The Giving Plague Read online

But ALAS --”

  “Alas?”

  “A-L-A-S.” He grinned. “It’s what I’ve named the new virus I’ve isolated, Forry. It stands for ‘Acquired Lavish Altruism Syndrome.’ How do you like it?”

  “Hate it. Are you trying to tell me that there’s a virus that affects the human mind? And in such a complicated way?” I was incredulous and, at the same time, scared spitless. I’ve always had this superstitious feeling about viruses and vectors. Les really had me spooked now.

  “No, of course not,” he laughed. “But consider a simpler possibility. What if some virus one day stumbled on a way to make people enjoy giving blood?”

  I guess I only blinked then, unable to give him any other reaction.

  “Think, Forry! Think about that old man I spoke of earlier. He told me that every two months or so, just before he’d be allowed to donate again, he tends to feel ‘all thick inside’. The discomfort only goes away after the next donation!”

  I blinked again. “And you’re saying that each time he gives blood, he’s actually serving his parasite, providing it a vector into new hosts...”

  “The new hosts being those who survive surgery because the hospital gave them fresh blood, all because our old man was so generous, yes! They’re infected! Only this is a subtle virus, not a greedy bastard, like AIDS, or even the flu. It keeps a low profile. Who knows, maybe it’s even reached a level of commensalism with its hosts -- attacking invading organisms for them, or...”

  He saw the look on my face and waved his hands. “All right, far-fetched, I know. But think about it! Because there are no disease symptoms, nobody has ever looked for this virus, until now.”

  He’s isolated it, I realized, suddenly. And, knowing instantly what this thing could mean, career-wise, I was already scheming, wondering how to get my name onto his paper, when he published this. So absorbed was I that, for a few moments, I lost track of his words.

  “... And so now we get to the interesting part. You see, what’s a normal, selfish Tory-voter going to think when he finds himself suddenly wanting to go down to the blood bank as often as they’ll let him?”

  “Um,” I shook my head. “That he’s been bewitched? Hypnotized?”

  “Nonsense!” Les snorted. “That’s not how human psychology works. No, we tend to do lots of things without knowing why. We need excuses, though, so we rationalize! If an obvious reason for our behavior isn’t readily available, we invent one, preferably one that helps us think better of ourselves. Ego is powerful stuff, my friend.”

  Hey, I thought. Don’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs.

  “Altruism,” I said aloud. “They find themselves rushing regularly to the blood bank. So they rationalize that it’s because they’re good people... They become proud of it. Brag about it...”

  “You’ve got it,” Les said. “And because they’re proud, even sanctimonious, about their newfound generosity, they tend to extend it, to bring it into other parts of their lives!”

  I whispered in hushed awe. “An altruism virus! Jesus, Les, when we announce this...”

  I stopped when I saw his sudden frown, and instantly thought it was because I’d used that word, “we.” I should have known better, of course. For Les was always more than willing to share the credit. No, his reservation was far more serious than that.

  “Not yet, Forry. We can’t publish this yet.”

  I shook my head. “Why not! This is big, Les! It proves much of what you’ve been saying all along, about symbiosis and all that. There could even be a Nobel in it!”

  I’d been gauche, and spoken aloud of The Ultimate. But he did not even seem to notice. Damn. If only Les had been like most biologists, driven more than anything else by the lure of Stockholm. But no. You see, Les was a natural. A natural altruist.

  It was his fault, you see. Him and his damn virtue, they drove me to first contemplate what I next decided to do.

  “Don’t you see, Forry? If we publish, they’ll develop an antibody test for the ALAS virus. Donors carrying it will be barred from the blood banks, just like those carrying AIDS and syphilis and hepatitis. And that would be incredibly cruel torture to those poor addicts and carriers.”

  “Screw the carriers!” I almost shouted. Several pizza patrons glanced my way. With a desperate effort I brought my voice down. “Look, Les, the carriers will be classified as diseased, won’t they? So they’ll go under doctor’s care. And if all it takes to make them feel better is to bleed them regularly, well, then we’ll give them pet leeches!”

