Xenoform (26 page)

The lift stopped at the next floor and more hospital staff crammed in. By the time it reached fourth, where the meeting room was, the lift was bursting with frightened hospital workers, outnumbered two to one by soldiers. Nobody spoke, although many frightened eyes sought Doctor Rushden’s face. He tried to smile reassuringly, secretly terrified himself all the while. Never in his life had he seen as many guns as currently surrounded him in this tiny space.

They exited the lift, herded like prisoners by the soldiers, although they stopped short of actually shoving anyone.
Not yet
, thought Rushden.
The shoving comes later.
From deep in the hospital came the gurgling roar of a GDD patient. Rushden felt a chill down his spine. Then there were four or five muffled cracks, then silence. Rushden’s group faltered, exchanging fearful glances. They had all heard it.

Rushden rounded on Major Krohn. ‘What was that?’ he demanded.

‘That, Doctor, sounded like one of those incidents you might want to note down,’ replied the major. ‘Not that anyone will listen. See, in terms of ultimate jurisdiction, I have it.’ All the false bonhomie had left him now. ‘You’d be well-advised not to interfere with our establishment of authority here. There might be another incident. Any number of them.’ He paused, staring down into Rushden’s face. The other staff stood amazed. ‘Now, where is this meeting room?’

Rushden could see no way out of this situation. What could he do but kowtow? He turned, without speaking, and led the way to the large double doors. Many other people were streaming into the room in a steady flow. There were soldiers everywhere. Rushden wondered briefly if they weren’t all just to be rounded up and executed, but he dismissed the idea at once.

Inside the meeting room the hospital staff were being herded into a group facing the presentation dais at the far end. The soldiers had encircled the civilians, blocking all exits. Rushden checked the hospital computer over DNI. Everybody was here. Krohn peeled Rushden away from the last of the general traffic and guided him towards the front. A hundred and twenty pairs of frightened eyes followed him. Krohn stood before the assembled staff with Rushden to his side, flanked by soldiers. Rushden knew he was to be used as a puppet governor. If the staff obeyed him, and he obeyed Major Krohn, then the major’s job would be that much easier. This was not a role that Rushden was keen to take on.

The last few staff members bunched into the group and the soldiers barred the doors. Major Krohn cleared his throat. ‘Good day, people. My name is Major Krohn of the First Contingency Guard. My unit has been sent here to oversee the treatment and observation of the GDD patients. As you have seen, all other patients have been evacuated from the building.’ There was a general mutter at the word
evacuated
. Most of the staff had seen the heavy-handed ejection of the sick and injured only minutes before. ‘You will continue to follow the directions of Doctor Rushden. Isn’t that right, Doctor?’

‘Yes,’ said Rushden, his mouth dry. He felt like a traitor. ‘That’s right.’

‘And no-one will have to get hurt. Will they, Doctor?’

‘That’s right.’ He could no longer look at his subordinates directly, but he could feel the resentment hanging in the air of the over-bright room.

‘Patients will be treated under a program developed by my organisation, on a ward-by-ward basis. No treatment is to be given, or withheld, unless detailed under that program. The details of said program will be made clear to all once this meeting is concluded.’

‘Why?’ somebody shouted. ‘What’s going on?’

Major Krohn seemed happy to address the heckler. ‘We seek to discover a way to reverse, or failing that contain the GDD infection. You are to submit all observational data directly to Doctor Rushden’s office for his and my perusal, and not to the central Health Authority Data Repository. What happens then to said data is not a matter to concern yourselves with, but suffice to say that the aforementioned method of submission is to be the
only
channel through which data is passed. Any information leaked from this facility will be traced and the perpetrator punished. That means information about me, my unit, our occupation of this facility, the trend of the GDD development generally, as well as any specific scientific data gathered through the hospital. Is this clear?’

‘
Fuck you!’ shouted one suicidal wag from near the front. Doctor Rushden hadn’t seen who it was, but either the major had, or he was happy to find a scapegoat, for he motioned to one of his troops with one huge hand. Then he pointed into the crowd.

