by Jean Lorrah
“An observation from life,” Korsal replied. “Now do you understand, Captain? This virus has mutated into strains that are deadly, and rapidly so. It is effective against every race in the Federation … but Klingons are immune. It is a weapon that you cannot turn back upon us.
“James Kirk, you cannot be so naive as to think that for all Klingon belief in the honor of direct confrontation, there are not those—and it takes only a few, even just one—who, if they knew about this virus, would use it. Once loosed upon the Federation at large—”
“—no cure,” said McCoy, “for the vast numbers of Federation citizens whose blood is based on copper. And for Humans and others with iron-based blood—”
“—the only cure,” Kirk took it up, “has to be made from the blood of Klingons. To save their lives, and the lives of their families, what bargains might any planetary government be willing to make?” He suppressed a shudder.
“And,” added Korsal, “it could have the effect of turning your race into … vampires, I believe, is the legendary term … preying upon my race.”
“Oh, God,” said McCoy. “He’s right; we’d attack their ships to get blood to make vaccine, and rationalize it by saying they started it.”
By this time, Kirk was feeling thoroughly sick. “I didn’t realize there were Klingons who didn’t want war.”
“Not that kind of war,” Korsal told him. “Not any sane Klingon. However, just as among Humans there are those—”
“You don’t have to say any more,” said Kirk. “Korsal, I am sorry. Thank God you thought it through.”
“A scientist’s job, extrapolation,” said Korsal.
Then Kevin spoke up. “Father, now I understand why my admission to Starfleet Academy did not disturb you.”
Korsal looked over at his son, but said nothing, so the boy continued, “I expected it to, if it came, because when Karl and I are grown you would have had a choice of whether to return to the empire or remain in the Federation. If I had graduated from Starfleet Academy and you had returned to the empire, there was the remote possibility that we might meet as enemies one day. But before my acceptance came, the plague began—and we were immune. You knew that you would not impart that information to the empire. And that means … you can never go home again.”
Chapter Twenty-nine
Dr. Leonard McCoy beamed reluctantly down to Nisus, leaving Spock in the hands of his staff. He sought out Sorel and told him, “I need a Vulcan healer. I’ve seen Spock through all kinds of illnesses and injuries, but this one has me stumped. His temperature and his blood pressure are shooting up and down like a yo-yo. He’s had a nosebleed. When he comes to he starts vomiting—and there’s nothing left in him. He can’t even hold water down. This last time he vomited blood. I’m giving him a transfusion from his father right now, and he’s unconscious again.”
The healer was swathed in protective gear, grim reminder that they still had no protection for Vulcans from the plague. “Leonard,” he said, “we agreed that no one with copper-based blood would beam aboard the Enterprise. You have not had any cases there yet among Vulcans, other than Spock?”
“No.”
“Then take Dr. M’Benga. There is no need for a mental touch in treating this plague, Leonard; Geoffrey can treat Spock as well as I can.”
Reluctantly, McCoy sought the black Human doctor. He was sleeping, and his eyes were bloodshot and weary when he forced them open, but he jumped up when McCoy described Spock’s symptoms. “That’s Vulcan undulant syndrome,” he said. “He’ll be bleeding from all mucus membranes in a few hours if we don’t get it stopped—and once that happens, transfusions can’t keep him from bleeding to death.”
“How do we stop it?” McCoy demanded.
“Anticoagulants and pressure points. I’ll show you.”
“Anticoagulants?” McCoy asked, suddenly afraid that M’Benga was so fatigued that he might make a fatal mistake.
“Coagulation in the capillaries forces blood through the membranes. Vulcans aren’t Humans, Leonard.”
“Spock’s half Human,” McCoy reminded him.
“Not physiologically. There are few Human factors to his anatomical structure. Spock is the first Vulcan/ Human hybrid—he is the specific case we studied in my classes. I’m glad for the opportunity to examine him in real life—except that I would prefer less grim circumstances.”
