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just like that."
Markoff snapped his fingers loudly. It was a horrible sound. It wasn't a very
nice thought.
"There's one small thing," I said. "If these things are so incredibly potent,
why did nobody catch them till today, and why do most of the victims appear to
have noth-
ing worse than an upset gut?"
"The first's easy," said Markoff. "If these bugs have been deliberately turned
out to definite specifications, they weren't just turned out in a spare
moment. I don't know how any kind of a mutational filter is made to work, but
one thing I am certain of to turn a harmless bacterium into a deadly killer to
order takes thousands of generations, whether it's the struggle for existence
that evolves them or some weird intracellular gimmick. As for the second,
though..."
"These bacteria," said Charlot. "Two cocci, one bacillus. They're not all
mutations of a single original, then?"
"It's only an opinion," said the bearded man, "but I'd say no. The viruses as
well. They don't have a common ancestor. They're modifications of different
models, I'd say."
I saw what Charlot was getting at.
"The timing," I said. "All the men with bellyache have got the mark one. Varly
picked up the marks two, three, and four."
Charlot shook his head slowly. "No," he said. "There's too much method in this
for a sloppy explanation like that. Far too much. This was a simultaneous
release of several different types of organisms. Organisms carefully tailored
to just one purpose... No!
More than one purpose. They're big viruses, you said. Complex. Carrying more
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genetic information than would be required for a simple, single-minded killer.
We mustn't assume the hand of chance in this at all. This life-system has an
absolute stranglehold on chance. There's absolutely nothing haphazard about
the way Pharos went about putting this thing together. Varly's not the only
one infected with the
killers. Every man who's sick is carrying the same little bundles of instant
death, but they're lying dormant. Not only that every man who isn't sick is
carrying them too, but not even dormant. There are three stages of virus
infection the particle itself, the virion; the genetic element in attachment
to the chromosomal material; and the full-
scale subversion of cellular activity.
"The reason why ninety-five percent of those affected are showing nothing more
than minor gut sensitivity is because they haven't got anything worse than a
harmless gut infection. The disease that killed Varly is only incipient.
We you and I
and the rest of the healthy ones haven't even got that. In us, the bacteria
and the viruses are completely quiescent. No virus infection, no bacterial
multiplication preparatory to virus infection."
"It still only half makes sense," I said. "That may well be a very accurate
account as to how things are happening, from a medical point of view. But it
lacks logic."
Charlot looked into my face, and behind his watery eyes I could practically
see the relays clicking at the speed of light. But there was a hint of rage
and disappointment about his expression which told me that it didn't compute.
He was riding high as a kite on the tide of his own genius, but he couldn't
quite solve the equations. He knew what was happening, and I was as sure as he
was that he had it all figured right, but the answer just wouldn't fall out.
Always and forever this world was just one step ahead of Charlot's logic. We
kept finding more and more, digging deeper and deeper, but it just wouldn't
fall out.
"It's here," he said, cupping his hand. "But I just can't quite grasp it."
The tone of his voice suggested that he believed his illness to be responsible
for the fact that he couldn't quite grasp it. It was obvious that he thought
he ought to have the whole thing off pat. He might have been right. A healthy
Charlot might have anticipated this two days ago and stopped the whole thing.
Who could tell?
"Let's not, for the moment, bother about why," I said. "Let's think whether
there's anything constructive we can do about it."
"I agree entirely," said Markoff, who had been visibly put out by Charlot's
pent-up emotion and gesture of frustration.
"Prepare the immuno-serums," said Charlot. Markoff nodded. "That is already
being done," he said. "A matter of course. But so many of them ... a thousand
men and more to treat ... we have only limited facilities here. It will take
time we simply do not have. We will also treat the symptoms of those who are
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