“I’m concerned about my wife. Let it be broadcast, now, on television, that I’m being taken to the Division of Science.”
“Okay. I’ll see to that.”
“What’s on the other side of the cordon?”
“We are. Normal life continues, to a degree. Normal, if not for these deaths. Each one accidental, explainable, and invariably in accordance with the Significant Name of the victim. But invariably, also, with your assistance . . .”
“If the deaths are accidental and explainable, then why this panic?”
“Because so many are dying. Quite aside from the connecting factor, this is an epidemic.”
“An epidemic?”
“Absolutely. There are so many more deaths than before the correlation—that’s you—was introduced. A difference of maybe twenty percent.”
The convoy rushed on, its sirens off now, only the colored lights flashing.
“What are you measuring with that sensor?”
“Radiation from you. It’s background level. That is, not a factor. We’ll find something eventually, I think. Everything has a cause.”
“The cause may not be logical,” said Omar. “It may be pure coincidence. Though the chance of that is infinitesimally small. And yet an event, no matter how improbable, must take place eventually if one waits long enough.”
“I don’t believe in miracles of probability,” said Yull dismissively.
47
The ride, at full speed, went on for hours. They tore through streets that the police had closed off to traffic.
Later, there were no lines of spectators. An occasional pedestrian looked with indifference at the vehicles rushing past. Life went on as usual here. No one connected the convoy with the news on television.
Suddenly they had left all the buildings behind—unheard of in Davabel, where urban sprawl covered the continent, except for the airports. Ayrrah was similarly populated. Empty stretches could be found in Lavath, to the north—eternal ice covered the land there—and also in the southern reaches of Llanaig, where the intense sun had turned the land into desert.
The empty stretch here was the result of the leveling of houses. Bulldozers had gone at them wholesale.
In the distance rose the mighty complex of the Division of Science.
They stopped at a barbed-wire checkpoint. Soldiers peered curiously into the ambulance.
Why are the idiots staring? thought Gavein. If I really am Death, they’re dead.”
Passing the checkpoint, the convoy made for the buildings.
“All this demolition, it’s in my honor?”
“That too,” muttered Yull. “A lot of effort has gone into this. The DS was given a bundle of money.”
“Who’s in charge?”
“Boggs is the head, but Siskin’s running things, since the plan is his.”
“Plan?”
“There were several proposed. His was chosen. But others are being kept in reserve, in case his fails.”
“This is all very flattering.”
Omar asked Gavein to get into a plastic suit similar to theirs. He was supposed to inhale through a filter, exhale into a tank. The thin material didn’t hinder conversation. After the cars pulled up to the institute, the ambulance interior was sprayed with a strong disinfectant.
“What’s this for?”
“Siskin’s plan tries to leave nothing out. We’re fairly sure there’s no bacillus involved, but why take a chance?”
The sterilization didn’t take long. The ambulance door was opened by people in similar suits, and Gavein was escorted through a membrane tunnel to the building.
He was taken to a specially equipped section of the institute’s hospital for infectious diseases. Everyone he met was covered with plastic. He was asked not to remove his suit until the results of the bacteriological tests were in. Even the toilet was designed hermetically: the suit attached to the seat, and his behind was automatically washed with a stream of water, then dried with a stream of hot air. The unit packaged the excrement as if it were a treasure. The same with his urine and spit. Gavein did not meet the brains of the project, did not even see them on a screen. The specific tests were conducted by biologist Yull Saalstein and physicist Omar Ezzir.
Their superior was a physician who obviously wanted to keep his existence a secret. Gavein was amused by the chain of command and by the cowardice behind it. All he would have to do, after all, was direct his attention to the unseen doctor.
Medved’s people had set up a clearinghouse of information on the deaths. They were looking for chains of causality between the victims and Gavein. No detail was too small to be entered into the database. The most insignificant fact, like a thread of a spiderweb, could lead to the perpetrator who sat unwitting at the center. The researchers were less interested in the cause of death than in how the death fit the victim’s Significant Name. The rest was a police matter.
The questions put to Gavein dealt with minutiae, since the basic facts had been known for some time. He repeated things that he had repeated several times already. This exhaustive interrogating made no sense to him: if you analyzed carefully enough what any citizen did, you were bound to find some link between him and the fate of any other citizen.
But the invisible leaders had faith in Medved and his statisticians. Deaths were being classified by their degree of connectedness to Gavein. The death count, broken up into these categories, was displayed daily on the DS monitors. Each time, Gavein looked for a death unrelated to him, but the number in that column—labeled Apparent Lack of Connection with GT—was always zero.
He was not allowed to use the telephone, but they promised him that every day someone would call Ra Mahleiné and speak with her. He could listen to her voice recorded on tape.
“Dr. Nott sends me pills regularly. I’m stronger after taking them and have stopped sleeping during the day,” said Ra Mahleiné in one recording. “They’ve provided me with a wheelchair. Lorraine pushes me along the streets around the house. Laila is not doing as well. Fatima asked if her daughter could push my wheelchair sometimes. Wilcox has hanged himself, and since then Brenda does nothing but drink. I never see her sober. The buildings around us are all abandoned, the stores boarded up. Our necessities, even the alcohol for Brenda, but whatever we ask for, are brought by police van.”
