Badge of Infamy, Lester del Rey [best romance novels of all time .txt] 📗

were traded to

the big chemical plants for a pittance to buy what had to come from

Earth. Other jury-rigged affairs synthesized much of their food. But

mostly they learned to get along on what Mars provided.

 

Doc Feldman learned from them. Money was no longer part of his life. He

ate with whatever family needed him and slipped into the life around

him.

 

He was learning Martian medicine and finding that his Earth courses were

mostly useless. No wonder the villagers distrusted Lobby doctors. Doc

had his own little laboratory where he had managed to start making

Mars-normal penicillin--a primitive antibiotic, but better than nothing.

 

Jake had come to remind him that it was his first anniversary, and now

they were smoking bracky together.

 

"Sheer luck, Jake," Doc repeated. "You Martians are tough. But some day

someone is going to die under my care, with the little equipment I have.

Then--"

 

Jake nodded slowly. "Maybe, Doc. And maybe some day Mars will break free

of the Lobbies. You'd better pray for that."

 

"I've been--" Doc stopped, realizing what he'd started to say. The old

man chuckled.

 

"You've been talking rebellion for months, Doc. I hear rumors. Whenever

you get mad, you want us to secede. But you don't really mean it yet.

You can't picture any government but the one you're used to."

 

Doc grinned. Jake had a point, but it was not as strong as it would have

been a few months before. The towns under the Lobby were cheap

imitations of Earth, but here, divorced to a large extent from the

lobbies, the villages were making Mars their own. Their ways might be

strange; but they worked.

 

Jake shifted his body in the weak sunlight. "Newton village forgot to

report a death on time. I hear Ryan is sweating them out, trying to

prove it was your fault."

 

There was no evidence against him yet, Doc was sure. But Chris was out

to prove something, and to get a reputation as a top-flight

administrator. It must have hurt when they shipped her here as head of

the lesser hemisphere of Mars. She'd expected to use Feldman as a front

while she became the actual ruler of the whole Lobby. Now she wanted to

strike back.

 

"She's using blackmail," he said, and some of his old bitterness was in

his voice. "Anyone taking treatment from an herb doctor in this section

is cut off from Medical Lobby service. Damn it, Jake, that could mean

letting people die!"

 

"Yeah." Jake sighed softly. "It could mean letting people begin to

think about getting rid of the Lobby, too. Well, I gotta help harvest

the bracky. Take it easy on operating for a while, will you, Doc?"

 

"All right, Jake. But stop keeping the serious cases a secret. Two men

died last month because you wouldn't call me for surgery. I've broken

all my oaths already. It doesn't matter anymore."

 

"It matters, boy. We've been lucky, but some day one case will go to the

hospital and they'll find your former work. Then they'll really be after

you. The less you do the better."

 

Doc watched Jake slump off, then turned down into the little root cellar

and back toward the room concealed behind it, where his crude laboratory

lay. For the moment, he was free to work on the mystery of the black

spots.

 

He kept running into them--always on the body of someone who died of

something that seemed like a normal disease. Without a microscope, he

was almost helpless, but he had taken specimens and tried to culture

them. Some of his cultures had grown, though they might be nothing but

unknown Martian fungi or bacteria. Mars was dry and almost devoid of

air, but plants and a few smaller insects had survived and adapted. It

wasn't by any means lifeless.

 

Without a microscope, he could do little but depend on his files of

cases. But today there was new evidence. A villager had filched an Earth

_Medical Journal_ from the tractor driven by Chris Ryan and forwarded it

to him. He found the black specks mentioned in a single paragraph, under

skin diseases. Investigation of the diet was being made, since all cases

were among people eating synthetics.

 

There was another article on aberrant cases--a few strange little

misbehaviors in classical syndromes. He studied that, wondering. It had

to be the same thing. Diet didn't account for the fact that the specks

appeared only when the patient was near death.

 

Nor did it account for the hard lump at the base of the neck which he

found in every case he could check. That might be coincidence, but he

doubted it.

 

Whatever it was, it aggravated any other disease the patient had and

made seemingly simple diseases turn out to be completely and rapidly

fatal. Once syphilis had been called "The Great Imitator". This gave

promise of being worse.

 

He shook his head, cursing his lack of equipment. Each month more people

were dying with these specks--and he was helpless.

 

The concealed door broke open suddenly and a boy thrust his head in.

"Doc, there's a man here from Einstein. Says his wife's dying."

 

The man was already coming into the room.

 

"She's powerful sick, Doc. Had a bellyache, fever, began throwing up.

Pains under her belly, like she's had before. But this time it's awful."

 

Doc shot a few questions at him, frowning at what he heard. Then he

began packing the few things that might help. There should be no

appendicitis on Mars. The bugs responsible for that shouldn't have

adapted to Mars-normal. But more and more infections found ways to cross

the border. Gangrene had been able to get by without change, it seemed.

So far, none of the contagious infections except polio and the common

cold had made the jump.

 

This sounded like an advanced case, perhaps already involving

peritonitis.

 

So far, he'd been lucky with penicillin, but each time he used it with

grave doubts of its action on the Mars-adapted patients. If the appendix

had burst, however, it was the only possible treatment.

 

He riffled through his stores; There was ether enough, fortunately. The

villagers had made that for him out of Martian plants, using their

complicated fermentation processes. He yelled for Jake, and the boy

brought the old man back a moment later.

