The doctor picks up a crust of bread. A greenish mold covers it. He eyes the stuff. "So many growing things are beneficial to us. And so many are deadly." He offers the piece of bread to Kanya. "Try it."
Kanya recoils. Gibbons grins and takes a bite. Offers it again. "Trust me."
Kanya shakes her head, forcing herself not to mouth superstitious prayers to Phra Seub for luck and cleanliness. She envisions the revered man sitting in a lotus, forces herself not to respond to the doctor's taunts, touches her amulets.
The doctor takes another bite. Grins as crumbs cascade down his chin. "If you take a bite, I'll guarantee you an answer."
"I wouldn't take anything from your hand."
The doctor laughs. "You already have. Every injection you took as a child. Every inoculation. Every booster since." He offers the bread. "This is just more direct. You'll be glad you did."
Kanya nods at the microscope. "What is that thing? Do you need to test it more?"
Gibbons shakes his head. "That? It's nothing. A stupid mutation. A standard outcome. We used to see them in our labs. Junk."
"Then why haven't we ever seen it before?"
Gibbons makes a face of impatience. "You don't culture death the way we do. You don't tinker with the building blocks of nature." Interest and passion flicker briefly in the old man's eyes. Mischief and predatory interests. "You have no idea what things we succeeded in creating in our labs. This stuff is hardly worth my time. I hoped you were bringing me a challenge. Something from Drs. Ping and Raymond. Or perhaps Mahmoud Sonthalia. Those are challenges." For a moment, his eyes lose their cynicism. He becomes entranced. "Ah. Now those are worthy opponents."
We are in the hands of a gamesman.
In a flash of insight, Kanya understands the doctor entirely. A fierce intellect. A man who reached the pinnacle of his field. A jealous and competitive man. A man who found his competition too lacking, and so switched sides and joined the Thai Kingdom for the stimulation it might provide. An intellectual exercise for him. As if Jaidee had decided to fight a muay thai match with his hands tied behind his back to see if he could win with kicks alone.
We rest in the hands of a fickle god. He plays on our behalf only for entertainment, and he will close his eyes and sleep if we fail to engage his intellect.
A horrifying thought. The man exists only for competition, the chess match of evolution, fought on a global scale. An exercise in ego, a single giant fending off the attacks of dozens of others, a giant swatting them from the sky and laughing. But all giants must fall, and then what must the Kingdom look forward to? It makes Kanya sweat, thinking about it.
Gibbons is watching her. "You have more questions for me?"
Kanya shakes off her terror. "You're sure about this? You know what we need to do, already? You can tell just by looking?"
The doctor shrugs. "If you don't believe me, then go back and follow your standard methods. Textbook your way to your deaths. Or you can simply burn your factory district to the ground and root out the problem." He grins. "Now there's a blunt-instrument solution for you white shirts. The Environment Ministry was always fond of those." He waves a hand. "This garbage isn't particularly viable, yet. It mutates quickly, certainly, but it is fragile, and the human host is not ideal. It needs to be rubbed on the mucus membranes: in the nostrils, in the eyes, in the anus, somewhere close to blood and life. Somewhere it can breed."
"Then we're safe. It's no worse than a hepatitis or fa' gan."
"But much more inclined to mutate." He looks at Kanya again. "One other thing you should know. The manufacturer you want will have chemical baths. Someplace where they can culture biological products. A HiGro factory. An AgriGen facility. A windup manufactory. Something like that."
Kanya glances at the mastiffs. "Would windups carry it?"
He reaches down and pats one of the guard dogs, goading her. "If it's avian or mammalian, it could. A bath facility is where I would look first. If this were Japan, a windup cr猫che would be my first guess, but anyone involved in biological products could be the index source."
"What kind of windups?"
Gibbons blows out an exasperated breath. "It's not a kind. It's a matter of exposure. If they were cultured in tainted baths, they may be carriers. Then