It seemed to take forever to go through all the decontamination necessary before they could beam up, but at least now the two Humans knew they were not carrying the disease in their own blood.
McCoy was impressed with M’Benga’s knowledge. M’Benga checked Spock’s vitals, ordered medication, adjusted the temperature of the room a few degrees higher, and said, “Now, we must place pressure on his main arteries in sequence, to drive the blood through the capillaries so it doesn’t pool and clot. Vulcan blood pressure is normally so low that it becomes a problem in a disease like this one; the bouts of heightened blood pressure are Spock’s body’s own attempts to accomplish cleansing of the capillaries.”
M’Benga showed McCoy where to apply pressure, then release it so that the blood surged through with extra strength, like water released from behind a dam. They went systematically over his body, applying and releasing pressure until their fingers went numb, and then went on anyway, working to save his life.
Finally M’Benga stopped and drew a blood sample, and they examined it in the laboratory. “It’s okay,” said M’Benga. “His blood is back to normal consistency. If his heart stays strong, this particular crisis is over.”
But Spock was still unconscious, pale, breathing raggedly. McCoy knew the disease had not yet run its course.
Chapter Thirty
When Sorel left McCoy, he went on to T’Kar’s room. The Vulcan woman was also in undulant syndrome; her daughter and a Human nurse were working on her as he entered.
This latest twist of the disease might spell death for the Vulcans on Nisus: there were simply not enough personnel to treat them. It took two people and nearly an hour’s work for each such bout with the syndrome. At least one of the two people had to be trained, to be able to direct the other as the nurse was doing with T’Pina.
Sorel saw that for all their efforts, death had outmaneuvered them. There were plenty of willing Human, Lemnorian, Caitian hands—but they were untrained hands. These latest strains of the disease had everyone who knew Vulcan anatomy on standby … and there were just too few.
The critical portion of the plague was also getting longer with each new strain. T’Kar had been sick for over three days now, and—
Three days!
He stood back from checking T’Kar’s vital signs and stared at T’Pina. The younger woman’s face was pinched and drawn with concern and the effort to control; her eyes were sunk into olive-green circles from lack of sleep.
But she was not ill.
T’Pina might be on the edge of exhaustion, but she definitely did not have the plague.
“How long?” he asked the nurse.
“Forty-nine minutes.”
“Let me draw a blood sample,” said Sorel. All the doctors and healers now carried tricorders to do this one simple blood test immediately, without sending it to the overworked laboratory. “All right,” he said, “she’s through this crisis.” But how many more can she survive?
“T’Pina,” he said, “lie down now, and try to sleep. And I want a blood sample from you.”
The girl frowned. “Why? I do not feel ill.”
“That is why I want the sample,” he replied. “Child, you should have been as sick as your mother after two days—less, because you have been overworking so that you have little resistance. Yet your body resists the plague. Let us see if we can find out how.”
She did not protest further.
Sorel returned to the computer laboratory, where his daughter T’Mir was working. “Put this through the same tests you did on the Klingon samples,” he told her.
She stared at
the vial of green fluid, then back at her father as if she feared for his sanity. “Humor me, child,” he said, and only then remembered that he had addressed T’Pina in the same way, as if she, too, were his daughter.
What was it Daniel called such things? A Freudian slip? Was his subconscious mind already making T’Kar and T’Pina a part of his family?
He sat down and rested his head on his hands while T’Mir set up the tests. Healers and doctors learned early in their careers to snatch any moment of rest in times of crisis. Deliberately, he turned his mind from the plague, let it blank, then allowed whatever thought might wish to enter.
He saw T’Kar as she had been aboard the Enterprise, dignified, stately, beautiful. Her blue eyes looked into his, so unlike the usual dark Vulcan eyes, so easy to read. In them he read—
“Father! Father, look. You’ve found it!”
He looked up, to see his daughter staring at the computer screen.
