Flight of the Maita Supercollection 3: Solving Galactic Problems Collector's Edition (68 page)

Hal danced
around and said it worked, that they had cured the rodents of the
virus and Mi had to tell him they had stopped the spread of the
virus in those receiving the highest doses and that would be the
effect in the upper midrange of dosage, but the virus already part
of the nervous system was still there.

"Love, this
gives us time to find a cure! The one thing we must have and didn't
have was time. Now we have it. People won't be infectious and won't
die nearly so quickly with this kind of medication. We now have
TIME! THAT'S the thing we MUST have and you gave it to us! IF we
can use this on the Kroon race you've saved us from
destruction!"

Su Neaa, lab
director of the isolation areas, led another young girl into the
room. "Mi, this is the bravest and silliest girl I've ever seen.
She's called Tu Hupp.

"Last evening
she injected herself with a midrange dosage of the serum."

"Injected
yourself!" Mi cried. "Girl! Whatever for?"

"Because it
wasn't harming the rodents and we must know if it would harm the
Kroon and I knew no one would allow anyone here to test it so I did
and I'm not one little bit sorry at all! I don't care what you
say!

"No one –
believe me, NO one – is happier than I that it can be reported that
the serum is not fatal. Not immediately, anyway. I've written down
every one of my reactions, both physically and psychologically. I
noticed that the injected rodents became a bit ... different."

She handed a
sheaf of notes to Mi.

"If you weren't
such a hero I'd reprimand your stupid use of yourself in this
beyond your wildest nightmares," Mi said. "As it stands I'm
more.... Thank you, girl, but there has to be more than this. Why?
Why would you do such a dangerous impetuous and foolish thing,
girl? What's really behind it?"

"Because my
brother and father both have the infection," she answered simply
and turned to go.

Mi read the
notes and wrote down:

Severe head
pains.

Blurred
vision.

Paranoia.

Accelerated
pulse rate and increased blood pressure.

Hearing of
strange sounds.

Fear
(Undirected.)

Pain (Dull and
not localized.)

Exhaustion.

Subject awoke
refreshed, but confused. Said confusion lessens as routines are
re-established.

Snappishness
increases with the mild stimulants in bev. Almost to point of
rage.

Sensitive to
heat.

Light hurts
the eyes, but that passes after a short while.

Feelings of
frustration bordering on rage decline.

Symptoms
disappear within two hours after awakening.

Food?

Mild headache,
slight nausea. Not debilitating.

Mi picked up
the com to call Enn Far.

*

Enn Far hung up
the com and almost danced across the room. He had spoken with Mi
Yinn. She reported that Hal Korr, of all the people on those
islands, discovered something that could POSSIBLY alleviate those
afflicted by plague to a minor degree IF it would work on people at
all. Enn was to begin requesting the doctors treating sufferers get
volunteers.

When Mi Yinn
said a thing was barely possible it was a sure sign it was a major
discovery. She was the most cautious person he could imagine. It
was possible it was as slight as she said, but not likely. This WAS
their first real breakthrough! It was true he mustn't react too
strongly in case the thing was a failure, but it WAS a major
breakthrough. The direction of research they discovered earlier was
about to pay off. He could feel it!

Ponn! Call
Ponn!

He took up the
comset and waited until Ponn was located. The doctor was with
patients. He was also researching on his own and had found
something that may be valuable if the reports Enn had heard were
true. While he was too modest to mention it himself there were
reports he was using something he made in his own labs and was
giving it to the worst affected patients at less than cost.

"Nil? We want
you to get some volunteers together to test a new serum or
something," he greeted.

"If you're
joking I'll personally strangle you to death," Ponn replied. "I
volunteer. I'll get as many as I can – far more than you can
use."

"I'm to tell
you this is totally untested, that there are very serious side
effects, it may not work at all. Because of the way the thing's
supposed to work it could even accelerate the plague in some.
There's still a chancy period."

"If it doesn't
kill you or destroy your nervous system it's better than the
plague. How soon can I get the stuff? A year ago?"

"Tomorrow. Mi
is mixing the stuff now and is printing up the dosages and so
forth. Someone named Jak is making a pickup bag for the
copters."

"Enn, this is
wonderful! It's almost like shock to ... this is wonderful!"

"Don't get
anyone's hopes up too high! We could get riots if we promise more
than we can deliver."

"Gods, don't I
know it! I'll personally be standing on the pad to take the
serum.

"Do you know
how it works?"

"I have some
idea. Don't use it on yourself until you see the likely side
effects. If it renders you unconscious for ten days it would be
unwise for the doctor to be under its influence too soon."

"Could be.
Background me."

"It's a
discovery by our friend, Hal Korr," Enn answered. "It causes the
virus to grow out of control and to become weakened. It seems to
leave out part of the chains, whatever they are, and the virus
dies. Mi says it'll give us some needed time, but she's cautious to
an extreme as to whether or not it'll prove of real value."

"We can only
wait and hope. I see her reservations, but I won't say anything for
the moment. It could backfire after we see what seem to be
improvements on primary cursory examination.

"In other words
it may look good at first, but prove worthless. This is NOT a cure,
Enn. It may be a way to stop the spread of the virus and to give us
some time to find a real cure. It could stop it from getting worse
in the patient. Maybe it'll cause only a very temporary remission.
It'll probably buy us a year or something."

They hung up
and Enn smiled at the world. A year – and hope! This was, as Ponn
said, wonderful!

The com buzzed
again. It was Sop Lett. Sop said he was going to include a package
for the eyes of Enn Far only. He was to be ready for it.

