Alan E. Nourse - The Bladerunner

by Alan E Nourse

  Before leaving the Hospital, however, he stopped at a public phone in the lobby and placed a code call to Parrot, waiting for the receiver to be lifted and then punching out the musical number-and-letter sequence he always used to tell Parrot he was coming to his shop so that no voice-print record could be lifted from a phone tap. In this case, after a moment's hesitation, he added a special code signal to indicate that he had to see Parrot urgently and in person, and then held the line open until, at last, Parrot's "come ahead" signal came through.

  It was, in effect, a peremptory demand for an audience, and he knew that Parrot wouldn't like it, but there was nothing else to do. As far as Billy could still think rationally, it seemed to him that he had to start with Parrot. If he couldn't convince Parrot of the urgency of the crisis, and enlist his active help—Parrot, who had known him and dealt with him for all these years and who probably trusted him about as far as Parrot trusted anyone—there would be no point in going any further. With Parrot's help there was a slender outside chance that he might conceivably be able to contact and convince others that he had to convince. Without Parrot's help he would be in a hopeless—and exceedingly dangerous—situation.

  And, at a distance, convincing Parrot seemed plausible. But an hour later when he was facing Parrot in person, in the basement storage room of Parrot's own shop, with the fat little man's cold, untrusting eyes stabbing at Billy over his grotesque little half-glasses, Billy's confidence of convincing Parrot of anything vanished like a fever-dream. Billy talked, and realized as he talked that what he was saying could only sound insane to Parrot. If Billy's own distrust of aiding and abetting a Health Control-sponsored scheme in any way had been dogged and pervasive in spite of the urging of Doc and Molly, Parrot's was positively monolithic. At first he virtually turned off everything Billy was saying, scowling and shaking his head and drinking cup after cup of the scalding black coffee from his back burner, but Billy was persistent and presently Parrot, still scowling and shaking his head, at least began to listen. There had, after all, been rumors, a singular increase in emergency calls filtering through Parrot's hands, and the words "meningitis" and "epidemic," seldom before bandied about in his circles, had been turning up spontaneously and with disquieting frequency lately. Little that occurred in the world of underground medicine escaped Parrot's ears for long, with the sweeping breadth of his contacts and involvements, and certain items he had heard and passed off as unlikely or plainly false before struck an oddly familiar note now, coming from Billy. Parrot listened, and scowled, and pulled on his fingers as Billy, huddled and shivering on a stool across the coffee bar from him, told him everything that Doc had recounted in detail, and toward the end Parrot was still scowling as blackly as ever, but now nodding his head from time to time instead of shaking it. "And you believe all this?" he said when Billy finally finished.

  "I don't know. I guess so. I don't trust Health Control for anything, but Doc seems to, in this case."

  "And there was no question on the computer analysis?"

  "I guess not."

  Parrot pulled his lip. "All tight, go through this all again, right from the start." He poured Billy more coffee, and then listened intently as Billy sipped and shivered and repeated himself, emphasizing the odd pattern of the infection, the prodromal flu-like symptoms, the period of apparent recovery from the flu ("Doc says in most cases it's about a week, but sometimes it's only a day or so of apparent partial recovery before the meningitis starts") and then the later secondary symptoms of headache and stiff neck and spiraling fever. As Billy talked, Parrot hoisted himself from his chair, nodding to keep him talking, and began riffling through a large circular card file, jotting occasional notes on a sheet of paper. "If it were a severe, alarming infection right from the beginning, there would be less problem," Billy said. "People would seek out medical help of some kind, legal or illegal, right away, but that hasn't been happening. It just acts like a minor flu bug at first, and then by the time the secondary symptoms begin the fat's already in the fire."

  "And what's the meningitis mortality?" Parrot prompted. "Forty percent?"

  "Not that much, but it's close to thirty, from the Hospital records, and Doc said the Health Control man confirmed it, said it might be even higher, depending on the individual victim's age and general condition and other things."

  "But what's the infection rate? How many people get the thing at all?"

