Casualty

  Brian Stableford

  Even though it seemed to take every last vestige of her strength to drag herself into the kitchen, Jenny found the impetus to cook breakfast. While she was waiting for the frying pan to do its work, she ate a bowl of bite-sized Shredded Wheat sprinkled with sultanas. Then she ate two fried eggs, two pork sausages, four rashers of bacon, three slices of fried bread and two fried tomatoes. She washed it all down with half a liter of orange and cranberry juice and three cups of coffee with sugar.

  There had been a time when she was proudly eating for two, carrying the future of the human race in her abdomen; nowadays she was just ravenous. She had hoped that the food would restore her strength and sense of well-being, but it didn’t.

  She didn’t want to vomit, but she still felt utterly drained, hardly capable of movement. She had too much pride actually to crawl back to bed, especially as she had put so much effort into getting dressed, but she collapsed onto the settee like the proverbial ton of bricks.

  She called Jackie first, but Jackie was at work and had her mobile switched off. The “Ride ol the Valkyries” ran its course and then gave way to voicemail.

  Jenny cursed, not having realized that it was already after nine. She didn’t leave a message. She called the Health Center, where she was due to pick up her Genetic Profile results—and, if necessary, to discuss their implications with Dr. Kitteredge.

  Her hand was trembling as she held the phone to her ear, although it weighed next to nothing.

  “This is Jennifer Loomis,” she said, as soon as the receptionist answered. “I have an appointment at eleven, but I can’t make it. It’s just not physically possible. I know you don’t like giving out results over the phone, but could you just tell me whether the baby’s Genetic Profile is clear? I think I’m going to have to ask the hospital if they can take me in today—I’m supposed to have three weeks plus to go, but I just can’t go on. If I weren’t living in a ground floor flat, the stairs would have done for me already.”

  She felt thoroughly ashamed of herself as she finished the rambling speech.

  She had always thought of herself as a strong person, capable of heroic effort when the need arose, and she had tried with all her might to believe what the veterans of the prenatal class told her about every first-time mother being taken by surprise by the awfulness of the experience, but she could no longer doubt that something was seriously amiss. It was one thing to be so lethargic that Jackie had to do the shopping for her, but quite another to find it impossible to move from room to room within the flat. She’d got into this mess because she’d heard the famous metaphorical biological clock begin to tick too furiously, but now its tick had been replaced by the knell of doom.

  The receptionist seemed to have taken forever to summon her notes to the screen. “It’s a good job you rang, Mrs. Loomis,” the receptionist said, scrupulously following the rule that required all maternity cases to be addressed as “Mrs.” Whether they were married or not. “Your appointment has had to be cancelled.”

  “Well, thanks for letting me know,” Jenny said, unable to inject the requisite sarcasm into her tone. “He’s all clear genewise, then? Too bloody healthy by half, I dare say. It’s me that can’t take the strain.”

  “I’m not able to confirm or deny that, Mrs. Loomis,” the receptionist said.

  “But there is a note here about contacting Dr. Gilfillan. It’s marked urgent. Will you call him or shall I?”

  “I’m with Dr. Kitteredge,” Jenny told her.

  “Yes, Mrs. Loomis, of course. Dr. Gilfillan is a consultant. It really would be better if you called him yourself. That way, you can describe your symptoms. His number—”

  “Hang on!” Jenny complained. “What kind of consultant is he? What’s his specialism?”

  “I really can’t tell you, Mrs. Loomis,” the receptionist said, frostily. “All I have here are his qualifications: PhD, RAMC.”

  “PhD?” Jenny queried. “Isn’t it supposed to be MD, if not FRCS? And what the hell’s RAMC?”

  “Royal Army Medical Corps,” the receptionist informed her, with a smugness that reminded Jenny of the general knowledge freak she’d got stuck with the last time Jackie had talked her into going down to the local pub on quiz night.

