Ice Age

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘… bulk of what’s before us comprises autopsy specimen analysis and that of organic and waste material recovered from the Antarctic and Alaska, all conducted here at Fort Detrick,’ Stoddart was saying. ‘So let’s begin with a verbal summary if we can, Walt.’ The christian name informality was intentional but Stoddart was at once unsure if he shouldn’t have accorded the director his title as a reminder that they were guests in Pelham country. Too late now. Why the fuck should he have to worry about such irrelevance?

  ‘Details which may have been overtaken by Dr Rothman’s work today,’ responded Pelham, at once. ‘Perhaps it might be better if we heard the outcome of that first, our not having any written presentation to examine, for comparison or perspective.’

  ‘It would risk confusion, by it being out of context, rather than move us forward,’ refused Stoddart. ‘Let’s start with you. Then we’ll come to Dr Rothman and after that I’ve got something to say about the climate monitors. And I think there’s something to be gained by discussing these other sea life outbreaks and transmitted influenza that we’ve been asked to comment about …’ At once contradicting himself, he said: ‘You might like to consider the fact that the political group in Washington have decided to pass the influenza outbreaks on to the World Health Organization.’

  ‘My own minister has returned, briefly, to London to do that,’ added Geraldine.

  What about my supposed liaison role, thought Spencer, who’d seen the human influenza outbreaks – outbreaks that wouldn’t yet have been identified if it hadn’t been for his establishing the global search – as his contribution to the meeting.

  Raisa wondered why Gregori Lyalin hadn’t told her about the influenza decision, when clearly their ministers had told Stoddart and Geraldine Rothman! A refusal to communicate could be a useful complaint to make to Moscow about the man.

  The only outward sign of Pelham’s inner turmoil at being overruled was the faintest flush to the man’s cheeks, gone as quickly as it so briefly came. His hands were without the slightest tremor as he opened his master file, the previously prepared pandect now scrawled with updated notes from the examinations of Henri Lebrun and the two Antarctic victims. When he began to speak there wasn’t any tremor in his voice, either. Every organ, tissue and the blood of every already dead victim – including that of Jane Horrocks’s unborn foetus – had been subjected to every known pathology test, examination and evaluation. There had been no positive bacterial response to Gram staining. Neither had the serology isolated natural immunity interferon to indicate body resistance to a viral infection. From both Antarctica and Alaska there had been full recovery of faeces and urine, although there was disinfectant contamination from the storage systems. Despite which no bacteria, virus or parasite had been detected. Neither had there been any presence in the undischarged faeces or urine of the bodies brought back for examination. Every piece of garbage from discarded food tins, containers and debris had undergone every bacterialogical examination. Nothing had been found. None of the medical conditions discovered among five victims – gall stones, blood sugar level suggesting nascent diabetes, duodenum ulceration and a chlamydia venereal infection – had any relevance to the ageing phenomena from which they had died. Each had shown outward physical and inner organic deterioration consistent with extreme senility, the most obvious outward signs being hair discolouration or loss – in three cases total – skin wrinkling and brown keratoses markings and finger and toenail keratinzation. In four there had been glaucoma or macular degeneration and in three arthritis. The most predictable and common manifestation within the bodies of every victim had been the substantial bone thinning of osteoporosis.

  Unexpectedly Pelham stopped, looking sideways to Geraldine. ‘No doubt you’d like to come in at this stage?’

  The woman appeared surprised. ‘No,’ she said, refusing, too, the condescension. ‘Not at all. You’re helping me. What, overall, was the extent of medullary spongiosis to the brain?’