T’Mir had introduced the most virulent strain of the virus into the sample of blood he had brought her—T’Pina’s blood. Just as in the Klingon blood, there was an analogous hemoglobin factor that bonded with the virus and would not let it grow. Before the eyes of father and daughter, the deadly infection shriveled up and died.
Chapter Thirty-one
T’Pina lay on the cot that had been placed in her mother’s room for her, but she could not sleep. Why hadn’t she caught the plague when her mother was so dreadfully ill?
For all her Vulcan training, T’Pina was afraid. T’Kar was dying. She was badly dehydrated, could not take even water by mouth, and went into undulant syndrome every time they tried to put blood, plasma, or even just hydration solution into her veins.
T’Pina was not ready to lose her mother—not so soon after her father had died! She had been through the healing process; the healers had said she was recovered. Yet the memory came back time after time, of the feeling, the knowledge, hours before the message came from T’Kar. Sevel was dead. Gone. She had sensed his katra again when T’Kar came to Vulcan to return it to his ancestors, but she would never again have her father to advise her, his strength to lean on, his wisdom to guide her.
But T’Kar had still been there, wise and strong.
Illogically, T’Pina got up and went to stand by T’Kar’s bed. “Mother,” she whispered, although she knew T’Kar could not hear, “please don’t die. Please, Mother—”
“She’s not going to die, T’Pina—thanks to you.”
It was the healer, Sorel. He pressed a hypodermic against T’Kar’s thin shoulder.
T’Pina looked at the healer, afraid to feel hope. “You are trying some new medication?”
“Watch her vitals,” Sorel instructed.
They remained critical … until the faltering heartbeat suddenly strengthened, speeded, raced, and then settled back to Vulcan norm! T’Pina looked at the other indicators. T’Kar’s temperature, which had been at one of its low points, was climbing upward —but instead of soaring on to fever pitch, as it had been doing, it settled at normal.
T’Pina stared at Sorel. “You’ve found a cure!”
He nodded, unreadable black eyes still on the life signs. “We have hope—and T’Kar is confirming it. There!”
Blood pressure stabilized. The crisis was over.
T’Kar stirred and opened hollow eyes. “T’Pina?” she whispered.
“I’m here, Mother,” T’Pina assured her, taking her clawlike hand in both of hers. “You are going to be well.”
“Yes,” T’Kar managed. “… thirsty.”
Hastily, T’Pina helped her to a sip of water. She was so weak that her head fell back on the pillow afterward, but Sorel said, “Go to sleep, T’Kar. Rest, and you will be well.”
He turned to T’Pina. “Come with me, child. You have saved your mother’s life, but many more need your blood.”
“My blood?”
“We don’t know how, but you carry something like that factor we found in the blood of the Klingons—a factor which destroys this disease. We can make a serum from your blood that will immunize the rest of us.”
T’Pina did not react. Outwardly, it might appear to be perfect Vulcan control, but in truth she was simply dazed as the healer led her toward the laboratory, stopping twice to enter other rooms and administer the other doses of serum in the hypo to critical patients.
One of them she recognized, although it took a few moments, he was so changed: Beau Deaver, unconscious, dehydrated, several days’ growth of beard making him look all the worse. At first he looked dead, the skin around his eyes wrinkled and shrunken inward like that of a corpse.
But as had happened with her mother, this man’s vital signs also responded, heart strengthening, breathing regulating. Sorel did not wait for him to wake up, but left a nurse with him and hurried T’Pina to the laboratory.
There they drew more blood from her arms and began to prepare more serum. “How much blood can I give?” she asked.
“No more right now,” Dr. Corrigan told her, “but this will make serum to save ten more people.”
“But—but there are hundreds of people very ill,” she protested.
“We’re waiting to hear from the Enterprise,” said Sorel.
He had hardly spoken before the communication came through—Dr. McCoy, face lit with a huge Human grin. “It worked! By God, you found it! Spock’s coming out of it, feisty as ever. What was that stuff?”
