Flight of the Maita Supercollection 3: Solving Galactic Problems Collector's Edition (72 page)

A virus is the
smallest of all living things, but can have the biggest effect on
all of them. The whole Kroon race could well be decimated by an
organism only the very finest and strongest of microscopes could
see and that no mind was large enough to really understand.

Such a small
thing!

He must keep
his ideas to himself. If it was seen as simply a distraction it
would fail. That must not happen.

The council
meeting was mostly upbeat while they discussed the ratification
vote and how it would best be handled. At noonmeal he received the
call from Sop Lett.

"Enn, what have
you done?" Sop asked. "Do you realize we have a maximum of fifty
days to chaos unless we can come up with a positive advance against
this plague here? We have lost control of that! Our position is
untenable!"

"Believe me,
Sop, I've taken that hard fact into consideration. I have a plan,
but it'll only add another one hundred days. I feel a hundred and
fifty days is all we'd have, at best. This will distract the people
more than anything I could think of.

"Believe me,
Sop! I'll listen more attentively than you would've thought
possible if you can give me something else!"

"Enn, please!"
Sop cried in exasperation. "What do you mean? You are not making
any sense! That is not at all like the Enn Far I know!"

"I'd think it
would be obvious. Once we have a constitution what does it say we
MUST do? You wrote the thing!"

There was a
silence that stretched on. "Well?" Sop finally asked.

"You wrote it!
What's the very first thing it requires of the people?"

"Enn, please!
Stop it!"

"Sop, the
constitution regulates the government. It tells us how to select
that government and it makes it the first order of business to
select that new government soon 'as reasonably possible.' The
maximum time an interim chairman may serve before an election is
one hundred days and a chairman may not succeed himself in two
consecutive elections. That means an election within one hundred
days of adoption of the constitution – AND it means I can get out
of this impossible position!"

"But you can be
elected first chairman. You may not be ELECTED to succeeding terms,
but you've never been elected before. You can then be chairman
every second election until you die!"

"Then I'll
refuse treatment if I get the plague! I've decided I'll place
either yourself or Hal Korr in nomination."

"ME!?! Great
gods, man! I am not material for the chairmanship! I am merely a
cowardly lawyer! What do I know of politics?"

"A lawyer who
wrote the constitution? You are not material? Surely you jest!
There isn't any person on this planet who's better qualified. No
one alive knows more about the processes and no one could better
lead us along the path of constitutional government."

"Enn, to be
completely honest about it this has never occurred to me before. I
have considered asking to be considered as Head State Attorney.

"Enn, there is
one person who is infinitely more qualified in all ways than I am,
but I need not ask to know he would flatly refuse
consideration.

"Hal is a
genius of the top tier. I will certainly back his nomination."

"Who's more
qualified than you?"

"Jak Tall. You
will never know how much of the constitution is his doing. You will
never know exactly how much of everything we have done on this
island is his doing. You will never know of his natural genius or
of his native abilities. He is as much of a genius as Hal, but he
has no training other than what he has given himself. The big
difference between them is that Hal would accept the chairmanship
as a duty if the people wanted him and would do a truly outstanding
job in that position while Jak would never show up for the
inauguration.

"Hal feels a
duty to whoever dumps on him while Jak can be conned by Mi Yinn,
but has been badly burned by being made to feel that he could have
been handed the responsibility for the whole race here. That was a
serious mistake, but a necessary one.

"In a way he
was, you know. He rose to the occasion and has an exemplary record
here, but he will not again be suckered in this and you are
perfectly well aware chairman is not a job any completely sane man
would want under any set of circumstances.

"I should have
made a clause in the constitution to beware of any who would
actively seek the job. Remember what the Mentan warned us about
concerning politicians and their motives?"

"It said, 'The
desire to hold public office is a desire for power over one's
fellows – a thing which should be used in the disqualification of
one from the holding of that office, but then that's what
politicians are. I should know. I'm the one it said it to when I
said I had no desire whatever to act as chairman."

They talked for
awhile like that, then hung up.

I just hope this works and I hope the time is
enough!
Enn
thought.
I
could run out of tricks very soon. One hundred fifty days – and
nothing in mind to follow!

Oh, gods!

* * * * * *

Jak Tall read
every book in the library on radiation and on viruses. In four days
he could have held his own with the ten top experts in each of
those fields. Nothing said he was right, but nothing said he was
wrong. He neglected everything while he was studying and took only
four hours a night for sleep and half an hour three times a day for
eating and other needs. Mi saw his concentration and gave strict
orders he was not to be disturbed. She had no idea what he was
doing, but she didn't for one second doubt it was important. Even
if it was no more than a new latrine installation it would be
important. She was the only one who knew of the full range of his
genius – well, maybe Sop Lett.

Jak Tall didn't
waste time, not ever, not for any reason.

Most things
were handled by his staff while he was studying and he simply
checked and okayed it, then began constructing a triply isolated
cell. He built the entire building by himself, then stocked the
small laboratory in it. That took six more days. It would have
taken a full crew ten.

He then toured
the area of the settlements on the three islands now occupied and
explained to the farmers, the fishermen and his crew what their
needs were and how best to meet those needs. He sat in his supply
shed for two days modifying equipment and building something. Hal
came to watch a bit, but didn't ask what he was doing.

He spent
another half day installing the thing he made in his isolation
shed, then spent the most of the remainder of the day carefully
checking every detail. He calibrated the electronics to the closest
tolerances he could manage and he learned to control the parts he
invented. He took the last two hours of daylight to ask Mi and Hal
to walk the mesa perimeter with him. They talked awhile on various
inconsequentialities before stopping to sit on a smooth rock on the
point overlooking the east shore of Tekif. They could see fishermen
building a pier across the glassine reef toward a large open
hole.

