The Wellness Plague

VII.

Days of anticlimax stretched into a week. An underlying tension ate into the pit of Rey’s stomach. He would wake up wondering: Is this the day some maniac is going to blow us to hell? Then he would push it out of his consciousness and get on with the day’s work. But it stayed just beneath the surface of his thoughts, gnawing at him.

Mercer-Konare asked everyone to prepare a list of those vital supplies which were in short supply, presumably in order to set up a rationing system. Rey and Martina printed out their inventory of medical supplies, then went over it to see what could be made locally. Bandages and splints could be fabricated from cloth and plastic scraps. Alcohol for disinfectant use could be distilled. Very simple tissue grafting could be done in the clinic.

On the other hand, antibiotics and immune system enhancers were both in short supply. There were no resources to support serious surgery or any kind of gene therapy. That sort of work had always been done in the Terraces.

They turned in their lists, revised a few of the clinic procedures to stretch out supplies as far as was consistent with patient safety, and continued on their rounds. Martina spent as much free time as she had with O’Donnel and his three friends, trying to devise new tests to determine why they had not starved to death.

A few guesses were confirmed. All of Bhagwati’s sheep were infected with the parasite. As were all other flocks, and all humans except newborn babies. Analysis of the oldest records indicated that the infection had originally spread west to east. Since that was for most of the year the direction of the prevailing winds, Rey began to suspect that something like airborne spores might be the mechanism of contagion. If so, then no cordon could provide protection. No colony this close to the world jungle would ever be safe.

On the seventh day, a comm call woke Rey while it was still dark.

“Santa Claus is coming to pay a surprise visit,” Mercer-Konare informed him. “You should be on hand to greet her at the airfield.”

A small group of men and women had already assembled by the time Rey reached the communications shack. A mug of hot coffee was pressed into his hand to ward off the pre-dawn chill. He sipped it gingerly, trying to keep it from scalding lips and mouth as his eyes quartered the sky.

There was an exclamation behind him, and an arm pointed to the east. Rey squinted in the direction indicated. At first, he could make out nothing against the featureless dark blue expanse. Then a flash caught his attention. It was the Sunbird, bathed in the advancing light of Tau Ceti. It was dropping quickly to the landing pad. To Rey’s eyes, its movements were sluggish; it seemed to wallow in the air.

“…Hope she didn’t overload…” a woman behind him muttered.

The Sunbird came straight in, hard and fast. Its wheels smacked the pavement and bounced. Wings quivered like an angry butterfly. The fans came to life with a sudden roar, twisting the craft around so that it stopped with its tail brushing the fence at the edge of the cliff.

Regan Lee jumped unsteadily onto the pavement and waved to the crowd which had run up to greet her. Seeing Mercer-Konare, she reached back into the cabin for a large envelope and handed it to him.

“Here’s the manifest. And a few letters from people who don’t want to trust the satellite links for privacy. ”

The councilor thanked her. He examined the manifest, grunted, and began calling out names of those he wanted to help with the unloading. Regan spotted Rey and walked over to him.

“Hi, Doc. You’ve really stirred people up since I dropped you here.”

“Not intentionally,” he mumbled, feeling oddly tongue-tied.

For some reason, her face split in a wide grin. “C’mon. I’ll show you your presents.”

There were three large boxes. Each had its contents listed on a sheet taped to one side. The first contained immune system boosters and pheromone regulators. A quick check disclosed that, at the normal rate of usage, these would last perhaps three months. Most of the second box was filled with a laser scalpel set, complete with spares, and attachments for local nerve deadening.

The third box was the most interesting. Instead of antibiotics, they had received an antibiotic culturing kit. More than thirty basic antibiotics could be grown in the glass trays from the dehydrated sample bags. It was not nearly as convenient as receiving pills or nasal sprays. With proper care, however, it could last decades.

Rey considered the implications. “I guess we’re getting ready for the long haul.”

“Maybe,” Regan agreed. “It sure never hurts to be prepared.”

“Are you prepared?” Rey asked. “Won’t you get into trouble for breaking the embargo?”

Her smile was as dazzling as the morning sun. “The orders were very specific. All classes of VTOLs and zeps were prohibited from flying within fifty kilometers of Far Edge. No mention was made of powered gliders or any other type of experimental vehicle.”

“Calley-Li will not let you get away with that for long,” Rey warned.

“I may not have to,” Regan said, tossing her head.

Rey was about to ask her what she meant by that when Mercer-Konare came over and invited them to breakfast at the Town Hall. Realizing abruptly that he was famished, Rey secured the boxes to the struts of his dragonfly, then joined the crowd ascending the twisting walkway to the hall.

