"This is Dr. Lett. He was the greatest of our physicians. Now he is nearly the last."
"Agreed," said the bland man, as zestfully as before. "But now the Interstellar Medical Service sends someone before whom I should bow! Someone whose knowledge and experience and training is so infinitely greater than mine that I become abashed! I am timid! I am hesitant to offer an opinion before a Med Service man!"
It was not unprecedented for an eminent doctor to resent the implied existence of greater skill or knowledge than his own. But this man was not only resentful. He was derisive.
"I came here," said Calhoun politely, "on what I expected to be a strictly routine visit. But I'm told there's a very grave public health situation here. I'd like to offer any help I can give."
"Grave!" Dr. Lett laughed scornfully. "It is hopeless for poor planetary doctors like myself! But not, of course, for a Med Ship man!"
Calhoun shook his head. This man would not be easy to deal with. Tact was called for. But the situation was appalling.
"I have a question," said Calhoun ruefully. "I'm told that paras are madmen, and there's been mention of suspicion and secretiveness which suggests schizo-paranoia and—so I have guessed—the term para for those affected in this way."
"It is not any form of paranoia," said the planetary doctor, contemptuously. "Paranoia involves suspicion of everyone. Paras despise and suspect only normals. Paranoia involves a sensation of grandeur, not to be shared. Paras are friends and companions to each other. They co-operate delightedly in attempting to make normals like themselves. A paranoiac would not want anyone to share his greatness!"
Calhoun considered, and then agreed.
"Since you've said it, I see that it must be so. But my question remains. Madness involves delusions. But paras organize themselves. They make plans and take different parts in them. They act rationally for purposes they agree on—such as assassinating me. But how can they act rationally if they have delusions? What sort of delusions do they have?"
The Minister for Health said thinly:
"Only what horrors out of the jungles might suggest! I ... I cannot listen, Dr. Lett. I cannot watch, if you intend to demonstrate!"
The man with thick glasses waved an arm. The Minister for Health went hastily out. Dr. Lett made a mirthless sound.
"He would not make a medical man! Here is a para in this aseptic room. He is an unusually good specimen for study. He was my assistant and I knew him when he was sane. Now I know him as a para. I will show you his delusion."
He went to a small culture oven and opened the door. He busied himself with something inside. Over his shoulder he said with unction:
"The first settlers here had much trouble establishing a human-use ecology on this world. The native plants and animals were useless. They had to be replaced with things compatible with humans. Then there was more trouble. There were no useful scavengers—and scavengers are essential! The rat is usually dependable, but rats do not thrive on Tallien. Vultures—no. Of course not. Carrion beetles ... Scarabeus beetles ... The flies that produce maggots to do such good work in refuse disposal.... None thrive on Tallien Three! And scavengers are usually specialists, too. But the colony could not continue without scavengers! So our ancestors searched on other worlds, and presently they found a creature which would multiply enormously and with a fine versatility upon the wastes of our human cities. True, it smelled like an ancient Earth-animal called skunk—butyl mercaptan. It was not pretty—to most eyes it is revolting. But it was a scavenger and there was no waste product it would not devour."
Dr. Lett turned from the culture oven. He had a plastic container in his hand. A faint, disgusting odor spread from it.
"You ask what the delusions of para may be?" he grinned derisively. He held out the container. "It is the delusion that this scavenger, this eater of unclean things, this unspeakable bit of slimy, squirming flesh—paras have the delusion that it is the most delectable of foodstuffs!"
He thrust the plastic container under Calhoun's nose. Calhoun did not draw in his breath while it remained there. Dr. Lett said in mocking admiration:
"Ah! You have the strong stomach a medical man should have! The delusion of the para is that these squirming, writhing objects are delightful! Paras develop an irresistible craving for them! It is as if men on an Earth-like world develop an uncontrollable hunger for vultures and rats and—even less tolerable things. These scavengers—paras eat them! So normal men would rather die than become paras!"
Calhoun gagged in purely instinctive revulsion. The things in the plastic container were gray and small. Had they been still, they might have been no worse to look at than raw oysters in a cocktail. But they squirmed. They writhed.
"I will show you," said Dr. Lett amiably.
He turned to the glass plate which divided the room into halves. The man behind the thick glass now pressed eagerly against it. He looked at the container with a horrible, lustful desire. The thick-eyeglassed man clucked at him, as if at a caged animal one wishes to soothe. The man beyond the glass yawned hysterically. He seemed to whimper. He could not take his eyes from the container in the doctor's hands.
"So!" said Dr. Lett.
He pressed a button. A lock-door opened. He put the container inside it. The door closed. It could be sterilized before the door on the other side would open, but now it was arranged to sterilize itself to prevent contagion from coming out.
The man behind the glass uttered inaudible cries. He was filled with beastly, uncontrollable impatience. He cried out at the mechanism of the contagion-lock as a beast might bellow at the opening through which food was dropped into its cage.
That lock opened, inside the glass-walled room. The plastic container appeared. The man leaped upon it. He gobbled its contents, and Calhoun was nauseated. But as the para gobbled, he glared at the two who—with Murgatroyd—watched him. He hated them with a ferocity which made veins stand out upon his temples and fury empurple his skin.
Calhoun felt that he'd gone white. He turned his eyes away and said squeamishly:
"I have never seen such a thing before."
"It is new, eh?" Said Dr. Lett in a strange sort of pride. "It is new! I ... even I!... have discovered something that the Med Service does not know!"
"I wouldn't say the Service doesn't know about similar things," said Calhoun slowly. "There are ... sometimes ... on a very small scale ... dozens or perhaps hundreds of victims ... there are sometimes similar irrational appetites. But on a planetary scale ... no. There has never been a ... an epidemic of this size."
He still looked sick and stricken. But he asked:
"What's the result of this ... appetite? What does it do to a para? What change in ... say ... his health takes place in a man after he becomes a para?"
"There is no change," said Dr. Lett blandly. "They are not sick and they do not die because they are paras. The condition itself is no more abnormal than ... than diabetes! Diabetics require insulin. Paras ... something else. But there is prejudice against what paras need! It is as if some men would rather die than use insulin and those who did use it became outcasts! I do not say what causes this condition. I do not object if the Minister for Health believes that jungle creatures creep out and ... make paras out of men." He watched Calhoun's expression. "Does your Med Service information agree with me?"
"No-o-o," said Calhoun. "I'm afraid it inclines to the idea of a monstrous cause, but it really isn't much like diabetes."
"But it is!" insisted Lett. "Everything digestible, no matter how unappetizing to a modern man, has been a part of the regular diet of some tribe of human savages! Even prehistoric Romans ate dormice cooked in honey! Why should the fact that a needed substance happens to be found in a scavenger...."