The Plague Tales

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by Ann Benson


  Even though this family had lost one member to the plague, those gathered here seemed largely untouched by the cruelties happening in the rest of the world. Only the queen had the telltale look of sorrow and loss that was so common among the population of Europa. There was genuine gaiety here; the men were hale and robust, and the ladies gracious and charming. In this castle there was a miraculous immunity to the effects of the plague, and Alejandro thought that this was a most blessed and fortunate assembly. He resolved to do his best to see that their contentment was preserved.

  Ten

  Despite the bulge in his stomach from the big chunk of mutton he’d already consumed, Robert Sarin managed to down one more bite. Then he sat back and let out a loud, satisfied belch. He was surprised and pleased by the sudden and unaccountable increase in his appetite. He rubbed his hands over his bulging stomach while the dog sat next to him, wagging his tail and whining a little, begging for some of the bits left on his master’s plate. The old man smiled and obliged his companion by offering him a good chunk of fat in his open palm. The dog neatly grabbed it with his teeth, never touching Sarin’s skin, and swallowed it in one gulp. Sarin held his greasy hand still, and the dog licked it clean.

  Knowing in his heart of hearts that he wouldn’t be experiencing that or any other sensation too many more times, he allowed himself to enjoy the soft tickle of the dog’s wet tongue on his callused palm. He was learning to enjoy every pleasant sensation that came his way, and he dwelled on each of his own thoughts as if it were some great philosophical offering.

  He thought it odd that fear could make him feel so alive. Now that he had dedicated himself to preparing for what lay ahead, he felt more energized than he had in years, as though a decade of aging had been stripped away in just a few days. Each breath came easier and each step was more springy. He had been out into his mother’s garden and had put it right, more right than it had been in the very long time since she herself had been able to see to it. He had always loved the smell of its rich black earth; it smelled so fertile and damp and musky, as he imagined a woman might smell.

  Each day he looked at his mother’s book and committed the rituals more perfectly to memory. He had never known such memory before! The power of knowing things and then learning more things was nearly intoxicating to him. He knew there would come a time soon when he would be expected to use the things he had learned, and he was excited beyond anything he’d ever experienced. If only, he thought with sad regret, she could have been alive to see it.

  When the meal was more settled in his belly, he rose from his chair to stretch his arms and legs. The cottage smelled wonderful, and Sarin was constantly flooded with memories of his mother now that the condition of the place had returned to what it was when she had still been in full command of herself. He called to the dog, and the big scruffy animal returned to his side, his pink tongue hanging out of a big doggy grin. Sarin patted the animal’s head and said, “Sometimes it feels like she’s not really gone.” The dog wagged his tail in agreement and whined softly.

  “It’s like she’s still right here helping me,” Sarin said. He’d spent a good deal of time putting things right, feeling all the while as if she were looking protectively over his shoulder as he went about the work of maintenance, and it was only after he’d finished it all that he realized how far he had let things slide.

  He knew that she had prayed for the task to come in her time of stewardship, and that no matter how carefully she instructed him—her only child—she would never believe that he would be ready if it happened in his time. “I should’ve known,” she’d said bitterly as she neared her death. “I had a son. I should have known.” And she was right, he thought, for he was the only male ever in a direct line of capable women through several centuries. Each daughter had borne a daughter by virtue of an old and closely guarded ritual, and had given the child her own name.

  But she had told him that he had come from love, not ritual. He wondered how horrified his mother must have been to look down between her own bloody legs, there to see the small wailing wrinkled thing he had been after the protracted and difficult birth. He wondered if she had panicked and cried, and, most horrifying, if she had considered doing away with him. He could almost sense her defiance in that moment of decision, her unwillingness to do what was required of her by tradition and custom. She was an angry young girl, struggling with an imperfect baby, shaking her fist at six hundred years of compliance on the part of her ancestors. And as time passed and her defiance dissipated, he had sensed her regret. “I knew what was required of me,” she’d told him once, “and I didn’t do it. There is no one to blame but myself.” And thereafter she had complied with everything that was required of her, in all matters but the care of her impaired son.

  That son, now a man of great age, stooped down and stepped through the low door into the cool outside air. His old eyes followed the darting silhouette of a ragged man who slipped between the trees. He reached down and patted the dog’s head. “There’s one of them now,” he whispered to the panting, grinning canine. “I wonder why they don’t come to visit more often.”

  Why, Janie wondered with great annoyance, does the telephone always ring when I have a mouthful of toothpaste? She was tempted to let the hotel’s voice mail pick up the call, but remembering that it might be Caroline, she spat and ran instead, catching the call just before the fifth ring when the system would have automatically kicked in. After a minty smack of her lips she said, “Hello?”

  Bruce said, “Good morning.”

  She thought about pretending not to recognize his voice, just to throw him off track. But she was determined to be a kinder, gentler Janie, especially in view of his princely behavior the night before.

  Actually, she thought to herself, a hornier, more hormonal Janie, with a newly reawakened libido, would be more accurate this morning.

