CHAPTER 4

We came back through the big glass doors hand in hand. The night watchman, making his last round, nodded and smiled at us as we wound up the stairs to the penthouse. We went through the showers together since nobody else was about. I scrubbed her back to get rid of the salt sea crystals and was rewarded with a warm, wet kiss. We reached the living room just as Dr. Hallam, freshly shaven and bright, came in for his breakfast.

"Welcome back, kids!" he boomed at us. "Did you have a good time?" He looked closely at Pat.

A slow flush deepened the color of her cheeks and he grinned elfishly. "I see you did. Well, let's have some breakfast. I have news for you and plenty of work, so eat heartily."

He pushed the toaster buttons and the bread dropped out of the cooler-keeper and lowered itself into the heating element. I set three cups and three glasses under the dispenser and dialled tomato juice and medium strong coffee. Pat cracked six eggs into three plates, added bacon and pushed them into the slots in the electronic oven. A minute later, with his mouth full of toast and egg, Hallam mumbled,

"After you left I waited for about two hours before Smith phoned. He had a preliminary report on the female ferrets. You'll be glad to hear this, both of you. He couldn't find a thing on any of them."

"Wonderful!" Pat breathed, and smiled at me radiantly.

"What about the pregnant one?" I said.

"There were only the usual changes in the ovaries associated with pregnancy. Mind you," he went on, "even with the new techniques, frozen sections are far from perfect, but I must admit I'd be disappointed if I weren't so relieved."

"Did the male ferrets show anything?" I said.

"He wasn't sure. He thought there were some inflammatory changes in the testicles but he wanted to wait for the paraffin sections to confirm it."

"Was there anything else?" Pat asked.

"Nothing except bronchial irritation, which one would expect."

It was eight o'clock when the telephone rang and I picked it up.

"Dr. Macdonald here," I said.

"Mac, is the boss in?" Smith asked.

"He's busy right now. Can I take a message?"

"Yes. Tell him the H and E's on those ferrets show only mild ovarian inflammation. The testicles are definitely inflamed ... a low grade thing with a lot of lymphocytes. There is swelling and some degeneration of the sperm cells but it doesn't seem to affect the hormone secreting elements."

"What about other organs?"

"Aside from nasal and bronchial inflammation, essentially negative."

"Have you any suggestions?"

"It's too early to come to any conclusions but I'd like to follow up on this. How about taking biopsies on the male ferrets rather than sacrificing them. Then maybe we can see what is happening, I mean what the progression of the disease is, in the same animal. You could snip out a piece of ovary on some females too!"

"It isn't easy but we can do it."

"How about the other animals?"

"Some of the mice look a bit sick this morning, but the monkeys are still healthy."

"Well, if you can get the biopsies to us soon, we should have a good idea, late tonight or tomorrow morning, of what's going on. Say, I just had a thought! Didn't George inoculate some ferrets when the epidemic first broke out?"

"I wasn't here but I believe he did. Why don't you ask Harry? He was working with the Chief when I was away. All those animals are in the other section anyway."

"I'll do that. With yours in the acute stage and the others convalescent, we should get a good idea of the progress of the disease. I'll let you know later."

Hallam was in the ferret room. I joined him there and told him of Smith's suggestions.

"This is going to be quite a day," he grinned wryly.

* * * * *

He was so right. It took several hours, and innumerable bites and scratches from indignant animals, fortunately the plastic gloves were tough enough not to tear, before the last snarling male writhed back into his cage to lick his smarting personal property. We stopped for lunch and went back to the more complicated task of operating on the females in the afternoon.

In the meantime, the testicular biopsies, in their fluid-filled bottles, were on their way to Tissue Path., to join those that Smith and his residents were already preparing from the convalescent ferrets. Speaking into Dictape machines, the junior residents described and numbered the specimens while deft-fingered girl technicians wrapped them in little packets and put those in tiny perforated boxes. They dropped the boxes into beakers filled with fixative which they then set up on the Technicon machines. The dials were set, the clock ticked, and hour by hour, as the timer clicked into the grooves of the wheel, the arms of the Technicon lifted, dangling their clusters of dripping boxes, turned like soldiers on parade, and dropped them again into the next beaker. On they went through the fixative that preserved the cells as they had been in life, the alcohols that slowly and carefully removed the water, the xylol that replaced the alcohol and, finally, the hardened shreds of tissue lay in melted paraffin, ready for the cutting.

