chill and fever that characterized the disease were coincident with the segmentation of these parasites in the patient's bloodstream.
The august members of the British Medical Association were well aware of Robyn's reputation as a political trouble stirrer a radical who flew in the face of their conservative convictions. They had never forgiven nor forgotten that she had impersonated a man to attend medical school and had desecrated their exclusive masculine preserve by obtaining her medical qualification under false colours. They recalled with.pain the furore and scandal that she had conjured up when the governors of St. Matthew's Hospital, London, where she had received her training, had attempted, quite reasonably, to revoke her doctorate.
Sourly they had looked on as she published a series of highly successful books, culminating in the infamous Trooper Hackett of Matabeleland, a vicious attack on the Company in which a great deal of the association's funds were invested.
Naturally the honourable members of such an august body were above such mundane emotions as envy and malice, so none of them had grudged her the princely royalties from her publications, and when some of Robyn's outrageous theories on tropical diseases had finally been proven accurate, and after they had been brought under pressure by Oliver Wicks who was Robyn's champion and editor of the Standard, they had magnanimously retracted their previous refutations. Nevertheless, when Dr. Robyn St. John, previously Codrington, nee Ballantyne, finally succeeded in hoisting and hanging herself on her own audacity and presumption, the members of the British Medical Association would not be numbered amongst the company of her mourners.
Thus, they read the first part of Robyn's latest paper on malarial fever with mild alarm. Her theory on the coincidence of parasite segmentation and patient temperature-change could only add lustre to her reputation. Then, with mounting joy, they came to the second part, and realized that once more she had placed herself and her reputation in jeopardy. Since Hippocrates had first described the disease, in the fifth century Bc, it had been an uncontested fact that malaria, as its name applied, was transmitted by the foul airs of swampy ground and poisonous nights. Robyn St. John postulated that this was fallacy, and that it was transmitted from a sufferer to a healthy victim by the physical transfer of blood. Then, incredibly, her paper went on to suggest that the carrier agents were the flying mosquitoes that were usually associated with the swamps and marshy ground where the disease proliferated. As proof, Robyn cited her discovery, by microscopic examination, of the malarial parasite in the stomach contents of the insects.
Offered such an opportunity, her peers in the British Medical Association had been unable to resist the temptation to embark on an orgy of derision. 'Doctor St. John should not allow her penchant for lurid fiction to intrude upon the sacred grounds of medical research,' wrote one of her more charitable critics. 'There is not the remotest shred of evidence that any disease can be transferred in the blood, and to look to the agency of flying insects to affect this mischief is not far removed from belief in vampires and werewolves.' 'They scoffed at your grandfather also.' Robyn's chin was up now as she addressed her family, and in this mood the strength and determination of her features were daunting. 'When he refuted their belief that yellow jack was an infectious or a contagious disease, they challenged him to provide proof.' The twins had heard this piece of family history a dozen times before, so they both paled in anticipatory nausea.
'He went into that fever hospital where all those eminent surgeons were gathered, and he collected a crystal glass of the yellow vomit from one of the patients who was dying of the disease, and he toasted his fellow surgeons with the glass and then he quaffed it down in front of them all.' Vicky covered her own mouth, and Elizabeth gagged softly and turned icy pale.
'Your grandfather was a courageous man, and I am his daughter,' Robyn said simply. 'Now eat up your lunch. I expect you both to assist me this afternoon.' Behind the church stood the new ward that Robyn had built since the death of her first husband in the BMatabele war. It was an open-sided go down with low waist-high walls. The thatched roof was supported on upright poles of mopani. In hot weather the breeze could blow through the structure unhindered, but in the rains or when it turned cold, then woven grass mats could be unrolled to close in the walls.
The sleeping-mats were laid out in rows upon the clay floor, no attempt being made to separate families, so that healthy spouses and offspring were camped with the sick and suffering. Robyn had found it better to turn the ward into a bustling community rather than have her patients pine to death. However, the arrangement was so congenial and the food so good, that it had been difficult to persuade patients to leave after their cure had been effected, until Robyn had hit upon the ruse of sending all convalescents, and their families, to work in the fields or at building the new wards. This had dramatically reduced the clinic's population to manageable proportions.
