Latest / Outer Space Adventures in Sci-Fi / 18 - To Pay The Piper

Transcript

18 - To Pay The Piper · Outer Space Adventures in Sci-Fi

0:00
Speaker 1: To Pay the Piper by James Blish. This is a
0:05
Speaker 1: LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
0:11
Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
0:18
Speaker 1: To Pay the Piper by James Blish. Clearly, re educating
0:25
Speaker 1: man's brain wouldn't fit him for survival on the plague
0:28
Speaker 1: ridden surface. Re Educating his body was the answer, but
0:33
Speaker 1: the process was so very long. The man in the
0:39
Speaker 1: white jacket stopped at the door marked re Education Project
0:43
Speaker 1: Colonel H. H. Mudget, Commanding Officer, and waited while a
0:48
Speaker 1: scanner looked him over. He had been through that door
0:51
Speaker 1: a thousand times, but the scanner made as elaborate a
0:54
Speaker 1: job of it as if it had never seen him before.
0:59
Speaker 1: It always did, for there was always, in fact, a
1:02
Speaker 1: chance that it had never seen him before. Whatever the
1:05
Speaker 1: fallible human beings to whom it reported might think, it
1:09
Speaker 1: went over him from gray crew cut pole to reagent
1:13
Speaker 1: proof shoes, checking his small, wiry body and lean profile
1:18
Speaker 1: against its stored silhouettes, tasting and smelling him as dubiously
1:23
Speaker 1: as if he were in an orange held in storage
1:25
Speaker 1: two days too long. Name, it said at last, Carson
1:30
Speaker 1: Samuel three to two dash four or five four dash
1:34
Speaker 1: six nine eight business medical director reed one. While Carson waited,
1:43
Speaker 1: a distant, heavy concussion came rolling down upon him through
1:47
Speaker 1: the mile of solid granite above his head. At the
1:51
Speaker 1: same moment, the letters on the door and everything else
1:54
Speaker 1: inside his cone of vision blurred distressingly, and a stab
1:59
Speaker 1: of pure pain went lancing through his head. Who was
2:03
Speaker 1: the supersonic component of the explosion, and it was harmless,
2:08
Speaker 1: except that it had always both hurt and scared him.
2:13
Speaker 1: The light on the door scanner, which had been glowing
2:15
Speaker 1: yellow up till now, flicked back to red again, and
2:19
Speaker 1: the machine began the whole routine all over. The sound
2:23
Speaker 1: bomb had reset it. Carson patiently endured its inspection, gave
2:28
Speaker 1: his name, serial number, and mission once more, and this
2:32
Speaker 1: time got the green. He went in, unfolding as he
2:36
Speaker 1: walked the flimsy square of cheap paper he had been
2:39
Speaker 1: carrying all along. Mudget looked up from his desk and
2:43
Speaker 1: said at once, what now. The physician tossed the square
2:48
Speaker 1: of paper down under Mudget's eyes. Summary of the press
2:53
Speaker 1: reaction to Hamlin's speech last night, He said, the total
2:57
Speaker 1: effect is going against us. Colonel. Unless we can change
3:00
Speaker 1: Hamelin's mind, this outcry to re educate civilians ahead of
3:04
Speaker 1: soldiers is going to lose the war for us. The
3:08
Speaker 1: urge to live on the surface again has been mounting
3:10
Speaker 1: for ten years. Now it's got a target to focus
3:14
Speaker 1: on us. Mudget chewed on a pencil while he read
3:20
Speaker 1: the summary. A blocky, bulky man as short as Carson,
3:25
Speaker 1: with hair as gray and close cropped. A year ago,
3:28
Speaker 1: Carson would have told him that nobody in Riad could
3:31
Speaker 1: afford to put stray objects into his mouth even once,
3:34
Speaker 1: let alone as a habit. Now, Carson just waited. There
3:39
Speaker 1: wasn't a man, or a woman or a child of
3:42
Speaker 1: America surviving thirty five million sane people who didn't have
3:47
Speaker 1: some such tick. Not now, not after twenty five years
3:52
Speaker 1: of underground life. He knows it's impossible, doesn't he, Mudget
3:57
Speaker 1: demanded abruptly. Of course he doesn't, Carson said impatiently. He
4:03
Speaker 1: doesn't know any more about the real nature of the
4:05
Speaker 1: project than the people do. He thinks the educating we
4:09
Speaker 1: do is in some sort of survival technique. That's what
4:12
Speaker 1: the papers think too, as you can plainly see by
4:15
Speaker 1: the way they loaded that editorial if we had taken
4:20
Speaker 1: direct control of the papers in the first place, Carson
4:24
Speaker 1: said nothing. Military control of every facet of civilian life
4:28
Speaker 1: was a fact, and Mudget knew it. He also knew
4:32
Speaker 1: that an appearance of freedom to think is a necessity
4:35
Speaker 1: for the human mind, and that the appearance could not
4:38
Speaker 1: be maintained without a few shreds of the actuality. Suppose
4:42
Speaker 1: we do this, Mudget said at last. Hamilin's position in
4:46
Speaker 1: the State Department makes it impossible for us to muzzle them,
4:50
Speaker 1: but it ought to be possible to explain to him
4:52
Speaker 1: that no unprotected human being can live on the surface,
4:56
Speaker 1: no matter how many merit badges he has for woodcraft
4:59
Speaker 1: and first aid. Maybe we could even take him on
5:02
Speaker 1: a little trip top side. I'll wager he's never seen it.
