Produced by Greg Weeks, Dave Lovelace, Stephen Blundell
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
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_PANDEMIC_
_BY J. F. BONE_
_Generally,
human beings don't do
totally useless things
consistently and widely.
So--maybe there is
something to it--_
"We call it Thurston's Disease for two perfectly good reasons," Dr.
Walter Kramer said. "He discovered it--and he was the first to die of
it." The doctor fumbled fruitlessly through the pockets of his lab coat.
"Now where the devil did I put those matches?"
"Are these what you're looking for?" the trim blonde in the gray
seersucker uniform asked. She picked a small box of wooden safety
matches from the littered lab table beside her and handed them to him.
"Ah," Kramer said. "Thanks. Things have a habit of getting lost around
here."
"I can believe that," she said as she eyed the frenzied disorder around
her. Her boss wasn't much better than his laboratory, she decided as she
watched him strike a match against the side of the box and apply the
flame to the charred bowl of his pipe. His long dark face became half
obscured behind a cloud of bluish smoke as he puffed furiously. He
looked like a lean untidy devil recently escaped from hell with his
thick brows, green eyes and lank black hair highlighted intermittently
by the leaping flame of the match. He certainly didn't look like a
pathologist. She wondered if she was going to like working with him, and
shook her head imperceptibly. Possibly, but not probably. It might be
difficult being cooped up here with him day after day. Well, she could
always quit if things got too tough. At least there was that
consolation.
He draped his lean body across a lab stool and leaned his elbows on
its back. There was a faint smile on his face as he eyed her
quizzically. "You're new," he said. "Not just to this lab but to the
Institute."
[Illustration: ILLUSTRATED BY BARBERIS]
She nodded. "I am, but how did you know?"
"Thurston's Disease. Everyone in the Institute knows that name for the
plague, but few outsiders do." He smiled sardonically. "Virus pneumonic
plague--that's a better term for public use. After all, what good does
it do to advertise a doctor's stupidity?"
She eyed him curiously. "_De mortuis?_" she asked.
He nodded. "That's about it. We may condemn our own, but we don't like
laymen doing it. And besides, Thurston had good intentions. He never
dreamed this would happen."
"The road to hell, so I hear, is paved with good intentions."
"Undoubtedly," Kramer said dryly. "Incidentally, did you apply for this
job or were you assigned?"
"I applied."
"Someone should have warned you I dislike clichés," he said. He paused a
moment and eyed her curiously. "Just why did you apply?" he asked. "Why
are you imprisoning yourself in a sealed laboratory which you won't
leave as long as you work here. You know, of course, what the conditions
are. Unless you resign or are carried out feet first you will remain
here ... have you considered what such an imprisonment means?"
"I considered it," she said, "and it doesn't make any difference. I
have no ties outside and I thought I could help. I've had training. I
was a nurse before I was married."
"Divorced?"
"Widowed."
Kramer nodded. There were plenty of widows and widowers outside. Too
many. But it wasn't much worse than in the Institute where, despite
precautions, Thurston's disease took its toll of life.
"Did they tell you this place is called the suicide section?" he asked.
She nodded.
"Weren't you frightened?"
"Of dying? Hardly. Too many people are doing it nowadays."
He grimaced, looking more satanic than ever. "You have a point," he
admitted, "but it isn't a good one. Young people should be afraid of
dying."
"You're not."
"I'm not young. I'm thirty-five, and besides, this is my business. I've
been looking at death for eleven years. I'm immune."
"I haven't your experience," she admitted, "but I have your attitude."
"What's your name?" Kramer said.
"Barton, Mary Barton."
"Hm-m-m. Well, Mary--I can't turn you down. I need you. But I could wish
you had taken some other job."
"I'll survive."
He looked at her with faint admiration in his greenish eyes. "Perhaps
you will," he said. "All right. As to your duties--you will be my
assistant, which means you'll be a dishwasher, laboratory technician,
secretary, junior pathologist, and coffee maker. I'll help you with all
the jobs except the last one. I make lousy coffee." Kramer grinned, his
teeth a white flash across the darkness of his face. "You'll be on call
twenty-four hours a day, underpaid, overworked, and in constant danger
until we lick Thurston's virus. You'll be expected to handle the jobs of
three people unless I can get more help--and I doubt that I can. People
stay away from here in droves. There's no future in it."
