The problem was somewhat simplified by there being no need to check the Venus diseases known to be fatal to Earthmen. Perhaps it had been one of such, but, if so, no matter; we could as well use smallpox. But the list of diseases native to Venus which kill Earthmen is surprisingly short and the list of those which are not fatal but merely nastily annoying is very long-from the standpoint of a Venerian bug we must be too strange a diet to suit his taste. If a Venerian bug has a viewpoint, which I doubt, Mcllvaine's silly ideas notwithstanding.
The problem was made harder by the fact that the types of diseases native to Venus which were represented by living cultures on Earth were strictly limited in number, i.e., the grain of sand we sought might not be on this beach. To be sure, such an omission could be repaired-in a century or so of exploration and research on a strange planet.
In the meantime there was beginning to be a breath of frost in the air; Schedule Sun Tan could not go on forever.
They had to go back where they hoped the answer was-into Mary's brain. I did not like it, but I could not stop it. She did not appear to know why she was being asked to submit, over and over again, to hypnotics-or perhaps she would not tell. She seemed serene, but the strain showed-circles under her eyes, things like that. Finally I went to the Old Man and told him that it had to stop. "You know better than that, son," he said mildly.
"The hell I do! If you haven't gotten what you want from her by now, you'll never get it."
"Have you any idea of how long it takes to search all the memories in a person's mind, even if you limit yourself to a particular period? It takes exactly as long as the period itself. What we need-if it's there at all-may be subtle."
"If it's there at all,"' I repeated. "You don't know that it is. See here-if Mary miscarries as a result of this, I'll break your neck personally."
"And if we don't succeed," he answered gently, "you will wish to heaven that she had. Or do you want to raise up kids to be hosts to titans?"
I chewed my lip. "Why didn't you send me to the USSR as you planned to, instead of keeping me around?"
"Oh, that-In the first place I want you here, with Mary, keeping her morale up-instead of acting like a spoiled brat! In the second place, it isn't necessary, or I would have sent you."
"Huh? What happened? Did some other agent report in?"
He stood up and started to leave. "If you would ever learn to show a grown-up interest in the news of the world, you would know."
I said, "Huh?" again, but he did not answer; he left.
I hurried out of there and brought myself up to date. My one-track mind has never been able to interest itself in the daily news; for my taste this dinning into the ears and eyes of trivia somewhere over the horizon is the bane of so-called civilization and the death of serious thinking. But I do miss things.
This time I had managed to miss the first news of the Asiatic plague. I had had my back turned on the biggest-no, the second biggest-news story of the century, the only continent-wide epidemic of the Black Death since the seventeenth century.
I could not understand it. Communists are crazy, granted-but I had been behind the Curtain enough to know that their public health measures were as good as ours and even better in some ways, for they were carried out "by the numbers" and no nonsense tolerated. And a country has to be, quite literally, lousy to permit the spread of plagues-rats, lice, and fleas, the historical vectors. In such respects the commissars had even managed to clean up China to the point, at least, that bubonic plague and typhus were sporadically endemic rather than epidemic.
Now both plagues were spreading like gossip across the whole Sino-Russo-Siberian axis, to the point where the soviet government system had broken down and pleas were being sent via the space stations for U.N. help. What had happened?
Out of my own mind I put the pieces together; I looked up the Old Man again. "Boss-there were slugs behind the Curtain."
"Yes."
"You knew? Well, for cripes sake-we'd better do something fast, or the whole Mississippi Valley will be in the shape that Asia is in. Just one rat, one little rat-" I was thinking back to my own time among the slugs, something I avoided doing when possible. The titans did not bother about human sanitation. My own master had not caused me to bathe, not once. I doubted if there had been a bath taken between the Canadian border and New Orleans since the slugs dropped the masquerade as unnecessary. Lice-Fleas-
The Old Man sighed. "Maybe that's the best solution. Maybe it's the only one."
"You might as well bomb them, if that's the best we have to offer. It would be a cleaner way to die."
"So it would. But you know that we won't. As long as there is a chance of cleaning out the vermin without burning down the barn, we'll keep on trying."
I mulled it over at great length. We were in still another race against time. Fundamentally the slugs must be too stupid to keep slaves; perhaps that was why they moved from planet to planet-they spoiled what they touched. After a while their hosts would die out and then they needed new hosts.
Theory, just theory-I brushed it aside. One thing was sure: what had happened behind the Curtain would happen in Zone Red unless we found a way to kill off the slugs, and that mighty soon! Thinking about it, I made up my mind to do something I had considered before-force myself into the mind-searching sessions being conducted on Mary. If there were something in her hidden memories which could be used to kill slugs, possibly I might see it where others had failed. In any case I was going in, whether Steelton and the Old Man liked it or not. I was tired of being treated like a cross between a prince consort and an unwelcome child.
Chapter 30
Since our arrival Mary and I had been living in a cubicle about the size of a bass drum. It had been intended for one junior officer; the laboratory had not been planned for married couples. We were as crowded as a plate of smorgasbord but we did not care.
I woke up first the next morning and made my usual quick check to be sure that a slug had not gotten to her. While I was doing so, she opened her eyes and smiled drowsily. "Go back to sleep," I said. "You've got another thirty minutes."
But she did not go back to sleep. After a while I said, "Mary, do you know the incubation period for bubonic plague?"
She answered, "Should I know? One of your eyes is slightly darker than the other."
I shook her. "Pay attention, wench. I was in the lab library last night, doing some rough figuring. As I get it, the slugs must have moved in on our commie pals at least three months before they invaded us."
"Yes, of course."
"You knew? Why didn't you say so?"
"Nobody asked me. Besides, it's obvious."
"Oh, for heaven's sake! Let's get up; we'll be late for breakfast."
Before we left the cubicle I said, "Parlor games at the usual time this morning?"
"Yes."
"Mary, you never talk about what they ask you."
She looked surprised. "But I never know."
"That's what I gathered. Deep trance with a 'forgetter' order, eh?"
"I suppose so."
"Hmm . . . well, there will be some changes made. Today I am going in with you."
All she said was, "Yes, dear."
They were gathered as usual in Dr. Steelton's office, the Old Man, Steelton himself, a Colonel Gibsy who was chief of staff, a lieutenant colonel whom I knew only by sight, and an odd lot of sergeant-technicians, j.o.'s, and flunkies. In the army it seems to take an eight-man working party to help a brass hat blow his nose; that is one reason why I left the service.
The Old Man's eyebrows shot up when he saw me but he said nothing. A sergeant who seemed to be doorman tried to stop me. "Good morning, Mrs. Nivens," he said to Mary; then to me he added, "I don't seem to have you on the list."