Death's Foot Forward

by George B Mair

  Chapter Ten – The vivisection unit

  Although Grant had once convalesced in the Big House he had not realised that it was so filled with secrets, but his education began when he left the breakfast room with the Professor and was taken through a green baize door in the hall to enter a passage linking the series of laboratory and examination rooms which, although converted from old bothies and Victorian kitchen premises, was now comparable with anything outside of a few teaching hospitals.

  Their first session started with a medical examination more thorough than anything ever done for Grant’s confidential file, blood pressures and cardiac reserves, sugar levels and metabolic rates being first estimated at rest and then repeated after a two-mile walk involving twelve-hundred feet of climbing at top speed, all completed in less than thirty minutes. Which was good time even for commandos, thought Grant grimly, as he raced over the peat hags back to the examination room. And not bad either, he mused, when one remembered his late nights and city life for the past six months and more.

  Several specimens of blood were then withdrawn into a series of bottles for later analysis. ‘Haematocrit, various agglutinations, platelet counts, ketones and bilirubin,’ explained Juin, smiling as he watched Grant’s resigned expression whilst the packages were labelled for filing inside special wooden containers. ‘And now,’ he added, handing over an old-fashioned stomach pump. ‘Swallow that. We must have a sample of your mid-morning juices and it’s nearly two hours till luncheon, so timing’s near enough for the purpose.’

  A series of X-ray examinations followed, heart and lungs, skeleton and sinuses, all part of the build-up of preliminary data against which later estimates would be compared before risk of damage could be established. And until then the gas would remain an unknown quantity marked DANGER.

  The same need for control data led to removal of a minute specimen of bone marrow from Grant’s sternum. Marrow puncture, the Professor called it, as he screwed a broad bore needle into the centre of his guinea pig’s chest. ‘Beginning to understand why this place has been nicknamed the vivisection unit?’ he asked, plugging the tiny hole with a wisp of dressing, and then gently squirting the beads of fatty blood into a slender ampoule.

  Reaction time, visual acuity, colour vision, auditory perception, chest expansion, peripheral reflexes, weight were noted as routine after a brief interlude for coffee and the morning ended with a series of swabs from the throat and nose joining the collection in Juin’s clinical bag before being rushed by car to London for culture.

  Over luncheon the men talked trivialities whilst the housekeeper served thick Scotch broth and then game pie blended from pheasant, hare, grouse and black-cock with home-made lemon meringue tart to follow. Coffee was strong and black, equal to anything offered in London, as Grant well remembered from his earlier visit, and the cheese was a local stilton, almost unobtainable in this age of milk marketing boards and farm subsidies. ‘And now,’ said Professor Juin, as the grandfather clock struck twice, ‘zero hour.’

  They returned through the chain of laboratories to an isolated little building sitting on a small hill behind the kitchen garden. It consisted of two rooms connected by an air-tight door. A window had been let into the dividing wall and in one chamber there was an impressive array of complex apparatus. ‘I shall stay here,’ said the doctor quietly, ‘whilst you are on the other side. But I should be able to see everything that’s going on, and there’s also a microphone which will transmit into this room.’ He pointed vaguely around. ‘As you can see everything has been arranged which foresight can predict as being even remotely necessary to cover every theoretical emergency, and you can take it from me that my ingenuity cannot go further.’

  He motioned Grant forward to the thick and curiously fashioned connecting doors. ‘Air-tight, but opens easily. If you want out in a hurry say so. But you simply push this button and lean against the thing if you think I’m not moving fast enough.’

  ‘And what do I do, stand or sit?’

  ‘Lie down,’ explained the doctor. ‘Using this.’ He walked back to the other room and returned with the telescoped frame of a folding table. Deftly he expanded the tubular legs and set it up in the centre of the curved floor, slinging a roll of nylon from each corner to form a couch. ‘Try it.’

  Grant stretched out about three feet above the floor, his head level with the observation window. ‘O.K.’ He nodded. ‘But how about clothes?’

  ‘Sorry, but you’ve got to strip. Don’t want any vapour hanging about on garments and afterwards you’ll take a spray. There’s a way of opening a square and exposing taps up top. Part of the drill for cleaning the cell.’

