First Contacts: The Essential Murray Leinster

by Murray Leinster

  “This talk is nonsense!” said Mors irritably. “I came to offer you the benefit of my experience in matters of military and public health. Do you have the welfare of your men actually at heart?”

  There was a pause. General Vladek was slim and beautifully tailored. He did not belong in the office of the provincial governor of Kantolia, whose desk was still littered with papers concerning such local affairs as the price of pigs and crops and an outbreak of measles in the public schools. The office was slightly grubby, despite a certain plebeian attempt at elegance. General Vladek seemed fastidiously detached from his surroundings. And he was amused.

  “I assure you,” said General Vladek, “that I am duly solicitous of my men’s health.”

  “If you are solicitous enough,” said Surgeon General Mors curtly, “you will get them out of here as quickly as they came in! But I can hardly expect you to comply with that wish. What I have to say is that your troops had better have as little to do with the civilian population as possible—no communication of any sort that can possibly be avoided.”

  “You are ridiculous,” said General Vladek, annoyed. “Kantolia is now part of my country. Its people are the fellow citizens of my troops. Isolate them? Ridiculous!”

  Surgeon General Mors stood up and shrugged.

  “Very well,” he said heavily. “I advised you. Now, either I am a prisoner or I am not. If not, I would like a pass allowing me to go about freely. The sudden entry of so large an invading force introduces problems of public health—”

  “Which my medical corps,” said General Vladek scornfully, “is quite able to cope with! You are a prisoner, and I think a tool! Good day!”

  Surgeon General Mors marched stolidly to the door…

  Since the invasion was not yet one day old, there had been no time to build concentration camps. Surgeon General Mors was confined, therefore, in a school which had been closed to education that it might be taken over and used as a prison. He found himself in company with the provincial governor of Kantolia, the mayor of Stadheim, and various other officials arrested by the invaders. There were private citizens in confinement, too—mostly people whom the small number of quislings in Kantolia had denounced. They were not accused of crimes, as yet. Even the invading army did not yet pretend that they had committed any offense against either military or civilian law. But most of them were frantic. It was not easy to forget tales of hostages shot for acts of resistance by conquered populations. They knew of places where leading citizens had been exterminated for the crime of being leading citizens, and educated men destroyed because they rejected propaganda that outraged all reason. The fate of Kantolia had precedents. If precedent were followed, those first arrested when the land was overrun were in no enviable situation.

  Surgeon General Mors tried to reassure them, but he had not much success. The entire situation looked hopeless. The seizure of a single province of a very minor nation would appear to the rest of the world either as a crisis, or as an affront to the United Nations, or as a rectification of frontiers—according to the nationality and political persuasion of the commentator. It would go on the agenda of the United Nations Council; deftly it would be intermixed with other matters so that it could not be untangled and considered separately. Ultimately it would be the subject of a compromise—one item in a complicated Great-Power deal—which would leave matters exactly as the invaders wished them. Practically speaking, that was the prospect.

  “But the fact,” said Surgeon General Mors, “is that such things cannot continue forever. The life of humanity is a symbiosis, a living-together, in all its stages. It begins with the symbiotic relationship of members of a family, each of whom helps and is helped by all the rest. But it rises to the symbiotic relationship of nations, of which each is an organism necessary to the others, and all are mutually helpful.”

  “But there is parasitic symbiosis, in which one organism seeks to prey upon another as our enemy seeks to prey upon us,” interjected an amateur naturalist who was a fellow prisoner.

  “But a truly healthy organism finds ways to rid itself of parasites,” Mors said calmly; “or at least to keep them in tolerable subjugation. Do you doubt that our country is a healthy organism?”

  It was encouraging talk, but his fellow prisoners were not convinced. Most of them had been seized in their homes. Only one was fully dressed. The mayor had on an overcoat over his nightshirt; his hairy shanks and bare feet left him utterly without dignity. Other leading citizens were unshaven, uncombed and in every possible stage of dishabille; all were certain their humiliation was a bad omen.

  “To be sure,” conceded Surgeon General Mors practically, “our country has only four million people, and our enemy has fifty. But we have planned our nation carefully. In nature, not all creatures defend themselves with tooth and claw. There is a specialized defense for every type of creature, as I myself pointed out to our president. There must be, as I insisted to him, some form of defense for every type of nation, so that it may survive. And I may say that he later told me that he considers our nation’s survival certain. So, since this province is necessary if our nation is truly to survive, the invaders will have to be turned out of it.”

  “But when?” asked a prisoner despairingly.

  “The wheat harvest should begin in three weeks,” said Mors meditatively. “It will be a great blow to our country if our enemy seizes the wheat harvest. I should say that we must have victory for our country in less than three weeks. Probably within ten days.”

  His companions stared at him. But Surgeon General Mors did not look like someone envisioning a spectacular military triumph for his country. He looked like someone sick at heart from some knowledge he concealed within him.

