Jack Faust - Michael Swanwick

by Unknown Author

  So it was that the Catherines poured water and spooned gruel, while the Clares prayed for the intercession of the saints. The Catherines changed sheets. The Clares practiced mortification of the flesh. The Catherines employed antibiotics. The Clares made a public display of a kneecap of their patron saint.

  It was soon widely known to which hospital one went to get well, and to which one went to die.

  "Sister Pelagia the Penitent's father is an apothecary," Mother Bondage said. "I feel she could be aptly put to work preparing the antibiotic."

  (To say nothing of spreading rumors) said Mephistopheles. (The dear lady is the shrillest gossip in Germany. Confide to her a secret and by Monday-week, it will be old news in the court of the Chinese Emperor.)

  "It will be my pleasure." Faust took over the young nun and directed her attention to the ovens, where loaves of fresh-baked bread were being taken out, torn apart, and stuffed into glass bottles. "The first step," he said, "is to boil the bottles. They must be sterile because the bread serves as a medium for our mold culture. Once the bottles are cooled and the bread stuffed, they are inoculated by Sister Mary Magdalen."

  A sturgeon-faced and bespectacled nun sitting at a nearby table looked up to nod a sour greeting, then bent back to her work. Before her was a large dish containing a mound of bread overgrown with blue-green fluff. Deftly, she drew a speck of the stuff upon a knitting needle, which she then stuffed deep into a bread-filled bottle. "The mold you see is Streptomyces fausti, a microscopic soil fungus."

  Sister Eva lightly corked each newly inoculated bottle and set it upon a shelf near the ovens. There were many shelves, all thronged with bottles. "The organism needs a warm place to multiply and grow—where better than here?"

  "I... see." It was obvious Sister Pelagia found the process nonsensical; equally obvious that she was determined to master it. Faust directed her attention to the next step.

  Sister Giulietta Heloise was going down the lines of bottles where the mold had grown thick, holding each to the light and examining it closely. Some she put back and some she set aside. Faust picked up one of these latter. "Look closely. See how on the fluff, golden droplets of liquid, like dew, have formed?" He held it up, waited for her nod. "This is our medication."

  "What is it?"

  "War," said Faust, "is universal—so implicit in nature that, indeed, without it life would not be possible. You doubt me? I assure you that even fungi fight wars, in the soil beneath your feet. They battle each other for territory, for dominance, for room in which to grow. Which ancient combat has been going on so long that the fungi have learned to create weapons. This golden dew is one such, a chemical poison lethal to its rivals. By good fortune it is also lethal to our enemy."

  At Faust's direction, Sister Pelagia uncorked the bottle with its precious dew and filled it to the neck with wine. "Excellent!" Faust cried. She flushed with pleasure. "Now recork it and set it aside to settle. From those which have already settled, the wine is poured off to be given to the afflicted in measured doses. A pint a day is generally sufficient. That and constant rehydration are enough to keep anyone alive."

  The plump young nun's eyes shone. "It seems so simple."

  "Indeed it does. That is because the fungus has already done the complicated work of distillation. Wagner!"

  His assistant wordlessly produced a sheet of paper and the lead stylus. Faust quickly jotted upon the one with the other: 4-dimethylamino-l,4, 4a,5,5a,6,11,12a-octahydro-3,6,10,12,12a-pentahydroxy -6- methyl-1,11,-dioxo-2- napthacenecarboxamide. "This is the simplest possible way of expressing the chemical structure of the elaboration products. Quite an eyeful, eh?"

  Wordlessly, Sister Pelagia nodded.

  (Sister Anne stole a hairbrush last night) Mephistopheles said (for the thrill. A trifle really; its loss was almost immediately forgotten. Yet a convent is a hotbed of spite and jealousy; it would destroy her if it came out. Take her out back of the laundry sheds and tell her you know. She'll cry. You may have to slap her once or twice. But she'll let you prod such orifices as you may desire.)

  Faust ignored him.

  The shadow shifted uneasily from the corner of one eye to a place just out of sight of the other. (Don't delude yourself. These nuns are all wantons. Sometimes at night Sister Gehenna will take out a fat devotional candle and—)

  "Have you ever heard," Faust asked, "of a purported healer named Quacksalver?"

