[~*-]
"Gone?"
"We assume he has been arrested," Efirr explained.
"Arrested..." On Clark's home planet, arrest was a trifle. It meant being tagged with a device that marked one's location at all times until the authorities were ready for a trial. People might wear the tags for a year or more.
"When the Eyimalian police arrest you, they don't just tag you," Paula said. "They haul you away."
"Can they do that here on Reshebora?"
"Yes, they can do that here!" Paula almost shrieked. "They just fill out some forms at Interplanetary Security."
Efirr wandered past Clark and leaned over the catwalk to peer into the worm chamber. He glanced down at the walk, a crude bit of furniture pieced together from leftover hardware and floating lower in one corner because the antigravitational lift was failing. Clark had thought of replacing it, but instead he left the low corner toward the middle of the room so that when he gave the thing a push is turned automatically.
"I see that you have adapted this room to suit you," Efirr said.
"Right. The whole wing was built for Eyimalians, so I need lifts and stepladders everyplace," Clark said. "Is there a record of the arrest?" he asked Paula. "What was the charge?"
"No, there's no record!" She seemed unable to speak quietly. Now she began to cry. Clark didn't know what to do. He brought her a chair.
"What are these worms for?" Efirr asked. He was staring into their chamber as though fascinated.
"Mathematical models," Clark said. "Reshecomp checks their responses against her calculations."
Before Clark could address Paula, the journalist asked, "So you have treated these with Ecclesiam purpuream?"
"Yes, but it didn't work. For some reason they don't take it into their systems. It goes right to the kidneys and out."
"Why?" Efirr responded at once.
"Good question!" Now I'm yelling, Clark thought. Someone was coming down the hall to see what was the matter. He looked at Paula and thought of telling her not to cry, but didn't. She might want to cry. He turned back to Efirr. "I don't know why they don't react to the stuff. I thought they would. The model does, but it isn't complete yet...they have to update it every 50 generations or so because the worm evolves..."
Efirr nodded. He walked past Clark to greet Dr. Arletty, who poked his head into the room and looked around in some confusion. "This is the celebrated Dr. Arletty. I am honored to meet you. My name--"
Arletty touched the offered palm and jerked his head toward Paula, who had fallen silent. "Is she hurt?" he asked.
"No--" Clark said. He paused to grope for some explanation.
"Why was she crying?"
"She is unhappy," Efirr said. Baffled, Arletty retreated.
"If there's no record of the arrest, how do you know he's been arrested?" Clark asked.
Paula rubbed her face with her sleeve. "We went to the Missing Persons office. First you tell the whole story to some busybody, then you sign a stack of forms, they they let you ask Reshecomp. She said he was in custody."
"That's all?"
"Detained for questioning."
"Then there is a record."
"There was something that looked like a shipping report. Received one Sevit Uchide in working order for indefinate term storage," she told him. "There really wasn't much more information."
He pulled at his mustache. "Can your father do anything?"
"I left a message."
"Sevit's family--"
"Don't put bets. With all their illegal drugs and businesses and the casino, they can't insist on their rights. Besides, arrest without charge is legal there." She stood up, her legs trembling. "We're going to march on the embassy and see if we can get on the news. Maybe they'll let him go to embarrass us."
It occurred to Clark that she might have come to his lab solely to mourn in private, not expecting Efirr to be there. He should have taken the man aside and left her alone, but it was too late. She murmured, "I'll see you later," and went out. Efirr sat down on the catwalk, bringing himself to eye level with Clark.
________________________________________
SKIP THE RESEARCH
_______________________________________
"Why do you keep these worms if they yield no information?" he asked.
Clark waved his hand at the tank. "Reshecomp wants to play with them to see what's wrong with the model."
"How interesting! Have you any idea what the fault might be?"
Clark had decided that Efirr was a pest, but the question set him thinking and it seemed only polite to try to think aloud. He said, "I don't know. It passes through so quickly--the Ecclesiam has to be broken down in their bodies before it can act. There are three levels of degradation...well, it has to be broken down. It's the pieces that are active. Well, the metabolism is a fairly slow process. At best, a part of the dose is always excreted still whole."
Efirr had begun to wander again. He came upon the air tank where the Eyimalian prairie rodents were busy lining their nests for winter. "And these little folk metabolize Ecclesiam purpureum?"
"Yeah."
Efirr frowned. "Is is supposed to work on the host animal, or on microorganisms inside?"
Clark shrugged. "Works on everything. The smallest organisms are the most affected."
"None left untouched. How interesting the sciences are!" Efirr cried suddenly. "I can see why you like them. Yes, one begins to understand the workings." His enthusiastic smile vanished almost before the words were out and the hopeless expression returned. Clark stared at him, wondering whether he could possibly have seen the smile and heard the comment, and why they should seem so strange.
Efirr tapped on the rodents' tank. "There are no side effects?"
"Don't know. I collect urines to see if they excrete the stuff or store it."
"And which do they do?"
"Neither. They...carry out a transformation--the breakdown--and excrete the products."
"But if everything is excreted, what is left to do damage?"
"A guy with a knife gets on the underground. Two stops later the guy and the knife get off. No harm done?"
"Very true! I leapt to a conclusion! So the drug may do some damage en passant?" Efirr responded. His enthusiasm was almost alarming.
"Maybe."
"What sort of damage?"
He's just upset, like Paula, trying to distract himself, Clark thought, but he had trouble concealing his irritation. "It could be anything. Maybe the...reaction that takes place...involves more than the drug and causes other things to be broken down. Things that ought to be left alone. Maybe not all the metabolites--the broken-down pieces--are excreted. Maybe a very small amount is retained and builds up."
