Viners leaned back in his chair and put his hands together, palms apart but fingers touching, each one lightly pressed against its counterpart.
'You were right to come to see me,’ he said, neutrally. He gave the impression of a man who was thinking hard.
'We can treat the question as hypothetically as you like,’ I said. ‘We can look at it from both sides, one by one. But I need to know how this thing is going to develop. I need to know whether to get myself admitted to a hospital. I'm scared of doing that, not only because of what I'd be admitting to myself, but also because it might make Detective Sergeant Miller think again about appointing me suspect number one in his investigation—which he might well do anyway, given that his chances of getting a statement from Anne aren't looking too good right now. If I am infected, by the way, I think she must be too.'
'I think you ought to be aware,’ said Viners, ‘that I've never suffered effects of the kind you describe. Vivid dreams, yes—but never physical symptoms like those you mentioned.'
'Perhaps you only thought you might have picked up one of the experimental viruses,’ I suggested. ‘Perhaps I'm the first person actually to do so.'
'I can assure you that's not so,’ he retorted.
I hadn't expected that he'd have any surprises for me tucked up his sleeve, and it was quite a shock to realize what he meant.
'You've infected yourself?’ I said, feeling the need to make sure. ‘Deliberately?'
'Of course. These viruses do occur in nature, you know. They weren't cooked up in the laboratory by some Frankensteinian madman. They're out there in the world. Animals and people catch them all the time. The ones I've isolated for investigation in the lab aren't endemic to Britain, nor to California, but they can be imported just like influenza viruses and common colds. Exploring the chemistry is all very well, but how could I hope to begin explaining anything if I didn't know anything at all about the psychological correlates?'
I stared at his grey, shadowed face. He didn't much resemble the Professor Viners I was used to seeing, so it was less astonishing than it might have been to hear that he was a wild man after all, a swashbuckling cut-the-crap kick-it-and-see-what-happens merchant.
'Why didn't you tell me this before?’ I asked.
'It wouldn't have been fair. It might have seemed that I was urging you to try a similar experiment. Actually, I had another reason, too. I presumed that the idea would occur to you in time, and I didn't want to discuss my symptoms in case foreknowledge affected your own. I assume, however, that this infection—if it is an infection by one of the experimental viruses—was quite accidental?'
'Damn right,’ I murmured. ‘What about Teresa? Has she played guinea pig too?'
'She hasn't volunteered,’ he said. ‘I'd never have infected her deliberately without her informed consent. Any symptoms she's had were presumably imaginary, unless she got careless and infected herself by mistake. I hope you haven't been thinking that I might have used you as an unsuspecting guinea pig. I certainly didn't slip something into your lunch box while you weren't looking. To tell you the truth, I've always had high hopes that you would one day decide to get properly involved. I suppose we tend to have a rather glamourised view of Californian daring in these strait-laced isles. But I really do think that your present symptoms must be psychosomatic.'
I swallowed the swearwords which sprang to my tongue, and substituted sarcasm. ‘I suppose it didn't occur to you,’ I said, ‘when you tried the virus on yourself that the damn things might take up permanent residence in your body—that you might become a walking incubator. You might be infectious, damn it! You might have passed viruses on to Teresa in a perfectly ordinary way—and she could have passed them on to me.'
'As I've already pointed out,’ he said, gently, ‘these viruses are out there in the world. They infect thousands of people every day, and they're not killers. People suffer a slight fever, mild delirium, and then recover. They're not anywhere near as contagious as the most effective cold viruses, and certainly no more dangerous. When I conducted my experiments I did so in private, and I made sure that I was clear of any symptoms before I renewed contact with my wife, my children or Teresa. I have no reason to think that anyone else has been infected.'
'Then what the fuck is happening to me?'
He winced at the obscenity, but he didn't complain. He just looked at me from the depths of his dark-grey eyes and said: ‘I don't know, Gil. That's what we have to try to work out.'
