"I'd like," said Calhoun, "a definition. Just what do you mean by a para?"
Murgatroyd echoed his tone in an indignant, "Chee-chee!"
This was twenty minutes later. Calhoun had gone back into the Med Ship and treated the blaster-burn on his side. He'd changed his clothing from the scorched uniform to civilian clothing. It would not look eccentric here. Men's ordinary garments were extremely similar all over the galaxy. Women's clothes were something else.
Now he and Murgatroyd rode in a ground-car with four armed men of the planetary police, plus the civilian who'd been introduced as the Minister for Health for the planet. The car sped briskly toward the space-port gate. Masses of thick gray fog still clung to the ground where the would-be assassins' car lay on its back and where the bodies of the two dead men remained. The mist was being spread everywhere—everywhere the men had touched ground or where their car had run. Calhoun had some experience with epidemics and emergency measures for destroying contagion. He had more confidence in the primitive sanitary value of fire. It worked, no matter how ancient the process of burning things might be. But very many human beings, these days, never saw a naked flame unless in a science class at school, where it might be shown as a spectacularly rapid reaction of oxidation. People used electricity for heat and light and power. Mankind had moved out of the age of fire. So here on Tallien it seemed inevitable that infective material should be sprayed with antiseptics instead of simply set ablaze.
"What," repeated Calhoun doggedly, "is a para?"
The Health Minister said unhappily:
"Paras are—beings that once were sane men. They aren't sane any longer. Perhaps they aren't men any longer. Something has happened to them. If you'd landed a day or two later, you couldn't have landed at all. We normals had planned to blow up the landing-grid so no other ship could land and be lifted off again to spread the—contagion to other worlds. If it is a contagion."
"Smashing the landing-grid," said Calhoun practically, "may be all right as a last resort. But surely there are other things to be tried first!"
Then he stopped. The ground-car in which he rode had reached the space-port gate. Three other ground-cars waited there. One swung into motion ahead of them. The other two took up positions behind. A caravan of four cars, each bristling with blast-weapons, swept along the wide highway which began here at the space-port and stretched straight across level ground toward the city whose towers showed on the horizon. The other cars formed a guard for Calhoun. He'd needed protection before, and he might need it again.
"Medically," he said to the Minister for Health, "I take it that a para is the human victim of some condition which makes him act insanely. That is pretty vague. You say it hasn't been controlled. That leaves everything very vague indeed. How widely spread is it? Geographically, I mean."
"Paras have appeared," said the Minister for Health, "at every place on Tallien Three where there are men."
"It's epidemic, then," said Calhoun professionally. "You might call it pandemic. How many cases?"
"We guess at thirty percent of the population—so far," said the Minister for Health, hopelessly. "But every day the total goes up." He added, "Doctor Lett has some hope for a vaccine, but it will be too late for most."
Calhoun frowned. With reasonably modern medical techniques, almost any sort of infection should be stopped long before there were as many cases as that!
"When did it start? How long has it been running?"
"The first paras were examined six months ago," said the Health Minister. "It was thought to be a disease. Our best physicians examined them. They couldn't agree on a cause, they couldn't find a germ or virus . . ."
"Symptoms?" asked Calhoun crisply.
"Doctor Lett phrased them in medical terms," said the Minister for Health. "The condition begins with a period of great irritability or depression. The depression is so great that suicide is not infrequent. If that doesn't happen, there's a period of suspiciousness and secretiveness—strongly suggestive of paranoia. Then there's a craving for—unusual food. When it becomes uncontrollable, the patient is mad!"
The ground-cars sped toward the city. A second group of vehicles appeared, waiting. As the four-car caravan swept up to them, one swung in front of the car in which Calhoun and Murgatroyd rode. The others fell into line to the rear. It began to look like a respectable fighting force.
"And after madness?" asked Calhoun.
"Then they're paras!" said the Health Minister. "They crave the incredible. They feed on the abominable. And they hate us normals as—devils out of hell would hate us!"