5:07
Speaker 1: And what if he dies up there? Carson said stonily.
5:11
Speaker 1: We lose three fifths of every top Side party as
5:14
Speaker 1: it is, and Hamelin's an inexperienced might be the best thing,
5:19
Speaker 1: mightn't it, No, Carson said, it would look like we
5:24
Speaker 1: planned it that way. The papers would have the populace
5:28
Speaker 1: boiling by the next morning. Budget groaned and nibbled another
5:33
Speaker 1: double row of indentations around the barrel of the pencil.
5:37
Speaker 1: There must be something, he said, there is. Well, bring
5:43
Speaker 1: the man here and show him just what we are doing,
5:47
Speaker 1: re educate him if necessary. Once we told the newspapers
5:51
Speaker 1: that he's taken the course, well, who knows, they might
5:55
Speaker 1: just resent it, abusing his clearance privileges and so on.
6:00
Speaker 1: We'd be violating our basic policy. Mudget said, slowly, give
6:05
Speaker 1: the earth back to the men who fight for it.
6:09
Speaker 1: Still the idea has some merits. Hamelin is out in
6:13
Speaker 1: the ante chamber right now, Carson said, shall I bring
6:17
Speaker 1: him in. The radioactivity never did rise much up beyond
6:23
Speaker 1: a mildly hazardous level, and that was only transient. During
6:27
Speaker 1: the second week of the war, the week called the
6:31
Speaker 1: Death of Cities. The small shards of sanity retained by
6:35
Speaker 1: the high commands on both sides dictated avoiding weapons with
6:39
Speaker 1: a built in backfire. No cobalt bombs were dropped, no
6:44
Speaker 1: territories permanently poisoned. Generals still remembered that unoccupied territory, no
6:51
Speaker 1: matter how devastated, is still unconquered territory. But no such
6:57
Speaker 1: consideration stood in the way of biological warfare. It was controllable.
7:03
Speaker 1: You never released against the enemy any disease you didn't
7:06
Speaker 1: yourself know how to control. There would be some slips,
7:10
Speaker 1: of course, but the margin for error. There were some slips,
7:16
Speaker 1: but for the most part biological warfare worked fine. The
7:20
Speaker 1: great fevers washed like tides around and around the globe,
7:25
Speaker 1: one after another. In such cities as had escaped the bombings,
7:31
Speaker 1: the rumble of truck convoys carrying the puffed, heaped corpses
7:34
Speaker 1: to the mass graves became the only sound except for
7:37
Speaker 1: sporadic small arms fire, and then that too ceased, and
7:41
Speaker 1: the truck stood rusting in rows. Nor were human beings
7:46
Speaker 1: the sole victims. Cattle fevers were sent out, wheat rusts,
7:52
Speaker 1: rice molds, corn blights, hog coleras, poultry enterritises fountained into
7:59
Speaker 1: the indifferent air from the hidden laboratories, or were loosed
8:03
Speaker 1: far aloft in the jet stream by rocketing fleets. Gelatin
8:08
Speaker 1: capsules polliolating with gil rods fell like hail into the
8:12
Speaker 1: great fishing grounds of Newfoundland, Oregon, Japan, Sweden, Portugal. Hundreds
8:18
Speaker 1: of species of animals were drafted as secondary hosts for
8:22
Speaker 1: human diseases, were injected and released to carry the blessings
8:26
Speaker 1: of the laboratories to their mates and litters. It was
8:30
Speaker 1: discovered that minute amounts of the tetracycline series of antibiotics,
8:34
Speaker 1: which had long been used as feed supplements to bring
8:37
Speaker 1: farm animals to full market weight early, could also be
8:41
Speaker 1: used to raise the most whopping anophilies and the aetes
8:46
Speaker 1: mosquitoes anybody ever saw capable of flying long distances against
8:51
Speaker 1: the wind, and of carrying a peculiarly interesting new strain
8:56
Speaker 1: of the malarial parasite and the yellow fever virus. By
9:02
Speaker 1: the time it had ended, everyone who remained alive was
9:05
Speaker 1: a mile underground for good. I still fail to understand why,
9:13
Speaker 1: Hamelin said, if, as you claim, you have methods of
9:17
Speaker 1: re educating soldiers for surface life, you can't do so
9:21
Speaker 1: for civilians as well, or instead the under Secretary, a
9:26
Speaker 1: tall spare man balled on top and with a heavily
9:30
Speaker 1: creased forehead, spoke with the odd neutral accent untinged by
9:36
Speaker 1: regionalism of the trained diplomat, despite the fact that there
9:40
Speaker 1: had been no such thing as a foreign service for
9:43
Speaker 1: nearly half a century. We're going to try to explain
9:47
Speaker 1: that to you, Carson said. But we thought that. First
9:51
Speaker 1: of all, we tried to explain once more why we
9:54
Speaker 1: think it would be bad policy, as well as physically
9:58
Speaker 1: out of the question. Sure, everyone wants to go top
10:02
Speaker 1: side as soon as it's possible, Even people who are
10:05
Speaker 1: reconciled to these endless caverns and corridors, hope for something
10:09
Speaker 1: better for their children. A glimpse of sunlight, a little rain,
10:13
Speaker 1: the fall of a leaf. That's more important now to
10:17
Speaker 1: all of us than the war, which we don't believe
10:19
Speaker 1: in any longer. That doesn't even make any military sense,
10:24
Speaker 1: since we haven't numerical strength to occupy the enemy's territory anymore,
10:29
Speaker 1: and they haven't the strength to occupy ours. We understand
10:33
Speaker 1: all that, but we also know that the enemy is
10:36
Speaker 1: intent on prosecuting the war to the end. Extermination is
10:41
Speaker 1: what they say they want on their propaganda broadcasts, and
10:44
Speaker 1: your own department reports that they seem to mean what
10:47
Speaker 1: they say. So we can't give up fighting them. That
10:51
Speaker 1: would be simple suicide. Are you still with me? Yes?