  Depression stayed with the prisoners. They increased in number as the day wore on. Typically, to the conquerors the conquered seemed somehow less than human. Many of the later prisoners had been beaten after their arrest. On the second day the schoolhouse was crowded. More of the new prisoners were beaten. On the third day there was a barbed-wire fence around the schoolhouse and food for the prisoners was contemptuously dumped inside it in bulk for them to distribute themselves. Surgeon General Mors organized a committee for the purpose, and to protest against unnecessary ill-treatment and humiliations.

  On the fourth day two men arrived so badly beaten that they were unconscious, and died even as Surgeon General Mors tried—without drugs or any equipment—to revive them.

  The newcomers reported conditions in the province. The invaders were methodically looting the captured territory. Their obvious purpose was to increase the riches of their country by impoverishing the province they had added to it. Machinery was being shipped back in a steady stream. Manufactured products were requisitioned from merchants. Kantolia had been the richest province in its small nation. When the invaders finished, it would be the most poverty-stricken in Europe.

  That was not all. The troops of the invaders were quartered in private homes as well as in public buildings. Nearly every Kantolian family had its quota of invaders, to be fed at the householder’s own expense. And while the enemy troops were required to practice strict discipline in relation to their officers, no such strictness was enforced as regarded civilians. A citizen whose home was only looted was considered fortunate.

  The outside world remained unconcerned. Of course no news went out from Kantolia. Censorship and a tightly sealed frontier took care of that. But what sparse, illicit radio news newcomers brought in to the prisoners indicated that the outside world was not too much disturbed by the rectification of an unimportant frontier in a remote corner of Europe.

  There was a diplomatic crisis among the Big Four powers. Surgeon General Mors’ government had made a dignified protest and a formal appeal to the United Nations, but the achievement of atomic energy control by that organization had been so precarious a matter, and was maintained by so unstable a balance of bargains, that a controversial question like the seizure of Kantolia might wreck the ent
ire framework of international accord if pressed at the present time. Consideration of the matter had been postponed. The invaders had an indefinite period in which forcibly to remold the province’s citizenry nearer to their heart’s desire, to teach them to clamor dutifully for the maintenance of their new nationality lest worse things befall.

  Strangely, though, no new prisoners arrived after the fourth day. Almost the last to arrive told, sobbing, of the fact that fresh troops had been pouring into Kantolia almost from the instant of its seizure, and that now a monstrous army was ready to overwhelm the rest of the nation of which Kantolia had been a part.

  But Surgeon General Mors counted on his fingers and said bleakly, “The invasion cannot last more than ten days! But it is very terrible!”

  He had never been military in appearance. Now, five days without soap with which to wash, or a razor with which to shave, and with no change of garments at all, his looks were not imposing. He had torn up his undershirt to make bandages for beaten prisoners. The food was insufficient, and he had given of his own to those most terribly beaten and therefore weakest. The five days had told upon him. Yet he still possessed an odd dignity which could only have been the dignity of faith.

  Then, on the afternoon of the fifth day, one of the sentries outside the barbed-wire enclosure staggered, dropped his rifle against a tree, and then clung to that tree in a spasm of weakness. And Surgeon General Mors saw it.

  He watched somberly until it was over. He looked heartsick and ill. But his eyes glowed doggedly as he turned and ran his eyes over the battered, dispirited figures in the concentration camp which was the first benefit conferred by the invaders.

  “I must borrow a razor from someone,” Mors told the mayor of Stadheim, who happened to be nearest him, “or a knife. At worst I shall have to break a pane of glass and try to shave with its edge. I am going to demand the surrender of the invading army.”

  He did not succeed in making the demand that day. It was late afternoon of the seventh day of the occupation before Surgeon General Mors was ushered into the presence of General Vladek. On the way from the schoolhouse, the stocky, untidy man had been marched through the streets of Stadheim. They were almost empty. They were dirty and unswept. Trash littered the sidewalks. He saw few civilians and no soldiers at all except his guard, until he arrived at the capitol building which was enemy headquarters.

  He saw an invading soldier there, a sentry, lying on the sidewalk in a curiously shapeless heap. Surgeon General Mors knew at the first glance that the man was dead.

  He looked more than ever sick at heart when he was ushered into the presence of General Vladek. The scene of this second interview was also the office of the provincial governor, but now the plebeian elegance of its furnishings had been corrected. Now it was a picture of efficiency. There were filing cabinets and wall maps, and an automatic facsimile machine in one corner hummed softly as it covered a slowly unreeling roll of paper with slightly out-of-register typed orders, queries, lists and the like.

  General Vladek was slim and elegantly bemedaled as before. But now there was a nervous tic in his cheek. His face was queerly gray. He looked at Surgeon General Mors with a desperate grimness.

  “You are going to be shot,” he said with a terrifying quietness, “if you answer my questions truthfully. If you do not answer them, you will not be shot. But you will beg very pitifully for a chance to reconsider and earn a firing squad! Do you understand?”

  Surgeon General Mors seated himself with great composure. His attempt at shaving had not been very successful. He was in every way a disreputable contrast to the invading general’s dapper splendor.

  “I asked for this interview,” said Mors matter-of-factly, “to ask if you are prepared to surrender the troops under your command. You mentioned once that I was the ranking officer of my army in your hands. I doubt that you have captured any other. So I seem to be the person to make the demand.”

