CONRADS QUEST FOR RUBBER - Leo Frankowski

"Don't worry about a thing," he said. "This won't be nearly as bad as what you've heard about."

I said I hadn't heard anything at all about the new medicine, but his last statement had indeed started me worrying.

"Really, there's nothing much to it. I went through it myself a week ago, when we crossed the sector line." When he saw the quizzical expression on my face, he continued. "They have divided the world up into thirty-three sectors, to contain communicable diseases. Every passenger and crew member on every ship that passes between two sectors has to take the Cure, all at the same time, to stop the spread of diseases between areas. Then they fumigate the whole ship, just to beon the safe side. It's a bother, but considering the number of deaths that were caused on both sides when your crew came to Brazyl, you have to admit that it will be worth it."

I agreed with him, and told him I was ready to start.

"You already have. The butter on the toast you just ate was the first part of it. I'll be back this evening to administer the second part, a piece of cheese. Good day."

I grumbled a bit about being medicated without my permission. Certainly,I had never done such a thing back when I was a corpsman. Still, I observed no noticeable change in myself, except for the way my foot was continuing to painfully rot away.

That evening, the doctor had me stripped naked and propped upright on a toilet by a beefy male nurse who had also taken some of the magical butter in the morning. Five other seriously ill patients were already sitting on the other toilets in the latrine. Armed guards at the doors kept any unauthorized personnel strictly out, since we were shortly to become very poisonous individuals.

The doctor then placed a carefully weighed slice of cheese on each of our tongues with a pair of tongs. It looked and tasted very ordinary, but he was treating it like the host, so I took it seriously as well.

In about a quarter hour I started itching. We were told that this was caused by the death of all the tiny animals that had previously taken up residence on our skins, and that shortly it would no longer concern us.

This turned out to be perfectly true, since I was soon vomiting and shitting great spews of unmentionable fluids from both ends of my person with such rapidity that I was usually unable to decide which end I should point at the toilet, and with such force that such of it as was reasonably aimed generally overshot the toilet and splattered on the wall behind. I managed all this while hopping around on my right foot, the left one being still blackened, rotten, and painful.

True to the doctor's promise, I hardly noticed any itching during this phase of my cure.

The worst of it was over by midnight. Sitting weakly on the toilet, I noticed a mosquito that landed on my hand, but I was too exhausted to shoo him away. It started to sting me, then stopped and fell over. Dead.

After a bit, my fellow patients and I were taken to the showers and washed, while another crew hosed down the latrine to ready it for the next batch of victims.

My left foot, which was, after all, the object of this exercise, looked worse than ever when they finally took me back to my room.

I felt much better in the morning, and even better yet after an attractive female nurse gave me the last part of the Cure, which included an all-over body massage with a special oil. I was walking again in three days, and my foot was completely healed in another week.

Amazing stuff, the Cure.

I was promptly put on the planning committee that was working on a program to stamp out the plagues we had started among the Brazylians. The areas we had stopped at were fairly well-mapped, and we knew the dates when each place was visited. We had to make some very uneducated guesses as to how fast the diseases would spread among the native populations. We then drew circles on the map with their centers at the points of contact and their radiuses proportional to the time the diseases had had to spread. These overlapping circles covered a depressingly large area.

We then set up two teams of workers. The A team was to contain the diseases, and stop them from spreading across the continent. They would surround the contaminated areas by making contact with all the native tribes on the periphery, convincing them of the seriousness of the threat, and giving the entire tribe the Cure. We would then give the Cure to the native doctors, teaching them how to use it and how to make more. The lack of milk animals among the natives was not a serious problem, since our tests had proven that mother's milk worked as well as any animal milk, and there was always a lactating woman about.

Once the contaminated areas were completely surrounded, the A team would start moving inward until they met up with members of the B team.

The B team would start at the points of contact and work outward, following the diseases through the jungle until the newly introduced diseases were wiped out. Actually, we would be eradicating most of the local diseases as well, so we would be partially compensating the natives for the damage we had caused them.

