Continuum 1, page 4
part #1 of Continuum Series
“You are crazy!” Paul said.
“I think we’d better go,” Morna said. “Paul has such an awful yellow color.”
Paul detested Tincrowdor at that moment and yet he did not want him to leave.
“Just a minute. Don’t you think it’d make a great story?”
Tincrowdor sat back down. “Maybe. Let’s say the saucer isn’t a mechanical vehicle but a living thing. It’s from some planet of some far-off star, of course. Martians aren’t de rigeur anymore. Let’s say the saucerperson lands here because it’s going to seed this planet. The yellow stuff wasn’t its blood but its spores or its eggs. When it’s ready to spawn, or lay, it’s in a vulnerable position, like a mother sea-turtle when it lays its eggs in the sand of a beach. It’s not as mobile as it should be. A hunter comes across it at the critical moment, and he shoots it. The wound opens its womb or whatever, and it prematurely releases the eggs. Then, unable to take off in full flight, it hides. The hunter is a brave man or lacking imagination or both. So he goes into the woods after the saucerperson. It’s still capable of projecting false images of itself; its electromagnetic field or whatever it is that enables it to fly through space, stimulates the brain of the alien biped that’s hunting it. Images deep in the hunter’s unconscious are evoked. The hunter thinks he sees a sphinx and a glittering green city.
“And the hunter has breathed in some of the spore-eggs. This is what the saucerperson desires, since the reproductive cycle is dependent on living hosts. Like sheep liver flukes. The eggs develop into larvae which feed on the host. Or perhaps they’re not parasitic but symbiotic. They give the host something beneficial in return for his temporarily housing them. Maybe the incubating stage is a long and complicated one. The host can transmit the eggs or the larvae to other hosts.
“Have you been sneezing yellow, Paul?
“In time, the larvae will mutate into something, maybe little saucers. Or another intermediate stage, something horrible and inimical. Maybe these take different forms, depending upon the chemistry of the hosts. In any event, in human beings the reaction is not just physical. It’s psychosomatic. But the host is doomed, and he is highly infectious. Anybody who comes into contact with him is going to be filled with, become rotten with, the larvae. There’s no chance of quarantining the hosts. Not in this age of great mobility. Mankind has invented the locomotive, the automobile, the airplane solely to make the transmission of the deadly larvae easier. At least, that’s the viewpoint of the saucerperson.
“Doom, doom, doom!”
“Dumb, dumb, dumb,” Morna said. “Come on, Leo, let’s go. You’ll be snoring like a pig, and I won’t be able to get a wink of sleep. He snores terribly when he’s been drinking. I could kill him.”
“Wait for time to do its work,” Tincrowdor said. “I’m slowly killing myself with whiskey. It’s the curse of the Celtic race. Booze, not the British, beat us. With which alliteration, I bid you bon voyage. Or von voyage. I’m part German, too.”
“What are your Teutonic ancestors responsible for?” Morna said. “Your arrogance?”
5.
After the Tincrowdors had left, Mavice said, “You really should get to bed, Paul. You do look peaked. And we have to get up early tomorrow for church.”
He didn’t reply. His bowels felt as if an octopus had squeezed them in its death agony. He got to the bathroom just in time, but the pain almost yanked a scream from him. Then it was over. He became faint when he saw what was floating in the water. It was small, far too small to have caused such trouble. It was an ovoid about an inch long, and it was a dull yellow. For some reason, he thought of the story of the goose which laid golden eggs.
He began trembling. It was ten minutes or more before he could flush it down, wash, and leave the bathroom. He had a vision of the egg dissolving in the pipes, being treated in the sewage plant, spreading its evil parts throughout the sludge, being transported to farms for fertilizer, being sucked up by the roots of corn, wheat, soy beans, being eaten, being carried around in the bodies of men and animals, being…
In the bedroom, Mavice tried to kiss him goodnight. He turned away. Was he infectious? Had that madman accidentally hit on the truth?
“Don’t kiss me then,” Mavice shrilled. “You never want to kiss me unless you want to go to bed with me. That’s the only time I get any tenderness from you, if you can call it tenderness. But I’m just as glad. I have a bladder infection and you’d hurt me. After all, it’s my wifely duty, no matter how sick I am. According to you, anyway.”
