Hooded Swan - The Paradise Game Part 10

-Wrong.

It's still the way it's going to be.

He lapsed into silence. Everybody wanted me to be a hero. Well, you don't have to be a hero to stay on the right side of yourself in this day and age, and I was pretty sure that the best thing was to play along.

So I kept walking.

We made pretty slow progress, and it took us a lot longer than it might have to get us into the neighbourhood of the field. Once we were within shouting distance, we had to be even more careful.

Varly knew full well that the field was crawling with black-shirts. But he also knew that the Swan wasn't far from the edge.

He made us work our way slowly out around the perimeter, keeping very quiet. By this time it was almost totally dark in the forest, and Varly was breathing down our necks in order to stay certain that he could fry us with a twitch of his finger.

Finally, he stopped us, and then pushed us forward out of the undergrowth. We were hidden from the main part of the field by a low heap of rubble.

"Go forward," he said to me. "Stand straight and walk a dead straight line. I'm going to be right behind you."

"I can't," I said.

I felt the gun barrel drill into my back.

"Why not?" he hissed. His lips were right next to my ear, and I could feel the moisture on his hot breath.

"Because there's a hole there," I told him.

He drew in his breath sharply, and I could tell that he was mad. "Then go around the hole," he said. His voice sounded absolutely tortured, as if he were in pain.

I took one half-stride forward on to the heap of loose dirt, and I felt the point of the gun run right down my spine. I half turned, to glance back. In the darkness, I wasn't sure, and I daren't act on the slender evidence of my eyes, but it seemed to me that Varly was using the rifle for support, with the barrel jammed into the ground. But he knew I'd turned, and he swayed back, bringing the barrel up again.

"Move," he said, his voice rising slightly in pitch and volume, as though it were pa.s.sing beyond his control.

"Get moving," he hissed. There was faint light glinting off the rifle, and it was glinting off his face as well.

He had a high fever. The instant I guessed, he knew that I knew. He dropped the gun from lifeless fingers.

"It's too late," he said. "For G.o.d's sake, get me to the ship!" He moved forward, pushing in between us, scrambled his way to the top of the pile of dirt, and fell headlong.

He didn't join the long-dead beast in the hole, but remained atop the heap, sprawled over the ridge in an ungainly spread of arms and legs. His face was upturned, and by the lights that were shining all over the field I could see that it was soaked and twisted. His eyes were open, and red with broken veins in the sclerotic.

"What happened?" said Eve. "What did you do to him?

"I didn't do a thing," I said. "There's something wrong with him."

He was very still. I picked up his wrist very gingerly, and searched for a pulse. I lifted his hand high, and dropped it.

"He's dead," I said.

"Just like that?" she asked, unable to credit it.

"Just like that," I confirmed.

"He looked all right when we first saw him," she said. "That was less than an hour ago. And he sounded..."

"Well, he wasn't all right," I said.

'Whatever he had..." said Eve.

"He's given to us," I finished for her. "Me, at least. Let's get back to the ship."

We left him lying there and we ran back to the Swan. The outer lock was open, and Johnny was waiting just inside.

"Get Just," I told him, making my voice sound urgent. "And don't touch either of us."

I pushed Eve into the decontamination chamber, and I got in with her. The jets came on, and we packed all our clothing into plastic bags and sealed them. Then we packed ourselves into plastic bags and sealed them. I connected oxygen bottles to Eve's suit and then to mine. I shut the lock from within the chamber, and fried every germ that might be lurking there. Then we came out of the chamber.

Johnny, Keith Just, and Nick delArco were all outside waiting for us. Five was about all the deck could hold.

"I want everybody into the chamber, one by one, in double quick time," I said. "I want everyone into suits. That lock stays shut until further notice. n.o.body goes out. Nick, you'd better tell Charlot that Varly's outside on the edge of the field and he's died of something not very pleasant. I'm going up to the control room to start broadcasting warnings. I don't know what killed him but I'm taking no risks."

Nick didn't bother hanging around to tell me that Pharos was as safe as they come, that there was no conceivable possibility of infection, that there weren't any diseases on Pharos. He knew as well as I did that no risk was worth taking. He went to tell Charlot.

I went up the stairs to the control room as fast as was humanly possible. I sat in the cradle and fixed up a beep that would raise the dead in Capella's place.

I got an immediate answer-they probably had someone on permanent duty keeping in touch with the ship.

He started to swear at me but I stopped him.

"Never mind that," I said. "This is Grainger at the Hooded Swan. Find Capella and Ullman as soon as possible, and I mean instantly. Tell them Varly's dead and tell them something killed him. Got that?"

"There's someone on his way," said the voice at the other end. "They'll both know within minutes."

"Right. Then get all this as well. You recording?"

"Yes."

"Varly is on top of a heap of dirt at the edge of the field near the Hooded Swan. Don't anyone go near him without suiting up. I don't know what he died of but it killed him in a matter of minutes."

Another voice cut in. "This is Ullman. What the h.e.l.l is this all about?"

"I'm broadcasting a plague warning," I told him.

"A plague warning! You know d.a.m.n well this planet is clean! What are you trying to pull? You can't get us off this world with a silly d.a.m.n story like that."

"I don't want you off this world, right now," I told him. "I don't want anybody off this world. It's entirely in the cards that no one will be allowed to leave this world for a long time to come. You'd better get Merani and Kerman and all their boys out here to the field, because there's more urgent work for them to do than playing word games with aliens. They'd better take that corpse apart in a hurry and find out exactly what turned it into a corpse."