  "Hochsalzer? Oh, yes. Everyone knows Hochsalzer. He has the most wonderful hat. He is wealthy, too. He bought some strong flavorings from my father and paid in gold from a purse as round as a baby's bottom. He is as active as a flea— now here, now there—and the people cheer him in the streets for his miraculous cures in Poland and Muscovy. They say he is the modern Asclepius. Yet I wonder, for he smiles constantly, and that is not a natural thing. He lives with a low woman named Brita Springindemrosen, who they say has had more husbands than fingers, and she having six fingers on the one hand. But I know very little about her origins."

  (Miss Hopinthebushes once serviced five men at the same time. To accomplish this ingenious and athletic—)

  Faust turned brusquely to address Sister Mary Magdalen. "I feel suddenly weary and in need of the sustenance of prayer. If the chapel is empty ..."

  The old nun put down her knitting needle. "Normally," she said, "men are not allowed on the second floor." Her face split in what could only be a smile. "But for you, Doctor, there are no rules."

  A single rose window illumined the chapel. Faust knelt beneath it, and clasped his hands. Outside, the clouds parted, bathing him in a pure and holy light.

  "Stop this pointless bantering," he said.

  A shadow slipped away from the light, danced at the edge of his vision. "Why, Faust, you give me little enough to do these days. I need something to keep me occupied."

  "I forbid you to harp upon the weaknesses of these ladies. I am not interested in the conquest of any woman but one alone."

  "They would hardly dare speak of it afterwards."

  "You do not understand the pure and innocent devotion I feel for Margarete."

  "No, I do not. I do not understand your pure and innocent devotion because I don't believe in it. Are you telling me you don't want to fuck Margarete? Or are you telling me that her cunt is so holy that your cock must enter into it innocent of more profane organs? If so, do not your previous pleasures disqualify you from such pious congress?"

  "Silence, mocker," Faust said wearily.

  The shadow was still.

  "How fares Margarete?" he asked after a time.

  "Well enough. She thinks of you often and in a kind of sweet confusion, believing sometimes that she loves you and other times that she does not quite but could easily learn to and yet other times that she does but has misread your intentions abjectly. Your letters she reads once aloud to her parents in such a way that none could suspect her feelings, and then peruses repeatedly in private for such hidden expressions of passion as only her eyes could discover. Every day brings her closer to your arms."

  "Why, this is good news indeed! I am surprised you would tell me it so readily."

  "How so?"

  "Your ill will toward me has not exactly been subtle."

  "My hatred is too vast and all-embracing to focus itself upon you individually. Imagine yourself a single molecule within a vast Amazonian river of vomit. It hardly matters in which direction you dart, against the current or with it—the river will yet reach its destination. Despising the river, shall I care about the fate of that molecule? Be happy if you wish! Cure the sick if you will. Much good it will do you."

  Wagner was waiting when Faust returned from the chapel. Together they went through the wards, observing and recording the progress of his patients.

  The Catherines, lacking a hospital of their own, had given up the ground floor of the nunnery to the sick. They had, for decency's sake, kept women and men segregated. But this was the uttermost of their organization. The hospital was a warren of s
paces, each one crammed so thickly and haphazardly with beds it was hard to pass from one room to another.

  Doubly so for Faust.

  His progress through the wards was less stroll than procession. Men fervently clasped his hands and cried down blessings from the saints. Women kissed his knuckles. Tears in eyes, they promised him Masses said, candles lit, and babies named in his honor. Extravagant indeed were their praises.

  This was always the most gratifying part of Faust's day.

  As always, though, he imagined the wards as they might be: with saline drips and electronic monitoring devices, with X-rays and CAT scans, with a ready supply of vital organs harvested and rieady for transplant, with artificial blood enough to make up any natural lack. He saw a time when the human body might be catheterized, massaged, and kept alive however great the injury, however small the will to survive.

  Will Wycliffe had a room of his own, though one wall was of cloth and the others formerly the blind end of a hallway. Faust and Wagner squeezed within.

