"That pattern of human conduct which is loosely called
"self-respecting" has the curious property of restricting to
the individual--through his withdrawal of acts to communicate
misfortune--the unfavorable chance occurrences which probability
insists must take place. On the other hand, the same pattern of
human conduct tends to disseminate and to share chance favorable
occurrences among the group. The members of a group of persons
practicing "self-respect," then, increase the mathematical
probability of good fortune to all their number. This explains
the instability of cultures in which principles leading to this
type of behavior become obsolete. A decadent society brings bad
luck upon itself by the operation of the laws of probability...."
_Probability and Human Conduct_
Fitzgerald
She came very slowly back to consciousness. It was almost as if she
waked from utterly exhausted sleep. When she first opened her eyes,
they wandered vaguely until they fell upon Calhoun. Then a bitter and
contemptuous hatred filled them. Her hand fumbled weakly to the knife
at her waist. It was not a good weapon. It had been table-cutlery and
the handle was much too slender to permit a grip by which somebody
could be killed. Calhoun bent over and took the knife away from her. It
had been ground unskillfully to a point.
"In my capacity as your doctor," he told her, "I must forbid you to
stab me. It wouldn't be good for you." Then he said, "Look! My name's
Calhoun. I came from Sector Med Headquarters to make a planetary health
inspection, and some lads in the city apparently didn't want a Med Ship
aground. So they tried to kill me by buttering me all over the walls
of my ship, with the landing-grid field. I made what was practically a
crash landing, and now I need to know what's up."
The burning hatred remained in her eyes, but there was a trace of
doubt.
"Here," said Calhoun, "is my identification."
He showed her the highly official documents which gave him vast
authority--where a planetary government was willing to concede it.
"Of course," he added, "papers can be stolen. But I have a witness that
I'm what and who I say I am. You've heard of _tormals_? Murgatroyd will
vouch for me."
He called his small and furry companion. Murgatroyd advanced and
politely offered a small, prehensile paw. He said "_Chee_" in his
shrill voice, and then solemnly took hold of the girl's wrist in
imitation of Calhoun's previous action of feeling her pulse.
Calhoun watched. The girl stared at Murgatroyd. But all the galaxy had
heard of _tormals_. They'd been found on a planet in the Deneb region,
and they were engaging pets and displayed an extraordinary immunity to
the diseases men were apt to scatter in their interstellar journeyings.
A forgotten Med Service researcher made an investigation on the ability
of _tormals_ to live in contact with men. He came up with a discovery
which made them very much too valuable to have their lives wasted in
mere sociability. There were still not enough of Murgatroyd's kind to
meet the need that men had of them, and laymen had to forego their
distinctly charming society. So Murgatroyd was an identification.
The girl said faintly:
"If you'd only come earlier.... But it's too late now! I ... thought
you came from the city."
"I was headed there," said Calhoun.
"They'll kill you--"
"Yes," agreed Calhoun, "they probably will. But right now you're ill
and I'm Med Service. I suspect there's been an epidemic of some disease
here, and that for some reason the people in the city don't want the
Med Service to know about it. You seem to have ... whatever it is. Also
you had a very curious weapon to shoot me with."
The girl said drearily:
"One of our group had made a hobby of such things. Ancient weapons.
He had bows and arrows and--what I shot you with was a crossbow. It
doesn't need power. Not even chemical explosives. So, when we ran away
from the city, he ventured back in and armed us as well as he could."
* * * * *
Calhoun nodded. A little irrelevant talk is always useful at the
beginning of a patient-interview. But what she said was not irrelevant.
A group of people had fled the city. They'd needed arms, and one of
their number had "ventured" back into the city for them. He'd known
where to find only reconstructions of ancient lethal devices--a hobby
collection. It sounded like people of the civil-service type. Of course
there were no longer social classes separated by income. Not on most
worlds, anyhow. But there were social groupings based on similar
tastes, which had led to similar occupations and went on to natural
congeniality. Calhoun placed her, now. He remembered a long-out-moded
term, "upper middle class" which no longer meant anything in economics
but did in medicine.
"I'd like a case-history," he said conversationally. "Name?"
"Helen Jons," she said wearily.
He held the mike of his pocket recorder to pick up her answers.
Occupation, statistician. She'd been a member of the office force which
was needed during the building of the city. When the construction work
was finished, most of the workmen returned to the mother-world Dettra,
but the office staff stayed on to organize things when colonists should
arrive.