"I still think this is a trick," said Ullman.

"Don't be a fool," I said. "What the h.e.l.l do we stand to gain?"

"It's a biological impossibility for there to be any kind of infection here," he said.

"Well, Varly died of something," I said. "I don't say that it's alien. He might have brought it with him. One of your boys might have brought it in. But one thing's certain-that man's dead, and if I were you I'd get every man on the ground into a decontam suit"

"Well," said Ullman, "That's exactly what we'll do. Every last G.o.dd.a.m.n man. But you'd better be right."

I switched off the circuit "Yeah," I murmured. "Or else what?"

Charlot came into the control room, looking grotesque inside his body-shaped plastic bag. "It's impossible," he said.

"Yeah," I said. "I know it's impossible. But I've been in s.p.a.ce a good long while, and I know that when you see a man lying dead with an expression on his face like that one had, with the blood and the sweat still oozing out of him, you don't hang around trying to find out how the impossible didn't happen to be impossible after all. You start screaming, and when you've screamed enough, you start praying that you haven't got it. You should be all right- you haven't been outside all day. But I've walked a mile and more with that b.a.s.t.a.r.d breathing all over me and it was me had to hold his hand to find out that he was an ex-human. So don't start accusing me of panic. If I'd panicked I'd have spread this thing over every inch of the field by now."

There was a sudden loud beep, and I grabbed at the call circuit switch.

"This is the Hooded Swan," I said.

"This is Srinjat Merani," said the other. "I think we'd better keep this circuit open, and hook every man on the ground into it. I've quarantined the camp and asked Ullman to fly decontam equipment out here with all possible speed. We have plague in the camp, Mr. Grainger. The situation is desperate."

You're telling me, I said under my breath.

"Well," I said to Charlot, "it might be impossible, but the miracle which will save Pharos has just arrived in our midst. We have a new problem now."

He looked really sick. I guess I didn't look any too good myself.

14.

Once everybody aboard was fully clad in transparent plastic, we gathered to discuss the gravity of the situation. By "we" I mean crew-Keith Just and his numerous guests were confined to the lower deck.

By the time Eve arrived, Charlot had already ascertained to his satisfaction that I was not feeling plagued. Despite the fact that I had been all day at the camp and a fair time that evening in Varly's company I did not have a single symptom. So far. This did not, of course, mean that I was in the clear.

We knew nothing about the incubation period of whatever it was that had killed Varly.

"How are you feeling?" Charlot demanded of Eve.

"All right," she answered, sounding a little apprehensive.

"You mean that?" he persisted. "This is no time for valiant courage. Do you feel anything?"

"There's nothing wrong that I can detect," she said.

"Captain?"

"I'm fine," said Nick. "A little tired, but apart from that I've never been fitter."

"Johnny?"

"Not so good," said Johnny. There was a sudden profound silence. This was the answer that no one had expected. Eve and I had been exposed, Nick could well have encountered the bug any time during the last couple of days. But Johnny hadn't been off the field since the first day except when he had accompanied the rest of us into town. If anyone should have escaped, it ought to be Johnny.

"How do you feel?" demanded Charlot, his voice cold and cutting.

"I've been bad for three or four hours," said Johnny. "Nothing much-didn't seem to be serious. Just an upset stomach, mild diarrhoea. I feel a bit hot, and my mouth's dry, but that might be the worry."

"It can't be the same thing," I said. "It killed Varly in a matter of an hour."

"Don't be a fool," said Charlot. "How do you know how he was feeling when he first picked you up?"

"True," I conceded unhappily. My comment had been motivated by hope and the desire to rea.s.sure Johnny rather than by medical confidence.

"Now think'" said Charlot. "During the last two days, have you done anything at all that might have exposed you-and only you-to any kind of disease-carrying agent?"

It was a difficult question. What, on Pharos, could possibly be a disease-carrying agent? Nothing to bite him, nothing to sting him. The only disease-carrying agents on Pharos, so far as we knew, were ourselves. And it was a dead certainty that n.o.body from Caradoc or Aegis would be carrying anything like what had killed Varly.

"There was the fight," said Johnny. "I picked up some bruises. I guess that's the most likely. I messed about in some of the Caradoc diggings, but I showed Grainger what I found there, and some of the Caradoc men were down in the hole at one point, looking at the bones. The only other thing...but that couldn't have been it."

"Tell me," demanded Charlot "I'll make the judgements."

"This morning. I was...talking, you know, just...playing about...with some of the aliens. They came out of the forest to look around. I just wanted a close look at them."

"No good," I said. "We've all been hobn.o.bbing with aliens longer than that."

"Varly's last-known contact was an alien," said Nick. "He killed one."

"Merani and his team have been working closely with the aliens," said Eve, sounding just a fraction stricken.

"They've been working with them for months," I said. "I've been in contact with them. So has t.i.tus. And the Aegis people."

"Just a minute," said Johnny.

Silence fell again. We all thought he'd remembered something else-we were all waiting for the vital revelation.

"The Aegis people," he said. "Some of them ... I think they had diarrhoea too."

"But they've been locked up down there!" I protested.

"That's right," said Johnny. "The only people they could have caught it from today are me and Just. But yesterday...they were anywhere and everywhere."

"Stay here!" ordered t.i.tus. He strode out of the control room and clattered down to the lower decks.