  “Good morning to you too,” she said.

  “How did you sleep?” he asked.

  She wondered if she should tell him that she had managed to dislodge the sheets from the bed without meaning to, and that what she had experienced for eight long and markedly lonely hours could hardly be called sleep, but more of a semiconscious toss-a-thon. She decided not to reveal the pounding headache that threatened to split her brain right down the middle every time she moved her neck even slightly. Maybe he has aspirin, she thought, and reconsidered her position.

  “Oh, pretty well,” she finally said. It wasn’t a blatant lie, but she followed it up with one. “I feel very rested this morning. It must have been the wine.”

  “Lucky you,” he said. “I tossed all night for some reason. Maybe it was the unfamiliar bed, I don’t know. I usually do pretty well in unfamiliar beds.”

  “Is that so?” Janie said, giggling. “Can you produce witnesses to support that claim?” Her giggles blossomed into full-fledged laughter.

  There was complete silence on the other end of the line for a few seconds. “I set myself up for that one, didn’t I?” Bruce finally said. “Maybe I should avoid engaging in conversation first thing in the morning.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” Janie said. “It was a cute thing to say. It feels good to start the day with a little laughter. And I’m sorry you didn’t sleep well. Truth is, I could’ve done better myself. I think I just had too much wine.”

  “Maybe I didn’t have enough. But a quart or two of coffee will probably cure what ails me. I’m going down to the coffee shop for some breakfast, if you care to join me.”

  “I’ll be down in a few minutes, as soon as I finish getting dressed.”

  “I’ll call the storage facility before I come down. Maybe they’ll have heard something from Ted finally.”

  “Good idea. I think I’ll try Caroline again too.”

  “Let’s hope we both have good news to report when next we meet,” he said, and they hung up.

  Ted pulled the skin-patch thermometer away from his hot, clammy skin and looked at the gauge.
“One-oh-three point seven,” he said aloud, though there was no one to hear it. “Dear God.” He sat down on the edge of his bed. As he lowered himself, he noticed that his knees ached. Another symptom? he thought silently. What will be next?

  He was certain that he was suffering from much more than a cold. He’d slept fitfully, getting up several times in the night to drink water, and yet on awaking, his first thought was to drink more. He was hot and clammy, and his eyes had the rheumy look of disease, but what worried him more than anything was the swelling in his neck. It hadn’t gone down at all; in fact, it had become more noticeable.

  Now as he examined his neck, he saw dark areas where the swelling was more pronounced. He’d seen the symptoms of most modern diseases firsthand in the course of his work, but never had he come across anything like what he was now seeing in his own mirror.

  He ran his hand over his neck. The lumps felt hard, and the slight pressure he applied produced the kind of dull ache he would have associated with a large, unresolved boil. “Ow!” He winced as his fingers dwelled on a particularly painful lump. He thought perhaps he should seek some medical help, but wondered how he could do so without attracting notice. He didn’t like to let his coprofessionals know there was a chink in his armor of perfection, and if his undiagnosed ailment did in fact turn out to be more than a cold, the last thing he wanted was to be swallowed up in the slow-turning wheels of the medical system. With one misstep he’d be sucked into its great grinding gears, and he would not emerge until the authorities were satisfied that he was absolutely no threat to society. The irony of the fact that he himself was frequently one of those stern authorities was not lost on him.

  He decided instead that the safest course of action would be to try self-diagnosis. He knew that all the programming he needed to chart and analyze his symptoms could be found in the medical library’s computer system; he had selected that system himself. He knew he could rule out the worst possibilities before going any further.

  Every inch of his body ached as he struggled into his clothing. He winced as he pulled on a turtleneck sweater, but was satisfied to see upon looking in the mirror that it covered his neck bruises nicely. Unfortunately, he thought to himself as he tried to loosen the knit fabric hugging his neck, it’s bloody uncomfortable. Before leaving the apartment he grabbed a light coat. Once outside he discovered that he needed it immediately, for despite the day’s relative warmth, the air felt cold and raw to him. Not trusting himself to drive in his unwell state, he took a taxi, and sat shivering in the backseat during the entire trip.

  The Institute’s library was closed for the weekend and Ted assumed it would be unstaffed, though he knew there were a few people working in other sections of the building. Without the warmth and noise of human activity the Institute always seemed huge to him, like some giant cave into which he was absorbed every working day. But it was a cave of his own making, and it usually felt quite safe to him. Today, it seemed entirely too cavernous. As his concern over his condition grew, his surroundings took on false proportions; he began to feel very small and fragile, more and more out of control.

  He let himself into the deserted library with a handprint. Looking around, he called out, “Hello?” When no one answered, he wasted no time in powering up the computer and logging on to the database. The program moved him along from frame to frame, asking for specific information in a pleasant, soothing voice. In the field marked PATIENT NAME he typed “Instructional session” so the computer would not record in its permanent database any of the information he was about to enter. This ploy also enabled him to bypass the time-consuming statistical data fields and proceed directly to the field marked SYMPTOMS. Get this done before you’re too sick to do it, he cautioned himself. In the symptom section he touched on the boxes provided for fever, headache, swollen neck, stiffness, nausea.

