Invisible Things by Davidson Jenny
Author:Davidson, Jenny [Davidson, Jenny]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2012-02-20T05:50:35+00:00
Part 2
OCTOBER 1938
KØBENHAVN AND ELSINORE, DENMARK
HELSINGBORG AND STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN
The device had been propelled through the conservatory windows by a mobile rocket launcher found abandoned outside; though the police had swarmed the grounds, they had otherwise discovered only a trail of footprints—rapidly snowed over—leading to a lay-by off the main road. The perpetrator of the attack had made a getaway by car, and though the newspapers said that various leads were being pursued, Sophie suspected the police knew very little.
Mikael’s flesh wounds were only superficial, but he and others from the institute who had breathed in large amounts of gas remained mostly unconscious since the attack. Several hundred guests had been affected in total, including many of Denmark’s most prominent citizens; impromptu infirmaries had been set up all over the city—the institute’s lunchroom had been given over to cots, with two full-time nurses—and a quarantine was imposed on everyone who had been at the party until a team of researchers from the school of public health could work out what had happened.
Quarantine! The word alone made Sophie think of bubonic plague and smallpox and the other grotesque afflictions pictured in the color plates of the encyclopedia of diseases of the skin that had revolted and mesmerized her as a child roaming the stacks of the University of Edinburgh library.
The gas seemed to have had a noticeable soporific and tranquilizing effect on many who breathed it in. Mikael had been much calmer immediately following the attack than Sophie (indeed, he was barely conscious), even as the nurse in the emergency tent—erected in a matter of minutes by a team of army medics, and heated with portable kerosene stoves—had used tweezers to remove the little pellets from his shoulder. She had placed each one carefully in a small metal kidney-shaped dish in which they rolled around like ball bearings; most of the metal was fairly near the surface, but several very deep pieces were left where they were, as it would do more damage poking around trying to remove them than leaving the flesh to heal.
As Mikael and the other victims slept, Sophie became increasingly convinced that her friend might never wake up again. What if Mikael had something like the sleeping sickness spread by the tsetse fly in Africa? What if he slept the whole rest of his life away? She pored over the newspaper each morning—a special section of the front page was now dedicated to the “Bohr Terror Report”—but found nothing conclusive.
There was only so much time she could spend doing the assignments that Miss Adler had sent over from school, and when Fru Petersen saw how frantic Sophie was getting, she sent her downstairs to Bohr’s office to help with the typing again. Now even the corner shop had to be telephoned and asked to replenish the chocolate supply by leaving boxes on the doorstep—Sophie had not realized how much she took for granted the privilege of wandering out on a minor errand, and the institute felt almost as oppressive as a sarcophagus.
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