Part 2

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.