  Pelham’s face briefly coloured again. ‘Softening was extreme, in every case: even the foetus. Before his death Burke, the pilot of the Antarctic rescue plane, evidenced advanced Alzheimer’s.’ The man paused. ‘Which might be an anomaly to point up. Burke unquestionably was suffering Alzheimer’s, a condition that needs to manifest itself by a loss of reality in life. Apart from the medically recognized prematurely ageing diseases in children, there are a number of other age-related or associated conditions: Parkinson’s, Huntington’s chorea, polycystic kidney growth, pituitary inflammation, Shy-Drager Syndrome …’ There was another pause, for Pelham mentally to ensure he’d completed the list. ‘There is no scientific post-mortem evidence that any victim suffered any of those afflictions …’

  There were other commonalities, Pelham suggested. It had been possible to make after-death comparisons with every victim from the detailed medical records available and again in every case – with the exception of the foetus, which was larger than it should have been – the bodies had lost size, weight and height, sometimes by as much as three inches. With another inviting glance at Geraldine, who shook her head, Pelham said that in every case the monitors upon those who had been alive when they arrived at Fort Detrick had over the last thirty-six hours of life registered grossly increased pulse rates: James Olsen’s heart had been recorded pumping at 170 beats a minute, which should have been medically impossible to sustain over such a period.

  ‘What we have,’ concluded Pelham, in what appeared an unexpected admission, ‘is an extremely comprehensive record of what we don’t know against which there is far too little that we can claim to know …’ Yet again the man deferred to Geraldine. ‘As you all know specimens have already been made available to Dr Rothman specifically for DNA analysis. In anticipation of each of you needing them, I have arranged comparative samples of every serology and pathology examination conducted here for each of your own molecular and medical research facilities to conduct independent study.’

  Stoddart was surprised by the gamble, but clearly Pelham was confident enough of his own installation’s research to be certain that others in London, Paris and Moscow wouldn’t isolate anything either. The risk remained that one of the other countries would make the breakthrough, which was clearly the thought mirrored by Spencer’s briefly startled – and even more quickly covered – expression. The concealment was helped by the Russian’s even quicker reaction.

  ‘I didn’t know of any DNA material being made available!’ said Raisa Orlov.

  ‘You weren’t here when they were provided,’ said Pelham. There was obviously a record kept of every specimen and sample. All of which can be duplicated, if you wish to conduct separate, repeated gene experimentation: any experimentation whatsoever.’

  Paul Spencer made a note of what he saw as a further concession.

  Geraldine said: ‘Anything – and everything – my research centre might find will be made freely available.’

  There was nothing confrontational in Geraldine’s voice, any more than there had been in Pelham’s, but Stoddart was anxious to bring the discussion back on scientific course and there was something close to irony that it was Raisa who provided it.

  Coming up from the newly provided medical material she said: ‘I can’t find anything here about culture growths?’

  ‘Because we haven’t succeeded in growing any,’ said Pelham. ‘As I’ve already made clear, we didn’t recover from any victim a single instance of viral cell invasion or mutation, from which we would obviously have attempted egg-fertilized cultures. Despite which, we’ve tried cultivation, from each victim, with lymph cells. Nothing whatsoever developed.’

  ‘We’ve yet to hear today’s work carried out by Dr Rothman,’ prompted Guy Dupuy, anxious for any indication, however slight, absolving him from negligence in Lebrun’s death.

  ‘Which certainly – obviously – has links with what I have already outlined and is included in greater detail in the medical file I’ve provided,’ said Pelham, suspecting from
those few of his forensic scientists who had been swept up in Geraldine Rothman’s slipstream that what she had to say would appear more medically exciting than anything he’d offered and eager to get a connection established by the secretariat.

  Stoddart had expected more discussion upon Pelham’s presentation, inconclusive though it had been, but reminded himself that if there were factors common to both it made sense to consider Geraldine’s contribution now and revert back and forth between the two as and when anyone had a point to make. They would be, in fact, maintaining his sequential insistence. It was so far going better than he’d hoped. Geraldine was actually looking at him, for his agreement. ‘If you’re ready, Gerry?’ he invited.

