The Doomsday Carrier

by Victor Canning

  “Yes, there is.”

  “Good. Let’s go.”

  She sat mostly silently by him as they drove. She was nervous of him and, without any obvious reason, felt a little frightened. Perhaps she had picked that up from Armstrong’s manner when talking about him. He looked hard, precise . . . no, neat, unruffled, and dead sure of himself. Now and again he made some passing comment. Seeing her looking at the radiotelephone equipment in front of her, he said, “From now on, twenty-four hours a day, we’ll be in touch with the operations centre wherever we go. But don’t worry, I’ll see you get your sleep.”

  As they crested the ridge by Old Sarum, the city below came full into view. She said, “My flat is on the far side of the town, beyond the cathedral.”

  “You just call the directions as we go.” He nodded towards the cathedral. “One of my favourites. Early English and the highest spire in England—four hundred and four feet. Most of it built in record time by an old boy called Elias de Derham. Impress you?”

  He glanced sideways at her and she saw the fine-crowfooting around his dry slaty eyes tighten as he lowered an eyebrow. Feeling far out of touch with him, she said, “Yes.”

  “Don’t let it. My father was a clergyman. Three boys. We had all the cathedrals of England and a few more at heart. We were traipsed round most of them, too.”

  When he parked the car outside the flat he reached over and picked up the telephone. He asked her the number of her telephone and called the operations centre and, giving it to them, said that he would be available on it until further notice. Although she made no move to suggest it, he came up with her and she left him in the sitting room while she went to pack the things she might need.

  * * * *

  It was mid-afternoon, the heat oppressive and not enough movement in the air to stir a leaf. Charlie lay along one of the broad mid-boughs of a chestnut tree, his back partly propped against the main trunk, his right hand clasping a thinner branch above him. He was eating the remains of a spring cabbage which he had pulled from a row in a smallholding a quarter of a mile away. The man working in the smallholding had been sitting under the shade of a hedge resting and drinking cold tea from a bottle. Charlie at the bottom of the holding had been screened from him by two tall rows of runner beans. Before taking the cabbage, Charlie had squatted between two rows of netted strawberries and, picking them through the meshes, had eaten his fill.

  Now and again, as the flies and honey bees which were working the spikes of the chestnut blooms buzzed around his head, he waved them away with a cabbage leaf. As he lay there, eating and flicking away the flies, Charlie watched a small boy who, a hundred yards away, was sitting on the bank of a narrow carrier stream fishing for roach. Charlie was well acquainted with children, for he had spent a period in a children’s zoo on the Continent before coming to England. Over-bothered with the flies about him and no longer hungry and feeling the need for a drink, Charlie leaned forward, seized a smaller branch and dropped to the ground. Leisurely he shuffled his way through a low growth of scrub willows towards the stream.

  He crossed the stream path and sat down a couple of yards from the boy who, watching his float move down the swim he was fishing, had his head turned from him. The boy already had acquired the complete absorption which overtakes fishermen as they watch their moving floats. Charlie, moved with a desire for company, ambled forward and, suddenly making a series of gentle, panting hoos, reached out and touched the boy on the shoulder.

  The boy jerked round at the unexpected touch, found Charlie’s face within inches of his own and, scared out of his wits, let out a loud cry of fear and alarm. Dropping his rod, he jumped to his feet and ran as fast as he could along the path. Two hundred yards away he had left his bicycle propped on the other side of a stile which gave access to a small road.

  When the boy reached the stile, he stopped, panting, and turned round and looked back along the path. Charlie was sitting on the bank, holding the long roach rod and beating the water with it. Concern for the rod overrode some of his shock and quick fright. The boy’s name was Andrew Garvey. He was was thirteen, stoutly built, and had sandy-coloured hair and a flattish square face, slightly freckled, and for his years he was self-confident over the average, and far from lacking in courage. He knew a chimpanzee when he saw one, and he knew that he was seeing one now. He began to walk slowly back along the path. As he did so Charlie dropped the rod and picked up the small tattered fishing bag which lay in the grass. Standing upright Charlie held the bag aloft in both hands and suddenly began to bang it on his head as he went into a silent and mild burst of display. The hairs of the fur on his head and body rose and bristled and he danced and ran around thumping himself and the ground and the bushes with the haversack. As abruptly as it had begun the display ceased. Charlie went back to the bank and, sitting down by the rod, put one corner of the haversack into his mouth and began to suck gently at it like a baby while his free right hand thumped a slow tattoo on the ground.

  Andrew Garvey, his heart beating faster than he would ever tell anyone, approached him slowly. Charlie had been long aware of him and as the boy neared him he dropped the haversack, turned his head towards Andrew, pursed his lips, pouting them forwards and began to issue a series of soft and friendly hoo-hoo whimpers.

  * * * *

  When Jean came back into the sitting room, changed, and carrying a suitcase, Rimster rose and took it from her. He put it down on a chair by the door and said, “Would there be any beer or something cool to drink in your fridge?”

  Surprised, Jean said, “Yes, yes, I think so . . . well, lager anyway.”

  “Good. No—don’t you bother. I’ll get it. I’m used to finding my way around.” He smiled. “I wanted to have a talk with you and I thought this was the best place. Lager for you, too?”

