Second Wind Part 26

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THE HOSPITAL I sought cared for horses.

I'd made a telephone call to prepare the way, and was greeted inside the main door of the Equine Research Establishment by a woman whose given name was Zinnia. Although a research veterinarian in general, she introduced herself as a specialist in poisonous plants and on their effect on any horse that ate them.

It had been she who'd been given the task not just of saving if possible the life of Caspar Harvey's filly but of finding what was wrong with her to begin with.

Zinnia had already attained fifty, I guessed, and wore a professional white coat over a gray flannel skirt. In spite of her colorful name she had short gray hair, no hint of lipstick, flat heeled shoes and an air of tiredness, which I discovered to be a permanent mannerism, not a pointer to lack of sleep.

"Dr. Stuart? " She greeted me with a toe-to-head inspection but no enthusiasm, and raised her eyebrows over Jett, who'd declined to be left outside in her car. A recital by me of Jeff's nursing certificates brought the eyebrows down again, and we were invited to follow the flower into a laboratory equipped with a herd of microscopes, centrifuges, measuring devices and a gas chromatograph. We all sat on high laboratory stools, and I went on feeling lousy.

"Mr. Harvey's filly, " Zinnia said without emotion, "presented with severe symptoms of intestinal distress. By the time I was called in to see her here, late on a Sunday afternoon, she was in a state of collapse... " She detailed her actions and her thoughts at the time which, as in nature horses had no provision for anti-peristalsis, or in plainer words, couldn't throw up, had consisted to a great extent of purging and of offering copious amounts of water, which the filly fortunately drank.

"I thought it certain that she'd eaten some form of plant poison that had been ground up into chaff and mixed into her hay, as there were no whole specimen leaves or stems in the hay net that came with her. I expected her to die, when of course I would have a.n.a.lyzed the stomach contents, but as she clung to life I had to make do with the copious droppings...

I thought that she might have ingested ragwort, which is extremely poisonous and often fatal for horses. It attacks the liver and is usually chronic, but it can have acute effects, as with Harvey's filly. " She paused, looking from my face to Jeff's and seeing considerable ignorance in both.

"Are you cognizant of Senecio jacobaea? " she asked.

"Er... " I said. "No. " i.

- "Better known as ragwort. " She smiled thinly. "It mostly lives in wasteland and was designated an injurious weed under the 1959 Weeds Act, so it's your duty to pull it up if you see any. " If she'd said that neither Jett nor I had any idea what it looked like on the hoof, so to speak, she would have been absolutely right. We asked, and she described.

"It has yellow flowers and jagged leaves... " She broke off.

"Ragwort has to do with cyclic diesters, the most toxic of pyrrelizidine alkaloids, and it causes the symptoms shown by the filly, the digestive tract upset, the abdominal pain and ataxia, the lack of control of the legs. " We listened respectfully. I wondered if I'd been eating ragwort myself.

"The leaves can be dried and will keep their poisoning capacity for ages, unfortunately making it all the more suitable for chopping and mixing with other dried fodder, like hay. " Jett said to Zinnia,

"So you found ragwort in the fiAly's droppings? " Zinnia glanced from her to me. "No, " she said without dramatics.

"There was no identifiable ragwort in the filly's droppings. We treated her with a series of antibiotics in case an infection was present, and she gradually recovered. We sent her to George Loricroft, having been given instructions to do that by the owner, Caspar Harvey. The filly had been trained by Oliver Quigley before that, of course, and we made inquiries in that yard from the head groom downwards, but the whole work force there strongly denied that anyone could possibly have tampered with the filly's hay net None of the other horses showed any symptoms like the filly, do you see? " "What was wrong with her, then? " Jett asked. "Did you ever find out? " "There are other theories, I believe, " she said, sounding as if any theory advanced by anyone except herself would automatically be wrong. "But the filly isn't here, of course. If you want to do blood tests for antibodies, Dr. Stuart, we have already suggested that course to Caspar Harvey, but so far he has declined the procedure. " Zinnia was saying, in her meticulous way, that if a horse or a human--had had a disorder successfully treated, then that creature's blood would likely forever contain the antibodies summoned up to defeat the infection. The presence of the antibodies to any disease proved that the individual had been exposed to that disease.

"No, I don't want to test for antibodies, " I said, "but...

did you keep any of the droppings? Do you still have any of them here in the research lab? " Zinnia said with starch, "I a.s.sure you, Dr. Stuart, we tested the droppings for every infection and every poison in the book and we found nothing. " My forehead was damp with sweat. I felt more or less on a par with the filly. No cracked bones that I'd heard of gave one such unquiet guts.

Zinnia with surprise agreed grudgingly that the Research Establishment had indeed retained some of the material in question, as the riddle of the filly's illness hadn't been solved.

"Caspar Harvey might change his mind, " Zinnia said.

I thought Caspar Harvey most unlikely to want light poured onto the filly's ailment, but regardless of his feelings, I said to

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Zinnia, "Does the Equine Research Establishment by any chance have a Geiger counter among its equipment? " "A Geiger... " Words dried in Zinnia's throat.

