Read Ebook: Infinity's Child by De Vet Charles V

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Ebook has 275 lines and 14005 words, and 6 pages

Infinity's Child

The sense of taste was always first to go. For a week Buckmaster had ignored the fact that everything he ate tasted like flavorless gruel. He tried to make himself believe that it was some minor disorder of his glandular system. But the eighth day his second sense--that of feeling--left him and he staggered to his telephone in blind panic. There was no doubt now but that he had the dread Plague. He was glad he had taken the precaution of isolating himself from his family. He knew there was no hope for him now.

They sent the black wagon for him.

In the hospital he found himself herded with several hundred others into a ward designed to hold less than a hundred. The beds were crowded together and he could have reached to either side of him and touched another ravaged victim of the Plague.

Next to go would be his sense of sight. Hope was a dead thing within him. Even to think of hoping made him realize how futile it would be.

He screamed when the walls of darkness began to close in around him. It was the middle of the afternoon and a shaft of sunlight fell across the grimy blankets on his bed. The sunlight paled, then darkened and was gone. He screamed again. And again.

He heard them move him to the death ward then, but he could not even feel their hands upon him.

Three days later his tongue refused to form words. He fought a nameless terror as he strove with all the power of his will to speak. If he could say only one word, he felt, the encroaching disease would have to retreat and he would be safe. But the one word would not come.

Four horrible days later the sounds around him--the screams and the muttering--became fainter, and he faced the beginning of the end.

At last it was all over. He knew he was still alive because he thought. But that was all. He could not see, hear, speak, feel, or taste. Nothing was left except thought; stark, terrible, useless thought!

Strangely the awful horror faded then and his mind experienced a grateful release. At first he suspected the outlet of his emotions had somehow become atrophied as had his senses, and that he was peaceful only because his real feelings could not break through the numbness.

However, some subtle compulsion within him--some power struggling in its birth-throes--was beginning to breed its own energy and he sensed that it was the strength of that compulsion that had subdued the terror.

He was at peace now, as he had never been at peace before. For a time, he did not question--was entirely content to lie there and savor the wonderful feeling. He had lost even the definition of fear. No terror now from the slow closing of the five doors; no regrets; no forebodings. Only a vast happiness as he seemingly viewed life, suffering, and death as a man standing on a cliff looking out over a great misty valley.

And he knew.

He could not prove it nor explain it there in the dark house of his thinking. But he knew it was true.

He wondered if he had taken over the body and mind--complete with all the mental trappings--of some other being. Or whether he had been just now conceived, full-blown and with memories of a synthetic past perhaps implanted also in the minds of those with whom he was supposed to have come in contact. He did not know. He was only sure that, before this moment, he had not been.

With the realization came the certainty that he would not die. The force he felt within him--he was not certain whether it was a part of himself, or the evidence of an outside control--was too powerful.

The inner spontaneity gathered strength until it became a striving, persistent vital force, a will of imperious purpose. It moved him and he moved his tongue and spoke. "I will not die!" he shouted.

Some time later he grew aware that his sense of hearing had returned. He heard a voice say, "He was in the last stages about an hour ago, before he spoke. I thought I'd better call you."

"You did right," a second voice answered. "What's his name?"

"Clifford Buckmaster."

They're talking about me, he thought. Like a burst of glory, sight returned. He looked up and saw two men standing beside his bed. The older man wore a plain black suit. The younger was dressed in the white uniform of a doctor.

"He can see now," the older man said. His was a voice Buckmaster disliked.

"It looks as if he's going to recover," the doctor said. "That's never happened before. Do you want me to leave him here with the dying ones?"

"No. Wheel him into your office. And leave us alone there. My name is James Wagner. You have, of course, heard of me. I am the Director of Security."

Buckmaster still rested in his hospital bed. They had screwed up the back until he sat almost straight. In his mouth there was a slight tang and knew the sense of taste returned. When he was able to feel again he would be entirely well. Yes, he'd heard of Wagner before. He nodded.

