Mother told me what you agreed. I understand.
Cordially, Bassano
Six
The first anyone knew of it was a ship, found drifting just outside the harbour mouth. It must have been blown down from the Cape during the night; the watchmen on the Great Light saw it at dawn, and as the day wore on, they wondered why it was just sitting there, when the weather was so fine. Reasonably enough, they suspected it might be a pirate, hanging about waiting for a victim it could tail into less well-regulated waters. When the harbour prefect made his rounds in mid-afternoon the Light captain reported it, and the prefect decided to send a patrol sloop to take a closer look.
The sloop captain, a Verrhoean with twenty years' service, sailed cautiously to just inside hailing range. The ship, he observed, looked like an ordinary Scleriot merchantman: a fat pot of a ship, triple-masted, with high castles, not exactly a pirate's vessel of choice. He tried hailing, but there was no reply, and no sign of activity of any sort. He'd seen something rather similar thirty years earlier, when he was working for his uncle. He sent a boat, with instructions to board if nobody answered their hails.
The boat came back an hour later. Everybody on board was dead, they said. Most of them were lying in their bunks; a few must've kept going until they dropped where they stood, and one man had fallen from the rigging. Any marks, the captain asked: swellings, blisters? Yes, the boatswain said, in a voice that suggested he knew exactly what he'd seen.
The sloop captain knew what to do. He went on board the merchantman personally to supervise the breaking open of the tar barrels and the setting of the fires. Then, once the merchantman was burning well, he set course for the Cape. There was an island just off the southern point that was kept empty, for use as a quarantine base. Before putting in, he sent the boat to within shouting range of the nearest village on the mainland, and raised the alarm, giving orders for a message to be sent to the City immediately. The village choirmaster (closest thing to a mayor) borrowed a horse and set off for town, where he went straight to the harbour prefect.
The prefect knew exactly what to do. First, he gave orders for the harbour chain to be raised, to stop any ships entering or leaving. Then he sent word to the City prefect, the Guard commander, the gatewardens and the First Citizen's office in that order, and put down the barriers to seal off the harbour from the upper town. The gatewardens closed all the six main City gates and put sentries on the five sally-ports. The City prefect issued emergency notices: all markets, fairs, shops, inns and places of entertainment to close immediately; no unauthorised gatherings of more than five people; a curfew; compulsory notification of plague symptoms to ward and guild officers. The Guard commander posted troops to enforce the emergency regulations, keep order and prevent looting. The First Citizen gave out commissions and warrants to the designated activity officers, conferring the usual additional powers on them for the duration of the emergency, sent compulsory service notices to all registered medical practitioners, suspended the House and called an immediate cabinet meeting.
They were intelligently planned procedures, quickly and efficiently carried out, by men who knew what they were doing. They'd never worked in the past, and this time was no exception.
The room was full of smoke, so thick that Basso couldn't make out the mosaics on the wall ten feet away from where he was sitting. He had a handkerchief pressed over his nose and mouth, but his eyes were watering. It had been proved a century ago that braziers burning aromatic herbs did nothing at all to prevent the spread of plague but everybody still did it anyway. There wasn't anything else anybody could do.
"We know for a fact that it's spread by rats," said the tall, bald doctor, his voice muffled by his scarf, making him sound like he had a bad cold. "That's not a guess, it's science. But this time, it can't be rats. The customs men who went on the plague ship to burn it took all the usual precautions, and anyway, they didn't see a single rat anywhere."
"How do you know that?" Sentio queried. "By the time our people got to the Cape, they were all dead."
"The captain wrote a log," the doctor replied. "All the relevant details, he was a good observer. They can't have caught it from rats on the merchant ship. It's not possible. And even if one of them had got it, the rest of them--"
"So it can't have come from that ship," Cinio interrupted. "There must've been another ship, with people on it who had the plague at a less advanced stage."
Basso shook his head. "The ship we found adrift was from Leucis," he said. "No other ships in from there in the last month. Besides, you've seen how quick this thing develops. It's hours, not days."
"Then it can't be rats," the doctor said. "In which case, it's an entirely new strain, and everything we know about dealing with the plague is most likely useless."
Basso scratched his head. "Wonderful," he said. "We don't know how it spreads, we sure as hell don't know how to cure it, and it takes hold so fast there wouldn't be time anyway. So what do we do?"
The other doctor, the one who looked like a cat, said: "We let it run its course. No choice in the matter."
"We let it run its course," Cinio repeated. "For crying out loud, gentlemen. We've got to be able to think of something better than that."
Basso turned and looked at him. "Such as?"
"I don't know," Cinio said helplessly. "But my mother and both my sisters died in the last lot, and all anybody said was, there's nothing we can do, just let it run its course. And that's not good enough."
"You haven't got anything to suggest, in other words." Basso turned to the doctors. "How about you?" he said. "Anything at all, doesn't matter how drastic. I'll burn down half the City, if you think it'd help."
"They did that in Coele Opuntia, sixty years ago," the bald doctor said.
"Did it work?"
"We don't know. The fire spread all over the city, and most of the people in the lower town were trapped behind the quarantine barriers and couldn't get out. It hadn't spread to the upper town, so really there's no way of telling. Personally, I wouldn't recommend it."
