Future Weapons of War

“I’m not able to confirm or deny that, Mrs. Loomis,” the receptionist said. “But there is a note here about contacting Dr. Gilfillan. It’s marked urgent. Will you call him or shall I?”

“I’m with Dr. Kitteredge,” Jenny told her.

“Yes, Mrs. Loomis, of course. Dr. Gilfillan is a consultant. It really would be better if you called him yourself. That way, you can describe your symptoms. His number—”

“Hang on!” Jenny complained. “What kind of consultant is he? What’s his specialism?”

“I really can’t tell you, Mrs. Loomis,” the receptionist said, frostily. “All I have here are his qualifications: PhD, RAMC.”

“PhD?” Jenny queried. “Isn’t it supposed to be MD, if not FRCS? And what the hell’s RAMC?”

“Royal Army Medical Corps,” the receptionist informed her, with a smugness that reminded Jenny of the general knowledge freak she’d got stuck with the last time Jackie had talked her into going down to the local pub on quiz night.

Awareness of what the voice at the other end of the phone had actually said burst in Jenny’s mind like a bomb just as the baby kicked her again, like a kangaroo taking a penalty. “A PhD in the Royal Army Medical Corps?” Jenny repeated, incredulously. “You mean he’s some biowarfare boffin from Porton Down? What the hell did that Genetic Profile throw up?”

“I really don’t know.” The receptionist’s disembodied voice suddenly seemed quite unhuman. “I dare say that he’ll explain everything when you call him. I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about. May I give you the number now?”

You absolute cow! Jenny thought—but all she said was: “Go ahead.” She tapped it into the phone’s memory as the receptionist read it off, and rang off as soon as she’d strangled a mumbled

“thank you,” without waiting to be told that she was welcome.

Jenny’s hand was really shaking now. She cursed several times. She’d known, of course, that the Genetic Profile wasn’t any mere formality—there were horror stories in the papers every day—but she’d had no reason to think that anything serious might be wrong. She had a better than average set of genes herself, and one of the pros of having selected an unwitting member of the armed forces as a potential father was supposed to be the screening that every recruit was put through nowadays. Except, of course, that she had had a reason to worry…

Jenny hit the speed dial, not to call the mysterious Dr. Gilfillan but to get to Jackie’s voicemail.

“Something’s wrong with the bloody Profile, Jackie,” she said, unceremoniously. “Pick up a soldier, you said. Guaranteed A-one physical condition, government screened, guaranteed never to show his pretty face again. The perfect combination of genetic quality and moral irresponsibility. I knew I should have gone for brains instead of brawn. All that stuff about the tactics of biological warfare wasn’t bullshit, Jackie. He really did know what he was talking about, the bastard. Something is very, very wrong, and I think I’ve just become a casualty in Plague War One. Call me when you can.”

Then she called the number that the receptionist had given her. She was expecting another receptionist, but the voice that answered on the third ring was male, deep and authoritative.

“Dr. Gilfillan?” she said, querulously.

“Speaking,” was the reply.

“My name’s Jennifer Loomis…”

“Miss Loomis! Thank god you called. I was beginning to think there’d been some kind of cock-up, or worse —”

Jenny cut him off, brutally. “There was some kind of cock-up,” she told him,“and worse. I just got your message now, when I called the Health Center to tell them I wouldn’t be in for my nonexistent appointment because I’m too bloody ill. Now, will you please tell me what’s wrong with my kid before I call an ambulance to take me to the hospital?”

“That won’t be necessary, Miss Loomis. An ambulance will be on its way within a matter of minutes, and I’ll be on board. Keep talking—I’ll bring the phone with me.”

“No, no, no!” said Jenny, horrified by the fact that her face seemed to be welded to the arm of the settee, so that she was unable to sit up. “You’re not shipping me off to bloody Porton Down! Apart from anything else, it must be sixty miles away!”

“I’m not at Porton, Miss Loomis. I’m at a private hospital in South Oxfordshire, no more than twenty miles away. If there are problems, you really would be better off here than your local maternity unit.”

“What do you mean, if?” Jenny complained. “You know damn well there are problems. What’s wrong with me, Dr. Gilfillan, PhD, RAMC? Exactly how did I become a casualty of this month’s bioterrorism scare? Because it seems to me that I’ve been hit by friendly fire, and if that’s the case…”

“Please don’t get carried away, Miss Loomis.” The voice didn’t sound so authoritative now.

Jenny had observed that male voices usually lost their edge when confronted with female hysteria—a serious weakness, she’d always thought. “We’ll be with you in less than half an hour. Now, can you tell me… ?”

“You’re the one who’s supposed to be telling me, you bastard!” Jenny screamed, figuring that if hysteria disturbed him she might as well let loose a broadside.“What’s wrong with my baby?”

She heard him out as far as “I’m not at liberty—” and then she cut him off. She called Jackie’s voicemail again.

“They’re sending an army ambulance for me,” she said, as calmly as she could. “Some hospital in South Oxfordshire—that’s as much as he’d say. If it were anything really nasty, like anthrax or Ebola, he’d have sent men in moon suits to storm the flat. Flagging my file with an urgent request to call him is pretty laid back by today’s standards, and whatever I’m carrying I’ve been carrying for the best part of nine months, so the feeling I have that it’ll explode any minute, or claw its way out, is probably a trifle exaggerated. That won’t stop them invoking the emergency regs, though, so it’ll be no phone calls, let alone visitors, once they’ve got their sticky fingers on me. Don’t let me vanish, Jackie.

If I’m not in touch soon, start asking questions, and don’t stop.”

She rang off, and wondered who else she ought to call. The phone rang in her hand, causing her to start, but the hope that it might be Jackie died when she saw Dr. Gilfillan’s name in the display. She blocked the call and rang her brother Steve. She figured that there was no point trying anyone at the office, where she’d been out of sight and mind since she started working at home in advance of her official maternity leave, and she hadn’t spoken to her father since the funeral. Steve was the only one left who might conceivably give a damn.

Naturally, his phone was off too. “It’s Jenny, Steve,” she said to his answering machine.

“Something’s wrong with the baby, and its nothing ordinary. The army are coming to pick me up. There must have been something wrong with the bloody soldier. I know you blanked it out when I told you about the eating, the kicking and the exhaustion, but it wasn’t just feminine frailty. If I don’t call you in the next two days, start making enquiries, will you? They say they’re taking me to some private place in South Oxfordshire, but they might be lying. This is just a precaution. No need to panic yet.”

It wasn’t until she’d rung off that she began to think that maybe she was jumping the gun a bit herself, in the matter of panicking. If all this turned out to be a storm in a teacup….

Gilfillan was still trying to get through, so she accepted the call. “Sorry,” she said, trying not to sound as if she meant it. “Had to bring a couple of people up to speed. Now, the way I figure it is that the soldier boy who got me pregnant was either a casualty himself or part of some kind of horrible experiment. Either way, I’m carrying some kind of giant mutant that’s trying to claw its way out because it knows it won’t be able to get out the usual way. Is that about the size of it?”

“You’re being ridiculously melodramatic, Miss Loomis,” the doctor informed her, reassuringly.

“There is nothing wrong with your baby. If anything, he’s a little too healthy. If only we’d known about this from the start, instead of having to find out when your Genetic Profile results tripped an alarm, there wouldn’t be any problem at all—and the fact that you’re as voluble as you are suggests that you’re still perfectly able to cope with the stress until we get you into hospital. So please stop trying to make yourself worse by scaring yourself to death.”

“So I’m not a casualty, then?” Jenny said, bluntly. “I have your word on that, as an officer and a gentleman?”