This was twenty minutes later. Calhoun had gone back into the Med Ship
and treated the blaster burn on his side. He'd changed his clothing
from the scorched uniform to civilian garb. It would not look
eccentric here. Men's ordinary garments were extremely similar all
over the galaxy. Women's clothes were something else.
Now he and Murgatroyd rode in a ground car with four armed men of the
planetary police, plus the civilian who'd been introduced as the
Minister for Health for the planet. The car sped briskly toward the
spaceport gate. Masses of thick gray fog still clung to the ground
where the would-be assassins' car lay on its back and where the bodies
of the two dead men remained. The mist was being spread
everywhere--everywhere the men had touched ground or where their car
had run.
Calhoun had some experience with epidemics and emergency measures for
destroying contagion. He had more confidence in the primitive sanitary
value of fire. It worked, no matter how ancient the process of burning
things might be. But very many human beings, these days, never saw a
naked flame unless in a science class at school, where it might be
shown as a spectacularly rapid reaction of oxidation. But people used
electricity for heat and light and power. Mankind had moved out of the
age of fire. So here on Tallien it seemed inevitable that infective
material should be sprayed with antiseptics instead of simply set
ablaze.
"What," repeated Calhoun doggedly, "is a para?"
The Health Minister said unhappily:
"Paras are ... beings that once were sane men. They aren't sane any
longer. Perhaps they aren't men any longer. Something has happened to
them. If you'd landed a day or two later, you couldn't have landed at
all. We normals had planned to blow up the landing grid so no other
ship could land and be lifted off again to spread the ... contagion to
other worlds. If it is a contagion."
"Smashing the landing grid," said Calhoun practically, "may be all
right as a last resort. But surely there are other things to be tried
first!"
Then he stopped. The ground car in which he rode had reached the
spaceport gate. Three other ground cars waited there. One swung into
motion ahead of them. The other two took up positions behind. A
caravan of four cars, each bristling with blast weapons, swept along
the wide highway which began here at the spaceport and stretched
straight across level ground toward the city whose towers showed on
the horizon. The other cars formed a guard for Calhoun. He'd needed
protection before, and he might need it again.
"Medically," he said to the Minister for Health, "I take it that a
para is the human victim of some condition which makes him act
insanely. That is pretty vague. You say it hasn't been controlled.
That leaves everything very vague indeed. How widely spread is it?
Geographically, I mean."
"Paras have appeared," said the Minister for Health, "at every place
on Tallien Three where there are men."
"It's epidemic, then," said Calhoun professionally. "You might call it
pandemic. How many cases?"
"We guess at thirty per cent of the population--so far," said the
Minister for Health, hopelessly. "But every day the total goes up." He
added: "Dr. Lett has some hope for a vaccine, but it will be too late
for most."
Calhoun frowned. With reasonably modern medical techniques, almost any
sort of infection should be stopped long before there were as many
cases as that!
"When did it start? How long has it been running?"
"The first paras were examined six months ago," said the Health
Minister. "It was thought to be a disease. Our best physicians
examined them. They couldn't agree on a cause, they couldn't find a
germ or a virus...."
"Symptoms?" asked Calhoun crisply.
"Dr. Lett phrased them in medical terms," said the Minister for
Health. "The condition begins with a period of great irritability or
depression. The depression is so great that suicide is not infrequent.
If that doesn't happen, there's a period of suspiciousness and
secretiveness--strongly suggestive of paranoia. Then there's a craving
for--unusual food. When it becomes uncontrollable, the patient is
mad!"
* * * * *
The ground cars sped toward the city. A second group of vehicles
appeared, waiting. As the four-car caravan swept up to them, one swung
in front of the car in which Calhoun and Murgatroyd rode. The others
fell into line to the rear. It began to look like a respectable
fighting force.
"And after madness?" Calhoun asked.
"Then they're paras!" said the Health Minister. "They crave the
incredible. They feed on the abominable. And they hate us normals
as--devils out of hell would hate us!"
"And after that again?" said Calhoun. "I mean, what's the prognosis?
Do they die or recover? If they recover, in how long? If they die, how
soon?"
"They're paras!" said the Health Minister querulously. "I'm no
physician! I'm an administrator! But I don't think any recover.
Certainly none die of it! They stay--what they've become."
