Authors: Elliot S. Maggin
She
jogged
her
last
half
mile
this
morning.
She
lay
down
in
her
bed
for
an
hour
today
for
the
last
time,
and
even
then
she
was
not
allowed
to
sleep.
Tomorrow
she
will
resign
from
both
of
her
secretarial
jobs.
She
has
been
weaned
from
her
normal
routine,
a
routine
that
was
fairly
new
to
her
when
I
began
the
weaning
process.
Her
body
is
adapting,
for
as
long
as
it
will
function,
to
a
new
routine
—
my
routine.
Some
weeks
ago
we
—
she
and
I
—
began
by
bringing
to
pass
a
number
of
emergency
situations
with
which
Superman
was
moved
to
deal.
These
included
a
ground
tremor,
two
mechanical
disasters
and
the
collapse
of
the
building
in
which
my
hostess
body
and
I
had
taken
up
residence.
We
currently
reside
in
a
small
apartment
in
the
building
inhabited
by
Lois
Lane,
one
of
the
women
from
whom
Kristin
Wells
will
soon
terminate
her
employment.
These
past
weeks
we
have
extended
our
power
over
the
face
of
this
world.
In
all
cases,
as
planned,
Superman
has
moved
to
avert
a
near
disaster.
In
Shoreham,
Long
Island,
Superman
compensated
for
an
excessive
nuclear
reaction
that
threatened
to
destroy
that
part
of
the
Atlantic
coast.
In
the
Marianas
Trench
I
awoke
a
hibernating
sea
creature
whose
interrupted
hundred-year
sleep
caused
it
to
be
hungry
for
the
creatures
—
most
of
them
human
—
on
board
an
oil
tanker
which
Superman
saved
before
he
put
the
creature
back
into
its
undersea
cavern.
In
Antarctica
I
caused
a
group
of
human
hunters
to
discover
the
secret
nesting
ground
of
millions
of
endangered
seals
so
that
Superman
had
to
build
the
animals
a
more
secluded
home.
In
the
sea
south
of
Singapore
I
threatened
a
shipload
of
homeless
refugees
with
a
rising
island
of
rock
and
Superman
raised
the
boat
over
the
menace.
I
have
caused
twins
in
their
mothers'
wombs
to
cease
separation
and
to
be
born
joined
at
inconvenient
parts
of
their
bodies.
I
have
coerced
world
leaders
to
great
crises
while
their
mental
and
emotional
perspectives
were
clouded.
I
have
brought
about
malfunction
in
the
controls
of
weapons
of
holocaust
such
as
nuclear
warheads
and
laboratories
of
cancer
and
plague
research.
I
have
compromised
the
world's
natural
balance,
and
the
mechanisms
men
have
raised
to
augment
that
balance.
In
all
these
cases,
as
planned,
Superman
has
thwarted
the
onset
of
chaos.
He
will
continue
to
do
so,
but
he
is
growing
weary.
It
will
be
after
I
destroy
the
creation
he
values
beyond
all
else,
beyond
even
his
own
realization,
that
I
will
tempt
him
beyond
even
his
ability
to
resist.
My
prey
has
had
several
busy
weeks.
He
will
soon
be
busier.
C.
W.
Saturn/Kristin
Wells
At
the
Onset
of
a
Frigid
May
Along with the fires, earthquakes, mechanical malfunctions, oceanic upheavals, uncommon belligerence of national leaders, an ominous spate of unusual births and birth defects—all of which contributed to a worldwide sense of malaise and possibly impending doom—there was the Itching Sickness. No one seemed to know very much about the Itching Sickness except for Dr. David Skvrsky. Everyone knew about Dr. David Skvrsky.
Skvrsky was one of those rare men, a few of whom show up in a generation, who seem to the world to be a vestige of a bygone era. No one could agree with anyone else, however, as to precisely in which bygone era Skvrsky belonged. In fact, for all his individuality, inventiveness, intrigue, for all the swash in his buckle, the mustachioed Skvrsky belonged to no age but his own. Above all, David Skvrsky was a physician, a man of twentieth-century reason and values.
Skvrsky was considered, in circles both informed and otherwise, to be the greatest diagnostician in the world. There was the story of how Skvrsky had created a stir when he turned up unexpectedly at a party in Washington, D.C., where, after noticing the grip of a welcoming handshake, the doctor told the Vice President of the United States that he had a calcium deposit on his shoulder that would have to be removed. Another time, while looking out the window of a passenger plane, Skvrsky had supposedly determined from the rhythmic wobbles the plane was making as it passed through some clouds that the pilot had an infection in his inner ear and that the copilot should take over the controls before the pilot tried to land the plane. There was the incident not long ago when Skvrsky predicted, on the basis of a photograph of the Soviet president in
Newsweek
, that an agreement on the SALT II treaty would be delayed so that the communist leader could recover from the stroke he would suffer sometime during the coming week.
As far as anyone could tell, Skvrsky spent most of his time out of the public eye's range of vision, being spotted occasionally at various locations around the world, honing his skills in medical research. That made him mysterious and thus more interesting when he periodically broke his anonymity with a public pronouncement. Often, other doctors were inclined to trust his judgment because they envied what they supposed to be his life-style.
A CARE volunteer swore he saw Skvrsky in Nicaragua after the devastating earthquake there, dressed like a seedy Roy Rogers, overseeing a neighborhood disaster clinic set up in a church in the ravaged city of Managua.
A group of West African villagers whose farmland had been reclaimed by the expanding desert told a French newsman that a man named David who fit Skvrsky's description had treated some of the village children for malnutrition and put the chief in touch with the national government's relocation administration.
