The Plague Tales

by Ann Benson

  But the technician didn’t seem to understand her. He said, “I’ve got a couple of loose ends to tie up here first before I can sink my teeth into your work. Monday would be better for me. Then I can give you a few days of my undivided attention and you can go home. But I’ve got enough time for a quick look at this right now if you want.”

  “Oh, come on, Janie,” Caroline said, her interest obvious. “Let’s just take a peek. What can it hurt?”

  What could it hurt? she wondered. Probably nothing. Still …

  She glanced over at the small circle of fabric and wondered why the sight of it suddenly raised her hackles just enough to sound some poorly defined internal alarm. She didn’t understand what made her want to leave it alone, but clearly something was holding her back. She couldn’t name it as anything other than a sense that it was in her best interest to leave that specific item alone on this particular day. But Caroline, in contrast to her more cautious employer, wanted to satisfy her curiosity immediately.

  “It’ll only take a few minutes,” she said. “We’ve done all this digging, some of it under very interesting circumstances, I might add, and so far all we have to show for it is some dirt under our fingernails and a piece of fabric. We’ll be spending all day Monday on that dirt. How about we loosen up and have a little fun with the fabric today?”

  Janie was surprised by the undertone of frustration she heard in Caroline’s comment. She sometimes forgot that Caroline was here because it was an opportunity to learn that she could not have afforded otherwise, an opportunity to travel that might never come her way again. She’d come over beforehand, at Janie’s expense, to set things up, and had been diligent in completing her end of the bargain. Janie found herself feeling suddenly inspired again by Caroline’s interest, so she gave in against her better judgment.

  “I guess we deserve some fun,” she said, “but let’s be careful. We don’t really have the right equipment, and this is history we’ve got here.”

  The technician led them to a computer setup near the center of the lab, and arranged three chairs so they would all have a good view of the screen. He powered up the system and secured the fabric with the suction provided by a light-duty vacuum. The fabric was quite a bit larger than the microscope’s platen, so it required some readjustment. Janie watched and winced each time he rearranged it, wondering what microscopic goodies were being dislodged with each movement. Finally it was settled and they brought up the first magnification.

  “The fibers are really in fine condition,” she said. “That leads me to think it might be wool.” But as they moved through the fibers frame by frame, she saw the telltale long striations that indicated the likelihood of vegetable origin and reassessed her opinion. “Maybe linen,” she said, “although I don’t think it would be this well preserved. Looks like if there was ever any dye in it, it has leached out over time. But there’s very little variation in the overall color, so my guess would be that it was originally white.”

  The strange artifact called to her, beckoning her to come closer. She complied and leaned in toward the screen for a closer look. The more she examined it, the more her curiosity grew, almost against her will. “Can you bring it up a little more?” she said.

  The technician responded by pulling down a menu with the computer’s mouse. He clicked on the command for magnification and selected a percentage. Almost immediately the screen was redrawn, and the fibers reappeared at twice the previous magnification.

  They examined that section, and again Janie asked for further enlargement. The tech obliged her, repeating the command at her request until each fiber filled the screen entirely. They scrolled up and down and back and forth, shifting the image on the screen, stopping occasionally to examine points of interest. All things considered, Janie thought, there isn’t as much to see here as one might hope, but just as she was beginning to lose interest a startlingly clear single cell scrolled into the screen’s field.

  “Stop there,” she said quickly, pointing at the image.

  Both Caroline and the technician, whose name tag said “Frank,” drew in a breath when they saw the cell on the screen.

  “Let’s take a closer look at that,” Janie said, and Frank complied by once again raising the magnification, then centering the cell on the screen. The image was slightly fuzzy, so Frank activated the automatic focus.

  But the level of clarity didn’t satisfy him. With obvious excitement in his voice, he said, “If you have a few minutes I can get it even sharper for you. There are a couple of filters I can run it through.”

  “Go ahead,” Janie said, too eagerly for her own liking.

  He played with the mouse a little, then entered some numerical values into a field. Another wave of electronic correction scrolled through the image from top to bottom, leaving a perfectly clear bacterium in its wake.

  It was a squat, bloated little torpedo, with spidery flagella streaming out from all sides. As she looked at its dead stillness, Janie could imagine the waving of those flagella on the live bacterium as it moved through the nourishing liquid in which it had once lived. From the lack of visible bloodstains on the fabric, she guessed that it might have been deposited in sweat, or tears, or perhaps saliva. She could test it in John Sandhaus’ university lab for traces of those body fluids.

  “Hubba, hubba,” Frank said, grinning over the find. “What a lovely little specimen this is. Looks like some type of enterobacteria, although it’s not anything I recognize immediately.”

  Caroline gave out a low whistle of amazement. “Very pretty, very pretty indeed.”

  Janie kept her thoughts to herself. So simple and perfect, and so incredibly well preserved, she thought. Uninvited, another thought slipped in. Dangerous, it said. She knew that she would pursue the story of this microbe further when they got back home, and thought it might even give them some additional information relating to her thesis. But it sent chills down her spine, and she didn’t know why. Neither Caroline, or Frank seemed to be experiencing anything like her reaction to it.