"My experience," said Calhoun, "has been mostly with diseases that one
either recovers from or dies of. A disease whose victims organize to
steal weather rockets and to use them to destroy a ship--only they
failed--and who carry on with an assassination attempt ... that
doesn't sound like a disease! A disease has no purpose of its own.
They had a purpose--as if they obeyed one of their number."
The Minister for Health said uneasily:
"It's been suggested--that something out of the jungle causes what's
happened. On other planets there are creatures who drink blood without
waking their victims. There are reptiles who sting men. There are even
insects which sting men and inject diseases. Something like that seems
to have come out of the jungle. While men sleep--something happens to
them! They turn into paras. Something native to this world must be
responsible. The planet did not welcome us. There's not a native plant
or beast that is useful to us! We have to culture soil-bacteria so
Earth-type plants can grow here! We don't begin to know all the
creatures of the jungle! If something comes out and makes men paras
without their knowledge----"
Calhoun said mildly:
"It would seem that such things could be discovered."
The Health Minister said bitterly:
"Not this thing! It is intelligent! It hides! It acts as if on a plan
to destroy us! Why ... there was a young doctor who said he'd cured a
para! But we found him and the former para dead when we went to check
his claim! Things from the jungle had killed them! They think! They
know! They understand! They're rational, and like devils----"
* * * * *
A third group of ground cars appeared ahead, waiting. Like the others,
they were filled with men holding blast rifles. They joined the
procession--the rushing, never-pausing group of cars from the
spaceport. The highway had obviously been patrolled against a possible
ambush or road block. The augmented combat group went on.
"As a medical man," said Calhoun carefully, "I question the existence
of a local, nonhuman rational creature. Creatures develop or adapt to
fit their environment. They change or develop to fit into some niche,
some special place in the ecological system which is their
environment. If there is no niche and no room for a specific creature
in an environment, there is no such creature there! And there cannot
be a place in any environment for a creature which will change it. It
would be a contradiction in terms! We rational humans change the
worlds we occupy! Any rational creature will! So a rational animal is
as nearly impossible as any creature can be. It's true that we've
happened, but--another rational race? Oh, no!"
Murgatroyd said:
"_Chee!_"
The city's towers loomed higher and taller above the horizon. Then,
abruptly, the fast-moving cavalcade came to the edge of the city and
plunged into it.
It was not a normal city. The buildings were not eccentric. All
planets, but very new ones, show local architectural peculiarities, so
it was not odd to see all windows topped by triple arches, or quite
useless pilasters in the brick walls of apartment buildings. These
would have made the city seem only individual. But it was not normal.
The streets were not clean. Two windows in three had been smashed. In
placed Calhoun saw doors that had been broken in and splintered, and
never repaired. That implied violence unrestrained. The streets were
almost empty. Occasional figures might be seen on the sidewalks before
the speeding ground cars, but the vehicles never passed them.
Pedestrians turned corners or dodged into doorways before the
cavalcade could overtake them.
The buildings grew taller. The street level remained empty of humans,
but now and again, many stories up, heads peered out of windows. Then
high-pitched yellings came from aloft. It was not possible to tell
whether they were yells of defiance or derision or despair, but they
were directed at the racing cars.
Calhoun looked quickly at the faces of the men around him. The
Minister for Health looked at once heartbroken and embittered. The
head of the planetary police stared grimly ahead. Screechings and
howlings echoed and re-echoed between the building walls. Objects
began to fall from the windows: bottles, pots and pans. Chairs and
stools twirled and spun, hurtling downward. Everything that was loose
and could be thrown from a window came down, flung by the occupants of
those high dwellings. With them came outcries which were assuredly
cursings.
It occurred to Calhoun that there had been a period in history when
mob-action invariably meant flames. Men burned what they hated and
what they feared. They also burned religious offerings to divers
bloodthirsty deities. It was fortunate, he reflected wryly, that fires
were no longer a matter of common experience, or burning oil and
flaming missiles would have been flung down on the ground cars.
"Is this unpopularity yours?" he asked. "Or do I have a share in it?
Am I unwelcome to some parts of the population?"
"You're unwelcome to paras," said the police head coldly. "Paras don't
want you here. Whatever drives them is afraid the Med Service might
make them no longer paras. And they want to stay the way they are."
