Marek Huberath - Nest of Worlds

“I have a phone call to make, then we can go.”

“I’m afraid there isn’t time.”

The soldiers standing by the door both took a step forward.

“I’m a prisoner?” Gavein asked, turning to Medved. “This you didn’t tell me.”

“Make your call,” said Senator Boggs. “Of course you are not a prisoner. We are simply in a great hurry, since this matter is so grave.”

Gavein nodded and picked up the phone. He told Dr. Nott that he was leaving to be tested.

“I will be in contact with your wife,” the doctor assured him. “She is weak now but will regain her strength before the operation. Do not worry.”

Gavein hung up. “I am free now. May my wife accompany me?” he asked.

“Unfortunately, no,” said Siskin. “The testing facility is off-limits. A military installation, you understand.”

Gavein had expected this answer, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.

“I’ll be gone for how long?” he asked.

“Six, seven days,” said Boggs. “I give you my personal word it will not be longer.”

“Then let’s go. And may the seven days pass as quickly as possible.”

Gavein started for one of the cars, but it turned out that he had been assigned a place in the ambulance. Inside were two men wearing helmets and airtight plastic suits. They wanted him to lie on the stretcher, but he preferred to sit. That way he could look out the window as the ambulance drove, its siren on. The two medics began to take readings. As if performing a rite of magic, they ran a sensor over his body.

“Radiation normal. No higher than background.”

The other confirmed it.

On the empty streets Gavein saw burned cars, broken windows, litter. The convoy passed a military cordon.

“It would be better if you lay down now,” said one of the scientist-medics. “There could be rocks thrown.”

In the distance was a mob.

“Why are they doing that?” Gavein asked, taking his place on the thick foam rubber.

“The infection spreads. People want to fight the germ. Even people you saw only on television, glimpsed accidentally out of the corner of your eye, are now dying. If it’s not known whose fate is sealed, then naturally everyone wants to remove the cause.”

“And you two, why do you wear masks?”

“We’re volunteers. They tell us to put on masks, so we put on masks, but it makes no difference, does it?”

“I wouldn’t think so.”

A couple of stones thumped against the side of the ambulance. The convoy accelerated. More sirens went on. A couple of tear-gas canisters were fired at the crowd.

“At least they’re not shooting,” said one of the medics.

“Not shooting yet, Yull. Who knows when they’ll start?”

“They will be prosecuted if they use weapons. That will make them think first.”

“For now.”

The crowd dispersed, and then there was hardly anybody out. The convoy sped down streets that seemed normal.

“Mr. Death,” said Yull, nudging Gavein with an elbow. “You can sit up now. We’re out of it.”

Gavein looked around. Once in a while they passed rows of the curious standing along police barriers. No one threw anything at the convoy. Some turned their backs at the last moment or hid their faces.

They pay me tribute, thought Gavein, as if I were a head of state. Which is no surprise. How else does one welcome Death?

“The madness was only in Central Davabel,” said the other scientist, Omar. “A lot of people settled private scores behind the pretext of dealing with David Death.”

“How is the country managing?” Gavein asked.

“A depopulated Central Davabel is now surrounded by a cordon of soldiers. It’s a tight line, but here and there desperate people break through. Soldiers too have lost members of their families. Sometimes they look the other way. Hence that band of attackers.”

“What do the attackers want?” Gavein asked, thinking of his wife.

“To kill you,” Yull answered simply. “In my opinion, it’s not possible. One proof of which was that crack-up on the street in front of your house. The cordon is really to protect people from their own stupidity.”

“I’m concerned about my wife. Let it be broadcast, now, on television, that I’m being taken to the Division of Science.”

“Okay. I’ll see to that.”

“What’s on the other side of the cordon?”

“We are. Normal life continues, to a degree. Normal, if not for these deaths. Each one accidental, explainable, and invariably in accordance with the Significant Name of the victim. But invariably, also, with your assistance…”

“If the deaths are accidental and explainable, then why this panic?”

“Because so many are dying. Quite aside from the connecting factor, this is an epidemic.”

“An epidemic?”

“Absolutely. There are so many more deaths than before the correlation—that’s you—was introduced. A difference of maybe twenty percent.”

The convoy rushed on, its sirens off now, only the colored lights flashing.

“What are you measuring with that sensor?”

“Radiation from you. It’s background level. That is, not a factor. We’ll find something eventually, I think. Everything has a cause.”

“The cause may not be logical,” said Omar. “It may be pure coincidence. Though the chance of that is infinitesimally small. And yet an event, no matter how improbable, must take place eventually if one waits long enough.”

“I don’t believe in miracles of probability,” said Yull dismissively.

The ride, at full speed, went on for hours. They tore through streets that the police had closed off to traffic.

Later, there were no lines of spectators. An occasional pedestrian looked with indifference at the vehicles rushing past. Life went on as usual here. No one connected the convoy with the news on television.

Suddenly they had left all the buildings behind—unheard of in Davabel, where urban sprawl covered the continent, except for the airports. Ayrrah was similarly populated. Empty stretches could be found in Lavath, to the north—eternal ice covered the land there—and also in the southern reaches of Llanaig, where the intense sun had turned the land into desert.

The empty stretch here was the result of the leveling of houses. Bulldozers had gone at them wholesale.

In the distance rose the mighty complex of the Division of Science.

They stopped at a barbed-wire checkpoint. Soldiers peered curiously into the ambulance.

Why are the idiots staring? thought Gavein. If I really am Death, they’re dead.”

Passing the checkpoint, the convoy made for the buildings.

“All this demolition, it’s in my honor?”

“That too,” muttered Yull. “A lot of effort has gone into this. The DS was given a bundle of money.”

“Who’s in charge?”

“Boggs is the head, but Siskin’s running things, since the plan is his.”

“Plan?”

“There were several proposed. His was chosen. But others are being kept in reserve, in case his fails.”

“This is all very flattering.”

Omar asked Gavein to get into a plastic suit similar to theirs. He was supposed to inhale through a filter, exhale into a tank. The thin material didn’t hinder conversation. After the cars pulled up to the institute, the ambulance interior was sprayed with a strong disinfectant.

“What’s this for?”

“Siskin’s plan tries to leave nothing out. We’re fairly sure there’s no bacillus involved, but why take a chance?”

The sterilization didn’t take long. The ambulance door was opened by people in similar suits, and Gavein was escorted through a membrane tunnel to the building.

He was taken to a specially equipped section of the institute’s hospital for infectious diseases. Everyone he met was covered with plastic. He was asked not to remove his suit until the results of the bacteriological tests were in. Even the toilet was designed hermetically: the suit attached to the seat, and his behind was automatically washed with a stream of water, then dried with a stream of hot air. The unit packaged the excrement as if it were a treasure. The same with his urine and spit. Gavein did not meet the brains of the project, did not even see them on a screen. The specific tests were conducted by biologist Yull Saalstein and physicist Omar Ezzir.