"And after that again?" said Calhoun. "I mean, what's the prognosis? Do they die or recover? If they recover, in how long? If they die, how soon?"
"They're paras," said the Health Minister querulously. "I'm no physician—I'm an administrator. But I don't think any recover. Certainly none die of it! They stay—what they've become."
"My experience," said Calhoun, "has mostly been with diseases that one either recovers from or dies of. A disease whose victims organize to steal weather rockets and to use them to destroy a ship—only they failed—and who carry on with an assassination-attempt, that doesn't sound like a disease. A disease had no purpose of its own. They had a purpose—as if they obeyed one of their number."
The Minister for Health said uneasily:
"It's been suggested—that something out of the jungle causes what's happened. On other planets there are creatures which drink blood without waking their victims. There are reptiles who sting men. There are even insects which sting men and inject diseases. Something like that seems to have come out of the jungle. While men sleep—something happens to them! They turn into paras. Something native to this world must be responsible. The planet did not welcome us. There's not a native plant or beast that is useful to us. We have to culture soil-bacteria so Earth-type plants can grow here. We don't begin to know all the creatures of the jungle. If something comes out and makes men paras without their knowledge—"
Calhoun said mildly:
"It would seem that such things could be discovered."
The Health Minister said bitterly:
"Not this thing. It is intelligent. It hides! It acts as if on a plan to destroy us! Why—there was a young doctor who said he'd cured a para. But we found him and the former para dead when we went to check his claim. Things from the jungle had killed them! They think! They know! They understand! They're rational, and like devils—"
A third group of ground-cars appeared ahead, waiting. Like the others, they were filled with men holding blast-rifles. They joined the procession; the rushing, never-pausing group of cars from the space-port. The highway had obviously been patrolled against a possible ambush or road-block. The augmented combat group went on.
"As a medical man," said Calhoun carefully, "I question the existence of a local, non-human rational creature. Creatures develop or adapt to fit their environment. They change or develop to fit into some niche, some special place in the ecological system which is their environment. If there is no niche, no room for a specific creature in an environment, there is no such creature there. And there cannot be a place in any environment for a creature which will change it. It would be a contradiction in terms! We rational humans change the worlds we occupy. Any rational creature will. So a rational animal is as nearly impossible as any creature can be. It's true that we've happened, but—another rational race? Oh, no!"
Murgatroyd said:
"Chee!"
The city's towers loomed higher and taller above the horizon. Then, abruptly, the fast-moving cavalcade came to the edge of the city and plunged into it.
It was not a normal city. The buildings were not eccentric. All planets but very new ones show local architectural peculiarities, so it was not odd to see all windows topped by triple arches, or quite useless pilasters in the brick walls of apartment-buildings. These would have made the city seem only individual. But it was not normal. The streets were not clean. Two windows in three had been smashed. In places Calhoun saw doors that had been broken in and splintered, and never repaired. That implied violence unrestrained. The streets were almost empty. Occasional figures might be seen on the sidewalks before the speeding ground-cars, but the vehicles never passed them. Pedestrians turned corners or dodged into doorways before the cavalcade could overtake them.
The buildings grew taller. The street-level remained empty of humans, but now and again, many storeys up, heads peered out of windows. Then high-pitched yellings came from aloft. It was not possible to tell whether they were yells of defiance or derision or despair, but they were directed at the racing cars.
Calhoun looked quickly at the faces of the men around him. The Minister for Health looked at once heart-broken and embittered. The head of the planetary police stared grimly ahead. Screechings and howlings echoed and reechoed between the building-walls. Objects began to fall from the windows. Bottles. Pots and pans. Chairs and stools twirled and spun, hurtling downward. Everything that was loose and could be thrown from a window came down, flung by the occupants of those high dwellings. With them came outcries which were assuredly cursings.