  "Nobody's sure," Billy said. "There aren't any underground statistics at all, and the Hospital statistics only show the top of the iceberg, but they think probably the flu is hitting twenty-five to thirty percent of the general population, about the same as an ordinary flu epidemic, and that thirty percent of them are coming up with the meningitis later."

  Parrot whistled softly. "Lord, you know what that could do if it ever really hit?"

  "It could wipe out Health Control," Billy said.

  "And everything else too, including us. Talk about health riots—there wouldn't be a doctor or bladerunner or supplier left alive, if it's really true and isn't stopped. Okay, first we check things out. If it's true here, it's true elsewhere too, and others have the story. You just sit tight awhile."

  Billy sat, still shivering, while Parrot huddled over the telephone, a husher obscuring his words but not the gray expression on his face. Half an hour passed, then another, as Parrot talked, pausing now and then to re-dial, occasionally scribbling a note. Finally he turned back to Billy. "You say that Health Control is willing to treat everybody, whether they're qualified or not?"

  "That's what Doc said. No questions asked. For the flu itself a hefty dose of injectable Viricidin will stop it cold. Those exposed but without symptoms should get immune globulin along with the Viricidin. Even the meningitis can be stopped with Viricidin in massive doses if it's given early enough, but they'll hospitalize people for support if they have to. At least that's the story Doc got."

  Parrot nodded. "It jibes with some other sources just enough to believe it. The trouble is, a whole lot of people won't go in for treatment, infection or no infection. They just won't trust the government."

  "I know, but if the bladerunners can get the word out to their suppliers, and other bladerunners and their docs, really get a hot rumor going, not just piecemeal stuff but a real underground rumble, and then each one canvass all the patients he knows, a lot of people will at least see their docs on the underground."

  "And Health Control is not going to jump these people, or the bladerunners, or the docs? Not in any way?"

  "That's supposed to be the deal. Nothing official, but there's supposed to be no surveillance, no questioning for qualifications. The Hospital personnel will be instructed to just turn their backs on the questions and give the medication wholesale, and supplies will be provided for the underground at every Hospital. The problem is to contact every bladerunner we can, and every supplier we can, just as fast as we can."

  Parrot returned to his card file thoughtfully. "I can reach some of these people best and quickest myself. But some of the bladerunners you can hit better than I can, especially if I flag them first with code calls so they won't be too suspicious when they see you. You're going to have to do some fast talking, though, with all the hard data you can give them. They're not going to want to believe you." He added more names, addresses, and phone contacts to a lengthening list and thrust it across to Billy. "Whatever you do, don't let this out of your hands," Parrot warned. "And for both our sakes, let's hope your information is straight. We could both be in very bad trouble if this is even a little bit phony."

  "I know," Billy said wearily. "But we should know

  within twelve hours if Health Control is really opening up the Clinics and the underground supplies. If they aren't, we'll just have to pull back and take our chances."

  Sitting down together, they went over Billy's list name by name. "You know some of these guys, and they'll all get code calls from me," Parrot said. "When I've got that done I'll get on to some of the other s
uppliers and see if I can get them moving, at least passing the word to the bladerunners working out of their shops. When you've hit these guys, check back with me and I'll get you some more names. Meanwhile we can see if there's been any feedback from the Clinics, and you can let me know what you've heard from Doc."

  It had taken three hours, enlisting Parrot's aid, but it had been time well spent. With a last cup of coffee Billy gulped down one of Doc's capsules and a couple of aspirin; moments later he was outside, flagging a ground-~ cab, Parrot's list in his hand. Some of the addresses were tenement flats like his own. Others were a variety of Lower City hangouts where bladerunners tended to gather in their off hours, some familiar to Billy, some foreign. The cabbie was unenthusiastic about the rounds he was asked to make, the cluttered slum streets and the unguarded streetcorner waits while Billy was inside, but money brightened his eye, and Billy started his rounds. At one place, a dirty restaurant-pool hall in one of the unreclaimed slum areas of a nearby section of the Lower City, he found three bladerunners he knew, youngsters like himself, huddled over food and watching him suspiciously as he talked, convincing them finally, grudgingly, at least to contact their docs and canvass their own patient lists. At another place he ran into a sometime friend who took to the story more warmly and agreed to contact two other runners he lived with to see if they couldn't contact more. With the more commonly

