In the dining hall of a university, a biochemical student glanced up from his paper to his breakfast companion. "You remember Johnny, the mythical carrier that they told about during the first and second epidemics of Syndrome Plague?" "Sure. Syndrome Johnny. They use that myth in psychology class as a typical example of mass hysteria. When a city was nervous and expecting the plague to reach them, some superstitious fool would imagine he saw Syndrome Johnny and the population would panic. Symbol for Death or some such thing. People imagined they saw him in every corner of the world. Simultaneously, of course." It was a bright morning and they were at a window which looked out across green rolling fields to a towering glass-brick building in the distance. The student who had gone back to his paper suddenly looked up again. "Some Peruvians here claim they saw Syndrome Johnny--" "Idiotic superstition! You'd think it would have died down when the plague died." The other grinned. "The plague didn't die." He folded his newspaper slowly, obviously advancing an opening for a debate. His companion went on eating. "Another of your wild theories, huh?" Then through a mouthful of food: "All right, if the plague didn't die, where did it go?" "Nowhere. _We have it now._ We all have it!" He shrugged. "A virus catalyst of high affinity for the cells and a high similarity to a normal cell protein--how can it be detected?" "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?"