“That’s not my kind of journalism.”
Lapsa went out to talk to the press. “Obviously, we’re concerned,” she told them. “Illness is very rare for us. The health service is working to identify—”
“How fast is it spreading?” someone called out.
“I couldn’t say. We’ll have a better idea once—”
“Can norms catch it?”
Gabriel, watching on a screen inside the office, saw Lapsa’s normally serene features cloud over and knew that she must want to snap, How the fuck should I know? She didn’t, of course, and he was immensely relieved that it was her and not Pilan out there. But there was a brittle edge to her voice as she said, “I have no idea who can or cannot catch it, or how contagious it is, or how it’s transmitted. I do know that most of us who don’t have it spend a lot of time with people who do.” She spread her hands to indicate herself. The vidcam lights gleamed on the webbing between her fingers. “That includes gillungs, other gems, and norms. We’re just getting on with—”
“Are you worried about your baby?”
There was a sharp intake of breath and Gabriel clenched his fists. He glanced sideways at Agwé, whose mouth had dropped open in outrage. Even Qiyem, also unaffected by the mystery illness and watching on his own workstation screen across the room, looked uneasy. Out on the quay, the noise of the media pack faded abruptly.
Lapsa’s face had gone stone quiet. She stared at the questioner, pinning him with the weight of her fury, before she said coldly, “I have no reason to be worried.”
On the screen it looked like hesitation.
“So,” said another voice, sounding a little embarrassed, “is it possible that not everyone is susceptible to this pathogen?”
“Or does it just take longer in some people?” came the voice that had asked about the baby.
“I suppose that’s possible. By morning we hope to know more.”
By morning they knew it wasn’t pestilential at all. Rhys, who had the triple advantage (or, as Callan observed, disadvantage, depending on your point of view) of having been duty medic at the TideFair, the doctor who had referred the first reported victim and one of the very few with a detailed knowledge of gillung physiology, had gotten himself seconded from genetic medicine to the closed ward where the sick of Sinkat were being treated. He had been grappling with the mystery ever since Tamin’s housemate had come hurrying to find him and led him back to their semi-aquatic apartment where Tamin lolled in an access pool in the floor, clinging weakly to its rim and unwilling to emerge.
“He says he feels better in the water,” said the housemate, “but that’s where he was when he got ill. So I’m not sure . . .”
Rhys had persuaded him out and into a hospital bed, where he fell into a state of fitful unconsciousness overnight, failing to improve the next day. He was, Rhys was certain, Patient Zero in the unfolding crisis, and by some considerable margin the sickest of the lot. They’d still not managed to identify the pathogen, and none of the antivirals were having much effect. Rhys worked through that second night with the microbiologists and virologists, and by early the next morning they finally had some answers.
“It’s not contagious,” Rhys told Aryel, Mikal, and Sharon, crowded into a too-small office near the closed ward, along with Dr. Budram, the hospital’s senior pulmonary consultant; Dr. Carvalho, a top clinical toxicologist, and Omana Dawny, the head of physiotherapy. “The symptoms are similar to a viral infection, so we assumed they must have contracted it from each other—but they didn’t. We’re certain now that it’s not a virus. It’s a toxin.”
Sharon, who had been as anxious as any of them but surprised that Rhys had asked her to attend a medical briefing, looked up sharply at that. Rhys took a sip of the coffee Aryel had brought him and met the detective superintendent’s eyes over the rim of the cup. “We think it must have been present in Sinkat Basin for two to three hours during the TideFair. Our estimate—”
“Hang on,” Sharon said, “you mean this was deliberate? Something was released into the water?”
“Something was; whether it was deliberate or not I don’t know. I thought you’d want to be aware of the possibility. Even if it does turn out to have been an accident, or a safety violation—”
“—we’d need to be involved either way. Good call, Rhys.”
“We’ll be asking more questions today, but what’s clear so far is that everyone who’s ill, whether their symptoms are mild or severe, breathed in Sinkat water at some point during the afternoon. Lapsa and Agwé are a case in point. They’re not ill, but Pilan is, even though they all live in the same house. He told us he went for a swim around lunchtime, said he needed to clear his head after a meeting—”
Mikal tutted under his breath.
Rhys waited politely for a moment, then continued, “The other two were topside all day. Agwé swam over to a friend’s house, but not until quite late in the evening and she’s fine. Lapsa popped out through their access pool at dawn to supervise the setting-up and she’s fine. Everyone we’ve interviewed fits that pattern. There are no reports of illness from people out in the estuary or elsewhere on the river. So our working hypothesis is that it was caused by a local aquatic contaminant, and we don’t think the contamination is ongoing, because it looks like people have stopped getting sick.” He squinted at the morning beginning to spread its canopy of sunlight against the window and said quietly, “Of course, we don’t know that it won’t happen again.”
“There are water-quality monitors,” Aryel said, in the probing tone that meant she was going to poke at his theory to make sure there were no holes in it. “All along the river, as well as in Sinkat and Limedog. They transmit to the Environmental Management datastream. A contaminant should have set off alarms, sent an emergency message to every gillung registered in the city to get out of the water.” She looked at Mikal.
