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                           McGonigal's Worm

                           By R. A. LAFFERTY

                 _It had happened--no question of it.
                Now how could it be made to unhappen?_

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
             Worlds of If Science Fiction, November 1960.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


When it happened, it happened unnoticed. Though it affected all
chordata on Earth (with a possible exception to be noted in a moment),
nobody knew of it, not even the Prince of all chordata, Man himself.
How could he have known of it so soon?

Though his lifeline had suddenly been cut, it was a long lifeline
and death would still be far off. So it was not suspected for nearly
twenty-four hours, nor accepted even as a working theory for nearly
three days, and not realized in its full implications for a week.

Now, what had occurred was a sudden and worldwide adynatogenesis of all
chordata, not, however, adynatotokos; this distinction for many years
offered students of the phenomenon some hope.

And another hope was in the fact that one small but genuine member of
chordate was not affected: an enteropneustron, a balanoglossida of the
oddest sort, a creature known as McGonigal's Worm. Yet what hope this
creature could offer was necessarily a small one.

The catastrophe was first sensed by a hobbyist about a day after
it occurred. It was just that certain experiments did not act right
and the proper results were not forthcoming. And on the second day
(Monday) there were probably a hundred notations of quite unusual and
unstatistical behavior, but as yet the pattern was not at all suspected.

On the third day a cranky and suspicious laboratory worker went to a
supply house with the angry charge that he had been sold sterile mice.
This was something that could not be ignored, and it is what brought
the pattern of the whole thing into the open, with corroboration
developing with explosive rapidity. Not completely in the open, of
course, for fear of panic if it reached the public. But throughout the
learned fraternity the news went like a seismic shock.

When it did reach the public a week later, though, it was greeted with
hoots of laughter. The people did not believe it.

       *       *       *       *       *

"The cataloguing of evidence becomes tiresome," said Director Concord
of the newly originated Palingenesia Institute. "The facts are
incontrovertible. There has been a loss of the power to conceive in
sea squirt, lancelet, hag fish, skate, sea cat, fish, frog, alligator,
snake, turtle, seal, porpoise, mouse, bat, bird, hog, horse, monkey,
and man. It happened suddenly, perhaps instantaneously. We cannot find
the cure. Yet it is almost certain that those children already in the
womb will be the last ever born on Earth. We do not know whether it
is from a natural cause or an enemy has done this to us. We have, for
ten months, tested nearly everything in the world and we have found no
answer. Yet, oddly enough, there is no panic."

"Except among ourselves," said Appleby, his assistant, "whose province
is its study. But the people have accepted it so completely that their
main interest now is in the world sweepstakes, with the total sums
wagered now in the billions."

"Yes, the betting on the last child to be born in the world. It will
prove one point, at least. The old legal limit on posthumous paternity
was a year and a day. Will it be surpassed? The Algerian claimant on
all evidence has nearly three months to go. And the betters on the
Afghan have not yet given up. The Spanish Pretender is being delayed,
according to rumor, medically, and there are some pretty angry
protests about this. It is not at all fair; we know that. But then a
comprehensive set of rules was never drawn up to cover all nations;
Spain simply chose not to join the pact. But there may be trouble if
the Spanish backers try to collect."

"And there is also a newly heard of Mexican claimant."

"I give little credit to this Juanita-Come-Lately. If she was to be a
serious contestant, why was she not known of before?"

The Algerian claimant, however, was the winner. And the time was an
unbelievable three hundred and eighty-eight days. So the last child on
Earth, in all likelihood, had been born.

There were now about thirty institutes working on the problem, most of
them on an international basis. Thirteen years had gone by, and one
hope had died. This was that those already in the womb at the time of
catastrophe might themselves prove to be fertile. It was now seen that
this would not prove so, unless for some reason it was to be quite a
delayed fertility.

The Cosmic Causes Council had by no means come to a dead end. It had
come to so many live ends as to be even more bewildering.

"The point," said Hegner in one of his yearly summaries, "is not
whether sterility could have been caused by cosmic forces. Of course it
could have been. It could have been caused in twenty ways. The miracle
is that fertility had ever been possible. There must have been a shield
built in for every danger. We know but scantily what some of them are.
We do not know which has failed or why."

"And could the failure have been caused by an enemy?" asked an
interlocutor.

"It could have been, certainly. Almost by definition we must call an
enemy anything that can harm us. But that it was a conscious enemy is
something else again. Who can say what cosmic forces are conscious? Or
even what it means to be conscious?"