‘That is not helpful behaviour, young man,’ scolded the major. He sounded as if he was enjoying this a little too much for Rushden’s liking.

The soldier barged his way into the crowd and lifted a smallish man into the air by one arm as if he were a rag doll.
So the soldiers wore power-suits, then. Rushden was not that surprised. He moved instinctively to help the young man, a doctor from the nanotech medicine department whom he didn’t know well but who certainly didn’t deserve this treatment. Krohn leaned close to Rushden and whispered in his ear, ‘If you move off that spot I’ll have my man rip that boy’s arms clean off and throw him out the window.’

Rushden was horrified. He turned to look into the calmly smiling face of Major Krohn. The man’s breath stank like a charnel house. Krohn flexed one huge weapon-arm emphatically. Rushden didn’t move. The soldier dumped the young man to the floor at the front of the room before Major Krohn. ‘Get o–’ started the man and then the soldier kicked him in the stomach. The rest of the sentiment was swallowed by an
oof!
of expelled breath and the man curled into a tight ball. A sigh went up from the crowd. The soldier looked to Krohn with his head cocked and the question he was asking was clear:
More?
Krohn shook his head.

‘Tell them, Doctor,’ he said.

‘Please, everybody remain calm,’ said Rushden, waving away the mumble of objection. ‘I don’t yet understand this situation fully myself, but I will keep you all informed as best I can. You are all to obey the major’s orders immediately and without question. Any objections can be taken up with me, and I will in turn relay them to him. Please continue to act professionally in all matters.’

‘Good, Doctor. Thank you,’ said Krohn quietly.

Rushden turned to him, his brain simmering. He tried to keep the hate from his voice when he spoke, knowing that it was his responsibility to keep his workers safe.

‘And may we go about our work now, Major? Under your benevolent direction, of course.’

‘Certainly, Doctor Rushden. I will have my staff update your people on the new procedures back on the wards.’ The soldiers started filing the staff back out of the room again, presumably acting on some order given over DNI. It occurred to Rushden that the major had only made everyone convene here to witness first-hand some act of ferocity that would serve as a warning to them. He was grateful that it hadn’t been as bad as it could have been. ‘I will set up my command centre in your own offices, where you will join me in twenty minutes. You may use that time to come to terms with the new order of things. Take a break.’ He looked critically at Rushden. ‘You look exhausted.’

‘How very generous,’ answered Rushden, but Major Krohn was already sweeping out of the room flanked by his personal guard.

Rushden went and knelt beside the young nanotech medicine doctor, who was rolling slowly from side to side still clutching his midsection. Tears streamed down his face, which was locked in a grimace of pain. To his credit, he didn’t make a sound. Everybody else was being ushered out by the soldiers but they seemed to be ignoring Rushden and the young doctor for now.

‘
Are you all right?’ asked Rushden. ‘Is anything broken, ruptured?’

‘I’m – I’m – okay,’ gasped the young man. ‘I think. Thank you, Doctor. If you could just help me up...’

Rushden leaned over and began to ease the man to his feet. He didn’t seem to be able to straighten up fully. His breathing came in great ragged heaves. He coughed heavily but, reassuringly, no blood came out. Rushden just stood supporting him. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

‘Doctor Wallinski,’ said the man, a little more steadily now.

‘We’re going to get you checked out properly, Doctor Wallinski. I’ll help you down to Emergency Intake, okay? You were stupid to back-chat those bastards, you know.’

‘
It – wasn’t –
me
,’ replied Doctor Wallinski through gritted teeth. Rushden, furious at the injustice, couldn’t come up with an answer to this. He helped Wallinski slowly down the aisle towards the big doors. Almost everyone else had been herded out now. Only a few soldiers remained, dispersed around the room watching Rushden and Wallinski from behind their glossy helmets. They were all, of course, armed. Rushden shot them a look of resentment as he helped the young doctor from the room.