His lips twisted. "They aren't making this uproar, though. We gathered
everybody we were sure wasn't ... infected into Government Center.
These people were left out. We weren't sure about them. So they
consider we've left them to become paras and they don't like it!"
Calhoun frowned again. This confused everything. There was talk of
infection, and talk of unseen creatures come out of the jungle, making
men paras and then controlling them as if by demoniac possession.
There were few human vagaries, though, that were not recorded in the
Med Service files. Calhoun remembered something, and wanted to be
sick. It was like an infection, and like possession by devils, too.
There would be creatures not much removed from fields involved,
anyhow.
"I think," he said, "that I need to talk to your counter-para
researchers. You have men working on the problem?"
"We did," said the police head, grimly. "But most of them turned para.
We thought they'd be more dangerous than other paras, so we shot them.
But it did no good. Paras still turn up, in Government Center, too!
Now we only send paras out the south gate. They doubtless make out--as
paras."
* * * * *
For a time there was silence in the rushing cars, though a bedlam of
howls and curses came from aloft. Then a sudden shrieking of foreseen
triumph came from overhead. A huge piece of furniture, a couch, seemed
certain to crash into the car in which Calhoun rode. But it swerved
sharply, ran up on the sidewalk, and the couch dashed itself to
splinters where the car should have been. The car went down to the
pavement once more and rushed on.
The street ended. A high barrier of masonry rose up at a cross street.
It closed the highway and connected the walls of apartment buildings
on either hand. There was a gate in it, and the leading car drew off
to one side and the car carrying Calhoun and Murgatroyd ran through,
and there was a second barrier ahead, but this was closed. The other
cars filed in after it, Calhoun saw that windows in these apartment
buildings had been bricked up. They made a many-storied wall shutting
off all that was beyond them.
Men from the barrier went from car to car of the escort, checking men
who had been the escort for Calhoun. The Minister for Health said
jerkily:
"Everybody in Government Center is examined at least once each day to
see if they're turning para or not. Those showing symptoms are turned
out the south gate. Everybody, myself included, has to have a fresh
certificate every twenty-four hours."
The inner gate swung wide. The car carrying Calhoun went through. The
buildings about them ended. They were in a huge open space that must
once have been a park in the center of the city. There were structures
which could not possibly be other than government buildings. But the
population of this world was small. They were not grandiose. There
were walkways and some temporary buildings obviously thrown hastily
together to house a sudden influx of people.
And here there were many people. There was bright sunshine, and
children played and women watched them. There were some--not many--men
in sight, but most of them were elderly. All the young ones were
uniformed and hastily going here or there. And though the children
played gaily, there were few smiles to be seen on adult faces.
"I take it," said Calhoun, "that this is Government Center, where you
collected everybody in the city you were sure was normal. But they
don't all stay normal. And you consider that it isn't exactly an
infection but the result of something that's done to them
by--Something."
"Many of our doctors thought so," said the Minister for Health. "But
they've turned para. Maybe the ... Things got at them because they
were close to the truth."
His head sank forward on his chest. The police head said briefly:
"When you want to go back to your ship, say so and we'll take you. If
you can't do anything for us, you'll warn other planets not to send
ships here."
The ground car braked before one of those square, unornamented
buildings which are laboratories everywhere in the galaxy. The
Minister for Health got out. Calhoun followed him, Murgatroyd riding
on his shoulder. The ground car went away and Calhoun followed into
the building.
* * * * *
There was a sentry by the door, and an officer of the police. He
examined the Minister's one-day certificate of health. After various
vision-phone calls, he passed Calhoun and Murgatroyd. They went a
short distance and another sentry stopped them. A little farther, and
another sentry.
"Tight security," said Calhoun.
"They know me," said the Minister heavily, "but they are checking my
certificate that as of morning I wasn't a para."
"I've seen quarantines before," said Calhoun, "but never one like
this! Not against disease!"
"It isn't against disease," said the Minister, thinly. "It's against
Something intelligent ... from the jungle ... who chooses victims by
reason for its own purposes."
Calhoun said very carefully:
"I won't deny more than the jungle."
