Yes, defence means fighting, and we don’t pretend otherwise.’
‘How did you know that Mrs Hurst ….’ Ben shook his head, not wanting to be diverted from the questions he wanted answered, but needing answers to everything. ‘She didn’t make any official complaint, did she? How could she have done? She’s been admitted to the ward ….’
‘No she didn’t. But we found out. It’s the same way we found out that you were on your way to Mr Hurst in a rather bad mood.’ Franey produced his gentle smile again. ‘Chap on duty in Accident and Emergency, you see. Thought he ought to behave like a responsible citizen, prevent a crime being committed ….’
‘The bastard!’ Ben said and flushed with anger as the image of the face of the Registrar in Accident and Emergency rose before his mind’s eye. ‘He had no right! Medical confidentiality – he had no right!’
‘I’m sure he didn’t. But he did it all the same. So you see, we have many ways of finding out what we need to know.’
‘But why … what’s the point of all this watching and spying and … it’s horrible!’ Ben said. ‘You tell me you’ve been watching me ….’
‘And all the people you’ve been dealing with,’ Franey said. ‘Clough – the chap who does your extractions for you – marvellous fella, really marvellous. Very suspicious he was, got the idea that our investigators were these Animal Freedom Brigade types, set up a complete little army on his premises in consequence.’ He laughed with real amusement. ‘I wanted to tell him he didn’t have to go to that sort of expense, that it was only a highly proper government department that was snooping about, but there, we do have to be careful to keep ourselves out of the public eye, so we couldn’t. Maybe you can tell him yourself in a day or two he’s wasting his efforts and his money. There’s no threat to him. Special Branch worked out who those AFB people were days ago. They’ll do no harm to anyone else – well, not at present anyway. They’re being watched, you see, and they’ll be stopped smartly if they overstep the mark. A little bit of lunatic fringe activity doesn’t hurt anyone, and we don’t mind it. But if it gets silly and over the top we step in, of course. You see how important defence is, old man? It isn’t just a matter of waiting for something nasty to turn up and have a go at you and then telling it to push off. It’s a matter of working out what sort of nasties might turn up and then going out and clobbering them before they clobber you.’
‘And what good would I be in that sort of activity?’ Ben said, and now it was his turn to laugh. ‘What possible use can my sort of research be to the Ministry of Defence?’
Franey lapsed again into one of his contemplative silences, and this time Ben sat and watched him and said nothing, leaving it to him to break his own silence, and after a long pause Franey got to his feet and began to walk up and down the little office, no more than four strides in each direction though it was.
‘This is difficult to explain to a man with a medical training. You people tend to have … well, they’ve been labelled as sentimental views about medical practice. I prefer to call them highly ethical views. But there’s more than one sort of ethic, and we have ours just as you have yours. They may not march, you know, they may not march, but they are both ethical standpoints.’
He stopped his pacing and came back to stand above Ben and look down at him. ‘This Contravert of yours – it will have the effect of enabling the individual human body on which it is used to fight off any infection; even the most severe of virus infections?’
‘That’s a very simple way of looking at it ….’
‘But … essentially it’s what it does?’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘And it isn’t the Contravert that sees off the viruses, it’s the body’s own cells?’
‘That’s right. It’s like the auto-immune reaction which acts against all sorts of threats, and not just specific invaders ….’
‘Precisely. Now, supposing you were able to work on your research with no stops at all, with no constraint of money or staff of any kind. Could you develop, do you suppose, a product that could be given to all the population, as a sort of vaccine? In times of high risk, you know? Suppose a severe epidemic was known to be on its way, could you visualize Contravert being given to everybody, man, woman and child, so that when the epidemic arrived it would simply peter out, not be able to get a hold?’
‘Yes, I suppose so. I mean, I hadn’t seen it as a prophylactic, more as a treatment, but of course it could be used that way. If I got the product purified, standardized, produced in huge bulk. It would cost a fortune though, to do that.’
