Authors: John Brunner
[PORTION OF TRANSCRIPT OMITTED. ACCESSIBLE
ONLY TO PERSONNEL WITH TRIPLE-A-STAR SECURITY
CLEARANCE]
found to cause unpredictable mental disturbances and other unacceptable side effects. Consequently no studies of it have been conducted since 1963.
Intelligence:
It's relevant here that several informants have advised us of an alleged synthesis of the substance which the Tupas claim to have found in relief food at San Pablo, carried out in Havana on the basis of Duval's work in Paris.
Health:
Putting that together with the now definitely established fact that the timing and location of the first outbreaks of that crippling enteritis coincide with a journey made by a foreign national during the preceding couple of weeks, ostensibly for legitimate business purposes…
Agriculture:
And nobody can make me believe that these damned
jigras
acquired immunity to such a wide range of pesticides without help. Nor that a responsible and respected firm of importers could simply have overlooked the presence of the wrong kind of worm in so many of their consignments.
State:
So it's obvious that we don't have to deal with the work of an isolated fanatic, like those fire-balloon raids on San Diego.
President:
Yes, there's only one possible conclusion. I'd appreciate at your earliest convenience your views on whether or not to make the matter public, but there can't be any doubt any longer. The United States is under attack.
…"Mid fume and reek
That caused unmanly Tears to lave my cheek,
Black-vis'd as Moors from soil, and huge of thew,
The Founders led me ever onward through
Th' intolerable Mirk. The furnace Spire
They broach'd, and came a sudden gout of Fire
That leach'd the precious Water from my corse
And strain'd my Vision with such awful force
It seem'd I oped my eyes to tropic Sun
Or lightning riving Midnight's dismal dun,
Or stood amaz'd by mighty Hekla's pit.
I marvel'd how Man, by his GOD-sent wit,
Thus tam'd the salamander Element
And loos'd the Metal in the mountain pent
To make us Saws, and Shears, and useful Plows,
Swords for our hands, and Helmets for our brows,
The surgeon's Scalpel, vehicle of Health,
And all our humble Tools for gaining wealth…
-
"De Arte Munificente,"
Seventeenth century
STANDSTILL
…
unanimously ascribed to fear of Trainite atrocities by traffic
experts across the nation. In many places the car-per-hour count
was the lowest for thirty years. Those who did venture out this
Labor Day often did not meet with the welcome they expected. In
Bar Harbor, Maine, townsfolk formed vigilante patrols to turn
away drivers of steam and electric cars, persons carrying health
foods, and other suspected Trainites. Two fatalities are reported
following clashes between tourists and residents. Two more
occurred at Milford, Pennsylvania, when clients at a restaurant,
angered at not obtaining items listed on the menu, fired it with
gasoline bombs. The owner later claimed that supplies had been
interrupted by food-truck hijackers. Commenting on the event by
the shore of his private lake in Minnesota, Prexy said, quote, Any
man has a right to his steak and potatoes, unquote. California:
experts assessing mortar damage to the Bay Bridge
…
"We can't go on," Hugh said doggedly. "The scene's too fraught.
Christ, I been stopped and searched four times in two days."
"And your ID didn't stand up?" Ossie snapped.
"Shit, if it hadn't would I be here? But for how much longer? No, Ossie, we have to let the kid go."
"But his old man hasn't come across!"
"That stinking mother
never
going to come across!" Carl snapped.
"He has the Abraham complex in a big way."
"And Hector is sick," Kitty said. She was unusually sober. "Hardly ate anything for a week. And his shit-ugh! All stinky and wet. And he sweats rivers."
The other two present were Chuck and Tab, the original co-conspirators. Ossie appealed to them.
"Hugh's right," Chuck said. He scratched his crotch absently; fleas and crabs were worse than ever around the Bay. Tab nodded agreement.
"We got to scatter if we turn him loose," Ossie said after a pause.
He was frowning, but he sounded as though he'd been expecting this decision for a good while.
"No skin," Hugh said. "He's seen us, sure, but he doesn't know who any of us are. Except me, and that's my problem." Saying that made him feel heroic. He'd been rehearsing. "Ossie, he only knows you as
'Austin Train,' doesn't he?"
