The Haploids

by Jerry Sohl

  "Captain Tomkins!" It was the mayor striding down the hall. "1 was listening to the radio just now and all of a sudden that buzzing started in again. Only it's worse than ever! Didn't you get that thing? Or are you experimenting with it? It's ruining reception again!"

  "Mayor Barnston," the captain said slowly, and he took the mayor to one side, started to talk to him.

  Travis felt sick. It wasn't a sickness of body. It was a sickness of mind. A dread for a city, a city that was without protection, a city in the way of somebody, either the women themselves or the men they worked for, who wanted it wiped out.

  A city couldn't exist without men . . .or could it? He tried to visualize what kind of a world it would be, but he could not.

  Travis walked as if in a dream into the captain's office. Dr. Leaf was already there.

  "... a matter of time," was all Travis caught of the words Dr. Leaf was saying to him.

  Outside he could heat the whistle of a train. Somewhere he heard an airplane. There were the usual busy sounds of city streets that floated in from windows, doorways, a condemned city.

  They had the secret. It was a metal box that baffled the few who had seen it. But before they could do much about it other metal boxes must have been started somewhere. What if they tracked them down one by one? They would all be dead before they got them all.

  Maybe I should have taken Betty's advice, he thought. Maybe I should have got out of town. Too late, now.

  He picked up the phone, dialed the Star. He asked for Cline.

  "This is Travis," he said.

  "Where are you?" Cline's raspy voice exploded. "We've just learned they've got men with gray skin at all the hospitals. What's it all about? What are you doing?"

  "I ought to be writing my obituary," Travis said. "You, too."

  "Wait a minute. Are you serious?"

  "Cline, I was never more serious in my life. I want to tell you something. Then we'll have to figure out what ought to go in the paper. What goes in the Star is the most important thing right now. Important to every man in this city."

  Cline listened while Travis told him everything he knew about the ease. In the end Cline was quiet.

  "It looks ... it looks like it might be the end ... of us all, Travis." Travis had never heard him so grave.

  "But, Travis," he said. "I have only one thing to tell you. This is an awful thing to say, but you know when the interference first started yesterday?"

  "Yeah."

  "I sent a piece about it on the wire to Chicago. Some of the papers used it. Many of the exchanges show it made good wire, copy."

  "What about it?"

  "Just this, Travis. A half hour ago over the teletype I get an inquiry from Chicago. It seems there's interference all over the city. They wondered if we ever found out what it was."

  TEN

  "All right," the mayor snapped, chewing the end of a cigar stub. "Your report!"

  Bill Skelley consulted a sheet. "We've recruited sixty-three radiomen, all of them familiar with simple RDF equipment. They've been divided into twenty trucks and most of them have started out already. We began with seventy men but six of them came down with the plague and the other didn't report."

  The room was thick with smoke. The council chamber was a busy place with messengers running in and out. A battery of phones had been installed along one side of the room and operators were busy taking down names and addresses. The slips were given to ambulance men who hurried out for another call.

  The twelve ambulances of five hospitals had had no rest since late afternoon. Undertakers had been called and their vehicles put into emergency operation.

  At the end of the room a man was marking numbers on a blackboard. The total stood at 316 at 8 P.M., At another wall a man was sticking redheaded pins into a map of the city.

  "The hospitals will soon be full," the mayor said. "We are going to have to open the armory. Did you get that story to the Star, Travis?"

  Travis nodded. "Cline has all the dope. I told him the city's radiomen are trying to track down the sets. Women are asked to volunteer for important tasks vacated by men in the emergency. Everyone is to search his premises for any radiation machines. The plan is to run an extra." He glanced at the wall clock. "Ought to be coming off now. They're going to get the carriers to deliver it tonight to everyone whether a subscriber or not. The Courier has been alerted for the next extra."

  "Good," the mayor said. "We may not be able to use the radio, but we'll get this thing to the people. We may lick it yet." He turned to the large city map. "It's heaviest right around that store on Wright Street, of course. But notice how there are red markers farther out now."

  Dr. Leaf shook his head sadly. "It's a losing game, Mayor. They've got the new ones going. The only safe place now is out of the city, if you haven't got it already."

