The Plague Tales
Page 35
“I daresay there’s no consistent look to a terrorist, madam, and it would not be for me to say what it is in any case. That falls under the authority of a different ministry altogether.” He pointed with his gloved hand to the plastic container she held in her hands. “Now, if you will kindly remove your clothing and put on the suit, please. You can place your own clothing in the empty container. You’ll be collecting it later.”
But Janie just stood there looking distinctly noncompliant.
The guard was still polite, although his tone of voice was growing more serious. He said firmly, “I’m sorry, madam, but this is not a request. Please do as I’ve asked.”
“No,” she said quietly, and drew back in the cell until her back was pressed against the rear wall.
The guard was becoming less pleased with every moment of delay. Bruce paid close attention from his cell, but said nothing until he was certain that Janie was not going to cooperate with their captors. “Janie,” he finally said, “it would be a good idea for you to do what he’s asking you to do. We may have some problems if you don’t.”
The guard looked at Bruce and nodded. “That’s right,” he agreed. “It’s best not to be difficult. We’re just going to go for a little walk to—”
She didn’t allow him to finish his sentence. “Fuck you,” she said quietly.
“I beg your pardon?” the guard said in surprise.
“I said, Fuck you! I am not going anywhere until you tell me what’s going on here. I haven’t done anything to warrant this kind of treatment and I demand—”
Abruptly, Bruce cut her off. “Janie! Please! Calm down!” And when he had her attention he said, “They’re just going to print you. Anyone who’s detained is printed if it hasn’t already been done. They’re not going to hurt you.”
She knew the process was not painful or dangerous. But no one, even its most ardent proponents, would deny that bodyprinting was the ultimate invasion of human privacy. She pressed herself even tighter against the wall, as if by doing so she could melt right through it into blessed freedom again. She said, hoping she would appear to be more defiant than she actually felt, “I won’t let you do that to me.”
The guard calmly pulled his weapon out of its holder and pointed it directly at her. “Very well, then,” he said, “but I urge you to reconsider that position. I must advise you that refusal to cooperate will place you in violation of Section 236 of the International Biosecurity Treaty. The British government has the right to try violators for a variety of crimes under that treaty, some of which carry a mandatory death penalty. We are not squeamish about that here in Britain as we once were.”
Desperate, she said, “I demand that you contact the U.S. ambassador.”
The guard said, “Violations of the treaty cannot be mediated through diplomatic channels, madam, I’m sorry to say.”
Janie looked at Bruce again. He looked nearly frantic. “Janie …” he said, “please cooperate with him.”
The guard said, “Of course, all this depends on my report of the incident … if you should change your mind and cooperate, things might go somewhat better for you.”
Her eyes went back and forth between the guard and Bruce, both of whom waited for her to say something, both of whom, for different reasons, hoped she would stop her resistance. She swallowed hard and dropped her gaze to the floor, saying nothing.
Frustrated, the guard said, “Very well.” His tone darkened. “From our conversation so far it’s my understanding that you wish to skip all the formalities of our justice system and proceed directly to execution.” He pulled the trigger on the weapon forward with a click. “But don’t be afraid. This is a chemical bullet and you won’t feel anything. Your brain will cease functioning before your head hits the floor.”
Her eyes went back and forth between the Biocop’s mask and Bruce’s pleading face. “Please, Janie … don’t be foolish … it’s only printing.…”
Finally Janie understood that she would not win this battle, and reluctantly gave it up. She looked up at the guard and said, “Can you at least turn around so I can have some privacy while I’m changing clothes?”
“I’m sorry, madam, but I have to observe. I must keep you in my sight at all times.”
“I will, Janie,” Bruce said as he turned away. “I’ll turn around. Just don’t do anything foolish. It’ll be all right. Everything will be all right.”
Caroline remained suspended in the fuzzy space between sleep and wakefulness for what seemed to her a very long time. Her chest ached and she felt as if a huge weight had descended upon her in her sleep. She felt terribly cold, though she knew from the weight that she was still covered.
Oh, God, I’m so sick, and this blanket feels like a layer of bricks.…
She couldn’t open her eyes. Even if she’d had the energy, they seemed to be stuck together with dried crust, as though she’d been crying in her sleep. Bits and pieces of her continuing dream came back to her as the drugged haze slowly dissipated. She tried to move her arms again. They seemed to be pinned to her; she could not move them. She gave her position more hazy thought and decided that something was keeping her from moving her arms. If I could only open my eyes to look … but the effort of moving facial muscles, however small, seemed too much to even consider. She lay there, semiconscious, and waited for more clarity.
She was cold, but covered. Her mouth was dry, but her skin was clammy and damp. She was almost awake but she could not move. She struggled again, and finally managed to raise her eyelids.
The first thing she saw was a mound of something lying across her chest. The heavy object was wrapped in some sort of dark cotton fabric.… Then she saw a shock of graying hair, and part of an arm.…
Someone is on top of me.
Using all her strength, she heaved herself upward and struggled to push him away, but she couldn’t do it even though her interloper was not struggling to remain in his position. With a great heave she finally managed to push the body off of herself, and it started to slip away toward the floor.
