Unity

by Steven Harper

  The marines stayed at attention while the MPs hauled the two babblers out of the room. Lee walked up and down the row of marines, the broken furniture forming a strange backdrop behind him.

  “Hold out your hands, palm down,” Lee ordered.

  The marines looked mystified but obeyed. Lee watched. Twenty marines held out forty hands, palm down. Two shook noticeably. Another five trembled, and three more started to shake a few seconds after Lee gave the order. Lee kept his own shaky hands behind his back.

  “The Unifier’s touch,” said the singer in awe. He was one of the tremblers.

  “No,” Lee said. “It’s a prion, a disease that Peter Attis is spreading.” He pointed at the ten marines whose hands weren’t shaking. “Report to the briefing room in ten minutes. The rest of you report to sickbay.”

  “He’s so handsome, Gaius,” Number Six murmured. “Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be that good-looking?”

  “No,” growled Gaius. “It’s not an issue with me.”

  “And he’s talented. When he speaks or sings, everyone listens. Even Laura Roslin.”

  The words popped out of Gaius’s mouth before he could stop them. “I’m her vice president,” he snapped. “She should listen to me.”

  “What’s that?” Cottle asked from the other side of the lab.

  “Nothing,” Gaius said quickly. “Just thinking out loud.”

  Cottle gave him an odd look, then turned back to his instruments. Gaius shot Number Six a harsh glare. She was sitting upright on one of the tables, one knee drawn up, a lot of smooth leg showing under a red dress.

  “It must be difficult to be pushed into the background,” Six said in a low, silky voice. “It’s not fair of them to ignore you, Gaius. You’re worth more than that.”

  “Frak you,” he muttered, and managed to wrench his attention back to the protein scanner. So far it was showing very few similarities between Prions T and H and Prion C. He was hoping for something, some kind of link between the three. Prion H, the harmless prion, linked with Prion T, the transformational prion, and became the deadly prion. Their link was well established. But what was the third prion for? Gaius knew it was artificial—there was nothing like it in any of the databases, and it was present only in Peter’s blood. He hadn’t found it in any of the other random samples he had taken from other crewmembers, which also meant the prion wasn’t communicable. It was, in fact, rather fragile. Once removed from its host plasma, it fell apart. The samples of Peter’s blood and plasma, in fact, had to be kept at body temperature and in near darkness, or the mysterious prion simply melted away. But what did it do? It had to be connected to Prion T and Prion H somehow, though it shared no structural similarities. Prions T and H had several similarities that let them hook together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle so Prion T could unfold Prion H into its deadly form. But if Gaius was reading the scans right—and he was—the mysterious prion had a single marker in common with Prion H, which meant they might hook together in one spot. Gaius furrowed his brow. If that happened, and Prion H linked with the mystery prion, they would form an enormous, ungainly macromolecule. And that would mean …

  And then Gaius had it. It was so simple, so obvious. Quickly, he assembled slides filled with Peter’s plasma. He had to be careful—Cottle had only extracted a few hundred cc’s of plasma before Peter’s kidnapping. Escape. Whatever you wanted to call it. And some of the vials had shattered on the floor when Lee Adama dropped them. Fortunately, two had remained intact. Now the entire supply rested in a pitifully small collection of sealed test tubes kept in a warmer set at precisely thirty-seven degrees—human body temperature. Gaius took care to return the tubes before the fragile mystery prion could be exposed to temperatures outside its viability range. He would have to hurry, in fact, because the prions he took out of the plasma would only survive a few minutes.

  “Onto something, Gaius?” Six asked archly. He ignored her. Cottle shuffled papers from the work area he had carved out of Gaius’s lab.

