Regeneration (10 page)

By the time she turned around, he was gone.

The TideFair was barely over before the first reports began to come in.

Gabriel knew that something was amiss the next morning when half the people who showed up to work at the Thames Tidal office were shivering and coughing and complaining of a strange, itchy ache in their lungs and gill tissue. Pilan, himself wrapped in a thick sweater and scowling with the effort to appear healthy, ordered them all to go home before they spread whatever it was even further, but by the afternoon many were arriving at the local hospital, aching and bewildered. By evening more than twenty gillungs had been admitted.

The onstream reaction was predictable, but Gabriel had half a day's head start. His monitor apps flagged the first, slightly quizzical socialstream posts commenting on the unusual phenomenon of gillungs seeking medical treatment. Those posts were quickly consolidated by newstream aggregators, and journalists began to file their own stories. By then he and Lapsa had conferred with Thames Tidal's publicity service and with the hospital, and were ready with a statement. It confirmed that company members were among a number of gillungs who had suddenly fallen ill, and that the health services
were working to establish the precise nature of the ailment. Those affected were in a serious but stable condition. Anyone with similar flu-like symptoms was urged to seek medical attention, especially if they had been at the TideFair.

“Did it have to say that?” Agwé asked, sitting beside him in the big TTP project offices, watching as the reactions scrolled past. “It makes it look like we think whatever it is started here.”

“We don't know it didn't, Ag. The TideFair is one thing everyone who's sick has in common—maybe we had an infected visitor wandering around, coughing on people.” He shrugged. “There's no point putting out a Thames Tidal press release if we're going to pretend it doesn't have anything to do with us.”

“I don't remember anyone coughing on anyone. I don't remember any coughing at all. And if that's what happened, why aren't any norms ill?” Agwé looked at him accusingly. “We're not supposed to be the ones who get sick.”

Gabriel made a face at her. She said, “Sorry, I didn't mean it like that.”

“I know, but do me a favor and don't say it like that onstream, okay? That's why they're getting so worked up.” He flapped his hand at the screen. “If there's some bug that can make even gillungs ill, what'll it do to the rest of us?”

“Probably nothing, seeing it's just us who
are
ill.”

“So far, Ag. So far.”

That fear was the focus of much of the stream commentary: there was sympathy for the sick and worry over what the sudden shortage of staff might mean for the power plant, but also bile from a vocal few who could barely contain their glee at the discovery of a weakness in the upstart water-breathers. Lacking concrete answers and cautious about trying to spin the story without them, Gabriel felt powerless to do much more than monitor the tide of opinion, which built as the day wound down, the news spread, and the numbers in the hospital increased. Vidcam crews gathered expectantly outside the Thames Tidal airlock, in the same spot where they had, the day before, assembled in the morning sunshine to salute the company's ingenuity and ambition. This time they were bathed in artificial light and a palpable air of schadenfreude.

Gabriel groaned and dropped his head into his hands.

“What's the point of all this?” asked Agwé rhetorically. “They already know everything we know.”

“They're not here for news. They're here to ask questions they know we don't have answers for in the hope that we'll be pushed into saying something they can take out of context. I thought you knew about journalism.”

“That's not my kind of journalism.”

Lapsa went out to talk to the press. “Obviously, we're concerned,” she told them. “Illness is very rare for us. The health service is working to identify—”

“How fast is it spreading?” someone called out.

“I couldn't say. We'll have a better idea once—”

“Can norms catch it?”

Gabriel, watching on a screen inside the office, saw Lapsa's normally serene features cloud over and knew that she must want to snap,
How the fuck should I know?
She didn't, of course, and he was immensely relieved that it was her and not Pilan out there. But there was a brittle edge to her voice as she said, “I have no idea who can or cannot catch it, or how contagious it is, or how it's transmitted. I do know that most of us who don't have it spend a lot of time with people who do.” She spread her hands to indicate herself. The vidcam lights gleamed on the webbing between her fingers. “That includes gillungs, other gems, and norms. We're just getting on with—”

“Are you worried about your baby?”

There was a sharp intake of breath and Gabriel clenched his fists. He glanced sideways at Agwé, whose mouth had dropped open in outrage. Even Qiyem, also unaffected by the mystery illness and watching on his own workstation screen across the room, looked uneasy. Out on the quay, the noise of the media pack faded abruptly.

Lapsa's face had gone stone quiet. She stared at the questioner, pinning him with the weight of her fury, before she said coldly, “I have no reason to be worried.”

On the screen it looked like hesitation.

“So,” said another voice, sounding a little embarrassed, “is it possible that not everyone is susceptible to this pathogen?”

“Or does it just take longer in some people?” came the voice that had asked about the baby.

“I suppose that's possible. By morning we hope to know more.”

By morning they knew it wasn't pestilential at all. Rhys, who had the triple advantage (or, as Callan observed,
dis
advantage, depending on your point of view) of having been duty medic at the TideFair, the doctor who had referred the first reported victim and one of the very few with a detailed knowledge of gillung physiology, had gotten himself seconded from genetic medicine to the closed ward where the sick of Sinkat were being treated. He had been grappling with the mystery ever since Tamin's housemate had come hurrying to find him and led him back to their semi-aquatic apartment where Tamin lolled in an access pool in the floor, clinging weakly to its rim and unwilling to emerge.

“He says he feels better in the water,” said the housemate, “but that's where he was when he got ill. So I'm not sure . . .”

Rhys had persuaded him out and into a hospital bed, where he fell into a state of fitful unconsciousness overnight, failing to improve the next day. He was, Rhys was certain, Patient Zero in the unfolding crisis, and by some considerable margin the sickest of the lot. They'd still not managed to identify the pathogen, and none of the antivirals were having much effect. Rhys worked through that second night with the microbiologists and virologists, and by early the next morning they finally had some answers.

“It's not contagious,” Rhys told Aryel, Mikal, and Sharon, crowded into a too-small office near the closed ward, along with Dr. Budram, the hospital's senior pulmonary consultant; Dr. Carvalho, a top clinical toxicologist, and Omana Dawny, the head of physiotherapy. “The symptoms are similar to a viral infection, so we assumed they must have contracted it from each other—but they didn't. We're certain now that it's not a virus. It's a toxin.”

Sharon, who had been as anxious as any of them but surprised that Rhys had asked her to attend a medical briefing, looked up sharply at that. Rhys took a sip of the coffee Aryel had brought him and met the detective superintendent's eyes over the rim of the cup. “We think it
must have been present in Sinkat Basin for two to three hours during the TideFair. Our estimate—”

“Hang on,” Sharon said, “you mean this was
deliberate
? Something was released into the water?”

“Something was; whether it was deliberate or not I don't know. I thought you'd want to be aware of the possibility. Even if it does turn out to have been an accident, or a safety violation—”

“—we'd need to be involved either way. Good call, Rhys.”

“We'll be asking more questions today, but what's clear so far is that everyone who's ill, whether their symptoms are mild or severe, breathed in Sinkat water at some point during the afternoon. Lapsa and Agwé are a case in point. They're not ill, but Pilan is, even though they all live in the same house. He told us he went for a swim around lunchtime, said he needed to clear his head after a meeting—”

Mikal tutted under his breath.

Rhys waited politely for a moment, then continued, “The other two were topside all day. Agwé swam over to a friend's house, but not until quite late in the evening and she's fine. Lapsa popped out through their access pool at dawn to supervise the setting-up and
she's
fine. Everyone we've interviewed fits that pattern. There are no reports of illness from people out in the estuary or elsewhere on the river. So our working hypothesis is that it was caused by a local aquatic contaminant, and we don't think the contamination is ongoing, because it looks like people have stopped getting sick.” He squinted at the morning beginning to spread its canopy of sunlight against the window and said quietly, “Of course, we don't know that it won't happen again.”

