The Zeno Effect Read online

  All this looked like a highly combustible mix and Ali had done her best to summarise her forebodings in the letter. But as she reread it yet again she worried that Sarah would dismiss her claims as unnecessary panic since, by virtue of her professional expertise, Sarah was more inclined to focus on the biomedical dynamics of the disease than on its social consequences.

  It was so difficult for Ali to argue her case at a distance like this. If only they could speak safely via CommsTab without the risk of being eavesdropped upon by the English intelligence agencies. But Douglas had been very firm about not doing that, insisting that this correspondence was the only safe way that they could communicate, and Ali certainly didn’t want to put her friends at risk. Yet more than anything she wanted to get them up to Scotland, not just for their own good – although definitely that – but also because she really needed her best friend. They had been through so much together since childhood, providing each other with unfailing support. If things were going to get as bad as seemed likely then she wanted to be with Sarah, facing whatever had to be faced.

  With a sigh she set the letter aside. As her father had always advised her, when having trouble writing something complicated turn your attention to some other task until you feel able to revisit the original. He should know, she thought, he had written more books than she cared to count. Besides, Douglas should be coming soon with the job offer details and he might be able to help. The thought of seeing Douglas cheered her up a little. Dinner the previous evening had been an entertaining diversion, and, lying in bed later that night, she had admitted to herself that she found him more than a little attractive. Older than her, certainly, but only by ten years or so, and as he had told her, currently single after separating from a long-standing partner.

  Her mind half occupied with these pleasant speculations she turned her attention to writing up the minutes of the last SVRG meeting, a torpor-inducing task if ever there was one. Sufficiently so that when Douglas did arrive mid afternoon he was doubly welcome.

  “Thank god you’ve come,” she said. “Writing minutes is reducing me to an automaton.”

  “I know the feeling,” he replied. “I used to have to do it myself before I escaped into the field. Now other apprentice agents are stuck with it while I dally with charming scientific liaison officers.”

  This last observation was accompanied by a self-deprecating look that somewhat defused its overt flirtatiousness. Even so, Ali felt the need to scrabble through the papers on her desk to cover her pleasure at the compliment, finally extracting a printout of her draft letter.

  “I’m having a lot of trouble writing this,” she said, waving it in front of him. “Have you got the job details?”

  “Yes, they’re here. They’re in a formal letter which we can include in the delivery. But what’s your problem?”

  “I can’t anticipate all Sarah’s objections so it just gets longer and more confused the more I try to second-guess her. It would be so much easier if we could talk face to face.”

  Douglas shook his head. “Impractical, I’m afraid. You need to do the best you can in writing. Do you want me to go through it with you?”

  “Yes, that would be good. Pull up a chair and we’ll work on screen.”

  For the remainder of the afternoon they sat side by side and juggled Ali’s arguments until it became clear that they weren’t going to make any further improvements. Douglas slid his chair back from the desk.

  “This is going to have to do,” he said, in a tone that brooked no disagreement. “I really need to get this stuff into our system today. I won’t have another courier until next week.”

  “Yes, I suppose you’re right. It’s probably as good as we’ll get it but I really don’t think it will work,” Ali replied, then added: “it’s all getting very depressing, Douglas. When the Zeno effect kicks in properly new mutations will spread and everything will get much worse. I’m worried, not just about Sarah, but about what this could do to our whole way of life. Everything could so easily collapse once basic resources can’t be maintained.”

  “I know,” Douglas said. “I’ve been thinking about it too. We need to develop contingency plans. I don’t just mean the government, though I know they’re trying. I mean us, ordinary people. We have to figure out what we are going to do if – when – things start to fall apart. We need to be prepared.”

  Ali looked at him wide-eyed. “What, you mean like those American survivalists? Cellars full of canned food and water and a whole armoury to protect it with?”

  “Up to a point, yes. It may well get bad enough to require weapons, and food supplies are obviously vital. But that’s essentially short-term stuff. If you get a real breakdown of social order then, in the longer run, we’d need something more sustainable. We’d have to produce food, maintain energy resources, defend ourselves from others who might want to steal what we have.”

  Douglas stood up and gazed out of the window across the Edinburgh skyline. “In those circumstances I don’t think it would be wise to stay here,” he continued. “The city would become very dangerous, a dog-eat-dog world with far too many people crammed into too small a space. I would head north into the Highlands. Try to establish a safe haven as far from cities as possible.”

  “You’ve really been thinking about it, haven’t you?” Ali said. “You believe it may well come to that?”

  “Yes, I suppose I do,” he replied, looking none too happy about it. “Sorry to sound so downbeat but best to be realistic about these things.”

  Ali joined him at the window, resting a comforting hand on his arm. “Yes, true enough. I haven’t really faced up to the possibilities yet. Not in that kind of detail anyway. It’s a depressing prospect, isn’t it?”

  “It is, it really is.” He put his hand over hers and squeezed it gently, then, disengaging himself, added: “Still, there are immediate things to do. I’d best get this letter sent off. We can talk about the rest some other time.”

