Plague

'Leonard, I need you here. You have to talk to Firenza. Please. I can't get away myself.'

Dr. Petrie shook his head. 'Anton — I can't. I think that Margaret has the plague. I have to go get Prickles back, Anton. I can't just leave her. Look — ' he checked his watch ' — just give me two hours, and I'll come right back here. I promise.'

Dr. Selmer looked desperate. 'Leonard, it's Firenza. You have to convince him. If we don't put this whole city into quarantine — well, God knows what's going to happen. I spoke to him just now. He still refuses. He says that until we find out what's causing this epidemic, there's no medical justification for sealing the city off.'

'We do know what's causing it,' said Dr. Petrie.

'We do?'

'I think so. It's the sewage that's been washed up on the beaches. Every one of the people I've come across with plague went swimming — either yesterday, or today.'

Dr. Selmer dropped his hands in resignation. 'Then we have to close the beaches,' he said. 'Go see Firenza, tell him what you think, and insist that he closes the beaches.' Dr. Petrie looked at his watch again. He had just seen a man die from the plague; he knew how short a time it took. If Margaret was already in the dizzy, drunken stage, she may only have a couple of hours left — three or four at the most. Supposing she died when Prickles was with her? Supposing she was driving her car?

'Anton,' he said desperately. 'Just two hours. Please. No one goes swimming at night, anyway.'

Dr. Selmer wiped his brow with the back of his hand. 'Go on, then,' he said softly. 'I can't stop you.'

'Anton, it's my daughter.'

Dr. Selmer nodded, and looked at Mrs. Haskins, waiting, shocked and patient, by the water fountain, and the white shivering people who were being wheeled in through the hospital's double doors.

'Sure. It's your daughter, and her husband, and his son, and my uncle. Everybody belongs to somebody, Leonard. I'm just disappointed, that's all. No matter how people criticized you, I didn't think you were that kind of a doctor.'

Leonard Petrie rubbed the back of his neck. The muscles were knotted and tense, and he could feel the beginnings of a pounding headache.

Dr. Selmer watched him, saying nothing, waiting for him to make up his mind.

Finally, Dr. Petrie sighed. 'All right, Anton. You win. Where does Firenza live?'

'Out by the university on South West 48th Street. The number's here.'

Dr. Petrie took the creased card and tucked it in his pocket. 'I'll be right back when I've seen him. Then I must go and look for Prickles. You understand that?'

Dr. Selmer nodded and laid a hand on his shoulder. 'I won't forget this, Leonard. Just talk sense into those bastards, that's all. I'll catch you later.'

Dr. Petrie was about to leave when he noticed Mrs. Haskins.

'Anton,' he said quietly. 'She still doesn't believe it. Tell her, for Christ's sake, or she's going to stand by that fountain all night.'

Dr. Selmer nodded. Then Dr. Petrie turned, and walked quickly down the hospital corridor, out through the double doors, and into the humid tropical night. By the clock over the hospital's main entrance, it was just past one-thirty. He slung his jacket in the back of his car, started the engine, and squealed off south.

He made a conscious effort to wipe any thoughts of Prickles out of his mind as he drove. There were too many giddy dollies in this city to think about just one of them, no matter how dearly he loved her, no matter how much it hurt to leave her to whatever fate she faced.

Two

Ivor Glantz stalked fiercely across his New York apartment, plucked the stopper out of the whiskey decanter, and splashed himself a more-than-generous glassful. He swallowed it like medicine, grimacing at every gulp, and then, with heavily suppressed fury, he set the glass quietly and evenly back on the table.

His attorney, Manny Friedman, stood watching this performance with respectful distaste.

'Ivor,' he said, in his persistent, nasal voice. 'Ivor, you'll kill yourself.'

Ivor Glantz looked at him and said nothing. He walked across to the floor-to-ceiling window, and parted the expensive translucent drapes. Sixteen floors below, on this gray and rainy Tuesday, the four o'clock traffic was beginning to congest the junction of First Avenue, measled with yellow taxis and teeming with people. Glantz let the drape fall back, and turned to face his attorney with exasperation and badly-concealed ill grace.

'You smart-ass,' he growled. 'You unctious, greasy, half-circumcized smart-ass.'

Manny Friedman frowned nervously. He was clutching his briefcase in front of him like a protective shield.

'Ivor,' he said uncertainly, 'it's a question of legal technique.'

'Technique?' snapped Glantz. 'You tell the jury what a short-tempered tyrannical bastard I am, and that's supposed to be technique?'

Manny Friedman licked his lips. 'Ivor, I explained it. I explained that we had to admit your past mistakes before the defense could get their teeth into them and make a meal out of the whole thing. What we're trying to say is that you're human, and you've made mistakes, but that now, in spite of everything, you've been misjudged, and taken advantage of.'

Ivor Glantz sat down heavily in one of the huge off-white armchairs. 'Oh, sure,' he said sarcastically. 'Well, you certainly made a good job of that. Now they think I'm a cross between Caligula and Adolf Hitler. I've been misjudged? And taken advantage of? What the hell kind of a performance is that?'

'Ivor, listen to me — '

'I won't listen!' snapped Glantz. 'I think I've listened to your half-assed advice long enough! This is my court case, and we'll run it the way I want it! Just because that Finnish bastard has lived a life of one hundred percent purity, that's supposed to give him the right to steal my research? It's not my fault the guy's a virgin, is it? That's my fucking patent, and he's infringed it. That's all there is to it!'

Manny Friedman swallowed hard. He sat down, still clutching his briefcase.

'Ivor,' he said. 'For one moment, just for one second, please listen.'

Ivor Glantz sniffed. 'What do you want me to do now? Confess that I'm a homosexual, so the jury won't think I'm having an incestuous relationship with my daughter?' He paused, looking the discomfited Manny up and down. 'Come on, stop looking so goddamned nervous!'

'It's all a question of credibility,' said Friedman earnestly. 'You're a scientist, and a good scientist, but you also have a checkered kind of a past.'

'Because I argued with those stuffed shirts at Princeton, and told DuPonts to go fuck themselves? That's a checkered past?'

Friedman winced. 'To a jury, Ivor, yes. What we've been trying to do today is to show that you're an honest American Joe, with a particular talent for bacteriological research, and that in spite of your mistakes you've been trying to make good. All of a sudden, you find out how to mutate bacilli with radioactive rays — the greatest discovery of your whole life, the discovery that's going to make it big — and what happens? Some foreign schmuck steps in and claims that it's his idea, and that you're some kind of a quack.'

Ivor rubbed his eyes tiredly. 'Manny,' he said, with immense and laborious patience, 'I am not just an honest American Joe. I am the best-paid, best-known, most successful research bacteriologist in the entire American continent. Manny, just look around you. Is this the kind of place your honest American Joe lives in? Concorde Tower? Stop playing Perry Masonstein and treat this whole thing with reality!'

Manny shrugged. 'You're looking at it through the wrong end of the telescope, Ivor. We don't want the jury to think you're some kind of fat plutocrat, parking your backside on medical patents for your own financial benefit.'