But first they had to be embedded in paper boats full of melted wax which, when it hardened, held them securely. Then, in millionths of a metre, the incredibly fine edge of the microtome sliced off a ribbon of tissue, as a bacon slicer cuts pork. The technician laid the ribbons on a bowl of warm water, separated off each individual slice with her needle and guided it on to a prepared glass slide which was then laid aside to dry. That was not all. Now the process had to be reversed, the paraffin removed with xylol, the xylol with alcohol, the alcohol with water, before the pale white dots of tissue could be stained. There was no way of hurrying the process. Chemicals need time to react, and time they took, regardless of our impatience. At last the blue color of the Hematoxylin and the red of the eosin had been added in their turn and taken up by the tissues; the protective balsam and the slip cover had been placed over the sections; the slides had hardened enough to be put under the microscope.

With mounting excitement, Smith and his senior residents racked down the binocular microscopes to focus on the minute blue and red dots that lay beneath. Silently they looked, moving the slides jerkily but accurately with their fingers to view all the sections. Still silent, they swapped slides to check and re-check their findings. At last Smith straightened up and removed his spectacles. He rubbed his eyes wearily. He looked along the table at the three young men who had worked with him.

"Any doubts about this?" he said.

Three heads shook slightly. There was nothing to say. They were too tired for casual chatter. He pushed the Intercom switch.

"Dr. Hallam. Smith calling."

The sound came into the living room as we sat at midnight coffee. The rasping voice jarred us out of the apathy of exhaustion.

"This is Hallam."

"George, we've just read those testicular biopsies. There's a sub-acute inflammation in those with the flu, as we saw before; in the convalescent ferrets there is complete absence of spermatozoa with no evidence of new formation."

I looked at Pat. "Now who should be worried?"

"I've never heard of this before in ferrets with the flu," Hallam was saying. "I'd think of mumps except that it isn't easily transmitted to the weasel tribe and this isn't like mumps clinically."

"What do you propose to do now?"

Hallam thought for a moment. "Carry on with our animal experiments; but we can't afford to wait for the monkeys. We shall have to start working on people."

"How?"

"Get in touch with the Public Health Department and see if you can round up volunteers for testicular biopsy in convalescents from the first attack. If they don't want a biopsy maybe you can persuade them to give us a sperm count."

"You know we can't keep this hushed up if we do that. The papers are bound to get hold of it."

"I realize that," Hallam said grimly, "but they're going to know sooner or later. Maybe this will soften the blow when it does come."

"OK George, you're the boss. We can't do anything until morning. I'm going to close up shop and let everybody get some sleep."

"Good idea. Keep away from the flu if you can."

"Huh, fat chance. I've got my family anyway. It's my kids I'm worried about."

"There are times when I'm glad I'm a bachelor," Hallam replied and shut off the speaker.

"Doesn't look too good, does it?" I said.

"We'll know by tomorrow night, I hope."

"I can't figure this thing at all. An inflammation that destroys the testicular cells should give a lot of swelling and pain. Those ferrets were frisky enough and they didn't show any signs of orchitis."

"Neither did most of the human victims," Hallam said.

"Perhaps it's only a temporary arrest in the maturation of the sperm rather than destruction of the spermatogonia themselves. That could be the explanation for the low grade inflammation and the minimal symptoms."

"You mean there might be some interference with an enzyme system?" Pat said.

"Yes. We see it in anemias where the cells don't mature properly because of a lack of some vitamin like B12. The same sort of thing could be happening here, I suppose."

"Then it might be only temporary?"

"I sincerely hope so, especially if Smith finds the same in man as he reports in the ferrets."

"I wish I could share your optimism John," the Director said, "but if this is a weapon it won't have just a temporary effect. There would be no point to that." He yawned. "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, as the Good Book says. Let's go to bed."

* * * * *

The alarm jarred me out of deep sleep. As I groped beside the bed for the still vibrating clock, I regretfully abandoned my dreams for the austere grey walls of my temporary room, and the dreary window view of a wet Vancouver dawn. The tide was out and the slimy green-spattered mud and rocks of the estuary looked like a surrealistic painting of a hangover. At the water's edge, a school of fishing boats angled in the mud, their tilted trolling masts reminding me of the broken antennae of some strange crayfish, stranded and dead on a fishmarket floor. And dead they were. No smoke came from their humpbacked little cabins; no fisherman climbed the slanted decks.

I wondered if the epidemic had silenced their motors, or was it just not the season for fishing. Were the lusty trollers and seiners worrying about their lost virility and gone home to test it out? The newspapers had been asked to play down their sterility stories, which had caused so much consternation yesterday, but even so it was common knowledge that those who had had involvement of the sex glands might be sterile.

I turned down the corridor to the kitchen and started the coffee dispenser. Pat was still asleep after a late night coaxing reluctant male and female ferrets into the same cage and to be friends instead of messily murdering each other. Chivalry among ferrets is not highly regarded, even with females in season. We wanted to see if they could produce families, not to see which one was the stronger sex. Tranquillizers are fine for the purpose but it takes a neat balance to eliminate the fight and keep the desire. Hallam was not around. He was an early riser and could probably be found watching the monkeys if I cared to go there. They had shown no symptoms as yet. Probably the incubation period was about the same as in man, and if so there had not been time for the fever to start.

