Title: Righteous plague
Author: Abernathy, Robert
Language: English
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                           Righteous Plague

                          By Robert Abernathy

               Complete Novelet of Uncontrolled Weapons

                It was a virus, against which the enemy
                could make no defense--but a virus does
                not distinguish between friend and foe.
               And immunity to what became known as the
                righteous plague could exist anywhere,

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                  Science Fiction Quarterly May 1951.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


The ugly, high-backed truck splashed heavily through the puddles of the
weedy road. Just before it reached a curve, it swayed and slithered as
the brakes locked suddenly. A man had come stumbling from the rain-wet
bushes; he paused now, stared dully at the halted, angrily grumbling
monster.

An officer heaved himself out of the seat beside the driver, cursed
irritably, flung open the door and swung out onto the running board--a
malevolently superhuman figure in his panoply of snouted mask and
rubberized armor. His gloved hand lifted, sliding a long-barreled
automatic from its worn holster, aiming. At the shot's crash the man
from the thicket stiffened and toppled into the mud, where he writhed
painfully. Two more bullets, carefully placed, put a stop to that.

The officer slid back into the seat and sighed with a sucking sound
inside his mask. Without being told, the driver turned the truck
cautiously off the road; tilting far over, left wheels deep in the
slippery ditch, it ground in lowest gear past the motionless body,
keeping several feet away.

In the back of the truck, five oddly-assorted civilian men and one
woman huddled together and exchanged vaguely curious glances over
the stop, the shooting, and the detour. Then, as the machine climbed
back onto the roadbed and they could see the corpse sprawled in the
way behind, the interest left their faces; they reflected only the
emptiness of the gray sky, the hopelessness of the sodden fields
and woods they passed. The prisoners might have found the weather
appropriate for death. They did not speak of that, because they knew
they were on their way to die.

But the masked and armored soldiers who sat nervously watching them,
rifles clutched between their knees, did speak of death, and made
sour jokes about it. They did not know they themselves were going to
death--that when the execution was done and reported by radio, a plane
would be overhead inside two minutes to bomb them.

That would take place by order of the Diktatura, that is: by the
sovereign will of the People, expressed by its Executive Council, which
was responsible directly to the Dictator.

Naturally it was the People's will that no one come out of a plague
spot, for the People feared death.

Joseph Euge said as much to the pale, underfed-looking young man who
crouched beside him in the bed of the truck. "The gasproof clothing,"
he added, "protects nothing but morale, and these men's morale needs to
last only until--their job is done."

The young man looked at him fixedly, seeing gray hair, a firm-lined
face, and a suit that had been expensively respectable. They did
not know each other's names. All the trials had been separate; each
prisoner had been told that the others--whom, for the most part, he had
never heard of--had confessed the whole plot.

"What makes you think so?"

"I know a good deal of the Dictator's ways," said Euge quietly; "I used
to be well acquainted with him."

"You were close to him--who are you?"

"My name is Joseph Euge."

"_Doctor_ Euge." The pale young man's eyes widened as he repeated the
name the way the newspapers had printed it so often; he edged a little
away from the other, jostling the woman beside him. She, too, stared
with haunted eyes, and her lips framed the name in a whisper; the rest
of the condemned--a large rough man in a workman's faded blue, a little
Jew with twitching hands, and another youth who, like Euge's neighbor,
had evidently been a student--looked at him also, with an expression
compounded of wonder, fear, and hate.

       *       *       *       *       *

Behind their masks, fixed eyes and bayonets gleaming, the guards sat
stony-faced. They were trained to be blind, deaf, and dumb--and on
occasion oblivious of smells--in the stern fulfillment of duty.

"You are _the_ Dr. Euge?" whispered the woman with a flicker of
interest. "The man who loosed the plague on the world?"

He nodded and stared at his knees. "It is true," he said slowly,
"that I was a military bacteriologist--one of the best; it is only an
accident that I was anything more. I have made my share of mistakes.
Most of us have been patriots at one time or another, else there could
have been no Victory." Euge noted wryly how strong the indoctrination
of his mind was, relegating the word 'war' to the realm of obscene
taboos, and leaving only 'victory' permissible. "But--" he lifted his
gray head and looked candidly into their faces, "when I 'loosed the
plague', as you put it, I was not being a patriot and I do not think I
was making a mistake."

They stared at him with bleak eyes. Euge said almost pleadingly, "I
believe you are all members of the Witnesses of the Lord, who are
proscribed for maintaining that the plague is a punishment decreed
against a sinful world. From that standpoint, surely I am not to blame
for having acted as an instrument of divine justice." It was as if he
appealed for judgment to these strangers, to whom he was united in the
intimate community of a grave that must be shared.