Time was of the absolute essence, since the longer it took to do the job, the farther the diseases would spread and the more people would die. Large numbers of people would be needed if we were to accomplish our objectives quickly, if at all. Army personnel would be coming as fast as we could transport them to Brazyl. Every ship that could possibly be spared from other tasks was called upon, but they could not begin to bring over enough people to do the job.

A major point of our plan was to enlist as many natives into the program as possible. Without their help, the job could take decades, and the death toll could be in the millions.

It took us three years to finish. For most of it, I ran the B team, while Fritz handled the A team. We each delegated most of the administrative duties and spent most of our time in the jungle, keeping in touch daily with the new radios.

Before we were through, over a quarter of the continent had been explored. Thirteen gross tribes were contacted, with people speaking over seven gross different languages, most of which we still haven't had time to properly record. Pidgin is rapidly becoming the universal second language in the entire continent.

At the end of the first year, one of our native teams found Zbigniew! He had lost a foot to some sort of jungle rot, but had found himself a place in a tribe living near the ocean shore as a shaman, storyteller, and toolmaker. He had a wife and a son when he was found, and he brought them both back with him to Brazylport. We put Captain Zbigniew on administrative work until the emergency was over, and now he serves with me on the faculty of the Explorer's School. He and his family have the house next to mine on faculty row.

Lezek was picked up from the trading station he was running despite impossible problems, and put to work as Fritz's deputy in his own area. Komander Lezek is currently on his way with a company of Explorers to see what India has to offer.

Halfway through the second year of the campaign, Captain Odon and Father John came into one of our advanced posts in native canoes. They had found their native, gold-rich civilization, high in the western mountains. They found five separate nations up there, and none of them called themselves the Incas, but they had still made a major discovery.

Baron Odon is back in his beloved mountains again, as Ambassador to Hy Brazyl, and with him is Father John, now Archbishop of Hy Brazyl.

Komander Fritz ended up marrying Jane, and a few months later, with Jane's permission, he married a pretty little Yaminana girl as well. They are both with him and his new, half-native, both-sexes company, exploring yet another tributary of the Amazon, the greatest river system in the world.

The Yaminana are now carefully protected from their bigger neighbors, and, without losses due to either diseases or to warfare, their numbers are increasing rapidly. This despite the fact that many Yaminana maidens have elected to marry Europeans. It seems that we have a reputation among them for being very good husbands.

To date, there have been more than six dozen of these Yaminana-European marriages, and curiously, they have not resulted in a single child. We are all mystified as to the reason for this. Since the little people's full-sized neighbors were only interested in eating them, there had been no earlier marriages with other full-sized people, as far as anyone knew.

Also, while every other native tribe caught deadly diseases even from apparently healthy Europeans, the Yaminana had remained disease free around us, even before the Cure was introduced. Some of us have begun wondering if they really are a separate species, as their own folklore insists.

On the other hand, the Cure works on them, and it is only supposed to work on humans.

Another of life's mysteries.

Once the foreign diseases had been wiped out in Brazyl, the army establishment at Brazylport was reduced to a group sufficient to maintain communications and support for trade, the missionaries, and exploration. Anna's children, the Big People, have been introduced in large numbers to assist the army's humans. Where the natives have requested it, we have started building and staffing our combination schools, stores, post offices, and churches.

Most important, from my viewpoint, those of us who wanted to go home were finally permitted to do so. In the company of Baron Siemomysl, Captain Zbigniew, over a gross of other army personnel, and all of their families, we boarded a new Express-class ship for home. These were half again as fast and had three times the capacity of the Challenger-class ships that had once so impressed me. They operated only between large, well-established, deepwater ports.

I, of course, brought Booboo with me. As I had discovered years before, her lack of intellectual capability made her something of a house pet, but the truth is that it can be very nice, having a good house pet. She was cuddly, pretty, and always anxious to please. With patient training, she had learned to keep our apartment or cabin neat and clean, and in time I learned to love her for what she was.

Maude was waiting for me on the crowded dock as our ship, the Brazylport Express, pulled into Gdansk. Lord Conrad was with her, as were Maude's four children, Molly, Megan, Mary, and Melinda.

