It was bizarre, and through the band of pain pulsating behind my eyes I had only one thought: mdt-48 was out there in society. Other people were using it in the

same way that I’d been using it. What I didn’t know was how much they were taking, and how often. I’d been taking MDT indiscriminately, one, two, occasionally

even three at a pop, but I had no idea if I really needed that many, and if taking that many actually rendered the hit more intense or made it last any longer. It was like

with cocaine, I supposed, in that after a while it was just a question of gluttony. Sooner or later, if the drug was there, gluttony became the controlling dynamic in your

relationship to it.

So the only way I was going to find out about dosage was to contact someone on the list – just phone them up and ask them what they knew. It was when I did this

that the second and more disturbing pattern began to emerge.

*

I put it off until the following day – because of my headache, because I was reluctant to call up people I didn’t know, because I was scared of what I might find out. I

kept popping Excedrin tablets every few hours, and although they took the edge off the pain, there was still a dull and fairly constant thumping sensation behind my eyes.

I didn’t imagine I’d have any luck getting through to Deke Tauber, so the first name I selected from the list was that of a CFO in a medium-sized electronics

company. I remembered his name from an article I’d read in Wired.

A woman answered the phone.

‘Good morning,’ I said, ‘may I speak to Paul Kaplan, please?’

The woman didn’t respond, and in the brief silence that followed I considered the possibility that we’d been disconnected. To check, I said, ‘Hello?’

‘Who is this, please?’ she said, her tone both weary and impatient.

‘I’m a journalist,’ I said, ‘from Electronics Today magaz—’

‘Look … my husband died three days ago.’

‘Oh—’

My mind froze. What did I say now? There was silence. It seemed to go on for ever. I eventually said, ‘I’m very sorry.’

The woman remained silent. I could hear muffled voices in the background. I wanted to ask her how her husband had died, but I was unable to form the words.

Then she said, ‘I’m sorry … thank you … goodbye.’

And that was that.

Her husband had died three days ago. It didn’t necessarily mean anything. People died all the time.

I selected another number and dialled it. I waited, staring at the wall in front of me.

‘Yes?’

A man’s voice.

‘May I speak to Jerry Brady, please?’

‘Jerry’s in …’ He paused, and then said, ‘who’s this?’

I’d chosen the number at random and realized now that I didn’t know who Jerry Brady was – or who I should be, calling him up on a Sunday morning like this.

‘It’s … a friend.’

The man hesitated, but then went on, ‘Jerry’s in the hospital …’ – there was a slight shake in his voice – ‘… and he’s really sick.’

‘Oh my god. That’s awful. What’s wrong with him?’

‘That’s just it, we don’t know. He started getting these headaches a couple of weeks ago? Then last Tuesday – no … Wednesday – he collapsed at work …’

‘Shit.’

‘… and when he came to he said he’d been having dizzy spells and muscular spasms all day. He’s been in and out of consciousness ever since, trembling, throwing

up.’ ‘What have the doctors said?’

‘They don’t know. I mean, what do you want, they’re doctors. All the tests they’ve done so far have been inconclusive. I’ll tell you something, though …’

He paused here, and clicked his tongue. I got the impression from his slightly breathless tone that he was dying to talk to someone but at the same time couldn’t quite

ignore the fact that he had no idea who I was. For my part I wondered who he was – a brother? A lover?

I said, ‘Yeah? Go on …’

‘OK, here’s the thing,’ he said, obviously judging it immaterial at this stage of the proceedings who the fuck I was, ‘Jerry’d been weird for weeks, even before the

headaches. Like he was really preoccupied with something, and worried. Which wasn’t Jerry’s style at all.’ He paused for a beat. ‘Oh my god I said wasn’t.’

I felt faint and put my free hand up to lean against the wall.

‘Look,’ I said quickly, ‘I’m not going to take up any more of your time. Just give Jerry my best, would you?’ Without saying my name, or anything else, I put the

phone down.

I staggered back towards the couch and fell on to it. I lay there for about half an hour, horrified, replaying the two conversations over and over in my mind.

I eventually got up and dragged myself back to the telephone. There were between forty and fifty names in the notebook and so far I’d only called two of them. I

picked another number – and then another one, and then another one after that.

But it was the same story each time. Of the people I tried to contact, three were dead and the remainder were sick – either already in the hospital, or in varying

states of panic at home. In other circumstances, this might have constituted a mini-epidemic, but given that these people displayed quite a wide range of symptoms – and

were spread out over Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island – it was unlikely that anyone would make a connection between them. In fact, the only thing that

did connect them, as far as I could see, was the presence of their phone numbers in this little notebook.

Sitting on the couch again, massaging my temples, I stared up at the ceramic bowl on the wooden shelf above the computer. I had no choice now. If I didn’t go back

on MDT, this headache would intensify and soon be joined by other symptoms, the ones I’d repeatedly heard described on the telephone – dizziness, nausea, muscular

spasms, impairment of motor skills. And then, apparently, I would die. It certainly looked as if all the people on Vernon’s client list were going to die, so why should I

be any different?

But there was a difference, and a significant one. I could go back on MDT if I chose to. And they couldn’t. I had a fairly substantial stash of MDT. And they didn’t.

Forty or fifty people were out there suffering severe and very probably lethal withdrawal symptoms because their supply had dried up.

And mine hadn’t.

In fact, mine had only started, because clearly their supply – or what would have been their supply if Vernon hadn’t died – was the stuff I’d been taking for the past

few weeks. I had dreadful guilt feelings about this, but what could I do? There were over three hundred and fifty pills left in my closet, which gave me considerable

breathing space, but if I were to share these out among fifty other people no one would benefit. Instead of us all dying this week, we’d all die next week.

In any case I decided that if I drastically reduced my own intake of MDT, it would have the effect of prolonging my supply, and might also, possibly, stop the

blackouts, or at least curtail them.

*

I got up and went over to the desk. I stood for a moment, gazing at the ceramic bowl on the shelf, but before I even reached out to touch it I knew that something

wasn’t right. I had a sense of fore-boding, of alarm. I took the bowl in my left hand and looked into it. The alarm quickly turned to panic.

Unbelievably, there were only two tablets left in the bowl.

Very slowly, almost as if I’d forgotten how to move, I sat down in the chair at my desk.

I’d put ten tablets into the bowl a couple of days before, and I’d only taken three of them out since then. So where were the other five?

I felt dizzy, and gripped the side of the chair to steady myself.

Gennady.

When I’d finished on the phone with my bank manager the other day, Gennady had been standing here at the desk, with his back to me.

Could he have taken some of the tablets?

It didn’t seem possible, but I racked my brains trying to visualize what had gone on, what the exact sequence of movements had been. And then I remembered –

when I’d picked up the phone to call Howard Lewis, I’d turned my back on him.

A couple of minutes drifted by, during which the mind-bending notion of Gennady on MDT sank in. How long would it be, I thought, before the stuff made its way

on to the streets, before someone worked out just what it was, reproduced it, gave it a marketable name and started dealing it in clubs, in the backs of cars, on street

corners … micro-doses cut with speed at ten bucks a pop …? I didn’t really imagine things would go that far, I suppose – not yet, not if Gennady only had five doses.

But given the nature of the MDT hit, it would be safe to assume that once he’d tried it out the first time he’d be unlikely to exercise much restraint with the rest of it.

He’d also be unlikely to forget where he’d come across the stuff in the first place.