"And I know who you are," Wagner said. "You are one of the Underground that is trying to overthrow the General. That is correct, is it not?"

Almost with surprise Buckmaster felt Wagner's words register in his mind. His implanted memories were still strange to him. But he recalled them quickly.

Twenty years before, in 1979, the great Atomic War had ended. In the beginning the two giants faced each other across the separating oceans. No one was certain who sent the first bomb across in its controlled rocket; each side blamed the other.

The methods of each were terrible in their efficiency. The great manufacturing cities were the first to go. After them went the vital transportation centers.

Striving mightily for an early advantage each country forced landing armies on the enemy's shores. The armies invaded with their hundreds of thousands of men--and the bombings continued.

The colossus of the western hemisphere had set up autonomous launching stations, so that if and when their major cities had all been bombed, their ruling bodies decimated and scattered--even if there were no longer any vestiges of a central authority--the launchings would continue.

The autonomous units had been a stroke of master planning, so ingenious that it was logical the giant of Eurasia had devised a similar plan.

Those armies with weak commanders fell apart and one by one their men died at the hands of hostile natives, or hunger.

The armies under strong commanders, like General Andrei Koski, of the Eurasian command, carved themselves a place in their new environment.

Koski had landed with a force of seventy thousand on the east coast of old Mexico. His army was different from the other invaders only in a secret weapon which they brought with them. The weapon's appearance was simple but it carried the potentiality of destruction for a world.

When Koski reached Duluth he circled the city. Almost miraculously it had escaped the bombs. Its population was only a little over two hundred thousand, and Koski still retained nearly fifty thousand hardened fighting men.

However, Duluth, Koski found, was governed by Earl Olson, an ex-brigadier and a man equally as strong as himself. The city was fortified, and garrisoned by a force of well trained civilians who would fight to their death to defend their city and families. And they were well led by Olson.

Koski knew he could capture the city if he decided to, but the price would be too dear. He moved on along the lakeshore and took over the city of Superior. Here he entrenched himself solidly and set up an efficient military government.

A bonus of ten thousand dollars was offered to any woman from the outlying districts who would move to Superior and take two of its citizens in marriage. After the first hesitation, the girls and young women and widows flocked in from their barren farms and hamlets.

Duluth in the meantime grew to three hundred thousand. Earl Olson ruled absolutely, but wisely and well. Between the two cities an alert truce held through the years and mutually advantageous trade flourished.

Koski, in his city, held all authority in his own tight grip, administered by his former officers and backed by the undeviating loyalty of his soldiers. His rule was stern and when necessary, bloody. It might have been bloodier except for the threat of intervention by Olson.

There are always men who fret under the hand of tyranny and the Underground had gradually risen until it grew into a powerful organization. Its demands were for a representative government chosen by vote of the people. This, of course, Koski refused. As a consequence the Underground formed an active resistance, with the avowed purpose of killing Koski. A retaliatory blood bath was prevented only by the threat of intervention by Olson, who had many friends in the Underground, especially his brother-in-law, Lester Oliver.

But right now none of this seemed very important to Buckmaster. Not important enough for him to bother answering.

"Answer when you're spoken to!" Wagner roared.

For a moment Buckmaster deliberated not replying. Just how unusual was the difference he had discovered in himself? Could he be hurt by someone like Wagner? He decided to wait until later to put it to the test.

"What do you want me to say?" he asked.

"I'm going to lay my cards on the table," Wagner said. "I want you to come over to our side."

Still not very interested, Buckmaster asked, "Why should I?"

"I think I can give you some very good reasons. In fact, unless you're a bigger fool than I think you are, I can convince you that it is the only wise thing to do. Because of your relatively smaller numbers, the Plague has caused havoc in your Underground."

"Yes," Buckmaster answered. "But we will have a vaccine before long." He knew this was purely bluff.

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