BRENDAN D. CARSON
Brendan Carson lives in Adelaide and occasionally Perth, with his wife, family and approximately fifty cats (true). He is returning to part-time writing after an absence of several years. By day, and often by night, be works in a small metropolitan hospital Emergency Department, which allows him to meet hundreds of interesting people with fascinating stories to tell, none of which he can ever use in his fiction. Previous publications have been in Altair. Antipodean and several indie magazines.
“I wrote “Occam’s Razing’ after coming back from a night shift, I’d been reading A Distant Mirror, by Barbara Tuchman, and it sort of melded in my mind with the neurobiology I’d been studying, and this was the result.”
* * * *
The Chatelaine Marguerite di Picard - first daughter of the Duc D’Orleans, related by marriage to the Navarres Dynasty, through title to Godefrey of Cherbourg (who three times unseated the English king at tournament), and through birth to the powerful Gascon nobility of Bordeaux and Poitiers - was the worst forensic neurotheologist in Christendom.
Still, you took what you could get at this short notice. Jean Doublet shivered in the thin Flemish rain and waited. Behind him the Chatelaine bent her broad back.
“Any joy?”
Chatelaine di Picard shook her head inside her cloth-of-gold containment suit, embroidered with fleur de lys: “It’s been a while - twelve, fourteen hours -”
“Three.”
“And with these summer temperatures -” A gust of wind spattered cold water onto Doublel’s face. “- the temperature would have hastened the decay. The synapses in the frontal cortex are almost -”
Doublel sighed. “Is there anything you can get? Anything at all?” He glanced over at the body of the slim woman, almost a girl, swinging occasionally in the gusts of rain. His sargent, de Burley, sawed at the rope around her neck. It was plasflax, something local, Doublel already had men tracing the gene lineage. He glanced away when the wind caused the woman to gently rotate, her thin, wise face contorted by fear and anoxia.
The Chatelaine grimaced. “A little…”
Doublel raised his eyebrows behind the molecular mask.
“I think - the footprints - theological beliefs form certain, typical patterns in the frontal lobes. Nerves join up to nerves in particular ways, synapses make certain characteristic pathways. The longer the deceased has held the beliefs, the stronger the patterns.”
Doublel nodded. This kind of stuff always intrigued him. There was a part of him that imagined being born noble, having the opportunity to study. Predictably, he felt a heavy, full pain beginning behind his eyes. He squeezed them shut, dismissing the thought and the pain.
“She’s a convert, not someone born to this. There’s only diffuse neurotheological imprinting - background noise - until probably about a month ago.”
“A month?”
“Give or take three. Six months at the outset.”
Doublel contained his increasing rage. Speaking slowly, he said “So you’ve narrowed it down to between six-months ago and a few days?”
“Exactly,” smiled the Chatelaine.
“Invaluable. And what about her religious conversion?’
“That’s where it gets really interesting. It’s hard to be sure, but I think she shows signs of Occam’s Syndrome.”
Doublel’s eyes widened. “Occam’s? Are you sure? But where would she get it from?”
The Chatelaine shrugged. “Definitely Occam’s. Atrophy of the epiphanic tracts, skeptogenic neural configuration in Aquina’s area, probable Avingnon Credo Score of less than five.”
“Occam’s been dead for seven hundred years. He was declared heretical by Innocent the - I think the Thirteenth. They exterminated his bloodline down to third cousins. There hasn’t been a case since -”
“There was the Florentine outbreak,” pointed out the Chatelaine. “Guilia Ammannati and Vincenzo Galilei, five hundred years ago. And then nothing until -”
Their eyes met. “By Our Lady,” said the Chatelaine.
“The English outbreak. Less than a year and a half ago. They tracked down the ship, sunk it off the coast of some islands in the Atlantic, the Galapagos. The Beagle, went down with all hands. But they could have docked here. They could have docked at Bordeaux, infected people -” He scrambled for his horse.
“I’m trying to remember. Patient Zero - was that Charle Du Wynne?”
“Something like that, may Satan tear his stones. I have to go to Bordeaux, my lady.”
She nodded. “It may be that it’s only the early stages. Not an epidemic yet. Perhaps only the susceptible are infected so far.”
De Burley trudged towards Doublel, raising his eyebrows.
“Quarantine the nearest three towns. And her home town, seal off Curie. Then clean it. Clean all first-degree, second-degree, childhood friends, possible sexual contacts. The father and mother are still in Curie, burn their bodies and their house. And don’t forget to decontaminate yourself.”
De Burley nodded.
Doublel swung into the saddle. His eyes were already scanning the horizon for smoke, fire, the signs of anarchy, scepticism, rebellion. Now the girl’s face didn’t look wise, but threatening. How many people had she doomed before she took her life?
“Burn them all” he shouted. “Tell them it is the last will and testament of Marie of Curie.”