  “Can we put some sort of marker on this spot?” she asked, wanting suddenly to be finished with it. “I’d like to be able to come back to this without having to review the entire piece again.”

  “I can put a chemical dye marker on it,” Frank said. “We can section out a small piece and save it as a search file. You can reopen the file later and direct the program to search out a match on the piece, and you can take the same file back home with you and direct your own system to do the same. Most biomed programs are set up to find specific dyes. I can use a common one to be on the safe side. We can print out this view of it now if you’d like, and I can save the entire file for you to take back to the States on a separate disk.”

  Rationalizing to herself the exposure of their delicate find to potentially damaging moisture, Janie said, “It’s probably been wet more than a few times in its history, so I don’t suppose a little bit of dye will kill it. It’s already good and dead anyway.”

  He nodded. “I’ll mark it right now, then we should leave it undisturbed for a while to minimize the spread of the dye. If you want me to, I can pack it up for you so it can be sent out tomorrow.”

  “That would be great,” Janie said, relieved to have the burden of export documentation lifted from her. “You’re certainly a lot more familiar with your own bioexport procedures than we are. Could I ask you to make two prints of the screen? I’d like to send one to my thesis advisor in America. I’d like to get his opinion about it. He’ll run the images through a few programs and there’ll be lots of data waiting for us when we get back.”

  “No problem.”

  He turned on the 3600 DPI laser printer, then pulled down the file menu at the top of the screen. He clicked on the command to save the file. “Pick a name,” he said to Janie.

  After giving it a moment’s thought she said, “Gertrude. We’ll name it after my grandmother. She’s the original source of my funding.”

  “Good as a name c
an get,” he said as he typed in the letters. “Gertrude it is.” He made two prints of the image and gave them both to Janie, with assurances that he would take good care of the original.

  Janie and Caroline departed, and Frank was left alone with the mystery creature. He gathered together an assortment of staining tools and materials, including a tiny syringe with a flow inhibitor. Working under the same magnification, he eased out one tiny drop of dye, which flowed onto the fibers of the fabric, deluging the single cell. He used the mouse to draw a box around the dyed image on the computer screen, and directed the computer to save the enclosed area as a separate file. Then he left the scope and turned his attention to a list of waiting lab tasks as the dye was absorbed.

  He came back a short while later to remove the sample from the microscope plate. But out of curiosity he decided to have one more look before putting everything away. He sat down in the chair and looked at the screen.

  Gertrude had moved.

  He looked again; it wasn’t possible. The bacterium was dead and couldn’t possibly move. He thought perhaps his memory of its original position was faulty. Without exiting the program, he pulled down the print menu from the top of the screen and directed the system to print the previously saved file. He watched anxiously as the page emerged slowly from the printer, then tore it away when it was finally complete and compared the printed page to the screen.

  Gertrude had definitely moved. She must have been just playing dead.… He saved the screen image as a new file, this time naming it “Frank” after himself. Must have been in spore state.… He sectioned off the immediate area of the cell and cleared everything else off the screen, then saved this smaller file as Frank2, and exited the program.

  He was brimming with excitement. This sort of thing didn’t happen every day, and he couldn’t wait to share what he’d discovered about the microbe. Digging quickly through a pile of loose paper scraps scattered over his desk, each one with some important tidbit not to be forgotten, he found Janie’s hotel number and dialed it quickly. There was no answer at her extension after the clerk put the call through.

  “Damn,” he said. Deeply disappointed, he hung up and went back to the computer, wondering if she’d gone somewhere other than her hotel.

  After a few moments of typing and clicking, the image of the bacterium was successfully transferred via modem into another system nearby, in which resided a program called Microorganism Identification Catalog, nicknamed MIC. Of all the people who worked at the Institute, Frank was the most intimately knowledgeable about the nuances of this particular program, and he had it up and running in seconds. It contained files for thousands of known microbes in graphic image format, and was able to compare its own resident images to an imported image for the purpose of visual first-round identification.

  He brought up the Frank2 file, then directed the program to search for a match. After a few minutes the system issued a pleasant beep, announcing its decision.

  PRELIMINARY CATEGORIZATION:

  ENTEROBACTERIA

  Right again, Frank! he thought to himself triumphantly, his excitement still building. He directed the program to deepen its search.

  READING FILES FOR SUBCATEGORIES

  Cedeacea

  Citrobacter

  E. coli

  Edwardsiella

  Erwinia

  Hafnia

  Klebsiella

  Kluyvera

  Morganella

  Providencia

  Proteus

  Salmonella

  Serratia

  Shigella

  Yersinia

  Bloody hell, he thought. A nasty little group! Capable of inflicting a choice variety of intestinal maladies, most of which could either kill the host organism or make it pray for a quick death. The program continued its sorting procedures, filtering out the possibilities as each characteristic was identified and compared to the known samples. Finally, after a few moments, the computer issued a short electronic fanfare, as if to congratulate itself before announcing MIC’s decision.

  “Cute,” he said aloud, though there was no one about to hear his opinion. “Very cute. So what do we have here?”

  Yersinia pestis

  98% probability of accuracy

  Identification complete.

