"Right-o," he sounded resigned. "I'll see you in half an hour."
"Wait!" I had the receiver halfway down before I remembered. "Better bring Polly along too. If she hasn't got the flu now, she probably will have."
"Will do," he answered and cut me off.
Pat heard us talking but Hallam was away and would have to be told later. Nowadays he was seldom available, being constantly in conference or on the telephone talking to specialists in preventive medicine or virology from other parts of the Americas or Europe. For the moment, Vancouver was the center of attention of the western world. Most of the NATO countries by now were battling full scale epidemics of their own and wanted to know what we had found out about the disease.
All over the province the schools, theaters and all public meeting places had been closed. All main routes of travel were under police and military control and only the most essential transport was allowed on the highways, the rails, or in the air. The same precautions were soon put into effect across Canada. The United States was under martial law, with the National Guard in complete control in each state. Communities which had not yet reported cases of S-Flu were isolated for their own protection and supplies were sent to them by military convoy. The guards and truck drivers were men who had already had the disease and were no longer infectious as far as anyone could tell. Even so, they were not allowed to come close to the isolated ones who unloaded the supplies with the greatest care after the truck drivers had got out and moved away. In spite of the most stringent precautions, the disease still broke through into some of those areas, and, as the weeks passed by, the uninfected zones were reduced to such locations as small hamlets in the eastern and western mountains, little whistle stops on the prairies and, in the southwest, some of the desert communities.
When the truth about the S-Flu became known, many families in the cities tried to barricade themselves in their homes. Some had already been exposed to the virus and hunger drove others out, only to catch the disease. Later, when the public health services were better organized, the same isolation techniques used on whole villages were used wherever a family was found untouched. Even in the worst areas a few were known. There were, of course, the cranks and selfish ones who couldn't bear to see others escape their own fate, but as a rule the people responded well. They knew, finally, it was either that or race suicide.
Ten days after exposure the three of us were in fine condition, although my behind felt as if a porcupine had attacked me, from all the injections of serum.
As I complained to Pat, "You women are lucky. You have a bigger target for all these damn needles."
Two weeks went by without a sign of S-Flu and, once more, when it seemed definite that we had escaped, we were locked up again in the Lab. Under the military orders covering all uninfected persons, we had to be isolated, but, as we were still working with the virus, the Research Building was the obvious place. To me, there was only one thing really wrong with the situation. In all the rush and excitement of our research, we had not yet taken out our marriage license, so, not being completely brazen, we had to take to our separate rooms and beds again, with the Chief as chaperone to our physically consummated but legally unlawful union.
I said to Pat when we were locked up, "That does it! Now, if you really are pregnant, all the women will condemn you as a fallen sister while envying you for being with child ... besides wondering whose child."