"When we first discovered the virus," Fidel said, "it seemed untouchable. None of our antibodies would bind it. At first I wondered if it was so alien in composition that our immune system just couldn’t recognize it. But our analysis shows that it is so similar in composition to the human neuron that our antibodies just don’t see it as a threat. Any antibodies or chemicals we use to attack the virus will also kill the host. Any ideas?"
My thoughts race. I immediately thought of subviruses, tiny parasites that can attack and destroy viruses, but I felt sure that they’d tried them. I’d once heard of a doctor who created an artificial immune system—creating bacteria that destroyed viruses. Soon after the viral infection had ended, a simple antibiotic could kill the bacteria.
But any artificial immune system that I created would also destroy the human neurons.
A general announcement came over the com-line on the computer. It was aimed at those in Module B. "Anyone who has not had a drink of water in the past 24-hours and does not have an elevated temperature, please report to level eight for induction into the cryotanks. All other remain in your rooms. Do not go to the infirmary."
I looked to Fidel. "They’re going to freeze the ones who are healthy," he said, "hoping that we’ll find a way to cure them."
I asked, "How many cryotanks do they have?"
"About three hundred on their module. We might be able to save three hundred."
José laughed derisively. "I told Fidel we should blow the seals on that module and let everyone get sucked into space right now. It would be faster than what they’re going through. We’ve already tried all the antiviral drugs—nothing. We’ve given up on antibodies. We’ve tried some common subviruses—but this little beast has its own immune system. Any subvirus that tries to attach to the virus just gets chopped up and eaten for dinner. We won’t get anywhere with them. We need something more ... elegant." His tone was hopeless.
"Have you tried heating the virus," I asked, "subjecting it to ultraviolet radiation, those things?"
"Yes. It reproduces best just a few degrees above body temperature. Of course, all the patients have elevated temperatures, which just makes the virus breed faster. We can kill it with radiation, and we’ve already cleared up their air and water, but it doesn’t help the patients in module B. They got it through their water sometime yesterday. And they’ve all got it. One of their samurai was an agent for the Yabajin. He was carrying a subdural bio-cache of the virus; he must have dug the cache out from under his skin and introduced it into the drinking water. He’s already been executed. Most of the victims got double doses of the virus of course—as soon as their fevers began to rise, they drank more heavily.
"The infections are fairly disseminated: the virus attacks a wide range of organs with equal vitality. It causes severe damage to the lungs, liver, skin. It’s also causing lesions in the arteries, with internal swelling. Several patients have died of stroke caused by clots breaking free from other areas and floating to the brain."
"At least the assassin died before his victims," I said.
I’m sure the Yabajin considered it a privilege. He’d traded one life for four thousand.
"Anyway," Fidel said, "we can’t kill the virus, but we may be able to sterilize it. That’s what we’re working on now. The computer is checking to see how it subverts the reproductive system of its host cells. We thought we might be able to introduce a subvirus that could infiltrate the virus—using a prion as a vector—and at least try to neuter these puppies."
Their idea seemed to be halfway decent—a prion is a subvirus that actually inserts its DNA into its host virus to reproduce, just as a virus will insert its own genetic material into a human host cell to reproduce.
In my work in morphogenics I often develop viruses to infiltrate a human host and insert new information into the patient’s genetic code. Such viruses are called vectors, and one can do marvelous things with them. It’s possible to use a subvirus such as a prion for a vector to insert new information into the genetic code of a virus, but in practice it is very difficult, for prions are very small bits of living matter, often with just a few dozen pairs of amino acids. They’re barely alive, and I thought it would be difficult to create one large enough to be useful as a vector in redesigning the virus. It would be doubly difficult since this particular virus was designed as a weapon and had already proven immune to other subviruses.
Its creator had taken years to perfect it. Yet we’d have only hours to defeat it. Perhaps if we’d had a few months we could have come up with something. As it was, Fidel simply said, "You’re welcome to wait and see if you come up with any ideas."
I waited with them for the computer’s report on the viral reproductive system. Occasionally the intercom carried the sound of someone’s hacking cough, the footsteps of nurses walking from patient to patient. They spoke softly to one another, telling the stories of their lives and the people they loved as they prepared to die.
There was one woman there, and I could hear her going from bed to bed, speaking with the ill, offering comfort and consolation. She would say, "My name is Felicia, would you like some water, a blanket?" and then she would begin talking about good things—a day she spent on the beach burning sandalwood, or how her father had taught her to make her own shoes.
It sounded like idle chatter at first, yet it calmed the ill well.
This woman seemed wise and strong, and I found myself listening to her intently, wishing I could be like her, wishing I could make her live.
Twice a Japanese announced over a loudspeaker in module B that the ill should "resist the illness by a supreme act of will." It was a brave gesture.
It took the computer nearly two hours to finally unravel the virus’s method of reproduction. We all knew that the results of the study would be useless before they arrived: the virus sent chemical messengers telling the cell it was time to commence mitosis, to form RNA, split, and grow.
We could shut down the reproductive system of the virus by using any of three drugs, but we’d also shut down the reproductive system of all the victim’s cells. Blindness and a quick death would follow.