"I see. These possible risks could not be avioded?"
"I wouldn't worry." Worry! Clark thought. I must sound like a monster. "This isn't the kind of stuff you would maintain somebody on. Despite what you may have heard from your government, it's a pretty low-grade antibiotic. It is an antibiotic, though, so you wouldn't take it unless you had an infection or something, and then you'd get better and stop taking it."
"So the risks are minimal?"
Clark went to the window. The Isadora Maxwell Pharmeceutical Research Center, commonly known as Drug Campus, surrounded and partly ascended a mountain whose peak was lost in the haze of sunlight scattered from droplets in the sticky air. He pointed down the mountain to the Resistance Labs, a central dome with extensions that reached clear out of Drug Campus and connected with another building somewhere in Genetics. The extensions were built in sections, with rectangular concave rooves like trains of swaybacked mules all pulling in opposite directions, panting, obstinate, immobile.
"You see that white building with the extensions all over the place?" he asked. "You can't really see the center from here, but that's one of the wings. You get an idea of its size. They study resistance in there. Resistance is what happens when the victims get wise to the poison. Bacteria grow fast. One generation in half an hour. It doesn't take long before one little guy comes along who's got a kink in him somewhere, so the drug doesn't kill him. Like the one in a million people who can drink all day and never get drunk. So if you've got that guy in your system and you've got the antibiotic in there, too, you're in trouble." Why did he sound so angry?"
"That one will survive."
"He might. Most of the rest won't. He can take over, he and his descendents. Pretty soon your wonderful antibiotic isn't any use. Happens all the time, if people aren't careful."
"I see." Efirr paused. "Can we suppose the side effects may present themselves quickly?"
"Sure. Suppose. On the house."
"And no one would be spared?"
"The side effects? I don't know. It would depend on the individual."
"How?"
"Well, the extent to which the drug is taken up and stored..."
"So some people might be insensitive to it?"
"Maybe."
"Would there be any way of determining who could and could not take the drug safely?"
"I don't know. That isn't what I'm working on. Why?"
"It would seem important if this drug is to be put to widespread use," Efirr said. He appeared to have grown much calmer during the conversation.
"Sure there would be side effects if you took it every day for ten years. So what?" Clark snapped. "What are they going to do, put it in the water? I told you, it isn't that good."
"We have seen that it is very difficult to predict what they will do," Efirr replied slowly, bending forward a bit as though he shrank from his own words. "It is difficult to predict what anyone will do, or deduce what anyone has done."
[~*~]
Clark was irritated now by his remorse. For a moment he envisioned himself trying to drown Efirr by pushing his head into the worms' bath. This may go on for weeks, he thought. I've got to calm down. "Let me finish checking some things," he said.
Efirr bowed himself out.
That evening they all watched the interactive news at Eyimalia House. Clark came on the sub, with his hat pulled down over his eyes, carrying papers he unfurled to hide his face whenever anything startled him.
Paula laughed at his precautions. "Where's your secret agent badge?"
He shrugged. "I was just being careful."
"Your wig is missing, too. Have you got a damp cigar you can light up in emergencies to make a smokescreen? Here it is." She pulled a cigar out of the chest pocket of his jacket.
He grabbed the jacket away from her.
"Be good to him, Paula," Efirr interceded. "He is doing his best. But Clark, we have done nothing wrong, so we have nothing to worry about. Let's see if Paula is going to be famous."
The news showed Paula shouting at an expressionless official, while the narrator explained that she was the colorful daughter of Marlow Maxwell and her boyfriend had been arrested by the Eyimalian government. Several related story titles appeared for an audience vote. Clark voted to see "Eyimalia: Planet in Transition," but the winning title was "The Maxwell Legend."
Efirr sighed. "The Eyimalia piece is quite good."
"The votes are rigged," Clark responded automatically.
They watched a few seconds of the feature about Maxwell Enterprises, the surface and space construction company founded by Paula's grandfather, where Marlow had begun his diplomatic career by settling worker-management disputes. People wandered through the room, tuning in and out as they passed, and made contemptuous comments. When the report came to the present generation and clips of Paula from Eyimalian gossip waves, Clark took pity on her and shut the thing off.
"So you're the one who started the Outlander fad," someone teased Paula.
She ignored the taunt. It was echoed next by a serious young man named Vyera, who had been trying to rig the interactive vote with a pulse amplifier but succeeded only in giving himself a few jolts. "I think the Outlander fad is an insult to Outlanders," he said. "I think it's really fitting that it centers around Paula, because she's not an Outlander at all."
"Well, I tried," Paula was saying.
"Who do they think they are," Clark fumed. "Boyfriend. It figures." He picked up his jacket. "I'm going down there. Let's see what they do with it then. Where's my hat?"
"I have it," Paula answered. "If you go in there now and start talking about Sevit, they'll think you're a nut. They'll think you saw the news in a bar someplace and throw you out."
"Well, come with me, then. You can't sit there while they laugh at you. This is serious business. They can't make a big joke out of it. Colorful. Nobody's going to call me colorful!"
"Nobody's going to call you anything. The news people don't live there, you know."
"We can call them again."
"What for? If they didn't listen to me, they won't listen to you. Do you look more credible than me? Is that it--I don't look like I know what I'm talking about, and you look like you do?"
Vyera looked up from his vote-rigging device. "Clark," he said quietly. "Put that hat in the vape chute." While Clark was asking what he meant, he felt Paula lift the hat from his head. She had the kitchen vape chute open when he got there and he heard the crackle of the vaporization arc reducing his hat to dust.
