"So," I went on, lifting the other two slides from their baths, "if one of his parents gave a child the gene for type 0 blood, and the other gave him one for type A, the child's blood will show up as type A, because it's the antibodies that are tested for. The child does still bave the gene for type 0, though."
I waved one of the slides gently in the air, drying it.
"My blood type is A. Now, I happen to know that my father's blood was type 0. In order to show up with type 0 blood, that means that both his genes must have been for 0. So whichever of those genes he gave me, it has to have been for 0. The A gene therefore came from my mother."
Seeing a familiar glaze come over his features, I sighed and set the slide
The Fiery Cross 849
down. Bree had been drawing pictures of penicillin spores for me, and had left her pad and graphite pencil by the microscope
- I took it and ffipped to a fresh page.
"Look," I said, and drew a quick chart.
Henry
00=Type 0
Julia
A? =A or AB
Claire
OA=Type A
"Do you see?" I pointed with the stick of graphite. "I don't know my mother's type for sure, but it doesn't matter; for me to have type A blood, she or it, because my father hadn't one."
must have given me her gene f
The next slide was nearly dry; I laid down the pencil, put the slide in place and bent to look through the eyepiece.
"Can you see blood types-these antibodies-through a microscope?" Roger was quite close behind me.
"No," I said, not looking up. "The resolution's nowhere near good enough. But you can see other things-1 hope." I moved the knob a fraction of an inch, and the cells sprang into focus. I let out the breath I had been holding, and a small thrill went through me. There they were; the disc-shaped pinkish blobs of the red blood cells-and here and there, inside a few of the cells, a darkish blob, some rounded, some looking like miniature nine-pins. My heart thumped with excitement, and I made a small exclamation of delight.
"Come look," I said, and stood aside. Roger bent, looking quizzical. "What am I looking at?" he asked, squinting.
Irplasmodium vivax," I said proudly. "Malaria. The small dark blobs inside the cells." The rounded blobs were the protozoans, the single-celled creatures transferred to the blood in a mosquito's bite. The few that looked like bowling pins-those were protozoa in the act of budding, getting ready to reproduce themselves.
"When they bud," I explained, bending for another took myself, "they multiply until they burst the blood cell, and then they move into new blood cells, multiply and burst those, too-that's when the patient suffers a malarial attack, with the fever and chills. When the Plasmodium are dormant-not multiplying-the patient is all right."
"And what makes them multiply?" Roger was fascinated.
"No one knows, exactly." I drew a deep breath, and corked up my bottles of stain again. "But you can check, to see what's happening, if they are multiplying. No one can live on quinine, or even take it for a long period-Jesuit bark is too expensive, and I don't know what the long-term effects on the body might be. And you can't touch most protozoans with penicillin, unfortunately.
"But I'll check Lizzie's blood every few days; if I see the Plasmodium increasing sharply, then I'll start giving her the quinine at once. With luck, that might prevent an outbreak. Worth a try, certainly."
850 Diana Gabaldon
He nodded, looking at the microscope and the pink- and- blue-splotched slide.
"Well worth it," he said quietly.
He watched me move about, tidying up the small debris of my operations. As I bent to retrieve the bloody cloth in which he'd wrapped his hand, be asked, "And you know Bree's blood type, of course?"
"Type B," I said, eyes on the box of bandages. "Quite rare, particularly for a white person. You see it mostly in small, rather isolated populations-some Indian tribes in the American Southwest, certain black populations; probably they came from a specific area of Africa, but of course by the time blood groups were discovered, that connection had been long lost."
"Small, isolated populations. Scottish Highlanders, perhaps?" I lifted my eyes.
"Perhaps. "
He nodded silently, clearly thinking to himself Then he picked up the pencil, and slowly drew a small chart of his own on the pad.
Claire Jamie
AO=Type 0 B?=B or AB Brianna
OB=Type B
"That's right," I said, nodding as he looked up at me in question. "Exactly right. "
He gave me a small, wry smile in response, then dropped his eyes, studying the charts.
"Can you tell, then?" he asked finally, not looking up. "For sure?"
"No," I said, and dropped the cloth into the laundry basket with a small sigh. "Or rather-I can't tell for sure whether Jemmy is yours. I migbt be able to tell for sure if he's not."
