CV

35

On Tuesday, at Bliss’s invitation, Higpen and Bernstein attended the staff meeting. McNulty was also present; Geller and Barlow had been invited, but neither of them had shown up.

“Apart from the epidemic itself, I think it’s fair to say that morale is our principal problem,” Bliss said. “People are frightened, and some of them are behaving badly. Our head of security, Mr. Lundgren, isn’t here because he can't leave the job, but speaking for him, I can say that the problem is out of hand. Our normal security staff, as you know, is only ten people. We need at least a hundred and thirty. My deputies have been working with Mr. Lundgren when they’re off shift, and we’ve got Mr. Islip, the entertainment director, and his staff, and about fifty staff from the restaurants and the casino, but it still isn’t enough; we’re overworking our people and falling behind.”

Higpen said, “How many volunteers do you need? What kind of duty?”

“Well, we need at least a dozen for guard, and say eighty more for patrol.”

“Will they be armed?”

“That’s never been necessary. We don’t have firearms in Sea Venture.”

“What are they supposed to do if they have to subdue somebody and arrest them?” Mrs. Bernstein wanted to know.

“Mr. Young, our chief carpenter, has provided some batons. We'd like the patrolmen to work in pairs, in three shifts around the clock. We haven’t got uniforms for them, of course, but we’ll give them brassards. Then we’ll need about twenty-five, they could be older men, for supervisory work.”

“Or women?”

“Or women, of course. Thank you, Mrs. Bernstein.”

“I wasn’t volunteering, although I may yet. Mr. Bliss, are you exaggerating this in any way? I can’t believe you need a hundred and thirty policemen to keep order in the passenger section.”

“Believe me, Mrs. Bernstein, if anything, I’m understating it. I had a delegation yesterday morning that nearly turned into a mob—some gentlemen demanding that we launch them in the lifeboats.”

“You turned them down? Why not let them go and be rid of them?”

“I hope that was not a serious suggestion,” said Bliss after a moment.

“Sea Venture is quarantined,” said McNulty. “We can’t take a chance on letting this thing spread.”

“Why not, if you know it only affects one person at a time? Lock that person up and let the rest go. Mr. Bliss, for your information, that was a. serious suggestion. I’d like to know what your plans are. You tell us Sea Venture is quarantined. I assume that means we can’t land at Guam. What are we going to do, just keep on going until you've lost all your passengers?”

Bliss seemed incapable of speech. McNulty said quickly, “Mrs. Bernstein, please. We’ve already found out that we can’t lock this thing up. What we’re dealing with here isn’t an ordinary infection, it’s some kind of intelligent parasite.”

“I don’t believe in intelligent bacteria,” said Bernstein.

“It isn’t a bacteria,” McNulty answered. “I don’t know what it is. It’s aware, it knows what we’re doing, and it’s outsmarted us every time. About the only thing we’ve got going for us is that it can’t get off Sea Venture.”

“So what are you going to do?” she demanded, looking at Bliss. “Just keep on drifting? Why aren’t we getting help from the mainland?”

Higpen cleared his throat. “Yetta, we’re getting overwrought. Mr. Bliss is responsible for the safety of CV, and I think we have to let him do his job. There’s something else, too, talking about the lifeboats. This thing is infecting, what, about six or eight people a day?”

“About that,” said McNulty.

“Well, so far it hasn’t got into the perm section. If Mr. Bliss were to evacuate the passengers in lifeboats, where would it go for its victims except to us?”

“Good point,” said Mrs. Bernstein. “But is there room on the lifeboats for everybody or not? Why not evacuate perms and passengers both?”

“Because,” said Bliss, “then the parasite would be aboard one of the boats.”

“All right, but at least then you’d have it confined to forty people. How about this? We announce CV is being evacuated. Everybody gets on the boats—everybody. Then we announce there’s been a delay. And we wait until someone collapses. Then everybody from all the other boats goes back on board. What’s wrong with that?”

Bliss rubbed his face wearily. “Mrs. Bernstein, it’s the same as the other scheme. If we did as you suggest, presently we’d have one person taking care of thirty-nine victims— that’s an impossible situation on a lifeboat. And then if we did nothing, the remaining person would go into convulsions, presumably, and we’d be back where we started.”

Bernstein was doodling on her pad. After a moment she said, “We’re not thinking this through. The point is, do we want to isolate the parasite or not? If we do, there’s got to be a way. Dr. McNulty, you said the thing can’t go from one person to another more than four or five feet away, is that right?”

“About that, apparently,” McNulty said.

“So we’ve got two problems here. The first one is, if people collapse on the lifeboat, we can’t leave them there. They’ve got to be taken back to the hospital.”

“And the first thing the parasite would do would be to jump to one of the people who come in to get the patient,” said Bliss.

“All right. So put a rope on a gurney or whatever you call it. Open the lifeboat door, throw the rope in. People inside put the patient on the gurney, throw the rope out. We pull the patient out and close the door. The parasite is still inside.”

“That might work,” McNulty said. “But then you get to the point where there’s one person left, and I just don’t see any way out of that. Either you go in and get that person, or else—” His voice stopped.

“That’s the second problem,” Mrs. Bernstein said. “But the only reason it’s a problem is we’re looking at it the wrong way. Why is there only one person left? Because nobody else is coming in.”

“I don’t quite follow,” said Bliss.

“Volunteers,” said Mrs. Bernstein. “Get volunteers to go into the lifeboat one at a time, whenever we take a patient out. That way there’s always somebody else for the parasite to jump to, and we can keep it there, in isolation, until we figure out something else to do.”

After a moment Bliss said, “By George, I think she’s got it.”