Now both plagues were spreading like gossip across the whole Sino-Russo-Siberian axis, to the point where the soviet government system had broken down and pleas were being sent via the space stations for U.N. help. What had happened?
Out of my own mind I put the pieces together; I looked up the Old Man again. “Boss—there were slugs behind the Curtain.”
“Yes.”
“You knew? Well, for cripes sake—we’d better do something fast, or the whole Mississippi Valley will be in the shape that Asia is in. Just one rat, one little rat—” I was thinking back to my own time among the slugs, something I avoided doing when possible. The titans did not bother about human sanitation. My own master had not caused me to bathe, not once. I doubted if there had been a bath taken between the Canadian border and New Orleans since the slugs dropped the masquerade as unnecessary. Lice—Fleas—
The Old Man sighed. “Maybe that’s the best solution. Maybe it’s the only one.”
“You might as well bomb them, if that’s the best we have to offer. It would be a cleaner way to die.”
“So it would. But you know that we won’t. As long as there is a chance of cleaning out the vermin without burning down the barn, we’ll keep on trying.”
I mulled it over at great length. We were in still another race against time. Fundamentally the slugs must be too stupid to keep slaves; perhaps that was why they moved from planet to planet—they spoiled what they touched. After a while their hosts would die out and then they needed new hosts.
Theory, just theory—I brushed it aside. One thing was sure: what had happened behind the Curtain would happen in Zone Red unless we found a way to kill off the slugs, and that mighty soon! Thinking about it, I made up my mind to do something I had considered before—force myself into the mind-searching sessions being conducted on Mary. If there were something in her hidden memories which could be used to kill slugs, possibly I might see it where others had failed. In any case I was going in, whether Steelton and the Old Man liked it or not. I was tired of being treated like a cross between a prince consort and an unwelcome child.
XXX
Since our arrival Mary and I had been living in a cubicle about the size of a bass drum. It had been intended for one junior officer; the laboratory had not been planned for married couples. We were as crowded as a plate of smorgasbord but we did not care.
I woke up first the next morning and made my usual quick check to be sure that a slug had not gotten to her. While I was doing so, she opened her eyes and smiled drowsily. “Go back to sleep,” I said. “You’ve got another thirty minutes.”
But she did not go back to sleep. After a while I said, “Mary, do you know the incubation period for bubonic plague?”
She answered, “Should I know? One of your eyes is slightly darker than the other.”
I shook her. “Pay attention, wench. I was in the lab library last night, doing some rough figuring. As I get it, the slugs must have moved in on our commie pals at least three months before they invaded us.”
“Yes, of course.”
“You knew? Why didn’t you say so?”
“Nobody asked me. Besides, it’s obvious.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake! Let’s get up; we’ll be late for breakfast.”
Before we left the cubicle I said, “Parlor games at the usual time this morning?”
“Yes.”
“Mary, you never talk about what they ask you.”
She looked surprised. “But I never know.”
“That’s what I gathered. Deep trance with a ‘forgetter’ order, eh?”
“I suppose so.”
“Hmm . . . well, there will be some changes made. Today I am going in with you.”
All she said was, “Yes, dear.”
They were gathered as usual in Dr. Steelton’s office, the Old Man, Steelton himself, a Colonel Gibsy who was chief of staff, a lieutenant colonel whom I knew only by sight, and an odd lot of sergeant-technicians, j.o.’s, and flunkies. In the army it seems to take an eight-man working party to help a brass hat blow his nose; that is one reason why I left the service.