It occurred to Calhoun that there had been a period in history when mob-action invariably meant flames. Men burned what they hated and what they feared. They also burned religious offerings to divers bloodthirsty deities. It was fortunate, he reflected wryly, that fires were no longer a matter of common experience, or burning oil and flaming missiles would have been flung down on the ground-cars.
"Is this unpopularity yours?" he asked. "Or do I have a share in it? Am I unwelcome to some parts of the population?"
"You're unwelcome to paras," said the police head coldly. "Paras don't want you here. Whatever drives them is afraid the Med Service might make them no longer paras. And they want to stay the way they are." His lips twisted. "They aren't making this uproar, though. We gathered everybody we were sure wasn't—infected into Government Center. These people were left out. We weren't sure about them. So they consider we've left them to become paras and they don't like it!"
Calhoun frowned again. This confused everything. There was talk of infection, and talk of unseen creatures come out of the jungle, making men paras and then controlling them as if by demoniac possession. There were few human vagaries, though, that were not recorded in the Med Service files. Calhoun remembered something, and wanted to be sick. It was like an infection, and like possession by devils too. There would be creatures not much removed from fiends involved, anyhow.
"I think," he said, "that I need to talk to your counter-para researchers. You have men working on the problem?"
"We did," said the police head, grimly. "But most of them turned para. We thought they'd be more dangerous than other paras, so we shot them. But it did no good. Paras still turn up, in Government Center too. Now we only send paras out the south gate. They doubtless make out—as paras."
For a time there was silence in the rushing cars, though a bedlam of howls and curses came from aloft. Then a sudden shrieking of foreseen triumph came from overhead. A huge piece of furniture, a couch, seemed certain to crash into the car in which Calhoun rode. But it swerved sharply, ran upon the sidewalk, and the couch dashed itself to splinters where the car should have been. The car went down on the pavement once more and rushed on.
The street ended. A high barrier of masonry rose up at a cross-street. It closed the highway and connected the walls of apartment-buildings on either hand. There was a gate in it, and the leading cars drew off to one side and the car carrying Calhoun and Murgatroyd ran through, and there was a second barrier ahead, but this was closed. The other cars filed in after it, Calhoun saw that windows in these apartment-buildings had all been bricked up. They made a many-storeyed wall shutting off all that was beyond them.
Men from the barrier went from car to car of the escort, checking the men who had been the escort for Calhoun. The Minister for Health said jerkily:
"Everybody in Government Center is examined at least once each day to see if they're turning para or not. Those showing symptoms are turned out the south gate. Everybody, myself included, has to have a fresh certificate every twenty-four hours."
The inner gate swung wide. The car carrying Calhoun went through. The buildings about them ended. They were in a huge open space that must once have been a park in the center of the city. There were structures which could not possibly be other than government buildings. But the population of this world was small. They were not grandiose. There were walkways and some temporary buildings obviously thrown hastily together to house a sudden influx of people.
And here there were many people. There was bright sunshine, and children played and women watched them. There were some—not many—men in sight, but most of them were elderly. All the young ones were uniformed and hastily going here or there. And though the children played gaily, there were few smiles to be seen on adult faces.
The ground-car braked before one of those square, unornamented buildings which are laboratories everywhere in the galaxy. The Minister for Health got out. Calhoun followed him, Murgatroyd riding on his shoulder. The ground-car went away and Calhoun followed into the building.
There was a sentry by the door, and an officer of the police. He examined the Minister's one-day certificate of health. After various vision-phone calls, he passed Calhoun and Murgatroyd. They went a short distance and another sentry stopped them. A little further, and another sentry.
"Tight security," said Calhoun.
"They know me," said the Minister heavily, "but they are checking my certificate that as of this morning I wasn't a para."
"I've seen quarantines before," said Calhoun, "but never one like this! Not against disease!"
"It isn't against disease," said the Minister, thinly. "It's against Something intelligent—from the jungles—who chooses victims by reason for its own purposes."
Calhoun said very carefully:
"I won't deny more than the jungle."
