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Clark had decided that Efirr was a pest, but the question set him thinking and it seemed only polite to try to think aloud. He said, "I don't know. It passes through so quickly--the Ecclesiam has to be broken down in their bodies before it can act. There are three levels of degradation...well, it has to be broken down. It's the pieces that are active. Well, the metabolism is a fairly slow process. At best, a part of the dose is always excreted still whole."

Efirr had begun to wander again. He came upon the air tank where the Eyimalian prairie rodents were busy lining their nests for winter. "And these little folk metabolize Ecclesiam purpureum?"

"Yeah."

Efirr frowned. "Is is supposed to work on the host animal, or on microorganisms inside?"

Clark shrugged. "Works on everything. The smallest organisms are the most affected."

"None left untouched. How interesting the sciences are!" Efirr cried suddenly. "I can see why you like them. Yes, one begins to understand the workings." His enthusiastic smile vanished almost before the words were out and the hopeless expression returned. Clark stared at him, wondering whether he could possibly have seen the smile and heard the comment, and why they should seem so strange.

Efirr tapped on the rodents' tank. "There are no side effects?"

"Don't know. I collect urines to see if they excrete the stuff or store it."

"And which do they do?"

"Neither. They...carry out a transformation--the breakdown--and excrete the products."

"But if everything is excreted, what is left to do damage?"

"A guy with a knife gets on the underground. Two stops later the guy and the knife get off. No harm done?"

"Very true! I leapt to a conclusion! So the drug may do some damage en passant?" Efirr responded. His enthusiasm was almost alarming.

"Maybe."

"What sort of damage?"

He's just upset, like Paula, trying to distract himself, Clark thought, but he had trouble concealing his irritation. "It could be anything. Maybe the...reaction that takes place...involves more than the drug and causes other things to be broken down. Things that ought to be left alone. Maybe not all the metabolites--the broken-down pieces--are excreted. Maybe a very small amount is retained and builds up."

"I see. These possible risks could not be avioded?"

"I wouldn't worry." Worry! Clark thought. I must sound like a monster. "This isn't the kind of stuff you would maintain somebody on. Despite what you may have heard from your government, it's a pretty low-grade antibiotic. It is an antibiotic, though, so you wouldn't take it unless you had an infection or something, and then you'd get better and stop taking it."

"So the risks are minimal?"

Clark went to the window. The Isadora Maxwell Pharmeceutical Research Center, commonly known as Drug Campus, surrounded and partly ascended a mountain whose peak was lost in the haze of sunlight scattered from droplets in the sticky air. He pointed down the mountain to the Resistance Labs, a central dome with extensions that reached clear out of Drug Campus and connected with another building somewhere in Genetics. The extensions were built in sections, with rectangular concave rooves like trains of swaybacked mules all pulling in opposite directions, panting, obstinate, immobile.

"You see that white building with the extensions all over the place?" he asked. "You can't really see the center from here, but that's one of the wings. You get anidea of its size. They study resistance in there. Resistance is what happens when the victims get wise to the poison. Bacteria grow fast. One generation in half an hour. It doesn't take long before one little guy comes along who's got a kink in him somewhere, so the drug doesn't kill him. Like the one in a million people who can drink all day and never get drunk. So if you've got that guy in your system and you've got the antibiotic in there, too, you're in trouble." Why did he sound so angry?"

"That one will survive."

"He might. Most of the rest won't. He can take over, he and his descendents. Pretty soon your wonderful antibiotic isn't any use. Happens all the time, if people aren't careful."

"I see." Efirr paused. "Can we suppose the side effects may present themselves quickly?"

"Sure. Suppose. On the house."

"And no one would be spared?"

"The side effects? I don't know. It would depend on the individual."

"How?"

"Well, the extent to which the drug is taken up and stored..."

"So some people might be insensitive to it?"

"Maybe."

"Would there be any way of determining who could and could not take the drug safely?"

"I don't know. That isn't what I'm working on. Why?"

"It would seem important if this drug is to be put to widespread use," Efirr said. He appeared to have grown much calmer during the conversation.

"Sure there would be side effects if you took it every day for ten years. So what?" Clark snapped. "What are they going to do, put it in the water? I told you, it isn't that good."

"We have seen that it is very difficult to predict what they will do," Efirr replied slowly, bending forward a bit as though he shrank from his own words. "It is difficult to predict what anyone will do, or deduce what anyone has done."

[~*~]

Clark was irritated now by his remorse. For a moment he envisioned himself trying to drown Efirr by pushing his head into the worms' bath. This may go on for weeks, he thought. I've got to calm down. "Let me finish checking some things," he said.

Efirr bowed himself out.

That evening they all watched the interactive news at Eyimalia House. Clark came on the sub, with his hat pulled down over his eyes, carrying papers he unfurled to hide his face whenever anything startled him.

Paula laughed at his precautions. "Where's your secret agent badge?"

He shrugged. "I was just being careful."

"Your wig is missing, too. Have you got a damp cigar you can light up in emergencies to make a smokescreen? Here it is." She pulled a cigar out of the chest pocket of his jacket.

He grabbed the jacket away from her.

"Be good to him, Paula," Efirr interceded. "He is doing his best. But Clark, we have done nothing wrong, so we have nothing to worry about. Let's see if Paula is going to be famous."

The news showed Paula shouting at an expressionless official, while the narrator explained that she was the colorful daughter of Marlow Maxwell and her boyfriend had been arrested by the Eyimalian government. Several related story titles appeared for an audience vote. Clark voted to see "Eyimalia: Planet in Transition," but the winning title was "The Maxwell Legend."

Efirr sighed. "The Eyimalia piece is quite good."

"The votes are rigged," Clark responded automatically.

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..................... CONTINUE.....................

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