Гарри Гаррисон - The Jupiter Plague

When he lowered his face he found her lips waiting.

A kiss is a contact, a union, an exchange. It is unknown to certain races and tribes, while others know it and consider it with disgust. They all suffer a loss. A kiss can be a cold formula, or a token of familial relationship or a prelude to the act of love. It can also be a revelation in an unspoken, secret language of feelings that have never been expressed in words.

She lowered her face against his chest after-ward and he knew that she was smiling while he spoke because he traced the contours of her lips with his fingers.

“I suppose — all our emotions are closer to the surface now and we say and do things just as we feel them. I have to laugh at myself—”

“Please don’t, Sam!”

“—Well, I should laugh at myself. If you only knew how I loathe starry-eyed and out of focus TV love scenes of young things wallowing in the treacly embrace of love at first sight. I think they have demeaned something uncountably precious by using it for common coinage. I want to be able to say that I love you, Nita, and have you understand it is something vitally different and important.”

“But I love you too, so I know exactly how you feel. I suppose it is terrible to say, but I’m almost grateful for Rand’s disease and what has happened. Women are selfish, darling. I have the feeling that without the pressure you would just have gone on being one of those silent, busy men, who use their lives up on important things and never have a moment to consider the frivolous unimportance of women.”

“Unimportance!” Her body was alive and vital under his hands.

The phone cut a clear signal through the darkness of the room.

“Damn!” he said angrily, and Nita laughed as she pulled gently away from him.

“I know how you feel,” she said, “but I still must answer it.”

He smiled back and reluctantly let go as she turned on the lights and went to the phone. The rain had let up a bit, but occasional gusts of wind sent it thrumming against the window as he looked out at the moist grayness of the city, seemingly empty of all life. From the twelfth floor here he could see far up First Avenue and the only thing moving was a green and white police car: it slipped into a side street and vanished. There was a mumble of voices behind him, cut off as Nita hung up. When he turned back she was standing and stretching, an enjoyable sight that cheered him a good deal.

“I’m going to wash up and change and find some breakfast,” she said. “There’s going to be a meeting in an hour, probably another of those council of war things, even Professor Chabel will be there she said.”

“She?”

“Dr. McKay’s secretary, though I guess she’s Perkins’s now.”

“Did she mention me? Locator knows I’m here.”

“No, she just asked me to come — but of course you’re supposed to be there.”

“Am I? Just another intern — isn’t that what Eddie Perkins called me? — at a policy meeting.”

“But you must be there, Sam!”

He smiled, a little crookedly. “Oh, I’ll be there all right.”

It was one of the large meeting rooms, more than ample to hold the people assembled there, roughly thirty in all. Sam recognized most of them, heads of departments, researchers who had been drafted to work on the team, even two uniformed officers of the Public Health Service. Coming through the door, he had a sudden feeling of inadequacy at his presumption in coming here, but Nita must have sensed this because she pressed his hand firmly in hers as he helped her into a chair and this kept his mind off the proceedings until he was securely seated. Then it was too late to retreat, nor was it necessary. The people who knew him and happened to catch his eye just nodded or lifted a hand in greeting, while the others took no notice of him at all.

“You are Dr. Bertolli?” a rumbling, accented voice asked from behind him, and he rose quickly. The scowling man with the full, black beard and broken nose was familiar to Sam, though he had never met him.

“Yes, I am, Dr. Hattyar, what can I…”

“How do you feel?” Hattyar leaned forward until his face was only a few inches from Sam’s. In someone else it might have been annoying, but Sam had heard the hospital stories about the Hungarian immunologist; it was generally agreed that he was a genius — his radioactive differentiator had already replaced Ouchterlony’s gel precipitation in laboratory procedure — but he was known almost as well for his severe myopia and vanity. He needed corrective lenses badly but refused to admit it or to wear them. His nearsightedness was only a minor handicap in the laboratory, but it did tend to make his social life difficult. “How do you feel?” he repeated, looking at

Sam closely.

“Just fatigued, Doctor, I’ve missed a lot of sleep — but nothing else. No symptoms at all of Rand’s disease.”

“Not so good, a small fever would have helped. You are sure there was no small fever—?”

“None, I’m afraid.”

“Still, there is some hope. I want some of your serum. I have sera, too much of it, but always from someone who later has died. Perhaps with yours we can isolate antigens…”

“Sam — I thought you were on ambulance duty?” The interrupting words were matter of fact and cold, but Sam was aware of the enmity behind them. It was Eddie Perkins. He kept his own voice just as noncommittal as he turned.

“Yes, still on ambulance. I was out almost twenty hours last tour. Things aren’t any better in the city.”

“I see. Yes. Were you asked here?” They faced each other and the only sign of Perkins’s real feelings was the cold anger in his eyes.

“No,” Sam said, and caught the fleeting edge of a grin of victory.

“Well, then I’m sorry then, Sam, I’m afraid you’ll have to—”

“Who the devils are you?” Hattyar boomed, leaning closer and scowling in concentration as he tried to make out the intruder’s face.

“I’m Perkins, Dr. Hattyar, Dr. McKay’s assistant, I’m taking over for him until…”

“Then go take over please, we are busy.”

Hattyar wrapped his large hand around Sam’s arm and pulled him away from the suddenly red-faced Perkins. Sam felt a fleeting emotion of victory, replaced instantly by the knowledge that this would only magnify his trouble with Perkins.

Professor Chabel tapped with the gavel and standing groups broke up and found seats around the long table. He sat and stared at the papers before him, squaring them into a neat stack, before he spoke in a voice heavy with the weariness they all felt.

“Firstly, I wish you all to know that this is a World Health meeting. I asked Dr. Perkins, who is seconding for Dr. McKay at the moment, to call you all together to give me an up-to-the-moment briefing. I have been receiving your reports and I must thank you all for keeping me so well informed and up to date. At World Health we have been occupied mostly with controlling the disease vectors and establishing a quarantine area and have left treatment up to local hospital authorities aided by some Army teams. But we’re reaching the point where we have some major policy decisions to make, and before we do that we want to know exactly where we stand, what you are doing and what you hope to do to control this disease, everything.”

When he finished speaking the entire room was silent. Finally Eddie Perkins cleared his throat and looked around. “Perhaps it might be best if I sum up the present state of our knowledge. Untreated, Rand’s disease brings on death after infection in a period of roughly ten to twelve hours, in one hundred percent of the cases. To our knowledge no exceptions have been uncovered so far. However with supportive treatment we can extend that period to almost forty-eight hours. This is hopeful…”