Chimera

by Sonny Whitelaw

  "So a molecular biologist only has to decide in which state he wants his virus, either stealth mode or replicating mode, and gives it the right bits of DNA," said McCabe.

  "Well…in terms of making a virus from scratch, it wouldn't be that simple." Jordan rocked her head equivocally. "Most combinations wouldn't work. The best approach would be to start with a larger virus, strip the DNA that you're sure you don't need, and then replace it with the bits from other viruses that you know you want. By systematic experimenting, you could build an incredibly contagious, highly lethal bug that walks right past your immune system-or goes one better and uses your immune against you."

  "Think like Frankenstein. What bits would you use?" McCabe sat back and clasped his hands behind his head.

  "Smallpox is a good start. It's human-specific so you can't stop it spreading by killing insect carriers like you could with malaria or dengue or even bubonic plague. It's highly contagious, infecting and replicating in the throat, lungs and sinus passages. Plus it's a big enough virus to pack in a few Ebola genes, which would attack the major organs and eat them from within. Despite what you said about Ebola being transmissible through the air, smallpox is a lot more contagious, so you'd keep the genes for that, whereas virologists are not too sure how Ebola evades the human immune system. To make it really efficient, I'd use haemorrhagic dengue to get it inside the body, because that form of dengue hijacks our immune system macrophage cells-the cells that kill intruders-in order to access every part of the body. Perhaps more importantly, in places where haemorrhagic dengue is endemic-Asia, Africa and the South Pacific, hell, even Texas and Northern Australia-health care workers would assume any outbreak was a natural, albeit particularly virulent strain of dengue."

  McCabe watched her talk, the way her mind explored the possibilities, the challenges. Her hands moved to accentuate points, retain this, discard that. Snipping and cutting, honing every gene until she'd sculpted a living monster that could become the ultimate weapon. He'd seen the same expression on Susan Broadwater's face when his father had talked about it, all those years ago.

  Abruptly, Jordan stopped speaking and stared it him, her eyes wide in surprise.

  "Seductive, isn't it?" he said with a knowing smile. "The challenge. Locked away in a state of the art lab, given all the money you want to play God, breathing life into your creation, birthing it then watching it live and grow and have babies of its own, to go out into the big, wide, world and-"

  "Shit." She snatched up the journal, leaped from the chair and grabbed her coat. "You're a real arsehole, you know that?"

  He sat further back in his chair so he could look up at her. "Don't confuse thinking like the enemy with being like the enemy. I just wanted you to see where these people are coming from."

  "You weren't interested in picking my brains, just pummelling them."

  "I needed information, you needed a perspective. We both got what we needed."

  She jerked open the door and left.

  Brant was right. Jordan Spinner would be a useful member to the team. She might resent her world view being turned inside out, but, given her recent personal losses, it was no surprise that she would cling so tenaciously to the shreds of her once dignified profession. She would go off in a huff for an hour or so, but then she would confront this new reality and dedicate herself to understanding it.

  McCabe watched her walk through the bullpen, his watch cap pulled low over her ears. He liked useful tools.

  His smile faded when he recalled that this was exactly how his father had seen Susan Broadwater.

  -Chapter 8-

  Mathew Island

  Dispersal: Plus 28 hours.

  Tom Kaleo woke that morning feeling a little ill, but he said nothing. Perhaps the fish he'd eaten the night before had been old. Or maybe it was from all the excitement. It had been three years since he'd left the village to go to school in Vila, and tonight there would be a big feast in his honour. He would drink the narcotic kava with his father and uncles in the nakamal , eat sweetened breadfruit and fresh poulet fish, and share stories with the village.

  At eleven years old, Tom had a surprisingly good understanding of what his future held. His parents had sacrificed much to send him to boarding school, but they could not afford the fees for high school. Few students passed the entrance exams and only a rare handful received a full scholarship. Then, just before the exams, Tom had come down with dengue fever.