"He's right," said the Jew, and smiled a little, even then, with
pleasure at a point well made. "We're inconsistent if we blame him."

There was a lightening in their wan, drained faces, mostly of relief at
being told that they need not spend those few last minutes in hating.

The woman's reaction was strongest; she leaned forward, eyes suddenly
feverish: "Do you believe as we do, then? Did you know you were guided,
when--"

The scientist said wearily, "I have seen no visions, I have heard no
voices. Still I do not feel responsible for what has come on the world
through me. In the plenum of probabilities, what may be will be...."

"Doctor, beyond your universe of probabilities there must be a power
that chooses among them." The young student spoke with the quiet
conviction of a man in whom knowledge and faith are at peace. "We must
accept that power--or the logic by which it chooses among the possible
worlds--as good, the definition of good. You should see that--now, if
never before." He quoted Goethe. "... _denn nur im Elend erkennt man
Gottes Hand und Finger, der gute Menschen zum Guten leitet._"

Euge looked out through the rear of the truck, at the gray landscape
rumbling away, and guessed that the journey's end was still fifteen
minutes ahead; unless his knowledge of how the Dictator's mind worked
failed him, the place would be near the wreckage of his one-time
laboratory, leveled from the air on the naive theory that some devilish
device there was broadcasting the seeds of plague....

Aching minutes that had to be soothed with words. Words--God, fate,
hope, hereafter--are man's last support when everything else has given
way. "So you accept the plague as good? I saw one of your propaganda
sheets with the phrase 'Judgment Virus'. An apt name. But it does
not judge as men do; it has its own peculiar standards, that virus
I found." Euge's voice was level, colorless; he did not look at the
others to hold their attention or to see if they were listening. "I
will tell you what it is...."



                                   2


Euge was busy in the microscope room, examining tissue from the last
run of test animals, when the communicator buzzed and told him that the
Dictator had arrived and wanted to see him at once.

He left the room by way of an airlock, in which--Dictatorial summons
notwithstanding--he spent full five minutes under a spray of
disinfectant chemicals and radiations; after the lock had cleared he
stripped off the airtight armor he wore without touching any of its
outer surfaces, and left the chamber quickly.

The Dictator's visit was a signal mark of Euge's importance, or
at least that of his virus research; there was no doubt that Euge
was highly thought of and trusted. His dossier was that of a man
who extended his scientist's worship of "Truth" even into the very
different field of human relations. The Diktatura could use such men.

Euge knew his status, had given it little thought for years. It was his
private social contract, the working agreement by which the powers that
be gave him the priceless opportunity to do research, in return for
the--to him--worthless byproducts of same.

Now, he thought as he went up in the elevator, the Dictator would
be impatient--or at least eager--to hear the results of the newest
experiments. The first tests of the new strain showed promise, by
inoculations of a monkey, _Macacus rhesus_. The last series of
experimental animals had belonged to another primate species. _Homo
sapiens._ That was the crucial proof, whether men infected with Virus
RM4-2197--R for rubeola, or measles, M4 for fourth-stage mutant, the
rest the classification number of the culture--would die swiftly,
surely, with a minimum of fuss. That was routine, too, but the results
were not.

The results had kept Euge lying awake for some nights now. Awake,
open-eyed, face to face with himself as he had not been within his
memory.

He turned briskly into the contagion laboratory, deliberately making
delay, explaining to himself that it would be best to have all the data
on the new culture at his fingertips. The big room was a jungle of
sealed glass cases where beady-eyed mice tumbled over each other, where
healthy rabbits nibbled lettuce cheek by jowl with rabbits whose bodies
seethed with mutant microbes. At the most crowded end of the room was
Novik, brightest of the skilled young men assigned as assistants and
apprentices to the great Dr. Euge, busy now with pencil and notebook,
counting dead mice.

       *       *       *       *       *

Euge looked over Novik's shoulder at the tallies. They were many. He
asked, "What does it come to?"

"So far," said Novik, "I've only been over the direct and remote cages.
But--" he gestured at the remaining glass compartments on his right,
"I'd be willing to bet the results of the delayed exposures are the
same. Contagion, one hundred per cent; mortality, one hundred per cent.
The only difference is, that where infected and healthy mice have a
screen between them, the healthy ones get it slower--a few cases at
first, then it runs right through them."

"Mmm," said Euge without enthusiasm. The figures proved nothing
new--only that the mutant virus bred true; for that matter, the 100-100
ratio of infections and deaths to exposures had been achieved already
with RM3.

