Part 2 (1/2)

”Then you will not report what all this planet will certify,” he said curtly. ”My vaccine----”

”You would not call it a vaccine if you thought it supplied a deficiency--a special need of the people of Tallien. Could you give me a small quant.i.ty of your ... vaccine?”

”No,” said Dr. Lett blandly. ”I am afraid you are not willing to be co-operative. The little of my vaccine that is available is needed for high officials, who must be protected from the para condition at all costs. I am prepared to make it on a large scale, though, for the whole population. I will see, then, that you have as much of it as you need.”

Calhoun seemed to reflect.

”No,” he admitted, ”I'm not ready to co-operate with you, Dr. Lett. I have a very uncomfortable suspicion. I suspect that you carry a small quant.i.ty of your vaccine with you all the time. That you cannot bear the idea of being without it if you should need it. I say that because it is a symptom of other ... similar conditions. Of other ... abnormal appet.i.tes.”

Dr. Lett had been bland and grinning in mockery. But the amus.e.m.e.nt left his face abruptly.

”Now ... what do you mean by that?” he demanded.

Calhoun nodded his head toward the para behind the gla.s.s wall.

”That poor devil nearly yawned his head off before you gave him his diet of scavengers, Dr. Lett. Do you ever yawn like that ... so you make sure you've always your vaccine with you to stop it? Aren't you a para, Dr. Lett? In fact, aren't you the ... monstrous cause of ... paras?”

Murgatroyd cried ”Chee! Chee! Chee!” in great agitation, because Dr. Lett had s.n.a.t.c.hed up a dissecting scalpel and crouched to leap upon Calhoun. But Calhoun said: ”Easy, Murgatroyd! He won't do anything regrettable!”

He had a blaster in his hand, bearing directly upon the greatest and most skillful physician on Tallien Three. And Dr. Lett did not do anything regrettable. But his eyes burned with the fury of a madman.

III.

Five minutes later, or possibly ten, Calhoun went out to where the Minister for Health paced miserably up and down the corridor outside the laboratory. The Minister looked white and sick, as if despite himself he'd been picturing the demonstration Lett would have given Calhoun. He did not meet Calhoun's eyes. He said uneasily: ”I'll take you to the Planetary President, now.”

”No,” said Calhoun. ”I got some very promising information from Dr. Lett. I want to go back to my s.h.i.+p first.”

”But the President is waiting to see you!” protested the Minister for Health. ”There's something he wants to discuss!”

”I want,” Calhoun observed, ”to have something to discuss with him. There is intelligence back of this para business. I'd almost call it demoniac intelligence. I want to get back to my s.h.i.+p and check on what I got from Dr. Lett.”

The Minister for Health hesitated, and then said urgently: ”But the President is extremely anxious----”

”Will you,” asked Calhoun politely, ”arrange for me to be taken back to my s.h.i.+p?”

The Minister for Health opened his mouth and closed it. Then he said apologetically--and it seemed to Calhoun--fearfully: ”Dr. Lett has been our only hope of conquering this ... this epidemic. The President and the Cabinet felt that they had to ... give him full authority. There was no other hope! We didn't know you'd come. So ... Dr. Lett wished you to see the President when you left him. It won't take long!”

Calhoun said grimly: ”And he already has you scared! I begin to suspect I haven't even time to argue with you!”

”I'll get you a car and driver as soon as you've seen the President. It's only a little thing----”

Calhoun growled and moved toward the exit from the laboratory. Past the sentries. Out to the open air. Here was the wide clear s.p.a.ce which once had been a park for the city and the site of the government building of Tallien Three. A little distance away, children played gaily. But there were women who watched them with deep anxiety. This particular s.p.a.ce contained all the people considered certainly free of the para syndrome. Tall building surrounded the area which once had been tranquil and open to all the citizens of the planet. But now those buildings were converted into walls to shut out all but the chosen--and the chosen were no better off for having been someone's choice.

”The capital building's over yonder,” said the Minister, at once urgently and affrightedly and persuasively. ”It's only a very short walk! Just yonder!”

”I still,” said Calhoun, ”don't want to go there.” He showed the Minister for Health the blaster he'd aimed at Dr. Lett only minutes ago. ”This is a blaster,” he said gently. ”It's adjusted for low power so that it doesn't necessarily burn or kill. It's the adjustment used by police in case of riot. With luck, it only stuns. I used it on Dr. Lett,” he added unemotionally. ”He's a para. Did you know? The vaccine he's been giving to certain high officials to protect them against becoming para--it satisfies the monstrous appet.i.te of para without requiring them to eat scavengers. But it also produces that appet.i.te. In fact, it's one of the ways by which paras are made.”

The Minister for Health stared at Calhoun. His face went literally gray. He tried to speak, and could not.

Calhoun added again, as unemotionally as before: ”I left Dr. Lett unconscious in his laboratory, knocked out by a low-power blaster bolt. He knows he's a para. The President is a para, but with a supply of 'vaccine' he can deny it to himself. By the look on your face you've just found out you can't deny it to yourself any longer. You're a para, too.”

The Minister for Health made an inarticulate sound. He literally wrung his hands.

