Alien Alliance (34 page)

“The point is how does the virus cause the
disease? In this case it is the effect the virus has on their
equivalent of your platelets and endothelial cells in the tiny
blood vessels of the capillary system. Almost all creatures have a
circulatory system and they are remarkably similar. The contents
vary but not the purpose and function. Fuel, in one form or
another, must get to the parts of a body that need it. So must
fluid and oxygen. Waste products must be transported away. In your
body Donny, platelet cells are the cells that stop bleeding. This
virus interferes with the clotting mechanism and in the end the
blood will not clot at all.

Endothelial cells line every blood vessel in
the human body. Keulfyd also have these endothelial cells. So do a
lot of other Races. Their job is to keep the fluid inside whatever
circulatory system the creature uses. This virus causes these cells
to leak. The combined job of the platelets and endothelial cells is
to keep the fluid and the blood cells inside the blood vessel. So
Keulfyd systems are similar and have similar cells with a combined
similar function.

Do you see how devastating this virus is
Donny? Each problem in itself is serious and can be eventually
fatal all by itself. Not only will the blood vessels leak but also
the blood will not clot. The body will bleed out. If one system
still worked, the doctors could use drugs to help. The combination
is too much and hopefully unfixable.”

Mathew was more interested in Helkmid’s
attitude. He really did not like the Keulfyd. Mathew wondered why
but had the impression that it might not be wise to ask.

Helkmid continued, “This virus causes the
blood vessels to leak. The leaking occurs all over the body to some
extent, but in this virus the stomachs are worse affected for some
reason I do not understand. Keulfyd have four stomachs. You have
three Donny if you include the small and large intestines. Also, in
the last stages of this disease the lungs leak. The consequences
then quickly become serious or lethal. I do not know why these
equivalent of your endothelial and platelet cells stop functioning.
This is the reason I was given this virus; to figure this out. But
I do not like the Keulfyd and I did not do that study.

Another reason this virus will work so well
is the mild onset. And even if the doctors look at the cells, they
continue to look normal. It is only once the patient is seriously
ill that anything looks wrong. A very curious feature of this
disease is that the doctors will be examining the organs because
that is where they will think the problem is. They will examine and
biopsy and they will find nothing wrong. The organs themselves are
not damaged and that is the beauty of using this virus. It is
deceptive and sneaky. First they will think it is a minor illness
and probably ignore it. Then they will concentrate on the organs,
the stomachs, but that is not where the problem is. By the time
they work it out it will be way too late.

Another joy of this virus is that its rate
of infection, its virulence, will now increase sharply once it
starts to infect a population. Its incubation period will shorten
and its lethality increase. I have altered all these; the
virulence, the incubation period and the lethality. I have also
ensured that the virus is resistant to all their anti virals. Also,
because I have altered this virus and changed it so much, the
inoculation will not work even if they have it, which they almost
certainly do not.

The first few infected may well survive.
Their circulatory system will recover, their organs will not have
been damaged because they were never attacked in the first place.
It just looked like they were. But the next generation of this
virus will be much worse. As soon as I saw this virus, I realised
its potential for Biological Warfare.

“How did you get it?” asked Mathew.

“Now that’s another interesting story. About
a hundred or so years ago, a woman of my race came to me with an
interesting story and some samples. In the hospital she worked in,
a patient had come in, a Keulfyd, with a curious illness. He was
bleeding badly from the stomachs. Worse, he was not conscious
enough to give a proper history. The surgeon who examined him
didn’t even try to get a history. That was a very bad mistake.
Especially since the Keulfyd had been brought in by his shipmates
who could have given a very interesting and revealing history. The
surgeon also ignored the other symptoms; fever, headache etc.