  She nodded, feeling awkward and aware that for all his easiness there was something beneath it which was deliberately designed not for her benefit but his. Before she had gone into the office to meet him Armstrong had said, “He’s one of the top grey men. They don’t pay social visits. They’re wound up and set going and then nothing stops them.” It meant nothing to her and she had the feeling that Armstrong was hardly aware of what he was saying to her, that he was talking to himself.

  Rimster came back, a glass in each hand. He handed her a lager. “Couldn’t find the tray.” He sat down in an armchair opposite her, took out his cigarette case and offered it to her.

  “No, I don’t smoke.”

  He lit a cigarette for himself, sipped at his lager and then said, “Relax.”

  Stung a little she said, “Is that an order?”

  Rimster laughed quietly. “Oh Lord, is that what I’m doing to you? I must be slipping. Look, I’m not an inquisitor. I’m not after you because it was through you that Charlie went out on the loose. I’ve read your report on how it happened and I know all the details about you and your career and so on which are on the official files. So we can forget all that. I’m only interested in Charlie and his recapture. I know something about human beings but not much about chimps, and nothing about Charlie. So, while I smoke and enjoy my lager I’d like you to fill me in. And after that I’d like you to translate into simple terms the reason why, if Charlie stays out over the limit, he’s such a cause for concern.”

  “But surely you know that?”

  “I’ve read the micro-biological notes about the project without my head spinning too much, but sometime if miracles keep happening I may have to explain it all to, say, a Chief Constable or an Army general. Underneath the glitter they’re just ordinary men, some of them even a little stupid. So—when you’ve finished with Charlie and his habits, needs and reactions and so forth, I’d like the cause for concern in simple language. All right?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Good.”

  “I think I’d better start with Charlie, and not his kind in general. You see he was comparatively quite young when he was captured and his life up till then can m
ean very little to him now. He’s used to human beings and he depends on them. They’re his source of food and shelter. That doesn’t mean he likes all of them. He likes some and dislikes or doesn’t like so much some others. Although basically he’s quite friendly, he’s not entirely reliable in his actions because of the unnatural stresses which captivity has caused in him. He has nervous mannerisms which he uses to ease some of these frustrations. Sometimes he just beats a hand or fist against a wall for a long time. Other times he will go into a display mood, either playful or angry. You can’t tell right away . . .”

  Rimster sat there listening to her and he saw, as he had often seen before in others, the naturalness return when she spoke of a subject she knew, and he marked the moments now and again when the tone of her voice or the stress on some words faintly gave away something of her personal feelings. The more she said the easier it was to read her and to guess at her feelings. She didn’t like what she had been doing for years now although—wisely—he guessed she had never said so openly to anyone else. And she didn’t like animals being kept in cages and even more so she disapproved of experiments on animals or the use of them for laboratory research purposes . . . Oh, yes, it was all there. It was there in all of them, because they were human, just as it was there with him in a different profession—if what he did merited that word. You could deny God, but that didn’t explain the world. You could use a thousand arguments to justify what you were doing but nobody believed them. Most people not involved turned aside, not wanting to know, and quickly forgot all about arguments, justifications and the greatest good of the greatest number. The world was a jungle; the wise thing to do was to move away from its dangerous areas—if you could. He couldn’t and Jean Blackwell hadn’t been able to. Tough.

  When she came to the end of her account of Charlie, Jean took a sip of her lager and then went on, “When I said I didn’t smoke—I meant not very often.”

  Rimster gave her a cigarette and lit it for her. She gave him a little nod of thanks and the ghost of a smile. Talking about Charlie had been easy. Talking about what had been done to Charlie was like going into a confessional and knowing that you could never come out with any dispensation or in a true state of grace.

  She said, “Yesterday at ten-thirty Charlie was injected with a new and highly complex form of plague bacilli. Basically its a combination of the three forms of plague—bubonic, pneumonic and septicaemic. The special thing about this form is that except for a few minor effects like slight vomiting and shivering spasms, which will quickly pass, he will at the end of twenty-one days be in normal health and, while immune himself from plague, will be a carrier. If he’s loose then, not under strict laboratory control, he can spread the disease. If he coughs the minute droplets could infect anyone within three feet range of him. That’s the pneumonic side. If he’s bitten by a flea—at the moment of his escape he was free of all body vermin, but he won’t be for long—then the flea takes his infected blood into its own and any person who is bitten by that flea will contract the disease. If the flea gets on a rat, that rat becomes a carrier and its faeces and urine deadly. That’s the septicaemic side . . .” She paused, drew hard on her cigarette and went on, “Pretty bloody, isn’t it? Charlie’s own urine and faeces will be similarly infective. The virus is very resistant to external conditions and will survive in the ground or water for a very long time—like the anthrax bacillus, which can survive in an infective state for a hundred years or more. Overall too, this form of plague is very difficult to diagnose . . . That’s a pretty generalized picture. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you the thinking behind all this. You probably know more about that than I do.”

  Rimster said, “All this after twenty-one days? Do you mean exactly twenty-one from the time of injection?”