There was a rattling sound in the receiver.
“We don’t pay for a thing. It’s like having unlimited credit with the government bank. This is not good, not normal.” She paused, then continued. “Zef started reading Nest of Worlds. He says he’s undergoing mind thaw, because there are no lectures now to deplete his gray matter, so he’s taken up the book and the matter of Wilcox. He also says he needs to choose a topic for his thesis. Edda wanted to throw the book out, but Zef told her that since his Name is Murhred, it’s not the book that threatens him but other people. Also, he told her that he read in the introduction that the book would finish off only Wilcox. I don’t know if that convinced her, but for the time being she has stopped talking about chucking books into the fire. Zef is reading a lot, taking notes, many notes, because this will be his thesis. You wouldn’t believe how he’s changed. He cut off his Mohawk. He wears gray. He can pester me with questions for an hour, for example asking if his clothes have achieved the Lavath standard for dullness. His enthusiasm gives him energy, not at all the way it was with Wilcox. The book destroyed Harry, you could see day by day how he was falling apart, how the end was coming.”
Two days later, Ra Mahleiné said:
“Brenda slit her wrists while drunk and got into the tub. Fortunately old Mrs. Hougassian saved her. She used to be a nurse. Brenda’s hands are bandaged up now, though one finger won’t move. She and Harry must have loved each other more than they let people see. I prefer Lorraine to push me on my outings; she’s stronger. Laila can’t manage when one of the wheels
gets stuck in a pothole. You can see she’s pregnant now. Maybe that’s the reason she’s weaker. In the house she walks around in nothing but her bandages and panties. She says she’s hot. I think it’s indecent, because she’s healed a lot and doesn’t have that many bandages now, so practically everything shows. Her skin is like parchment and pinker even than before. Her panties are full of holes. Zef may have screwed her once, but now all he cares about is the book. The only man in the house is old Mass, and he doesn’t get out of bed, after his attack of sciatica.
“I smacked Anabel in the mouth and pulled her hair, because the toilet was dirty. Not only that, but she also spilled coffee on the bed. You wouldn’t believe how humble she was, offering her face so I could hit it. Afraid to die, she puts up with everything, never resists. It becomes meaningless, this paying her back. Later I felt stupid. I don’t make a good torturer. I’ve decided to leave her alone unless she gets arrogant again.”
48
The closed-circuit television at the institute showed old films with all dead actors. They ran a lot of Lola Low and Maslynnaya. Gavein didn’t care for it.
The physical exam showed that he was a healthy man of thirty-five with the beginnings of rheumatism, was slightly anemic, and had two bad teeth. He was spreading no mysterious contagion in the form of bacillus or virus. He was permitted to take off the uncomfortable plastic suit, and his bad teeth were fixed at the cost of the Davabel taxpayer, over three excruciating visits to the dentist.
Saalstein informed him that Marius Balakian, the physician heading the research team, had suffered a fatal heart attack. The chief had been a highly secretive man. The monitors showed a picture of Balakian: bald, overweight. The first casualty at the DS after Gavein’s arrival.
There was a change in the way people treated Gavein. It was hard to pin down but palpable. The bacteriological tests all completed, exploratory surgery was suggested next, but Gavein balked at that. He agreed instead to a series of x-rays.
Nurse Winslow, old, enormous, with a jutting jaw, mixed a white powder in a small amount of saline solution, while Chechug, the radiologist, fussed with the scanner. Gavein waited for them to hook him up to the IV. Doctor Hepditch, Balakian’s successor, supervised.
“You’ll be able to see my veins, with this?”
“Please confine your comments,” said Winslow, “to what you are experiencing in the course of the procedure.”
“It’s cold here. There’s a draft coming from under the door.”
Winslow began filling the syringe.
“In my rear?” asked Gavein. He was in good humor.
“It can be in your rear,” muttered the nurse.
Chechug was preparing the plates as Winslow took the IV bottle and injected the white fluid into it.
“Aren’t those plates for tomography?”
Both Winslow and Chechug started.
“That’s right. They’re used with dye,” said the technician.
“In that case you need my permission, don’t you? Because there is risk involved in taking that kind of picture.”
Winslow dropped the little bottle with the prepared fluid. It shattered on the floor. Chechug turned abruptly to see what had happened, and the sleeve of his lab coat knocked over another bottle.
Gavein couldn’t help laughing.
“Shit,” said Chechug. “I spilled the rubbing alcohol.”
Winslow looked at Dr. Hepditch without a word, waiting for her to say something. There was the characteristic smell of alcohol.
“Nurse, take another bottle of the saline solution and prepare another dye,” said the doctor coldly. “And have the orderly come in and clean up this mess you’ve made.”
“But—”
“The bottle on the second shelf from the top.” Dr. Hepditch said, making a note on her clipboard.
Winslow took another bottle and started over. Chechug was fiddling with the x-ray machine’s transformer. The alcohol stank.