There were two doctors on duty that night.
The surgeon, was a Keulfyd. The other was another Race and the
medical doctor. The Keulfyd surgeon took over the patient’s care.
It probably seemed logical but it was a disaster. The Keulfyd was a
surgeon and took the obvious surgeon’s approach. He operated. He
assumed that there was an injury in the stomachs. Keulfyds are
gluttons and have a habit of eating things they shouldn’t and not
chewing their food adequately. They also eat a creature that, if
not chewed properly, gets its claws caught inside the stomachs and
causes damage. It is a delicacy. You can imagine what happens if
several of these are eaten and get hooked into several places. They
cause bleeding. This is probably what the surgeon expected to find.
The nurse was assisting. The surgeon could not stop the bleeding.
He did not notice that the bleeding was all through the body
because there was so much blood he could not tell where it was
coming from but he assumed he knew. He ended up removing all four
of the stomachs and left the operating room thinking he had solved
the problem. He was lazy as Keulfyd often seem to be and was
arrogant to the point of being stupid, which is also typical of his
race. In addition he was careless and lax in his technique.

The patient died a couple of days later. The
surgeon would probably have investigated except for the problem
which occurred on his days off. He became ill. I said he was stupid
and arrogant. Because he did not take a history, he did not
immediately connect his symptoms with the patient. By the time he
did, it was too late. He was the only Keulfyd in the region with
medical knowledge and he died. The case was closed.

The chief theatre nurse, in contrast, was
not stupid. She was curious, puzzled, very old and experienced. She
cleaned and examined the organs, which the surgeon had not. She
found them undamaged and not diseased. She made the obvious, to
her, conclusion that the disease was functional not biochemical. It
did not destroy the cells or the organs. It interfered with their
function.

She brought this puzzle to me thinking it
might be worth my while to find out what this disease was and come
up with a cure. I not only operate these machines. I am also a
medical scientist. There are very few of these machines available
to ordinary people. They are incredibly difficult and time
consuming to build, they need constant updating and constant
supervision. Therefore most People cannot afford treatment, even
short treatment. Very few can afford a full treatment. If I can
find a cure for this virus I can sell it and make a lot of money.
She wanted to sell me this virus. I took it and studied it. I also
took a very full history. She had done her best to find out what
symptoms the surgeon had had and she had tracked down the shipmates
of the patient and taken a history from them. She had also
carefully and correctly prepared the virus.”

Donny was fascinated. “What did you pay
her?”

“What she asked for but a bit more. She was
old and ill. She asked for as much treatment as I thought her
discovery was worth. That is what I gave her; a full treatment. I
did not tell her that,” he added mischievously. “She contacted me a
few months later. She was becoming aware of the extent of her
recovery but didn’t know how much more rejuvenation she could
expect. I told her I had paid her fair value and given her a full
treatment. She had given me the specimens plus a history that was
almost as valuable. One without the other is only half the
story.”

“What did a full treatment do?”

“Gave her back her life. She was old, near
retirement age. She ended up your equivalent of early adulthood.
But she was also now in perfect health down to the cellular and
chromosome level. Her children will be genetically perfect. She
also has antibodies to every disease that could, at the time of her
treatment, infect our race. And her body will work better because
it has been told how to regenerate parts of itself.”

Donny was too young to fully appreciate what
he had just been told but when he told Alan later, Alan got the
point!

“Did he tell you how the machine does this?’
Alan asked later in front of several other shocked people. “How
does it fix chromosomes? Genetic perfection? I thought it would
just fix my stuffed organs.”

“Sort of. He said the Machines study as many
People of a Race as possible. Thousands if possible. They then work
out what is the optimum perfection someone could be down to the
cellular and genetic level. A perfect person. But you will still
look like you did but you will be as good as you can be. It will
also take you back to early adult age if you are older. It will fix
everything wrong. It will also make your children perfect.”

“But how?” Alan asked.

