Hooded Swan - The Paradise Game Part 15

Well before the hour was up, the technical staff began to filter back and make ready for the crucial explorations. We were all herded out, then, while the medical staff got on with their job. We might just as well have gone back to the Swan, or even gone sightseeing, but we remained outside Markoff's copter, waiting.

We were joined by other men, alerted by the grapevine that affairs were coming to a head. After an hour or so had pa.s.sed we were no longer a group but a crowd. By the time two hours had slipped by we were a very anxious and disturbed crowd. The doctors seemed to be in no hurry to put us out of our misery. There wasn't a man present who wasn't sick in his stomach at the thought that the supposed cure might not have worked. But we all continued to wait, constantly recharging ourselves with hope-hope that inside the 'copter they were merely sweeping away the last shreds of doubt-making absolutely certain that when someone appeared to give us the news it would be the goods.

We were well into the third hour, really feeling the heat of the sun through our clear plastic suits, when we were finally and irrevocably released from our misery. It was Markoff who made the announcement.

All he said was: "It works."

The crowd broke up just like that, and scattered. Everyone wanted to be first home with the news.

n.o.body but Nick and myself had come out from the Hooded Swan, and we both knew there was no point in making a race of it. We went back together, exchanging no words. We got into the airlock together, and when the inner door swung open, I waved him through. He was better equipped to deliver the release than I was.

It was me that had to tell them how, though. That was the task for which I was singularly well equipped, in that it was my mental parasite who had made the crucial suggestion. The Aegis people only wanted to know that everything was OK, but Just, Eve, and Johnny hung around while I showed off.

"It's quite simple," I a.s.sured them, "once you've thought of it. The viruses are initially carried into your body cells by bacteria. Once there, however, they invade cells in the gut lining, and ultimately establish themselves in nerve cells of the autonomic nervous system. The bacteria, of course, remained infected and potentially capable of infecting others, but they weren't any real problem to deal with, using ordinary antibiotic measures.

"The viruses, however, were more difficult. They existed in two forms-one, a dormant ring-form in the cytoplasm of the cell, caused no trouble at all. But when the ring-form broke and attached itself to the chromosomes in the nucleus, there was minor trouble caused by malfunctions of the autonomic nervous system. This happened in ninety percent of us. The symptoms weren't serious-just the sickness and general debility a.s.sociated with minor infections. But this was only c.o.c.king the gun.

"The viruses also had a trigger which could make them subvert the entire energy of the cells, replicate themselves vastly, and re-infect millions of other cells throughout the body. We a.s.sumed to begin with that this trigger would be activated by chemical changes a.s.sociated with aggressiveness and anger. But the glandular effects aren't the only physiological evidence of emotion-there's quite marked electrical activity in the brain. The ma.s.s currents in the brain are always confused with all sorts of other electrical activity, but the mentality of an organism isn't wholly confined to the brain and the central nervous system.

For every gross change in the electrical activity of the brain, there is a distinct 'echo current' in the autonomic nervous system. It was a certain breed of echo current that was supposed to trigger the chromosomally-located virus, just as it was a certain breed of echo current that caused the ring-form to break, migrate to the nucleus and locate in the first place.

"This two-level activity was what initially offered the hope of a cure. The Pharos life-system as a whole has a far higher level of total organisation than do Terrestrial-type life-systems, and its evolution at a molecular level has produced an extremely high level of electrical sensitivity about the molecular organisations employed in living tissue. Once Markoff had obtained a computer-model of the electrical patterns in the viruses-which was far easier than trying to build an absolute electrochemical model-it was only a matter of plotting the electrical interchanges which would take place between the viruses and various external charge-patterns. Echo currents can also be induced in the autonomic nervous system externally, by stimulating the hypothalamus, or even the inner ear. Eventually, Markoff and Charlot discovered a pattern which will not only deactivate the trigger but dismantle the virus. They can set up that pattern quite easily- they'll use the implanted electrodes in your case, Eve, and in mine. Other people will have to accept a little more discomfort, but they have the choice of electrode treatment and subsonic treatment "We've already done almost everything necessary to exterminate the bacteria that carry the viruses-once our insides are clean as well we can all go home. There'll be quarantine, of course, but it will only be a matter of a few weeks on a s.p.a.ce station or on a dead world somewhere. The Caradoc people have agreed to abandon the world, and I think it's only a matter of time before New Rome proscribes it.

They'll put a ship in orbit around it, to maintain a watch over the world, but that's all."

"Where do we start lining up?" Johnny wanted to know.

"It'll take time," I told him. "There's a lot of men with bellyaches down here. We can bring Merani's people back now, and the Caradoc people can start dismantling their town, provided that Holcomb and his excitable friend left them enough equipment to do it with. It'll be several days before everyone's been treated, and you can't expect to feel better instantaneously. But we'll be off this world in less than a week.

All of us."

"What are they going to do with the virus?" asked Just. I had been talking quite long enough for him to get over the burst of elation which must have accompanied the news that he was going to live to enforce the law on some other innocent world. He was from New Rome, and while he wasn't the brightest peace officer I'd ever encountered he knew about the cold war that was brewing between the current aristocracy and the companies.

"I don't know," I told him. "Your guess is probably a lot better than mine."

"People are going to want to use this stuff," he said.

"Dead right," I agreed.

"On criminals," he said.

"And slaves," I said. "And political enemies. And on a lot of other people."

"It could solve a lot of problems."

"And create a lot more."

He turned away. I knew he had a lot of thinking to do. But most of it would be personal. The ship that had come out from New Rome hadn't come for the ride.