  ‘So it’s been used before?’

  The doctor smiled broadly. ‘But not for this. It was originally made for experimental work simulating high altitudes, which is why it is shaped like a boiler.’

  ‘So when do we start?’

  ‘Before we go any further I want you to listen very closely.’ Juin was deadly serious as he gripped Grant’s arm and led him to the observation room. ‘Sit down.’ Whilst he was speaking he opened a small box packed with foam rubber carved to hold a round glass ball no larger than a grape. ‘Look at it,’ he continued. ‘Half a drachm of a fluid about which less is known than almost any weapon in our possession. All we can say is that it belongs to that series of chemicals which has become known as nerve gases, that it acts when vaporised by paralysing motor nerves and part of the sympathetic system, that minute quantities have been given to some of the higher animals, including chimpanzees causing complete paralysis for over two weeks, and that the degree varies with the concentration of gas used. Unfortunately, however, one cannot yet fully measure an animal’s fear, or appreciate the effect of this chemical on its intellect and imagination. But T suspect that it does create certain disagreeable emotions, almost panic at times, and I believe that the same thing may follow in the human subject.’

  ‘Meaning me?’ Grant was becoming impatient. Why couldn’t he get on with it?

  ‘Meaning you,’ agreed the Professor, ‘which is why the microphone is necessary. But I also want to take both an electro-encephalograph and cardiographs whilst you are under its influence. In addition we’re also going to rig up apparatus for checking blood pressure and respiration which I can read off in here. So, if you are ready, undress and lie down. I’ll need about half an hour to get organised and then I’ll give you the capsule, but I’ll still be able to see at a glance how heart and lungs are behaving, and if there’s the slightest sign of danger I’ll put on the extractor fans, flush you with oxygen and have you out within seconds.’

  A few minutes later Grant was lying on the nylon sheet. His pulse was steady at 78, ten above normal, and his breathing nearer fourteen than its usual eleven per minute. The emergency iron lung was working with smooth slushing efficiency and Grant could hear its sighing machinery whispering through the open door. The mike had also been tested and the recorder was running sleekly between its broad flat drums, ready to take down every sound which came from within the gas-chamber. A sphygmomanometer was strapped to his right arm and the electrodes of a six-lead cardiograph against his skin. Then an electro-encephalograph joined the maze of tubes and wires coursing across the floor to attachments either in the wall or on portable machines now standing at the head of the bed and leaving him almost helpless, lying in the middle of a sea of scientific paraphernalia.

  ‘One more thing,’ said Juin. ‘The extractor fans.’ Grant saw him press two switches on the outside wall of the other room. A series of squares opened above him and there was a rush of cold air as pumps came into operation. The Professor listened for a moment and then switched them off, the formica squares again swivelling round to close the gas-chamber and leave a bleak expanse of curved ceiling with only the faintest of hair-lines marking the position of the openings.

  The Frenchman then lifted out the capsule from its bed of rubber and produced a pair of nut-crackers from his pocket. ‘Break it wit
h this when we are both ready,’ he said, ‘and good luck.’

  Grant watched him seal the door from the other side and settle himself at the window. The capsule felt cold against his hand and the place was deathly silent. He could hear nothing except the lub-doop of his own heart and the sound of breath whistling through his nostrils. Slowly he lifted the glass ball and slipped it into the jaws of the nut-cracker, an elegant toy shaped like a Siamese dancing girl. As he watched her thighs tighten against it he hesitated for one last second, and then, viciously, snapped the capsule. There was a thud of metal when the crackers dropped upon the floor and a fine tinkle as glass spicules fell around.

  He could see Juin watching intently through the window, his eyes staring like blue saucers through a quivering shimmer of daylight. There was no smell, but he felt as though every sense had suddenly heightened and he became aware of his body as never before. The eyes had ballooned into balls of violet neon lights staring through a haze of blurring greyness. There was a lonely feeling of helplessness, and then the swirling colours darted around the room, flashes of brilliance which blended into patterns of horror, volcanoes belching red ash towards the roof and then toppling into rivers of white-hot metal which poured through the air to crash against the side of his head and explode into myriads of glinting sparks which landed on his body and burned like acid.

