The leader's eyes were sunken and spoke of sleepless nights. They rested on Euge with the cold impersonal enmity of a snake's.
"You lied to me," he stated flatly.
"No," denied the scientist. "I let you interpret the data in your own way. It is not my fault that you believed what you wanted to believe."
The Dictator strove visibly to say what he had planned. "I have recalled you, despite grave suspicions, to—to appeal for assistance. Perhaps you have had pacifist sentiments all along—" Euge made a scornful gesture. "In any case, it is no longer a question of making war. The enemy has practically ceased to fight, now it is the plague that must be conquered—"
"I imagine," said Euge softly, "that your statisticians have told you that RM4 will be pandemic in this country as soon as, or before, it is in the enemy's."
The other's mouth twitched. "You performed exhaustive experiments with the plague; you hold the key to its nature and possibly to a remedy."
"It is true that I learned something about the virus' raison d'etre. Novik must have told you about it. There was nothing which pointed to a preventive, let alone a cure, at this stage. I am no immunologist, anyway."
"Novik said," the Dictator's eyes narrowed, "'It is fear!'"
Euge nodded with satisfaction. "He was right. The virus attacks only brains that are already sick with fear. Not—my results with mice indicated—the normal alarm of a healthy organism, which expresses itself in flight or fight, but the pathological anxiety-state that come of an inescapable threat or frustration in the environment, and that turns itself so easily into feelings of guilt or hatred.... The fear of the criminal, the neurotic, the paranoiac."
"Then all that is needed is to stamp out such elements, the focus of infection!"