Seed of Stars (20 page)

Piet felt a sudden thud of caution. "I ... I came to see what it was."

"When did it start?"

Piet told him, and was interrupted after a couple of sentences by the arrival of two more fire floats. The officer broke away and went to confer with the new arrivals. The floats lifted again and took up station to encircle the fire, before disembarking men who followed the same drill as the first team. But as far as Piet could see the foam was making little impression. The fire was all-consuming, as if the disaster, whatever it was, had succeeded in setting up a slow chain reaction in hitherto nonradioactive matter.

The officer returned to Piet. "You live around here —see it all?"

"Yes." Suddenly Piet realized the particular difficulty he was in. This officer would want a statement...

"About what time did—?"

"Matsu!" someone shouted. "Have you got the temperature clock there?"

The officer questioning Piet turned to address the man who had called, and Piet took the opportunity to walk away. He had gone about fifty meters when he heard someone calling. He broke into a run, cursing his luck. There were no survivors on whom he could exercise his medical skill. The only result of his errand had been to attract the attention of the fire officer, who would surely get in touch with the police in order to trace such an important witness.

Kenji Sato was alone in the office of the hospital superintendent Recognizing that he was unsteady, through anxiety and overwork, Mary Osawa had ordered him out of the delivery room, and he had accepted that order almost gratefully, content to leave the task in her more capable hands. In the meantime he had called Dan Shimaza, Yoko's mining-engineer husband in western Minashu, and Shimaza was already on his way to Main City by the first available jet flight. And now there was nothing to do but wait ... his hands trembling, resisting with difficulty the urge to take a heavy shot of methidine.

Dragging himself from his chair, he walked across to the wall screen and switched on just in time to catch the first newscast of the day.

". . . at the crossroads of a small village named Tamah, about ten kilometers east of Main City." The newsreader's voice went on describing, as the screen showed the devastated area in shocking detail. .. said that the topsoil is now burned down a matter of ten to fifteen centimeters. . . ." The screen showed a black, flattened depression, with a few irregularities at the center which had once been the houses and other buildings at the crossroads. ". . . combined fire forces managed to stamp out the conflagration after a desperate eight-hour fight, and scientists are now examining the area in an attempt to discover the cause of the disaster. In this respect, police and fire authorities would like to interview a tall man who appeared to be of mixed Asiatic and Western parentage, and is believed to have been one of the first people on the scene after the occurrence of the outbreak. Casualties are difficult to assess at this time, but it is believed that over a hundred and fifty people living in the area of the Tamah crossroads must have perished...."

His face rigid with shock, Kenji Sato switched off the TV screen and hurried to the desk vidphone.

He sagged with relief when his wife's face appeared in the small screen. "The Lord Buddha be praised— you are all right, Tana?"

"Yes, Kenji. We were far enough from the center of the disaster to suffer nothing more than a few damaged windows," she reassured him.

He remembered the tall Eurasian, whom the TV announcer had mentioned. "And our visitors?"

"They are also unharmed," said Tana. "Don't worry about us. How is Yoko? Is there any news yet?"

"Not yet, my love. I will call you again as soon as I have anything to tell." He hesitated. "You're sure you're all right? I could come, if you need me. There's little I can do here, at the moment"

"No—you must stay there near Yoko. She needs your strength by her at this time. Goodbye, Kenji."

"Goodbye. . .." Sato switched off the vidphone, and sat staring at its blank screen.
My strength!
How can Tana go on believing in my strength when at this time I am less than useless? Unable to help Tana, or Yoko, impotent, useless and old. He thought of Huygens, who was there at the house with Tana—would he be of any help in an emergency?

He started, as the intercom on the desk buzzed, then pressed a button.

Mary Osawa said: "Kenji-san, come now."

She was waiting in the delivery room, alone with Yoko. The girl was sleeping, her face very pale, breathing lightly as the father hurried to the bedside. "Sedation?"

"I thought it best. Her time was not easy." Mary Osawa's voice was flat, emotionless.

He looked up. Her round, homely face was a stone mask, only the eyes were alive, filled with pain.

"The baby?"

She pointed in silence to a door.

He closed his eyes for a moment in silent prayer, then hurried through the door.

The child lay in the warm, transparent case of the incubator. Its nakedness was a pink, alien obscenity of distorted limbs and grotesquely misshapen trunk. Only the face, apart from the multiple-faceted, insectlike eyes, was minimally human.

"God! Where is our sin?" Kenji Sato slumped to his knees, covering his face with his hands in an attempt to shut out the dreadful image. But it remained with him.

At last he became aware of a touch on his shoulder. "Kenji," said Mary Osawa. "You must save your strength for Yoko. When she awakes, she will need you more than ever before."

Again this reference to his strength. How could they have—still maintain such faith in—a quality that he could no longer believe in himself? A man who no longer had honor could not have strength. And a man who had failed, as he had failed, could not have honor....

"Kenji-san." Again, the insistent voice of Mary Osawa.

He allowed himself to be drawn to his feet, then, with a supreme effort of will, he removed his hands from in front of his eyes, and forced himself to look once again on the thing that was his grandchild.

This time his reaction was a new one, bora of rage against fate and the knowledge of what he must do. Lifting the cover of the incubator, he reached down and, with the fingers of his right hand, firmly closed the nose and the mouth of the tiny monster.

The task completed, he wrapped the corpse in a sheet. There was no need of words between the two of them, they both knew what had to be done. Mary Osawa held the door open for him, and then accompanied him as he carried the small burden to the hospital incinerator.

Afterwards, the two of them returned to Mary Osawa's office.