  Without bothering to take proper notes or make proper documentation—no time—Gaius dropped samples of Prion T and Prion H into a single slide. Then he slid them under a microscope and watched. It didn’t take long for the copies of Prion T to find partners among the Prion H samples. They clicked together like little magnets, and the tightly-wound Ts unraveled, just as Gaius had seen them do a thousand times. His skin crawled with cold worms, and it seemed as if he could feel the same unraveling process happening in his own body. All his life, Gaius had been blessed with a whipcord body that required little maintenance and which held a certain amount of charm, if he said so himself. But in the end, his body was merely a home for his mind. It was his mind that had made him into a celebrity, his great intelligence that had elevated him above other humans. Having such a mind was a terrible and heavy responsibility, and it was his duty to preserve his mind so that the rest of humanity could benefit from it. And now that mind was under attack by a rogue bit of protein that would eat holes in it until it looked like a lumpy gray sponge. It would leave nothing of Gaius Baltar but a babbling, incoherent fool, and the thought filled him with a cold terror that twisted his gut like a snake.

  “All right, you little bugger,” he whispered to himself, “let’s see what happens when I do this.”

  With careful fingers, he introduced the mystery prion to the mix and watched carefully. At first nothing happened. The mystery prion floated in the thin plasma, bobbing about the white blood cells, water, and other flotsam like a complicated beach ball floating among the detritus of an ocean shipwreck. Then a mystery prion intersected an unfolded Prion H. Instantly, it linked ribbons with its deadly cousin, forming as Gaius had predicted, a long, lumpy macromolecule of protein. The moment that happened, a nearby white blood cell engulfed the molecule. In a few moments, the macromolecule fell completely apart. The component amino acids drifted harmlessly away.

  Exultation swelled in Gaius Baltar, banishing the fear. The mystery prion was the cure to the plague of tongues and he, Gaius Baltar, had discovered it. Pride inflated his chest, and he felt strong enough to punch through a metal bulkhead. See if anyone would avoid his lectures now!

  “Are you finding what I’m finding?” Cottle said behind him.

  Gaius jumped and jerked away from the microscope. “Gods, you scared the bleeding shit out of me.”

  “Sorry.” Cottle exhaled a stream of smoke. “Just wanted to see what you got.”

  “The third prion is the key to Peter’s immunity,” Gaius said triumphantly. “It bonds with the deadly prion and turns it into a form that the body’s immune system recognizes as a threat. I just observed a macrophage consume and destroy an unfolded Prion H.”

  “Interesting,” Cottle said. “I just finished examining a bunch of Peter’s B cells. B cells produce antibodies, right?”

  “I know what B cells do,” Gaius said shortly, annoyed that Cottle hadn’t acknowledged his breakthrough with appropriate fanfare.

  “Just setting the stage,” Cottle said, unruffled. “Peter’s B cells produce antibodies, but currently they’re also producing—”

  “The mystery prion,” Gaius finished.

  “Brilliant,” Six commented dryly from the table. Didn’t she get cramped from sitting in one position for so long? “Too bad you have to share this discovery with the good doctor, Gaius. The credit should go to you.”

  Gaius didn’t like Number Six very much at that moment, but he had to admit she was right. Cottle might grab credit that belonged to Gaius Baltar.

  “So in summary,” Cottle said, “if you inject someone with the mystery prion—let’s call it Prion C for ‘cure’—it bonds with Prion H and changes it into a form your white blood cells crunch down like potato chips. Prion C also convinces your B cells to make antibodies against the transformed Prion H, which further boosts your immunity. You continue to carry the prions, but they don’t bother you.”

  Gaius ran a hand over his face, feeling suddenly tired. �
��Except our only reliable supply of Prion C was kidnapped by a bunch of religious fanatics. Every time we find a solution, it only reveals another problem.”

  “Then we’d better get back to work,” Cottle said, turning back to his own instruments. “Before we start shaking in our own booties.”

  The fear took hold of Gaius again. He couldn’t afford to get sick—he had to finish his work here or thousands of others would die along with him. A small sob tried to escape and he choked it back. It was so unfair!

  “Have you examined your own blood lately, Gaius?” asked Number Six.

  “Not half an hour ago,” Gaius muttered, wishing she would go the hell away and leave him to his fear and misery.

  “Check it again, Gaius.”

  “What for? Nothing’s changed.”

  “You never know.” A small smile tugged at the corners of her red lips. “Not until you look.”

  Gaius looked at her, but her face remained a beautiful mystery. “Fine,” he snapped as loud as he dared. “But it’s a waste of time.”

  He glanced at Cottle to make sure the man was occupied, then pricked a fingertip and dripped several scarlet drops onto a slide. He capped the sample and slid it under a microscope.

