WREN TIAN-MORRIS

It was odd, he thought, how wrong the Prophets were. When Li’s Disease broke into the news there were frightened predictions of the end of civilization. But they had not materialized. There were mass insurrections, rioting, organized violence. Individual excesses, yes--but more of a group nature. What little panic there was at the beginning disappeared once people realized that there was no place to go. And bleak activity had settled upon the survivors. Civilization broke down. It dissolved. Grim end. The mechanics failed to remain intact. People had to do something even if it was darker than a routine counterfeit of normal life--in the face of disaster.

What the Prophets expected from humankind, Mark decided, had given way to panic. Humanity had survived other plagues nearly as terrible as this--but human memory is often short. The same grim patience of the past was not here in the present. Yet, humans would somehow survive, and civilization would somehow go on.

It is inconceivable that humankind will become extinct, thought. The whole vast resources and pooled intelligence of surviving humanity focused upon Li’s Disease. The disease must yield. Humanity waited with confidence for the miracle that would save it. And the miracle would happen, Mark knew it with a calm certainty as he stood in the cross corridor at the end of the hall, dying, looking down the thirty metres of tile that separated him from the elevator that would carry him up to the clinic and oblivion. It might be too late for him, but not for civilization. Nature had tried unaided to destroy humans before--and had failed. And Nature’s unholy alliance with human recklessness would also fail.

He wondered as he walked down the corridor if the others who had sickened and died felt as he did. He speculated with grim amusement whether Wendy Kramer would be as impersonal as she was with the others, when she performed the post-mortem on his body. He shivered at the thought of that bare sterile room with the andlers and the shining table. Death was not a pretty thing. But he could meet it with resignation if not with courage. He had already seen too much for it to have any meaning. He did not falter as he placed a finger on the elevator button.

Poor Wendy, he sighed. Sometimes it was harder to be among the living. It was good that he didn't let her know how he felt. He had sensed a change in her recently. Her friendly impersonality had become more than friendly. It could, with a little encouragement, have developed into something else. But it wouldn't now. He sighed again. Her hardness had been a tower of strength. And her black humor had furnished a wry relief to grim reality. It had been thrilling to work with her. He wondered if she would miss him. His lips curled in a faint smile. She would, if only for the trouble she would have in making chaos out of the order he had created. Why couldn't that elevator hurry?


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Chapter 8