The Jupiter Plague

8

Nita was waiting in the open door of the lab when he came out of the elevator and she let him in without saying a word, then locked the door securely behind him.

“You’re being very secretive — can you tell me now what is going on?”

“I’ll show you, Sam, everything that I have been doing and what the results have been, then let you decide for yourself.”

“You said on the phone that there was something terrible, what did you mean?”

“Please,” she asked, and Sam saw that when she clamped her lips shut they were so tight they were white. “Just look first and make your own mind up, without asking me any more questions.” She pointed to the racked test tubes and specimens. “I’ve been doing graded tests for the team on the resistance of the Rand virus, just getting empirical results that can be fed to the computers so that they might be useful to the other researchers. This has left me with some spare time and I have been doing some tests on my own, consecutive isolation passages and repeated transfers to tissue cultures.”

“There must be other teams doing this?”

“There are. I didn’t mind duplicating somebody else’s work since I was doing this outside of the assigned tests. I guess, what I was really hoping, was that after repeated transfers the virus might be weakened or changed and we could treat it successfully, but it stays just as deadly as ever. But I did find out something else…”

“What?”

“Just check the results first.” Close-lipped, she handed him a folder and waited patiently while he flipped through the sheets.

“Everything looks in order, as you said — wait a moment, this is an interesting series. You were alternating tissues, first bird, then human?”

“Yes, I used the laboratory birds, pigeons, and Detroit-6 human tissue culture, just one and then the other. I made seven transfers in all and ended up with Rand-beta virus from the bird, still just as deadly as ever, Only it had one factor changed, something I had not counted on and only discovered by accident. In there—”

Nita pointed to a sealed isolation cage and Sam pulled the covering cloth away and looked inside. A dog lay on its side on the floor of the cage, panting heavily. Through the thin fur covering its belly could be seen round, reddened swellings. He dropped the cover and looked back to Nita, his face drained of blood.

“You’ve made the tests—?” She nodded. “Then, this dog, it has Rand’s disease.”

“Yes, Rand-gamma I suppose we should call it, something new. None of the other strains of Rand, neither alpha nor beta will infect canines, not even after six transfers from human to bird. But here, on the seventh transfer, something new. Something incredible…”

“I’ve never heard of anything like it!” Sam was pacing the floor, angrily, burning with frustration at this last development. Rand’s disease was an alien plague, inhuman — was there no way to stop it?

“Have you tried to find out susceptibility of other organisms to this Rand-gamma? Does McKay know what you have found out?”

She shook her head. “No, I’ve gone just this far and — then I was frightened. I left the message for you; if you weren’t back soon I was going to call Dr. McKay. What shall we do, Sam?”

“See McKay as soon as possible, tell him what you’ve done. He’s not going to like it — do you realize what this will mean?”

“Yes,” she said so faintly he could barely hear her. She dropped into a chair.

“If we stop the spread of the disease in birds we should have it licked — but what if we can’t stop it before it turns into Rand-gamma? Then it will be the dogs, and what after that? These mutations and changes are incredible, they’re like nothing we have ever heard of before — they don’t follow any earthly pattern. But, is it possible there is an alien pattern they conform to? If we can find it, find its rules, then we can stop it.”

“But it’s not an alien disease, Sam — it’s human, or earthly, whatever you want to call it.”

“Now it is, but it came on the ship from Jupiter, it must be a disease from that planet—”

“No, that’s been determined already.” She riffled through a thick stack of duplicated reports until she found one which she handed to Sam. “You can see for yourself; this is still a preliminary report but it is indicative. They simply cannot get the virus to live under anything resembling Jupiter conditions. When the temperature drops and the pressure is raised the virus dies, long before it reaches the range of the Jupiter atmosphere.”

“That’s impossible!”

“Everything about this virus is impossible — but it is here. We can’t escape that fact. What can we do, Sam? I feel defeated at every turn…”

“There’s not very much we can do by ourselves — but that’s what McKay’s team is for. They’ll find out the significance of these changes.” He took her hands to help her to her feet, and was aware of how cold they were, while her face was pale under the makeup and her eyes red-rimmed with fatigue. “We’ll turn all the results over to him, then you’ll get some rest. When was the last time you slept?”