“There are water-quality monitors,” Aryel said, in the probing tone that meant she was going to poke at his theory to make sure there were no holes in it. “All along the river, as well as in Sinkat and Limedog. They transmit to the Environmental Management datastream. A contaminant should have set off alarms, sent an emergency message to every gillung registered in the city to get out of the water.” She looked at Mikal.

“Indeed it should have,” he said, “and I will be having a very serious conversation with that department shortly. Do they know about the situation yet?”

“We've only just worked it out ourselves,” Rhys replied. “Dr. Carvalho has sent an urgent query, I think”—the toxicologist nodded confirmation—“and I've had a look at the public infostream; there's nothing unusual that I can see, but we don't actually know what the contaminant is yet. Maybe it's a failure in the system, but it might also be something the monitors simply aren't programmed to pick up.”

Sharon was tapping notes into her tablet. “Concerns have recently been expressed,” she said without looking up, “about whether Environmental Management does enough to monitor the marine environment.”

“Noted,” Mikal replied drily, and returned his attention to Rhys. “So this is essentially a case of poisoning, correct? Possibly accidental, and limited to a few hours a couple of days ago. But until we know precisely what caused it, we can't be certain it won't happen again. Have I got that right?”

“That about sums it up. We thought you ought to know as quickly as possible that whatever we're looking at, it extends well beyond the remit of the health services.”

“Thank you,” Aryel said to Rhys and the rest of the medical team. “An excellent night's work. We can reassure the public that there isn't an epidemic in east London—”

“—unless more of this crap gets into the water before we find it,” Sharon muttered.

“Yes, but at least we know what we're looking for now. What about your patients? Can you cure them, now that you know what's wrong?”

“Well . . .” Rhys glanced around at the other doctors. Despite being the most junior in the hospital hierarchy, they looked content to let him be their spokesperson. As he rubbed a weary hand across his face and over the short ruby-shimmer of his hair, his finger brushed against the thin wire of the cranial band and he noted wryly that he and Aryel were the only ones wearing them. “They all started feeling sick either in or shortly after coming out of the water, and they got progressively sicker as it worked its way through their systems. They've stopped getting worse, but they're not getting better either. My final hypothesis of the day is this: if we get them into
clean oxygenated water, that might help to flush the toxin. It binds to the gills' receptor sites and we haven't been able to shift it. But Tamin, who's now dangerously ill, was conscious when I first got to him, and he was still mobile when Eli and Cal saw him earlier in the day—and he didn't want to come out of the water. Something about it was making him feel better, and that doesn't make sense if he was still breathing in the toxin. But if the concentration had dropped and clean water was starting to displace the poison, that might explain it.”

“That sounds like sense to me,” said Mikal, “but it's still a risk, isn't it? Putting someone so sick back into the water?”

“It is—we'll test it first on one of the patients who's in better shape, and who can tell us how they're feeling. We'll need a volunteer—”

“Pilan will do it,” Aryel said before he'd finished. “Bet you anything.”

Rhys chuckled. “How right you are, Ari. Pilan was awake when I did my last round and I told him that we were hatching this idea—he said yes before I'd even finished getting the words out.” He looked at Ms. Dawny. “Assuming everyone approves, of course.”

“I've already canceled today's bookings for the hydrotherapy pool,” the head physio replied. “I'll get it set up.” She looked around at the other consultants for confirmation. Dr. Carvalho was already nodding his agreement; he talked about various other antigens that behaved in a similar way, and why the suggestion was sensible.

Dr. Budram agreed rather more succinctly, and said that she too had cleared her schedule. “It's an experimental treatment, so all patients will need to be under my direct care,” she said to Rhys. “But as it's your idea, Dr. Morgan, and you've already recruited a volunteer . . .”

“I would very much like to be there,” he said with a smile. “Thanks.”