Star Trek - TOS 38 Idic Epidemic (6 page)

“My daughter and Dr. Corrigan are recently mar
ried,” Sorel replied. “They are in Seclusion.”

“You mean honeymooning?”

Someone off-screen grabbed Bright’s arm and
tugged. He shook off whoever it was in annoyance.
“I’m afraid this emergency takes—”

The hand was back on Bright’s arm, followed by a
body in a blue Starfleet uniform. It was a Human
female, middle-aged, wearing commander’s stripes. A
protocol officer, Sorel judged as he watched impas
sively, using his strongest controls to curb an inappro
priate amusement.

“Commodore!” the woman whispered sharply,
pulling Bright away from his console. “Nothing can
take precedence when married Vulcans are in Seclu
sion!”

Sorel, accustomed for many years to judge Human
abilities by Corrigan’s, realized that a Human could
not have overheard the woman’s voice.

Bright frowned at her. “Dammit, Miss Frazer! I don’t care what planet it is, vacations don’t take
precedence over medical emergencies!”

“It’s not—” She gave a quick glance at the screen, and must have remembered Vulcan hearing, for she
tugged Bright right out of the picture.

Sorel could no longer hear her words, but after a pause he heard Bright’s blustery protest, “But this
Corrigan is
Human!”

The man’s obtuseness irritated Miss Frazer enough
to make her raise her voice, for Sorel heard her
whisper angrily, “We don’t know
anything
about how
these things affect Vulcan
women,
sir! And with
Vulcans, when it comes to biology, you
don’t ask!”

Then both voices were too low for him to hear,
although there was a soft hum as words were swiftly
exchanged.

Finally Commodore Bright appeared on screen
again, red-faced and sweating. He cleared his throat.
“Is there any way to get a message to Dr. Corrigan and
the Lady T’Mir?”

Nisus, a colony of the best scientists the galaxy had to offer, would call for medical aid only in the gravest
emergency. So, “Yes,” Sorel replied. “I can do so.
And,” he added, “Daniel and T’Mir can travel in two
days’ time, should the situation warrant it.”

“Thank you,” Bright said in obvious relief. “If you
will set your console to record, I will send you the
information we have on the Nisus plague.”

The screens of data flashed by too quickly for even
a Vulcan to follow—but the last one lingered for a moment, burning itself into Sorel’s brain.

The mortality figures.

Quickly, Sorel called up the summary of the disease
and its pattern of spread. What he saw told him why
he and Daniel were needed.

When Commodore Bright reappeared on the
screen, Sorel said, “We will come, Commodore. In this situation I can speak for my partner. Although I cannot speak for my daughter, I expect her to be
honored to be requested. I will verify with them, and
notify you within the hour.”

“Thank you,” Bright repeated, and gave Sorel the
communications code.

There was, of course, no biological reason for
Daniel and T’Mir to be in Seclusion, but Sorel had no
intention of enlightening that officious Human. He
doubted such a one could comprehend the impera
tives of privacy and tradition. As soon as the commo
dore left the screen, the healer punched in the code of
his partner’s home, along with the privacy-override
sequence that he alone knew.

Chapter Five

Korsal
shared a room in the isolation wing of the
Nisus hospital with Therian, the Andorian epidemiol
ogist. Ordinarily, each patient would have a single room in this area, but the hospital was so badly overcrowded that it was impossible to put any but
critical patients in private rooms.

Both men had requisitioned computer terminals
and had spent the past two days trying to keep their
minds off their own danger by plotting the progress of
the plague. Korsal put Borth’s threat out of his consciousness and concentrated on helping Therian
search for clues to the cause of mutation of the virus.

The Andorian’s blue skin was pale with fatigue, for
neither man had been able to sleep. The incubation
period was almost up—provided, of course, that the new strain followed the pattern of the old at least in
that respect. Dr. Treadwell had begun exhibiting the
new symptoms yesterday—but as a physician he had
been in contact with other victims before the council
meeting and, thinking himself immune, might not
have exercised complete caution. All the weary hospi
tal staff could tell them was that the Human doctor
had not injured anyone, and was now critical. So was
Keski.

Therian entered data on every newly reported case,
his antennae drooping as more cases of madness were
reported, fewer of fever and headache. He plotted
everything on graphs that meant nothing to Korsal.

