“. . . so the same vectored explosives I designed to dig diamond mines in Africa are now redesigned to propel my Silverbirds.”
It was about the point at which Voorhees looked like he was actually about to nap, that Colonel Wolff was approached by one of Dr. Kimura’s assistants, who gestured toward the door, emphatically. Wolff exited the meeting swiftly, without a word, and without acknowledging S?nger.
As the colonel walked the muddy path between buildings, his thoughts drifted back to the recent expedition to the cave. Ultimately, the mission had been a success—if only because he had managed to return with a live specimen. More important, his people were managing to keep the creature alive, although he had been infuriated to learn that that Kimura was using local “volunteers” to study how the bat attacked and fed, something the doctor had done without asking Wolff’s permission.
“All of my maruta have been burned up,” Kimura had responded matter-of-factly when confronted. The volunteers were evidently women living above the fog line. “Alone in huts,” he explained, “just like the two witches and the boy.” According to Kimura, they were easy pickings for his men. “Outcasts. No one will miss them.”
Wolff was not so sure. He knew that up until now, their reluctant Indian allies had been placated by generous gifts that included crates of canned meat and fruit, and finely honed German steel. But now the locals were dying at the hands of his own people. And that was definitely not a recipe for appeasement.
To make matters worse, there was the realization that securing the specimen had come at a steep cost, seven men, valuable men, including Schr?dinger, and quite possibly Vogt and Kessler. The two guides were never seen again. Then there was the unfortunate Private Schoeppe, catheterized by an even more unfortunate catfish. Neither of those two specimens had made it back to the base, which was doubly disappointing. He had looked forward to seeing a candiru up close.
What an interesting interrogation aid, Wolff thought, just before stepping into Kimura’s Bio Lab.
“The bacterium has proven to be surprisingly cooperative,” the Japanese scientist announced as the colonel entered. “Especially for an organism that was completely unknown to man until only a week ago.”
“Cooperative?” Wolff asked, picking up a surgical mask.
“Well, once we learned how to control and muzzle your little horror, obtaining saliva from it was not much of a problem.” Kimura understood, already, that what he really needed was another half century of technological development to truly comprehend how the draculae microbe worked. No one knew what a genetic code really looked like, and yet the secret of how the draculae symbionts caused rapid bleeding was down there somewhere, in the bacterial genes, the secret code of life. The microbiologist discovered, however, that he did not have to know very much about bacterial genetics to isolate a biological weapon from the beast’s saliva. Ignorance had turned out to be no obstacle to application.
“The challenges became interesting but never serious,” he explained to Wolff. “I’m guessing that this bacterium normally resides in the bat’s salivary glands. Nothing too interesting there. Initially, I was puzzled by the microbe’s strange reproductive cycle. But as is usually the case, getting this one to multiply was not at all difficult. In fact, once I infused the agar growth media with fresh plasma, the bacterial cultures experienced exponential growth. Just as suddenly, though, they died.”
Wolff interrupted. “Yes, yes. I was there. Remember? But isn’t that the problem? How can you culture the pathogen and prevent it from entering the self-destructive phase of its life cycle before it can be packaged and launched?”
“Ah, the unique microbial suicide that follows soon after the bite of your winged nightmare.”
“The same,” Wolff said, beginning to lose patience.
Kimura puffed himself up slightly, and with a wave of a chubby hand he dismissed a challenge that had, in reality, taken his team several days of nonstop work to overcome.
“We know that when the bat bites, the bacteria enter the victim’s blood—”
“Yes, yes,” Wolff interrupted again, making a cutting motion with his hand. “Would it be too much to ask for something I don’t already know?”
Kimura bowed slightly. “Of course; my apologies. It appears that there are factors in the blood of an adult victim, and even in juvenile blood, that initiate the autolytic phase of the bacteria’s life cycle. As the bacteria disintegrate, something they release causes the prey to bleed out. Now, by using fetal plasma, even umbilical extract works nicely, we have successfully bypassed the bacteria’s exposure to ASF.”
“ASF?”
“I call it Autolysis Stimulating Factor.”
“And where did you get this fetal tissue?”