Mother of God, I’ve been covered by a dead man.…
The body finally rolled completely off her and thumped loudly onto the floor. Gasping for breath, she clutched at her throat and tried to scream, but could not. She looked over the side of the bed and saw the pale stiff body of Ted Cummings staring up at her, his expression a twisted grimace of horror.
She stood up too quickly and her head felt as if it would split. The horror of revulsion rose up in her gorge and she stumbled to the bathroom, where she heaved dryly for over a minute before getting hold of herself. She saw her jeans and flannel shirt lying there where she had left them earlier and dressed quickly, leaving her sweat-soaked nightdress on the floor of the bathroom.
She had to find help. Her first thought was Janie, but she had no idea if she’d returned yet from her mission in Leeds. She ran out of the bathroom, swaying and unbalanced, and looked again at Ted’s corpse.
She had no idea how or why he had died, no notion of whether or not she was involved in that death in some way. A quick look at the body gave her no clues as to the cause of his death. There were no obvious marks or blood, and although he looked pale and bloated, those conditions didn’t account for his death. She’d been unconscious for what she thought might have been a very long time; who knew what she might have done in her sleep? She was in a foreign country where she had virtually no protective rights, a country whose severe policies on situations of the sort she found herself in were almost always immediately applied. Suddenly the seriousness of this situation came crashing down on her and she panicked; she could think of nothing but leaving the suite and dissociating herself from the horrible thing that lay on her floor. She quickly ran out the door and heard it click shut behind her as she hurried toward Janie’s nearby door. She knocked as loudly as she could, but there was no response, so she tried again. This time she came as close to pounding on the door as her weakened state would allow. Still nothing.
It was then that she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror mounted on the wall opposite her door.
Her hair was in matted disarray. Her face was a mass of yellow bruises, and the neck below it was covered with dark blue-black splotches. Her fingertips were dark and visibly swollen. Her eyes were rimmed with deep blue-black and the whites were tinged with red.
As she gaped at her own terrifying image, the elevator bell rang, announcing its impending arrival at the seventh floor. She knew she could not allow anyone to see her in this condition. She ran crazily toward the exit sign at the end of the hallway and struggled with the door, tugging frantically. It seemed to weigh a ton. Just as she crashed through to the fire stairway, the elevator door opened. She closed the door behind her, and tumbled down the stairs.
Janie walked slowly down the same long corridor they’d used to reach the cell room. She was naked within the big plastic suit that enveloped her body like a huge condom, and the cold plastic rubbed against her skin, sending shivers through her entire being with every step she took. She wore paper slippers, which she knew would later be discarded. They were the same type she had always worn into the operating room, a million years ago when she had a happy life as a surgeon. She imagined herself opening the swinging door with her hip, nurses on the other side with gloves waiting for her scrubbed hands, Mozart playing on the sound system, the promise of an imminent cure.…
Instead, two heavy metal doors slid open automatically, withdrawing into the walls with a whoosh and then coming together again after her entourage had passed through. Two Biocops walked behind her, weapons drawn, ready to take her out of this life, unhappy though it might be, if she misbehaved. That she was about to undergo a forced bodyprint in just a few moments was completely abhorrent to her. In the United States it was a rare practice because of the privacy laws, although those laws were weakened by Congress with every new Outbreak. Still, very few people had suffered the indignity of the procedure, and she wished with all her heart that she could somehow turn back time and avoid it.
One of the Biocops said, “Turn left here,” and she obeyed, although she felt anything but obedient. She wanted nothing more than to turn and run away to some lush pastoral place where birds chirped and pollen made her sneeze. The filtered sterile air in this facility was devoid of all the sweet-smelling earthy things that made her want to take breath after fragrant breath; it was dry and irritatingly pure, it had no life in it.
After the turn she faced another long corridor and kept walking past numerous side doors toward a set of double doors at the end. This must be the place, she thought. When she reached them one of her escorts entered a code into a wall-mounted number pad and the doors slowly swung open. He said, “Go in, please, and do nothing until the doors have completely closed again. We’ll give you further instructions by intercom.”
The whoosh and click of the closing doors signaled the demise of any possible escape. Janie stood in the small room and stared at the small pedestal in the center of it. That’s where it will happen, she thought, and she began to tremble.
There were mirrors on every wall of the stark enclosure. Janie had no doubt that they were two-way mirrors, enabling the Biocops to watch the procedure though she wouldn’t be able to see them. She wondered, Which mirror will it be? Or will it be all four? Do they all drop what they’re doing and come out to watch?
A voice came from a small speaker in the ceiling. “Please state your name.”
For a moment Janie wondered why they didn’t know her name. Then she remembered that she’d never been asked since arriving at the facility. Bruce had done all the negotiating. Perhaps they thought she was simply Bruce’s traveling companion. And she’d left her own papers in Bruce’s car. She thought slyly, These Einsteins didn’t even ask for my papers!
Anything you say, Adolf, but I’m going to have a little fun with you and your storm troopers.…
She cleared her throat and said in a loud clear voice, “Merman. Ethel Merman.”