  The redheaded Englishman was much improved. He smiled weakly when they walked up. "Good to see you, Jack. Clever chap, aren't you?"

  Wagner sniffed.

  "Some have called me so," Faust said, holding back a smile of his own.

  "Well, Jack, I heard you were asking after this Hochsalzer fellow. One of the nuns told me. I know I don't look it, but I'm a man who can do well by his friends." He lowered his voice. "I don't know what he is to you. But if there's any serious trouble, well, I have certain lads in my employ who could..."

  "Rest," said Faust. "Rest and get well. That is all I require of you."

  For convenience, Faust had rented rooms at a tavern near the convent. Sometimes he slept there, sometimes in his workshop. It depended on where he was when weariness overtook him. Now he and Wagner went to the tavern to spread out their maps and add today's data to the week's cumulative total, placing a black dot of ink on the location of each new infection.

  When they were done, Faust stared at the result for a long time.

  "You seem unhappy, Magister," Wagner said cautiously.

  Faust slammed fist into palm. "All this sickness stems from the well behind Saint Sebald's! From it and those wells downhill of it. I could cap them all myself and end the plague in an afternoon."

  "Then why don't we?" Wagner asked eagerly. "We could—"

  "Because it would not prove anything."

  "We have maps for proof, all meticulously detailed."

  "But they refuse to reveal a pattern. It ought to be simple. This dark stain spreads like a fan from Saint Sebald's. The wells below the church and within that darkness spread the contagion yet further. So far, simple. But then there ought not be any outbreaks on the other side of the Pegnitz, as there demonstrably are. The rich suffer as well as the poor, and this is a thing that passes all understanding. People sicken in all parts of the city—why? They do not go to the contaminated wells to drink, and it is certain the wells cannot go to them."

  (Mephistopheles chuckled.)

  "Cannot we simply remove those figures which draw the eye away from the polluted wells?"

  "No! Science must prove itself. The data must be reproducible."

  Wagner looked blank.

  Exasperated, Faust said, "Anyone with a dead sister or father that was not marked on the map would know it immediately for a fraud and lie. The methodology is what matters, not the well or even a few hundred lives, but the self-evident proof that by this method diseases may be identified, tracked down, and cured. Our records must be scrupulous, whether they show what we want them to show or not."

  He paused. "Perhaps we have been going about this wrong."

  Taking up the sanding jar, Faust poured a small heap onto the map. With his knife he began moving and smoothing it. "Let us sand over those results which are as should be expected. Perhaps what remains—the inexplicable illnesses— will by themselves form a pattern."

  They worked in silence.

  "There is no discernible pattern at all," Wagner wearily said when they were done. "See—it is like a madman's dance through the town."

  "A madman's ..." Faust said softly. Then, explosively, "I've been a fool!"

  (Non disputandum est.) The devil stepped at last into sight. He wore a fantastical hat of blue silk with a spray of cocks' feathers in the band, so wide it hid one eye and so high it bumped against the ceiling. There was lace about his throat. He grinned like a shark. (For once you speak truly.)

  "I am hungry," Faust said energetically. "Let us retire downstairs for a meal. Beef, cabbage, beer—the best of everything. But first I must have a word with a nun whose name I have forgotten—the plump one, the apothecary's daughter."

  "Pelagia the Penitent, you mean?"

  "No," said Faust. "I mean Pelagia the gossip."

  Not much later, in the common room, Faust explained. "See now the depth of human wickedness. It is the easiest thing in the world for a bold and daring rogue to break into the houses of the sick and dead and steal their possessions. How much bolder, however, to deliberately contaminate the healthy."

  "No!"

  "Yes. The adored Quacksalver. How little effort to put a touch of the excrement from an afflicted man into his plague-water. When his victims sicken, they send again for Quacksalver. He comes, and makes empty promises if they are still aware, and steals their gold if they are not."

  "Look! It's a vulture!" somebody shouted.

  "No, a jackal!"

  "A vulture, I say!"

  Faust turned. Four drunken men sprawled in a booth to the far side of the room. "It's only a doctor," said one scornfully.