“Indeed it should have,” he said, “and I will be having a very serious conversation with that department shortly. Do they know about the situation yet?”
“We’ve only just worked it out ourselves,” Rhys replied. “Dr. Carvalho has sent an urgent query, I think”—the toxicologist nodded confirmation—“and I’ve had a look at the public infostream; there’s nothing unusual that I can see, but we don’t actually know what the contaminant is yet. Maybe it’s a failure in the system, but it might also be something the monitors simply aren’t programmed to pick up.”
Sharon was tapping notes into her tablet. “Concerns have recently been expressed,” she said without looking up, “about whether Environmental Management does enough to monitor the marine environment.”
“Noted,” Mikal replied drily, and returned his attention to Rhys. “So this is essentially a case of poisoning, correct? Possibly accidental, and limited to a few hours a couple of days ago. But until we know precisely what caused it, we can’t be certain it won’t happen again. Have I got that right?”
“That about sums it up. We thought you ought to know as quickly as possible that whatever we’re looking at, it extends well beyond the remit of the health services.”
“Thank you,” Aryel said to Rhys and the rest of the medical team. “An excellent night’s work. We can reassure the public that there isn’t an epidemic in east London—”
“—unless more of this crap gets into the water before we find it,” Sharon muttered.
“Yes, but at least we know what we’re looking for now. What about your patients? Can you cure them, now that you know what’s wrong?”
“Well . . .” Rhys glanced around at the other doctors. Despite being the most junior in the hospital hierarchy, they looked content to let him be their spokesperson. As he rubbed a weary hand across his face and over the short ruby-shimmer of his hair, his finger brushed against the thin wire of the cranial band and he noted wryly that he and Aryel were the only ones wearing them. “They all started feeling sick either in or shortly after coming out of the water, and they got progressively sicker as
it worked its way through their systems. They’ve stopped getting worse, but they’re not getting better either. My final hypothesis of the day is this: if we get them into clean oxygenated water, that might help to flush the toxin. It binds to the gills’ receptor sites and we haven’t been able to shift it. But Tamin, who’s now dangerously ill, was conscious when I first got to him, and he was still mobile when Eli and Cal saw him earlier in the day—and he didn’t want to come out of the water. Something about it was making him feel better, and that doesn’t make sense if he was still breathing in the toxin. But if the concentration had dropped and clean water was starting to displace the poison, that might explain it.”
“That sounds like sense to me,” said Mikal, “but it’s still a risk, isn’t it? Putting someone so sick back into the water?”
“It is—we’ll test it first on one of the patients who’s in better shape, and who can tell us how they’re feeling. We’ll need a volunteer—”
“Pilan will do it,” Aryel said before he’d finished. “Bet you anything.”
Rhys chuckled. “How right you are, Ari. Pilan was awake when I did my last round and I told him that we were hatching this idea—he said yes before I’d even finished getting the words out.” He looked at Ms. Dawny. “Assuming everyone approves, of course.”
“I’ve already canceled today’s bookings for the hydrotherapy pool,” the head physio replied. “I’ll get it set up.” She looked around at the other consultants for confirmation. Dr. Carvalho was already nodding his agreement; he talked about various other antigens that behaved in a similar way, and why the suggestion was sensible.
Dr. Budram agreed rather more succinctly, and said that she too had cleared her schedule. “It’s an experimental treatment, so all patients will need to be under my direct care,” she said to Rhys. “But as it’s your idea, Dr. Morgan, and you’ve already recruited a volunteer . . .”
“I would very much like to be there,” he said with a smile. “Thanks.”
The physio slipped out, followed shortly by the other doctors. Dr. Carvalho, who had also been up all night, had begun to yawn hugely.
“Are you going home?” Aryel asked as she and Rhys walked arm in arm out to the hospital’s main lobby, following Mikal, who had moved forward to take point and deal with the press pack who’d no doubt be waiting. Like Sharon, he was issuing a steady stream of instructions into his earset as he strode ahead.
“Not yet,” Rhys said. “A lot needs to be confirmed in the next hour or so, and we’ll probably get the answers quicker if I’m the one asking questions. Not that they don’t trust norm doctors, but . . .” He nodded at the portraits of eminent physicians lining the walls of the lobby. “You know.”
Aryel regarded the gallery of notables without expression. “We need more gem doctors. I know.”
“So I think I need to stay close to this. They should be ready to try the treatment on Pilan pretty quickly, and if it looks like it’s working, we’ll get the others in too. I’m the only one here who really knows any gillungs—the only one who’s ever been swimming with them, all that stuff. I might spot things the others won’t.”
“I agree—but not just because it’ll reassure the patients.” She looked up at him. “With the best will in the world, Carvalho and the others wouldn’t have figured this out so quickly without you. You’re not just a good doctor, Rhys, important though that is, and I think we’re going to need the full range of your talents. This feels too precise to have been an accident.”
He’d already thought the same himself. “Thanks, Ari. Now I just need to persuade the department.”
“I’ll have a word with your masters at GenMed, but given how serious this is I can’t see them objecting to loaning you out for a while. Besides, I suspect Sharon would happily shoot anyone who tried to take you off this case.”
