Engineman - Eric Brown [85]
Mirren shook his head. "I'm sorry, Dan."
The door opened and an Asian women in her thirties breezed in. She was jasmine scented and her white coat contrasted with her mocha complexion. "Dan! This is a surprise." Then her expression changed. "What is it?"
"Sita - Ralph Mirren, a good friend of mine. You've heard me talk about him. Ralph, Sita..." He took a breath. "Ralph had contact with a Heine's victim... what? Two nights ago? The guy'd slipped quarantine and died with Ralph. We didn't find out until this morning."
Dr Nahendra's calm, oval face turned to Mirren. "I'll have to take a blood and tissue sample from you and I'll be back in... oh, about fifteen, twenty minutes. And cheer up, both of you. The virus is weakened in a carrier close to death." She gave Mirren a smile so bright he didn't want to disappoint her.
"I feel terrible, feverish..."
"Ever heard of psychosomatic symptoms? If you had only superficial contact with the carrier, then you've probably escaped infection-"
"I drank from the same bottle," Mirren said.
She pointedly ignored the admission, her expression set. "Roll up your sleeve, Ralph."
For the next ten minutes she took blood and skin samples from the two men, working quickly and efficiently and without a word. She smiled and hurried from the room with the same breezy confidence as when she had entered.
"Need she be so damned cheerful?" Mirren asked.
Dan forced a smile. "Maybe it's how she keeps her sanity, Ralph. Who'd be a doctor in a place like this?"
Mirren stood and crossed the room to the window. A grey dawn was seeping steadily out of the east, chasing away the patches of darkness in the streets around the hospital and revealing detail: workers leaving their homes, birds both Terran and alien, wind-borne rubbish. Mirren opened the window and felt the breeze in his face, hot and laden with the stench of exhaust emissions and rotting vegetation.
He recalled what Dan had said earlier about still being able to push the 'ship, but the threat of oblivion overwhelmed even the desire to flux again. Why crave ecstasy, when after it there would be no continuation of life against which to measure the experience?
A flier banked over the Seine and settled in front of the hospital, and only then did Mirren notice the ten storey drop to the parking lot below. He looked over his shoulder. Dan was slumped in the chair at the far end of the room, staring at the floor. So why not? He had nothing to lose. Rather instant death than weeks of agony and mental debilitation. He had considered taking his life before, in the years following the closure of the Lines, but always the thought of an eternity of oblivion, and the hope that things might get better - that by some miracle the Lines might be reinstated - had stopped him from going through with the act.
What he faced now was imminent oblivion, or painful weeks or months with the knowledge of his inevitable end...
Then, before he had time to steel himself, the door opened at the far end of the room. Dr Nahendra strode in. Dan was on his feet. Mirren started, and despite himself felt a surge of guilt.
Dan and the doctor seemed not to have noticed his discomfort. They spoke in lowered tones. Dan was nodding. Nahendra looked stern-faced. Mirren felt his stomach tighten.
Dr Nahendra smiled. "Ralph, please - take a seat."
He fumblingly pulled a chair from beneath the table. The doctor sat across from him, consulting a small screen in her hand. Dan remained standing.
Nahendra looked up. "The news is both good and bad, Ralph. The bad first - I'm afraid it is Heine's. The good news is that it's Heine's III, a mutated form of the disease, which means it can be treated."
Mirren experienced a sudden sense of stomach-churning weightlessness, like the sensation of hitting an air-pocket in flight.
"Like they treated Macready?" he wanted to say.
He thought of the oldster he had watched dying.
Nahendra went on, "Heine's is a strange virus, Ralph.