After a time Barney said, “You mean it?”
“It’ll be illegal, of course. Only the UN can legally route you back to Terra and that’s not going to happen. What we’ll do is pick you up some night and transfer you to Winnie-the-Pooh Acres.”
“And there I’ll stay.”
“Until Leo’s surgeons can give you a new face, finger and footprints, cephalic wave pattern, a new identity throughout; then you’ll emerge, probably at your old job for P. P. Layouts. I understand you were their New York man. Two, two and a half years from now, you’ll be at that again. So don’t give up hope.”
Barney said, “Maybe I don’t want that.”
“What? Sure you do. Every colonist wants—”
“I’ll think it over,” Barney said, “and let you know. But maybe I’ll want something else.” He was thinking about Anne. To go back to Terra and pick up once again, perhaps even with Roni Fugate—at some deep, instinctive stratum it did not have the appeal to him that he would have expected. Mars—or the experience of love with Anne Hawthorne—had even further altered him, now; he wondered which it was. Both. And anyhow, he thought, I asked to come here—I wasn’t really drafted. And I must never let myself forget that.
Allen Faine said, “I know some of the circumstances, Mayerson. What you’re doing is atoning. Correct?”
Surprised, Barney said, “You, too?” Religious inclinations seemed to permeate the entire milieu, here.
“You may object to the word,” Faine said, “but it’s the proper one. Listen, Mayerson; by the time we get you to Winnie-the-Pooh Acres you’ll have atoned sufficiently. There’s something you don’t know yet. Look at this.” He held out, reluctantly, a small plastic tube. A container.
Chilled, Barney said, “What’s this?”
“Your illness. Leo believes, on professional advice, that it’s not enough for you merely to state in court that you’ve been damaged; they’ll insist on thoroughly examining you.
“Tell me specifically what it is in this thing.”
“It’s epilepsy, Mayerson. The Q form, the strain whose causes no one is sure of, whether it’s due to organic injury that can’t be detected with the EEG or whether it’s psychogenic.”
“And the symptoms?”
Faine said, “Grand mal.” After a pause he said, “Sorry.”
“I see,” Barney said. “And how long will I have them?”
“We can administer the antidote after the litigation but not before. A year at the most. So now you can see what I meant when I said that you’re going to be in a position to more than atone for not bailing out Leo when he needed it. You can see how this illness, claimed as a side-effect of Chew-Z, will—”
“Sure,” Barney said. “Epilepsy is one of the great scare-words. Like cancer, once. People are irrationally afraid of it because they know it can happen to them, any time, with no warning.”
“Especially the more recent Q form. Hell, they don’t even have a theory about it. What’s important is that with the Q form no organic alteration of the brain is involved, and that means we can restore you. The tube, there. It’s a metabolic toxin similar in action to metrazol; similar, but unlike metrazol it continues to produce the attacks—with the characteristically deranged EEG pattern during those intervals—until it’s neutralized—which as I say we’re prepared to do.”
“Won’t a blood-fraction test show the presence of this toxin?”
“It will show the presence of a toxin, and that’s exactly what we want. Because we will sequester the documents pertaining to the physical and mental induction exams which you recently took… and we’ll be able to prove that when you arrived on Mars there was no Q-type epilepsy and no toxicity. And it’ll be Leo’s—or rather your–contention that the toxicity in the blood is a derivative of Chew-Z.”
Barney said, “Even if I lose the suit—”
“It will still greatly damage Chew-Z sales. Most colonists have a nagging feeling anyhow that the translation drugs are in the long run biochemically harmful.” Faine added, “The toxin in that tube is relatively rare. Leo obtained it through highly specialized channels. It originates on Io, I believe. One certain doctor—”
“Willy Denkmal,” Barney said.
Faine shrugged. “Possibly. In any case there it is in your hand; as soon as you’ve been exposed to Chew-Z you’re to take it. Try to have your first grand mal attack where your fellow hovelists will see you; don’t be off somewhere on the desert farming or bossing autonomic dredges. As soon as you’ve recovered from the attack, get on the vidphone and ask the UN for medical assistance. Have their disinterested doctors examine you; don’t apply for private medication.”
“It would probably be a good idea,” Barney said, “if the UN doctors could run an EEG on me during an attack.”
“Absolutely. So try if possible to get yourself into a UN hospital; in all there’re three on Mars. You’ll be able to put forward a good argument for this because—” Faine hesitated. “Frankly, with this toxin your attacks will involve severe destructiveness, toward yourself and to others. Technically they’ll be of the hysterical, aggressive variety concluding in a more or less complete loss of consciousness. It’ll be obvious what it is right from the start, because—or so I’m told–you’ll reveal the typical tonic stage, with great muscular contractions, and then the clonic stage of rhythmic contraction alternating with relaxation. After which of course the coma supervenes.”
“In other words,” Barney said, “the classic convulsive form.”
“Does it frighten you?”
“I don’t see where that matters. I owe Leo something; you and I and Leo know that. I still resent the word ‘atonement,’ but I suppose this is that.” He wondered how this artificially induced illness would affect his relationship with Anne. Probably this would terminate the thing. So he was giving up a good deal for Leo Bulero. But then Leo was doing something for him, too; getting him off Mars was no minor consideration.
“We’re taking it for granted,” Faine said, “that they’ll make an attempt to kill you the moment you retain an attorney. In fact they’ll—”
“I’d like to go back to my hovel, now.” He moved off. “Okay?”
“Fine. Go pick up the routine there. But let me give you a word of advice as regards that girl. Doberman’s Law—remember, he was the first person to marry and then get divorced on Mars?–states that in proportion to your emotional attachment to someone on this damn place the relationship deteriorates. I’d give you two weeks at the most, and not because you’ll be ill but because that’s standard. Martian musical chairs. And the UN encourages it because it means, frankly, if I may say so, more children to populate the colony. Catch?”
“The UN,” Barney said, “might not sanction my relationship with her because it’s on a somewhat different basis than you’re describing.”
“No it’s not,” Faine said calmly. “It may seem so to you, but I watch the whole planet, day in, night out. I’m just stating a fact; I’m not being critical. In fact I’m personally sympathetic.”
“Thanks,” Barney said, and walked away, flashing his light ahead of him in the direction of his hovel; tied about his throat the small bleeper signal which told him when he was nearing—and more important when he was not nearing—his hovel began to sound louder: a one-frog pond of comfort close to his ear.
I’ll take the toxin, he said to himself. And I’ll go into court and sue the bastards for Leo’s sake. Because I owe that to him. But I’m not returning to Earth; either I make it here or not at all. With Anne Hawthorne, I hope, but if not, then alone or with someone else; I’ll live out Doberman’s Law, as Faine predicts. Anyhow it’ll be here on this miserable planet, this “promised land.”