'If it's a mutant,’ I said, ‘we're in trouble. All of us.’ I suddenly thought about what I'd done with Teresa the previous evening. Maybe it had all been her imagination before, or maybe she'd only had the harmless strains. But now ... could she possibly have antibodies that would still protect her, the way antibodies to cowpox could protect against smallpox? I hoped so.
'It could be a mutant,’ the professor admitted. ‘And if it is, there could indeed be further problems. Quarantine might be in order.'
'Isn't it a bit late for that?'
'I don't know. Have you had sexual relations with anyone else recently, apart from Anne Charet and Teresa?’ He asked the question in an apologetic manner, as though half fearful of giving offence. There was no point in having an argument about the way he'd jumped to the conclusion, given that he was right on the nail.
'No,’ I said.
'I presume that Miss Charet is still in the intensive-care unit, isolated as long as she remains there by the procedures intended to keep her safe from infection. It only remains to make sure that Teresa doesn't pass anything on. I think she's been here long enough to take a precautionary warning in the right spirit, especially if we stress that it's to ensure your peace of mind.'
I couldn't quite decide whether he was being thoroughly sensible and level-headed, or criminally irresponsible. I knew that he didn't believe there was any danger. He didn't think that I had picked up any new mutant. He was just humouring me. But he had a duty to think about all the possibilities, didn't he? I reminded myself that I was the one with defective vision and an incomprehensible ache in my gut. He couldn't know how desperate my situation felt—and I was, after all, sitting in his office discussing the matter. I had nothing external to show for my travails except a few faded bruises.
'Professor Viners,’ I said, trying to make him understand how bad things were, ‘I might be going blind. I can't see properly.'
'I understand that,’ he said. ‘I might need outside help to carry out a full physical examination, but that won't be a problem if and when we decide that it's necessary. I can certainly find out right here whether you've been exposed to any of the experimental viruses, and whether there's any abnormality in your brain chemistry. I can't tell you not to worry until we have a better idea what's going on, but it's far too soon to decide that the trouble can't be fixed, let alone that the world might be swept by some terrible epidemic. If you come through this unscathed—and I have no reason at all to believe that you won't—you might have the makings of a very interesting thesis.'
The last remark sounded uncomfortably like a sick joke, but I could see that he was serious. He was half hoping, in a way, that I did have something strange and interesting.
'Anne's in some kind of coma,’ I reminded him. ‘She's dreaming, and can't wake up. I can't help suspecting that she is not having a nice time. Nobody saw her attacker—nobody is absolutely sure that there really was an attacker. I have a psychosomatic bruise on my neck, and I can't discount the possibility that the cut on her neck was psychosomatically inflicted, too. If we're victims of the same virus, I think we have to be prepared to concede that it's the kind of bug that can really screw people up, don't you?'
'It's possible,’ he agreed, but he was still humouring me. He was too much of a scientist to jump to those kinds of conclusions, even if he was wild man enough to test-drive his own diseases. He was still telling himself that no one had died yet, that no one could even be proven to be seriously ill.
I felt a sudde
n impulse to throttle him, to try to shake a proper sense of hazard into him. It started out as one of those impulses which you feel but would never put into practice in a million years—more a sort of self-indulgent fantasy than an authentic intention. Even as I pictured myself taking him by the throat—and it wasn't a particularly vivid fantasy—I was passing on to the next thought, planning the next sentence, bending under the pressure of the next anxiety. Suddenly, though, the idea seemed to catch hold of something inside me, as though it were a hook unexpectedly seized by a too-powerful fish. Suddenly, it didn't seem to be my impulse any more, but something independent of me: a compulsion urging me to act, screaming at me to hurl myself forward and do it.
I stopped myself. It wouldn't have mattered if it had been an utterly trivial impulse, to pick my nose or say ‘Fuck you, Viners'; the mere fact that it had abruptly transformed itself from an unintended whimsy into an awful command was enough to make me resist it with all my might. But all my might seemed as it if might not be enough—my hands started shaking violently, as though they longed to become talons, and the fingers claws.
