Balance of Power (18 page)

“We had to clear land on either side of the road...the bandits. And we had to get timber to carry south.”

“You opened up a causeway,” I said. “Between two isolated regions. You gave the fauna of each region access to a new habitat. Previously, the forest and the hills had been a barrier—not to men or to birds or to some of the larger animals, but a barrier nonetheless. A barrier to insects.”

“But the plague didn’t originate in the south!” Charles protested. “It originated north of the hills, and the disease has always been known north of the hills. There’s just never been an epidemic before. I don’t see what the south has to do with it...we didn’t have any cases at all at the dam.”

“The flies didn’t bring the disease with them,” I said. “I say flies...it might have been some other kind of bloodsucking insect. The flies just came themselves. When a species first moves into a new suitable habitat it often enjoys a spectacular success. The bloodsuckers from the south probably underwent a population explosion in the north, out-competing the local species that filled the same niche. Probably, the southern species were at an advantage because they’re adaptable—they’ll suck virtually anyone’s blood, while the northern ectoparasites are more specific.

“Anyhow, what I think has happened is that there appeared a transfer mechanism that didn’t exist before—out of the south came a vector capable of transmitting a disease endemic in the herdsmen’s animal populations—which doesn’t do the animals any lasting harm—into the Ore’l population. Ore’l had caught the disease before, but only under odd circumstances—direct contact with the blood of the beasts. Now, there’s a convenient vector for carrying the infection from person to person, from animal to person, from person to person, from animal to person, from person to animal...you see the pattern?”

“Can you prove this?” asked Charles.

“Probably,” I said. “I’ve already found the organism causing the disease—it’s a one-cell creature comparable with Earthly trypanosomes. It’s in the blood of the animals you brought back as well as the soldier’s. I’ve deduced the existence of the vector, but an expedition to the south ought to find that particular piece of the jigsaw with no difficulty.”

“There’s no time for that,” put in Jan. “Can you cure the disease?”

I shook my head. “I can’t effectively muster resources for a massive immunization program, even if I could make a serum,” I told him. “Not here. But there’s one thing we can be sure of, and that’s that the danger isn’t immediate here in the city. The soldier must have picked up the disease a long way back on the road—this kind of parasite can lay dormant a long time.”

“That’s something,” said Christian.

“It’s a temporary respite,” I told him. “Your methods of farming, relying as they do on considerable waterworks to irrigate land, will make things easy for the vector. The disease is already coming north. When it gets beyond the region where the herdsmen carry it around there’s always domestic livestock of half a dozen kinds, and there’s always the Ore’l. There’s no way of telling how much trouble the empire is in for in the long term. Maybe the cooler climate will set a limit on the vector’s range. Maybe other ecological factors will stop it. But one thing is certain, and that’s that this epidemic is going to kill one hell of a lot of people in the south, and how far north its depredations will spread year by year is anybody’s guess. The panic here in Ak’lehr may not last...but that isn’t going to solve the problem. No way.”

“We must be able to do
something,”
insisted Charles. “Immunization of some kind...show that at least we’re fighting this thing.”

“You’re asking for a medical miracle,” I said. “No one can deliver it here.”

I put slight emphasis on the word
here
—enough to make Jan ask: “What are you getting at?”

“On Lambda,” I said, “there’s a starship with a genetic engineering lab. In that lab I can make a medical miracle—not an immunity serum but a tailored virus that will knock out the disease-parasite. It’s fighting fire with fire—a bug to exterminate a bug. If I can make that virus and release it in the southern provinces...the epidemic would be rapidly checked, and inside two years you wouldn’t have a problem at all.”

There was silence.

Jan and Christian exchanged a long look.

Charles said: “Piet isn’t....”

He halted as Mariel entered the room.

“The fever’s passed,” she announced. “He’s still unconscious, but he’s not on the danger list as far as I can tell. You’d better come have a look at him.”

I nodded, and went without delay. I left the three brothers behind me. None of them followed. They had things to discuss.

I left them to it.

I finished dressing, and reflected that I’d missed breakfast yet again.

“It’ll pass,” I said. “Without a real epidemic, the panic can’t last.”

“It’ll pass,” agreed Jan. “If Ul’el doesn’t manage to persuade his fellow magisters that they ought to seize the opportunity to be rid of us. Rid of Piet, anyhow....”

“You think he’ll do that?” I asked. Jan held the door open for me, and I went through, waiting in the corridor for him to guide me to my meeting with the aristocracy of Y’su’s church.

“He’ll try,” said Jan. “But I don’t think he’ll succeed. It would reflect too badly on the church. They’re very careful to protect their image. No one in power stands to gain much from any kind of upheaval. Ik’ri and Ur’shere between them can hold Ul’el in check. And with his cooperation they can hold the rest. And who knows—maybe this new popular interest in disease will result in the rebuilding of the city sewers. Charles can abandon his dam and do some real work.”

I couldn’t make out whether he was covering up his anxiety with the sarcasm or whether he was really sure of himself. I decided upon the former. He was still worried about his own part in the affair, bringing Mariel, Nieland and myself into Ak’lehr.

We eventually came out of the endless maze of corridors into a small courtyard planted with four diamond-shaped flower-beds and a number of young trees. The sun was still high enough in the sky to cast shadows across the paved area at the end where we entered without shading the beds themselves. The three masters were waiting on the benches in the center of the courtyard. I presumed that the meeting-place had been deliberately chosen to emphasize the informality of the occasion.

