And now here she sat, staring at the viral DNA she had isolated from the Mariposan bioattack victims, certain she was failing to see the fish for the trees. There was a pattern in these base-pair sequences, she knew, one she should have recognized. And yet, the answer eluded her.
She leaned back in her chair, rocked her head back and forth to loosen her tight neck muscles, and glanced out the open lab door into the small isolated ward beyond. Victor Granger, facing open revolt from the rest of the hospital staff led by Sue DiCamino, had grudgingly allowed her to set up down here. Ten victims of the bioattack had been moved here and given to her care. All had had their conditions stabilized, at least temporarily, and were sleeping peacefully for the moment. This in itself was a major step forward.
Lense reached for the coffee cup at her right elbow, and was disappointed to find it empty. (Well, maybe not too disappointed; what the Mariposans called coffee was actually a “biosynthesized” liquid produced by splicing arabica bean genes into a common bacterium; it was best not to think about it.) She thought about getting a refill, about just stepping away from this lab equipment and clearing her head for a minute, maybe getting some food to soak up the bacteria juice already sitting in her stomach. After all, she did have to start taking better care of…
She put the cup off to the side and leaned in closer to her display screen. Her patients came first, before any concerns about herself. What would have happened at Sherman’s Planet if she spent all her time getting all touchy-feely with Captain Gold? What would have happened at Pike City if she’d spent her off-duty time obsessing over what had just happened at Galvan VI? Or at Setlik if all she did was lick the wounds Commander Selden gave her at Starbase 314?
A small part of her brain tried to tell her that she couldn’t simply ignore her pregnancy the same way she ignored other emotional traumas. Not that she should be keeping those bottled up and festering inside her the way she did, either, but at some point she would have to tell people, to—
“Excuse me, Doctor?”
Lense turned to see Konya standing in the lab’s open doorway, with Kara McClay hovering at his elbow. Oh God, how long has he been there? How much did he hear? Oh God, no, this is not how I want people to find out—
“I didn’t hear anything, Doctor.”
All thought processes ceased. Konya gave her what must have been meant as a reassuring smile. “My telepathic skills aren’t that sharp, even when I’m trying to listen. Normally, it’s just so much white noise.”
“But…you did just hear me worrying that…”
“Well, you were pretty much yelling at me there.”
Lense allowed herself to relax and give the Betazoid guard a weak smile in return. “Was there something you needed, Rennan?”
“Commander Corsi just paged,” he said. “She wants me to report back to the ship. That is, if you don’t need me here anymore.”
Lense cocked her head and loosed a small laugh. “No offense, but I didn’t really need you in the first place.”
“If only that were always the case,” he answered, far from offended. He then turned to Kara and offered his hand. “It was very nice to meet you, Kara. Thank you for helping the doctor where I couldn’t.”
“Nice to meet you, too,” she said, smiling politely. Lense found herself again impressed by the young woman’s poise. When she was her age, had she been paid such a compliment by a handsome older man, she would have blushed bright red and stammered like an idiot.
“Good luck, Doctor,” he said as he turned for the exit. “One of your patients is starting to come around,” he called over his shoulder just before leaving.
Lense jumped out of her seat and brushed past McClay into the adjoining ward. Sure enough, one of the biobed monitors was just starting to pick up the accelerating brainwave activity Konya had already sensed. Her ten patients represented what, by Mariposan standards, was a broad cross-section of their society. She had two individuals from each of the five Progenitors’ genetic lines: DiCamino, Granger, Hammond, Vallis, and Wheelock. They ranged in age from twelve to sixty (to which Lense had to mentally add eighteen years, to account for the Mariposans’ inscrutable ability to bring their nascent clones to full physical maturity in the lab), and from ninth-through fifteenth-generation cell lines.
Lense moved to the side of her awakening patient, Cory Wheelock—age 18 (36), generation line 12—and ran her tricorder above his abdomen. At the same time, Kara had moved to the opposite side of the bed, using one hand to brush Wheelock’s dark hair from his pale, sweat-dampened forehead. The other she wrapped around the patient’s hand, giving it an encouraging squeeze. “His vital signs have fallen to the exact same level as before,” she said, looking up at the display mounted above Wheelock’s head.
Lense nodded as she read the same from her tricorder. Stasizine therapy had become less effective in all the infected Mariposans after an hour’s time. She’d switched to an equizine-3 solution, which initially improved matters, but the virus had seemingly adapted again. “Let’s see if switching back to stasizine helps any,” Lense said, as she reached for her hypospray.
“Alternating therapies,” Kara replied, smiling with understanding. “Kinda like keeping the virus off balance.”
“In a sense,” Lense smiled back as she pressed the hypo to Wheelock’s neck. When Granger begrudgingly allowed her this space to do her work, he also assigned McClay as her only assistant. Lense got the impression that the health minister intended this as some sort of snub, but she could not have been more pleased with the young woman’s dedicated work and professionalism.
“It’s working!” Kara said, watching the monitor readings start to rise. Lense noticed Wheelock’s grip around Kara’s hand tighten, as if grasping at a lifeline, and then his eyelids cracked open, slowly adjusting to the light until he could see the faces of his caretakers.
