"I think," he said, "that I need to talk to your counter-para researchers. You have men working on the problem?"
"We did," said the police head, grimly. "But most of them turned para. We thought they'd be more dangerous than other paras, so we shot them. But it did no good. Paras still turn up, in Government Center, too! Now we only send paras out the south gate. They doubtless make out—as paras."
For a time there was silence in the rushing cars, though a bedlam of howls and curses came from aloft. Then a sudden shrieking of foreseen triumph came from overhead. A huge piece of furniture, a couch, seemed certain to crash into the car in which Calhoun rode. But it swerved sharply, ran up on the sidewalk, and the couch dashed itself to splinters where the car should have been. The car went down to the pavement once more and rushed on.
The street ended. A high barrier of masonry rose up at a cross street. It closed the highway and connected the walls of apartment buildings on either hand. There was a gate in it, and the leading car drew off to one side and the car carrying Calhoun and Murgatroyd ran through, and there was a second barrier ahead, but this was closed. The other cars filed in after it, Calhoun saw that windows in these apartment buildings had been bricked up. They made a many-storied wall shutting off all that was beyond them.
Men from the barrier went from car to car of the escort, checking men who had been the escort for Calhoun. The Minister for Health said jerkily:
"Everybody in Government Center is examined at least once each day to see if they're turning para or not. Those showing symptoms are turned out the south gate. Everybody, myself included, has to have a fresh certificate every twenty-four hours."
The inner gate swung wide. The car carrying Calhoun went through. The buildings about them ended. They were in a huge open space that must once have been a park in the center of the city. There were structures which could not possibly be other than government buildings. But the population of this world was small. They were not grandiose. There were walkways and some temporary buildings obviously thrown hastily together to house a sudden influx of people.
And here there were many people. There was bright sunshine, and children played and women watched them. There were some—not many—men in sight, but most of them were elderly. All the young ones were uniformed and hastily going here or there. And though the children played gaily, there were few smiles to be seen on adult faces.
"I take it," said Calhoun, "that this is Government Center, where you collected everybody in the city you were sure was normal. But they don't all stay normal. And you consider that it isn't exactly an infection but the result of something that's done to them by—Something."
"Many of our doctors thought so," said the Minister for Health. "But they've turned para. Maybe the ... Things got at them because they were close to the truth."
His head sank forward on his chest. The police head said briefly:
"When you want to go back to your ship, say so and we'll take you. If you can't do anything for us, you'll warn other planets not to send ships here."
The ground car braked before one of those square, unornamented buildings which are laboratories everywhere in the galaxy. The Minister for Health got out. Calhoun followed him, Murgatroyd riding on his shoulder. The ground car went away and Calhoun followed into the building.
There was a sentry by the door, and an officer of the police. He examined the Minister's one-day certificate of health. After various vision-phone calls, he passed Calhoun and Murgatroyd. They went a short distance and another sentry stopped them. A little farther, and another sentry.
"Tight security," said Calhoun.
"They know me," said the Minister heavily, "but they are checking my certificate that as of morning I wasn't a para."
"I've seen quarantines before," said Calhoun, "but never one like this! Not against disease!"
"It isn't against disease," said the Minister, thinly. "It's against Something intelligent ... from the jungle ... who chooses victims by reason for its own purposes."
Calhoun said very carefully:
"I won't deny more than the jungle."
Here the Minister for Health rapped on a door and ushered Calhoun through it. They entered a huge room filled with the complex of desks, cameras, and observing and recording instruments that the study of a living organism requires. The setup for study of dead things is quite different. Here, halfway down the room's length, there was a massive sheet of glass that divided the apartment into two. On the far side of the glass there was, obviously, an aseptic environment room now being used as an isolation chamber.
A man paced up and down beyond the glass. Calhoun knew he must be a para because he was cut off in idea and in fact from normal humanity. The air supplied to him could be heated almost white-hot and then chilled before being introduced into the aseptic chamber for him to breath, if such a thing was desired. Or the air removed could be made incandescent so no possible germ or its spores could get out. Wastes removed would be destroyed by passage through a carbon arc after innumerable previous sterilizing processes. In such rooms, centuries before, plants had been grown from antiseptic-soaked seeds and chicks hatched from germ-free eggs, and even small animals delivered by aseptic Caesarean section to live in an environment in which there was no living microorganism. From rooms like this men had first learned that some types of bacteria outside the human body were essential to human health. But this man was not a volunteer for such research.
He paced up and down, his hands clenching and unclenching. When Calhoun and the Minister for Health entered the outer room, he glared at them. He cursed them, though inaudibly because of the sheet of glass. He hated them hideously because they were not as he was; because they were not imprisoned behind thick glass walls through which his every action and almost his every thought could be watched. But there was more to his hatred than that. In the midst of fury so great that his face seemed almost purple, he suddenly yawned uncontrollably.
Calhoun blinked and stared. The man behind the glass wall yawned again and again. He was helpless to stop it. If such a thing could be, he was in a paroxysm of yawning, though his eyes glared and he beat his fists together. The muscles controlling the act of yawning worked independently of the rage that should have made yawning impossible. And he was ashamed, and he was infuriated, and he yawned more violently than seemed possible.
"A man's been known to dislocate his jaw, yawning like that," said Calhoun detachedly.
A bland voice spoke behind him.
"But if this man's jaw is dislocated, no one can help him. He is a para. We cannot join him."
Calhoun turned. He found himself regarded with unctuous condescension by a man wearing glittering thick eyeglasses—and a man's eyes have to be very bad if he can't wear contacts—and a uniform with a caduceus at his collar. He was plump. He was beaming. He was the only man Calhoun had so far seen on this planet whose expression was neither despair nor baffled hate and fury.
"You are Med Service," the beaming man observed zestfully. "Of the Interstellar Medical Service, to which all problems of public health may be referred! But here we have a real problem for you! A contagious madness! A transmissible delusion! An epidemic of insanity! A plague of the unspeakable!"
The Minister for Health said uneasily: