Nest of Worlds (14 page)

The closed-circuit television at the institute showed old films with all dead actors. They ran a lot of Lola Low and Maslynnaya. Gavein didn’t care for it.

The physical exam showed that he was a healthy man of thirty-five with the beginnings of rheumatism, was slightly anemic, and had two bad teeth. He was spreading no mysterious contagion in the form of bacillus or virus. He was permitted to take off the uncomfortable plastic suit, and his bad teeth were fixed at the cost of the Davabel taxpayer, over three excruciating visits to the dentist.

Saalstein informed him that Marius Balakian, the physician heading the research team, had suffered a fatal heart attack. The chief had been a highly secretive man. The monitors showed a picture of Balakian: bald, overweight. The first casualty at the DS after Gavein’s arrival.

There was a change in the way people treated Gavein. It was hard to pin down but palpable. The bacteriological tests all completed, exploratory surgery was suggested next, but Gavein balked at that. He agreed instead to a series of x-rays.

Nurse Winslow, old, enormous, with a jutting jaw, mixed a white powder in a small amount of saline solution, while Chechug, the radiologist, fussed with the scanner. Gavein waited for them to hook him up to the IV. Doctor Hepditch, Balakian’s successor, supervised.

“You’ll be able to see my veins, with this?”

“Please confine your comments,” said Winslow, “to what you are experiencing in the course of the procedure.”

“It’s cold here. There’s a draft coming from under the door.”

Winslow began filling the syringe.

“In my rear?” asked Gavein. He was in good humor.

“It can be in your rear,” muttered the nurse.

Chechug was preparing the plates as Winslow took the IV bottle and injected the white fluid into it.

“Aren’t those plates for tomography?”

Both Winslow and Chechug started.

“That’s right. They’re used with dye,” said the technician.

“In that case you need my permission, don’t you? Because there is risk involved in taking that kind of picture.”

Winslow dropped the little bottle with the prepared fluid. It shattered on the floor. Chechug turned abruptly to see what had happened, and the sleeve of his lab coat knocked over another bottle.

Gavein couldn’t help laughing.

“Shit,” said Chechug. “I spilled the rubbing alcohol.”

Winslow looked at Dr. Hepditch without a word, waiting for her to say something. There was the characteristic smell of alcohol.

“Nurse, take another bottle of the saline solution and prepare another dye,” said the doctor coldly. “And have the orderly come in and clean up this mess you’ve made.”

“But—”

“The bottle on the second shelf from the top.” Dr. Hepditch said, making a note on her clipboard.

Winslow took another bottle and started over. Chechug was fiddling with the x-ray machine’s transformer. The alcohol stank.

“You aren’t afraid they’ll think we’ve been drinking?” Gavein said to the doctor. Being the principal here, he could take the liberty of joking.

“You’re right,” agreed Hepditch, opening a window. “But it will be colder now.”

Chechug swore again. “The blasted transformer is out. I’ll call maintenance. It’s probably from the quake we had.”

That morning, one could definitely feel it. Even the lamps shook. Earthquakes were common only in Ayrrah.

“What now? We go back?” Gavein wasn’t eager to have that big needle embedded in a vein in his thigh.

“I suppose . . . ,” said Hepditch, hesitating. “We’ll start again tomorrow, at twelve. The other room will have to be made ready.”

“The DS isn’t doing so well, is it?”

Gavein’s remark drew no response.

They wheeled him down the corridors on a hospital gurney, per regulations. He would have preferred to walk, but they said no. Winslow pushed this time.

Sixty-three people had died in the last twenty-four hours. In forty-eight cases, Medved’s group established a clear link to Gavein; in the others, the link was unclear, the facts unavailable. Until evening, idiotic sitcoms were shown.

Winslow came to give Gavein an injection for his radio tomography. It turned out that the schedule had been changed; the x-raying was moved to later, because the MRI would be done on him early the next morning.

She handed him a bunch of pills he had to swallow first. Because he grimaced at her as he swallowed, the last pills stuck in his throat, and he choked. He strained and wheezed, while Winslow stood by, seemingly not knowing what to do. Then he remembered an old trick: he put his hands on the floor near a wall and kicked up to stand on them, his feet resting on the wall. He coughed out the obstruction: two colored tablets, their coating half dissolved. He got to his feet, red in the face and covered with sweat.