  “What am I looking for?” he whispered. “What do you think I’m going to find?”

  “It’s what you don’t find that’s important, Gaius,” Six said from her table. “Go ahead.”

  He looked. It was a perfectly normal blood sample. Erythrocytes, thrombocytes, lymphocytes, leukocytes. All to be expected.

  “What am I … not looking for?” he asked.

  “Keep looking. Focus closer.”

  A suspicion crawled over him, and he adjusted the focus on the microscope. He spent considerable time searching, and found … nothing. He backed away from the microscope, feeling abruptly weak and wrung out.

  “No prions,” he said in a hushed voice. “I don’t have the prion.”

  “You’re observant, Gaius,” Six said.

  He turned to face her. “But how? No, scratch that. It’s obvious how.” He started to pace, oblivious to whether Cottle was paying attention to him or not. “In any case of infection, there’s always a certain percentage of the population who is naturally immune. I’m simply one of those cases.”

  “Poor Gaius.” Six slid off the table and sauntered toward him. “You still don’t believe, do you?”

  “Believe what?”

  “In miracles.” She put his arms around him, breathing her breath into his mouth. “Isn’t it clear? God wants you alive for a purpose, Gaius. He took the prion from your blood so you can fulfill your purpose.”

  Gaius felt a strange combination of uncertainty and gratification. This wasn’t the first time Number Six had told him he was special, that his destiny was for something more than puttering around a laboratory and signing paperwork. It was immensely gratifying to hear this. To a certain extent it was a relief, further proof that his own estimation was right—that his innate intelligence and talent made him more valuable, more important than the masses of humanity who scurried through their ordinary corridors living their quiet, desperate lives. On the other hand, it was a little unnerving to think that a Cylon deity—assuming such a being really existed—had its eye on him.

  “What purpose am I supposed to fulfill?” he murmured.

  “That will come clear in time, Gaius,” Six said, backing away. “And in less time than you think.”

  “Oh, that’s helpful,” Gaius complained. “Why is it the people who hand out predictions never say exactly what is going to happen? It would be nice, for once, to hear something like ‘You’ll find an inhabitable planet in a few weeks, so don’t worry,’ or ‘Run for president and you’ll win.’”

  “Just concentrate on the cure, Gaius,” Six said. “It’s in the blood.”

  Gaius was about to argue when a thought crossed his mind. He turned to Cottle, who was still bent over his own instruments and appeared to have noticed nothing. “Peter’s blood type is O negative, right?” Gaius asked.

  “Yeah,” Cottle said. “We caught a break there. O negative is rare, but it’s the universal donor. Anyone can receive his blood—and the cure. We’re just stuck with the fact that we don’t even have two hundred cc’s of Peter’s blood left.”

  “We can create more Prion C,” Gaius said. “We have the samples. We just need to use the right incubation methods, feed Prion C the appropriate nutrients in the right medium. Shouldn’t take more than a few hours. A half-trained beagle could do it. What do you think?”

  “That had occurred to me. But I think we need to do more tests first.”

  “Dammit, we don’t have time for that!” Gaius smacked a tabletop in a melodramatic gesture. “Let’s just get to work, shall we? You know I’m right.”

  Cottle looked at him, then shrugged and started pulling petri dishes from a shelf. Gaius was a little surprised he had given in so fast and with so little argument.

  “It’s funny, when you think about it,” Cottle said.

  “What’s that?” Gaius crossed his arms as he stood next to the plasma warmer.

  “Peter’s turning out to be the savior he’s been claiming to be all along. His blood is going to cure everyone.” Cottle set the stack of dishes on a work table and ground out the stub of his cigarette in one of them. “We’re going to do all the work, but you know how it always goes. Peter Attis will be famous for saving us while we toil in foggy obscurity.”

  Gaius felt his jaw slowly drop as Cottle laid out the dishes in preparation for the incubation medium. Number Six’s soft hands slid over his shoulders, and her warm breath moved against his ear.

  “He’s right, Gaius,” she said wetly. “You and Cottle will labor here in this dim, cramped lab while Peter Attis, handsome Peter Attis, rakes in the glory. If only you could find a cure completely on your own. It isn’t fair or right.”

