PREVIOUSLY.
[The kingdom did not stand to lose from these expeditions, of that I was certain. We gained exotic resources, invaluable naval experience, and a global understanding that placed us decades ahead of any other nation.
But Zasaba's words resonated like a muffled bell in my head.
I felt a cold knot in my stomach at the thought that perhaps I had made a mistake. I had projected the fears of my past life into the present, spending fortunes and risking lives on overseas expeditions. It was all useful, all profitable, yes. But at the end of the day, the truth remained that none of it was absolutely necessary for the greatness of my people.
Was I protecting the kingdom, or was I simply playing god, moving pieces across a map that was far too large?]
----
One month later.
Year 14 of the SuaChie Calendar, Fifth Month (July 1496).
Dawn City (Santiago de Cuba, Cuba), Caribá Region (FRFI).
Chuta's Office, Stone Manor.
This month brought a dense, suffocating heat to the Caribá region.
Exactly a month had passed since that long afternoon of reflection with Zasaba, and my mind had almost entirely cast aside its existential doubts regarding the expansion and colonization of distant continents.
I had a far more terrifying dilemma breathing down my neck, an invisible and ruthless enemy that understood nothing of trade treaties or maritime borders: foreign diseases.
Ever since that 'fateful' first encounter with Christopher Columbus in the latter half of Year 10, both I and the kingdom's select group of health experts had been waging a war in the shadows.
I knew, from the history of my past life, that European viruses and bacteria were a thousand times more lethal to my people than gunpowder or steel. For that reason, the planning and construction of Dawn City in what would become Cuba were designed with an almost paranoid purpose of quarantine.
The sanitary controls imposed on ships, cargo, and above all, the crews from the Old World, were so strict they bordered on tyranny.
We had to maintain that ironclad blockade for two full years before daring to allow a single European vessel to dock at any of the other Suaza ports in the Caribá region.
A soft, intentionally polite cough tore me from my grim memories.
I blinked, bringing into focus the man seated across my desk. It was Oiya, an ancient and respected shaman from the deep lands of the Great Forest, the vast Amazon.
Now, stripped of his traditional ritual attire and clad in the immaculate tunic of the Academy, he carried out the crucial role of the kingdom's chief disease investigator.
"My apologies, Oiya," I murmured, rubbing the bridge of my nose to dispel the fatigue. "I was lost in thought for a moment."
Oiya offered a tranquil smile, traced by the deep lines of a man who had seen too much life and far too much death.
"Do not worry, Great Leader. By now, I am quite accustomed to your mind traveling to places the rest of us cannot see," he replied with imperturbable calm.
I felt a faint heat of shame in my cheeks. Having my subordinates notice my mental flights into 'memories of the future' always unsettled me, but I quickly composed myself, straightening my back and returning to the macabre subject at hand: smallpox.
Ever since the trade routes had opened, we had encountered repeated cases of European sailors carrying the disease. Thanks to the gods, our ports and their relentless prevention systems had managed to halt any massive outbreak.
Coupled with this was the fact that we had trained European captains through severe threats; it was now common practice for them to drop anchor far from the coast and hoist emergency flags to alert our patrols if they detected visible cases aboard their vessels.
That early warning system had saved the kingdom from deadly outbreaks, but I knew that a containment wall never holds forever. It was mathematically impossible to keep smallpox out of our territory for eternity.
For that reason, using the scarce and vague medical knowledge I retained from my previous life, I had entrusted Oiya with the dark and urgent task of clinically studying this and other plagues.
"Tell me, Oiya," I urged him, interlacing my hands over the mahogany desk. "What real progress has your research group made?"
The countenance of the shaman-turned-scientist immediately darkened. His eyes, normally warm, took on a clinical, disturbed gleam.
"I find it absolutely incredible, and frankly terrifying, just how deadly these diseases from the East can be, My Lord," Oiya began, opening a leather notebook filled with annotations and anatomical diagrams. "We have cross-referenced our empirical data with the historical and medical records obtained through trade with Europe. And, of course, with the results of the... experimental practices you authorized us to conduct."