  "It must operate just like FM and TV," Bill Skelley volunteered. "Just to the horizon. Get over the horizon and you won't get it."

  "Maybe the radiomen will corner those started now," the mayor said hopefully.

  "It's much more difficult when there is more than one source of power you're trying to track," Bill said.

  Chief of Police Riley came into the council chamber, sat down at the desk with the other men, a sheaf of papers in his hands.

  "I have a TWX from the FBI. They're sending men here and to Chicago," he said. "They have the full report on this thing. Violation of FCC law primarily. Otherwise it would be purely a local proposition.

  "Travis, you'd be interested in this," he said, handing several sheets to him. "Inquiries from the press services, telephone calls from newspapers, news magazines I haven't had a chance to answer. Some tell me a few are flying staff men in. I sent them warning answers.

  "Chicago is as desperate as we are, though there is no sickness there. The Chicago papers we got this evening are headlining the thing here, preparing their population for it."

  He grabbed another sheet. "Here's a communication from South Bend, Indiana. Seems there's radio interference there, now. They want to know what they're in for. I hated to tell them, but I did. I pulled no punches. The FCC is already operating in both places, I believe. Had a talk on the phone with the Chicago outfit.

  "Long message here from the U. S. Department of Public Health. They suggest all sorts of preventive measures. Of course this was before we knew what it was.

  "And of course the governor called. I relayed that to you, Your Honor."

  "Yes, he's sending some National Guard units," the mayor said.

  Captain Tomkins, who had been supervising the crew at the phones, came over.

  "Dr. Wilhelm wants to see you at once, Dr. Leaf," he announced. "He just called, wouldn't wait for you to talk to him."

  Dr. Leaf rose. "Wonder what he wants?" Travis went after him. "Mind if I trot along?"

  "Not at all."

  They took the doctor's car, headed toward the hospital. It was as they were driving through the streets that the full force of events hit them. The streets were practically deserted. Occasionally a racing car, ambulance or hearse that had been pressed into service passed them; Otherwise there were few cars and less pedestrians.

  It only proves, Travis thought, that word-of-mouth is as fast as lightning. He noticed the few people on the streets hurried, looking neither to the right nor the left. He also noticed rather grimly that the exception to the rule seemed to be the taverns. They were jammed. People already wanted to forget something they didn't know until a few hours ago: if you were a man you were being sought out by radiations you couldn't smell, see or hear—an invisible something that wanted to embrace you, kill you. If you were a woman your husband, your father, your brother— certainly someone you knew was threatened.

  It didn't take you long to know, did it? Now you're huddled somewhere wondering if you've got it. Wondering if you're going to get it. You've heard people talk about it, but you haven't seen anybody with it. If you had . . . well, you wouldn't be huddled there as you are now.
Or maybe you're with your family. You don't want to rouse them, so you pretend it's just another evening, but in the back of your mind you're trying to figure out what to do. You, too, have heard about this thing. You remember what you read in the papers Wednesday and how the health department has the thing well in hand, and now tonight you've heard it isn't so well in hand. Maybe you have been informed by a friend.

  But maybe you don't know a damn thing about it yet at all. Maybe it's still a buzz on the radio to you. But you have a phone, haven't you? Well, you'll be hearing about it soon enough.

  As they neared Union City Hospital traffic quickened. There were many cars parked within several blocks of it and people were walking toward the hospital's entrance.

  A number of policemen were moving the traffic around the building. Dr. Leaf had to show his identification card and tell them who he was before one of them would let him turn into the hospital driveway. They found a parking space in the courtyard, entered the hospital.

  The corridors thronged with people. Nurses moved quickly up and down the halls, not stopping to answer questions put by eager people. The hospital lobby was jammed. Travis and Dr. Leaf made their way to Dr. Stone's office. They found him alone.

  He was sitting at his desk, his tie unloosened, studying a sheet with figures on it. He looked up. His face was pale, haggard, his eyes bleary.

  "I've got 'em in the corridors on three and four," Dr. Stone said wearily. "Now we're setting out in the hallway on two. Next will be the first floor, if the cots hold out. How've you been, Dr. Leaf, Travis?"