“Bad to choke like that,” said the nurse. “Every year, a number of people die from choking.”

“You can’t be serious,” he said with a sour smile. “People actually died before I got here?”

Winslow prepared the injection, a cloudy brown fluid in a vial with a cork. Gavein wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of this dark stuff entering his bloodstream. Winslow inserted the needle through the cork and, holding it to the light, carefully drew the fluid into the syringe. She squirted a few drops from the needle.

Suddenly the building shook. The vibration was so strong that some plaster crumbled from the ceiling. Losing her balance, Winslow put her hand on the glass table for support. The table, though on wheels, didn’t roll away under her considerable weight; it tipped. From its surface slid beakers, stirring rods, spatulas, test tubes, syringes. Unable to control her fall, Winslow stuck herself with the needle she was holding and in addition pressed the plunger.

“Now they can give you an MRI,” Gavein joked, helping her up.

The second shock wave was stronger than the first. Again a rain of plaster fell. Gavein found himself on the floor beside the nurse.

“This, too, is my doing,” he said with a grin.

Winslow waved away his humor. Their dislike was mutual; it wasn’t time yet for them to call a truce.

The quake evidently bothered her less than the fact that she had injected herself. She looked at the spot of the puncture.

“It all went in . . . all that shit went in,” she muttered.

“You got a bubble? I don’t know about these things, but I would think you’d feel it.”

“Damn. Oh damn. You wait here. Dr. Barth!” she yelled into the hallway.

A name Gavein didn’t know. Through a window he watched the frantic activity of DS personnel trying to repair the damage from the seismic shocks. Some were in white lab coats, some in the green of military uniforms, and some in the gray coveralls of workers. They swarmed around a small bunker in the courtyard. In the distance gleamed the dome of the energy plant that powered the DS complex, and beyond that, on a gray horizon, were the buildings of Davabel.

The last shocks had opened a crack that was several meters deep and about two meters wide. It went across the whole complex. In its path, one building had collapsed, the telephone center. The difference in height between the two sides of the crack was about a meter. The other buildings were not touched, but the underground plumbing and power lines had been broken. When the emergency power came on, there was light again in the night. All the experiments were halted. Instead of meals, dry rations and juice in cartons were distributed.

The television news service reported that the epicenter lay exactly underneath the Division of Science. The land toward the sea had sunk a meter, but another commentator said that Davabel was rising. (Ezzir related, with a chuckle, that his colleagues all feared that the division complex would be swept away by a raging sea at the command of David Death.) Another expert on the screen explained that the boundary between the tectonic plates of Davabel and Ayrrah lay exactly in this location. But this was conjecture only; no one knew the geology of the region that well. Only in Ayrrah had anything resembling a science of seismology been developed. The decision was made to consult the experts of that Land, but such consulting would take time, because although questions were sent to Ayrrah directly by plane, the answers to them could come only by way of Llanaig and Lavath.

Gavein received the recording of the next phone call to Ra Mahleiné. He listened as she gave an account of her daily aggravations and worries, but something seemed wrong. He tried not to respond emotionally to her voice but, instead, to follow only the sense of what she said. When he did this, it was obvious. He had heard these sentences before: they had been taken from previous tapes. He noticed now the subtle differences in tone among the different recordings.

He trembled with anxiety. Debating quickly what to do, he came to a decision. He pushed the alarm and jammed the button with a matchstick. He sat back on the bed and planned his strategy.

Aurelia, the nurse on duty, was the first to come running. She was young, thin-lipped, skinny.

“Please stand by the window and wait,” he told her in a voice of authority. He didn’t want them to confer before they spoke to him.

A little later, Saalstein ran in, his lab coat flapping.

“I’ll explain in a moment,” Gavein said. “Please wait over there,” he added, pointing. “And button up your coat.”

Two more came running: a young physician he didn’t know, wearing glasses and with a pinched rodent face, and Nurse Nylund, the only white nurse he had seen so far at the DS. Slender and tall, she had white eyebrows, pink skin, and a hundred freckles.

Pinched Mouth started to say something, but Gavein silenced him with a gesture.