We immediately began developing a vector subvirus—the creature we hoped would be "elegant" enough to defeat the virus’s defense mechanisms.
The patients began dying rapidly. We were able to document their deaths: we learned all the symptoms of the illness—the rise in temperature followed by dehydration, destruction of the liver and arteries, followed by death.
We were able to calculate how many copies the virus made of itself each time it reproduced, and to discover that it would take an average of twenty-eight hours from the time of the victim’s first exposure to death.
With that information we computed exactly the hour the bio-cache had been poured into the water, and found that the Greek technician who’d moved between modules had missed contaminating the rest of the ship by only minutes. We learned everything except how to stop the plague.
As far as the capacity for destruction to human life went, the virus was as effective as a hydrogen bomb.
We followed many dead-end leads over the next twenty-four hours. Over three thousand people died while we labored, and then we found something: we found a family of prions that would work as vectors to sterilize the virus, but we also found that the body’s own defense mechanisms destroyed our nice little creations.
In order to get the subviruses to work, all we needed to do was to shut down our patient’s production of antibodies long enough for the subvirus to infect the patients.
On top of this, we needed to breed a culture of the subviruses so we could infect our patients with them. We began growing the cultures immediately, but our next problem became evident: it would take a minimum of six hours to manufacture one dose of the subvirus, and in seven hours we could manufacture four hundred doses, but by calculating the spread of the illness we found that the patients would be too far gone by then for anyone to be saved.
We found a
way to conquer the virus, but not in time.
We decided to go ahead and produce the antidote and manufacture four hundred doses in hopes that we might save someone. If anyone was alive in six hours, we’d have the ship’s maintenance robots carry the antidote down to the cryotanks and inject it into the tanks.
Five and a half hours later, Mavro called me on com link. It was nearly noon. "Hola, muchacho, how are you doing?" he said.
"Oh, fine," I answered wearily.
"Did you hear that I killed that punk Samora last night?"
"No," I said.
"Sí, we chased Lucío and his compadres all around, and we finally got Samora. The fucker cut my arm, though. It is not too bad. We looked for Lucío this morning before breakfast, but we couldn’t find him. Now Kaigo says we can’t kill Lucío after all, because of the bad things that are happening on module B. They want every man alive. They have some big samurai guarding Lucío, and they’re waiting for the plague to run its course so they can transfer him over to module A."
"Oh," I said.
"Did you hear the other good news?"
All the news I’d heard lately was bad. I told him so.
"Garcia’s team beat the samurai last night! They won over half a million IMUs. Then we went to the simulators this morning and instead of fighting the samurai we are fighting other Latin American combat teams now. We lost all four of our fights this morning, but that was just because we were two men down. When you and Zavala get back, we will do much better. I have been watching The Horror Show with Perfecto, learning who is good and who is not. Some friends and I have been gambling on the outcomes of the battles this morning. I made twelve thousand pesos already." He’d been speaking as if he was in high spirits, but his tone became desperate. "And, anyway, I was thinking: you have a lot of money. Would you like me to invest some of it for you in the fights?"
He may have made twelve thousand pesos already this morning, I mused, but I was sure he’d lost them all again. I was disappointed to hear that he only called me so he could borrow money.
"No," I said. "I want to watch the teams, see who my favorites are first."
"Oh. Okay. Tell me, are things on module B as bad as they say?"
"Worse," I said.
"Oh. Well, I’m sure an intelligent person like yourself will come up with something. Adios." He clicked off.
I thought about what he’d said. I weighed the good news against the bad. Lucío was out of our hair and we no longer had to battle samurai. But four thousand of our compadres were dead or dying. It wasn’t a fair trade.
It seemed to me that if a good man worked hard, he should at least be allowed to break even in life. We weren’t breaking even. I had another realization: during this entire trip, we had been looking at the Motoki samurai as if they were our enemy, or at Lucío and his men as if they were our enemies.
I had not understood that the Yabajin were our true enemy.
At the end of the seven hours we found that 113 people were still alive in the cryotanks. The intercom had quit sending audio signals. No one was left wandering the other module. No one in the infirmary was coughing.
A maintenance robot carried the antidote to the men and injected it into the cryotanks along with the necessary antibody inhibitors. But three hours later our patients were all dead.
When the last man died, the ship’s AI blew the seals on the module and flushed the corpses into space. The freezing void sterilized that part of the ship better than all our drugs ever could.
In our first battle with the Yabajin we lost more than we could ever have imagined.
I was able to take a small nap before battle practice, the only hour of sleep I’d had in two days.
I dreamt that we were descending in our shuttles to Baker. From my window I saw a shining paradise of blue and green, an iridescent disk in the sky. We were falling, falling, and my heart raced with joy.
We’d be in paradise soon. I’d taste the honeyed fruits that hung thick on the trees! I’d swim in warm oceans and take my ease staring into the sky!
We flew in low over the planet, over well tended gardens. Japanese farmers waved and shouted greetings. They called to children and put them on their shoulders so whole families could watch our shuttles thunder overhead, coming in low for the landing.
