by Thomas Hopp
“I suppose it’s the best we can hope for,” I said. “But something else has come up.” I explained my discovery of Tleena Steel’s brother and his need of money to buy the harpoon.
“Interesting,” said McKean. “Buying the harpoon for him might bring us into the good graces of his father, who could tell us more about this legendary disease. But twenty-five hundred dollars is quite a lot for an uncertain payoff. Maybe the old man knows nothing more.”
“Could you get ImCo to pay for it?”
“Holloman would laugh me out of his office.”
“Okay,” I acquiesced. “But if this disease turns out to be real, then you and I must be at risk.”
“Possibly, but we still have no idea how contagious the Spaniard’s virus is. Rabies requires direct contact with a diseased animal or human - ” He stopped and caught his breath, seized by a sudden thought. “Archawat! He was bitten! He is our test case of virulence. If he has the disease, then we have proof that the CDC can rely on!”
McKean hurried to his office and used the speakerphone on his desk to track down Leon Curtis, who was back at the Neah Bay dig site. Talking on a scratchy connection from his cell phone, Curtis said, “I’m sorry Peyton, but I can’t confirm your theory. I saw Archawat half an hour ago. He and his crew paddled out of the bay with the protester ship on their tails. He was at the bow in the harpooner’s position and paddling as strong as any of them.”
McKean looked at me and shrugged. “The best laid theories of mice and men - ” Then he asked Curtis, “How’s progress on that mysterious parchment?”
“I’ve got it in a humidified cabinet at my office,” said Curtis. “Moisture should make it flexible enough to unroll. When I get back to Seattle tomorrow, I’ll flatten it out and make a photograph. I’ll e-mail you a copy as soon as I’ve got it.”
“Good enough,” said McKean. “I’ll be eager to see it.”
When he switched off the phone, McKean turned to me. “You see, Fin, it’s not a good research practice to jump to conclusions. If Archawat is still healthy after being bitten, then our epidemic may be nothing but a figment of hyperactive imaginations. Seeing Pete Whitehall die may have affected not only your judgment but mine as well.”
“I suppose that’s true,” I admitted. “But I plan to keep on worrying.”
“Me too,” McKean agreed.
Janet came in and sat at the computer. “I believe we’ve got ourselves a new virus,” she said.
McKean leaned near the screen with her and I looked over their shoulders.
“First of all,” Janet said, “most of the mononegavirus chips were blank.”
“That’s not too surprising,” said McKean. “I don’t think anyone seriously thought the Spaniard or Pete Whitehall died of the mumps.”
“But there are some interesting things going on with the rhabdovirus family microchip. First, the column of lyssavirus-one probes have lit up in exactly the same pattern we saw before.” She pointed to a column of brighter and darker green dots on the left side of the chip.”
“Excellent,” McKean remarked. “The first test of any scientific discovery is, can the experiment be reproduced? And you have done just that, Janet.”
She smiled at the compliment and went on. “Over here is the really interesting result.” She pointed to a column near the middle of the chip, which showed a pattern of lighter and darker green spots similar to, but distinct from the lyssavirus-one column.
“Hmmm,” McKean murmured. “Another virus with a partial match. Which virus is it?”
“VHSV,” Janet replied. “The Makah strain.”
“Makah,” he repeated. “Very interesting.”
“So it is a known virus after all?” I asked.
“Not exactly,” said Janet. “It’s the same kind of result we got with rabies virus. Strong matches on some probes, but weak matches on others, and no matches on still others. So it’s not exactly VHSV either.”
“VHSV,” I said. “What does that stand for?”
“Viral hemorrhagic septicemia virus,” Janet replied.
“Hemorrhagic,” I repeated. “Sounds nasty.”
“You would think so,” McKean interjected. “But it’s never been reported in humans. VHSV causes a fatal disease in salmon hatchlings. Quite a bad syndrome if you’re a fish. Victims begin to swim in circles and then they thrash around wildly. Next, their skin begins to slough off in bloody lesions. Finally, they die.”
“Thrashing about in water and dying,” I said. “That just about sums up what happened to Pete Whitehall.”
“I congratulate you, Phineus Morton,” McKean said with a smirk, “for consistently getting your speculations one step ahead of the facts. The extrapolation of thrashing fish to thrashing humans is apt, but also without any precedent in medical science. Still, I’m open to your theory.”
“What confuses me,” Janet said, “is that we’ve got some clearly positive probes with rabies and some clearly positive probes with hemorrhagic virus, but the dark probes say it’s neither one.”
“Confusing indeed,” McKean agreed, “unless one considers a third alternative. Perhaps the virus is a recombinant.”
“Recombinant?” I asked. “You mean, a combination of the fish virus with the rabies virus?”
“Exactly,” said McKean. “A sort of Frankenstein’s monster virus. Stitch a portion of the VHSV genome to a portion of rabies genome and viola! You’ve got a new organism made with parts of both. Conceivably, it could possess the biological properties of both. Recombination occurs rarely in nature, but it could be the answer here.”
“It sounds horrific,” I said. “The thought of madness and hemorrhage, both caused by the same microbe.”