A shiver ran down my spine. To understand the beast, I had been forced to sacrifice a part of my modern morality, secretly allowing the physicians to perform unethical trials on irredeemable prisoners of war and slaves condemned for the gravest of crimes. It was a stain on my soul, a sin I carried in silence to save twenty-one million innocents.
Oiya turned a page and took a breath.
"Upon opening the bodies, we have found that the internal organs are reduced to a bloody mass and..."
"Enough," I interrupted him abruptly, raising a firm hand. "I appreciate it, Oiya, but I would rather not hear the more grotesque internal details. Give me the clinical progression. How does it manifest on the outside? What should our medical inspectors be looking for at the ports?"
Oiya nodded, recovering his professional posture and clearing his throat before detailing the horrors they had observed in the "volunteer" subjects.
"The progression is deceptive at first, but relentless in its development, Great Leader. We have documented it in three clear phases:
The first four days: The patient begins to present sudden, soaring fevers. This is followed by paralyzing muscle aches, severe fatigue, and episodes of violent vomiting. At this point, inexperienced Europeans confuse it with sea fatigue or common tropical fevers.
The next four days: The true face of the plague reveals itself. Painful sores appear inside the mouth and throat. Simultaneously, flat red spots emerge, always starting on the face and spreading rapidly like wildfire down the arms, torso, and legs.
The second week: Those red marks raise and eventually turn into hard pustules filled with a thick fluid. It is at this stage that the suffering reaches its peak, and where the disease claims the majority of its victims."
I nodded in complete, sepulchral silence, not daring to interrupt him again. The investigator's words fell like lead stones inside my office.
I felt I was suffocating. I pushed my chair back, stood up, and walked slowly toward the room's large window. I rested both hands on the wooden frame and closed my eyes, allowing the strong, clean breeze of the Caribá Sea to strike my face, in a desperate attempt to sweep away the horrific images of pustule-covered bodies that Oiya's account had injected into my mind.
The bustle of the shipyards, the sounds of merchant ships, and the voices of thousands of healthy people drifted up from the streets of Dawn City. All that progress, all that majesty of stone, iron, and wood I had built over the last few years, was terrifyingly fragile in the face of an enemy we could not kill with arrows or shatter with our Juracán cannons.
"Great Leader?" Oiya's voice sounded behind me, cautious yet laden with genuine concern. "If this account is too... overwhelming, I can halt my report and present only the numerical conclusions."
The sound of his voice broke the trance I had fallen into. I took one last, deep breath of the salty air wafting through the window, letting the breeze sweep away the momentary anguish, and turned around slowly.
"No, Oiya. Forgive me," I replied, walking back to my desk. Every step seemed to weigh a ton, but I forced myself to maintain my composure. I sat down, rested my elbows on the wood, and looked at him intently. "I need to know everything. Exactly what we are up against. Continue, please. What happens after the second week?"
The ancient shaman nodded, his face recovering that mask of scientific stoicism he had cultivated so well at the Academy.
"For those subjects who manage to survive the onslaught of the pustules, the following two weeks are of a slow and agonizing decay," he explained, tracing a finger over one of his chilling sketches. "The wounds begin to dry. Thick scabs form, which, upon falling off, leave red marks—sunken scars that will disfigure the individual's skin for the rest of their life. But vanity is the least of our problems, My Lord."
Oiya paused, and I saw his jaw clench slightly. "In cases where the pustules reach the eyes... the disease devours their sight. Many of those who survive are plunged into an absolute and irreversible blindness."
I let out a long, trembling sigh, rubbing my eyelids as if that could banish the image of an entire generation of Suaza warriors, artisans, and farmers groping in the dark. The human cost would be incalculable.
"What is the actual mortality rate you have observed?" I asked, my voice sounding much hoarser than I intended. "Give me cold numbers, Oiya."
"Of the cases we studied in total isolation... thirty percent died."
The figure struck me, but in a strangely dissonant way. I blinked, surprised. My mind, clinging to the painful memories of history classes from my past life, had projected a far more nightmarish scenario.