"Somebody tagged you with a locator," she explained.
"What do you mean?" Stupid question, he told himself. She meant that someone wanted to know at all times where he was, that someone could contact or injure or kill him at any time. He went back to the other room. "Let me see that thing."
Vyera turned the meter arm so Clark could read it. "We modified it a little to pick up that stuff. See, it's picking up Efirr's now."
Efirr smiled. "My employer is afraid I'll be slain in an interview."
"But you can't just call ResheBargain for one of those--" Clark began.
Everybody laughed. "They are available," Efirr explained. "Even a jealous woman could tag you. Last week when my sister visited, the ship-port detection system was alarmed by so many passengers that they disabled it and searched everyone individually."
His sister? Clark was sure Efirr had told him something about a trip last week to interview people engaged in some kind of geology on a nearby moon and the rough trip in a bad vessel through interplanetary winds. He'd envied the journalist's ability to weather that kind of thing without getting spacesick.
"Have you been in any fancy hotels or government buildings?" asked Paula.
He had, meeting an offplanet expert in his worm. "There it is," she said. "They tag all the visitors so if anything happens, they know who was where."
"Just so," Efirr chimed in. "And consider, anyone who truly wanted to harm you would have attached it to your person, not to your hat."
They were trying to reason with him. He was being soothed because they knew him, kindly and with no blame attached, for an excitable Resheborian spoiled by liberty. He had never had to be careful, to watch his words or keep an eye out for government agents. He had been as secure all his life as a baby in the embrace of his priviledging citizenship. Clark sat down again, determined to accept the unimportance of his first brush with priviledge's other side, but his fear refused to abate.
He felt a little enouraged when people began to talk about Sevit again. Maybe it had to do with Sevit. The tags could be thrown from a distance; maybe somebody noticed him in this Eyimalian neighborhood and triggered some thrower mounted at Eyimalian height. "I know somebody in the Justice ministry," Vyera said.
"What's he good for?" asked Paula.
"I helped repanel his house. He might give us a few hints."
"Free, or did he pay you?"
"He paid. But we're friends. I can ask him something like--"
"Sevit's location," Efirr suggested.
"No, don't ask that. Ask what family kidnapped him," Paula said.
"He's not kidnapped, he's arrested," Clark said.
"Well, what family put them up to it," she amended.
"Why not ask him everything?" Clark asked. "If he doesn't want to tell you, he won't."
"But he might lie," Paula said.
"Oh." These discussions made Clark feel as though he were observing an alien system. Everyone knew people, everyone traded favors beginning with small things like an occasional drink or a few grains of napit, and progressing slowly as the traders gained a measure of one another's power to jobs, homes, romantic partners and information. What bothered Clark was not the cold-bloodedness of these relationships but their sincerity. When one of the tit-for-tat friendships broke down, there was real loneliness. We grasp at straws, he thought.
A few days later, Paula asked the serious man about his friend in the Ministry of Justice.
"He told me not to come back."
"Not to come back?" Clark echoed.
"That's right," Vyera said. He was picking apart the cushion on which he sat.
"Just, don't come back?" Paula persued. "Did he answer the question?"
"Yes, he told me. The Viyato family is behind it."
Efirr, who was sitting on the floor behind Paula, opened his eyes. "Possibly."
Vyera sighed. "Look. They hate the Uchide family, right? They always want to pal up to the government, right? Who else would it be? We could have figured that out by ourselves, for whatever good it does us. And I'd still have my friend."
"Wasn't there a Viyato woman at the party?" Clark put in.
Paula shook her head. "Not likely."
"You got into an argument with her," Clark insisted.
"Oh, her. She's not really a Viyato. Her cousin is married into one of their allied families."
"She's interclan, though," Vyera said.
Efirr sat up. "Your clan prejudices are stupid. Shut your mouth."
"Who are the Viyato, anyway?" Clark asked.
"They're a church family. The Eyimalian state church, Pravelany. They set up missions," Paula told him. "I think Paffir Eket is their base of operations, isn't it, Efirr?"
Efirr shrugged.
"You see, when the Uchide lost their church offices about six hundred years ago, the Viyato got them. The Uchide were supposed to control the missions in the Outland, but the Viyato took them away. The Viyato used the missions as garrisons to oppress the Outlanders. It was just after the Rediscovery. The Outlanders were resettled there from some other planet that had just been rediscovered. There was some disaster on the other planet, wars or something. They didn't have any clans or leaders or anything--they still don't. They raise goats. The land they live on is really barren. Just scrub. The Viyato really betrayed them."
Efirr and Vyera were still glaring at one another.
"Are there Viyatos here on Reshebora?" Clark asked.
"They're religious types. They have their own house here, Pravelany House. You've probably seen it. It's near where you live."
He hadn't, and that ended the conversation. Paula told him where Pravelany House was, and a few days later he wandered past on his way to the sub, half intending to introduce himself there and see whether he could attract some new recruits to Sevit's cause. He was surprised to see Efirr Nije on the front porch, but relieved that someone had already made friends there so he wouldn't have to do it. The reporter waved cheerfully at him as though pleased to see another of his contacts. Clark wondered how many people he knew.
"What kind of article is Efirr working on?" he asked Paula when they met at the Engineering foodhall. "He keeps asking me questions. Him and Arletty and their chronic toxicity."
Paula stared at the table. "Do you think there's something fishy going on?"
"Like what?"
"I don't know. Like somebody wanting to use the drug for a nefarious purpose."
"There's not much potential in it. It doesn't do anything."