“I’ve been dozing on the couch here, it’s enough—” She looked at herself in the mirror and bit her lip, then laughed, searching through her purse for a comb. “You’re right — it’s not enough. I look like a refugee from a horror film. Give me a moment to repair some of the ravages and then we’ll go see McKay.“

“I’ll call and find out if he is in his office.”

There was difficulty in getting Dr. McKay’s number and Sam hung up and tried again. Twice after this he got busy signals before he finally got through. The call signal buzzed a number of times before the secretary answered it.

“I’m sorry, it is impossible to talk to Dr. McKay, he cannot be disturbed—” She disconnected before Sam had a chance to say a word. She was distraught and seemed to be on the point of tears.

“I wonder what the trouble can be…” Sam said, looking at the dark screen. “She seemed very upset about something.”

“We’ll have to go and find out,” Nita said, putting her notes into a folder. “Though I don’t wonder at her cracking a bit. The strain has been simply awful here and it doesn’t show any signs of letting up.”

The elevator boosted them with a silent rush to the thirty-ninth floor, but when the doors opened a murmur of voices pushed in, a chilling novelty in the normally silent hospital. They stepped out just in time to see a stretcher with a white-covered figure being wheeled into the service elevator further down the hall. A small crowd had gathered around the open door of McKay’s office and Sam recognized one of the nurses who had shared the same tour with him in the emergency room: he touched her shoulder.

“What happened, Ann?”

“It’s Dr. McKay.” She looked worried — as well as tired, like everyone else in the giant hospital. “He’s been overworking, you know — it was so sudden, a coronary thrombosis they think, he just collapsed.”

Sam pushed through the crowd at the door and Nita followed him. There were fewer people inside and the secretary was gone. The door to McKay’s private office was partly open and Sam could see Eddie Perkins inside, talking on the phone. He knocked quietly and Eddie glanced up and waved them in, signaling them to shut the door at the same time.

“Yes, of course,” Perkins said into the phone, “we’ll keep going here and I’ll keep you informed of Dr. McKay’s condition. Right then, good-by.” He disconnected and scratched a cigarette out of the open package on the desk before him. “It’s a mess, Sam. Everyone acts like it is the end of the world with McKay out of the battle; they think he is going to lick Rand’s disease all by himself and the team is just sort of a Greek chorus to cheer him on.” The phone whirred and he gave it a distasteful look and put his cigarette out. It was the governor of New York State and Eddie gave him three minutes of solid reassurance before pleading the rush of business and hanging up.

“Do you see what I mean?” he asked, relighting the bent cigarette.

“You can’t blame them,” Sam said. “After all McKay did find the answer to Topholm’s pachyacria and they expect him to pull another cat out of the same bag. Who is going to take over for him?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. I’ve been his acting assistant the last few days, so I’m holding on to the strings until something is decided. Chabel and the team heads will be here for a meeting in an hour.”

“Well, until they decide something you’re top man, Eddie.”

“Yes,” Perkins said thoughtfully, a double stream of smoke coming slowly from his nose, “I imagine I am. In which case — what can I do for you?”

Nita opened the file and passed the sheets across the desk, outlining briefly what she had discovered. Perkins flipped through them while she talked, looking up sharply when she mentioned the dog that had been affected.

“You make it sound pretty bad, Nita.” He closed the file and pushed it away from him. “In the morning I’ll let one of the pathologists have a look at this, see what they think. Meantime, thanks for the homework, we’ll see if we can put it to some use.”

“Eddie, you don’t seem to get the importance of this,” Sam said, smiling to take the edge off his words. “If Rand’s disease can be passed on to dogs we’re in for some bad trouble. Birds as vectors are bad enough—”

“I told you I’d take care of it, Sam, now relax.” There was an edge to Perkins’s voice now.

“There’s nothing to relax about; dogs are going to get this disease and if they are then now is the time to take measures.”

“Like starting to kill all the dogs around — birds aren’t bad enough? Do you know the trouble we’ve been running in to with that?”

“The trouble isn’t important. If we have to kill the dogs we’ll kill them — better now than after they’ve been infected.”

