Caliphate

Castle Honsvang, Province of Baya, 8 Muharram,

1538 AH (19 October, 2113)

Sands, Johnston, and Meara watched through a high temperature glass window as flames raised the internal heat of the furnace to over two thousand degrees. The two bodies inside quickly burst into flames as their own fat caught fire, then burned down to ash. Even then, the residue was not released until that temperature had been maintained for some time. They were playing gods with world- destroying organisms here, and there was no room for chance.

"Damn" said Sands sadly, in a French accent, as he watched the last bits of bone from two human bodies turn to ash, "I thought we really had something there."

Meara shook his jowly head. "Bitch mutates too rapidly. Just when we think we've got a counter-virus to render it sterile in some phase, it changes to something we can't sterilize."

"Sometimes I wonder if we might not have been better off going with the discarding strands theory we left behind to throw the Empire off the track," added Johnston.

"No . . . no, I don't think so," Sands said. "The form we have would be better if we can find a way to control it."

And this was something of which the American Empire had no clue. The trio had been working on a virus such as described by Mary to Hamilton . . . officially. This virus did indeed change from harmless to deadly to sterile in five generations, being transmissible in all but the last stage. Yet they had never managed to time the thing just right. The extra strands simply would not slough off as planned.

On their own, though, and without leaving any computer record for the Empire to dissect, they had tried a very different approach, one which caused the virus to change by attacking different types of organs in turn. It was the theory and the work on this they had brought through Montreal to the Caliphate, for a very substantial set of fees and regular free access to highly desirable female slaves (except for Meara whose preferences switched between teenaged girls and very young boys).

This virus, the true VA5H, began by going after endothelial cells, those lining the throat and mouth. There, in those cells, the virus inserted various introns (DNA sections added), removed various exons (DNA sections removed), and produced a substantially different set of progeny because of the specific DNA of the cells invaded. These then went on to infect the nasal mucosa, and only the nasal mucosa, mimicking a cold and allowing the virus at that stage to spread by sneeze.

Within the nasal mucosa, a codon, coming from the DNA of the mucosa itself, inserted into the strand, changing its target to the lymph cells. There, it was spread by bodily fluid. This is to say, it didn't spread much.

It didn't have to. At the lymph cells, new modifications occurred, caused, once again, by the DNA of the lymphocytes themselves. This modification turned into full blown disease highly analogous to hemorrhagic smallpox. Moreover, it did so so quickly and so— literally, without pun—virulently, that infection of close family, co- workers, and medical staff was highly likely . . . for whichever of those co-workers, family and medicos had not already contracted the virus during its sneezing stage.

It was during this stage that the virus began sloughing off sections of that codon which controlled lethality, becoming more deadly with each new transmission. Within five such generations, the last bit of that codon had disappeared, leaving a virus that was no longer deadly and incapable of reproduction, in theory.

It was that "in theory" part that had Sands, Meara, and Johnston up late, infecting and then incinerating the bodies of superfluous slaves, because the virus did not always lose the last, deadly section of that particular codon and those that did not went on replicating at the deadliest level.

Thus, they were working on two other projects. The first of these was to mimic the exterior polyglyceride coat of the virus to rapidly spread immunity through the Caliphate without giving warning to the Empire. The other, and more promising, project was a virus that would attack the ability of the human cells that produced the deadly form to do so.

Promising, however, was neither promised nor certain.

"And we're running out of test subjects," said Johnston.

"No matter," wheezed Meara, "the Caliph is sending us another two hundred."