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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Pandemic, by Jesse Franklin Bone
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Pandemic
+
+Author: Jesse Franklin Bone
+
+Illustrator: Barberis
+
+Release Date: August 6, 2008 [EBook #26206]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PANDEMIC ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, Dave Lovelace, Stephen Blundell
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+_PANDEMIC_
+
+_BY J. F. BONE_
+
+
+        _Generally,
+          human beings don't do
+      totally useless things
+        consistently and widely.
+    So--maybe there is
+            something to it--_
+
+
+"We call it Thurston's Disease for two perfectly good reasons," Dr.
+Walter Kramer said. "He discovered it--and he was the first to die of
+it." The doctor fumbled fruitlessly through the pockets of his lab coat.
+"Now where the devil did I put those matches?"
+
+"Are these what you're looking for?" the trim blonde in the gray
+seersucker uniform asked. She picked a small box of wooden safety
+matches from the littered lab table beside her and handed them to him.
+
+"Ah," Kramer said. "Thanks. Things have a habit of getting lost around
+here."
+
+"I can believe that," she said as she eyed the frenzied disorder around
+her. Her boss wasn't much better than his laboratory, she decided as she
+watched him strike a match against the side of the box and apply the
+flame to the charred bowl of his pipe. His long dark face became half
+obscured behind a cloud of bluish smoke as he puffed furiously. He
+looked like a lean untidy devil recently escaped from hell with his
+thick brows, green eyes and lank black hair highlighted intermittently
+by the leaping flame of the match. He certainly didn't look like a
+pathologist. She wondered if she was going to like working with him, and
+shook her head imperceptibly. Possibly, but not probably. It might be
+difficult being cooped up here with him day after day. Well, she could
+always quit if things got too tough. At least there was that
+consolation.
+
+He draped his lean body across a lab stool and leaned his elbows on
+its back. There was a faint smile on his face as he eyed her
+quizzically. "You're new," he said. "Not just to this lab but to the
+Institute."
+
+[Illustration: ILLUSTRATED BY BARBERIS]
+
+She nodded. "I am, but how did you know?"
+
+"Thurston's Disease. Everyone in the Institute knows that name for the
+plague, but few outsiders do." He smiled sardonically. "Virus pneumonic
+plague--that's a better term for public use. After all, what good does
+it do to advertise a doctor's stupidity?"
+
+She eyed him curiously. "_De mortuis?_" she asked.
+
+He nodded. "That's about it. We may condemn our own, but we don't like
+laymen doing it. And besides, Thurston had good intentions. He never
+dreamed this would happen."
+
+"The road to hell, so I hear, is paved with good intentions."
+
+"Undoubtedly," Kramer said dryly. "Incidentally, did you apply for this
+job or were you assigned?"
+
+"I applied."
+
+"Someone should have warned you I dislike clichés," he said. He paused a
+moment and eyed her curiously. "Just why did you apply?" he asked. "Why
+are you imprisoning yourself in a sealed laboratory which you won't
+leave as long as you work here. You know, of course, what the conditions
+are. Unless you resign or are carried out feet first you will remain
+here ... have you considered what such an imprisonment means?"
+
+"I considered it," she said, "and it doesn't make any difference. I
+have no ties outside and I thought I could help. I've had training. I
+was a nurse before I was married."
+
+"Divorced?"
+
+"Widowed."
+
+Kramer nodded. There were plenty of widows and widowers outside. Too
+many. But it wasn't much worse than in the Institute where, despite
+precautions, Thurston's disease took its toll of life.
+
+"Did they tell you this place is called the suicide section?" he asked.
+
+She nodded.
+
+"Weren't you frightened?"
+
+"Of dying? Hardly. Too many people are doing it nowadays."
+
+He grimaced, looking more satanic than ever. "You have a point," he
+admitted, "but it isn't a good one. Young people should be afraid of
+dying."
+
+"You're not."
+
+"I'm not young. I'm thirty-five, and besides, this is my business. I've
+been looking at death for eleven years. I'm immune."
+
+"I haven't your experience," she admitted, "but I have your attitude."
+
+"What's your name?" Kramer said.
+
+"Barton, Mary Barton."
+
+"Hm-m-m. Well, Mary--I can't turn you down. I need you. But I could wish
+you had taken some other job."
+
+"I'll survive."
+
+He looked at her with faint admiration in his greenish eyes. "Perhaps
+you will," he said. "All right. As to your duties--you will be my
+assistant, which means you'll be a dishwasher, laboratory technician,
+secretary, junior pathologist, and coffee maker. I'll help you with all
+the jobs except the last one. I make lousy coffee." Kramer grinned, his
+teeth a white flash across the darkness of his face. "You'll be on call
+twenty-four hours a day, underpaid, overworked, and in constant danger
+until we lick Thurston's virus. You'll be expected to handle the jobs of
+three people unless I can get more help--and I doubt that I can. People
+stay away from here in droves. There's no future in it."
+
+Mary smiled wryly. "Literally or figuratively?" she asked.
+
+He chuckled. "You have a nice sense of graveyard humor," he said. "It'll
+help. But don't get careless. Assistants are hard to find."
+
+She shook her head. "I won't. While I'm not afraid of dying I don't want
+to do it. And I have no illusions about the danger. I was briefed quite
+thoroughly."
+
+"They wanted you to work upstairs?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I suppose they need help, too. Thurston's Disease has riddled the
+medical profession. Just don't forget that this place can be a death
+trap. One mistake and you've had it. Naturally, we take every
+precaution, but with a virus no protection is absolute. If you're
+careless and make errors in procedure, sooner or later one of those
+submicroscopic protein molecules will get into your system."
+
+"You're still alive."
+
+"So I am," Kramer said, "but I don't take chances. My predecessor, my
+secretary, my lab technician, my junior pathologist, and my dishwasher
+all died of Thurston's Disease." He eyed her grimly. "Still want the
+job?" he asked.
+
+"I lost a husband and a three-year old son," Mary said with equal
+grimness. "That's why I'm here. I want to destroy the thing that killed
+my family. I want to do something. I want to be useful."
+
+He nodded. "I think you can be," he said quietly.
+
+"Mind if I smoke?" she asked. "I need some defense against that pipe of
+yours."
+
+"No--go ahead. Out here it's all right, but not in the security
+section."
+
+Mary took a package of cigarettes from her pocket, lit one and blew a
+cloud of gray smoke to mingle with the blue haze from Kramer's pipe.
+
+"Comfortable?" Kramer asked.
+
+She nodded.
+
+He looked at his wrist watch. "We have half an hour before the roll tube
+cultures are ready for examination. That should be enough to tell you
+about the modern Pasteur and his mutant virus. Since your duties will
+primarily involve Thurston's Disease, you'd better know something about
+it." He settled himself more comfortably across the lab bench and went
+on talking in a dry schoolmasterish voice. "Alan Thurston was an
+immunologist at Midwestern University Medical School. Like most men in
+the teaching trade, he also had a research project. If it worked out,
+he'd be one of the great names in medicine; like Jenner, Pasteur, and
+Salk. The result was that he pushed it and wasn't too careful. He wanted
+to be famous."
+
+"He's well known now," Mary said, "at least within the profession."
+
+"Quite," Kramer said dryly. "He was working with gamma radiations on
+microorganisms, trying to produce a mutated strain of _Micrococcus
+pyogenes_ that would have enhanced antigenic properties."
+
+"Wait a minute, doctor. It's been four years since I was active in
+nursing. Translation, please."
+
+Kramer chuckled. "He was trying to make a vaccine out of a common
+infectious organism. You may know it better as _Staphylococcus_. As you
+know, it's a pus former that's made hospital life more dangerous than it
+should be because it develops resistance to antibiotics. What Thurston
+wanted to do was to produce a strain that would stimulate resistance in
+the patient without causing disease--something that would help patients
+protect themselves rather than rely upon doubtfully effective
+antibiotics."
+
+"That wasn't a bad idea."
+
+"There was nothing wrong with it. The only trouble was that he wound up
+with something else entirely. He was like the man who wanted to make a
+plastic suitable for children's toys and ended up with a new explosive.
+You see, what Thurston didn't realize was that his cultures were
+contaminated. He'd secured them from the University Clinic and had, so
+he thought, isolated them. But somehow he'd brought a virus
+along--probably one of the orphan group or possibly a phage."
+
+"Orphan?"
+
+"Yes--one that was not a normal inhabitant of human tissues. At any rate
+there was a virus--and he mutated it rather than the bacteria. Actually,
+it was simple enough, relatively speaking, since a virus is infinitely
+simpler in structure than a bacterium, and hence much easier to modify
+with ionizing radiation. So he didn't produce an antigen--he produced a
+disease instead. Naturally, he contracted it, and during the period
+between his infection and death he managed to infect the entire
+hospital. Before anyone realized what they were dealing with, the
+disease jumped from the hospital to the college, and from the college to
+the city, and from the city to--"
+
+"Yes, I know that part of it. It's all over the world now--killing
+people by the millions."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Well," Kramer said, "at least it's solved the population explosion." He
+blew a cloud of blue smoke in Mary's direction. "And it did make
+Thurston famous. His name won't be quickly forgotten."
+
+She coughed. "I doubt if it ever will be," she said, "but it won't be
+remembered the way he intended."
+
+He looked at her suspiciously. "That cough--"
+
+"No, it's not Thurston's Disease. It's that pipe. It's rancid."
+
+"It helps me think," Kramer said.
+
+"You could try cigarettes--or candy," she suggested.
+
+"I'd rather smoke a pipe."
+
+"There's cancer of the lip and tongue," she said helpfully.
+
+"Don't quote Ochsner. I don't agree with him. And besides, you smoke
+cigarettes, which are infinitely worse."
+
+"Only four or five a day. I don't saturate my system with nicotine."
+
+"In another generation," Kramer observed, "you'd have run through the
+streets of the city brandishing an ax smashing saloons. You're a lineal
+descendent of Carrie Nation." He puffed quietly until his head was
+surrounded by a nimbus of smoke. "Stop trying to reform me," he added.
+"You haven't been here long enough."
+
+"Not even God could do that, according to the reports I've heard," she
+said.
+
+He laughed. "I suppose my reputation gets around."
+
+"It does. You're an opinionated slave driver, a bully, an intellectual
+tyrant, and the best pathologist in this center."
+
+"The last part of that sentence makes up for unflattering honesty of the
+first," Kramer said. "At any rate, once we realized the situation we
+went to work to correct it. Institutes like this were established
+everywhere the disease appeared for the sole purpose of examining,
+treating, and experimenting with the hope of finding a cure. This
+section exists for the evaluation of treatment. We check the human
+cases, and the primates in the experimental laboratories. It is our
+duty to find out if anything the boys upstairs try shows any promise. We
+were a pretty big section once, but Thurston's virus has whittled us
+down. Right now there is just you and me. But there's still enough work
+to keep us busy. The experiments are still going on, and there are still
+human cases, even though the virus has killed off most of the
+susceptibles. We've evaluated over a thousand different drugs and
+treatments in this Institute alone."
+
+"And none of them have worked?"
+
+"No--but that doesn't mean the work's been useless. The research has
+saved others thousands of man hours chasing false leads. In this
+business negative results are almost as important as positive ones. We
+may never discover the solution, but our work will keep others from
+making the same mistakes."
+
+"I never thought of it that way."
+
+"People seldom do. But if you realize that this is international, that
+every worker on Thurston's Disease has a niche to fill, the picture will
+be clearer. We're doing our part inside the plan. Others are, too. And
+there are thousands of labs involved. Somewhere, someone will find the
+answer. It probably won't be us, but we'll help get the problem solved
+as quickly as possible. That's the important thing. It's the biggest
+challenge the race has ever faced--and the most important. It's a
+question of survival." Kramer's voice was sober. "We have to solve this.
+If Thurston's Disease isn't checked, the human race will become
+extinct. As a result, for the first time in history all mankind is
+working together."
+
+"All? You mean the Communists are, too?"
+
+"Of course. What's an ideology if there are no people to follow it?"
+Kramer knocked the ashes out of his pipe, looked at the laboratory clock
+and shrugged. "Ten minutes more," he said, "and these tubes will be
+ready. Keep an eye on that clock and let me know. Meantime you can
+straighten up this lab and find out where things are. I'll be in the
+office checking the progress reports." He turned abruptly away, leaving
+her standing in the middle of the cluttered laboratory.
+
+"Now what am I supposed to do here?" Mary wondered aloud. "Clean up, he
+says. Find out where things are, he says. Get acquainted with the place,
+he says. I could spend a month doing that." She looked at the littered
+bench, the wall cabinets with sliding doors half open, the jars of
+reagents sitting on the sink, the drainboard, on top of the refrigerator
+and on the floor. The disorder was appalling. "How he ever manages to
+work in here is beyond me. I suppose that I'd better start
+somewhere--perhaps I can get these bottles in some sort of order first."
+She sighed and moved toward the wall cabinets. "Oh well," she mused, "I
+asked for this."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Didn't you hear that buzzer?" Kramer asked.
+
+"Was that for me?" Mary said, looking up from a pile of bottles and
+glassware she was sorting.
+
+"Partly. It means they've sent us another post-mortem from upstairs."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"I don't know--man or monkey, it makes no difference. Whatever it is,
+it's Thurston's Disease. Come along. You might as well see what goes on
+in our ultra modern necropsy suite."
+
+"I'd like to." She put down the bottle she was holding and followed him
+to a green door at the rear of the laboratory.
+
+"Inside," Kramer said, "you will find a small anteroom, a shower, and a
+dressing room. Strip, shower, and put on a clean set of lab coveralls
+and slippers which you will find in the dressing room. You'll find
+surgical masks in the wall cabinet beside the lockers. Go through the
+door beyond the dressing room and wait for me there. I'll give you ten
+minutes."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"We do this both ways," Kramer said as he joined her in the narrow hall
+beyond the dressing room. "We'll reverse the process going out."
