The Folding Knife (43 page)

"Ah," Basso said. "Which one have you cured?"

The doctor looked at him. "Actually," he said, "it's more a matter of prevention."

"That's not what you said just now."

"True." The doctor dipped his head in formal acknowledgement. "But I had to make you listen to me."

Basso shrugged. "You shouldn't have done that. All you've achieved is to make me rather more sceptical than I would've been if you'd told the truth. Still, no great harm done. Tell me about it."

The doctor frowned. "Forgive me," he said. "There's the question of remuneration. If I tell you what I've found out..."

"I see." Basso sighed, then raised his right hand, mock-solemn. "If what you've got to say has any value, I'll see to it you get paid. If not, not. If you don't like the terms, go and advise somebody else."

He didn't like that, but Basso didn't care. "Very well," the doctor said. "Now, then. As I said just now, there are two different diseases. One of them, which I prefer to think of as the real plague, is spread by fleas."

"Fleas," Basso repeated.

"That's right."

"In that case, we're screwed," Basso said. "Nothing anybody can do about fleas. They're everywhere."

"A specific variety of fleas," the doctor said.

"There's more than one kind?"

"Hundreds," the doctor said. "And only one kind spreads the plague. The fleas live on the backs of rats and mice; they can survive for a short period on a cat or a dog, and on humans, though we aren't their host of choice. They spread the plague that gives you boils and swellings, and death follows in about a fortnight. The plague you had here recently was the other kind."

Basso nodded. "Quicker," he said, "and no boils."

"Exactly. That's the other sort. Basically, it's a strain of cattle sickness. The early symptoms--fever and so forth--are common to both diseases, but the sort you had kills you in a matter of days. You catch it by contact with infected animals or infected people, or from eating tainted meat."

Basso held up his hand for silence; then he winced. "Auxentine salt beef," he said.

The doctor nodded eagerly. "Exactly," he said. "Because of the sharp, early winter last year in Auxentia, they killed off substantially more cattle at the end of autumn, salted the beef and sold it cheap. I've read your doctors' report, and spoken to some of your leading merchants. Just before the outbreak, the market was flooded with cheap Auxentine salt beef. That's what caused the disease."

Basso stared at him. "So the ships..."

"Coincidence," the doctor said, smiling. "I managed to see a copy of the ships' inventory. They were carrying barrels of Auxentine beef as part of their provisions. They started exhibiting symptoms a day or so earlier than the people here simply because they'd started eating the poisoned meat earlier. If you like, they were the first victims, but not the cause."

Basso nodded slowly. "So the steps we took..."

"Actually," the doctor said, "you almost certainly saved thousands of lives. You herded large numbers of people together, away from their homes, and fed them mostly bread, with some cheese and dried fish; no beef. I'm prepared to bet that the ones who died were the ones who had the foresight to take food with them from their homes when they were evacuated. Of course," he went on, "once the disease was well established, there was a certain amount of cross-infection; it's mildly contagious, as far as I can tell, though there has to be substantial contact. Being in the same room or breathing the same air won't do it."

Basso rubbed his face with his hands. "This is just a theory," he said. "We had theories of our own. At the time, they seemed to make perfect sense."

"Excuse me." This time, he'd definitely given offence. "My theory, as you call it, has been proved by extensive research and controlled experiment. In Scleria, I fed Auxentine salt beef, from a batch I had excellent reason to believe to be tainted, to condemned debtors in a town prison. Eight out of twelve of them developed symptoms; five of them died. I repeated the experiment with Hus prisoners of war in Auxentia, with comparable results. My researches in Auxentia--"

"Just a moment," Basso said. "You took perfectly healthy people and you gave them the plague."

The doctor frowned. "I think I mentioned that the subjects were prisoners," he said. "And besides, if we can prevent plague in future, we'll save thousands of lives; quite possibly millions. If you have reservations about the morality of the experiments, you might care to consider the ethics of sending soldiers to fight in a war."

Basso shook his head. "I don't want to talk about ethics," he said. "I just find it hard to believe a human being could do something like that. I've always had this idea that death is on one side and the human race is on another, and you don't do deals with the enemy. But," he went on, before the doctor could interrupt, "your point about soldiers is trite but basically valid, so we won't go there. I guess that so long as you haven't actually murdered anyone in Vesani territory, it's none of my business."

The doctor wasn't even trying not to scowl at him. No matter. "I have extensive notes," the doctor said, "and observations verified by independent witnesses. My theory is proven fact. Accordingly, I can prevent further outbreaks of the disease."

Basso sighed. All he wanted to do was get rid of the man as quickly as possible. "Tainted meat," he said. "So how do we know if it's tainted?"

"By testing," the doctor said. "And quarantine. Samples of all preserved beef brought into the country should be fed to prisoners. Should no symptoms occur within seven days, the meat is safe and can be released for sale. Follow this simple precaution, and you will effectively eliminate the threat. Of course, there's still a danger from smuggled beef, so you may care to step up your border and customs controls. Generally, though, it should be self-regulating. Once people know that smuggled meat may kill them, the appetite for it should diminish, or at least restrict itself to the lower orders of society."

Basso nodded slowly. "And the other sort of plague," he said. "The one spread by fleas. What do you suggest we do about that?"

The doctor shrugged. "That's up to you," he said. "I would recommend setting up a facility on one of your offshore islands where all incoming ships must wait for twenty-eight days before being allowed to dock in the main harbour. I don't suppose you'd find that acceptable, politically or commercially."

Basso smiled at him. "Not really," he said.

"In that case, I suggest you keep your streets swept, and offer a bounty of a florin a dozen for rats' tails. It may help. It'll almost certainly win you votes."

Basso's smile widened, to reveal all his teeth. "I might just do that," he said. "Jobs for poor people, and it may even be useful. I think we'll just have to take our chances with the beef imports. If we get another outbreak, at least we'll know what to tell people."

