The Sheep Look Up (16 page)

"How long to take effect? Typically, about one to three hours after the onset of the sweating and pupillary dilation, a sensation of floating ensued, and one saw the victims staring at their hands and feet unable to believe they any longer belonged to them. This stage was rapidly succeeded by one of hysterical terror, with visual and auditory hallucinations, and in the great majority of cases total loss of self-control. Outbursts of wild rage, often leading to random wrecking of the immediate surroundings and particularly to arson, and later to assault on anybody and anything that moved-especially crying children, who were frequently kicked and beaten to death by their own parents because their noise proved intolerable-lasted six to thirty-six hours.

Most sufferers did not sleep for the longer period. If no other target offered itself their own bodies took the brunt and they gashed or battered themselves. I also saw many run to the river and jump in, crying they were dying of thirst. This probably connects with the extreme dehydration the diarrhea entailed.

"The content of the hallucinations? Remarkably uniform. Voices came first, especially those of parents, senior relatives, and-in the case of ex-soldiers-officers and NCO's. Since the majority of these were dead the conviction that ghosts were walking followed logically. Many of those killed were mistaken for evil spirits. Because personal appearance is radically changed by the condition (e.g., the huge staring eyes, the awkward walk due to muscular cramps) close relatives often did not recognize one another and ran screaming even from a wife or husband.

"After-effects? Melancholia, acute hypnophobia-that's fear of going to sleep because of the high incidence of nightmares-anxiety, unaccountable fits of violence…A man was murdered the other day for no better reason than that he let his shadow fall on someone else's foot.

"Treatment? Well, we've had some success with doctoring the water supply-you know we're still selling drinking water from carts, and dumping half a pound of tranquilizers into every barrel seems to have helped, a little. But the tranquilizers are running short, so…"

Shrug.

She, too, was afraid to sleep. She dreamed always of the little bloody bits of human flesh that had spattered her. Either she doped herself with amphetamines, or-when they ceased to have any effect and her eyelids began to sting-she took enough barbiturates to drive her into coma, insulated against dreams. While she was awake she hardly ate, but wandered around coaxing people from hiding, washing gangrened wound's, helping to rig improvised shelters. At first the black soldiers now cleaning up the town were hostile; when they saw how meekly she worked, and how hard, they grew used to her and more than once when she found herself falling down with fatigue strong anonymous black arms carried her bodily home. Often the man was surprised at being called major when he was a mere private.

She learned about the charge that the relief food contained a hallucinogen from Bertil, who believed the suggestion that it had been infected with ergot or something like it; he said that had been responsible for outbreaks of medieval dancing mania. She was told about it again by the army officers investigating the calamity, who believed there had been poison deliberately added. She herself had no views on the matter.

Reporters naturally came in swarms. Although the news value of the war had more or less died with the armistice, General Kaika was anxious that the whole world should see the extent of the continuing disaster, so he put government planes at the disposal of journalists and TV camera teams. He even relaxed his embargo on Americans for the sake of a team from ABS's Paris office, provided they were led by a Frenchman. When they heard about Lucy they sensed an angle: beautiful blonde caught up in a night of horror. No one apparently knew exactly where she was, so they set off in search of her.

They came on her burrowing in the ruins of a house. She had uncovered a body the soldiers had overlooked, that of a child about ten years old. She was disinterring it with a pocket-knife.

When she realized the interviewer was an American she bared her teeth and attacked him. He had to have eight stitches in a gash that ran from his collarbone to his sternum.

They flew her, under sedation, to England, to a country mental hospital, where she awoke to discover green lawns, the first flowers of spring peering out under the overcast sky, cows grazing in a field the other side of a pleasant valley, and steel bars across an unopenable window.

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His haunted dreams had finally faded and Pete Goddard was sleeping okay again.

His first wakening after the collapse, though, had been appalling: terror, paralysis, pain.

Except that he wasn't paralyzed. They had merely put his legs into traction, cased the whole lower part of his trunk in tight plastic wraps,
stretched
him with weights hung from ceiling-mounted pulleys. As soon as he was alert enough to understand, they explained what they were doing to him, and why, and he very nearly couldn't believe the why.

They said that all by himself he had held up three-quarters of a ton.

Oh, it wasn't any kind of a record. The physiotherapist who attended him daily had mentioned a woman, hysterical with fear for the life of her child, who had lifted a car weighing a ton and a half; also a professional strongman who had demonstrated a lift of two full tons, slung from a harness around his waist. It had something to do with the engineering properties of the femur. She showed him diagrams that he fought to comprehend.

But it was strange how the nurses seemed to be frightened of him, and kept asking whether he had trained as a weight-lifter. Well, he had, though not for over a year, not since he met Jeannie. He said wearily he had kept in shape.

Obviously one couldn't do this kind of thing and not be very badly damaged. All the musculature of his shoulders had suffered subcutaneous hemorrhage, so that he wore a colossal bruise a foot wide, and even supporting the weight of his own arm now tired him within seconds. The cartilaginous discs separating his vertebrae had been crushed when his spine locked into the single solid column that enabled him to stand the weight. All the synovial membranes in his leg joints had been overloaded, so that his
knees
and ankles had also locked rigid, and the arches of both his feet had collapsed. He had briefly become a pillar of bone, and he didn't remember. He had known only one thing during that terrible time: he couldn't do anything any more except stand straight.

For the first few days he lay there in the hospital he was frightened as much of having to pay for what was being done to him as he was of not being able to walk again. He was doped to kill the pain, of course, and that made his mind fuzzy too, so when they allowed Jeannie to see him he couldn't explain what was troubling him and finally he broke down crying from frustration and they thought it was pain and doped him with a double dose.