11
The medical team’s conclusions, hinted at but expertly left hanging when Mikal spoke to the press outside the hospital, were confirmed by an official bulletin at noon. Lapsa, Agwé, and Gabriel had been updated just before that by Pilan, speaking from the hydrotherapy pool where he was supposed to be staying quiet and immersed.
“It’s a fucking miracle,” he said, via the tablet Rhys was holding for him. They could see he was lying on a gurney a couple of feet underwater, tilted to allow his face to break the surface while his body remained submerged. “It’s like I was never even sick.” There was an emphatic splash and a small wave lapped over the lower edge of the screen. Agwé chortled and Lapsa’s drawn face went slack with relief.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Rhys said drily. “You only get a couple of minutes topside to talk, so make the most of them.”
“But I’m better.”
“You’re feeling better. There’s a difference.” The image tilted a little.
Rhys must be crouched on the edge of the pool, Gabriel thought, leaning over with the tablet. The hospital wouldn’t have had time, nor necessarily the inclination, to rig up a sub-aquatic communications system.
“Pilan’s gill function is definitely improving,” Rhys said, speaking now to the listeners in Sinkat, “but we don’t yet know how long it’ll take to flush all the toxin, or how quickly his other organ systems will recover. He definitely won’t be going home today. We might start to think about it tomorrow, if things go exceptionally well.”
“But—” Pilan objected.
“But nothing. Say your good-byes before I tip you back under.”
“We need to work out how this stuff got into the basin,” Pilan said rapidly. “Everything that came in for the TideFair needs to be checked. There were repairs to one of the wet buildings last week—”
“Pilan,” said Lapsa, while Agwé and Gabriel grinned at each other.
“One of their products might’ve become contaminated offsite—”
“Pilan.”
“Which is one way this poison could have been introduced deliberately. I know we don’t want to say that yet, but—”
“Pilan!” Lapsa and Rhys shouted together, and Lapsa added firmly, “Shut up.”
Pilan’s face sank lower in the water as Rhys prodded threateningly at the gurney.
“We know all this,” Lapsa went on. “Environmental Management teams are all over the basin and the river, taking samples and testing the monitors. Turns out they’re months behind on their regular checks—”
“No surprise there,” muttered Agwé.
“But we now appear to have their undivided attention. The police are interviewing the repair teams and the vendors, testing everything they brought onsite, and searching the entire area including the canals, topside and below. We’ve spread the word to avoid going into the water until further notice. We’re on top of it.”
Pilan still looked worried. “What do people think is going on?”
“The toxin rumor’s already out,” Gabriel said. “We’re just waiting for the hospital to confirm it.”
“That should happen in the next few minutes,” Rhys put in.
“Good,” Gabriel replied. “That should send one set of scaremongers packing. But we won’t need to bring up the possibility of sabotage. It’s in the air already.”
“Who’s saying it?” asked Pilan.
“Who isn’t?” said Agwé. “Everyone here thinks that the point must have been to try and disrupt the TideFair—which it sort of has, because instead of talking about how great the fair was, the streams are full of this.”
“The police are going to issue an appeal for information,” Gabriel added. “Aunt Sha—I mean, Detective Superintendent Varsi says that’ll give every crackpot in London something to do for a couple of days, but it’s worth it in case someone out there noticed something important.”
“The problem is, we don’t know what might be important,” said Agwé. “Do we? Do you?”
“We have some ideas,” Rhys replied. “Remember, a toxin is a poison of biological origin. We know this one was produced by an engineered microorga
nism—”
“That doesn’t exactly narrow it down,” said Lapsa, and Agwé added, “Half of everything is produced that way.”
“Yes, but everything that’s a legitimate product or by-product is registered. Maybe some rogue microbe farmer decided to chuck an experiment down a storm drain rather than pay for proper disposal—that might explain why the toxin isn’t on any of our databases. The point is, it’s possible that the by-product of an industrial process got into the water without anyone knowing or intending it to cause harm.”
“Or,” said Agwé, “they did know, they did intend, and this was specially planned to hurt us and no one else.”
“That can’t be ruled out,” Rhys said grimly, “but just remember, that’s only one possibility.”
It turned out to be far from the only possibility the streams latched onto. Gabriel had thought himself impervious to even the nastiest of innuendoes, but as the afternoon wore on he became more and more appalled. Along with an outpouring of relief that there was no risk of contagion and speculation about terrorism came a wave of mostly anonymous assertions that the situation must, somehow, be the gillungs’ own fault: who knew what they got up to in their secret laboratories and subaquatic dwellings? What illicit experiment of theirs had come back to bite them? And wasn’t it just typical that they would try to blame normal people? In contrast to the public support that had followed the turbine sabotage—praise for the speed of the repair, delight at Agwé’s vid, the huge turnout for the TideFair—it was as if those of a different disposition had finally found a hook upon which to hang their rage.
Gabriel found himself staring for far too long at what was becoming far too typical a comment:
If they’re going to fall over every time something goes wrong, they can’t be trusted with that power plant. How can it be safe when they’re all lounging in the hospital? How do we know the next thing they cook up won’t put the rest of us there?
Regeneration Page 11
