Death in Winter - Michael Jan Friedman [77]
The pojjima was bitter, but not nearly as bitter as a Klingon dish Gerda had once shared with him. He couldn’t recall its name, but he recalled with perfect clarity the expression on her face as she watched him eat it.
One of triumph, for Gerda had taken another step toward molding Greyhorse into a Klingon warrior. But also one of impatience, because he couldn’t make the transformation as quickly as she would have liked.
In only one regard had Gerda approved of the doctor from the start, and that was his ability to absorb punishment without complaint. In truth, he had endured his share of it during his stint on the Stargazer, only part of it at the hands of his lover.
The one whose dishonor and death Greyhorse had taken so badly. The one he had hoped to avenge by committing murder on the Enterprise.
Gerda had been wrong in some respects-he saw that now. But she had been right to honor him for carrying his burdens without a whimper, for that wasn’t just the hallmark of a good warrior. It was also the hallmark of a good doctor.
The ability to stay with a task, even when it meant going without sleep… to maintain one’s focus, even when conditions were less than optimal… these were virtues in the medical profession. Indispensable virtues, if one was to remain true to one’s oath.
Greyhorse had possessed such virtues. But that, he noted as he put down the pojjima, was a very long time ago.
Feeling a wave of panic coming on, he took a deep breath and held it, exactly the way his therapists had taught him. Then he let it out, as slowly as he could.
When a problem seems overwhelming, he had been told, consider what you know about it. Break it down into its most rudimentary components, its most basic facts.
All right, he thought. I will.
Most vaccines were essentially just pieces of dead virus. Exposed to them, an organism’s immune system would come up with a new category of antibody, which would then fight off the living virus when it launched its invasion.
However, the virus afflicting the Kevrata was toxic to their species-so much so that even in an attenuated form, it was certain to kill its host before an immune response could be triggered. This was what made it so difficult to arm the Kevrata against the ravages of the plague.
Back at Starfleet Medical, Beverly had begun her research into the virus with a sample of her own blood. After all, it contained something precious-antibodies that had enabled her to survive as a teenager when so many of her fellow colonists had perished.
Without her grandmother’s herbal remedies, even her natural ability to produce these antibodies might not have been enough to keep her alive. However, the herbs worked to bolster her immune response, enabling her to destroy and expel the virus.
In her laboratory at Starfleet Medical, with Greyhorse’s assistance, Beverly had extended her biological advantage to other Federation member species-first humans, then Vulcans, then Andorians, and so on-by splicing the antibody-producing portion of her genetic material with their DNA. This circumvented the toxicity problem, and effectively girded the Federation against further exposure to the plague.
It was too late for Beverly to help those who had succumbed to the disease on Arvada III. However, she had seen to it that those colonists hadn’t died in vain, and that appeared to have been a great comfort to her.
Greyhorse had never been exposed to the virus directly, but-like all space-traveling citizens of the Federation-he had been immunized against it. Therefore, he carried the key to the virus around with him the same way Beverly did.
All he had needed to do was obtain blood samples from the Kevrata, isolate the appropriate portion of their DNA, and combine it with the appropriate portion of his own. Not a terribly difficult task, just one that necessarily took a while.
And he had very nearly come to the end of it. After many long hours, the vaccine was practically