The Jupiter Plague

9

Darkness filled the laboratory, pierced only by the blue-green light from the TV screen that glowed above the workbench, throwing its ghostly illumination over Sam’s face and accenting even more the lines of fatigue and the dark shadows under his eyes. He looked at the image on the screen and hated it. The jumbled and fearfully twisted rods of Rand’s virus sprawled across the face of the tube, transmitted from the main virology lab, glowing in room after room of the great hospital like some duplicated and demonic icon. Sam yawned and forced his eyes away from it: he should sleep, he was tired enough surely, but sleep would not come. Outside the window a grayness was beginning to seep through the rain that had been falling most of the night. He should have slept. Nita had leaned her head forward onto her arm while they had been talking and just that easily and quickly had been asleep, the wealth of her hair spread out on the table. She breathed lightly, her half-turned face lovely in its composure.

An announcing signal pinged and the scene on the screen shifted and changed, yet did not change. The latticework of thin rods still stretched from edge to edge: the speaker hummed.

“Identification is positive, the furuncles of the specimen, the dog, sent in from Connecticut, contain the virus of Rand’s disease, it’s on the screen now. Until further tests have been run on the viability of this virus in other mediums and hosts we are tentatively assigning it the title of Rand-gamma…”

Nita sat back in her chair, straightening her hair while she listened intently to the voice, blinking a bit with her sleep-filled eyes at the image on the screen.

“It came too fast,” Sam said, his fists clenched in impotent anger. “There should have been more time before the change took place, before the disease passed through seven different hosts. It’s been less than a week now.”

“Yet it is happening, we can’t escape the fact—”

“There are a lot of facts we can’t escape, right out there in the city.” Sam was on his feet, pacing the length of the room, tired but too angry to sit still. “The entire plague area is falling apart, sliding back to savagery; I’ve been watching it happen. I’ve never realized before what a thin veneer civilization is — it has taken us centuries to develop but only days to lose.”

“Aren’t you being unfair, Sam? People are just afraid.”

“Of course I know they’re afraid, I’m afraid myself and I have more to fear because I know just how easily Rand’s disease is spread and how helpless we are against it. But I also know what they seem to have forgotten, that not our strongest but only hope is our brains, our ability to think before acting. Yet out there people are acting without thinking and in doing it they are condemning themselves to certain death and trying to drag the rest of the world down with them. They riot and they get killed. They ignore the sound advice given to them and shelter their miserable chickens and parakeets. Wait until we try and kill their dogs! Not my old Rex, my dear old friend! — when Rex is really the damned enemy now who is going to catch a disease that will kill him and his idiot master. But before they die they are going to panic. I’ve been watching it and it’s a disgusting sight because there are no people in a mob, just animals. I’ve watched them rape and kill and try to get away and eventually someone will escape, we won’t be able to stop it. Someone will break out of the quarantine zone, or an infected dog will get through and the disease will keep spreading. People!”

Her voice was as quiet as his had been booming.

“You can’t blame people for having emotions, Sam — it’s only human—”

“I’m as human as the next man,” he said, stopping in front of her, “and I have just as many emotions. I know how those people out there feel, because I hear the same little lost simian screaming in my own heart. But what do we have intelligence for if we can’t use it to control or guide the emotions?”

“Just like a man to talk about guiding emotions while you’re stamping up and down the floor in a rage.”

He opened his mouth to answer, then stopped and smiled instead.

“You’re right of course. All my raging isn’t going to accomplish a thing. It’s the times I suppose, with all our emotions laid bare and exposed like a raw nerve. The next thing you know I’ll be telling you how lovely you look sitting there in the blue light of Rand’s virus with your hair all in a tangle.”

“Does it look awful?” she asked worriedly, trying to pat it back into position.

“No, leave it,” he said and reached out to take her hand away. When his skin touched hers something changed and she glanced up at him quickly and he saw a reflection of what he was feeling mirrored in her eyes. When he pulled at her hand to draw her to her feet he found that she was already rising.

When he lowered his face he found her lips waiting.

A kiss is a contact, a union, an exchange. It is unknown to certain races and tribes, while others know it and consider it with disgust. They all suffer a loss. A kiss can be a cold formula, or a token of familial relationship or a prelude to the act of love. It can also be a revelation in an unspoken, secret language of feelings that have never been expressed in words.

