Three to Conquer

13. Unidentified Virus

Business was stalled again the next morning, before he had time even to look through the mail. Harper arrived at the office, having been tailed by his escort all the way from home, removed his hat and made ready to sling it onto a hook.

"Don't let go," advised Norris. "Haul it back and stick it on your head. You're departing right away."

"Where to?"

"I don't know; they haven't seen fit to confide in me."

That was true enough. Norris's mind held no more information than that an official car had arrived to take Harper somewhere else, that he would be away the full day and that the guard was commanded, to maintain its watch on the plant during his absence.

Harper did not argue the matter this time; he was becoming resigned to the situation. Replacing the hat, he went outside and entered the car, in which sat only a driver.

As they moved off, a second machine bearing four men followed close behind. Around the corner, a third car suddenly pulled out from the curb and took the lead. This one also held a hard-looking quartet.

"Quite a cavalcade," Harper remarked. "Somebody is according me the importance I've long deserved."

The driver made no response.

Harper slumped in his seat, half-closed his eyes while his mind felt around like invisible fingers. His own driver, he found, knew nothing except that he must keep on the tail of the leading machine, be prepared for trouble and on no account face it if he could run out of it.

The fingers explored further.

Those in the leading car knew where the procession was heading; and from that moment, so did Harper. He gazed idly through the window at passing shops and pedestrians. With habit born of the last few days, he made a mental sweep of the neighborhood every now and again.

They had passed through two sets of traffic lights, and over a dozen cross streets, when alien impulses reached him, weak with distance but discernible. Something high up that side road, six, eight or maybe ten hundred yards away.

He sat up, red-faced, and snapped, "Quick! Turn up there!"

Beetle-brows firmed his thick lips, gave a warning toot on his horn and speeded up. They whizzed across the road without turning and continued straight on.

"You're too slow to keep up with your own boots," commented Harper, sharp-eyed and still listening. "Take this next turn; make it fast. We can buzz round the block and get him before he fades out."

The car plunged on. It ignored the turn and the next and the next. The faraway squirming mind thinned into nothingness and was lost.

"You bladderhead!" swore Harper. "You've missed a prize chance."

No retort.

He lapsed into ireful silence, wondering whether the brief emanations he'd picked up had come from McDonald himself or from yet another of his unsuspected dupes. There was no way of telling.

Surliness remained with him two hours later, when the cars rolled through a strongly guarded gateway in a heavily fenced area, went over a small hill and stopped before a cluster of buildings hidden from sight of the main road. A painted board stood beside the main entrance.

The four from the pilot car escorted him through the doors in the wary manner of men convinced that, given half the chance, he would take wings and fly.

He took a chair in the waiting-room, watched by three of them, while the fourth went in search of someone else. In due time, the latter returned with a white-coated, gray-haired individual who registered prompt surprise.

"Wade Harper! Well I'm blessed!"

"What's dumbfounding about it?" growled Harper. "You weren't soul-shaken last time we met, four years back."

One of the escort chipped in, saying, "If you and Doctor Leeming already know each other, you don't need an introduction. So we'll get along." He went out, taking the others with him.

Leeming explained, "My instructions were to make a check with the help of a specialist who would be brought here this morning. I was given to understand that what he says must be treated as decisive. The specialist's identity wasn't revealed." He backed off a short way, looked the other up and down. "And it's you. Four years haven't done you any good; you look older and uglier."

"So would you if you were in my britches." Harper gave a sniff of discontent, went on, "I came like royalty, under strong protection. All that rigmarole wasn't so you could hand me another problem about how to shave the whiskers off a bacillus. Moreover, my mercenary instinct tells me you aren't aiming to give me a repeat order for twelve thousand dollars' worth of apparatus. So what's this all about?"

"I'll show you." Doctor Leeming beckoned. "Come along."

Taking him through a series of corridors, Leeming conducted Harper into a long room cluttered with scientific glassware, stainless-steel instruments and, Harper swiftly noted, a few silk-lined cases of his own especial products. A young man, white-coated, bespectacled and serious, glanced up nervously as they entered.

"My assistant, Doctor Balir," introduced Leeming, "meet Wade Harper." He gestured toward a nearby micromanipulator and its array of accessories. "He's the fellow who makes this stuff."

Balir looked suitably impressed and said, "Glad to know you."

"Then you may number yourself among a select few," Harper responded.

"Take no notice," Leeming advised Balir. "He says the first thing that pops into his head."

"Hence the general ruckus," commented Harper, "seeing what's been popping of late." He stared around. "Well, why am I here?"

Leeming went to a large cabinet, took from it a photograph blown up to full-plate size, handed it over for inspection. It showed a fuzzy white sphere with a band of slight discoloration across its middle.

"A picture of the planet Jupiter," Harper hazarded, momentarily too preoccupied to check his guess by mental probing.

