my name.”
“Hal Winter.” They shook hands. “Please sit down.”
“I rather expected to be the only one here this morning,” Hartman said, unfolding his napkin.
“Yes. Most people are hiding in their rooms.”
“Mind my asking why you’re not one of them, Mr. Winter?”
“There doesn’t seem to be much point in it. My friend collapsed when we were in our room—first a steward, and then him. How about you?”
“Oh, just bloody-mindedness, I expect. I’m a seafaring man, retired now, but I’ve never thought much of hiding in one’s room.”
The waiter brought their orders. Hartman’s toast was warm. Winter, he was interested to note, had a strip steak and a salad. Over breakfast Hartman chatted easily about his experiences on the Queen; Winter seemed entertained, and even smiled once or twice.
“Any news about your friend?” Hartman asked.
“No, he’s the same. I’m doing volunteer work on the night shift—they won’t let me nurse him, of course, but I can sneak in every once in a while. He doesn’t recognize me.”
“You’re a nurse, then, Mr. Winter?”
“Practical nurse, and I’m trained in physical therapy.” After a moment he added, “This is a rotten thing to happen. He was in a wheelchair to begin with. He never complained.”
“It must be very hard for you.”
“Yes. He’s a great man. Paul Newland.”
“Oh, yes, I read he was aboard. There’s some controversy about it, I believe.”
“There were people who didn’t want him to come.”
Hartman thought a moment. “Mr. Winter, as a professional man, what’s your opinion of this disease?”
“I’m not a doctor.” Winter tore a roll apart, his eyes unfocused. “There doesn’t seem to be anything like it in the literature. Dr. McNulty is a G.P., but he’s consulted with a lot of specialists, and they don’t recognize it either.”
“Not a mutation of some virus, like the Asian flu?”
“It doesn’t act like any known di
sease.”
Hartman chewed reflectively. “New things do seem to turn up. You remember Legionnaire’s Disease, and AIDS, fifteen or twenty years ago?”
“And herpes. But this is different.”
“Yes, I think it is. Mr. Winter, I remember reading once that some physicians can actually identify an illness by smell. Have you ever had that experience?”
Winter thought about it. “No.”
“Please don’t laugh. This isn’t quite the same thing, but I have the strongest conviction that I can smell something in Sea Venture—not the individual patients, but the whole vessel. A scent of illness, perhaps.”
“Or evil?”
Hartman put down his fork. “Have you felt it too?”
“Yes,” Winter said.
“I don’t suppose,” Hartman said delicately, “you’ve had nightmares?”
“Yes.”
Hartman said good-bye, left the restaurant and strolled down the corridors. The only people he met were stewards with carts; they all looked grim. The shopping mall was deserted; only the pharmacy was open. There was an eerie silence and a sort of darkness in Sea Venture now, as if the lights had gone dim, although when one looked at them, they seemed as bright as ever.
He was thinking about the first ships that carried the plague to Europe in the fourteenth century. What must it have been like to be the master of one of those ships, watching the people around him fall one by one?
New things did turn up. This might very well be something like the Black Death. Perhaps, he thought, it was something worse.
That night he dreamed that he was in a dark corridor of Sea Venture; all the lights were out, and in the yellowish no-light he saw that the corridor was occupied by a monstrous squid, with garage-long tentacles that writhed toward him like sucker-disked serpents; and he felt utmost despair, because he knew the monster was an evil that could not be killed. He woke with the smell of rotting seaweed in his nostrils.