"What will we do now, Kenji?" she asked, making him realize that by his positive action he had once more re-established his position as her superior, as the decision-maker. It was a position that he had no real desire to resume, because his mind was still preoccupied by the private problems presented by this new situation—the prospect of meeting Yoko's enquiring eyes when she recovered from the sedative, of meeting her eyes, and explaining to her that he had failed her.

And then there was Tana. Faithful, loving Tana, who had trusted in him, relied on him completely to save their daughter from a second horror. Tana, who was even now awaiting his vidphone call, who had talked only last night of the day soon to come when they would plant together the second
sakura
tree by the main entrance of their house, signifying the birth of their grandchild. That tree would never be planted now, because what had happened here today proved beyond doubt that the seed on which its planting depended, Yoko's seed, was irrevocably tainted.

"I must go to President Kido," Sato said. "And tell him that I have failed."

"No, Kenji-san," Mary Osawa objected. "You could not possibly have known, or even guessed."

He looked at her sadly, wishing that he could find comfort in her excuses for him. "I think that all along, even when I was reassuring Yoko that her second baby would be normal, somehow I knew that I was lying."

"That is impossible!" Mary Osawa's voice took on a touch of sharpness. "In all the records we have of Johannsen's disease, there has never before been a case of a woman, once she is free of infection, giving birth to a second malformed child The evidence is there in the files, and it cannot be discounted."

"Mary," he said gently. "I made the fatal mistake of assuming, on the basis of the accompanying syndrome, that what we were dealing with here was a variety of the common Johannsen's disease virus. This is not the case, as has been demonstrated by today's tragedy. The Johannsen's virus does indeed cause the birth of malformed children, through its action on the growing fetus in the womb, but what we are dealing with here is something much more far-reaching in its effects; a virus which has the power to attack and modify the genetic structure of the human reproductive cells."

Mary Osawa's heavy body seemed to shrivel inside her white coverall as she stared at her chief. "What you're saying is that no woman who has suffered from the effects of this particular virus can ever again bear normal human children?"

"There is no other possible conclusion," agreed Sato. "And further, if the disease continues to spread as it is doing at the moment, this must mean that the time will soon come when there is no longer
any
woman on Kepler III capable of bearing a normal human child."

"Is there nothing we can do?"

"There may be, if I can persuade President Kido to agree with me," Sato said. "I have reason to believe that with the help of the Corps doctors, and the resources of
Venturer Twelve
, it may still be possible to save our people. There is unlikely to be any way of reversing the genetic effects of the disease on those who have suffered from it already—but if we can stamp it out, there is at least a chance that we shall be able to save those who have not yet been attacked."

"And if President Kido refuses to agree?" asked Mary Osawa.

Sato looked at her steadily, his ravaged face drained of blood, of life itself. "Then our colony is doomed," he said.

Charles Magnus did not share Commander Brace's dislike of Keplerian food. Carefully schooled in Japanese gastronomy by the efficient Ichiwara, he was able to acquit himself with some distinction during the lunch with President Kido. Wielding his
hashi
with the aplomb of an expert, he moved daintily as a bee among the three tables of dishes placed before him, finding the task as absorbing as playing a five-keyboard organ.

Kido was clearly a man with an enormous appetite both for food and power. Afterwards, when the debris of the meal had been removed, and small pots of pale green tea had been served by self-effacing kimono-clad female members of his host's household, Magnus relaxed for a while on a silken couch, listening with some alarm to the rumblings of the presidential belly. At last, judging that a reasonable time had elapsed, he allowed himself, with suitable circumlocation, to approach the subject which had been the true purpose of his visit.

Kido listened attentively, his constant smile marred only occasionally by an unruly explosion of flatulence. "My dear Mr. Magnus, you did right to bring this matter to my attention. I have no detailed knowledge of the operation, of course, beyond the awareness that the matter was delegated to my Minister of Health, Doctor Sato. However, I think that I can understand what has happened. As your Mr. Ichiwara has no doubt explained to you already, we are by nature a tidy race, and an industrious one. In most situations these attributes would be looked upon as virtues, but there are occasions when they can prove an embarrassment. Among the officers of my government, Doctor Sato is perhaps one of the most zealous and industrious; a truly good man, and a fine physician, but a man also who is preoccupied to the point of obsession by a desire for order and tidiness. I have myself found it necessary on several occasions to beg him to spare himself some of the burdens which he insists on undertaking____"

Magnus listened, sipping his tea quietly. To his mind, practiced in diplomatic maneuvers, it was all too obvious that the "excellent" Doctor Sato was a sacrificial goat being readied for the knife.

"It seems quite clear to me," continued Kido, "that although the request was for a random sample of the Keplerian population, Doctor Sato must have taken it upon himself to order some kind of preselection—not out of any desire to present a false picture, of that I am sure, but rather in a misguided attempt to assist your medical men in their investigations. Knowing Doctor Sato as I do, I can quite clearly see that the very idea of a "random" sample would be abhorrent to him. I have no doubt that you will find upon examination of the record cards concerned that he has been at great pains to present you with a carefully distributed cross-section in all respects."

Magnus nodded. "Yes, this is indeed the case. But Lieutenant Maseba insists, quite rightly, that if it is to have any validity at all, an investigation of this nature must be based on a completely random sample of the population. Further, I would add that this point was made quite clear in my original directive."

President Kido shook his head penitently. "My dear Mr. Magnus, I can only offer you my sincere apologies, and assure you that I will get in touch with Doctor Sato immediately and have the mistake rectified. Perhaps the best way of doing this would be for him to arrange with his records department that all cards should be made available to Lieutenant Maseba, so that he can make his own selection?"