  They shook hands.

  "Dr. Wilhelm?" Dr. Leaf said.

  Dr. Stone's face clouded. "He asked me to get in touch with you, Dr. Leaf. He's been working on this without sleep since Wednesday. You talk to him. He's on floor four. I gave him a room—an auxiliary operating room we're not using right now. He says he can keep on working there ... to the end."

  "To the end?" Dr. Leaf said. "What the devil do you mean?"

  "In case you don't know it," Dr. Stone said, "you will in a few moments. He's in 434. He's got it. He was all run down, naturally he'd be more susceptible."

  They left the office, walked upstairs to 434. They found Dr. Wilhelm, big hulking Wilhelm, lying on a cot within easy reach of a notebook and textbooks. He was a pasty gray.

  "Glad you're here," he said to Dr. Leaf. "Sit down. Glad you got here before . . ." he gritted his teeth as he moved to rise.

  "Lie down," Dr. Leaf ordered, settling him back.

  "It's working on me," the doctor said. "I can feel it—I think I can feel it in every cell." He managed to smile grimly. "But I think I know something about it." He moved and looked at Travis hostilely. "Let me have a drink, Doctor."

  Travis quickly took the glass from a table, gave it to him. The doctor looked at him steadily then, took the glass, drank from it.

  "Stick around, Mr. Travis," he said. "You'll get it soon. Maybe you can bunk in here."

  "Travis is all right," Dr. Leaf said. "What have you found out?"

  "It's the Y chromosome, Doctor."

  "The Y?" Dr. Leaf studied him. "I see."

  "From your description of the machine . . ." Dr. Wilhelm gritted his teeth again as some pain struck him. Then he moistened his lips with his tongue and continued. "You remember you called."

  "Yes, I called you late this afternoon and told you about the machine."

  "I thought about it for an hour before I put it together." the ailing doctor said, biting his lips. "Then I realized it had to be the Y. The gamma rays are just short enough to hit the Y for some reason. They won't bother the X, or they'd destroy the women, too."

  "You must be right," Dr. Leaf said. "I never thought of that ... oh, I thought of it, yes, but I didn't think it significant. Of course that's it."

  Dr. Leaf got excited now. "Yes, I think you've got it, Dr. Wilhelm."

  "A hell of a lot of good it does us now," the weakening doctor said. He closed his eyes and breathed loudly.

  "What's this about a Y chromosome?" Travis asked.

  Dr. Leaf motioned for Travis to follow him, leaving Dr. Wilhelm twisting on his cot.

  Out in the hallway Dr. Leaf explained. "Every cell of your body is made up of forty-eight chromosomes, Travis," he said. "Forty-six of them are what we call autosomes to differentiate them from sex-determining chromosomes like X and Y. The forty-seventh chromosome is the X chromosome and the forty-eighth is the Y."

  "Dr. Wilhelm mentioned about women not being affected," Travis started to say.

  "That's right," Dr. Leaf explained. "Remember my saying there was little difference between men and women except for obvious physical differences?"

  Travis nodded.

  "Well, women have forty-six autosomes, the forty-seventh is an X chromosome, just as in a man, but the forty-eighth, instead of being a Y, is an X, too.

  "You see, when you were born it came about like this: Your mother's oogenesis—the creation of an ovum—occurred when a regular 46XX cell broke in two. We call it 'reduction division,' a process of 'mitosis.' The ovum was composed of half a 46XX cell—or a 23X cell, complete in itself.

  "In your father the 46XY cell—the male cell—was reduced to two spermatozoa in the reduction division. One a 23X and the other a 23Y and it grew a tail. When the thousands of 23X and 23Y spermatozoa converged on the ovum a 23Y won out, thereby creating you, the 23Y plus the 23X creating a 46XY, which is you. If the 23X and the- 23X had got together, you'd have been a girl. The original 46XY thus formed keeps dividing until you're born and it keeps on—they're still dividing, as a matter of fact, although controlled by the genes."