“Dr. Bertolli, let’s not forget one thing,” Perkins’s voice was empty of tone, his long face cold and drawn. “You are an intern in this hospital and not one who makes decisions. This will be taken care of—”

“Come off it, Eddie, when we were both students—”

“That will be enough!” Perkins crashed his hand down on the desk.

Sam took a long breath and let it out slowly, keeping his temper in check, then climbed to his feet. “Let’s go, Nita,” he said.

“Just a minute,” Perkins said. He was also standing now and leaning forward on his arms, his fists planted squarely on his desk. “You don’t know everything that is going on. There are two factors that you happen to be ignorant of: firstly, we have had some success today with a vaccine that may have rested some early cases of Rand’s; secondly, we are not going to allow this disease seven passages through different hosts as Dr. Mendel has done. That’s a lab exercise and we’re working with the real world. We’re controlling the spread of the disease and wiping out the vectors. If things keep going as they are — and even if all the cases we now have die — we’ll still lick it by wiping out the reservoirs of infection. So don’t rock the boat.”

“Is that all, Dr. Perkins?” Sam asked, no signs of his anger showing.

“That’s all. You stick to your job and I’ll stick to mine.” The phone whirred and he sat down to answer it. They left.

They said nothing until they had gone down the hall and were waiting for the elevator. Nita looked worriedly at his tightly clenched jaw and could feel the knotted muscles in the forearm when she touched it.

“Sam — please, don’t let it bother you so. The others will see…”

“The others will see nothing if he doesn’t show the report to them! He’s playing politics again, don’t you realize that? Don’t rock the damned boat — what a wonderful way to practice medicine!”

“Yet he’s right in a way, as long as things are going smoothly outside and they’re bringing the cases under control…”

“But they’re not going smoothly, I’ve seen enough of what’s going on to realize that. And that’s not the point. Smooth or not, we must take the right measures or this plague will spread to every corner of the world.”

As the elevator doors opened before them its loudspeaker broke into life and was echoed by the other speakers in the hall behind them.

“Dr. Roussell, Dr. Christensen, Dr. Bertolli, Dr. Invar. Will you please report to the Emergency Room. Dr. Roussell, Dr. Christensen…”

“What can it be?” Nita asked, looking at him with worried eyes.

“More trouble. The boat is being rocked in spite of Dr. Edward Perkins. Look, Nita, don’t wait for him to make up his mind — send a copy of your findings to Professor Chabel at World Health.”

“I couldn’t, that would be going over his head!”

“Try not to be so sweet and civilized, that’s a luxury we are going to have to forego for a while. Let Chabel know.” He stepped inside the elevator as the doors closed, then was gone from her sight. “Sam Bertolli, I just don’t know what to make of you,” she said to herself as she rang for the next elevator. It was a civilized world and a well-ordered world, and he just didn’t seem to fit into it at times. When the elevator arrived she saw that there were stains on the smooth white walls and drops of fresh blood on the gray floor. She shivered. Perhaps the world was not as ordered and civilized as she supposed.

“Another riot, that’s all I know,” Roussell said. “Move your big dirty feet, Chris — this is my last pair of whites.” Dr. Christensen, who was sprawled on his back occupying most of the room on the stretcher, only rattled a guttural snore in answer. The other three interns looked at him enviously, rocking back and forth as the ambulance raced through the deserted streets. They had all been on continuous duty longer than they cared to remember.

“What’s the city like now?” Sam asked. “I’ve been out in the woods all day running down a supposed cure for Rand’s disease.”

“No cure?” Invar asked.

“No disease. Boils. The doctor was old, enthusiastic, nearsighted and should have been put out to pasture thirty years ago.”

“The city’s falling apart,” Roussell said. “People think we’re lying when we tell them they can’t catch Rand’s from each other but only from birds. So everything is closed up tight. Rioting, violence, break-ins, rape, religious nuts, drunks. It’s just lovely. Anyone have a benny? It looks like another night without sleep.”

“It’s fear,” Invar said. “People are afraid to leave their homes so the normal city life has broken down. The military is keeping most of the essential services like electricity and phones going, and they have been trucking in food, but they can’t keep it up forever — not in a city this size. Tension is building and there has been a constant run of new cases of the plague — people can see that and their nerves are getting rubbed raw — and the ban oft all traveling is the last straw. It makes good epidemiological sense but to the guy in the street it looks like he is going to be trapped on this rock until he dies.”

