Pariah Planet Part 9

"No! Not where you're guessing--or hoping. Not on Dara. Just because I act as if Darians were human doesn't mean I have to be one! I'm a Med Service man, and I'm acting as I think I should." His tone became exasperated. "Dammit, I'm supposed to deal with health situations, actual and possible causes of human deaths! And if Weald thinks it finds proof that blueskins are in s.p.a.ce again and caused the death of Wealdians it won't be healthy! They're halfway set anyhow to drop fusion-bombs on Dara to wipe it out!"

Maril said fiercely;

"They might as well drop bombs. It'll be quicker than starvation, at least!"

Calhoun looked at her more exasperatedly than before.

"It is a crop failure again?" he demanded. When she nodded he said bitterly; "Famine conditions already?" When she nodded again he said drearily; "And of course famine is the great-grandfather of health problems! And that's right in my lap with all the rest!"

He stood up. Then he sat down again.

"I'm tired!" he said flatly. "I'd like to get some sleep."

Maril understood. She picked up a book and went into the other cabin.

Alone in the control compartment, he tried to relax, but it was not possible. He flung himself into a comfortable chair and considered the situation of the people of the planet Dara. Those people were marked by patches of blue pigment as an inherited consequence of a plague of three generations past. Dara was a planet of pariahs, excluded from the human race by those who had been conditioned to fear them.

And now there was famine on Dara for the second time, and they were of no mind to starve quietly. There was food on the planet Orede, monstrous herds of cattle without owners. It was natural enough for Darians to build a s.h.i.+p or s.h.i.+ps and try to bring food back to its starving people.

But that desperately necessary enterprise had now roused Weald to a frenzy of apprehension. Weald was if possible more hysterically afraid of blueskins than ever before, and even more implacably the enemy of the starving planet's population. Weald itself throve and prospered.

Ironically, it had such an excess of foodstuffs that it stored them in unneeded s.p.a.ce-s.h.i.+ps in orbits about itself. Hundreds of thousands of tons of grain circled Weald in sealed-tight hulks, while the people of Dara starved and only dared try to steal--it could be called stealing--some of the innumerable wild cattle of Orede.

The blueskins on Orede could not trust Calhoun, so they pretended not to hear--or maybe they didn't hear. They'd been abandoned and betrayed by all of humanity beyond their world. They'd been threatened and oppressed by guards.h.i.+ps in orbit about them, ready to shoot down any s.p.a.ce-craft they might send aloft.

So Calhoun pondered ...

A long time later Calhoun heard small sounds which were not normal on a Med s.h.i.+p in overdrive. They were not part of the random noises carefully generated to keep the silence of the s.h.i.+p endurable. Calhoun raised his head. He listened sharply. No sound could come from outside.

He knocked on the door of the sleeping-cabin. The noises stopped instantly.

"Come out," he commanded through the door.

"I'm--I'm all right," said Maril's voice. But it was not quite steady.

She paused. "I was just having a bad dream."

"I wish," said Calhoun, "that you'd tell me the truth occasionally! Come out, please!"

There were stirrings. After a little the door opened and Maril appeared.

She looked as if she'd been crying. She said quickly;

"I probably look queer, but it's because I was asleep."

"To the contrary," said Calhoun, fuming, "you've been lying awake crying. I don't know why. I've been out here wis.h.i.+ng I could sleep, because I'm frustrated. But since you aren't asleep maybe you can help me with my job. I've figured some things out. For some others I need facts. How about it?"

She swallowed.

"I'll try."

"Coffee?" he asked.

Murgatroyd popped his head out of his miniature sleeping-cabin.

"_Chee?_" he asked interestedly.

"Go back to sleep!" snapped Calhoun.

He began to pace back and forth.

"I need to know something about the pigment patches," he said jerkily.

"Maybe it sounds crazy to think of such things now. First things first, you know. But that is a first thing! So long as Darians don't look like the people of other worlds, they'll be considered different. If they look repulsive, they'll be thought of as evil.... Tell me about those patches. They're different-sized and different-shaped and they appear in different places. You've none on your face or hands, anyhow."

"I haven't any at all," said the girl reservedly.

"I thought--"

"Not everybody," she said defensively. "Nearly, yes. But not all. Some people don't have them. Some people are born with bluish splotches on their skin, but they fade out while they're children. When they grow up they're just like--the people of Weald or any other world. And their children never have them."

Calhoun stared.

"You couldn't possibly be proved to be a Darian, then?"

She shook her head. Calhoun remembered, and started the coffee-maker.

"When you left Dara," he said, "You were carried a long, long way, to some planet where they'd practically never heard of Dara, and where the name meant nothing. You could have settled there, or anywhere else and forgotten about Dara. But you didn't. Why not, since you're not a blueskin?"

"But I am!" she said fiercely. "My parents, my brothers and sisters, and Korvan--."

Then she bit her lip. Calhoun took note but did not comment on the name that she had mentioned.

"Then your parents had the splotches fade, so you never had them," he said absorbedly. "Something like that happened on Tralee, once! There's a virus--a whole group of virus particles! Normally we humans are immune to them. One has to be in terrifically bad physical condition for them to take hold and produce whatever effects they do. But once they're established they're pa.s.sed on from mother to child.... And when they die out it's during childhood, too!"

He poured coffee for the two of them. As usual, Murgatroyd swung down to the floor and said impatiently;

"_Chee! Chee! Chee!_"

Calhoun absently filled Murgatroyd's tiny cup and handed it to him.

"But this is marvellous!" he said exuberantly. "The blue patches appeared after the plague, didn't they? After people recovered--when they recovered?"

Maril stared at him. His mind was filled with strictly professional considerations. He was not talking to her as a person. She was purely a source of information.

"So I'm told," said Maril reservedly. "Are there any more humiliating questions you want to ask?"

He gaped at her. Then he said ruefully;