The Wellness Plague

V.

The screen above the bed gave most of the basic facts: blood pressure, pulse rate, body temperature, white blood cell count, respiration, oxygenation levels, metabolic rates, fluid input and output. Most of the facts and none of the answers.

“When can I go home?” O’Donnel asked.

Rey followed the IV lines down to his patient. “When you are well enough.”

“I just did a hundred-kilometer hike in the jungle. Doesn’t that mean I’m in pretty good shape?”

“Considering what you went through, you are in astoundingly good shape,” Rey answered. “You should be ready tomorrow, or the next day for sure. After all, you were in the jungle more than two weeks. Even the Bainbridge expedition was beyond the cordons little more than one week, and they started fully outfitted, and were resupplied on their way. The fact is, a lot of people can’t understand why you and your friends are alive at all.”

“I’m almost sorry to disappoint them,” O’Donnel murmured.

“No need to be,” Rey replied, “but there are some questions which need answering. You were on minimal rations, on a trek which must have required a great deal of endurance. You seem to have lost some body fat, and you may have the beginnings of a few deficiency diseases. Yet Belkom, who had most of the emergency rations, died of starvation.”

O’Donnel’s face clouded. “None of us wanted to leave him,” he said, “but there was no way he could!ve walked. The emergency packs were supposed to contain enough rations for all of us for five days. We took three days’ rations for ourselves and left the rest for Belk.”

Rey thought back to the pile of cartons in the VTOL. “Why did you split it up that way?”

“We figured we weren’t that far from Far Edge, so three days should do it.” He shrugged. “Big mistake, huh? Even though we tried to keep to the ridge, the tree cover was so thick we a lose sight of me sun. Every two or three hours, one of us had to climb a tree to see if we were still walking in the right direction. Lots of times, we weren’t.

“And the rations weren’t nearly enough! Each of them was supposed to last you a day, but we’d eat one during a stop and be hungry two hours later.”

Which suggested one line of investigation: if the contractor who packaged the emergency rations had shorted the contents, it might explain why Belkom had died. Although, as Marty had remarked, it was odd that anyone should die of hunger in a week even if he had had no food at all. In Belkom’s case, the additional factors of trauma and blood loss must have gready weakened him.

“Why did you leave the VTOL?” Rey asked.

O’Donnel shook his head, aware of the implied criticism. “We didn’t think you’d ever find us. All the radios had been destroyed by the crash. We waited two days before starting the trek. We could hear VTOLs both days, but nobody ever spotted us. I figured we were just too deep below the canopy, and that we would have to save ourselves.”

That was close enough to the truth. Regan Lee’s friends had mounted an experimental infrared sensor array and metal detectors on the Sunbird’s wings. That, and the fact that the Sunbird was able to stay on station longer than the VTOLs and so make a more thorough search, were the only reasons the downed craft had ever been located.

“Fair enough,” Key said. “I guess the main question now is how the four of you managed to survive as well as you did. Your exploits have made you the heroes of the news net.”

O’Donnel looked skeptical.

“No, really,” Rey insisted. “What’s important, though, is to learn whatever we can from your experience. If your rations were inadequate, then we want to establish that and have someone swing for it. On the other hand, if you discovered some way of improving the odds of surviving in the jungle, it is important that everyone else on the planet learn of it.”

O’Donnel nodded. “There isn’t much to tell. We just discovered that we could live off the land. At least, a little bit.”

It was Rey’s turn to look skeptical.

“It started with water,” O’Donnel continued stubbornly. “The ration packs made us thirsty. There weren’t any streams on the ridge, but I was afraid we would become completely lost if we went lower. Then we looked around, and discovered that in between the trees there was ground cover which looked like leaves as big as your arm. Lot of these leaves contained little puddles.

“So we tried to drink them while spilling as little as possible. One way was to put your mouth on an end and slurp. That’s how we found that the leaves tasted good. So we started eating them.”

“The leaves as bulk would have been somewhat filling,” Rey said judiciously, “and your body may well have been able to extract water from the leaf tissues as well as what was lying on the surfaces. Did you eat anything else?”

O’Donnel nodded. “There were these things Judy called pine cones ’cause they resembled something she’d seen in the Terrace’s big arboretum. They were scattered all over the ground. Had kind of a nutty smell. I don’t know why she started eating them, but she did and told us they tasted good. We’d stuff our pockets, then eat as we walked.”

“You are lucky you didn’t poison yourselves,” Rey said. “Were there any adverse reactions?”

“We all had cramps,” O’Donnel admitted, “at least, at first. I may have had a fever part of the time.”

“You still do,” Rey confirmed. “It’s coming down slowly. Any other problems?”

“No.” O’Donnel thought a moment. “Y’know, it’s strange. We were tired and hungry and scared that we wouldn’t make it all the time we were in the jungle, but in some ways it was really neat. Maybe it was just that there was more oxygen at a higher pressure than I’m used to. But all my life I’ve been told how awful and dangerous the jungle was, but when we were there it was, well, pretty.

“I’d like to go back sometime.”

“Maybe,” Rey said, “but only after you are completely recovered.” Lots of luck getting permission from the Committee on Colonial Security. “In the meantime, I’d like to run more tests. This will mean getting poked and prodded, and submitting to the additional indignities of giving blood and stool samples.”