'Holy shit!’ I said, as I watched them, pale and white among the shadows, dancing and shivering in midair, as though caught up by a dozen violently shaken puppet-strings.
I was possessed by a dreadful desire to get to my feet and hurl myself upon Professor Viners, to grab him and squeeze him and show him that the world wasn't the bright and orderly place he thought it was, but a dark and hellish realm where nothing could be relied upon and where violence lurked in every beating heart. I wanted to do it, but the want didn't seem to be mine—not really. It was just a want, with no subject of its own, which happened to have burst forth inside me.
I moved forward, impelled by some force which was within me but not part of me, and might have gone further but for the fact that I came up against the desk, and was in any case off balance. The shock of the impact on my knee knocked me back, and I was able to snatch my hands back too, suppressing that hideous quivering.
I saw Viners looking up at me, his white face seeming suddenly tiny in an infinite wilderness of shadows that was no longer confined by the walls of the room.
He was scared. He was very frightened. As well, I thought, he might be. As well he ought to be.
'Gil,’ he said faintly, as though he were a million miles away. ‘Gil, what is it?'
'Fuck you, Viners,’ I said, my voice hissing as though I were speaking over a bad telephone line. ‘Do you have any idea what you've done to me?'
I turned and ran, as fast as my feet could carry me. I barged through the door which connected Viners’ office to the corridor, and I raced to the stairs that would take me down to the ground floor and out of the building.
The people on the stairs took evasive action to let me through, and they must have looked after me in open astonishment, but I didn't pause. I didn't know whether it was really me that was doing the running, or whether I was simply capitulating to something that wanted to run me, but whichever it was, my body was desperate to flee, desperate to race away from what had suddenly become an incredibly awkward confrontation, towards...
But I had no idea what I was running towards.
No idea at all.
9
Viners didn't try to follow me out of his office, let alone out of the building. I didn't go past the isolation lab, so Teresa never saw me. I passed more people on the pavement when I got out into the cold, clean air, but they moved out of my way easily enough. I was just a person in a hurry, no big deal.
I could have slowed down once I was away from the building. The urgency had gone out of my flight, but I didn't try to stop until I was a couple of hundred yards away, away from the looming black towers.
It was still a clear, bright morning but to me it was grey and dark and full of grotesque shadows. The sky was sullen and the sun, which ought to have been a blaze of white light, was like a dark pit sucking the light and colour out of the world. Nothing made sense; although I knew that it was me who was out of sensory step, I couldn't help feeling that it was the world around me which had changed and become alien.
I continued moving, but only at walking pace. I didn't go towards the road and the town but in the opposite direction, towards the wilderness which lay at the heart of the campus.
I slowed down again as I approached the bridge over the stream, and finally stopped there to catch my breath. My heart was hammering and it was difficult to suck air into my lungs. I had a pain in my side which folded me over, but it didn't last long.
As soon as I felt able to do so, I walked on, past Wombwell House. There were students passing in and out, laughing and gossiping. I went past the main door. My hands and feet seemed to belong entirely to me again—I was back in control. My eyes wouldn't see straight, and the hunger was still stirring inside me, but the fit of pure madness that had seized hold of me in Viners’ office had subsided. I'd run it off. I stopped again, to lean against one of the ancient lampposts on the path which ran alongside the stand of trees where Anne had been attacked.
To me, the woodland was lightless and sinister, every bit as menacing as it must have seemed to Anne as she'd tried to walk past it on her way home. To everyone else it, it must have seemed to be at its mildest and most ordinary.
I stared into the unnatural darkness, at the black, leafless branches. They captured and held my gaze. Somehow, they seemed pregnant with life, as though half-formed shapes were stirring in every problematic shadow, trying to capture my attention.