“He may be right,” Sam said, thinking of Nita’s experiment with the dog.

“No depressing thoughts, Doctor!” Roussell said, raising his eyebrows. “We must be brave, clean, reverent—”

“That’s for boy scouts, not physicians. Neither rain nor hail nor gloom of night—

“And that’s for postmen,” Christensen mumbled, rolling over on the stretcher. “Now will you bunch of old women kindly shut up so I can get some sleep.”

A police car passed them with a wail of its siren and in the distance they heard the warbling wail of a fire engine. In the background, growing louder and more ominous, a roar like distant breakers.

“What the hell?”

“A mob, Doctor, the citizens of our fair state showing their resentment of constituted authority.”

“They sound like animals.”

“They are,” Christensen said, opening his eyes and groaning. “We all are. Just below the surface the red-eyed beast lurks. So into battle, Doctors. What was it old Shakespeare said? ‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends!’ ”

The ambulance lurched to a stop and when Sam threw the rear door open the harsh roar of a multitude of voices poured in. The bantering, the moment of good-natured attempt to forget the world outside was ended. As their expressions changed, firmed, they were physicians again. They climbed down as the driver hurried around to help them unload the stretchers.

It was a nightmare scene. The ambulance had stopped under one of the soaring arches of an approach to the Koch Bridge on Twenty-third Street. It rose above them, its three wide levels brightly lit but empty of traffic, stretching out across the Hudson River to New Jersey. Around the maze of entrances and exits a dark crowd had gathered, screaming with a single voice of hatred, their faces blue-lit by the mercury vapor lamps or ruddy from the torches they carried. Behind them a row of old warehouses was burning. Shots snapped over their heads from the beleaguered forces of police and Army and were drowned in the roaring splash of the fire hoses. Knots of uniformed defenders could be picked out by the glare of the battle lamps they had put behind the barriers of trucks and metal drums thrown across the roadway. This was the setting, the shifting backdrop to the emergency dressing station that had been set up here, boldly lit by the piercing light of the battle lamps. In harsh black and white the huddled bodies of the injured lay waiting for treatment; behind them were those to whom treatment would never come, the newly dead.

“Doctor, can you help me— Doctor!”

Sam heard the words clearly through the thunder of back-ground noise and turned to see a young medical corpsman waving to him: he shouldered the emergency bag and threaded his way toward him through the sprawled figures.

“They just brought her over, Doctor, I don’t know what to do—”

The corpsman was young, hardly out of his teens, and he had never seen anything like this before. He had practiced in training and he had probably treated gunshot and puncture wounds — but never a woman who had one leg and her entire side burned, crisped black, with clothing and flesh charred together. His pressure can of burn foam had run out before he had done her leg as high as her knee and he just looked at it with staring eyes, pressing the useless button.

“I’ll attend to this,” Sam said, noticing the woman’s fixed expression and gaping mouth. “Take care of that policeman there, pressure bandage for the bullet wound.” As the corpsman turned away Sam pressed his telltale to the woman’s arm, knowing the results in advance. Massive fourth-degree burns, shock, then death. He pulled a blanket over her and turned to the next case.

Lacerations, gunshot wounds, broken bones, fractured skulls. Most of the injured were soldiers or policemen, the few civilians were those who had been trampled or crushed in the attack. The rioters were using any weapons they could lay their hands on in their hysterical attempts to flee the city.

Sam finished securing a dressing on a policeman’s arm, then sent him to the ambulance, and when he turned back he noticed a new arrival leaning against one of the pillars with both hands over his face. He was in the shadows and when Sam pulled him gently forward into the light he saw that the soldier was wearing a turban on his head and had the chevrons of a havildar; one of the Pakistani brigade that had been flown in early that morning. His hands were clamped to cover his face but blood was oozing out from between his fingers and dripping steadily to the ground.

“Over here,” Sam said, guiding him to an empty stretcher and helping him to lie down. “If you’ll move your hands away, Havildar, I’ll take care of that.”

