Free Worlds Apart by Joe Haldeman Page A

It’s only been bad for couple of days.” He’d never seen anything quite like it. On the inside of both thighs, from the crotch down about fifteen centimeters, was a growth of gray fungus. The flesh under the fungus was angry red and discharging pus. There were three prominent syphilis chancres on the lips of her vagina, which was probably associated, since the fungus was spreading up over the pubic mound.
    “She gonna die?”
    “Charlie knows when,” Healer said with only a little sarcasm.
    “Charlie’s will,” the others muttered in ragged chorus.
    He poured hydrogen peroxide on the infected areas and they foamed impressively. He rinsed with water from his canteen and applied the peroxide again, then rinsed again and patted the mess dry with a clean gauze pad. He turned her over and shot her full of wide-spectrum antibiotics.
    “Here is what you do. Take this filthy sheet and burn it. Keep something clean under her. Don’t bandage it; let it breathe. Make her drink a lot of water. Anybody who touches her wash up afterwards with hot water and soap. Can you remember that?”
    The leader nodded. “If she does die, you bury her. Or at least take the body far away. Don’t just chuck it out the door like that other one—and bury it too. You can get real sick, having dead people around.”
    “We was going to. Two guys’re still out hunting, they gotta get their throws in. For luck.”
    “Yeah, luck. I suppose all of you have syphilis, don’t you?” They looked at him blankly. He pointed to the chancres. “Sores like this.”
    “’Course we get them, all the grownups,” the leader said.
    “Except for Jimmy,” a girl said, and giggled. “He’s got hair but all he does is pull himself.”
    “Jimmy’s scared to fight me,” the leader said proudly. “You don’t fight, you don’t fuck. That’s signtific. Natural selection.”
    “Where did you get all this ‘scientific’ shit?”
    “Old Tony taught us. He lived to be twenty-one, he could read really good.”
    He tugged on his white beard. “You listen to me. I’m older than Tony ever was, and I’ve been reading since before any of you were born. Now, you’ve had children born blind, haven’t you.”
    “Two or three,” the leader admitted.
    “How do you suppose I knew that?”
    “You’re pretty old.”
    “That’s what happens when people have syphilis. They have babies born blind and stupid. It’s a
disease
. You don’t have to get it.”
    “Sure,” the giggling girl said, “like you don’t have to get babies. Just don’t fuck.” The others giggled along with her.
    “This is serious business. If you don’t get this syphilis cured, you’ll all go crazy before your time.” He looked at the leader. “You won’t be able to get it up any more. It’ll hurt too much.”
    He was pale under the grime. “What do we have to do?”
    “I’ll give you each a shot. Then I’ll leave a bottle of pills. Everybody takes one each morning; you watch and make sure they do. And no fucking for ten days.”
    “Ten days! You can’t go ten days.”
    “You can and will. Absolutely no sexual contact; not even boy-boy girl-girl. I want you to swear on Christ and Charlie.”
    They all looked at the leader. He hesitated, then madethe sign of the cross and muttered “Charlie’s will.” The others did the same.
    “Okay, call in the children. Then everybody line up in the living room and drop your pants.” He screwed a bottle of omnimycin into the hypodermic gun.
    “We don’t do it to the children,” the leader said.
    “Glad to hear it. But they can pick it up other ways, living with you.” He wasn’t sure that was true, but then neither could he be sure they actually did leave the younger children alone. That would make them an unusual family.
    Waiting for the two hunters to come home, he treated various minor complaints. For most of them, he gave aspirin or an innocuous salve. His police training, many years before, had included a few days