       *       *       *       *       *

However, the Possibility Searcher Institute had some spotted success.
It had worked out a test, a valid test, of determining whether an
individual yet remaining had the spark of possible fertility. And in
only a few million tests it had found one male shrew, one male gannet,
no less than three males of the yellow perch, one female alligator, and
one female mud puppy, all of whom still possessed the potential. This
was encouraging, but it did not solve the problem. No issue could be
obtained from any possible pairing of these; not that it wasn't tried.

And when the possibility test was run on all the humans of the Earth,
then it was that incredible and unsuspected success crowned the efforts
of the institute. For, of a bare three billion persons tested, there
were two who tested positive; and (good fortune beyond all hoping),
one was male and one was female.

So then the problem was solved. A few years had been lost, it is true,
and several generations would be required to get the thing on a sound
footing again. But life had been saved. Civilization could yet be
transmitted. All was not lost.

Musha ibn Scmuel was an Arabian black, an unthrifty man of tenuous
income. His occupation on the cardex was given as thief, but this
may have been a euphemism. He was middle-aged and of full vigor, a
plain man innocent of shoes or subtlety. He was guilty neither of the
wine-hatred of the Musselman nor the garrulousness of the Greek. He
possessed his soul in quietude and Port Said whisky and seldom stole
more than he needed. And he had a special competence shared by no other
man in the world.

Cecilia Clutt was an attractive and snooty spinster of thirty-five.
She was a person of inherited as well as acquired wealth, and was an
astute business woman and amateur of the arts. She did have a streak of
stubbornness in her, but seldom revealed it unless she was crossed.

So, the first time she said no, it was hardly noticed. And the second
time she said it, it was felt that she did not quite understand the
situation. So it was Carmody Overlark, the silky diplomat, who came to
reason with her.

"You are the sole hope of the human race," he said to her. "In a way,
you are the new Eve."

"I have heard the first one spoken badly of," said Cecilia. "Yet her
only fault was that she could be talked into something. I cannot."

"But this is important."

"Not really. If it is our time to disappear, then let us disappear with
dignity. What you suggest is without it. It would leave us a little
less than human."

"Miss Clutt, this is a world problem. You are only an individual."

"I am not _only_ an individual. There is no such thing as _only_ an
individual. If ever a person can be spoken of as _only_ an individual,
then humanity has already failed."

"We have tried reason. Now, by special emergency legislation, we are
empowered to employ compulsion."

"We will see. I always did enjoy a good fight."

Those who read the State Histories of the period will know that it did
not come off. But the reasons given there are garbled. "Unforeseen
circumstances" cover a multitude of failures. But what really happened
was this.

Musha ibn S. had been tractable enough. Though refusing to fly, he had
come on shipboard readily. And it was not till they were out of the
Inland Sea and on the Atlantic that he showed a certain unease. Finally
he asked, reasonably enough, to be shown a picture of his bride. But
his reaction on seeing it was not reasonable.

He screamed like a dying camel. And he jumped overboard. He was a
determined swimmer and he was heading for home. A boat was put out and
it gained on him. But, as it came up to him, he sounded. How deep he
dived is not known, but he was never seen again.

On hearing of this, Cecilia Clutt was a little uncertain for the only
time in her life. Just to be sure, she asked for a copy of the picture.

"Oh, that one," said Cecilia. "It is quite a nice picture, really.
It flatters me a little. But what an odd reaction. What a truly odd
reaction."

       *       *       *       *       *

There were repercussions on the economy. The primary schools were
now all closed, except for a few turned over to retarded children.
In a year or two the high schools would close also. The colleges
would perhaps always be maintained, for adult education and for their
expanding graduate schools. Yet the zest for the future had diminished,
even though the personal future of nobody had been abridged. New
construction had almost ceased and multi-bedroom homes became a drug
on the market. In a very few years there would be no additions at all
to the labor force. Soon there would be no more young soldiers for the
armies. And soon the last eyes ever would see the world with the sudden
poetic clearness that often comes with adolescence.

There had been a definite let-down in morals. Morals have declined in
every generation since the first one, which itself left something to
be desired. But this new generation was different. It was a tree that
could not bear fruit, a hard-barked, selfish tree. Yet what good to
look at it and shudder for the future? The future had already been
disposed of.

Now there as a new hobby, a mania that swept the world, the Last Man
Clubs, millions of them. Who would be the last person alive on Earth?

But still the institutes labored. The Capsule Institute in particular
labored for the codification and preservation of all knowledge. For
whom? For those who might come after. Who? Of what species? But still
they worked at it.