+
+"You certainly carry security to a maximum," she said through the mask
+that covered the lower part of her face.
+
+"You haven't seen anything yet," he said as he opened a door in the
+hall. "Note the positive air pressure," he said. "Theoretically nothing
+can get in here except what we bring with us. And we try not to bring
+anything." He stood aside to show her the glassed-in cubicle overhanging
+a bare room dominated by a polished steel post-mortem table that
+glittered in the harsh fluorescent lighting. Above the table a number of
+jointed rods and clamps hung from the ceiling. A low metal door and
+series of racks containing instruments and glassware were set into the
+opposite wall together with the gaping circular orifice of an open
+autoclave.
+
+"We work by remote control, just like they do at the AEC. See those
+handlers?" He pointed to the control console set into a small stainless
+steel table standing beside the sheet of glass at the far end of the
+cubicle. "They're connected to those gadgets up there." He indicated the
+jointed arms hanging over the autopsy table in the room beyond. "I could
+perform a major operation from here and never touch the patient. Using
+these I can do anything I could in person with the difference that
+there's a quarter inch of glass between me and my work. I have controls
+that let me use magnifiers, and even do microdissection, if necessary."
+
+"Where's the cadaver?" Mary asked.
+
+"Across the room, behind that door," he said, waving at the low, sliding
+metal partition behind the table. "It's been prepped, decontaminated and
+ready to go."
+
+"What happens when you're through?"
+
+"Watch." Dr. Kramer pressed a button on the console in front of him. A
+section of flooring slid aside and the table tipped. "The cadaver slides
+off that table and through that hole. Down below is a highly efficient
+crematorium."
+
+Mary shivered. "Neat and effective," she said shakily.
+
+"After that the whole room is sprayed with germicide and sterilized with
+live steam. The instruments go into the autoclave, and thirty minutes
+later we're ready for another post-mortem."
+
+"We use the handlers to put specimens into those jars," he said,
+pointing to a row of capped glass jars of assorted sizes on a wall rack
+behind the table. "After they're capped, the jars go onto that carrier
+beside the table. From here they pass through a decontamination chamber
+and into the remote-control laboratory across the hall where we can run
+biochemical and histological techniques. Finished slides and mounted
+specimens then go through another decontamination process to the outside
+lab. Theoretically, this place is proof against anything."
+
+"It seems to be," Mary said, obviously impressed. "I've never seen
+anything so elegant."
+
+"Neither did I until Thurston's Disease became a problem." Kramer
+shrugged and sat down behind the controls. "Watch, now," he said as he
+pressed a button. "Let's see what's on deck--man or monkey. Want to make
+a bet? I'll give you two to one it's a monkey."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The low door slid aside and a steel carriage emerged into the necropsy
+room bearing the nude body of a man. The corpse gleamed pallidly under
+the harsh shadowless glare of the fluorescents in the ceiling as Kramer,
+using the handlers, rolled it onto the post-mortem table and clamped it
+in place on its back. He pushed another button and the carriage moved
+back into the wall and the steel door slid shut. "That'll be
+decontaminated," he said, "and sent back upstairs for another body. I'd
+have lost," he remarked idly. "Lately the posts have been running three
+to one in favor of monkeys."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+He moved a handler and picked up a heavy scalpel from the instrument
+rack. "There's a certain advantage to this," he said as he moved the
+handler delicately. "These gadgets give a tremendous mechanical
+advantage. I can cut right through small bones and cartilage without
+using a saw."
+
+"How nice," Mary said. "I expect you enjoy yourself."
+
+"I couldn't ask for better equipment," he replied noncommittally. With
+deft motion of the handler he drew the scalpel down across the chest
+and along the costal margins in the classic inverted "Y" incision.
+"We'll take a look at the thorax first," he said, as he used the
+handlers to pry open the rib cage and expose the thoracic viscera. "Ah!
+Thought so! See that?" He pointed with a small handler that carried a
+probe. "Look at those lungs." He swung a viewer into place so Mary could
+see better. "Look at those abscesses and necrosis. It's Thurston's
+Disease, all right, with secondary bacterial invasion."
+
+The grayish solidified masses of tissue looked nothing like the normal
+pink appearance of healthy lungs. Studded with yellowish spherical
+abscesses they lay swollen and engorged within the gaping cavity of the
+chest.
+
+"You know the pathogenesis of Thurston's Disease?" Kramer asked.
+
+Mary shook her head, her face yellowish-white in the glare of the
+fluorescents.
+
+"It begins with a bronchial cough," Kramer said. "The virus attacks the
+bronchioles first, destroys them, and passes into the deeper tissues of
+the lungs. As with most virus diseases there is a transitory
+leukopenia--a drop in the total number of white blood cells--and a rise
+in temperature of about two or three degrees. As the virus attacks the
+alveolar structures, the temperature rises and the white blood cell
+count becomes elevated. The lungs become inflamed and painful. There is
+a considerable quantity of lymphoid exudate and pleural effusion.
+Secondary invaders and pus-forming bacteria follow the viral destruction
+of the lung tissue and form abscesses. Breathing becomes progressively
+more difficult as more lung tissue is destroyed. Hepatization and
+necrosis inactivate more lung tissue as the bacteria get in their dirty
+work, and finally the patient suffocates."
+
+"But what if the bacteria are controlled by antibiotics?"
+
+"Then the virus does the job. It produces atelectasis followed by
+progressive necrosis of lung tissue with gradual liquefaction of the
+parenchyma. It's slower, but just as fatal. This fellow was lucky. He
+apparently stayed out of here until he was almost dead. Probably he's
+had the disease for about a week. If he'd have come in early, we could
+have kept him alive for maybe a month. The end, however, would have been
+the same."
+
+"It's a terrible thing," Mary said faintly.
+
+"You'll get used to it. We get one or two every day." He shrugged.
+"There's nothing here that's interesting," he said as he released the
+clamps and tilted the table. For what seemed to Mary an interminable
+time, the cadaver clung to the polished steel. Then abruptly it slid off
+the shining surface and disappeared through the square hole in the
+floor. "We'll clean up now," Kramer said as he placed the instruments in
+the autoclave, closed the door and locked it, and pressed three buttons
+on the console.
+
+From jets embedded in the walls a fine spray filled the room with fog.
+
+"Germicide," Kramer said. "Later there'll be steam. That's all for
+now. Do you want to go?"
+
+Mary nodded.
+
+"If you feel a little rocky there's a bottle of Scotch in my desk. I'll
+split a drink with you when we get out of here."
+
+"Thanks," Mary said. "I think I could use one."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Barton! Where is the MacNeal stain!" Kramer's voice came from the lab.
+"I left it on the sink and it's gone!"
+
+"It's with the other blood stains and reagents. Second drawer from the
+right in the big cabinet. There's a label on the drawer," Mary called
+from the office. "If you can wait until I finish filing these papers,
+I'll come in and help you."
+
+"I wish you would," Kramer's voice was faintly exasperated. "Ever since
+you've organized my lab I can't find anything."
+
+"You just have a disorderly mind," Mary said, as she slipped the last
+paper into its proper folder and closed the file. "I'll be with you in a
+minute."
+
+"I don't dare lose you," Kramer said as Mary came into the lab. "You've
+made yourself indispensable. It'd take me six months to undo what you've
+done in one. Not that I mind," he amended, "but I was used to things the
+way they were." He looked around the orderly laboratory with a mixture
+of pride and annoyance. "Things are so neat they're almost painful."
+
+"You look more like a pathologist should," Mary said as she deftly
+removed the tray of blood slides from in front of him and began to run
+the stains. "It's my job to keep you free to think."
+
+"Whose brilliant idea is that? Yours?"
+
+"No--the Director's. He told me what my duties were when I came here.
+And I think he's right. You should be using your brain rather than
+fooling around with blood stains and sectioning tissues."
+
+"But I like to do things like that," Kramer protested. "It's relaxing."
+
+"What right have you to relax," Mary said. "Outside, people are dying by
+the thousands and you want to relax. Have you looked at the latest
+mortality reports?"
+
+"No--"
+
+"You should. The WHO estimates that nearly two billion people have died
+since Thurston's Disease first appeared in epidemic proportions. That's
+two out of three. And more are dying every day. Yet you want to relax."
+
+"I know," Kramer said, "but what can we do about it. We're working but
+we're getting no results."
+
+"You might use that brain of yours," Mary said bitterly. "You're
+supposed to be a scientist. You have facts. Can't you put them
+together?"
+
+"I don't know." He shrugged, "I've been working on this problem longer
+than you think. I come down here at night--"
+
+"I know. I clean up after you."
+
+"I haven't gotten anywhere. Sure, we can isolate the virus. It grows
+nicely on monkey lung cells. But that doesn't help. The thing has no
+apparent antigenicity. It parasitizes, but it doesn't trigger any immune
+reaction. We can kill it, but the strength of the germicide is too great
+for living tissue to tolerate."
+
+"Some people seem to be immune."
+
+"Sure they do--but why?"
+
+"Don't ask me. I'm not the scientist."
+
+"Play like one," Kramer growled. "Here are the facts. The disease
+attacks people of all races and ages. So far every one who is attacked
+dies. Adult Europeans and Americans appear to be somewhat more resistant
+than others on a population basis. Somewhere around sixty per cent of
+them are still alive, but it's wiped out better than eighty per cent of
+some groups. Children get it worse. Right now I doubt if one per cent of
+the children born during the past ten years are still alive."
+
+"It's awful!" Mary said.
+
+"It's worse than that. It's extinction. Without kids the race will die
+out." Kramer rubbed his forehead.
+
+"Have you any ideas?"
+
+"Children have less resistance," Kramer replied. "An adult gets exposed
+to a number of diseases to which he builds an immunity. Possibly one of
+these has a cross immunity against Thurston's virus."
+
+"Then why don't you work on that line?" Mary asked.
+
+"Just what do you think I've been doing? That idea was put out months
+ago, and everyone has been taking a crack at it. There are twenty-four
+laboratories working full time on that facet and God knows how many more
+working part time like we are. I've screened a dozen common diseases,
+including the six varieties of the common cold virus. All, incidentally,
+were negative."
+
+"Well--are you going to keep on with it?"
+
+"I have to." Kramer rubbed his eyes. "It won't let me sleep. I'm sure
+we're on the right track. Something an adult gets gives him resistance
+or immunity." He shrugged. "Tell you what. You run those bloods out and
+I'll go take another look at the data." He reached into his lab coat and
+produced a pipe. "I'll give it another try."
+
+"Sometimes I wish you'd read without puffing on that thing," Mary said.
+
+"Your delicate nose will be the death of me yet--" Kramer said.
+
+"It's my lungs I'm worried about," Mary said. "They'll probably look
+like two pieces of well-tanned leather if I associate with you for
+another year."
+
+"Stop complaining. You've gotten me to wear clean lab coats. Be
+satisfied with a limited victory," Kramer said absently, his eyes
+staring unseeingly at a row of reagent bottles on the bench. Abruptly he
+nodded. "Fantastic," he muttered, "but it's worth a check." He left the
+room, slamming the door behind him in his hurry.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"That man!" Mary murmured. "He'd drive a saint out of his mind. If I
+wasn't so fond of him I'd quit. If anyone told me I'd fall in love
+with a pathologist, I'd have said they were crazy. I wish--" Whatever
+the wish was, it wasn't uttered. Mary gasped and coughed rackingly.
+Carefully she moved back from the bench, opened a drawer and found a
+thermometer. She put it in her mouth. Then she drew a drop of blood from
+her forefinger and filled a red and white cell pipette, and made a smear
+of the remainder.
+
+She was interrupted by another spasm of coughing, but she waited until
+the paroxysm passed and went methodically back to her self-appointed
+task. She had done this many times before. It was routine procedure to
+check on anything that might be Thurston's Disease. A cold, a sore
+throat, a slight difficulty in breathing--all demanded the diagnostic
+check. It was as much a habit as breathing. This was probably the result
+of that cold she'd gotten last week, but there was nothing like being
+sure. Now let's see--temperature 99.5 degrees, red cell count 4-1/2
+million. White cell count ... oh! 2500 ... leukopenia! The differential
+showed a virtual absence of polymorphs, lymphocytes and monocytes. The
+whole slide didn't have two hundred. Eosinophils and basophils way
+up--twenty and fifteen per cent respectively--a relative rise rather
+than an absolute one--leukopenia, no doubt about it.
+
+She shrugged. There wasn't much question. She had Thurston's Disease. It
+was the beginning stages, the harsh cough, the slight temperature, the
+leukopenia. Pretty soon her white cell count would begin to rise, but
+it would rise too late. In fact, it was already too late. It's funny,
+she thought. I'm going to die, but it doesn't frighten me. In fact, the
+only thing that bothers me is that poor Walter is going to have a
+terrible time finding things. But I can't put this place the way it was.
+I couldn't hope to.
+
+She shook her head, slid gingerly off the lab stool and went to the hall
+door. She'd better check in at the clinic, she thought. There was bed
+space in the hospital now. Plenty of it. That hadn't been true a few
+months ago but the only ones who were dying now were the newborn and an
+occasional adult like herself. The epidemic had died out not because of
+lack of virulence but because of lack of victims. The city outside, one
+of the first affected, now had less than forty per cent of its people
+left alive. It was a hollow shell of its former self. People walked its
+streets and went through the motions of life. But they were not really
+alive. The vital criteria were as necessary for a race as for an
+individual. Growth, reproduction, irritability, metabolism--Mary smiled
+wryly. Whoever had authored that hackneyed mnemonic that life was a
+"grim" proposition never knew how right he was, particularly when one of
+the criteria was missing.