Here the Minister for Health rapped on a door and ushered Calhoun through it. They entered a huge room filled with the complex of desks, cameras, and observing and recording instruments that the study of a living organism requires. The set-up for study of dead things is quite different. Here, halfway down the room's length, there was a massive sheet of glass that divided the apartment into two. On the far side of the glass there was, obviously, an aseptic-environment room now being used as an isolation-chamber.
A man paced up and down beyond the glass. Calhoun knew he must be a para because he was cut off in idea and in fact from normal humanity. The air supplied to him could be heated almost white-hot and then chilled before being introduced into the aseptic-chamber for him to breathe, if such a thing was desired. Or the air removed could be made incandescent hot so no possible germ or its spores could get out. Wastes removed would be destroyed by passage through a carbon arc after innumerable previous sterilizing processes. In such rooms, centuries before, plants had been grown from antiseptic-soaked seeds, and chicks hatched from germ-free eggs, and even small animals delivered by aseptic Caesarian section to live in an environment in which there was no living microorganism. From rooms like this men had first learned that some types of bacteria outside the human body were essential to human health. But this man was not a volunteer for such research.
He paced up and down, his hands clenching and unclenching. When Calhoun and the Minister for Health entered the outer room, he glared at them. He cursed them, though inaudibly because of the plate of glass. He hated them hideously because they were not as he was; because they were not imprisoned behind thick glass walls through which every action and almost every thought could be watched. But there was more to his hatred than that. In the midst of fury so great that his face seemed almost purple, he suddenly yawned uncontrollably.
Calhoun blinked and stared. The man behind the glass wall yawned again and again. He was helpless to stop it. If such a thing could be, he was in a paroxysm of yawning, though his eyes glared and he beat his fists together. The muscles controlling the act of yawning worked independently of the rage that should have made yawning impossible. And he was ashamed, and he was infuriated, and he yawned more violently than seemed possible.
"A man's been known to dislocate his jaw, yawning like that," said Calhoun detachedly.
A bland voice spoke behind him.
"But if this man's jaw is dislocated, no one can help him. He is a para. We cannot join him."
Calhoun turned. He found himself regarded with unctuous condescension by a man wearing glittering thick eyeglasses—and a man's eyes have to be very bad if he can't wear contacts—and a uniform with a caduceus at his collar. He was plump. He was beaming. He was the only man Calhoun had so far seen on this planet whose expression was neither despair nor baffled hate and fury.
"You are Med Service," the beaming man observed zestfully. "Of the Interstellar Medical Service, to which all problems of public health may be referred! But here we have a real problem for you! A contagious madness! A transmissible delusion! An epidemic of insanity! A plague of the unspeakable!"
The Minister for Health said uneasily:
"This is Doctor Lett. He was the greatest of our physicians. Now he is nearly the last."
"Agreed," said the bland man, as zestfully as before. "But now the Interstellar Medical Services sends someone before whom I should bow! Someone whose knowledge and experience and training is so infinitely greater than mine that I become abashed! I am timid! I am hesitant to offer an opinion before a Med Service man!"
It was not unprecedented for an eminent doctor to resent the implied existence of greater skill or knowledge than his own. But this man was not only resentful. He was derisive.
"I came here," said Calhoun politely, "on what I expected to be a strictly routine visit. But I'm told there's a very grave public health situation here. I'd like to offer any help I can give."
"Grave!" Doctor Lett laughed scornfully. "It is hopeless, for poor planetary doctors like myself! But not, of course, for a Med Ship man!"
Calhoun shook his head. This man would not be easy to deal with. Tact was called for—but the situation was appalling.
"I have a question," said Calhoun ruefully. "I'm told that paras are madmen, and there's been mention of suspicion and secretiveness which suggests schizo-paranoia and—so I have guessed—the term para for those affected in this way."
"It is not any form of paranoia," said the planetary doctor, contemptuously. "Paranoia involves suspicion of everyone. Paras despise and suspect only normals. Paranoia involves a sensation of grandeur, not to be shared. Paras are friends and companions to each other. They cooperate delightedly in attempting to make normals like themselves. A paranoiac would not want anyone to share his greatness!"
