The Survivors by Tom Godwin Page A

about listlessly at the tasks given them by Bemmon. Anders was in grave condition, too weak to rise, and Dr. Chiara was dying.
    He squatted down beside Chiara’s pallet and knew there could be no hope for him. On Chiara’s pale face and in his eyes was the shadow of his own foreknowledge.
    “I finally saw what it was”—Chiara’s words were very low, hard to hear—“and I told Bemmon what to do. It’s a deficiency disease, complicated by the gravity into some form not known on Earth.”
    He stopped to rest and Lake waited.
    “Beri-beri—pellagra—we had deficiency diseases on Earth. But none so fatal—so quickly. I told Bemmon—ration out fruits and vegetables to everybody. Hurry—or it will be too late.”
    Again he stopped to rest, the last vestige of color gone from his face.
    “And you?” Lake asked, already knowing the answer.
    “For me—too late. I kept thinking of viruses—should have seen the obvious sooner. Just like—”
    His lips turned up a little at the corners and the Chiara of the dead past smiled for the last time at Lake.
    “Just like a damned fool intern … ”
    That was all, then, and the chamber was suddenly very quiet. Lake stood up to leave, and to speak the words that Chiara could never hear:
    “We’re going to need you and miss you—Doctor.”
    *
    *
    *
    He found Bemmon in the food storage cavern, supervising the work of two teen-age boys with critical officiousness although he was making no move to help them. At sight of Lake he hurried forward, the ingratiating smile sliding across his face.
    “I’m glad you’re back,” he said. “I had to take charge when Anders got sick and he had everything in such a mess. I’ve been working day and night to undo his mistakes and get the work properly under way again.”
    Lake looked at the two thin-faced boys who had taken advantage of the opportunity to rest. They leaned wearily against the heavy pole table Bemmon had had them moving, their eyes already dull with incipient sickness and watching him in mute appeal.
    “Have you obeyed Chiara’s order?” he asked.
    “Ah—no,” Bemmon said. “I felt it best to ignore it.”
    “Why?” Lake asked.
    “It would be a senseless waste of our small supply of fruit and vegetable foods to give them to people already dying. I’m afraid”—the ingratiating smile came again—“we’ve been letting him exercise an authority he isn’t entitled to. He’s really hardly more than a medical student and his diagnoses are only guesses.”
    “He’s dead,” Lake said flatly. “His last order will be carried out.”
    He looked from the two tired boys to Bemmon, contrasting their thinness and weariness with the way Bemmon’s paunch still bulged outward and his jowls still sagged with their load of fat.
    “I’ll send West down to take over in here,” he said to Bemmon. “You come with me. You and I seem to be the only two in good health here and there’s plenty of work for us to do.”
    The fawning expression vanished from Bemmon’s face. “I see,” he said. “Now that I’ve turned Anders’s muddle into organization, you’ll hand my authority over to another of your favorites and demote me back to common labor?”
    “Setting up work quotas for sick and dying people isn’t organization,” Lake said. He spoke to the two boys, “Both of you go lie down. West will find someone else.” Then to Bemmon,
    “Come with me. We’re both going to work at common labor.”
    They passed by the cave where Bemmon slept. Two boys were just going into it, carrying armloads of dried grass to make a mattress under Bemmon’s pallet. They moved slowly, heavily. Like the two boys in the food storage cave they were dull-eyed with the beginning of the sickness.
    Lake stopped, to look more closely into the cave and verify something else he thought he had seen: Bemmon had discarded the prowler skins on his bed and in their place were soft wool blankets; perhaps the only unpatched blankets the