an invasion by a zombie militia – small-scale and half-dead, but unusual enough for the body to notice it, destroy it, and learn all about it in the process. When the real army comes, the immune cells are primed to attack. But The Virus thwarts this approach by targeting the immune system itself, by in effect infiltrating both the schools and the military bases of the body.
‘To develop a different kind of vaccine, we have been looking instead into some promising studies about a group of sex workers in Nairobi,’ Lee said. ‘These women are obviously highly exposed to The Virus, and they test positive for it. But for some reason, it has not blossomed into the full-blown disease in this small population.’
A few bowed heads in the audience sprang up like maize kernels bursting into popcorn.
‘As we’ve known since the 1990s,’ Lee went on, ‘human immune cells have receptors that The Virus uses to enter and infect them – CD4, CCR5, CXCR4. The hypothesis is that these prostitutes have mutations in the genes for one or more of these receptors. In short, these women may have a natural immunity to The Virus.’
Audience members whispered as he proceeded to the next slide. This research was not new – the Americans had discovered a Virus-immune patient with this mutation in 1994 – but social researchers seemed to know little of the scientific data being gathered in Africa. Yes, the studies were scant and suffered from a breathtaking lack of resources. But being here, in the midst of the crisis, ought to make you hungry for medical breakthroughs wherever they could be found. Lee was always a little surprised by the surprise he encountered at these conferences.
After his presentation was over, an older man, white hair stubbling his chin, approached him.
‘Hex-cuse me, sah. But that was remakabo! Extra-extra-ordinary!’ the man exclaimed, pumping Lee’s hand energetically. ‘Blirriant!’
‘Thanks,’ Lee murmured. There weren’t many locals at this conference. The bashikulu’s suit was old-fashioned and scuffed, his hems as withered as his thin purple lips. He was wearing a stethoscope for some reason, and dusty white nursing shoes.
‘Am Dr Patrick Musadabwe. We must link up, Dr Banda! You are velly implessive.’
Lee sighed internally, anticipating a request for money. He glanced around the room at the clusters of chatting bazungu, seeking an exit from the conversation.
‘…must inform you that I have a velly-good population for testing this Nairobi thing.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘These women in Kenya.’ Musadabwe leaned in with an eyebrow raised. ‘You are aweya that we have these same women in Lusaka as well?’
‘Yes, I’m aware.’ Lee scratched his head and tried not to laugh or inhale – Musadabwe’s breath was staggeringly foul.
‘You must come to my clinic, just down the road in Kalingalinga. We can do velly-good resatch together.’
‘Ah sorry, Ba Uncle.’ Lee put on his politest Zambian manners. ‘I have my own clinic.’
‘But do you have the correcti peshents? Because if we transplantate these kinds of mutation thingies, pahaps through the stem cell transplantation—’
‘You know about stem cell transplants?’ asked Lee, peering curiously at this ragtag doctor.
‘Of course!’ Musadabwe exclaimed, issuing another cannonade of halitosis. He put his hand on Lee’s arm. ‘Come, my friend, come to my clinic. It has eveelithing you need.’
* * *
Musadabwe’s clinic, a squat blue and white building in the middle of the compound, did not have everything that Lee needed, not by a mile. It was empty inside but for an old wooden desk, its concrete floors speckled from the fresh paint job on the walls. Reaching up now and again to pat Lee on the shoulder, Musadabwe gave a tour of the rooms – ‘andi this one will be for examinationing our peshents…’ If the patients were not poisoned by fumes from the paint, Lee thought, or from the good doctor’s mouth. If he even was a doctor. Despite the string of titles after his name on the outside wall of the clinic, Lee wasn’t quite convinced by Mr Malaprop over here.
Musadabwe seemed to know his stuff, though. They sat on the wooden desk and drank from a bottle of Scotch – the only bottle, the only chemical, in the place – lecturing each other on bone-marrow transplants and receptor mutations, on inherited conditions and antiretroviral resistance, on autoimmunity and genetic abnormality, on using what was available to make something new.
‘Together, Dr Banda,’ Musadabwe exhorted, ‘we can vanquish this monster!’
As the sun sent its dying light into the hollow clinic, Lee thought it through. He had