A Usual Lunacy

by D.G. Compton

Genres: Science Fiction; Alien Contact; Dystopian; Genetic Engineering

Synopsis

It makes people positively ache with happiness. It puts the roses back in their cheeks and the itch back in their blood. "It" is the Scholes Virus - proper medical term for what used to be called, out of mawkish ignorance but with uncanny prescience, the "love bug". Professor Trevor Scholes has discovered, isolated and classified every variety of the infection that now bears his name. One variety, B79/K, is so rare that the odds are fifty thousand to one against two compatible carriers meeting. So of course Giles Cranston and Tamsin McGillivray meet . . .

Release date: September 29, 2011

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 219

Sample

Tamsin McGillivray was in agony. And it wasn’t any good telling herself it was only nerves—she’d gone only ten minutes before, hadn’t she, the way she always did before being escorted down to the courtroom? Honest to God, she thought, one of these mornings I swear I’ll wet myself …. Mind, she knew the feeling would go away. But it’d happened on every blessed day of the trial so far, and she was frankly sick of it. And her a married woman too.

It was the sense of being trapped that did it, of course. Stuck there in the dock, three hours to go till lunch, and not a chance in hell of a natural break. What did other prisoners do? Hold up one hand and ask to be excused? If they did you never read about it. But then, you wouldn’t.

And what about the judge? She knew old gentlemen had difficulties in that department, but this one with a face like an elephant’s backside never budged an inch. And then there were all the army police, and the court officials, and the nice young blokes on the TV cameras. Stuck there hour after hour. It was one of those things you never thought about, not till it was actually happening to you.

She glanced across at the opposite dock, caught Giles’s eye, and managed an anxious smile.

Giles Cranston’s answering smile was equally anxious. He too was in agony, though for different reasons and rather higher up, from a couple of ribs he feared might be cracked if not downright broken. His jailers had kicked him that morning before breakfast, in the bleak, joyless way jailers had. He hadn’t bothered to ask them why, and they certainly hadn’t thought to tell him. But there’d been another attack on the Justice Building in the night, this time with rocket launchers, and he presumed that this was the reason. Possibly the attackers thought they were his friends. Equally possibly, however, they were hoping to get him killed—or at least seriously disabled—before the end of the trial and its inevitable not guilty outcome.

Inevitable? Well, he’d been promised, hadn’t he? He’d been promised, right from the very beginning, otherwise he’d never have agreed to go through with it. The plan. The Them’s bloody plan.

Reassured (more or less), he turned his attention to the edgy young man in the witness box.

 

The man in the witness box this morning was Professor Trevor Scholes, MD. FSP. And a great deal more. And he too, if not precisely in agony, was undoubtedly acutely uncomfortable. His brand new jeans were tight in all the wrong places, the collar of his new polo-necked sweater had already worn a sore place under his chin, and his ears felt cold and strangely naked from his hideous new haircut.

It seemed that to be the discoverer of the Scholes Virus, and famous throughout the civilized world, somehow wasn’t enough. According to the hospital superintendent, if you were going to appear in public you had also to present something called an image. And preferably a young and forceful one.

The days had long passed, so the hospital superintendent had told him, when his department heads could be seen slopping around in suits inherited from their fathers. “You’re going out into the world, old fellow. You must think of yourself as our ambassador …. And Trevor—no offense, old fellow, but while you’re about it why not have a bit of a trim as well? Something a little more in keeping with the mood of the moment. Hmm?” The hospital superintendent had smiled then, and run one hand complacently over his own brisk half-inch of graying stubble.

The jeans, therefore, and the polo-necked sweater, and the limp half-inch of pale ginger fuzz.

“Professor Scholes—evidence has been placed before this court that the defendant Mrs. McGillivray contracted her Primary Infection on Friday, April the Second. It has therefore been suggested that Wednesday, April the Seventh, is the day to which the attention of this court should principally be directed ….” Counsel paused. (Defense? Prosecution? Professor Scholes had quite lost count.) “Perhaps you would be good enough to explain the significance of this four-day interval for the benefit of the jury?”

Professor Scholes turned from his questioner to the twelve blank faces of the jurors and tried conscientiously to imagine that they were a group of first-year students, sharp-minded, enthusiastic, eager to learn. “You see,” he began, “four days are needed for the virus to establish itself in the body of the patient. We call this its passive phase.” He held up a warning hand. “Which is not to say that the phase is passive in the normal sense of the word. Enormous changes, for example, are being gradually brought about in the patient’s metabolic rate. Appetite is likely to increase. Skin condition frequently improves. Growth rates of hair, toe and finger nails also. Furthermore—”

“And on the fifth day, Professor?”