  frequented local watering holes covered, Billy moved farther afield, running up flights of stairs and pounding on doors of individual rooms, apartments and tenements, waking some of the runners from dead sleep, interrupting others in planning stages of cases, moving as swiftly as he could and talking feverishly to every one that would listen. At one place a surly bladerunner on Parrot's list flatly refused to have anything to do with Billy's scheme; at another place the occupant of a room, more irritable than others, talked only through a door opened a crack, sounding unconvinced until Billy told him to check back either with Parrot or with his own supplier to confirm the story.

  Another place was different, a tiny darkened room at the end of a broken-down tenement hallway, a place where melting snow was dripping through the roof and a wet, greenish mold had worked its way through the aged and rag-tag wallpaper, a place smelling of garbage and vomit, with rats the size of cats skittering into darkened corners as Billy passed. Inside the tiny room, curtains all pulled, a skinny youth of about fourteen lay huddled in a filthy bed, shivering, gesturing weakly to Billy to find some place to sit. "I'm sick, man," the boy groaned. "Goddam flu, I think, I can't stop shaking—"

  Billy worked to get his attention, told him the story, but soon the boy was interrupting him with irrelevant questions, and it was clear that he wasn't going anywhere or doing anything. Billy felt his forehead, hot and dry, and heated up some soup for him, the only food he could find in the place. "You're sick, all right," Billy said. "Probably the same thing we're trying to get stopped. Can you reach your doc?"

  "Don't have a doc now," the boy said. "I got fired two weeks ago, and things have been tight."

  "You need some medicine, all the same. You could get it free at a Clinic, like I've been telling you."

  The boy groaned. "I could never make It," he said. "Couldn't hardly get the shades pulled down this morning."

  "Well, then take some of these," Billy said, dumping a pile of his own white-and-brown capsules out on a chair beside the bed. "Here, gulp down two of them right now. I'll try to get a doc to you some way, but this may help in the meantime. I'm not feeling so hot myself."

  In point of fact he was feeling more exhausted and confused by the minute, but he went on as the afternoon hours wore along and darkness came, clinging to his list and doggedly checking off the names one by one. His head was aching again, and now his chest was getting tight, as if a steel hoop was shrinking around it, and from time to time a paroxysm of coughing left him gasping for breath. Things beyond the checklist drifted hazily out of his mind; he remembered vaguely that he was supposed to check in with Doc at some hour or another, but he couldn't remember when, and when he finally tried it from a public booth he couldn't get through for some reason. It was hours later when he thought to try again, and he sat in a booth then for almost half an hour with his head on his elbow against the plastic door before a contact was finally made and he heard Doc demanding why he was so late and what he'd been doing, and he reported his conference with Parrot and the long day of contacting bladerunners.

  Doc sounded mollified then, almost pleased. "Okay, I've been working all day too, and I've got a list of calls a mile long for tonight," Doc said. "I'm sending Molly out alone on the ones in the Upper City, she'll be safe enough there, and I'll take the Lower City names and some in the intermediate levels. How are you holding up now?"

  "Okay, I guess, but I've still got a string of contacts to make."

  "Well, don't crowd it, you can't work around the clock in your condition. Why don't you go get some sleep now? I'll check back with you in the morning."

  "Okay, I'll quit for a while. I've just a couple more of these names to contact first." Billy rang off, then sat wondering for a moment what Doc had just said. He saw the list of names in his hand, and placed a call to Parrot.

  "Did you call Doc?" Parrot said immediately. "What did he have to say?"

  "Not much that I remember, except that he's working."