Jan introduced me to the two who I hadn’t previously met, and then left. Within moments of his leaving I had forgotten who was who. They were similarly dressed, and their features all seemed to have a similar cast. I knew which of the three was Ul’el, but for some minutes while the conversations consisted of polite formalities I couldn’t separate the other two. They didn’t stay still, but moved around as they spoke. Then Ul’el referred to Ik’ri by name, and I grasped the opportunity to keep track of his movements thereafter, though I looked in vain for some feature by which to distinguish him from his colleague.

To begin with, we talked of nothing but generalities and matters of information they must already have had. They were sizing me up. I gathered that they had already talked to Nieland earlier in the day.

Eventually, though, they reached the matter in hand.

“With the aid of the ship that brought you here from Earth you can provide a cure for the disease that is spreading from the south,” said the one I was pretty sure was Ik’ri. It wasn’t a question.

“I can wipe out the disease-parasite,” I said. “That’s not quite the same thing as curing individual cases. What I propose to do is actually to make a virus—or to incorporate new genetic material into already-existing viruses—that will attack the parasite. The disease-organism will then suffer itself from an epidemic of plague. It will not be entirely obliterated, but there will be an equilibrium established which will never permit the disease-organism to undergo another population explosion. The disease will still exist—but it is not beyond your resources to come up with medicines for treating the symptoms in individual cases. You should be able to cut the mortality rate greatly.”

“How long would this take?” asked Ur’shere.

“That’s the worst of it,” I said soberly. “Jan’s ship can almost certainly get us back to the colony. But the
Daedalus
itself can’t fly around in a gravity well—near the surface of the planet, that is. If we’re to complete our mission we have to go directly on to the next world. So
Ilah’y’su
will have to bring us back again—or the virus, at least. It can be stored and shipped in crystalline form, so there’ll be no problem in handling it, but it will take time. It took the
New Hope
more than a hundred days to make the journey. For Ilah’y’su to go both ways it may take a hundred and eighty. She’s a slower ship, I think, but going from west to east she’ll have the prevailing wind to help her.”

“A hundred and eighty days,” echoed Ul’el.

“And another hundred for me to make the virus,” I said. “It’s not easy work. I may be able to do it in less, but I can’t guarantee it. The whole process can’t take less than half a year...and it’s likely that you won’t get your answer until next spring. I can’t work miracles...or, if I can, I can’t work them instantaneously.”

“In that time,” said Ul’el, “a great many will die.”

“There’s nothing can prevent that,” I said. “There are precautions—you can make war on the vector that is transmitting the parasite, you can get better medical care to the people in the south. It should be possible to find treatments that are effective to some degree in individual cases. But there is nothing that will stop the epidemic this summer. Until the winter kills the flies you can only fight a rearguard action against the disease.”

“If indeed, it cannot be defeated...,” said Ik’ri, half to himself. He didn’t follow through with the thought, but it was easy enough to understand the way his mind was working. To him, this was indeed a visitation from Y’su. He knew and understood what had happened—about all the causes of the disease. But in his world view it still remained to ask
why.
Why did the parasite exist at all? Why this curious geographical accident that had permitted it to get out of hand? Why
now
and not some other time? We are prepared to shrug our shoulders and acknowledge the role of chance, but in the Ore’l world view there was no such thing as chance. There was only Y’su...and his messengers. And, of course, his messages.

Ik’ri wanted to know what Y’su was trying to tell him by setting up the configuration of events in precisely this way and no other. It wasn’t an easy problem.

“Why must you return to your ship?” asked Ur’shere. “Why can you not work here?”

“I haven’t the equipment,” I answered.

“We will make it for you,” he said, as if it were the simplest thing in the world.

I shook my head. “You cannot. It will be hundreds of years before you can make the kind of machines required. Even under the guidance of men who know what is to be done and how. Knowledge is only a part of progress. There must be machines to make machines to make more machines, and machines to make machines to procure what is necessary to make yet more machines. The mind leaps quickly enough from one problem to the next, but the limiting factor is the hand that must do the making. There’s a lot of history still in front of you. Empires are not built overnight, as no doubt you know. The time is in the building, not in knowing what to build and how.”

Ul’el said something in his own language. I think the others frowned upon his impoliteness. I guessed that what he had said was something along the lines of: “I told you so.”

“You are willing to do this for us,” said Ik’ri, slowly. “You are willing to help us as the father of the children helped us?”

“Yes,” I said.

“And are there conditions attached to your help?” asked Ul’el. Again they might have frowned at him.

I hesitated a little. “Not as such,” I said. “I will do what I can to make sure that there is no further outbreak of the disease next year. There’s no price for that. I don’t want anything in return. But I think it necessary—for your sake as well as the colony’s—that this should be the foundation of a friendly relationship between the two continents.”

There was a brief silence.

“That is not what Bernhard Verheyden wanted,” said Ur’shere.

“Bernhard Verheyden was wrong,” I said flatly.

Ur’shere and Ik’ri exchanged a long glance. I could see the irony. In a way, I was almost adding the weight of my argument to the theory that the disease was a judgment of Y’su passed upon the people of Ak’lehr because they had adopted Bernhard Verheyden. They didn’t believe that—not in the way that the rumor-mongers believed it—but it was, to them, a plausible “explanation.” It was an acceptable way of thinking about the situation, not something that could be declared absurd. I knew full well that I was virtually setting myself up as new messenger from God, delivering a slightly amended version of the last message they’d received. I was doing everything that Piet Verheyden feared that I might—challenging his power and the authority of his father’s mission.