Santra: Night of Nights

[Sjet]

42 Years ago, in a time before the Cardassian Occupation of Bajor...

The air of the night was humid and sweet, the deluge that had come and gone the day before having excited the pollen of the valley's orchards into an enthusiastic chemical assault on the senses. At the mouth of the valley many miles distant, the glow of Calden City could be seen as a second sunset marking the northern horizon, with the scattered townships and villages that ran into the rich soil of the farm lands looked like stars fallen from heaven.

Tonight Santra Arron was feeling particularly poetic with his words and thoughts, though some of that might be from the fire water he was sipping at.

He sat on comfortable padded bench that ran along one of the low walls of the roof top garden, leaning back against the rough stone as he took another sip from the glass. He didn't look like much but even as a young man he was something of a old soul: Chair of Viral Pathology at the Calden City MediCentre, respected surgeon and physician, and right now damn proud his still had not produced a drink that made him go blind.

Tobeky Tule, a much older man than he by an order of magnitude sat beside him and tentatively sipped the fermented product of a genius doctor. His sputtered retort and gasp for breath meant that the spirit was living up to its name. Arron smiled: to be honest he had wanted to drink something a little more appropriate for the evening but Tule's arrival had been unexpected. Had he knew in advance his long time mentor in Bajoran medicine was to join him on this very night, he would have sent a boy from the village out to buy a wine of suitable providence.

Still, a celebration lofted by home brewed ingenuity was not without its appropriateness.

"I could always get you some water, you know?" Arron said dryly, a wry smile playing on his lips as he leaned forward to grab the clay bottle from between their feet.

"I value my sense of taste up to a point." Tule went on to say, before taking a second sip with more forbearance than anything else "But I was always told it was impolite to turn down the gracious hospitality of ones host."

"Its no imposition." Arron said, getting up one much younger legs and heading towards the ladder down from the roof and into the modest two storey home he lived in with his wife.

"It will be if you wake that wife of yours." Tule smiled appreciatively and leaned his bulk back against the wall "Even suffering from that damnable flu and swaddled in blankets, she's as much a vision as the day you introduced me to her. Let the woman sleep and recover herself."

"Bed rest is your best prescription?" Arron chided jokingly.

"I've no doubt you've done your best, but the flu is what it is: bed rest, fluids and warmth as useful in treatment as all the anti-virals and bacterial phages we could throw at her. Besides, she seemed on the mend to me even with a blocked nose." Tule said, cheeks reddening from the drink slightly as he gestured with his glass “That is my prescription.”

"I'm sure you're right." Arron said with a nod, eyes going to the roof ladder before slowly drifting back to sit beside Tule once more. He offered the old man a refill, who was gracious enough to only hesitate a moment before extending his glass out. Arron smiled and filled the mans cup, before he too leaned back and admired the stars above. Bajor's moons had yet to rise fully, and so at least the string of stars that soared over head had no competition to fight for their brilliance.

Arron spoke a phrase quietly to himself, and Tule had to put his glass down and ask him to repeat himself. A joke spoken in private could always be as blue as needed, especially where proper Temple going people were not in earshot, and Tule had an odd sense of humor.

"I said..." Arron said with a smile "...I did it."

“Did what?” Tule asked, turning slightly to better look at his protege.

“I solved the Shattered X problem.” Arron said, as though all the necessary information was contained within that word. And for Tule, for any man of medicine, and any couple cruelly denied a child in their lives that was true enough. The Shattered X was an all to common genetic deformity within Bajoran society, where one or more of the X chromosomes looked as though one of its legs had been snapped off and had reattached itself to its neighbour to form a K like shape. This did very little to the genetic information passed down from parent to child, and a child born with two Shattered X chromosomes would still grow and be well.

The problem was that that child would be of the 5% of infants that were carried to term with that deformity. Mortality rates for newborn infants were as high in two in five, and for that five to be born first they had to run a near 80% chance of dieing in the womb from complications. The Shattered X chromosome worked against the bodies natural reproductive cycle, and it even seemed to work against the developing fetus in trials done with artificial wombs. With the majority of Bajorans carrying the Shattered X, birth rates were low but sustainable even if the psychological cost was high on the parents.