  Every pore of his skin prickled with itchy irritation whilst his hairs seemed to rise vertically from their roots in fear. He could hear his own voice echoing with vibrating overtones as he tried to form words. The sound seemed to strangle in his throat, phrases running into one another to create a medley of chaotic noise. His tongue lolled flatly against the roof of his mouth and then slithered against his lips, fighting to say something, to cry for help, to scream in panic as his body became bound to the bed, anchored by the knowledge that he couldn’t move, that he was nothing more than a bundle of flesh lying on a pool of sweat.

  There was a tightness in his chest, bands of steel screwing taut against his ribs, crushing his heart. And he was gasping like a fish writhing on the banks of its river, forcing his neck muscles to pump air into his aching lungs. His legs were heavy, his thighs lying dead-weight on the bed whilst his toes stuck outwards at strange angles as he struggled to move his feet and swing round on to the floor.

  He had lost count of time, his senses bewildered by the violence of the colours which still eddied around him, and his brain dulled by sounds still piercing his ear-drums like skewers. The stinging, prickly itch of his skin had risen to a burning glow and his body was drenched with dampness. He guessed that he was going to die, his heart was racing and the cramps which girdled his chest gripped him in a corset of agony. The lights were now bursting like Roman candles into flickering specks of fire which exploded against a background of heaving darkness. And then, slowly the darkness began to clear, violet pin-points of stabbing rays staring at him from a patch of daylight which quivered on the nearby wall, until, after what seemed a lifetime of uncertainty, it focussed into shape. Juin was behind it, his eyes darting from the dials of machines back towards the gas-chamber.

  And then Grant looked at his feet. His toes were moving with athetoid restlessness. The room had cleared of madness. Breathing was still a battle, but the cramp-like girdle pain had diminished to a steady ache and his tingling skin had settled into an itchy discomfort which made him want to scratch until he had drawn blood.

  And then, above him, he saw the ventilation squares pivot into action, revealing the broad nozzles of extractor ducts. The hum of machinery throbbed in his still sensitive ears and he felt an inrush of cold air kissing his body. Juin was no longer at the window, but Grant could see him busy in the observation room until at last the door opened and the doctor walked across to the bed. Deftly he detached the electrodes, unwrapped the cuff of his sphygmomanometer and freed his patient from yards of tubing. Cautiously Grant tried to move his arms. They were heavy and aching, but by concentrating hard enough it was possible to lift them just off the sheet. Systematically he tried to move each finger, his wrist and elbow. He was weak as a baby, unable to sit up, unable even to turn. His thighs and feet were useless. He didn’t wish to speak. Just to be left alone. His eyes were smarting and tears trickled down his cheek. There was a weird sense of being dissociated from time or space and Juin seemed no more real than a ghost, his voice a blur of confused sound. He wanted only to forget. Even to die. He was vaguely aware of being washed down and then being lifted on to a trolley, of the Professor speaking to someone, and of a capable woman tucking him into bed. He winced to the jab of a needle. Later he saw a figure switch off the lights and he was left in darkness. The sheet was cool against his skin but the weight of blankets soothed his senses, and from the far distance he heard the plaintive lowing of sheep, the eerie wail of a curlew and the babble of a stream splashing over mountain stones, quiet music which lulled him to sleep.

  He wakened up on a sunny morning to see the Frenchman sitting by his bedside reading The British Medical Journal. There was still a sense of utter physical weakness, each limb hanging heavy against his body as he tried to move sluggish joints with muscles which had become clumsy machines, but his memory seemed normal and the itch had faded almost to nothing. The nightmare of flashing lights had disappeared and as he slowly returned to full consciousness the faces of Maya and Jacqueline reminded him of his mission.

  He lifted a hand to rub his chin. There was a heavy growth of coarse bristle and a thick taste in his mouth. ‘Good God!’ he murmured, ‘but this is one hell of a hang-over.’

  Juin turned as he spoke and smiled broadly. ‘Glad to see you back again. How d’you feel?’