  "It's a bird of ill omen the sight of which strikes terror into honest men, and which grows fat off of carrion," sneered his fellow. "What's the difference?"

  They boomed with laughter.

  "Auerbach!" Faust cried. The lean taverner hurried to their table. "Who are these men?"

  "I'm terribly sorry." Auerbach ran a nervous hand over his bald head. "I've tried speaking with these rascals, but they are beyond reason. Night after night they come here to drink and drive away what few respectable patrons remain to me. Please, let me carry your platters into a private room. There will be no charge."

  "No, no, don't trouble yourself. I'll see to this matter." Faust cocked his head, listening. He stood.

  The laughter died as he approached the railers. But they did not fear his wrath. Mouths smirking, scowling, cocked in half-grins, they waited to be entertained. Faust raised an accusing finger and pointed it at the loudest of the batch. "You! Herr Weisskopf. You will be the first to die. For all your boasting, for all your drinking, for all the charms sewn into the lining of your jacket—"

  "How the devil did you know that?" the man said.

  "—you will be the first to discover that you cannot hide from the plague. Tonight, when you have drunk enough to forget this conversation, you will stagger home and up the stairs. You will do as you always do: sling the bed clothes aside, give your wife a hearty slap on the rump, and cry, 'Your dilly-dander's home, old puss!' "

  "Now, this is too much! Have you been spying on—?"

  "She will not respond. She will not move. Her flesh will feel cold as marble. Then you will remember my words and with sudden dread bring closer your candle, and discover that the woman you left in perfect health this morning is dead.

  "You will have two days before the sickness manifests itself on your body, but knowing as you will your fate, those two days will be for you a richly deserved Hell."

  He rounded upon the second and most corpulent of the railers. "You will not forget my words. Which is why your blood will run cold tomorrow when you hear a banging on your door. It will be your dear friend Weisskopf, all in disarray, as distracted as a madman from grief and fear. You will bar the door against him. 'Good Henlein,' he will cry. 'I gave you aid in the matter of the Jewish widow. Help me now.' "

  The portly man turned pale. "Nobody knows of that," he said. "Nobody!"

/>   "Eventually he will go away. The irony is that, though you will shun Weisskopf, the contagion is already in your blood, and you will die but minutes after him—and by your own hand."

  He turned to the third. "You, Burchard, are the hardest of this sorry lot."

  The man screwed his face up impudently. "I thank you, sir."

  "Which is why your lot will be the hardest. For as my predictions come true, you will turn more and more to drink and bravado. Tomorrow night, drunk and alone, you will go to peer into the pits of the dead."

  "And why not?" scoffed the man. "A touch of death seasons life well, I think."

  "In your arrogance, you will resolve to piss upon the corpses and thus show your disregard for death. As soon thought as unbuttoned and done. But while you are emptying your bladder you will step too close. The earth will crumble beneath your feet. You will fall in.

  "Breaking an arm will be the least of your horrors. You will be trapped among the dead, unable to work your way free. By the time the grave-diggers come in the morning and haul you out, you will be cold sober, and a much wiser man. One who would benefit greatly from the experience if he had not already caught the contagion."

  He turned then to the last man. "And you. You—"

  The man shrank back from the approaching finger. But there was nowhere to go. The finger came inexorably on. His head slammed into the back of the booth. The finger lightly tapped the center of his forehead. Faust smiled. "You will live a long life and die in bed. Your children and grandchildren will be gathered around to hear your final blessing. Your friends should envy you."

  Afterwards, as they left the tavern, Wagner blurted, "Magister! Was that really those men's futures you told them?"

  "Eh?" Faust shrugged. "It is some men's futures. What matter if they belong to these poor fools or to others? It drove them away, and allowed us to eat in peace."

  There was a full moon and a clear sky outside. The walk home would be pleasant. "Tomorrow," Faust said, "we will begin visiting all those locations which do not fit our pattern and determine which were patients of the renowned Quacksalver. All, or near enough, I am sure. When their names have been documented and stricken, what remains should fit our thesis within a standard deviation. Then our case will be proved."