Robyn's laboratory stood between the church and the ward. It was a small rondavel with adobe walls, and a single window. Shelves and a workbench ran around the entire curved inside wall. In pride of place stood Robyn's new microscope, purchased with the royalties of Trooper Hackett, and beside it her working journal, a thick leather-bound volume in which she was now noting her preliminary observations.
'Subject. Caucasian female at present in good health. she wrote in her firm neat hand, but she looked up irritably with pen poised at Juba's tragic tone and mournful expression.
'You swore on oath to the great King Lobengula that you would care for his people after he was gone. How can you' honour that promise if you are dead, Nomusa?' Juba asked in Sindebele, using Robyn's Matabele praise name 'Nomusa Girl Child of Mercy'.
'I am not going to die, Juba,' Robyn snapped irritably. 'And for the love of all things holy, take that look off your face.' 'It is never wise to provoke the dark spirits, Nomusa.' 'Juba is right, Mama,' Vicky supported her. 'You have deliberately stopped taking quinine, not a single tablet in six weeks, and your own observations have shown the danger of blackwater fever is increased-' 'Enough!' Robyn slapped the table with the flat of her hand. 'I will listen to no more.' 'All right,' Elizabeth agreed. 'We won't try and stop you again, but if you become dangerously ill, should we ride into Bulawayo to fetch General St. John?' Robyn threw her pen onto the open page so the ink splattered and she leaped to her feet.
'You will do no such thing, do you hear me, girl? You will not go near that man.' 'Mama, he is your husband,' Vicky pointed out reasonably.
'And he is Bobby's father,' Elizabeth said quickly.
'And he loves you,' Vicky gabbled it out before Robyn could stop her.
Robyn was white-faced and shaking with anger and some other emotion that prevented her speaking for a moment, and Elizabeth took advantage of her uncharacteristic silence. 'He is such a strong- 2
'Elizabeth!' Robyn found her voice, and it rang like steel from the scabbard. 'You know I have forbidden discussion of that man.' She sat back at the desk, picked up the pen and for a long minute the scratching of her nib was the only sound in the room, but when she spoke again, Robyn's voice was level and businesslike. 'While I am incapacitated, Elizabeth will write up the journal she has the better handwriting. I want hourly entries, no matter how grave the situation.' 'Very well, Mama.' 'Vicky, you will administer treatment, but not before the cycle has been established beyond any chance of refutation. 'I have prepared a written list of instructions for you to follow, should I become insensible.' 'Very well, Mama.' 'And me, Nomusa?'Juba asked softly. 'What must I do?' Robyn's expression softened then, and she laid her hand on the other woman's forearm.
'Juba, you must understand that I am not reneguing on my promise to take care of your people. What I will accomplish with this work is a final understanding of a disease that has ravaged the Matabele and all people of Africa since the beginning of time. Trust me, dear friend, this is a long step towards freeing your people and mine of this terrible scourge.' 'I wish there was another way, Nomusa.' 'There is not.' Robyn shook her head. 'You asked what you should do to help, will you stay with me, Juba, to give me comfort?' 'You know I will,' Juba whispered, and hugged Robyn to her. Robyn seemed slim and girlish in that vast embrace, and Juba's sobs shook them both.
The black girl lay on her sleeping-mat against the low wall of the ward. She was of marriageable age, for when she cried out in delirium and threw aside the fur kaross, her naked body was fully matured, with a wide fertile spread of hips and hard-thrusting nipples to her breasts, but the heat of fever was burning her up. Her skin looked as brittle as parchment, her lips were grey and cracked, and her eyes glittered with the unnatural brilliance of the fever that was rushing down upon her.
Robyn pressed her hand into the girl's armpit, and exclaimed, 'She is like a furnace, the poor child is at the climax,' and she pulled her hand away and covered her with the thick soft kaross. 'I think this is the moment. Juba, take her shoulders. Vicky, hold her arm, and you, Elizabeth, bring the bowl.' The girl's bare arm protruded from under the kaross, and Vicky held her at the elbow while Robyn slipped a tourniquet of whiplash leather over her forearm and twisted it up until the blood vessels in the Matabele girl's wrist swelled' up, purple black and hard as unripe grapes.
'Come on, child,' Robyn snapped at Elizabeth, and she prof erred the white enamel basin and drew back the cloth that covered it. Her hand was trembling.
Robyn picked up the syringe. The barrel of brass had a narrow glass inset running down its length. Robyn detached the hollow needle from the