  Travis smiled. "You make it sound awfully simple." And as he said it something like a sledgehammer hit him on the head.

  He saw a circle with 23X in the middle of it. The Venus mirror, the diagram the old man had drawn! "Dr. Leaf!" he exclaimed. "I just remembered that diagram the old man drew. Remember? It had the 23X in it. Doesn't that have something to do with all this?"

  Dr. Leaf stared at him blankly for a moment, then his eyes lighted slowly.

  "You're right," he said with sudden realization. "The first case. Dr. Collins, the intern—yes, I remember that!" He became thoughtful. "Funny, I never thought of it in that sense. 23X. Now, why would the old man draw that?"

  "He couldn't mean an ovum caused all this."

  "Not unless he went back to his beginning."

  "If anything, Doctor, from what you've said, he'd have been smarter to have drawn a plain Y."

  "No, no," the doctor said, wrinkling his brow. "There was this circle, too. That would mean 'female.' A female has 46XX chromosomes, though." The doctor seemed to be talking to himself. "Unless . . . unless . . ."

  "And this Betty Garner," Travis said. "Have you heard about my showing the diagram to her? She turned pale when she saw it, wanted to know where I got it."

  "There's just the barest chance, Travis," Dr. Leaf said. "But it couldn't be. It's just not possible, that's all . . ."

  "What's that, Dr. Leaf?"

  "A haploid. It can be done in plants, some animals. No, it must be something else." The little doctor walked back and forth in sudden study in the corridor, oblivious of the commotion farther down the corridor. "But what if it were true?"

  "You're talking over my head, Doctor," Travis said. "What's a haploid?"

  "You're a diploid," the doctor returned, then added hastily, "No offense. It just means each cell of your body is composed of pairs of chromosomes—twenty-four pairs in each cell. One set from your mother, one set from your father. You could, of course, be standing there if you had only one set. No, maybe you couldn't. But a woman could. A haploid woman. A woman created with only a single set of chromosomes. Parthenogenesis. It can be done in biology, but nobody has tried it with humans. 23X instead of 46XX. Also provided there are no 'blank' genes so she'd be missing an arm or a leg or a brain. . . ."

  "You're still way ahead of me," Travis said.

  Instead of answeri
ng, Dr. Leaf turned to the room where Dr. Wilhelm was. They saw that he was in a restless sleep. They also noted that his flesh was just a shade darker than when they had come.

  Dr. Leaf walked to a shiny cabinet, opened the door, studied the bright instruments inside. He took several, put them in his pocket, reached up and took down a microscope in a plastic hood. He put this under his arm.

  "No sense in waking him now," Dr. Leaf said. "Now come along. We've got work to do. We're going to find out if there is such a thing as a haploid woman."

  Where before the doctor had been slow, methodical and seemed more prone to thought than action, he now became a bundle of energy. He wrapped the microscope in a sheet and they stepped out in the corridor, made their way down the hallway, dodging between the cots with gray men in various stages of the sickness, some of them gasping, others just staring stupidly at the ceiling. Others groaned and turned and twisted as Dr. Wilhelm had done. One was laughing, quite out of his head.

  How can one human being do this to another? Travis asked himself. But he remembered some things he had seen which were just as bad. World War II. Men torn with shrapnel. Men squashed like bugs beneath the tread of a giant tank. He had seen an antipersonnel mine make a man a raving idiot, robbing him of all compunction, of all desire for living, a man hit in the most vulnerable spot.

  But what about the A-Bomb? Perhaps it was necessary. But it still had been the creation of man for use against men. The ultimate engine of destruction? No, there was a worse one. A little black box. It had a little machine in it. A little tube. . . .

  Man's inhumanity to man! Would civilization never learn? Or is war and the killing of one' another just another adjunct to nature? A necessity? Would man become biologically extinct if he didn't have the release offered by killing his fellow men? But then why did he have a brain but to reason with, to see how horrible his destruction would be?

  They reached the ground level which was more crowded than when they came. There were gray men in the lobby now. No place to put them. Some were moaning on the floor, others sitting up against chairs, their faces expressionless, their eyes without hope. Their women crowded around their men, some weeping softly.