“Shut up, Mavice,” he said. “I’m sick. I don’t want you to catch anything.”
“Catch what? You said you felt all right. You don’t have the flu, do you?”
“I don’t know what I got,” he said, and he groaned.
“Oh, Lord, I pray it’s not the rabies,” she said.
“It couldn’t be. Morna said rabies doesn’t act that fast.”
“Then what is it?”
“I don’t know,” he said, and groaned again. “What is it Leo is so fond of quoting? Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she said, but she softened. She kissed him on the cheek before he could object, and turned over away from him.
He lay awake a long time, and when he did sleep he had fitful dreams. They awoke him often, though he remembered few of them. But there was one of a glittering green city and a thing with a body which was part lioness and part woman advancing toward him over a field of scarlet flowers.
6.
Roger Eyre stood up and looked at Leo Tincrowdor. They were standing near the edge of a cornfield just off the Little Rome Road.
“They’re the tracks of a big cat all right,” he said. “A very big cat. If I didn’t know better, I’d say they were a lion’s or a tiger’s. One that could fly.”
“Your major is zoology, so you should know,” Tincrowdor said. He looked up at the sky. “It’s going to rain. I wish we had time to get casts. Do you think that if we went back to your house and got some plaster… ?”
“It’s going to be a heavy rain storm. No.”
“Damn it, I should have at least brought a camera. But I never dreamed of this. It’s objective evidence. Your father isn’t crazy, and that dream… I thought he was telling more than a dream.”
“You can’t be serious,” Roger said.
Tincrowdor pointed at the prints in the mud. “Your father was driving to work when he suddenly pulled the car over just opposite here. Three men in a car a quarter of a mile behind him saw him do it. They knew him, since they work at Trackless, too. They stopped and asked him if his car had broken down. He mumbled a few unintelligible words and then became completely catatonic. Do you think that that and these tracks are just coincidence?”
Ten minutes later, they were in the Adler Sanitorium. As they walked down the hall, Tincrowdor said, “I went to Shomi University with Doctor Croker, so I should be able to get more out of him than the average doctor would tell. He thinks my books are a lot of crap, but we’re both members of The Baker Street Irregulars and he likes me, and we play poker twice a month. Let me do the talking. Don’t say anything about any of this. He might want to lock us up, too.”
Mavice, Morna, and Glenda were just coming out of the doctor’s office. Tincrowdor told them he would see them in a minute; he wanted a few words with the doctor. He entered and said, “Hi, Jack. Anything cooking on the grange?”
Croker was six-feet three-inches tall, almost too handsome, and looked like a Tarzan who had lately been eating too many bananas. He shook hands with Tincrowdor and said, in a slight English accent, “We can dispense with the private jokes.”
“Sorry. Laughter is my defense,” Tincrowdor said. “You must really be worried about Paul.”
The door opened, and Morna entered. She said, “You gave me the high sign to come back alone, Jack. What’s wrong?”
“Promise me you won’t say anything to the family. Or to anybody,” he said. He gestured at a microscope under which was a slide. “Take a look at that. You first, Morna, since you’re a lab tech. Leo wouldn’t know what he was seeing.”
Morna bent over, made the necessary adjustments, looked for about ten seconds, and then said, “Lord!”
“What is it?” Leo said.
Morna straightened. “I don’t know.”
“Neither do I,” Croker said. “I’ve been ransacking my books, and it’s just as I suspected. There ain’t no such thing.”
“Like the giraffe,” Leo said. “Let me look. I’m not as ignorant as you think.”
A few minutes later, he straightened up. I don’t know what those other things are, the orange, red, lilac, deep blue, and purple-blue cells. But I do know that there aren’t any organisms shaped like a brick with rounded ends and colored a bright yellow.”
“They’re not only in his blood; they’re in other tissues, too,” Croker said. “My tech found them while making a routine test. The things seem to be coated with a waxy substance which doesn’t take a stain. I put some specimens in a blood agar culture, and they’re thriving, though they’re not multiplying. I stayed up all night running other tests. Eyre is a very healthy man, aside from a mental withdrawal. I don’t know what to make of it, and to tell you the truth, I’m scared!