On a city street, an old Japanese gentleman waved to us, carrying a small girl on his shoulders, a pale-faced European girl, the one I’d named Tatiana.
They were both smiling and waving. Then they looked above us and their mouths opened in surprise and shock.
I could read the girl’s lips as she said, "Grandfather, you didn’t take care of them!"
Something was wrong. I looked up and saw bodies falling from the sky, thousands of limp bodies—the corpses of the plague victims we’d flushed into space. We’d forgotten our trajectory when we flushed those bodies: they’d kept traveling beside the ship all the time, and naturally they were falling toward Baker with us. I realized some of the viruses would be frozen but intact in those bodies, and everyone on Baker would die because of it.
Chapter 21
On our thirteenth day depression at our losses to the plague hung in the air like a thick dark smoke. I walked the halls in the morning to ease a cramp in my legs, and even my bare feet padding over the plastic floors seemed muted. At breakfast people whispered their concern at the deaths of our compadres, and though the words were different from man to man, always the talk went something like this: "Too many of us have already died from the plague for the war to continue. We cannot even beat the samurai in practice now, how will we beat the Yabajin on Baker? How can we hope to win the war now?"
There was electricity in the air. My hair stood on end and my mouth was dry. There was too much silence on the ship, the cautious silence of mice. It was as if every heart beat in unison. I felt I was about to break. I felt that everyone else was about to break.
Mavro confronted a man at breakfast who said he wanted to go home. "You steer! Where are your balls?" Mavro shouted. "Give us a few more weeks of practice and the samurai will shit in fear of us!"
We returned to battle practice as if nothing had changed. Yet depression clung to me. I was exhausted in body and spirit, and only wanted to shake my emptiness.
In our first simulation we met five compadres from module A who appeared to wear red armor as if they were Yabajin. Yet I knew they saw us in the red of the Yabajin. Their fighting style had evolved differently from ours. And because Zavala was still out with his wound, we lost. We beat our second team soundly. It was my first taste of victory in the simulator. I should have been elated, but I felt empty and dissatisfied.
We jacked into a third simulation, and were thrust into a landscape near the sea, shooting over rows of dunes where stinging flies were the dominant life form. My prosthetic eyes picked up wisps of silver among the leaves of small bushes, and everywhere I looked, gulls seemed to be hovering in the air. I knew I’d meet Tamara, and my heart raced at the thought. We met the Yabajin and a lucky shot removed me from action quickly, but instead of jacking into the battle room I tumbled off the hovercraft and skidded in the sand at the bottom of a hill. The hovercrafts raced away.
I took off my helmet and Tamara’s great black bull ambled up over the hilltop, its belly lazily swaying from side to side as it walked, swishing its tail. Tamara rode comfortably on its back, dressed in a yellow robe. The sun beating on the fabric blinded me.
"I’ve been ... looking for you."
"I’ve been busy."
"You ... couldn’t ... save them."
"I know."
"Angelo. I heard Garzón ... speaking. To. Advisers. He ... doesn’t know I can ... talk to you. Your. Situation is. Desperate. ... I want to ... apologize ... for the mess ... I got you into."
I was instantly curious. Garzón hadn’t spoken publicly about how plague on module B would affect us. "What did Garzón say?"
"Because of ... current losses ... the AI projects. You’ll. Have 78% ...
deaths. Forgive me."
I shrugged. It didn’t sound so bad. We’d all known we might die when we got aboard ship. We were guaranteed the computer simulations would give us a 51% chance of survival. So the odds had gone down. "It makes no difference."
Tamara’s shoulders sagged in weariness. Tears began to stream down her cheeks. She glowed like an apparition of a goddess. As if an invisible finger touched me, stimulating my emotions directly, I beheld a beauty in her so profound it caused physical pain. "Forgive me," she whispered. "Forgive."
"It’s not your fault," I said. My words were empty.
"It’s my fault," she said. Her eyes sparkled with knowledge that defied contradiction.
"Then I forgive you anyway," I said.
She reached out and scratched the head of the bull. "Reality is ... a pain in the butt. The. Sooner. We. Get. Rid. Of it. . . the better," she said. "When you ... need ... reprieve. Come to me. I’ll ... prepare a. World ... for you. Here." She pointed to her head.
"Thank you," I said and she began to fade. Darkness gathered as I prepared to jack out, and the old depression returned.
I jacked out of the last battle for the morning. I began undressing and hanging my foliage-green bug suit on its pegs. The backs of my eyes ached from loss of sleep. I wondered how others in the room would respond to the knowledge Tamara had given me. Would they want to go home? Certainly not Mavro or Abriara. Perfecto would patiently wait to learn my intentions. But would Kaigo consider my words treasonous?
I kept my mouth shut.
We went to the gymnasium and jogged slowly in the heavy gravity. Two days away from exercise had done me much good. I felt better than I had in months. As we lifted weights the room was quieter than usual. Instead of people joking and laughing, there were only whispers and the soft clank of weight bars lowering and raising.
On My Way to Paradise Page 28