"On the contrary," informed Leeming, "it is something far smaller, though massive enough as such things go. That's an electron-microscope's view of a protein molecule."

"If you want to dissect it, you're right out of luck. I can't get down to any method of handling things that tiny."

"More's the pity," said Leeming. "But that's not what we're after."

Returning the photo to the cabinet, he turned to a heavy steel safe set in the wall. Opening it carefully, he took out a transparent plastic sealed container in which was a wadded test rube one quarter filled with a clear-colorless liquid.

"This," he announced, "is the same thing multiplied a millionfold. Does it mean anything to you?"

Harper peered at the fluid. "Not a thing."

"Consider carefully," Leeming advised, "because to the best of our belief this is still alive."

"Alive?"

"By that, I mean potent. It is a virus extracted from the brainpans and spinal cords of certain bodies."

"A recognizable virus?"

"No."

"Filterable?"

"We did not attempt to filter it; we isolated it by a new centrifugal process."

"Then if it's not dead, it's still dizzy from being whirled," said Harper. "Let me try again when it has come to its senses."

"Ah! That's precisely what we want to know. Has it any senses? My information is that you, and you alone, can tell us." He frowned and continued, "I have my orders which say that if this virus is innocuous, it means either that it has been rendered so by processing and isolation or, alternatively, that we're on the wrong track and must start all over again."

Harper said, "Anyway, you don't have to stand there holding it out at arm's length. Put it back. It will make not the slightest difference to my ability to weigh it up. If that stuff were willing and able to advertise its suspected nature, I could have told you about it in the waiting-room, without bothering to come this near."

Doing as bidden, Leeming fastened the steel safe, spread expressive hands, "So we're no farther than at the beginning?"

"Not necessarily," Harper replied. Leaning against a lab bench, he put on a musing expression while he picked the minds of both Leeming and Balir. Then he said, "You've been told that three space-explorers have returned from Venus, afflicted with a possessive disease which is spreading. They have sent you bodies of known victims, starting with a girl named Joyce Whittingham. Your job is to isolate what's doing it, learn its nature and, if possible, devise a cure."

"Correct," admitted Leeming. "It's top secret information; evidently you've been given it, too."

"Given it? I took it with both hands. And it was like pulling teeth." Harper leaned forward, eyed him intently. "Are you positive that you have extracted the real cause in the form of that virus?"

"I was fairly certain — until your arrival; now I'm not."

"What made you so sure?"

"No words of mine can tell you how thoroughly we've dealt with those corpses. We've had our leading experts on the job twenty-four hours per day and they've done it down to the last fragment of flesh, blood, bone, skin and hair. All we've got to show for it is a formerly unknown virus. That could be it. That should be it." He paused, finished, "But according to you, it isn't."

"I haven't said so."

"You said it meant nothing to you."

"Neither does it — in its present state." Harper hesitated, then continued, "I have the peculiar power to recognize persons afflicted with this disease. If they haven't told you how I can do it, I cannot either. However, I can tell you one thing."

"What's that?"

"I recognize the symptoms; you're asking me to put a finger on the cause. It's not the same thing, not by a long shot. So far as I'm concerned, it's a quite different problem."

"Well, can you help with any suggestions?" asked Leeming.

"I can give you my ideas. It's up to you to decide whether they make sense or nonsense."

"Let's have them. We need every angle we can get."

"All right. Understand that I'm not criticizing you people in any way when I say that I think the authorities rushed me here because they'd jumped to a silly conclusion."

"What conclusion?"

"That you can undress when you're stark naked. That you can swim without water. That you can pedal down the road without a bicycle between your legs."

"Be more explicit," Leeming suggested.

"You can't be a disease when you've nothing to work upon. You can't run without legs, talk without a mouth, think without brains. If that stuff is what you believe it to be, and what for all I know it really may be, it's hamstrung, tied up, fastened down, gagged, slugged and bollixed. It is, therefore, no more than what it appears to be, namely, a dollop of goo. Its power, if any, has ceased to be actual and become only potential. I can detect an actuality, but I can't sit in judgment upon potentiality, any more than I can read the future."

"I see what you mean." Leeming put on a slow smile. "You don't give us credit for overmuch intelligence, do you?"

"I haven't defined you as stupid. I'm merely theorizing about my own inability to help."

"All right." Leeming waved a hand toward the steel safe. "That's not all we've got; it's only half of it. We used the rest for a time-honored purpose: we tried it on the dog."

"You mean you've actually squirted it into someone?"

"Yes — a dog, as I've said."

Harper gazed at him defeatedly. In all his life he had never picked up a thought radiating from any of the lower animals. Telepathically, the dogs and cats, the birds and bees just did not exist.

"What happened to it?"

"It lived. It's still living. Like to see it?"

"Yes, I would."