Brought down to earth, Professor Scholes sighed. It was like being interviewed for the Sundays—all they really wanted were the dirty bits. He cleared his throat. “On the fifth day the patient’s condition stabilizes into what we call the active phase …. Which is, however, in no real sense any more active than the previous, passive phase. Indeed, the patient is now in what one might describe as a state of heightened equilibrium. He or she commonly experiences a great sense of physical well-being and psychic euphoria.” He hesitated. By rights this was where the vastly increased sexual activity came in, the dirty bits Counsel was waiting for. Well, he wouldn’t get it. The professor frowned slightly, then resumed. “But the crucial change in the patient’s condition that occurs upon the fifth day—and the one that justifies our use of the word active—is that the patient becomes both acutely susceptible to Secondary Infection—that is, to reinfection from another compatible Scholes Virus—and also acutely infectious himself. Or herself, of course.”

Finished at last, he smiled vaguely at the jurors and eased his chin above the collar of his jersey. What the hell was the thing knitted out of—asbestos string?

“In other words, Professor?”

“In other words what?” Trevor Scholes caught himself sounding decidedly snappish for the hospital superintendent’s ambassador. “In other words what?” he asked again, in a mild, conciliatory tone.

“You spoke of Secondary Infection, Professor.” From Counsel’s manner it seemed that he considered he was the one, rather, who was being conciliatory. “What nature would this Secondary Infection take?”

“What nature? Why, a fully-developed ROF Syndrome, of course.”

“Would you explain that, please?”

“Dammit man, there’s been more than adequate media coverage. Not to mention the government leaflet and a comprehensive Medical Council directive.”

“Bear with us, Professor. We want these things to be absolutely clear. The jury may not have seen the leaflet nor have the directive by them. Please bear with us ….”

 

Now, three meters away, in the Female Defendant’s dock, Tamsin McGillivray was smiling. It was a tranquil smile, a smile of happy remembrance, a smile—now that her neurotic need to pee had gone away like she’d known it would—without the smallest trace of anxiety. She was, in fact, far away from the air-conditioned, TV-camera’d, maximum security subterranean world of the courtroom, back on Counsel’s morning of Wednesday, April the Seventh, safely in bed with her husband.

Heightened equilibrium … a great sense of physical well-being and psychic euphoria … my goodness, yes. A daft lot of long words, but my goodness yes all the same.

She’d woken early. The sun was shining brightly in through their window in the nice safe airline staff hostel, and she’d known right away from the start that it was going to be a good day, a marvelous day. She’d known it in her bones. She loved the whole world that morning. The whole world …. She even loved the, well, the hard-on Jock had that morning. He often got them just before waking up, these, well, these hard-ons, nearly up to his chin. Sometimes they put her off, not in general, just the morning ones—she reckoned they were on account of the sexy things he dreamed about, the things he’d never tell her. But that sunny morning she loved even his, well, his hard-on, nearly up to his chin.

There was this place up near the end, underneath and round a little to the left, a sort of crinkly place, and just touching it was enough to set him off. Set him off grunting and groaning …. Not that she minded his grunting and groaning. Fact was, it gave her the hots, just hearing him. And she hadn’t found his place from the books either. She’d discovered it for herself, before they were married, even down behind the tennis courts. Mostly she thought it was on account of her finding his place that he’d married her. Which was all right by her. There were far worse reasons she could think of.

And besides, by now it wasn’t just his place—it was theirs somehow.

So she’d taken his, well, his hard-on in both her hands, and found his place, and he’d opened his eyes, and—not being properly woke up and that—well, he’d come there and then all over her hand, which she hadn’t meant at all. But it was a friendly sort of come, and there’d be plenty of other mornings, and nights too, so it hadn’t mattered … even though it messed up the sheets and she didn’t like to send them to the airline laundry, not with Jock’s come all over them. She preferred to scrub them herself. He made a lot of come, Jock did, she thought proprietorially.

