Thrice upon a Time (28 page)

Behind them the restaurant manager appeared, attracted by the rising voices and the flare of the plastic coating on the outside of the cartridge. Heads began turning to look in their direction from the surrounding booths and tables. The manager hovered uncertainly, as if hoping that his presence might be sufficient to calm things down.

Murdoch turned his head to look up over the back of the booth. "Could you get these two bums away from our table? We don't know who they are, they're bothering us, and all we want to do is have a meal. Otherwise call the police."

The manager moved nearer reluctantly and looked from Gowling to Squires. "I'm sorry, but if you two gentlemen wouldn't mind returning to—" he began, but a sudden gasp from Anne interrupted him.

"Murdoch! Look… "

Murdoch jerked his head around to find Anne staring with horrified eyes at where Lee was sitting. He turned fully to follow her gaze. At the same instant the vague thought flitted through his mind that Lee, in a way that was completely out of character, had not been reacting to the hostile exchange at all.

Lee seemed to be unaware of anything around him. He was clutching a glass of water with his arm half raised above the table. His arm was convulsing in short, irregular spasms from the elbow, causing water to spill onto the tablecloth; Lee was staring at it with a stupefied expression, as if it had suddenly acquired a will of its own and was defying his attempts to bring it under control. His jaw tightened visibly as he made a concentrated effort. The glass shattered on the table, and his fingers went limp among the pieces. A trickle of blood ran out from under his hand and began soaking into the white cloth.

"Lee, what is it?" Murdoch said, alarmed. Lee remained staring blankly in front of him. Anne waved her hand to and fro in front of his eyes. They didn't blink.

"I don't think he can see anything," she whispered, and then more loudly, "Lee… Lee, can you hear me?" No response. Murdoch stared aghast, not knowing quite what to do.

"He's sick," Anne said in a worried voice. "Very sick. We have to get him to hospital." She looked up at the manager, who was about to say something. "I'm a doctor. Can we get him out of the restaurant and have an ambulance here as quickly as possible, please? Also I need to use a phone."

"There's an armchair in my office," the manager replied. He turned to one of the waitresses who had appeared behind him. "Peggy, ask Mrs. Graham to call for an ambulance right away, would you. When she gets through, she's to put the call through to my office. Ask her to tell them that we have a doctor on the premises who will be able to give them whatever information they need. Hurry along now."

Anne got up to leave the booth. Gowling, now suddenly subdued, heaved himself out and stood back to make room while Squires got up to get out of Murdoch's way.

Anne lifted Lee's hand gently from the broken glass and swathed it in a napkin. As she did so, his arm began twitching uncontrollably again, and he mumbled fragments of words that made no sense. "You'll have to give me a hand," she said, glancing at Murdoch and the manager. "He'll probably need supporting. I think his balance will be affected too."

Between them they half led and half carried Lee from the restaurant while the shocked silence that had descended slowly gave way to a normal level of noise as people resumed eating and talking. In the office they sat Lee back in the armchair, and Anne loosened his shirt collar and belt. Then she produced a small, black leather wallet from somewhere inside her pocketbook.

She took a plastic packet from the wallet and unsealed it to expose a thin adhesive disk with a blob of what looked like yellow gelatin at its center, protected by a translucent film. She peeled the film away and placed the disk firmly over an artery on the side of Lee's neck. As the drug penetrated his skin and entered the bloodstream, the convulsions in his limbs died away, and his body fell limp. Anne felt inside his jacket and passed his wallet to Murdoch.

"See if you can find his social security number," she said. "They'll need it to access his records in the U.S. Health Department databank."

"Is there anything I can do?" the manager asked.

"If you could get somebody to bring in some clean water for that hand, it would help," Anne said, moving an upright chair underneath Lee's feet. "Also we'll need an area cleared in the car park for the ambulance to land."

"I'll see to it right away," the manager said, and left the office.

Anne produced a penlamp from her pocketbook and lifted each of Lee's eyelids in turn to examine the pupils. She tested his pulse at the temple, and then lifted one of his arms to feel for stiffness in the elbow, hand, and fingers. Just as she was finishing this, the call-tone sounded from the vi-set on the desk behind her. It was a gray-haired woman, presumably the one the manager had referred to as Mrs. Graham.

"I have the Emergency Unit at Inverness Hospital on the line," the woman said.

"Thank you," Anne acknowledged. "And would you try another call for me? I'd like you to call the Royal Infirmary at Glasgow, if you would. Ask to be put through to a Dr. Fisher in Intensive Care Special Isolation. If he's not available tonight, then I'll talk to whoever is on duty there."

"I'll put the call through as soon as I get them," Mrs. Graham said, and vanished. A second later she had been replaced by a young woman wearing a white coat, who announced that she was speaking from the Emergency Unit.

"Hello," Anne said to her. "My name is Patterson, Dr. Patterson. I'm at the Clansman Restaurant at Tomatin on the Kingussie road south from Inverness. We need an ambulance here right away."

"Very good," the woman replied. "Can you give me some information?"

"A man has collapsed here and needs hospital treatment immediately. I've administered a diffusive tranquilizer. This is important: He must be taken to the Special Isolation section of the Intensive Care Unit at Glasgow Royal. They are familiar with this kind of case there." Murdoch stared at Anne in horror as he listened. She went on, "The patient is a United States citizen by the name of… " She took the papers that Murdoch was proffering numbly and scanned them. "Lee Francis Walker; last residing at 236 Bayview Towers, San Francisco; social security number 101-58-1453."

"His records to be beamed through to Glasgow?" the woman inquired.

