[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction November 1950.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It was a nasty plot Vyrko was involved in.
The worst part was that he constructed it
himself--and didn't get the end right!
There were three of them in the retreat, three out of all mankind safe
from the deadly yellow bands.
The great Kirth-Labbery himself had constructed the retreat and its
extraordinary air-conditioning--not because his scientific genius had
foreseen the coming of the poisonous element, agnoton, and the end of
the human race, but because he itched.
And here Vyrko sat, methodically recording the destruction of mankind,
once in a straight factual record, for the instruction of future
readers ("if any," he added wryly to himself), and again as a canto
in that epic poem of Man which he never expected to complete, but for
which he lived.
Lavra's long golden hair fell over his shoulders. It was odd that its
scent distracted him when he was at work on the factual record, yet
seemed to wing the lines of the epic.
"But why bother?" she asked. Her speech might have been clearer if her
tongue had not been more preoccupied with the savor of the apple than
with the articulation of words. But Vyrko understood readily: the
remark was as familiar an opening as P-K4 in chess.
"It's my duty," Vyrko explained patiently. "I haven't your father's
scientific knowledge and perception. Your father's? I haven't the
knowledge of his humblest lab assistant. But I can put words together
so that they make sense and sometimes more than sense, and I have to do
this."
From Lavra's plump red lips an apple pip fell into the works of the
electronic typewriter. Vyrko fished it out automatically; this too was
part of the gambit, with the possible variants of grape seed, orange
peel....
"But why," Lavra demanded petulantly, "won't Father let us leave here?
A girl might as well be in a ... a...."
"_Convent?_" Vyrko suggested. He was a good amateur paleolinguist.
"There is an analogy--even despite my presence. _Convents_ were
supposed to shelter girls from the Perils of The World. Now the whole
world is one great Peril ... outside of this retreat."
"Go on," Lavra urged. She had long ago learned, Vyrko suspected, that
he was a faintly over-serious young man with no small talk, and that
she could enjoy his full attention only by asking to have something
explained, even if for the _n_th time.
* * * * *
He smiled and thought of the girls he used to talk _with_, not _at_,
and of how little breath they had for talking now in the world where no
one drew an unobstructed breath.
It had begun with the accidental discovery in a routine laboratory
analysis of a new element in the air, an inert gas which the great
paleolinguist Larkish had named _agnoton_, the Unknown Thing, after
the pattern of the similar nicknames given to others: _neon_, the New
Thing; _xenon_, the Strange Thing.
It had continued (the explanation ran off so automatically that
his mind was free to range from the next line of the epic to the
interesting question of whether the presence of ear lobes would damage
the symmetry of Lavra's perfect face) it had continued with the itching
and sneezing, the coughing and wheezing, with the increase of the
percentage of agnoton in the atmosphere, promptly passing any other
inert gas, even argon, and soon rivaling oxygen itself.
And it had culminated (no, the lines were cleaner without lobes), on
that day when only the three of them were here in this retreat, with
the discovery that the human race was allergic to agnoton.
Allergies had been conquered for a decade of generations. Their cure,
even their palliation, had been forgotten. And mankind coughed and
sneezed and itched ... and died. For while the allergies of the ancient
past produced only agonies to make the patient long for death, agnoton
brought on racking and incessant spasms of coughing and sneezing which
no heart could long withstand.
"So if you leave this shelter, my dear," Vyrko concluded, "you too
will fight for every breath and twist your body in torment until
your heart decides that it is all just too much trouble. Here we are
safe, because your father's eczema was the only known case of allergy
in centuries--and was traced to the inert gases. Here is the only
air-conditioning in the world that excludes the inert gases--and with
them agnoton. And here--"
* * * * *
Lavra leaned forward, a smile and a red fleck of apple skin on her
lips, the apples of her breasts touching Vyrko's shoulders. This too
was part of the gambit.
Usually it was merely declined. Tyrsa stood between them. Tyrsa, who
sang well and talked better; whose plain face and beautiful throat were
alike racked by agnoton.... This time the gambit was interrupted.
Kirth-Labbery himself had come in unnoticed. His old voice was
thin with weariness, sharp with impatience. "And here we are, safe
in perpetuity, with our air-conditioning, our energy plant, our
hydroponics! Safe in perpetual siege, besieged by an inert gas!"