"Fine," Basso said. "What else is there? I seem to remember something about diverting a river."
"Dapoeia, forty-six years ago," the cat-faced doctor said. "They dammed up the Asper and flooded the slum district, with the people still in it. Same problem as with Coele Opuntia. Nobody left alive to see if it did any good."
"Besides," the bald doctor said, "we're not dealing with the same disease. In both those cases it was the regular strain, spread by rats. Burn or drown the rats, you get rid of the plague, though of course they didn't know that then. But in this case, since we don't know how it spreads, we'd just be guessing. Suppose it's water-borne, and you flood the whole of downtown. All you'd achieve would be to spread it all through the suburbs."
Basso nodded. "Nothing to be gained from the big, broad gesture, then," he said. "All right. You've left us in no doubt about what we don't know. What do we know?"
The bald doctor frowned. "All we can say for certain is that it's a mass of contradictions," he said. "It's been going on for eight days. In the first forty-eight hours, it spread across a quarter of the City; infection rate close to ninety per cent; mortality, as far as we can tell, something like one in three. After forty-eight hours, it stopped dead in its tracks; no new cases in the next twelve hours. Then there was another spurt, right across the west side; same infection rate, same mortality. Then another pause; then we started getting a few scattered outbreaks on the north side, with much lower infection rates but rather higher mortality. Then practically all the southern wards catch it, but the death rate drops to one in six." He paused to catch his breath, then went on: "In seven out of ten cases, it's all over in twelve hours; they die, or they get better. In three out of ten cases, rising to fifty per cent on the south side, it drags on for eighteen hours, though the mortality ratio stays pretty much the same. That's the worst thing about it, from our point of view. There's no pattern. Which means," he added, "that there is a patt
ern, but we haven't seen it yet. I just hope some of us live long enough to figure it out."
Basso had been taking notes. "What we need," he said, "is a ship's captain, preferably off a merchantman. Or a fisherman would do just as well, I guess. Cinio, get out there and find me one, quick as you like."
Cinio knew better than to argue. He doubled his scarf round his face, got up and left without a word. Basso was frowning at the notes he'd made. "This is no good," he said. "What we need is a map. Doctor--sorry, I keep forgetting your name. I want you and your colleague here to get a map of the City and mark on it where the outbreaks have been. Sentio, round up some clerks to help them. And when you've done that, find Aelius, if he's still alive, and bring him here."
"Is that a good idea? What if--?"
"Sorry," Basso said, "I thought I was the one who's deaf, but obviously I was wrong and it's you. Come on, all of you. This is important."
When they'd gone, he stoked up the fire with laurel, sandalwood and the dried leaves in the bag from his mother's private store, until he could hardly see at all for the smoke.
Cinio got lucky. The first clerk he asked had a brother-in-law who'd just come home after three months as first mate on a charcoal freighter; he was at the clerk's apartment right now, just a few hundred yards down the street, in one of the big grace-and-favour blocks reserved for the civil service.
The clerk's brother-in-law, a short, square man by the name of Mavorsus, wasn't too keen on leaving the house, but the platoon of Palace guards Cinio had brought along just in case eventually managed to persuade him. He arrived in Basso's office in the Severus house about twenty minutes after the clerks had handed Basso the map he'd asked for.
Yes, Mavorsus said, of course he knew the winds in the bay. He'd been a sailor all his working life, ever since he used to help his dad on an oyster boat. Including the times of day? The times when the wind changed direction. Well, naturally. You had to know that stuff if you were a fisherman.
Basso showed him the map and explained his theory. It's possible, Mavorsus said. Possible? Well, it fits. You'd get a good blow coming in from the sea around about then, for sure; we used to ride it home from the oyster beds; and we'd take the turn of the tide out again, when the wind'd be blowing south-west, out to sea. Then we'd be stuck out there until the late evening north-easterly, which (Marvorsus had to admit) is what you've got written in here.
"It's airborne," Basso said. "It moves when the wind changes. And the incubation period is short. If we know where the wind will be blowing and when, we can move people out of harm's way."
The doctors looked mildly stunned. Sentio looked terrified. Aelius, who'd arrived shortly after they brought Mavorsus in, opened his eyes wide. "I'm convinced," he said. "Mind you, I'm no expert."
"Yes you are," Basso said. "You were at the siege of Lyssa, weren't you?"
"Yes, but--"
"You're an expert. More to the point, you've got the men and the organisation to carry out mass evacuations very quickly indeed. Stop arguing, general, who the hell else is there? The fire brigade?"
"Fine," Aelius said, with a shrug. "Right, I need to know when, and where to."
They crowded round the desk, and between them, somehow or other, they drew a new map, heavily annotated with times and directions; big arrows drawn in Basso's imperial purple ink (for signing statutes and decrees) and clusters of numbers in his nearly illegible handwriting, and underneath, other numbers (the designations of army units) in Aelius' tiny, neat, slanting hand. Then Basso looked at his clock and said, "That'll have to do. You'd better get started or you'll miss your chance." Aelius grabbed the map, nodded, and left. After he'd gone, there was dead silence for some time.