I moved on again to the shower, taking it cool to clear my fuzzy head. Now there was little to do but wait; wait for the ferrets to get amorous; wait for the chattering monkeys to fall ill; wait for more biopsies of the human volunteers out there beyond the virus-proof walls of our chosen prison. I thought of the previous day, the second after our brief excursion. After breakfast we had rechecked the animals while Pat had transferred cultures, brought our records up to date and then Hallam and I sat in the living room playing cribbage while we waited for Smith's reports.

As he had predicted, the newspapers soon heard of the new investigations and the noon headlines, shown over the TV, were large and frightening. "Are Flu Victims Sterile?" the _Daily Mail_ screamed hysterically in three inch letters and went into a long discourse based only on a cautious statement, attributed to Dr. Smith, that some experimental animals, after the flu, showed a decrease in procreative powers. _The Sun_ was more cautious but the tune was the same. An hour after the papers appeared, Hallam ordered all telephone lines to the Laboratory shut down and a short dictated speech, intended to calm the hysteria, was played continuously over the trunks and repeated on both radio and TV.

The mayor came to the hospital, as mad as a clucking hen whose eggs have been disturbed, as indeed they had. She cooled off considerably after Hallam spoke to her on the inside telephone, and, in cooperation with the local director of the RCMP, the head of the Metropolitan School Board, the Medical Officer of Health and various other officials summoned to the spot, agreed to form a Public Safety Committee to take immediate action if the need arose. They too, after their meeting, could only sit and wait for Smith's report.

"Why didn't you go down and talk to them sir?" I said later.

"I don't want to get the flu."

I smiled condescendingly. "Oh? I didn't think it would mean that much to you."

"It doesn't," he said levelly, "but it would to you and Pat if I brought it back up here with me."

There was nothing I could say. I have seldom felt so foolish.

* * * * *

Later in the day, I played a lazy game of cribbage with Hallam while Pat knitted and watched TV at the other end of the room. Deciding to have some fun, as the Chief dealt a new hand, I picked up the paper that was lying on the table.

"Say, Pat, here's a little item that should interest you," I said, and pretended to read. "Lovely woman scientist, possible Nobel prize winner, knits little things and dreams of rose-covered cottage. I always wanted at least ten children, our reporter quotes Mrs.--" I started loudly, cocking one eye over the top of the paper; but I didn't finish.

Pat got up abruptly. For an instant I thought she would throw the wool at me, needles and all.

"You stinker ... you absolute stinker," she spat at me, and almost ran from the room.

"Lord! She must be getting stir crazy," I said, bewildered.

"John, sometimes I think you spent too many years overseas," Hallam said quietly. "You still can't imagine how a woman thinks."

That broke up the crib game. Neither of us had the heart to continue. For the first time I really began to imagine a world full of sterile people; the falling population; the frustrated family life; the emptying houses; the already empty schools.

"God, what a dreary prospect," I said aloud. "And we were worrying about overpopulation."

The Chief caught my train of thought but he just nodded. There was no answer.

An hour later the phone rang. He answered it and then turned to me with a smile. "That was a report from Smith about the ovaries of those convalescent ferrets I inoculated with the first cases of flu. They seem OK. Maybe it affects only a few females after all."

"Well, we can't go peeking into the tummies of all the ladies in Vancouver just to find out," I said.

"No, but we could try to get permission to biopsy ovaries on women who have abdominal operations in the city hospitals. Many of them have had the flu. It should tell us something."

He turned back to the telephone and in a matter of minutes Bruce Thompson had agreed to cooperate and to pass the word on to the surgical departments of the other hospitals in town.

Pat showed up to make us afternoon tea but she was clearly disturbed ... even more so when she heard the news.

"I thought you'd have been pleased to hear about the females," I said dubiously.

"Suppose it does apply to women. What good are active ovaries to a prospective mother if all the men are sterile?" she said, scornfully.

"Well, you could always marry a Russian, when they take over the world."

"Fool," she sneered. "That probably will be years from now, and I'll be too old. For another thing, I don't want to be part of anybody's harem, even for a baby."

"Where do you get that harem stuff?" I grunted. "The Russkis aren't Moslems."

"This isn't your good day, John," Hallam interrupted. "It is obvious that there will be a tremendous demand for fertile males, and I can even visualise the female voters of this country and the United States demanding a quota for Russian immigrants to this continent. Just how the disgruntled American males would react I don't know. It could lead to a very nasty situation, and maybe to that retaliatory war the Reds are trying to avoid. Of course, it could also mean civil war ... a war between the sexes ... with our males trying to revenge themselves on the Russians and our more realistic females trying to prevent it so they could use the Slavs to rebuild the nation ... on Communist terms of course."