  The thought made his jaw go from slack to tense. It was unfair. How many times had he labored to save the Fleet, and how many times had his hard work gone unnoticed? Once he had spent hours working up calculations on how much food and water the Fleet would use on a weekly basis, and when he had presented Commander Adama with the information at a meeting, Adama had stared at the startlingly high figures for a moment, then turned to discuss the matter with Saul Tigh and Laura Roslin, as if Gaius were a child who had brought home average marks on a report card. As vice president, he had been saddled with idiotic paperwork and given lectures no one attended while people like Kara Thrace appeared in full-color magazines because she kissed a rock star in public. Fury clenched his fists.

  “I could do it,” he said softly. “A prion is just a protein, and I have a model to work from. Reverse engineering is much easier than creating something from scratch. I know my way around a molecule. It wouldn’t take that long to create my own Prion C.”

  “Except you don’t need to,” Six pointed out. “Peter’s prion will replicate itself in his rare, heroic blood. As long as his material exists, the world doesn’t need you, Gaius.”

  Gaius stared down at the little plasma warmer. It was the size and shape of a microwave oven. The temperature readout on the front indicated that the internal temperature was a precise thirty-seven degrees. A few degrees too hot or too cold, and Prion C would disintigrate. Cottle, meanwhile, was pouring careful amounts of liquid nutrient medium into the Petri dishes. In a few hours, the cure would be ready. The dial that controlled the warmer’s temperature seemed to stare at Gaius, daring him.

  “Do it, Gaius,” Six goaded. “It’s the right idea.”

  “No,” he whispered. “People might die in the time it takes me to replicate the original. One person already has.”

  “Do it,″ she said firmly. “It’s your destiny!” She took his hand and pulled it toward the dial. He resisted, hand trembling, but she was strong, stronger than he had ever been. His fingers found the ribbed surface of the dial. It would be so easy. One little twist, and his position in hi
story would be assured while Peter Attis was forgotten.

  “No,” he whispered again.

  “Yes,” Six said, and twisted his hand. The dial slowly clicked counter-clockwise, and the readout indicated a falling temperature. Thirty-six degrees. Thirty-four. Thirty-one. No! This was wrong. Gaius reached out to turn the dial back, but Six’s hand snaked out and grabbed his. She wrenched it aside, and he gasped with pain.

  “Leave it!” she barked. “Be a man, Gaius! Grab the opportunities God and I send you!”

  He stared at her, comprehension dawning. “Did you … did you arrange this, somehow? Start this plague of tongues so I could cure it?” His back was now to Cottle, who was still engrossed with the Petri dishes.

  “Think, Gaius,” Six snarled. “Does anything in the universe happen by accident? Do you think I’m here, with you, by random chance? I’ve told you before, Gaius—you have a destiny, and you can’t ignore it. God cured you for a reason. Fulfill your purpose!”

  “I … I can’t …” he whispered. But he made no move to turn the dial again, and the temperature continued to fall.

  Galen Tyrol held up his hands. Both were shaking. His mouth went dry and fear squeezed his heart, but he didn’t panic. Not yet. That would come later, when he was lying in his bunk with the curtain drawn and his trembling hands crammed against his mouth so no one would hear him whimpering in the dark against an enemy he couldn’t see, hear, or touch but was coming to kill him nonetheless.

  Lined up on the floor in front of him were dozens of people. Deck five—Tyrol’s deck—had been turned into an impromptu sickbay because sickbay itself was full. The people lay on stretchers, blankets, towels, and hard, bare floor. Some twitched and writhed and babbled, others lay perfectly still. Two harried-looking medical technicians did their best to tend them, but there wasn’t much they could do except try to keep everyone comfortable. Half the Viper pilots were among the patients, as were several of Tyol’s people, Galactica’s “knuckle draggers.” Tyrol squatted next to Cally, who lay on an old rug Tyrol had scrounged for her. She twisted like a dancer whose tendons had been halfway cut, and long strings of nonsense syllables fell from her mouth. He took her cool, squirming hand in his shaking one. The air around her was tainted with the sour smell of sickness.