The soldier opened the one eye that was not covered by his hands. “I dare not, Doctor,” he said in a strained voice. “If I do my face shall fall away.”

“You just let me worry about that, it’s my job.”

Sam pushed at the man’s hands gently and they reluctantly moved back. Fresh blood welled up and he could see the curving, almost circular laceration that cut through the cheek to the bone and had torn one nostril away from his nose: broken bits of glass still stuck in the flesh.

“A broken bottle?” Sam asked, making an injection with a morphine syrette.

“Yes, Doctor, he came on me suddenly and pushed it into my face before I could stop him. Then I–I’m afraid, contrary to orders — I hit him full in the stomach with the butt of my rifle, he fell down and I came here.”

“I would have done the same myself.”

Sam took the last of the visible glass out with tweezers — if there was more they would find it in the hospital — and set the width and depth of the stitch on the battery operated suturator. Holding the edges of the wound together with the fingers of his left hand he pressed the tiny machine over the cut. Each time it touched it secured the cut edges with a rapid suture — sewn together, tied and cut free in a fraction of a second. He moved it on, making a few large stitches that would secure the wound until the surgeons could attend to it. No large blood vessels had been cut and the bleeding had almost stopped.

When the Pakistani had been dispatched by ambulance with the other cases needing immediate attention Sam found two soldiers waiting for him. The sergeant saluted.

“We have some wounded up there on the top deck, Doctor — can you help us?”

“How many — and what is the situation?”

“Just two — now, a pair of the men hit by thrown metal, but we are expecting more trouble. We’ve set up a second blockade there because we haven’t enough men to hold all the entrances. The others will be falling back on it soon and then you’ll have your work cut out for you.”

Sam didn’t hesitate; swinging his bag onto his shoulder he pointed to two emergency medical boxes that had been unloaded from the ambulance.

“Let’s go then, and bring those with you.” A big, double-vaned combat copter was waiting for them, jets whistling softly. Once they were in, it lifted straight up with an ear-shattering howl, swung over the top deck of the bridge and dropped gently behind a barrier of overturned trucks and cars. Nervous-looking soldiers manned the barricade — the mob couldn’t be seen from here but its raw sound beat at the air. Sam watched the boxes being unloaded, then turned his attention to the two casualties. One man had a brain concussion and would probably lose his eye, the other had a lacerated wound that a field dressing took care of. There were shouts close by as the soldiers attached thick fire hoses to the standpipes on either side of the bridge and unrolled them up to the barrier. Running footsteps splatted on the concrete from the other side of the barricade and more soldiers, many with torn uniforms and bandages, began climbing over.

“Get ready!” a captain shouted. “They’re through the first barricades. Into the line you men, stand ready with the mortars.”

Sam stood up on the fender of the command car, behind the officer, and had a clear view down the wide expanse of roadway. It was empty, outside of the scattered handful of soldiers running toward them, but they were followed by a swelling, victorious roar. This grew and grew like the cry of a great animal and then, suddenly, the road was no longer empty. From the ramps they came, and up the stairways, a solid, black, frightening mass of humanity, a mob without leadership or plans but driven on by fear and the need to survive. They came swiftly, the first rank already visible as individuals waving clubbed lengths of metal and wood; their mouths gaped open redly but whatever they were shouting was lost in the roar of the masses behind them.

A whistle shrilled behind Sam and was followed instantly by the smacking thud of the mortars: they were zeroed in nicely and the shells fell in a neat row across the width of the roadway exploding outward with gray arms of gas. The crowd shivered to a stop before it came to the expanding clouds and its voice rose in a frustrated howl.

“Will the gas stop them?” Sam asked.

“It hasn’t before,” the captain said tiredly.

More of the gas shells were popping into the growing haze, but a strong breeze down the river rolled the cloud away. Some people were already coming through it, staggering and falling and holding their streaming eyes. Then there were others, more and more, and the mob was upon them.

“Hoses!” a hoarse voice shouted and columns of solid water leaped out, sweeping the legs from under the rioters, bowling them over and over. Again the wordless howl rose up as they retreated from the barlike streams of water.

“Look out!” Sam shouted, but he couldn’t be heard five feet away in the din.