Here the Minister for Health rapped on a door and ushered Calhoun
through it. They entered a huge room filled with the complex of desks,
cameras, and observing and recording instruments that the study of a
living organism requires. The setup for study of dead things is quite
different. Here, halfway down the room's length, there was a massive
sheet of glass that divided the apartment into two. On the far side of
the glass there was, obviously, an aseptic environment room now being
used as an isolation chamber.
A man paced up and down beyond the glass. Calhoun knew he must be a
para because he was cut off in idea and in fact from normal humanity.
The air supplied to him could be heated almost white-hot and then
chilled before being introduced into the aseptic chamber for him to
breath, if such a thing was desired. Or the air removed could be made
incandescent so no possible germ or its spores could get out. Wastes
removed would be destroyed by passage through a carbon arc after
innumerable previous sterilizing processes. In such rooms, centuries
before, plants had been grown from antiseptic-soaked seeds and chicks
hatched from germ-free eggs, and even small animals delivered by
aseptic Caesarean section to live in an environment in which there was
no living microorganism. From rooms like this men had first learned
that some types of bacteria outside the human body were essential to
human health. But this man was not a volunteer for such research.
He paced up and down, his hands clenching and unclenching. When
Calhoun and the Minister for Health entered the outer room, he glared
at them. He cursed them, though inaudibly because of the sheet of
glass. He hated them hideously because they were not as he was;
because they were not imprisoned behind thick glass walls through
which his every action and almost his every thought could be watched.
But there was more to his hatred than that. In the midst of fury so
great that his face seemed almost purple, he suddenly yawned
uncontrollably.
Calhoun blinked and stared. The man behind the glass wall yawned again
and again. He was helpless to stop it. If such a thing could be, he
was in a paroxysm of yawning, though his eyes glared and he beat his
fists together. The muscles controlling the act of yawning worked
independently of the rage that should have made yawning impossible.
And he was ashamed, and he was infuriated, and he yawned more
violently than seemed possible.
"A man's been known to dislocate his jaw, yawning like that," said
Calhoun detachedly.
A bland voice spoke behind him.
"But if this man's jaw is dislocated, no one can help him. He is a
para. We cannot join him."
* * * * *
Calhoun turned. He found himself regarded with unctuous condescension
by a man wearing glittering thick eyeglasses--and a man's eyes have to
be very bad if he can't wear contacts--and a uniform with a caduceus
at his collar. He was plump. He was beaming. He was the only man
Calhoun had so far seen on this planet whose expression was neither
despair nor baffled hate and fury.
"You are Med Service," the beaming man observed zestfully. "Of the
Interstellar Medical Service, to which all problems of public health
may be referred! But here we have a real problem for you! A contagious
madness! A transmissible delusion! An epidemic of insanity! A plague
of the unspeakable!"
The Minister for Health said uneasily:
"This is Dr. Lett. He was the greatest of our physicians. Now he is
nearly the last."
"Agreed," said the bland man, as zestfully as before. "But now the
Interstellar Medical Service sends someone before whom I should bow!
Someone whose knowledge and experience and training is so infinitely
greater than mine that I become abashed! I am timid! I am hesitant to
offer an opinion before a Med Service man!"
It was not unprecedented for an eminent doctor to resent the implied
existence of greater skill or knowledge than his own. But this man
was not only resentful. He was derisive.
"I came here," said Calhoun politely, "on what I expected to be a
strictly routine visit. But I'm told there's a very grave public
health situation here. I'd like to offer any help I can give."
"Grave!" Dr. Lett laughed scornfully. "It is hopeless for poor
planetary doctors like myself! But not, of course, for a Med Ship
man!"
Calhoun shook his head. This man would not be easy to deal with. Tact
was called for. But the situation was appalling.
"I have a question," said Calhoun ruefully. "I'm told that paras are
madmen, and there's been mention of suspicion and secretiveness which
suggests schizo-paranoia and--so I have guessed--the term para for
those affected in this way."
"It is not any form of paranoia," said the planetary doctor,
contemptuously. "Paranoia involves suspicion of everyone. Paras
despise and suspect only normals. Paranoia involves a sensation of
grandeur, not to be shared. Paras are friends and companions to each
other. They co-operate delightedly in attempting to make normals like
themselves. A paranoiac would not want anyone to share his greatness!"
Calhoun considered, and then agreed.