Calhoun considered, and then agreed.
"Since you've said it, I see that it must be so. But my question remains. Madness involves delusions. But paras organize themselves. They make plans and take different parts in them. They act rationally for purposes they agree on—such as assassinating me. But how can they act rationally if they have delusions? What sort of delusions do they have?"
The Minister for Health said thinly:
"Only what horrors out of the jungle might suggest! I—I cannot listen, Doctor Lett. I cannot watch, if you intend to demonstrate!"
The man with thick glasses waved an arm. The Minister for Health went hastily out. Doctor Lett made a mirthless sound.
"He would not make a medical man! Here is a para in this aseptic room. He is an unusually good specimen for study. He was my assistant and I knew him when he was sane. Now I know him as a para. I will show you his delusion."
He went to a small culture-oven and opened the door. He busied himself with something inside. Over his shoulder he said with unction:
"The first settlers here had much trouble establishing a human-use ecology on this world. The native plants and animals were useless. They had to be replaced with things compatible with humans. Then there was more trouble. There were no useful scavengers—and scavengers are essential! The rat is usually dependable, but rats do not thrive on Tallien. Vultures—no. Of course not. Carrion beetles . . . Scarabeus beetles . . . the flies that produce maggots to do such good work in refuse disposal. . . . None thrive on Tallien Three! And scavengers are usually specialists, too. But the colony could not continue without scavengers. So our ancestors searched on other worlds, and presently they found a creature which would multiply enormously and with a fine versatility upon the wastes of our human cities. True, it smelled like an ancient Earth-animal called skunk—butyl mercaptan. It was not pretty—to most eyes it is revolting. But it was a scavenger and there was no waste product it would not devour."
Doctor Lett turned from the culture-oven. He had a plastic container in his hand. A faint, disgusting odor spread from it.
"You ask what the delusions of paras may be?" He grinned derisively. He held out the container. "It is the delusion that this scavenger, this eater of unclean things; this unspeakable bit of slimy squirming flesh—paras have the delusion that it is the most delectable of foodstuffs!"
He thrust the plastic container under Calhoun's nose. Calhoun did not draw breath while it remained there. Doctor Lett said in mocking admiration:
"Ah! You have the strong stomach a medical man should have! The delusion of the para is that these squirming, writhing objects are delightful. Paras develop an irresistible craving for them. It is as if men on a more nearly Earthlike world developed an uncontrollable hunger for vultures and rats and—even less tolerable things. These scavengers—paras eat them! So normal men would rather die than become paras."
Calhoun gagged in purely instinctive revulsion. The things in the plastic container were gray and small. Had they been still, they might have been no worse to look at than raw oysters in a cocktail. But they squirmed. They writhed.
"I will show you," said Doctor Lett amiably.
He turned to the glass plate which divided the room into halves. The man beyond the thick glass now pressed eagerly against it. He looked at the container with a horrible, lustful desire. The thick-eyeglassed man clucked at him, as if at a caged animal one wishes to soothe. The man beyond the glass yawned hysterically. He seemed to whimper. He could not take his eyes from the container in the doctor's hands.
"So!" said Doctor Lett.
He pressed a button. A lock-door opened. He put the container inside it. The door closed. It could be sterilized before the door on the other side would open, but now it was arranged to sterilize itself to prevent contagion from coming out.
The man behind the glass uttered inaudible cries. He was filled with beastly, uncontrollable impatience. He cried out at the mechanism of the contagion-lock as a beast might bellow at the opening through which food was dropped into its cage.
That lock opened, inside the glass-walled room. The plastic container appeared. The man leaped upon it. He gobbled its contents, and Calhoun was nauseated. But as the para gobbled, he glared at the two who—with Murgatroyd—watched him. He hated them with a ferocity which made veins stand out upon his temples and fury empurple his skin.
