It was a virus, against which the enemy
could make no defense--but a virus does
not distinguish between friend and foe.
And immunity to what became known as the
righteous plague could exist anywhere,
or nowhere at all....
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Science Fiction Quarterly May 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The ugly, high-backed truck splashed heavily through the puddles of the
weedy road. Just before it reached a curve, it swayed and slithered as
the brakes locked suddenly. A man had come stumbling from the rain-wet
bushes; he paused now, stared dully at the halted, angrily grumbling
monster.
An officer heaved himself out of the seat beside the driver, cursed
irritably, flung open the door and swung out onto the running board--a
malevolently superhuman figure in his panoply of snouted mask and
rubberized armor. His gloved hand lifted, sliding a long-barreled
automatic from its worn holster, aiming. At the shot's crash the man
from the thicket stiffened and toppled into the mud, where he writhed
painfully. Two more bullets, carefully placed, put a stop to that.
The officer slid back into the seat and sighed with a sucking sound
inside his mask. Without being told, the driver turned the truck
cautiously off the road; tilting far over, left wheels deep in the
slippery ditch, it ground in lowest gear past the motionless body,
keeping several feet away.
In the back of the truck, five oddly-assorted civilian men and one
woman huddled together and exchanged vaguely curious glances over
the stop, the shooting, and the detour. Then, as the machine climbed
back onto the roadbed and they could see the corpse sprawled in the
way behind, the interest left their faces; they reflected only the
emptiness of the gray sky, the hopelessness of the sodden fields
and woods they passed. The prisoners might have found the weather
appropriate for death. They did not speak of that, because they knew
they were on their way to die.
But the masked and armored soldiers who sat nervously watching them,
rifles clutched between their knees, did speak of death, and made
sour jokes about it. They did not know they themselves were going to
death--that when the execution was done and reported by radio, a plane
would be overhead inside two minutes to bomb them.
That would take place by order of the Diktatura, that is: by the
sovereign will of the People, expressed by its Executive Council, which
was responsible directly to the Dictator.
Naturally it was the People's will that no one come out of a plague
spot, for the People feared death.
Joseph Euge said as much to the pale, underfed-looking young man who
crouched beside him in the bed of the truck. "The gasproof clothing,"
he added, "protects nothing but morale, and these men's morale needs to
last only until--their job is done."
The young man looked at him fixedly, seeing gray hair, a firm-lined
face, and a suit that had been expensively respectable. They did
not know each other's names. All the trials had been separate; each
prisoner had been told that the others--whom, for the most part, he had
never heard of--had confessed the whole plot.
"What makes you think so?"
"I know a good deal of the Dictator's ways," said Euge quietly; "I used
to be well acquainted with him."
"You were close to him--who are you?"
"My name is Joseph Euge."
"_Doctor_ Euge." The pale young man's eyes widened as he repeated the
name the way the newspapers had printed it so often; he edged a little
away from the other, jostling the woman beside him. She, too, stared
with haunted eyes, and her lips framed the name in a whisper; the rest
of the condemned--a large rough man in a workman's faded blue, a little
Jew with twitching hands, and another youth who, like Euge's neighbor,
had evidently been a student--looked at him also, with an expression
compounded of wonder, fear, and hate.
* * * * *
Behind their masks, fixed eyes and bayonets gleaming, the guards sat
stony-faced. They were trained to be blind, deaf, and dumb--and on
occasion oblivious of smells--in the stern fulfillment of duty.
"You are _the_ Dr. Euge?" whispered the woman with a flicker of
interest. "The man who loosed the plague on the world?"
He nodded and stared at his knees. "It is true," he said slowly,
"that I was a military bacteriologist--one of the best; it is only an
accident that I was anything more. I have made my share of mistakes.
Most of us have been patriots at one time or another, else there could
have been no Victory." Euge noted wryly how strong the indoctrination
of his mind was, relegating the word 'war' to the realm of obscene
taboos, and leaving only 'victory' permissible. "But--" he lifted his
gray head and looked candidly into their faces, "when I 'loosed the
plague', as you put it, I was not being a patriot and I do not think I
was making a mistake."
They stared at him with bleak eyes. Euge said almost pleadingly, "I
believe you are all members of the Witnesses of the Lord, who are
proscribed for maintaining that the plague is a punishment decreed
against a sinful world. From that standpoint, surely I am not to blame
for having acted as an instrument of divine justice." It was as if he
appealed for judgment to these strangers, to whom he was united in the
intimate community of a grave that must be shared.
"He's right," said the Jew, and smiled a little, even then, with
pleasure at a point well made. "We're inconsistent if we blame him."
There was a lightening in their wan, drained faces, mostly of relief at
being told that they need not spend those few last minutes in hating.
The woman's reaction was strongest; she leaned forward, eyes suddenly
feverish: "Do you believe as we do, then? Did you know you were guided,
when--"
The scientist said wearily, "I have seen no visions, I have heard no
voices. Still I do not feel responsible for what has come on the world
through me. In the plenum of probabilities, what may be will be...."