"I believe, " I said without emphasis, "that someone here reckons the filly was suffering from radiation sickness. " "Oh no, " Zinnia shook her head decisively. "She would have deteriorated and died from that, but she recovered within days when treated with antibiotics. We have a research scientist here who advanced the radiation theory, chiefly I think on the grounds of some of the filly's hair dropping out, but yes, to answer your inquiry, we do have a Geiger counter somewhere, but the filly showed no abnormal count when she left here. " There was a pause. I had no intention of annoying or contradicting her, and after a short while she raised an at least semi-friendly smile and said she would go and find the researcher in question. Within five minutes she returned with another white-coated lady, whose knowledge of radioactivity could have done with a dusting off.

Her name, she said, was Vera, she was earnest, thorough and a cutting genius in bad cases of colic.

"I'm a veterinary surgeon, not a physicist, " she explained, "but since Zinnia found no trace of poison--and believe me, if she couldn't, then no one could--I began to think of other possibilities, and I just floated the idea of radiation sickness.

and of course it generated an instant atmosphere of fear, but we called in an expert on radiation and he did tests and told us not to worry, neither radiation sickness nor the filly could have been infectious. I wish I could remember everything he said. " "Dr. Stuart is a physicist, " Zinnia smoothly remarked.

"He reads the weather on the BBC, " the second veterinarian contradicted flatly, unimpressed.

"He's both,

"Jett a.s.sured her, "and a lecturer also. " I looked at her in surprise.

"Your grandmother told me, " she smiled. "She said you lecture on physics in general and radiation in particular. Mostly to young people, like teenagers. " Vera, the second white coat, showed none of Zinnia's constant tiredness, but quite the opposite. She woke to see me as a different creature.

She said, "Give me a sample of your lecturing wares and I'll lend you my records of the filly's droppings. " "That's totally reprehensible, " Zinnia reproved. "Unacceptable.

" Her friend nodded, unabashed.

"Promise? " I said.

"Of course. " I thought it might take my mind off greenish gills, so I started on a portion of the lecture I'd given so often that I knew it by heart. "This is about uranium, " I said. "It's from a lecture I give to sixteen-and seventeen-year-olds usually. " The second white coat approved. "Right. Carry on. " In a conversational voice I did her bidding.

I said from memory, "Just one gram of uranium ore contains more than two thousand million million million atoms, that's a two with twenty-one zeros after it, too big to imagine. Even though natural uranium is not very radioactive compared to some other really dangerous stuff, a couple of grams of it, less than half a teaspoonful, will emit about thirty thousand alpha particles every second and will go on doing so at almost that rate for millions of years. Thirty thousand alpha particles attacking your guts every second for a couple of days might certainly make you feel sick but I think you would recover eventually. " I stopped. I certainly did feel sick, but I hadn't touched uranium that I knew of. Jett looked alarmed, however, and Vera, evidently considering the bargain kept, made a short exit and returned carrying a buff folder that to my eyes looked the exact double of the one that had agitated the Unified Traders.

The contents, alas, were not twenty letters offering for sale or offering to buy any of the enriched version of the ore I'd just been chronicling, but a scholarly account and graph of the amount of radioactive waste expelled by a two-year-old filly over the short number of days she'd spent in recovery.

By the time Vera had thought of radiation sickness the Geiger count was already on the decline. The source of it, I reckoned, had been pa.s.sed by the filly very early, maybe even in diarrhea during that first Sunday afternoon, while she lay and groaned in her stall in Quigley's stable.

As a charming gesture Vera also gave me a parcel of s...o...b..x size which she said not to open in polite company. Zinnia, still disapproving, pointed out that the contents of the box were the property of the Research Establishment, or perhaps of Caspar Harvey, or even, arguably, of the filly, but not, definitely not, mine.

I stood up abruptly and asked for directions to the bathroom, and through the closing door behind me heard Jett thanking the two white coats and saying goodbye, and shortly, still unwell, I was sitting beside her on the way back to Loricroft's yard.

"Is that what's wrong with you?

"Jett asked anxiously.

"Radiation sickness? " "You have the symptoms. " "I simply don't know. " She braked to a halt on Loricroft's gravel. There was no one about.

"Don't argue, " she said. "I'm coming with you into the house. " I felt too rough anyway to demur. I slid out of the Honda and with Jett firmly alongside crossed the gravel and, after the briefest of taps on the door knocker, walked into the kitchen.

George Loricroft himself, to my enormous relief, wasn't there. I'd had visions of having to deal with him physically, and, apart from my persistent and weakening nausea, George was taller and stronger, and had already tried once to see me off.

The only person there was Glenda, who sat beside the big central table shaking with apprehension and looking a light shade of gray. She was clearly relieved that it was we, Jett and I, who had come.

She said, "George isn't here. He said he was going out with the second string to jump them on the Heath. " Her voice sounded flat, without life.