The Silver Plague
By ALBERT DE PINA
Like a tide, the horror of the silver
death was sweeping to inundate the
inhabited worlds—with only Varon to
halt its flood—and he was already
marked by the plague he fought.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Spring 1945.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Fermin, the Arch-Mutant, had risen before dawn and in thegarnet-colored light that passed for morning on Ganymede, repaired tothe magnificent austerity of his cloister where he received an endlessseries of reports.
He had been reading Seville-Lorca the previous evening, delightingin the incredible pages which had been the great historians' dyingcontribution to their worlds, and to which he had every intention ofadding an ironic anti-climax of his own. He sat in an austere Jaditechair basking in the archaic warmth of an open hearth, and watchedwhimsically for a moment how the darting flames reflected a brightpatina on the fur of the somnolent Felirene at his feet. There wasa chapter on the Jovian Societies he wanted to re-read. Not forthe brilliant, facile style in which Seville-Lorca presented thedistilled chronicles of the Jovian Moons, but for that deeper purportwhich is the notation of the heart.
Slowly, Fermin became absorbed in the photo-plastic record on the standbefore him, unrolling in synchronized timing with his own reading speed.
"... It seems natural, I suppose, human nature being as it is—that theMother Planet should maintain an attitude of supercilious aloofness.But then, it is axiomatic we can never quite love those we havewronged. And the history of the colonization of the major Jovian Moonsis anything but exalting.
"When at the close of the 'Great Unrest,' as the twenty-third centuryis popularly known, it was definitely established that the ratio ofMutants to the grand total of normal populations was becoming anincreasingly dangerous potential, they were given their choice of acharter to the newly explored Jovian Moons—a magnanimous gesturewhich ignored with olympic indifference the fact that at leastone—Ganymede—had already a civilization of its own.
"The fact that 'Mutants' were the direct result of malignant rays andfiendish gases to which their ancestors had been exposed during theendless wars that ravaged Terra until the twenty-second century, thusdamaging and modifying their chromosomes until Mutants began to appearin increasing numbers, was beside the point.
"Terra was not interested in 'origins' it was only interested in'conclusions'—and that the sooner the better! For these silver-hairedMutants the color of old ivory, with the piercing silver-grey eyes,were a constant reminder of a recent barbarism, of fratricidal wars sodamning that the new apostles of the 'Great Peace' would rather averttheir minds. Besides, and this was the deciding factor, the Mutants'infinite capacity for intrigue bid fair to upset Terra's idyllicapplecart!
"For in a world devoid of want, where strife had ceased underscientific control, where obedience was taken for granted, androbot-labor performed an endless variety of tasks, the blessed Mutantsfound ways and means of fomenting discontent with admirable logic. Hadit been confined to their own ranks, it would have been no problem atall, for as yet their number were negligible—scarcely a million. Butthe perversity of human nature is sometimes appalling to behold; thus,under the persuasive eloquence of the Mutants, great