“Possibly,” said McKean. “But just knowing what sort of virus we’re dealing with doesn’t tell us what it’s capable of doing or how to deal with it. The ways in which viral genes can recombine are almost infinite. And when dealing with viruses as deadly as two rhabdoviruses, I doubt we could guess which traits would survive the merger.”
“What about vaccines?” Janet asked. “Won’t a rabies vaccine block the infection? What about a VSHV vaccine?”
“Good thinking,” said McKean. “Conventional rabies vaccine, as well as a salmon vaccine from the aquaculture industry are readily available, I am sure. We can get some test sera from Kay Erwin and check their reactivity with the virus. But the half-lit probes worry me more than the strongly-lit probes. Their non-identity with the authentic viruses suggest this virus has mutated to something substantially different from either of its ancestors. It’s possible no existing vaccine will protect against it.”
“You are not inspiring much confidence,” I said. “I hate to think there is nothing we can do if this disease spreads.”
“Don’t worry Fin,” McKean responded. “We’re being pro-active.” He turned to Janet. “How have your efforts been going to isolate this virus?”
“Not well. I think the DNA in the bone sample is too old and damaged to give us the whole virus in one piece. We seem to be getting only fragments.”
I interjected, “How on earth could a fragmented virus infect Pete Whitehall or anybody else?”
“The ravens!” McKean exclaimed suddenly. “Fin, you are right to doubt that a virus can be infectious after two centuries of degradation. But if it were processed through living cells, in a living animal - “
“Then it could be - what? - reanimated, like Frankenstein’s monster?”
“Precisely, Fin. And you will recall that we observed ravens eating some of the corpse’s flesh and perching in branches over Pete Whitehall’s bulldozer. Perhaps he came in contact with their droppings.”
“How awful!”
“But not without precedent, Fin. If the bird flu epidemics have taught us anything, it is that birds can act as carriers of human diseases. In this case, the ravens may have reactivated the virus and delivered it to Pete Whitehall after two centuries! And old Gordon Steel’s predictions may carry m
ore weight than he realizes.”
“Or maybe he does realize,” I said.
I went back to my office and made some notes about McKean’s unsettling new theories. In the evening I went home and poured a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon and watched the TV news, which made no mention of any virus at Neah Bay or any threat of an outbreak. Only the briefest mention of Neah Bay came in a quick report about Whales First protesters successfully blocking another Makah whale hunt. There was not one word about raving maniacs or a death at the Makah Clinic. I made dinner and made some notes on my computer. Then, deciding tomorrow’s updates from Peyton McKean’s laboratories couldn’t arrive too soon, I went to bed.
* * * * * * * * * *
The next morning I went to my office more eagerly than I had on the previous day, hoping for another telephone summons from McKean. I wasn’t disappointed. His call came before I was halfway through my morning espresso.
“More excitement, Fin. Come and join us.”
I walked quickly to ImCo and found McKean in his office, where my knock was greeted by an over-the-shoulder wave that bade me enter and be seated. I took a chair and waited silently for some time while McKean leaned his lanky frame over one of the many photocopied scientific papers piled on his desk, until I began to suspect my arrival hadn’t made a sufficient impression on the man’s prodigious mind. Just as I opened my mouth to speak, he addressed me without turning. “She’ll be here in a moment.”
I assumed he meant Janet, but when the lab door opened, another woman with whom I was only too familiar crossed the hall and came into McKean’s office.
“Kay Erwin!” I rose to greet her. She smiled and shook my hand and as she did so, I consciously chased away memories of the day I had lain in a fever on her isolation ward and she, dressed in a biohazard suit, had inspected my body for smallpox sores, leaving no part of me unexamined.
“Hi, Fin,” she said, smiling thoughtfully as if remembering the same event. “You look well. Recovered from your close call with the jihad virus.”
“I’m glad that’s over with,” I replied. “It’s the least of my worries right now.” Kay sat down at the computer desk. I took my seat, watching McKean for a reaction. Although he too had been infected almost fatally with the jihad virus, he remained focused on his article, using a yellow highlighter on a passage that was of particular interest to him.
“It seems that my colleague here,” Kay gestured toward McKean, “has once again discovered an entirely new virus.”
“I’d heard that much yesterday,” I replied. “What’s making me nervous is that he and I might be among its first victims.”
McKean made no reaction, although I was sure he had heard.
Kay said palliatively, “Now Fin, you know we have yet to establish a link between the virus and anyone’s death. The Spaniard and Pete Whitehall may have died from other causes.”
I nodded affirmatively.
“You don’t look convinced,” she remarked.
“I’m not.”
“If it’s any comfort, we’re setting up a forward post for the CDC to track any new cases of mania on the reservation.”
“New cases? Last I heard there were five. How many how?”
“The victim count is up to six. Normally that wouldn’t trigger so much effort on my part, but Peyton is way ahead of us. He’s already got a possible etiological agent that’s hard to ignore. Haven’t you, Peyton?”
He nodded while continuing to read. I craned my neck to look at the running title of the article. It read: “Life Cycle And Variations Of The Rhabdovirinae.” McKean used his yellow highlighter pen to mark several more lines.
