The Fog - James Herbert [68]
Holman smiled back weakly, completely disarmed.
The Chief Medical Officer spoke up. ‘This is Mrs Janet Halstead. I’ll leave you to it then, Jan?’
She nodded and asked Holman and Barrow to follow her as the lift doors closed on the grinning Ministry of Health man. This was the Principal Medical Officer? Holman couldn’t help but smile. She was certainty sweet, but she looked no brighter than the average housewife. The day would prove her to be otherwise.
‘I take it Sir Geoffrey has explained why we brought you to this building. There are quite a few people we want to examine you, and it’s a bit more convenient to bring them here than to cart you all over the country. I don’t know if you’ve heard yet, but a State of Emergency has been declared. We have to find some answers, very, very quickly.’
She led them into an office and asked them to sit. She perched on the edge of a desk. ‘Now, the first thing. Have either of you eaten this morning?’ She smiled at their shaking heads. ‘Right, we’ll soon fix that. Not much for you, I’m afraid, Mr Holman. We have a few tests to put you through that won’t allow it. However, we’ll give you enough to sustain you. We don’t want you passing out on us, do we?’
Holman felt himself almost mesmerized by her words and began to relax, a combination of his own tiredness, the soft chair he was sitting in and the easy manner in which she was talking to him.
‘While you’re eating, you can tell me all that’s happened to you – and I’d appreciate it if you tried to leave out nothing. The smallest thing could be of the greatest importance.’ She picked up the telephone and pressed a button, then ordered breakfast for them both.
Holman snatched a glance at Barrow who seemed distinctly uneasy in his non-active role.
‘Oh, please call me Jan, by the way,’ she told them as she replaced the receiver. ‘Now, as I’ve already said, we have an extremely busy day ahead of us here. We have every facility we need and the best medical brains are either already here or on their way. I can promise you, we’ve wasted no time in the past couple of hours.
‘Let me tell you briefly who will examine you. I won’t mention all the names because I can’t remember half of them myself, but most of them are from these Units: Cellular Disorders; Infectious and Immune Diseases; Psychiatry and Nervous Disorders; Biochemical Parasitology; Neurobiological Studies; Brain Metabolism; Cell Mutation; Molecular Genetics; Immunochemistry and Cellular Immunology; Molecular Pharmacology; Neurological Prostheses and Neuropsychiatry.’ She smiled at Holman. ‘Two others: Environmental Radiation and I believe the Ministry of Defence is sending us some of their Chemical Defence and Microbiological researchers.’
He sat there stunned and frightened and she hastily tried to reassure him. ‘As you can see a lot of these divisions won’t even come into it, we just have to have them at hand in case they’re necessary.’ She smiled her disarming smile again.
Holman was silent for a moment, a troubled look on his face. Then, he spoke. ‘Two Units stuck in my mind, one I think you tried to hide among the others.’
She still smiled. ‘And they were?’ she asked.
‘The obvious one was Environmental Radiation. The other was Cell Mutation.’
She looked at him keenly and said without any hint of patronization: ‘I can see you’re very sharp, Mr Holman – may I call you John?’
He nodded.
‘Yes, I did bury it among the others, I didn’t want to alarm you. As I said, many of these divisions of investigation will be a waste of time. I think Cell Mutation will be one of these – but we have to be sure. You do see that? We can’t leave anything to chance. As for Environmental Radiation – well, that’s an obvious one in this day and age, isn’t it?’
‘But what exactly can you find out from me? I mean, I’m cured, aren’t I?’
‘First of all, information, John. I’ve already spoken on the phone to the doctors who treated you in Salisbury. Their description of your symptoms was helpful, but I’m afraid very