I vaguely remembered that smallpox in the Americas had reached direct mortality rates of fifty percent or more in unexposed populations. That our numbers yielded "only" thirty percent left me at an emotional crossroads: it was a horrifying tragedy, yes, but paradoxically, it was a much better scenario than my worst fears.
"Thirty percent?" I repeated, trying to decipher if there was a flaw in his methodology.
"That is correct, but I must make a crucial distinction," Oiya hastened to clarify, raising an index finger. "Our health team divided the studies into two isolated situations. That thirty percent corresponds to subjects who were not given any palliative care; they were left to their own devices exclusively to observe the natural cycle of the disease. However, I must emphasize that they started from a stable baseline of health. They were well-nourished and strong men prior to infection."
The investigator leafed through his notes, searching for a specific page before continuing. "The second group, however, received care. Constant hydration, cold cloths for the fever, strict cleaning of the wounds with our herbal infusions to prevent secondary putrefaction. In that group, the mortality rate dropped drastically to fifteen percent, and comprised almost entirely of the older subjects or those with frail constitutions."
I nodded slowly, grasping the magnitude of what he was telling me. The robust health and nutritional infrastructure of the Suaza Kingdom—the one I had obsessively built over fourteen years—was our first shield. We were not malnourished tribes; we were a prosperous civilization, and our bodies had the strength to fight back.
But that was a controlled bubble.
I leaned back in my chair, pressing my fingertips together.
"Let us do a speculative exercise, Oiya," I said, feeling the knot in my stomach return. "Suppose the prevention at the ports fails. That a single infected sailor slips past us, or a merchant evades the quarantine. If we let this disease loose in a small town—say, a farming village on the borders of the Caribá region, where there are no Academy physicians or garrisons to enforce isolation... What do you believe the real effect would be?"
Oiya did not answer immediately. His gaze darkened, losing its clinical gleam. He returned to his leather notebook, flipping through several pages until he reached a section filled with numbers and complex projections.
"I do not have to speculate much, Great Leader. We have already discussed this scenario with the kingdom's mathematics and logistics experts," his voice took on a lugubrious, almost funereal tone. "If the disease attacks a population with no knowledge of it, that does not know how to treat it, the contagion curve would be absolute. Our calculations assume that, in the worst-case scenario, and only by the will and mercy of the gods... barely ten percent of the village would survive."
I froze. My heart skipped a beat.
"A ninety percent death rate!" I exclaimed, leaning over the desk, unable to conceal my horror. "But you just told me the lethality is thirty percent. Is this massacre... a direct effect of the virus?"
"No, My Lord," Oiya replied firmly, holding my gaze. "The mathematics of death are crueler than the disease itself. In that hypothetical case, we calculate that the direct deaths caused by the ravages of the illness on the body would account for fifty percent at most."
"And the rest?"
"The collapse of life itself," Oiya decreed. "Think about it, My Lord. If half a village falls bedridden, burning with fever and covered in sores, who harvests the fields? Who brings fresh water from the river? Who feeds the healthy children or tends the fire? No one... The remaining deaths would be from starvation, dehydration, infections due to poor hygiene, and sheer panic. The disease kills half, but hunger and chaos kill the rest."
The raw logic of his words crushed me.
It was exactly what had happened in the original history of my world. Entire empires collapsing not solely from the virus, but from the absolute paralysis of their society. It was a profoundly disheartening prospect. A death sentence hanging over our heads by a silk thread.
"It is... bleak, Oiya," I murmured, feeling a sudden exhaustion deep in my bones.
"It is, Great Leader," the old shaman conceded, snapping his leather notebook shut with a dull thud. "But I beg you not to lose hope. Because not everything we have discovered in the quarantine dungeons is grim."
I looked up, furrowing my brow, searching his hardened face for any trace of optimism.
"Explain that to me. What good could possibly come from this nightmare?"
A small, almost imperceptible smile traced Oiya's lips.
"A couple of years ago, long before the first stone was laid to found this Dawn City, you and I had a long conversation. Do you remember? We spoke of the gods' favor, of how the human body possesses the sacred capacity to learn and adapt to poisons and foul airs, given the necessary time."
My mind spun at top speed. Adaptation of the body. I recalled that chat. I had tried to explain the rudimentary concept of the immune system without using modern terminology he wouldn't be able to grasp.
