The Jupiter Plague

“Identification is positive, the furuncles of the specimen, the dog, sent in from Connecticut, contain the virus of Rand’s disease, it’s on the screen now. Until further tests have been run on the viability of this virus in other mediums and hosts we are tentatively assigning it the title of Rand-gamma…”

Nita sat back in her chair, straightening her hair while she listened intently to the voice, blinking a bit with her sleep-filled eyes at the image on the screen.

“It came too fast,” Sam said, his fists clenched in impotent anger. “There should have been more time before the change took place, before the disease passed through seven different hosts. It’s been less than a week now.”

“Yet it is happening, we can’t escape the fact—”

“There are a lot of facts we can’t escape, right out there in the city.” Sam was on his feet, pacing the length of the room, tired but too angry to sit still. “The entire plague area is falling apart, sliding back to savagery; I’ve been watching it happen. I’ve never realized before what a thin veneer civilization is — it has taken us centuries to develop but only days to lose.”

“Aren’t you being unfair, Sam? People are just afraid.”

“Of course I know they’re afraid, I’m afraid myself and I have more to fear because I know just how easily Rand’s disease is spread and how helpless we are against it. But I also know what they seem to have forgotten, that not our strongest but only hope is our brains, our ability to think before acting. Yet out there people are acting without thinking and in doing it they are condemning themselves to certain death and trying to drag the rest of the world down with them. They riot and they get killed. They ignore the sound advice given to them and shelter their miserable chickens and parakeets. Wait until we try and kill their dogs! Not my old Rex, my dear old friend! — when Rex is really the damned enemy now who is going to catch a disease that will kill him and his idiot master. But before they die they are going to panic. I’ve been watching it and it’s a disgusting sight because there are no people in a mob, just animals. I’ve watched them rape and kill and try to get away and eventually someone will escape, we won’t be able to stop it. Someone will break out of the quarantine zone, or an infected dog will get through and the disease will keep spreading. People!”

Her voice was as quiet as his had been booming.

“You can’t blame people for having emotions, Sam — it’s only human—”

“I’m as human as the next man,” he said, stopping in front of her, “and I have just as many emotions. I know how those people out there feel, because I hear the same little lost simian screaming in my own heart. But what do we have intelligence for if we can’t use it to control or guide the emotions?”

“Just like a man to talk about guiding emotions while you’re stamping up and down the floor in a rage.”

He opened his mouth to answer, then stopped and smiled instead.

“You’re right of course. All my raging isn’t going to accomplish a thing. It’s the times I suppose, with all our emotions laid bare and exposed like a raw nerve. The next thing you know I’ll be telling you how lovely you look sitting there in the blue light of Rand’s virus with your hair all in a tangle.”

“Does it look awful?” she asked worriedly, trying to pat it back into position.

“No, leave it,” he said and reached out to take her hand away. When his skin touched hers something changed and she glanced up at him quickly and he saw a reflection of what he was feeling mirrored in her eyes. When he pulled at her hand to draw her to her feet he found that she was already rising.

When he lowered his face he found her lips waiting.

A kiss is a contact, a union, an exchange. It is unknown to certain races and tribes, while others know it and consider it with disgust. They all suffer a loss. A kiss can be a cold formula, or a token of familial relationship or a prelude to the act of love. It can also be a revelation in an unspoken, secret language of feelings that have never been expressed in words.

She lowered her face against his chest after-ward and he knew that she was smiling while he spoke because he traced the contours of her lips with his fingers.

“I suppose — all our emotions are closer to the surface now and we say and do things just as we feel them. I have to laugh at myself—”

“Please don’t, Sam!”

“—Well, I should laugh at myself. If you only knew how I loathe starry-eyed and out of focus TV love scenes of young things wallowing in the treacly embrace of love at first sight. I think they have demeaned something uncountably precious by using it for common coinage. I want to be able to say that I love you, Nita, and have you understand it is something vitally different and important.”