  Gerry, seized Raisa, actually the diminutive of the woman’s given name! If he wasn’t already screwing her – which he probably was – he clearly intended to. With much of her earlier anger gone – and what remained under tight control – it was a detached, uncritical reflection. Raisa’s bisexual appetite matched her size and, as well as banqueting at any bedside table to satisfy it, Raisa had without hesitation enthusiastically used her sexual as well as scientific ability to progress her career whenever it had been necessary and sometimes even when it hadn’t. Quite apart from very personally deriding the woman who had that morning far too publicly derided her, there could, Raisa accepted, be every professional benefit enclosing Jack Stoddart between her legs. He certainly looked the only likely candidate, compared against the stick-like installation director, a presidential aide who looked like one of those bulging children’s toys that always returned upright when it was pushed over and a Frenchman with a buttoned jacket like about-to-burst skin and bagged trousers full of farts.

  ‘Buckland Jessup couldn’t have died kneeling, with his hands outstretched, which was how he was found in the Antarctic field station. The body would have collapsed,’ Geraldine began. ‘George Bedall’s arms wouldn’t have cleanly snapped, not once but twice, the first time when he fell, the second when the rescue doctor had to break them to transport the body. Arm sections can only separate as positively as Bedall’s were when they’re shattered by a blow and even then that’s not positive, edge from edge separation. The force of the blow creates fragments – fracturing – and there weren’t any on the X-rays taken within the first hour of his body arriving here …’

  There was every reason for her to give the explanation like this, beginning logically with the first incongruity that had occurred to her, but Geraldine consciously recognized that instead of a clinical recitation she was dramatizing the presentation, building towards a denouement as if it was a work of fiction. It was as if she wanted to impress someone with her medical deduction, which was ridiculous. She’d already talked through some of it – the beginning at least – with Jack Stoddart so what … Geraldine abruptly halted the drift. So what, indeed? What place did Jack Stoddart have in any reflection that she might be performing to impress anyone?

  Hurriedly, strangely disconcerted, she went on: That’s all I had this morning, something I didn’t understand. Which I wanted to investigate further, with a second autopsy …’ She turned briefly towards Pelham. ‘But on the way I was told Henri Lebrun was about to die. What happened then – what I think we learned then – started as an accident, as discoveries so often do. I dropped an instrument, point first, and very superficially punctured the skin, at Lebrun’s shoulder. He didn’t feel it. Neither did he feel skin pricking over most of his body: only in his hands and the soles of his feet – the latter most often neurologically used for body sensitivity testing – was there any reaction. I took skin samples, as deep as the germinative strata. They were dead. His body temperature was quite normal, 37°C, but he complained of feeling cold. Yet his pulse rate was averaging 158, frequently peaking higher …’

  ‘That’s not possible!’ protested Raisa. ‘The readings are wrong!’

  ‘I know it’s not possible,’ agreed Geraldine. ‘But the instruments recording it as such are accurate and you’ve heard from Walter that similar readings – higher even, at 170 – were taken over the last thirty-six hours of the lives of all those who briefly survived here.’

  ‘You told him he was going to die,’ accused Dupuy.

  ‘I didn’t tell all the rest whose hearts beat at the same rate. And the print-out of Lebrun’s monitor shows it was averaging 158 for twelve hours before I entered his room. It wasn’t a shock reaction.’

  ‘What was it then?’ asked Stoddart.

  ‘I think it was the heart trying to do its job and keep him alive,’ said Geraldine. She didn’t have to dramatize anything for effect: impress anybody. All of them – all trained, experienced, unemotional scientists of various disciplines – were regarding her with various degrees of unease. ‘I personally attended second autopsies upon Buckland Jessup and George Bedall, specifically to examine why Jessup was kneeling as he was and why Bedall’s arms snapped, like dry sticks. Now, post rigor, Jessup’s lower spine, femur and tibia are in advanced stages of medullar spongiosis, despite mortuary preservation. As are both of Bedall’s arms. I’ve taken specimens –’ She looked to Raisa – ‘sufficient for all … for the genetic testing I want to carry out, as I wish to do upon Henri Lebrun’s already dead skin samples. And that’s what I expect to confirm orthopaedically from bone re-examination upon all the victims: that Jessup remained upright, arms outstretched, because his legs and arms were already dead and rigored. Where he died was as far as he could pitifully drag himself, towards the door. Before the rigor could dissipate, he froze. So that’s how he stayed until he was found.’

