The Judas Strain - James Rollins [59]
“We think so.”
Devesh tapped another two keys. The bacterium vanished, replaced with a rotating figure on the screen, an image from an electron micrograph, all in shades of silver. It made the organism depicted seem more mechanical than biological. It looked like some lunar lander. The main shell was geometric, an icosahedron, made up of twenty flat triangular pieces. Out from every corner stretched thin tendrils, spiked at the tips, made to latch on and pierce.
Lisa had seen many such images back in medical school.
A virus.
“We discovered it in a sample of the cyanobacteria from the toxic tide. It turned the innocent phosphorescent sea bacteria into a flesh-boiling, poison-spewing killer. And within such windblown steaming clouds of toxin, the virus spread onto land, beginning the slow alteration of the island’s bacteria into monsters.”
“And now we’re seeing it happen among the patients,” Henri said. “Turning our own bodies against us.”
Devesh tapped the screen. “The ultimate betrayer of life. This organism has the capability to travel through the planet’s biosphere, transforming all bacteria into lethal, life-destroying organisms. It’s nature’s neutron bomb, a viral explosion with the potential to wipe out all higher life-forms, leaving behind only a toxic soup of deadly bacterial ooze. If unchecked, we’ve already seen a peek of what the world may become on the windward side of Christmas Island.”
“And if it should spread…” Henri’s face had paled. “We’d have no way of stopping it.”
Devesh finally stood and retrieved his cane. “Perhaps. But we’ve barely begun to analyze the organism. The good news is that so far the virus appears to be short-lived and does not infect human cells. Only bacteria. So the virus poses little direct risk to us. It hijacks a bacterial cell, uses the cell to churn copies of itself, then leaves behind the toxic plasmids. Outside the cell, the new virus is fragile. It can easily be killed with simple disinfectants and controlled with good hygiene.”
Lisa pictured the work crews moving through the ship in a cloud of disinfectant. They were sterilizing the ship.
“But unfortunately, the virus leaves behind a killer in its wake. Deadly bacteria that divide and multiply, each a new monster added to the microbial world, contaminating the biosphere forever with never-before-seen life-forms.”
Henri placed a worried palm on his forehead. “If the viral exposure breaks free into the general biosphere…we’re talking about a thousand different new diseases hitting the world simultaneously. A plague with the capability of changing faces faster than we can react. The world has seen nothing like this before.”
“That’s not necessarily true,” Devesh countered cryptically.
Henri focused back to their captor.
“My employers and I believe this is not the first outbreak of this Judas Strain. There are historical reports from the region of a similar outbreak. Back almost a millennium ago.” His voice lowered to a contemplative whisper. “The stories were accompanied by some strange and disturbing claims.”
“What historical reports are you talking about?” Lisa asked.
Devesh waved away her question. “It doesn’t matter. We’ve got others looking into that question, following that historical trail. We must stay focused on our goal. Our mission aboard the ship lies not in the past, but the present. My employers orchestrated the evacuation of the island, arranged to have Mr. Blunt’s cruise ship detoured here. We needed to isolate the currently infected in one place. Here we have the rare opportunity to study how this disease unfolds. Its epidemiology, its pathology, its physiologic effects. And we’ve a full shipload of test subjects.”
Lisa backed away a step, unable to mask her horror.
Devesh leaned on his cane. “I sense your distaste, Dr. Cummings. Now you understand why the Guild had to act. When faced with an organism of such virulence, there could be no hand-wringing. No politically correct response to such an onslaught. Action must be swift, and hard choices made. In Tuskegee, did not your own government