"Since you've said it, I see that it must be so. But my question
remains. Madness involves delusions. But paras organize themselves.
They make plans and take different parts in them. They act rationally
for purposes they agree on--such as assassinating me. But how can they
act rationally if they have delusions? What sort of delusions do they
have?"
The Minister for Health said thinly:
"Only what horrors out of the jungles might suggest! I ... I cannot
listen, Dr. Lett. I cannot watch, if you intend to demonstrate!"
The man with thick glasses waved an arm. The Minister for Health went
hastily out. Dr. Lett made a mirthless sound.
"He would not make a medical man! Here is a para in this aseptic room.
He is an unusually good specimen for study. He was my assistant and I
knew him when he was sane. Now I know him as a para. I will show you
his delusion."
He went to a small culture oven and opened the door. He busied himself
with something inside. Over his shoulder he said with unction:
"The first settlers here had much trouble establishing a human-use
ecology on this world. The native plants and animals were useless.
They had to be replaced with things compatible with humans. Then there
was more trouble. There were no useful scavengers--and scavengers are
essential! The rat is usually dependable, but rats do not thrive on
Tallien. Vultures--no. Of course not. Carrion beetles ... Scarabeus
beetles ... The flies that produce maggots to do such good work in
refuse disposal.... None thrive on Tallien Three! And scavengers are
usually specialists, too. But the colony could not continue without
scavengers! So our ancestors searched on other worlds, and presently
they found a creature which would multiply enormously and with a fine
versatility upon the wastes of our human cities. True, it smelled like
an ancient Earth-animal called skunk--butyl mercaptan. It was not
pretty--to most eyes it is revolting. But it was a scavenger and there
was no waste product it would not devour."
Dr. Lett turned from the culture oven. He had a plastic container in
his hand. A faint, disgusting odor spread from it.
"You ask what the delusions of para may be?" he grinned derisively. He
held out the container. "It is the delusion that this scavenger, this
eater of unclean things, this unspeakable bit of slimy, squirming
flesh--paras have the delusion that it is the most delectable of
foodstuffs!"
He thrust the plastic container under Calhoun's nose. Calhoun did not
draw in his breath while it remained there. Dr. Lett said in mocking
admiration:
"Ah! You have the strong stomach a medical man should have! The
delusion of the para is that these squirming, writhing objects are
delightful! Paras develop an irresistible craving for them! It is as
if men on an Earth-like world develop an uncontrollable hunger for
vultures and rats and--even less tolerable things. These
scavengers--paras eat them! So normal men would rather die than become
paras!"
* * * * *
[Illustration]
Calhoun gagged in purely instinctive revulsion. The things in the
plastic container were gray and small. Had they been still, they might
have been no worse to look at than raw oysters in a cocktail. But they
squirmed. They writhed.
"I will show you," said Dr. Lett amiably.
He turned to the glass plate which divided the room into halves. The
man behind the thick glass now pressed eagerly against it. He looked
at the container with a horrible, lustful desire. The thick-eyeglassed
man clucked at him, as if at a caged animal one wishes to soothe. The
man beyond the glass yawned hysterically. He seemed to whimper. He
could not take his eyes from the container in the doctor's hands.
"So!" said Dr. Lett.
He pressed a button. A lock-door opened. He put the container inside
it. The door closed. It could be sterilized before the door on the
other side would open, but now it was arranged to sterilize itself to
prevent contagion from coming out.
The man behind the glass uttered inaudible cries. He was filled with
beastly, uncontrollable impatience. He cried out at the mechanism of
the contagion-lock as a beast might bellow at the opening through
which food was dropped into its cage.
That lock opened, inside the glass-walled room. The plastic container
appeared. The man leaped upon it. He gobbled its contents, and Calhoun
was nauseated. But as the para gobbled, he glared at the two
who--with Murgatroyd--watched him. He hated them with a ferocity which
made veins stand out upon his temples and fury empurple his skin.
Calhoun felt that he'd gone white. He turned his eyes away and said
squeamishly:
"I have never seen such a thing before."
"It is new, eh?" Said Dr. Lett in a strange sort of pride. "It is new!
I ... even I!... have discovered something that the Med Service does
not know!"
