Hidden Empire (Empire 2)

"You mean 'sneeze,'" said the light-haired gunman.

Dr. Wangerin looked at him now with a kind of awe. "You were—you were the first person infected?"

"Monkey bite my brother Ire," said Chinma. "Monkey … sneeze me."

" 'Ire' was the name of the first victim of the aggressive form of the disease," said Dr. Wangerin. "I think the disease nexus just walked into our tent."

"That is why they kill my village," said Chinma. "I writed it in my notebook."

"I believe him," said Dr. Bekaba. "Of course they'd kill all the Ayere-speaking people. To punish them for starting this plague."

"So nobody can read his language except the boy himself?" asked the light-haired gunman.

Dr. Bekaba shook her head. "There are language experts in some of the universities here."

"Are there any in the United States?"

"I wouldn't know," she said. "Probably. Specialists in obscure African languages. And the boy doesn't speak English well enough to translate it himself. But he speaks Yoruba, don't you, boy?"

Chinma nodded.

"I speak Yoruba, like everybody around here," she said. "He can translate it into Yoruba and I'll render it in English. On the plane."

"Under close supervision and wearing the handcuffs every moment," said Dr. Wangerin.

Chinma thought Dr. Wangerin was very smart.

So did Dr. Bekaba. "As soon as I'm gone, they'll kill my family."

"We know your address. Will all your family be at home?" asked Dr. Wangerin.

"Yes, everybody's at home, because of the curfew," she said.

"I'll send an ambulance for them," said Dr. Wangerin. "We'll tell the authorities that we have reason to believe your family has been infected but we need to study them while still alive to observe the course of the disease. So they'll let us bring them here."

Dr. Bekaba nodded.

"We'll have to lie to your family, too," said Dr. Wangerin. "Until you're all in the air and out of here."

She nodded again.

Dr.Wangerin turned to Chinma. "You did the right thing, young man. These pictures—I think they'll bring down the Nigerian government."

"I think they'll start a civil war," said the light-haired gunman.

"How did you get a camera?" asked Dr.Wangerin.

Chinma turned to Dr. Bekaba and explained to her in Yoruba about the Nigerian scientist who rode with him out to see the trees where he had caught the monkeys. "I never knew his name," he said.

Dr. Bekaba translated for Dr. Wangerin, who nodded. "The other nexus," he said. "Now we know he didn't get a second, new infection from the monkeys out in the bush, he got it from this boy."

It took a moment, and then Chinma understood. The Nigerian scientist who gave him the notebook was dead.

He burst into tears. The scientist had been good to him. And Chinma had infected him, just like Father and all the others who died. In a way, even the villagers killed by the robbers and the army had died from Chinma's infection, too.

Since Dr. Bekaba had translated only what Chinma had told her, nobody knew why he was suddenly crying.

"Poor kid," said Dr. Wangerin. "He's lost his whole family." But Chinma's family had already abandoned him to die when he got sick. He had no more tears for them.