"Doctor, beyond your universe of probabilities there must be a power
that chooses among them." The young student spoke with the quiet
conviction of a man in whom knowledge and faith are at peace. "We must
accept that power--or the logic by which it chooses among the possible
worlds--as good, the definition of good. You should see that--now, if
never before." He quoted Goethe. "... _denn nur im Elend erkennt man
Gottes Hand und Finger, der gute Menschen zum Guten leitet._"
Euge looked out through the rear of the truck, at the gray landscape
rumbling away, and guessed that the journey's end was still fifteen
minutes ahead; unless his knowledge of how the Dictator's mind worked
failed him, the place would be near the wreckage of his one-time
laboratory, leveled from the air on the naive theory that some devilish
device there was broadcasting the seeds of plague....
Aching minutes that had to be soothed with words. Words--God, fate,
hope, hereafter--are man's last support when everything else has given
way. "So you accept the plague as good? I saw one of your propaganda
sheets with the phrase 'Judgment Virus'. An apt name. But it does
not judge as men do; it has its own peculiar standards, that virus
I found." Euge's voice was level, colorless; he did not look at the
others to hold their attention or to see if they were listening. "I
will tell you what it is...."
2
Euge was busy in the microscope room, examining tissue from the last
run of test animals, when the communicator buzzed and told him that the
Dictator had arrived and wanted to see him at once.
He left the room by way of an airlock, in which--Dictatorial summons
notwithstanding--he spent full five minutes under a spray of
disinfectant chemicals and radiations; after the lock had cleared he
stripped off the airtight armor he wore without touching any of its
outer surfaces, and left the chamber quickly.
The Dictator's visit was a signal mark of Euge's importance, or
at least that of his virus research; there was no doubt that Euge
was highly thought of and trusted. His dossier was that of a man
who extended his scientist's worship of "Truth" even into the very
different field of human relations. The Diktatura could use such men.
Euge knew his status, had given it little thought for years. It was his
private social contract, the working agreement by which the powers that
be gave him the priceless opportunity to do research, in return for
the--to him--worthless byproducts of same.
Now, he thought as he went up in the elevator, the Dictator would
be impatient--or at least eager--to hear the results of the newest
experiments. The first tests of the new strain showed promise, by
inoculations of a monkey, _Macacus rhesus_. The last series of
experimental animals had belonged to another primate species. _Homo
sapiens._ That was the crucial proof, whether men infected with Virus
RM4-2197--R for rubeola, or measles, M4 for fourth-stage mutant, the
rest the classification number of the culture--would die swiftly,
surely, with a minimum of fuss. That was routine, too, but the results
were not.
The results had kept Euge lying awake for some nights now. Awake,
open-eyed, face to face with himself as he had not been within his
memory.
He turned briskly into the contagion laboratory, deliberately making
delay, explaining to himself that it would be best to have all the data
on the new culture at his fingertips. The big room was a jungle of
sealed glass cases where beady-eyed mice tumbled over each other, where
healthy rabbits nibbled lettuce cheek by jowl with rabbits whose bodies
seethed with mutant microbes. At the most crowded end of the room was
Novik, brightest of the skilled young men assigned as assistants and
apprentices to the great Dr. Euge, busy now with pencil and notebook,
counting dead mice.
* * * * *
Euge looked over Novik's shoulder at the tallies. They were many. He
asked, "What does it come to?"
"So far," said Novik, "I've only been over the direct and remote cages.
But--" he gestured at the remaining glass compartments on his right,
"I'd be willing to bet the results of the delayed exposures are the
same. Contagion, one hundred per cent; mortality, one hundred per cent.
The only difference is, that where infected and healthy mice have a
screen between them, the healthy ones get it slower--a few cases at
first, then it runs right through them."
"Mmm," said Euge without enthusiasm. The figures proved nothing
new--only that the mutant virus bred true; for that matter, the 100-100
ratio of infections and deaths to exposures had been achieved already
with RM3.
Euge turned toward a double tier of cages along the side wall. These
were small, built to contain one animal apiece, ten above, ten below.
They were segregation cages; the lower tier was wired to a wall plug
through a transformer and a mildly remarkable device, consisting of
two slowly revolving, eccentric wheels and a relay, which insured that
the metal floor of the ten cages should be slightly electrified at
irregular intervals.
"Mmm," said Euge again, surveying the victims of his unorthodox
experiment. Of the ten mice in the bottom cages, not all were dead;
they had been exposed to Virus RM4 somewhat later than those in the
large cases, after the first tests on human beings; but those that
still lived were obviously breathing their last. In the upper tier,
though, seven mice were still bright-eyed and alert; two were dead, and
a third lay on its side, panting and bedraggled.
Euge swung back to Novik. "Set up fifty more segregation cages. Clear
the wired set for a repeat test. And get me half a dozen cats. And--"
he hesitated, "don't mention these experiments to the others if you
can help it; we two can handle all the necessary work."
Novik's clear eyes dwelt briefly on his superior's face, a look of
sympathetic understanding for the haggard pallor, the tired lines about
the older man's mouth. "Right," he nodded crisply.
"I'll be back by the time you're ready," said Euge. "Right now I have a
chore to do."
"The Dictator's here?"