  Raisa shook her head in refusal. ‘You’re suggesting localized necrosis?’

  ‘Not localized for long,’ said Geraldine, in matching refusal. ‘I believe – and I hoped to get some genetic as well as organic proof – that this ageing disease affects organs and tissue progressively, killing each off—’

  ‘No!’ rejected Raisa, although objectively. ‘If that happened – certainly in the case of the man who was found to be kneeling – there would have been gangrene.’ She tapped her medical dossier. ‘There’s nothing here about gangrene.’

  ‘There wasn’t any,’ agreed Geraldine. ‘Degeneration occurs predominantly because of an interruption of blood supply and flow. There has been no blood interruption in any parts of the bodies upon which autopsies, first and secondary, have so far been completed. Although the organs, tissue and limbs died, blood still circulated – pumped around the body by increasingly overstrained hearts trying to keep up with metabolisms going completely haywire …’

  There was a moment of deliberating silence. Uncertainly – denied the necessary scientific A-B-C progression – Pelham said: ‘As a theory it fits the anomalies. But contravenes – contradicts – every accepted molecular principle …’

  ‘… totally,’ insisted Raisa.

  Neither remark was personal, a dismissal of Geraldine Rothman. It was, judged Stoddart, a refusal to accept a deviation from the rules. After that morning, the Russian still very much needed to establish herself. ‘This is something about which I could certainly do with more guidance, Raisa.’

  ‘I think I could, too,’ said Dupuy, in an unexpected bonus.

  Now her given name, isolated the attentive Russian. They were patronizing her, as she’d known they would, which made her churn inside but which she had, for the moment, to accept: pretend she hadn’t realized. To lecture would be patronizing them, in turn.

  ‘Think of blood vessels, arteries, as the pathways through the body constantly travelled by blood itself. Which carries the oxygen to keep the organs of the body alive,’ Raisa began, spacing the words for her own amusement at student dictation speed. ‘Unless there’s an infection – a virus or a bacteria – in the blood, as long as it flows organs stay alive. The only other way they can die is if there’s a blockage, an infarction. Or a direct wound …’

  Had Stoddart and Dupuy really wanted it like this, painting by numbers? wondered Geraldine. Or was the Russian …
? Geraldine stopped the thought, as well as holding back the temptation to interrupt with the insistence that the autopsies – most certainly that upon Henri Lebrun – would prove her right.

  ‘So there has to be an explanation that complies with, not contravenes, medical and molecular science,’ Raisa was continuing. ‘Which logically brings us back to infection. I don’t know of any bacterium that fails to respond to Gram staining. Which leaves us with a virus that has so far escaped detection by any recognized staining technique. Which it could easily do if it’s a virus we haven’t any previous experience of and which I think it is. As we’re speculating, let’s speculate further but more logically. A staphylococcu bacteria can be as small as a thousand nanometres and a nanometre is one thousand millionth of a metre. Viruses are usually enclosed in a capsid, a shell, of protective protein. Sometimes there’s a second, protective envelope—’ She looked directly at Pelham. ‘Wouldn’t you be happier thinking of a virus smaller than any science has ever encountered before, beating us for the moment by hiding perhaps behind a third protein layer?’

  Pelham actually looked between the two women, aware he was being shepherded into a choice and unwilling to make either. ‘We’re into the realms of the unknown. It’s a theory. Both are theories.’

  Which could be expanded, thought Geraldine, professionally. ‘At the moment, we have scientific – medical – proof without knowing what it proves of blood-supplied organs and tissue dying. Perhaps what you refer to as an indication in the blood of your victims will turn out to be the bacteria or antigen or antibodies or interferon that will lead us to a virus. Which would be a quantum leap. So it might, if examinations like I conducted upon Henri Lebrun could be carried out on those of your victims still surviving. Are they still alive?’

  Bitch! thought Raisa. ‘I’m waiting for a reply, through the embassy in Washington, about the survivors. Blood specimens are on their way, for repeat testing here.’ There was something in the blood of two of those who’d died at Iultin. So she had to be right!