+
+The race couldn't reproduce. That was the true horror of Thurston's
+Disease--not how it killed, but who it killed. No children played in the
+parks and playgrounds. The schools were empty. No babies were pushed in
+carriages or taken on tours through the supermarkets in shopping
+carts. No advertisements of motherhood, or children, or children's
+things were in the newspapers or magazines. They were forbidden
+subjects--too dangerously emotional to touch. Laughter and shrill young
+voices had vanished from the earth to be replaced by the drab grayness
+of silence and waiting. Death had laid cold hands upon the hearts of
+mankind and the survivors were frozen to numbness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was odd, she thought, how wrong the prophets were. When Thurston's
+Disease broke into the news there were frightened predictions of the end
+of civilization. But they had not materialized. There were no mass
+insurrections, no rioting, no organized violence. Individual excesses,
+yes--but nothing of a group nature. What little panic there was at the
+beginning disappeared once people realized that there was no place to
+go. And a grim passivity had settled upon the survivors. Civilization
+did not break down. It endured. The mechanics remained intact. People
+had to do something even if it was only routine counterfeit of normal
+life--the stiff upper lip in the face of disaster.
+
+It would have been far more odd, Mary decided, if mankind had given way
+to panic. Humanity had survived other plagues nearly as terrible as
+this--and racial memory is long. The same grim patience of the past was
+here in the present. Man would somehow survive, and civilization go
+on.
+
+It was inconceivable that mankind would become extinct. The whole vast
+resources and pooled intelligence of surviving humanity were focused
+upon Thurston's Disease. And the disease would yield. Humanity waited
+with childlike confidence for the miracle that would save it. And the
+miracle would happen, Mary knew it with a calm certainty as she stood in
+the cross corridor at the end of the hall, looking down the thirty yards
+of tile that separated her from the elevator that would carry her up to
+the clinic and oblivion. It might be too late for her, but not for the
+race. Nature had tried unaided to destroy man before--and had failed.
+And her unholy alliance with man's genius would also fail.
+
+She wondered as she walked down the corridor if the others who had
+sickened and died felt as she did. She speculated with grim amusement
+whether Walter Kramer would be as impersonal as he was with the others,
+when he performed the post-mortem on her body. She shivered at the
+thought of that bare sterile room and the shining table. Death was not a
+pretty thing. But she could meet it with resignation if not with
+courage. She had already seen too much for it to have any meaning. She
+did not falter as she placed a finger on the elevator button.
+
+Poor Walter--she sighed. Sometimes it was harder to be among the living.
+It was good that she didn't let him know how she felt. She had sensed a
+change in him recently. His friendly impersonality had become merely
+friendly. It could, with a little encouragement, have developed into
+something else. But it wouldn't now. She sighed again. His hardness had
+been a tower of strength. And his bitter gallows humor had furnished a
+wry relief to grim reality. It had been nice to work with him. She
+wondered if he would miss her. Her lips curled in a faint smile. He
+would, if only for the trouble he would have in making chaos out of the
+order she had created. Why couldn't that elevator hurry?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Mary! Where are you going?" Kramer's voice was in her ears, and his
+hand was on her shoulder.
+
+"Don't touch me!"
+
+"Why not?" His voice was curiously different. Younger, excited.
+
+"I have Thurston's Disease," she said.
+
+He didn't let go. "Are you sure?"
+
+"The presumptive tests were positive."
+
+"Initial stages?"
+
+She nodded. "I had the first coughing attack a few minutes ago."
+
+He pulled her away from the elevator door that suddenly slid open. "You
+were going to that death trap upstairs," he said.
+
+"Where else can I go?"
+
+"With me," he said. "I think I can help you."
+
+"How? Have you found a cure for the virus?"
+
+"I think so. At least it's a better possibility than the things they're
+using up there." His voice was urgent. "And to think I might never
+have seen it if you hadn't put me on the track."
+
+"Are you sure you're right?"
+
+"Not absolutely, but the facts fit. The theory's good."
+
+"Then I'm going to the clinic. I can't risk infecting you. I'm a carrier
+now. I can kill you, and you're too important to die."
+
+"You don't know how wrong you are," Kramer said.
+
+"Let go of me!"
+
+"No--you're coming back!"
+
+She twisted in his grasp. "Let me go!" she sobbed and broke into a fit
+of coughing worse than before.
+
+"What I was trying to say," Dr. Kramer said into the silence that
+followed, "is that if you have Thurston's Disease, you've been a carrier
+for at least two weeks. If I am going to get it, your going away can't
+help. And if I'm not, I'm not."
+
+"Do you come willingly or shall I knock you unconscious and drag you
+back?" Kramer asked.
+
+She looked at his face. It was grimmer than she had ever seen it before.
+Numbly she let him lead her back to the laboratory.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"But, Walter--I can't. That's sixty in the past ten hours!" she
+protested.
+
+"Take it," he said grimly, "then take another. And inhale. Deeply."
+
+"But they make me dizzy."
+
+"Better dizzy than dead. And, by the way--how's your chest?"
+
+"Better. There's no pain now. But the cough is worse."
+
+"It should be."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"You've never smoked enough to get a cigarette cough," he said.
+
+She shook her head dizzily. "You're so right," she said.
+
+"And that's what nearly killed you," he finished triumphantly.
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+"I'm certain. Naturally, I can't prove it--yet. But that's just a matter
+of time. Your response just about clinches it. Take a look at the
+records. Who gets this disease? Youngsters--with nearly one hundred per
+cent morbidity and one hundred per cent mortality. Adults--less than
+fifty per cent morbidity--and again one hundred per cent mortality. What
+makes the other fifty per cent immune? Your crack about leather lungs
+started me thinking--so I fed the data cards into the computer and keyed
+them for smoking versus incidence. And I found that not one heavy smoker
+had died of Thurston's Disease. Light smokers and nonsmokers--plenty of
+them--but not one single nicotine addict. And there were over ten
+thousand randomized cards in that spot check. And there's the exact
+reverse of that classic experiment the lung cancer boys used to sell
+their case. Among certain religious groups which prohibit smoking there
+was nearly one hundred per cent mortality of all ages!
+
+"And so I thought since the disease was just starting in you, perhaps I
+could stop it if I loaded you with tobacco smoke. And it works!"
+
+"You're not certain yet," Mary said. "I might not have had the
+disease."
+
+"You had the symptoms. And there's virus in your sputum."
+
+"Yes, but--"
+
+"But, nothing! I've passed the word--and the boys in the other labs
+figure that there's merit in it. We're going to call it Barton's Therapy
+in your honor. It's going to cause a minor social revolution. A lot of
+laws are going to have to be rewritten. I can see where it's going to be
+illegal for children not to smoke. Funny, isn't it?
+
+"I've contacted the maternity ward. They have three babies still alive
+upstairs. We get all the newborn in this town, or didn't you know.
+Funny, isn't it, how we still try to reproduce. They're rigging a smoke
+chamber for the kids. The head nurse is screaming like a wounded tiger,
+but she'll feel better with live babies to care for. The only bad thing
+I can see is that it may cut down on her chain smoking. She's been
+worried a lot about infant mortality.
+
+"And speaking of nurseries--that reminds me. I wanted to ask you
+something."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Will you marry me? I've wanted to ask you before, but I didn't dare.
+Now I think you owe me something--your life. And I'd like to take care
+of it from now on."
+
+"Of course I will," Mary said. "And I have reasons, too. If I marry you,
+you can't possibly do that silly thing you plan."
+
+"What thing?"
+
+"Naming the treatment Barton's. It'll have to be Kramer's."
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+    This etext was produced from _Analog Science Fact and Science
+    Fiction_ February 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any
+    evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
+    Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without
+    note.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Pandemic, by Jesse Franklin Bone
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PANDEMIC ***
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Pandemic, by Jesse Franklin Bone
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Pandemic
+
+Author: Jesse Franklin Bone
+
+Illustrator: Barberis
+
+Release Date: August 6, 2008 [EBook #26206]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PANDEMIC ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, Dave Lovelace, Stephen Blundell
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="bk1"><h1><big>Pandemic</big></h1>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i2">Generally,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">human beings don't do<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">totally useless things<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">consistently and widely.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So&mdash;maybe there is<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">something to it&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<h2>BY J. F. BONE</h2></div>
+
+<p>&#9632; "We call it Thurston's Disease for
+two perfectly good reasons," Dr.
+Walter Kramer said. "He discovered
+it&mdash;and he was the first to die of it."
+The doctor fumbled fruitlessly
+through the pockets of his lab coat.
+"Now where the devil did I put those
+matches?"</p>
+
+<p>"Are these what you're looking
+for?" the trim blonde in the gray
+seersucker uniform asked. She picked
+a small box of wooden safety matches
+from the littered lab table beside
+her and handed them to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah," Kramer said. "Thanks.
+Things have a habit of getting lost
+around here."</p>
+
+<p>"I can believe that," she said as
+she eyed the frenzied disorder around
+her. Her boss wasn't much better
+than his laboratory, she decided as
+she watched him strike a match
+against the side of the box and apply
+the flame to the charred bowl of his
+pipe. His long dark face became half
+obscured behind a cloud of bluish
+smoke as he puffed furiously. He
+looked like a lean untidy devil recently
+escaped from hell with his
+thick brows, green eyes and lank
+black hair highlighted intermittently
+by the leaping flame of the match.
+He certainly didn't look like a pathologist.
+She wondered if she was going
+to like working with him, and shook
+her head imperceptibly. Possibly, but
+not probably. It might be difficult being
+cooped up here with him day after
+day. Well, she could always quit
+if things got too tough. At least there
+was that consolation.</p>
+
+<p>He draped his lean body across a
+lab stool and leaned his elbows on its
+back. There was a faint smile on his
+face as he eyed her quizzically.
+"You're new," he said. "Not just to
+this lab but to the Institute."</p>
+
+<div class="figright">
+<img src="images/001.png" width="368" height="500" alt="" title="" />
+<b><small>ILLUSTRATED BY BARBERIS</small></b></div>
+
+<p>She nodded. "I am, but how did
+you know?"</p>
+
+<p>"Thurston's Disease. Everyone in
+the Institute knows that name for the
+plague, but few outsiders do." He
+smiled sardonically. "Virus pneumonic
+plague&mdash;that's a better term for
+public use. After all, what good does
+it do to advertise a doctor's stupidity?"</p>
+
+<p>She eyed him curiously. "<i>De mortuis?</i>"
+she asked.</p>
+
+<p>He nodded. "That's about it. We
+may condemn our own, but we don't
+like laymen doing it. And besides,
+Thurston had good intentions. He
+never dreamed this would happen."</p>
+
+<p>"The road to hell, so I hear, is
+paved with good intentions."</p>
+
+<p>"Undoubtedly," Kramer said dryly.
+"Incidentally, did you apply for
+this job or were you assigned?"</p>
+
+<p>"I applied."</p>
+
+<p>"Someone should have warned you
+I dislike clich&eacute;s," he said. He paused
+a moment and eyed her curiously.
+"Just why did you apply?" he asked.
+"Why are you imprisoning yourself
+in a sealed laboratory which you
+won't leave as long as you work here.
+You know, of course, what the conditions
+are. Unless you resign or are
+carried out feet first you will remain
+here ... have you considered what
+such an imprisonment means?"</p>
+
+<p>"I considered it," she said, "and it
+doesn't make any difference. I have
+no ties outside and I thought I could
+help. I've had training. I was a nurse
+before I was married."</p>
+
+<p>"Divorced?"</p>
+
+<p>"Widowed."</p>
+
+<p>Kramer nodded. There were plenty
+of widows and widowers outside.
+Too many. But it wasn't much worse
+than in the Institute where, despite
+precautions, Thurston's disease took
+its toll of life.</p>
+
+<p>"Did they tell you this place is
+called the suicide section?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>She nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Weren't you frightened?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of dying? Hardly. Too many
+people are doing it nowadays."</p>
+
+<p>He grimaced, looking more satanic
+than ever. "You have a point," he admitted,
+"but it isn't a good one.
+Young people should be afraid of
+dying."</p>
+
+<p>"You're not."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not young. I'm thirty-five,
+and besides, this is my business. I've
+been looking at death for eleven
+years. I'm immune."</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't your experience," she
+admitted, "but I have your attitude."</p>
+
+<p>"What's your name?" Kramer said.</p>
+
+<p>"Barton, Mary Barton."</p>
+
+<p>"Hm-m-m. Well, Mary&mdash;I can't
+turn you down. I need you. But I
+could wish you had taken some other
+job."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll survive."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her with faint admiration
+in his greenish eyes. "Perhaps
+you will," he said. "All right.
+As to your duties&mdash;you will be my
+assistant, which means you'll be a
+dishwasher, laboratory technician,
+secretary, junior pathologist, and
+coffee maker. I'll help you with all
+the jobs except the last one. I make
+lousy coffee." Kramer grinned, his
+teeth a white flash across the darkness
+of his face. "You'll be on call
+twenty-four hours a day, underpaid,
+overworked, and in constant danger
+until we lick Thurston's virus. You'll
+be expected to handle the jobs of
+three people unless I can get more
+help&mdash;and I doubt that I can. People
+stay away from here in droves.
+There's no future in it."</p>
+
+<p>Mary smiled wryly. "Literally or
+figuratively?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>He chuckled. "You have a nice
+sense of graveyard humor," he said.
+"It'll help. But don't get careless. Assistants
+are hard to find."</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head. "I won't.
+While I'm not afraid of dying I don't
+want to do it. And I have no illusions
+about the danger. I was briefed
+quite thoroughly."</p>
+
+<p>"They wanted you to work upstairs?"</p>
+
+<p>She nodded.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="cap">"I suppose they need help, too.