"I know what you speak of," I said, feeling my pulse quicken slightly. "The body remembers the enemy. Go on."
"Exactly," Oiya nodded, his eyes now shining with genuine excitement. "Because we were previously able to detain a handful of European prisoners condemned for petty thefts in the port... we made a monumental discovery. Those European men carried the sickness, yet they did not fall gravely ill; their bodies already held the favor of the gods—they already knew the beast."
Oiya leaned forward, planting his hands on my desk, closing the distance between us as if he were about to reveal the greatest secret of the universe.
"I took those prisoners and used them in a completely isolated case study. I forced active contagion from one of these Europeans onto one of our prisoners, a warrior of Mexica origin."
I held my breath, my modern mind racing ahead of his words, intuiting the medical miracle the brilliant shaman had stumbled upon in his ethical darkness.
"The Mexica warrior fell ill, My Lord," Oiya whispered, full of awe. "He burned with fever, yes. But he survived. His body fought and adapted. And now... now the disease is incapable of ever touching him again."
Variolation.
The word crossed my mind like lightning, suddenly illuminating the shadows of my anguish.
Oiya, guided by a blend of shamanic intuition and empirical observation, had just accidentally rediscovered a millennia-old practice from my previous world. A technique that, if my historical memory did not fail me, would be used in Asia and Europe for centuries until the invention of the true vaccine.
My heart began to pound so hard I could almost hear it drumming in the silence of the office. I leaned over the desk, locking eyes with the investigator.
"Explain the exact procedure to me, Oiya," I demanded, feeling the texture of the varnished wood beneath my palms helping to keep me anchored to reality. "How did you manage to pass the sickness from one body to another without killing him outright? And has the Mexica been the only case?"
Oiya opened his leather notebook once more, tracing his rough fingertips over the diagrams. The scent of fresh ink and cured parchment reached me, mingling with the salty breeze from the port.
"It was a crude process, Great Leader. We took the rot itself: the thick pus of the small pustules, and even the dried scabs that fell from the Europeans' skin. We used very fine obsidian blades to make superficial cuts and small punctures in the arms of the study subject, introducing that matter directly into his blood."
The elderly investigator paused, frowning, as if reliving the long, sleepless nights in the quarantine wards.
"The Mexica presented the same symptoms as the normal disease. He burned with fever and sprouted a few sores, but all on an immensely reduced scale. The effects were weak and passed quickly. However, ..." Oiya raised a finger, adopting a tone of severe warning, "...we discovered that, during those days of fever, the inoculated can spread the sickness with the same fury as a dying patient. Extreme caution must be taken to keep them confined until they heal completely."
I nodded, assimilating the information. It was the classic risk of variolation: you saved the individual, but you could unleash an epidemic if you didn't isolate them.
"But that is not all, My Lord," Oiya continued, and for the first time, I saw a spark of scientific pride in his tired eyes. "Once the Mexica healed and became immune, we took the matter from his scabs and infected other subjects in the same way. And it worked! The shield of the gods was transmitted. We no longer need the original subject to be a sick European; we can use our own people to spread the protection."
I leaned back slowly in my chair, pleasantly surprised. While the bustle of Dawn City's shipyards echoed in the distance, my mind was bombarded by fragments of my past life.
Medical data, forgotten documentaries, articles I had read out of boredom or curiosity. Other diseases crossed my memory, but above all, one name shone with intensity: Edward Jenner.
I remembered how that doctor had created the first safe vaccine using cows infected with a bovine variant of smallpox. That was where the word vaccine originated.
We were a single step away from absolute immunity.
"Oiya, tell me something," I interjected, trying to keep my enthusiasm in check. "What are the age ranges of the subjects who have received this treatment so far?"
"Because these are secret trials on prisoners of war and criminal slaves, we have only worked with men between twenty and fifty years of age," Oiya answered, checking his notes. "We have noticed that older subjects, or those with bodies punished by the quarries, present more dangerous complications and fevers. The younger ones tolerate it better."