  Awareness of what the voice at the other end of the phone had actually said burst in Jenny’s mind like a bomb just as the baby kicked her again, like a kangaroo taking a penalty. “A PhD in the Royal Army Medical Corps?” Jenny repeated, incredulously. “You mean he’s some biowarfare boffin from Porton Down? What the hell did that Genetic Profile throw up?”

  “I really don’t know.” The receptionist’s disembodied voice suddenly seemed quite unhuman. “I dare say that he’ll explain everything when you call him. I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about. May I give you the number now?” You absolute cow! Jenny thought—but all she said was: “Go ahead.” She tapped it into the phone’s memory as the receptionist read it off, and rang off as soon as she’d strangled a mumbled “thank you,” without waiting to be told that she was welcome.

  Jenny’s hand was really shaking now. She cursed several times. She’d known, of course, that the Genetic Profile wasn’t any mere formality—there were horror stories in the papers every day—but she’d had no reason to think that anything serious might be wrong. She had a better than average set of genes herself, and one of the pros of having selected an unwitting member of the armed forces as a potential father was supposed to be the screening that every recruit was put through nowadays. Except, of course, that she had had a reason to worry…

  Jenny hit the speed dial, not to call the mysterious Dr. Gilfillan but to get to Jackie’s voicemail. “Something’s wrong with the bloody Profile, Jackie,” she said, unceremoniously. “Pick up a soldier, you said. Guaranteed A-one physical condition, government screened, guaranteed never to show his pretty face again. The perfect combination of genetic quality and moral irresponsibility. I knew I should have gone for brains instead of brawn. All that stuff about the tactics of biological warfare wasn’t bullshit, Jackie. He really did know what he was talking about, the bastard. Something is very, very wrong, and I think I’ve just become a casualty in Plague War One. Call me when you can.”

  Then she called the number that the receptionist had given her. She was expecting another receptionist, but the voice that answered on the third ring was male, deep and authoritative.

  “Dr. Gilfillan?” she said, querulously.

  “Speaking,” was the reply.

  “My name’s Jennifer Loomis…”

  “Miss Loomis! Thank god you called. I was beginning to think there’d been some kind of cock-up, or worse—”

  Jenny cut him off, brutally. “There was some kind of cock-up,” she told him,

  “and worse. I just got your message now, when I called the Health Center to tell them I wouldn’t be in for my nonexistent appointment because I’m too bloody ill.

  Now, will you please tell me what’s wrong with my kid before I call an ambulance to take me to the hospital?”

  “That won’t be necessary, Miss Loomis. An ambulance will be on its way within a matter of minutes, and I’ll be on board. Keep talking—I’ll bring the phone with me.”

  “No, no, no!” said Jenny, horrified by the fact that her face seemed to be welded to the arm of the settee, so that she was unable to sit up. “You’re not shipping me off to bloody Porton Down! Apart from anything else, it must be sixty miles away!”

  “I’m not at Porton, Miss Loomis. I’m at a private hospital in South Oxfordshire, no more than twenty miles away. If there are problems, you really would be better off here than your local maternity unit.”

  “What do you mean, if?” Jenny complained. “You know damn well there are problems. What’s wrong with me, Dr. Gilfillan, PhD, RAMC? Exactly how did I become a casualty of this month’s bioterrorism scare? Because it seems to me that I’ve been hit by friendly fire, and if that’s the case …”

  “Please don’t get carried away, Miss Loomis.” The voice didn’t sound so authoritative now. Jenny had observed that male voices usually lost their edge when confronted with female hysteria—a serious weakness, she’d always thought. “We’ll be with you in less than half an hour. Now, can you tell me… ?”

  “You’re the one who’s supposed to be telling me, you bastard!” Jenny screamed, figuring that if hysteria disturbed him she might as well let loose a broadside. “What’s wrong with my baby?”

  She heard him out as far as “I’m not at liberty—” and then she cut him off.

  She called Jackie’s voicemail again.

  “They’re sending an army ambulance for me,” she said, as calmly as she could. “Some hospital in South Oxfordshire—that’s as much as he’d say. If it were anything really nasty, like anthrax or Ebola, he’d have sent men in moon suits to storm the flat. Flagging my file with an urgent request to call him is pretty laid back by today’s standards, and whatever I’m carrying I’ve been carrying for the best part of nine months, so the feeling I have that it’ll explode any minute, or claw its way out, is probably a trifle exaggerated. That won’t stop them invoking the emergency regs, though, so it’ll be no phone calls, let alone visitors, once they’ve got their sticky fingers on me. Don’t let me vanish, Jackie. If I’m not in touch soon, start asking questions, and don’t stop.”

  She rang off, and wondered who else she ought to call. The phone rang in her hand, causing her to start, but the hope that it might be Jackie died when she saw Dr.

  ; Gilfillan’s name in the display. She blocked the call and rang her brother Steve. She figured that there was no point trying anyone at the office, where she’d been out of sight and mind since she started working at home in advance of her official maternity leave, and she hadn’t spoken to her father since the funeral. Steve was the only one left who might conceivably give a damn.

  Naturally, his phone was off too. “It’s Jenny, Steve,” she said to his answering machine. “Something’s wrong with the baby, and its nothing ordinary.

  The army are coming to pick me up. There must have been something wrong with the bloody soldier. I know you blanked it out when I told you about the eating, the kicking and the exhaustion, but it wasn’t just feminine frailty. If I don’t call you in the next two days, start making enquiries, will you? They say they’re taking me to some private place in South Oxfordshire, but they might be lying. This is just a precaution.

  No need to panic yet.”

  It wasn’t until she’d rung off that she began to think that maybe she was jumping the gun a bit herself, in the matter of panicking. If all this turned out to be a storm in a teacup….

  Gilfillan was still trying to get through, so she accepted the call. “Sorry,” she said, trying not to sound as if she meant it. “Had to bring a couple of people up to speed. Now, the way I figure it is that the soldier boy who got me pregnant was either a casualty himself or part of some kind of horrible experiment. Either way, I’m carrying some kind of giant mutant that’s trying to claw its way out because it knows it won’t be able to get out the usual way. Is that about the size of it?”

  “You’re being ridiculously melodramatic, Miss Loomis,” the doctor informed her, reassuringly. “There is nothing wrong with your baby. If anything, he’s a little too healthy. If only we’d known about this from the start, instead of having to find out when your Genetic Profile results tripped an alarm, there wouldn’t be any problem at all— and the fact that you’re as voluble as you are suggests that you’re still perfectly able to cope with the stress until we get you into hospital. So please stop trying to make yourself worse by scaring yourself to death.”

  “So I’m not a casualty, then?” Jenny said, bluntly. “I have your word on that, as an officer and a gentleman?”

  “Well,” the officer and gentleman procrastinated, “that all depends on exactly what one might mean by casualty.”

  “Exactly what I thought,” Jenny said. “Fucked by friendly fire. It’s some kind of supersoldier, isn’t it? I’m carrying some kind of fast-growing, android, cannon fodder.”

  “No, Miss Loomis. I promise that I’ll explain just as soon as I can, but…”

  “I should never have let Jackie talk me into it,’ Jenny put in, not wanting to listen to a long explanation of why the Frankenstein Corps weren’t allowed to talk about their work to mere civilians. Let’s sign on for an evening class at the university, I said. Imagine a kid with my head for figures and the instincts of a creative artist. Oh no, she said, your Junoesque body cries out for alliance with Hector or Lysander or the British bloody Grenadiers. Brains are for wimps. I can’t believe that I went along with it. It’s my baby, when all’s said and done. Or is it crown property, given that it must have extra genes cooked up in some secret lab in the wilds of South Oxfordshire? Do you need directions, by the way, or do you know where I live?” She tried to lower her voice as she pronounced the last few words, aiming for the customary implication of menace, but it came out all wrong; the hysteria was creeping back.

  “We have your address, Miss Loomis,” Dr. Gilfillan assured her, trying to sound reassuring. “Our ETA’s eight or ten minutes. Please be patient.”