The plague appeared among the last shipload of workmen waiting to be
returned to the mother world. There were about a thousand persons
in the city altogether. The disease produced, at first, no obvious
physical symptoms, but those afflicted with it tended to be listless
and lackadaisical and without energy. The first-noticed symptom was
a cessation of gripes and quarrelings among the workmen. Shortness
of breath appeared two days later. It was progressive. Deaths
began in two weeks. Men sank into unconsciousness and died. By the
time the transport-ship arrived from Dettra with colonists to be
landed ... it was to take back the workmen ... the physicians on
the planet were grim. They described the situation by space phone.
The transport returned to Dettra without removing the workmen or
landing the colonists. The people left in the city on Maris III were
self-quarantined, but they expected help.
It was two months before another ship arrived. By then fewer than
two hundred of the original thousand remained. More than half those
survivors were already listless and short-breathed. A good ten per cent
were in the beginning of that marked lethargy which deepened into coma
and ended fatally. A desperate, gaunt, plague-stricken few still manned
the landing grid.
The ship came down. Men disembarked. There was no crowd to greet them.
The survivors still in the city had scattered themselves widely,
hoping to escape the contagion by isolating themselves in new and
uncontaminated dwelling-units. But there was no lack of communication
facilities. Nearly all the survivors watched on vision screens in
contact with the landing grid.
The newcomers did not look like doctors, nor act like them. Visiphone
contact with the landing grid was immediately broken. It could not be
restored. So the isolated groups spoke agitatedly to each other by
other visiphone contacts, exchanging messages of desperate hope. Then,
new-landed men appeared at an apartment whose occupant was in the act
of such a conversation with a group in a distant building. He left
the visiphone on as he went to admit and greet the men he hoped were
researchers, at least, come to find the cause of the plague and end it.
The viewer at the other visiphone plate gazed eagerly into his friend's
apartment. He saw a group of the newcomers admitted. He saw them
deliberately murder his friend and the survivors of his family.
Plague-stricken or merely terrified people--in pairs or trios widely
separated through the city--communicated in swift desperation. It was
possible that there had been a mistake--a blunder; an unauthorized
crime had been committed. But it was not a mistake. Unthinkable as such
an idea was, there developed evidence that the plague on Maris III was
to be ended as if it were an epizootic among animals. Those who had it
and those who had been exposed to it were to be killed to prevent its
spread among the newcomers.
A conviction of such horror could not be accepted without absolute
proof. But when night fell, the public power-supply of the city was cut
off--communications ended. The singular sunset hush of Maris III left
utter stillness everywhere--and there were screams which echoed among
the city's innumerable empty-eyed, unoccupied buildings.
The scant remainder of the plague-survivors fled in the night. They
fled singly, carrying the plague with them. Some carried members of
their families already stricken. Some helped already-doomed wives or
friends or husbands to the open country. Flight would not save their
lives. It would only prevent their murder. But somehow that seemed a
thing to be attempted.
* * * * *
"This," said Calhoun, "is not a history of your own case. When did you
develop the disease ... whatever it may be?"
"Don't you know what it is?" asked Helen hopelessly.
"Not yet," admitted Calhoun. "I've very little information. I'm trying
to get more now."
What other information he had he'd gathered from a newly dead man in a
field some miles away. He did not mention that at this moment.
The girl went on, exhaustedly. The first symptom was listlessness, of
which the victim was unconscious. One could pull out of it with an
effort, but one wasn't aware that anything was wrong. The listlessness
progressed. One could realize it only by recognizing the more urgent,
more violent effort needed to pay attention, and the discovery of
weakness when one tried to act. One did not feel discomfort--not even
hunger or thirst. One had to summon increasing resolution even to
become aware of the need to do anything at all.
The symptoms were singularly like those of a man too long at too high
an altitude without oxygen. They were even more like those of a man
in a non-pressurized flier whose oxygen supply has been cut off. But
such a man would pass out without realizing that he was slipping into
unconsciousness. On Maris III the process was infinitely gradual. It
was a matter of two weeks or more.
"I'd been infected before we ran away," she said drearily. "I didn't
know it then. Now I know I've a few more days of being able to think
and act ... if I try hard enough. But it'll be less and less each day.
Then I'll stop being able to try."
Calhoun watched the tiny recorder roll its multiple-channel tape from
one spool to the other as she talked.
"You had energy enough to try to kill me," he observed.
He looked at the weapon. There was an arched steel spring placed
crosswise at the end of a barrel like a sporting blast-rifle. Now he
saw a handle and a ratchet by which the spring was brought to tension,
storing up power to throw the missile. He asked:
"Who wound up this crossbow?"
Helen hesitated.
"Kim ... Kim Walpole."
"You're not a solitary refugee now? There are others of your group
still alive?"
She hesitated again, and then said:
"Some of us came to realize that staying apart didn't matter. We ...
couldn't hope to live, anyhow. We ... already had the plague. Kim
is ... one of us. He's the strongest. He ... wound up the crossbow for
me. He ... had the weapons to begin with."
