He snapped: "Save you a lot of trouble, you mean!"
"Me," I said, "or the guys who'll come after me, if I fail. I figure there'll be about ten million of them."
"What do you mean?"
I said, "Well, I was just using your figures, Doc. You estimate your stuff will kill around ninety-five per cent, isn't that right? There are about two billion people in the world. After ninety-five per cent of them are dead, there'll still be around ten million left. And every damn one of them will be looking for Dr. Archibald McRow with a gun in his hand, or a knife, or a stone club, or nothing at all but the bare fingers and the homicidal impulse. You'll be the most unpopular man on this depopulated planet, amigo."
He laughed uneasily. "You're being ridiculous. Of course, unless we're forced to, we're not really going to-"
"You may not be," I said, "but she is."
I sensed, rather than saw, Madame Ling stir slightly. The nameless man at the door had also moved, as if to step forward and silence me, but she'd signaled him to lay off. She was watching McRow. He glanced at her, and looked back to me.
"You're crazy!" he cried. "Madame Ling is merely taking precautions against outside interference-"
"Sure," I said. "She's got this place rigged with more remote control gadgets than a space probe, to hear her tell it. She's going to be on the ship's radio thirty-six hours a day, after she leaves here, giving orders and ultimatums and pushing buttons like a church organist doing hot licks from Hayden. I never heard a grown woman talk so much science-fiction nonsense in my life." I glanced at Madame Ling. "Oh, don't get me wrong, Madame. I enjoyed every minute of the performance. It was real great."
She did not move. She'd thrown aside the mink coat, and she was wearing a figured silk tunic above the narrow pants. She was smiling faintly as if she found me amusing, too amusing to stop, at least not while I was doing good work for her. After all, she'd have to break the news to him pretty soon; and this way she could study his reactions while I did the talking for her.
McRow licked his lips again. "But… but I don't understand."
I said, "Hell, sonny, there's no remote-control stuff here. There's just that black lever on the wall, which she'll pull just before she goes out the door and down to the boat which will take her out to the much-advertised ship. Since she's so insistent it's a ship, it's probably a plane or submarine, probably the latter. They've got a few, I've heard, not the latest atomic jobs, but adequate.
Good enough to take her-under strict radio silence, of course-to the coast of Europe, where she'll land a load of your infected rats, and then across the Atlantic where she'll dump a big consignment on the North American continent, and maybe a small one in South America. And then home to the Orient, to manufacture serum like mad, and try to improve it with the help of one McRow, and inoculate as many of her people as possible-the politically sound people, of course; the others can go to hell- before your hopped-up Black Death works its murderous way around the world, leaving only one country in any kind of shape to take over…"
I was watching the woman's delicate, smiling face; and I saw that I was right on the beam. I saw her finger move. I didn't see the dark-faced man move-I wasn't looking that way-but I heard him. There was no point in dodging. Where could I go? I just hoped he was good at his work, and he was. The blow put me out instantly, with hardly any pain at all.
chapter TWENTY-ONE
I woke up in a cage, like a rat. I mean, the mesh was bigger and the wire was stronger, but it was a cage just the same. I was lying on a kind of sagging chain-link shelf crimped into one side of it, about eighteen inches off the stone floor. There was no mattress, no blanket, and no other furniture except a unit of basic plumbing, quite primitive, in the back corner. The place stunk of insect spray and strong disinfectant, that was not, however, strong enough to cover up various other odors reminiscent of a public john. I seemed to be wearing a suit of crude white cotton pajamas and nothing else.
I managed to get this much information without using anything but my eyes and nose. I stirred cautiously, to give anybody hanging around plenty of warning that I intended to wake up. It seemed unlikely that surprise could gain me anything except a crack with a gun-butt, and the back of my neck was quite tender enough already.
I sat up unmolested, and found that I had the cage or cell to myself. There were others, however, down both sides of the long, narrow hail carved out of the rock. The next cage down the line on this side was empty. There was a woman, judging by the hair, asleep in the one beyond. The hair was gray and frizzy and unfamiliar. Elsewhere, a few faces were turned my way incuriously. I knew none of them.
I decided that I was in the observation ward, the door of which Madame Ling had pointed out to me, the one with the guard. It looked pretty much like the animal room she'd shown me, except that the cages were larger, the specimens wore a certain amount of rudimentary clothing, and there were no fancy gadgets for opening the doors.
"Feeling better, old chap?"
I looked around. In the next cage toward the door- the last one that way-stood Sir Leslie Alastair Crowe-Barham, watching me through the strong wire mesh. He was wearing pajamas, too, and a pair of cheap rubber thong sandals. Looking down, I found a similar pair under my cot. I put my feet into them and stood up; rubbing my aching neck. I felt pretty groggy-not surprising, considering that I'd been rendered unconscious in two different ways within the space of an hour or two.
"I'll live," I said.
"Fortunate man," said Les. "To be so certain."
I grinned at him weakly. "Well, let's say I'll live until somebody decides otherwise. I gather they're shooting me full of their high-powered culture soon, after which it's up to Lady Luck. But, hell, sixty-forty is better odds than you often get in this racket, or so I keep trying to tell myself. Besides, I…" I glanced around. "Is it safe to talk?"
"Oh, yes," he said. "There is nothing elaborate about this place. No microphones or closed-circuit television. They just pop their heads in now and then to see if we're behaving ourselves; and they have a full-scale inspection twice a day to check us for symptoms and drag out the positives-that is, the ones who have developed the disease."
I suppose I should have shown a friendly curiosity about the hair-raising adventures he'd undoubtedly been through since we'd parted company in London, but the fact that he was here spoke for itself. The details weren't important. He didn't seem to be particularly interested in my harrowing experiences, either.
"What happens to the so-called positives?" I asked.
"For a while, I'm told, they were kept in another ward below, but that experiment has been discontinued. Madame Ling apparently decided she didn't have the time, facilities, or personnel to follow each case to its gruesome conclusion. Now, I understand, the positives are simply disposed of at sea."
"Tidy," I said. "I suppose you've checked the locks and studied the guard routine and all that jazz."
"Certainly. There is not much else to do here. I have found no tempting weaknesses. I'm told that one man managed to escape some time ago-one of your people- but he got away from the burial squad somehow after being taken out of here as a positive. My considered opinion, old chap, is that without outside help escape from in here is not really feasible." He moved his shoulders ruefully. "Perhaps I was a little hasty in allowing myself to be captured so easily in London. I'm rather good at escaping, don't you know? It has been a specialty of mine. I had a notion that if I allowed myself to be brought into this place…" He sighed. "Ah, pride."