Badge of Infamy by Lester del Rey (easy novels to read txt) 📕

out with Doc.

 

Chris had everything set up. They matched coins to decide who would be

treated. Doc noticed that Chris would get no plasma, while he was

scheduled for everything. He watched her prepare the culture and add the

accelerator that would speed development and make certain he and Tom

were infected, then let her inject it.

 

That was all, except for the waiting. To keep conditions more closely

alike, they were to stay there until the tests were finished, not even

eating for fear of upsetting the conditions. Swanee dug out a pack of

worn cards and began to deal while Doc dug out some large pills to use

as chips.

 

It was an hour later when the pain began. Doc had just won the pot of

fifty pills and opened his mouth for the expected gloating. He yelled as

an explosion seemed to go off inside his head. Even closing his mouth

was agony.

 

A moment later, Tom began to sweat. It got worse, spreading to the whole

area of the back of the head and neck. Doc lay on the cot, envying Chris

and Swanee who had already been infected naturally. He longed

desperately for bracky, and had to keep reminding himself that no drugs

must upset the tests. It was the longest day he had ever spent, and he

began to doubt that he could get through it. He watched the little clock

move from one minute to nine over to half a minute and hung breathless

until it hit the nine. There was no question about whether the infection

had taken. Now they could dull the agony.

 

Chris had the anodyne tablets already dissolved in water, and Swanee was

passing out three lighted bracky weeds. It took a few minutes for the

relief of the anodyne, and even that couldn't kill all the pain. But it

didn't matter by comparison. He sucked the weed, mashed it out and began

dealing the cards again.

 

They had a plentiful supply of the anodyne and used it liberally during

the night. The test was a speeded-up simulation of the natural course of

the disease, where painkiller would take time to get for most people

here, but would then be used generously.

 

Precisely at nine in the morning, Chris began to inject Swanee and Doc

with plasma.

 

Now there was no thought of cards. They waited, trying to talk, but with

most of their attention on the clock. Doc had estimated that an hour

should be enough to show results, but it was hard to remember that an

hour was the guess as to the minimum time.

 

He winced as Chris took a tiny bit of flesh from his neck. She went to

the other men, and then submitted to his work on herself. Then she began

preparing the slides.

 

"Feldman," she read the name of the slide as she inserted it into the

microscope. Then her breath caught sharply. "Only dead cells!"

 

It was the same for Swanee and Tom. Each had to look at his own slide

and have it explained before the results could be believed. But at last

Chris bent over her own slide. A minute later she glanced up, nodding.

"What it should be. It checks."

 

Tom whooped and went out the door to notify Jake. There was only plasma

for some two hundred injections, but that should yield sufficient proof.

Once salvation was offered, there should be no trouble convincing the

people that blood donations from their children were worthwhile.

 

Later, when the last of the plasma had been used, they could finally

relax. Chris slipped off her smock and dropped onto the cot. A tired

smile came onto her lips. "You're forgiven, Dan," she said. A moment

later she was obviously asleep. Doc meant to join her, but it was too

much effort. He leaned his head forward onto his arms, vaguely wondering

why she was calling off the feud.

 

It was night outside when he awoke, and he was lying on the cot, though

he still felt cramped and strained. He stirred, groaning, and finally

realized that a hand was on his shoulder shaking him. He looked up to

see Jake above him. Chris was busy with the coffee maker.

 

Jake slumped onto the cot beside Doc. "We took Southport," he announced.

 

That knocked the sleep out of Doc's system. "You what?"

 

"We took it, lock, stock and barrel. I figured the news of your cure

would put guts into the men, and it did. But we'd probably have taken it

anyhow. There wasn't anything to fight for there after Earth pulled out

and the plague really hit. Wilson mistook last-minute panic for fighting

spirit. The poor devils didn't have anything to fight about, once the

Lobby stopped goading them."

 

Doc tried to assimilate the news. But once the surprise was gone, he

found it meant very little. Maybe his revolutionary zeal had cooled,

once the Lobby men had pulled out. "We'll need a lot more plasma than

there is in Southport," he said.

 

"Not so much, maybe," Jake denied. "Doc, three of the men you injected

were shot down as runners. Your plasma's no good."

 

"It takes time to work, Jake. I told you there might be a case or two

that would be too close to the edge. Three is more than I expected; but

it's not impossible."

 

"There was plenty of time. They blew after we got back from Southport."

Jack dropped his hand on Doc's shoulder, and his face softened.

"Harkness tested every man you injected. He finished half an hour ago.

Five showed dead bugs. The rest of them weren't helped at all."

 

Doc fumbled for a weed, trying to think. But his thoughts refused to

focus. "Five!"

 

"Five out of two hundred. That's about average. And what about Tom? He

was jumping around after the test last night, telling how you'd cured

him, how he'd seen the dead bugs; but he never had the jumping headache,

and you never gave him the plasma! He's got dead bugs, though. Harkness

tested him."

