Part 14 (1/2)

”Friend?” he queried.

”Figure of speech,” I said. And I left him to it. I did I get the shot, though. I really wasn't kidding about needing it.

Afterward, I went to talk to Johnny again, in the I hope that it would cheer me up. It didn't. Despite the stimu-shot was.h.i.+ng benevolence and strength of mind I around in my veins, I found that the company of human beings made my mind contemplate nasty things.

It wasn't that I blamed anybody-certainly not. What Charlot said was quite true. The men who could destroy this world didn't dare not to, unless we found a way of defusing its artillery. Fair enough. You couldn't blame them. But on the other hand, it's things like that tend to make one cynical.

The worst thing of all, I think, was that I later came to the conclusion that the men who might-almost certainly would-have destroyed Pharos would have been wrong, in a way. The Pharos bugs wouldn't have destroyed the human race. We could have lived with them -and not just the one in ten or fifteen who never even got to stage two. After a while, even our guts might have stopped aching. We'd only have lost one in fifty right away-maybe one in ten in the final a.n.a.lysis. But even that runs to billions, I suppose. And there were only a lousy twelve hundred of us, plus a few thousand aliens. It all depends, I guess, on your economic theory.

Instead of talking to Johnny, I took a walk in Paradise. My att.i.tude to it had changed. Before, I had reacted adversely to it. Now I had to wear a plastic suit to go out in it, and had to decontaminate myself every time I came home from it; it wasn't Paradise anymore. It wasn't even beautiful.

Beauty, as they say, is in the eye of the beholder.

I'd just inherited another blind spot.

I met some of the aliens while I was out walking. They approached me fearlessly, just as curious, just as playful as they had been the day the first Caradoc s.h.i.+p landed on their world. I let them walk with me for a while.

I liked them.

19.

By the time I got back to the s.h.i.+p, the sickness had filed a claim on one more body-Eve Lapthorn.

This meant that of the seventeen people currently resident aboard the Hooded Swan only three-one of the Aegis girls, Nick delArco (the original wouldn't-hurt-a-fly-guy), and myself-remained unaffected.

That was a far, far better average than Caradoc was managing, however. They had about forty healthy people left to them- at least six of whom, it was strongly rumoured, were the company wh.o.r.es. Markoff had been hit, and so had most of his staff, but they refused to lie down. They couldn't afford to stop working.

I called to see Eve the moment I found out the thing had dug its claws into her. She wasn't in bed-just resting, with an expression of valiant cheerfulness that looked as if it had been painted on.

”Hi,” I said. ”What did you do?”

”Nothing,” she replied.

”That's what they all say,” I informed her, with mock jocularity. ”It came apart in me 'ands. Honest, it's a plant. I never touched the stuff. You have a sudden urge to beat somebody up?”

”No,” she said. ”If I got angry with anyone, it was with myself.”

”Bit of a drag,” I said, ”when you can't even fall out with yourself in private without being called upon to suffer. This is Paradise all right. You are hereby ordered to be happy. Or else. It's a hard life.”

”Sure is,” she agreed.

”Is that really what happened?” I asked, striking a more serious note. ”You got angry with yourself?”

”I honestly don't know,” she said. ”It could be that. But I think it's probably because I've slowly got to hating this place.”

I nodded sympathetic understanding. ”It's a difficult place to love,” I admitted.

”You seem to manage,” she said.

”I don't love it,” I a.s.sured her. ”But I slowly stopped hating it, instead of the other way around.”

She gave me a long, steady look that made me feel a fraction uncomfortable.

”Just how is it,” she said, ”that an irascible b.a.s.t.a.r.d like you, who reckons to hate the whole d.a.m.n universe, manages to hold this thing at arm's length, while the rest of us, one by one, let it into our systems?”

”I don't hate the whole universe,” I said. ”I just don't like it very much. I guess I just don't feel anything about it very much. Don't confuse me with Nick. He's holding this thing back with sheer goodness of heart. It's not getting to me because I haven't got a heart.” She was still looking at me.

”Your bark must be one h.e.l.l of a lot worse than your bite,” she said.

”Bite? I haven't got a bite. You know me-I'm too tiny to be a bother to anybody. I don't bite. I don't even bark, really. I just make noises.”

She shook her head. ”n.o.body's too tiny to bite,” she said. ”What do you think is putting the bite on all of us, right now? It's the little things that bite the hardest.”

I spread my hands wide. ”In that case,” I said, ”I have no excuses. I don't bite because I don't bite. It's no use trying to work out why this thing hasn't laid me prostrate or kicked me right out like poor Ullman.

That's the way it goes. I can't tell you my secret.”

”It's a bit late now, anyhow,” she said regretfully.

”Take it easy,” I said.

”It isn't easy,” she told me.

”I know,” I said.

But she didn't believe that. She didn't see how I could know. She didn't know how I was surviving untouched by the Paradise bug, but she was sure that because I was, I couldn't understand. I think she resented the fact that she'd caught it but I hadn't. She'd been a.s.sociating with the Aegis people-it was more or less inevitable that she'd pick up a little of their way of thinking. She saw this affair as a sort of testing ground-she thought that infection was a sign of weakness, of badness. A sort of stigma. I realised that she was jealous of me.

”They'll have the cure soon,” I told her, but my voice was weak. Not because I didn't believe what I was saying-I was pretty sure they would have the cure soon. But because I knew it wasn't what she was thinking about. She thought that she ought to have been able to hold out.

It was a dangerous mood for her to be in.

”Look,” I said, ”I'll tell you why it hasn't got me. I've been cheating. I've been taking shots to keep my spirits floating. I had one earlier today-if I hadn't I'd be with you right now. If we'd thought there was any danger, we'd have given you shots too. But we thought you could hold out on your own. We had confidence in you.”

Her eyes searched my face, looking for some traces of evidence that I was lying. I don't know what she expected to see.

”It would never have got Michael,” she said levelly. I knew that was the core of the problem. That was the thought that was haunting her.

”It would have had him on the first day,” I told her, and I wasn't saying it just to try to make her feel better. It was true. ”Your brother was a great guy. He was as good a man as I've ever met. But he wasn't equipped for this sort of a fight. Your brother was br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with anger, just as he was br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with every other kind of emotion known to man. He couldn't have got by without it. He was what he was because he reacted to things, and his reactions were honest. He hadn't anything like the self-discipline that he would have needed to stay clear of this thing. It would have got him. Only stage one -just the aching gut and the runs, just to remind him, just to keep him in check. It wouldn't have killed him-he didn't have that much aggression in him. But he was only human.”