"Oh. Sevit said he thought it was no accident that a non-Eyimalian got the project. You heard that it grows all over, but the Eyimalian botanists we know have never heard of it. Arletty wants you to check out eventualities that wouldn't happen if it were used properly."
"Lots of drugs are used improperly. That's what the medical industry is for. Efirr doesn't have a very good idea where it comes from, does he?"
Paula looked up. "That's right. When you asked him at the party--"
"He lied."
"Are you sure?" she asked. "No, he sounded like he didn't know what he was talking about, that's all."
"Maybe."
"Clark, what could this stuff do if someone were really nefarious?"
"Not much. There are by-products when it breaks down. I guess if you kept dosing somebody with it for twenty years it might affect the brain."
"They'd be stupid?"
"Maybe. It would take a lot. On the other hand, the liver might go first. That's what I'm researching."
"Paula yawned. "It's impossible." She looked sadly at her half-eaten sandwich.
"Well, it's not impossible," Clark said, trying to cheer her up. "Say you wanted a whole tribe of idiots. Twenty years lag time and there they are. For whatever they're worth."
"Fools," she mused. "Paffir Eket?"
"You think the Viyato are behind everything, don't you?"
"It's their subject planet," Paula pointed out.
"What's that?"
"Eyimalia is an Allied Planet. That means that after the wars and all, maybe eight hundred years ago--what's happened to social science education? You should know all this. After the wars, Reshebora found them and made an alliance against the Hostile Planets. With Eyimalia. So Eyimalia and Reshebora keep in touch. But it doesn't mean that all the planets out that way are Allied, or even that they've been discovered."
"Uncharted worlds. But nobody owns them," Clark said.
"Nobody owns Paffir Eket, but some families have exclusive trade rights with it. Eyimalia gets a lot of grain from Paffir Eket. They rook the natives out of it. They're probably using your drug on them."
"What for?"
Paula shrugged. "To make them pliable, I guess."
Clark laughed. "That's a lot of conspiring for nothing."
"But if they kidnapped Sevit..." She put her chin in her hands. "Oh, Clark, it's all random activity."
"All right, maybe it's worth finding out," Clark said. "If they've been giving this stuff to everybody on the planet for hundreds of years, the native human bacteria should be resistant. So get me a tissue sample from Paffir Eket and I'll check."
"How am I going to do that?"
"I don't know."
He underestimated her cleverness and determination. Paula came to the lab a few days later with a bag full of odd, dirty socks she claimed to have stolen from an Eyimalian freighter's laundry. "Test that, and we can rule out on-planet use."
"What?"
"See if they're using your drug on Eyimalia."
"Paula, this won't tell us--never mind." The point was to keep her diverted. He took two dozen cultures in tubules he had been meaning to use for something else, and wasted twenty-five drops of extract proving that none of the crew's bacteria were any more resistant than a culture from her sock. Then he dropped the tubules down a vaporization chute so he wouldn't have to explain them to Arletty.
"All right, all right," she said. "I'm still trying to get you something from Paffir Eket that hasn't been washed or sterilized on the way."
Efirr Nije, who had been listening, said, "That is no problem. I can get you some native soil from a friend in Agriculture, or if you like, a handcrafted goat's-hair rug."
"You have a Paffir rug? Aren't they expensive?" Paula asked.
"I shall bring it. I bought it only a few days ago, after selling an article. I will bring you a clipping."
No clipping ever materialized, but the rug did, and it was easy to believe soap had never touched the yellowed work of art. The knotted thread and hair that made its intricate design were still grey from the artist's hands, and the rug stank.
"This thing is expensive?" Clark asked.
"They are quite fashionable. One must wash them, of course. I had not yet gotten around to it," Efirr explained.
Clark found several bits of human skin and hair in the rug and took cultures from them. None could resist Ecclesiam extract.
"No good," he told Paula. "Nothing on that rug had ever seen it before so, if you want to believe our methodology, they aren't using the stuff on Paffir Eket."
[~*~]
Later in the afternoon Marlow Maxwell called Paula to tell her angrily that she knew nothing of politics and he hinted, she thought, that bribery might sway whom protest only stiffened. Clark donated all his savings rather than decide how much to keep.
Efirr gave him a strange look. "This man is not your relative or even a co-worlder. Why do you give so much?" he asked.
"Ready aid," Clark replied with a shrug.
"What?"
"The doctrine of ready aid. If someone needs help, you give whatever you can. Then people should do the same for you." Eyimalian ethics are so primitive, he thought. But then, his own planet was often no better. People behave as they must, Sevit had told him. He added, "It's part of the religion at home. My father's first wife was killed defending a perfect stranger."
"From what?"
"An assailant. I don't know...I think it was the guy's brother."
"So you have seized the opportunity to do good." Efirr turned away and Clark saw tears on his cheeks.
When Paula cried he had frozen; this time he made himself act. He put his arm around the journalist's waist. Efirr dropped to his knees to return the embrace, and the two clung to one another until their agitation subsided.
By now it did not surprise Clark that he should find himself weeping in the arms of a man he did not particularly like. All of them were tense. He had touched neither napit nor alcohol since the first night of Sevit's imprisonment, but he had slept very little. Whenever someone shouted in the street, he would wake up, thinking he heard his freind's cries of anguish, run to the window and tear aside the curtain. Then he would remember that Sevit was far away and stagger back, head throbbing with the light. At other times he dreamed they had come for him and woke up covered with sweat. He took to going past the Eyimalian embassy on his way to work, though as yet he had no plan involving it.