I realised that it was time to start being frightened of Caradoc again. It was time to resume worrying about that battleship and the way it had spewed troops out all over the sky of a world where it had no business to be.

It was over-on Pharos. But it would continue, somewhere else.

21.

Quarantine was a welcome rest. It would have been far more welcome had we not had to share the facilities with twelve hundred Caradoc men. Mostly soldiers. But I did manage to join that card game, ultimately, and I didn't do too badly out of it.

The man who benefited most from the days with nothing to do but warm our backsides was t.i.tus Charlot. It was probably the first time in years he'd taken a real rest, and it gave him a chance to recover as much as possible from the deterioration of his health which had afflicted him on Pharos long before we discovered the viruses. He would never be young again, that was sure, and he would probably never recover even the fitness and vitality that he'd had before we went to Pharos, but the period of quarantine set him up with a good chance of living a good few years yet.

I didn't see much of him, and he didn't seek out my company at any time either. He never bothered to thank me for the help that I'd given him on Pharos, and he certainly never thought of rewarding the devoted loyalty I'd shown with money or some relaxation in the terms of my contract. But I knew that it wasn't any use expecting miracles. He'd probably never been grateful to anyone for anything in his entire life.

One time that I did see him-briefly-he had some news for me. His eyes were glinting, and he had a distinct look of "I told you so" about him. "You remember what we found on Rhapsody," he said.

"How could I forget?"

"We've duplicated the metabolic properties of the worms. In the labs on New Alexandria."

"Sure," I said, trying not to sound anything but resigned. "You told me that once people knew it existed they'd make it, if they couldn't have it made for them. You told me that it couldn't be suppressed. I know.

Which city are you going to destroy to test the stuff?"

"None," he said.

"Things are really moving for you, aren't they?" I said. "A new ultimate weapon every month. By the time Caradoc decides on another confrontation, both of you will be able to destroy the whole d.a.m.n universe in round one."

"I think that confrontation has been postponed for a while," he said.

"Why?"

"I think we proved something out on Pharos despite everything," he said. "We proved that the human race hasn't got the stranglehold on creation that Caradoc was ready to a.s.sume. There are more things to be dealt with than family squabbles."

"That doesn't sound like Caradoc thinking to me," I said.

"It is now," he a.s.sured me. "The war isn't quite what it used to be, now that our primary weapon is peace. Caradoc people are thinking things out. I believe that they'll come to the conclusion that greater subtlety is the order of the day. The naked confrontation policy they initiated on Pharos was a terrible failure."

"It sure as h.e.l.l wasn't us who beat them," I pointed out. "That won't happen on the next world."

Charlot shook his head. "It would never have worked," he said. "Not on the scale Caradoc wanted.

One world, maybe two. But it wasn't a policy for conquering a galaxy. That takes an awful lot more than naked force. Pharos was only one shot in the coming battle. But it's a shot they won't be trying again.

There are different pieces on the board now."

"That's how you see it, is it?" I asked him. "Pieces on a board. A destroyer of cities and the meanest, most underhanded killer that nature's ever devised. That's all they are-two more pieces on the board. It's a game, is it? The whole of civilisation just one big version of the Paradise Game?"

"You can look at it that way," Charlot said.

"You can," I said. "I'm not big enough to play games that rough. I couldn't even push the pieces. h.e.l.l, I'm nothing more than a p.a.w.n in the game myself. Your p.a.w.n."

"You could be a lot worse off," he told me.

"Yeah? In your hands I'm a king's p.a.w.n-how much more exposed can you get? I've almost grown accustomed to having people point guns at me, these last few months. It's becoming a reflex action to dive out of the way every time I see a flash of light. This isn't my idea of fun, t.i.tus. It's not my kind of party, and you know it. I'm a simple man and I like a simple life. You know I don't like all these little affairs that you dabble your fingers in. You know I don't give a d.a.m.n about playing the Paradise Game. "

"You care," he said.

"Sure I care," I said. "I care who wins. But n.o.body wins anymore, and n.o.body ever will win. Every move we make, we get bigger and bigger pieces on the board. You're playing with forces that can sweep whole worlds aside, things that are bigger than a billion men. I know you're a genius, and I know you're always right, and I know that the Library has civilisation in the palm of its hand, but the toys you're finding to play with are just too big. They'll decide the game, not you."

"So?" he said.

"So nothing," I said. "It's not my empire. I only work here."

"Grainger," he said, "men have been playing with forces that are bigger than they are ever since the Chinese invented gunpowder."

"So?" I flung his own comment back at him.

"So the practice has done us good," he said.

"It didn't do us much good on Pharos," I said, taking a new kind of pleasure in letting vindictiveness into my voice. "On Pharos, we lost. There's one Paradise that won't become a p.a.w.n in the game. And when it comes to the next planet, we won't be any better off because of what happened on Pharos."

Charlot shook his head. He seemed slightly amused. I knew that he was making a mockery of me, but I wasn't too upset about it. I didn't think he had the total understanding and the total control that he pretended. A king he might be, in his way, but I was pretty sure that history wouldn't give him the acclaim he expected, and wanted so badly.

But he had the last word on Pharos and the events a.s.sociated with it.

"The Caradoc Company is playing the Paradise Game from the wrong angle," he said. "The primitive-Earth model of Paradise is no use. That Paradise Game was fought to a standstill a very long time ago. We had our unspoiled Earth once, you know. We had the primitive Garden of Eden. We lived in it. We played the Game to its conclusion then. We know the result. It was Paradise versus civilisation.

"Paradise lost."

end.