  If he did not gain a place in high school, Tom's choices in life were limited. His work as a garden boy brought in a little money, but in order to stay in Vila he would have to steal to live. If the ineffectual police caught him, jail meant a place to sleep and food to eat, so that was okay. Or he could return to Mathew Island to work in the gardens and fish. He'd live in a bamboo-walled hut with a dirt floor and become entwined with the village politics, permanently enmeshed in a never-ending list of familial and social obligations that bound him to the village more assuredly than credit cards and mortgages bound Westerners to banks.

  Despite the aches that had wracked his young body, he had forced himself to sit for the high school entrance examinations. The official results weren't out until January, but when his Australian teacher had given him a return ticket to Mathew Island as a Christmas present, Tom knew it could mean only one thing. So he'd used the few vatu he'd earned looking after the teacher's garden, to buy his mother a small pig, a bag of rice, a little calico, and a packet of sugar. He had come home with gifts and he would be returning to high school in the new year!

  Tom never realised that he wasn't simply bright; he was gifted. He would have breezed through high school and undoubtedly landed himself another scholarship to an Australian or New Zealand university. Medicine or engineering would not have been out of the question, either one of which was desperately needed in a country chronically lacking skilled professionals.

  But Tom had been one of the first to inhale the virus the previous morning. Hundreds of chimera particles had readily passed through the alveoli in his lungs and then spread through his bloodstream. Because Tom had so recently suffered a bout of non-haemorrhagic dengue, his antibodies, already alerted for dengue, responded rapidly, sending signals to the immune system's primary killers, the macrophage cells. Legacy of one of its three genetic parents, dengue Type-2, the chimera allowed itself to be engulfed. And, as with dengue Type-2, Tom's macrophage cells failed to kill it. While he sat fishing from his canoe that morning, the chimera overcame and took control of these killer cells. Like a Trojan horse, the virus now had unhindered access to every organ in Tom's body.

  By midmorning, Tom knew that he was getting worse. He'd never been seasick in his life, but sitting in the bobbing canoe made him ill. His muscles also hurt, just like they had when he'd been getting dengue. He said nothing to his friends in the canoes nearby, and instead concentrated on pulling in another big red poulet fish. He didn't want to be sick again, especially with the feast tonight.

  *

  The trip to Hunter Island was bumpy as all hell. Another wave of nausea washed over Nate, and he began to regret coming. "Hey Mike, want a break?" Taking the helm would keep his mind of his seasickness.

  Warner glanced at him. "Sure, just don't run into anything, I don't fancy setting up camp here."

  "Finally found a volcano you don't like, huh?" Nate cleaned the salt spray off his polarized sunglasses and then took the helm.

  "It's not that. Look at the thing!" Warner stared at the island. "You'd be sleeping almost vertical."

  If there was such a thing as en evil archetype, Hunter Island fit the bill. The volcano shot out from the ocean like a witch's hat. It was so black that even in full sunlight, nothing reflected off the surface. "I'm surprised no Hollywood producer's ever used it as the backdrop for some gothic horror film." Nate peered over the edge of the boat. Underwater it was much the same, a sheer drop into the depths. There were no outcrops of coral, no reefs extending out from the shore. "Then again, nobody would believe it
was real. It's too damned evil lookin'."

  The only place to land was in a small inlet tucked behind a lava flow. Nate tossed the anchor onto the rocky shore and helped Warner offload his equipment. He couldn't leave the launch for any length of time because the anchor's hold was tenuous, at best.

  While Warner climbed the hundred metres to the top of the lava flow to replace the broken sensor, Nate collected soil samples and a few scrapings of moss, the only vegetation growing on the island. None of the samples carried any trace of the chimera; it had been washed away or decimated by UV light.

  On the return trip, Nate viewed Mathew Island almost affectionately. Even the ever-present sienna clouds hovering over the volcano gave the island a warm, almost inviting aura.