"They found the
hole has a limestone formation in the center and that fishes,
waterclaws and those flip-scooters are thick in there. Some of the
flipscooters weigh as much as six kilos," Jak explained. "They're
making this their permanent home, you know. They won't leave here
if we do. They'll never leave here and I think they've earned title
to the place."

"You'll never
leave these islands yourself and we all know it. You didn't ask us
out here to discuss fish or giant flipscooters."

Jak grinned and
inserted a fresh glamp twig between his teeth.

"I would've
thought you'd have used all of that up by now," Mi said.

"I grow my
own," Jak said, chewing the minty wood.

"But that's
illegal!" Mi cried.

"Call in the
army! Bomb the islands!" Hal cried. "What did you want to discuss
in this extreme privacy?"

"I want a
trained handler for the rodents and lots of badly infected
specimens," Jak answered. "I don't want to be asked to answer
anybody's questions and I don't want to be told how to do my
experiments. If it's not possible I don't want to know. I'll find
that out soon enough on my own. The bumblestinger can't fly. It
defies all the socalled laws of aerodynamics. It'll continue to fly
around making a nuisance of itself so long as no one convinces IT
of the impossibility it represents to physics and reason.

"Let me be a
bumblestinger learning to fly. Don't tell me it can't be done."

"I don't have
any vague idea what you're talking about. You can certainly have
all the technicians and all the lab assistants you want and no
questions asked. If whatever you want to do doesn't work you don't
have to tell anyone."

"I'll keep very
careful notes, which you may have when I'm through – whether it
works or not. I just have to start this my own way. I've studied it
from every available angle and there's no reason it CAN'T work. The
worst that'll happen is I'll have explored another thing no one
needs to waste their time on in the future.

"And
thanks."

"Do you want to
start today?" Hal asked.

"I was thinking
I could begin with twenty culture plates. Active ones. Tonight I
could get the first phase of the thing finished. I have an electron
microscope set up and I have computer records, but I'd appreciate
it if you'll show me how to tell which virus is dead and which is
alive and even what the virus looks like."

"I can do that
in a few minutes," Hal agreed. "You built isolation so we can
encase the virus cultures and can move them right in. You've
already set it up to grow all you want in your own isolation
room."

"I may need a
few more cultures, but I think the twenty will do it. Then the
rodents. The very worst infected ones only. I'll tell you right now
I may kill a lot of rodents!"

"No problem!
The way they breed you'd have to kill hundreds per day to make any
difference," Mi dismissed. "We keep the sexes separated except when
we need more. The breeding is very controlled by us. They don't
control it themselves. That's something they must've learned from
us!"

They walked
back to the labs where Hal helped the assistants pack the cultures,
then showed Jak how to use the microscope and how to identify the
more important things he would need to know. Jak went to the door
of his personal project, stopped, took a very deep breath and went
in. This was a lot of time and work and critical equipment. His
subconscious was as much as jumping out of his skull for joy. It
had been heard and understood.

It was very
different from the Jak Tall that others knew and admired so. Very
different

.

* *

Mi was
confused. Jak Tall was a genius who would never do anything to in
any small way jeopardize any of this critical work. That was as
certain as anything she knew or could know, but why the secrecy?
What was he doing? What had his genius discovered?

He'd entered
that shed last evening and stayed there for six hours, came out in
a very exhilarated mood and went directly to bed after asking for
the first rodents in the morning. That he had decided to work on
the plague was plain enough, but what was he doing? It was driving
her mad!

He was a
tinkerer. He had built something. Surely he didn't think a machine
could cure the plague? Obviously, he did.

He'd asked
about radiation several times in several ways and she assured him
that light, such as UV or infra-red, would kill the virus, but it
wouldn't penetrate the Kroon body. Nuclear types of radiation were
much more deadly than the virus if used in intensity enough to
penetrate. He wasn't the type to ignore those things that were so
well-known and that he had studied the research on for so long. Why
all the questions about the nerves? He asked her for a book not
found in the library about chain insertions onto the genetic matrix
and surprised her with knowledge most graduates didn't possess.

She'd say it
again. Jak Tall was a top tier genius! Hal was a top tier genius,
too. He could do anything he set his mind to do and had learned
more than she thought a historian capable of learning about the
virus. They were very different kinds of genius. Hal would
discipline his mind to solve a thing.... That's it! Hal is a strict
disciplined-mind genius while Jak is an undisciplined genius! They
sensed each other's specialness and reacted with respect for one
another as a direct result.

Specialness? Is
that a word? Who the hell cares?

Enn Far was yet
another form of genius. He was a plodder. He set his mind on a
problem and excluded other things until he solved it. That was his
difference. Jak and Hal could work on several things at one time,
but Enn Far must not be distracted. He thought much as she did, but
he had a certain reservoir she didn't possess. Many said she was a
genius, but she was mostly lucky. She couldn't think of herself in
those terms.

And Sop Lett?
Sop Lett was very clever. He had one quality that most clever
people did not have, and that was intelligence. He was anything but
a genius, but he could make one think he was the purest form of
brilliant. He was up to something. Mi knew with certainty it was
nothing she would feel was wrong or evil, like Ponn. Quite the
opposite. She was sure it was something quite good. He didn't have
the same value system as other people.

He was up to
something. She wondered what it could be. It had something to do
with the new constitution. He had been ever so single-minded about
that document. Did he want to be first chairman? She was damned if
she didn't think he could make it – and she was sure he would be a
good one. She wasn't sure he had the kind of psychology that would
make him want the job. He wanted something less, but what?