Calhoun asked crisply, "What's this? My special patients ran away?"
"That the Med man we heard about?" The invisible speaker was almost derisive with anger. "Sure! They've run off, all right . . . man and girl together. After we made trouble with Three City by not killin' 'em and with One City by sneakin' over to get you! Three City men'll come boiling over. . . ." The voice raised in pitch, expressing scorn and fury. "Because they fell in love! We shoulda killed 'em right off or let 'em die in the snow like they wanted in the first place!"
Calhoun nodded almost imperceptibly to himself. When there is a syndrome forbidding association between societies, it is a part of the society's interior struggle against morbidity that there shall be forbidden romances. The practice of exogamy is necessary for racial health, hence there is an instinct for it. The more sternly a small population restricts its human contacts to its own members, the more repressed the exogamic impulse becomes. It is never consciously recognized for what it is. But especially when repressed, other-than-customary contacts trigger it explosively. The romantic appeal of a stranger is at once a wise provision of nature and a cause of incredible furies and disasters. It is notorious that spaceship crews are inordinately popular where colonies are small and strangers infrequent. It is no less notorious that a girl may be destitute of suitors on her own world, but has nearly her choice of husbands if she merely saves the ship-fare to another.
Calhoun could have predicted defiances of tradition and law and quarantine alike, as soon as he began to learn the state of things here. The frenzied rage produced by this specific case was normal. Some young girl must have loved terribly, and some young man been no less impassioned, to accept expulsion from society on a world where there was no food except in hydroponic gardens and artificially warmed pastures. It was no less than suicide for those who loved. It was no less than a cause for battle among those who did not.
The deep-voiced Hunt said now, in leaden, heavy tones, "Cap it. This is my doing. It was my daughter I did it for. I wanted to keep her from dying. I'll pay for trying. They'll be satisfied in Three City and in One alike if you tell 'em it's my fault and I've been drove out for troublemaking."
Calhoun said sharply, "What's that? What's going on now?"
The man in the shadows answered, by his tone as much to express disgust as to give information. "His daughter Nym was on sentry duty against Three City sneaks. They had a sentry against us. The two of 'em talked across the valley between 'em. They had walkies to report with. They used 'em to talk. Presently, she sneaked a vision screen out of store. He prob'ly did, too. So presently they figured it was worth dyin' to die together. They run off for the hotlands. No chance to make it, o'course!"
The hotlands could hardly be anything but the warm equatorial belt of the planet.
"We should've let them go on and die," said the stocky Hunt, drearily. "But I persuaded men to help me bring 'em back. We were careful against sickness! We—I—locked them separate and I—I hoped my daughter mightn't die of the Three City sickness. I even hoped that young man wouldn't die of the sickness they say we have that we don't notice and they die of. Then we heard your call to One City. We couldn't answer it, but we heard all you said, even to the bargain about the cow. And—we'd heard of Med men who cured sickness. I hoped you could save Nym from dying of the Three City sickness or passing it in our city. My friends risked much to bring you here. However my daughter and the man have fled again."
"And nobody's goin' to risk any more!" rasped the voice from the shadow of the cliff. "We held a council! It's decided! They gone and we got to burn out the places they was in! No more! You don't head the Council any more, either! We decided that, too. And no Med man! The Council ruled it!"
Calhoun nodded yet again. It is a part of fear, elaborately to ignore everything that can be denied about the thing feared. Which includes rational measures against it. This was a symptom of the state of things which constituted a Med Service emergency, because it caused needless deaths.
Hunt made a gesture which was at once commanding and filled with despair.
"I'll take the Med Man back so One City can use him if they dare and not blame you for me taking him. I'll have to take the sledge, but he's used it so it'd have to be burned anyhow. You men be sure to burn your clothes. Three City'll be satisfied because I'm lost to balance for their man lost. The Med Man will tell One City I'm drove out. You've lost me and my daughter too, and Three City's lost a man. One City'll growl and threaten, but they win by this. They won't risk a showdown."
Silence again. As if reluctantly, one man of the party that had abducted Calhoun moved away from the sledge and toward the abysmally deep shadow of the cliff. Hunt said harshly, "Don't forget to burn your clothes! You others, get off the sledge. I'm taking the Med man back and there's no need for a war because I made the mistake and I'm paying for it."
The remaining men of the kidnapping party stepped off the sledge into the trampled snow, just here. One said clumsily, "Sorry, Hunt. 'Luck!"
"What luck could I have?" asked the stocky man, wearily.
The roaring of the sledge's drive, which had been a mere muffled throbbing, rose to a booming bellow. The snow-vehicle surged forward, heading downward into the valley with the dark area below. Half a mile down, it began to sweep in a great circle to return upon its former track. Calhoun twisted in his seat and shouted above the roar. He made violent gestures. The deep-voiced Hunt, driving from a standing position behind the seat, slowed the sledge. It came nearly to a stop and hissing noises from snow passing beneath it could be heard.
"What's the matter?" His tone was lifeless. "What d'you want?"
"Two people have run away," said Calhoun vexedly, "your daughter Nym and a man from Three City, whatever that is. You're driven out to prevent fighting between the cities."
"Yes," said Hunt, without expression.
"Then let's go get the runaways," said Calhoun irritably, "before they die in the snow! After all, you got me to have me save them! And there's no need for anybody to die unless they have to!"
Hunt said without any expression at all, "They're heading for the hotlands, where they'd never get. It's my meaning to take you back to your ship, and then find them and give them the sledge so's they'll—so Nym will keep on living a while longer."
He moved to shift the controls and set the sledge again in motion. His state of mind was familiar enough to Calhoun, shock or despair so great that he could feel no other emotion. He would not react to argument. He could not weigh it. He'd made a despairing conclusion and he was lost to all thought beyond carrying it out. His intention was not simply a violent reaction to a single event, such as an elopement. He intended desperate means by which a complex situation could be kept from becoming a catastrophe to others. Three City had to be dealt with in this fashion, and One City in that, and it was requisite that he die, himself. Not only for his daughter but for his community. He had resolved to go to his death for good and sufficient reasons. To get his attention to anything else, he would have to be shocked into something other than despair.
Calhoun brought his hand out of its pocket. He held the blaster. He'd pocketed the weapon before he went to examine the cow. He'd had the power to stop his own abduction at any instant. But a medical man does not refuse a call for professional service.
Now he pointed the blaster to one side and pressed the stud. A half-acre of snow burst into steam. It bellowed upward and went writhing away in the peculiar blue-gold glow of this world at night.
"I don't want to be taken back to my ship," said Calhoun firmly. "I want to catch those runaways and do whatever's necessary so they won't die at all. The situation here has been thrown into my lap. It's a Med Service obligation to intervene in problems of public health, and there's surely a public health problem here!"