He took Wallinski down to Emergency in the lift. They passed many soldiers, some of whom had their helmets off now. They were blank-faced men and women who spoke little, even to each other. They could all have been grown in the same vat for all the distinguishing qualities they had. None of them sported any obvious bodymod. Hospital staff, in various states of composure ranging from outright distress to resignation, were being marshalled about here and there.

Wallinski was absurdly grateful as Rushden left him in Emergency, under the capable care of Doctor Maysen, a tall woman with the most remarkable tie-dye effect skin of red and yellow. Rushden wished him well and headed up to the third floor. As he left the ground floor, he heard chanting voices rising in the street outside, but was unable to see out because of the heavy sheeting glued over the windows. There was a large contingent of soldiers there and he didn’t linger. They watched him but didn’t molest him in any way.

Many of his staff tried to collar him as he passed, rattling off questions and dogging his steps. He told them all the same thing: ‘Stay calm; do as they tell you; your safety is my main concern; it will all end soon; I will keep you all informed.’

He dreaded returning to his office to find that Krohn set up shop there, doubtless stuffing the place with his own people. By now they were probably already attempting to hack what remained of the inexplicably-malfunctioning hospital computer system. He would probably find the bastard sat in his chair, too, maybe with his huge jackbooted feet up on the ancient teak desk.

He stopped on third and walked into the ward, expecting one of the soldiers to grab him at any moment. They let him pass. He thought perhaps they didn’t want to demean him in front of his staff – it would devalue him as a figurehead. The staff would have to be happy to obey him and he would have to be happy to obey Krohn. Who the hell were the First
Contingency Guard anyway? Not actually military, if Krohn were to be believed. Some commercial defence force? Did it matter? Not really, he decided. Rushden would do what he had to do to protect his staff and his patients.

Within the ward nurses and doctors moved about their business overseen by armed soldiers. Several small groups of hospital staff were gathered around what were presumably ranking officers, taking instructions regarding their new, enforced, operational procedures.

Most of the GDD patients were under sedation, but not all. Some were being kept awake so that their cognitive degeneration could be tested and mapped. These were restrained by strong straps and had their mouths covered by plastic masks. They writhed and strained sluggishly, leaking viscous green fluid from their pores, which collected in channels around the steel beds. The cleaning robots trundled constantly about their never-ending business.

Rushden stopped beside the bed of what had once been, according to the screen on the headboard, a young woman from a good part of High Hab. Selissa Jonas had been her name, for what it was worth now. She had grown two extra appendages since her admittance to the hospital – you couldn’t really call them limbs. They were grotesque, floundering things with no bone structure to speak of. The day before, as Rushden had walked past her on his morning rounds, one of those horrifying tentacles had somehow wriggled free of the straps that bound it and brushed against his exposed forearm. It had left a tingling, crawling sensation that had lasted several hours and no amount of washing would remove.

Her skin was now a deep, mossy emerald. Her hair was a matted shock of wire, completely drained of its original pigment and beginning to turn a pallid, sickly green. That colour would soon deepen to match the hue of her flesh, which seemed somehow to crawl on her body, possessed of its own life. On the fourth finger of one hand, mostly obscured by the bulbous, fungussy flesh that had swelled around it, she wore an expensive platinum wedding ring. Rushden looked at that ring, aghast at what had become of this human being, wondering why the man to whom that ring presumably linked her had not come to visit her; wondering who she had used to be, sickened by how many others were now like her. They had fifty-six in this hospital alone.

She struggled half-heartedly against her bonds, as if driven by instinct rather than any actual desire to escape. In the early stages they were psychotic, full of rage. But as the disease progressed they seemed to sink into a thoughtless, emotionless state. Her eyes were simple dark points drilled into what remained of the face above the mask. Their lenses shone with a dark green oily film. Thick green liquid seeped from her ears and the corners of her eyes and had completely soaked her hospital gown. She was not responding to the nanotech treatment. None of them were. If the cutting edge of medical technology didn’t cut it, what would? Rushden looked into those animal eyes and feared for the future of humanity. He stood there staring into that monstrous face until one of the soldiers came and tapped him on the shoulder. He turned and looked into the shiny facemask.