More recently, a boatload of overcrowded but unanimously healthy Vietnamese refugees floated unannounced into San Francisco Bay with the story of how the miracle-working physician had dropped from a helicopter onto their deck somewhere in the south Pacific, examined ailing passengers and took blood samples. Then he synthesized, from a gel produced under the gills of sea bass, a serum to combat a virus that was sweeping the boat. Soon afterward, the health ministers of sixteen countries in Asia and North America received identical manila envelopes stuffed with formulas and explanations in their respective languages, detailing nearly a hundred cures, treatments and foods that could be made from this plentiful sea bass gel.
And so forth.
Skvrsky had been reported doing one thing or another this week in diverse parts of the world. Burma, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Togo, Colombia, Senegal, the Dominican Republic, Byelorussia, Liechtenstein and other places turned up, in just about that order, in a wild itinerary of Skvrsky sightings. A free-lance foreign correspondent from London named George Laderbush noticed, according to the "People" section of
Time
magazine, that someone claimed to have seen Skvrsky in each of those countries immediately following a reasonably reliable report of the outbreak of the Itching Sickness in each place.
Four days earlier in Reykjavik where, the day before, Superman had caught a toddler falling from a hotel window, there were three reports of Itching Sickness. Laderbush went there immediately, and yesterday's
Daily News
carried a story by a European stringer named John Hughes to the effect that Hughes's sometime collaborator Laderbush had run into Skvrsky in a hospital lobby there. According to the Hughes report, the only quotable phrase Skvrsky uttered to Laderbush was, "Can't you see I'm
busy?"
Meanwhile, through the courtesy of some force whose pattern only Superman was beginning to recognize, there had been plenty of short-lived phenomena of interest to scientists this week. The small staff of the Center for the Study of Short-Lived Phenomena, which occupied one floor of an old university building in uptown Metropolis, was busy enough this week. No one was prepared when Dr. David Skvrsky, in a Livingstonesque bush jacket and a three-day growth of whiskers, appeared at the head of the stairs and demanded the use of a telephone.
A young biologist trying to come up with some rational explanation for the strange red coloring that had lately appeared in the Nile River was summarily taken off a phone in favor of the eminent man. Within twenty minutes, Skvrsky was assured by the Under Secretary of Health and Human Services in Washington, that he would have all the federal money he needed to study and cure the Itching Sickness.
The illness had never been fatal so far, but the symptoms were nothing short of horrifying, and death was theoretically possible. It started, in each of its supposedly verified cases, with a severe form of eczema of the scalp. No matter what the patient's genetic background or natural hair condition, dandruff began to fall like snowflakes. The skin began to get scaly, and the condition spread quickly—in less than two hours in some cases—over the entire surface of the body. If the patient was not hospitalized, restrained and injected with massive doses of pain killer immediately, he or she was driven to scratch off two layers of skin. There were three cases, reported on three different continents, where those who had the disease scratched off their hair down to the follicles over the entire surfaces of their heads. Within two days, whether or not he or she was restrained and hospitalized, the patient resembled a vampire left out in the sun too long.
After four days, the Itching Sickness simply went away, often leaving nightmarish scars behind. It did not seem to be communicable between humans; there was no known virus or natural abnormality that seemed to cause it; there was no apparent reason for it to disappear after four days. No one but Skvrsky had any idea why it popped up in the far-flung and diverse places it appeared. Skvrsky said that he had an idea of the disease's source, but that it was no more than an idea.
At the Center for the Study of Short-Lived Phenomena, Skvrsky was brisk and oppressively competent. In the main reception room there were a collection of cluttered and disheveled cabinets, a secretary-receptionist at a small desk, enough folding chairs to seat all eleven staff members who were generally in the building, and a blackboard with chalk. Within three minutes of the end of his telephone call to the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Skvrsky assembled the entire staff and held their complete attention.
"I have prepared a list," Skvrsky began, "of the reported locations of the so-called Itching Sickness incidences during these past six weeks. I also have another longer list of cases which I have personally learned of through various contacts in parts of the world normally inaccessible o the American public. I have mimeographed the documentation for you. You will please hand these out to everyone, my dear. Thank you. As you can see from page six of my report . . . I said page six of my report, young man, and it might be appropriate for you to turn there in order to perpetuate the illusion that you a paying attention to me . . . as you can see, the two most serious cases of outbreak occurred this past week in the cities of Shanghai and Medina, two locations all but totally cut off from Western contact. Those of you who have seen fit to browse ahead of my fascinating narrative have doubtless encountered some consternation at finding a day-by-day account of Superman's known whereabouts during a period roughly thirty-six hours preceding the disease's appearances. On page eleven . . . that is page eleven, young man. You'd better keep up because we're easing on into the exciting climax now . . . is a chronological correlation between Superman's presence and the outbreak of the disease. Apart from some predictable gaps in the data, you—even the gentleman over there in the flowered shirt, I suppose—can deduce from the information here that the disease's appearance consistently follows by approximately thirty-six hours the appearance by Superman in that area.
"You will see, for example, that in Shanghai seven days ago Superman, according to an associate of mine in the Chinese Ministry of Health, saved the lives of several score people when the walls of the sixth floor of a nine-story hospital building mysteriously disintegrated. I of course have only speculation to lead me to an explanation of why the sixth floor wall disintegrated, but I can surmise with relative certainty that Superman is carrying the Itching Sickness, because five days ago thirty people in that Shanghai hospital, including two lab technicians and four doctors, came down with it. I have reason to believe that the Kryptonian is carrying the disease in his indestructible hair and, immune to it himself, is passing it on to people with whom he comes in contact. Considering the fact that our suspected carrier's daily itinerary may routinely include the entire globe and several neighboring planets and star systems, I do not suppose that we have any hope of finding out where he picked it up, but that is quite irrelevant. I propose to cure it."