“A serum from T’Pina’s blood,” Sorel told him. “She appeared to be immune, so we tested and found a similar hemoglobin factor to the one in the Klingons’ blood. Here it is,” he added, pressing a switch to play a computer analysis.
T’Pina watched the screen as the virus, which she had seen schematized before, tried to attack something that she assumed was her own blood structure. Instead of thriving, the virus collapsed and died.
“I knew I had seen something like that Klingon blood factor before,” said McCoy, “but I couldn’t remember where.”
“I was remiss,” said Sorel. “I also recalled something similar. I should have remembered—I have never seen that factor anywhere in Vulcan blood, except T’Pina’s.”
“There’s a good reason you haven’t,” said the Enterprise chief medical officer. “That’s not Vulcan blood you’ve got there, Sorel. That’s Romulan.”
Chapter Thirty-two
For the next several hours, Sorel was too busy to wonder how T’Pina could be Romulan. First priority was to use her blood serum to save their most critical patients. That was quick work, but preparing her to give more blood was not.
Fortunately, Leonard McCoy had an answer: a Rigellian drug that would cause the girl’s body to produce blood cells at a highly accelerated rate. Because the Starfleet surgeon had had experience with it, they did not have to search the computer records for it and then adapt it for Vulcan use.
There was a supply of the drug at the Nisus hospital, for use by Rigellians, but Leonard beamed down to help them adapt the drug for T’Pina.
“I had to use it on Spock once,” he explained. “He’s not fully Vulcan, but the drug wasn’t affected by the Human factors in his blood. Let’s hope that Romulan factor doesn’t negate its effectiveness on T’Pina or give her any serious side effects.”
“Leonard,” Sorel asked as they worked, “how did you recognize that blood factor as Romulan?”
“It must have been about a year ago,” Leonard replied, “the Enterprise had a run-in with a Romulan vessel. No one in the Federation had ever seen Romulans before, so we wanted to find out all we could. Despite their booby traps, we got one body on board, along with what we could find of the others after their ship was destroyed. I ran autopsies. Except for that factor in their blood, they could have been Vulcans.”
“That one factor is all that separates Vulcans from Romulans?” Sorel mused.
“Seems to be—and that factor could be an artificially created one. Spock thinks they’re an offshoot of the Vulcans,” McCoy said. “Same p
eople, different philosophy—like the Followers of T’Vet, perhaps.”
Sorel nodded. “Please tell that to T’Pina. She is controlling her emotions outwardly. However, her shields are up so strongly that I cannot reach her thoughts without a meld, and she will not permit that. She insists she can meditate on her own, and that it is more important that I spend my time with critical patients. Do you … ?”
“I understand,” the Human doctor replied. “I can’t ever reach Spock’s thoughts, of course, but I can tell when he’s overcontrolling. I’ll talk to T’Pina, but it’s her mother who can do her the most good. Uh … I take it the girl is adopted? Or could her father have been… ?”
“No, Sevel could not have been Romulan,” Sorel told him, amused at the absurdity of the idea. “And yes, T’Pina is adopted, her ancestry unknown.” He told Leonard everything he knew about T’Pina.
“So T’Pina was the only child not identified?”
“That is correct.”
“And you have never heard of any other Vulcan with this blood factor?”
“When T’Pina became my patient, I searched all records,” Sorel replied. “In fact, since I first examined her as an infant, my medical computer has had a notation to call to my attention any instance of that blood factor. It was originally intended to locate any relatives she might have. There has never been a reason to remove that notation. Leonard, your report should have triggered it.”
Leonard smiled. “You haven’t dealt much with Starfleet, have you? Oh, they’ll get around to releasing the information eventually, but they tend to classify anything about Klingons or Romulans in case it might be strategic. But if the Romulans were planting cuckoos in the Vulcan population, that blood factor would have turned up through civilian channels and your computer would have picked it up.”
“Planting cuckoos?” Sorel asked. Daniel would have automatically interpreted, but he was making rounds again.