  Les smiled. “Clever. But that’s not the only, or even my main reason, Forry. No, I’m not going to publish, yet, and that is final. I just can’t allow anybody to stop this disease. It’s got to spread, to become an epidemic. A pandemic.”

  I stared, and upon seeing that look in his eyes, I knew that Les was more than an altruist. He had caught that most insidious of all human ailments, the Messiah Complex. Les wanted to save the world.

  “Don’t you see?” he said urgently, with the fervor of a proselyte. “Selfishness and greed are destroying the planet, Forry! But nature always finds a way, and this time symbiosis may be giving us our last chance, a final opportunity to become better people, to learn to cooperate before it’s too late!

  “The things we’re most proud of, our prefrontal lobes, those bits of gray matter above the eyes which make us so much smarter than beasts, what good have they done us, Forry? Not a hell of a lot. We aren’t going to think our way out of the crises of the twentieth century. Or, at least, thought alone won’t do it. We need something else, as well.

  “And Forry, I’m convinced that ‘something else’ is ALAS. We’ve got to keep this secret, at least until it’s so well established in the population that there’s no turning back!”

  I swallowed. “How long? How long do you want to wait? Until it starts affecting voting patterns? Until after the next election?”

  He shrugged. “Oh, at least that long. Five years. Possibly seven. You see, the virus tends to only get into people who’ve recently had surgery, and they’re generally older. Fortunately, they also are often influential. Just the sort who now vote Tory...”

  He went on. And on. I listened with half an ear, but already I had come to that fateful realization. A seven-year wait for a goddamn co-authorship would make this discovery next to useless to my career, to my ambitions.

  Of course I could blow the secret on Les, now that I knew of it. But that would only embitter him, and he’d easily take all the credit for the discovery anyway. People tend to remember innovators, not whistle-blowers.

  We paid our bill and walked toward Charing Cross Station, where we could catch the tube to Paddington, and from there the train to Oxford. Along the way we ducked out of a sudden downpour at a streetside ice cream vendor. While we waited, I bought us both cones. I remember quite clearly that he had strawberry. I had a raspberry ice.

  While Les absent-mindedly talked on about his research plans, a small pink smudge colored the corner of his mouth. I pretended to listen, but already my mind had turned to other things, nascent plans and earnest scenarios for committing murder.

  2

  It would be the perfect crime, of course.

  Those movie detectives are always going on about “motive, means, and opportunity.” Well, motive I had in plenty, but it was one so far-fetched, so obscure, that it would surely never occur to anybody.

  Means? Hell, I worked in a business rife with means. There were poisons and pathogens galore. We’re a very careful profession, but, well, accidents do happen... The same holds for opportunity.

  There was a rub, of course. Such was Boy Genius’s reputation that, even if I did succeed in knobbling him, I didn’t dare come out immediately with my own announcement. Damn him, everyone would just assume it was his work anyway, or his “leadership” here at the lab, at least, that led to the discovery of ALAS. And besides, too much fame for me right aft
er his demise might lead someone to suspect a motive.

  So, I realized. Les was going to get his delay, after all. Maybe not seven years, but three or four perhaps, during which I’d move back to the States, start a separate line of work, then subtly guide my own research to cover methodically all the bases Les had so recently flown over in flashes of inspiration. I wasn’t happy about the delay, but at the end of that time, it would look entirely like my own work. No co-authorship for Forry on this one, nossir!

  The beauty of it was that no one would ever think of connecting me with the tragic death of my colleague and friend, years before. After all, did not his demise set me back in my career, temporarily? “Ah, if only poor Les had lived to see your success!” my competitors would say, suppressing jealous bile as they watched me pack for Stockholm.

  Of course none of this appeared on my face or in my words. We both had our normal work to do. But almost every day I also put in long extra hours helping Les in “our” secret project. In its own way it was an exhilarating time, and Les was lavish in his praise of the slow, dull, but methodical way I fleshed out some of his ideas.

  I made my arrangements slowly, knowing Les was in no hurry. Together we gathered data. We isolated, and even crystallized the virus, got X-ray diffractions, did epidemiological studies, all in strictest secrecy.

  “Amazing!” Les would cry out, as he uncovered the