She lowered her face against his chest after-ward and he knew that she was smiling while he spoke because he traced the contours of her lips with his fingers.

“I suppose — all our emotions are closer to the surface now and we say and do things just as we feel them. I have to laugh at myself—”

“Please don’t, Sam!”

“—Well, I should laugh at myself. If you only knew how I loathe starry-eyed and out of focus TV love scenes of young things wallowing in the treacly embrace of love at first sight. I think they have demeaned something uncountably precious by using it for common coinage. I want to be able to say that I love you, Nita, and have you understand it is something vitally different and important.”

“But I love you too, so I know exactly how you feel. I suppose it is terrible to say, but I’m almost grateful for Rand’s disease and what has happened. Women are selfish, darling. I have the feeling that without the pressure you would just have gone on being one of those silent, busy men, who use their lives up on important things and never have a moment to consider the frivolous unimportance of women.”

“Unimportance!” Her body was alive and vital under his hands.

The phone cut a clear signal through the darkness of the room.

“Damn!” he said angrily, and Nita laughed as she pulled gently away from him.

“I know how you feel,” she said, “but I still must answer it.”

He smiled back and reluctantly let go as she turned on the lights and went to the phone. The rain had let up a bit, but occasional gusts of wind sent it thrumming against the window as he looked out at the moist grayness of the city, seemingly empty of all life. From the twelfth floor here he could see far up First Avenue and the only thing moving was a green and white police car: it slipped into a side street and vanished. There was a mumble of voices behind him, cut off as Nita hung up. When he turned back she was standing and stretching, an enjoyable sight that cheered him a good deal.

“I’m going to wash up and change and find some breakfast,” she said. “There’s going to be a meeting in an hour, probably another of those council of war things, even Professor Chabel will be there she said.”

“She?”

“Dr. McKay’s secretary, though I guess she’s Perkins’s now.”

“Did she mention me? Locator knows I’m here.”

“No, she just asked me to come — but of course you’re supposed to be there.”

“Am I? Just another intern — isn’t that what Eddie Perkins called me? — at a policy meeting.”

“But you must be there, Sam!”

He smiled, a little crookedly. “Oh, I’ll be there all right.”

It was one of the large meeting rooms, more than ample to hold the people assembled there, roughly thirty in all. Sam recognized most of them, heads of departments, researchers who had been drafted to work on the team, even two uniformed officers of the Public Health Service. Coming through the door, he had a sudden feeling of inadequacy at his presumption in coming here, but Nita must have sensed this because she pressed his hand firmly in hers as he helped her into a chair and this kept his mind off the proceedings until he was securely seated. Then it was too late to retreat, nor was it necessary. The people who knew him and happened to catch his eye just nodded or lifted a hand in greeting, while the others took no notice of him at all.

“You are Dr. Bertolli?” a rumbling, accented voice asked from behind him, and he rose quickly. The scowling man with the full, black beard and broken nose was familiar to Sam, though he had never met him.

“Yes, I am, Dr. Hattyar, what can I…”

“How do you feel?” Hattyar leaned forward until his face was only a few inches from Sam’s. In someone else it might have been annoying, but Sam had heard the hospital stories about the Hungarian immunologist; it was generally agreed that he was a genius — his radioactive differentiator had already replaced Ouchterlony’s gel precipitation in laboratory procedure — but he was known almost as well for his severe myopia and vanity. He needed corrective lenses badly but refused to admit it or to wear them. His nearsightedness was only a minor handicap in the laboratory, but it did tend to make his social life difficult. “How do you feel?” he repeated, looking at

Sam closely.

“Just fatigued, Doctor, I’ve missed a lot of sleep — but nothing else. No symptoms at all of Rand’s disease.”

“Not so good, a small fever would have helped. You are sure there was no small fever—?”

“None, I’m afraid.”

“Still, there is some hope. I want some of your serum. I have sera, too much of it, but always from someone who later has died. Perhaps with yours we can isolate antigens…”

“Sam — I thought you were on ambulance duty?” The interrupting words were matter of fact and cold, but Sam was aware of the enmity behind them. It was Eddie Perkins. He kept his own voice just as noncommittal as he turned.

“Yes, still on ambulance. I was out almost twenty hours last tour. Things aren’t any better in the city.”