 

Doc let his realization of his own idiocy sink in until he could believe

Jake was right. Tom had never been treated, yet Chris had reported

dead bugs. They'd all been so ready to believe in miracles that no one

had been able to think straight after the long wait.

 

"There was a bump on his neck--a small one," he said slowly. "Jake, he

must have caught it, even if he seemed immune. If he was taking anodyne

anyway for something--or unconscious--"

 

"He was up in Northport six years ago for a kidney operation," Jake

admitted doubtfully. "We had to chip in to pay for it. But you still

didn't treat him, and he's cured. Face it, Doc, that plasma is no good

inside the body."

 

His hand tightened on Doc's shoulder again. "We're not blaming you. We

don't judge a man here except by what he is. Maybe the stuff helps a

little. We'll go on using it when we get it; tell everybody you were a

mite optimistic, so they'll figure it's a gamble, but have a little hope

left. And you keep trying. Something cured it in Tom. Now you find out

what."

 

Doc watched him go out numbly, and turned to Chris.

 

"It can't be right," she said shakily. "You and Swanee were cured. Maybe

it was the accelerator. It had to be something."

 

"You didn't have the accelerator," he accused.

 

"No, and I've still got live bugs. I was never supposed to be cured, so

I expected to see just what I saw. How I missed the fact that Tom should

have been like me, I don't know. Damn it, oh, damn it!"

 

He's never seen her cry before, except in fury. But she mastered it

almost at once, shaking tears out of her eyes. "All right. Plasma works

in a bottle but not in an adult body. Maybe something works in the body

but not in a bottle."

 

"Maybe. And maybe some people are just naturally immune after it reaches

a certain stage. Maybe we ran into coincidence."

 

But he didn't believe that, any more than she did. The answer had to be

in the room. He'd taken a massive dose of the disease and been cured in

a few hours.

 

Outside the room, the war went on, drawing toward a close. The supposed

partial cure was good propaganda, if nothing else, and Jake was widening

his territory steadily. There was only token resistance against him. He

had the Southport shuttles now to cover huge areas in a hurry. But

inside the room, the battle was less successful. It wasn't the

accelerator. It wasn't the tablets of anodyne. They even tried sweeping

the floor and using the dust without results.

 

Then another test in the room, made with four volunteers Jake selected,

yielded complete cures after injections with plain salt water in place

of plasma.

 

The plague speeded up again. About four people out of a hundred now

seemed to have caught the disease and cured themselves. They accounted

for what faith was left in Doc's plasma and gave some unfounded hope to

the others.

 

Northport fell a week later, putting the whole planet in rebel hands.

 

Jake returned, wearier than ever. He'd proved to be one of the natural

immunes, but the weight of the campaign that could only end in a defeat

by the plague left him no room to rejoice in his personal fortune.

 

This time he looked completely defeated. And a moment later, Doc saw why

as Jake flipped a flimsy sheet onto the table. It bore the seals of

Space and Medical Lobbies.

 

Jake pointed upwards. "The war rockets are there, all right. We knew

they'd come. Now all they want for calling them off is our surrender and

your cure. If they don't get both, they'll blow the planet to bits. We

have two days."

 

The rockets could be seen clearly with binoculars. There were more than

enough to destroy all life on the planet. Maybe they'd be used

eventually, anyhow, since the Lobbies wanted no more rebellion. But with

a cure for the plague, he might have bought them off.

 

Chris stood beside him, looking as if it were a bitter pill for her,

too. She'd risked herself in the hands of the enemy, had cooperated with

him in everything she'd been taught to oppose, and had worked like a

dog. Now the Lobbies seemed to forget her as a useless tool. They were

falling back on a raw power play and forgetting any earlier schemes.

 

"Maybe they'd hold off for a while if I agreed to go to them and share

all my ideas, specimens and notes," he said at last. "Do you think your

Lobby would settle for that, Chris?"

 

"I don't know, Dan. I've stopped thinking their way." She seemed almost

apologetic for the admission.

 

He dropped an arm over her shoulder and turned with her back to the

laboratory. "Okay, then we've got to find a miracle. We've got two days

ahead of us. At least we can try."

 

But he knew he was lying to himself. There wasn't anything he could

think of to try.

XV (Decision)

 

Two days was never enough time for a miracle. Doc decided as he packed

his notes into a small bag and put it beside his bundle of personal

belongings. He glanced around the room for the last time, and managed a

grin at Jake's gloomy expression.

 

"Maybe I can bluff them, or maybe they'll string along for a while," he

said. "Anyhow, now that they've agreed to take me and my notes in place

of the cure we're fresh out of, I've got to be on that shuttle when it

goes back to their men at orbital station."

 

Jake nodded. "I don't like selling friends down the river, Doc. But it

wouldn't do you any more good to blow up with the planet, I reckon. They

won't call off the war rockets when they do get you, of course. But

maybe they won't use them, except as a threat to put the Lobbies back

in, stronger than ever."

 

He stuck out one of his awkwardly shaped hands, clapped the aspirator

over his face and