  After Douglas left, Ali remained standing at the window thinking about the conversation they had just had. Edinburgh looked peaceful enough in the winter sunshine, as if nothing could ever disturb its serenity. But of course Douglas was right. When the epidemic did get worse its focus would be in the cities where people lived cheek by jowl and infection could spread rapidly, so it was in the cities that trouble would first arise. Her most likely refuge when that happened would be with her father in the mountains of northern Argyll. If he hadn’t done so already – and knowing him he probably had – she should warn him to stock up on non-perishable food. It could be a long winter, she thought, as she gathered her things to go home. A very long winter.

  By the time she reached the flat Ali was sunk even further in gloom. Her only positive thought was to visit her father over the coming weekend and discuss plans with him, but beyond that she was uncertain what else she could do. In an attempt to cheer herself up she drank her customary cup of coffee and then spent an inordinately long time under a hot shower. Such taken-for-granted pleasures might well disappear within months, she told herself, so make the most of them while you can. After drying her hair she dressed in what she thought of as her ‘slouching about’ clothes – an old scoop-neck top and a pair of loose cotton trousers – then, streaming what she hoped would be some comforting music, she curled up on the sofa and closed her eyes.

  More than an hour later she awoke with a start. The music had ended and her doorbell was ringing. Still only half-awake, she opened the door to find a smiling Douglas carrying a bottle of wine.

  “After our talk this afternoon I thought you might need cheering up,” he said, thrusting the bottle into her hands. “Maybe we could share this.”

  “Right. Yes. Come in,” Ali said, still not fully awake. “How did you get through the main door?”

  “An elderly lady on her way out let me in when I said I was visiting you. She seemed pleased that you had a cal
ler.”

  “Oh, that would be Bessie. She’s determined to marry me off. Doesn’t think it’s right that I should be living on my own. As far as she’s concerned that’s for old ladies like her, not young women, so now she’ll have you down as a potential suitor. She means well though and I’m very fond of her.”

  Ali fetched wine glasses from the kitchen, opened the bottle, and joined Douglas on the sofa.

  “Here you go,” she said, handing him a glass and pouring wine into it. “Have you eaten yet?”

  “No, I thought maybe we could order a pizza. Though we might have to wait a bit. The delivery services are working overtime now that people are reluctant to go out.”

  “We could,” she said, sipping her wine. “But I was going to cook some pasta and sauce anyway and that would be easy enough to make for two.”

  “OK, if you’re sure. That would be even better. Can I help?”

  “Yes, you can make a salad and talk to me while I cook. Come on, let’s get started before we drink our way through the entire bottle on empty stomachs.”

  Half an hour of companionable activity in the kitchen saw them seated at the table and ready to eat.

  “Thanks for this, Alison. It’s a while since anyone has cooked for me.”

  “It’s a pleasure. I’m relieved not to be on my own tonight.” She paused for a minute, then asked: “One thing though. Why do you keep calling me Alison when everybody else uses Ali?”

  “Ah. Well, I have this funny preference for full names not diminutives. It’s – oh dear, this is embarrassing – it’s because at school I used to get called Dougie, only pronounced the Scottish way, Doogie. I hated it. I still do. So I’ve got this obsessive thing about proper names. Do you mind?”

  “No, no. I quite like to be called Alison. It sounds special. And you certainly don’t look like a Doogie to me so I’ll stick with Douglas. It’s a deal. Now eat. Suddenly I’m starving.”

  They followed the pasta with cheese and fruit then sat finishing the wine and chatting of this and that until, out of the blue, Douglas suddenly announced, “You do look very lovely, you know.”

  “What, in these clothes? Surely not,” Ali replied, looking down at her clothing and only then realising that her scoop-neck top was displaying rather more cleavage than usual and remembering that she had not bothered to put on a bra when she came out of the shower. “Ah, I see,” she added, with a knowing smile.

  “So do I,” he said, his eyes dropping deliberately to her breasts. She was aware that her nipples were hardening under his look and, without the bra, were clearly visible through the thin fabric. She looked at him enquiringly.

  “Do you mind?” he asked, reaching across and running his fingers down her cheek and then across the uncovered slope of her breasts. Ali took an involuntary breath.

  “No. It’s good,” she said, and encouraged by her response he allowed his fingers to slip inside the neckline of her top, gently stroking her now hardened nipples. With a little groan Ali bit on her bottom lip and, looking him directly in the eye, grabbed his straying hand.

  “I think perhaps we should go to bed,” she said, and still holding his hand she led the way to the bedroom.

  In the early hours of that December morning tanks and armoured vehicles emerged onto the streets of Istanbul, barricading both the Bosphorus and the Fatih Sultan Mehmet bridges. Fighter jets and helicopters patrolled the skies above the city while a group of military special forces captured the President and leading figures in his administration. The ostensible reason given for the military coup was that the government had failed entirely to halt the rampant spread of influenza and to sustain essential services. There had been public unrest and some violent demonstrations which, it was claimed, now required military intervention and martial law. It was widely agreed among commentators that the flu epidemic, although real enough and extremely serious, had provided opposition groupings with a convenient excuse to take power, and that they were unlikely to be any more successful in combating the disease than had been their predecessors. Beyond Turkey, in international diplomatic circles, there was much concern that this might not be the only coup precipitated by the English flu.