10:55
Speaker 1: But I don't see give me a moment more if
10:58
Speaker 1: we have to continue to fight. We know this much
11:02
Speaker 1: that the first of the two sides to get men
11:04
Speaker 1: on the surface again so as to be able to
11:08
Speaker 1: attack important targets, not just keep them isolated in seas
11:12
Speaker 1: of plagues. Will be the side that will bring this
11:15
Speaker 1: war to an end. They know that too. We have
11:20
Speaker 1: good reason to believe that they have a re education project,
11:23
Speaker 1: and that it's about as far advanced as ours is.
11:27
Speaker 1: Look at it this way, Colonel Mudget burst in unexpectedly.
11:32
Speaker 1: What we have now is a stalemate. A saboteur occasionally
11:36
Speaker 1: locates one of the underground cities and lets the pestilences
11:39
Speaker 1: into it, sometimes on our side, sometimes on theirs, But
11:43
Speaker 1: that only happens sporadically, and it's just more of this
11:47
Speaker 1: mutual extermination business to which we're committed willy nilly for
11:51
Speaker 1: as long as they are. If we can get troops
11:54
Speaker 1: onto the surface first, we'll be able to scout out
11:57
Speaker 1: their important installations in short order and issue them a
12:01
Speaker 1: surrender ultimatum with teeth in it. They'll take it. The
12:05
Speaker 1: only other course is a sort of slow mutual suicide.
12:08
Speaker 1: We've got now, Hamelin put the tips of his fingers together.
12:14
Speaker 1: You gentlemen, lecture me about policy as if I had
12:18
Speaker 1: never heard the word before. I'm familiar with your arguments
12:22
Speaker 1: for sending soldiers first. You assume that you're familiar with
12:25
Speaker 1: all of mine for starting with civilians, But you're wrong
12:29
Speaker 1: because some of them haven't been brought up at all
12:31
Speaker 1: outside the department. I'm going to tell you some of them,
12:36
Speaker 1: and I think they'll merit your close attention. Carson shrugged.
12:41
Speaker 1: I'd like nothing more to be convinced, mister secretary. Go ahead, You,
12:46
Speaker 1: of all people, should know, doctor Carson, how close our
12:49
Speaker 1: underground society is to a psychotic break. To take a
12:53
Speaker 1: single instance, the number of juvenile gangs roaming these corridors
12:57
Speaker 1: of ours has increased four hundred percent since the rumors
13:01
Speaker 1: about the re education project began to spread. Or another,
13:05
Speaker 1: the number of individual crimes without motive, crimes committed just
13:10
Speaker 1: to distract the committer from the grinding monotony of the
13:13
Speaker 1: life we all lead, has now passed the toll of
13:16
Speaker 1: all other crimes put together. And as for actual insanity,
13:22
Speaker 1: of our thirty five million people still unhospitalized, there are
13:27
Speaker 1: four million cases of which we know, each one of
13:31
Speaker 1: which should be committed right now for early paranoid schizophrenia,
13:35
Speaker 1: except that were we to commit them, our essential industries
13:39
Speaker 1: would suffer a manpower loss more devastating than any of
13:43
Speaker 1: the enemy has inflicted upon us. Every one of those
13:47
Speaker 1: four million persons is a major hazard to his neighbors
13:51
Speaker 1: and to his job. But how can we do without them?
13:55
Speaker 1: And what can we do about the unrecognized subclinical cases
14:00
Speaker 1: which probably told of twice as many. How long can
14:04
Speaker 1: we continue operating without a collapse under such conditions? Carson
14:10
Speaker 1: mopped his brow. I didn't suspect that it had gone
14:13
Speaker 1: on that far. It has gone on that far, Hamelin said, icily,
14:19
Speaker 1: and it is accelerating. Your own project has helped to
14:23
Speaker 1: accelerate it. Colonel Mudget here mentioned the opening of isolated
14:27
Speaker 1: cities to the pestilences. Shall I tell you how Louisville
14:31
Speaker 1: fell a spy again? I suppose? Mudget said, no, Colonel,
14:37
Speaker 1: not a spy, a band of vigilantes, of mutineers. I'm
14:44
Speaker 1: familiar with your slogan, the earth to those who fight
14:47
Speaker 1: for it. Do you know the counter slogan that's circulating
14:51
Speaker 1: among the people. They waited, Hamelin smiled and said, let's
14:58
Speaker 1: die on the surface. They overwhelmed the military detachment there,
15:04
Speaker 1: put the city administration to death, and blew open the
15:07
Speaker 1: shaft of the surface. About a thousand people actually made
15:11
Speaker 1: it to the top. Within twenty four hours, the city
15:15
Speaker 1: was dead, as the ringleaders had been warned would be
15:19
Speaker 1: the outcome. Warning didn't deter them, nor did it protect
15:24
Speaker 1: the prudent citizens who had no part in the affair.
