These Savage Futurians

by Philip E. High

  “And so?”

  “And so he arrived at the Island, together with his wife, only one week before the world tried to take the Island by naval power. In this engagement, as you know, the Island suffered only eight fatalities—unfortunately he was one of them.” Hobart paused and shuffled his feet uncomfortably.

  “You know how it is, sir. You have some spare time, you think: I wonder what the old boy was up to— It may be silly, sir, but I thought the matter should be brought to your attention.”

  Skeld nodded curtly. Hobart was obviously dreaming up things. On the other hand, a device with radiation leaks was not a sensible thing to leave around. “Very well, if you will give me the map co-ordinates, I will divert one of our regular weekly ships to the Rio villages.”

  When Hobart had gone, Skeld shrugged. Hadn’t Hobart been punished for—no, not Hobart, the other fellow, Matheson. Yes, of course, that business over the escaped specimen.

  Something in Skeld’s mind seemed to click. Yes, the specimen, Ventnor—must be four or five years ago now. How time flew, been meaning to check that business but what with those tribes in Eastern Europe who had discovered a cache of machine guns somewhere. Then, of course, there had been that trouble on the coast of Maine. Fine thing when your own experimental villages rose in revolt. All because some fool of a yokel had dug up a couple of long-life books in a tin box while ploughing. All that trouble over a couple of books: The History of the American Peoples and The Declaration of Independence. A couple of books, what the hell!

  His mind returned to the immediate problem and he spun the index dial of the file system. Almost immediately the open file appeared on the reader screen.

  Skeld read it through carefully and frowned: “Existence of body confirmed by instruments but not by exhumation.” He didn’t care for that particularly—it was incomplete and, as such, was out of line with the traditions of the department. The body should have been exhumed at the time and the bone structure compared with the standard medical records of the deceased specimen.

  Skeld called personnel. “Kindly assign me an expert from Medical Identification and a ship for a special mission.”

  Such was Skeld’s authority that both were available within four hours and, after brief instructions were on their way.

  The director did not expect them to find anything out of the ordinary but he detested loose ends. Incomplete confirmation was, in his opinion, a reflection of departmental inefficiency and as such . ..

  Unaware that only a few kilometers away a ship was descending near Harthill Crossroads to check his ‘remains’ Ventnor was still with Cina.

  The vessel was not, however, unobserved by others.

  “They’re not coming down there by accident, better let Graham know.”

  The base director, however, who liked to play things close to his chest, only smiled. “Let them search, they’ll find enough soil impressions to confirm that the body was there but no body or remains. Taken them a long time to get here, hasn’t it?”

  When Skeld received the negative report, he frowned. One could expect little else really, too many carrion about and a shallow grave— Oh, well, his department had fulfilled its obligations, nothing to worry about, really.

  Less than a week later, however, he was jolted out of his complacency. A panel in the wall of his room lit luridly— a class-5 alarm!

  Skeld switched in to number five circuit and got the involved departments on his three dimensional screen. The emergency was in ‘Flights’ and it didn’t take him more than six seconds to find out what was wrong—a ship was in trouble. An harassed-looking controller was giving quick but calm advice to the pilot.

  “All right, R-9, open the emergency panel and pull the red switch, we’ll push your emergency power out from here. What’s your flying speed?”

  Skeld did not hear the pilot’s answer but he was dimly aware of a trickle of sweat crawling down his temple. R-9, that was the Rio ship—the ship he had diverted to check that Hobart business.

  The controller was speaking again, this time sharply. “For God’s sake get a grip on yourself, Rennie, we’re getting you back.”

  “At eighty-five flying kilometers an hour! Hasn’t it sunk in yet? We were attacked! I’m a sitting duck up here, push some blasted speed into this late, do you hear me?”

  “Easy, old chap—”

  “And you can skip the ‘soothing-the-hysterical-patient’ tone as well. Take a look at this ship.”

  Skeld found himself looking at a vibrating but still clear picture of the interior of R-9. In its sides were at least five jagged holes through which the wind was howling noisily.

  “See?” The pilot thrust his head close to the screen. “What do you think did that—moths?”

  The controller took a deep audible breath. “If we push you any faster, the kite will fold up in the air—clear?”

  “Okay.” The pilot was calmer now but sullen. “Okay, you don’t have to draw a diagram, frying pan or fire.” Then, wearily: “Hooker is dead—he copped it just after we saw it—”

  “Saw what?” The controller’s voice lacked curiosity, he was obviously more intent on keeping the pilot calm.

  “The—the—” Rennie made a helpless movement with his shoulders. “God knows, it was like a lake of fine wire or spun glass, all running in spirals, like they used to lay barbed wire. We came in over a mountain and there it was, miles of it, glittering in the sun. We managed to get a couple of pictures and then Hooker fell backwards holding his chest —can’t you turn this blasted kite towards the sea? Must you hold it over the land?”

  Skeld waited for no more, he sent an emergency call to Committee.

  By the time the battered flying vessel arrived, a yellow alert was in force and all scientific departments on an emergency footing.

  Rennie, the pilot, was almost dragged from the plane, sedated to calm him, patted on the back and given a large brandy to make him feel at home. Then he was hurried in front of the Committee to tell his story.