“This is not the usual order of things with a new outbreak,” Erwin explained to me. “Usually the virus is the last thing to be identified. But, given that Peyton has already got a potential agent from the rabies virus family in his sights, the pattern of symptoms is hard to overlook - sudden outbursts of raving mania, fever, convulsions, death.”
I pointed a thumb at him. “It’s beyond me how he manages to stay calm about all that.”
McKean finally set down his marker and turned to look at Erwin and me with a pleased expression on his face, which I thought was inappropriate to the subject being discussed. He said, “If we can isolate the new virus from any of those cases, that would be definitive.”
He said this with such enthusiasm that I was annoyed. “Peyton!” I said rather harshly. “Don’t you dread an epidemic as much as I do? Or do you want one?”
“I only meant it would be scientifically…engaging.”
“Fun, is what you mean to say.”
Erwin seemed to be infected by the gleam in McKean’s eye. “You’re right, Peyton,” she concurred. “Even if we can’t cultivate the virus directly from a victim of the mania, I’d say another four or five deaths would warrant a major investigation.”
“Then we’ll get everything we need.” said McKean. The gleam in his eyes increased. “Government grant money, more personnel to gather lab data about which organs are destroyed, some high-quality autopsies, detailed family histories.”
Erwin’s enthusiasm mounted to match his. “Peyton, this could be bigger than your discovery of a vaccine for the Congo River virus.”
I slapped my hand on the arm of my chair. “I can’t believe you two! I’d like to hear something other than premature congratulations. I want to know if I’ll be on that list of victims you’re so eager to study. I suppose if I dropped dead right now, you would giggle like schoolchildren and put me on the autopsy table!”
McKean and Erwin stopped smiling and both looked at me appraisingly. “Sorry Fin,” said McKean. “I get focused on science and sometimes forget I’m in this to save people’s lives.”
Kay placed a hand on her chest. “Oh my,” she said. “Did we really sound so heartless?”
“Yes, you did.” I sat back and folded my arms.
“Don’t misunderstand us,” McKean explained. “We’re merely excited at the prospect of solving this mystery before any substantial outbreak occurs.”
“Okay,” I said after a moment. “But you can’t blame me for being irritated. If I become one of the victims, I’m sure you’ll gladly add me to your statistics.”
“Why, of course, Fin,” McKean replied, suppressing a grin. “And myself too. At least then our sacrifice will add to scientific knowledge.”
“Sacrifice! I’m not going to let you make an experimental animal of me again.”
“But therein lies our problem.” McKean raised a long index finger. “Too few patients. Right Kay?”
She nodded. “Even though I’m half-convinced we’re dealing with a new viral disease here, it takes more than a hunch to convince Atlanta and Washington D.C. We’ve never quarantined any part of the country for a case of rabies.”
“But this isn’t exactly rabies,” I countered.
“Apparently not,” she agreed. “At least in Dr. McKean’s theory. But the government would be the bad guy if it closes down Neah Bay. If the outbreak doesn’t materialize it’s hard to tell people we’re sorry we messed up their lives, ruined their fishing season, screwed up their community. It was a false alarm.”
“I see your point,” I admitted. “But the new virus in the Spaniard and the new disease in Neah Bay seem like too great a coincidence to ignore.”
“Nevertheless,” McKean said, “we’ll get little government interest until we prove a causal connection between the virus and the mania. And that requires evidence of transmission of both the virus and the disease from one person to the next.”
“But it may have already happened in Pete Whitehall!”
“May have. But we have yet to culture a virus from his body.”
“Then what about Gordon Steel’s claim that it’s a disease already known to him?”
“Some would call that a mere speculation.”
“But if he knows the oral history of the tribe’s old medicine men and he says it’s Lost Souls disease, that counts for s
omething.”
Kay shook her head. “I’m afraid the CDC would never take a non-professional’s word.” She turned to McKean. “So far, we’ve got four European Americans, one Asian American, and one African American down with mania and fever but no Makahs. What do you make of that, Peyton?”
“Statistically speaking,” McKean mused, “out of the six cases, there ought to be more than one Makah, given that they constitute the great majority of the local population. That strikes me as very odd.”
“But it agrees with what Gordon Steel told us,” I reminded them.
Erwin nodded. “If it’s the start of a trend, then the old man might have a point. We would be looking at a disease that leaves Makahs untouched but hits everybody else.”
“A sort of cosmic retribution,” said McKean. “Once, it was outsiders who brought diseases that killed the Makahs. We might now be looking at the opposite situation.”
“Karma,” I said. “What goes around comes around.”
Erwin looked at her watch. “On that pleasant note, gentlemen, I’ll take my leave. I’ve seen enough data to convince me your virus is something new, Peyton. I’ve got to work fast if I want to get an update filed with the CDC before their workday ends.” After goodbyes, she hurried down the hall for the elevator, leaving me sitting in brooding silence while McKean resumed reading the paper on his desk.
After a few moments I remarked, “Peyton, I am astonished at how matter-of-factly the two of you discussed what might be an apocalypse in the making.”