+Thurston's Disease has riddled the
+medical profession. Just don't forget
+that this place can be a death trap.
+One mistake and you've had it. Naturally,
+we take every precaution, but
+with a virus no protection is absolute.
+If you're careless and make errors
+in procedure, sooner or later one
+of those submicroscopic protein molecules
+will get into your system."</p>
+
+<p>"You're still alive."</p>
+
+<p>"So I am," Kramer said, "but I
+don't take chances. My predecessor,
+my secretary, my lab technician, my
+junior pathologist, and my dishwasher
+all died of Thurston's Disease." He
+eyed her grimly. "Still want the job?"
+he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I lost a husband and a three-year
+old son," Mary said with equal grimness.
+"That's why I'm here. I want to
+destroy the thing that killed my family.
+I want to do something. I want
+to be useful."</p>
+
+<p>He nodded. "I think you can be,"
+he said quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"Mind if I smoke?" she asked. "I
+need some defense against that pipe
+of yours."</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;go ahead. Out here it's all
+right, but not in the security section."</p>
+
+<p>Mary took a package of cigarettes
+from her pocket, lit one and blew
+a cloud of gray smoke to mingle with
+the blue haze from Kramer's pipe.</p>
+
+<p>"Comfortable?" Kramer asked.</p>
+
+<p>She nodded.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at his wrist watch. "We
+have half an hour before the roll tube
+cultures are ready for examination.
+That should be enough to tell you
+about the modern Pasteur and his
+mutant virus. Since your duties will
+primarily involve Thurston's Disease,
+you'd better know something about
+it." He settled himself more comfortably
+across the lab bench and
+went on talking in a dry schoolmasterish
+voice. "Alan Thurston was an
+immunologist at Midwestern University
+Medical School. Like most men
+in the teaching trade, he also had a
+research project. If it worked out,
+he'd be one of the great names in
+medicine; like Jenner, Pasteur, and
+Salk. The result was that he pushed
+it and wasn't too careful. He wanted
+to be famous."</p>
+
+<p>"He's well known now," Mary said,
+"at least within the profession."</p>
+
+<p>"Quite," Kramer said dryly. "He
+was working with gamma radiations
+on microorganisms, trying to produce
+a mutated strain of <i>Micrococcus
+pyogenes</i> that would have enhanced
+antigenic properties."</p>
+
+<p>"Wait a minute, doctor. It's been
+four years since I was active in nursing.
+Translation, please."</p>
+
+<p>Kramer chuckled. "He was trying
+to make a vaccine out of a common
+infectious organism. You may know
+it better as <i>Staphylococcus</i>. As you
+know, it's a pus former that's made
+hospital life more dangerous than it
+should be because it develops resistance
+to antibiotics. What Thurston
+wanted to do was to produce a strain
+that would stimulate resistance in the
+patient without causing disease&mdash;something
+that would help patients
+protect themselves rather than rely
+upon doubtfully effective antibiotics."</p>
+
+<p>"That wasn't a bad idea."</p>
+
+<p>"There was nothing wrong with it.
+The only trouble was that he wound
+up with something else entirely. He
+was like the man who wanted to
+make a plastic suitable for children's
+toys and ended up with a new explosive.
+You see, what Thurston didn't
+realize was that his cultures were contaminated.
+He'd secured them from
+the University Clinic and had, so he
+thought, isolated them. But somehow
+he'd brought a virus along&mdash;probably
+one of the orphan group or possibly
+a phage."</p>
+
+<p>"Orphan?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;one that was not a normal
+inhabitant of human tissues. At any
+rate there was a virus&mdash;and he mutated
+it rather than the bacteria. Actually,
+it was simple enough, relatively
+speaking, since a virus is infinitely
+simpler in structure than a
+bacterium, and hence much easier to
+modify with ionizing radiation. So he
+didn't produce an antigen&mdash;he produced
+a disease instead. Naturally, he
+contracted it, and during the period
+between his infection and death he
+managed to infect the entire hospital.
+Before anyone realized what they
+were dealing with, the disease
+jumped from the hospital to the college,
+and from the college to the
+city, and from the city to&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know that part of it. It's
+all over the world now&mdash;killing people
+by the millions."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="cap">"Well," Kramer said, "at least it's
+solved the population explosion." He
+blew a cloud of blue smoke in Mary's
+direction. "And it did make Thurston
+famous. His name won't be quickly
+forgotten."</p>
+
+<p>She coughed. "I doubt if it ever
+will be," she said, "but it won't be remembered
+the way he intended."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her suspiciously.
+"That cough&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No, it's not Thurston's Disease.
+It's that pipe. It's rancid."</p>
+
+<p>"It helps me think," Kramer said.</p>
+
+<p>"You could try cigarettes&mdash;or
+candy," she suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd rather smoke a pipe."</p>
+
+<p>"There's cancer of the lip and
+tongue," she said helpfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't quote Ochsner. I don't
+agree with him. And besides, you
+smoke cigarettes, which are infinitely
+worse."</p>
+
+<p>"Only four or five a day. I don't
+saturate my system with nicotine."</p>
+
+<p>"In another generation," Kramer
+observed, "you'd have run through
+the streets of the city brandishing an
+ax smashing saloons. You're a lineal
+descendent of Carrie Nation." He
+puffed quietly until his head was surrounded
+by a nimbus of smoke. "Stop
+trying to reform me," he added.
+"You haven't been here long
+enough."</p>
+
+<p>"Not even God could do that, according
+to the reports I've heard,"
+she said.</p>
+
+<p>He laughed. "I suppose my reputation
+gets around."</p>
+
+<p>"It does. You're an opinionated
+slave driver, a bully, an intellectual
+tyrant, and the best pathologist in
+this center."</p>
+
+<p>"The last part of that sentence
+makes up for unflattering honesty of
+the first," Kramer said. "At any rate,
+once we realized the situation we
+went to work to correct it. Institutes
+like this were established everywhere
+the disease appeared for the sole purpose
+of examining, treating, and experimenting
+with the hope of finding
+a cure. This section exists for the
+evaluation of treatment. We check
+the human cases, and the primates in
+the experimental laboratories. It is
+our duty to find out if anything the
+boys upstairs try shows any promise.
+We were a pretty big section once,
+but Thurston's virus has whittled us
+down. Right now there is just you
+and me. But there's still enough
+work to keep us busy. The experiments
+are still going on, and there
+are still human cases, even though
+the virus has killed off most of the
+susceptibles. We've evaluated over a
+thousand different drugs and treatments
+in this Institute alone."</p>
+
+<p>"And none of them have worked?"</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;but that doesn't mean the
+work's been useless. The research has
+saved others thousands of man hours
+chasing false leads. In this business
+negative results are almost as important
+as positive ones. We may never
+discover the solution, but our work
+will keep others from making the
+same mistakes."</p>
+
+<p>"I never thought of it that way."</p>
+
+<p>"People seldom do. But if you
+realize that this is international, that
+every worker on Thurston's Disease
+has a niche to fill, the picture will be
+clearer. We're doing our part inside
+the plan. Others are, too. And there
+are thousands of labs involved. Somewhere,
+someone will find the answer.
+It probably won't be us, but we'll
+help get the problem solved as quickly
+as possible. That's the important
+thing. It's the biggest challenge the
+race has ever faced&mdash;and the most
+important. It's a question of survival."
+Kramer's voice was sober.
+"We have to solve this. If Thurston's
+Disease isn't checked, the human
+race will become extinct. As a result,
+for the first time in history all mankind
+is working together."</p>
+
+<p>"All? You mean the Communists
+are, too?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. What's an ideology if
+there are no people to follow it?"
+Kramer knocked the ashes out of his
+pipe, looked at the laboratory clock
+and shrugged. "Ten minutes more,"
+he said, "and these tubes will be
+ready. Keep an eye on that clock
+and let me know. Meantime you can
+straighten up this lab and find out
+where things are. I'll be in the office
+checking the progress reports." He
+turned abruptly away, leaving her
+standing in the middle of the cluttered
+laboratory.</p>
+
+<p>"Now what am I supposed to do
+here?" Mary wondered aloud. "Clean
+up, he says. Find out where things
+are, he says. Get acquainted with
+the place, he says. I could spend a
+month doing that." She looked at
+the littered bench, the wall cabinets
+with sliding doors half open, the jars
+of reagents sitting on the sink, the
+drainboard, on top of the refrigerator
+and on the floor. The disorder
+was appalling. "How he ever manages
+to work in here is beyond me.
+I suppose that I'd better start somewhere&mdash;perhaps
+I can get these bottles
+in some sort of order first." She
+sighed and moved toward the wall
+cabinets. "Oh well," she mused, "I
+asked for this."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="cap">"Didn't you hear that buzzer?"
+Kramer asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Was that for me?" Mary said,
+looking up from a pile of bottles and
+glassware she was sorting.</p>
+
+<p>"Partly. It means they've sent us
+another post-mortem from upstairs."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know&mdash;man or monkey, it
+makes no difference. Whatever it is,
+it's Thurston's Disease. Come along.
+You might as well see what goes on
+in our ultra modern necropsy suite."</p>
+
+<p>"I'd like to." She put down the bottle
+she was holding and followed
+him to a green door at the rear of
+the laboratory.</p>
+
+<p>"Inside," Kramer said, "you will
+find a small anteroom, a shower, and
+a dressing room. Strip, shower, and
+put on a clean set of lab coveralls and
+slippers which you will find in the
+dressing room. You'll find surgical
+masks in the wall cabinet beside
+the lockers. Go through the door beyond
+the dressing room and wait for
+me there. I'll give you ten minutes."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="cap">"We do this both ways," Kramer
+said as he joined her in the narrow
+hall beyond the dressing room. "We'll
+reverse the process going out."</p>
+
+<p>"You certainly carry security to a
+maximum," she said through the
+mask that covered the lower part of
+her face.</p>
+
+<p>"You haven't seen anything yet,"
+he said as he opened a door in the
+hall. "Note the positive air pressure,"
+he said. "Theoretically nothing can
+get in here except what we bring
+with us. And we try not to bring
+anything." He stood aside to show her
+the glassed-in cubicle overhanging a
+bare room dominated by a polished
+steel post-mortem table that glittered
+in the harsh fluorescent lighting.
+Above the table a number of jointed
+rods and clamps hung from the ceiling.
+A low metal door and series of
+racks containing instruments and
+glassware were set into the opposite
+wall together with the gaping circular
+orifice of an open autoclave.</p>
+
+<p>"We work by remote control, just
+like they do at the AEC. See those
+handlers?" He pointed to the control
+console set into a small stainless steel
+table standing beside the sheet of
+glass at the far end of the cubicle.
+"They're connected to those gadgets
+up there." He indicated the jointed
+arms hanging over the autopsy table
+in the room beyond. "I could perform
+a major operation from here
+and never touch the patient. Using
+these I can do anything I could in
+person with the difference that there's
+a quarter inch of glass between me
+and my work. I have controls that
+let me use magnifiers, and even do
+microdissection, if necessary."</p>
+
+<p>"Where's the cadaver?" Mary
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Across the room, behind that
+door," he said, waving at the low,
+sliding metal partition behind the table.
+"It's been prepped, decontaminated
+and ready to go."</p>
+
+<p>"What happens when you're
+through?"</p>
+
+<p>"Watch." Dr. Kramer pressed a
+button on the console in front of him.
+A section of flooring slid aside and
+the table tipped. "The cadaver slides
+off that table and through that hole.
+Down below is a highly efficient crematorium."</p>
+
+<p>Mary shivered. "Neat and effective,"
+she said shakily.</p>
+
+<p>"After that the whole room is
+sprayed with germicide and sterilized
+with live steam. The instruments go
+into the autoclave, and thirty minutes
+later we're ready for another post-mortem."</p>
+
+<p>"We use the handlers to put specimens
+into those jars," he said, pointing
+to a row of capped glass jars of
+assorted sizes on a wall rack behind
+the table. "After they're capped, the
+jars go onto that carrier beside the
+table. From here they pass through
+a decontamination chamber and into
+the remote-control laboratory across
+the hall where we can run biochemical
+and histological techniques. Finished
+slides and mounted specimens
+then go through another decontamination
+process to the outside lab.
+Theoretically, this place is proof
+against anything."</p>
+
+<p>"It seems to be," Mary said, obviously
+impressed. "I've never seen
+anything so elegant."</p>
+
+<p>"Neither did I until Thurston's Disease
+became a problem." Kramer
+shrugged and sat down behind the
+controls. "Watch, now," he said as
+he pressed a button. "Let's see what's
+on deck&mdash;man or monkey. Want to
+make a bet? I'll give you two to one
+it's a monkey."</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="cap">The low door slid aside and a steel
+carriage emerged into the necropsy
+room bearing the nude body of a
+man. The corpse gleamed pallidly under
+the harsh shadowless glare of the
+fluorescents in the ceiling as Kramer,
+using the handlers, rolled it onto the
+post-mortem table and clamped it in
+place on its back. He pushed another
+button and the carriage moved back
+into the wall and the steel door slid
+shut. "That'll be decontaminated," he
+said, "and sent back upstairs for
+another body. I'd have lost," he remarked
+idly. "Lately the posts have
+been running three to one in favor of
+monkeys."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/002.png" width="555" height="550" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>He moved a handler and picked
+up a heavy scalpel from the instrument
+rack. "There's a certain advantage
+to this," he said as he moved
+the handler delicately. "These gadgets
+give a tremendous mechanical
+advantage. I can cut right through
+small bones and cartilage without
+using a saw."</p>
+
+<p>"How nice," Mary said. "I expect
+you enjoy yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't ask for better equipment,"
+he replied noncommittally.
+With deft motion of the handler he
+drew the scalpel down across the
+chest and along the costal margins
+in the classic inverted "Y" incision.