With Paula he wandered, increasingly confused, among Reshecomp's files on Ecclesiam purpureum. Most of the botanical reports were Privileged Access, to botanists only. Someone in the house who had a Botany registration number eventually learned that all the entries were at least 250 years old. They found references to some modern ones under Public Health. Access to these was limited even more severely.
"Why didn't Reshecomp at least list them in the bibliography I got at the beginning of the project?" Clark wondered.
Paula said, "Ask her."
In response Clark got a long list of security request and code numbers.
"I want to seek authorization--" he began.
"I'm sorry, Clark. Authorization denied."
"By whom?"
A yellow dot appeared in the lower left corner of the screen to notify him that someone was recording the exchange. Clark's first impulse was to yank off his headset. Paula calmly reached past him and spun the location dial so the conversation could not be traced to Clark's entry address, remarking, "She did that to scare us."
Clark wrote down the security numbers Reshecomp had given him.
[~*~]
Favors were exchanged and a grimy statistician appeared, smiling artlessly, to say a friend of his in Administrative Statistics knew all the security request codes. "He's a card counter," the statistician explained. "Amazing guy, really amazing. Supports two families playing cards."
Clark went according to the statistician's directions to a small office in the nether reaches of the Reshecomp Administration Department where the counter worked. The windowless cube had no decorations or furniture except a floating chair that faced a wall of lights, meters, eye-arms and dials, all unlabeled. Clark had the curious impression that he was looking at the wall from behind, and the labels were on the other side.
A plump sandyhaired man with an orange beard came in behind him. "Looking for me?"
"I need--" Clark faltered, holding out the sheet of paper on which he had written the security numbers.
The counter barely glanced at it. "Ninety casheeks," he said, sitting down before the wall. He activated an a-grav and drifted up near the ceiling to check something there, then returned.
Clark had raised a hundred casheeks for this purpose. "All right," he said.
"Viyato. All of them."
"That's it?"
"That's what you wanted to know, isn't it--who requested the access restriction? It was the Viyato family. Except for that one." The counter pushed himself back from the wall with one foot, drifted over to Clark and tapped one of the numbers on the list. "That's a dummy you made up to see if I'm on the level. Actually, it does belong to a guy named Arletty, but he's never used it. Did you hit it by accident or do you know him?" He gave Clark a little pat and drifted back to his place. "It's OK. I understand."
"How--?"
"Luck, really. I have a sense for numbers. One time a guy was here squashing a bug in the system that assigns the numbers and I got a glance at the list. I have to update now and then, but how I do that is a professional secret."
Clark shrugged and counted out the fee. "How about accessing the files?" he asked.
The counter looked him over. "I could have it done. Three-fifty each."
"I can't pay that."
"Well...do you know anything?"
Clark spread his hands. "I'm just a researcher."
"Of what?"
"Physiology. Drugs."
"Wait here." The sandyhaired man bustled out of the room and returned with a capsule inside a flask of water. "Know what this is?"
Clark read the label. "Anadicine. They give it to newborns if there's a chance of alcohol addiction." The counter said nothing, so he added, "If there's any inherited suceptibility to it. This is one of the Delta-Biro group wonder drugs."
"Can you make it work on older children?"
"What?"
"It only works in newborns. Can you do something to it to make it work in a kid three years old?"
"Iso-anadicine. Well, it's a five-step process, and the yields are low, but I could do it. Sure. Why?"
The other put his face close to Clark's. "I need some," he said.
"For a three-year-old?"
"Yeah."
"But--you can get it from a medic."
"Look, just name your price."
Clark could see the man's pulse in the veins of his neck. "All right. Get me all the files on that list and I'll make as much as I can from this."
The chemistry proved difficult. Clark husbanded every crystal of the drug, but still the yield from each reaction was low because he must rinse everything a dozen times for fear of killing his unknown patient with impurities. He smuggled the necessary equipment in and out of the lab during the night and worked on the conversion instead of sleeping.
Paula brought him stimulants. "You're doing a good thing even if he doesn't come through," she said in answer to his complaints. "Poor guy must have a kid someplace that needs it."
"But they'll give it to him if he asks," Clark insisted.
She shook her head. "Not always. They might take the kid away if the parents lied about addictions in the family."
"Why would they lie?"
"Who knows? They got caught in a tough spot." She picked up one of the pills she had brought him, tossed it from hand to hand and missed. It hit the floor with a crack. She jumped.
"Have you been taking those, too?"
"I don't need them. Haven't felt sleepy for weeks."
The sandyhaired counter was trembling with excitement when Clark next saw him. He pulled a handful of crumpled papers from his pocket. "I couldn't get any feedout, so I copied them by hand," he explained.
Clark stared at the papers. There was more handwriting there than he had seen in his life. The man's fingers were swollen.
"Well, here's the anadicine derivative you wanted. That should be enough. How much does the kid weigh?"
The counter stood holding the bottle. "Yep. Here's the stuff," he said. "Anything you need, let me know. Any time." He ran from the room.
Clark heard a yell of triumph in the hall. I still don't know what I've done, he thought.
The people on the street outside looked small and round in comparison to the Eyimalians with whom Clark had been associating. They reminded him of little careening planets, each on its own fixed path about an invisible sun.
The sense of mystery heightened when Clark began to examine the papers. Their detail and consistency with his own knowledge convinced him they were genuine. Some discussed the feasibility of using E. purpureum to prevent epidemics, but concluded that the risk of incurring generalized resistance was too great. Others described case studies at doses so low the drug was not absorbed or broken down. Skipping those, he came to a report on its use to prevent infection in people suffering stab wounds from agricultural accidents. Here the doses seemed reasonable, but treatment had to be abandoned because a considerable majority of the bacteria present were unaffected by the drug. The author recommended restraint in Ecclesiam purpuream use.