Calhoun asked seemingly casual questions. She told him of a group of
fugitives remaining together because all were already doomed. There
had been eleven of them. Two were dead, now. Three others were in
the last lethargy. It was impossible to feed them. They were dying.
The strongest was Kim Walpole, who'd ventured back into the city to
bring out weapons for the rest. He'd led them, and now was still the
strongest and--so the girl considered--the wisest of them all.
They were waiting to die. But the newcomers to the planet--the
invaders, they believed--were not content to let them wait. Groups and
single hunters came out of the city and searched for them.
"Probably," said the girl dispassionately, "to burn our bodies
against contagion. They ... kill us so they won't have to wait. And
it's just ... seemed so horrible that we ... felt we ought to defend
our right to die naturally by ... dying fighting. That's why I ... shot
at you. I shouldn't have, but--"
She stopped, helplessly. Calhoun nodded.
The fugitives now aided each other simply to avoid murder. They
gathered together exhaustedly at nightfall, and those who were
strongest did what they could for the others. By day, those who
could walk scattered to separate hiding places, so that if one were
discovered, the others might still escape the indignity of being
butchered. They had no stronger motive than that. They were merely
trying to die with dignity, instead of being killed as sick beasts.
Which bespoke a tradition and an attitude which Calhoun approved.
People like these would know something of the science of probability in
human conduct. Only they would call it ethics. But the strangers--the
invaders--the occupiers of the city were of another type. They probably
came from another world.
"I don't like this," said Calhoun coldly. "Just a moment."
He went over to Murgatroyd. Murgatroyd seemed to droop a little.
Calhoun checked his breathing and listened to his heart. Murgatroyd
submitted, saying only "_Chee_" when Calhoun put him down.
"I'm going to help you to your rendezvous," said Calhoun abruptly.
"Murgatroyd's got the plague now. I ... exposed him to it, and he's
reacting fast. And I want to see the others of your group before
nightfall."
The girl just managed to get to her feet. Even speaking had tired her,
but she gamely though wearily moved off at a slant to the hillside's
slope. Calhoun picked up the odd weapon and examined it thoughtfully.
He wound it up as it was obviously meant to be. He picked up the
missile it had fired, and put it in place. He went after the girl,
carrying it. Murgatroyd brought up the rear.
Within a quarter of a mile the girl stopped and clung swaying to the
trunk of a slender tree. It was plain that she had to rest, and
dreaded getting off her feet because of the desperate effort needed to
arise.
"I'm going to carry you," said Calhoun firmly. "You tell me the way."
He picked her up bodily and marched on. She was light. She was not a
large girl, but she should have weighed more. Calhoun still carried the
quaint ancient-type weapon without difficulty.
Murgatroyd followed as Calhoun went up a small inclination on the
greater hillside and down a very narrow ravine. Through brushwood he
pushed until he came to a small open space where shelters had been made
for a dozen or so human beings. They were utterly primitive--merely
roofs of leafy branches over frameworks of sticks. But of course they
were not intended for permanent use. They were meant only to protect
plague-stricken folk while they waited to die.
But there was disaster here. Calhoun saw it before the girl could.
There were beds of leaves underneath the shelters. There were three
bodies lying upon them. They would be those refugees in the terminal
coma which--since the girl had described it--accounted for the dead man
Calhoun had found, dead of starvation with food-plants all around him.
But now Calhoun saw something more. He swung the girl swiftly in his
arms so that she would not see. He put her gently down and said:
"Stay still. Don't move. Don't turn."
* * * * *
He went to make sure. A moment later he raged. Because it was Calhoun's
profession to combat death and illness in all its forms. He took his
profession seriously. And there are defeats, of course, which a medical
man has to accept, though unwillingly. But nobody in the profession,
and least of all a Med Ship man, could fail to be roused to fury by the
sight of people who should have been his patients, lying utterly still
with their throats cut.
He covered them with branches. He went back to Helen.
"This place has been found by somebody from the city," he told her
harshly. "The men in coma have been murdered. I advise you not to look.
At a guess, whoever did it is now trying to track down the rest of you."
He went grimly to the small open glade, searching the ground for
footprints. There was ground-cover at most places, but at the edge
of the clearing he found one set of heavy footprints going away. He
put his own foot beside a print and rested his weight on it. His foot
made a lesser depression. The other print had been made by a man
weighing more than Calhoun. Therefore it was not one of the party of
plague-victims.
He found another set of such footprints, entering the glade from
another spot.
"One man only," he said icily. "He won't think he has to be on guard,
because a city's administrative personnel--such as were left behind
for the plague to hit--doesn't usually have weapons among their
possessions. And he's confident that all of you are weak enough not to
be dangerous to him."