15:29
Speaker 1: Hamelin leaned forward, Suddenly, people won't wait to be told
15:34
Speaker 1: when it's their turn to be re educated. They'll be
15:36
Speaker 1: tired of waiting, tired to the point of insanity of
15:40
Speaker 1: living at the bottom of a hole. They'll just go,
15:44
Speaker 1: and that gentleman will leave the world to the enemy,
15:48
Speaker 1: or more likely the rats. They alone are immune to
15:52
Speaker 1: everything by now. There was a long silence. At last,
15:58
Speaker 1: Carson said mildly, why aren't we immune to everything by now? Eh?
16:04
Speaker 1: What the new generations, They've never been exposed. We still
16:09
Speaker 1: have a reservoir of older people who lived through the war,
16:13
Speaker 1: people who had one or several of the new diseases
16:16
Speaker 1: that swept the world, some as many as five and
16:21
Speaker 1: yet recovered. They still have their immunities. We know, we've
16:25
Speaker 1: tested them. We know from sampling that no new disease
16:28
Speaker 1: has been introduced by either side in over ten years
16:31
Speaker 1: now against all the known ones. We have immunization techniques,
16:36
Speaker 1: Anti sarah, antibiotics and so on. I suppose you get
16:40
Speaker 1: your shots every six months like all the rest of us.
16:43
Speaker 1: We should all be very hard to infect now, and
16:46
Speaker 1: such infections as do take should run mild courses. Carson
16:52
Speaker 1: held under Secretary's eyes grimly. Now, answer me this question.
16:57
Speaker 1: Why is it that despite all these protections, every single
17:02
Speaker 1: person in an open city dies. I don't know, Hamelin said,
17:09
Speaker 1: staring at each of them. In turn. By your showing
17:12
Speaker 1: some of them should recover, they should, Carson said, but
17:17
Speaker 1: nobody does. Why Because the very nature of disease has
17:23
Speaker 1: changed since we all went underground. There are now abroad
17:27
Speaker 1: in the world a number of mutated bacterial strains which
17:31
Speaker 1: can bypass the immunity mechanisms of the human body altogether.
17:36
Speaker 1: What this means, in simple terms, is that should such
17:39
Speaker 1: a germ get into your body, your body wouldn't recognize
17:43
Speaker 1: it as an invader. You would manufacture no antibodies against
17:48
Speaker 1: the germ. Consequently, the germ could multiply without any check,
17:53
Speaker 1: and you would die. So would we all I see,
17:58
Speaker 1: Hamelin said. He seemed to have recovered his composure extraordinarily rapidly.
18:04
Speaker 1: I'm no scientists, gentlemen, but what you tell me makes
18:08
Speaker 1: our position sound perfectly hopeless. Yet obviously you have some answer,
18:16
Speaker 1: Parson nodded. We do, but it's important for you to
18:20
Speaker 1: understand the situation, otherwise the answer will mean nothing to you.
18:24
Speaker 1: So is it perfectly clear to you now from what
18:27
Speaker 1: we've said so far, that no amount of re educating
18:31
Speaker 1: a man's brain, be he soldier or civilian, will allow
18:35
Speaker 1: him to survive on the surface? Quite clear, Hamelin said,
18:40
Speaker 1: apparently ungrudgingly. Parson's hope rose by fraction of a millimeter.
18:47
Speaker 1: But if you don't re educate his brain, what can
18:51
Speaker 1: he re educate his reflexes? Perhaps no, Carson said, his
18:57
Speaker 1: lymph nodes and his spleen. A scornful grin began to
19:03
Speaker 1: appear on Hamlin's thin lips. You need better public relations
19:08
Speaker 1: counsel than you've been getting, he said. If what you
19:12
Speaker 1: say is true, as of course I assume it is,
19:16
Speaker 1: then the term re educate is not only inappropriate, it's
19:20
Speaker 1: downright misleading. If you had chosen a less suggestive and
19:24
Speaker 1: more accurate label in the beginning, I wouldn't have been
19:28
Speaker 1: able to cause you half the trouble I have. I
19:31
Speaker 1: agree we are badly advised there, Carson said, but not
19:36
Speaker 1: entirely for those reasons. Of course, the name is misleading.
19:40
Speaker 1: That's both a characteristic and a function of the names
19:42
Speaker 1: of top secret projects. But in this instance, the name
19:47
Speaker 1: re Education, bad as it now appears, subjected the men
19:51
Speaker 1: who chose it to a fatal temptation. You see, though
19:55
Speaker 1: it is misleading, it is also entirely accurate. Word gains
20:01
Speaker 1: Hamelyn said, not at all much interposed. We were going
20:06
Speaker 1: to spare you the theoretical reasoning behind our project, mister secretary,
20:11
Speaker 1: but now you'll just have to sit still for it.