That paper had evidently sparked some activity. Several others attempted to fix a dosage that minimized resistance while it maximized kill. These attempts seemed to be hampered by uncertainty about what dosage the patients were getting. That could mean nothing else but that people were being given it far too casually, perhaps without their knowledge. A footnote referred to studies now in progress under laboratory conditions where dosages could be measured, and gave the Reshecomp address of Clark's own lab. Later in the same paper, he found a comment about the allergic reaction of a certain species of worm to the drug, and a footnote, "Clarkwell Brockhurst, personal communication."
"Personal communication," he repeated. He had complained about that problem to dozens of people, colleagues, friends and acquaintances, in the weeks after he discovered it. He might have shot off his mouth to a spy. It could also be that someone heard it from Arletty and ascribed the director's words to him. In fact, since no one was likely ever to check the validity of these secret notes to a secret report, the writer had probably used Clark's name just because it was his project. Nothing to worry about. Time to get some sleep. The stimulants were wearing off and he wanted to be in bed when the dreaming began.
As soon as he closed his eyes, however, Clark saw again the sandyhaired counter, and then Sevit, each in a mysterious trap. He opened his eyes. Were they not lying to themselves when they said Sevit was arrested? Whether by the Viyato or by the police, he was kidnapped, beyond the help of law.
Waking after the drugs left his body was usually difficult, but this time Clark sprang up a few hours before dawn, still impelled with the energy of his nightmares. Sevit must be rescued. The family that had him were engaged in something to do with involuntary medicine, a practice despised on even the Hostile Planets. They would certainly not hesitate to advance themselves by murdering a political philosopher, nor, for that matter, a researcher who got in the way. He hurried to the lab as though someone were chasing him.
Dr. Arletty awaited him there, dressed in a brightly colored shirt and beaming at the prairie rodents. Dr. Arletty could no more conceal a mood than an elephant. When he was angry, the blood rushed to his pudgy brow and he drummed his fingers and paced. When he was content he sat radiating serenity.
"Those damn politicians have gone sour on this Ecclesiam thing," he said. "Let it go, we've got something now that's much more fun. Has Reshecomp told you about the Ulovka model?"
"New what model? When did it come through? I got an update last week," Clark said. Sour on Ecclesiam? Keep calm, he thought.
"Well, get another update and let's talk."
Ulovka, Clark learned, was a small animal whose life systems had been reduced to a few thousand functions and represented by equations in Reshecomp. It possessed the epsilon immune system that he and Arletty were working to understand.
That afternoon, Clark participated in a fifteen-way Reshecomp conference on Ulovka and was astounded by the things that had been happening in representative mathematics while he puttered with his worms. When he spoke to Arletty again, they were both excited. Each bubbling with ideas for new experiments, they spent hours jostling each other at the Resheterminal, listing all the things Ulovka had made possible.
Before he left that evening, Clark decided to take the protein-code records of all Reshecomp's public data on Ecclesiam purpuream and give it to Efirr. It would be simple to do, and the journalist must have access to a reader to decode the sequence of amino acids that made up the protein chain. Perhaps the data would help him expose whatever was being done with the drug.
"Give me a dump on Ecclesiam purpuream," he ordered.
"State your ID," Reshecomp challenged.
"Brockhurst. Arletty. l85-489-6802."
"Sorry. This file has been reclassified Key Access Only under the Allied Planets' Security and Information Pact--"
Clark cursed. Remembering that some records were still in a vial in his desk, he dug them out and put them in his jacket. They were secret now. Perhaps what he was doing was a crime; so be it. In part his democratic soul rebelled, and in part his pride was miffed that someone thought the risk of informing him might outweigh his value.
Another student was in Arletty's office, but he scarcely noticed her. "What's going on?" he demanded. "How come everything on Ecclesiam's been reclassified?"
The other student went out, her face as smooth as though she had never in her life overheard anything.
"I told you, the politicians have gone sour on it," Arletty replied.
Clark sat down. "Listen, I resign."
Arletty looked so sad that Clark thought he might cry, and was irritated. The man had no perspective.
"The stuff is being abused. They want to know about toxicity from chronic use because it's being given to people without their knowledge." Clark's voice was still quiet, but beginning to squeak. "On the other hand, if I quit, they'll get someone else as naive as I was."
"Don't underestimate yourself, Clark," Arletty said quietly.
"And if I go I'm giving up any influence I might have. But I have to go. I can't stay here and pretend it's OK."
Arletty folded his hands. He contemplated them. At length he said, "I think you're way off course about Ecclesiam, but obviously I can't be sure. In any case, does it concern you? You suspect that some improper use has been found for this agent, but you aren't involved in any schemes."
Clark stood up and sat down again.
"And you know nothing about Eyimalia," Arletty went on. "You seem to think you're dealing with a bunch of half-crazy dictators. It happens that they spend way the hell more on basic research than any other Allied Planet. They're not ignorant."
Clark hung his head. Maybe he's just saying whatever comes to mind, he told himself. Answer the good arguments and ignore the bad ones. Maybe he's talking nonsense because he's afraid. "They put me in a situation where I can't do the right thing, no matter what I do. I'm afraid to go and I'm afraid to stay."
There was a brief pause before the professor said, "Nothing will happen to you if you stay."