Helen did not turn pale. She was pale before. She stared numbly at
Calhoun. He looked grimly at the sky.
"It'll be sunset within the hour," he said savagely. "If it's the
intention of the newcomers ... the invaders to burn the bodies of all
plague victims, he'll come back here to dispose of these three. He
didn't do it before lest the smoke warn the rest of you. But he knows
the shelters held more than three people. He'll be back!"
Murgatroyd said "_Chee!_" in a bewildered fashion. He was on all fours,
and he regarded his paws as if they did not belong to him. He panted.
Calhoun checked him over. Respiration way up. Heart-action like that
of the girl Helen. His temperature was not up, but down. Calhoun said
remorsefully:
"You and I, Murgatroyd, have a bad time of it in our profession. But
mine is the worse. You don't have to play dirty tricks on me, and I've
had to, on you!"
Murgatroyd said "_Chee!_" and whimpered. Calhoun laid him gently on a
bed of leaves which was not occupied by a murdered man.
"Lie still!" he commanded. "Exercise is bad for you!"
He walked away. Murgatroyd whined faintly, but lay still as if
exhausted.
"I'm going to move you," Calhoun told the girl, "so you won't be
sighted if that man from the city comes back. And I've got to keep out
of sight for a while or your friends will mistake me for him. I count
on you to vouch for me later. Basically, I'm making an ambush." Then he
explained irritably, "I daren't try to trail him because he might not
backtrack to return here!"
He lifted the girl and placed her where she could see the glade in its
entirety, but would not be visible. He settled down himself a little
distance away. He was acutely dissatisfied with the measures he was
forced to take. He could not follow the murderer and leave Helen and
Murgatroyd unprotected, even though the murderer might find another
victim because he was not trailed. In any case Murgatroyd's life, just
now, was more important than the life of any human being on Maris III.
On him depended everything.
But Calhoun was not pleased with himself.
* * * * *
There was silence except for the normal noises of living wild things.
There were fluting sounds, which later Calhoun would be told, from
crawling creatures not too much unlike the land-turtles of Earth.
There were deep-bass hummings, which came from the throats of
miniature creatures which might roughly be described as birds. There
were chirpings which were the cries of what might be approximately
described as wild pigs--except that they weren't. But the sun Maris
sank low toward the nearer hill-crests, and behind them, and there came
a strange, expectant hush over all the landscape. At sundown on Maris
III there is a singular period when the creatures of the day are silent
and those of the night are not yet active. Nothing moved. Nothing
stirred. Even the improbable foliage was still.
It was into this stillness and this half-light that small and
intermittent rustling sounds entered. Presently there was a faint
murmur of speech. A tall, gaunt young man came out of the brushwood,
supporting a pathetically feeble old man, barely able to walk. Calhoun
made a gesture of warning as the girl Helen opened her lips to speak.
The slowly moving pair--the young man moving exhaustedly, the older man
staggering with weakness despite his help--came into the glade. The
younger helped the older to sit down. He stood panting.
A woman and a man came together, assisting each other. There was barely
light enough from the sun's afterglow to show their faces, emaciated
and white.
A fifth feeble figure came tottering out of another opening in the
brush. He was dark-bearded and broad, and he had been a powerful man.
But now the plague lay heavily upon him.
They greeted each other listlessly. They had not yet discovered those
of their number who had been murdered.
The gaunt young man summoned his strength and moved toward the shelter
where Calhoun had covered an unseemly sight with branches.
Murgatroyd whimpered.
There came another rustling sound. But this had nothing of feebleness
in it. Someone pushed branches forthrightly out of his way. He came
striding confidently into the small open space. He was well-fleshed,
and his color was excellent. Calhoun automatically judged him to be in
superlative good health, slightly over-fleshed, and of that physical
type which suffers very few psychosomatic troubles because it lives
strictly and enjoyably in the present.
Calhoun stood up. He stepped out into the fading light just as
the sturdy last-comer grinned at the group of plague-stricken
semi-skeletons.
"Back, eh?" he said amiably. "Saved me a lot of trouble. I'll make one
job of it."
With leisurely confidence he reached to the blaster at his hip.
"Drop it!" snapped Calhoun, from quartering behind him. "Drop it!"
The sturdy man whirled. He saw Calhoun with a crossbow raised to cover
him. There was light enough to show that it was not a blast-rifle--in
fact, that it was no weapon of any kind modern men would ordinarily
know. But much more significant to the sturdy man was the fact that
Calhoun wore a uniform and was in good health.
He snatched out his blast-pistol with professional alertness.
And Calhoun shot him with the crossbow. It happened that he shot him
dead.