20:14
Speaker 1: The fact is that the body's ability to distinguish between
20:16
Speaker 1: its own cells and those of some foreign tissue a
20:20
Speaker 1: skin graft, say, or a bacterial invasion of the blood,
20:24
Speaker 1: isn't an inherited ability. It's a learned reaction. Furthermore, if
20:30
Speaker 1: you'll think about it a moment, you'll see that it
20:33
Speaker 1: has to be body cells die too and have to
20:36
Speaker 1: be disposed of. What would happen if removing those dead
20:40
Speaker 1: cells provoked an antibody reaction as the destruction of foreign cells,
20:44
Speaker 1: does we die of anaphylactic shock while we were still infants.
20:50
Speaker 1: For that reason, the body has to learn how to
20:52
Speaker 1: scavenge selectively. In human beings, that lesson isn't learned completely
20:57
Speaker 1: until about a month after birth. During the intervening time,
21:01
Speaker 1: the newborn infant is protected by antibodies that it gets
21:05
Speaker 1: from the cholestrum the first milk it gets from the breast.
21:07
Speaker 1: During the three or four days immediately after birth. It
21:11
Speaker 1: can't generate its own It isn't allowed to, so to speak,
21:15
Speaker 1: until let's learn the trick of cleaning up body residues
21:18
Speaker 1: without triggering the antibody mechanisms. Any dead cells marked personal
21:24
Speaker 1: have to be dealt with some other way. That seems
21:27
Speaker 1: clear enough, Hamelin said, But I don't see it's relevance. Well,
21:33
Speaker 1: we're in a position now where that differentiation between the
21:36
Speaker 1: self and everything outside the body doesn't do us any
21:39
Speaker 1: good anymore. These mutated bacteria have been selfed by the mutation.
21:45
Speaker 1: In other words, some of their protein molecules, probably deoxyuribonucleic
21:51
Speaker 1: acid molecules, carry configurations or recognition units identical with those
21:57
Speaker 1: of our body cells, so that they can't tell one
22:01
Speaker 1: from another. But what does all this have to do
22:04
Speaker 1: with re education. Just this, Carson said. What we do
22:09
Speaker 1: here is to impose upon the cells of the body,
22:12
Speaker 1: all of them, a new set of recognition units for
22:16
Speaker 1: the guidance of the lymph nodes in the spleen, which
22:18
Speaker 1: are the organs that produce antibodies. The new units are
22:22
Speaker 1: highly complex, and the chances of their being duplicated by
22:25
Speaker 1: bacterial evolution, even under forced draft, are too small to
22:30
Speaker 1: worry about. That's what re education is. In a few moments,
22:35
Speaker 1: if you like, will show you just how it's done.
22:39
Speaker 1: Hamelin ground out his fifth cigarette in Mudget's astray and
22:43
Speaker 1: placed the tips of his fingers together. Thoughtfully. Carson wondered
22:47
Speaker 1: just how much of the concept of recognition marking the
22:50
Speaker 1: Undersecretary had absorbed. It had to be admitted that he
22:54
Speaker 1: was astonishingly quick to take hold of abstract ideas, but
22:58
Speaker 1: the self marker theory of immunity was, like everything else
23:02
Speaker 1: in immunology, almost impossible to explain to layman. No matter
23:08
Speaker 1: how intelligent this process, Hamelin said, hesitantly, it takes a
23:15
Speaker 1: long time, about six hours per subject, and we can
23:19
Speaker 1: only handle one man at a time. That means we
23:23
Speaker 1: can count on putting no more than seven thousand troops
23:25
Speaker 1: into the field by the turn of the century. Everyone
23:29
Speaker 1: will have to be a highly trained specialist if we're
23:33
Speaker 1: to bring the war to a quick conclusion, which means
23:37
Speaker 1: no civilians. Hamelin said, I see, I'm not entirely convinced,
23:43
Speaker 1: but by all means, let's see how it's done. Once inside,
23:50
Speaker 1: the Undersecretary tried his best to look everywhere at once.
23:55
Speaker 1: The room cut into the rock was roughly two hundred
23:57
Speaker 1: feet high. Most of it was occupied by the bulk
24:01
Speaker 1: of the re education monitor. A mechanism is tall as
24:05
Speaker 1: a fifteen story building and about a city block square.
24:10
Speaker 1: Guards watched it on all sides, and the face of
24:13
Speaker 1: the machines swarmed with technicians. Incredible, Hamelin murmured that enormous
24:21
Speaker 1: object can process only one man at a time. That's right,
24:26
Speaker 1: Budget said, Luckily, it doesn't have to treat all the
24:29
Speaker 1: body cells directly. It works through the blood, reselfing the
24:33
Speaker 1: cells by means of small changes in the serum chemistry.
24:37
Speaker 1: What kind of changes, well, Carson said, choosing each word carefully.
24:44
Speaker 1: That's more or less a graveyard secret. Mister secretary, We
24:49
Speaker 1: can tell you this much. The machine uses a vast
24:52
Speaker 1: array of crystalline complex sugars, which behave rather like the
24:57
Speaker 1: blood group and type proteins. They're fed into the serum
25:01
Speaker 1: in minute amounts under feedback control of second by second
25:05
Speaker 1: analysis of the blood. The computations involved in deciding upon
25:10
Speaker 1: the amount and the precise nature of each introduced chemical
25:14
Speaker 1: are highly complex, hence the size of the machine. It
25:19
Speaker 1: is in its major effect, an artificial kidney. I've seen
25:25
Speaker 1: artificial kidneys in the hospitals, Hamelin said, frowning. They're rather
25:30
Speaker 1: compact affairs because all they do is remove waste products
25:35
Speaker 1: from the patient's blood and restore the fluid and electrolyte balance.