Franey waved one hand. ‘That’s immaterial. Now, can you see why the Ministry of Defence is interested in helping you develop your Contravert along these lines? What a useful adjunct it would be to the State’s protection system for its population?’
‘No,’ Ben said after a moment. ‘No, I can’t.’
‘You’re not interested in politics, Dr Pitman?’
Ben blinked, startled. ‘What the hell’s that got to do with it? No, not particularly.’
‘Then you don’t read the political news much, I dare say. Don’t worry yourself about strategic arms talks, Star Wars conferences, attempts to maintain a balance of power as regards the possession of major weapons ….’
Ben’s face cleared. ‘I see what you mean. Well, of course I pay some attention to that. You can’t fail to … the news, the papers, they’re always going on about it. But I’ve never been as interested as I should be.’
‘Should be?’
‘They asked me to join the Medical Campaign against Nuclear Weapons,’ Ben said, and was uneasy suddenly. ‘I meant to, but somehow … it all seemed so pointless. What good can we do fussing about the damned things? The weapons are there. We’ve got them … we can’t just unmake them ….’
‘And of course when one side possesses them the other must too, for its own protection, you’d agree ….’
‘I don’t know …’ Ben said, and then exploded. ‘For God’s sake, Franey! What the hell’s this got to do with me? I’ve had a God awful day, I’ve no idea what tomorrow’s going to bring. I need some sleep and you’re standing there blathering on about nuclear bloody weapons ….’
‘Not as irrelevant as you might think, Dr Pitman. You see, there are other weapons apart from atomic and hydrogen bombs and so forth.’
‘I know that! I heard enough from my parents about the last war. They were bombed out, went through the London blitz and the buzzbombs and ….’
‘Yes, indeed, there are conventional explosives like those. And there are also the group of biological weapons.’
‘Biological?’
‘There’s been a good deal of interest for some time in the possibilities. We have considerable evidence from our Intelligence people that certain groups around the world are showing an increasing interest in them. Infections that attack plants and livestock.’ He paused for a long moment and then said smoothly, ‘And people.’
Ben lifted his chin and stared at him, his face blank with astonishment.
‘Ah,’ Franey said with satisfaction. ‘Now I see you understand! Yes, Dr Pitman. A product like Contravert could be of enormous value to any country if biological weapons became as important as nuclear ones. And they are rapidly becoming so, I have to tell you. They are rapidly becoming very important indeed.’
34
‘I had to talk to someone,’ he said. ‘And who else is there but you? I know I’m a bastard, coming here and bothering you when you’re feeling so lousy ….’
‘I was feeling lousy only because I was alone and bored and … seeing you has made me feel much better. And talking about this is desperately important – I’d have been very upset if you hadn’t.’
‘You wouldn’t have known,’ Ben said and managed a grin, and after a moment she returned it.
‘Well, no, I suppose not. But I’d have found out eventually and been miserable. Anyway, I’ve a right to know. If they really want me to be part
of it all.’
‘That’s what he said.’ Ben got up from his perch on the edge of her bed and went over to the window to peer out into the wide hospital courtyard and the foreshortened cars in the car park, seven storeys below. ‘He said they’d been watching me, too. Do you suppose they still are?’
‘That’s horrible,’ Jessie said and shivered a little, and pulled the blankets higher over her shoulders, even though the room was quite warm. ‘To be spied on … it would make me feel … I don’t know. Grubby.’
‘It makes me amazed. It’s so ridiculous, isn’t it? Like a silly film.’
‘Life imitating art and all that?’
‘Some art! People skulking around, watching me, watching you, even old Clough ….’ He laughed then. ‘That’s funny, you know. Old Clough spotting them and thinking they were the Animal Freedom people and turning his place into a beseiged fort, apparently. Just like him.’
‘Watching me too, you say?’ Jessie said sharply, and he turned to look at her and grimaced.