Euge turned toward a double tier of cages along the side wall. These
were small, built to contain one animal apiece, ten above, ten below.
They were segregation cages; the lower tier was wired to a wall plug
through a transformer and a mildly remarkable device, consisting of
two slowly revolving, eccentric wheels and a relay, which insured that
the metal floor of the ten cages should be slightly electrified at
irregular intervals.

"Mmm," said Euge again, surveying the victims of his unorthodox
experiment. Of the ten mice in the bottom cages, not all were dead;
they had been exposed to Virus RM4 somewhat later than those in the
large cases, after the first tests on human beings; but those that
still lived were obviously breathing their last. In the upper tier,
though, seven mice were still bright-eyed and alert; two were dead, and
a third lay on its side, panting and bedraggled.

Euge swung back to Novik. "Set up fifty more segregation cages. Clear
the wired set for a repeat test. And get me half a dozen cats. And--"
he hesitated, "don't mention these experiments to the others if you
can help it; we two can handle all the necessary work."

Novik's clear eyes dwelt briefly on his superior's face, a look of
sympathetic understanding for the haggard pallor, the tired lines about
the older man's mouth. "Right," he nodded crisply.

"I'll be back by the time you're ready," said Euge. "Right now I have a
chore to do."

"The Dictator's here?"

Euge frowned. "How did you know?"

"It's plain in your face.... What are you going to tell him?"

"Tell him? Why, what he's come to hear."

       *       *       *       *       *

The Dictator was as usual splendid in uniform. His was not a garish
or offensive splendor, but beautifully tailored, pointed up with
harmonizing gleams of bright metal, like the tasteful chromium
ornaments of the luxurious modern cars and aircraft. The uniform made
his somewhat stocky figure the epitome of the new age, ruled by the
stars of technical perfection, beauty, and above all harmony. The
Diktatura was the first government which had dared to assume total
power over and total responsibility for the lives and happiness of
its people. Under the sway of its master plan, guided by its ultimate
ideology, all men and things harmonized, cooperated and coordinated;
dissonances were forbidden. And the vast harmony of a nation found its
summit and symbol in this one man, the almighty father of his people.
Without his knowledge no sparrow fell to the ground in his borders, and
in his files all the hairs of his subjects' heads were numbered.

The great Dr. Euge was only one among hundreds of millions whose work
and rewards and recreations and very thoughts were arranged for their
own benefit; but at the same time he was something more. As long as the
Diktatura was not world-wide, there would be groups and nations in the
clashing chaos beyond the frontier which plotted with envious hatred to
destroy it. The earthly paradise must be defended; Euge's position as
a top scientist in a field vital to defense elevated him almost to the
level of the politico-economic planners.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Dictator greeted Euge with a man-to-man warmth he did not use
toward those to whom he was something much like a god. "Well, doctor,
how is the health of your virus? And of those who have sampled it?"

The scientist said quietly, "Of the sixteen specimens you sent me, all
but one died within ten days after inoculation."

"Ah? And the one?"

"That is the strange thing. It would seem that--the virus has some
preference in victims."

The Dictator blinked, his most marked expression of surprise. "Explain!"

Euge's face was unreadable. "Before I go into details," he suggested,
"let us consider the nature of the perfect biological weapon."

"Perhaps you have discovered the perfect weapon?" The Dictator frowned;
"you are being obscure."

"Then," said Euge stolidly, "suppose I put it negatively. What is wrong
with most biological weapons?"

"They are treacherous."

"Exactly. Virus RM3 was our best development up to now; it has a
contagion index and mortality rate of 100, with the psychological
advantage of bringing about death in a rather repulsive fashion; it is
easily produced and distributed, and there is no known counteragent. So
it cannot be used as a weapon; it is too dangerous to the user."

"We were over that before," said the Dictator. They had been, and he
had found it hard to stomach. Especially when he reflected that the
enemy, while it was improbable they had duplicated the creation of RM3,
might have equally deadly weapons, which similar considerations would
deter them from using--unless driven to suicidal retaliation. It was
known, though, that the enemy had been fortunately slow in developing
the technique of disease mutation--the methods of irradiation,
centrifugal selection and automatic scanning which could produce and
analyze thousands of cultures at a time, compress millions of years of
micro-organic evolution into weeks or days.

"The single case of immunity to RM4," said Euge drily, "had no bases
that became evident either at once or on the closest comparison of
the physiological data, both pre-inoculation and post mortem. I was
on the point of giving up and deciding to repeat the experiment, when
it occurred to me to contact the Political Police and ask for their
dossiers on all the specimens. After a little delay, my request was
granted--"

"I know," said the Dictator impatiently; "I approved it myself."

