Pandemic
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it worse. Right now I doubt if one per cent ofthe children born during the past ten years are still alive."
"It's awful!" Mary said.
"It's worse than that. It's extinction. Without kids the race will dieout." Kramer rubbed his forehead.
"Have you any ideas?"
"Children have less resistance," Kramer replied. "An adult gets exposedto a number of diseases to which he builds an immunity. Possibly one ofthese has a cross immunity against Thurston's virus."
"Then why don't you work on that line?" Mary asked.
"Just what do you think I've been doing? That idea was put out monthsago, and everyone has been taking a crack at it. There are twenty-fourlaboratories working full time on that facet and God knows how many moreworking part time like we are. I've screened a dozen common diseases,including the six varieties of the common cold virus. All, incidentally,were negative."
"Well--are you going to keep on with it?"
"I have to." Kramer rubbed his eyes. "It won't let me sleep. I'm surewe're on the right track. Something an adult gets gives him resistanceor immunity." He shrugged. "Tell you what. You run those bloods out andI'll go take another look at the data." He reached into his lab coat andproduced a pipe. "I'll give it another try."
"Sometimes I wish you'd read without puffing on that thing," Mary said.
"Your delicate nose will be the death of me yet--" Kramer said.
"It's my lungs I'm worried about," Mary said. "They'll probably looklike two pieces of well-tanned leather if I associate with you foranother year."
"Stop complaining. You've gotten me to wear clean lab coats. Besatisfied with a limited victory," Kramer said absently, his eyesstaring unseeingly at a row of reagent bottles on the bench. Abruptly henodded. "Fantastic," he muttered, "but it's worth a check." He left theroom, slamming the door behind him in his hurry.
* * * * *
"That man!" Mary murmured. "He'd drive a saint out of his mind. If Iwasn't so fond of him I'd quit. If anyone told me I'd fall in lovewith a pathologist, I'd have said they were crazy. I wish--" Whateverthe wish was, it wasn't uttered. Mary gasped and coughed rackingly.Carefully she moved back from the bench, opened a drawer and found athermometer. She put it in her mouth. Then she drew a drop of blood fromher forefinger and filled a red and white cell pipette, and made a smearof the remainder.
She was interrupted by another spasm of coughing, but she waited untilthe paroxysm passed and went methodically back to her self-appointedtask. She had done this many times before. It was routine procedure tocheck on anything that might be Thurston's Disease. A cold, a sorethroat, a slight difficulty in breathing--all demanded the diagnosticcheck. It was as much a habit as breathing. This was probably the resultof that cold she'd gotten last week, but there was nothing like beingsure. Now let's see--temperature 99.5 degrees, red cell count 4-1/2million. White cell count ... oh! 2500 ... leukopenia! The differentialshowed a virtual absence of polymorphs, lymphocytes and monocytes. Thewhole slide didn't have two hundred. Eosinophils and basophils wayup--twenty and fifteen per cent respectively--a relative rise ratherthan an absolute one--leukopenia, no doubt about it.
She shrugged. There wasn't much question. She had Thurston's Disease. Itwas the beginning stages, the harsh cough, the slight temperature, theleukopenia. Pretty soon her white cell count would begin to rise, butit would rise too late. In fact, it was already too late. It's funny,she thought. I'm going to die, but it doesn't frighten me. In fact, theonly thing that bothers me is that poor Walter is going to have aterrible time finding things. But I can't put this place the way it was.I couldn't hope to.
She shook her head, slid gingerly off the lab stool and went to the halldoor. She'd better check in at the clinic, she thought. There was bedspace in the hospital now. Plenty of it. That hadn't been true a fewmonths ago but the only ones who were dying now were the newborn and anoccasional adult like herself. The epidemic had died out not because oflack of virulence but because of lack of victims. The city outside, oneof the first affected, now had less than forty per cent of its peopleleft alive. It was a hollow shell of its former self. People walked itsstreets and went through the motions of life. But they were not reallyalive. The vital criteria were as necessary for a race as for anindividual. Growth, reproduction, irritability, metabolism--Mary smiledwryly. Whoever had authored that hackneyed mnemonic that life was a"grim" proposition never knew how right he was, particularly when one ofthe criteria was missing.
The race couldn't reproduce. That was the true horror of Thurston'sDisease--not how it killed, but who it killed. No children played in theparks and playgrounds. The schools were empty. No babies were pushed incarriages or taken on tours through the supermarkets in shoppingcarts. No advertisements of motherhood, or children, or children'sthings were in the newspapers or magazines. They were forbiddensubjects--too dangerously emotional to touch. Laughter and shrill youngvoices had vanished from the earth to be replaced by the drab graynessof silence and waiting. Death had laid cold hands upon the hearts ofmankind and the survivors were frozen to numbness.
* * * * *
It was odd, she thought, how wrong the prophets were. When Thurston'sDisease broke into the news there were frightened predictions of the endof civilization. But they had not materialized. There were no massinsurrections, no rioting, no organized violence. Individual excesses,yes--but nothing of a group nature. What little panic there was at thebeginning disappeared once people realized that there was no place togo. And a grim passivity had settled upon the survivors. Civilizationdid not break down. It endured. The mechanics remained intact. Peoplehad to do something even if it was only routine counterfeit of normallife--the stiff upper lip in the face of disaster.
It would have been far more odd, Mary decided, if mankind had given wayto panic. Humanity had survived other plagues nearly as terrible asthis--and racial memory is long. The same grim patience of the past washere in the present. Man would somehow survive, and civilization goon.
It was inconceivable that mankind would become extinct. The whole vastresources and pooled intelligence of surviving humanity were focusedupon Thurston's Disease. And the disease would yield. Humanity waitedwith childlike confidence for the miracle that would save it. And themiracle would happen, Mary knew it with a calm certainty as she stood inthe cross corridor at the end of the hall, looking down the thirty yardsof tile that separated her from the elevator that would carry her up tothe clinic and oblivion. It might be too late for her, but not for therace. Nature had tried unaided to destroy man before--and had failed.And her unholy alliance with man's genius would also fail.
She wondered as she walked down the corridor if the others who hadsickened and died felt as she did. She speculated with grim amusementwhether Walter Kramer would be as impersonal as he was with the others,when he performed the post-mortem on her body. She shivered at thethought of that bare sterile room and the shining table. Death was not apretty thing. But she could meet it with resignation if not withcourage. She had already seen too much for it to have any meaning. Shedid not falter as she placed a finger on the elevator button.
Poor Walter--she sighed. Sometimes it was harder to be among the living.It was good that she didn't let him know how she felt. She had sensed achange in him recently. His friendly impersonality had become merelyfriendly. It could, with a little encouragement, have developed intosomething else. But it wouldn't now. She sighed again. His hardness hadbeen a tower of strength. And his bitter gallows humor had furnished awry relief to grim reality. It had been nice to work with him. Shewondered if he would miss her. Her lips curled in a faint smile. Hewould, if only for the trouble he would have in making chaos out of theorder she had created. Why couldn't that elevator hurry?
* * * * *
"Mary! Where are you going?" Kramer's voice was in her ears, and hishand was on her shoulder.
"Don't touch me!"
"Why not?" His voice was curiously dif
ferent. Younger, excited.
"I have Thurston's Disease," she said.
He didn't let go. "Are you sure?"
"The presumptive tests were positive."
"Initial stages?"
She nodded. "I had the first coughing attack a few minutes ago."
He pulled her away from the elevator door that suddenly slid open. "Youwere going to that death trap upstairs," he said.
"Where else can I go?"
"With me," he said. "I think I can help you."
"How? Have you found a cure for the