“What…?” he asked groggily, and then, as the sleep melted away from him, his look of confusion dissolved to something darker. “Breeders!” he snarled, causing Lense to involuntarily flinch. “Whuh’ve y’ done t’ me?”
“Mr. Wheelock, you’re going to be all right,” Lense said in her most soothing doctor’s voice.
“Tried to kill us!” he answered, turning to look directly at Kara. “Murderers! ’Gloidi trash!” Lense cut off what would almost certainly have been an uninterrupted string of pejoratives with another touch of her hypospray, sending the Mariposan back into slumber.
“Well, that raised his vitals, all right,” Kara said, giving no sign of any offense as she gave Wheelock’s hand one last squeeze before laying it gently by his side.
Lense shook her head slowly. “I have to tell you, Kara…your bedside manner would put a lot of the doctors I’ve known to shame.” Lense was more than a little disturbed by the pervasive human-against-human racism she’d been witness to since arriving on the surface. And though she meant what she had just said to Kara, she found her unflinching acceptance of the hatred directed at her almost equally disturbing.
Kara beamed at the compliment nonetheless. “Thank you, Dr. Elizabeth. That means a lot to me, since it was a Starfleet doctor who made me want to get into medicine in the first place.”
“Kate Pulaski, right,” Lense nodded, as she reloaded her hypo with stasizine and made her way around the ward administering it to the rest of her charges. “She did a couple of guest lectures at Starfleet Medical when I was there. She can be very inspirational.” She could also be very acerbic when addressing a hall full of insecure med students, but Lense didn’t say that to McClay. A girl needed her role models, after all. “But you didn’t pick all this up in a couple days on the Enterprise.”
“Well, no. I do a lot of reading on my own off the subspace link to the Federation infonet, and Dr. Sandra was always very good to me.”
Lense thought she heard something in her tone. “‘Was’?”
Kara lowered her eyes to the biobed in front of her, but looking through it. “She was one of the
ones who didn’t make it.”
Lense hesitated, knowing that it would be little help to say she was sorry. Then, her chance to say anything was gone, as an alarm sounded from Cory Wheelock’s monitor.
Lense was across the room in an instant, checking both the overhead readouts and her own tricorder. “Dammit,” she muttered, as she watched the virus continue its rampage through his body. “It’s built up a resistance already!”
“Dr. Elizabeth,” Kara called from behind her. Lense turned to see her studying all the rest of the monitors, in the order in which she had dispensed the latest round of injections. “They’re all slipping back.”
Lense cursed the tenacious little bug as she reloaded her hypo once again, this time with equizine-1. She had hesitated in employing this therapy up until now, because if the damned bug was to develop a resistance to this, there weren’t any other options. She injected Wheelock once more, and once more the treatment seemed to work. Lense couldn’t muster up much optimism, though.
“How did the virus build a resistance so fast?” Kara asked.
Lense shook her head. “It couldn’t have. Or, it did the first time we used the therapy.” She ran her fingers through her short curly hair, as if trying to stimulate the brain cells through her scalp. “The immunity was there, and this tenacious little bastard just…faked remission.” Lense realized how ridiculous that sounded the moment the words were out of her mouth, but she couldn’t help but see this damned virus as some kind of fighter, playing with his opponent, lulling her into a false sense of confidence, then suddenly switching his sword to his stronger hand and launching a more powerful offensive…
“Oh, my God.”
Kara shot Lense a wide-eyed, worried look. “What?”
Lense beamed at Kara, and slapped the hypospray into the young woman’s palm, first ramping down the dosage. “Administer this to all the rest of the patients, and then get the message over to Sue DiCamino: ten cc’s of equizine-1, no more than that per hour. If I’m right, the war shouldn’t last any longer than that.”
Kara looked at the hypo in her hand, and then up into Lense’s eyes as if overwhelmed. The doctor would have added a few words of confidence, but she was just too excited, and instead turned directly into the lab and pulled the genetic map of the virus back up.
This time, she saw the fish plain as day.
Chapter
7
After the way the meeting at the Prime Ministers’ residence had ended, Reade Latta feared Starfleet would be abandoning them for another decade, if not longer. So when he learned that a Starfleet team was to come calling to discuss security matters, he resolved to show them how much he welcomed their presence.
“Ten-year-old whiskey,” he announced, holding up the bottle and beaming at his guests. “Distilled from the finest Bringloidi-raised quadrotriticale; none of that biosynthesized swill for you good folk.” The Starfleeters—Corsi, the tall blond security chief he’d met earlier, and Soloman, whose large skull clearly identified him as some manner of technological genius—were clearly overwhelmed by his graciousness, and they could only smile silently as he filled their glasses. “To fallen comrades,” he said as he lifted his glass, “and absent friends.”
Corsi nodded solemnly, raised her glass in kind, and added, “And to new friends.”
