"Is there anything else it could be?" Dunworthy had asked, "Anything besides the slippage that could go wrong?"
"If the coordinates are correct, nothing," Andrews had said and promised to report as soon as he'd done the parameter checks.
Five years was 1325. The plague had not even begun in China then, and Badri had told Gilchrist there was minimal slippage. And it couldn't be the coordinates. Badri had checked them before he fell ill. But the fear continued to nag at him, and he spent the few free moments he could snatch telephoning techs, trying to find someone willing to come read the fix when the sequencing arrived and Gilchrist opened the laboratory again. It was supposed to have arrived yesterday, but when Mary phoned, she had still been waiting for it.
She phoned again in the late afternoon. "Can you set up a ward?" she asked. The visual was back on. Her SPG's looked like she'd slept in them, and her mask dangled from her neck by one tie.
"I've already set up a ward," he said. "It's full of detainees. We've got thirty-one cases as of this afternoon."
"Do you have space to set up another one? I don't need it yet," she said tiredly, "but at this rate I will. We're nearly at capacity here, and several of the staff are either down with it or are refusing to come in."
"And the sequencing hasn't come yet?" he asked.
"No. The WIC just phoned. They got a faulty result the first time through and had to run it again. It's supposed to be here tomorrow. Now they think it's a Uruguayan virus." She smiled wanly. "Badri hasn't been in contact with anyone from Uruguay, has he? How soon can you have the beds ready?"
"By this evening," Dunworthy said, but Finch informed him they were nearly out of folding cots, and he had to go to the NHS and argue them out of a dozen. They didn't get the ward set up, in two of the Fellows' teaching rooms, until morning.
Finch, helping assemble the cots and make beds, announced that they were nearly out of clean linens, face masks, and lavatory paper. "We haven't enough for the detainees," he said, tucking in a sheet, "let alone all these patients. And we have no bandages at all."
"It's not a war," Dunworthy said. "I doubt if there will be any wounded. Did you find out if any of the other colleges has a tech here in Oxford?"
"Yes, sir, I telephoned all of them, but none of them did." He tucked a pillow beneath his chin. "I've posted notices asking that everyone conserve lavatory paper, but it's done no good at all. The Americans are particularly wasteful." He tugged the pillow slip up over the pillow. "I do feel rather sorry for them, though. Helen came down with it last night, you know, and they haven't any alternates."
"Helen?"
"Ms. Piantini. The tenor. She has a fever of 39.7. The Americans won't be able to do their Chicago Surprise."
Which is probably a blessing, Dunworthy thought. "Ask them if they'll continue to keep watch on my telephone, even though they're no longer practicing," he said. "I'm expecting several important calls. Did Andrews ring back?"
"No, sir, not yet. And the visual is off." He plumped the pillow. "It is too bad about the peal. They can do Stedmans, of course, but that's old hat. It does seem a pity there's no alternative solution."
"Did you get the list of techs?"
"Yes, sir," Finch said, struggling with a reluctant cot. He motioned with his head. "It's there by the chalkboard."
Dunworthy picked up the sheets of paper and looked at the one on top. It was filled with columns of numbers, all of them with the digits one through six, in varying order.
"That's not it," Finch said, snatching the papers away. "Those are the changes for the Chicago Surprise." He handed Dunworthy a single sheet. "Here it is. I've listed the techs by college with addresses and telephone numbers."
Colin came in, wearing his wet jacket and carrying a roll of tape and a plastene-covered bundle. "The vicar said I'm to put these up in all the wards," he said, taking out a placard that read, "Feeling Disoriented? Muddled? Mental Confusion Can Be a Warning Sign of the Flu."
He tore off a strip of tape and stuck the placard to the chalkboard. "I was just posting these at the Infirmary, and what do you think the Gallstone was doing?" he said, taking another placard out of the bundle. It read, "Wear Your Face Mask." He taped it to the wall above the cot Finch was making. "Reading the Bible to the patients." He pocketed the tape. "I hope I don't catch it." He tucked the rest of the placards under his arm and started out.
"Wear your face mask," Dunworthy said.
Colin grinned. "That's what the Gallstone said. And she said, the Lord would smite anyone who heeded not the words of the righteous." He pulled the gray plaid muffler out of his pocket. "I wear this instead of a face mask," he said, tying it over his mouth and nose highwayman fashion.
"Cloth cannot keep out microscopic viruses," Dunworthy said.
"I know. It's the color. It frightens them away." He darted out.
Dunworthy rang Mary to tell her the ward was ready but couldn't get through, so he went over to Infirmary. The rain had let up a little, and people, mostly wearing masks, were out again, coming back from the grocer's and queueing in front of the chemist's. But the streets seemed hushed, unnaturally silent.
Someone's turned the carillon off, Dunworthy thought. He almost regretted it.
Mary was in her office, staring at a screen. "The sequencing's arrived," she said before he could tell her about the ward.
"Have you told Gilchrist?" he said eagerly.
"No," she said. "It's not the Uruguay virus. Or the South Carolina."
"What is it?"
"It's an H9N2. Both the South Carolina and the Uruguay were H3's."
"Then where did it come from?"
"The WIC doesn't know. It's not a known virus. It's previously unsequenced." She handed him a printout. "It has a seven point mutation, which explains why it's killing people."
He looked at the printout. It was covered with columns of numbers, like Finch's list of changes, and as unintelligible. "It has to come from somewhere."
"Not necessarily. Approximately every ten years, there's a major antigenic shift with epidemic potential, so it may have originated with Badri." She took the printout back from him. "Does he live around livestock, do you know?"
"Livestock?" he said. "He lives in a flat in Headington."
"Mutant strains are sometimes produced by the intersection of an avian virus with a human strain. The WIC wants us to check possible avian contacts and exposure to radiation. Viral mutations have sometimes been caused by X-rays." She studied the printout as though it made sense. "It's an unusual mutation. There's no recombination of the hemagluttinin genes, only an extremely large point mutation."
No wonder she had not told Gilchrist. He had said he would open the laboratory when the sequencing arrived, but this news would only fuel his ridiculous theories.
"Is there a cure?"
"There will be as soon as an analogue can be manufactured. And a vaccine. They've already begun work on the prototype."
"How long?"
"Three to five days to produce a prototype, then at least another five to manufacture, if they don't run into any difficulty with duplicating the proteins. We should be able to begin inoculating by the tenth."
The tenth. And that was when they could begin giving immunizations. How long would it take to immunize the quarantine area? A week? Two? Before Gilchrist and the idiot protesters considered it safe to open the laboratory?
"That's too long," Dunworthy said.
"I know," Mary said, and sighed. "God knows how many cases we'll have by then. There have been five new ones already this morning."
"Do you think it's a mutant strain?" Dunworthy asked.