The flush had faded from his skin. "How's that?"
"Bree is type B, but I'm type A. That means she'll have a gene for B and my gene for 0, either of which she might have given Jemmy. You could only have given him a gene for type 0, because that's all you have."
I nodded at a small rack of tubes near the window, the serum in them glowing brownish-gold in the late afternoon sun.
"So. If Bree gave him an 0 gene, and you-his father-gave him an 0 gene, he'd show up as type O-his blood won't have any antibodies, and won't react with serum from my blood or from Jamie's or Bree's. If Bree gave him her B gene, and you gave him an 0, he'd show up as type B-his blood would react with my serum, but not Bree's. In either case, you might be the father-but so might anyone with type-0 blood. IF, however-"
I took a deep breath, and picked up the pencil from the spot where Roger had laid it down. I drew slowly as I talked, illustrating the possibilities.
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Brianna Roger
OB=Type B 00=Type 0 Jemmy
OB or 00=Type B or Type 0
"Bur-i tapped the pencil on the paper-"if Jemmy were to show as type A or type AB-then his father was not homozygous for type O-hornozygous means both genes are the same-and you are-" I wrote in the alternatives, to the left of my previous entry.
X AO/AA/AB/BB/BO/00
Brianna
BO=Type B
Roger
00=Type 0
Jemmy
Jemmy
BO=Type B
00=Type 0
AB=Type AB AO=Type A OB/BO=Type B BB=Type B
00=Type 0
I saw Roger's eyes flick toward that 11V, and wondered what had made me write it that way. It wasn't as though the contender for Jemmy's paternity could be just anyone, after all. Still, I could not bring myself to write "Bonnet"-perhaps it was simple superstition; perhaps just a desire to keep the thought of the man at a safe distance -
"Bear in mind," I said, a little apologetically, "that type 0 is very common, in the population at large."
Roger grunted, and sat regarding the chart, eyes hooded in thought.
"So," he said at last. "If he's type 0 or type B, he may be mine, but not for sure. If he's type A or type AB, he's not mine-for sure."
One finger rubbed slowly back and forth over the fresh bandage on his hand. "It's a very crude test," I said, swallowing. "I can't-I mean7 there's always the possibility of a mistake in the test itself."
He nodded, not looking up.
,you told Bree this?" he asked softly.
"of course. She said she doesn't want to know-but that if you did, I was to make the test."
I saw him swallow, once, and his hand lifted momentarily to the scar across his throat. His eyes were fixed on the scrubbed planks of the floor, hardly blinking.
I turned away, to give him a moment's privacy, and bent over the microscope. I would have to make a grid, I thought-a counting grid that I could lay across a slide, to help me estimate the relative density of the plasmodium-infected ceus. For the moment, though) a crude eyeball count wo
uld have to do.
852 Diana Gabaldon
It occurred to me that now that I had a workable stain, I ought to test the blood of others on the Ridge-those in the household, for starters. Mosquitoes were much rarer in the mountains than near the coast, but there were still plenty, and while Lizzie might be well herself, she was still a sink of potential infection.
... fourl five) six was counting infected cells under my breath, trying to ignore both Roger on his stool behind me, and the sudden memory that had popped up, unbidden, when I told him Brianna)s blood type.
She had had her tonsils removed at the age of seven. I still recalled the sight of the doctor, frowning at the chart he held-the chart that listed her blood type, and those of both her parents. Frank had been type A, like me. And two type-A parents could not, under any circumstances, produce a type B child.
The doctor had looked up, glancing from me to Frank and back, his face twisted with embarrassment-and his eyes filled with a kind of cold speculation as he looked at me. I might as well have worn a scarlet "A" embroidered on my bosom, I thought-or in this case, a scarlet "B."
Frank, bless him, had seen the look, and said easily, "My wife was a widow; I adopted Bree as a baby." The doctor's face had thawed at once into apologetic reassurance, and Frank had gripped my hand, hard, behind the folds of my skirt. My hand tightened in remembered acknowledgment, squeezing backand the slide tilted suddenly, leaving me staring into blank and blurry glass.
There was a sound behind me, as Roger stood up. I turned round, and he smiled at me, eyes dark and soft as moss.
"The blood doesn't matter," he said quietly. "He's my son." "Yes," I said, and my own throat felt tight. "I know."
