Lost Era 06_ Catalyst of Sorrows - Margaret Wander Bonanno [77]
“And you’re telling me this process is the same for cancer as it is for a head cold?” Uhura asked skeptically, making sure she had it right.
“Superficially, yes. Where cancers differentiate is that once they have established themselves in the host, they recruit healthy cells in order to colonize and grow. Tumors, left untreated, will create their own blood vessels and divert the blood supply from healthy tissue. They will then proceed to crowd out and scavenge healthy cells in a lung or liver or pancreas or in blood or bone until the healthy cells cannot function, the organ or system breaks down, and the patient dies.
“It is my hypothesis,” Selar concluded ominously, “that someone, whether by design or accident, has discovered that grafting the Gnawing onto R-fever, possibly with other factors, can sometimes cause the resulting virus, once it is introduced into a host body, to mutate into a form of cancer. The cancer itself is not contagious but, because the virus is, the end result is the same.”
“And it has somehow managed to spread in an enclosed environment like Tenjin,” Uhura said.
“Correct.”
No one said anything for a few minutes. Uhura’s fingers ticked over her console, totting up all the casualties to date.
“We’ve also had a dozen new cases reported on Cestus III,” she reported, “and a possible outbreak on…” Her voice trailed off just in time to hear Crusher ask Selar something about “squeak tests.”
Uhura sighed again. “Squeak tests?”
When Zetha first volunteered to help Selar in the lab, the Vulcan had taught her how to perform viral squeak tests.
“Viruses emit high-frequency sounds,” she had explained, setting up the simple wave transmitter that would do the job. “And each virus has its own distinct sound. A single copy of a stable virus can be detected in a biosample and identified on the basis of its unique sound. Do you understand so far?”
Zetha nodded. Entities so small that they were invisible, existing inside every living thing, some of them powerful enough to kill? Science or sorcery, it was all one to her. If they could kill, why couldn’t they sing as well?
“How does it work?” she asked, indicating the transmitter, insatiably curious, wanting to know everything. Too, pragmatically, the more she learned, the more useful she could be.
Selar, who enjoyed instructing anyone so clearly eager to learn, explained.
“Quartz crystals transmit radio signals. When coated with particles of a virus we wish to identify and exposed to an electrical field, they will vibrate until the virus detaches and shakes free. When it does so, it emits a burst of sound.
“The crystal resonates to the sound and records it as an electrical impulse. Humans cannot hear these sounds, and therefore must rely upon reading the recorded impulse. But most fall within the range of Vulcan hearing, therefore speeding the process.”
“But-” Zetha started to say, then stopped. She was not a Vulcan, but she could hardly say she was a Romulan after a lifetime of being told she was not.
It had occurred to her, once she stopped trembling and settled into the hovercar behind the silent aristocrat whose name she still did not know, that if he had in fact traced her through her codes, he also knew her origins, and which part of her was not Romulan.
It had occurred to Koval as well. In the ensuing months, he would taunt her with it.
“Don’t you want to know your codes? To know who spawned you, what your parents were?”
She did, but she didn’t, not from him. She couldn’t trust him to tell her the truth, and what she wanted above all else was not to be beholden to him.
“No,” she said.
“I don’t believe you,” he had said with his smug little smile. “If you volunteer for a mission, I will tell you. You will know your place before you die.”
She had shrugged. “If I die for the Empire, I’ll be an honorary Romulan after death,” she reminded him, making sure she was beyond arm’s length before she finished her thought. “By then, though, I doubt I’ll care.”
“I am not a Vulcan,” she