Bioterror! (an Ell Donsaii story #14) Page 19

  Alice frowned, “Why didn’t you get someone?!”

  Zage grimaced, “I wasn’t sure whether it was…” He gave her an embarrassed look, “I wasn’t sure whether that was normal for a college party.”

  With a startled and astonished look, Alice said, “You weren’t sure…?! You thought maybe it was normal for guys to drag girls outside and rip their shirts off?”

  Zage studied her for a moment, unsure whether she was serious. Deciding that she was, he said, “I’m only five Alice. I have no idea what college kids normally do at parties. Besides, he hadn’t ripped her shirt when I followed them outside.”

  She got a blank look for a moment, then Alice blinked and looked embarrassed. “Sorry. I guess you really wouldn’t know what’s normal. It’s just that you’re so smart about science that I always feel like…” she ran down as if she were trying to figure out what exactly she should say, but before she resumed speaking Carley came in the door of the lab.

  Seeing Zage standing there, Carley dropped her bag and strode to him, dropping to one knee and throwing her arms around him in a smothering hug. After a moment she pulled back to reveal red rimmed eyes and wet cheeks. “Oh Zage! Thank you, thank you, thank you! Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, just worried about you.”

  “What happened to you?! At first you were there, so calmly taking care of things. Helping me climb in my window and getting Matt that wet towel as if you handled things like that every day. But then you just disappeared! I was worried!”

  “Sorry, you should have called me. I’d promised my mother I’d leave the party before 9:30 and I was already late.” He shrugged, “She’s a real worrywart.”

  Carley sniffed, “I did call your AI and asked it if you were okay. It said you were fine so I didn’t think I should bother you.”

  “It’d never be a bother getting a call from you.”

  Carley gave him a curious look, “Did you see who sprayed Matt with the pepper spray? The guy that did it just reached around from behind, shot him in the face, then disappeared even faster than you did.”

  Surprised, Zage said nothing for a second as he contemplated the fact that he might not have been visible in either of their AIs’ cameras when he reached around with the pepper spray, then he tilted his head curiously and said, “Sorry, I didn’t get a good look at him.”

  Carley went back and picked up her bag, “Well, I owe you guys for all your help Friday night so, even though it doesn’t seem nearly enough, I baked you some cookies.” She pulled out a container and popped the lid.

  Alice grinned and grabbed a couple, “Chocolate chip! My favorite!”

  Zage gave them a wistful look as he shook his head, “I can’t eat…”

  Carley practically exploded as she interrupted him, “You’re not going to tell me you think you’re too fat still?! You used to be a little chubby, but you’re not anymore!”

  Zage looked down at himself and blushed, “Maybe I could have a couple of cookies.”

  “You’re dang right you could!”

  ***

  Shan looked up as Zage came into the room. “Hey kid, what’s up?”

  Looking uncomfortable, Zage said, “It’s the Gordito website.”

  “Really? Did someone break into it somehow?” Shan said, thinking that he couldn’t imagine how that could actually be possible with all the safeguards they’d installed.

  “Oh. No, it’s just that it’s getting so much traffic. If it keeps increasing I won’t be able to keep up.”

  Shan frowned, “I thought it only took you about thirty seconds to work out the parts of the folding that Osprey’s algorithm can’t handle and then designate the best antigens?”

  Zage sighed, “Yeah, but it turns out that there’re a whole lot more people interested in protein folding than ones who care about viral antigens. I’m getting hundreds of queries a day now and it looks like it’ll be thousands pretty soon.”

  “Aha,” Shan said with a big grin, “that’s the problem with providing a free service. People are gonna take advantage. You just need to start charging.”

  Zage frowned, “But you guys said we don’t need the money.”

  “Yeah, but you need the deterrent. You could make it a sliding-scale if you wanted.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The first one only costs a dollar, ten dollars each for the next five, $100 for the five after that…” Shan shrugged, “The way you’re doing it now, they’re going to submit any proteins they’re even the least bit curious about. This way they’ll pick the ones that they think really matter.”

  Zage gave him a curious look, “How do we know that subsequent submissions are from the same person?”

  Shan lifted an eyebrow, “We can’t tell that the submissions came from the same person, but we can tell whether the payments come from the same account. Unless these guys’re willing to open up a new bank account for each protein they submit…”

  “Oh… Okay, can you show me how?”

  ***

  LaQua Kelso stepped into Abe’s office looking disheartened. “Homeland Security’s found ports hidden in American mosques. Our testing shows they’re covered with the vaccinia type virus, as is the surrounding area. They’re a type of port that come with sticky backs. You just pull off a tiny piece of paper and touch them to something and there they stick! It makes them really easy to hide. We’ve found them up high, in light fixtures and the like. My contact at Homeland thinks the people probably place them with some kind of extensible reacher-grabber that lets them just reach up and stick them into place when no one’s looking.”

  Leaning back, Abe said thoughtfully, “Well, it’s good to know the method they used for delivery.”

  As if she couldn’t believe his calm response, LaQua said plaintively, “I’m sure they’re planning to release the killer virus the same way. I can’t imagine how we’d be able to stop them.”