“By telling the body how to fix itself and
how it should be. He said the body was like a photo copier making
copy after copy of its cells. Every now and then the body makes a
mistake or an injury or disease results in a mistake that the body
doesn’t know how to fix or doesn’t notice, or can’t fix. Over time
these mistakes add up. He said that as cells keep splitting and
recombining, little bits of them get leftover and detached from the
whole. Like losing a little bit. Also there is a fixed limit to
most cells, to how many times they can reproduce. There are a lot
of built in spare parts he said. A lot can go wrong but we still
function; we compensate. But eventually too many cells reach their
limit of compensation and you die. The Machines put you back to
peak original condition. But you don’t live forever unless you keep
up treatment. As soon as you leave the machine, the environment
starts to wear you down. You can still be killed by an accident or
a disease your body isn’t immune to. It isn’t immortality. You
won’t live forever but your body will last much longer and in much
better health barring accidents and environmental factors.” There
was a shocked silence. Donny looked around. “It’s true,” he
said.

“But how come some People go in for only a
short time?”

“You get what you can afford. I don’t know
how to calculate money yet but he said a full treatment costs
according to time. And time is relative to what is wrong. But I
gather a full treatment on a sick adult costs a huge lot of money.
The more intricate and complicated the Alien is the more the cost
because of the greater time it takes to heal it. Or rather to tell
it how to heal itself.

He said the machines fix the life
threatening problems first. Then they keep going until they have
fixed everything or until your treatment stops. Or more often until
your credit runs out. The last thing they do is all the cells and
chromosomes. He said that after you come out of a full treatment,
you can get awful injuries and break bones and your body can fix it
but this ability reduces over time. The injuries still make you
pretty sick though and the body still needs time to heal. After
treatment, you still look the same. It will take months for the
body to fix itself if you were badly injured or very old. It isn’t
magic, it’s science and it takes time.

But a built in feature is the Machine’s
priority on giving you the time to heal. It simultaneously
diagnoses what is wrong and starts to fix the most life threatening
problems first. Different lights show how far through the treatment
is and when not enough has been done yet to keep the patient alive.
Sometimes a patient is put in with a known disease or injury and
the Machine, by its lights, tells the operator something worse
needs fixing first.

Alan wondered, not for the first time, what
the Machine had done to him. But he felt no better. No worse, but
no better. He wanted to believe that he was going to get better but
it was difficult. But he knew not to say anything to Donny. Helkmid
had told Donny that the treatment would work and Donny believed
him. Simple. Alan wished he had Donny’s faith and his belief and
trust in others.

“What did he tell you about what Helkmid and
his staff are planning?” asked Alan.

“He says he has a virus that will kill many
of the Keulfyds and that will tie up many more of them because
someone will have to look after all the sick. They won’t be able to
fight us because they’ll be too busy caring for their sick. He is
concentrating on the Keulfyd, the Races that are the mercenaries
and the ones that are the pilots. We have to time it so the pilots
get sick last as they will be disposing of the slaves. Kaz and Az
knew which Races were the pilots and mercenaries. Helkmid says if
we can knock these ones out, the rest will be less of a problem. We
need to kill or incapacitate about 3,000 mercenaries plus the
pilots and about 2000 others that are crew and support personnel.
That’s if we time it for after the slaves are killed.

I feel a bit bad about the slaves and so
does he but if we have to take on the slaves as well we can’t. We
don’t know who the slaves will fight, if they would fight. Some
might be bribed by the Keulfyd to fight us. And there are too many
Races and we don’t know what they all are. Kaz and Az only know the
ones that were in their ship, not the other six ships. And we can’t
fight half a million or more as well. And we can’t save them. And
it wouldn’t be right for us to kill the slaves. It’s not their
fault.

Helkmid says we are going the difficult
route. It is much easier to kill by gas, as they are doing, or by
food or water contamination. But Helkmid doesn’t know how to make
the gas or even what it is. It’s a closely guarded secret. He
doesn’t even understand how it works; how it affects all the Races.
He thinks it’s a toxin. And we can’t get at their food or water
supply because a lot of it is on the ships.