  3

  In spite of the hospital’s bustle all around them, sounds from elsewhere barely penetrated the Hart’s family room. Occasionally they could hear the rumble of a trolley being wheeled past the door, perhaps accompanied by the odd indistinguishable word or two. Even less frequently there might be the distant chiming of an over-loud nurse’s alarm call, or, given that hospital employees were required to wear rubber-soled shoes, the distinctive click of a visitor’s heels in the corridor. But other than the regular arrival of medical staff to monitor Rosemary’s condition and the delivery of food for her parents, to all intents and purposes the room was a private, closed space. This almost hermetic insulation from the world outside was beginning to play on Hart’s mind. He was exhausted anyway, unable to sleep even in the bed provided, preferring to remain seated next to his now mortally ill daughter.

  To his growing horror her decline had taken little more than three days. First her breathing had become increasingly laboured and she had required intubation and connection to a ventilator. Then, much concerned about these respiratory problems, the consultant diagnosed viral pneumonia on top of the already deeply debilitating flu. Liquid was accumulating in her chest cavity and required to be drained, leaving her connected to yet another piece of life-preserving equipment. To Hart’s despairing eyes she now resembled a butterfly trapped at the centre of an elaborate web of tubes and cables, waiting only for the spider to arrive. It was a measure of his state of mind that however hard he tried to dispel it, this image kept returning to him.

  Hart himself had been hospitalised only once, a minor procedure which kept him in for just a few days. Yet he remembered vividly the sense of claustrophobic entrapment that he had felt when confined to the ward and the extraordinary relief on being released from what he had experienced as involuntary captivity. Unconscious as she was, Rosemary could hardly be having such feelings, but he felt as if he was reliving them on her behalf. When he had been discharged from hospital the first thing he had done was to seek out a tree that he had been able to see from the ward window and run his hand along its rain-dampened bark. The exquisite roughness of that profoundly physical sensation, confirming his return to the outside world, had stayed with him ever since, and it was now an experience that he desired desperately for his daughter.

  Hospitals, Hart concluded, were paradoxical places. When you are ill you are relieved and grateful that they are there to look after you, but as the days grind by you want nothing more than to escape their pervasive embrace. Like all total institutions, however well intentioned, they inevitably undermine your sense of identity, shaping it to their own distinctive requirements. You have to become ‘a patient,’ ready to accept and live up to the everyday expectations of that role as it is defined for you. If, like Rosemary, you are seriously ill, that matters little. But if you still have your wits about you then, bit by bit, your autonomy is undermined and you become a marionette endlessly dancing to their tune. Of course, in a hospital they are trying to help you, but in other institutions – and not just total ones like prisons or care homes – they may well be trying to help themselves at your expense.

  Hart had endlessly rehearsed this line of thought as he sat beside Rosemary’s unresponsive form, and each time it had led him to the same disturbing place. Had he not spent his life in the intelligence world living up to precisely what was expected of him? And, in order to do so, had he not suspended his own judgment, his own sense of independent identity, his own evaluations of the objectives set for him by the governing elite known traditionally to their administrative servants as ‘our masters’?

  What a phrase that was – ‘our masters’ – capturing in just two words a whole universe of tacitly masculine authority and deference. If
he had been less ensnared in that world, less cautious at that fateful meeting about the Zeno breach, if he had only spoken out as Irene Johnson had, then he might not now be seated helplessly by his daughter. At least they could have been making preparations for the epidemic, slowing its spread, developing a strategy of containment. But he had not done so, and now he felt that he was directly confronted with the consequences.

  Assailed by these dark thoughts Hart dozed fitfully until a voice cut sharply through them.

  “Jonathan, Jonathan. Wake up,” Jill was calling. “It’s Rosie. Something’s badly wrong. I’ve pressed the emergency button.”

  Hart sat up, shaking his head as if to empty it of unwanted echoes of his dreams. His daughter was thrashing about on the bed, a thick green discharge flowing from her nose and mouth. She was staring up at him, though without any sign of recognition, while the violence of her desperate struggle for breath disrupted and broke the web of tubes and cables in which she was contained. He took hold of her shoulders in a forlorn attempt to control her convulsions but she continued to writhe beneath his hands, the force of her movement finally weakening as the effort of breathing became too much. Just as the door burst open with the arrival of two nurses and a doctor, Hart thought he saw a look of recognition and appeal as her eyes locked onto his, but then they went blank and lifeless and her body seemed to collapse in on itself.

  “No, no,” he moaned, as the medical staff forcibly pushed him aside and set about the challenge of reviving their patient. Hart sat hunched on a chair in the farthest corner of the room, Jill beside him, both helpless in the face of the terrible sight of Rosemary being subjected to CPR and defibrillation. Hart could not tell how long the frantic treatment continued – it seemed an eternity – but finally the doctor turned away from the task with a shake of his head.