"Did you see ABS found Train?" Kitty put in.
"Sure!"-in chorus from them all, and Ossie continued.
"And I tell you one thing straight! If that bastard doesn't say what needs to be said, I'm going to walk clear to New York and tear him into little pieces. Unless someone beats me to it."
"Yeah," Hugh said, and reverted to the subject "Well, the rest of us he knows by first names, but there are thousands of Hughs and Chucks and Tabs. And Kittys. Sorry about the pad, baby."
She shrugged. "Nothing here I specially want. I can pack all my gear in the one bag."
"But we can't just like take him down to the street and let him go,"
Tab said, worrying.
"When he's asleep, we simply drift," Hugh countered. "We leave the door unlocked. When he wants to, he walks out."
"If he's too sick?" Kitty said.
"Shit, he's not going to die in twenty-four hours. Give ourselves that much start, then call the pigs to come look for him if he hasn't made it on his own feet…Ossie, what're you doing?"
Ossie had taken a scratch-pad and a pen. Without looking up, he said, "Drafting the note we should leave behind. Got to make our point.
Now we gave the kid the best food, like from Puritan, right? And regular water because there's no don't-drink notice in force. So if he fell sick it's because of the filthy mothers who are screwing up the world, right?"
Nods.
"All because his old man loves money more than his son, right?
Wouldn't give water-purifiers to the poor."
"Maybe he did them a favor," Carl said.
"What?"
"Up in Colorado they're all getting blocked with bacteria. It's a scandal. Talking about suing the makers."
"Won't mention that," Ossie said.
Darkness. But starred with the brilliant horrible images of nightmare.
He was sick at his stomach. He was wet with perspiration. His penis hurt, his anus hurt, his belly hurt. He screamed for someone to come to him.
No one answered.
He fell off the bed when he tried to stand up, bruised his hip and his left elbow. Staggering to the door to hammer on it, he knocked against the chamber pot and splashed urine and liquid excrement over his feet.
Banging the door opened it. He was too giddy to realize what had happened and was all set to beat on it again. His fists struck air. He fell forward, crying and moaning. Beyond, a room with soiled mattresses covering the floor. Some light from a street lamp. The sky was dark. It was the first time in eternities that he'd seen the sky.
He shouted again, hoarsely, and the world swam. He had fever, he was sure of that. And ached. And there was a foulness inside his pants, fore and aft. Hell. This was hell. The world ought to be clean, sweet, pure!
Weaker and weaker, he hobbled moaning toward the front door of the apartment and found that open, too, giving on to stairs, and he fell down those two or three at a time. At the foot a filthy hallway where children certainly, adults maybe, had relieved themselves. Like paddling in a sewer. But he made it to the street door. Clawed himself up to reach the catch on it. There was a step beyond. He fell down that also, sprawled on hard sidewalk, screaming.
"I'm Hector Bamberley! Help me! There's a reward! My father will give you a reward!"
But boys stoned or crazy were a common sight, and anyhow everyone knew that Roland Bamberley had downright refused to offer a reward for his son, for fear the kidnappers might receive it. It was more than an hour before any of the rare passers-by took him seriously, and by then he had lapsed into delirium.
Besides, the air had deprived him of his voice within a few minutes, and then it was hard to make out what he was trying to say through the bouts of coughing and vomiting.
"Well, doctor?" Leaner than his older brother Jacob, dedicated to exercise and what outdoor life was nowadays possible because he was proud of his stringy, tough, Western-pioneer good looks, Roland Bamberley addressed the masked man emerging from the hospital ward.
The doctor, removing his mask, passed his hand wearily across his forehead. He said, "Well…I…"
"Tell me!" Stern, like a patriarch secure in the knowledge that God approved of him.
"It's a long list," the doctor said, and sat down, taking a notepad from the pocket of his white coat. "He's had a couple of lucid intervals, but much of the time he's been-uh-rambling. Let's see…Oh, yes. Says he's been well fed. Says the kidnappers gave him nothing but stuff from Puritan and kept complaining about how expensive it was. He's had regular breakfast, lunch and supper. But he had to drink tap-water.