  "Boy, am I glad you guys are back!" Katie was waiting for them on the beach. Kicking off her sandals, she waded into the water, grabbed the gunwale and turned the boat so that its stern was facing the shore.

  "Why, what's up?" Nate asked, glancing around the launch to make certain that they had everything packed. "Accident?"

  "No." Katie held the boat steady while Warner lifted out his cases. "Around midday a couple of old bubus came to the clinic asking for you. They were complaining about headaches and nausea. I thought they just wanted some attention; you know, boast about seeing Dr Nate, so I gave them some paracetamol and told them to come back tomorrow. Then more people started coming by, all complaining of the same thing. Headachy, some are a little nauseous but no one's throwing up, so I don't think it's bad food or ciguatera poisoning. An hour ago, the first cases from this morning returned-this time with a fever. At the rate we're going, we'll use two month's supply of Panadol in two days."

  The launch's fuel tanks were near empty and the oil needed changing, but that could wait. Nate tossed the anchor out as far as he could, jumped into the waist deep water, and waded ashore.

  "Oh, and Mike," Katie said to Warner as they carried the equipment up the beach. "I checked your email. There's an urgent one from Seattle, so I opened it like you said. Your assistant said he's worried about Mt Rainer. They want you back, post haste."

  "Oh, crap." Warner's face darkened.

  "What is it?" Nate asked him.

  "Cascade Mountains are unstable as all hell. Another Mount Saint Helens is a real possibility."

  Nate was only half listening. Three hundred metres away, up the hill, he could see the line of people waiting outside the clinic.

  Later that evening, when Nate had finished ministering to everyone, he sat down to write in his journal. It was a habit he'd acquired in his earliest days travelling through the islands. Detailing everything he encountered in relation to exotic tropical illnesses and the treatments used by the locals had aided his research in traditional medicines. Before beginning a new entry he read over his previous notes from earlier that morning.

  0530, Thursday 14 December 1995.

  'Sharing dinner with Mike Warner last night, I had something of an epiphany: I'm getting too old for this. We broiled meals in the hot springs and ate by the light of the volcano. It sounds romantic, adventurous, but it was just plain tedious. I'm tired of sleeping on dirt floors, especially when they're mud. I'm tired of eating from tins and freeze-dried packets, or being served taro, breadfruit and bony fish cooked in coconut milk. I'm sick of having my things ransacked by pigs and chickens, and I hate living on top of a flatulent volcano. I can never sleep properly, and everything tastes and smells of rotting eggs. In truth, I feel like I'm wading through mud-even in the dry season. Now that the Vanuatu government has cut funding for its Malaria and Dengue Programme, they expect the WHO in Noumea, that is, me, to fill the gap, both financially and physically. They don't understand that pouring doctors in isn't the answer. Education and mosquito control, prevention, not more Chloroquinine and Panadol is what's needed.

  'On the positive side, the Mathew people have been keeping their village clean. With the wet season due, they've removed anything that might hold stagnant water, and the children's vaccinations are up to date. The incidence of malaria is way down, and there's been no outbreak of hepatitis or dengue. Being more Polynesian than Melanesian helps. Although they've never been successfully Christianised-having eaten the only missionaries who ever made the attempt-they're more inclined to assimilate new ideas and Western medicines than, say the purely Melanesian Ambrym Islanders, who live under a permanent shroud of volcanic dust and black magic. The Mathew Islanders accept that germs and mosquitoes, not witch doctors, cause disease.

  'Most of the credit has to go to Katie Wood and Judi Harris, the Peace Corps nursing sisters, and their three Mathew Island aids, Alice, Emily, and Nettie. Middle age hasn't slowed Katie down; if anything, she seems to have more energy than Judi, who's young enough to be her daughter. Despite the generation gap, the women have formed a close bond; they even wear each other's clothes-something Mike Warner appreciates because most of the time that means shorts and tank tops. It's too damned hot to wear anything else.