+"We'll take a look at the thorax first,"
+he said, as he used the handlers to
+pry open the rib cage and expose the
+thoracic viscera. "Ah! Thought so!
+See that?" He pointed with a small
+handler that carried a probe. "Look
+at those lungs." He swung a viewer
+into place so Mary could see better.
+"Look at those abscesses and necrosis.
+It's Thurston's Disease, all right,
+with secondary bacterial invasion."</p>
+
+<p>The grayish solidified masses of
+tissue looked nothing like the normal
+pink appearance of healthy lungs.
+Studded with yellowish spherical abscesses
+they lay swollen and engorged
+within the gaping cavity of the chest.</p>
+
+<p>"You know the pathogenesis of
+Thurston's Disease?" Kramer asked.</p>
+
+<p>Mary shook her head, her face
+yellowish-white in the glare of the
+fluorescents.</p>
+
+<p>"It begins with a bronchial cough,"
+Kramer said. "The virus attacks the
+bronchioles first, destroys them, and
+passes into the deeper tissues of the
+lungs. As with most virus diseases
+there is a transitory leukopenia&mdash;a
+drop in the total number of white
+blood cells&mdash;and a rise in temperature
+of about two or three degrees.
+As the virus attacks the alveolar
+structures, the temperature rises and
+the white blood cell count becomes
+elevated. The lungs become inflamed
+and painful. There is a considerable
+quantity of lymphoid exudate and
+pleural effusion. Secondary invaders
+and pus-forming bacteria follow the
+viral destruction of the lung tissue
+and form abscesses. Breathing becomes
+progressively more difficult as
+more lung tissue is destroyed. Hepatization
+and necrosis inactivate more
+lung tissue as the bacteria get in their
+dirty work, and finally the patient
+suffocates."</p>
+
+<p>"But what if the bacteria are controlled
+by antibiotics?"</p>
+
+<p>"Then the virus does the job. It
+produces atelectasis followed by progressive
+necrosis of lung tissue with
+gradual liquefaction of the parenchyma.
+It's slower, but just as fatal. This
+fellow was lucky. He apparently
+stayed out of here until he was almost
+dead. Probably he's had the
+disease for about a week. If he'd
+have come in early, we could have
+kept him alive for maybe a month.
+The end, however, would have been
+the same."</p>
+
+<p>"It's a terrible thing," Mary said
+faintly.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll get used to it. We get one
+or two every day." He shrugged.
+"There's nothing here that's interesting,"
+he said as he released the
+clamps and tilted the table. For what
+seemed to Mary an interminable
+time, the cadaver clung to the polished
+steel. Then abruptly it slid off
+the shining surface and disappeared
+through the square hole in the floor.
+"We'll clean up now," Kramer said
+as he placed the instruments in the
+autoclave, closed the door and
+locked it, and pressed three buttons
+on the console.</p>
+
+<p>From jets embedded in the walls
+a fine spray filled the room with fog.</p>
+
+<p>"Germicide," Kramer said. "Later
+there'll be steam. That's all for now.
+Do you want to go?"</p>
+
+<p>Mary nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"If you feel a little rocky there's
+a bottle of Scotch in my desk. I'll
+split a drink with you when we get
+out of here."</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks," Mary said. "I think I
+could use one."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="cap">"Barton! Where is the MacNeal
+stain!" Kramer's voice came from the
+lab. "I left it on the sink and it's
+gone!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's with the other blood stains
+and reagents. Second drawer from
+the right in the big cabinet. There's
+a label on the drawer," Mary called
+from the office. "If you can wait until
+I finish filing these papers, I'll come
+in and help you."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you would," Kramer's
+voice was faintly exasperated. "Ever
+since you've organized my lab I
+can't find anything."</p>
+
+<p>"You just have a disorderly mind,"
+Mary said, as she slipped the last
+paper into its proper folder and
+closed the file. "I'll be with you in a
+minute."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't dare lose you," Kramer
+said as Mary came into the lab.
+"You've made yourself indispensable.
+It'd take me six months to undo what
+you've done in one. Not that I mind,"
+he amended, "but I was used to
+things the way they were." He looked
+around the orderly laboratory with a
+mixture of pride and annoyance.
+"Things are so neat they're almost
+painful."</p>
+
+<p>"You look more like a pathologist
+should," Mary said as she deftly removed
+the tray of blood slides from
+in front of him and began to run the
+stains. "It's my job to keep you free
+to think."</p>
+
+<p>"Whose brilliant idea is that?
+Yours?"</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;the Director's. He told me
+what my duties were when I came
+here. And I think he's right. You
+should be using your brain rather
+than fooling around with blood stains
+and sectioning tissues."</p>
+
+<p>"But I like to do things like that,"
+Kramer protested. "It's relaxing."</p>
+
+<p>"What right have you to relax,"
+Mary said. "Outside, people are dying
+by the thousands and you want
+to relax. Have you looked at the
+latest mortality reports?"</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You should. The WHO estimates
+that nearly two billion people have
+died since Thurston's Disease first appeared
+in epidemic proportions.
+That's two out of three. And more
+are dying every day. Yet you want
+to relax."</p>
+
+<p>"I know," Kramer said, "but what
+can we do about it. We're working
+but we're getting no results."</p>
+
+<p>"You might use that brain of
+yours," Mary said bitterly. "You're
+supposed to be a scientist. You have
+facts. Can't you put them together?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know." He shrugged,
+"I've been working on this problem
+longer than you think. I come down
+here at night&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I know. I clean up after you."</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't gotten anywhere. Sure,
+we can isolate the virus. It grows
+nicely on monkey lung cells. But
+that doesn't help. The thing has no
+apparent antigenicity. It parasitizes,
+but it doesn't trigger any immune reaction.
+We can kill it, but the
+strength of the germicide is too great
+for living tissue to tolerate."</p>
+
+<p>"Some people seem to be immune."</p>
+
+<p>"Sure they do&mdash;but why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't ask me. I'm not the scientist."</p>
+
+<p>"Play like one," Kramer growled.
+"Here are the facts. The disease attacks
+people of all races and ages. So
+far every one who is attacked dies.
+Adult Europeans and Americans appear
+to be somewhat more resistant
+than others on a population basis.
+Somewhere around sixty per cent of
+them are still alive, but it's wiped out
+better than eighty per cent of some
+groups. Children get it worse. Right
+now I doubt if one per cent of the
+children born during the past ten
+years are still alive."</p>
+
+<p>"It's awful!" Mary said.</p>
+
+<p>"It's worse than that. It's extinction.
+Without kids the race will die out."
+Kramer rubbed his forehead.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you any ideas?"</p>
+
+<p>"Children have less resistance,"
+Kramer replied. "An adult gets exposed
+to a number of diseases to
+which he builds an immunity. Possibly
+one of these has a cross immunity
+against Thurston's virus."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why don't you work on that
+line?" Mary asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Just what do you think I've been
+doing? That idea was put out months
+ago, and everyone has been taking a
+crack at it. There are twenty-four
+laboratories working full time on that
+facet and God knows how many more
+working part time like we are. I've
+screened a dozen common diseases,
+including the six varieties of the
+common cold virus. All, incidentally,
+were negative."</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;are you going to keep on
+with it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have to." Kramer rubbed his
+eyes. "It won't let me sleep. I'm sure
+we're on the right track. Something
+an adult gets gives him resistance or
+immunity." He shrugged. "Tell you
+what. You run those bloods out and
+I'll go take another look at the data."
+He reached into his lab coat and produced
+a pipe. "I'll give it another
+try."</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes I wish you'd read without
+puffing on that thing," Mary said.</p>
+
+<p>"Your delicate nose will be the
+death of me yet&mdash;" Kramer said.</p>
+
+<p>"It's my lungs I'm worried about,"
+Mary said. "They'll probably look like
+two pieces of well-tanned leather if I
+associate with you for another year."</p>
+
+<p>"Stop complaining. You've gotten
+me to wear clean lab coats. Be satisfied
+with a limited victory," Kramer
+said absently, his eyes staring unseeingly
+at a row of reagent bottles on
+the bench. Abruptly he nodded. "Fantastic,"
+he muttered, "but it's worth a
+check." He left the room, slamming
+the door behind him in his hurry.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="cap">"That man!" Mary murmured. "He'd
+drive a saint out of his mind. If I
+wasn't so fond of him I'd quit. If
+anyone told me I'd fall in love with a
+pathologist, I'd have said they were
+crazy. I wish&mdash;" Whatever the wish
+was, it wasn't uttered. Mary gasped
+and coughed rackingly. Carefully she
+moved back from the bench, opened
+a drawer and found a thermometer.
+She put it in her mouth. Then she
+drew a drop of blood from her forefinger
+and filled a red and white cell
+pipette, and made a smear of the remainder.</p>
+
+<p>She was interrupted by another
+spasm of coughing, but she waited
+until the paroxysm passed and went
+methodically back to her self-appointed
+task. She had done this many times
+before. It was routine procedure to
+check on anything that might be
+Thurston's Disease. A cold, a sore
+throat, a slight difficulty in breathing&mdash;all
+demanded the diagnostic check.
+It was as much a habit as breathing.
+This was probably the result of that
+cold she'd gotten last week, but there
+was nothing like being sure. Now let's
+see&mdash;temperature 99.5 degrees, red
+cell count 4&frac12; million. White cell
+count ... oh! 2500 ... leukopenia!
+The differential showed a virtual
+absence of polymorphs, lymphocytes
+and monocytes. The whole slide
+didn't have two hundred. Eosinophils
+and basophils way up&mdash;twenty and
+fifteen per cent respectively&mdash;a relative
+rise rather than an absolute one&mdash;leukopenia,
+no doubt about it.</p>
+
+<p>She shrugged. There wasn't much
+question. She had Thurston's Disease.
+It was the beginning stages, the harsh
+cough, the slight temperature, the
+leukopenia. Pretty soon her white cell
+count would begin to rise, but it
+would rise too late. In fact, it was already
+too late. It's funny, she thought.
+I'm going to die, but it doesn't frighten
+me. In fact, the only thing that
+bothers me is that poor Walter is going
+to have a terrible time finding
+things. But I can't put this place the
+way it was. I couldn't hope to.</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head, slid gingerly
+off the lab stool and went to the hall
+door. She'd better check in at the
+clinic, she thought. There was bed
+space in the hospital now. Plenty of it.
+That hadn't been true a few months
+ago but the only ones who were dying
+now were the newborn and an occasional
+adult like herself. The epidemic
+had died out not because of lack of
+virulence but because of lack of victims.
+The city outside, one of the first
+affected, now had less than forty per
+cent of its people left alive. It was a
+hollow shell of its former self. People
+walked its streets and went through
+the motions of life. But they were
+not really alive. The vital criteria
+were as necessary for a race as for an
+individual. Growth, reproduction, irritability,
+metabolism&mdash;Mary smiled
+wryly. Whoever had authored that
+hackneyed mnemonic that life was a
+"grim" proposition never knew how
+right he was, particularly when one of
+the criteria was missing.</p>
+
+<p>The race couldn't reproduce. That
+was the true horror of Thurston's Disease&mdash;not
+how it killed, but who it
+killed. No children played in the
+parks and playgrounds. The schools
+were empty. No babies were pushed
+in carriages or taken on tours through
+the supermarkets in shopping carts.
+No advertisements of motherhood, or
+children, or children's things were in
+the newspapers or magazines. They
+were forbidden subjects&mdash;too dangerously
+emotional to touch. Laughter
+and shrill young voices had vanished
+from the earth to be replaced by the
+drab grayness of silence and waiting.
+Death had laid cold hands upon the
+hearts of mankind and the survivors
+were frozen to numbness.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="cap">It was odd, she thought, how wrong
+the prophets were. When Thurston's
+Disease broke into the news there
+were frightened predictions of the
+end of civilization. But they had not
+materialized. There were no mass insurrections,
+no rioting, no organized
+violence. Individual excesses, yes&mdash;but
+nothing of a group nature. What
+little panic there was at the beginning
+disappeared once people realized
+that there was no place to go.
+And a grim passivity had settled upon
+the survivors. Civilization did not
+break down. It endured. The mechanics
+remained intact. People had
+to do something even if it was only
+routine counterfeit of normal life&mdash;the
+stiff upper lip in the face of disaster.</p>
+
+<p>It would have been far more odd,
+Mary decided, if mankind had given
+way to panic. Humanity had survived
+other plagues nearly as terrible as
+this&mdash;and racial memory is long. The
+same grim patience of the past was
+here in the present. Man would somehow
+survive, and civilization go on.</p>
+
+<p>It was inconceivable that mankind
+would become extinct. The whole
+vast resources and pooled intelligence
+of surviving humanity were focused
+upon Thurston's Disease. And the
+disease would yield. Humanity waited
+with childlike confidence for the
+miracle that would save it. And the
+miracle would happen, Mary knew it
+with a calm certainty as she stood in
+the cross corridor at the end of the
+hall, looking down the thirty yards of
+tile that separated her from the elevator
+that would carry her up to the
+clinic and oblivion. It might be too
+late for her, but not for the race. Nature
+had tried unaided to destroy man
+before&mdash;and had failed. And her unholy
+alliance with man's genius would
+also fail.</p>
+
+<p>She wondered as she walked down
+the corridor if the others who had
+sickened and died felt as she did. She
+speculated with grim amusement
+whether Walter Kramer would be as
+impersonal as he was with the others,
+when he performed the post-mortem
+on her body. She shivered at the
+thought of that bare sterile room and
+the shining table. Death was not a
+pretty thing. But she could meet it
+with resignation if not with courage.