Straight tap-water."
"And?" No emotion discernible.
"He has hepatitis. Acute. He's running a high fever, about one-oh-one point eight. Also he has violent diarrhea, enteritis or dysentery I imagine, though I'll have to wait for a stool culture on that.
Those are the most important things."
"What about the rest?"
It was an order. The doctor sighed and licked his lips. "Well…A skin complaint. Minor. Impetigo. It's endemic in the slums around here.
One of his eyes is a bit inflamed, probably conjunctivitis. That's endemic, too. And his tongue is patched and swollen-looks like moniliasis. Fungus complaint. What they call thrush. And of course he had body-lice and fleas."
The mask of Roland Bamberley's self-possession cracked like a strained ice-floe. "
Lice
?" he rasped. "
Fleas
?"
The doctor looked at him with a sour twist of his mouth. "Sure. It'd have been a miracle if he'd escaped them. About thirty per cent of the buildings in the city center are infested. They're immune to insecticides, even the illegal ones. I imagine the enteritis and hepatitis will turn out to be resistant to antibiotics, too. They usually are nowadays."
Bamberley's cheeks were gray. "Anything else?" he said. In the tight voice of a man looking for an excuse to pick a fight, wanting to be needled one more time so he can let go his charge of ill-temper.
The doctor hesitated.
"Come on, out with it!" Like a coarse file against hardwood.
"Very well. He also has gonorrhea, very advanced, and if he has that he's virtually bound to have NSU, and if he has those then he most likely has syphilis. Though that'll have to wait for the Wassermann."
There was a long silence. Finally Bamberley said, "But they must have been worse than animals. People can't live like that."
"They have to live like that," the doctor said. "They aren't given a choice."
"Liar! Fleas? Lice? Venereal disease? Of course they have a choice!" Bamberley barked.
The doctor shrugged. It wasn't politic to argue with a man as rich as this. Since his brother Jacob died he was almost unbelievably rich. He'd been next in line for the entailed portion of the fortune. Jacob's adopted children weren't eligible.
Nor was Maud.
"Can I see him?" Bamberley said after a while.
"No, sir. That's medical orders. I've put him to sleep, and he must be allowed to rest for at least twenty-four hours. The combination of drugs we've had to give him might-ah-disturb his reasoning powers anyway."
"But antibiotics-" Bamberley checked, like a hound-dog catching a new scent. He said suspiciously, "There was more. You didn't tell me everything."
"Oh, hell!" The doctor finally lost patience. He'd been on the job three hours without a break. "Yes, Mr. Bamberley! Of course there was more! You raised him in that practically gnotobiotic environment-he doesn't have the regular natural immunities! Inflamed tonsils! Pharyngitis! Allergies from the shit Puritan sell in their so-called
'pure' foods! Scatches that have gone septic, boils on his ass full of stinking pus! Exactly what
everybody
has who lives the way he's been living the past couple of months, only more so!"
"Everybody?" Steely; dangerous.
"Sure, everybody! I guess that was the point the kidnappers were intending to make."
The instant the words were out, he knew he'd gone too far.
Bamberley jumped to his feet.
"You sympathize with those devils! Don't deny it!"
"I didn't say that-"
"But that's what you meant!" In a roar. "Well, you can take your filthy Trainite ideas somewhere else!"
The doctor debated only a moment whether to speak his mind and clear his conscience or keep his fee and multiply his income. He opted for the second choice, the sensible one. He was thinking of moving to New Zealand.
"I didn't mean to offend you," he said in a soothing tone. "Only to point out that your son isn't suffering from anything-well-extraordinary.
He hasn't been beaten, or starved, or tortured. He'll recover."
Suspecting irony, Bamberley glared at him. He said, "Has he talked about the kidnappers at all?"
"Not really," the doctor sighed.
"You're holding something back. I'm used to dealing with people-I can tell."
"Well…" The doctor had to lick his lips. "Well, he's mentioned this girl Kitty, of course. He's not a virgin any more, obviously."
"Thanks to some whore who gave him the clap!"
"Well, sir, he must have cooperated. I mean, you can't rape a boy, can you?"