And the oddest of the institutes was the Bare Chance Transmission
Society. In spite of all derision and mockery, it persevered in its
peculiar aim: to find some viable creature that could be educated or
adapted or mutated to absorb human knowledge and carry on once more the
human tradition.

What creature? What possible strain could it be from? What creature on
Earth was unaffected?

Well, the largest of them was the giant squid. But it was not
promising. It had shown no development in many millions of years; it
did not seem capable of development or of education. And, moreover,
there are difficulties of rapport with a creature that only can live in
the deep sea.

There were the insects. Bees and ants were capable of organization,
though intelligence has been denied them. Spiders showed certain rugged
abilities, and fruit flies. Special committees were appointed to study
each. And then there were the fleas. Old flea-circus grifters were
brought out of retirement and given positions of responsibility and
power. If fleas could really be taught, then these men could teach
them. But though fleas can be taught to wear microscopic spectacles,
they cannot be taught to read. It all seemed pretty futile.

       *       *       *       *       *

And there were the crayfish, the snails the starfish, the sea cucumber.
There were the fresh-water flat worm and the liver fluke. There were
the polyp, the sponge, the cephalopod. But, after all, none of them
was of the main line. They were of the ancestry that had failed. And
what of the noble genealogy that had succeeded, that which had risen
above all and given civilization, the chordata? Of that noble line, was
there nothing left? What was the highest form still reproducing?

McGonigal's Worm.

It was discouraging.

But for the careful study of M.W., as it was now known, a great new
institute was now created. And to the M.W. Institute was channeled all
the talent that seemed expedient.

And one of the first to go to work for the Institute in a common
capacity was a young lady of thirty-odd named Georgina Hickle. Young
lady? Yes. Georgina was within months of being the youngest woman in
the world. She was a scatterbrained wife and disliked worms. But one
must work and there were at that time no other jobs open.

But she was not impressed by the indoctrination given in this new
laboratory.

"You must change your whole way of thinking," said the doctor who
briefed them. "We are seeking new departures. We are looking for any
possible breakthrough. You must learn to think of M.W. as the hope of
the world."

"Oog," said Georgina.

"You must think of M.W. as your very kindred, as your cousin."

"Oog," said Georgina.

"You must think of him as your little brother that you have to teach,
as your very child, as your cherished son."

"Oog, oog," said Georgina, for she disliked worms.

Nor was she happy on the job. She was not good at teaching worms. She
believed them both stupid and stubborn. They did not have her sympathy,
and after a few weeks they seemed to make her sick.

       *       *       *       *       *

But her ailment was a mysterious one. None of the young doctors had
ever seen anything like it. And it was contagious. Other women in the
bright new laboratory began to show similar symptoms. Yet contagion
there was impossible, such extreme precautions had been taken for the
protection of the worms.

But Georgina did not respond to treatment. And Hickle's Disease was
definitely spreading. Sharper young doctors fresh from the greatest
medical schools were called in. They knew all that was to be known of
all the new diseases. But they did not know this.

Georgina felt queer now and odd things began to happen to her. Like
that very morning on her way to work, that old lady had stared at her.

"Glory be," said the old lady, "a miracle." And she crossed herself.

And Georgina heard other comments.

"I don't believe it. It isn't possible," a man said.

"Well, it sure does look like it," said a woman.

So Georgina took off at noon to visit a psychiatrist and tell him that
she imagined that people were staring at her and talking about her, and
what should she do. It made her uneasy, she said.

"That's not what is making you uneasy," said the psychiatrist. Then he
went with her to the laboratory to have a look at some of the other
women suffering from this Hickle's Disease that he had been hearing
about. After that, he called the young doctors at the laboratory aside
for a consultation.

"I don't know by what authority you mean to instruct us," said one.
"You haven't been upgraded for thirty years."

"I know it."

"You are completely out of touch with the latest techniques."

"I know it."

"You have been described--accurately I believe--as an old fogy."

"I know that too."

"Then what could you tell us about a new appearance like Hickle's
Disease?"

"Only that it is not really new. And not, properly speaking, a
disease."

       *       *       *       *       *

That is why, even today, there are superstitious persons who keep
McGonigal's Worms in small mesh cages in the belief that they insure
fertility. It is rank nonsense and rose only because it was in the M.W.
laboratory that the return of pregnancy was first noticed and was named
for one of the women working there. It is a belief that dates back to
that ancient generation, which very nearly became the last generation.

The official explanation, is that the Earth and its solar system, for
a period of thirty-five years, was in an area of mysterious cosmic
radiation. And afterward it drifted out of that area.

But there are many who still believe in the influence of McGonigal's
Worm.