+She had already seen too much for it
+to have any meaning. She did not falter
+as she placed a finger on the elevator
+button.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Walter&mdash;she sighed. Sometimes
+it was harder to be among the
+living. It was good that she didn't let
+him know how she felt. She had
+sensed a change in him recently. His
+friendly impersonality had become
+merely friendly. It could, with a little
+encouragement, have developed into
+something else. But it wouldn't now.
+She sighed again. His hardness had
+been a tower of strength. And his bitter
+gallows humor had furnished a
+wry relief to grim reality. It had been
+nice to work with him. She wondered
+if he would miss her. Her lips
+curled in a faint smile. He would,
+if only for the trouble he would have
+in making chaos out of the order she
+had created. Why couldn't that elevator
+hurry?</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="cap">"Mary! Where are you going?"
+Kramer's voice was in her ears, and
+his hand was on her shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't touch me!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" His voice was curiously
+different. Younger, excited.</p>
+
+<p>"I have Thurston's Disease," she
+said.</p>
+
+<p>He didn't let go. "Are you sure?"</p>
+
+<p>"The presumptive tests were positive."</p>
+
+<p>"Initial stages?"</p>
+
+<p>She nodded. "I had the first coughing
+attack a few minutes ago."</p>
+
+<p>He pulled her away from the elevator
+door that suddenly slid open.
+"You were going to that death trap
+upstairs," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Where else can I go?"</p>
+
+<p>"With me," he said. "I think I can
+help you."</p>
+
+<p>"How? Have you found a cure for
+the virus?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think so. At least it's a better
+possibility than the things they're using
+up there." His voice was urgent.
+"And to think I might never have
+seen it if you hadn't put me on the
+track."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you sure you're right?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not absolutely, but the facts fit.
+The theory's good."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I'm going to the clinic. I
+can't risk infecting you. I'm a carrier
+now. I can kill you, and you're too important
+to die."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't know how wrong you
+are," Kramer said.</p>
+
+<p>"Let go of me!"</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;you're coming back!"</p>
+
+<p>She twisted in his grasp. "Let me
+go!" she sobbed and broke into a
+fit of coughing worse than before.</p>
+
+<p>"What I was trying to say," Dr.
+Kramer said into the silence that followed,
+"is that if you have Thurston's
+Disease, you've been a carrier for at
+least two weeks. If I am going to get
+it, your going away can't help. And if
+I'm not, I'm not."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you come willingly or shall I
+knock you unconscious and drag you
+back?" Kramer asked.</p>
+
+<p>She looked at his face. It was grimmer
+than she had ever seen it before.
+Numbly she let him lead her back to
+the laboratory.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="cap">"But, Walter&mdash;I can't. That's sixty in
+the past ten hours!" she protested.</p>
+
+<p>"Take it," he said grimly, "then take
+another. And inhale. Deeply."</p>
+
+<p>"But they make me dizzy."</p>
+
+<p>"Better dizzy than dead. And, by
+the way&mdash;how's your chest?"</p>
+
+<p>"Better. There's no pain now. But
+the cough is worse."</p>
+
+<p>"It should be."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"You've never smoked enough to
+get a cigarette cough," he said.</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head dizzily. "You're
+so right," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"And that's what nearly killed you,"
+he finished triumphantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you sure?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm certain. Naturally, I can't
+prove it&mdash;yet. But that's just a matter
+of time. Your response just about
+clinches it. Take a look at the records.
+Who gets this disease? Youngsters&mdash;with
+nearly one hundred per
+cent morbidity and one hundred per
+cent mortality. Adults&mdash;less than fifty
+per cent morbidity&mdash;and again one
+hundred per cent mortality. What
+makes the other fifty per cent immune?
+Your crack about leather
+lungs started me thinking&mdash;so I fed
+the data cards into the computer and
+keyed them for smoking versus incidence.
+And I found that not one
+heavy smoker had died of Thurston's
+Disease. Light smokers and nonsmokers&mdash;plenty
+of them&mdash;but not one
+single nicotine addict. And there
+were over ten thousand randomized
+cards in that spot check. And there's
+the exact reverse of that classic experiment
+the lung cancer boys used
+to sell their case. Among certain religious
+groups which prohibit smoking
+there was nearly one hundred per cent
+mortality of all ages!</p>
+
+<p>"And so I thought since the disease
+was just starting in you, perhaps I
+could stop it if I loaded you with
+tobacco smoke. And it works!"</p>
+
+<p>"You're not certain yet," Mary said.
+"I might not have had the disease."</p>
+
+<p>"You had the symptoms. And
+there's virus in your sputum."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But, nothing! I've passed the word&mdash;and
+the boys in the other labs figure
+that there's merit in it. We're going to
+call it Barton's Therapy in your honor.
+It's going to cause a minor social
+revolution. A lot of laws are going to
+have to be rewritten. I can see where
+it's going to be illegal for children
+not to smoke. Funny, isn't it?</p>
+
+<p>"I've contacted the maternity ward.
+They have three babies still alive upstairs.
+We get all the newborn in this
+town, or didn't you know. Funny,
+isn't it, how we still try to reproduce.
+They're rigging a smoke chamber for
+the kids. The head nurse is screaming
+like a wounded tiger, but she'll
+feel better with live babies to care for.
+The only bad thing I can see is that it
+may cut down on her chain smoking.
+She's been worried a lot about infant
+mortality.</p>
+
+<p>"And speaking of nurseries&mdash;that
+reminds me. I wanted to ask you
+something."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Will you marry me? I've wanted
+to ask you before, but I didn't dare.
+Now I think you owe me something&mdash;your
+life. And I'd like to take care
+of it from now on."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I will," Mary said. "And
+I have reasons, too. If I marry you, you
+can't possibly do that silly thing you
+plan."</p>
+
+<p>"What thing?"</p>
+
+<p>"Naming the treatment Barton's.
+It'll have to be Kramer's." &#9632;</p>
+
+<div class="trn"><b>Transcriber's Note:</b>
+This etext was produced from <i>Analog Science Fact and Science Fiction</i> February 1962.
+Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
+copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and
+typographical errors have been corrected without note.</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Pandemic, by Jesse Franklin Bone
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+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,1291 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Pandemic, by Jesse Franklin Bone
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Pandemic
+
+Author: Jesse Franklin Bone
+
+Illustrator: Barberis
+
+Release Date: August 6, 2008 [EBook #26206]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PANDEMIC ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, Dave Lovelace, Stephen Blundell
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+_PANDEMIC_
+
+_BY J. F. BONE_
+
+
+        _Generally,
+          human beings don't do
+      totally useless things
+        consistently and widely.
+    So--maybe there is
+            something to it--_
+
+
+"We call it Thurston's Disease for two perfectly good reasons," Dr.
+Walter Kramer said. "He discovered it--and he was the first to die of
+it." The doctor fumbled fruitlessly through the pockets of his lab coat.
+"Now where the devil did I put those matches?"
+
+"Are these what you're looking for?" the trim blonde in the gray
+seersucker uniform asked. She picked a small box of wooden safety
+matches from the littered lab table beside her and handed them to him.
+
+"Ah," Kramer said. "Thanks. Things have a habit of getting lost around
+here."
+
+"I can believe that," she said as she eyed the frenzied disorder around
+her. Her boss wasn't much better than his laboratory, she decided as she
+watched him strike a match against the side of the box and apply the
+flame to the charred bowl of his pipe. His long dark face became half
+obscured behind a cloud of bluish smoke as he puffed furiously. He
+looked like a lean untidy devil recently escaped from hell with his
+thick brows, green eyes and lank black hair highlighted intermittently
+by the leaping flame of the match. He certainly didn't look like a
+pathologist. She wondered if she was going to like working with him, and
+shook her head imperceptibly. Possibly, but not probably. It might be
+difficult being cooped up here with him day after day. Well, she could
+always quit if things got too tough. At least there was that
+consolation.
+
+He draped his lean body across a lab stool and leaned his elbows on
+its back. There was a faint smile on his face as he eyed her
+quizzically. "You're new," he said. "Not just to this lab but to the
+Institute."
+
+[Illustration: ILLUSTRATED BY BARBERIS]
+
+She nodded. "I am, but how did you know?"
+
+"Thurston's Disease. Everyone in the Institute knows that name for the
+plague, but few outsiders do." He smiled sardonically. "Virus pneumonic
+plague--that's a better term for public use. After all, what good does
+it do to advertise a doctor's stupidity?"
+
+She eyed him curiously. "_De mortuis?_" she asked.
+
+He nodded. "That's about it. We may condemn our own, but we don't like
+laymen doing it. And besides, Thurston had good intentions. He never
+dreamed this would happen."
+
+"The road to hell, so I hear, is paved with good intentions."
+
+"Undoubtedly," Kramer said dryly. "Incidentally, did you apply for this
+job or were you assigned?"
+
+"I applied."
+
+"Someone should have warned you I dislike cliches," he said. He paused a
+moment and eyed her curiously. "Just why did you apply?" he asked. "Why
+are you imprisoning yourself in a sealed laboratory which you won't
+leave as long as you work here. You know, of course, what the conditions
+are. Unless you resign or are carried out feet first you will remain
+here ... have you considered what such an imprisonment means?"
+
+"I considered it," she said, "and it doesn't make any difference. I
+have no ties outside and I thought I could help. I've had training. I
+was a nurse before I was married."
+
+"Divorced?"
+
+"Widowed."
+
+Kramer nodded. There were plenty of widows and widowers outside. Too
+many. But it wasn't much worse than in the Institute where, despite
+precautions, Thurston's disease took its toll of life.
+
+"Did they tell you this place is called the suicide section?" he asked.
+
+She nodded.
+
+"Weren't you frightened?"
+
+"Of dying? Hardly. Too many people are doing it nowadays."
+
+He grimaced, looking more satanic than ever. "You have a point," he
+admitted, "but it isn't a good one. Young people should be afraid of
+dying."
+
+"You're not."
+
+"I'm not young. I'm thirty-five, and besides, this is my business. I've
+been looking at death for eleven years. I'm immune."
+
+"I haven't your experience," she admitted, "but I have your attitude."
+
+"What's your name?" Kramer said.
+
+"Barton, Mary Barton."
+
+"Hm-m-m. Well, Mary--I can't turn you down. I need you. But I could wish
+you had taken some other job."
+
+"I'll survive."
+
+He looked at her with faint admiration in his greenish eyes. "Perhaps
+you will," he said. "All right. As to your duties--you will be my
+assistant, which means you'll be a dishwasher, laboratory technician,
+secretary, junior pathologist, and coffee maker. I'll help you with all
+the jobs except the last one. I make lousy coffee." Kramer grinned, his
+teeth a white flash across the darkness of his face. "You'll be on call
+twenty-four hours a day, underpaid, overworked, and in constant danger
+until we lick Thurston's virus. You'll be expected to handle the jobs of
+three people unless I can get more help--and I doubt that I can. People
+stay away from here in droves. There's no future in it."
+
+Mary smiled wryly. "Literally or figuratively?" she asked.
+
+He chuckled. "You have a nice sense of graveyard humor," he said. "It'll
+help. But don't get careless. Assistants are hard to find."
+
+She shook her head. "I won't. While I'm not afraid of dying I don't want
+to do it. And I have no illusions about the danger. I was briefed quite
+thoroughly."
+
+"They wanted you to work upstairs?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I suppose they need help, too. Thurston's Disease has riddled the
+medical profession. Just don't forget that this place can be a death
+trap. One mistake and you've had it. Naturally, we take every
+precaution, but with a virus no protection is absolute. If you're
+careless and make errors in procedure, sooner or later one of those
+submicroscopic protein molecules will get into your system."
+
+"You're still alive."
+
+"So I am," Kramer said, "but I don't take chances. My predecessor, my
+secretary, my lab technician, my junior pathologist, and my dishwasher
+all died of Thurston's Disease." He eyed her grimly. "Still want the
+job?" he asked.
+
+"I lost a husband and a three-year old son," Mary said with equal
+grimness. "That's why I'm here. I want to destroy the thing that killed
+my family. I want to do something. I want to be useful."
+
+He nodded. "I think you can be," he said quietly.
+
+"Mind if I smoke?" she asked. "I need some defense against that pipe of
+yours."
+
+"No--go ahead. Out here it's all right, but not in the security
+section."
+
+Mary took a package of cigarettes from her pocket, lit one and blew a
+cloud of gray smoke to mingle with the blue haze from Kramer's pipe.
+
+"Comfortable?" Kramer asked.
+
+She nodded.
+
+He looked at his wrist watch. "We have half an hour before the roll tube
+cultures are ready for examination. That should be enough to tell you
+about the modern Pasteur and his mutant virus. Since your duties will
+primarily involve Thurston's Disease, you'd better know something about
+it." He settled himself more comfortably across the lab bench and went
+on talking in a dry schoolmasterish voice. "Alan Thurston was an
+immunologist at Midwestern University Medical School. Like most men in
+the teaching trade, he also had a research project. If it worked out,
+he'd be one of the great names in medicine; like Jenner, Pasteur, and
+Salk. The result was that he pushed it and wasn't too careful. He wanted
+to be famous."
+
+"He's well known now," Mary said, "at least within the profession."
+
+"Quite," Kramer said dryly. "He was working with gamma radiations on
+microorganisms, trying to produce a mutated strain of _Micrococcus
+pyogenes_ that would have enhanced antigenic properties."
+
+"Wait a minute, doctor. It's been four years since I was active in
+nursing. Translation, please."
+
+Kramer chuckled. "He was trying to make a vaccine out of a common
+infectious organism. You may know it better as _Staphylococcus_. As you
+know, it's a pus former that's made hospital life more dangerous than it
+should be because it develops resistance to antibiotics. What Thurston
+wanted to do was to produce a strain that would stimulate resistance in
+the patient without causing disease--something that would help patients
+protect themselves rather than rely upon doubtfully effective
+antibiotics."