  "Well, some of the other docs are too, I've heard, so something must be getting through. And we've had at least one real break. I finally got Brown convinced of the story—you know Brown? He supplies a whole big area around Hospital Number Eleven, west of here, must work with forty or fifty bladerunners and their docs—and he's going to get things moving on his end. He got smart, called Hospital Number Eleven Central Supply and asked them for immune globulin and Virici-din supplies, and in one-half hour they had a whole truckload of injection packs on his doorstep. He's up to his ears in them—so they must mean business. Okay, he's got a list of runners he'd like you to see, he isn't exactly popular with his boys, always clipping them too much, but he'll back you up if you'll make the contacts. Just swing by here and get the list. And the feedback is starting to come in from the Clinic at Hospital Number Seven that people are getting Viricidin shots with no questions asked; they're not even taking names or IDs. So if we can get the word around that Health Control is really looking the other way, I think we can get a lot of these people to go in to the Clinics and save the docs many steps. No bad feedback yet, either, Billy . . . Billy? Hey, are you there?"

  "Yeah, yeah, I'm here," Billy said dully. "No negative feedback, that's great."

  "Okay, now, you come by for Brown's list when you finish the one you've got—and you'd better move. From what I've been hearing, there are thousands of people who have had this flu and just rode it out, thousands of them. Some of them are listening and accepting treatment and some are not, but it's going to take days, maybe weeks, to contact them all. There isn't any time to lose."

  "Yeah, well, Ill be moving. See you later tonight or tomorrow." Billy hung up and sat looking at the list in his hand. Five, six, seven more to see, all strangers, the same long job of arguing, pleading, convincing with each one. He sighed and went back out to the waiting cab again. It was over four hours later before he was finally climbing the stairs to his own room, barely able to raise one foot ahead of the next. The light hurt his eyes, and the thought of food stirred no interest; coat and all, he collapsed on his bed and closed his eyes. He knew he had to rest, at least an hour or two, if he hoped to go on —and the new list from Parrot looked like three days' work. If he could relax a bit now perhaps his head would stop hurting. Moments later he drifted off, and slept for fourteen unbroken hours.

  III

  It did not take weeks, nor even days, however, before the results of the warning campaign began to show. Within twelve hours of Billy's departure from Doc's office there was an upsurge in patient visits to the emergency room clinics at Hospital No. 7, as indicated in the routine half-daily patien
t census, and by the following morning patients were queuing up by the hundreds at the Clinic treatment rooms inquiring about the flu shots they had heard were supposed to be available. Triple shifts of nurses were assigned to the treatment cubicles, and questions were deliberately limited to specific data which was necessary to guide the treatment. Had the patient had any symptoms of the Shanghai flu? If so, what symptoms and when? Was there fever or illness now? Any other members of the family exposed? Friends or other contacts? These and a few other questions—allergic history, for example, or past reactions to antibiotics—made up the specially tailored mini-history, and in any case in which "flu" was mentioned there was a notable absence of interest in names, identifying numbers or Health Control qualifications. The appropriate medications were dispensed, data on possible contacts was taken for special telephone crews to tackle later, and each treated patient was earnestly exhorted to pass the word to anyone—anyone at all—known to have been exposed to the flu to come in for free protective shots with the greatest dispatch possible. People young and old shambled into the Clinics, people who had not darkened the door of a Health Control facility in twenty years, and each one, after receiving treatment, was enlisted as urgently and emphatically as possible as a bearer of the word to others.

  True to the plan Mason Turnbull had outlined, there were no panic-inducing headlines from the Department of Health Control, no blanket announcements of amnesty from the qualification laws—but on the first day Health Control did release a low-key news announcement that a "possibly widespread" epidemic of Shanghai flu was "expected" in the city, and that "highly effective" preventive treatment could be obtained without charge at any regular Health Control facility. The following day Turnbull himself held a brief but well-covered press conference in which he mentioned reports "from some areas" of late-appearing meningitis-like symptoms believed to be related to the Shanghai flu, and again urged all who had had flu-like symptoms or had even had contact with influenza victims to present themselves at Health Control facilities for preventive and therapeutic treatment. It was a masterpiece of news manipulation, carefully geared both to stimulate action and defuse panic, and although Turnbull was rumored to have gone into total nervous collapse when the conference was over, the results of the broadcast were salutary. Health Control switchboards were flooded with calls and the queues at the Clinics and Hospitals lengthened.