"Well--the fifteen men who died of RM4 were run-of-the mill criminals
and political offenders--malcontents stupid enough to express
themselves antisocially. But the survivor was a Witness of the Lord--a
religious maniac, arrested for overstepping the limits of toleration
in an impromptu sermon. A man of scanty intelligence, barely above the
euthanasia level.

"Those facts, however, were less interesting than the letter attached
to the dossier. It stated that, after a review of the case inspired by
my particular interest in it, the Political Police had concluded that
the man's arrest had been a mistake. You know that those fanatics,
though not our most desirable elements, are mostly harmless and even
useful, with their 'whatever is, is right' theology. This one's loyalty
seems to have been beyond question."

The Dictator's eyes glowed with a sudden energy. "When the Popo admits
a mistake, there's really been one!" His breath whistled between his
teeth. "I--begin to--see." He started pacing up and down the room. "The
perfect weapon--an intelligent virus!"

"Not intelligent," denied Euge heavily. "The day we develop a thinking
virus here--a thing I do not believe possible--I will call for an
atomic bomb to be dropped on the laboratory. RM4, evolved from an
encephalitic measles strain, attacks primarily the brain--as it
seems now, only certain types of brains. Of course, the data are
insufficient. Some of the lower animals tested were immune--but you
can't draw safe analogies between animals and men. I'll need more human
material."

"You'll get it!" The Dictator halted and stood very straight,
glittering impressively in his uniform. "How many--"

"This time I will need a control...."



                                   3


So twenty-five healthy privates of the Dictator's Honor Guard,
handpicked for courage, rigid honesty and selfless loyalty to the
leader, were hospitalized and injected with potent doses of viciously
lethal culture RM4-2197. They were told that it was a new immunization
which would soon become regulation throughout the armed forces.
And twenty-five prisoners, likewise healthy save for the twist in
their minds that made them seditionists and rebels instead of Honor
Guardsmen, received the same injection and were told the same story.

The results were almost fantastically satisfactory. The twenty-five
convicts died, one and all, with the uncontrolled spasms and
twitchings, lapsing into stupor, that told of the virus' progress
in the higher nerve centers. Their isolated barracks, together with
the unimportant orderlies who had cared for it and the victims, were
sterilized, almost obliterated by caustic chemicals and flame. Meantime
the Honor Guard in their separate quarantine rolled dice and exchanged
dirty jokes and felt no ill effects.

The Dictator had commanded that he be first to know the outcome; he,
who fancied himself as a poet of human destiny, also liked to think
that he had a scientific mind, and in this matter, on which the world's
future might hinge, he wished to make his own observations and draw
his own conclusions. But promptly after receiving the news he visited
Euge again to shower him with jubilant congratulations.

"Now," he announced fervently, "we must have a final experiment, to
be wholly sure. One on a far grander scale than before--than any
experiment ever was before! I want a large supply of Virus RM4, in
sealed cylinders of five or six liters each, under pressure. Prepared
as for military use, you understand. The rest I will take care of."

Euge bowed his head in acquiescence, and refrained from mentioning his
mice.

       *       *       *       *       *

Long rows of glass cells where mice lived and died by ones and twos
and threes, were in the contagion laboratory, where by Euge's orders
only he and Novik worked now. Less flamboyantly than the Dictator, Euge
liked to be sure, and he repeated his experiments doggedly until the
statistical results leveled off at well-defined norms.

Infected mice, segregated in solitary confinement, developed symptoms
and died in the ratio of sixty-five out of a hundred. Among similarly
exposed animals distributed two to a cage, the mortality averaged
somewhat over eighty-seven per cent. In threes, ninety-six per cent.
And when he tried isolating a hundred mice, four to a cage, all of them
died. In every case, if one mouse in a group took the disease, so did
the rest.

That was not unreasonable. Re-exposure by contact with more susceptible
specimens.... But Euge played with his apparent immunes. He rigged a
number of cages so that the occupants, their food and their water were
constantly under a fine mist of virus poison. And only a couple of
them died. Then, with difficulty and some danger, working in armor, he
opened the cages and shifted the living mice about, breaking up groups
and creating new ones. In the next few days, the immunes' mortality
rate was better than forty per cent.

And in an adjoining storeroom, cleared for the purpose, Euge set up
another and cruder experiment. Mice that had survived exposure to RM4
were imprisoned in sealed glass runs, and in the room at large were let
loose the half-dozen lean alley cats that Novik had procured. The cats
roamed hungrily about, mewed and clawed at the glass and had difficulty
understanding that there was no way of getting at the mice. And the
mice, likewise deceived, ran and squeaked in terror--and quickly
succumbed to the convulsions and lethargy of encephalitis.