They’d lain side by side then, happy as two bugs in a rug, and looked at the sun shining in through the window, and talked about where they’d go for her summer holiday—provided he was still unemployed by then—and the alarm had gone off and she’d got up and washed at the basin in the corner and dressed in her overall uniform and run down to the canteen for breakfast, and they’d ragged her then, well, her friend Jood had, for whistling fit to break the windows, and if that wasn’t heightened euphoria, physical equilibrium, psychic well-being, and all that jazz, well, nothing was.

 

“This Secondary Infection, Professor—this ROF Syndrome. What you really mean, do you not, is that the two persons concerned would, if you’ll pardon the phrase, er, fall in love?”

“No, I will not—I will not pardon the phrase!” Professor Scholes found himself pounding the edge of the witness box. “I’m sorry … but you really should not put words into my mouth. Dangerous words. Words that carry all the wrong, out-of-date associations. Fall in love, indeed …”

He appealed to the jury. “We all know, do we not, that Secondary Infection with a compatible Scholes Virus produces a Reciprocal Obsessive Fixation Syndrome? ROF for short. And we all know that this has nothing whatsoever to do with love.” He leaned forward. “It is a disease, ladies and gentlemen. In the purest sense, a disease. And one that strikes at the entire human organism, mind and body. It is a destroyer—a destroyer primarily of psychic defenses, of social conditioning, of established behavior patterns … of conscience, if you like. But it is a physiological destroyer also, a destroyer of glandular balance, of metabolic stability, of—”

“They do tell me, Professor, that it makes one extraordinarily sexy.”

“Not … invariably.” He sighed. The dirty bits—dear God, how they did love the dirty bits. “Though I do concede that increased sexual activity is a typical symptom of the Syndrome. But it is only the presence of a disease—a virus in one human body responding to reinfection from a matching virus in another human body. It’s a disease, you see—nothing to do with love at all. I do think it’s most terribly important for people to understand that.”

“Perhaps you would prefer the phrase bugged rigid, Professor.”

He waited for the juvenile tittering of the court officials to die down. “I do admit that the words possess a certain ethnic vitality. And they’re accurate too, inasfar as they refer to what I take to be the Love Bug of folk myth. That too was considered a disease, I seem to remember.”

Counsel bowed, conceding to the point. “Then what you are telling us, Professor Scholes, is that on the morning of Wednesday, April the Seventh, the female defendant, Mrs. McGillivray, was in a condition acutely susceptible to Reinfection. She was, as the common parlance has it, primed ….”

 

Up in the front row of the visitors’ sound-proof, bullet-proof, bomb-proof gallery, where the court officials had reluctantly been forced to admit him as next of kin to the female defendant, Jock McGillivray tore in ineffectual rage at the immovable steel arms of his riot-proof seating. The bitch … the bloody little bitch ….

He too was remembering the morning of Wednesday, April the Seventh. Primed … God Almighty, the bloody little bitch, jacking him off as cool as you please and her secretly already on her fifth day, primed, all set to get herself bugged rigid with some shit she hadn’t even set eyes on yet.

He’d never’ve let her put a bloody finger on him if he’d known.

Anybody’d think he wasn’t good enough for her. And hadn’t he had them crying for mercy at the size of it? And him never a man to grudge the birds a wee bit of a feel-up first, for starters? After all, fair’s fair, you gave as good as you got these days. But when the chips were down it was your cock they needed, and not one of them better forget it.

That bloody Tammie now, jacking him off the way she meant it. And afterwards—d’you know what she’d said? ‘I’m so happy, Jock, she’d said, God Almighty, the cheek of it. Happy, indeed, and her on her fifth day, primed. He’d have stuck it in if he’d known, screwed it up and in till it bloody near choked her. And then some. And he could have, too. He’d had more fucks than some folks had had hot dinners. He could have too.

People sitting next to Jock McGillivray were staring at him. Any minute now one of them armed attendants’d come pussyfooting down the aisle. He controlled himself, took a deep breath, sat back in his seat, smiled calmly round. He’d been to every day of the trial so far and he meant to see it out. They’d not be asking him to leave, no bloody fear of that. He meant to be there when that sneaky bitch got what was coming to her.

 

“Primed. That is correct.” For the first time in some minutes Professor Scholes remembered to smile. You have a charming smile, the hospital superintendent had said. Use it. “On the morning in question Mrs. McGillivray’s Primary Infection would undoubtedly have passed into its active phase. She would have been feeling—and looking—at her very best.” Then the hospital superintendent had punched his arm rather too hard for comfort. You must think of yourself as our ambassador, Trev. “Indeed, some patients go so far as to describe seeing the world as if through a distinct golden haze.”