I rubbed my chin. In my time, childhood vaccination plans were the foundation of the species' survival. I needed Oiya to understand that inoculating young children, specifically in the two-to-five age range, would be the most effective course of action.
Their systems were in full development, ready to learn and adapt. But I could not speak to him of antibodies, T-cells, or active immunological responses. I had to speak his language.
"Listen to me closely, Oiya," I said, adopting a deep, almost mystical tone, staring intently into the shaman's eyes. "I firmly believe that the gods protect pure beings with the greatest ferocity."
The investigator tilted his head, intrigued. "Pure beings?"
"Children," I proclaimed, gesturing vaguely toward the window, out to the city where the kingdom's new generations ran through the cobblestone streets. "People who have not yet been corrupted by the horrors of the world, who act only with kindness and whose blood is fresh. Their spirits are malleable, just like their bodies. If the gods favor a hardened thirty-year-old prisoner, imagine how they will embrace an infant. I believe it will be much better to inoculate the little ones; they will adapt faster and with far less suffering."
Oiya looked at me in perplexity at first. His white eyebrows drew together in the center of his forehead. Inoculating a child with European rot sounded like madness. But I saw the gears in his mind begin to turn.
He thought of the overwhelming strength with which children grew in the kingdom, of their inexhaustible vitality, and—being a man of faith as well as science—his belief in spirits finally tipped the scales. He convinced himself.
"It makes... it makes a great deal of sense, Great Leader," he murmured, nodding slowly. "The vital energy within them is an overflowing river. I accept your wisdom, but I urge caution. I will run a trial at first, under strict isolation, with a small group of children from the Royal Orphanage... If the spirits protect them as you say, I will proceed with the rest."
"Do it," I ordered firmly, assuming my role as absolute ruler. "And do not worry about the logistics. When you are certain that it works, I will issue direct orders to all regional governors, granting absolute priority to regions with ports. I will instruct Umza to print the measures and edicts in the official newspaper. And I will speak with the high priests; we will have every temple and church in the kingdom preach this sacred cut as a blessing from the gods."
Oiya nodded, visibly relieved to have the full weight of the state apparatus backing his medical campaign. He closed his notebook and looked at me with a mix of respect and curiosity.
"And you, Great Leader? Will you also submit to this... sacred cut?"
I thought about it for a moment. If I wanted thousands of inhabitants in the Caribá region and beyond to accept having pus injected into their veins, the leader of the empire had to bare his arm first.
"Yes," I replied without hesitation. "I will. I will set the example in front of the entire capital if necessary." I paused, feeling a cold knot in my stomach as I thought of my family. "But my wives will not. For the time being, no one in my inner circle, save myself, will receive this inoculation."
Oiya tensed, clearly surprised. For the leader to accept the risk yet exclude his women contradicted the logic of protection we had just discussed.
"Why, My Lord? If the sickness attacks the palace..."
"Because I want you to do something before that," I interrupted him, rising from my chair. I paced slowly across the office, searching for the exact words to guide his brilliant mind toward the ultimate discovery. "Tell me, Oiya, what do you think of animals?"
The shaman stood at attention, thrown off balance by the sudden change of subject.
"They are children of the earth, My Lord. They give us sustenance and strength."
"Exactly. They are more intimately tied to nature itself than we are," I said, weaving my modern knowledge into the cosmogony of my empire. "And I believe this bond has earned them a special protection. Nature shields them against the evils that afflict men."
Oiya frowned, thoroughly confused. His eyes sought mine, trying to decipher the riddle.
"I do not understand what you mean, Great Leader. What do animals have to do with the plague of pustules?"
I stopped in front of him and rested both hands on the leather notebook he held against his chest. I looked at him with absolute intensity.
"It is highly probable that in these new animals that have arrived on the ships from Europe lies the true solution. A pure version of the gods' protection, without the risk of death." I paused, ensuring that every syllable was carved into his mind. "In cows, Oiya. In the udders of cows, we will find the ultimate answer."
The elderly investigator stared at me, blinking several times. His jaw dropped slightly, far more stupefied and astounded than when I suggested inoculating the infants. His voice emerged in an incredulous, drawn-out whisper.
"Cows?"