“You aren’t afraid they’ll think we’ve been drinking?” Gavein said to the doctor. Being the principal here, he could take the liberty of joking.
“You’re right,” agreed Hepditch, opening a window. “But it will be colder now.”
Chechug swore again. “The blasted transformer is out. I’ll call maintenance. It’s probably from the quake we had.”
That morning, one could definitely feel it. Even the lamps shook. Earthquakes were common only in Ayrrah.
“What now? We go back?” Gavein wasn’t eager to have that big needle embedded in a vein in his thigh.
“I suppose . . . ,” said Hepditch, hesitating. “We’ll start again tomorrow, at twelve. The other room will have to be made ready.”
“The DS isn’t doing so well, is it?”
Gavein’s remark drew no response.
They wheeled him down the corridors on a hospital gurney, per regulations. He would have preferred to walk, but they said no. Winslow pushed this time.
49
Sixty-three people had died in the last twenty-four hours. In forty-eight cases, Medved’s group established a clear link to Gavein; in the others, the link was unclear, the facts unavailable. Until evening, idiotic sitcoms were shown.
Winslow came to give Gavein an injection for his radio tomography. It turned out that the schedule had been changed; the x-raying was moved to later, because the MRI would be done on him early the next morning.
She handed him a bunch of pills he had to swallow first. Because he grimaced at her as he swallowed, the last pills stuck in his throat, and he choked. He strained and wheezed, while Winslow stood by, seemingly not knowing what to do. Then he remembered an old trick: he put his hands on the floor near a wall and kicked up to stand on them, his feet resting on the wall. He coughed out the obstruction: two colored tablets, their coating half dissolved. He got to his feet, red in the face and covered with sweat.
“Bad to choke like that,” said the nurse. “Every year, a number of people die from choking.”
“You can’t be serious,” he said with a sour smile. “People actually died before I got here?”
Winslow prepared the injection, a cloudy brown fluid in a vial with a cork. Gavein wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of this dark stuff entering his bloodstream. Winslow inserted the needle through the cork and, holding it to the light, carefully drew the fluid into the syringe. She squirted a few drops from the needle.
Suddenly the building shook. The vibration was so strong that some plaster crumbled from the ceiling. Losing her balance, Winslow put her hand on the glass table for support. The table, though on wheels, didn’t roll away under her considerable weight; it tipped. From its surface slid beakers, stirring rods, spatulas, test tubes, syringes. Unable to control her fall, Winslow stuck herself with the needle she was holding and in addition pressed the plunger.
“Now they can give you an MRI,” Gavein joked, helping her up.
The second shock wave was stronger than the first. Again a rain of plaster fell. Gavein found himself on the floor beside the nurse.
“This, too, is my doing,” he said with a grin.
Winslow waved away his humor. Their dislike was mutual; it wasn’t time yet for them to call a truce.
The quake evidently bothered her less than the fact that she had injected herself. She looked at the spot of the puncture.
“It all went in . . . all that shit went in,” she muttered.
“You got a bubble? I don’t know about these things, but I would think you’d feel it.”
“Damn. Oh damn. You wait here. Dr. Barth!” she yelled into the hallway.
A name Gavein didn’t know. Through a window he watched the frantic activity of DS personnel trying to repair the damage from the seismic shocks. Some were in white lab coats, some in the green of military uniforms, and some in the gray coveralls of workers. They swarmed around a small b
unker in the courtyard. In the distance gleamed the dome of the energy plant that powered the DS complex, and beyond that, on a gray horizon, were the buildings of Davabel.
50
The last shocks had opened a crack that was several meters deep and about two meters wide. It went across the whole complex. In its path, one building had collapsed, the telephone center. The difference in height between the two sides of the crack was about a meter. The other buildings were not touched, but the underground plumbing and power lines had been broken. When the emergency power came on, there was light again in the night. All the experiments were halted. Instead of meals, dry rations and juice in cartons were distributed.
The television news service reported that the epicenter lay exactly underneath the Division of Science. The land toward the sea had sunk a meter, but another commentator said that Davabel was rising. (Ezzir related, with a chuckle, that his colleagues all feared that the division complex would be swept away by a raging sea at the command of David Death.) Another expert on the screen explained that the boundary between the tectonic plates of Davabel and Ayrrah lay exactly in this location. But this was conjecture only; no one knew the geology of the region that well. Only in Ayrrah had anything resembling a science of seismology been developed. The decision was made to consult the experts of that Land, but such consulting would take time, because although questions were sent to Ayrrah directly by plane, the answers to them could come only by way of Llanaig and Lavath.
Gavein received the recording of the next phone call to Ra Mahleiné. He listened as she gave an account of her daily aggravations and worries, but something seemed wrong. He tried not to respond emotionally to her voice but, instead, to follow only the sense of what she said. When he did this, it was obvious. He had heard these sentences before: they had been taken from previous tapes. He noticed now the subtle differences in tone among the different recordings.
He trembled with anxiety. Debating quickly what to do, he came to a decision. He pushed the alarm and jammed the button with a matchstick. He sat back on the bed and planned his strategy.
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