The Jupiter Plague

“Was there a — particular reason for the decision?”

“In the very end there was one positive fact that made my mind up, but the idea was a long time growing. I was always happy enough with what I did, though always with some doubts. Guns are fun to play with when you’re young, but they are really made to kill people. The UN Army is a very good idea, don’t misunderstand me, but after a certain time I began to feel that I, personally, could do better helping the world in some manner other than with a gun. That was when I met Doctor Percy Dharmatilake. He was large, black, mostly Tamil, though he was from Ceylon. No one could pronounce his first name, but he had been to school in England and had a very posh British ac-cent and didn’t mind at all when everyone called him Percy. He was our medical officer, and probably the best friend I ever had. When I watched him work, little by little, I began to have the feeling that there was more sense to his job than to mine. He never propagandized me, but he did answer all of my stupid questions with infinite patience. Even let me stand around and watch when he was operating. Yes, more coffee, thanks.”

He sipped silently, looking out of the window, and Nita knew from his expression that he was looking at something other than the New York skyline.

“It was a mine,” he said, “a bad one. Blew up one of our troop carriers and an entire squad. I knew every one of them. I was with Percy when the medics brought them in. Some were dead, others just, well, butchered. But he saved them, the ones he could. And I helped, he made me. He just assumed that I would because there was no one else there. I held clamps for him, passed him instruments, did a lot of things that I was not qualified to do and should not have done. But it worked. They were my friends — and I helped them. It was, well, the greatest feeling I had ever had. He gave me some medical books and I started thinking seriously about medicine, maybe surgery, as a career. What finally decided me was what happened in a little village in Tibet. We had been airdropped in during the night to get between the Indians and the Chinese who were having a disagreement. You had to wonder why. This place was off the main roads, off the main roads of civilization as well. I had never seen poverty or disease like that before. Looking at it, I had to wonder if guns were the only things that we could bring them. Instead of soldiers we should have airdropped a medical team — and a lot of plumbers. Their water supply was something right out of the stone age…”

The wasplike buzz of the phone cut across his words and he turned quickly to the kitchen extension and turned it on. Dr. McKay’s face swam into focus on the screen. His Department of Tropical Medicine must have worked through the night and it was apparent from the dark shadows under his eyes that he had worked along with them. He was brusque.

“How are you both feeling? Have there been symptoms of any kind”

Sam glanced at the dials of his own telltale, then at Nita’s. “All readings are normal and there are no symptoms. Have there been other cases—?”

“No, we’ve had none, I was just concerned since you both had been exposed.” He closed his eyes for a moment and rubbed at his knotted forehead, “so far there have been no other cases of what is now unofficially known as Rand’s disease, at least not among human beings.”

“The birds?”

“Yes, we’ve had men out with lights all night, and since dawn there have been more reports, a plague of birds, dead birds. World Health has already broadcast a warning that ill or dead birds are not to be touched and that the police should be notified at once.”

“Have any other animals been affected?” Nita asked.

“No, nothing else so far, just the birds, for which we are very grateful. And you two, no symptoms at all, that is very hopeful. That is why you must stay in touch with me, let me know at once if there is anything, well, out of the ordinary. Good luck.” He hung up.

Nita sipped at her coffee. “It’s cooled off — I’ll have to heat some more.” She slid two sealed containers into the radar oven. “Everything about this disease is strange, it doesn’t fit any of the rules.”

“Well, should it, Nita? After all it is a disease from space, from another world, and it should be expected to be alien.”

“New but not alien. No matter what an organism is it can only affect the body in a limited number of ways. If the disease were really alien it would have no effect on human beings — if it were, say, a fungus that attacked only silicon-based life

“Or a bacteria that was only viable at twenty below zero.”

“Right! The disease Rand returned with is entirely new to us, but its reactions aren’t. Fever, nephrosis, furunculosis and pyemia. Admittedly the infection was spread through his entire body, but there are other diseases that attack a number of organs simultaneously, so it is just the combination of these factors that is new.”