Double Helix 03_ Red Sector - Diane Carey [59]
McCoy’s white head bobbed in a nod. “My dear, you remember the line ‘Methinks he doth protest too much’? Well, me have begun to think this infection doth show up too much. Prion-based infections just don’t appear randomly this often, and certainly not in a pattern that leaps from one planet to another, infecting a vastly different DNA makeup. Somebody’s forcing mutations, combining prions that would never hook up naturally, then targeting whole races for infection. This biological terrorism smacks to me of experimentation” “My God!” Riker blurted.
Spock heard the exclamation, but was himself focused on the doctor’s unexpected declaration. “Someone is working toward a larger goal? The Romulan royal family is not the target?”
“I don’t think so;’ McCoy said. “I don’t think the goal is to kill off the royal family at all. I think they’re being used as an incubation test site. I think the goal is to develop a bioagent that can be neither cured nor treated.” “Upon what do you base this?”
The doctor’s gravelly voice took on a surge of confidence. “On the same multiprion sickness popping up all over the place, sometimes in isolation, other times in populated areas, but each time with some new aberration. A plague here, a flu there, an infection yonder, a couple of them leaping racial boundaries… until now, nobody’s tied the incidents together; but I’ve seen this kind of thing before on a smaller scale, and I got suspicious. So I started ordering some quiet information gathering about three years ago. And, folks, this isn’t just an epidemic. It’s a pandemic.”
The word sent a chill through the bridge that Spock found nearly palpable. Even he discovered his hands suddenly clenched and forced himself to control his reaction. Ever since the first armies began forming and moving in the first civilizations on the earliest planets, pandemics had been a far more insidious scourge than any war.
Dr. McCoy paused long enough to see his revelation run its course of shock and nervousness, then enjoyed center stage again.
“When the Romulan royal family popped up with this deadly strain,” he went on, “I started gathering the results of tests all over the quadrant, and sure enough they’ve got enough common characteristics to eliminate either the idea of coincidence or the idea of any other cause. These aren’t dozens of isolated biological occurrences-they’re all mutations of a single strain.”
“So it couldn’t be remnants of genetic testing?” Riker jabbed, leaning a little toward Dr. Crusher. McCoy swiveled to him. “Genetics? Whoever said that?” “Nobody said that,” Crusher injected quickly. Her face masked a cold and bottled fury, as a knight’s who had just been told the dragon is still alive. “Did you bring the results of all these tests? I’d like to examine them.”
He patted his satchel. “Along with a cache of Scaffold Mints for the wardroom.”
“As ever” Spock commented, “you keep your eye on the future ?’
“Watch it, pal, or I’ll sit on you and give you a lecture on how long two cockroaches can live off the glue on the back of a postage stamp.” Dr. Crusher clasped her hands in a manner of controlled anxiety. “Who ever heard of ‘two cockroaches’? Doctor, have you isolated the matrix on this Romulan mutation?”
McCoy’s ancient blue eyes fixed on hers with the zeal of youth. “First thing. And, bless us all, it’s a DNA strain, not RNA, which mans we can beat it with one medication if we can come up with the right one. Healthy blood cells can replace the atrophied cells. All I need is a continuing source of uninfected royal blood for about a week to generate healthy plasma. But first, we’ve got to keep the members of the royal family who’re still alive from dying. That’s going to be your job. Keep them alive long enough to throw the infection off or for me to synthesize a cure.” “Treat the symptoms.”
“But treat them in the right order. It might not be the right thing to do to lower a fever. The fever’s something that I think helps. You’re going to be treating the empress herself and over twenty of her family members on