Inferno: A Chronicle of a Distant World (The Galactic Comedy) (21 page)

At first it was known as the Thinning Sickness, and finally, when doctors diagnosed the nature of the disease, it received its official name, an acronym that actually described the effects: SLIM, for Subclinical Lusinemia-Imperiled Metabolism. But while doctors understood the effects of the disease, they still had not discovered the cause.

One Christian sect declared that this was God's punishment, that the jasons were a sinful and wicked race, but it didn't make many converts, since most jasons, whether they felt sinful or not, were convinced they had already undergone their share of suffering and then some.

Barioke, for his part, had ignored SLIM, but by the time Dushu took over the reins of power it was too widespread to ignore. Since he was not only the president but the leader of the military, and a beleaguered military at that, his only thought was to find a way to harness the disease and spread it among Krakanna's followers, but since medical science hadn't yet determined the cause of it, nothing ever came of his efforts.

Soon various relief organizations learned of SLIM's existence, and sought permission to land on Faligor and treat the victims. Dushu tried to turn their offer to his advantage, and explained that he could not guarantee their safety under the present conditions, but that if James Krakanna and his followers would throw down their arms and surrender, he would welcome all the humanitarian aid he could get.

Krakanna's answer, not surprisingly, was to blow up two munitions dumps and a subspace transmitting station, and that was the end, at least temporarily, of the relief organizations' efforts to help Faligor's SLIM victims.

It was when two of Dushu's sons came down with the disease that he sent a private message to Krakanna, offering to call a temporary truce long enough to led relief and medical workers land of Faligor and start treating SLIM victims. Krakanna answered that if Dushu's army would throw down their arms and Dushu himself would surrender control of Romulus and Remus, Krakanna would be happy to allow the workers to land, but there could be no truce. After all the abuses and bloodshed, he would accept nothing short of total surrender.

And that is where things stood five weeks after Arthur Cartright returned from James Krakanna's headquarters.

30.

The actual battle was brief but bloody.

Krakanna attacked before dawn, striking not at Remus, which was closest to his position, but at Romulus, which was not as heavily fortified. By the end of the day the fall of Romulus was inevitable, but it took a week of house-to-house fighting before the city was secured and his army moved on to Remus.

Cartright had delivered his message to the Republic, which sent a large contingent of medics to the system but kept them in orbit even after Romulus had fallen. They were not about to risk a single human life on this crazed, bloodthirsty planet, and they refused to land until Cartright could guarantee them that Dushu's government had fallen and that the streets of both Romulus and Remus were safe.

The attack on Remus was even more savage. The children fought without fear and without mercy, their war cries sounding like the ululations of females above the din of battle. Four hours into the fighting, Dushu realized that his forces were going to lose, and he quietly left the city along a pre-arranged escape route, accompanied by his most trusted advisors and a handful of bodyguards.

As with Romulus, even after the city had fallen, Krakanna's troops were faced with house-to-house battles for the next three days. When it was obvious that victory had been achieved, the Republic finally sent down its medical teams, which found that they had their hands full right on the battlefield before they could even begin to go into the hinterlands among the SLIM victims.

31.

Dear Miss Beddoes:

I regret to inform you of the death of Arthur Cartright. He was instrumental in our efforts to free Faligor from the yoke of tyranny, and he devoted himself to our cause right up until the end.

He was shot and killed by a sniper as he was escorting a Republic medical team through the streets of Remus on a humanitarian mission to aid the wounded of both sides.

As you know, he had no family, and he had willed all his belongings to you. We are holding his effects until such time as you can retrieve them, or direct us in their disposition.

Regretfully,

J. Krakanna, Acting President

CARBON

Interlude

You work on the jason children, stabilizing four, losing one, not a particularly bad percentage given their initial appearance, and then you walk away, overwhelmed by the death and destruction all around you. You are a doctor, you have spent your life with the sick and the injured, but you have never encountered them in these quantities before.

Determined to get away from the carnage for just a few minutes, you wander off to the south end of town, but as you approach the savannah just beyond the edge of the city you see huge earth-moving equipment unearthing a grave that must hold five hundred decayed corpses. You wonder which of the three crazed presidents was responsible for this, and then shrug: does it really matter?

You realize that there is no escape from the dying and the dead, and you head back toward the city center to see if you can be of further use. As you do so, you come to a medical clinic. It is a small building, and you enter it, wondering if there are any wounded who might have taken refuge here.

The building is empty. The scattered instruments in the operating room are primitive by your standards, the supply of drugs and medications almost non-existent. The recovery room isn't much better; the "bed" is actually a converted kitchen table.

The roof has caved in, and there is dust everywhere. When you concentrate you can still hear the crack of distant rifles, the hum of laser weapons, the gentle purr of sonic pistols being trained in different directions.

Once again you mutter the question aloud: "How did it come to this?"

And you are startled to receive an answer in thickly-accented Terran.

"Come in here," says a voice from the recovery room, as you jump, startled, by its presence, "and I will tell you everything you want to know . . ."

32.

"Come in here, and I will tell you everything you want to know."

I walked into the recovery room, and found an old jason sitting on the bed, his back propped up against the wall.

"Have you been wounded?" I asked.

"No," he replied. "I came in here when I saw the medics leave after the roof was hit. It seemed safe." He paused and twisted his lips into a smile. "Why would anyone bomb a hospital twice?"

"I'm still trying to figure out why they'd bomb it once," I said.

"Because it's here, and Sibo Dushu isn't going to leave anything for the next president to use." He slowly swung his feet to the floor. "I'm sorry that this had to be your first view of Faligor. It was once a very beautiful world."

"I should be getting back to my work," I said. "There are still victims to be tended to."