A man had climbed up one of the supports from the lower level and was hauling himself over the balustrade. He had a large kitchen knife clamped in his teeth, pirate style, and it had cut the corner of his mouth so that the blood trickled down his chin. One of the soldiers saw him and turned down; they fell together. The attacker rose, the knife now darkened with blood, but before he could move the nearest soldier had caught him on the side of the neck with the flat edge of his hand, a wicked judo blow, hitting him again on the same spot as he was falling, then kicking the knife away. The attacker was groaning, rolling over and over clutching his throat, when Sam ran up, while the soldier who had been knifed was climbing unsteadily to his knees, looking mystifiedly at his blood-drenched arm.

“Sit down,” Sam said, easing him back in the roadway, then cutting his shirt open. There was a deep gash in the upper arm, more painful than serious, and Sam bound it with an antiseptic pressure bandage. The roar of the-mob still beat in his ears and it seemed to have changed tone; was it more excited, with a note of elation? And behind it, low-pitched but throbbing louder was a new sound. And through it cut the shrill of a whistle.

Sam looked up to see the captain waving wildly from the command car, urging on the noncoms who were pulling the soldiers from the barricade. Then he jumped down too and ran toward the outer rail near Sam as the throbbing rumble grew to a vibrating roar.

The large trailer truck must have been doing sixty miles an hour when it hit the barrier, knocking it aside. One of the front tires blew and it began to skid sideways across the roadway, the black bulk of the trailer folding up on the cab of the tractor while all sixteen wheels squealed in agony, brakes locked tight, dragged along and spewing pieces of burned rubber. It crashed into the guardrail on the far side of the road and shuddered to a stop, the cab tilted forward and one wheel hanging into space.

That was all that Sam saw before the mob burst through the gap, unstoppable and victorious. They ignored the soldiers, even the remains of the two who had been caught and crushed like ants by the plunging truck, and rushed headlong down the bridge. Fear drove them on and ahead was freedom.

“They will never get through,” the captain said, his lips pulled back from his teeth in a pained expression. “The New Jersey police have barricaded and blocked the other end of this bridge solidly and are waiting for them. They killed my men — I wish they could get through!”

“What do you mean?” Sam asked.

“I mean that we have no orders to shoot or defend ourselves, as do the New Jersey police. But there is a ring further away, I don’t know how far out, and they are determined to keep this plague inside of it. They have bulldozed buildings and plowed this ring clear and are putting up barbed wire all along it.” He looked away from his dead men and mastered his anger with a tremulous sigh, and when he spoke again it was with a weary sadness. “And they have orders, I saw them… that anyone who enters the ring and attempts to cross the wire is to be shot.”

There was little sound from the mob now, other than the trample of running feet, as they surged through the opening in the barricade. It was a mile to the other end of the bridge and they needed their breath. Above the thud of their footsteps sounded the whistling flutter of a copter and when Sam looked up he could see the riding lights coming toward them down the river. The pilot must have seen the military copter behind the barricade because he swung out in a circle and began to descend, lifting once when the people streamed by below, then dropping again when the flow lessened and moved away. When the copter entered the glow of the bridge lights Sam saw that it had the Connecticut State Trooper’s insignia on its side.

Rioters were still coming in the gap, though not in the solid mass as at first. The captain pushed his way angrily through them and Sam followed: there would be injuries on the other side of the barricade. As they passed the copter, its blades still swinging slowly, the pilot slid his window open and called down to them.

“Listen, I’m just down from Waterbury and I don’t know this town — can you help me?”

“I’m from Karachi and I know less about it than you do,” the captain said, moving on by.

“Where do you want to go?” Sam asked, glancing around at the same time to see if there were any casualties.

“Bellevue Hospital — do you know where it is?”

“Yes, that’s my hospital. What is it you want there?” For no reason at all Sam had a premonition, a chilling sensation that brushed the length of his spine.

“Delivery to make; can you show me the way to their heliport? I got a dog in the back, a dead dog, all wrapped up in plastic.”

The chill was a cold hand now that clutched at Sam as he threw back the piece of canvas that covered the dog and turned his flashlight down on its body, dimly seen through the many layers of sealed polythene.

But it was not so well concealed that he couldn’t see the raw, ugly, red boils that covered its skin.