  “No—there could be anything up to a two-day spread on either side. No more though, and very rarely that.”

  Rimster got up and walked to the window. Through gaps in trees and houses some of the green sward of the cathedral close could be seen. There was nothing she could tell him about the thinking behind it. Almost every government had its own chemical and biological warfare establishment.

  Without turning, he said, “You’d have gone on using Charlie? Putting, say, another chimpanzee in with him and waiting for it to be infected and die?”

  “Yes. He was going to be transferred to another lab.—specially built, but not at Fadledean—next week.”

  “And if it worked? Then eventually it would have been used on a human—some brave volunteer?”

  “Yes. Does that surprise you?”

  Ignoring the emphasis on the you, he said, “No. But how did you get into all this?”

  “It creeps up. I was a bright girl, scholarships, university and medical school. Micro-biology always fascinated me. Government research establishments often farm out minor projects and research work to university scientific departments. I did quite a few. My work must have impressed someone and I was offered a post eventually at Fadledean.” She shrugged her shoulders and made a wry face. “You begin to paddle in the water and then you find one day you’re right out of your depth. You must know that.”

  He turned. He knew all right. But he had long, long ago learned to live contentedly with it. Just for a moment he saw a handful of men, plague carriers, moving openly and peacefully into some country, some troublesome or strategic emergent state . . . oh, in a hundred different places, and leaving behind them, unsuspected, a growing epidemic that would disrupt economies, social services, weakening law and order. The brave new world . . . which he served. He said, moving to her and picking up her empty lager glass. “Yes, I know. But there’s always a moment when you know you could escape—I didn’t take my moment. What about you?”

  Jean said coldly, “I was to have been married in four months’ time. For love and for escape. I should have done it on my own years ago. But I kept putting it off. But now—as soon as Charlie’s back—they’ll sack me. I’ll sign the Official Secrets document and be free. Well, as free as I can be.” For a moment or two she thought he was going to make some answer. The slate-grey eyes watched her and the corners of his lips showed two tight, stubble-touched clefts. Then with a little shrug of his shoulders he picked up his own glass and went into the kitchen. She heard the tap running as he rinsed them. A tidy, neat, hard man, wound up long ago and set going, and still going, and—she wondered—with no real sympathy for anyone.

  He came back, picked up her case and they went down to the car. He called the network to give them his change of place, and asked for the latest on Charlie. The latest on Charlie was that there was nothing to report.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE GARVEY FAMILY lived in a cottage in the hamlet of Petersfinger which was outside Salisbury and just off the Southampton road and a little to the east of the river Avon. Andrew’s father was a carpenter, working mostly on building sites, an amiable, easy-going man; his mother was amiable, too, but less easy-going. He had one sister, Judy, who was sixteen and looking forward to the freedom of leaving school and working in any job which was not too demanding but well-paid.

  At supper-time as Andrew Garvey finished his sausages and baked beans and began to wipe the plate clean with a piece of bread he said casually. “Guess what?”

  “You’ll have the pattern off the bottom of that plate in a minute, that’s what,” said his mother.

  Andrew grinned. “Guess what happened to me this afternoon —after school when I went fishing.”

  “You sure you went fishing after school, not skipped it all afternoon?” His father cocked an eye at him dubiously. “Course I did. But guess what happened.”

  Without looking up from the magazine she was reading as she ate, Judy said, “Some old lady fell in, you rescued her and she gave you a five-pound note. Can I borrow a quid?”

  “Oh, shut up you!”

  “Enough of that.” His mother took his plate from him.

  “But guess what happened. You never will.”
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  His father grinned. “Don’t suppose we will. It’s always something with you what never happens to anyone else.”

  “Like seein’ flying saucers or nearly catching a fish as big as a shark. Always nearly.” Judy reached out a hand for the sauce bottle and smothered the last of her sausages.

  “Well, this weren’t no flyin’ saucer and it weren’t nearly anything. It really happened.”

  His father finished eating and sat back. “Okay, lad—let’s have it.” He winked at his wife. “Andrew Garvey will now tell us one of his celebrated—”

  “This is no make-up thing! This really happened! Not like some of the others. That was just for fun.”

  “What’s this for then? Money? We got to cough up when you pass round the hat afterwards?” asked Judy.

  “Let him be,” said Mrs Garvey. She ran her hand affectionately across his sandy hair. “One of these days you’re going to wake up and find you’re living in a real world. It’s all this T.V., and those comics and books you read.”

  “Batman and Asterix. And Dr Who,” said Judy.

  “They’re not bad stories, his, though,” said his father. “I liked that one he told about seeing Princess Anne and Prince Philip mending a puncture on—”

  “This is real, I tell you! I was just sitting there fishing away when something taps me on the shoulder—”

  “Not the Queen Mother or good old Snoopy?”

  Andrew made a threatening gesture at his sister and almost shouted, “All right! Don’t believe me then. But I turns round and there’s this chimpanzee thing—”

  “Riding a bicycle?” His father leaned back and laughed at his own witticism and went on, “One thing I got to say for you, son, is you’re always good value. So what did you do? Now—keep quiet everyone. Andrew Garvey speaks.”