Calhoun felt that he'd gone white. He turned his eyes away and said squeamishly:
"I have never seen such a thing before."
"It is new, eh?" said Doctor Lett in a strange sort of pride. "It is new! I—even I!—have discovered something that the Med Service does not know."
"I wouldn't say the Service doesn't know about similar things," said Calhoun slowly. "There are—sometimes—on a very small scale—dozens or perhaps hundreds of victims—there are sometimes similar irrational appetites. But on a planetary scale—no. There has never been a—an epidemic of this size."
He still looked sick and stricken. But he asked:
"What's the result of this—appetite? What does it do to a para? What change in—say—his health takes place in a man after he becomes a para?"
"There is no change," said Doctor Lett blandly. "They are not sick and they do not die because they are paras. The condition itself is no more abnormal than—than diabetes. Diabetics require insulin. Paras require—something else. But there is prejudice against what paras need. It is as if some men would rather die than use insulin and those who did use it became outcastes. I do not say what causes this condition. I do not object if the Minister for Health believes that jungle-creatures creep out and—make paras of men." He watched Calhoun's expression. "Does your Med Service information agree with that?"
"No-o-o," said Calhoun. "I'm afraid it inclines to the idea of a monstrous cause, and it isn't much like diabetes."
"But it is!" insisted Lett. "Everything digestible, no matter how unappetizing to a modern man, has been a part of the regular diet of some tribe of human savages. Even prehistoric Romans ate dormice cooked in honey. Why should the fact that a needed substance happens to be found in a scavenger—"
"The Romans didn't crave dormice," said Calhoun. "They could eat them or leave them alone."
The man behind the thick glass glared at the two in the outer room. He hated them intolerably. He cried out at them. Blood-vessels in his temples throbbed with his hatred. He cursed them—
"I point out one thing more," said Doctor Lett. "I would like to have the cooperation of the Interstellar Medical Service. I am a citizen of this planet, and not without influence. But I would like to have my work approved by the Med Service. I submit that in some areas on ancient Earth, iodine was put into the public water-supply systems to prevent goiters and cretinism. Fluorine was put into drinking-water to prevent caries. On Tralee the public water-supply has traces of zinc and cobalt added. These are necessary trace elements. Why should you not concede that here there are trace elements or trace compounds needed—"
"You want me to report that," said Calhoun, flatly. "I couldn't do it without explaining—a number of things. Paras are madmen, but they organize. A symptom of privation is violent yawning. This—condition appeared only six months ago. This planet has been colonized for three hundred years. It could not be a naturally needed trace compound."
Doctor Lett shrugged, eloquently and contemptuously.
"Then you will not report what all this planet will certify," he said curtly. "My vaccine—"
"You would not call it a vaccine if you thought it supplied a deficiency—a special need of the people of Tallien."
Doctor Lett grinned again, derisively.
"Might I not supply the deficiency and call it a vaccine? But it is not a true vaccine. It is not yet efficient. It has to be taken regularly or it does not protect."
Calhoun felt as if he had gone a little pale.
"Would you give me a small sample of your vaccine?"
"No," said Doctor Lett blandly. "The little that is available is needed for high officials who must be protected from the para condition at all costs. I am making ready to turn it out in large quantities to supply all the population. Then I will give you—suitable dosage. You will be glad to have it."
Calhoun shook his head.
"Don't you see why Med Service considers that this sort of thing has a monstrous cause? Are you the monster, Doctor Lett?" Then he said sharply, "How long have you been a para? Six months?"
Murgatroyd said, "Chee! Chee! Chee!" in great agitation, because Doctor Lett seized a dissecting scalpel from a table-top and crouched to spring upon Calhoun. Calhoun said:
"Easy, Murgatroyd! He won't do anything regrettable!"
He had a blaster in his hand, bearing directly on the greatest and most skillful physician of Tallien Three. And Doctor Lett did not do anything. But his eyes showed the fury of a madman.