Robert Abernathy

“ He turned briskly into the contagion laboratory, deliberately making delay, explaining to himself that it would be best to have all the data on the new culture at his fingertips. The big room was a jungle of sealed glass cases where beady-eyed mice tumbled over each other, where healthy rabbits nibbled lettuce cheek by jowl with rabbits whose bodies seethed with mutant microbes. At the most crowded end of the room was Novik, brightest of the skilled young men assigned as assistants and apprentices to the great Dr. Euge, busy now with pencil and notebook, counting dead mice. ”

“ I am no immunologist, anyway."
"Novik said," the Dictator's eyes narrowed, "'It is fear!'"
Euge nodded with satisfaction. "He was right. The virus attacks only brains that are already sick with fear. Not—my results with mice indicated—the normal alarm of a healthy organism, which expresses itself in flight or fight, but the pathological anxiety-state that come of an inescapable threat or frustration in the environment, and that turns itself so easily into feelings of guilt or hatred.... The fear of the criminal, the neurotic, the paranoiac." ”

“ Euge looked out through the rear of the truck, at the gray landscape rumbling away, and guessed that the journey's end was still fifteen minutes ahead; unless his knowledge of how the Dictator's mind worked failed him, the place would be near the wreckage of his one-time laboratory, leveled from the air on the naive theory that some devilish device there was broadcasting the seeds of plague....
Aching minutes that had to be soothed with words. Words—God, fate, hope, hereafter—are man's last support when everything else has given way. "So you accept the plague as good? ”

“ Euge looked at him with open amusement. "You're welcome to try it. But remember—we are at war now. The psychology of the people is fear, like that of the criminal, the hunted hunter, the hated hater, perhaps the guilty.... As long as there was peace, the Diktatura gave most of us security, reasonable happiness, freedom from fear. ”

“ Only evil men, warped minds oppose us. The virus attacks such minds and completes the ruin which their own perversion has begun. Those who are clean and upright in thought and deed, loyal to their fatherland and the great idea of the Diktatura, have nothing to fear from it ”

“ Most of us have been patriots at one time or another, else there could have been no Victory." Euge noted wryly how strong the indoctrination of his mind was, relegating the word 'war' to the realm of obscene taboos, and leaving only 'victory' permissible. "But—" he lifted his gray head and looked candidly into their faces, "when I 'loosed the plague', as you put it, I was not being a patriot and I do not think I was making a mistake." ”

“ As long as the Diktatura was not world-wide, there would be groups and nations in the clashing chaos beyond the frontier which plotted with envious hatred to destroy it. The earthly paradise must be defended; Euge's position as a top scientist in a field vital to defense elevated him almost to the level of the politico-economic planners.
The Dictator greeted Euge with a man-to-man warmth he did not use toward those to whom he was something much like a god. "Well, doctor, how is the health of your virus? ”

“ The Dictator took some time in the preparation of the experiment. A city of twenty thousand people had to be isolated temporarily from the rest of the country, and unobtrusively surrounded with troops, guns and bombers, in case things went disastrously wrong.
The isolation was accomplished, by means of a complete embargo on land and air transportation out of the test area, only an hour before a few small planes droned over the city, trailing an impalpable and invisible mist of virus-laden solution. ”

“ The Dictator's visit was a signal mark of Euge's importance, or at least that of his virus research; there was no doubt that Euge was highly thought of and trusted. His dossier was that of a man who extended his scientist's worship of "Truth" even into the very different field of human relations. The Diktatura could use such men. ”

“ The scientist said wearily, "I have seen no visions, I have heard no voices. Still I do not feel responsible for what has come on the world through me. In the plenum of probabilities, what may be will be...."
"Doctor, beyond your universe of probabilities there must be a power that chooses among them." The young student spoke with the quiet conviction of a man in whom knowledge and faith are at peace. "We must accept that power—or the logic by which it chooses among the possible worlds—as good, the definition of good. ”

“ History demands that we prevail. If any fresh proof of that fact were needed—as all of you know that it is not—it would be provided by the new scientific discovery which at the same time reaffirms the fundamental, objective truth of our way of life and thought, and provides us with the ultimate weapon for enforcing our way on the backward regions of the world.... ”

“ The fifth-column offensive must have failed miserably. Naturally, the first to die in the enemy's country would have been those entrusted with spreading the plague. Euge wondered if the Dictator had found that out, and if so, what he thought about it.
Never acknowledged, but quickly apparent to the expectant Euge from certain veiled illusions, denials and instructions that came over the air, was the beginning spread of RM4, in its active and lethal form (the latent infection must be almost universal now) , among the people of the Diktatura. ”

“ That would take place by order of the Diktatura, that is: by the sovereign will of the People, expressed by its Executive Council, which was responsible directly to the Dictator.
Naturally it was the People's will that no one come out of a plague spot, for the People feared death.
Joseph Euge said as much to the pale, underfed-looking young man who crouched beside him in the bed of the truck. "The gasproof clothing," he added, "protects nothing but morale, and these men's morale needs to last only until—their job is done." ”

“ You mean Euge? What information?"
"His experiments ... the mice. Been doing them for months."
"For months? Then why haven't you reported it before?"
"Another traitor," mumbled Novik. He swayed unsteadily on his feet, caught himself with a peculiar jerk; his eyes were somnolent. Before them the Dictator blurred in a bright painful glitter of metal. Two Dictators, shining and terrible here at the end of the world. "The virus ... not a weapon. Not to be used, because ... it's death. It's ... fear...." ”

“ So twenty-five healthy privates of the Dictator's Honor Guard, handpicked for courage, rigid honesty and selfless loyalty to the leader, were hospitalized and injected with potent doses of viciously lethal culture RM4-2197. They were told that it was a new immunization which would soon become regulation throughout the armed forces. And twenty-five prisoners, likewise healthy save for the twist in their minds that made them seditionists and rebels instead of Honor Guardsmen, received the same injection and were told the same story. ”

“ Then, with difficulty and some danger, working in armor, he opened the cages and shifted the living mice about, breaking up groups and creating new ones. In the next few days, the immunes' mortality rate was better than forty per cent.
And in an adjoining storeroom, cleared for the purpose, Euge set up another and cruder experiment. Mice that had survived exposure to RM4 were imprisoned in sealed glass runs, and in the room at large were let loose the half-dozen lean alley cats that Novik had procured. ”

“ He left the room by way of an airlock, in which—Dictatorial summons notwithstanding—he spent full five minutes under a spray of disinfectant chemicals and radiations; after the lock had cleared he stripped off the airtight armor he wore without touching any of its outer surfaces, and left the chamber quickly. ”