“Correction. It’s everywhere I’ve been able to examine in the last five hours. I’ve found it inside and outside the domes. It’s inside the wags and gyros. It’s in all of the battlesuits. It’s in the soil surrounding the compound.”
“Do you have a treatment for it that works? The ointment Jann gave us does nothing.”
Huth reached in his pocket and took out a white plastic tube. “This formulation will heal your irritations. It won’t solve the problem, however.”
“Explain.”
“This organism will adapt to the formulation,” he said. “That is guaranteed. In days, in perhaps hours, it will produce offspring that are immune.”
“So, find another formula.”
Huth shook his head. “Ultimately, that route leads to total disaster. If we attempt to keep one-upping this organism, in the end all we will succeed in doing is selectively breeding a generation that cannot be stopped by any means at our disposal.”
“There is nothing we can do?”
“As I said, there are temporary measures.”
“How widespread is the infection now?”
“Almost everyone has it. The transgenic females and the male troopers. The Deathlanders do not seem to be affected, however.”
“Because the organism is native to this planet?” Huth frowned. “Evidence on the organism’s origin is uncertain. It is difficult to tell whether it is a native species or whether it has spread locally since your arrival.”
“You mean we brought it with us? I thought it was unlike anything on our world.”
“That’s true, but it doesn’t eliminate the possibility that it changed, either in transit or after it came here. There is also the possibility that your treatments made you susceptible to a species native to Deathlands.”
“But the male troopers didn’t have the procedure.”
“If the engineered virus wasn’t completely burned out of your systems, it’s possible that you infected the troopers or the organism, or both. Genes could have been inadvertently transferred.”
Dredda recalled her haste to get out of Level Four quarantine, warnings of whitecoats unheeded.
“At present this organism is only attacking the surface layer of skin,” Huth went on. “But as the colonies grow on infected individuals, they will begin to penetrate deeper. If they get past the muscle and into the body cavity and internal organs, death is the only foreseeable outcome.”
“We did not go through hell to be defeated by something as small and insignificant as this,” she told him. “Can’t we sterilize the environment?”
“We can clean the battlesuits and the interiors of the domes and wags, but we can’t keep the organisms out because they are already too well established locally.”
Dredda paused for a second, then said, “What about you? Have you got it, too?”
“That’s a critical point,” he said. “Currently, I am infection free. And I’ve been here much longer than you. That adds support to the idea that it was transported here with your forces. Or that your susceptibility and that of the male troopers is the result of the transgenic treatments.”
Dredda shook her head in disbelief. “You don’t have it,” she said. “Everybody else has it, but you don’t.”
“You do understand the implications, I hope.”
“What do you mean?”
“If you brought the organism along with you,” Huth said, “you may well have left it behind. Given the thing’s generation time, the changes probably occurred before you made your exit. The same thing that’s happening here could be happening on our Earth.”
Dredda’s eyes opened wide. “You mean, this thing could conceivably wipe out all of humanity on our world?”
“Based on my preliminary calculations, it could have already done so.”
“We solved the population problem by accident?”
He nodded.
“Too bad there’s nothing there to return to,” Dredda said. “A dead world full of dead people.”
“I think you have to face an unpleasant choice,” he said.
“And that is?”
“Having to leave this planet.”
“Leave the planet? Why not just leave the area? Go to the other side of this continent? Or go to another continent?”
“Like sterilization, that is a short-term solution. This organism and its spores spread on the wind, and on other hosts who can tolerate it. Like the Deathlanders. Or the native insects. Or birds. Or wild animals. There is no end to it.”