The Starfleeters both brought the drink to their lips, but Latta hesitated. He stared into the amber liquid for a long guilty moment, as if only then remembering his promises and his responsibilities. But you only promised Brenna you would stay sober for the duration of the crisis, the demon in the back of his head reminded him. Well, now Starfleet is here to put things right, aren’t they? Besides, you were the one who proposed that toast; it would be an insult to Kevin Hammond and all the rest not to—
Latta slammed the untouched drink down on the desk, sloshing a good share of it onto his hand. Stupid weak old man, he cursed himself. Pulling out a handkerchief to wipe his hand, he put on a smile to meet the questioning gazes from across the desk. “Well then, friends, shall we get to business?”
Corsi set her still half-full glass aside. “The da Vinci stands ready to offer our assistance in securing the safety of this colony. Soloman and I are here to determine how to best organize those efforts.”
“Ah, yes, yes. Very wise, very forward thinking.”
“Thank you,” Soloman said. His glass was also sitting forgotten in front of him, the level barely a centimeter lower than what he had poured. “To this end, we hoped you would grant us access to your computer systems.”
“Oh, well, certainly,” said Latta, gesturing to the fancy chrome and glass panels set into the wall to his right.
The Starfleeters looked at the device, and then back to Latta, as if they had expected something else. After a moment of awkward silence, Mr. Soloman spoke. “Minister, we would require an authorization code in order to fully access your systems.”
“Um…” Latta replied. “Yes. An authorization code. Of course.” Kevin Hammond had mentioned something to him about codes, maybe, when he set off on his counterstrike against those A.M.P. madmen. But all power was out then, so Latta hadn’t bothered remembering any of it. Hell, in his younger days, back on the Old World with Danilo Odell (God rest his sweet soul), you didn’t need computers or any of the rest of this machinery to keep order. Danilo lay down the law, and Reade needed nothing but his own two fists to enforce it. Now, that was how you maintained security….
Soloman and Corsi were still staring at him expectantly. “Well, the thing is, you see…these contraptions are very temperamental. They have to be dealt with in just such a way—”
“Minister,” Corsi interrupted, frowning at him suspiciously, “I understand that you would be hesitant to give outsiders access to restricted data at any level—”
“Oh, no, it’s not that,” Latta insisted. He still needed help from these people—over half the Public Safety Force was dead, another quarter were gravely ill, at least eight of those remaining had revealed themselves as A.M.P. sympathizers. But to admit his ignorance, to appear weak to them…
“Perhaps I could attempt to circumvent the encryption protocols myself,” Mr. Soloman suggested. “With your permission, of course, Minister.”
“Yes, of course, permission granted,” Latta said magnanimously. Soloman rose from his chair and went straight to work on the machine. In the back of his mind, he wondered, what with all this to-do about access authorization and restricted files, whether he was too readily giving away the store.
That worry was shoved aside when Corsi said, “I’d also like to hear from you a narrative of what, exactly, happened here. What was the trigger event, the chain of events that followed, the parties involved?”
“Ah, that I can tell you,” Latta said. “’Twas an explosion and fire, dead center of the Life Science Center, in the cloning labs.”
Corsi’s entire body snapped taut at that. “Cloning labs? But I thought—”
“Oh, they’re not used for cloning anymore, of course. They’re just regular science labs now. One woman working down there was killed in the blast—Sandra Vallis, a fine lass, deserved much better. Then when the emergency responders answered the call, they started dropping dead on the floor. Just the clones, of course. By the time anyone realized what was happening, it was all up in the air ducts, and everything went straight to hell.”
“Any way of tracking who’d been in and out of there?” Corsi asked. “Any security restrictions? Visual recordings?”
“No, not that I know of. And like I said, it’s the middle of medical center; everyone goes through or around there. Would have been too simple.” His hand went to his whiskey glass again, and he had to fight the urge to wrap his fingers around and pick it up. “It would have taken less solution than this to do the damage, I’m told. Could’ve been snuck in in a small pocket flask, and no one’d be the wiser.”
“You would think there would be more protection around what used to be their clone labs
,” Corsi said. “So you have no idea who could’ve done this.”
Latta sighed and shrugged. “The A.M.P., the Dieghanists, the Wilmut Party, the Sons of Bringloid…any group of bloody splitters who think they can run this world better than it is now.”
Corsi showed deep concern hearing that. “Is there really that much discord in this colony, that any of these groups is as likely a suspect as the next?”
Latta shook his head. “As you said yerself, miss, we cannot discount anyone.”
Corsi looked ready to say something more, but then Soloman announced, “I’ve gained access.”
“Good. Let’s start by pulling together all the professional and educational information on the colony inhabitants we can, ranked by level of expertise.”
“What are you looking for?” Latta asked.
“We need to find individuals who would have the knowledge and ability to have created this bioweapon—not just the actual work of gene splicing, but the design of complex new genomes.”
After several seconds, the chrome contraption beeped. “I have the list of geneticists’ names,” Soloman said.
Corsi rose from her seat, and went to look over Soloman’s shoulder at the display. Latta joined her to look at the fifty-one names, all with the surnames of the Mariposan Progenitors, listed on the screen. Poor Sandra Vallis’s name immediately jumped out at him from the list. “You should know, Commander Corsi,” he said in a somber voice, “if you’re looking for a guilty party to charge, that a goodly number of these people have already gone on to their Final Judgment in recent days.”
Out of the Cocoon Page 6