‘I shouldn’t have told you – yes, apparently. They’ve been watching everyone who’s had anything to do with me, June and Timmy too. I’m sorry, Jess. I feel sick that you should have ….’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, though it did, a great deal. Someone had watched her running out of her own house, her husband after her, watched her behaving like a frightened rabbit instead of turning and fighting back; she was filled with sudden self-loathing at the thought. ‘Goddamn it, yes, it does matter. I feel more than grubby when I think about it. I feel … I don’t know. Polluted, almost ….’
‘That’s an over-reaction, Jess,’ he said and came back to sit on the edge of the bed again. ‘The surveillance wasn’t because there was anything bad about you. Or about me, I imagine, it was just ….’ He shrugged. ‘They wanted to know more about me and mine before they approached me, as I understand it. That was all!’
‘I don’t think that’s true, Ben,’ she said levelly. ‘Is it? Why else should he have said I could come and live with you in the new house they’re offering, if they didn’t know? Or at least suspect? You said that was what he offered, didn’t you?’
Ben dropped his head and gazed at her for a moment and then said, ‘Yes. That’s what he said. I … oh, hell, I wasn’t trying to deceive you, Jess, I just wanted to … he’s only guessing, after all. He can’t know anything about us, but it seems a reasonable guess, after all. I went and had that fight with Peter, and ….’
‘I suppose so,’ she said wearily, and closed her eyes. ‘I’m being childish and ridiculous, I dare say. As if it matters anyway. I’m divorcing Peter and everyone’ll know about that soon enough. And then the gossip’ll really get going here. I dare say the nurses on this ward have done their share of it already. There can’t be many people around the place now who don’t know I was raped. Christ, but I’ve got to get away from here! I can’t stay to be looked at by everyone, have them thinking ….’ She began to shiver and couldn’t stop, and he set his hands on each of her shoulders and held on, saying nothing, and slowly the shivering subsided, and he let go and stood up again and went to lean against the window with his back to the light, so that his face was shadowed.
‘You’re definitely divorcing Peter?’ he said after a while.
‘Are you surprised?’
‘No. No, I’m glad. You don’t deserve to put up with a man like him.’
‘I did it for twenty years,’ she said. ‘So he can’t be all bad. Don’t try to make him worse than he is, Ben. I couldn’t cope with that.’
‘It isn’t possible to make him worse than he is.’
‘I lived with him for twenty years,’ she said again. ‘Remember that, and don’t … just remember that.’
There was a long silence and then he said, ‘All right. No talk of the past. Only of the future. Shall we do it then, Jess? Take this job?’
‘We?’
‘I told you … they want you to come too. He … Franey seemed to think it would be a good idea. Having my own assistant, someone in sympathy with what I was doing, someone I could trust and rely on, he said. I agree with him.’
Again there was a silence and then she said, ‘I’m not sure I would be in sympathy, Ben. I don’t think you could rely on me in the same way any more.’
He frowned. ‘Not in … but you’ve worked with me on Contravert for a long time, Jess! Now, when I’m given the chance to really get it right, all the time and the money and the resources I need – how can you lose interest now?’
‘I didn’t say I’d lost interest. I said I wasn’t sure I’d be in sympathy with the new job. The work and the job – they’re two separate things, aren’t they? I can’t see myself in a Ministry of Defence set-up.’
‘The politics worry you?’
‘Of course. Don’t they worry you?’
He took a deep breath and then said, ‘I don’t know. There, I’ve said it. I don’t bloody well know. I’ve been thinking about nothing else for the past three days, ever since he talked to me, but I have to tell you I just don’t know what to think any more. All I can visualize is a decent laboratory and plenty of staff and enough animals and the chance to do proper trials, access to a really good computer, all that. I can’t think of much more than that either. And I don’t see why I should, damn it!’
He moved away from the window and began to prowl around the small room, and she lay against her pillows and let her eyes follow him as he went from one side to the other.