Here, I thought, here are monsters.
'You're Gil Molari, aren't you?'
I started, and turned abruptly to see who had spoken.
It was a woman in her early thirties, wearing a shapeless sweater—apparently grey, although it probably didn't look that way to her—and baggy black slacks which presumably were black in actuality. She had a child with her, a girl perhaps ten or eleven years old, much thinner and paler than her mother.
The woman blinked uncomfortably, taken slightly aback by the way she'd made me jump. The little girl looked bored and deliberately uninterested, as if she'd rather be anywhere else in the world than where she was.
'Sorry,’ said the woman. ‘I'm Cynthia Leigh—I'm in Anne's tutorial group. I've seen you with her. I just wondered if you knew how she is.'
I couldn't find the words for an immediate reply, and she continued nervously.
'It's just ... at first we heard that she wasn't badly hurt, but since then ... well, you know how rumours are. Do you know if she's recovered consciousness yet?'
'I phoned this morning,’ I said. ‘An hour ago—slightly more. They said there's been no change. She's still unconscious, or was then. They expect her to wake up any time.'
'Oh,’ she said, unhappily. She cast about for something else to say. ‘This is my daughter Janine. She has a dentist's appointment at twelve-thirty, so she didn't go to school, but I have a lecture first, so she came with me.'
'Hi, Janine,’ I said, automatically. The little girl seemed surprised that I'd bothered, and looked at me a little more intently. To me, her eyes were dark and her hair nondescript, but she might have looked pretty if I'd been able to see the colour in her face. She had neat features, and she had already learned to look up from beneath her eyebrows in a slightly coquettish fashion.
'It happened in there,’ said Cynthia, nodding in the direction of the shadow-crazed wood, which must have looked quite innocent to her in the bright light which I couldn't perceive. ‘It's not safe at night, this path. It could have been —'
She stopped, and looked away in discomfort. She had been about to say that it might have been anyone, implying that it might have been her, but she hadn't dared to complete the sentence—in case it had made me say silently to myself that it wouldn't have been her, because she was too old, too plain. I wouldn't have thought any such thing, because I knew full well that rapists are unselective. They only want someone to hurt and humiliate and terrorize, and don't care at
all about sexual attractiveness. Not that there was anything especially unprepossessing about Cynthia Leigh—she was just fleshy and faded and dispirited. When she'd been younger, she must have looked more like her daughter, and more like Anne. There was nothing wrong with her looks that a touch of anorexia and a little coquettishness couldn't have cured.
'Dr Gray was very upset,’ said Cynthia, changing the subject to cover her confusion. ‘He likes Anne. We all do. It's a terrible shame.'
'I should have been with her,’ I said bleakly, trying to halve the burden of her sorrow by sharing it. ‘I had a cold, and stayed at home with it. Just a cold.'
The words rang unexpectedly hollow as I stared at her colourless form.
'Will she be all right?’ the woman asked, looking for further reassurance.
'I think so,’ I said. ‘It's not a real coma. There's no possibility of brain damage, the doctor says. She'll wake up when she's ready. It's just a matter of time.'
I hoped that I was telling the truth. I hoped that it was all a matter of time, and that the world would put itself to rights if only I waited long enough. I wanted the coloured world back again, and I wanted Anne back too. I wanted it all to be over, and no harm done to anyone.
'She wasn't a strong girl,’ said Cynthia Leigh. ‘It was the stress of being away from home, I think. I should have done more, taken her under my wing a bit. I should have made more effort. Someone said that she often went out at night, late—was that true? Do you know why?'
'I don't know,’ I answered. ‘The policeman who came to tell me what had happened said that a girl on Anne's corridor had told them that, but it was news to me. Perhaps it's a mistake. Even if it's not, often is probably an exaggeration.'
She nodded, wanting to believe that it wasn't important, that it meant nothing. I was astonished by my own capacity for common sense.
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