I nodded. UN law governing transfer and ownership of war viruses was clear to the point of bluntness. Inert viral forms could be owned as subjects for study, or even, as one bizarre test case had proved, private trophies. Ownership or sale of an active military virus, or the codes whereby a dormant virus could be activated, was a UN indictable offence, punishable with anything between a hundred and two hundred years' storage. In the event of the virus actually being deployed, the sentence could be upped to erasure. Naturally these penalties were only applicable to private citizens, not military commanders or government executives. The powerful are jealous of their toys.