“It could be,” said Saracen, “That’s why I wanted to have a talk to you. Be on your guard at all times. Think plague. Every apparent drunk that you see pewk on the floor. Think first! Every apparent junkie with cramps and cold sweat. Think first! Things might not be what they seem. None of us are too familiar with the disease.
“I thought that plague could be easily cured these days,” said Jamieson.
“That’s what the books say but this isn’t the book, this is for real and there’s a problem.”
“What kind of a problem?”
“At the moment we can’t treat it.”
The houseman’s eyes opened wide. “Are you serious?” he asked.
“Very.”
Jamieson seemed to pale slightly. He covered his discomfort with an embarrassed grin. “Well, this really is something,” he said, flicking some imaginary dirt from the knees of his trousers.
“In practise we are going to set up a separate reception area for potential plague cases but the odd one could slip through under the guise of something else.”
“I’ll be on my guard,” said Jamieson.
Saracen covered A amp;E on his own until Prakesh Singh joined him at half past seven. There had only been one patient in the interim, a Gas Board worker who had fallen off his bicycle on the way to work and fractured his wrist. The man was leaving as Singh arrived. Saracen gave Singh the same warning as he had Jamieson and satisfied himself that the man had understood before leaving him in charge of admissions. He himself retired to his office to start making plans for the new reception area.
The immediate problem was to find a route between reception and ward twenty that avoided all contact with the rest of the hospital. His attention was drawn to a room beneath ward twenty itself that was currently being used as a store room for empty gas cylinders awaiting collection. According to the hospital plan there existed a staircase that led from the room up to the ward above. If access were restored then the location of the room would make it an ideal reception area for plague patients. Ambulances would be able to take their patients directly to it. Saracen decided that he would have to check with the hospital secretary whether or not the connecting staircase was wide enough to permit the passage of stretchers. He would do this at the next meeting of the emergency committee which was scheduled for eleven.
Saracen was surprised when he got to the Lecture Theatre. There were a great many people there that he had not seen before. Two of them were wearing army uniform; the others were introduced by Saithe as being heads of department in Skelmore’s administration.
“And now,” said Saithe, “I am going to hand you over to Lt Col Beasdale who, from six o’clock this morning, is technically in command of Skelmore.
The officer smiled and cleared his throat. “Let me begin by saying that this situation gives me no pleasure at all.” He smiled again as if to reinforce his statement but no one smiled back. Beasdale continued. “Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see an end to this business and the restoration of the town to the proper civil authorities. In the meantime however, my orders are clear and simple. No one is to enter or leave Skelmore without my say-so. Secondly I am charged with the maintenance of law and order.” Beasdale looked round at his audience but no one spoke. He continued, “In practise we would all hope that things would continue pretty much as normal. The civilian authorities will continue to operate as usual and my men will maintain a low profile. They will stay outside the town in fact except for transfer duties.”
Someone asked what transfer duties were.
“Essential goods coming in to Skelmore will be transferred to military vehicles outside the town and delivered by my men. Civilian delivery drivers will not be permitted to enter.”
“What happens if someone absolutely insists on leaving the town?” asked the County Hospital’s Senior Nursing Officer.
“My men would explain the position to them and politely turn them back,” said Beasdale.
“And if they still persisted?”
“They would not be allowed to leave.”
“Meaning?”
Beasdale rubbed his forehead in a nervous gesture of frustration and said, “We would be obliged to use as much force as was necessary to maintain the integrity of the cordon.”
“Thank you Colonel.” The woman sat down again with an air of self satisfaction that Saracen found hard to fathom for Beasdale did not seem to be an unreasonable character at all. If anything, he seemed to be rather embarrassed by the situation and was deliberately playing down his authority rather than flaunting it.
Beasdale continued. “This, of course, is not a routine military operation in that the problem is not one of civil unrest but of medical necessity. For that reason all of us concerned with administration of the town will be heavily reliant on medical advice, not just for situation reports but for forecasts as to how things might develop.”
The more Beasdale said the more Saracen liked him. Never a great fan of the military mind he was relieved to discern in Beasdale a great deal of common sense and that was a rarer commodity than most people imagined. It did not necessarily come with intelligence and you could not be taught it at university or military academy. It had to be innate.
“Before I hand you over to Doctors Braithwaite and MacQuillan I must just tell you that this will be the last meeting of the emergency committee in its present form.
“Why?” demanded the nurse who had forced Beasdale into admitting that he would use force if necessary.
“It has served its purpose,” said Beasdale. “It makes no sense to have the centre of administration here in the hospital, one of the areas most likely to be affected by the problem.”
“Do you mean you are afraid Colonel?” asked the woman.
Silly cow, thought Saracen.
“On a personal level I suppose you could say that I was Miss?…”
“Williams.”
“Miss Williams. Like most lay people I know nothing at all about plague save for the horror that the word implies. I depend on you and your colleagues to provide me with more realistic information. But my decision has nothing to do with personal considerations. Should the worst happen and God forbid that it does, Skelmore must not be left like a headless chicken.”
“So where will your headquarters be Colonel?” asked one of the civilian administrators.
Beasdale smiled and said, “I am afraid my colleague here has something for you all to sign before I say anything else.” The other army officer took some papers from his briefcase and started handing them out.
“What on earth?” exclaimed someone in the front row.
“The official secrets act,” said Beasdale.
With the formalities over Beasdale said, “Headquarters will be at Skelmore municipal waterworks.”
The sense of anti-climax in the room was unanimous. Beasdale said, “One or two of you here will already know the reason for this. For the rest of you it will come as a surprise to learn that sixty feet below ground at the waterworks there are a series of well equipped chambers designed as a regional seat of government for the area.” Beasdale paused to let the noise die down.
“But surely that sort of thing is for nuclear attack and the like?”
“It does sound a bit overly dramatic I agree,” said Beasdale, “But the powers that be thought that this would be a good opportunity to put the facilities to the test.”
“So we all meet there in future?” asked one of the administrators.
“No, not all,” replied Beasdale. “None of the medical personnel will be permitted to enter the administration centre. Instead my men will install extra communication facilities between the waterworks and the two hospitals so that we can communicate at any time and in complete confidence. There will be no need for any of the medical people to come to the centre. Any questions?”
There were none.
“In that case I will now hand you over to Doctor MacQuillan for a progress report.”
MacQuillan got to his feet and switched on the overhead projector. He placed a transparency on it and picked up the pointer. “This,” he announced is an epimid, short for epidemiological pyramid. It is a chart that records the