Mary smiled wryly. "Literally or figuratively?" she asked.
He chuckled. "You have a nice sense of graveyard humor," he said. "It'll
help. But don't get careless. Assistants are hard to find."
She shook her head. "I won't. While I'm not afraid of dying I don't want
to do it. And I have no illusions about the danger. I was briefed quite
thoroughly."
"They wanted you to work upstairs?"
She nodded.
* * * * *
"I suppose they need help, too. Thurston's Disease has riddled the
medical profession. Just don't forget that this place can be a death
trap. One mistake and you've had it. Naturally, we take every
precaution, but with a virus no protection is absolute. If you're
careless and make errors in procedure, sooner or later one of those
submicroscopic protein molecules will get into your system."
"You're still alive."
"So I am," Kramer said, "but I don't take chances. My predecessor, my
secretary, my lab technician, my junior pathologist, and my dishwasher
all died of Thurston's Disease." He eyed her grimly. "Still want the
job?" he asked.
"I lost a husband and a three-year old son," Mary said with equal
grimness. "That's why I'm here. I want to destroy the thing that killed
my family. I want to do something. I want to be useful."
He nodded. "I think you can be," he said quietly.
"Mind if I smoke?" she asked. "I need some defense against that pipe of
yours."
"No--go ahead. Out here it's all right, but not in the security
section."
Mary took a package of cigarettes from her pocket, lit one and blew a
cloud of gray smoke to mingle with the blue haze from Kramer's pipe.
"Comfortable?" Kramer asked.
She nodded.
He looked at his wrist watch. "We have half an hour before the roll tube
cultures are ready for examination. That should be enough to tell you
about the modern Pasteur and his mutant virus. Since your duties will
primarily involve Thurston's Disease, you'd better know something about
it." He settled himself more comfortably across the lab bench and went
on talking in a dry schoolmasterish voice. "Alan Thurston was an
immunologist at Midwestern University Medical School. Like most men in
the teaching trade, he also had a research project. If it worked out,
he'd be one of the great names in medicine; like Jenner, Pasteur, and
Salk. The result was that he pushed it and wasn't too careful. He wanted
to be famous."
"He's well known now," Mary said, "at least within the profession."
"Quite," Kramer said dryly. "He was working with gamma radiations on
microorganisms, trying to produce a mutated strain of _Micrococcus
pyogenes_ that would have enhanced antigenic properties."
"Wait a minute, doctor. It's been four years since I was active in
nursing. Translation, please."
Kramer chuckled. "He was trying to make a vaccine out of a common
infectious organism. You may know it better as _Staphylococcus_. As you
know, it's a pus former that's made hospital life more dangerous than it
should be because it develops resistance to antibiotics. What Thurston
wanted to do was to produce a strain that would stimulate resistance in
the patient without causing disease--something that would help patients
protect themselves rather than rely upon doubtfully effective
antibiotics."
"That wasn't a bad idea."
"There was nothing wrong with it. The only trouble was that he wound up
with something else entirely. He was like the man who wanted to make a
plastic suitable for children's toys and ended up with a new explosive.
You see, what Thurston didn't realize was that his cultures were
contaminated. He'd secured them from the University Clinic and had, so
he thought, isolated them. But somehow he'd brought a virus
along--probably one of the orphan group or possibly a phage."
"Orphan?"
"Yes--one that was not a normal inhabitant of human tissues. At any rate
there was a virus--and he mutated it rather than the bacteria. Actually,
it was simple enough, relatively speaking, since a virus is infinitely
simpler in structure than a bacterium, and hence much easier to modify
with ionizing radiation. So he didn't produce an antigen--he produced a
disease instead. Naturally, he contracted it, and during the period
between his infection and death he managed to infect the entire
hospital. Before anyone realized what they were dealing with, the
disease jumped from the hospital to the college, and from the college to
the city, and from the city to--"
"Yes, I know that part of it. It's all over the world now--killing
people by the millions."
* * * * *
"Well," Kramer said, "at least it's solved the population explosion." He
blew a cloud of blue smoke in Mary's direction. "And it did make
Thurston famous. His name won't be quickly forgotten."
She coughed. "I doubt if it ever will be," she said, "but it won't be
remembered the way he intended."