Without warning

STAND BY FOR AN ANNOUNCEMENT BY HM GOVERNMENT.

‘Check the French news channels,’ she said. ‘See if they’re still on. And the English sports channels.’

Monique abandoned the task of glaring at her to flip through the channels with the remote. As Caitlin had expected, the continental stations were still broadcasting, as was Sky Racing and the English football channels. Even the end of the world wouldn’t be allowed to interfere with interminable replays of last year’s Champions League.

‘It’s nothing,’ Caitlin assured them, rubbing at her throbbing temples with one hand, the one trailing slightly fewer leads and sensors. ‘The government has taken control of the news broadcasters. It’s standard procedure in a national emergency. Just watch… And doc… what’s your name again?’

‘Colbert.’

‘Dr Colbert. I’m not dying?’

He gave the impression of a man greatly relieved to find himself back on familiar ground. ‘Not yet. But you could, without proper treatment. You are not yet incapacitated but the lesion might well require intensive therapy, and very soon. But we can treat you as an outpatient for the moment… We need your bed.’ He shrugged, smiling for the first time, almost apologetically.

A single, high-pitched tone filled the room for one second before the TV screen came back to life. Tony Blair was sitting at a desk in a book-lined room, with a British flag prominently draped from a pole behind him. His eyes were haunted and, even beneath a very professional make-up job, his skin looked blotchy and sallow.

‘G-good evening …’ he stammered.

* * * *

Colbert wasn’t kidding about needing the bed. An hour later, still swaddled in bandages, and trailing one rogue sensor lead that had become entangled with her unwashed hair, Caitlin Monroe was still in-character as Cathy Mercure, attempting to sign herself out of the Pitiй-Salpкtriиre while shaking off what she’d come to think of as her Secret Squirrel detail. The motley collection of professional anti-warmongers had closed around her like a fist as she’d dragged herself out of bed, dressed, and pushed her way through corridors now crowded with fearful idiots.

Caitlin was surprised at the hysterical undertow that was running so strongly in the Pitiй-Salpкtriиre. But then again, the place was full of people who were already stressed out and had nothing much to do beyond watching television while they waited for some sort of traumatic medical procedure. On the way down to check out she witnessed any number of pedal-to-the-metal, full-bore freak-outs. One woman even barrelled right into her; a large, bug-eyed Parisian Mack Truck, she knocked Maggie right off her feet, screaming about the end of days, before disappearing down the hallway with her enormous, deeply dimpled butt swinging free in the rear of a badly strung hospital gown.

‘I’ll be a lot better off out of here,’ Caitlin assured her companions.

Apart from Monique, who remained suspicious after discovering Caitlin’s hidden gift for her native tongue, the secret squirrels weren’t doing much better than any of the ranting, unbalanced Frenchies around them. Maggie, after picking herself up off the floor, was blabbering on about needing to phone her sister in Connecticut. And Aunty Celia had settled on a never-ending string of curses and oaths as her favoured response. They’d all made perfunctory efforts to get her to stay in the hospital, to argue with Colbert that she was too ill to move, but Caitlin could tell that each was spinning off into her own little world of free-floating and violently unstable anxiety. The whole city was probably going to be like this. The whole fucking world.

For her part, she didn’t know what to think about the news out of the States. It was bordering on psychotic. But she did know that even if this all turned out to be some post-millennial War of the Worlds shakedown, if she’d been cut off from Echelon, she was travelling blind and unarmed in a world of predators. She had to run to ground as soon as possible, re-establish contact with Wales, her controller, and get some updated instructions. Christ only knew what had gone down while she’d been out of it. Plus, of course, Monique was eyeing her off with increasing suspicion.

A single television, suspended from the ceiling in the main waiting room, had drawn a huge pool of onlookers, all muttering and gasping at every new revelation from the French-language news service. Caitlin ignored it. She was having trouble negotiating her release with the large, distracted black woman on the front desk. Like everyone else, the woman seemed incapable of dragging her attention away from the TV for more than a few seconds. Monique tugged at her elbow, saying ‘Cathy, je veux te parler,’ while Maggie, having spied a bank of payphones, exclaimed, ‘All righty then!’