  'Katie is returning to Seattle next week. I wonder if her family can conceive of what she's been doing, how wonderful she's been despite the unbelievable conditions that she works under? Judi will be alone for a few weeks. I'm not sure if that's such a great idea, but the responsibility will probably be good for her.'

  Nate pulled his laptop closer to begin a new entry.

  2030: Thursday 14 December 1995.

  'Most of my clinical notes are attached to my hand written reports, but before going to bed I wanted to make some personal observations about this sudden outbreak. My first instinct was to look for a common cause. The only thing that comes to mind is the hot springs that provide the village with fresh water. Apart from a slightly sulphurous aftertaste, the water bubbles out of the ground boiling, and, of course, sterile. As it rained yesterday and the symptoms include mild gastro-intestinal upset, I'm wondering if something washed into the common water supply. Unfortunately, I have no way of testing it.

  'The symptoms worsened throughout the day and paracetamol has had only a marginal impact. Judi suggested a giardia infection, but it's unlikely the entire village would have come down with it almost simultaneously. Also, boiling water kills most microorganisms, including the parasitical giardia . Interestingly, of the six people who arrived with the flight on Tuesday, only one seems affected: Tom Kaleo. He brought with him a small pig-and what I now suspect could be an extremely contagious flu virus.

  'The villagers are generally healthy and likely to get through it without too much discomfort, but it's hit them uncommonly fast, and it's putting a huge dent in the clinic's limited supplies.

  'Mike Warner has been called back to Seattle urgently. Apparently Mt Rainer is causing some concern. Mike's organised a charter plane to collect him tomorrow morning, so I've requested that the Health Department load the flight with additional analgesics and sterile equipment, including masks and gloves.

  'That idiot who pretends to run Vila Central Hospital, Gene Marshall, is foot shuffling. I told him to take it from the WHO supplies earmarked for the Dengue and Malaria Unit. I'll juggle the stock lists later, but this constant bickering over a few basic supplies that are not even under Marshall's control, and worse, his increasing propensity to dispute my professional judgment when his own diagnostic skills are notoriously appalling, is getting on my nerves.

  'In addition to the speed of onset, the other aspect of this outbreak that concerns me are the symptoms. Although flu-like, they also exhibit dengue-like traits. Tom Kaleo assumed he was suffering a relapse. Although the symptoms do not rule out dengue, the epidemiology does; it's too rapid and has affected way too many people. Even had a swarm of mosquitoes bitten Tom the moment he got off the plane at Mathew, it takes eight to twelve days for the virus to replicate in the mosquito's gut. The insects would then have had to bite each of the other victims simultaneously. And even then, it takes another four to seven days after someone has been bitten for symptoms to manifest.

  'Whatever the cause, if To
m did bring it with him, it's a remarkable example of how quickly a contagion can be introduced into, and spread through, a closed population.'

  Nate paused, glanced out the window, and then added, 'I just don't like the look of this thing; something about it bugs me-no pun intended. Mike Warner has agreed to take blood samples back to Vila. The lab there regularly tests for malaria and dengue, and it would be useful to rule that out. I've also asked them to check the white cell count. Meanwhile, I've started Tom Kaleo and eight others on two courses of antibiotics, just in case it is some gastrointestinal infection. I've also advised Katie, Judi, and Mike to re-boil all water and eat only pre-packaged foods until we're sure what's causing this.'

  -Chapter 9-

  Quantico

  Dispersal: Plus 43 hours

  McCabe's only request to Brant was that the investigative teams assigned to run extensive background checks on him and his family do not trash his place or delete his files in their usual bull-headed fashion.

  Such investigations had a notoriously chilling effect on a person's career and personal life. Although logic dictated his innocence, given his connection to the case, especially his familial ties, the FBI should have relieved him of duty until he was cleared. They weren't keeping him on because of logic but because they needed him.