"Yes, please. And could you arrange for the ambulance to bring a supply of Sotisone 5 and Formactinin. We're clearing a landing area here, and we'll have a car transmitting on Emergency Band for the ambulance to home on."

"Very good, Dr. Patterson. They'll be leaving immediately."

"Thank you." Anne cut the call and turned to Murdoch, who was still watching speechlessly. Her face was grave. "Has he been drowsy for the last day or two?" she asked. "Lack of energy, sleeping a lot… temporary blurrings of vision?"

"Yes… he has," Murdoch mumbled. "I thought he'd been working too hard."

"Fits of giddiness? Difficulty in coordinating movements?"

"He never mentioned anything like that, but then he isn't the kind of guy who would." He swallowed hard. "You've seen this before, haven't you? It's the same thing you've been getting at the plant."

Before Anne could reply, the call-tone sounded again. This time the call was put straight through, and showed a swarthy, gray-bearded man dressed in what looked like a surgical smock. "Dr. Patterson," he said at once. "Surely you're not still working at this time on a Friday."

"Hello, Dr. Ellis. No, I'm not, but we have an emergency that I'm arranging to be sent straight to you. His name is Lee Walker. You'll be getting all the details soon via computer from Inverness. An ambulance is on its way here to collect him."

Ellis's expression became more serious. "How positive is it?" he asked. "Has voluntary motor deterioration set in yet?"

"Possibly incipient. The diagnosis is tentative at this stage, but I don't want to take any chances. Listlessness and lethargy for the last two days, temporary visual disturbances, and suspected giddiness. Right now we have complete loss of vision, extreme dilation of pupils, and no stimulus responses; involuntary contractions of right arm and partial loss of control of lower limbs; pulse fifty-four; skin cold and moist; stiffening of hands and arms under sedation."

Ellis listened and nodded his head slowly.

"It could be another one, right enough," he said. "Very well. I'll have them prepare for reception right away."

It was one-thirty in the morning when Murdoch and Anne came out of a side door of the Glasgow Royal Infirmary and trudged across the almost empty parking lot to his car. A wind was beginning to blow from the west, and it was just starting to rain. Anne had flown to Glasgow with Lee in the ambulance; Murdoch had driven, leaving Anne's car at the restaurant in Tomatin to be collected later.

In the Intensive Care Unit of the Infirmary, Ellis had confirmed Anne's suspicions and admitted Lee to the Special Isolation section, where the other cases from Burghead were interned. Ellis had also mentioned to them in confidence that the most recent reports from London had revealed a flood of identical cases appearing in many parts of the world, but especially in the West Coast region of the United States. The victims were from all walks of life, and it seemed safe to conclude that whatever the cause of the sickness was, it had nothing to do with working around fusion reactors. If anything, the common link seemed to be that all of the victims had been in the western United States around eight months previously; Lee, for example, had been living there, and the eight from Burghead had all been members of a party that had spent some time in California in early September as part of an exchange program of European and American fusion scientists. From what had been learned so far from the earlier cases, Lee's condition could be expected to deteriorate rapidly toward total disruption of the central nervous system. To date there had been no fatalities, but all the signs pointed inevitably in that direction, probably within several weeks. As far as Ellis knew, the cause had still not been identified, and no cure was even remotely in sight. There was nothing more that anybody could do.

Murdoch was still shaky from the shock when he climbed into the car next to Anne and closed the door. He sat for a long time, staring out at the streetlamps through the streaky patterns of rain and dust on the windshield. The occasional lights from traffic passing by outside the Infirmary grounds added to the bleakness and emptiness of the scene. And the emptiness of Storbannon would be even worse to return to. Tonight of all nights, he didn't want to be alone. Even as he thought it, he felt Anne's hand close around his in the darkness of the car. He turned his head and saw that she was watching him.

"We can pick my car up tomorrow," she whispered simply. Murdoch barely nodded by way of reply. There was no need to say anything.

They arrived at Storbannon, tired and exhausted, in the early hours of the morning. Despite the events that had taken place that night, one thing couldn't be allowed to wait. When they walked in, Murdoch told Anne that there was something of crucial importance that he would have to check in the lab.

"You look as if you could do with a strong coffee," Anne said as they hung their coats on the pegs inside the main entrance. "Would you like me to make some?"

"Good idea," Murdoch told her. "Black with plenty of sugar."

"You go on down to the lab. I'll bring it when it's ready." Anne disappeared in the direction of the kitchen, and Murdoch hurried downstairs.

As he switched on the lights in the lab, a sleepy-eyed Maxwell detached himself from the shadows in the doorway and followed him in. "Getting lonely, huh, little fella?" Murdoch grunted as he sat down at the datagrid terminal to access the results file of the analysis. Maxwell rubbed himself against Murdoch's ankle and began purring. Murdoch smiled faintly and turned his eyes away as the screen in front of him filled with mathematical expressions. He scanned down them, and then pulled over a pile of hardcopy that Charles and he had used earlier to set up the equations. He began following through the sheets to interpret the results being presented on the screen.

How does a man feel when he finds the end of the world staring him in the face?

Murdoch just stared numbly at the screen, unable to think, unable to move, unable to feel anything. But for him the shock was not total; he had been half prepared for it all along.

The black holes were not going to evaporate.

The loss of energy through tau radiation would sustain them until they became permanent. Then they would grow. As they lost orbital momentum, they would spiral toward the Earth's core, eventually coalescing into larger black holes… which would continue to draw in matter and grow even faster. There was insufficient information to determine exactly how quickly the process would accelerate or how long it would go on—maybe months, years, tens of years, or perhaps even longer—but the final result at the end of it would be inevitable:

Eventually they would consume the whole planet.

It was unstoppable, and irreversible. There was no other way it could end.