He was lying on a soft bed and he felt healthy.
The headache was gone. The shivering was gone. He was able to breathe easily. The strength had returned to his body. He was hungry.
He tried to raise a hand, but couldn't. He looked and saw a padded cuff around his wrist, attached by a leather strap to the side of the bed he was lying on. His other hand was also restrained, as were his feet. Who'd done this to him? The New Philadelphians? They must have found him, treated his illness and then tied him to the bed. He was a prisoner, then. Well, he'd deal with that situation later. Right now, he was just glad to be alive.
Where were the others? Were they being treated too? He raised his head to look around and saw more beds. Two lines of them along the long sides of a hospital ward, most of them occupied. He saw Valentina in the bed beside him, dressed in a thin hospital gown and also restrained. On his other side was Joe Badger. Both were still asleep, as was everyone else in the room as far as he could tell.
The room was lit by fluorescent tubes in the ceiling, but only around half of them were working. One near the other end of the room was blinking on and off while making a buzzing sound. Some of the polystyrene tiles lining the ceiling were missing revealing electrical wiring and dusty cobwebs. Maybe this room isn't used very often, he told himself. Eleven sick people all turning up at once might have overwhelmed the hospital's normal capacity.
"Hello!" he called out. "Hello! Is anyone there?"
A man came into view. He was wearing a military uniform and carrying some kind of automatic machine gun. He looked at Andrew, then turned his head to call to someone out of sight. "Doc, one of 'em's woken up."
Another man emerged from a side office. This man was wearing a while lab coat and had a stethoscope around his neck. "Welcome back, Mister Birch," he said as he approached. "You had us worried for a while."
"Where are my wife and children?" Andrew asked. He raised his head as high as he could, trying to see who was in the beds further away. "Are they okay?"
"All eleven of you are still alive," the doctor replied. "A couple of the children are still poorly but we're hoping they'll make a full recovery."
Andrew felt relief wash over him. "Thank you," he said. "The disease we had is very infectious. I hope you took precautions to avoid catching it."
"We did," the doctor replied. "We received your warning messages. Unfortunately, the man who received it was a civilian and had no authority to respond. He passed it on to his military superior, who passed it on to his until it finally got all the way up to the President. He was the one who send a team up to the upper levels to investigate. I have to say, it's fortunate you were all unconscious or they'd probably have shot you."
"I'm suitably grateful," Andrew replied. "You can release me from these restraints now. I'm quite rational. I'm not going to go crazy and attack you."
"We're not afraid of psychosis," the doctor replied. He looked embarrassed and apologetic. "That's not the reason you're restrained."
"Then what is the reason?" asked Andrew, suddenly alarmed.
"While you were all still unconscious, one of you was, apparently, still conscious. Only pretending to be asleep. We don't know which one of you it was. At the time, it wasn't thought necessary to guard you. You were all near death, or so we thought. You weren't in any condition to do anything."
"What happened?" demanded Andrew.
"One of you tried to murder another of you. The young woman who was sharing a room with two teenage boys."
Andrew stared in shock and horror, then pulled desperately against his restraints. "Jasmine!" he said. "My daughter! What happened? What happened to her? Untie me! Untie me now!"
Two more soldiers had appeared, watching him carefully, their machine guns held ready to be aimed and fired at any moment. Andrew forced himself to relax. "I promise I'm not going to attack you or try to escape," he said, trying to keep his voice calm, "but the woman who was attacked was my daughter. I have to see her. Please, please let me see her."
The doctor glanced towards one of the soldiers, who considered for a moment. Then, shouldering his machine gun, he moved closer to unto the strap around his wrist. "Watch him," he told the other soldiers. They nodded and shifted the guns in their hands.
Andrew jumped from the bed as soon as he was free, part of him delighting at how strong and healthy his body felt. "Where is she?" he demanded.
"This way," said the doctor, leading the way to a side room. One of the solders followed them.
There was another soldier already in the room, watching over Jasmine, who was also in restraints and wearing a white hospital gown. She was unconscious but didn't have any visible injuries. Andrew ran over and took her hand. It had shrunk down to its normal size and felt cool and dry. "What happened to her?" he asked.
"Someone gave her a massive overdose of the antibiotics we were treating you with. It's fortunate there was nothing more lethal in the room, but even so the overdose would have killed her if it hadn't been discovered in time. There was an assistant working in the next room who would have heard any noise, which is doubtless why he didn't just bludgeon her to death."
"But she's going to be all right?" asked Andrew.
"Well, she's not out of the woods yet but we're quietly confident, so long as whoever tried to kill her doesn't get the chance to try again."
"None of us would have done this," said Andrew confidently. "It must have been an accident. Someone got the dose wrong."
"I have the utmost faith and confidence in my people, Mister Birch," the doctor replied stiffly. "One of your people did this."
"I can't believe that!"
"We went aboard your rovers, Mister Birch. We were curious why you didn't have your own supplies of antibiotics." Andrew waved a hand at him to concede the point, but the doctor apparently wanted to drive it home. "Being so long away from home, it would have been an essential part of your medical supplies," he said. "We found bottles labelled as antibiotics, but they contained only water. The lids had been tampered with."
Andrew nodded reluctantly. "You're right," he said. "There is someone among us who wants to sabotage our mission, but he may have been deceived by others. Told that the disease he was giving us was non-lethal. He may only have wanted to scare us back to New London."
