McKean 02 The Neah Virus

by Thomas Hopp

  “Indeed they are,” he agreed. “But scientific breakthroughs require quiet contemplation. Rushing into things and hitting dead ends is a way to waste precious time. We’ll all do our jobs better after some rest.”

  As McKean made a few notes for the next morning’s experiments, I left him and went out ImCo’s front door with a small vial of sea spinach, which McKean had given me to protect my health, stashed in a coat pocket. The protesters were gone. Perhaps they had retreated to their homes in fear of attacks by maniacs, or perhaps the backfire of their pressure tactics had given them cause to think things over. Whatever the reason, their ill-advised meddling had ended.

  I walked home through empty streets, missing my wrecked Mustang. I passed a man in a rumpled business suit who lay literally in a gutter, raving and snarling at me as I went by. Although he was too weak with the Neah virus to attack, the mad-dog look in his eyes suggested he would bite if I tried to help him. Farther along, I passed a barefoot woman in a camel-colored business skirt and nude-tone bra who wandered the sidewalks aimlessly, scratching her skin and tearing off the last tatters of her white blouse. Her reddened eyes stared at me starkly from puffy, purplish lids rimmed with smeared mascara, but she made no aggressive moves.

  If I had any doubts the disease could spread as rapidly in Seattle as it had in Port Angeles, they were dispelled. There were no cars in motion on any street, but here and there wrecks or abandoned vehicles stood in the street at odd angles, most with their doors open, some with their windows shattered out. A column of black smoke rose off to the east but no sound of a siren was to be heard.

  When I reached the Denny Heights Apartments and trudged up the stairs, Penny Worthe opened her door only as far as the chain would allow. She peered out with a spooked expression. “Fin!” she said frailly. “You’re not…sick, are you?”

  In answer, I smiled and held up the vial of sea spinach. “Come on over,” I said. “I’m willing to share.” She followed me into my apartment and I took the vial to the counter and dished up two portions of sea spinach in bowls. It smelled especially rank after its unrefrigerated travels. While we choked the goo down I turned on my TV. The President was seated at his desk in the Oval Office, midway through a speech.

  “Again,” he said, “I want to assure the public that the Holloman vaccine has been recalled, and not one single new dose will be given to anyone. I congratulate the scientists of Immune Corporation for having discovered an alternative treatment that blocks the progression of the disease. However, one significant problem remains. The substance exists nowhere in nature except in the oil of gray whales. This brings me to a sad announcement. Because of the lack of other sources, I have made a difficult but necessary decision. I have authorized the U.S. Navy to immediately begin hunting gray whales with every resource they possess. Based on our understanding of the required dose of the substance, and its limited presence in whale oil, it is likely that the whale population will be severely impacted. This is regrettable but necessary if human lives are to be saved. I have listened to the voices of concerned whale advocates but, given the choice of either whales or humanity, I have chosen humanity.”

  I switched off the TV and Penny and I exchanged dumbfounded looks. I said, “I can’t believe it. Peyton McKean’s discovery will be the cause of a whale massacre!”

  Penny’s eyes welled with tears. “I petted one from a boat in Baja California. It was such a peaceful creature - so serene, so intelligent. I even kissed it on the nose - ” Her voice broke. I put an arm around her and gave her a hug. She leaned her head against my shoulder and cried. After a while I took her to my door, kissed her on the forehead, bid her goodnight, and watched to see that she got safely across to her apartment.

  I slept fitfully. In dreams, I remembered the whales beckoning me to join them under the waters of Spirit Cove. Now the memory of their calls seemed more like cries for help, given the slaughter that was coming.

  Chapter 25

  The next morning I walked back to ImCo about 8 am. The only people I saw along the way were a few wandering half-dressed souls too delirious to even notice me. At ImCo, the street was deserted except for a trio of curious crows. I found McKean in his office, leaning his lanky body over sheets of computer printout atop the pile of papers on his desk.

  “Have you been working long?” I asked him.

  “I came back at 3 am,” he said without looking up from his data sheets. “I left Sean with a neighbor. Evelyn is still held off by the quarantine.”

  “Three am! But you told everyone to go home and get some rest!”

  “I didn’t say how much rest. In this case, I had hardly gotten to sleep when inspiration struck.”

  “But now you’ll be too exhausted to follow your own plan!”

  “Hardly. After the inspiration, it’s easy to push through to the conclusion whether you’re tired or not. It’s the inventive insight that requires rest, not the labor of proving it out. All that’s needed now is the kind of routine drudgery most people spend their entire lives doing.”

  I changed the subject. “The TV news last night was full of dire warnings. Did you see it?”

  “I avoided it. I’m quite capable of making my own assumptions. For instance, I assume the sickness has a solid foothold in Seattle despite efforts to contain it on the Olympic Peninsula.”

  “That’s right. But have you heard about the whales?”

  “Whales?” McKean paused his reading and looked up at me with genuine interest. “What about them?”

  I recapped the President’s call for whale hunting. McKean stared out at the brick wall opposite his window. “That’s horrendous,” he said. “I have every intention of developing a synthetic product, but even with my insight, it could take weeks to find the right procedure.”

  “In the meantime, your discovery has put the gray whale back on the endangered species list!”

  “Why is it,” McKean asked, “that every benefit to mankind comes at a cost to nature? The irony is breathtaking. My discovery will cause the slaughter of whales a thousand times worse than anything the Makahs ever contemplated. The warships are no doubt approaching the whaling grounds right now.”

  “Maybe the virus will spread more slowly than people think. There may be time - “

  “Precious little,” McKean said. “The situation looks pretty grave. I called Kay Erwin this morning.” He pointed at his computer monitor.

  “She looked refreshed by her dose of sea spinach, I assume.”