  Not your common everyday enterobacterium, he thought to himself, or I’d be more familiar with it. Yersinia pestis. He remembered vaguely studying the Yersinia at one time or another, but it was apparently not active in Britain or he knew he’d have been getting memos about it. Frank left the console and walked to the far bookshelf. Selecting a volume, he ran his finger impatiently down the columns of the index, finally locating the desired entry. He turned quickly to the indicated page, and read the relevant material.

  As he neared the bottom of the page, he let out a low whistle. “My God …” he said quietly.

  He took the volume back to the computer and made a visual comparison between the book’s diagrams and the organism on the computer screen. As he watched, the microbe shuddered, its sides heaving with the immense effort of moving after such a long sleep. Frank jumped back involuntarily and clutched the book to his chest as if protecting himself.

  He set down the heavy volume. Keeping his eyes glued to the screen as if the microbe might jump right off and attack him personally in all its magnified ferocity, he reached around behind himself and groped until his hand came into contact with a chair. He drew it close to the computer and sat down carefully. He watched in fascination as the microbe continued to struggle, intrigued by its sinuous dance, wondering what it was trying to accomplish. This type of organism, among the most simple beings on earth, was limited to two major activities: it could either take in nourishment or reproduce by division. And it was definitely not eating.

  She’s trying to replicate! “You liked that little dye bath, didn’t you, sweetheart?” he said. Obviously refreshed, Gertrude had shaken off several hundred years of stiff dormancy and Was trying to resume her normal life cycle. He stared at the screen and watched in frustrated fascination as the creature’s sides heaved without result, a tiny Houdini wrapped in chains, one moment away from the fatal gulp.… He almost wanted to cheer her on.

  His concentration was interrupted by the ding of the autoclave timer and the sudden cessation of the low background noise that always accompanied its operation, not a noise Frank ever minded or even really noticed until it stopped and he realized how truly annoying it had been. Muttering curses under his breath, he looked at his watch, and realized that he had gotten lost in the American woman’s tiny creature, much to the detriment of the day’s schedule. He realized with some concern that he was living up to his reputation for lateness, a fault he vehemently denied he possessed at every annual performance review. There was still a list of materials to be gathered for an upcoming project, still mail to be posted, and he had not yet reached the discoverer of the distracting microbe on the screen before him. Quickly he dialed the number; once again, there was no answer. This time he left a message that Janie should contact him at the lab as soon as possible.

  He looked at Gertrude again. She was still heaving and twitching. “Come on, girl, you can do it …” he whispered to the image on the screen. “Come on.…” But she finally settled back into her original position and stopped moving, exhausted by her efforts. She made no more attempts at reproduction for several very long minutes, and finally Frank reluctantly tore himself away. He crossed the lab to the door marked BIOLOGICAL COLD STORAGE, where he leafed through the printed directory of the contents, looking for a particular sample he needed to get thawing. He flipped through page after page of Latin bacterial names, each one dated and coded for the location of its holding tube in the storage rack, his index finger running quickly down the alphabetical list. He stopped at Palmerella coli, a strain of enterobacteria developed to have cell parts that mingled rather freely with those of other cells. It was graciously generous with its genetic components and could be coaxed into excha
nging plasmids with only the slightest provocation. A virile, potent, and vigorous bacterium with a dash of proper British hospitality. He made note of the storage location and closed the directory.

  As he looked through the glass partition into the freezer area, he thought to himself, A thousand agents of death, just on the other side of that glass, microbes beyond all imagination. One or two cracked vials in the wrong hands … he didn’t even like to think about it. Microbes were lying in wait, licking their lips, primed to assume their rightful positions in the food chain. One little slip …

  He set those doomsday thoughts aside and sat down at the operation console for the robotic retrieval arm. Just like a video game, he thought naughtily, and easily found the sample he sought amid the small forest of tubes and canisters. He picked it up carefully and guided it to the pass-through for exterior surface decontamination. Looking back at the empty space, he let his imagination run wild and tried to envision what would happen if anyone discovered an empty slot with no marker. Hordes of Biocops in their strange green spacesuits with yellow biosafe sacks hanging from the waist would descend upon this place within minutes of the discovery. Every exit would be sealed, and no one would come in or go out until the Biological Police were absolutely certain that there was no possibility of further contamination. It would be fascinating to watch, he thought. Then reality set in again, with all of its burdensome honor. He gave in to it and placed a marker identifying himself as the person who’d removed the tube. There were, he knew, perfectly good reasons for all these precautions, and Frank understood them only too well.

  He left the cold storage area and placed the tube in an upright holding rack in the work area adjacent to the microscope where Gertrude lay in repose. He looked again at Gertrude, and saw that she was still motionless.

  He wanted to poke and prod her, to see how she would react, to encourage her to be everything she could be. But work was piling up all around him, regular duties requiring his full attention. Don’t let yourself get distracted, he warned himself; get these other things out of the way first. Obligation came first, but he could feel himself being tugged by fascination. Ultimately, obligation won out. “Don’t worry, darling,” he said to Gertrude as he powered down the computer, “I’ll be back for you later.”