But, a day or two after-he wasn't keeping track of time right then-they let him have other visitors, and it all came clear. There were reporters, and photographers, and a man from California, the uncle of the two children he'd saved. Harry had crawled under the beam and brought them back with him, but he'd held up the roof.

Their parents were dead. So their uncle, a successful bee importer, was going to adopt them, and pay for this hospitalization-the best of everything, he said, up to fifty thousand bucks. He insisted he could easily afford it; he'd got right in on the ground floor when the bees of California became extinct in the sixties, and now he ran a million-dollar undertaking.

He also remarked, sounding puzzled, that he'd tried to get Harry to accept a reward, too, but the guy wouldn't take a cent. Said something about ghouls. Some kind of Trainite prejudice.

Then a week or two later a senator called Howard or Howell or something brought him an illuminated scroll, a citation for courage, signed by Prexy himself. They framed it and hung it facing his bed.

"Hi, honey."

"Hi, doll."

They brushed lips. Jeannie had come in as usual, regular as clockwork. But there was something odd about her appearance. Lying surrounded by the papers and books he used to pass the time-his arms were moving freely thanks to the physiotherapist's massage and he could turn pages fine-he took a second look. Her left hand was bandaged.

"You cut yourself, baby?" he demanded.

"Uh…" She made to hide it, changed her mind. "No, I got bitten."

"Bitten! What by-a dog?"

"No, a rat. I reached in the cupboard for a bag of flour…I keep calling the exterminator, but he can't come. Got too many calls-hey, what you doing?" Pete had seized the bell-push by his bed.

"Calling the nurse! You put that dressing on yourself?"

"Well-yes."

"You have it attended to properly! You know what rats carry?

Sometimes plague! Or it might go septic."

The nurse came, prompt because of his benefactor's money, and led Jeannie protesting away. While she was gone he lay there fuming, thinking: Rats? So many rats the exterminator can't cope? Hell!

And it was just as well he insisted. Jeannie had a sub-clinical fever due to septicemia. When they found out she'd kissed him, they gave him a prophylactic injection as well.

Trying to lighten the mood when she came back with her hand neatly wrapped in white, he said, "Say, baby, good news. Tomorrow they're going to let me try and walk!"

"Honey, that's really great!" Her eyes shone. But mainly with tears.

"Is it…?"

"Is it going to be the same?"

She nodded.

"They think it will be. But not for a pretty long time. I'll have to wear a brace for my back, to start with anyway."

"How long?"

He hesitated, then repeated the physiotherapist's estimate. "Two years."

"Oh,
Peter
!"

"But everything else is okay!" He brought out the worst terror, the most fearful fear. There's nothing wrong with…I mean, I'm still a
man
."

Thank God. Thank God. He'd prayed, really prayed, when that point occurred to him. And one of the doctors, whom he was going to remember every time he prayed again, had told him well, as far as can be judged that ought to be okay, as soon as you've got the strength back in your arms try it for yourself. I'll send you some deep-dirt books in case they help.

Jeannie clutched his hand and began to cry.

Eventually she was able to ask about the future. Obviously a cripple couldn't go back on the force. Could he?

He shook his head. He could do that now without a twinge of pain.

They'd been wonderful, the care they'd taken.

"No. But I got the offer of a job already. Man called by this morning who'd heard I can't get back in the police. Friend of one of the doctors, cat called Prosser. Says to let him know as soon as I'm fit and hell give me a desk job I can handle."

"Back in Towerhill, you mean?"

"No, here in Denver. Of course we'd have to move house, but he said the pay would be good…Ah, don't worry, baby. Everything's going to be all right."

MY FINGERS ARE GREEN AND SOMETIMES

Dear Sir: Thank you for your letter of 18th and enclosures.

The sample of dirt contains an exceptionally high proportion of
lead and mercury, trace quantities of molybdenum and selenium,
and a small amount of salts of silver. There is no detectable
cadmium. The water sample is contaminated with lead, arsenic,
selenium and compounds of sodium and potassium, particularly
sodium nitrite. We suspect that the garden of the house you have
bought is sited on infill derived from mine tailings, and suggest
you raise the matter with the former owners. You do not mention
whether you have children, but if you do we would draw your
attention to the dangers they face from lead and sodium nitrite in
such quantities. Early settlement of your account would be
appreciated.

Yours faithfully.

THE REARING OF THE UGLY HEAD

Having dropped Harold, Josie and the Henlowes' boy at their play-school-social behavior should be encouraged at an early age and the hell with the risk of infection that caused parents like Bill and Tania Chalmers (RIP, victims along with Anton of the Towerhill avalanche) to keep their kids at home as late as was legal: what a nasty personality poor Anton had developed!-Denise Mason continued to Dr. Clayford's office.

The room was a perfect frame for his personality. He sat at a mahogany desk, an antique, with a gilt-tooled leather top, in a leather armchair with a swivel base. He was gruff, bluff and tough. He was proud of belonging to what, in a rare moment of jocularity, Denise had once heard him term "the sulfa generation." She had been on his list for years, since long before her marriage, even though she didn't much like him because he was distant and difficult to talk to. All the same there was something reassuring in his old-fashioned manner. He reminded her more than a little of her father.

For the first time ever he didn't stand up as she entered, merely waved her to the chair facing him. Puzzled, she sat down.

"Well, what's the trouble?"

"Well-uh…" Absurdly, she felt herself flushing bright scarlet. "Well, I've been pretty run down lately. But now I've developed-well, a discharge. And irritation."

"Vaginal, you mean? Oh, that's the gonorrhea your husband gave you."

"
What
?"

"I told him to go to the clinic on Market. They specialize in that sort of thing. He didn't tell you?"

She could only shake her head wordlessly. So many things had suddenly become clear.