“Please don’t bullshit me, Ms. Cantor, or whoever you are, I’m not buying it.” Gearing’s gaze sharpens and she stands up, clearly adamant. “This has been a very strange research protocol all along, and the whole … occult … connection with your agency is quite disturbing. As you are probably aware, the supply arrangement imposed on me by our directors breaches the Human Tissues Act and almost certainly wouldn’t pass muster in front of a medical ethics review board; unless you can give me a good reason to stick my neck on the line for your study I’m going to have to—”
“Don’t move.” Mhari throws her force of will behind the instructions and Dr. Gearing freezes. Then Mhari takes an irrevocable step: she smiles.
“Uh-huh-unh—” Gearing is fighting it, a sure sign of her rising panic. Mhari lets the smile slip, allows her lips to relax back into place, concealing her dentition.
“I’m not going to bite you.” Mhari takes a deep breath, then searches for the right words, a formula that will imply the essentials without breaking confidence. “Even though I’m hungry. But this isn’t about me. The agency has been dealing with a, a certain problematic condition, a contagious paranormal disease. As you can see, some of the patients can be stabilized, if they receive regular transfusions. The downside is that the donors … don’t survive. So the optimal protocol is to take donations only from people who are already dying.” Gearing’s eyes are wide and dark, terrified, as she meets Mhari’s gaze. She’s breathing rapidly, and Mhari can’t help glancing down at the nearly irresistible pulse in her throat. “Do you understand? You may reply.”
“Yuh-you’re a—”
“Stop! Don’t say it. Let’s keep this deniable, please.”
Dr. Gearing’s face is wan and her forehead is shiny with perspiration; it’s a wonder she hasn’t pissed herself. “But you, you drink—”
“Calm down.” Predictably, that sort of order doesn’t work, even with PHANG mind control mojo behind it. “Most of what people think they know about this condition is stuff and nonsense. I’m not going to murder you, I’m not some kind of undead animated corpse, I’m not harmed by religious symbols, it’s all rubbish. Well, except for needing regular blood samples. The point is, if the supply arrangement is disrupted a number of people with this condition will be faced with a slow, lingering death or, or, having to face an unacceptable alternative. I’m a civil servant, Doctor, I didn’t sign up to become a blood-drinking serial killer. But I can’t speak for all the others, if their rations are interrupted.”
Dr. Gearing is shaking her head. “But if it harms the donors, if they haven’t given informed consent, it, it’s clearly unethical as well as illegal—”
Implied threats aren’t working and she’s in danger of losing control. Mhari consults her conscience and takes another step into the twilight borderland between bending the rules and breaking them. “One of the other civil—former civil—servants who shares my condition is the fellow to whom the All-Highest of the alf?r Host pledged their surrender. I’m not exaggerating: this little interruption jeopardizes our national security. If it comes to the crunch, there are soldiers who will stick the needle in their own arm and draw blood, even knowing that their life expectancy afterwards will be measured in weeks, because it’s better than the thousands of deaths that will result if they don’t.” Mhari’s delivery grows increasingly vehement as she makes her case. “Do you know the streetcar problem? A runaway tram is hurtling towards six people on the track, but you can throw a switch and divert it onto a siding—where it will kill one person instead? Congratulations, Doc, welcome to my world. It’s a classic streetcar problem—except the six people you think you’re saving will die of natural causes before the streetcar reaches them, and the person on the other track is carrying a bomb that will wipe out everyone on the tram if it hits them.”
Mhari takes a step back; now she’s breathing too fast as well, and trying not to clench her fists. Dr. Gearing stares at her as if she’s grown a second head as well as fangs. “You can talk and move again,” Mhari says curtly. “I’m not going to hurt you. But I want you to think very hard. I just committed a serious offense in trusting you with this. I’m not just risking a disciplinary hearing or being struck off, my neck is quite literally on the line here.”
She turns and stares out the window, at the moonlit garden where so many of the people who have unknowingly kept her alive for the past year spent their last hours. She feels empty, purged of human feeling. By rights she ought to be appalled at herself for the deliberate breach, but she finds she really doesn’t care any more. She has reached the point of questioning whether her actions are more about defending herself than defending the realm, and the irony of surrendering responsibility and dumping the whole thorny dilemma on the shoulders of a doctor who specializes in pain control does not elude her. She seats herself in the visitor’s chair, beside an empty bed where her own will to survive has hastened the end of more than one cancer patient’s story, and she finds herself at peace as she waits for the doctor to return and deliver the verdict on her prognosis.
*
It’s six o’clock on a Saturday evening at Nether Stowe House and the reception is just getting underway. The permanent staff and Schiller’s events team have been working flat-out for days to ensure that everything is ready to run in accordance with the plan drafted by the party planning office. This first session is a black tie event with a very exclusive guest list (no journalists or press photographers will be permitted to approach within telephoto range). While many of the attendees are arriving in a fleet of chauffeur-driven limos provided by GP Services, others—the reclusive property tycoon Burroughs twins, the eldest son and heir of an infamous press baron, a former French president and his supermodel/rock-star wife—are dropping in on the helipad tucked discreetly behind the orchard at the rear of the building.
Nigel Irving, the Minister of Defense, does not rate a helicopter, but the vintage Rolls-Royce Schiller’s people laid on for him is a step up from the normal ministerial Jaguar, as is the bottle of posh plonk in the solid silver bucket. It’s a nice touch, he has to admit, and he is more-than-somewhat lubricated by the time the car glides to a halt on the graveled drive in front of the big house. (A Minister of the Crown can’t accept gifts, but a lift in a friend’s car and a bottle of refreshments between friends is somewhat deniable, or can at least be written down as “party hospitality” on his parliamentary expenses form.)