  Rennie had a retentive memory and original turn of phrase and he made the story vividly real:

  “On leaving the Rio villages as instructed we fed the map references into the auto-pilot and let the kite fix the course and height herself.

  “She fixed herself a nice comfortable twenty thou’ to avoid any mountain tops which might get in the way and just aimed herself.

  “About sixty kilometers from our destination, however, Hooker happened to glance down. I can remember his words clearly. He said: ‘Looks as if someone has had a fire down there.’

  “Naturally I had a look myself. Gentlemen, I don’t mind admitting I was shaken. From horizon to horizon it was just green jungle steaming and shimmering in the heat but right below, covering about eighteen square kilometers, was a burned out patch. It was just as if the damp jungle had been burned to the ground.

  “We switched the kite to manual and went down to take a closer look but when we locked steady at a couple of meters it looked more like a battle ground. Everything was blackened as I said, but the ground was all rotting tree trunks, broken or burned off, and the ground was pitted with little holes like craters. It looked as if it had been that way a long time, perhaps ten years, but nothing grew.

  “Funny thing was that the audio-geiger got hysterics as soon as we stopped. It kept switching on the alarm fights and bawling: ‘Dangerous radiation. Do not leave vessel.’

  “Hooker thought it might be out of order but rather than take chances, we stayed put and took soil samples with scoops. The auto-Geiger didn’t care for that either. ‘Samples referred to safety holds,’ it shouted. ‘Radio-active material must not be approached.’

  “We took several samples, quite a few from a muddy stream which ran through this burned area—all of it was “hot.”

  “After that we went on and—”

  It was then that Pressly called from the biological laboratories. He was pale and sweating visibly. “Take a look at this,” he said.. ..

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nbsp; They looked. They looked at the screen, at Pressly in it, they looked at the photograph he held in his hand and they looked at each.

  Finally a Committee member said: “You’d better come up here.”

  Pressly got there so quickly that wondering comment had barely begun and immediately he cut it short.

  “This frightens me to death.” He thrust the photograph into the room projector, flicked the switch and stood glowering nervously while it warmed. A tall, pale man with a jutting, pointed chin and thick black eyebrows which he never bothered to trim, he had not bothered to remove his laboratory coat and clearly he was as alarmed as he claimed.

  Finally the picture appeared on the wall screen and they stared at it uncomprehendingly.

  “This came up with some of the samples,” he said. “Presumably one of those selected from the stream.”

  “You mean this photograph came up with the samples?” The questioner sounded puzzled and completely out of his depth.

  Pressly, noted for his quick temper and his biting sarcasm, turned a dull red.

  “Is my command of this language so grossly inadequate or are you being deliberately obtuse, sir? This—must I define the word?—came up with one of the samples. The photograph, I repeat, the photograph itself, is ours and was taken with a biological camera. In short gentlemen, the object you are observing is almost as small as a non-filterable virus.”

  They stared, as if by their staring they could make the picture disappear. All were aware of disbelief and a cold feeling of apprehension inside them. Some of the more intelligent however, were already cursing themselves for not noticing details.

  The picture itself, at first glance, might have been one of thousands taken in the World War II, until one studied the design, the application, the wholly alien in a horribly familiar implication. It couldn’t be—could it?

  The picture showed a curiously shaped vessel with a hole in its side. Fixed to the vessel’s flat deck were six tracked objects. The bows of the vessel which carried them had been lowered to form a ramp.

  It was impossible to say whether the vessel had been designed to fly, float on water or travel in some other medium, but its purpose was obvious—ft was a tank landing craft.

  Most of the members became aware of an icy prickling at the backs of their necks. You couldn’t conceive of L.C.T. that small could you?

  Slowly their eyes turned from the photograph and back to Pressly. Eyes filled with disbelief, anger, fear, rank rejection and not a few with a kind of anguished hope. Maybe Pressly would explain it away, tell diem there was nothing to worry about.

  Pressly didn’t. His next few words tore not only the hopes but all the other emotions into tiny meaningless shreds.

  He removed something from his pocket, his thick black eyebrows moving curiously. “I have here a complete report from the Department of Physicists.” He looked at them directly. “The blackened area is “hot”, radio-active from end to end. The radio-activity is on the decline, but the department concerned has confirmed by test that this activity dates back some thirty odd years.”

  He paused and looked at them again. “How many relative years is that, gentlemen, a thousand—ten thousand. How many generations of God-knows-what?”

  He paused, sensing the scepticism. “Gentlemen, when I have finished, and at your convenience, you may visit the laboratories and check the evidence. This vessel you are observing in the photograph is not the only sub-microscopic artifact we found by any means. You are just seeing the best photograph.

  “The physicists among you may make your own checks but you will arrive at the same answer.”

  He paused and thrust another photograph into the viewer. “This is the area of devastation viewed from the damaged aircraft. Make no mistake, gentlemen, thirty years ago something fought a war here and they fought it with hydro-nuclear devices. In all probability the ‘mushrooms’ of these devices seldom rose higher than a normal mushroom, a few centimetres, barely the height of a man’s ankle but they were released in such great numbers that they completely obliterated this area of jungle. An area, which I may add, would hold the cities of London and greater New York at the height of their glory. Something—some intelligence—so small that our imagination veers away from the conception.”