There was a moment of silence before the voice returned. “Dr. Ransom referred to you as ‘Janie.’ ”
Ha! They really don’t know! “Jane is my middle name. I hated the name Ethel when I was a kid, so everyone called me Janie.”
“All right, Miss Merman. We have a few other questions for you before we proceed.”
I’ll just bet you do, she thought.
“Date of birth.”
Make it a good one, Janie. “November 22, 1963.”
“Place?”
“Dallas, Texas. USA.”
Behind the glass the guards exchanged glances. The leader flipped off the intercom button and said, “Like she’s going to put one over on us. She thinks we have to be told she’s American.”
He flipped the intercom back on again. “Very good, Miss Merman. I understand Dallas is a lovely city. Now if you could please tell me your permanent U.S. residence.”
“Yawkey Way, Boston, Massachusetts.”
“Could you spell that, please?”
“Yawkey. Y-A-W-K-E-Y … Way. W-A-Y—”
“Thank you very much,” he interrupted her. “Postal code?”
Oops! she thought. She invented a nine-digit number. They’ll never know.
“Social status?”
Painful memories flooded through her. These were the questions she always hated. “Widowed.”
“Thank you, Miss Merman. Now we’ll need a brief medical history.”
A flash of concern went off in Janie’s head. They’ll know everything about my medical history when this is over. Why ask now?
Maybe they’re just checking. They want me to know they’ll check what I say against what they find.
“Number of live births.”
“One.”
“Number of living offspring.”
Oh, God, please stop these questions. “None.”
“Reproductive status.”
“Sterilized.”
After that response there was silence in the pedestal room as the guards conferred briefly in privacy to assess Janie’s responses.
One said, “She seems to have settled down. What do you think we should do with her?”
They knew they had a difficult situation on their hands, and their decision on how to proceed could have major ramifications. Their captive was not a British citizen, but claimed to be American, a claim that was bolstered by her accented English and her impudence. She had no identification on her person, but neither had she been carrying any weapons or other suspicious items.
“Maybe we should call upstairs for some advice on this one.”
The other guards groaned in response to that suggestion. One said, “Oh, Christ. Not upstairs. He’ll make a bloody mess of it. And then we’ll have to answer for it when it turns out to be nothing.”
They discussed the difficulties they’d had when their supervisor, a political appointee with good ancestry and poor decision-making skills, had leapt to unwarranted conclusions and arrested an innocent American citizen for a minor infraction of biosecurity regulations. His bungling had nearly caused an international incident, and one of their erstwhile colleagues had taken a fall for it, losing his job and his pension. None of the guards handling Janie was eager to let their current situation reach that state. They knew they were obliged to process her, but wanted to keep the procedure as local as possible unless further investigation was warranted.
One of them said, “I think she’s telling the truth. Look at the numbers here.” He pointed to a diagnostic readout of the time when Janie had answered the questions about her parental status. It measured her bodily reactions to the questions they asked and compared the biological indicators to what would be expected for
the type of response she gave, like an old-fashioned lie-detector. “Looks like she lost a kid in the Outbreaks. She should be upset by that question. This leap in the line says she was upset. I think we should just get on with it. I don’t think we have a terrorist here.”
“Probably not,” the other said. “Maybe she did just drop an earring.” He pressed a few keys on the board of his computer and looked at the screen. “Merman,” he said. “There’s no history of any kind of criminal activity; no association with any known group, at least not in Europe. I wish we could get that information from the U.S. I don’t understand why they don’t let us look at it.”
“They want us to ask nicely first. At least they let us look at biologicals. And she didn’t match up with anything on file when she hit the scanner. If she’d been arrested or even investigated over there, it makes sense that we’d get some sort of a hit, even a small one. There’s nothing. Let’s just print her and be done with it.” Everyone nodded accord.
He flipped on the intercom button again.
“All right, Miss Merman, that will be all the questions. The matron will come in to hook you up now.”
Caroline lay confused and frightened in a heap in the stairwell between the sixth and seventh floors of the hotel, trying desperately to remember the circumstances that had led to her present predicament. Her fall down the stairs had knocked her senseless for a few moments, and she was slowly coming out of it. She knew she was in a stairwell, but she didn’t know why. The best idea she could come up with was to get out of there as quickly as possible. Since it was much less strenuous to go down the stairs than up, she headed in that direction, using a disjointed combination of crawling and sliding to drag herself over the cold concrete steps.
When she finally came to the bottom of the stairs, she saw a door with a red-lit exit sign over it, and decided to make her escape through that door. She had no idea what lay on the other side of it, but it couldn’t be any worse than a dark concrete stairwell. She stood up and balanced herself against the steel door, then pushed hard against the handle. As soon as she succeeded in opening it a loud alarm sounded directly over her head, sending her into a state of confused panic. The sound threatened to split her head; she clasped her hands over her ears and plunged out the door to find herself in a small grassy courtyard nestled between her hotel and the next building. All she could think to do was to get out of sight quickly, so she ran clumsily in the direction opposite from the well-lit street, into a dark alley behind the hotel.