‘What bloody affair is it of mine why I’m being given the chance to do the work? Isn’t it the work that matters? What’d the difference be, anyway? Suppose I went on as I am, and managed to get Contravert right, and properly tested, working the way I already do – it’ll take years, no doubt – but eventually, suppose I manage it? Then won’t these Division Seventeen people take it up anyway? How could I prevent them? And what would I do when the research was complete, anyway? Sell it to a pharmaceutical company? That’d be really moral, wouldn’t it? And if I didn’t, how would the stuff be distributed to people who need it? And wouldn’t they sell it to the highest bidder, anyway, and couldn’t that be another country, rather than this one? As I see it, it doesn’t make much odds what I do. As long as the research goes on and the stuffs made available, then the way I do it and where I do it are really immaterial.’
‘If it goes on,’ Jess said after a moment, and he turned and looked at her miserably.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I thought about that too.’
‘What conclusion did you come to?’
‘I didn’t. I’ve been trying ….’ He shook his head. ‘And there are a lot of questions to be asked here, too. Suppose I did say – this is dangerous knowledge, I mustn’t do anything more to gain it, I’ve got to bury it, pretend I never thought of it; do you really think that’d make any difference? I’ve started, and the idea’s been put into people’s heads. Franey’s head. If I refuse to go on, won’t he find other researchers, point them in the direction I was going in, start them off? For all I know he already has, and there are people beavering away on my work, and they’ll get there before I do if I don’t accept the invitation I’ve been given ….’ He went a sudden dusky red. ‘And I know that oughtn’t to matter, but it does, it bloody well does. I never thought of myself as particularly ambitious, Jess. I used to despise the people I knew who were, thought them … oh, I don’t know, stupid and rather childish. Wanting to build the highest dungheap and jump on it and shriek, “Look at me, look at me!” I thought they were greedy, too, did it just for money, all that wanting and striving but … it isn’t like that, is it? It’s a different sort of wanting and I’m full of it now, that same need. And it’s not to do with wanting to be looked at or wanting money, it’s a different thing entirely. I just couldn’t bear to see someone else get Contravert right before I do, that’s the thing. It’s my stuff, mine, and I want it to stay that way. So when I think of abandoning the work altogether I feel sick. I don’t think I cou
ld.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Jess said after a moment, and he turned and looked at her and made a small face.
‘Apologizing, Jess? What for? For having a mind of your own?’
‘No. Commiserating. It’s a hell of a dilemma to be in.’
‘The doctor’s dilemma,’ he said and laughed, a short sharp bark of a sound. ‘Bloody cliche isn’t it? All living’s a cliche, I think, sometimes. I keep finding myself in situations that feel like stories. Not real at all.’
‘It’s real,’ she said. ‘That’s why the stories. They come after the reality – they don’t create it. Ben, please, can you wait for me to think some more? About whether to come with you or not? If you really want me, that is, after what I said. I mean I do have … difficulties about the politics of it, but the things you’ve said – they make sense. I need time to think more.’
‘Really want you? Are you mad?’ And he smiled so warmly that her eyes filled with tears and she couldn’t look at him. ‘Don’t be a bloody fool. Of course I do.’
‘What about June?’
‘I … that’s another issue. I haven’t thought about that. She might not want to come. Not without Timmy. And I can’t see Liz letting him come north to be with June so … it might resolve itself.’
‘Story time again?’ Jess said. ‘I don’t think it’ll be as easy as that, Ben. I think you’ll have to make a decision.’
‘I know!’ he said, and there was a controlled violence in his voice now. ‘I know. But there’s a limit to what I can cope with at any one time. Let me get my head clear about work, first. And as far as the work’s concerned – if I do go, and I’m still thinking about it, I want you to come too. To work with me. I can say that much, can’t I? Without compromising your Calvinist conscience any more than it already is?’
She sat and thought, looking down at her fingers interlaced on the sheet in front of her, and then she nodded. ‘Yes, you can say that. I need time to think too, though, remember that. And I have to sort out the business of my divorce ….’
The Virus Man Page 34
