The Jupiter Plague

“She’ll sleep at least twelve hours,” he said. “If she is still bad when she wakes up give her one of these, one pill will keep her calmed down for twenty-four hours.” He put a small bottle of psychotropic tablets by the bed.

“They killing all our chickens and turkeys, Doctor, they got no right.”

“It’s not a matter of right — it’s a matter of necessity. Those birds carry the disease that could kill your entire family. And you’ve been given a receipt; they’ll be paid for or replaced after the emergency.”

“Just a piece of paper,” the farmer muttered.

Sam started to say something, then thought better of it. He went out and found the police sergeant and the Army officer in conversation, bent over a map.

“The sergeant has been telling me about your troubles,” the lieutenant said. “I wish I could provide you with transportation back to the city, but I’m afraid I can’t, I have only this single vehicle. But there is a compromise possible. The farms here are close together and I can take my men to the next one or two of them on foot while the driver runs you over to this spot.” He pointed to the map. “Your Dewey Thruway passes right here at Southfields and there should be a number of convoys going south. You can flag down one of the lorries. Will that suit you?”

“Yes, that will be fine. One other thing, I want to send a message back to my hospital, and I’m sure the sergeant wants to contact his squad too, but the phones aren’t operating. Do you have a radio in your truck?”

“We have, but it can only send and receive on the Army command channels. You can’t talk directly but I could have the messages relayed for you.”

“Suits me,” the sergeant said, opening his notebook. He tore a sheet out and handed it to Sam, then carefully printed a message of his own with his left hand. Sam thought a moment; this would be read by a lot of people and he did not want to be too specific about the reasons for the report. He wrote:

Dr. McKay Bellevue Hospital New York City— Results negative case of common furunculosis. Bertolli.

It was dusk when they reached the thruway and the UN corporal used his flashlight to signal a convoy of food trucks. A command car stopped with guns ready since there had been more than one attempted looting — and then drove them back slowly to the city. It was after nine before Sam reached the hospital and checked back in.

“There’s a message for you, Doctor,” the girl said, flipping rapidly through her file until she found the envelope with his name on it. He tore it open and found a single slip of paper inside with a rapid scrawl in thick marking pencil on it.

CALL ME AT ONCE EXT. 782 98 NITA

There was an air of urgency in the handwriting that struck a warning note. He went to one of the booths in the hall and quickly dialed the number.

“Hello,” he said when the image cleared, “I have your message…”

“Sam, are you alone?” she asked, and he couldn’t help noticing that her eyes were wider open than normal and that there was a thin shrill to the edges of her words.

“Yes, what is it?”

“Can you come here at once? It’s laboratory 1242.”

“I’m on my way — but what is it about?”

“I–I can’t tell you on the phone, it’s too terrible!”

She broke the connection and her features swam, melted and disappeared.

8

Nita was waiting in the open door of the lab when he came out of the elevator and she let him in without saying a word, then locked the door securely behind him.

“You’re being very secretive — can you tell me now what is going on?”

“I’ll show you, Sam, everything that I have been doing and what the results have been, then let you decide for yourself.”

“You said on the phone that there was something terrible, what did you mean?”

“Please,” she asked, and Sam saw that when she clamped her lips shut they were so tight they were white. “Just look first and make your own mind up, without asking me any more questions.” She pointed to the racked test tubes and specimens. “I’ve been doing graded tests for the team on the resistance of the Rand virus, just getting empirical results that can be fed to the computers so that they might be useful to the other researchers. This has left me with some spare time and I have been doing some tests on my own, consecutive isolation passages and repeated transfers to tissue cultures.”

“There must be other teams doing this?”

“There are. I didn’t mind duplicating somebody else’s work since I was doing this outside of the assigned tests. I guess, what I was really hoping, was that after repeated transfers the virus might be weakened or changed and we could treat it successfully, but it stays just as deadly as ever. But I did find out something else…”

“What?”

“Just check the results first.” Close-lipped, she handed him a folder and waited patiently while he flipped through the sheets.

“Everything looks in order, as you said — wait a moment, this is an interesting series. You were alternating tissues, first bird, then human?”