Kira remained silent, not taking the bait.
“After Lusetti used truth drugs on you, he told me he had learned why you felt it was so important to keep your discovery secret. Overpopulation. Fear of societal upheaval. Well, you’re in luck. I can help you out. What if there were no longer any births in the world?” Sam smiled cruelly, quite pleased with himself. “That would solve this problem, wouldn’t it? Give you no excuse for not sharing.”
“What are you talking about?”
Sam raised his eyebrows. “Sterilization of every woman on the planet,” he said simply.
Desh heard Sam but didn’t react in any way. His mind had begun to feel strange. It had been painful at first, like a sharp headache, but now the feeling was electric, like the pins-and-needles feeling of a limb falling asleep, only in his head, a place in which he knew there were no sensory receptors of any kind.
Kira looked at Sam as though he were mad. This wild, over-the-top threat could have easily come out of the mouth of a villain on a Saturday morning cartoon. But sadistic and deranged though Sam was, he was clearly formidable, and she sensed that this threat was not entirely an idle one.
“You’re out of your mind,” she said.
“Am I? My enhanced molecular biologist doesn’t think so. He thinks mass sterilization is child’s play. Well, child’s play for a child trained in molecular biology with an immeasurable IQ,” he said in amusement. “A woman is born with all the egg cells she’ll ever have. Take them out and it’s game over.”
“How?”
“I’m not the expert, but I’m told that it’s pretty simple if you really make the effort. Lots of ways to target just egg cells. Hell, there are venereal diseases that lead to infertility all by themselves. All you need are determination and an artificially boosted IQ.”
As Kira thought about it, she realized he was right. Even a mediocre molecular biologist, his mind transformed by her treatment, could manage something relatively simple like this. And the entire female population wouldn’t have to be infected at once. If an engineered virus was set loose, designed just to attack female eggs and nothing else, the attacks would go unnoticed for some time. Each woman infected would have her ability to reproduce destroyed without coming down with as much as a sniffle. And once all human egg cells were destroyed, that was it. Even cloning required an intact egg cell to work, albeit one with its own genetic material removed to get an exact carbon copy of the donor.
“I can see in your eyes that you’re beginning to fully grasp the implications of what I’m saying,” said Sam, gloating. “The only real challenge is a logistical one: making sure the hyper-contagious virus is spread to every corner of the world. But there are any number of ways to accomplish this.” He began ticking them off with his fingers. “Genetically engineered E. coli, designed to be able to out-compete and replace the E. coli found in every human gut—harmless other than having a gamete destroyer on board. Poisoned water supplies. Contaminated cigarette filters.”
Kira looked puzzled by this last entry.
“Don’t be fooled by the anti-smoking lobby, my dear,” said Sam. “Cigarette use is thriving in every corner of the world. Over five trillion are smoked each year. Do you think it would be difficult for someone with immeasurable intelligence to figure out a simple way to contaminate a majority of the world’s cigarette production lines with a hyper-contagious agent? With all the world's smokers playing the role of Typhoid Mary, it would spread to every human on the planet in no time.” He grinned. “I guess second-hand smoke isn't the biggest danger you can face from smokers, after all.”
Kira shook her head in disgust but said nothing.
Desh’s mind leaped! A massive acceleration of his thoughts occurred in an instant. Like one hundred billion dominoes falling into place at once; like a chain reaction leading to a massive explosion, his neurons had reordered themselves into a more efficient architecture. Thoughts arrived at a furious pace.
Square root of 754, Desh thought to himself, and seemingly before the thought was even finished he saw the answer: 27.459. Time seemed to slow down. His thoughts had been traveling through molasses previously, but now they were jet-propelled.
As Sam delivered a sentence the pauses between each of his words were agonizingly long. Spit . . . It . . . Out! thought Desh impatiently. He studied Sam and realized his body language communicated almost as much as his words—in some cases more. His every movement, breath, eye blink, and facial expression telegraphed what he was thinking.