25:40
Speaker 1: Those are very minor renal functions. In the higher animals,
25:44
Speaker 1: the oregon's main duty is chemical control of immunity. If
25:49
Speaker 1: Burnett and Fenner had known that back in nineteen forty nine,
25:53
Speaker 1: when the selfing theory was being formulated, we'd have had
25:56
Speaker 1: re education long before now. Most of the machine size
26:01
Speaker 1: is due to the computation section. Much it emphasized. In
26:05
Speaker 1: the body. The brain stem does those computations as part
26:08
Speaker 1: of maintaining homeostasis, but we can't reach the brain stem
26:13
Speaker 1: from outside. It's not under conscious control. Once the body
26:18
Speaker 1: is reselveed, it'll retrain the thalamus where we can't. Suddenly,
26:23
Speaker 1: two swinging doors at the base of the machine were
26:25
Speaker 1: pushed apart, and a mobile operating table came through, guided
26:29
Speaker 1: by two attendants. There was a form on it, covered
26:33
Speaker 1: to the chin with a sheet. The face above the
26:36
Speaker 1: sheet was a mobile and almost as white. Hamelin watched
26:41
Speaker 1: the table go out of the huge cavern with visibly
26:44
Speaker 1: mixed motions. He said, this process it's painful. No, not exactly,
26:53
Speaker 1: Carson said. The motive behind the question interested him hugely,
26:58
Speaker 1: but he didn't dare show. But any fooling around with
27:01
Speaker 1: the immunity mechanisms can give rise to symptoms fever, general malaise,
27:06
Speaker 1: and so on. We try to protect our subjects by
27:10
Speaker 1: giving them a light shock anesthesia, first shock, Hamelin repeated,
27:16
Speaker 1: you mean electroshock. I don't see how call it stress anesthesia. Instead,
27:22
Speaker 1: we give the man a steroid drug that counterfeits the
27:25
Speaker 1: anesthesia the body itself produces in moments of great stress
27:28
Speaker 1: on the battlefield, say, or just after a serious injury.
27:33
Speaker 1: It's fast and free of after effects. There's no secret
27:37
Speaker 1: about that. By the way, the drug involved a twenty
27:40
Speaker 1: one hydrosic pregnant three twenty dione sodium sucinate, and the
27:45
Speaker 1: dates all the way back to nineteen fifty five. Oh,
27:50
Speaker 1: the under Secretary said. The ringing sound of the chemical
27:53
Speaker 1: name had had, as carsonet hoped, a ritually soothing effect
28:00
Speaker 1: element Hemelyn said hesitantly, gentlemen, I have a rather unusual request,
28:07
Speaker 1: and I am afraid a rather selfish one, a brief
28:11
Speaker 1: nervous laugh, selfish in both senses. If you will pardon
28:14
Speaker 1: me the pun You need feel no hesitation in refusing me.
28:19
Speaker 1: But abruptly he appeared to find it impossible to go on.
28:26
Speaker 1: Carson mentally crossed his fingers and plunged in, you would
28:30
Speaker 1: like to undergo the process yourself? He said, well, yes, yes,
28:36
Speaker 1: that's exactly it does. That seem inconsistent. I should know,
28:41
Speaker 1: should I not? What it is that I'm advocating for
28:43
Speaker 1: my following know it intimately from personal experience, not just theory.
28:48
Speaker 1: Of course, I realized that it would conflict with your policy,
28:52
Speaker 1: but I assure you I wouldn't turn it to any
28:54
Speaker 1: political advantage, none whatsoever. And perhaps it wouldn't be too
28:59
Speaker 1: great a law policy to process just one civilian among
29:03
Speaker 1: your seven thousand soldiers subverted by God. Carson looked at
29:10
Speaker 1: Mudget with a firmly straight face. It wouldn't do to
29:14
Speaker 1: accept too quickly, but Hamelin was rushing on, almost chattering. Now.
29:20
Speaker 1: I can understand your hesitation. You must feel that I'm
29:24
Speaker 1: trying to gain some advantage, or even to get to
29:27
Speaker 1: the surface ahead of my fellow men. If it will
29:30
Speaker 1: set your minds at rest, I would be glad to
29:33
Speaker 1: enlist in your advance Army before five years are up.
