CV

16

When the elevator stopped, she was still shaky and disoriented; her companion, Mrs. Murphy, was standing against the wall staring at the man on the floor and stuffing her fingers into her mouth.

“What happened?” she heard herself ask. Mrs. Murphy made an inarticulate noise.

The door slid open. “Come on,” she said, taking the other woman’s arm. “Let’s get out, Georgette, hurry!”

In the corridor, as the elevator door closed, Mrs. Murphy said, “He just—he just—”

“Did you see it?”

“Yes, didn’t you see it? He just fell down—”

“My back was turned. I felt all funny for a minute. Come on, dear, we’ll have to report this to somebody.”

“Is this the right floor?” Mrs. Murphy asked, looking around with a witless expression.

“Yes, the Signal Deck—see, right here. Come on, Georgette.”

They passed a steward with a cart; he was raising his hand to knock on a door beside a discreet brass plate that read MCKINLEY SUITE. The memory of something she had once known stirred in her, and she slipped out again, across the fuzzy void; and as the new avalanche of sensation struck him, he staggered and put his hand on the cart to steady himself. A woman was screaming, beside the body of another woman who lay sprawled on the floor, her skirts over her knees, eyeglasses beside her head.

Once he had quieted the screaming woman and turned her over to the two men with the stretcher who came to collect the other one, he was able to return his attention to his duties. The cart had been standing in front of the door for at least five minutes; the food would be cooling off, it was too bad.

He knocked on the door. Presently Mr. Winter opened it.

“Good afternoon, sir.” He wheeled the cart in. “I’m sorry for the delay, but there was an unfortunate incident in the corridor. A lady was ill. I had to call for security.”

“Is she all right now?”

“Yes, sir.” He noticed with keen interest the small grayhaired man in the wheelchair. “Good afternoon, Professor Newland. Here is your lunch finally.” He uncovered the tray and began laying out the dishes on the table.

“Did I hear you say someone was ill?”

“Yes, sir. Very unfortunate.” He was near enough now, and he slipped out, moved across the void and was in again, raising his head and hearing Winter’s voice: “Professor! Are you all right?”

“Yes,” he said. “What’s the matter with Kim?”

“He’s unconscious. I’d better call somebody.”

“First a woman in the hall, and now Kim. Do you suppose there’s some kind of contagion?”

He did not listen to the reply; he was absorbed in the complex network of his new host’s mind. He had expected that Newland would be interesting, and it was true: he was very interesting.

“Attention, all passengers and crew.” The voice echoed down the corridors. In the lounges and restaurants, the casino, the shopping mall, heads turned to look at television screens. A round, serious face. “This is Chief of Operations Bliss. I have to inform you that a possibly contagious disease has broken out on Sea Venture. The illness is marked by a sudden collapse. The patients are being cared for in our hospital, and they are in stable condition. There is no cause for undue alarm. You should be aware, however, that the illness is sometimes preceded by a temporary dizziness or a fainting spell. All those who have experienced anything of this kind in the presence of someone who has collapsed are asked to report to Dr. Wallace McNulty at his office on the Upper Deck. Further bulletins will be issued from time to time. Thank you for your cooperation.”

A blue-haired old woman, who heard this, put her bird’s-foot hand to her mouth.

“What’s the matter, Fran?” said her husband.

“Why, I felt faint, you remember—when that man fell down in the lobby?”

“Oh, my gosh. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything. I guess we’d better go find out, though. Do you think?”

“Oh, dear. I suppose so. And here I thought I was going on this trip to get away from doctors.”

McNulty persuaded Frances Quincy and her husband to move into the isolation section. On the way she fell down senseless in the corridor, and he had another patient. An hour later the same thing happened all over again—a man this time, Chandragupta Devi, seventy-one. He had been passing in the hall when Mrs. Quincy was stricken. In he went.

McNulty fed his notes into the office computer. He had the places and approximate times of onset of all the patients, and they formed a coherent chain. The computer displayed them in the three-dimensional skeleton of Sea Venture, with colored lines between them. The lines started in the marine laboratory, went back into the crew quarters, then up to the Quarter Deck, then here and there in the passenger section. In almost every case he could match up the time when one victim collapsed with the time the next one felt dizzy. There were a few where the times didn’t match—three hours between Geller and Barlow, for instance—but that could be bad reporting or bad recollection.

What kind of epidemic was this, for God’s sake? It wasn’t spreading, it was being passed on to one victim at a time like the wand in a relay race. No wonder the experts couldn’t tell him anything. There had never been anything like this in the world before.