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“I don’t know the specifics,” he said, “but there’s hundreds of extra men on this s.h.i.+p. It’s very confused up top, no matter how disciplined Yasaka’s crew is. If someone smart tried hard enough, they could probably duck a test. Maybe even two.”

That didn’t make the cellulose test worthless, exactly, but not far from it.

“Maybe more are ducking it,” Margaret said. “There’s got to be another way to look at the task force’s population as a whole, try to get an idea of just how f.u.c.ked we are.”

Tim raised a gloved hand. “I can get Yasaka to give me access to onboard medical records. I’ll set up a biosurveillance algorithm. Maybe there’s common symptoms reported early, before the infection reaches the stage where it’s detectable and then contagious. If there’s a spike in a certain symptom — say, headaches — we might get an idea of how many people are infected but not yet testable.”

Biosurveillance … she hadn’t thought of that. Maybe Tim’s background in bioinformatics could make a difference.

“Do it,” Margaret said. “But make sure your yeast cultures are the first priority. What’s the status of those?”

“Modified yeast is growing like wildfire,” Tim said. “Population-wise, we’re succeeding, but it remains to be seen if it has any impact.”

Tim didn’t sound jovial anymore. The light had faded from his eyes. He, too, was good at math, and math said he was standing in what would wind up being his tomb.

“We need to split your cultures,” Margaret said. “As soon as we’re finished here, give half to Clarence so he can s.h.i.+p it to Black Manitou.”

Tim didn’t answer right away. Margaret knew he could read between the lines, knew she was confirming his fears that they were all doomed.

“Sure,” he said. “I guess that makes sense.”

Clarence cleared his throat. “I a.s.sume sooner is better than later?”

“Yesterday was already a week too late,” Margaret said. “Get ahold of Murray, make it happen. Right now, Tim’s cultures are the most valuable thing on the planet.”

“Will do,” Clarence said. “What about those new crawlers you injected into Edmund? The hydras. Do we need to get those to Black Manitou as well?”

Margaret looked into the containment area again, toward the cell that held Edmund.

“We’ll find out soon,” she said. “I’m going to take samples from him right now, see if the hydras replicated.”

Aside from Tim’s yeast, the hydras were the only other real hope. The yeast would live in the intestine, secreting cellulase into the bloodstream, cellulase that would, hopefully, melt any infection. But Tim’s yeast wouldn’t survive in there indefinitely: normal gut flora would outcompete it, the very nature of the gut itself would kill it, and so on. To maintain effectiveness as an inoculant, people would have to ingest regular doses of the stuff.

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