  Abe pursed his lips, “First of all, you and Homeland should be talking to D5R. Maybe they’ve got some way to stop transmission of viral particles…”

  “Oh, come on! How in the world would they do that?”

  “I don’t know, but over a lifetime I’ve learned never to assume that the other guy can’t do something. It’s at least worth asking.” He took a deep breath, “Second, realize the bad guys presumably tested their first virus to be sure that it’ll immunize against the second virus. We should be able to beat them at their game simply by producing their first virus in huge quantities and using it to immunize the population.”

  Dismayed, she shook her head, “You know some idiots are going to refuse to be immunized. They’ll be hoping that herd immunity will protect them. Besides, they’d be absolutely correct if they complained that it’s more dangerous than modern vaccines.”

  “First of all, herd immunity won’t protect them from a virus that’s being released into the air in large quantities. Second, the government could choose to force them to be immunized. Third,” he shrugged, “it’s a free country. I think idiots should be free to refuse immunization if they want—as long as the rest of us don’t have to expend our resources trying to save them when they actually get the disease.”

  LaQua’s distraught expression faded long enough for a brief chuckle, “I never figured you for a hardliner like that.”

  He sighed, “Unfortunately, my bark’s way worse than my bite.” He chewed his lip for a moment, “How’re we coming on growing up the immunization virus? We probably should be starting to think about an immunization program for critical people.”

  She shook her head, “We’re having trouble growing it. We can’t seem to get the virus to replicate in culture for some bizarre reason. It grows fine in cats and rats and people, just not in culture. I have no idea how the people who’re spreading the virus are growing it up. We’re also trying to identify good antigens for a vaccine, but not having much luck so far.”

  “Have you thought of posting it to the Gordito site?”

&nb
sp; “Really?! Come on. We don’t even know who ‘Gordito’ is!”

  Abe snorted, “Yeah, I know. And there’re a hell of a lot of people who’d like to find out too. People who’re a lot better than we’re at tracking such things down.” He shook his head, “But look at the results! Most people may be using it to get the 3-D structures of proteins, but it was designed to let you put up a viral genome and get back a list of likely antigenic peptides and recommended DNA sequences that you can clone in order to make those peptides! Usually, within a day! Whoever he is and however he came up with whatever algorithm he’s using, he’s some kind of genius. I don’t think there’s any harm in seeing what he comes up with.”

  “What she comes up with.”

  Abe frowned and narrowed his eyes, “Do you know something about Gordito…”

  “No, just pointing out that while you probably see Gordito as some old Jewish guy,” she grinned, “I see her as a young black woman… someone with a refined sense of style like me.”

  Abe snorted and smiled as he waved her away, “Okay, see what she comes up with.”

  Thirty minutes later LaQua leaned back in Abe’s door. “Dang, we’re a day late. Gordito just started charging.”

  “If it works, it doesn’t matter how much it costs, we’ll still think it’s cheap.”

  LaQua said, “But it’ll take a long time to run through billing and I don’t think we should wait. We especially won’t want to wait when the real bioweapon appears. How about if I pay for this one and you pay for the next one?”

  “Okaay… Why do I think there’s a catch?”

  LaQua shrugged, “First one’s a dollar, next five are ten dollars each.” She turned on her heel and walked away calling back over her shoulder, “Send ten dollars to my account so we’ll be ready, okay?”

  Abe snorted and shook his head, Suckered again…

  ***

  Allan, Ell’s AI, spoke in her ear piece, “You have a call from Vivian.”

  “Put her through… Hey Vivian, trouble again?”

  Vivian sounded depressed, “Yeah, I got a call from a Dr. Kelso at CDC. It’s more port terrorism.”

  “CDC as in Centers for Disease Control?”

  “Yeah, those guys. She says somebody’s been using one centimeter ports to spread viral particles.”

  “Um… I haven’t heard about any disease outbreaks in the news. At least nothing that sounded very serious…”

  “Yeah, this’s really scary. Apparently so far they’ve been sending through a mild virus that’s related to one that’s used to immunize people to smallpox. Kelso thinks they’re trying to protect one group for when they release a virus similar to smallpox. Smallpox kills one in three people which is pretty bad, but, since they’ve modified the immunization virus, they’ve probably also modified the smallpox they’re going to release. It’ll probably be even more deadly.”

  “Who’re they trying to protect?”

  “The immunization version’s been released in mosques here in the United States. Same for other nations that have a mixture of religions. It’s showing up pretty much throughout entire populations in countries that are mostly Islamic.”

  “If it doesn’t make people sick, how do we know it’s out there?”

  “Chickenpox, cowpox, smallpox, they all produce pustules called pocks that leave scars. So, people seek medical attention for these pocks. And cowpox, which is what they used in the past to immunize people to smallpox and what this virus’s related to, can make people really sick if they have weak immune systems or are kind of feeble. CDC estimates about one in 10,000 people are dying from it.”

  “So, is CDC going to start immunizing people for smallpox?”

  “First thing I asked. Apparently they think immunization with standard cowpox like CDC knows how to make probably won’t work because this new immunization virus’s different enough that they think the old vaccination won’t protect against the new smallpox version.”