But when he provided opaque shelters, where the mice could conceal
themselves part of the time, most of them remained immune.

The cats, Euge determined, were wholly immune; massive injections of
the virus did no more than infuriate them. Sleeping fitfully in the
small hours, he had nightmares in which the carnivora inherited an
Earth from which men and rodents had vanished.

That was only one of his nightmares. He was as phlegmatic as a man need
be in his line of work, but now his peace of mind had gone glimmering,
and he was at odds with his world. From the time when mature reflection
had replaced the last sparks of youthful rebellion in him, he had
been a faithful and coddled servant of the Diktatura, but now he was
increasingly certain that his failure to make known his new data was
treason. A fatalistic streak tried to comfort him, whispering that even
if he spoke it would make no difference.

Of only one thing was he sure: he wanted to know....

       *       *       *       *       *

The Dictator took some time in the preparation of the experiment. A
city of twenty thousand people had to be isolated temporarily from the
rest of the country, and unobtrusively surrounded with troops, guns and
bombers, in case things went disastrously wrong.

The isolation was accomplished, by means of a complete embargo on
land and air transportation out of the test area, only an hour before
a few small planes droned over the city, trailing an impalpable and
invisible mist of virus-laden solution. The published and broadcast
reason for the emergency measures was truthfully plausible--a
threatened outbreak of disease, understood to be sleeping sickness. The
difference in symptoms between ordinary _encephalitis lethargica_ and
that produced by RM4 was so slight that few if any of the doctors who
were shipped into the city recognized anything peculiar in the cases
they treated, apart from the high--100%--fatality. It was not necessary
that they know any better, since they were only a part of the ardently
pursued campaign to allay public suspicion and anxiety and prevent an
undesirable panic.

The soothing propaganda and example of the authorities, and the
diligence of the Popo agents who swarmed in the stricken area, were so
successful that no mass plague-terror reared its head, though the death
toll during the three weeks it took for the epidemic to run its course
climbed to almost a thousand.

Several doctors and a couple of secret policemen contracted the
disease, and, of course, died. That was fair enough, but a far more
untoward incident came near marring the Dictator's pleasure in his
experiment.

Chaber, the Popo chief, crossing the country on one of his frequent
incognito tours, happened to be caught in the test city's railway
station by the travel interdict. It took him more than an hour to
convince the distracted officials in charge of enforcing the ban that
a man in his position was above such things, so that he and his aides
were still there when the virus-carrying planes did their job.

The Dictator, receiving belated word, was furious. A flying squad of
Honor Guardsmen intercepted Chaber's private train, ran it onto a
siding and held the police chief and his staff there in something very
like arrest. True, the Dictator sent a message to assure Chaber that
the quarantine was a purely temporary result of someone else's mistake,
and that matters would soon be cleared up....

For Chaber they never were. He died eight days later in the coma of
RM4 infection. Most of his aides preceded or followed him by a day or
so; and when the last radioed reports indicated that the contagion was
spreading to the Guards, the Dictator gave horrified orders and the
plague-infested train was set on fire by incendiary bombs.

About the same time, past one o'clock in the morning, Dr. Euge was
dragged out of bed and haled unceremoniously before the Dictator.

The scientist listened dispassionately to his first news of Chaber's
misfortune and to excited demands for an explanation. He was more at
peace with himself now than he had been for long; he was prepared to
lie coldly and directly, to ensure the unfolding of events to their
logical conclusion. But no lie seemed to be needed yet.

"I would suggest," said Euge calmly, "that you impound the deceased's
papers and personal effects, and subject them to rigorous examination.
You may find the reason for his death--about which I know no more than
you."

Euge cooled his heels under house arrest for twenty-four hours before
he was summoned again to the Dictator's presence. The leader was
himself again; he greeted Euge with that warm smile which had made more
impressionable men fall at his feet in adoration.

"You were right, doctor. The man was, if not an actual traitor, at
least a potential one; he was slyly subverting the loyalty of his
immediate subordinates, with the idea of making himself paramount in
the government. His death becomes a striking demonstration of your
virus's value." A new shadow passed over the Dictator's face as he
recalled how he had trusted Chaber. "I think," he mused aloud, "we
will prepare RM4 injections for all the more strategically placed
personnel of the Political Police and--yes, the Guards too. Eventually,
it would be a good idea to blanket the whole country with the virus."
The Dictator brightened again. "For the rest, the results of the
large-scale test were highly gratifying."

"Indeed," said Euge without surprise.

"You can study the figures if you like. Comparison of the death-list
with police files shows that the vast majority of the affected were
people with criminal records or known deviationist tendencies. A city
rid of human vermin at one stroke! Now nothing can stop us."

