Lost Era 06_ Catalyst of Sorrows - Margaret Wander Bonanno [5]
“One hundred percent mortality?” he asked incredulously. “That can’t be accurate. Is this thing bacterial or viral?”
“I don’t know,” was what Dr. Crusher had said after the preliminary lab work. “We don’t know enough about Romulan genetics to distinguish damaged genes from healthy ones. There are some bacteria that can disguise themselves as viruses, and some viruses that can mutate and integrate themselves at the genetic level so they look like a normal part of the DNA sequence.”
She’d tucked a strand of bright red hair behind her ear and sighed in frustration. Uhura could see Dr. Selar nodding agreement.
“As soon as I get readouts on all the samples from the colonies, I’ll compare them,” Crusher said. “But it could be weeks before we can find a match, Admiral, if at all. I’m sorry.”
“All right,” Uhura had replied, not expecting it to be good news, not this soon. “Do your best. There’s someone else I need to talk to in the meantime.”
That was when she called McCoy.
McCoy was talking to himself. “Can’t be bacterial. The bubonic plague by most estimates only killed twenty-five to forty percent of the population of Europe and Asia.” He glared at Uhura, annoyed at being drawn into something she’d known he wouldn’t be able to resist. “Gotta be viral. Even so, those numbers… the Ebola virus’s mortality rate was eighty-eight percent at most, but it was transmitted person-to-person, and it was self-contained. It didn’t go hopping across solar systems.”
“What if it’s airborne?” Uhura asked. She’d been learning more than she wanted to know from Medical ever since this thing first crossed her desk.
“Then the spread would be faster, but mortality would be much lower,” McCoy pointed out. “Ever hear of the Spanish flu?”
“No, but I’m sure you’ll enlighten me.”
“Earth, 1918. End of what some historians at the time took to calling the Great War. Now, there’s an oxymoron if there ever was one…”
Uhura glanced at the chrono, trying not to be impatient. Thysis would be back any minute pestering her about the press conference. She could picture the roomful of reporters from half a dozen worlds clearing their alimentary canals and shifting their appendages restlessly.
“… theory is that those who didn’t die in the trenches brought this bug back home with them. Or it could have come from Asia, which is where most flu bugs came from at the time. It killed more people within a year than the Black Death did over several centuries. Lowered the life expectancy in the industrialized world by ten years. People would keel over in the street with a high fever and not last the night.”
“Which sounds very much like what we’re dealing with here,” Uhura suggested. “And that’s exactly why we need your help.”
McCoy ignored that last remark. “Except that the mortality rate for that particular strain of flu-which thank God was never replicated, at least not on Earth-was only 2.5 percent. Millions of people got sick, but most of them recovered. Even in 1918, with no vaccines or even palliative treatments like antibiotics. Not that antibiotics work against a viral infection, but-“
“Leonard, this is fascinating, but-“
“- but I’m dithering, and you’ve got work to do,” he finished for her. “All I’m saying is you can’t have every single one of your patients dying from a possibly viral, possibly airborne infection. Either this isn’t viral or these numbers are wrong.”
“Then help me make them right,” Uhura challenged him.
“A one hundred percent mortality rate?” McCoy was talking to himself again. Uhura sighed. She’d wanted him onboard, but wished he’d get off the pot. “No response to treatment, and across species? How do you know these numbers from inside the Zone are accurate? And why are you in charge of this instead of Starfleet Medical?”
Good thing this is a secured frequency, Uhura thought. It was past time for her to take control of this conversation.
“Are you finished?” she asked quietly. “The reason this was brought to my attention…” Well, not the entire reason, she thought, but he doesn’t need to know that now, if at all. “… is because-and