"You look exhausted," said the jason. "Sit down and rest. There will still be victims when you leave here."

It occurred to me that I
was
exhausted, and I sat down on a chair and took my helmet off.

"My name is Winston Maliachi," he said. "I am pleased to make your acquaintance."

"I am Captain Milton Papagolos," I replied.

"Captain? I thought you were a doctor."

"A military doctor."

"How long will you be stationed here?" asked Maliachi.

"As long as it's necessary," I said.

"Let us hope it is a long time."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Neither side will risk shooting any Men. They don't want the Republic interfering."

"As a matter of fact, we came here at the request of James Krakanna," I pointed out.

"Really?" he said. "Then perhaps he won't be as bad as the others."

"You were going to tell me about all this," I said, indicating the destruction in the street. "How does an intelligent race choose three successive genocidal maniacs for leaders?"

"You are laboring under two misapprehensions," said Maliachi. "First, we didn't
choose
them, and second, they weren't maniacs. Not all three of them, anyway."

"The one who received all the publicity back in the Republic was Gama Labu," I said.

Maliachi nodded. "Well, he
was
crazy. Not at first, but eventually."

"And the other two weren't?"

"No."

"How can a sane being kill off millions of his countrymen?"

"Expediency," answered Maliachi.

"Expediency?" I repeated.

"Oh, yes, Captain Papagolos."

"Tell me how the hell all this can be justified by expediency."

"I can't," he said. "I can only tell you how
they
justified it. It is an interesting story." He paused. "And when I am done, I will have a favor to ask of you in return."

"What favor?"

"It can wait."

"Ask it now," I said.

He shrugged, sending almost hypnotic ripples across his golden fur. "All right," he said. "The events I am going to recount to you have left me without a family, a job, any money, or even a roof over my head." He paused. "During the length of time that you are stationed on Faligor, you will need help: a servant, a cook, an interpreter, perhaps a guide. I will be all these things for you, in exchange for food and shelter, and, if you can afford it, a nominal wage."

"I don't need a servant," I said. "Or any of those other things, either."

"I wasn't asking on
your
behalf," he said wryly.

"You won't find it demeaning?"

"Certainly I will," he replied.

"Then why—"

"It's been a long time since I was demeaned on a full stomach," he said. "I can learn to adjust."

I shrugged. "All right, Maliachi," I said. "You've got a deal."

He thanked me and the proceeded to give me a brief but thorough synopsis of Faligor's recent history, from the beginning of Arthur Cartright's well-meaning experiment through the progressive terror of Labu, Barioke and Dushu. He told me of James Krakanna's long years in the wilderness, living off the land and the charity of impoverished villagers, waiting for his army to grow both in numbers and age, and how he had finally mobilized against Sibo Dushu.

"We have learned not to put too much trust in our leaders," concluded Maliachi dryly, "nor to hope too optimistically for a better future, but hope is nourishment for the soul, and our souls have had very little sustenance for the past decade, and so, despite all of our recent history, we hope once again. Perhaps Krakanna will keep his promises, or at least some of them."

"Have you any reason to believe he will?" I asked.

"He seemed an industrious and honorable being when I knew him, but that was many years ago."

"You knew Krakanna?"

"I went to school with him."

"What did you do for a living?"

"I taught philosophy at Sabare University," he answered.

"And now you are reduced to being the servant of an alien being," I said sympathetically.

"No, Captain Papagolos," he replied. "I have been elevated to the rank of servant."

"Elevated?"

"It is more than I was an hour ago."

"What did you say you taught?"

He smiled. "My specialty was pragmatism."

33.

It was his pragmatism that had kept Maliachi alive. It taught him never to trust a politician, so while all his colleagues were listening to Labu's promises, he was already preparing for the worst. He learned protective coloration, and while all the other intellectuals were being murdered, he was able to pass himself off as a peasant farmer. Since he couldn't farm, he became an adept thief, and since the people he lived with had nothing to steal, he eventually went back to the city to prey upon politicians.

In a totalitarian society, the most valuable commodity is information, since the government guards it so jealously, and for the past four years Maliachi had kept alive by obtaining information and selling it. Nothing big like military secrets, since there was no market for them, but little things, things people like myself who had grown up in a free society never thought about, like which stores were selling tainted food, which tax collectors could be bribed, and which tribes were about to fall into disfavor with the government.

So it was not surprising that when I mentioned that I needed a place to stay, Maliachi told me that he knew of a house that had recently become available, if it hadn't been destroyed in the fighting. It turned out to have belonged not to a jason but a Man, Arthur Cartright, about whom Maliachi had told me so much.

I protested that we couldn't simply move in, that the estate must still own the house. But Maliachi assured me that it would stand empty until Cartright's heir, who lived many light years away, decided what to do with it, and that he would take care of the legalities once the new government's bureaucracy was established. I still didn't like it, but after I found out that the three main hotels in Remus had been destroyed in the fighting, it was either move into the house or stay in our temporary barracks. Being a captain and a doctor were supposed to afford me some advantages, so I finally agreed.

The house seemed in fine repair from the outside, as if the revolution had somehow missed it, but when I opened the door I saw that most of the furniture had been looted. Maliachi assured me that replacing it presented no problem. About the only thing remaining were the book and tape shelves, filled with tomes on sociology, cartography, politics, and a surprising large section on utopian philosophy.

Most of the kitchen appliances were gone, but the stove and sink, which had been built into the structure of the house, remained, and I made sure that both the power and water were operative.

"Once, when the house was first built," said Maliachi, pointing out one of the windows, "you could see thousands of animals grazing out there. On a clear day, when the mists rise, you can see the Hills of Heaven."