"No," said Euge.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Diktatura worked fast. The new mass-production forced-culture
techniques obviated the difficulties of producing great quantities of
the new virus within a short period, and when the armed forces received
the order for the minor operation of occupying two small, ideologically
hostile countries on the border, there was already enough RM4 on hand
for a major war.

In that lightning trial campaign, the new weapon was still used
sparingly and with caution. In combination with more conventional
offensive measures, it proved itself nobly. The Diktatura's shock
troops rolled into cities of the dead, saw whole countrysides unpeopled
almost overnight by the mutant plague. Few of the invaders, picked,
loyal men that they were, succumbed; but even after the guns had fallen
silent, the pestilence continued to stalk unchecked and uncheckable
among the subjected peoples.

The Dictator weighed the reports that piled up on his desk. The
plague's existence and origin were no longer secrets to anyone whose
knowledge or lack of it mattered. The Diktatura's most potent rival
had already closed its borders and begun a formidable mobilization.
The time for a public announcement had arrived; the enemy would fear
to believe it, but the revelation of the invincible weapon would do
wonders for home morale.

       *       *       *       *       *

Novik walked the streets in a daze, torn by recurring doubts. He
had left the laboratory and flown to the capital without Dr. Euge's
knowledge, but now the image of the gray scientist, his approval of
Novik, his trust in Novik, rose up to torment him. He could not even
guess at Euge's motives, but he felt morally certain they were against
the nation's interests. And the nation, he knew as everyone knew today,
was on the threshold of war. Of Victory. That was the word that had
been given them for years with their food and drink, held shining
before them upon the straight and narrow way....

The air was filled with Victory. It blared and glared from the public
television screens on the street corners, in brazen anthems, in a
familiar voice that swelled in triumphant oratory, battered its phrases
into Novik's numb consciousness.

"Announcement to the people ... the day, the hour are at hand ...
Victory! Against the corrupt and vicious barbarians, the slimy foes of
progress, the enslavers of humanity ... Victory!"

From all the corners, from the big screens, glittered the Dictator,
above the crowds that gathered and shoved each other and hurrahed his
words. Novik stared with smarting eyes; his head buzzed and he could
not assemble his thoughts. He turned away and plodded on, and on
the next corner met again the voice and gestures of the leader, his
compelling gaze from the glowing screen.

"History demands that we prevail. If any fresh proof of that fact
were needed--as all of you know that it is not--it would be provided
by the new scientific discovery which at the same time reaffirms the
fundamental, objective truth of our way of life and thought, and
provides us with the ultimate weapon for enforcing our way on the
backward regions of the world....

"Only evil men, warped minds oppose us. The virus attacks such minds
and completes the ruin which their own perversion has begun. Those who
are clean and upright in thought and deed, loyal to their fatherland
and the great idea of the Diktatura, have nothing to fear from it; they
are immune. Therefore we can use it as a weapon without apprehension
or compunction, for we shall only be wiping out the vermin of the
Earth...."

Novik started to run. Heart thudding, breath rasping in his throat, he
shouldered through the ecstatically listening crowds. In their ears he
screamed: "It's not so! We mustn't use it!"

They stared after him, some shouted "Stop him!" but no one wanted to
miss the Dictator's epoch making speech.

It was over a mile to the Dictatorial palace, and Novik ran all the
way. He was reeling with exhaustion when he got there, and he had to
lean against a pillar and wrestle with nausea for a time before he
was able to produce his wallet and show the card in it to the tall
Guardsman at the gate.

The Guardsman raised his eyebrows; the disheveled and panting young man
before him didn't look much like a Popo agent.

Beyond the gates, though, Novik encountered officials who knew him,
and in a remarkably short time he was led before the Dictator. Since
Chaber's demise, the leader had appointed no successor to the post,
taking care of the most important police matters himself. Now he was
still flushed from his speech to the people and delighted by the first
reports of the people's reaction.

Novik faced the Dictator, holding himself erect with an effort. He
said thickly, "Agent Novik reporting, sir, in the case of Dr. Joseph
Euge...."

"What's the matter with you?" The Dictator stared at him from under
knitting brows. "Are you drunk?"

"He is a traitor," said Novik. "He has withheld information ... vital
to defense...."

"Eh? You mean Euge? What information?"

"His experiments ... the mice. Been doing them for months."

"For months? Then why haven't you reported it before?"

"Another traitor," mumbled Novik. He swayed unsteadily on his feet,
caught himself with a peculiar jerk; his eyes were somnolent. Before
them the Dictator blurred in a bright painful glitter of metal. Two
Dictators, shining and terrible here at the end of the world. "The
virus ... not a weapon. Not to be used, because ... it's death.
It's ... fear...."