A loud crack broke the momentary silence, and I looked down, startled. A puff of turkey-feathers drifted past my foot, and Adso, discovered in the act, rushed out of the surgery, the huge fan of a severed wing-joint clutched in his mouth.
"You bloody cat!" I said.
CLIEVER LAD
COLD WIND BLEW from the east tonight; Roger could hear the steady whine of it past the mud-chinked wall near his head, and the lash A
and creak of the wind-tossed trees beyond the house. A sudden gust struck the oiled hide tacked over the window; it bellied in with a crack! and popped loose at one side, the whooshing draft sending papers scudding off the table and bending the candle flame sideways at an alarming angle.
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Roger moved the candle hastily out of harm's way, and pressed the hide flat with the palm of his hand, glancing over his shoulder to see if his wife and son had been awakened by the noise. A kitchen-rag stirred on its nail by the hearth, and the skin of his bodhran thrummed faintly as the draft passed by. A sudden tongue of fire sprang up from the banked hearth, and he saw Brianna stir as the cold air brushed her cheek.
She merely snuggled deeper into the quilts, though, a few loose red hairs glimmering as they lifted in the draft. The trundle where Jemmy now slept was sheltered by the big bed; there was no sound from that corner of the room.
Roger let out the breath he had been holding, and rummaged briefly in the horn dish that held bits of useful rubbish, coming up with a spare tack. He hammered it home with the heel of his hand, muffling the draft to a small, cold seep, then bent to retrieve his fallen papers.
(10 will ye let Telfers kyegae back?
or willye do augbtfor regard o'me?"
He repeated the words in his mind as he wiped the half-dried ink from his quill, hearing the words in Kimmie Clellan's cracked old voice.
It was a song called "Jamie Telfer of the Fair Dodhead"--one of the ancient reiving ballads that went on for dozens of verses, and had dozens of regional variations, all involving the attempts of Telfer, a Borderer, to revenge an attack upon his home by calling upon the help of friends and kin. Roger knew three of the variations, but Clellan had had another-with a completely new subplot involving Telfer's cousin Willie.
'Or by thefaith of my body, -quo' Willie Scott. _Pse ware my damc"s calfskin on thce!"
Kimmie sang to pass the time of an evening by himself, he had told Roger, or to entertain the hosts whose fire he shared. He remembered all the songs of his Scottish youth, and was pleased to sing them as many times as anyone cared to listen, so long as his throat was kept wet enough to float a tune.
The rest of the company at the big house had enjoyed two or three renditions of Clellan's repertoire, began to yawn and blink through the fourth, and finally had mumbled excuses and staggered glazen-eyed off to bed-cn masseleaving Roger to ply the old man with more whisky and urge him to another repetition, until the words were safely committed to memory.
Memory was a chancy thing, though, subject to random losses and unconscious conjectures that took the place of fact. Much safer to commit important things to paper.
ccI winna let the kyegae back, Neitherfor thy love, nor yet thyfear
The quill scratched gently, capturing the words one by one, pinned like fireflies to the page. it was very late, and Roger's muscles were cramped,"ith chill
854 Diana Gabaldon
and long sitting, but he was determined to get all the new verses down, while they were fresh in his mind. Clellan might go off in the morning to be eaten by a bear or killed by falling rocks, but Telfer's cousin Willie would live on.
"'But I will drive Jamie Telfer's kye, In spite ofevery Scot tbat's . . .
The candle made a brief sputtering noise as the flame struck a fault in the wick. The light that fell across the paper shook and wavered, and the letters faded abruptly into shadow as the candle flame shrank from a finger of light to a glowing blue dwarf, like the sudden death of a miniature sun.
Roger dropped his quill, and seized the pottery candlestick with a muffled curse. He blew on the wick, puffing gently, in hopes of reviving the flame.
'But Willie was stricken owre the bead,' he murmured to himself, repeating the words between puffs, to keep them fresh. "But Willie was s ricken owre the t
hea"nd througb the knapscap the sword bas ganelAnd Harden grat for very rage/Wben Willie on the grund lay slain ... Wben Willie on the grund lay slain. .