+
+"That wasn't a bad idea."
+
+"There was nothing wrong with it. The only trouble was that he wound up
+with something else entirely. He was like the man who wanted to make a
+plastic suitable for children's toys and ended up with a new explosive.
+You see, what Thurston didn't realize was that his cultures were
+contaminated. He'd secured them from the University Clinic and had, so
+he thought, isolated them. But somehow he'd brought a virus
+along--probably one of the orphan group or possibly a phage."
+
+"Orphan?"
+
+"Yes--one that was not a normal inhabitant of human tissues. At any rate
+there was a virus--and he mutated it rather than the bacteria. Actually,
+it was simple enough, relatively speaking, since a virus is infinitely
+simpler in structure than a bacterium, and hence much easier to modify
+with ionizing radiation. So he didn't produce an antigen--he produced a
+disease instead. Naturally, he contracted it, and during the period
+between his infection and death he managed to infect the entire
+hospital. Before anyone realized what they were dealing with, the
+disease jumped from the hospital to the college, and from the college to
+the city, and from the city to--"
+
+"Yes, I know that part of it. It's all over the world now--killing
+people by the millions."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Well," Kramer said, "at least it's solved the population explosion." He
+blew a cloud of blue smoke in Mary's direction. "And it did make
+Thurston famous. His name won't be quickly forgotten."
+
+She coughed. "I doubt if it ever will be," she said, "but it won't be
+remembered the way he intended."
+
+He looked at her suspiciously. "That cough--"
+
+"No, it's not Thurston's Disease. It's that pipe. It's rancid."
+
+"It helps me think," Kramer said.
+
+"You could try cigarettes--or candy," she suggested.
+
+"I'd rather smoke a pipe."
+
+"There's cancer of the lip and tongue," she said helpfully.
+
+"Don't quote Ochsner. I don't agree with him. And besides, you smoke
+cigarettes, which are infinitely worse."
+
+"Only four or five a day. I don't saturate my system with nicotine."
+
+"In another generation," Kramer observed, "you'd have run through the
+streets of the city brandishing an ax smashing saloons. You're a lineal
+descendent of Carrie Nation." He puffed quietly until his head was
+surrounded by a nimbus of smoke. "Stop trying to reform me," he added.
+"You haven't been here long enough."
+
+"Not even God could do that, according to the reports I've heard," she
+said.
+
+He laughed. "I suppose my reputation gets around."
+
+"It does. You're an opinionated slave driver, a bully, an intellectual
+tyrant, and the best pathologist in this center."
+
+"The last part of that sentence makes up for unflattering honesty of the
+first," Kramer said. "At any rate, once we realized the situation we
+went to work to correct it. Institutes like this were established
+everywhere the disease appeared for the sole purpose of examining,
+treating, and experimenting with the hope of finding a cure. This
+section exists for the evaluation of treatment. We check the human
+cases, and the primates in the experimental laboratories. It is our
+duty to find out if anything the boys upstairs try shows any promise. We
+were a pretty big section once, but Thurston's virus has whittled us
+down. Right now there is just you and me. But there's still enough work
+to keep us busy. The experiments are still going on, and there are still
+human cases, even though the virus has killed off most of the
+susceptibles. We've evaluated over a thousand different drugs and
+treatments in this Institute alone."
+
+"And none of them have worked?"
+
+"No--but that doesn't mean the work's been useless. The research has
+saved others thousands of man hours chasing false leads. In this
+business negative results are almost as important as positive ones. We
+may never discover the solution, but our work will keep others from
+making the same mistakes."
+
+"I never thought of it that way."
+
+"People seldom do. But if you realize that this is international, that
+every worker on Thurston's Disease has a niche to fill, the picture will
+be clearer. We're doing our part inside the plan. Others are, too. And
+there are thousands of labs involved. Somewhere, someone will find the
+answer. It probably won't be us, but we'll help get the problem solved
+as quickly as possible. That's the important thing. It's the biggest
+challenge the race has ever faced--and the most important. It's a
+question of survival." Kramer's voice was sober. "We have to solve this.
+If Thurston's Disease isn't checked, the human race will become
+extinct. As a result, for the first time in history all mankind is
+working together."
+
+"All? You mean the Communists are, too?"
+
+"Of course. What's an ideology if there are no people to follow it?"
+Kramer knocked the ashes out of his pipe, looked at the laboratory clock
+and shrugged. "Ten minutes more," he said, "and these tubes will be
+ready. Keep an eye on that clock and let me know. Meantime you can
+straighten up this lab and find out where things are. I'll be in the
+office checking the progress reports." He turned abruptly away, leaving
+her standing in the middle of the cluttered laboratory.
+
+"Now what am I supposed to do here?" Mary wondered aloud. "Clean up, he
+says. Find out where things are, he says. Get acquainted with the place,
+he says. I could spend a month doing that." She looked at the littered
+bench, the wall cabinets with sliding doors half open, the jars of
+reagents sitting on the sink, the drainboard, on top of the refrigerator
+and on the floor. The disorder was appalling. "How he ever manages to
+work in here is beyond me. I suppose that I'd better start
+somewhere--perhaps I can get these bottles in some sort of order first."
+She sighed and moved toward the wall cabinets. "Oh well," she mused, "I
+asked for this."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Didn't you hear that buzzer?" Kramer asked.
+
+"Was that for me?" Mary said, looking up from a pile of bottles and
+glassware she was sorting.
+
+"Partly. It means they've sent us another post-mortem from upstairs."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"I don't know--man or monkey, it makes no difference. Whatever it is,
+it's Thurston's Disease. Come along. You might as well see what goes on
+in our ultra modern necropsy suite."
+
+"I'd like to." She put down the bottle she was holding and followed him
+to a green door at the rear of the laboratory.
+
+"Inside," Kramer said, "you will find a small anteroom, a shower, and a
+dressing room. Strip, shower, and put on a clean set of lab coveralls
+and slippers which you will find in the dressing room. You'll find
+surgical masks in the wall cabinet beside the lockers. Go through the
+door beyond the dressing room and wait for me there. I'll give you ten
+minutes."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"We do this both ways," Kramer said as he joined her in the narrow hall
+beyond the dressing room. "We'll reverse the process going out."
+
+"You certainly carry security to a maximum," she said through the mask
+that covered the lower part of her face.
+
+"You haven't seen anything yet," he said as he opened a door in the
+hall. "Note the positive air pressure," he said. "Theoretically nothing
+can get in here except what we bring with us. And we try not to bring
+anything." He stood aside to show her the glassed-in cubicle overhanging
+a bare room dominated by a polished steel post-mortem table that
+glittered in the harsh fluorescent lighting. Above the table a number of
+jointed rods and clamps hung from the ceiling. A low metal door and
+series of racks containing instruments and glassware were set into the
+opposite wall together with the gaping circular orifice of an open
+autoclave.
+
+"We work by remote control, just like they do at the AEC. See those
+handlers?" He pointed to the control console set into a small stainless
+steel table standing beside the sheet of glass at the far end of the
+cubicle. "They're connected to those gadgets up there." He indicated the
+jointed arms hanging over the autopsy table in the room beyond. "I could
+perform a major operation from here and never touch the patient. Using
+these I can do anything I could in person with the difference that
+there's a quarter inch of glass between me and my work. I have controls
+that let me use magnifiers, and even do microdissection, if necessary."
+
+"Where's the cadaver?" Mary asked.
+
+"Across the room, behind that door," he said, waving at the low, sliding
+metal partition behind the table. "It's been prepped, decontaminated and
+ready to go."
+
+"What happens when you're through?"
+
+"Watch." Dr. Kramer pressed a button on the console in front of him. A
+section of flooring slid aside and the table tipped. "The cadaver slides
+off that table and through that hole. Down below is a highly efficient
+crematorium."
+
+Mary shivered. "Neat and effective," she said shakily.
+
+"After that the whole room is sprayed with germicide and sterilized with
+live steam. The instruments go into the autoclave, and thirty minutes
+later we're ready for another post-mortem."
+
+"We use the handlers to put specimens into those jars," he said,
+pointing to a row of capped glass jars of assorted sizes on a wall rack
+behind the table. "After they're capped, the jars go onto that carrier
+beside the table. From here they pass through a decontamination chamber
+and into the remote-control laboratory across the hall where we can run
+biochemical and histological techniques. Finished slides and mounted
+specimens then go through another decontamination process to the outside
+lab. Theoretically, this place is proof against anything."
+
+"It seems to be," Mary said, obviously impressed. "I've never seen
+anything so elegant."
+
+"Neither did I until Thurston's Disease became a problem." Kramer
+shrugged and sat down behind the controls. "Watch, now," he said as he
+pressed a button. "Let's see what's on deck--man or monkey. Want to make
+a bet? I'll give you two to one it's a monkey."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The low door slid aside and a steel carriage emerged into the necropsy
+room bearing the nude body of a man. The corpse gleamed pallidly under
+the harsh shadowless glare of the fluorescents in the ceiling as Kramer,
+using the handlers, rolled it onto the post-mortem table and clamped it
+in place on its back. He pushed another button and the carriage moved
+back into the wall and the steel door slid shut. "That'll be
+decontaminated," he said, "and sent back upstairs for another body. I'd
+have lost," he remarked idly. "Lately the posts have been running three
+to one in favor of monkeys."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+He moved a handler and picked up a heavy scalpel from the instrument
+rack. "There's a certain advantage to this," he said as he moved the
+handler delicately. "These gadgets give a tremendous mechanical
+advantage. I can cut right through small bones and cartilage without
+using a saw."
+
+"How nice," Mary said. "I expect you enjoy yourself."
+
+"I couldn't ask for better equipment," he replied noncommittally. With
+deft motion of the handler he drew the scalpel down across the chest
+and along the costal margins in the classic inverted "Y" incision.
+"We'll take a look at the thorax first," he said, as he used the
+handlers to pry open the rib cage and expose the thoracic viscera. "Ah!
+Thought so! See that?" He pointed with a small handler that carried a
+probe. "Look at those lungs." He swung a viewer into place so Mary could
+see better. "Look at those abscesses and necrosis. It's Thurston's
+Disease, all right, with secondary bacterial invasion."
+
+The grayish solidified masses of tissue looked nothing like the normal
+pink appearance of healthy lungs. Studded with yellowish spherical
+abscesses they lay swollen and engorged within the gaping cavity of the
+chest.
+
+"You know the pathogenesis of Thurston's Disease?" Kramer asked.
+
+Mary shook her head, her face yellowish-white in the glare of the
+fluorescents.
+
+"It begins with a bronchial cough," Kramer said. "The virus attacks the
+bronchioles first, destroys them, and passes into the deeper tissues of
+the lungs. As with most virus diseases there is a transitory
+leukopenia--a drop in the total number of white blood cells--and a rise
+in temperature of about two or three degrees. As the virus attacks the
+alveolar structures, the temperature rises and the white blood cell
+count becomes elevated. The lungs become inflamed and painful. There is
+a considerable quantity of lymphoid exudate and pleural effusion.
+Secondary invaders and pus-forming bacteria follow the viral destruction
+of the lung tissue and form abscesses. Breathing becomes progressively
+more difficult as more lung tissue is destroyed. Hepatization and
+necrosis inactivate more lung tissue as the bacteria get in their dirty
+work, and finally the patient suffocates."
+
+"But what if the bacteria are controlled by antibiotics?"
+
+"Then the virus does the job. It produces atelectasis followed by
+progressive necrosis of lung tissue with gradual liquefaction of the
+parenchyma. It's slower, but just as fatal. This fellow was lucky. He
+apparently stayed out of here until he was almost dead. Probably he's
+had the disease for about a week. If he'd have come in early, we could
+have kept him alive for maybe a month. The end, however, would have been
+the same."
+
+"It's a terrible thing," Mary said faintly.
+
+"You'll get used to it. We get one or two every day." He shrugged.
+"There's nothing here that's interesting," he said as he released the
+clamps and tilted the table. For what seemed to Mary an interminable
+time, the cadaver clung to the polished steel. Then abruptly it slid off
+the shining surface and disappeared through the square hole in the
+floor. "We'll clean up now," Kramer said as he placed the instruments in
+the autoclave, closed the door and locked it, and pressed three buttons
+on the console.
+
+From jets embedded in the walls a fine spray filled the room with fog.
+
+"Germicide," Kramer said. "Later there'll be steam. That's all for
+now. Do you want to go?"
+
+Mary nodded.
+
+"If you feel a little rocky there's a bottle of Scotch in my desk. I'll
+split a drink with you when we get out of here."
+
+"Thanks," Mary said. "I think I could use one."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Barton! Where is the MacNeal stain!" Kramer's voice came from the lab.
+"I left it on the sink and it's gone!"
+
+"It's with the other blood stains and reagents. Second drawer from the
+right in the big cabinet. There's a label on the drawer," Mary called
+from the office. "If you can wait until I finish filing these papers,
+I'll come in and help you."
+
+"I wish you would," Kramer's voice was faintly exasperated. "Ever since
+you've organized my lab I can't find anything."
+
+"You just have a disorderly mind," Mary said, as she slipped the last
+paper into its proper folder and closed the file. "I'll be with you in a
+minute."
+
+"I don't dare lose you," Kramer said as Mary came into the lab. "You've
+made yourself indispensable. It'd take me six months to undo what you've
+done in one. Not that I mind," he amended, "but I was used to things the
+way they were." He looked around the orderly laboratory with a mixture
+of pride and annoyance. "Things are so neat they're almost painful."
+
+"You look more like a pathologist should," Mary said as she deftly
+removed the tray of blood slides from in front of him and began to run
+the stains. "It's my job to keep you free to think."
+
+"Whose brilliant idea is that? Yours?"