The Dictator recoiled, recognizing the red-rimmed vacant eyes, the
twitching face of the young man. He opened his mouth to say too much,
and held his breath; then he stiffened and ordered harshly: "Take him!
Take him away!"



                                   4


During the speech to the people, the first rockets had already risen
from their scattered launching sites and were soaring at ten, fifteen,
twenty miles per second over continents and oceans. The enemy was not
unprepared; his immensely complex and expensive systems of warning
and defense, radar-eyed, electric-nerved and robot-brained, were
fully on. But that defense setup, which laced a whole nation and
concentrated bristlingly over the great cities, was designed primarily
to detect, deflect and destroy projectiles with atomic warheads,
which must approach within a few miles of their targets to do damage.
The bombardment rockets of the Diktatura burst quietly high in the
stratosphere, before very many of them were met and annihilated by
the interceptor barrage. Their cargoes dispersed earthward in a rain
of little protective plastic globes, which, as they fell through the
warm restless levels of the troposphere, darkened and shriveled in a
fantastically swift chemical decay, and spewed their liquid contents in
a fine spray into the air.

Six days before--the virus' average incubation period--the code word
had been sent out to the spies and the native fifth columnists who
served the Diktatura for pay or loyalty's sake. It was their mission to
distribute the small quantities of Virus RM4 which had been smuggled
to them, in such a way as to make the plague's initial onslaught as
paralysing as possible. The enemy's total destruction in the end was
foregone; but his power to strike back must be cut down to a minimum.

The broadcasts and the headlines continued to proclaim to the nation
that this was Victory Day.

       *       *       *       *       *

Euge had cleared away the remains of his experiments methodically.
There was nothing more to be learned that way, and most of the
establishment was converted now to helping in the mass production of
Virus RM4. Euge locked up the contagion laboratory and settled down
by his private televisor to observe the progress of the ultimate
experiment, whose laboratory was the world.

Guessing as he did the reason for Novik's failure to return, he was
little surprised or alarmed when a half-dozen booted Guardsmen clumped
in on him, and their leader informed him that he was again confined to
quarters.

"If the Dictator wishes to see me--" began Euge politely.

"The Dictator's busy," said the squad leader. "He'll talk to you in due
time."

"I understand," Euge nodded resignedly, and turned back to his
newscasts.

His own name was repeated in them with considerable frequency, and
recorded pictures of him were broadcast. He was understood to be a
modest hero of science, with a passion for anonymity. In the Dictator's
due time, Euge realized, he might receive the accolade of a martyr to
science.

He passed over the mentions of himself impatiently. Once he had rather
liked the modicum of glory and the comfort that the Diktatura granted
him in return for his work, but now he was down to basic motives, and
his desire to live was largely a product of his avid curiosity to see
what the offspring of his curiosity would do to mankind's world.

The picture emerged but slowly from behind the bright parade of
censored reports; only for one like Euge, who had some experience of
the government's inside ways and who, moreover, knew better than any
other living man what to expect, did it emerge at all.

It was evident before long that the enemy's resistance was greater than
anticipated. Easy to say "according to plan", but it was impossible to
ignore or gloss over the news when enemy atomic rockets leaked through
the defenses, and a city here or there puffed skyward in a pillar of
smoke and flame. Or when highflying enemy machines sowed the seeds of
a controllable, but extremely nasty epidemic, which touched even the
capital.

The fifth-column offensive must have failed miserably. Naturally, the
first to die in the enemy's country would have been those entrusted
with spreading the plague. Euge wondered if the Dictator had found that
out, and if so, what he thought about it.

Never acknowledged, but quickly apparent to the expectant Euge from
certain veiled illusions, denials and instructions that came over the
air, was the beginning spread of RM4, in its active and lethal form
(the latent infection must be almost universal now), among the people
of the Diktatura. In his head Euge kept a map, in which the increasing
areas that the newscasts never mentioned were represented by creeping
splotches of blackness. When he examined and revised it, he was wont
to lean back with closed eyes, on his lips a faint smile that made his
guards look uneasily at one another.

Immured, Euge had no means of learning directly what spirit was abroad
in the masses. But he could make shrewd deductions from the changing
tones of the propaganda directed at them. Within the space of less than
a month, it shifted from paeans of celebration for a quick and easy
conquest to the harsh task of inspiring a fiercely realistic, do-or-die
determination, to which Victory was once again a far wandering fire,
beckoning out of storm and darkness ahead.