Inside, there was a mood of restrained celebration. Happiness at having the embargo broken was tempered by the understanding of just how small the break was. From the scraps of conversation he picked up as he made his way to Regan’s table, Rey learned that everyone else’s shipments had been as limited as the clinic’s. New chips and circuit boards had been provided when needed, but replacement parts for broken mining equipment or harvesters had been too large and massive for the Sunbird. If they could not jury-rig replacements, they would have to do without.

Rey felt irrationally pleased that the seat across from Regan was unoccupied. As the last of the unloading crew took seats, Mercer-Konare stood and tapped his tea cup. Silence fell, except for the servers bringing in the breakfast trays on roll carts.

“Before we start eating, I think we want to show our appreciation to the brave young woman who was willing to ignore the dictatorial decrees of the colonial governor and who, at great risk to her own safety, has brought us back into contact with the rest of humanity on this planet. She has brought with her a number of communications that I don’t have time to summarize but which prove that we have many supporters throughout all the colonies. For that alone, she deserves our gratitude.”

The applause was loud and prolonged. Regan’s blush was surprisingly visible despite her skin coloring.

She stood and made a slight bow to her audience. “While I have your attention, I have one more communication which I did not provide the councilor, because it was not addressed to him. I would like you all to hear it.”

She opened an envelope and extracted a large, formal looking document. “By the authority invested in me by the School of Apollo, I hereby grant to Reynolds Morrill-Landers the degree of Doctor of Medicine.”

She leaned over, handing the parchment to Rey and giving him a quick kiss. More applause, followed by some laughter at his dumbfounded expression.

“Ah, but I haven’t presented a thesis yet.”

“Your adviser, Dr. Mongosuthu, wants you to know that ‘An Analysis of Some Effects of Indigenous Parasites on Human Allergic Response,’ is scheduled for the summer issue of the Apollo Journal of Medicine. He urges you to clean it up for publication as soon as possible.”

Breakfast,trays were placed before them and all talk was replaced by a reverent hush, broken only by the occasional clatter of silverware.

“That is our other long term problem,” Mercer-Konare said at length, regretfully regarding his empty plate as he put down his knife and fork. “We’ve made it through the winter largely on stored goods. Those vegetable gardens nearly everyone grows were meant to supplement our diets, not sustain them. We will need to see if we can cultivate enough acreage to sustain the entire colony. If we can’t—”

“If we can’t, we may have to live off the land, just like the Naturalers have always wanted,” Martina Mazio-Carr said.

She pulled a chair around to join them and leaned on its back. “How can we do that?” Rey asked.

“The same way O’Donnel and his friends were able to,” she answered. “For that matter, it’s the same way Bhagwati’s sheep have been able to thrive on fields which are mostly native vegetation.”

The table fell silent. Satisfied that she had their attention, she continued. “Rey has already given you most of the pieces of the puzzle. Through the process of convergent evolution, a native variety of protozoan has modified itself sufficiently to live in our digestive systems. It hasn’t had the severe effects terrestrial parasites used to have, probably because it has not been able to completely adapt to its new host. A fair amount of our diet must be useless, if not actually detrimental, to it.

“But if our diet is not completely nourishing, much of the local fauna is. The effect of that is—”

“That these aren’t parasites at all,” Rey interrupted excitedly. “I let myself be misled by the allergy response. What we have is… symbiosis?”

“Looks like,” Martina agreed. “Or at least something reasonably close. It’s hard to say because we are trying to identify something while it’s still trying to change to adapt to us. If it were a successful parasite, we might find ourselves devoured from inside. If it were a fully evolved symbiote, on the other hand, our immune systems wouldn’t attack it and we would still have allergy problems.

“Most of the native plants have starches and sugars too complex for our digestive systems. The symbiotes break these down into human-usable form.”

“Then that’s how O’Donnel’s party was able to survive,” Rey surmised. “Despite everything we’ve always been taught, they were able to metabolize a fair proportion of what they ate.”

“It is also the reason Belkom Michaels-Nye died,” Martina said somberly. “Normally, the symbiotes are not dangerous to us. Aside from reducing allergies, their effect is to increase our appetite. Put another way, there is a caloric price for allergy reduction. Belkom was stranded with supplies apportioned for uninfected humans. When they were gone, the symbiotes became parasitical, deriving nourishment from what was closest at hand. Which was Belkom.”

Rey dropped his eyes, feeling embarrassed. He put his certificate on the table between them. “I think they awarded this to the wrong person.”

“Probably so,” Martina agreed, “but I’ll get my recognition soon enough.

Provided, of course, that the governor and his friends don’t vaporize us in a fit of panic.”

VIII.

As it turned out, they had nothing to worry about. That afternoon, a news flash reported that Governor Calley-Li had been found dead in his study. The laser pistol held in his hand had been the cause of death.

