Non-Stop - Brian W. Aldiss [72]
‘22.xii.2221. I had no time to finish yesterday. Today there seems to be all the time in the world. Fourteen more deaths reported this morning by a tired Toynbee. The Nine Day Ague is undisputed master of the ship: my dear Yvonne is its latest victim. I have tucked her in bed but cannot look at her – too terrible. I have ceased to pray.
‘Let me finish what young Besti told me. She was guardedly optimistic about the ultimate survival of a percentage of our population. The bodies of Ague victims are inactive while their internal forces cope with viral depredations; they will eventually break them down if the constitution concerned is elastic enough: “another little virus won’t do us any harm”, Miss Besti pertly quotes. Proteins are present already in all living cells and, after a danger period, another protein, differing but slightly, may be tolerated. The new amino, christened bestine (this bright young creature smoothly informs me!), has been isolated; like leucine and lysine, which are already known, it has an effect on growth – what effect, only long-term research will establish, and I doubt that we have that much time.
‘The short-term results are before us. The plants have mainly adapted to bestine and, once adapted, seem to thrive. The animals, varying with their species, have adapted, though only the pig colony actually seems exhuberant. All survivals, Besti says, may be regarded as mutations – what she calls “low-level mutations”. It seems the heat in Agriculture may have helped them; so I have ordered a ten degree temperature increase from Inboard Power for the whole ship. That is literally the only step we have been able to take to help . . .
‘It looks as if the more complex the organism, the more difficulty it has in rejecting to the new proteins and viruses. Bad luck on man: in particular, us.
‘24.xii.2221. Toynbee has the Ague. So has Montgomery. They are two of only five new victims this morning. The freak proteins seem to have done the worst of their work. Trying to analyse the reports Sick Bay still heroically send in, I find that the older the person, the better he holds out to begin with and the less chance he stands of surviving once the virus develops. I asked Besti about this when she came, quite voluntarily, to see me (she has made herself I/C Research, and I can only bless her efficiency); she thinks the figures are not significant – the young survive most things better than older people.
‘Little Sheila Pesoli has recovered! Hers was one of the first cases, sixteen long days ago. I went down and saw her; she seems perfectly all right, although quick and nervous in her actions. Temperature still high. Still, she is our first cure.
‘Feel absurdly optimistic about this. If only 100 men and women came through, they might multiply, and their descendants get the ship home. Is there not a lower limit to the number who can avoid extinction? No doubt the answer lurks somewhere in the library, perhaps among those dreary disks compiled by past occupants of this ship . . .
‘There was a mutiny today, a stupid affair, led by a Sergeant Tugsten of Ship’s Police and “Spud” Murphy, the surviving armourer. They ran amok with the few hand-atomic weapons not landed on P.V., killing six of their companions and causing severe damage amidships. Strangely enough, they weren’t after me! I had them disarmed and thrown into the brig – it will give Bassitt someone to preach at. And all weapons apart from the neurolethea, or “dazers” as they are popularly called, have been collected and destroyed, to prevent further menace to the ship; the “dazers”, acting only on living nervous systems, have no effect on inorganic material.
‘25.xii.2221. Another attempt at mutiny. I was down in Agriculture when it all blew up. As one of the essential ship’s services, the farm must be kept running at all costs. The oxygenators in Hydroponics have been left, as they can manage themselves; one of them, the dry variety mentioned before, has proliferated over the floor and seems almost as if it could sustain itself.