The Science Fiction Anthology. Fritz Leiber
Alcala tried to see past the meditative mask of the thin dark face. “He makes small job-lots of chemical compounds. Special bug spray for sale to experimental plantations, hormone spray for fruits, that sort of thing. Sometimes, when he collects some money ahead, he does research.”
Camba waited, and his silence became a question. Alcala spoke reluctantly, anger rising in him. “Oh, it’s genuine research. He has some patents and publications to his credit. You can confirm that if you choose.” He was unable to keep the hostility out of his voice.
A waiter came and placed steaming platters of food on the table. Camba waited until he was gone. “You know him well, I presume. Is he sane?”
The question was another shock. Alcala thought carefully, for any man might be insane in secret. “Yes, so far as I know.” He turned his attention to the steak, but first took three very large capsules from a bottle in his pocket.
“I would not expect that a doctor would need to take pills,” Camba remarked with friendly mockery.
“I don’t need them,” Alcala explained. “Mixed silicones. I’m guinea pigging.”
“Can’t such things be left to the guinea pigs?” Camba asked, watching with revulsion as Alcala uncapped the second bottle and sprinkled a layer of gray powder over his steak.
“Guinea pigs have no assimilation of silicones; only man has that.”
“Yes, of course. I should have remembered from your famous papers, The Need Of Trace Silicon In Human Diet and Silicon Deficiency Diseases.”
Obviously Camba had done considerable investigating of Alcala before approaching him. He had even given the titles of the research papers correctly. Alcala’s wariness increased.
“What is the purpose of the experiment this time?” asked the small dark Federation agent genially.
“To determine the safe limits of silicon consumption and if there are any dangers in an overdose.”
“How do you determine that? By dropping dead?”
He could be right. Perhaps the test should be stopped. Every day, with growing uneasiness, Alcala took his dose of silicon compound, and every day, the chemical seemed to be absorbed completely—not released or excreted—in a way that was unpleasantly reminiscent of the way arsenic accumulated without evident damage, then killed abruptly without warning.
Already, this evening, he had noticed that there was something faulty about his coordination and weight and surface sense. The restaurant door had swung back with a curious lightness, and the hollow metal handle had had a curious softness under his fingers. Something merely going wrong with the sensitivity of his fingers—?
He tapped his fingertips on the heavy indestructible silicone plastic table top. There was a feeling of heaviness in his hands, and a feeling of faint rubbery give in the table.
Tapping his fingers gently, his heavy fingers ... the answer was dreamily fantastic. I’m turning into silicon plastic myself, he thought. But how, why? He had not bothered to be curious before, but the question had always been—what were supposedly insoluble silicons doing assimilating into the human body at all?
Several moments passed. He smoothed back his hair with his oddly heavy hand before picking up his fork again.
“I’m turning into plastic,” he told Camba.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Nothing. A joke.”
Camba was turning into plastic, too. Everyone was. But the effect was accumulating slowly, by generations.
Camba lay down his knife and started in again. “What connections have you had with John Delgados?”
Concentrate on the immediate situation. Alcala and Johnny were obviously in danger of some sort of mistaken arrest and interrogation.
As Alcala focused on the question, one errant whimsical thought suddenly flitted through the back of his mind. In red advertising letters: TRY OUR NEW MODEL RUST-PROOF, WATERPROOF, HEAT & SCALD RESISTANT, STRONG—EXTRA-LONG-WEARING HUMAN BEING!
He laughed inwardly and finally answered: “Friendship. Mutual interest in high ion colloidal suspensions and complex synthesis.” Impatience suddenly mastered him. “Exactly what is it you wish to know, Senor? Perhaps I could inform you if I knew the reasons for your interest.”
Camba chose a piece of salad with great care. “We have reason to believe that he is Syndrome Johnny.”
Alcala waited for the words to clarify. After a moment, it ceased to be childish babble and became increasingly shocking. He remembered the first time he had met John Delgados, the smile, the strong handclasp. “Call me Johnny,” he had said. It had seemed no more than a nickname.
The investigator was watching his expression with bright brown eyes.
Johnny, yes ... but not Syndrome Johnny. He tried to think of some quick refutation. “The whole thing is preposterous, Senor Camba. The myth of Syndrome Plague Johnny started about a century ago.”
“Doctor Alcala”—the small man in the gray suit was tensely sober—”John Delgados is very old, and John Delgados is not his proper name. I have traced his life back and back, through older and older records in Argentina, Panama, South Africa, the United States, China, Canada. Everywhere he has paid his taxes properly, put his fingerprints on file as a good citizen should. And he changed his name every twenty years, applying to the courts for permission with good honest reasons for changing his name. Everywhere he has been a laboratory worker, held patents, sometimes made a good deal of money. He is one hundred and forty years old. His first income tax was paid in 1970, exactly one hundred and twenty years ago.”
“Other men are that old,” said Alcala.
“Other men are old, yes. Those who survived the two successive plagues, were unusually durable.” Camba finished and pushed back his plate. “There is no crime in being long-lived, surely. But he has changed his name five times!”
“That proves nothing. Whatever his reasons for changing his name, it doesn’t prove that he is Syndrome Johnny any more than it proves he is the cow that jumped over the moon. Syndrome Johnny is a myth, a figment of mob delirium.”
As he said it, he knew it was not true. A Federation investigator would not be on a wild goose chase.
The plates were taken away and cups of steaming black coffee put between them. He would have to warn Johnny. It was strange how well you could know a man as well as he knew Johnny, firmly enough to believe that, despite evidence, everything the man did was right.
“Why must it be a myth?” Camba asked softly.
“It’s ridiculous!” Alcala protested. “Why would any man—” His voice cut off as unrelated facts fell into a pattern. He sat for a moment, thinking intensely, seeing the century of plague as something he had never dreamed....
A price.
Not too high a price in the long run, considering what was purchased. Of course, the great change over into silicon catalysis would be a shock and require adjustment and, of course, the change must be made in several easy stages—and those who could not adjust would die.
“Go on, Doctor,” Camba urged softly. “‘Why would any man—’“
He tried to find a way of explaining which would not seem to have any relationship to John Delgados. “It has been recently discovered”—but he did not say how recently—”that the disease of Syndrome Plague was not a disease. It is an improvement.” He had spoken clumsily.
“An improvement on life?” Camba laughed and nodded, but there were bitterness and anger burning behind the small man’s smile. “People can be improved to death by the millions. Yes, yes, go on, Senor. You fascinate me.”
“We are stronger,” Alcala told