“I see. Yes. Were you asked here?” They faced each other and the only sign of Perkins’s real feelings was the cold anger in his eyes.

“No,” Sam said, and caught the fleeting edge of a grin of victory.

“Well, then I’m sorry then, Sam, I’m afraid you’ll have to—”

“Who the devils are you?” Hattyar boomed, leaning closer and scowling in concentration as he tried to make out the intruder’s face.

“I’m Perkins, Dr. Hattyar, Dr. McKay’s assistant, I’m taking over for him until…”

“Then go take over please, we are busy.”

Hattyar wrapped his large hand around Sam’s arm and pulled him away from the suddenly red-faced Perkins. Sam felt a fleeting emotion of victory, replaced instantly by the knowledge that this would only magnify his trouble with Perkins.

Professor Chabel tapped with the gavel and standing groups broke up and found seats around the long table. He sat and stared at the papers before him, squaring them into a neat stack, before he spoke in a voice heavy with the weariness they all felt.

“Firstly, I wish you all to know that this is a World Health meeting. I asked Dr. Perkins, who is seconding for Dr. McKay at the moment, to call you all together to give me an up-to-the-moment briefing. I have been receiving your reports and I must thank you all for keeping me so well informed and up to date. At World Health we have been occupied mostly with controlling the disease vectors and establishing a quarantine area and have left treatment up to local hospital authorities aided by some Army teams. But we’re reaching the point where we have some major policy decisions to make, and before we do that we want to know exactly where we stand, what you are doing and what you hope to do to control this disease, everything.”

When he finished speaking the entire room was silent. Finally Eddie Perkins cleared his throat and looked around. “Perhaps it might be best if I sum up the present state of our knowledge. Untreated, Rand’s disease brings on death after infection in a period of roughly ten to twelve hours, in one hundred percent of the cases. To our knowledge no exceptions have been uncovered so far. However with supportive treatment we can extend that period to almost forty-eight hours. This is hopeful…”

“It is not hopeful, it is nothing.” Dr. Hattyar’s angry rumble interrupted. “It is no cure or treatment, just stretching out the time of dying.”

Perkins controlled his temper with an effort. “That may be true, Dr. Hattyar, but I am just summing up roughly. Perhaps this might be a good time for you to inform us about the progress of your immunology team.”

“Results zero.”

“That doesn’t tell us very much.”

“There is nothing much to tell. Until I can isolate an antibody I can do nothing. Rand’s disease is very simple, alpha, beta, gamma, all of them simple in the reactions. The organism either is infected or not. If it is infected it dies. There are no mild forms of the disease and apparently none of the organisms affected is capable of doing anything to combat the antigens. They just die.”

“Could you tell me, Doctor,” Chabel asked, “what you think your chances are, or rather what your prospects are of finding the antibody you need?”

“Zero. Unless a wholly new factor is introduced there is nothing that can be done.”

This time the silence was even more prolonged, and a general request for further reports brought no response; Perkins had to call on the team heads by name. Many of them were not as frank as Hattyar — or could not bring themselves to be so— but their words added up to the same conclusion.

“If I may be allowed to sum up,” Professor Chabel said, and there was a thin quaver to his voice that was caused by more than fatigue now, “we are not in a very good position. We know where Rand’s disease came from, we know how it is spread. We know the first symptoms and we know the final result — which we can only postpone by a few hours at most. We know that none of the infected organisms can generate antibodies to combat it, antibiotics do not stop it, interferon has only a limited effect, and we have no chemical agents capable of destroying it during the course of the disease without fatally injuring the host as well. We also know, and this fact is the most unusual of all, that Rand’s disease can infect certain animals, which in turn can infect their own species or reinfect humans. This is a terrible list of factors, a damning indictment, and about the only thing in our favor is that we can’t infect one another.”

“We can’t — yet…” Nita said, then raised her hand toward her mouth as though regretting that she had spoken aloud. Her words were clearly audible in the quiet room and chairs squeaked as everyone turned to look toward her.

“Would you explain that, Dr. Mendel?” Chabel asked frowning.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt — and I have no way of proving it. Call it an unjustified assumption if you want to, but it occurred to me when I had passed Rand-beta through seven hosts and found out that it then became Rand-gamma and could infect canines—”

“Pardon me,” Professor Chabel said, leafing quickly through the papers before him, “but I find no record of these experiments.”

