"Then why don't people die? Why aren't we sick?"
"Because we have sickened and recovered. We caught it on conception and recovered before birth. Proof? Why do you think that the countries which were known as the Hungry Lands are now well-fed, leisured, educated, advanced? Because the birth rate has fallen! Why has the birth rate fallen?" He paused, then very carefully said, "Because two out of three of all people who would have lived have died before birth, slain by Syndrome Plague. We are all carriers now, hosts to a new guest. And"—his voice dropped to a mock sinister whisper—"with such a stranger within our cells, at the heart of the intricate machinery of our lives, who knows what subtle changes have crept upon us unnoticed!"
His companion laughed. "Eat your breakfast. You belong on a horror program!"
A police psychologist for the Federated States of The Americas was running through reports from the Bureau of Social Statistics. Suddenly he grunted, then a moment later said, "Uh-huh!"
"Uh-huh what?" asked his superior, who was reading a newspaper with his feet up on the desk.
"Remember the myth, of Syndrome Johnny?"
"Ghost of Syndrome Plague. Si, what of it?"
"Titaquahapahel, Peru, population nine hundred, sent in a claim that he turned up there and they almost caught him. Crime Statistics rerouted the report to Mass Phenomena, of course. Mass Phenomena blew a tube and sent their folder on Syndrome Johnny over here. Every report they ever had on him for ninety years back! A memo came with it." He handed the memo over.
The man behind the desk looked at it. It was a small graph and some mathematical symbols. "What is it?"