The doctor looked at him, then shrugged. "My fee," he said, "is one million nomismata."

Basso shook his head sadly. "Five thousand," he said. "Buy yourself another pair of shoes. Oh, and you have forty-eight hours to leave the city. If you're still here after that, I'll have you arrested for murder."

("But he was right," Melsuntha said later. "You should have paid him properly. Not a million, perhaps, but more than five thousand. Think of the lives that could be saved."

"I know," Basso replied. "And I couldn't think of an answer when he said I was as bad as him, because I send soldiers out to die for the greater good. So I was rude to him, and I underpaid him, and I told him to get out of town; I was just being spiteful, because he's disgusting and he's right." Basso spread his fingers wide. "Or at least, I couldn't show he was wrong, which really annoyed me."

"That's life," Melsuntha said. "Sometimes bad people are right, and sometimes good people are wrong. I'd have thought by now--"

"It's why Bassano has to be First Citizen," Basso said. "When he faces something like this, he'll know what to do. All I could manage was to act like a child.")

A messenger brought him a book: Cyanus'
Dialogues
, not the sort of thing Basso went in for. No name; his benefactor wished to remain anonymous.

Basso sent for Captain Tralles, a long, skinny Cazar recently assigned by General Aelius to be his personal security adviser. So far, Captain Tralles had spent his time wandering about the house, examining the windows and muttering about angles of fire. It was about time he did something useful.

"Someone sent me this," Basso said.

Tralles looked at the book, lying on a desk in the cartulary annex, as though it was some rare variety of venomous reptile. "I see," he said. "Do you know who sent it?"

Basso shook his head. "I heard something once about a book with poisoned pages," he said. "For all I know, it could just be an extended metaphor, but I thought..."

"Well-known technique in the Eastern Empire," Tralles said. "Several well-documented cases." He leaned over the book, taking great care not to let any part of his clothing brush against it, and sniffed. He had an enormous nose. Basso wondered whether he'd had it cut off someone else and sewn on, specially.

"None of the commoner poisons," Tralles said. "Could be wormsbane or ceraunus oil; they don't have a smell. But in that case, I'd expect some slight discoloration of the pages." He drew a long, slim dagger and carefully flipped open the front cover with its point. "Someone's written something here, look," he said. "Does it mean anything to you?"

Basso peered over his shoulder, then laughed. "It's all right," he said. "That's my nephew's writing. Thanks anyway, but I've wasted your time."

Tralles didn't look at all convinced, but Basso shooed him away. Then he read the message again.

I need to see you. This evening, the House?

No way of replying. He tried to put it out of his mind for the rest of the day. Normally, there would have been enough work on his desk to keep him fully occupied, but as luck would have it, the world was maliciously quiet, and he was reduced to reading diplomatic dispatches from the Republic's man in Scleria--a waste of time, since the Sclerians never told anybody anything. He found a mildly entertaining account of the election of a new cardinal, to replace Magnentius IX, who'd finally died at the monstrous age of ninety-six. Apparently, the college of electors had been unable to reach a decision. They'd been in continuous conclave for three months, and the King, after dropping increasingly heavy hints, had tried to concentrate their minds by having the tiles stripped off the roof of the chapter house--quite an incentive, in the middle of a Sclerian winter. But even that hadn't been enough, and so the King had brought matters to a head by proposing his own compromise candidate: his nephew, a boy of nineteen, whose only known talent was the ability to swallow pickled eggs whole. The boy was not, of course, a priest, but that was by no means an insuperable obstacle. He was, the report said, ordained on the first of the month, made a deacon the next day, and elected abbot of a monastery by the end of the week. The compromise would have worked, the report went on, had it not been for one Constituatus, abbot of Barcy, an outsider in the pre-compromise race; when the King's nephew had been duly elected and was in the process of being invested with the symbols of office, Constituatus snatched the sacred cope, mitre and mantle from the attendants, wriggled into the mantle, jammed the mitre on his head, planted himself firmly on the episcopal throne and declared himself to be cardinal Magnentius X, equal of the apostles, vice-regent of the Invincible Sun. In his haste he'd put the mantle on the wrong way round and hadn't even tried to assume the cope, but when they tried to drag him out of the throne he clung to the arms and bit the attendant's hands; since he weighed a good twenty stone and had started life as a stevedore in the dockyards, it proved impossible to dislodge him. After he'd been there forty-eight hours, the King gave in and ratified his election, on the grounds that if he wanted the job that much, he might as well have it. The royal nephew's reaction had not been made public, but was assumed to be one of profound relief.

Basso wrote a polite note to the new cardinal, congratulating him on his election and expressing the wish that the excellent relations between the Sclerian Curia and the Vesani Studium would continue to flourish. He resisted the temptation to append a gift of the justly famous Vesani birch-syrup toffee (sure to be appreciated by a man with strong jaws), sending instead a richly illuminated copy of Xenophanes' commentary on the Western Psaltery (Constituatus, according to the dispatches, couldn't read and had to sign his name with a stencil) and a large box of candied figs.

Then, quite suddenly, there was a clerk standing in the doorway, telling him that his nephew was there to see him. Basso jumped up, knocking papers off his desk. The clerk stood there, waiting for something. Basso remembered he'd been asked a question.

"I'll see him in the treaty room," he said. "Get a fire lit, and fetch some brandy."

Not that Bassano drank brandy any more. The clerk went out; Basso hesitated, though he wasn't sure why. He pulled himself together, put the letters he'd written on the table by the door, to be collected in the morning, and went slowly down the stairs.

Bassano was sitting by the fire, looking cold; he had his coat on and his collar up. He felt the cold more than anybody Basso had ever known, apart from his sister.