"William Tenn - Null-P" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tenn William)

Null-P
William Tenn

Several months after the Second Atomic War, when radioactivity still held one-third of the planet in
desolation, Dr. Daniel Glurt of Fillmore Township, Wisc., stumbled upon a discovery which was to
generate humanity's ultimate sociological advance.
Like Columbus, smug over his voyage to India; like Nobel, proud of the synthesis of dynamite which
made combat between nations impossible, the doctor misinter-preted his discovery. Years later, he
cackled to a visiting historian:
"Had no idea it would lead to this, no idea at all. You remember, the war had just ended: we were
feeling mighty subdued what with the eastern and western coasts of the United States practically sizzled
away. Well, word came down from the new capital at Topeka in Kansas for us doctors to give all our
patients a com-plete physical check. Sort of be on the lookout, you know, for radioactive burns and
them fancy new diseases the armies had been tossing back and forth. Well, sir, that's absolutely all I set
out to do. I'd known George Abnego for over thirty yearsтАФtreated him for chicken-pox and pneumonia
and ptomaine poisoning. I'd never suspected!"
Having reported to Dr. Glurt's office immediately after work in accordance with the proclamation
shouted through the streets by the county clerk, and having waited patiently in line for an hour and a half,
George Abnego was at last received into the small consulting room. Here he was thoroughly
chest-thumped, X-rayed, blood-sampled, and urinanalyzed. His skin was examined carefully, and he was
made to answer the five hundred questions prepared by the Department of Health in a pa-thetic attempt
to cover the symptoms of the new ailments.
George Abnego then dressed and went home to the cereal supper permitted for that day by the
ration board. Dr. Glurt placed his folder in a drawer and called for the next patient. He had noticed
nothing up to this point; yet already he had unwittingly begun the Abnegite Revolution.
Four days later, the health survey of Fillmore, Wisc., being complete, the doctor forwarded the
examination reports to Topeka. Just before signing George Abnego's sheet, he glanced at it cursorily,
raised his eyebrows and entered the following note: "Despite the tendency to dental cavities and athlete's
foot, I would consider this man to be of average health. Physically, he is the Fillmore Township norm."
It was this last sentence which caused the government medical official to chuckle and glance at the
sheet once more. His smile was puzzled after this; it was even more puzzled after he had checked the
figures and statements on the form against stan-dard medical references.
He wrote a phrase in red ink in the right-hand corner and sent it along to Research.
His name is lost to history.
Research wondered why the report on George Abnego had been sent upтАФhe had no unusual
symptoms portending exotic innovations like cerebral measles or arte-rial trichinosis. Then it observed the
phrase in red ink and Dr. Glurt's remark. Re-search shrugged its anonymous shoulders and assigned a
crew of statisticians to go further into the matter.
A week later, as a result of their findings, another crewтАФnine medical special-istsтАФleft for Fillmore.
They examined George Abnego with coordinated precision. Afterwards, they called on Dr. Glurt briefly,
leaving a copy of their examination re-port with him when he expressed interest.
Ironically, the government copies were destroyed in the Topeka Hard-Shelled Baptist Riots a month
later, the same riots which stimulated Dr. Glurt to launch the Abnegite Revolution.
This Baptist denomination, because of population shrinkage due to atomic and bacteriological
warfare, was now the largest single religious body in the nation. It was then controlled by a group
pledged to the establishment of a Hard-Shelled Bap-tist theocracy in what was left of the United States.
The rioters were quelled after much destruction and bloodshed; their leader, the Reverend Hemingway T.
GauntтАФwho had vowed that he would remove neither the pistol from his left hand nor the Bible from his
right until the Rule of God had been established and the Third Temple builtтАФwas sentenced to death by
a jury composed of stern-faced fellow Baptists.