Clark was so startled that he nearly leapt from his chair, but gambling experience helped him keep his face expressionless. He drew his hands slowly off the desk and let them fall to his sides while he stared at the space between Arletty's eyebrows, avoiding while seeming to meet his gaze. "If you mean something by that, say it," he directed, regretting as he spoke the bravado in his voice.
"I mean stop worrying. No mustached men are going to come after you with Puros." Arletty stood up and put a hand on Clark's shoulder. "You need to spend a couple of days fishing on the Cape."
After he left the building, Clark walked quickly and at random, until he realized that he was going in a circle. He took the underground to Eyimalia House.
"You know," he told Paula, sitting at her kitchen table, "I can't get rid of an idea that--well, that... promise you won't laugh."
"Of course not."
"I keep thinking they're going to kill me."
"Oh, I doubt that," she said. "You're a Resheborian citizen."
He sighed. "You're right. Well, they found out I was reading the secret files. I would have thought they'd be mad at me, but instead they gave me access to a new model called Ulovka that opens up new terrains for us...you know, I think they might have been glad I found out. Maybe the Science Ministry doesn't like being used like that."
Paula held her teacup at eye level between them as though hiding. "Maybe."
"What?"
"Nothing. You're right. Maybe it doesn't."
"Come on. What?"
"It's just that if they wanted to shut you up and keep you from finding out any more--"
"They'd throw me out."
"But that wouldn't shut you up. It would make you angry. And they'd lose the money they've already invested in you."
Clark saw. "They gave me a juicy problem instead. Then it's not because they like my work."
"It's...a more backhanded compliment than you might think. Or you could be right. They might just want to keep you from getting carried away."
Clark stared at the floor between his feet. He traced a line between the dark tiles with his toe and then kicked lightly against the table leg. He had not thought it through. He had been all too ready to believe everyone wanted to reward him for his perception. He glanced across the table at Paula, who was looking sympathetically at him, waiting while he made the discovery that he was being flattered because he happened to be in a place where others needed his compliance, and that behind the flattery lay threats. It was a discovery she had made a long ago, he thought, and that had overshadowed much of her life.
"This is a perfect no-win situation, isn't it?" He looked over her head at the window. Outside there was darkness and then another window to the neighbors' kitchen. He could see the tops of heads in the next kitchen where people were talking and laughing in blithe assurance that they knew something, anything at all.
"That's why I didn't go into medicine," he remarked. "Not enough chemistry and too many impossible situations. You have to lie and give your patients placebos, give them rotten choices. Sometimes you have to deliberately get them sick. To hell with that. I wanted to be able to tell what was going on. I wanted to do the right thing and always know which it was."
"There's no right thing to do," Paula said. She went into the living room. Clark could see her lie down on the carpet to sleep and thought of trying to encourage her, but felt too miserable to stay. There must be some direct action that would pry Sevit from their grip.
He walked at random again. The sky was growing light when he went into the underground. He changed lines and went to the embassy. Now there, he thought, a simple target. One attack, carefully planned, with a poison absorbed through the skin. Walking along the opposite side of the street in the cool grey twilight while pigeons wandered among the litter underfoot and the streetlamps faded out, Clark horrified himself by contemplating murder.
He studied the building. It was a dome with black panels and dark brown window bands running up one side and down the other. Stable. The green and white Eyimalian flag snapping in the dawn breeze was its only ornament. A stout man in a grey uniform unlocked the front and then the back doors. The sound of his footsteps and the chink of keys, even the jingle of his bracelets, carried across the street.
At the back door, the guard met Efirr Nije, who was coming out. Another man stood behind him in shadow, one heavy forearm extended to wave the guard on. Efirr and the stranger argued. Clark could hear the harsh gutterals and hissing whispers but could make out no words. Finally Efirr turned his back on the other and stomped off.
Clark followed him. He had to run to keep pace, but the Eyimalian was too preoccupied to hear him. They stomped and ran down a side street to an overland stop. Clark got on behind two bony charwomen whose ID tags gave him a moment's pause; both had been named for famous actresses. He sat low in his seat, hair straggling across his face, so engaged in hiding that he almost let Efirr get off alone.
At the last moment, Clark stumbled out of the car into a neighborhood full of warehouses. Efirr was a long way ahead, walking quickly. Clark persued as fast and quiet as he could. Efirr went into a warehouse office. Clark sat on the curb to wait for him.
No one lives here, he thought. The area was sunk in profound silence, the windowless buildings utterly still. Even the plants had a survivor's fierceness. A few tough weeds erupted through a crack in the pavement before him. More weeds shot up close to the warehouse walls and more in the patch of rock-hard dirt in front of the office. Vines clutched the fence around the building. Patches of stiff yellow grass separated the warehouse from its neighbors.
Clark tried to imagine what Efirr might be doing here. It seemed to him that no one who claimed to be anti-Dagrov, even a journalist, ought to have friends so high up that they could come and go at the embassy when it was closed. Of course, the mysterious friend might be secretly trying to help Sevit. But then he would not dare meet Efirr at the building.
The office door slammed. Efirr stood outside, hands on hips, laughing harshly.
"I'm done for!" he declared. "Done for, altogether and beyond doubt. Our friend is dead. I have killed him."
You're lying, Clark thought, but disbelief vanished like the last gleam of daylight before the fact of Sevit, dead. There was no reason to suppose he was lying.
Efirr began to walk. Clark again followed, keeping a few paces behind, not hurrying. The Eyimalian walked very slowly. They passed the overland stop without pausing.
The neighborhood was still deserted. Their footsteps echoed among the buildings. Once an old woman in a grey uniform emerged from a narrow alley to stare at them and then turn away in silence, as though a life of solitary watchfulness had left her incapable of speech.