Two hours later, a shaken Acting Governor Normana Girouard-Sime announced a partial lifting of the embargo against Far Edge. All goods would be allowed into the colony. Manufactured goods could be exported. If the School of Apollo determined that the infection was basically harmless (as it was expected to do shortly) all further restrictions would be lifted.

Darkness swept up from the jungle far below and shadowed the sky in ever deepening shades of blue. Stars appeared, pinpricks of cold fire.

Rey felt, rather than saw, Regan beside him. “What are you looking for?”

He pointed. “That bright star up there is Arcturus. If you look just to the right of it, you’ll see a dim little star.”

“Sol,” Regan said. “Manhome.”

Rey nodded. “My advisor pointed it out to me my first year at Apollo. He told me how, for nearly a century, humanity thought it knew everything about the nuclear reactions that made it shine. Then, in the latter part of the twentieth century, experimenters realized that there were too few neutrinos being produced for their model to be true. Just by itself, that should have been enough to demonstrate that they knew nothing. Yet for years they questioned their data, concocted extravagant theories, and almost until the end had no idea how quickly doom was racing down upon them.

“ ‘Whenever you look at Sol, think of how little you know,’ he said, ‘And consider how much of what you do know may not be so.’ ”

“Then you should be happy,” Regan said in a slightly reproving tone. “You’ve done a good job decreasing the circle of ignorance.”

Rey shook his head. “It took me forever to see the obvious. When I started putting things together, I still had no idea what sort of reaction my findings would provoke. Then when I tried to get our sanctions lifted, I pushed a man into suicide.”

“There is no point in feeling sorry about Calley-Li,” Regan said sharply. “The man was a victim of his own fears. He panicked because he thought this plague, which never did anything except make people healthier, was going to subvert our humanity.”

“He was right,” Rey said.

Even in the darkness, he felt the weight of her regard. “If you believe that,” she said at length, “then why haven’t you done everything in your power to eradicate it?”

“Because even before the plague, Calley-Li’s efforts were doomed to failure.” He took a deep breath, trying to sort through a welter of facts and emotions. “Did you ever notice how much effort is devoted in other colonies to raising the various tea crops? When you consider that we derive no nourishment from them, it’s quite extraordinary. But we do it because for a lot of people it is important that we have teas and tea times. More important than actually having food to eat.”

“So what?” Regan asked. “We can raise both.”

Rey shook his head, frustrated that he was doing such a poor job of expressing what he could see so clearly. “It’s the reason that’s important. We want to have tea ceremonials like our Japanese ancestors did; we want to have tea times like the British. We want to pretend that we are nothing more than an outpost of human empire and that everything will stay the same forever if we dress for dinner and keep the Old Earth Days traditions alive.

“The problem is that it can’t work. First of all, any isolated population soon begins to show genetic drift. The College of Apollo has statistics to show that is already happening. Because they are disconcerting, they aren’t widely known.

“More than that, though, we are evolving to fit the planet. Read the old diaries if you can’t remember the stories your grandmothers must have told you. It was very difficult for women to conceive and bring children to term during the first two generations. All that remain of that now are problems with irregular menstrual cycles. We have adapted successfully.”

“I don’t consider that a problem,” Regan said.

“I don’t either,” Rey admitted, “but Calley-Li saw further. He recognized that it is only a matter of time before we drift so far that we won’t be able to breed with humans who have settled around other stars. We will have become a separate race.

“What he learned from me was worse, though. Not only were we adapting, but the biosphere was adapting to us. Something strange and alien was making its home within us. He couldn’t have known what Martina would discover about being able to digest some native plants, but I think he imagined it. And in his imagination, humans became as ghostly and strange as the White People. We would lose our culture, our beliefs, all the memories and mental disciplines which made us human.”

“That does not have to happen,” Regan protested.

“No,” Rey agreed, “it doesn’t have to happen. But it could, very easily. I rubbed Calley-Li’s nose in it, and it was too much for him. Especially when he discovered that his own daughter was tainted by the alienness he so feared.”

He found that his eyes were wet. He wept for Calley-Li, for the dream of safely cordoned island societies, for the Old Earth they had tried so diligently to resurrect. Regan put her arm around him, comforting him.

The path had taken them to the edge of the cliff. Scents floated up from the jungle far below. It was going to be their world, Rey realized. They would change it, and it would change them, and it would be as exciting and as dangerous as it had been on Earth.

Regan was startled by his sudden laugh.

“All this time, the Naturalers said we would have to learn to live off the world to come to terms with it,” he explained. “Instead, we have become part of the world because it has learned to live off us.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is a sequel to “The Changeling Hunt,” which appeared in our July 1987 issue.