What if Cladach Duillich had been abandoned-evacuated? I could stay in that room until the flesh rotted from my bones. I stopped walking and sat in the corner again. I may have fallen asleep for a while, I don't remember. The hours I spent there are pretty much blanked out in my memory. But I was aware when the door opened to let in a flood of light as glaring as from arc lamps. I put my hands to my eyes and saw Cregar at the door. He tut-tutted, and said, 'You didn't leave him a light, Max.' 'Must have forgotten,' said Max indifferently. The light was quite ordinary light shed from fluorescent tubes in the ceiling of the corridor. I got up and went to the door. 'God damn you!' I said to Max. He stood back a pace and lifted the pistol he held. Cregar said, 'Calm down. It wasn't intentional.' He saw me looking at the pistol.
'That's to warn you not to do anything silly, as well you might. You wanted to see the girl, didn't you? Well, you can see her now. Come with me.' We walked along the corridor side by side with Max bringing up the rear. Cregar said conversationally, 'You won't see any of the staff because I've had them cleared out of this block. They're scientific types and a bit lily-livered. The sight of guns makes them nervous.' I said nothing. We walked a few more paces. 'I think I've found a way of confounding Ogilvie-there'll be no problem there-but that still leaves you. After we've seen Dr. Ashton we'll have a talk.'
He stopped at a door. 'In here,' he said, and let me precede him. It was a strange room because one wall was almost entirely glass but the window looked, not upon the outside, but into another room. At first I didn't know what I was looking at, but Cregar said, 'There's Dr.
Ashton.' He pointed to a bed in the next room. Penny was in bed, seemingly asleep. Her face was pale and ravaged, she could have been a woman twice her age. Around the bed were various bits of hospital equipment among which I recognized two drip feeds, one of which appeared to contain blood. I said, 'In God's name, what happened?'
Cregar said, almost apologetically, 'We had… er… an accident here last week in which Dr. Ashton was involved. I'm afraid she's rather ill. She's been in a coma for the last two days.' He picked up a microphone and snapped a switch. 'Dr. Ashton, can you hear me?' His voice came amplified and distorted from a loudspeaker in the next room. Penny made no movement. I said tightly, 'What's she got?'
'That's rather hard to say. It's something nobody has ever had before.
Something new. Carter has been trying to run it down but without much success.' I was frightened and angry simultaneously. Frightened for Penny and angry at Cregar. 'It's something you brewed up here, isn't it? Something that got loose because you were too tight-fisted to have a P4 laboratory as she wanted.' 'I see that Dr. Ashton has been chattering about my business.' Cregar gestured. 'That's not a proper hospital ward of course; it's one of our laboratories. She had to be put somewhere safe.' 'Not safe for her,' I said bitterly. 'Safe for you.' 'Of course,' said Cregar. 'Whatever she's got we can't have spread about. Carter thinks it's most infectious.' 'Is Carter a medical doctor?' 'His degree is in biology not medicine, but he's a very capable man. She's getting the best of attention. We're transfusing whole blood and glucose, as you see.' I turned to him.
'She should be in a hospital. This amateur lash-up is no good, and you know it. If she dies you'll be a murderer, and so will Carter and everybody else here.' 'You're probably right,' he said indifferently.
'About the hospital, I mean. But it's difficult to see how we could put her in a hospital and still maintain security.' His voice was remote and objective. 'I pride myself on my ability to solve problems but I haven't been able to solve that one.' 'Damn your security!'
'Coming from a man in your profession that smacks of heresy.' Cregar stepped back as he saw my expression, and gestured to Max who lifted the pistol warningly. 'She's having the best attention we can give her. Dr. Carter is assiduous in his duties.' 'Carter is using her as a guinea pig and you damned well know it. She must be taken to a hospital-better still, to Porton. They understand high-risk pathogens there.' 'You're in no position to make demands,' he said. 'Come with me.' He turned his back and walked out. I took a last look at Penny, then followed him with Max close behind. He walked up the corridor and opened a door on the other side. We entered a small vestibule and Cregar waited until Max had closed the outer door before proceeding.
'We do take precautions, in spite of anything you've been told,' he said. 'This is an airlock. The laboratory through there is under low pressure. Do you know why?' 'If there's a leak air goes in and not out.' He nodded in satisfaction as though I'd passed a test, and opened the inner door. My ears popped as the pressure changed. 'This is Carter's own laboratory. I'd like to show it to you.' 'Why?'
'You'll see.' He began a tour, behaving for all the world like a guide in one of those model factories where they show you what they're proud of and hide the bad bits. 'This is a centrifuge. You'll notice it's in an air-tight cabinet; that's to prevent anything escaping while it's in operation. No aerosols-microbes floating in the air.' We passed on, and he indicated an array of glass-fronted cabinets covering one wall.
'The incubating cabinets, each containing its own petri dish and each petri dish isolated. Nothing can escape from there.' 'Something escaped from somewhere.' He ignored that. 'Each cabinet can be removed in its entirety and the contents transferred elsewhere without coming into contact even with the air in the laboratory.' I looked into a cabinet at the circular growth of a culture on a petri dish. 'What's the organism?' 'Escherichia coli, I believe. It's Carter's favourite.'
'The genetically weakened strain.' Cregar raised his eyebrows. 'You seem well informed for a layman. I don't know; that's Carter's affair.
I'm not the expert.' I turned to face him. 'What's this all about?'
'I'm trying to show you that we do take all possible precautions. What happened to Dr. Ashton was purely accidental-a million to one chance.
It's very important to me that you believe that.' 'If you'd listened to her it wouldn't have happened, but I believe you,' I said. 'I don't think you did it on purpose. What's so important about it?' 'I can come to an accommodation with Ogilvie,' he said. 'I'll lose some advantage but not all. That leaves you.' 'Have you spoken with Ogilvie?' 'Yes.' I felt sick. If Cregar could corrupt Ogilvie I wouldn't want to work with him again. I said steadily, 'What about me?' 'This. I can do a deal with Ogilvie all right, but I don't think I could make it stick if anything happened to you. He always was squeamish. That means you have to be around and able to talk for some time to come which, as you will appreciate, presents me with a problem.' 'How to keep my mouth shut without killing me.' 'Precisely.
You are a man like myself-we cut to the heart of a problem. When you appeared in the Ashton case I had you investigated most thoroughly. To my surprise you had no handle I could get hold of, no peccadilloes to be exploited. You seem to be that rarity, the honest man.' 'I won't take compliments from you, damn it!' 'No compliment, I assure you.
Just a damnable nuisance. I wanted something to hold over you, something with which to blackmail you. There was nothing. So I have to find something else to close your mouth. I think I've found it.'
'Well?' 'It will mean my giving up more of the advantage I have achieved over the years, but I'll retain the most of it. I'll trade the young lady in the next laboratory for your silence.' I looked at him with disgust. He had said the solution to his problem would lie in the study of men's weaknesses and he had found mine. He said, 'As soon as you agree, the girl can be taken to hospital, in carefully controlled conditions, of course. Perhaps your suggestion that she be taken to Porton is best. I could arrange that.' I whirled round as the door of the laboratory burst open. There stood Archie Ferguson.