The Meddlers (8 page)

He moved a little uneasily. “I’m not sure. It just struck me as… well, odd. Perhaps I’ve been infected by those damned journalists.”

“Journalists?”

“Oh, I had to hold a bloody press conference this morning. You know it got out—the birth? And Kegan was old-womaning around until he drove me to agreeing to talk to the wretched people. We won’t know till tomorrow what sort of dog’s breakfast they’ll dish up out of it, but they were waffling on about the poor little guinea-pig baby. You can imagine the sort of thing. What does he look like? What does he weigh? What will his name be? It was like bathing in hot syrup.”

“Perhaps you should have concerned yourself as much about avoiding emotional involvement yourself as about protecting me,” she said, and her voice was still sharp. “In using the neuter term rather than the particular I display clearly my own lack of involvement, and you find it odd! Forgive me if I find
that
odd?”

“Touché!” he said and smiled awkwardly. “You’re right, of course. My apologies.”

“Not needed. And forget the question I asked. If you can be as… affected as you seem to have been by answering journalists’ questions, perhaps I’d be wiser to wait for publication of results, like everyone else. Anyway, there’s something else I’d like to talk about. I have an idea for a piece of work that might possibly provide a theme for my doctorate thesis. I’d like your guidance, if you can spare another few minutes.”

“Of course,” he said. “I’d be glad to. You need a strong piece of work. What have you thought of?”

“It’s this interesting effect of hormone balance on thinking processes. Would it be possible to mount a research project into that, do you suppose? I could have access to the female population of the university, both pre and post maternity. There are plenty of students with children, after all…”

She lay on the narrow white bed, staring out of the window at the gray-white clouds moving heavily across the October sky, and tried to organize her thinking.

She had been so pleased when Dr. Briant had suggested she lunch with him in the medical staff dining room, aching as she was to get away for a while at least from the uncomfortable atmosphere of the Maternity Ward. The staff talked only banalities at her, until she could have screamed with irritation, and try as she might to ignore it, there was no doubt in her mind that they disliked her, these crisp women in their crisp uniforms. Well, dislike wasn’t the word perhaps, disapproval was really what she felt coming from them.

And the infuriating thing was that their disapproval mattered to her. It shouldn’t; she had never been a woman to give a damn about other people’s opinions. She went her own way, made her own successes and failures, and cared for no opinion but her own, apart from that of people she knew to be her intellectual equals or superiors. People like Briant. So why should she care what these half-witted women thought?

Because I’m a woman, and my hormone balance is disturbed by the pregnancy—makes me respond emotionally to my biological state? An interesting hypothesis, that. She filed the thought for later use. Or is it because in a way I share their disapproval?

She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and went over to the window to look down at the courtyard. Is that it? she thought. Am I really just like every other woman down there? Do I share their prejudices and feel somewhere deep in my psyche that a woman ought to care about a baby she produces, even if she produces it under highly unnatural conditions? Do I feel anger at myself because I don’t care?

But you do care. It was as though a voice had actually said the words aloud, and she moved sharply and leaned against the window to stare blankly at the room. You’re having to make a conscious effort to be detached, aren’t you? That’s why Briant found it odd you should refer to the baby as “it”; it wasn’t the use of a
neuter term, but the way you sounded when you said it. Strained. Self-conscious.

“I
don’t
care,” she said aloud. I really don’t, not in that sense. Of course I care that the project should be valid, produce worthwhile results. I don’t want to think I’ve wasted almost a year of my working life on an abort. My caring is scientific. No more and no less. I care the way Jefferson cared about his rats and their portal shunts. That’s all. He didn’t love his rats, and I don’t love this baby. How could I?

Across the hall, someone opened the door to the nursery, and the thin wail of a baby cut across her thinking, and she raised her head sharply, feeling a sudden surge of anxiety.

And then anger took its place, and she moved sharply across to her bed and rang the bell. When the nurse came, she said crisply, “Will you ask Sister Field if I could speak to her please? As soon as possible—before Miss Guttner comes over for her ward round.”

She would insist on leaving the Maternity Ward today. There was no point in staying for the next three days; her physical progress was excellent, and the proximity of these midwives and mothers and babies was having a most unfortunate effect on her. There would be much more point in spending the rest of the week working in the library, planning a project of her own. It was high time she got down to serious thought about her doctorate.

  At six-thirty Kegan passed her taxi as it swung out across the courtyard. He was walking purposefully toward Dr. Briant’s unit, two newspapers held firmly under his arm, and his face was set in hard lines of anger.

He’d warned the man, no one could say he hadn’t warned him. If it had only been possible to hold the conference without him! But that had been out of the question, of course. It was ridiculous, really it was. To have had to practically beg the man to cooperate with him, and now be faced with the God-awful mess he’d made of it. And these were only the London evenings. Heaven help them all when the dailies came out the next day. And as for the Sundays! He felt sick as he thought about them.

And that reminded him. He’d better warn Matron to keep a
special watch on the Maternity people. The Sundays would be baying after the Lawton girl in no uncertain terms, now the evenings had led the way. Though maybe they’d turn in the other direction, looking for a different angle? It was a possibility.

He was a very confused as well as a very angry man as he pushed open the doors of Briant’s unit, and hurried down the corridor toward the office.

Mike filed his copy at quarter past four and went back to his desk and plastic beaker of stewed tea feeling well satisfied. Four good folios there, the whole story put across clean and clear, solid with fact and not a smell of an opinion. The sort of job that pleased him most, this one. A piece of real science, worth reporting, and because of its human angle small danger of the copy being spiked in favor of something with half its intrinsic interest.