“They were not official experiments, Professor, not part of any of the planned research; I undertook them on my own and am writing up my notes now.”

“Unofficial or not — you should have reported this at once, when you obtained your results!”

“I did want to—” she looked up, then glanced away quickly from Eddie Perkins, who was leaning forward, his face white and set, “—but it was just last night. When I went to see Dr. McKay he had just been stricken and there was a great deal of confusion. Soon after this the infected dog was discovered in Connecticut and the danger known.”

“Confusion or not, there should have been a report. Excuse me, Doctor, I’m not criticizing you, I realize that the situation is confused as well as you do. I just wish to stress again that anything that has a bearing on Rand’s disease — no matter how trivial it may seem — must be reported to me at once. Now please continue. You seem to feel that eventually Rand’s disease will become contagious in humans?”

“I’m afraid I can’t back the idea up with any facts, Professor. The disease is alien, we all admit that, and we can see that it conforms to alien laws of some kind, a growing or a changing brought on by passing through various hosts, from man to bird then to man, back and forth until suddenly it gains the capacity to infect dogs. And after passing from dog to man a number of times — then what? I have a feeling that there will be another change; it is not altogether impossible considering what has gone before, perhaps to another species of host. Or perhaps the final mutation to full contagiousness, that would seem only normal — what is abnormal is the present arrangement of inability for one human host to infect another.”

“It could happen,” Chabel said, nodding agreement. “Though I pray it doesn’t. But whether it does or not we must be aware of the danger and I suggest a program of research into the possibility be instituted at once. Dr. Perkins, what arrangements do you suggest?”

There was a hum of cross talk as the required work was apportioned to various teams. Speaking softly, Sam leaned toward Nita and asked, “Why did you take Perkins off the hook?”

“I had to, Sam. With McKay out he’s doing two men’s work and we can’t hang him for one mistake. You can’t rock the boat.”

“Don’t rock the boat — that was what Perkins said — and I’d like to tip it right over. He made a bad mistake in not taking your report to Chabel and it should be mentioned and he should be canned. This is no time for mistakes.”

“Aren’t you being personally vindictive?”

“No, I’m not! Though I admit I would enjoy seeing it happen — no, it’s more than that. He’s the wrong man for the job, he proved that, and as long as he is acting for McKay we are going to have trouble…”

The rapping of the gavel interrupted him. Professor Chabel spoke.

“Thank you for your reports. Now I would like to tell you my reasons for asking for them. The Emergency Council of the UN has been in continuous session, with the American chiefs of staff and the President as you know, and a decision has been reached. Within a few hours we are going to begin what the Army has given the dramatic title of Operation Cleensweep, a concerted effort to halt the spread of Rand’s disease at once. Zone Red, this is roughly the circular area within which the disease is now confined, will be evacuated completely. We are already beginning to move the inhabitants into a series of quarantine camps. As soon as all the developing cases of Rand’s disease have appeared and have been separated, and the incubation period has been exceeded, these people will be lifted out of Zone Red. We are already widening Zone Blue, which is a strip of no-man’s land that circles Zone Red, a dead zone. We are bulldozing and leveling it, using explosives and flamethrowers where necessary, and spreading poison bait through it. Zone Blue is now about two hundred yards wide on the average and when it is done we hope it will be at least a half a mile. If nothing happens to upset our schedule we should have Zone Blue completed at the same time Zone Red is completely evacuated.

“Then Zone Red will be sown by air with radio-actives having a half-life of two months.”

A stunned silence followed his words as they tried to understand the magnitude of it. Over eight thousand square miles of the most metropolitan area in the world would be dead and depopulated. New York City, Newark, Philadelphia, ghost cities from which man had fled and where every bird, insect and animal down to the microscopic life in the soil would be dead. Chabel’s voice continued tonelessly and grimly.

“This will have to be done at once, because the world is afraid. As long as the disease is localized and only vectored by animals Operation Clean-sweep will continue.” His voice dropped, so low that it could be barely heard. “This program, you must realize, is really a compromise. The people of the world are living in fear and they have a right to be. The only alternative acceptable was to drop a hydrogen bomb on Zone Red at once…”

He could not go in the face of horrified expressions before him; he lowered his head, an old man who had been forced to be the mouthpiece of other people’s terror — and threats.