"Well," Basso said, "I sincerely hope we've got that right. Otherwise..." He shrugged. "If anybody's got an alternative theory that fits all the facts, this would probably be a good time."
Sentio, who'd been looking very unhappy, said, "You do realise we're risking the lives of everybody in this city on the word of an oysterman."
Basso looked at Mavorsus. "Well?"
"As far as I know, that's about right," he said. "Don't you all go blaming me if it turns out wrong."
"And there you have it," Basso said, throwing his head back and gripping the arms of his chair. "If everybody dies, don't blame us. Hell of an epitaph for a quarter of a million people."
"Who'd have died anyway," Cinio said quietly, "if we'd just sat here and done nothing."
"Stick some more of the leaves from that bag on the fire, someone." Basso grinned. "My mother may have gone a bit strange in her old age, but she knows her home remedies. She bought that stuff from a Verrhoean who swore blind it wards off the plague. Wouldn't give her the recipe, unfortunately, or else we'd all be laughing."
The cat-faced doctor pulled a face, then got up and went to the brazier. "They haven't had the plague in Verrhoe for seventy years," he said.
"There you are, then," Basso said. He twisted his neck restlessly, as though the plague was an itch he couldn't quite reach to scratch. "This has got to be the most ridiculous thing I've ever done," he said. "Sentio, get this man here a large sum of money and send him home. We've taken advantage of his sense of civic duty for long enough."
Sentio stood up. "When you say large..."
Basso laughed. "As much as he can carry. Fill a fucking sack. If we're right, he's just saved the Republic. If he's wrong, in a couple of days it won't matter a damn. You, what's-your-name: stay at your brother-in-law's till you hear from me, and try not to die, we may need you again."
That left him with Cinio and the two doctors. "Is there anything else we can help you with?" the bald doctor asked.
Basso shook his head. "You two stay here, though," he said. "Who knows, someone might get sick. Cinio, remind me, what's the legal position about people who die without making a will?"
Basso stayed in his office for eight days. He slept on the floor, and when he wasn't working he sat and stared at the mosaics. One of his earliest memories had been sneaking into this room, which was out of bounds by order of his father, and climbing up the mountain of stored and dust-sheeted furniture to get a closer look at the pretty pictures on the sloping ceiling. In particular he remembered one angel with a sad face; her eyes were big and wide open, and a single stylised tear hung from her lower eyelid. She didn't seem to be there any more.
They brought him reports, every hour on the hour. The evacuations had gone as smoothly as could be expected. Plague had broken out in two of the evacuation camps, but both the infection rate and the mortality were only a fraction of what they'd become used to. People who'd had the plague and recovered were immune; he conscripted them into burial and security details. Looting was a problem. Aelius' soldiers wouldn't go near areas known to have been infected when the wind was in that direction, and who could blame them for that? But gangs of recovered plague-sufferers were taking the opportunity to help themselves to whatever they could carry. By the fifth day, Aelius had enough men who'd caught the plague and lived to form a specialist squad, who hunted the looters through the deserted streets. For a while, the looters managed to get their plunder past the checkpoints by hiding it on the floor of the handcarts used for clearing the dead and piling bodies on top, until Aelius got wise to that. There were outbreaks of dysentery and other illnesses brought on by overcrowding and exposure in the evacuation camps. With no ships coming in, food was already a problem, and could only get worse. The death toll rose. Accurate figures were hard to come by, needless to say, but the best guesses put it at an average of eleven hundred a day. Firewood, for burning bodies, ran out on the sixth day, and Basso chaired a grim meeting to consider alternatives; burying them would take up manpower urgently needed for other purposes, dumping them at sea would mean lifting the blockade and risking having ships make a run for it. The latter option prevailed; nearly all the sailors who'd been trapped in the harbour district when the plague had first broken out were dead by now, so the risk of unauthorised
egress was minimal.
On the ninth day, the estimated total went over ten thousand.
"You know," Basso said, when they broke the news to him, "I simply can't imagine that. Ten thousand people dead. That's enough to fill the Blues' end of the Track, isn't it?"
About that, they said.
Later he regretted thinking about it in those terms. He could see it clearly in his mind's eye: the Track, on a race day, and one end of the auditorium filled with dead people. Well, he told himself, more people than that died in Perigouna, which was entirely my fault, and this isn't. But that didn't work at all, so he sat up all night checking the stores inventories against the supply requisitions; a useful exercise that revealed five clear cases of theft of food. He wrote an order for the thefts to be thoroughly investigated, and the perpetrators hanged, as an example.
On the tenth day, he called a meeting of the full emergency cabinet. The picture, they told him, was inconclusive. Deaths in the evacuation camps were considerably lower than in the infected areas of the City, which had been sealed off. Incidence of new cases, however, had peaked on the seventh day and was now holding more or less steady. The airborne theory, it had to be said, was starting to look a bit ragged; if the theory was correct, there should either be a lot fewer or a lot more cases, depending on the distance the infection could carry. A steady plateau in the statistics suggested that it was being spread by something else, and the evacuations had therefore made no material difference, one way or another.
The Folding Knife Page 15