“That is why I had him put in isolation, and yet I don’t want to alarm anybody. I’ve got no evidence that he’s a danger to anybody. But he’s swarming with something completely unknown. It’s a hell of a situation, because there’s no precedent to follow.”
Morna burst into tears. Leo Tincrowdor said, “And if he recovers from his catatonia, there’s nothing you can do to keep him here.”
“Nothing legal,” Croker said.
Morna snuffled, wiped her tears, blew her nose, and said, “Maybe it’ll just pass away. Those things will disappear, and it’ll be just another of the medical mysteries.”
“I doubt it, Pollyanna,” Tincrowdor said. “I think this is just the beginning.”
“There’s more,” Croker said. “Epples, the nurse assigned to him, has a face deeply scarred with acne. Had, I should say. She went into his room to check on him, and when she came out, her face was a smooth and as soft as a baby’s.”
There was a long silence before Tincrowdor said, “You mean, you actually mean, that Paul Eyre performed a miracle? But he wasn’t conscious! And —”
“I was staggered, but I am a scientist,” Croker said. “Shortly after Epples, near hysteria, told me what happened, I noticed that a wart on my finger had disappeared. I remember that I’d had it just before I examined Eyre…”
“Oh, come on!” Morna said.
“Yes, I know. But there’s more. I’ve had to reprimand a male nurse, a sadistic apish-looking man named Backers, for unnecessary roughness a number of times. And I’ve suspected him, though I’ve had no proof, of outright cruelty in his treatment of some of the more obstreperous patients. I’ve been watching him for some time, and I would have fired him long ago if it weren’t so hard to get help.
“Shortly after Epples had left Eyre and not knowing yet that her scars were gone, she returned to the room. She caught Backers sticking a needle in Eyre’s thigh. He said later that he suspected Eyre of faking it, but he had no business being in the room or testing Eyre. Epples started to chew Backers out, but she didn’t get a chance to say more than two words. Backers grabbed his heart and keeled over. Epples called me and then gave him mouth-to-mouth treatment until I arrived. I got his heart started with adrenalin. A half hour later, he was able to tell me what happened.
“Now Backers has no history of heart trouble, and the EKG I gave him indicated that his heart is normal. I —”
“Listen,” Tincrowdor said, “are you telling me you think Eyre can both cure and kill? With thought projection?”
“I don’t know how he does it or why. I’d have thought that Backer’s attack was just a coincidence if it hadn’t been for Epple’s acne and my wart. I put two and two together and decided to try a little experiment. I felt foolish doing it, but a scientist rushes in where fools fear to tread. Or maybe it’s the other way around.
“Anyway, I released some of my lab mosquitoes into Eyre’s room. And behold, the six which settled on him expecting a free meal fell dead. Just keeled over, like Backers.”
There was another long silence. Finally, Morna said, “But if he can cure people… ?”
“Not he,” Croker said. “I think those mysterious yellow microorganisms in his tissues are somehow responsible. I know it seems fantastic, but —”
“But if he can cure,” Morna said, “how wonderful!”
“Yes,” Leo said, “but if he can also kill, and I say if, since he’ll have to be tested further before such a power can be admitted as possible, if, I say, he can kill anybody that threatens him, then…”
“Yes?” Croker said.
“Imagine what would happen if he were released. You can’t let a man like that loose. Why, when I think of how often I’ve angered him! It’d be worse than uncaging a hungry tiger on Main Street.”
“Exactly,” Croker said. “And as long as he’s in catatonia, he can’t be released. Meanwhile, he is to be in a strict quarantine. After all, he may have a deadly disease. And if you repeat any of this to anybody else, including his family, I’ll deny everything. Epples won’t say anything, and Backers won’t either. I’ve had to keep him on so I can control him, but he’ll keep silent. Do you understand?”
“I understand that he might be here the rest of his life,” Tincrowdor said. “For the good of humanity.”
Poul Anderson
My Own, My Native Land
The boy stood at sunrise on the edge of his world. Clouds torrented up along the gap which clove it. They burned in the light. Wind sang, cold and wholly pure.