"I wouldn't say the Service doesn't know about similar things," said
Calhoun slowly. "There are ... sometimes ... on a very small scale ...
dozens or perhaps hundreds of victims ... there are sometimes similar
irrational appetites. But on a planetary scale ... no. There has never
been a ... an epidemic of this size."
He still looked sick and stricken. But he asked:
"What's the result of this ... appetite? What does it do to a para?
What change in ... say ... his health takes place in a man after he
becomes a para?"
"There is no change," said Dr. Lett blandly. "They are not sick and they
do not die because they are paras. The condition itself is no more
abnormal than ... than diabetes! Diabetics require insulin. Paras ...
something else. But there is prejudice against what paras need! It is as
if some men would rather die than use insulin and those who did use it
became outcasts! I do not say what causes this condition. I do not
object if the Minister for Health believes that jungle creatures creep
out and ... make paras out of men." He watched Calhoun's expression.
"Does your Med Service information agree with me?"
"No-o-o," said Calhoun. "I'm afraid it inclines to the idea of a
monstrous cause, but it really isn't much like diabetes."
"But it is!" insisted Lett. "Everything digestible, no matter how
unappetizing to a modern man, has been a part of the regular diet of
some tribe of human savages! Even prehistoric Romans ate dormice
cooked in honey! Why should the fact that a needed substance happens
to be found in a scavenger...."
"The Romans didn't crave dormice," said Calhoun. "They could eat them
or leave them alone."
The man behind the thick glass glared at the two in the outer room. He
hated them intolerably. He cried out at them. Blood vessels in his
temples throbbed with his hatred. He cursed them.
* * * * *
"I point out one thing more," said Dr. Lett. "I would like to have the
co-operation of the Interstellar Medical Service. I am a citizen of
this planet and not without influence. But I would like to have my
work approved by the Med Service. I submit that in some areas on
ancient Earth, iodine was put into the public water-supply systems to
prevent goiters and cretinism. Fluorine was put into drinking water to
prevent caries. On Tralee the public water supply has traces of zinc
and cobalt added. These are necessary trace elements. Why should you
not concede that here there are trace elements or trace compounds
needed----"
"You want me to report that," said Calhoun, flatly. "I couldn't do it
without explaining--a number of things. Paras are madmen, but they
organize. A symptom of privation is violent yawning. This ...
condition appeared only six months ago. This planet has been colonized
for three hundred years. It could not be a naturally needed trace
compound."
Dr. Lett shrugged, eloquently and contemptuously.
"Then you will not report what all this planet will certify," he said
curtly. "My vaccine----"
"You would not call it a vaccine if you thought it supplied a
deficiency--a special need of the people of Tallien. Could you give me
a small quantity of your ... vaccine?"
"No," said Dr. Lett blandly. "I am afraid you are not willing to be
co-operative. The little of my vaccine that is available is needed for
high officials, who must be protected from the para condition at all
costs. I am prepared to make it on a large scale, though, for the
whole population. I will see, then, that you have as much of it as you
need."
Calhoun seemed to reflect.
"No," he admitted, "I'm not ready to co-operate with you, Dr. Lett. I
have a very uncomfortable suspicion. I suspect that you carry a small
quantity of your vaccine with you all the time. That you cannot bear
the idea of being without it if you should need it. I say that because
it is a symptom of other ... similar conditions. Of other ... abnormal
appetites."
Dr. Lett had been bland and grinning in mockery. But the amusement
left his face abruptly.
"Now ... what do you mean by that?" he demanded.
Calhoun nodded his head toward the para behind the glass wall.
"That poor devil nearly yawned his head off before you gave him his
diet of scavengers, Dr. Lett. Do you ever yawn like that ... so you
make sure you've always your vaccine with you to stop it? Aren't you a
para, Dr. Lett? In fact, aren't you the ... monstrous cause of ...
paras?"
Murgatroyd cried "_Chee! Chee! Chee!_" in great agitation, because Dr.
Lett had snatched up a dissecting scalpel and crouched to leap upon
Calhoun. But Calhoun said:
"Easy, Murgatroyd! He won't do anything regrettable!"
He had a blaster in his hand, bearing directly upon the greatest and
most skillful physician on Tallien Three. And Dr. Lett did not do
anything regrettable. But his eyes burned with the fury of a madman.