The Scarlet Plague Page #5

"The Scarlet Plague" by Jack London, published in 1912, is a post-apocalyptic novel set in the year 2073, sixty years after a deadly pandemic—called the Scarlet Plague—wiped out most of humanity in 2013.

• Novel

								

their time, and even, sometimes, in their time--”

“Was that all you did?--just talk, talk, talk?” Hoo-Hoo demanded. “Who
hunted your meat for you? and milked the goats? and caught the fish?”

“A sensible question, Hoo-Hoo, a sensible question. As I have told you,
in those days food-getting was easy. We were very wise. A few men got
the food for many men. The other men did other things. As you say, I
talked. I talked all the time, and for this food was given me--much
food, fine food, beautiful food, food that I have not tasted in sixty
years and shall never taste again. I sometimes think the most wonderful
achievement of our tremendous civilization was food--its inconceivable
abundance, its infinite variety, its marvellous delicacy. O my
grandsons, life was life in those days, when we had such wonderful
things to eat.”

This was beyond the boys, and they let it slip by, words and thoughts,
as a mere senile wandering in the narrative.

“Our food-getters were called freemen. This was a joke. We of the
ruling classes owned all the land, all the machines, everything. These
food-getters were our slaves. We took almost all the food they got, and
left them a little so that they might eat, and work, and get us more
food--”

“I'd have gone into the forest and got food for myself,” Hare-Lip
announced; “and if any man tried to take it away from me, I'd have
killed him.”

The old man laughed.

“Did I not tell you that we of the ruling class owned all the land, all
the forest, everything? Any food-getter who would not get food for us,
him we punished or compelled to starve to death. And very few did that.
They preferred to get food for us, and make clothes for us, and prepare
and administer to us a thousand--a mussel-shell, Hoo-Hoo--a thousand
satisfactions and delights. And I was Professor Smith in those
days--Professor James Howard Smith. And my lecture courses were very
popular--that is, very many of the young men and women liked to hear me
talk about the books other men had written.

“And I was very happy, and I had beautiful things to eat. And my hands
were soft, because I did no work with them, and my body was clean
all over and dressed in the softest garments--

“He surveyed his mangy goat-skin with disgust.

“We did not wear such things in those days. Even the slaves had better
garments. And we were most clean. We washed our faces and hands often
every day. You boys never wash unless you fall into the water or go
swimming.”

“Neither do you Granzer,” Hoo-Hoo retorted.

“I know, I know, I am a filthy old man, but times have changed. Nobody
washes these days, there are no conveniences. It is sixty years since I
have seen a piece of soap.

[Illustration: Sixty years since I have seen a piece of soap. 059]

“You do not know what soap is, and I shall not tell you, for I am telling
the story of the Scarlet Death. You know what sickness is. We called
it a disease. Very many of the diseases came from what we called germs.
Remember that word--germs. A germ is a very small thing. It is like a
woodtick, such as you find on the dogs in the spring of the year when
they run in the forest. Only the germ is very small. It is so small that
you cannot see it--”

Hoo-Hoo began to laugh.

“You're a queer un, Granser, talking about things you can't see. If you
can't see 'em, how do you know they are? That's what I want to know. How
do you know anything you can't see?”

“A good question, a very good question, Hoo-Hoo. But we did see--some of
them. We had what we called microscopes and ultramicroscopes, and we put
them to our eyes and looked through them, so that we saw things larger
than they really were, and many things we could not see without the
microscopes at all. Our best ultramicroscopes could make a germ look
forty thousand times larger. A mussel-shell is a thousand fingers like
Edwin's. Take forty mussel-shells, and by as many times larger was the
germ when we looked at it through a microscope. And after that, we
had other ways, by using what we called moving pictures, of making the
forty-thousand-times germ many, many thousand times larger still. And
thus we saw all these things which our eyes of themselves could not see.
Take a grain of sand. Break it into ten pieces. Take one piece and break
it into ten. Break one of those pieces into ten, and one of those into
ten, and one of those into ten, and one of those into ten, and do it all
day, and maybe, by sunset, you will have a piece as small as one of the
germs.” The boys were openly incredulous. Hare-Lip sniffed and sneered
and Hoo-Hoo snickered, until Edwin nudged them to be silent.

“The woodtick sucks the blood of the dog, but the germ, being so very
small, goes right into the blood of the body, and there it has
many children. In those days there would be as many as a billion--a
crab-shell, please--as many as that crab-shell in one man's body. We
called germs micro-organisms. When a few million, or a billion, of them
were in a man, in all the blood of a man, he was sick. These germs were
a disease. There were many different kinds of them--more different kinds
than there are grains of sand on this beach. We knew only a few of the
kinds. The micro-organic world was an invisible world, a world we could
not see, and we knew very little about it. Yet we did know something.
There was the bacillus anthracis; there was the micrococcus; there
was the Bacterium termo, and the Bacterium lactis--that's what
turns the goat milk sour even to this day, Hare-Lip; and there were
Schizomycetes without end. And there were many others....”

Here the old man launched into a disquisition on germs and their
natures, using words and phrases of such extraordinary length and
meaninglessness, that the boys grinned at one another and looked out
over the deserted ocean till they forgot the old man was babbling on.

“But the Scarlet Death, Granser,” Edwin at last suggested.

Granser recollected himself, and with a start tore himself away from the
rostrum of the lecture-hall, where, to another world audience, he
had been expounding the latest theory, sixty years gone, of germs and
germ-diseases.

“Yes, yes, Edwin; I had forgotten. Sometimes the memory of the past is
very strong upon me, and I forget that I am a dirty old man, clad in
goat-skin, wandering with my savage grandsons who are goatherds in
the primeval wilderness. 'The fleeting systems lapse like foam,' and so
lapsed our glorious, colossal civilization. I am Granser, a tired old
man. I belong to the tribe of Santa Rosans. I married into that tribe.
My sons and daughters married into the Chauffeurs, the Sacramen-tos, and
the Palo-Altos. You, Hare-Lip, are of the Chauffeurs. You, Edwin, are
of the Sacramentos. And you, Hoo-Hoo, are of the Palo-Altos. Your tribe
takes its name from a town that was near the seat of another great

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