A Call to Darkness - Michael Jan Friedman [23]
Still, she thought, the bodies of the crew had to be somewhere. It was just a matter of time before one of the searchers found them.
And then, as she pored over the fourth cabin… it came to her. Descended on her, really, like a small avalanche.
Her thesis about Fredi’s disease-it hadn’t sprung from her fertile mind fully formed, as the goddess Athena was reputed to have sprung from that of Zeus. She had heard of such a disorder-a long time ago, when she was an intern back on Chaquafar.
Of course, the Chaquafar’ath version had never been officially recorded in Federation medical annals. Chaquafar was an advanced but iconoclastic world, one that was still spurning Federation membership to this day.
Some thirty years ago, Chaquafar’s scientific community had been convinced to share its technologies with Pulaski and her colleagues-but the natives had played it rather close to the vest when it came to medical history. Apparently, it was inextricably entwined with cultural practices the Chaquafar’u would rather have forgotten.
Only Perrapataat-the elderly physician who’d taken a liking to a young and eager Katherine Pulaski-had been willing to speak of his people’s ancient afflictions. Among them had been an illness-she remembered the name now-called stirianaa.
A disease that turned on an unusual translocation of certain genes-and therefore certain capabilities-from a foreign bacterium to a familiar one. A disease that…
Suddenly, Pulaski felt cold all over.
Oh my god.
The Chaquafar’ath disease had killed hundreds of thousands before it was stopped. And why? Because early on, about the time the medical community thought it might have discovered a cure… the hybrid bacterium had mutated.
Of course, mutation was something any doctor had to expect-on Chaquafar or anywhere else. It could have been triggered by almost anything at all that was hostile to the hybrid bug-a drug, a change in diet, a rise in temperature. Even natural selection, over time.
But this mutation had transformed the disease from something non-communicable to something contagious-highly contagious. And naturally, because of the change, the antibiotic devised by the Chaquafar’u was no longer effective. The organism had become much hardier, much tougher to kill.
By the time they came up with a second cure, the disease had ravaged two continents. All those lives…
Pulaski’s heart was hammering against her ribs. With an effort, she calmed herself-enough to think clearly, anyway.
“The captain,” she murmured. “I’ve got to tell the captain.”
Pressing the communicator beneath her containment suit, she said: “Pulaski to Captain Picard.”
There was no answer.
She tried it again.
Still nothing.
“Damn it,” she whispered. For some reason, the communicators weren’t working. Did it have something to do with the energy mantle?
Then she definitely wouldn’t be able to get word back to the ship. Nonetheless, she made an attempt to contact the bridge.
“Riker here,” came the somewhat mangled reply.
Pulaski breathed a deep sigh of relief. For the moment, she put aside the fact that she’d been unable to raise the captain. The vagaries of communicator technology weren’t exactly her field of expertise.
“Commander, something serious has come up. I need to get back to the ship immediately.”
She could hear the tension in the first officer’s response, though his words tried to rise above it. “Has something happened over there? Someone hurt?”
“No,” she said. “Nothing like that. It’s the-“
“Doctor?”
She turned at the sound of the voice just behind her-in time to see Badnajian’s bulk fill the open doorway.
“Not now,” she told him. “I’m-“
“There’s something wrong,” he interrupted a second time. “No one’s answering my security checks.”
“I know,” she told him. “I had some trouble, too. But I’ve managed to contact the