+
+"No--the Director's. He told me what my duties were when I came here.
+And I think he's right. You should be using your brain rather than
+fooling around with blood stains and sectioning tissues."
+
+"But I like to do things like that," Kramer protested. "It's relaxing."
+
+"What right have you to relax," Mary said. "Outside, people are dying by
+the thousands and you want to relax. Have you looked at the latest
+mortality reports?"
+
+"No--"
+
+"You should. The WHO estimates that nearly two billion people have died
+since Thurston's Disease first appeared in epidemic proportions. That's
+two out of three. And more are dying every day. Yet you want to relax."
+
+"I know," Kramer said, "but what can we do about it. We're working but
+we're getting no results."
+
+"You might use that brain of yours," Mary said bitterly. "You're
+supposed to be a scientist. You have facts. Can't you put them
+together?"
+
+"I don't know." He shrugged, "I've been working on this problem longer
+than you think. I come down here at night--"
+
+"I know. I clean up after you."
+
+"I haven't gotten anywhere. Sure, we can isolate the virus. It grows
+nicely on monkey lung cells. But that doesn't help. The thing has no
+apparent antigenicity. It parasitizes, but it doesn't trigger any immune
+reaction. We can kill it, but the strength of the germicide is too great
+for living tissue to tolerate."
+
+"Some people seem to be immune."
+
+"Sure they do--but why?"
+
+"Don't ask me. I'm not the scientist."
+
+"Play like one," Kramer growled. "Here are the facts. The disease
+attacks people of all races and ages. So far every one who is attacked
+dies. Adult Europeans and Americans appear to be somewhat more resistant
+than others on a population basis. Somewhere around sixty per cent of
+them are still alive, but it's wiped out better than eighty per cent of
+some groups. Children get it worse. Right now I doubt if one per cent of
+the children born during the past ten years are still alive."
+
+"It's awful!" Mary said.
+
+"It's worse than that. It's extinction. Without kids the race will die
+out." Kramer rubbed his forehead.
+
+"Have you any ideas?"
+
+"Children have less resistance," Kramer replied. "An adult gets exposed
+to a number of diseases to which he builds an immunity. Possibly one of
+these has a cross immunity against Thurston's virus."
+
+"Then why don't you work on that line?" Mary asked.
+
+"Just what do you think I've been doing? That idea was put out months
+ago, and everyone has been taking a crack at it. There are twenty-four
+laboratories working full time on that facet and God knows how many more
+working part time like we are. I've screened a dozen common diseases,
+including the six varieties of the common cold virus. All, incidentally,
+were negative."
+
+"Well--are you going to keep on with it?"
+
+"I have to." Kramer rubbed his eyes. "It won't let me sleep. I'm sure
+we're on the right track. Something an adult gets gives him resistance
+or immunity." He shrugged. "Tell you what. You run those bloods out and
+I'll go take another look at the data." He reached into his lab coat and
+produced a pipe. "I'll give it another try."
+
+"Sometimes I wish you'd read without puffing on that thing," Mary said.
+
+"Your delicate nose will be the death of me yet--" Kramer said.
+
+"It's my lungs I'm worried about," Mary said. "They'll probably look
+like two pieces of well-tanned leather if I associate with you for
+another year."
+
+"Stop complaining. You've gotten me to wear clean lab coats. Be
+satisfied with a limited victory," Kramer said absently, his eyes
+staring unseeingly at a row of reagent bottles on the bench. Abruptly he
+nodded. "Fantastic," he muttered, "but it's worth a check." He left the
+room, slamming the door behind him in his hurry.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"That man!" Mary murmured. "He'd drive a saint out of his mind. If I
+wasn't so fond of him I'd quit. If anyone told me I'd fall in love
+with a pathologist, I'd have said they were crazy. I wish--" Whatever
+the wish was, it wasn't uttered. Mary gasped and coughed rackingly.
+Carefully she moved back from the bench, opened a drawer and found a
+thermometer. She put it in her mouth. Then she drew a drop of blood from
+her forefinger and filled a red and white cell pipette, and made a smear
+of the remainder.
+
+She was interrupted by another spasm of coughing, but she waited until
+the paroxysm passed and went methodically back to her self-appointed
+task. She had done this many times before. It was routine procedure to
+check on anything that might be Thurston's Disease. A cold, a sore
+throat, a slight difficulty in breathing--all demanded the diagnostic
+check. It was as much a habit as breathing. This was probably the result
+of that cold she'd gotten last week, but there was nothing like being
+sure. Now let's see--temperature 99.5 degrees, red cell count 4-1/2
+million. White cell count ... oh! 2500 ... leukopenia! The differential
+showed a virtual absence of polymorphs, lymphocytes and monocytes. The
+whole slide didn't have two hundred. Eosinophils and basophils way
+up--twenty and fifteen per cent respectively--a relative rise rather
+than an absolute one--leukopenia, no doubt about it.
+
+She shrugged. There wasn't much question. She had Thurston's Disease. It
+was the beginning stages, the harsh cough, the slight temperature, the
+leukopenia. Pretty soon her white cell count would begin to rise, but
+it would rise too late. In fact, it was already too late. It's funny,
+she thought. I'm going to die, but it doesn't frighten me. In fact, the
+only thing that bothers me is that poor Walter is going to have a
+terrible time finding things. But I can't put this place the way it was.
+I couldn't hope to.
+
+She shook her head, slid gingerly off the lab stool and went to the hall
+door. She'd better check in at the clinic, she thought. There was bed
+space in the hospital now. Plenty of it. That hadn't been true a few
+months ago but the only ones who were dying now were the newborn and an
+occasional adult like herself. The epidemic had died out not because of
+lack of virulence but because of lack of victims. The city outside, one
+of the first affected, now had less than forty per cent of its people
+left alive. It was a hollow shell of its former self. People walked its
+streets and went through the motions of life. But they were not really
+alive. The vital criteria were as necessary for a race as for an
+individual. Growth, reproduction, irritability, metabolism--Mary smiled
+wryly. Whoever had authored that hackneyed mnemonic that life was a
+"grim" proposition never knew how right he was, particularly when one of
+the criteria was missing.
+
+The race couldn't reproduce. That was the true horror of Thurston's
+Disease--not how it killed, but who it killed. No children played in the
+parks and playgrounds. The schools were empty. No babies were pushed in
+carriages or taken on tours through the supermarkets in shopping
+carts. No advertisements of motherhood, or children, or children's
+things were in the newspapers or magazines. They were forbidden
+subjects--too dangerously emotional to touch. Laughter and shrill young
+voices had vanished from the earth to be replaced by the drab grayness
+of silence and waiting. Death had laid cold hands upon the hearts of
+mankind and the survivors were frozen to numbness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was odd, she thought, how wrong the prophets were. When Thurston's
+Disease broke into the news there were frightened predictions of the end
+of civilization. But they had not materialized. There were no mass
+insurrections, no rioting, no organized violence. Individual excesses,
+yes--but nothing of a group nature. What little panic there was at the
+beginning disappeared once people realized that there was no place to
+go. And a grim passivity had settled upon the survivors. Civilization
+did not break down. It endured. The mechanics remained intact. People
+had to do something even if it was only routine counterfeit of normal
+life--the stiff upper lip in the face of disaster.
+
+It would have been far more odd, Mary decided, if mankind had given way
+to panic. Humanity had survived other plagues nearly as terrible as
+this--and racial memory is long. The same grim patience of the past was
+here in the present. Man would somehow survive, and civilization go
+on.
+
+It was inconceivable that mankind would become extinct. The whole vast
+resources and pooled intelligence of surviving humanity were focused
+upon Thurston's Disease. And the disease would yield. Humanity waited
+with childlike confidence for the miracle that would save it. And the
+miracle would happen, Mary knew it with a calm certainty as she stood in
+the cross corridor at the end of the hall, looking down the thirty yards
+of tile that separated her from the elevator that would carry her up to
+the clinic and oblivion. It might be too late for her, but not for the
+race. Nature had tried unaided to destroy man before--and had failed.
+And her unholy alliance with man's genius would also fail.
+
+She wondered as she walked down the corridor if the others who had
+sickened and died felt as she did. She speculated with grim amusement
+whether Walter Kramer would be as impersonal as he was with the others,
+when he performed the post-mortem on her body. She shivered at the
+thought of that bare sterile room and the shining table. Death was not a
+pretty thing. But she could meet it with resignation if not with
+courage. She had already seen too much for it to have any meaning. She
+did not falter as she placed a finger on the elevator button.
+
+Poor Walter--she sighed. Sometimes it was harder to be among the living.
+It was good that she didn't let him know how she felt. She had sensed a
+change in him recently. His friendly impersonality had become merely
+friendly. It could, with a little encouragement, have developed into
+something else. But it wouldn't now. She sighed again. His hardness had
+been a tower of strength. And his bitter gallows humor had furnished a
+wry relief to grim reality. It had been nice to work with him. She
+wondered if he would miss her. Her lips curled in a faint smile. He
+would, if only for the trouble he would have in making chaos out of the
+order she had created. Why couldn't that elevator hurry?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Mary! Where are you going?" Kramer's voice was in her ears, and his
+hand was on her shoulder.
+
+"Don't touch me!"
+
+"Why not?" His voice was curiously different. Younger, excited.
+
+"I have Thurston's Disease," she said.
+
+He didn't let go. "Are you sure?"
+
+"The presumptive tests were positive."
+
+"Initial stages?"
+
+She nodded. "I had the first coughing attack a few minutes ago."
+
+He pulled her away from the elevator door that suddenly slid open. "You
+were going to that death trap upstairs," he said.
+
+"Where else can I go?"
+
+"With me," he said. "I think I can help you."
+
+"How? Have you found a cure for the virus?"
+
+"I think so. At least it's a better possibility than the things they're
+using up there." His voice was urgent. "And to think I might never
+have seen it if you hadn't put me on the track."
+
+"Are you sure you're right?"
+
+"Not absolutely, but the facts fit. The theory's good."
+
+"Then I'm going to the clinic. I can't risk infecting you. I'm a carrier
+now. I can kill you, and you're too important to die."
+
+"You don't know how wrong you are," Kramer said.
+
+"Let go of me!"
+
+"No--you're coming back!"
+
+She twisted in his grasp. "Let me go!" she sobbed and broke into a fit
+of coughing worse than before.
+
+"What I was trying to say," Dr. Kramer said into the silence that
+followed, "is that if you have Thurston's Disease, you've been a carrier
+for at least two weeks. If I am going to get it, your going away can't
+help. And if I'm not, I'm not."
+
+"Do you come willingly or shall I knock you unconscious and drag you
+back?" Kramer asked.
+
+She looked at his face. It was grimmer than she had ever seen it before.
+Numbly she let him lead her back to the laboratory.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"But, Walter--I can't. That's sixty in the past ten hours!" she
+protested.
+
+"Take it," he said grimly, "then take another. And inhale. Deeply."
+
+"But they make me dizzy."
+
+"Better dizzy than dead. And, by the way--how's your chest?"
+
+"Better. There's no pain now. But the cough is worse."
+
+"It should be."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"You've never smoked enough to get a cigarette cough," he said.
+
+She shook her head dizzily. "You're so right," she said.
+
+"And that's what nearly killed you," he finished triumphantly.
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+"I'm certain. Naturally, I can't prove it--yet. But that's just a matter
+of time. Your response just about clinches it. Take a look at the
+records. Who gets this disease? Youngsters--with nearly one hundred per
+cent morbidity and one hundred per cent mortality. Adults--less than
+fifty per cent morbidity--and again one hundred per cent mortality. What
+makes the other fifty per cent immune? Your crack about leather lungs
+started me thinking--so I fed the data cards into the computer and keyed
+them for smoking versus incidence. And I found that not one heavy smoker
+had died of Thurston's Disease. Light smokers and nonsmokers--plenty of
+them--but not one single nicotine addict. And there were over ten
+thousand randomized cards in that spot check. And there's the exact
+reverse of that classic experiment the lung cancer boys used to sell
+their case. Among certain religious groups which prohibit smoking there
+was nearly one hundred per cent mortality of all ages!
+
+"And so I thought since the disease was just starting in you, perhaps I
+could stop it if I loaded you with tobacco smoke. And it works!"
+
+"You're not certain yet," Mary said. "I might not have had the
+disease."
+
+"You had the symptoms. And there's virus in your sputum."
+
+"Yes, but--"
+
+"But, nothing! I've passed the word--and the boys in the other labs
+figure that there's merit in it. We're going to call it Barton's Therapy
+in your honor. It's going to cause a minor social revolution. A lot of
+laws are going to have to be rewritten. I can see where it's going to be
+illegal for children not to smoke. Funny, isn't it?
+
+"I've contacted the maternity ward. They have three babies still alive
+upstairs. We get all the newborn in this town, or didn't you know.
+Funny, isn't it, how we still try to reproduce. They're rigging a smoke
+chamber for the kids. The head nurse is screaming like a wounded tiger,
+but she'll feel better with live babies to care for. The only bad thing
+I can see is that it may cut down on her chain smoking. She's been
+worried a lot about infant mortality.
+
+"And speaking of nurseries--that reminds me. I wanted to ask you
+something."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Will you marry me? I've wanted to ask you before, but I didn't dare.
+Now I think you owe me something--your life. And I'd like to take care
+of it from now on."
+
+"Of course I will," Mary said. "And I have reasons, too. If I marry you,
+you can't possibly do that silly thing you plan."
+
+"What thing?"
+
+"Naming the treatment Barton's. It'll have to be Kramer's."
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+    This etext was produced from _Analog Science Fact and Science
+    Fiction_ February 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any
+    evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
+    Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without
+    note.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Pandemic, by Jesse Franklin Bone
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #26206 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26206)