Men and women like Santra Arron and his wife, Santra Lida. Tuel had had to pass by the small shelf in the entrance hall that was always overflowing with cut flowers, within which rested the flickering votive memorial candles.

And Arron had just dropped the fact he had solved the problem...as though he had just remember to buy milk from the farmers market in the morning. The young man smiled, turning to his teacher and allowing a happy grin to spread across his face as he nodded.

“How?” Arron asked, the clear enjoyment in explaining his clever solution evident in his voice.

“The Calden City drug trials-” Tule began to sputter, before being cut off with a wave of Arrons hands.

“A stop gap. Those drugs are hard to manufacture, and a single treatment regieme is nearly the same value as a upper class family income for the Darkara provinence! Where would people here, in the farm lands find those sort of funds? No those drug trials are, at best, money making ideas from the PharmCombines.” Arron snorted derisively “That and remind me of how many children have been born to that program from the ten families involved in the trail? 1? 2?”

“Two.” Tule said softly, rubbing his fingers along the glass of fire water in his hand “There was a third but there was an allergic reaction.”

“So we’ve slightly improved the odds of the higher class out breeding the farmers and producers. Speaking as a man of medicine I am thrilled we’re doing our best to ensure the elites survival.” Arron shook his head again and met his mentors eyes “My solution is much simpler, and far more cost effective in the long term. The Shattered X exists in the chromosomes of the male and female reproductive organs. Thats how its passed on to the child, creating the genetic cocktail that has turned the maternity wards of Bajor into a battlefield. My cure- The Santra Cure, now thats a name. The Santra Cure targets that chromosomal DNA in the testes and ovaries and alters it, breaking the Shattered X and replacing it with a normal X configured chromosome.”

Tule was silent for a moment, before he slowly set his glass.

“Genetically engineered virus specifically tailored to deliver the needed chromosomal edit without effecting the host genetic profile. In a single treatment the body becomes able to breed a Bajoran that will never again know the fear of the Shattered X: the next generation can live without that pain.” Arron said, continuing his glorious rendition of his triumph “Of course the trick was getting the virus past the bodies autoimmune response, after all its carrying a RNA strand that is designed to forcibly edit one part of the genetic blueprint. But by using the Bajoran flu as a carrier for the virus, by breeding a strain of the influenza virus with a secondary RNA receptor that is keyed to the reproductive signature of its new host...well suddenly the flu that sickens us for a few days of bed rest turns into a miracle. The bodies immune system reacts to the flu, but can’t counter the secondary infection vector of the new receptor. Its like placing a Vedek into an armoured tank and driving them into a riot between two differing interpretation of the faith.”

He turned to look at Tule and...frowned. The old man suddenly looked ancient, his eyes brimming with tears and as he looked at his young student. The news was astounding, even groundbreaking for its simplicity, and it was rightly it should stir the heart of every Bajoran who had known the pain of loss as Arron had. He reached out a hand to pat the old mans chest, to let him know everything was alright...but his hand patted something hard and rectangular on Tule’s sternum.

“Arron I-”

He reached under his old friends shirt.

“-I wanted to help you-”

He gripped the hard object on his friends chest, and tugged at it forcibly.

“-but the university...my funding…”

Arron held the item in his bare hand now, admiring the small wireless microphone and transmitter that sat there.

“They promised me…” Tule said quietly.

Arron could barely hear the sound of rapidly approaching foot steps in the streets below, nor the crunch of slowly moving armoured cars. All he could hear was the sudden rising thudding of his heart as his blood seemed to boil in his veins. He looked to Tule, to his friend. For the first time in his life, Santra Arron, a man sworn to the medicinal arts and saving the lives of his fellow Bajorans, held murderous intent in his heart.

That feeling would find a loving and nurturing home there in the decades to come.