  The machine made him wait for a few moments as the information was sent out over the wires. The wait, no more than fifteen or twenty seconds, seemed interminable to him. Distortion had spilled over from his physical self and invaded his sense of time, and as he waited he began to feel slightly disoriented. He felt almost rescued when a list of potential diagnoses came up on the screen and the computer then asked him to touch the boxes for which he wanted additional information.

  But the list before him was far from comforting. His panic grew as he read through it.

  Hodgkin’s disease: a lymphatic cancer.…

  He passed it by.

  Influenza: a viral upper respiratory condition.…

  He marked it.

  Mononucleosis: a viral disease causing marked fatigue.…

  Maybe. But probably not.

  Mumps: a viral childhood disease characterized by.…

  Been immunized.

  Plague: a bacterial condition caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis.…

  He stopped reading and stared at the screen. Yersinia pestis. He had seen that name recently but couldn’t make his brain connect it to anything. He sat back and concentrated, and was soon enormously frustrated by his inability to recall this small but apparently important detail. He didn’t yet know that a newly born relative of the bacterium with the familiar but intangible name was in fact the cause of his infuriating lapses in memory.

  When it finally came to him where he’d seen it, he quietly disconnected from the network and shut down the computer. He sat in the chair staring blankly at the gray, unlit screen, trembling, his heart beating wildly, and though he didn’t move for several minutes, sweat literally poured off his forehead and upper lip. He stood up, and a wave of nausea overtook him, so he heaved into a nearby wastebasket. His retching was dry and unproductive, for he’d had no appetite since taking ill and there was nothing in his rebellious stomach that could be expelled.

  When his belly finally stopped lurching, he closed the library and walked slowly to the lab. He was terrified of what he would find when he got there, but he had to know. It was simply too much of a coincidence to be ignored.

  He walked slowly through the white-and-pastel hallways, one hand on the wall for balance, the other holding his aching belly. During the weekend the automatic timers turned on only every third bulb, and though cheerful when fully illuminated, the corridors seemed gloomy as he passed through them. His own brain felt as dim as the spare light; every footstep he took echoed off the freshly polished floors and reverberated in his ears, jarring him, dulling him even further.

  When he reached the lab, he went straight for the book Frank had left lying open next to the computer system containing the Microorganism ID program. He picked up the book and had started to flip the pages toward the enterobacteria section when he noticed a piece of paper with a large graphic left lying under the book. He picked it up and examined it more closely. In the lower left corner was the file and date information. Printed there he saw the date on which Frank had died, and the name “Gertrude.”

  The file name brought on another frustrating neural tweak. He closed his eyes and searched his brain, willing it to drag up the information he needed. My head feels so thick, he thought, and wondered if what he was feeling approximated what a naturally stupid person experienced every day. In a moment of triumph he finally recalled questioning Caroline about the name Gertrude. She’d told him it was name they’d given to the microbe Frank had discovered on their fabric sample.

  The same sample that had been exposed to the explosion of P. coli earlier that morning.

  He had handled the sample, and so had Caroline. Ted didn’t recall seeing either Janie or Bruce touch it. He thought it unlikely that Bruce had had any contact with it, but the other woman certainly could have.

  I’ve got to find that fabric … if I can just wade out of this mental swamp.…

  He powered up both computers. Each one, at his insistence, had a “prevops” function allowing the user to recall any previous operations performed on the system, enabling that or any subsequent user to get right back into any program exactly where it had been
exited. The dates, times, and operators were listed to streamline the search. Ted had responded to complaints that it was an insidious way for supervisory personnel to keep tabs on what the techs were doing and when they were doing it by ordering the programmers to add the same function to every computer at the Institute. Two technicians immediately resigned. He had promptly replaced them with more compliant personnel.

  He went first to the microscope system where Frank had left the fabric sample. He called up the prevops list and went back to the day Frank had died. On the list were three files: Gertrude, Frank, and Frank2. Then he moved to the system where MIC was installed.

  Right there on the list, just after “Frank2,” was the entry “MIC ID Yersinia pestis.”

  His mind raced with the horrifying possibilities as he entered the MIC program and called up the file for the Yersinia pestis graphic. He held the print of Gertrude in his hand, ready to make a visual comparison between the graphic due up on the screen and the print itself. In a few seconds the image scrolled onto the screen from top to bottom. They were nearly identical; he didn’t need a computer to tell him that they were the same microbe.

  His fingers trembled on the computer keyboard as he exited the program and logged back in to the database he had explored in the library. He was blubbering softly to himself, hovering on the edge of tears. They’ll find me somehow. They’ll come for me in their green suits and put me in one of those big yellow biohazard bags and just haul me away.…

  This time he bypassed the symptom search entirely and went directly to the file for plague.

 

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