“It sounds like a delightful condition, Professor.”

“And so it might be, were it not caused by a virus multiplying ungovernably within the patient’s blood stream.” He could not be sure, but he suspected mockery. It made him pompous. As did his asbestos string collar. Smile, damn you.

“And were it not also, Professor, as you have so helpfully explained, so dangerously vulnerable to reinfection.”

“By a compatible virus, yes. Involving the patient virally with some other unsuspecting person.”

“Would you explain to the court what you mean by compatible, please?”

Now that was more like it. An abstruse point, one well worth going into in some detail. “Well it varies enormously. I mean, not all virus groups reciprocate interfamilially. If they did, then the incidence of the fully developed Syndrome would be even greater than it already is. No, virus groups tend in the main to reciprocate only within a relatively small range of ….” Suddenly he was filled with misgivings. “Are you sure the court wants to hear all this?”

“It has a bearing, Professor. I promise you it has a bearing.”

Odd. He couldn’t for the life of him imagine how. Still, he’d do his best to keep it brief. With some difficulty he withdrew his handkerchief from the improbable pocket opening of his jeans and mopped his forehead. It was becoming uncomfortably hot in the courtroom.

“A virus, you must understand, is well known to be an extremely versatile organism. The influenza virus, for example, produces new strains every year. Mercifully the Scholes Virus is rather more stable. When I came to classify it I found that it broke down into three basic groups, which I called A, B, and C. Within these basic groups there are many sub-divisions, however, not all of which are fully reciprocally compatible.” He was getting into his stride. At last a serious question to which he could give a serious answer. “Some combinations, for example, are reinfective only on a one-sided basis, the dominant sub-division bestowing limited immunity upon its host, while the—”

“Tell us, Professor, the Scholes Virus group to which the female defendant’s Primary Infection belonged.”

Why, the professor wondered, did they ask you questions when they did not really wish to hear the answers? “Mrs. McGillivray’s infection was found upon computer analysis to be of group B79/K. She—”

“Group B79/K …. And does not that final K carry a special significance, Professor?”

“It signifies that the virus is exclusively autoinfective.” Suddenly he became aware of the jury’s blank faces. It was almost as if he was being pelted with large blobs of cotton wool. “That is to say, the virus can only reciprocate with an identical Group and subdivision. Near matches will not do. Reinfection with any Group other than B79/K would fail completely.”

“I see. And is this B79/K a rare group?”

“Probably the rarest.”

“Can you give us any idea as to just how rare that is?”

Professor Scholes cleared his throat. “Allowing for seasonal variations, let us take five percent of the population as being at risk of reinfection in early April. Of these, no more than one in ten thousand would be host to the B79/K grouping. The odds, therefore, against Mrs. McGillivray contracting a Secondary Infection seem at first sight to have been in the region of twenty thousand to one. Nevertheless, taking into account the improbability of an—ah—an unconventional fixation arising in one as pronouncedly heterosexual as the female defendant, these odds must be lengthened still further. Not that the virus itself, you must understand, is a respecter of convention. Reinfections occur between all manner of people, male or female, old or young. Nevertheless, social conditioning—coupled with the powerful bias natural selection has given towards heterosexuality—does tend to suppress most of the symptoms in the more bizarre fixations that come about.”

He paused, shuddered slightly, though whether from revulsion or delight at the thought of such fixations not even he was quite certain.

“Furthermore,” he went on hastily, clearing his throat again and glaring at the jury, “one has to remember the increased resistance to the virus that comes with each successive attack, so that above the age of, say, sixty, fully developed Syndromes become highly unusual. Old people, in short, are virtually immune to bugging out. Therefore …” his hands sought the lapels of his jacket, found none, only asbestos string knitwear, and hovered uncertainly “… therefore the odds I would suggest must be closer to fifty thousand to one against, taking the ratio of males to females as disclosed in the most recent census to be approximately ….”

 

Fifty thousand to one against … the figure penetrated even Giles Cranston’s self-absorption. It was certainly impressive. And was a measure of the Them’s thoroughness. The way they’d worked it there’d really been precious little chance of his falling for the wrong girl. Doubtless the prosecution was going to use it as evidence of criminal conspiracy—which was fair enough, for there had been a conspiracy, and a criminal one at that.

There’d been two of the Them, large ones and no arguments, to pick him up in the road. . .