“You make it sound irresistible,” O’Donnel muttered.

“On the other hand, we may be able to learn something from you and your friends that will save lives in the future.”

O’Donnel rolled his eyes to the ceiling with a sigh. “Let’s get on with it, then.”

The answer came early that evening. He had sealed his samples into their small plastic dishes and placed the dishes in the trays of the automated microscopes, there to be cared for by the medical AI programs until he could make time to conduct an examination.

An alarm went off. It was a soft-spoken, almost deferential alarm. Instead of screaming a strident warning, it seemed to say “Take a look over here; this may interest you.” What it most likely meant was equipment failure or a mistake in programming parameters.

“Computer: alarm visuals, please.” Then he kicked himself mentally as he remembered that voice activation was one of the many frills the clinic did without. Muttering, he punched in the proper command.

The screen glowed to life. Strange shapes moved like shadows, elongating, their trifurcated ends grasping for nourishment, then curling up into balls for no apparent reason.

“What the hell?” His tone was almost reverent. He tapped a series of keys.

ACCESING MICROORGANISM DATABASE.

Twenty seconds elapsed, no match FOUND.

“That’s what I thought.” Another series of commands established a satellite link to the Terraces.

“Security authorization.” The voice was tired and more than slightly irritated.

Rey frowned. “Since when does a colony clinic need a security clearance to access a medical database? I thought that was what our taxes were for.”

“Who—? Is that you, Rey? How are things on the frontier?”

“Mongosuthu?” Rey guessed. “You used to have a real job as a researcher. What’s going on back there?”

“Things are even crazier than usual,” Mongosuthu grumbled. “Natu-ralers got into a lot of the systems two weeks ago, looking for evidence of some grand conspiracy to suppress ‘the Truth,’ whatever that might be. Colonial Security had a fit, thinking they might crash the databases. My part-time job as gatekeeper is one of the results.

“Here’s what we do. When you hear someone request your authorization, you say ‘Medical priority.’ Say that now a few times, so we can put your voiceprint into memory.”

Rey did so.

“Good. Try to sound as natural as you can when you call in. The program is supposed to evaluate stress in case you’re being coerced. So far it’s shut out three docs calling in for emergency support.

“Now that that’s all taken care of, what can I do for you?”

“I have some beasties for you to look at,” Rey said. “They are not in the standard references.” He keyed in the visual from the microscope.

“Hmm. Bizarre looking,” Mongosuthu said. “Where do they come from?”

“The intestines of one of my patients.”

“Any symptoms?”

“None I can be sure of. He was in the jungle for a couple of weeks, and is about as tired and exhausted as you might suppose.”

“Ah! So this is one of the missing rock climbers. Wait—” Five seconds elapsed. “The AI diagnostic suggest some sort of parasite. No match in the records, though. Those trifurcations are a pretty dammed distinctive morphology. If it were anything terrestrial, it should be in the database. But if it’s native, it shouldn’t be able to exist in a human gut. Any idea how he became infected?”

“He says they ate some of the native plants,” Rey said.

“Well, that explains it. Your boy ingested some of the local fauna, which not only came with assorted bugs, but also created an intestinal microhabitation which was not immediately fatal. He’s lucky it didn’t kill him.”

“I’ve already told him that,” Rey agreed.

Rey readied himself for bed, mind awhirl with thoughts which went nowhere but would not settle down. He pulled the sheets up, enjoying the scents which had permeated them as they hung outside to dry. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, reveling in the simple act of breathing.

And stopped. He had left a breathing mask high in a tree more than three days earlier. In the excitement, he had forgotten to unwrap a replacement. He had even forgotten his antihistamines. And never in his life had he breathed so easily.

He sat up, suddenly wide awake.

“Mind telling me just what the hell you’re doing?” Marty asked sleepily. It had been her night to sleep in the clinic, in order to take emergency calls. Rey had tried to move around quiedy, but obviously he had not been quiet enough.

“Research,” he said. “I got an unexpected lead on why nobody here has allergies.”

“Really?” Martina asked skeptically. “Like what?”

“Like I suddenly remembered an old theory that allergies were the result of an underworked immune system. Take a look at that first screen.”

“I see it,” Marty said. “What is it?”

“You are looking at a stool sample from O’Donnel. The things you see wriggling around have been tentatively identified as native parasites, though they aren’t on any database. Now, it’s an odd thing, but the archives note that back on old Earth, human population that was infected with any of the local parasites rarely if ever suffered from allergies. That was a disease of what you might call the overly-hygienic. The theory was that a substantial part of the human immune system had evolved to deal with parasites, and that when they were absent, the system went into overdrive, reacting against basically harmless dust and pollen particles.

“Conversely, if parasites were present, allergies would disappear.”

Marty sat down heavily on a stool and blearily regarded the monitors. “Excuse me for being dense this late at night. Or this early in the morning. But doesn’t it occur to you that whatever your explanation does for O’Donnel and his friends, it has no relevance to the rest of us?”

“Take a look at the second screen,” Rey suggested. “How would you say it differs from the first?”

She squinted uncertainly from monitor to monitor. “Not at all that I can see.”

“That second screen is from a sample I provided,” Rey said. “I’m willing to bet that everyone on Far Edge is infected.”