”So,” said Calhoun, ”I want to get back to my s.h.i.+p and see what I can do with the 'vaccine' I took from Dr. Lett. Do you help me, or don't you?”

The Minister for Health seemed to have shriveled inside his garments. He wrung his hands again. Then a ground car braked to a stop five yards away. Two uniformed men jumped out. The first of them jerked at his blaster in its holster on his hip.

”That's the tormal!” he snapped. ”This's the man, all right!”

Calhoun pulled the trigger of his blaster three times. It whined instead of rasping, because of its low-power setting. The Minister for Health collapsed. Before he touched ground the nearer of the two uniformed men seemed to stumble with his blaster halfway drawn. The third man toppled.

”Murgatroyd!” said Calhoun sharply.

”Chee!” shrilled Murgatroyd. He leaped into the ground car beside Calhoun.

The motor squealed because of the violence with which Calhoun applied the power. It went shrilly away with three limp figures left behind upon the ground. But there wouldn't be instant investigation. The atmosphere in Government Center was not exactly normal. People looked apprehensively at them. But Calhoun was out of sight before the first of them stirred.

”It's the devil,” said Calhoun as he swung to the right at a roadway curve, ”to have scruples! If I'd killed Lett in cold blood, I'd have been the only hope these people could have! Maybe they'd have let me help them!”

He made another turn. There were buildings here and there, and he was hardly out of sight of where he'd dropped three men. But it was astonis.h.i.+ng that action had been taken so quickly after Lett regained consciousness. Calhoun had certainly left him not more than a quarter of an hour before. The low-power blaster must have kept him stunned for minutes. But immediately he'd recovered he'd issued orders for the capture or the killing of a man with a small animal with him, a tormal. And the order would have been carried out if Calhoun hadn't happen to have his own blaster actually in his hand.

But the appalling thing was the over-all situation as now revealed. The people of Government Center were turning para and Dr. Lett had all the authority of the government behind him. He was the government for the duration of the emergency. But he'd stay the government because all the men in high office were paras who could conceal their condition only so long as Dr. Lett permitted it. Calhoun could picture the social organization to be expected. There'd be the tyrant; the absolute monarch at its head. Absolutely submissive citizens would receive their dosage of vaccine to keep them ”normals” so long as it pleased their masters. Anyone who defied him or even tried to flee would become something both mad and repulsive, because subject to monstrous and irresistible appet.i.te. And the tyrant could prevent even their satisfaction! So the citizens of Tallien Three were faced with an ultimate choice of slavery, or madness, for themselves and their families.

Calhoun swerved behind a government building and out of the parking area beyond. Obviously, he couldn't leave Government Center by the way he'd entered it. If Lett hadn't ordered him stopped, he'd be ordering it now. And Murgatroyd was an absolute identification.

Again he turned a corner, thrusting Murgatroyd down out of sight. He turned again, and again.... Then he began concentratedly to remember where the sunset-line had been upon the planet when he was waiting to be landed by the grid. He could guess at an hour and a half, perhaps two, since he touched ground. On the combined data, he made a guess at the local time. It would be mid-afternoon. So shadows would lie to the northeast of the objects casting them. Then-- He did not remain on any straight roadway for more than seconds. But now when he had a choice of turnings, he had a reason for each choice. He twisted and dodged about--once he almost ran into children playing a ritual game--but the sum total of his movements was steadily southward. Paras were turned out of the south gate. That gate, alone, would be the one where someone could go out with a chance of being unchallenged.

He found the gate. The usual tall buildings bordered it to left and right. The actual exit was bare concrete walls slanting together to an exit to the outer world; no more than a house-door wide. Well back from the gate, there were four high-side trucks with armed police in the truck-bodies. They were there to make sure that paras turned out, or who went out of their own accord when they knew their state, would not come back.

He stopped the ground car and tucked Murgatroyd under his coat. He walked grimly toward the narrow exit. It was the most desperate of gambles, but it was the only one he could make. He could be killed, of course, if anybody suspected him of attempting exit at any gate.

He got out, unchallenged. The concrete walls rose higher and higher as he walked away from the trucks and the police who would surely have blasted him had they guessed. The way he could walk became narrowed. It became a roofed-over pa.s.sageway, with a turn in it so it could not be looked through end to end. Then--he reached open air once more.

Nothing could be less dramatic than his actual escape. He simply walked out. Nothing could be less remarkable than his arrival in the city outside of Government Center. He found himself in a city street, rather narrow, with buildings as usual all about him, whose windows were either bricked shut, or smashed. There were benches against the base of one of those buildings, and four or five men, quite unarmed, lounged upon them. When Calhoun appeared one of them looked up and then arose. A second man turned to busy himself with something behind him. They were not grim. They showed no sign of being mad. But Calhoun had already realized that the appet.i.te which was madness came only occasionally, only at intervals which could probably be known in advance. Between one monstrous hunger-spell and another, a para might look and act and actually be as sane as anybody else. Certainly Dr. Lett and the President and the Cabinet members who were paras acted convincingly as if they were not.

One of the men on the benches beckoned.

”This way,” he said casually.

Murgatroyd poked his head out of Calhoun's jacket. He regarded these roughly dressed men with suspicion.

”What's that?” asked one of the five.