And since he’d opened it up in the first place—and he definitely owed David Dennis a drink for putting him onto it—every chance of a couple of TV spots on the strength of it. If they were the right spots, and he handled them properly, he might manage to get his foot well into that door.

He let his mind play with that again, the idea of making it on the box. It had been with him a long time, long before McLuhanism had arrived to make a lot of people cry into their beer at El Vino’s and go haring after every tin-pot producer in the business.
But he wasn’t going to make that mistake. With a specialty like his, he could afford to wait until a really worthwhile chance came up. Like a regular place on the
Probe
team. They didn’t use a full-time science man, only that wet psychiatrist with a profile that he displayed to a damned sight better advantage than his puny little mind.

Now that was an idea. Call J. J. Gerrard direct and see if he could set up a spot on Briant for tonight’s edition? He was more than the anchor man, everyone knew that, and if he wanted to put a regular science spot in the program, the producer wouldn’t argue. And if Mike could set it up for tonight, and it went well, a drink with J. J. in the club afterward could pay big dividends.

He reached for his desk phone and then swore as it rang before he could pick it up.

“Mike Bridges,” he said irritably. “What? Oh, yes, Graham. It’s gone to the sub’s desk. Yes, I’m glad you agree. I think it’s a good story too. What?… Why?… Oh, all right. I’ll come up.”

Now why all of a sudden should Graham want him in his office? He’d liked the story well enough, admittedly, given a fairly good display to his half-dozen column inches yesterday; but when Mike had told him the press conference to which Briant had agreed could make a much better story, he hadn’t seemed to think much of it. Told him not to let his report run to more than it absolutely had to, and on no account to make a feature piece out of it. Straight news was what he wanted and nothing more. And now he had sounded—how had he sounded? Irritable but excited, as though he were only just able to hold something important under control. Odd, that, Mike thought as he went up to the third floor in the rattling old lift. Graham wasn’t the sort of editor to get excited easily. Maybe, just for once, he’d understood what a science story was all about? If he has, Mike thought with a familiar bitterness, the bloody millennium’s arrived.

Graham was standing by his window, staring out over the roof of the Comet Building across the street, and when Mike saw who was sitting at Graham’s desk, he had to make a strong effort not to show his surprise. The Old Man! Now what the hell was up?

“Ah, Mr. Bridges! Nice to see you!” Sir Daniel Sefton stood up
and extended his hand across the desk, smiling the warm friendly smile that was virtually his trademark. Phony old bastard! Mike thought and shook hands with him. About as genuinely friendly as a boa constrictor, and a damned sight more dangerous. Beware him most when he smiles his widest, he told himself.

“This is quite a story you’ve uncovered, my boy! Mr. Moloney, can we find a drink for Mr. Bridges—for Mike?”

Mike almost grinned as Graham moved to his desk and flicked the intercom switch. It must be killing him to have the Old Man expecting him to play barman to me! He keeps his liquor just on the other side of the room, but catch him actually dishing it out himself.

There was a brief flurry as Graham’s secretary came in and dispensed drinks, while the Old Man teased her kindly, and she giggled, and then they were all sitting looking at one another in silence.

After a moment the Old Man put his glass on the desk and looked at Graham, switching on his let’s-get-down-to-real-business look.

“Now, Mr. Moloney—Graham. Shall I kick this one off, or would you prefer to?”

“It’s up to you, Sir Daniel.” Graham looked as though he would gladly kick the Old Man, Mike thought, beginning to enjoy himself. Whatever this is about, there’ll be a great deal of pleasure to be got out of telling the tale around afterward.

“Right, then, Mr. Bridges. Mike. I think we can be informal, don’t you? It’s just this. You’ve uncovered a great story—a great story.” He looked at Mike owlishly, and Mike murmured a swift “thank you” into his glass.

“And clearly it’s going to develop. Have you seen the evenings?”

“Not yet. I’ve been doing my own story all afternoon, and I had to cover the opening of a new computerized diagnosis unit out at Barnet on my way back from the Sillick Memorial.”

Mike was embarrassed. He should have made a point of looking at the evening coverage before doing his own piece; but he’d seen the people they’d sent to the press conference at the hospital, dismissed them as unlikely to do a decent job on it, and promptly
forgotten them. Blast it! Just the sort of thing the Old Man would pick on.

But Sir Daniel was magnanimous. “Not to worry. I know you’re under pressure. The
Echo
’s science man has to be, hmm? And there was nothing in the early editions, anyway. But they did a very rapid rejig, obviously, for the later editions. These went on the streets only half an hour ago. Take a look at them, will you? Then you’ll be
au fait
with our… problem.” And he glanced at Graham as he pushed copies of the two London evening papers across the desk.

Each of them had a ten- to twelve-column-inch splash on the front page, with a picture of Dr. Briant standing glowering at the desk in the board room, and each of them carried leaders about Briant and his project. One was headed “Science Goes Too Far!” and Mike skimmed swiftly through the heavy black print.

“In its search to reveal secrets of human existence,” it trumpeted, “science has brought us undoubted gifts. It has, by pushing back the boundaries of human knowledge, given us much that has enriched our lives. But when science proposes to manipulate the life of a human baby, the time has come to call a halt.…”

It went on in the same tone for several excited paragraphs and ended in an even heavier and blacker print.