They walked for an hour and came to an underground station. Now the day shift had begun to arrive and the skeleton night crews were going home. They caught one of the inbound lines and rode among tired workers who knew one another and stared at the outsiders. Clark noted, with a detatchment that surprised him, that they stared at no one else, so there were probably no Eyimalian secret police nearby.
Efirr did not bother trying to fit into a seat, but stood above one of the a-grav patches in the floor and kept himself in place by pressing his head against the ceiling. He stared about him, now and then dropping his gaze to look at Clark.
"I'm a double agent," he said in Eyimalian.
"For whom?" Clark asked.
Efirr took a roll of napit from his pocket and bit off a large piece. "The Eyimalian secret police." He chewed slowly. When they rounded a turn he moved his head to keep his place in the car.
"How long--?"
"Before I came to Reshebora, I was recruited by two men. One was hostile, the other friendly," he explained, looking at Clark from the corner of his eye. He grinned. "Indeed, I was a fool."
Clark shook his head. Efirr thinking he could outwit the whole of the government security system. Had he not thought the same?
"At first I was protecting everyone, then I was protecting Sevit, and finally I was protecting no one at all. They assigned another agent to him. I was introducing him at the party when you interrupted me," Efirr said. The car stopped with a jolt that swung his body sharply. He let his head roll against the cieling until the back of his neck was uppermost and he looked as though he had been hung.
Efirr moved away from the patch and came down. The workers got out. Clark and Efirr changed to a line that brought the clericals, whose day began later, downtown. The napit was beginning to work on Efirr. He manuvered himself into position over an a-grav with more difficulty.
"He stood at my elbow," he said.
"All evening?"
"All evening." Efirr was in a corner this time, head resting in the intersection of the walls and cieling. One eyebrow rose a trifle. "You are thinking of the moments I spent with you in Paula's room. He was in the hall. Paula..." His attention wandered. He looked over the heads of the clericals chatting, trading anecdotes of complaints they handled on the job."...imagines that she loves him, but you and I are the only ones who truly did."
A woman was staring at them. Clark's hands gripped his knees, tense with the effort of keeping still. He felt that at any moment their strength might fail and he would leap up, seize Efirr--he made himself relax. She still stared. He stared back. She looked down. He heard Efirr chuckle.
"The party," Clark said as evenly as he could. "Why was Sevit arrested?"
"He was Sevit Uchide."
"But what exactly--"
"You were in the next room. You heard him speak of the necessity of organizing now, while they are weak, did you not?"
"Yes."
"They do not permit that." Efirr shut his eyes. "I was with him. In the candlelight our shadows were dancing across the walls. I knocked over candles, hoping to create confusion about who said what, but to no avail. And then Sevit jumped up. You must have heard him, to free our people... He was in the light that came from Paula's room, his face in shadow. I imagine him gazing fiercely, with sincerity, as before all this began." Efirr glanced down at Clark. "Awful, yes. The door slammed and the shadows took him. That's all."
"And after that," Clark prompted.
"After that, nothing," Efirr said. He folded his arms, then let them fall. "No one dies from despair." The train slowed. They were at the end of the cape, on the Bay side.
"Why did you kill him?"
Efirr drifted away from the a-grav. "They would have tortured him to death," he said as he descended.
They came up into daylight. The sun shone ferociously. Efirr still led the way, though with uneven steps, and Clark followed, pushing people aside when they blocked him. The clumsy chase ended at a Bayside cafe, a big open room with a high arched ceiling and tables scattered about. It was nearly empty. Outside on the patio, the patrons kept up a strident din with their dishes and conversations. Beyond lay glittering water, too bright to behold.
Efirr stopped in the middle of the room. He took a cannister from inside his shirt and gave it to Clark, saying, "I have written a manifesto about Eyimalia." He leaned down to embrace Clark, whispering, "Little brother, your friendship with Paula has sustained me. I thank you both. You must hate me now, but I hope that when you have done grieving for Sevit you will grieve a bit for me."
He eased Clark into a chair. Clark sat. Efirr went slowly away toward the washroom, stopping once to contemplate a chair before he stepped over it and went on.
Clark rested his head on the table. Shock protected him for the moment and he thought little, but some corner of his mind remained active and there he measured the pain to come by his inability to feel now. He made the working corner concentrate on what he should do next. Someone would doubtless come after Efirr. They would have to hide him...no one at Eyimalia House would do it if they knew he had killed Sevit, but not to tell them meant letting them continue to suffer in the belief that he suffered, and to waste their energy in schemes for his rescue. Lying to Paula was unthinkable. Clark groaned. Efirr, the leaf in the storm. He knew he was alone now; he must know it.
Did Efirr know what he would do? He seemed to be acting on impulse. Certainly his confession was unplanned, unless--the gleam of doubt appeared again and vanished--surely it was unplanned as his collaboration with the police had been. Efirr had learned nothing. Most likely he would seek the quickest route of escape. The quickest route. Clark got to his feet, but already someone who had just entered the washroom was running out, face ashen.
Clark leaned against the table. Too late, once again blind to what now became so clear. He staggered toward the washroom, but the witness detained him. Clark stared without speaking at that gaping mouth, those fearful eyes. This is the link that can never be broken, he thought. This is where reason meets its bound. Others were going in and out now. The police arrived. A fat officer drew Clark away from the scene. He opened his mouth to argue, but all that emerged was an inarticulate sob.
"Wait till they bring him out here," the policeman urged. Clark waited, but when the door opened and he heard people straining to lift Efirr's body, he fled.
Chapter 4
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