Lord Conrad was very polite to me, but soon begged off to speak with Baron Siemomysl. Maude greeted me warmly, and introduced me to her daughters, whose greeting kisses were almost improperly sexual. I introduced them to Booboo, and I could see in an instant that she and Maude would like each other. They hit it off perfectly, and each seemed to intuitively understand the other. I was much relieved. If they had hated each other, I don't know what I would have done.

The custom was now that each family in the army should have at least one Big Person attached to it. Margarete had asked to be in our family, and Maude accepted her in my name.

It was late in the day and arrangements had been made at a new hotel on the Vistula Lagoon, run by a company with a snowflake fort a few miles south. When I mounted Margarete, Maude climbed up on my lap, just like old times. Booboo joined Molly, to get better acquainted. As we went slowly to the hotel, I mentioned the passion her daughters had put into their kisses.

"I know. They all love you as much as I do. They awoke loving you. I did not know that this would happen. In Tom's world, we did not have feelings. Here, I learned about my emotions. Now my daughters have my love along with my memories."

I was surprised about all this, and asked what we should do.

"You must love them as you love me. Then you must find them good men of their own."

I said that with thought, I could probably find four good men in the army.

"Four men to start. In time, we will need sixteen more."

Startled, I asked her to explain.

"It takes four like me to guard one man properly. If Lord Conrad had four guards, King Henryk would want two of them to guard himself. If King Henryk had such guards, Prince Daniel of the Ruthenias would want some, too. So would King Bela of Hungary. So would Tzar Ivan of Bulgaria. Then each leader would have only one guard. One guard is not enough. Also, I would have to guard Lord Conrad. There would be no one else. I could not spend all of my time with you. Thus, I had four children for Lord Conrad. I had four more for King Henryk. Also for King Bela, and for Prince Daniel, and for Tzar Ivan. It takes four years for my children to awaken. Before that time is up, the Federation of Christendom will expand. More kings will need to be guarded. So I have made more children now."

So I was now the head of a household with two wives, a Big Person, and twenty children! I certainly hoped that the Explorer's School was providing me with a big house! I said as much to Maude.

"There will never be more than twenty of my daughters there. They will awaken and leave as fast as I have young ones. We will soon have two more Big People. There will be as many Big People as there are adults in the household. The house provided to you is very large. Your household also will need at least three servants. There will be much work to do."

I had been thinking of a long, quiet time alone with Maude and Booboo. Apparently such was not to be!

The hotel was a remarkable building, done in a style I had never seen before. It was a squarish, boxy structure, with no thought at all taken for defense, having neither battlements, nor machicolations, nor even thick masonry walls. Except for the large windows, it was completely covered with large, porcelain plates, each a yard square. These plates were embossed with bright, polychromed designs and heraldic symbols.

I asked if people actually lived in that thing.

"It is the new style," Maude said. "It is very comfortable. The outer plates cover thick mats made of glass fibers. It is very warm in the winter. It is cool in the summer. Your new house is made the same way."

I said I was sure that Baron Piotr would love it, and hoped that our home would have fewer colors.

"I told them to use red and white. You will like it," Maude said.

I grunted. I didn't want to appear an old stick-in-the-mud, but I've always felt more comfortable in a building that looked defensible. Well-a-day. I was soon to be a properly married man, and my days of relative freedom would be gone forever.

I was married sooner than I thought, for the great hall of the hotel was all set up for my wedding. Everybody seemed to know about it except me! My family was there, Zbigniew was set to be my best man, and he had three wedding rings ready, for Maude, Booboo, and me. Lord Conrad acted as father of the bride for Maude, and Baron Siemomysl did the same for Booboo.

I had no objections to these proceedings, but I felt they should have given me some warning. I mean, it was only by good luck I was still in a State of Grace, so I could take Communion at the mass that followed.

No sooner was my short double marriage ceremony completed, with Maude as my first wife and Booboo as my second, than the whole thing was repeated for Captain Zbigniew, since he had not yet had proper Christian wedding ceremonies with either of his wives. This time, I was his best man.