"I think he knew exactly what he was giving you," said the doctor. He waved a hand at Jasmine. "And this confirms it. One of your people will stop at nothing to accomplish his aims, including murder. That is why you were all put in restraints."
"Including the victim?" said Andrew, pointing to the cuffs around Jasmine's wrists.
"My orders were just to restrain all of you. In this city, you do not question orders, Mister Birch. You obey them."
The statement chilled Andrew. "How long before she wakes up?" he asked. "How long before we can be on our way?"
"I'm afraid there's no way to know how long she'll be in her coma," the doctor replied. "All we can do is care for her and hope for the best." He bent over her and lifted an eyelid to shine a light into her eye. Then he opened the front of her gown to put his stethoscope to her chest. "She seems to be strong and healthy, though. I think we can be confident that she'll be up and about in a day or two."
Andrew nodded with relief. "Thank you for everything you've done for us," he said. "All of New London will be grateful for what you've done for us."
"I was only obeying orders," the doctor replied. "I'll ask the soldiers if you can be let out of your restraints. I saw one of your other men waking up just now so you can keep an eye on each other. Your killer can only act if he can do so unobserved."
"Thank you," said Andrew. "I imagine your soldiers will be keeping an eye on us as well."
"They will indeed," the doctor confirmed. "I advise you not to do anything to alarm them. I understand there is a certain, er, kudos, shall we say, among their ranks attached to actually shooting someone, so they're always looking for an excuse."
"Thanks for was warning," said Andrew drily. "I want to see my other children now."
They're out there with the others," the doctor replied.
Andrew nodded and went back out into the ward, one of the soldiers following him. "Andy!" said Philip, trying to sit up. "What's going on?"
"It's all right," said Andrew. "I'll explain later. Everything's okay, though."
"Why are we tied to the beds?"
"The doctor's asking the soldiers if you can be untied. Hang in there, Phil."
He found James and David lying in adjacent beds, intravenous drips going into the backs of their hands. A nurse, taking David's blood pressure, looked up as he arrived. "Is he your son?" Andrew nodded. "Don't let all the tubes alarm you. They're going to be just fine."
Andrew nodded gratefully, then came closer to examine them. They were both still unconscious, but they looked healthy and were breathing evenly. He left them to wake up on their own and went on to Susan, who was in the next bed. She was just waking up and looked at him with bleary, unfocused eyes. "Andy," she said drowsily. She tried to raise her hand and looked confused when she couldn't.
"Take it easy, Susie." said Andrew, taking her hand. "Everything's okay. The children are okay." He watched her carefully. She was rapidly becoming more alert and awake, but he waited a few moments longer before breaking the bad news to her. "Jasmine's fine," he said. "She's going to be just fine."
"Why are you telling me that?" asked Susan, looking alarmed. "What happened?"
Andrew squeezed her hand reassuringly. "Someone tried to kill her."
"WHAT!" Susan struggled to rise from the bed, fighting madly against the straps holding her down. Andrew put his hands on her shoulders, telling her over and over that their daughter was okay, that she was going to make a full recovery. He turned to the nearest soldier. "Can I release her? Please?" The soldier just glared at him and tightened his grip on the machine gun.
Susan gradually calmed down but still looked alarmed and afraid. "Who?" she asked. "What did he do to her?"
"Gave her an overdose of antibiotics, but she's going to be fine. One of the others, one of our people from New London, was just pretending to be infected. I imagine he, whoever it was, kept some of the antibiotics to keep treating himself while taking another drug to imitate the symptoms. The fever and so on. I'm just guessing, but whoever it was couldn't have done it if they were as sick as the rest of us."
"But why..." Then her eyes widened further as the truth hit her. "Oh God! It was Jasmine who dumped our antibiotics."
Andrew nodded. "It's why the airlock camera doesn't show anyone else entering our rover. She must have been threatened. Told that one of us would be killed if she didn't do as she was told. I can't think of any other reason she'd do such a thing. Remember how she kept saying how sorry she was. We thought she was sorry because she thought we'd gotten sick from the cow. Can you imagine how she must have felt when she found out the bug she'd given us was 14-b."
Susan stared at him. "She did what she did because she thought she was protecting us, and then she found out she'd killed all of us. God, what she must have been going through."
"So who was it?" said Andrew, staring around at the other New Londoners, his eyes hard and angry. "Which of them tried to kill our daughter? Which of then tried to kill all of us?"
"Jasmine will tell us when she wakes up," said Susan.
"That's what I'm afraid of," said Andrew softly. "He'll want to try again before she regains consciousness." He gave a humourless laugh. "I never thought I'd be glad to be surrounded by a bunch of trigger happy Gestapo freaks."
Susan squeezed Andrew's hand with fear and the two of them stared nervously around at the soldiers standing with their backs to the wall, handling their weapons as if they were just waiting for an excuse to use them. Then the doctor returned. "The Sergeant has given his permission for the patients to be freed," he said. "Please impress upon them the need to remain calm, though. Your sudden appearance has made the soldiers a little twitchy. There are toilets through there and some snacks are available in the canteen, down that corridor. I imagine you're all hungry. Some proper meals will be served at five." He indicated a clock on the wall that said a quarter after three.
"Thank you," said Andrew. The doctor nodded and went to examine James and David. Andrew began undoing the straps around his wife's wrists.