 

"Jake, I'll need more of that narcotic stuff. I don't want the woman

writhing and tearing her stitches after the ether wears off."

 

"Can't get it, Doc." Jake's eyes seemed to cloud as he said it.

"Distilling plant broke down. Doc, I don't like this case. That woman's

been to the hospital three times. I hear she just got out recently. This

might be a plant, or they figure they can't help her."

 

"They're afraid to try anything on Mars-normal flesh. They can't be

proved wrong if they do nothing." Doc finished packing his bag and got

ready to go out. "Jake, either I'm a doctor or I'm not. I can't worry

when a woman may be dying."

 

For a second, Jake's expression was stubborn. Then the little crow's

feet around his eyes deepened and the dry chuckle was back in his voice.

"Right, Dr. Feldman." He flipped up his thumb and went off at a

shuffling run toward the tractor. Lou and the man from Einstein followed

Doc into the machine.

 

It was a silent ride, except for Doc's questions about the sick woman.

Her husband, George Lynn, was evasive and probably ignorant. He admitted

that Harriet had been to the dispensary and small infirmary that

Southport called a hospital.

 

It was the only place in the entire Southern hemisphere where an

operation could be performed legally. Most cases had to go to

Northport, but Chris had been trying to expand. Apparently, she was

determined to make Southport into another major center before she was

called back to Earth.

 

Doc wondered why the villagers went there. They had no medical insurance

with the Lobby; they couldn't afford it. Most villagers didn't have the

cash, either. They were forced to mortgage their future work and that of

their families to the drug plants that were run by the Lobby.

 

"And they just turned your wife away?" Doc asked. He couldn't quite

believe that of Chris.

 

"Well, I dunno. She wouldn't talk much. Twice she went and they gave her

something. Cost every cent I could borrow. Then this last time, they

kept her a couple days before they let me come and get her. But now

she's a lot worse."

 

Jake spun about, suddenly tense. "How'd you pay them last time, George?"

 

"Why, they didn't ask. I told her she could put up six months from me

and the kids, but nobody said nothing about it. Just gave her back to

me." He frowned slowly, his dull voice uncertain. "They told me they'd

done all they could, not to bring her back. That's why she was so strong

on getting Doc."

 

"I don't like it," Jake said flatly. "It stinks. They always charge.

George, did they suggest she get in touch with Doc here?"

 

"Maybe they did, maybe not. Harriet did all the talking with them. I

just do what she tells me, and she said to get Doc."

 

Jake swore. "It smells like a trap. Are you sure she's sick, George?"

 

"I felt her head and she sure had a fever." George Lynn was torn

between his loyalties. "You know me, Doc. You fixed me up that time I

had the red pip. I wouldn't pull nothing on you."

 

Doc had a feeling that Jake was probably right, but he vetoed the

suggestion that they stop to look for spies. He had no time for that. If

the woman was really sick, he had to get to her at once, and even that

might be too late.

 

He remembered the woman, sickly from other treatment. He'd been forced

to remove her inflamed tonsils a few months before. She'd whined and

complained because he couldn't spend all his time attending her. She was

a nag, a shrew, and a totally selfish woman. But that was her husband's

worry, not his.

 

He dashed into the little house when they reached Einstein, and his

first glance confirmed what George Lynn had said. The woman was sick,

all right. She was running a high fever. Much too high.

 

She began whining and protesting at his having taken so long, but the

pain soon forced her to stop.

 

"There may still be a chance," Doc told her husband brusquely. He threw

the cleanest sheet onto a table and shoved it under the single light.

"Keep out of the way--in the other room, if you can all pile in there.

This isn't exactly aseptic, anyhow. You can boil a lot of water, if you

want to help."

 

It would give them something to do and he could use the water to clean

There was no time to wait for it, however. He had to sterilize with

alcohol and carbolic acid, and hope. He bent over the woman, ripping her

thin gown across to make room for the operation.

 

Then he swore.

 

Across her abdomen was the unhealed wound of a previous operation.

They'd worked on her at Southport. They must have removed the appendix

and then been shocked by the signs of infection. They weren't supposed

to release a sick patient, but there was an easy out for them; they

could remove her from the danger of spreading an unknown infection. Some

doctors must have doped her up on sedatives and painkillers and sent her

home, knowing that she would call him. For that matter, they might have

noticed her unrecorded tonsillectomy and considered her fair bait.

 

He grabbed the ether and slapped a cone over her nose. She tried to

protest; she never cooperated in anything. But the fumes of the ether he

dipped onto the packing of the cone soon overcame that.

 

It was peritonitis, of course. The only thing to do was to go in and

scrape and clean as best he could. It was a rotten job to have to do,

and he should have had help. But he gritted his teeth and began. He

couldn't trust anyone else to hold the instruments, even.

 

He cleaned the infection as best he could, knowing there was almost no

chance. He used all the penicillin he dared. Then he began sewing up the

incision. It was all he could do, except for dressing the wound with a

sterile bandage. He reached for one, and stopped.

 

While he'd been working, the woman had died, far more quietly than she

had ever lived.

 

It was probably the only gracious act of her life. But it was damning to

Doc. They couldn't hide her death, and any investigation would show that

someone had worked on her. To the Lobby, he would be the one who had

murdered her.

 

Jake was waiting in the tractor. He took one look at Doc's face and made

no inquiries.

 

They were more than a mile away when Jake pointed back. Small in the

distance, but distinct against the