Lost Era 06_ Catalyst of Sorrows - Margaret Wander Bonanno [112]
Selar told her what she’d found. “As expected, air, water, and soil samples tested negative. Native flora and fauna, also negative. As for the putative cure…”
“The stuff you confiscated in the marketplace,” Crusher said. “What do you make of it?”
“Structurally intriguing, but essentially inert.”
Crusher sat back in her chair, hands in her pockets. She’d hailed Uhura and McCoy, but neither had reported in yet. Well, she could give them a précis later. “Structurally intriguing? I’m listening.”
“At the molecular level, it would appear to be a levorotatory form of the Gnawing bacillus,” Selar began. Suddenly McCoy popped into view beside Crusher. A human might have been startled, but Selar merely waited for him to say what he would inevitably feel compelled to say.
“Are you sure of that?”
“Within 99.997 percent of certainty, Doctor, yes.”
The old man’s eyes lit up. “That’s wonderful news! We could be talking about a potential treatment, or at least a decoy. Same principle behind ryetalin treatment for Rigelian fever.”
“I’m afraid it is not that simple,” Selar said quietly, and suddenly Uhura was with them, too.
“Wait a minute. Back up and explain this for the layman, please.”
“She means ‘in English,’ ” McCoy supplied. Crusher suppressed a smile. Selar’s news was making them all a little giddy; it was the first ray of hope in a long time.
Selar activated a holoprogram. “We are all by now familiar with the Gnawing, as seen at the molecular level,” she said, as the image rotated before them. “This,” she said, calling up a second shape, “is hilopon, its mirror image, the substance Lieutenant Tuvok confiscated from the individual in the Sliwoni market.
“As you can see, the same number of molecules, in the same order, is present. But in the Gnawing, the genetic helix rotates to the right, whereas the hilopon spiral rotates to the left. Thus levo-from the Latin, meaning ‘left’- rotatory, or turning in the familiar helical configuration.”
“So this could be a potential cure?” Uhura asked, not daring to hope.
“Not exactly,” McCoy butted in before Selar could speak. “Since you’re not dealing with the pure Gnawing, but with the Catalyst neoform, which has been grafted onto Rigelian fever. But Rigelian fever’s curable with ryetalin, which is what I started to tell you about. But I’m sure with a little ingenuity we could design a cocktail of the two compounds, a little one-two punch that’d knock this damn disease right out of business.”
“Hypothetically,” Selar said quietly. “If it worked.”
Crusher had been studying the two organisms intently. “You started to say something about its being inert.”
“Correct. I have tested it against the Gnawing. It is ineffective. In fact, it does not kill even ordinary staphylococcus. There are several potential reasons for this.”
“There’s something I’m not getting here,” Uhura interrupted. “Why would something found in the soil of a planet hundreds of light-years from Romulus cure a disease found only on Romulus?”
“You mean a disease found only in the soil on Romulus,” McCoy supplied for her. “Who knows? Why do targeted histamines ingest some kinds of cancer? Why does bread mold kill everything from pneumonia to the clap? And why does Rigelian fever affect humans as well as Vulcans, and why it is cured by something found on Holberg 917-G? One of the universe’s unanswered mysteries, one of God’s little jokes. From a purely empirical point of view, it does, that’s all. We’ll philosophize about it later; for now, we work with it.”
“It would fit with Sagan’s theory about star stuff,” Crusher said thoughtfully. The others looked at her. “C’mon, guys, am I the only one who knows this? Carl Sagan, late twentieth century Earth, taught physics in a way so simple a child could understand it. God, I think I can recite it from memory! ‘We are a way for the universe to know itself. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return, and we can, because the Cosmos is also within us. We’re made of star stuff.’ “
She stopped, suddenly embarrassed.
“Why, Doctor, you’re a poet,