"Boy, this is really science fiction gone wild," I said. "Seems as if I picked the wrong place to live, unless I can avoid the flu."

Pat didn't even look at me after that crack. The day dragged on. Radio reports came every few minutes and the interruptions of the TV programs to announce the spread of the epidemics were almost as frequent as the commercials.

* * * * *

By now the Chinese had admitted that thousands were dying in the big cities of Peiping and Shanghai, while panic had disrupted communications to the interior. The first frightened reports were in from India, where efforts to block the Himalayan passes were too late and refugees had spread the deadly "measlepox", as it was now called, to Assam and Upper Bengal. There were rumors of flu in Texas and the Rangers had redoubled their efforts to keep the Mexican "wetbacks" from sneaking across the Rio Grande. All trans-Pacific air travel was cancelled.

About that time, the Intercom lit up again.

"Are you there, George?" It was Dr. Smith.

"Yes. What have you found?"

"We have the reports on thirty sperm counts taken today from professional personnel in this hospital. They are all negative."

"You mean normal, I hope."

"I mean negative for sperm. Three are from doctors who are just over the fever. They show a few abnormal forms in the secretion but no live ones. All the others are several days convalescent and show nothing but epithelial cells, a few polymorphs and more lymphocytes."

"What about the biopsies?"

"We have half a dozen that we rushed through. The slides aren't the best but it's perfectly obvious that something serious is happening. The spermatogonia are degenerating. The Sertoli cells seem all right and the interstitial cells are apparently untouched."

"What's he mean?" Pat whispered to me.

"He means the cells that form the sperm are dying but the ones that give a man his masculinity are intact."

"How many more biopsies have you?" said the Chief.

"About fifty."

"That's not enough. We're going to need at least several hundred. There must be absolutely no doubt in anyone's mind that this is a national emergency when we present the facts to the Government. I know that the statisticians can prove that this present number is highly significant but a politician is much more impressed with a lot of people than with a small group."

Joe Armstrong came on the line. "George, I'm convinced now that this virus does have serious after-effects. Let me talk to the other hospitals. We can get enough specimens in another twenty-four hours to prove your point." He paused, obviously considering his words. "I can't go along with this secret weapon idea yet.... I don't think there's enough evidence. What do you say?"

"There isn't any evidence for the weapon theory," Hallam admitted, "but Gordon is well on the way to showing that the structure of the virus is synthetic. What I mean is that it looks more like a crazy mixture of mumps and flu than like any of the natural viruses or their known mutations."

"I still don't think we'd better let that story get out. There'll be enough hell raised as it is."

"All right ... just as long as we stop this thing."

"How do you suggest we go about it?"

"Joe, there isn't time to search for a way of preventing it by vaccines. It will take months to manufacture enough, even if we succeed. Our only hope is to alert the civil authorities to its after-effects and get a strict quarantine set up. Frankly, I think it's almost hopeless by now. The Eastern Seaboard started reporting cases just a short time ago. Agents must be working in seaport cities like Montreal, New York, Charleston and all the others. I'm afraid we're licked except for isolated communities in the far north or in some rural areas which can be ringed around with guards to prevent contamination. Every male we can save must be protected either until the disease dies out or we can devise a vaccine."

"Do you have any other ideas?"

"You could get a Blood Donor Program going to collect blood from those who have had the flu. We might be able to separate out antibodies from convalescent serum strong enough to give a temporary protection to those who haven't had the disease ... and then hope for a vaccine."

"OK, George," said the Intercom. "Why don't you three stay in there and work on the vaccine since you haven't had the flu yet. I'll alert the Minister of Health. The Public Safety Committee is already back in session."

"Do that, Joe," Hallam said, "and tell Harry Cope and Polly Cripps to stay on call. We're going to need help with the electron pictures and other procedures."

* * * * *

So that day had gone by and here was another one, a day of coffee drinking and waiting, a day of writing reports, of listening to the mounting clamor in the outside world. In the Vancouver area, schools were closed at noon. The Public Safety Committee, impressed sufficiently by yesterday's preliminary reports, barred all public meetings and ordered theatres, bars and dance halls to close. Families not yet affected by the flu were urged to stock up on supplies and then remain home. Quarantine regulations were put in effect to protect them. This reversal of the usual procedure in which those who had not had the disease were kept isolated, was explained as necessary since the majority of the people had already been victims and therefore were unsalvageable. By nightfall the day's biopsy reports were coming in from all the city hospitals. There was no doubt. Every male who had had the flu was sterile!

The extras hit the streets an hour after dark. The Lieutenant Governor came on the TV and radio to declare a state of emergency. Curfew was to be enforced, beginning the next night, for all except essential medical services and food supply. At least the country was aroused. All trace of former unconcern had disappeared.

I went to bed early. There was nothing more I could do.