Omega

'Oh, that's a pity,' Miss Smith said for the second time this morning.

'Right nuisance to us, too, love. Five they've taken, and a doctor, and we're short-staffed already…'

'Nurse!' The sister had emerged suddenly from the door behind the counter, and her tone was sharp. 'I'll attend to this lady. You can go for your lunch-break.'

The nurse flushed and scuttled away.

'Yes?' the sister asked abruptly.

'I was asking for my cousin, Nurse Eileen Roberts. But I understand she's away.' 'I'm afraid so. She's been lent to another hospital.' ‘At Banwell?'

'The nurse was misinformed. Nurse Roberts went to Weston, yesterday, but she was due for two weeks' holiday first. So it'll be no use asking for her there for another fortnight.'

Miss Smith said 'Thank you, Sister' and left. When she was back in the van she looked at Ginger Lad curled up in his usual place on the passenger seat. 'You know what, my friend? There's something very odd going on. That sister was lying. And so was the sergeant, back there.'

Ginger Lad yawned.

'You're probably right,' Miss Smith told him. 'All the same, we're going to Banwell to have a look-see.'

She remembered passing through Banwell three or four kilometres back; just as well, because she had not known the name and if it hadn't been fresh in her visual memory she might not have caught what the nurse had said. As she drove towards it again, she wondered what she should do. She was obstinately determined to sec Eileen, quite apart from the fact that her curiosity (an active element in Miss Smith's make-up) had been aroused. But her experience with the sister warned her that there might be snags to simply asking for Banwell Emergency Unit. Miss Smith was not at all sure what she was up against, but she felt wary.

On the other hand, the young nurse had told her that1 Eileen was at Banwell Emergency Unit. Maybe she shouldn't have but that wasn't Miss Smith's fault. And Eileen was her cousin, which gave her every excuse for asking for her-

She decided to risk it.

As she came to the outskirts of Banwcll, she kept her eyes open for a suitable pedestrian – preferably someone a little naive and unsuspicious. She picked on a housewifely woman of about forty and pulled up beside her.

'Excuse me. Can you direct me to the Banwell Emergency Unit?'

The woman had smiled when Miss Smith leaned through the window to speak to her, but now the smile faded. She looked at Miss Smith nervously.

'You'd better ask at the police station,' she said, and turned away.

Miss Smith sat there for a moment, thinking. She decided she did not want to ask at the police station. She did not want her name noted down in the station book. Obviously, to ask for the Emergency Unit made one suspect; and if, somewhere along the official wires, that suspicion linked up with the disappearance of a local government officer and an unauthorized entry in File LB 0806… She was beginning to regret that little joke.

Oh well. One more 'innocent' try. She drove up to the post office and parked.

From the medical cupboard she took a cardboard carton of penicillin tablets which she had somewhat unofficially acquired as useful stores; it was still in its hospital wrapping. That would do. She could carry it into the post office and say she had orders to deliver it in person to the Unit; it might work, and if it didn't, she could say she was going on to the police station.

But Miss Smith was saved the trouble of finding out. As she opened the door of the van, a nurse walked out of the post office.

Miss Smith called, 'Eileen!'

The nurse spun round, startled. She gasped, 'Angie!' and then looked quickly up and down the street. No one was looking their way. Miss Smith jumped back into the van and opened the passenger door from inside.

'Move over, Ginger Lad. We've got a visitor.'

Eileen said, 'Drive straight on, Angie,' as soon as she was seated.

Miss Smith did as she was told, asking, 'Where are we going?'

'Towards the Unit, as long as anyone can see us. But not to it… How the hell did you find me? We're supposed to be top secret. We can't write or phone anyone.'

'Never mind that now – tell you later. What were you doing in the town, then?'

'Official errand. But if I'd tried to use the phone, the post office would have stopped me. They're under orders, too… Turn up here. We can keep out of sight for a while and talk.'

Miss Smith chose a spot to park and then turned and looked at her cousin. My God, she thought, she's been through the mill… Eileen Roberts was a pretty girl; twenty-three, with a sturdy little figure, a sunny face, rather high-coloured and framed with black curls. But now the face was pale and drawn and the curls seemed to have lost their sheen. And the eyes…

'Can you tell me?' Miss Smith asked gently.

'I don't know how much has leaked out,' Eileen said. 'Do you know anything about what's going on round here?'

'Only that the Gorge is closed. I was turned back by an Army road block, of all things. I smelt a rat then. I went on to look you up at the hospital and a little nurse let slip you were at Banwcll Emergency Unit, before a sister came and shut her up. The sister tried to put me off your scent with some yarn about your being on holiday.'

'The Gorge is closed, all right – and the Cave entrances sealed off with God knows how many tons of concrete. Ever since the first tour came up the day after the tremors. Those people are at the Unit, Angie. And a few others who caught it from fissures in the ground before those were sealed, too.'

'Caught what}'

'The Dust… That's what they call it but it's so fine it's more like a vapour. At least, that's how the… the patients described it, while they still could… First day, they were treated as acute bronchitis cases. Matron told me one story did reach a London evening paper but they rang back for more details and by that time the clamps were on. So it never appeared.'

She broke off, and was silent for some time before Miss Smith realized she was crying. Just sitting there, trembling, while the tears ran down her cheeks.

Miss Smith put an arm round her and Eileen clutched at her, sobbing now. 'Call myself a nurse! But oh, Angie – it's awful '

'There now, love.'

Eileen sat determinedly upright and managed to regain control of herself. 'But then, I'm not a nurse. I'm a bloody jailer. We all are… No, listen – I'll try to tell you. It starts off like acute bronchitis, but after a day that clears and they're breathing normally. For another couple of days they're just weak, like fever cases recovering. Then it starts. Out of the blue, fits of violence, lasting only a minute or two and then passing. The first patients smashed furniture and windows and one broke a nurse's arm – after that we were prepared for it. They get steadily worse till the fits are continuous. By about the fifth day, they're wild animals. They don't seem to be in pain – just stark, staring mad -and violent. In strait-jackets, round the clock. It takes two of us to feed one patient – a male nurse to hold him and a female nurse to spoon it into him. Or her. Otherwise the feeder may get bitten. One girl was; it fractured two of her fingers.' Eileen laughed, harshly. 'They gave her an anti-rabies course, to be on the safe side. But it doesn't seem to be infectious, or contagious. And that's about all we do know.… We've got experts with strings of letters after their names as long as your arm, up there at the Unit. They've been running tests and Christ knows what, and they haven't a clue. It's a week now since the first ones went mad and all we've learned so far is how not to get ourselves hurt… Angie, I wouldn't confess this to anyone else, but… Look, I'm a nurse. I've got my reasonable share of compassion; you must have in my job or it gets impossible. But these… They're so awful, so far away from being human, I can't even feel sorry for them. I'm afraid of them and I hate them. I hate them for not being human and for keeping me away from being a nurse… I said I was a jailer but I'm not even that. I'm a keeper of wild beasts which haven't even got the nobility of real beasts… I know some of the others feel the same. One day soon, one of us is going to kill one of them. And what that would trigger off, I daren't think… Angie, it's like the end of my world.'