29:37
Speaker 1: I could surely learn some technical skill which would make
29:40
Speaker 1: me useful to the expedition. If you would prepare papers
29:43
Speaker 1: to that effect, I'd be happy to sign them. That's
29:47
Speaker 1: hardly necessary, Budget said, After you're re educated, we can
29:52
Speaker 1: simply announce the fact and say that you've agreed to
29:54
Speaker 1: join the advance party when the time comes. Ah, Hamelin said,
30:00
Speaker 1: I see the difficulty. No, that would make my position
30:04
Speaker 1: quite impossible. If there's no other way. Excuse us a moment,
30:09
Speaker 1: Harson said, Hamelin bowed, and the doctor pulled Mudget off
30:14
Speaker 1: out of earshot. Don't overplay it, he murmured, you're tipping
30:19
Speaker 1: our hand with that. Talk about a press release, Colonel,
30:22
Speaker 1: He's offering us a bribe. But he's plenty smart enough
30:26
Speaker 1: to see that the price you're suggesting is that of
30:28
Speaker 1: his whole political career. He won't pay that much. What then,
30:34
Speaker 1: Mudget whispered hoarsely. Get somebody to prepare the kind of
30:38
Speaker 1: informal contract he suggested. Offer to put it under security seal,
30:43
Speaker 1: so we won't be able to show it to the
30:45
Speaker 1: press at all. He'll know well enough that such a
30:48
Speaker 1: seal can be broken if our policy ever comes before
30:51
Speaker 1: a presidential review, and that will restrain him from forcing
30:56
Speaker 1: such a review. Let's not demand too much. Once he's
31:00
Speaker 1: been re educated, he'll have to live the rest of
31:03
Speaker 1: the five years with the knowledge that he can live
31:06
Speaker 1: topsided at any time he wants to try it. And
31:09
Speaker 1: he hasn't had the discipline ar men have had. It's
31:13
Speaker 1: my bet that he'll goof off before the five years
31:15
Speaker 1: are up. And good riddance. They went back to Hamelin,
31:21
Speaker 1: who was watching the machine and humming in a painfully
31:23
Speaker 1: abstracted manner. I've convinced the colonel. Carson said that your
31:28
Speaker 1: services in the army might well be very valuable when
31:31
Speaker 1: the time comes, mister secretary, if you'll sign up We'll
31:35
Speaker 1: put the papers under a security seal for your own protection,
31:39
Speaker 1: and then I think we can fit you into our
31:41
Speaker 1: treatment program. Today, I'm grateful to you, doctor Carson, Hamelin said,
31:48
Speaker 1: very grateful. Indeed, five minutes after his injection, Hamelin was
31:55
Speaker 1: as peaceful as a flounder and was rolled through the
31:58
Speaker 1: swinging doors. An hour's discussion of the probable outcome, carried
32:03
Speaker 1: on in the privacy of Mudget's office, bore a very
32:05
Speaker 1: little additional fruit. However, it's our only course, Carson said.
32:11
Speaker 1: It's what we hope to gain from his visit, duly
32:13
Speaker 1: modified by circumstances. It all comes down to this. Hamelin's
32:19
Speaker 1: compromised himself, and he knows it. But Mudget said, suppose
32:25
Speaker 1: he was right. What about all that talk of his
32:27
Speaker 1: about mass insanity. I'm sure it's true, Carson said, his
32:33
Speaker 1: voice trembling slightly despite his best efforts at control. It's
32:38
Speaker 1: going to be rougher than ever down here for the
32:40
Speaker 1: next five years, Colonel. Our only consolation is that the
32:44
Speaker 1: enemy must have exactly the same problem, and if we
32:47
Speaker 1: can beat them to the surface, Mudget said. Carson had
32:52
Speaker 1: already broken off his sentence. He wondered why the scanner
32:56
Speaker 1: gave a man such a hard time outside that door
33:00
Speaker 1: and then admitted him without any warning to the people
33:03
Speaker 1: on the other side. Couldn't the damn thing be trained
33:06
Speaker 1: to knock the newcomer was a page from the hematology section.
33:13
Speaker 1: Here's the preliminary rundown on your student, X, Doctor Carson.
33:16
Speaker 1: He said, the page, saluted Mudget and went out. Carson
33:22
Speaker 1: began to read. After a moment, he also began to sweat. Colonel,
33:28
Speaker 1: look at this. I was wrong, after all, disastrously wrong.
33:34
Speaker 1: I haven't seen a blood type distribution pattern like Hamlin
33:37
Speaker 1: since I was a medical student, and even then it
33:40
Speaker 1: was only a demonstration, not a real life patient. Look
33:43
Speaker 1: at it from the genetic point of view, the migration factors.
33:49
Speaker 1: He passed the protocol across the desk. Mudget was not
33:53
Speaker 1: by background a scientist, but he was an enormously able
33:56
Speaker 1: administrator of the breed that makes it its business to
33:59
Speaker 1: know that technicalities on which any project ultimately rests. He
34:04
Speaker 1: was not more than halfway through the taally before his
34:06
Speaker 1: eyebrows were gaining altitude like shock waves. Carson. We can't
34:11
Speaker 1: let that man into the machine. He's he's already in it. Colonel,
34:15
Speaker 1: you know that, and if we interrupt the process before
34:17
Speaker 1: it runs to term, we'll kill him. Let's kill him then,
34:22
Speaker 1: Mudget said, harshly, say he died while being processed. Do
34:25
Speaker 1: the country a favor that would produce a hell of
34:28
Speaker 1: us stink. Besides, we have no proof, Mudget flourished the
34:34
Speaker 1: protocol excitedly. That's not proof to anyone but a hematologist.
34:39
Speaker 1: But Carson, the man's a saboteur, Mudget shouted, Nobody but
34:45
Speaker 1: an asiatic could have a typing pattern like this. And
34:48
Speaker 1: he's no melting pot product either. He's a classical mixture,
34:53
Speaker 1: very probably a Georgian. In every move he's made since
34:57
Speaker 1: we first heard of him has been aimed directly at us,
35:00
Speaker 1: aimed directly at trigging us into getting him into the machine.