“I’ll explain in a moment. Where is Dr. Ezzir?”

“He got a cold. Tomorrow his leave is up,” said Saalstein. “Are you—?” he began, but Gavein interrupted.

“Will one of you please explain the telephone tape cassettes to me, or must I call Siskin or Thompson?”

“What cassettes? I don’t understand,” said the physician.

“And you are?”

“Dr. Barth.”

“The last telephone recording of my wife, Dr. Barth, was a fabrication. I want to hear the actual recording. Do you have authorization to make that happen, or do I need to talk with your superiors? But perhaps someone else will come.”

Gavein felt that he had hit a nerve.

Dr. Barth began to stammer.

“No point,” Saalstein said to him. “We should tell him the truth.”

Pinched Mouth underwent a transformation, as if touched by a wand. He turned very red. “If you insist, Saalstein. But it’s on your head. “

The last statement was absurd. Gavein was surprised that the DS had put such a nonentity in charge.

“The first thing I want to know,” he said, turning to Saalstein, ignoring Dr. Barth, “is if Ra Mahleiné is still alive.”

“She is.”

Gavein heaved a sigh of relief.

“Is she all right?”

“She’s no sicker than she was before. Dr. Nott is taking care of her. That’s not what this is about.”

“Good. What is this about?”

“A crime was committed. Zef Eisler and Laila Hougassian are dead.”

“They . . . ? Even they.”

“You wanted the truth. Around the Eisler house is an abandoned area cordoned off by the military. But no one was forced to evacuate, and a few stayed on. Zef and Laila must have gone out. They were found on the sidewalk. Zef had been stabbed about twenty times with a knife. Laila was gang-raped, then drowned in a bucket. They had taped her mouth shut and pulled off most of the bandages. The methods used suggest that the murderers knew the Significant Names of their victims. Now you know what Medved’s people know, because he’s on the case. Your wife’s recordings were faked so that you would have no contact with the outside. Some think that the murders were triggered by the telephone recording in which Ra Mahleiné mentioned the victims. That focusing your mind on them increased the probability of their death.”

“That’s ridiculous. I think of many people, all the time. Saalstein, I’ve just come to a decision: I agree to that operation. You people can cut me open and have a look inside, on the condition that the operation concludes my stay at the DS. I doubt you’ll find anything, but I want to get home.”

“I’ll notify Dr. Siskin immediately,” said Dr. Barth, officially accepting Gavein’s offer. “He’ll be most pleased.”

Saalstein looked at the man with disgust.

“The nurses may leave,” said Dr. Barth. The man had regained his confidence. “We don’t need them.”

We don’t need you, Gavein thought.

“One more condition,” he said to Dr. Barth.

He had the physician’s full attention.

“I must speak personally with my wife. Without that, no operation.”

“That won’t be possible,” said Saalstein. “Her last statement, recorded earlier, has become important evidence in the investigation. It was your Magda who found the bodies on her outing. Miss de Grouvert was pushing her.”

Curious, Gavein thought. Lorraine is the one who usually pushes her.

“I insist on speaking with my wife. The conversation will only supply you with more evidence for your investigation.”

That same day he was informed that both Thompson and Boggs agreed to his terms. The conversation would be monitored and could be broken off at any moment by the police censor listening in.

In the evening there was a series of weak aftershocks. The main buildings of the DS had been erected like concrete cages, so they rode the quakes well. More plaster crumbled down, that was all. The smaller structures were propped by wooden beams.

Gavein’s phone call took place the following day. The quality of the sound was good enough for him to recognize her voice. Both had been warned to avoid certain subjects.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“I hardly ever get up from the armchair. Anabel helps when I wash. I’ve been nicer to her.”

“And the operation?”

“The preparation for it is dragging out. Dr. Nott sends different powders. I take everything. I miss you. Lorraine wanted to borrow
Nest of
Worlds
, but I said no, because you told me you planned to read it through when you got back.”

“So Dr. Nott hasn’t actually scheduled the operation?”

“Things have changed. They’re giving me medicine for my nerves, after what happened to Zef and Laila. It was horrible to look at . . . like a butcher’s shop . . .”

Ra Mahleiné was cut off.