The Biological Revolt

"Induce? Seduce!"

"Anyway you call it. The Belos or me."

He stood, shakily, and turned his head back and forth. "I don't know. Maybe the fever's getting me. I wouldn't do this in my right mind." Gripping the table's edge, he said, "Barbara, promise me that, soldier's duty or not, you won't reveal what I'm going to show you."

Puzzled, she said, "I promise, provided it's not dangerous to Earth's welfare."

This isn't."

He went into the library, closed the door, and in a few minutes returned to slump into the chair. The moment he did so, she, forgetting his behavior, jumped from her chair, saying loudly, "I've got it! I've got it!"

"I'll have the place sprayed." be croaked, smiling feebly.

She came over and kissed his fever-parched mouth. "If you can joke while feeling like this, you might make a good husband."

She picked up her bag and went into the lab. Not all the bottles were smashed. Her clue was the fact that pyretigen raised a fever by conserving excess heat in the body resulting from increased cell metabolism. Its action was doublefold. It oxidized sugar, breaking it down into carbon dioxide and water. Though the burning of glucose was a normal function in the body, pyretigen accelerated it. At the same tune, it excited that part of the sympathetic nervous system which controlled the capillaries of the skin, thereby contracting them and lessening time blood-flow through them. The result was that excess heat was not radiated at the body's surface.

The fever-inducer, normally burned up in the blood, maintained itself in Ogtate's blood. Killison, recalling the asps' maintenance of their numbers, reasoned that they were the underlying cause for the steady level of pyretigen. Somehow, they "locked" onto the fever-stimulants and, as fast as the substance burned, produced more.

The rhythm of reproduction of the asps was followed by the pyretigen. Killison wanted to know if the ,pyretigen had a similar enough molecular structure, positively charged, to fasten itself onto the negative tag-ends of the asp.

Books were scattered on the floor. She searched among them and was thrilled to find the one she sought. Some pages were torn out, but among the ones left she found her information. The semivirus pyretigen did have an asp-like molecular structure.

A calculated dose of a recently developed anti-virus in his bloodstream might close down the little double factories. The serum, though it started in the vascular system, could diffuse through other tissues. It was itself as dangerous as the foes it was designed to fight. But a sample of blood would show exactly the proportions needed. The numbered hosts would tramp up and down the highways and alleys of the body, and wherever they met the enemy, they would attack. They couldn't refuse to fight, for their negative charge drew them irresistibly to their brother virus. Civil war would rage. Antivirus would meet the pyretigen, would close with it, would explode. Touching one would discharge the field of both. Literally burned, they would then disintegrate.

Ogtate's body would be a funeral pyre. It would become warm, but the ultimate effect would be cool.

As a matter of course, the discharged pyretigens would become unlocked from the asps. There would be no more fabrications by fabrications. And Barbara Killison would see to it that Bill ate no more tampered-with food.

She searched in the huge lab and found what she wanted. Her hopes were high, for there was almost every kind of substance needed. Ogtate had by no means destroyed all of the containers. Having located a tube, she returned to the big room at the end of the hall.

"Bill!" she called. "We'll fix you ..." Rigid, she stopped short and gasped.

9

Ogtate said, "I'm sorry, Barbara. Smitty just walked in. I was telling him to wait in the library until I prepared you. I'm really sorry."

Smitty removed his cigar with the prehensile end of his trunk and said, "Believe me, Madame, if I hadn't known you were here, and I'd walked around the corner into you, I'd have been just as startled and horrified."

She recovered a little and said, "Thank you."

"Bill," Barbara said, "I'm going to pour a bunch of little thunderstorms in you. This stuff wasn't designed for the particular kind of work it's being called to do, but it should handle your trouble."

He didn't watch the needle but looked at the Priami. "Sit down, Smitty. I'm going to give you my decision now."

Smith trumpeted an undecipherable emotion. Barbara jumped and pushed the needle in hard. Bill said, "Ouch!"

"That's what I meant," said Smith. Smoking, he sat back, seemingly at ease with the world. Bill could see the abnormal pulsing of veins and, perhaps, the heart hammering under the unorthodox ribcage. The latter, he thought, must be his imagination.

"There are four things I can do," intoned Ogtate. "One, keep the Belos to myself. Two, give it to Earth. Three, extend it to Mars. Four, allow both factions to possess it. If I do the first, I go crazy from indecision. More important, I'll spend eight years without the one woman I know I can learn to love. If you want the truth, I'm afraid to face those years without her. If I do the second, I will, I'm sure, start Earth on a downward spiral of conquest and arrogance. Earth people are not the stuff of warriors just now, but until two hundred years ago they were, and they can be again. And Smitty risked his life to sneak here and convince me the Priami aren't the all-black carnivorous monsters they're painted to be. As is evident, you can see through him. He has nothing to hide."

Ogtate sat up a little straighter. Killison asked him if he felt better, and he replied that he did.

"If I give it to the Priami alone, then the war-mongers there will do to us as we'd do to them. Although I am bitter, I don't, contrary to report, hate man as a whole. I loathe some individuals and am indifferent to others. But wiping out a world because of what a small, vicious gang did to me, isn't in my character at all." He smiled apologetically at the woman. "In fact I held the Belos over Earth's head because I knew that once I gave it away, I'd no longer be valuable. Yewliss was kind enough to point that that out to me during a visor-interview, and Smitty here confirmed it. I rejected that idea, because it made me look so terribly selfish. But Barbara's appearance tonight, as Smitty said, was a catalyst. The truth of my unconscious possessiveness hit me.

"If I do the fourth, give the Belos to both planets ... As for the traitor-stigma I'll gain, the Government can make no official actions because of the law of free will. By giving the Belos to the Priami, I'm not personally hurting anybody. Earth ships don't have to penetrate the Priami field. If they want to, let them do it safely, by arranging peace. There'll be social ostracism, yes. What a laugh! And eight years hence, I'm sure, events will prove me right. Chances are, I'll be in the limelight again, this time as a social lion-instead of a skunk. No matter. I don't care about their adulation.

"As for the accusation that I'll be setting up another status quo, I plead guilty. The two foes will stagnate because they'll be afraid to use interplanetary travel. They'll slide back to their former conditions of dinky one-globe states. That is, unless they achieve peace. They'll have to, because population and prosperity depend on trade between worlds. Cut off EPB transmitters and you have chaos."

Smith rose, trumpeted again and dropped his cigar. The light behind him gleamed dully through him and showed a blackish pump working accelerando in the grille of his chest. "I have your word?"

Ogtate straightened some more. He looked proud. This was his greatest moment. He was the unofficial emperor of the solar system; he was dispensing the fate of many billions. "The papers are on the table by your chair. They were within handreach for the last six months. I just couldn't make up my mind to tell you what they were."