“Dr. Chabel,” Sam said, standing, a little surprised at his own temerity but being pushed ahead by the burning need to say what must be said. “Operation Cleansweep is a logical answer to this problem since it can’t be solved medically, at least not at once, we have all admitted that. And on a global scale it may be logical to say that an H-bomb should be dropped here — though as one of the prospective carbonized corpses I can’t think very highly of the suggestion. Nor do I think very highly of the veiled threat here, that the rockets are waiting to deliver that bomb at any time it is decided that it is the best course. But that is an unimportant detail — what is more important is the unspoken desperation behind this decision— there is no medical answer, so let us scour the land clean of the infection. All very good, but there is one more piece of medical research that should be undertaken before these desperate measures are resorted to.”

He stopped for breath and realized that they were all listening with an agonized intensity. They were beyond their depth in a problem that was no longer a medical one — but a matter of survival.

“What research do you talk about?” Hattyar asked impatiently.

“The spaceship ‘Pericles’ must be entered and searched for evidence about this disease, some records or notes. There must be a reason why Commander Rand wrote ’in ship‘; after all he had survived the trip from Jupiter. If these heroic atomic measures are going to be used there can be no complaint that we will loose another plague on the earth…”

He was interrupted by the sharp rapping of Professor Chabel’s gavel.

“Dr. Bertolli, there is nothing we can do about the ‘Pericles.’ Part of the decision reached by the Emergency Council was that the ship must be left untouched. The final stage of Operation Clean-sweep, after evacuation and radioactive neutralizing of the land, will be the destruction of the ‘Pericles’ by a tactical atomic weapon. No chances are to be taken that Rand’s disease, or any other plague from space, will depopulate the Earth. I’m sorry. The decision has been reached and discussion would be useless since there is no appeal; no one would listen to anything I or any of you might say. It is out of our hands. The only thing that might affect this decision would be the discovery of a treatment for Rand’s disease. If that happens Operation Cleansweep might be revoked. Without a cure we are helpless to change the planned course of events.”

There was little else to say. There were some protests — including a fiery one by Dr. Hattyar— but they were only for the record because they knew the decisions had already been made without their being consulted and at a far higher level. Professor Chabel listened to them all very carefully and where he could answer he did and, as soon as it was possible, he adjourned the meeting. There were no protests. Nita and Sam walked back to her laboratory together, the silence between them a tangible presence. They passed the glass doors of one of the wards, crowded with cases of Rand’s disease: Nita looked away.

“I’m frightened, Sam, everything seems to be somehow… out of hand. This talk of bombs and radioactivity, and practically abandoning the research program. It means that these patients, and everyone else who comes down with the plague, are good as dead.”

“They are dead. This decision turns us into graveyard keepers — not doctors. But look at it from the outside, from the point of view of the rest of the world. They’re scared and they are going to make a sacrifice here to save themselves; let a tiny fraction of the global population die to save the rest. It makes good sense — unless you happen to be one of the fraction. It’s not that decision I’m arguing with, it’s the nonsensical act of sealing up the ‘Pericles,’ keeping it off bounds. That is an act of fear, nothing else. The answer to this plague may be in the ship, and if it is all of those already stricken may be saved.”

“There’s nothing we can do about it, darling, you heard what Chabel said. The ship can’t be entered so we’ll have to find the answer right here in the labs.”

There was no one near, so she held his hand and gave it what was meant to be a touch of reassurance, then quickly took hers away. She did not notice the sudden widening of his eyes.

“Are you on duty now, Sam?” she asked as she opened the laboratory door.

“I go on in about an hour,” he said, his voice steady as he went to the cabinet of instruments.

“We can’t let it worry us, just go on doing— What is that for?” She was looking at the telltale in his hand.

“Probably just foolishness, my skin temperature is probably depressed from lack of sleep, that must be why your hand felt warm to me—” He touched the telltale to her skin and the needle on the thermometer instantly wavered up to one hundred and two.

“You might be coming down with the flu, anything,” he said, but he could not keep the tension from his voice.

Though there was no cure for Rand’s disease, tests for its presence had been developed that were both simple and rapid.

Five minutes later they knew that the plague from space had one more victim.