  General Vladek made a violent gesture. Then he composed himself. But he breathed quickly, and his cheek twitched, and his teeth showed when he smiled. He did not look conspicuously sane.

  “What is this epidemic?” he demanded in deadly quietness. “My men die at the rate of ten thousand a day! Your citizens do not! We have lost thirty-five thousand men in four days, and so far not more than six civilians native to Kantolia have been stricken! What is it, Mors?”

  Surgeon General Mors leaned back in his chair. He showed no sign of triumph.

  “It would be an—organism we developed,” he said heavily. “The official designation is CK-211. I understand that it is an artificial mutation, a variation on a fairly common bacterium. I have been told that it could be described as a dwarf form of one of the diplococci. It is hardly larger than a virus molecule. You would not expect me to be more precise.”

  General Vladek’s nostrils distended.

  “Ah-h-h-h!” he said with deadly softness. “It is no normal plague! It is biological war! Too cowardly to fight as honorable men fight, your nation—”

  “There is no war between our countries,” said Surgeon General Mors, prosaically, “and you invaded our country like a brigand, making your own rules for attack. So we made our own rules for defense. If you surrender the troops under your command, there is a good chance that we can save their lives. Have you given thought to the matter?”

  General Vladek’s cheeks twitched. His hands shook with hate.

  “Tell me the truth,” he said hoarsely, “and I will have you shot. I will concede so much! I promise that I will have you shot! But if you do not—”

  “I think you are being absurd, General,” said Mors stolidly. “As I recall the details, death occurs on the third day after infection, usually within a few hours of the appearance of the first noticeable symptoms. Sulfa, streptomycin, and penicillin are ineffective against this particular strain, which was especially bred up to be resistant to such drugs. Also, from my recollection, the patient is infectious almost from the instant of his own infection. I think you understate your losses. Moreover, in an epidemic of this sort, the death rate should mount geometrically until natural immunes and the lack of susceptibles lower it.”

  Mors paused, and said inquiringly, “You have ordered your men to abstain from all contact with the civil population?”

  General Vladek panted with fury.

  “I suspected intention when the plague began! My medical corps insisted that since only my men were infected, its cause must be contaminated supplies from home! I ordered my troops to subsist on local supplies and distributed our rations among the people—or revenge in case your spies in our supply system were responsible! But the rate of infection tripled! And your people do not die! My men die! Only my men.”

  Surgeon General Mors nodded. His eyes were somber, yet very resolute.

  That is natural, he observed. “Our population is immune.” Then he said explanatorily. “We have immunized practically our entire population against certain formerly prevalent diseases. And included in the injection given to each citizen was a fraction of a very interesting formula which produces immunity to diplococci in a quite new fashion.”

  The dapper General Vladek sat frozen and speechless, in a rage so murderous that he seemed almost calm.

  “It makes symbiosis possible,” said Surgeon General Mors, in an interested tone. “It produces a condition under which the human body and the entire series of diplococci can live together. It does not produce the relationship. That requires the organisms, too. It merely makes the relationship possible. We have had practically no diplococci infections in our country for years back. Such diseases happen to be very rare among us. But the inoculation makes it possible for any of our inoculated citizens to establish a truly symbiotic relationship in case he encounters them. It is like the adjustment of intestinal flora and colon bacilli to us. They do not harm us, and we do not harm them. You follow the reasoning?”

  General Vladek’s voice was quite inhuman. “How were my men infected?” he deman
ded. His voice cracked. “Tell me, how were my men infected? My medical corps says—”

  “We did not infect them,” said Surgeon General Mors calmly. “We infected only our own population. On the morning of your invasion we spread the infection in the drinking water, in the food. We infected our own people—who could not be harmed by it—and then I came to you and warned you to keep your soldiers aloof from our people. I also advised you to get your troops out of our country for their own safety, but you would not believe me. Because, you see”—his tone was absolutely commonplace—“every citizen of our country is now a carrier of the plague of which your soldiers die. A carrier. Not suffering from it, but able to give it to anyone not immunized against it. You have heard of typhoid carriers. We are a nation of carriers, bearers of the plague which is destroying your army.”

  General Vladek looked like an image of frozen, despairing rage. His face was gray. His cheek twitched. He had led an invading army triumphantly into this province.

  Then without one shot being fired, his army had ceased to be an army, and a sentry lay dead on the street before his headquarters.

  “We did not like to do it,” said Surgeon General Mors, heavily. “But we had to defend ourselves. The soil of our nation is now deadly to your troops. If you murdered and burned every citizen of our country, our land would still be fatal to your men and to the settlers who might follow them. You cannot make use of Kantolia. You cannot make use of any of the rest of our country. And the loot you have sent back has spread infection in your cities. Couriers have carried it back and transmitted it before they died. The quislings you sent to your country to be rewarded for betraying their own—they were carriers, too. The plague must rage horribly in your nation. Other countries will close their frontiers in quarantine, if they have not already done so. Your nation is destroyed unless you let us save it. I beg that you will give us the power.”