A spearfowl broke from those mists to soar further aloft, magnificence upon wings the hue of steel. For an instant the boy did not move. He could not. Then he screamed, once, before he fled.
He took shelter in a thicket until he had mastered both tears and trembling. Boys do not tell anyone, least of all those who love them, that they are haunted.
“Coming in, now,” said Jack O’Malley over the radio phone, and got to work at a difficult approach.
On its northeastern corner, that great tableland named High America did not slope in mountains and valleys, to reach at last the sea level which lay eight kilometers straight beneath. Here the rim fell in cliffs and talus until vapors drowned vision. Only at one place were the heights climbable: where a fault had driven them apart to make the Cleft. And the drafts which it channeled were treacherous.
As his aircar slanted toward ground, O’Malley had a clear view across the dropoff and its immense gash. At evening, the almost perpetual clouds that lapped around the plateau were sinking. Rock heaved dark and wet above the ocean, which billowed to the horizon. Their whiteness bore a fire-gold tinge and shadows were long upon them; for the Eridani sun was low in the west, barely above the sierra of the Centaurs. The illusion of its hugeness could well-nigh overwhelm a man who remembered Earth — since in fact its disc showed more than half again the width of Terrestrial Sol. Likewise the ruddier hue of its less ardent G5 surface was more plain to see than at high noon.
Further up, O’Malley’s gaze had savored a sweep of country from Centaurs to Cleft, from Hercules Mountains to Lake Olympus, and all the grasslands, woodlands, farmlands in between, nourished by the streams out of yonder snowpeaks. Where the Swift and Smoky Rivers joined to form the Emperor, he should have been able to make out Anchortown. But the rays blazed too molten off their waters.
Instead, he had enjoyed infinite subtleties of color, the emerald of man’s plantings mingled in patchwork with the softer blue-greens of native growth. Spring was coming as explosively as always on Rustum.
Raksh, the larger moon, stood at half phase in a sky turning royal purple. About midway between the farthest and nearest points of its eccentric orbit, it showed a Lunar size, but coppery rather than silver. O’Malley scowled at the beautiful sight. It was headed in closer, to raise tides in the dense lowland air which could make for even heavier equinoctial storms than usual. And that was just when he wanted to go down there.
His pilot board beeped a warning and he gave his whole attention back to flight. It was tricky at best, in this changeable atmosphere, under a fourth more weight than Earth gives to things. Earth, where this vehicle was designed and made. He wondered if he’d ever see the day when the colony manufactured craft of its own, incorporating the results of experience. Three thousand people, isolated on a world for which nature had never intended them, couldn’t produce much industrial plant very soon.
Nearing ground, he saw Joshua Coffin’s farmstead outlined black against sky and some upsurgings from the cloud deck. The buildings stood low, but they looked as massive as they must be to withstand hurricanes. Gim trees and plume oak, left uncut for both shade and windbreak, were likewise silhouetted, save where the nest of bower phoenix phosphoresced in one of them.
O’Malley landed, set his brakes, and sprang out: a big, freckle-faced man, athletic in spite of middle age grizzling his red hair and thickening his waist. He wore a rather gaudy coverall which contrasted with the plainness of Coffin’s. The latter was already, courteously, securing the aircar’s safety cable to a bollard. He was himself tall, as well as gaunt and crag-featured, sun-leathered and iron-gray. “Welcome,” he said. They gripped hands. “What brings you here that you didn’t want to discuss on the phone?”
“I need help,” O’Malley answered. “The matter may or may not be confidential.” He sighed. “Lord, when”ll we get proper laser beams, not these damn ’casts that every neighborhood gossip can listen in on?”
“I don’t believe our household needs to keep secrets,” said Coffin a bit sharply. Though he’d mellowed over the years, O’Malley was reminded that his host stayed a puritanical sort. Circumstance had forced this space captain to settle on Rustum — not any strong need to escape crowding, corruption, poverty, pollution, and tyranny on Earth. He’d never been part of the Constitutionalist movement. In fact, its rationalism, libertarianism, tendency toward hedonism, to this day doubtless jarred on his own austere religiousness.