Good news often
arrives in bunches. It had to be the constitution and for the first
time in a long while he could spend a little time reading it over.
He could now concentrate on something other than a horrible
sickness. This constitution could cure some fatal sicknesses itself
– if it wasn't a false remedy. What had Nil Ponn called it?
Temporary remission? For the first time in a long while there would
be a point to considering such a document. Maybe it would be an
important cure, too!

I'm giddy. I'm
silly. I don't care!

Okay. This
wasn't a cure, but it could be used to stop the spread of the virus
so the race would survive. That was enough!

* * * * *

Something was
nagging at him. Something in the hidden recesses of his mind was
trying to get out. It happened at times and there was always
something there. It would come out. Patience was all he needed.

Jak Tall knew
it would come out in its own time and couldn't be forced. He sat on
the rock looking over the sea and took out another glamp twig. He
inspected it minutely not actually seeing it at all and tasted it
before inserting it into the side of his mouth.

He was addicted
to the damned things. It was a dirty habit and one that would
shorten his life and make him prone to certain diseases, but
everyone had one vice or another – stupid excuse for a stupid
habit.

They had found
the first step to stopping the virus. He, along with them all, was
exonerated for running off to these islands to hide from death for
a little while. Now they must do more. They must cure it. There was
no lessening of responsibility to any of them except the historian
who had given this small reprieve.

Well, he
wouldn't have to live with the high possibility it would fall to
him to keep the race alive. It wasn't a thing he was very keen on
from the first.

Sop Lett put
the "original" document of the new constitution, along with six of
the slick copies, into a package marked for Enn Far's eyes only. It
was supposed to go with the serum.

Mi Yinn, Hal
Korr, Sop Lett, some girl named Tu Hupp, had signed the "original"
handwritten document, as had he. Jak Tall was written largely and
firmly across that sheet. It was written proudly. It was a document
to be proud of.

Jak knew he had
much to do with the final formulation of the document and he was
certain it would become the model for many other nations to emulate
so he signed it large and firm.

Proudly!

(He could not
know it would someday become the most important document on the
world of Kroon, that it would someday become the constitution of
the whole planet or that his large, firm, proud signature would
become legend. Even hundreds of years later the expression "Put you
Jak Tall right there" would still mean "Place your signature on an
important document." "Jak Tall" would one day become synonymous
with "signature.")

Jak always had
insight and he was always the smartest person around. He just hid
it well as a general rule. Life was easier that way – not the
smartest person, perhaps, but the wisest. He kept the fact hidden
as best he could. He had little education, had in fact taught
himself most of what he knew. He had a very quick mind and could
learn virtually any subject with ease, but had chosen working with
things, tools. He was inventive and curious. He was a natural
problem solver. He had an orderly mind-set through conscious
effort. He trained himself to place everything in its own place in
memory and to reduce the most complicated things to their simplest
terms.

He was also
somewhat poetic. He could place a thing in its most artistic form
as well.

The helicopter
pickup bag was ready and the thing should be there in minutes. It
would fly in from directly in front of him, hover, drop the hook,
lift the sack and go. Everything would be sooooo sterile! They
still thought there was a virulent form of the plague here and Jak
had been told it was hard to find anyone to fly the copter above
the island. They would know there was serum in that package so
anyone with a positive for the infection would give their backside
for the honor of coming after it.

The copter came
to hover over the pickup point and two people waved at him. He
waved back and took the box of equipment they dropped off into Mi's
lab. He passed it through the UV sterilizer then shed the clear
plastic suit. It wouldn't do for the people on the copter to know
those careful precautions taken were to prevent contamination from
THEM!

Damn it! Was he
so dulled? There was that tugging at his mind as he took the box
from the UV chamber. Something he had heard or seen or read and
that his subconscious had added to something else wanted out! The
UV chamber brought it closer to the surface.

That was silly.
Any intensity of UV would cook the Kroon along with any virus!

It had
something to do with wavelength. That was sure. Light was deadly to
the virus, but light didn't penetrate the Kroon body. Not even UV
and, while the wavelength of UV went up to X- ray.... X-rays? Could
that be it?

He took the box
to Mi Yinn and waited until she looked up at him.

"Will X-rays
kill the virus?"

"Yes.
Definitely," she answered. "Anything in the shorter ranges of
light. It ionizes the gene chains and they break up. It won't work
as a cure, though. Anything intense enough to destroy the virus
would kill the person."

He nodded. That
was much what he thought would be the case.

Outside he
stopped to let it sink into his subconscious that high intensity UV
or X-rays were out of the question. They wouldn't work. It was
experimented with and had failed. All aspects of that were proved
futile. Forget upper-limit radiations. No way.

Well, maybe
something higher than X-rays, but those would be fatal as the
energy expansion in those wavelengths would tear a body apart. They
would cook the internal organs. Forget it. Don't waste time on
what's been shown to not be workable. That would be
counter-productive at best.

He had always
had more trouble convincing his subconscious of a thing than he had
learning a whole new field, but he was aware that most of his
inventiveness was due to active subconscious processes. He had
formulated a way to reach that part of his brain. It was to present
his case in many ways and strongly. If he was wrong it would come
out. The subconscious, if it knew a thing, would never let it go,
but if it was speculating it could be convinced when it was on the
wrong track.

X-rays won't
work. UV won't work. We don't have the time to spend on things that
won't work. X-rays will kill. UV will cook. They won't work!

He felt as
though his subconscious said, "I know it!" very smugly. The nagging
increased.

There was no
way to hurry the process. It would eventually come out in its own
time. The fact that time was the commodity in shortest supply here
meant nothing to Jak Tall's subconscious.

He walked
slowly back to the kitchens where he poured a cup of bev, then sat
on a table to think. He was there for more than an hour, but
couldn't bring out what was nagging at him.

Well, while he
was there he may as well recheck everything, but all the facilities
were exactly where they should be. No more shorts or leaks.