Pandemic

"So ARCS is not the Spanish Flu?" Streicher asked.

"Could be closely related, though." Haldane shrugged.

McLeod nodded. "Maybe this is the Spanish Flu's long-lost meaner but antisocial sister."

"I think we can find out," Yuen said quietly.

"How so?" Haldane asked.

She looked down and shuffled the papers in front of her, needlessly. "The U.S. military pathology labs have saved tissue samples from the 1918 Spanish Flu victims. We have a partially sequenced genome for the virus. Now that we know ARCS is a member of the influenza family, we will be able to sequence this virus with DNA probes. Then we can compare the two."

"All good and bloody well, Milly," McLeod said with a sympathetic smile to her. "But sequencing the virus doesn't help the people who are dying of it today, or those who will acquire it tomorrow."

People around the table nodded.

Haldane snapped his fingers. He whirled to face the two Chinese health officials. "How are you controlling the spread in the countryside?"

Huang looked away. He picked up his pen and started twirling again.

With Yuen translating, Choy answered for them. "We have the same strict quarantines in place in all the towns and farms for two hundred miles around the city. There is no travel allowed into or out of any areas that have had an active case within the last ten days."

"But the livestock!" Haldane said.

Choy shrugged, confused.

"As with the Spanish Flu, ARCS is almost certainly a product of zoonosis, or species intermixing." Haldane leaned forward in his chair, tapped the table, and spoke so urgently that Yuen had difficulty keeping up with the translation. "The pig is the usual mixing vessel. Inside the porcine bloodstream, viruses from birds like chickens meet their human equivalent and mutate. We call it a 'massive reassortment of genetic code.' Since pigs are the usual intermediary, most of these mutated viruses are forms of swine flus."

"I see." Choy nodded. "But what does that mean in terms of our quarantine?"

"It means," Haldane said, "that you have to slaughter the livestock. Like they did last year in Vietnam and Korea for the Avian Influenza outbreaks."

"Just the pigs?"

Haldane shook his head. "No. Birds are the natural carriers of influenza. They develop the most profound viremia, or highest blood levels, without becoming sick. The chickens — in fact, all the livestock — must be sacrificed."

Choy glared at Haldane and his face crumpled in dire concern. Yuen translated Choy's frantic, squeaky response. "But farming is one of the province's essential industries. Gansu's economy would be devastated if we slaughtered all the livestock."

"And the alternative?" Haldane held his hands out in front of him. "Imagine what would happen to the economy if ARCS broke free of here and stormed across China and beyond, killing one in four of the healthy people who stood in its path?"

Haldane glanced around the table. The others, even Choy, nodded in agreement, but Dr. Kai Huang refused to meet his gaze. Instead, he stared at the table and frantically twirled the pen in his hand. Haldane wondered why the youthful hospital director looked more fearful than anyone else at the table.

* * *

Haldane grappled with the door to his small hotel room. Once opened, he took two strides and lunged for the ringing phone. "Hello?" he said, hearing his breathless anticipation echo back in his ear.

"Noah?"

He felt a pang of disappointment, recognizing that it wasn't his wife's voice. "Oh, Karen, hi," he said.

"Well, hello to you too, stranger," said his secretary, Karen Jackson.

"What's going on, Karen?"

"Tell me everything," she said excitedly. "How's China? What's the Great Wall like?"

"I don't have a clue," Haldane said irritably. "I'm not over here on the AAA's Great Chinese Bus Tour. We're kind of working against the clock."

"Excuse me," Jackson murmured. "I forgot how busy saving the world must keep you."

Haldane chuckled. "Sorry, Karen, I haven't caught up from my jet lag yet. But in all honesty, all I've seen so far is the hotel, the hospital, and city hall. None of which are anything to write home about."

"No, it was a boneheaded question." She laughed. "Of course, you're too busy for all that." Then she asked in a hushed voice: "What is it like over there, Noah? Scary?"

"Yeah. A little."

"You keeping safe?" Jackson demanded with her usual maternal protectiveness.

"It's not me I'm worried about," he said, sitting down on the bed and resting his back against the headboard. "This virus is some piece of work."

"That's what they say," Jackson said.

"Who's they?" Haldane asked.

"The news folk," she said.

He hit the bed with a fist. "Damn it. This has made the news?"

"Small print, back page stuff so far," she said. "I came across a small article in the Post. Wouldn't have even seen it if I wasn't looking for the crossword."

"That's better, I guess," he said. "Is that what you called to tell me?"

"No," she said. "Someone is looking for you. She said it was important."

"Who?"

"Dr. Gwen Savard"

"Why is that name so familiar?"