35:05
Speaker 1: I think so too, Carson said grimly. I just hope
35:09
Speaker 1: the enemy hasn't many more agents as brilliant. One's enough,
35:14
Speaker 1: Mudget said, He's sure to be loaded to the last
35:17
Speaker 1: cc of his blood with catalyst poisons. Once the machine
35:21
Speaker 1: starts processing his serum, we're done for. It'll take us
35:25
Speaker 1: years to reprogram the computer. If it can be done
35:28
Speaker 1: at all, it's got to be stopped. Stopped, Carson said, astonished.
35:34
Speaker 1: But it's already stopped. That's not what worries me. The
35:38
Speaker 1: machine stopped at fifty minutes ago. It can't have how
35:41
Speaker 1: could it? It has no relevant data, Sure it has.
35:46
Speaker 1: Carson leaned forward, took the cruelly chewed pencil away from
35:49
Speaker 1: Mudget and made a need check beside one of the
35:52
Speaker 1: entries on the protocol. Mudget stared at the checked item.
35:57
Speaker 1: Platelets RH six, he mumbled. But what that got to
36:02
Speaker 1: do with? Oh? Oh, I see that platelet type doesn't
36:07
Speaker 1: exist at all in our population, now, does it? Never
36:10
Speaker 1: seen it before? Myself? At least no, Carson said, grinning wolfishly.
36:17
Speaker 1: It never was common in the West, and the pigrim
36:19
Speaker 1: of nineteen eighty one wiped it out. That's something the
36:22
Speaker 1: enemy couldn't know, but the machine knows it. As soon
36:27
Speaker 1: as it gives him the standard anti IV desensitation shot,
36:32
Speaker 1: his platelets will begin to dissolve, and he'll be rejected
36:36
Speaker 1: for in simping a thrombo sideopenia, he laughed, for his
36:41
Speaker 1: own protection. But he's getting nitrous oxide in the machine
36:46
Speaker 1: and he'll be held six hours under anesthesia anyway, Also
36:50
Speaker 1: for his own protection much it broke in. He was
36:54
Speaker 1: grinning back at Carson like an idiot. When he comes
36:58
Speaker 1: out from under, he'll assume that he's been re educated,
37:02
Speaker 1: and he'll beat it back to the enemy to report
37:04
Speaker 1: that he's poisoned our machine, so that they can be sure.
37:08
Speaker 1: They'll beat us to the surface, and he'll go the
37:11
Speaker 1: fastest way overland. He will, Carson agreed. Of course he'll
37:18
Speaker 1: go overland, and of course he'll die. But where does
37:22
Speaker 1: that leave us. We won't be able to conceal that
37:25
Speaker 1: he was treated here if there's any sort of inquiry
37:28
Speaker 1: at all, and his death will make everything we do
37:31
Speaker 1: here look like a fraud. Instead of paying our pied
37:34
Speaker 1: piper and great jumping to Josaphat, look at his name,
37:40
Speaker 1: They were rubbing our noses in it all the time. Nevertheless,
37:44
Speaker 1: we didn't pay the piper. We killed him. And Platelet's
37:48
Speaker 1: right six won't be an adequate excuse for the press
37:52
Speaker 1: or for Hamlet's following. Doesn't worry me, Mudget rumbled, who'll
37:58
Speaker 1: know he won't dine our labs. He'll leave here hail
38:02
Speaker 1: and hearty. He won't die until he makes a break
38:05
Speaker 1: for the surface. After that we can compose a fine
38:09
Speaker 1: obituary for the press. Heroic government official on the highest
38:13
Speaker 1: policy level couldn't wait to lead his followers to the surface.
38:18
Speaker 1: Died of being too much in a hurry. Re ed
38:22
Speaker 1: project sorrowfully reminds everyone that no technique is full proof.
38:28
Speaker 1: Mudget paused long enough to light a cigarette, which was
38:31
Speaker 1: a most singular action for a man who never smoked.
38:35
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, Carson, he said, it's unnatural.
38:42
Speaker 1: Carson considered it. It seemed to hold up, and Hamlin
38:46
Speaker 1: would have a death certificate as complex as he deserved.
38:50
Speaker 1: Not officially, of course, but in the minds of everyone
38:53
Speaker 1: who knew the facts. His death, when it came, would
38:57
Speaker 1: be due directly to the thrombo side openia which had
38:59
Speaker 1: caused the read machine to reject him, and thrombo cidopenia
39:04
Speaker 1: is a disease of infants unless ye become as little children.
39:10
Speaker 1: That was a fitting reason for rejection from the New
39:13
Speaker 1: Kingdom of Earth, anemia of the newborn. His pent out
39:19
Speaker 1: breath went out of him in a long sigh. He
39:23
Speaker 1: hadn't been aware that he had been holding it. It's true,
39:27
Speaker 1: he said, softly. That's the time to pay the piper.
39:32
Speaker 1: When the budget said, when Carson said, surprised, why before
39:40
Speaker 1: he takes the children away? End of To Pay the
39:46
Speaker 1: Piper by James Blish, read by Paul Hampton,