  “Oh, stick your bedside manner up your jaxy,” Jenny said. “I’ve got to try to get to the loo before you get here, then back again. Wish me luck.” She rang off without waiting for a reply.

  *

  She did manage to get to the loo, and back again, before the doorbell rang, but it was a close run thing. She even managed to get to the door without having to take a rest en route.

  Dr. Gilfillan was very tall and distinguished, and exceedingly well dressed, considering that he might have turned up in a moon suit. In person, he oozed authority, almost to the extent that Jenny might have been inclined to trust him if she hadn’t known that he was a slimeball who had dedicated his career to the design and deployment of weapons more insidious than the human imagination had ever been able to dream up before. He had some uniformed chit in tow who didn’t look a day over nineteen. The ambulance parked outside her front gate was dark green. Jenny wondered whether it had a red cross on the roof, to warn off enemy aircraft, but she decided that it probably hadn’t; warfare had become so unsporting in the last twenty years that today’s guerillas used red crosses and red crescents for target practice.

  Gilfillan introduced the chit as Sergeant Cray while he looked Jenny carefully up and down, as if trying to figure out how much trouble she might give him.

  “Come in for a moment,” Jenny said, tiredly. “I think I need to sit down while you try to persuade me that I ought to go with you—because you will have to persuade me.”

  “I can do that, Miss Loomis,” Gilfillan told her, his confidence seemingly renewed now that he had seen her, and the neat little garden fronting her neat little suburban maisonette. “I’m sorry you’ve been alarmed by your wild guesses. Would it be possible for Sergeant Cray to make us a cup of tea while I try to set your mind at rest, do you think?”

  “Kitchens a mess,” Jenny retorted. “Worse state than me. Shall I show you where everything is?”

  “I’ll work it out,” the sergeant assured her.

  Gilfillan waited politely for her to sit down when they hit the living room, but Jenny hadn’t the strength to make a contest out of it. She slumped down on the settee; he took the armchair. He reached into his jacket and produced a thick sheaf of papers. He peeled off the top half of the stack and held them out to her. “I’m afraid that I’ll have to ask you to sign these,” he added.

  Jenny didn’t reach out to take them. “No consent forms,” she said, soberly.

  “It’s not a consent form,” he countered. “It’s the Official Secrets Act.”

  “And if I won’t?” she said, trying unsuccessfully to sound menacing.

  Gilfillan shifted in the chair, arranging his limbs with more civilian fastidiousness than military precision. “Please don’t be afraid, Miss Loomis,” he said. “I doubt very much that you’ll want to publicize your situation, but I can’t tell you what your situation is if you don’t sign the document, and that’s not what either of us wants. Please sign.” He offered her a pen.

  Jenny understood well enough that if she signed the Official Secrets Act and then blabbed, even to Jackie, she could kiss goodbye to her so-called career—but she believed Gilfillan when he said that if she didn’t sign he wouldn’t talk.

  “And I suppose the others are my conscription papers?” she said, hoping that she might be joking.

  “I don’t have the authority to conscript you,” the RAMC man told her. “You have to volunteer.” He put all the papers together and placed them on the coffee table.

  Jenny picked them up. She skipped the Official Secrets Act, and found that the other set really was an application form to join the RAMC in the capacity of

  “civilian aide.” Curiosity was burning up calories Jenny couldn’t spare, and she really did need to know what was what, for the baby’s sake. She signed the top set of papers and gave them back, but left the others where they were.

  “I need to confirm the name of the father,” Gilfillan told her, now sounding confident that he not only had the upper hand but the full cooperation of his victim.

  “He called himself Lieutenant Graham Lunsford,” Jenny told him, putting on her best brave face even though she knew that it couldn’t be very convincing. “Very tall, not very dark, and extremely handsome. Have I just got him into deep trouble or won him a medal?”

  “That’s not for me to say. Was it just the fact that he was a soldier that triggered your anxieties, or was there something more?”

  “Apart from your attachment to the RAMC and the fact that we haven’t had a good bioterrorism scare hereabouts since Wednesday last?” Jenny countered.

 

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