Realism went as far as an admission that the initial biological attack
had failed to fulfill the hopes pinned on it. The plague had taken hold
and spread slowly, but, on the bright side, it was doing its work now
all the more thoroughly.... There followed a map, showing the estimated
extent of plague areas in the enemy lands, and an extrapolation by
noted pathologists of the time that must pass, the time that must be
endured with courage, fortitude and hard work, before the foe would be
blotted from the face of the Earth.

Euge closed his eyes and made comparisons with his private map and with
his extrapolations from it, and he smiled unpleasantly yet again.

He asked for and received a bundle of newspapers; it was among those
there chanced to be an ill-printed pamphlet issued by the Witnesses of
the Lord, which stated positively that, had the original experiments
been correctly understood, it would have been plain at once that
RM4 was the Judgment Virus, come to slay the wicked and spare the
righteous, whose lintels were sprinkled with blood....

Euge read the pamphlet through with a sharp quickening of interest, but
when he had finished he shook his head sadly.

       *       *       *       *       *

He was brought before the Dictator for the last time.

The leader's eyes were sunken and spoke of sleepless nights. They
rested on Euge with the cold impersonal enmity of a snake's.

"You lied to me," he stated flatly.

"No," denied the scientist. "I let you interpret the data in your own
way. It is not my fault that you believed what you wanted to believe."

The Dictator strove visibly to say what he had planned. "I have
recalled you, despite grave suspicions, to--to appeal for assistance.
Perhaps you have had pacifist sentiments all along--" Euge made a
scornful gesture. "In any case, it is no longer a question of making
war. The enemy has practically ceased to fight, now it is the plague
that must be conquered--"

"I imagine," said Euge softly, "that your statisticians have told you
that RM4 will be pandemic in this country as soon as, or before, it is
in the enemy's."

The other's mouth twitched. "You performed exhaustive experiments with
the plague; you hold the key to its nature and possibly to a remedy."

"It is true that I learned something about the virus' _raison d'etre_.
Novik must have told you about it. There was nothing which pointed to
a preventive, let alone a cure, at this stage. I am no immunologist,
anyway."

"Novik said," the Dictator's eyes narrowed, "'It is fear!'"

Euge nodded with satisfaction. "He was right. The virus attacks only
brains that are already sick with fear. Not--my results with mice
indicated--the normal alarm of a healthy organism, which expresses
itself in flight or fight, but the pathological anxiety-state that come
of an inescapable threat or frustration in the environment, and that
turns itself so easily into feelings of guilt or hatred.... The fear of
the criminal, the neurotic, the paranoiac."

"Then all that is needed is to stamp out such elements, the focus of
infection!"

Euge looked at him with open amusement. "You're welcome to try it. But
remember--we are at war now. The psychology of the people is fear, like
that of the criminal, the hunted hunter, the hated hater, perhaps the
guilty.... As long as there was peace, the Diktatura gave most of us
security, reasonable happiness, freedom from fear. The same is true of
the enemy's government, however short it may have fallen of ours. But a
nation at war is a nation afraid.

"And RM4 is a successful mutation," added Euge didactically. "It
creates the thing it feeds on. One of the most basic fears in men
or mice--the fear of one's own dead. Thanks to that, the plague is
independent now of anything you do or leave undone."

The Dictator stared smolderingly. He spoke with bitter irony, "You awe
me, doctor. You are a traitor to your country and to all mankind. Yet
you seem to consider yourself justified."

Euge shrugged. "I am a scientist; I deal in questions of what can be
done. It is left to you politicians to concern yourselves with what
should be."

The Dictator choked, recognizing his own doctrine.
"Irresponsibility--science!" His face flamed with finally unleashed
passion. "If I survive this, I'll see to exterminating the whole breed
of scientists!"

Euge studied him coolly. "You won't survive; you are afraid."

       *       *       *       *       *

Bent over his desk, the Dictator struggled to compose a speech to the
people--one that would reassure, enhearten, inflame the blackening
coals of hope.

He wrote: "There is nothing to fear but fear. A way will be found...."
He scowled at the shaky hand-writing of the last line, scratched it out
angrily and began again.

"A way will be found...." But his fingers twitched convulsively with
the pen, and the sentence trailed into a senseless scrawl.

       *       *       *       *       *

The truck swung round and lurched to a halt not far from the road, and
they saw that there would be no grave--only a stretch of wild, rank
weeds in a wet meadow.

"So," said Joseph Euge in the same weary monotone, "there will be an
end of man--unless somewhere on Earth are found men without fear."

He flinched from the prodding bayonet of a frightened man in a terrible
mask, and stumbled stiffly to his feet.



*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Righteous plague" ***


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