Mate in Two Moves.

by Winston Marks.

[Sidenote: _Murt's Virus was catastrophically lethal, but it killed in a way no disease had ever thought of--it loved its victims to death!_]

Love came somewhat late to Dr. Sylvester Murt. In fact, it took the epidemic of 1961 to break down his resistance. A great many people fell in love that year--just about every other person you talked to--so no one thought much about Dr. Murt's particular distress, except a fellow victim who was directly involved in this case.

High Dawn Hospital, where 38-year-old Dr. Murt was resident pathologist, was not the first medical inst.i.tution to take note of the "plague." The symptoms first came to the attention of the general pract.i.tioners, then to the little clinics where the G. P.s sent their patients. But long before anything medical was done about it, the plague was sweeping North and South America and infiltrating every continent and island in the world.

Murt's a.s.sistant, Dr. Phyllis Sutton, spotted the first irregularity in the _Times_ one morning and mentioned it to him. They were having coffee in Murt's private office-lab, after completing reports on two rush biopsies.

She looked up from the editorial page and remarked, "You know, someone should do a research on the pathology of pantie raids."

Murt spooned sugar into his mug of coffee and stared at her. In their six months' a.s.sociation, it was the first facetious remark she had made in his presence. To this moment, he had held an increasing regard for her quiet efficiency, sobriety, professional dignity and decorum. True, she wore her white coat more tightly belted than was necessary and, likewise, she refused to wear the very low hospital heels that thickened feminine ankles. But she wore a minimum of come-hither in both her cosmetic and personality makeup. This startling remark, then, was most unexpected.

"Pantie raids?" he inquired. "Whatever would justify an inquiry into such a patently behavioristic problem?"

"The epidemic nature and its increasing virulence," she replied soberly.

"This spring, the thing has gotten out of hand, according to this editorial. A harmless tradition at a few of the more uninhibited campuses has turned into a national collegiate phenomenon. And now secondary effects are turning up. Instructors say that intramural romance is turning the halls of ivy into amatory rendezvous."

Murt sipped his coffee and said, "Be thankful you aren't a psychiatrist.

Bacterial mutations are enough of a problem, without pondering unpredictable emotional disturbances."

His a.s.sistant pursued it further. "It says the cla.s.srooms are emptying into the marriage bureaus, and graduation exercises this year will be a mockery if something isn't done. What's more, statistics show a startling increase in marriages at the high school level."

Murt shrugged broad shoulders that were slightly bent from long hours over a microscope. "Then be thankful you aren't an overworked obstetrician," he offered as an amendment.

She glanced up from the paper, with annoyance showing in her dark, well-s.p.a.ced eyes. "Is it of no interest to you that several hundred thousand youngsters are leaving high school and college prematurely because they can't control their glands?"

"Be glad, then," Murt said coldly, "that you aren't an endocrinologist--now drink your coffee. I hear the microtome working.

We'll have some business in a minute."

Dr. Phyllis Sutton rustled the pages of the _Times_ together, folded it up and threw it at the wastebasket with more vigor than was necessary.

The subject was momentarily closed.

His staff position at High Dawn paid less, but the life suited Dr. Murt better than the hectic, though lucrative, private practices of many of his colleagues. He arrived at the hospital early, seven o'clock each day, to be on hand for quick tissue examinations during the morning operations. By ten, the biopsies were usually out of the way, and he spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon checking material from the bacteriology section and studying post-operative dissections of tumorous tissues and organs removed in surgery.

It was engrossing, important work, and it could be accomplished in a normal work-day, leaving the pathologist considerable leisure to study, read and relax. Shortly after the pantie-raid conversation with Phyllis Sutton, he found the evening paper attracting more than his usual quick perusal.

This emotional fuss in the young human animal was beginning to preoccupy the newspaper world. Writers were raising their eyebrows and a new crop of metaphors at the statistics, which they described variously as alarming, encouraging, disheartening, provocative, distressing, romantic or revolting, depending upon the mood and point of view.

As June, the traditional mating month, wore into July, national statistics were a.s.sembled to reveal that marriages were occurring at almost double the highest previous rate, that the trend was accelerating rather than diminishing.

Jewelers and wholesale diamond merchants chalked up fabulous increases in the sale of engagement and wedding settings. Clergymen and qualified public officials were swamped with requests for religious and civil marriage ceremonies.

Parks, beaches and drive-in theaters were jammed with mooning and/or honeymooning couples, and amus.e.m.e.nt parks began expanding their over-patronized tunnel-of-love facilities.

The boom in houses, furniture, appliances and TV was on, and last year's glut of consumer goods for the home was rapidly turning into a shortage.

All was not good news, however. The divorce courts reported their calendars stacked months ahead of time, and an increasing number of lurid headlines were devoted to the love-triangular troubles of the rich, famous and notorious. Love-nest exposes and bigamous marriages rocketed in number.

The whole world, adolescent and adult, was falling in love, with the inevitable unrequited infatuations, the jealousies, infidelities and the bitter-sweetness of wholesale, illicit, impossible love situations in which vulnerable people found themselves increasing astronomically.

Writers of popular newspaper psychology columns attributed the rampaging emotional fire to everything from ma.s.s-hysteria, caused by sunspots, to the paternalism of a government that gave increased income-tax deductions to married people.

Dr. Murt's growing interest was not entirely academic. His bachelorhood was no accident of fate, but rather a carefully contrived independence, for which he paid the price of eternal vigilance. As the world supply of eligible bachelors diminished sharply, his wariness increased, and he became more and more curt with nurses and female technicians at the hospital.

He revealed the depth of his leeriness one afternoon at the scrub-up sink, where he and his a.s.sistant were washing after a messy dissection.

Phyllis Sutton remarked, "Holly, down in Personnel, showed me a tabulation she ran off for her own curiosity today, Doctor. Do you realize that in this whole hospital there are only _eight_ unmarried female employees?"

Murt threw water droplets from his bare arms and muttered, "Yes, and every one of them's giving me the eye--to say nothing of half the married ones."

His aide dried her long arms and slender hands and looked at him with a crooked smile. "Not to underestimate your good looks, Doctor, but I am one of the unmarried females. I trust I'm not giving you too much trouble?"

He looked up, startled. "Yes--no, _no_--of course not. I'm referring to the nurses and the technicians. What's got into them? The whole lot seems to be on the make!"

Phyllis combed out her short dark hair and looked at him in the mirror.

"I a.s.sure you the males are just as bad. These interns and four of the male nurses give me a physical with their eyes every time I happen to meet them."

"I suppose this ties in somehow with your pantie-raid theory."

"Well, what do _you_ think?"

"I don't think. I just dodge. You'd do well to do the same," Murt told her, putting on his jacket and adjusting his tie.

She sat down in his oak swivel-chair and crossed her slender ankles.

"Are you aware of the problem they have downstairs in the out-patient clinic?"

"Hadn't heard," Murt said.

She removed a file from her purse and touched up her short nails. "The outlying clinics are sending their overflow to us. They can't seem to diagnose the odd symptoms they're getting."

"I had noticed the large number of negative test results coming out of the lab," Murt acknowledged. "Haven't followed any of them through, though."

"I have," Phyllis said with a little frown. "Seems to be a psychosomatic nightmare down there."

"What are the symptoms?"