  “They can’t vaccinate people for the new one?”

  Ell could hear the frustration in Vivian’s voice, “A new version of smallpox hasn’t been released yet, they’re just guessing that it will be. But you can imagine it’s hard to vaccinate people for a disease you’re not sure exists and that you know nothing about.”

  Ell said, “But they know, presumably, that this new virus the terrorists are releasing will provide protection, right?”

  “Yeah,” Vivian sighed, “but the new virus is a lot more dangerous than standard vaccinations so a lot of people would object to getting it. At least they will until people start dying by the millions. Besides, CDC’s having a hard time growing the new virus and nobody’s sure why.”

  “So, they’d like us to do something to keep the virus from being spread through ports, right?”

  “Uh-huh. And I’ve already pointed out to them that ports are only convenient. I’m sure the terrorists could find a way to spread the virus some other way.”

  “Do we have a way of preventing port transmission?”

  Vivian said, “They’re probably either blowing dry viral particles through the ports, which would be like dust, or an aqueous aerosol of the particles. We don’t have systems in place to detect those kinds of substances going through ports. Building such systems in would only affect future ports, and it’d make ports a lot more expensive which would make a lot of people unhappy.”

  “Well, if they found some of these ports that the vaccination virus was sent through we’ll know when they started buying them. They’ve probably already bought all they need to spread the smallpox version. If they’re only using one centimeter ports, we could just shut down all the one centimeter ports we’ve sold between the time we sold the vaccination ports and now.”

  “Ell! That’s tens of thousands of ports! Maybe hundreds of thousands. All those people are going to file on our guarantees!”

  “Vivian, we’re talking millions and millions of deaths, right?”

  There was a pause, then Vivian sighed, “Yeah. I’ll get the information and we’ll start figuring out which ports we’d need to shut down. Maybe CDC will figure out a better solution before we actually have to carry it out.”

  “If they’re doing this worldwide, the bad guys almost certainly had to have bought ports in large quantities. You should be able to track sales well enough to only shut down ports sold in large lots. Homeland Security should be very interested in checking out anyone who’s done that. Anyone who contacts you about the guarantee, complaining because a few ports have stopped working isn’t a bad guy, you can just reactivate their ports…

  Chapter Eight

  Zage was working on queries to Gordito. Osprey said, “This next request’s for viral antigens rather than protein folding.”

  “Which virus?” Zage asked, hoping as always that someone was trying to create a vaccine for an obesity virus.

  “They haven’t specified the name of the virus. Do you want me to analyze the genome to see if it’s a known virus?”

  “Yes,” of course, Zage thought, though he didn’t say it. Osprey’s stunning computational abilities didn’t enable him to intuit some things that humans thought obvious.

  Osprey could however, analyze the genome almost instantaneously. “No published viral genomes completely match this virus. It has sections that’re quite similar to vaccinia and others that’re somewhat analogous to parts of the camel pox genome.”

  “What’s vaccinia?”

  “Vaccinia’s a variant of the cowpox virus. Cowpox was used for immunization against smallpox and eventually versions that became somewhat different from native cowpox came to be called vaccinia.”

  “Find me stuff to read about vaccinia and camelpox,” Zage said, thinking, This doesn’t sound like a natural virus. If someone constructed it, why? He didn’t want Gordito to help someone construct a bio-weapon. To Osprey, he said, “Go through the virus’s entire genome and find any parts of it that aren’t native to either vaccinia or camelpox. Those segments
are probably also genes from other organisms, see if you can identify those genes as well.”

  By the time Zage had posed the second query, Osprey’d already found a large body of literature on vaccinia and camelpox. Zage started looking at it and sank into what he’d come to think of as a kind of fugue state. To try to understand what happened to him when he was in these episodes, he’d watched some security camera video of himself when it happened. While he was in these fugues he gave nearly constant commands to Osprey for finding and sorting information while he glanced from screen to screen at information Osprey was putting up. He spent so little time looking at each screen it was hard to imagine that he took much in from any of them. However, when it was over, he’d feel like he was simply and suddenly much more knowledgeable about whatever topic he’d been studying. Like a psychiatric fugue, he’d barely remember the time he’d spent in the state. He thought of these episodes as similar to the “zone” that he and his mother got into for physical activities, but the fugues were for learning.

  Coming out of even the relatively brief fugue it’d taken him to learn about the pox viruses, Zage said, “Show me your analysis of that viral genome and let’s work out its folding.”

  Zage started working to understand what each segment of the viral genome coded for and where the proteins it coded for were located in the viral structure.

  Zage shook his head, realizing that he’d gone into another brief fugue state just analyzing the virus. But, what he’d learned…!

  Dreading what he might find out, he said, “Who submitted that viral genome?”

  “A Dr. LaQua Kelso from CDC.”

  For a moment, Zage was relieved to realize that someone from the CDC’d submitted the viral genome. Someone who tried to prevent diseases, not someone who might be creating one. Then he recognized the fact that, if CDC was trying to understand this virus, someone else had probably already built it and spread it around! “Send Dr. Kelso a request for me to be able to speak to her.”