  It was a question he was to ask at least a dozen times during the next two months, and it was only then that Grant was given any detailed report of all that had happened. Each day had brought a new experiment, either exposure to a further concentration of gas from a series of capsules graded in doses fined down to hundredths of a milligram or else detailed clinical assessments which were even more tedious, involving as they did the collection of blood samples, kidney tests or cardiographs and the estimations of strange metabolic processes within the body. But at last it was over. There had been a brief break in the daily routine over Christmas, but by mid-February he guessed that the end was in sight. He could now tolerate heavy concentrations of the beastly stuff without obvious ill-effects and even on the worst days felt only some mild muscle weakness, a little disorientation which might last for a few hours, or sometimes a return of the nightmares, these weird fantasies which he had come to call his colour dreams.

  They lived in complete seclusion, withdrawn into their work, venturing out only for short walks on the nearby hills or for a stroll along the stream which flowed down the glen. The only other person to whom they spoke was the housekeeper, but even with her contact was reduced to a minimum. An immense degree of mutual respect had developed between the two men and the Frenchman treated Grant with a natural kindness which did much to reduce the strain of the ‘vivisection room’.

  ‘And now, it’s over,’ he said, one evening after dinner. ‘Want to hear the news?’

  ‘In a nutshell, you’ve pulled it off,’ he continued later when they were comfortably settled in the parlour, a glass of Drambuie beside their coffee and Juin half-concealed behind a cloud of pale blue smoke from a Burma cheroot. ‘The first exposure gave both of us a fright. You had a transient paralysis which lasted for several hours but, as I warned you, the emotional side effects were worse. You developed a roaring delirium which needed a shot of hyoscine and omnopon, but even then it was all I could do to clean out the place, wash you down and manhandle you on to a trolley back to bed. Then there was the business of getting you into pyjamas! Quel horreur! Ever tried to dress an unconscious man? My advice is don’t. Especially when you’ve got to clean up a couple of labs afterwards and bring records up-to-date. Hardest physical work I’d done in years.’

  He poured out a second Drambuie. �
��Very good liqueur this. Can’t understand why we don’t use it more in France. Anyhow, there was no real danger from then on. We knew your reaction to a given dose, so next time you got exactly one quarter. And you’ll remember that it made hardly any impression at all. Just some colour fantasies and certain fleeting muscle weakness of legs. But the further question arose as to interval between exposures. I gave you a three-day rest and then repeated the smaller dose of the second exposure, and with the same results. It seemed possible that tolerance might build up quite quickly, and, indeed, that proved to be the case. But it was also vital to anticipate possible ill effects and so you had to suffer all these clinical examinations as part of our campaign to discover theoretical poisonous reactions before they had done any harm.

  ‘Fortunately,’ he added, ‘you seem to have escaped permanent damage. The drug appears to be non-toxic in the doses used and after twenty-six exposures you were able to breathe in concentrations equal to twenty times that on the first day. In other words there was a half drachm dose on the first occasion but eight weeks later, and with the twenty-sixth exposure, you were able to accept ten drachms without turning a hair. But ten drachms would be sufficient to paralyse everyone in an average small ballroom if it was suddenly vaporised, and since you agree that you required enough to deal only with an ordinarily large room there was no justification in pressing matters further. We have kept to that and so far as I can see you are now completely tolerant to that concentration released in a chamber measuring almost two thousand cubic feet. But bear in mind how you felt in that same place with an initial exposure of only one half drachm and you can understand what a powerful weapon you have created for yourself.’

  ‘How about supplies?’ asked Grant. He guessed that his ‘orders’ would have met with a good deal of opposition.

  ‘No problems,’ grinned the Professor. ‘At least not after the Admiral had taken things to top level. You’ll get several boxes of the most dangerous matches ever made. Each tip contains enough gas in maximally concentrated liquid form to knock out the man lighting it. Provided it is used indoors, of course. And you can use one every three or four days to keep your own tolerance going. The paste has been built up round each capsule but the act of striking it is enough to break the glass and make a flame which will vaporise the stuff. Almost instantaneous results.’