“They mean nothing to me, either,” Therian said sadly. “I cannot find a common factor of race, age,
location, or previous illness. Here,” he added, pulling
a data cartridge from his computer and handing it to Korsal, “please check the math on this while I try
something else.”

Korsal inserted the cartridge into his own terminal
and began graphing the equations, knowing that once
again Therian would be proved accurate.

The Andorian, meanwhile, asked the hospital com
puter for family records on all victims of the latest strain. Then, almost as an afterthought, he asked for family statistics on everyone reported to have
any
form of the disease. Soon he was busy figuring again.

The room-to-room intercom buzzed. Korsal, who
had found Therian’s graph as accurate as he had
expected, flipped the switch. “Korsal here.”

Rita Esposito’s image appeared on the screen. “Bad news, I’m afraid.”

Therian left his work to stand beside Korsal. “More
victims?”

“No end,” she replied. “But also, John Treadwell just died, and Keski has gone into systemic failure
and is on total life support.”

“Has anyone yet recovered from the new strain?”
Therian asked.

Esposito glanced away from the screen. She was a
floor nurse here at the hospital; Korsal was sure she was getting regular reports from her friends on the
staff. Then she looked back at them and replied, “A
few cases are now listed as critical but stable. But no
one has come off the critical list.”

“Thank you for letting us know,” said Korsal. “Has
anyone else on the council … ?”

She shook her head. “The next six hours are crucial.
God help us all.”

The screen blanked. Therian turned away, his an
tennae so wilted they almost disappeared into his
fluffy white hair.

“All your figures are accurate,” Korsal said in an
effort to encourage him.

“But meaningless!” Therian replied. “Why can’t I
find the pattern?”

“There has to be one,” Korsal said. As an engineer
he believed in patterns. “We just haven’t found the
key factor yet.”

Therian made a small hissing sound that was the Andorian equivalent of a sigh. “Let me see what happens when I add family data to the equations.”

Korsal watched as Therian programmed in his
instructions, and the computer computed. It was slow
today; monitoring dozens of people on life support,
keeping records on the largest number of patients the
hospital had ever held, it actually had a perceptible
lag between entry or request, and the time items
appeared on the screen.

Finally the results began to appear. Family size was
not significant, nor ages of family members. No area of the city produced more cases per capita except for
the hospital complex—

“Compute according to occupation,” Therian in
structed.

Korsal studied the figures coming up on the screen.
Nothing new; the largest percentage of victims were
doctors and nurses, exposed to patients despite all
antiseptic procedures. The next largest number were
students and teachers—the perfectly ordinary course of any epidemic on any planet.

“Now compute only for victims of Strains B and C,” Therian told the machine.

The figures told Korsal nothing. There were fewer
students and teachers because the schools had been
closed; otherwise, there seemed little difference in the
figures.

Therian pulled at one of his antennae—an act that hurt the sensitive organ, indicating the degree of frustration the Andorian was experiencing. “Take
every individual factor in the data files on victims,”
he instructed the computer, “and compute for it
separately.”

“Memory drain,” the computer announced. “Pro
gramming overload. Time factor for completing pro
gram under current conditions is three hours,
fourteen-point-seven-three minutes.”

Korsal estimated that such a program would nor
mally run in minutes, not hours; the hospital comput
er
was
badly overloaded.

“Let me get a terminal patch to the engineering lab computer,” he suggested.

“Go ahead,” said Therian, “but I’m going to start this program running anyway; it could easily take three hours to get set up on your lab computer.”

That was true. However, Korsal called and got one
of his colleagues to start the process of patching through to his terminal, then turned to watch what
Therian was doing.

The program was running, but so slowly that each
line could be seen coming onto the screen and crawl
ing upward to disappear off the top. Therian studied them as they passed, and Korsal did not interrupt his
concentration.

Soon he had his connection to the lab computer and
began entering the changes necessary to adapt the hospital computer terminal to work with it.

“Great Mother Andor!”

Korsal was jolted out of his concentration by
Therian’s exclamation.

He turned to see the Andorian staring intently at the lines crawling by on his computer screen, his antennae raised up almost straight out of his head. “It’s the children!” Therian gasped. Then, almost a sob, “Oh, Great Mother—it’s the
children!”

“What children?” Korsal demanded, crossing to
where he could read the screen.