A ragged corona of orange rose briefly, feeding on his breath, but then dwindled steadily away despite continued puffing, winking out into a dot of incandescent red that glowed mockingly for a second or two before disappearing altogether, leaving no more than a wisp of white smoke in the half-dark room, and the scent of hot beeswax in his nose.
He repeated the curse, somewhat louder. Brianna stirred in the bed, and he heard the corn shucks squeak as she lifted her head with a noise of groggy inquiry.
"It's all right," he said in a hoarse whisper, with an uneasy glance at the trundle in the comer. "The candle's gone out. Go back to sleep."
But Willie was stricken owre the bead ...
"Ngm." A plop and sigh, as her head struck the goose-down pillow again. Like clockwork, Jemmy's head rose from his own nest of blankets, his nimbus of fiery fluff silhouetted against the hearth's dull glow. He made a sound of confiised urgency, not quite a cry, and before Roger could stir, Brianna had shot out of bed like a guided missile, snatching the boy from his quilt and fumbling one-handed with his clothing.
"Pot!" she snapped at Roger, poking blindly backward with one bare foot as she grappled with Jemmy's clothes. "Find the chamber pot! Just a minute, sweetie," she cooed to Jemmy, in an abrupt change of tone. "Wait juuuuust a minute, now. . ."
Impelled to instant obedience by her tone of urgency, Roger dropped to his knees, sweeping an arm in search through the black hole under the bed.
Willie was stricken owre the bead ... And tbrougb the ... kneecap? nobskull? Overwhelmed by the situation, some remote bastion of memory clung stubbornly to the song, singing in his inner ear. Only the melody, though-the words were fading fast.
"Here!" He found the earthenware pot, accidentally struck the leg of the bed with it-thank Christ, it didn't break!-and bowled it across the floor to Bree.
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She clapped the now-naked Jernmy down onto it with an exclamation of satisfaction, and Roger was left to grope about in the semi-dark for his fallen candie while she murmured encouragements.
"OK, sweetie, yes, that's right . .
Willie was struck about ... no, stricken ...
He found the candle, luckily uncracked, and sidled carefully round the drama in progress to kneel and relight the charred wick from the embers of the ,fire. While he was at it, he poked up the embers and added a fresh stick of wood. The fire revived, illuminating Jemmy, who was making what looked like a very successful effort to go back to sleep, in spite of his position and his mother's urging,
"Don't you need to go potty?" she was saying, shaking his shoulder gently. "Go potty?" Roger said, this curious locution pushing the remnants of the verse from his mind. "What do you mean go potty?" It was his personal opinion, based on current experience as a father, that small children were born potty, and improved very slowly thereafter. He said as much, causing Brianna to give him a remarkably dirty look.
" What?" she said, in an edgy tone. "What do you mean, they're born potty?" She had one hand on Jemmy's shoulder, balancing him, while the other cupped his round little belly, an index finger disappearing into the shadows below to direct his aim.
"Potty," Roger explained, with a brief circular gesture at his temple in illustration. "You know, barmy. Daft."
She opened her mouth to say something in reply to this, but Jemmy swayed alarmingly, his head sagging forward.
"No, no!" she said, taking a fresh grip. "Wake up, honey! Wake up and go potty!
The insidious term had somehow taken up residence in Roger's mind, and was merrily replacing half the fading words of the verse he had been trying to recapture.
Willie sat upon bis potltbe sword to portygane ...
He shook his head, as though to dislodge it, but it was too late-the real words had fled. Resigned, he gave it up as a bad job and crouched down next to Brianna to help.
"Wake up, chum. There's work to be done." He drew a finger gently under Jemmy's chin, then blew in his car, ruffling the silky red tendrils that clung to the child's temple, still damp with sleep-sweat.
Jemmy's eyelids cracked in a slit-eyed glower. He looked like a small pink mole, cruelly excavated from its cozy burrow and peering balefully at an inhospitable upper world.
Brianna yawned widely, and shook her head, blinking and scowling in the candlelight.
"Well, if you don't like 'go potty,' what do you say in Scotland, then?" she demanded crabbily.
Roger moved the tickling finger to Jern's navel.
"Ah ... I seem to recall a friend asking his wee son if he needed to do a poo," he offered. Brianna made a rude noise, but Jemmy's eyelids flickered. "Poo," he said dreamily, liking the sound.