  He paused again and went on in a strangely subdued voice. “Gentlemen, you are entitled to scepticism, it is your right to theorize, but the fact that troubles us most, is the unavoidable conclusion that this intelligence is not only still alive but aware of our existence as a possible threat. . , .”

  10

  In Base 4, Ventnor, now fully recovered, was already formidably fortified by advanced courses in practical biology.

  “This particular organism, Mr. Ventnor, should be of considerable interest to you personally—Hartman’s Disease.”

  Ventnor studied it. Through the magnifier, it resembled a piece of black cotton, a centimetre or so in length. “Not a lot to work on, is there?”

  “Unfortunately we have reached the limits of sub-microscopic magnification. The device to bring that culture any closer has yet to be invented.”

  “What are the exact effects on the human body?”

  “Directly and simply, it attacks the nerve membranes. Indirectly, in the normal functions of its existence, it excretes toxics which effect the blood. The life cycle of the organism is short but the rate of reproduction fantastic. In your case, for example, another thirty minutes would have been too late.”

  “What methods do you employ to combat the virus?”

  “In the human body, a twofold method. A special antibiotic which attacks the virus directly and a substance to cleanse the bloodstream of the toxic by-products of the disease.”

  Ventnor said, “I see,” and scowled.

  Later that day, with Gina, he was absent-minded and a little vague.

  She was not troubled. She understood, loved him and knew he had a problem on his mind.

  Finally he said: “I have an idea, I think it might work.”

  Then, irrelevantly, “You have the most gentle brown eyes I have ever seen, gentle and understanding.”

  “Does that help your ideas?” She was smiling gently.

  “Yes, it does, I feel at peace with you. Your eyes are part of that peace, part of you.” Suddenly he took her in his arms. “I love you.”

  “I know.” Her arms went round his neck.

  He kissed her again. “I don’t feel peaceful now.”

  “I know that, too.”

  “Darling, will you marry me—?”

  “Later.” She drew his mouth down to hers. “Later, when you— Oh, darling—feel—peaceful again—” Three weeks later he called Biology.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Latimer’s thin face was slightly flushed.

  “Working—sorry, should have let you know but I got so involved. Listen, you told me that a device to magnify Hartman’s Disease had yet to be invented—magnify it any more, that is.” Ventnor drew a deep breath, clearly he was excited.

  “Very well, go on.” Latimer sounded resigned.

  “Go on? Oh, sorry—er—I think I’ve invented it.”

  “The hell you have I Where are you?”

  “Department C—can you bring some culture along?”

  “Bring some—” Latimer hesitated. “It will have to be latent, you know, sterile, the rules forbid— Be with you in about six minutes.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Latimer’s mouth opened but no sound came out.

  The virus which, with his instruments, had looked like a centimetre of black cotton, now looked like an untidy piece of rope. It was, or appeared to be, nearly a meter long and was as thick as a man’s arm.

  “How the hell did you do it?”

  “Later, if you don’t mind. Apart from known methods, if it were alive what would kill it?”

  “I don’t quite follow you.”

  “You don’t have to—yet. I was thinking of a heavy electrical discharge.”

 
Latimer, uncomfortably aware that he was getting out of depth in his own field of research, said tartly, “Most certainly, but the patient would go with it.”

  “Not if it were a constricted discharge, electronically confined to the nervous system of the virus.”

  “What do you propose to do—jump into the patient’s blood stream and pick them off like a sniper?”

  Ventnor’s mouth twitched slightly, then he said, “Yes,” with a straight face.

  For a few moments he watched the changing expressions on Latimer’s face then he held out his hand. “Sony, Mr. Latimer, I’ve a warped sense of humour. Come and see what I’m working on.”

  Latimer tried to frown disapprovingly and failed. Ventnor was one of the most infuriating and, at the same time, one of the most likeable men he had ever met.

  “Very well.” He followed meekly.

  Thirty minutes later, however, he had the uncomfortable feeling that his eyes were bulging slightly.

  “It can’t be done, Ventnor, truly it cannot be done.” Latimer made the statement almost defensively. The other’s conceptions were so incredibly unorthodox that its very existence threatened to undermine the techniques both of biology and preventative medicine at a single stroke.

  “Why can’t it be done? You, yourself, told me that medical science can now educate the normal metabolism into accepting certain substances.”

  “Well—because—” Latimer, now flushed and scowling was horrified to discover that he couldn’t think of a reason, not at the moment, not off hand. “It would have to be tried on a five culture first.”

  “Naturally.”

  “It will have to be examined by a panel of experts.”

  “Of course, I expect that.”

  Latimer almost shook his fist. “Will you please stop being so infuriatingly submissive. You’re not even giving me the satisfaction of an argument. Damn it, man, this has been a shock.”

  When, subsequently, the matter was examined by a panel of experts, only two stubbornly refused to be shocked.

  Stein only smiled blandly as if he had expected it and Prone was noisily jubilant.