  “As a matter of fact, she did. But she said that, as of last count, hospitals in the Greater Seattle Area have reported a total of ninety-eight cases, with another seven cases elsewhere on this side of Puget Sound.”

  “The crows and ravens are spreading it.”

  “Agreed,” McKean replied. “I’m afraid this epidemic will explode in the next couple of days, just like in Port Angeles. The pattern is clear. But here comes Janet. Good news, I hope?”

  “Yep!” She entered from the lab with a smile on her otherwise weary-looking face.

  McKean explained, “Janet has been busy this morning.”

  “Since 4 am when you called me in.”

  “Yes, well, my inspiration of last night needed your attention. And your attention has been well invested.” He pointed at the sheets he had been studying. “An excellent first step. The mono-glycoconjugate came together in high yield, just as I hoped it would.”

  For my benefit, he explained, “I realized we could carry out the entire synthesis using enzymes to assemble the active molecule.”

  “Here’s the second step,” she said, handing him more computer printouts.

  “Looking good, as well,” he murmured, glancing them over.

  “Out of how many steps?” I asked, unwilling to let myself become too optimistic.

  “Three,” McKean replied. “There is just one more step in the process, Fin. And Robert and Beryl are hard at work on it. We may see some progress by this afternoon. The timeline to a cure has
shortened.”

  * * * * * * * * * *

  Given the urgency of the situation, I offered to help in the lab, but McKean declined. He explained that members of David Curman’s scientific staff had volunteered, and he was now leading a force of more than twenty scientists. ImCo had never struck me as a lazy place, but now people couldn’t take the time to walk from one lab to another. They rushed down the hallways, hurrying to complete duties Peyton McKean had assigned them. Despite the need for haste, McKean didn’t surrender his scientific scruples. He was particularly concerned that adequate safety testing be done before the new cure was made available to humans. Using fresh active material isolated from Gordon Steel’s batch of sea spinach, and with uncanny ability to foresee problems before they arose, he shepherded the safety-testing process as quickly as he had ramrodded the discovery of the synthesis method. Within hours he was putting a wrap on a highly successful testing regimen in which the oily material showed no trace of toxicity in any cell culture or animal tested. The substance seemed to reserve its toxic effects entirely for the Neah virus, which it proved capable of neutralizing with great efficiency.

  Never in my life had I seen such phenomenal speed and effectiveness in scientific research. Janet tuned in the lab’s radio to a news station that gave frequent updates of the disease’s spread from downtown into the suburbs. There were reports of shopping mall-goers fleeing a zombie-like maniac, neighborhoods of people shuttered in their homes in fear of anyone roaming the streets, and even one blazing gas station in Burien reminiscent of my own experience. The news reports seemed to goad McKean’s team to even higher levels of performance.

  As the combined workforce applied itself to every possible nuance of McKean’s scientific endeavor, I wandered the labs and halls aimlessly for a while. Passing David Curman’s office and finding it empty, I let myself in and sat at his desk. The room was small like McKean’s and furnished with an office desk, side computer desk, file cabinets, bookshelves, and guest chairs just like McKean’s. However, Dr. Curman had clearly possessed a different approach to organization. The surface of his desk was clean except for a blotter, a small clock, and a telephone. No chaotic strew of papers, no jumble of photocopies and books were to be found.

  I appropriated a pad of paper from within Curman’s desk and began writing down my experiences. As I scribbled, I realized Gordon Steel had been wrong about one thing. I wasn’t writing the epitaph of American society. Instead I was chronicling the end of the Neah virus. In my notes, I keyed on the strange and wonderful interaction I had observed between Peyton McKean and Gordon Steel. Once past their initial conflict, their complex blend of old and new thought, of shamanism and medical research, was nothing short of miraculous. I pondered the medicine snake Quykatsayak on Steel’s longhouse wall, remembering how the creature had seemingly come to life and seized me during my hallucination. I thought too, how Steel had said the two heads represented a balance between two worlds of medicine, Steel’s shamanistic lore and McKean’s fastidious laboratory work. Now the two men were on the brink of accomplishing what neither one could have done alone.

  I wandered back to the lab just after noon. McKean looked perplexed. “We’ve bogged down on the very last synthetic step,” he said. “The enzyme works less well than I hoped. We’re running out of it and I’ve begun to doubt we’ll get through the impasse without needing to order more. Unfortunately, the supplier is out-of-state. The quarantine might delay the delivery for weeks. If so, we may still have a catastrophe on our hands.”

  Near us, one technician from Curman’s group, an East Indian fellow, did a simple thing that alarmed us both. He lifted a purple-gloved hand and rubbed a knuckle at the corner of one eye. McKean went to him immediately and looked into his face. “You’re Biff Sundaralingam, aren’t you?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said the man.

  “The vegetarian who declined sea spinach because it contains whale oil?”

  “Yes, Dr. McKean. So sorry.”

  “Just this once, Sundaralingam, I suggest you violate your dietary rules - and save your life.”

  The man looked horrified. “Yes, of course - “

  Janet interrupted. “But we used the last of the sea spinach on the toxicity tests. Scraped the bottom of the barrel, literally.”

  McKean seemed at a loss. “We can’t risk having somebody else go berserk in this lab - ” His cell phone rang. He answered and briefly gave directions to ImCo from the ferry terminal. “See you in a few minutes,” he said to the caller. Slipping his phone into a lab coat pocket, he smiled. “Gordon Steel has just arrived in a pickup truck with two more buckets of sea spinach, enough to dose all of our workers - especially Biff.”

  “Wonderful!” I exclaimed. “But how did he get past the quarantine?”

  “Kay Erwin convinced the authorities to let him make a special ferry crossing.”

  McKean sent Beryl Shum down to await Gordon Steel and arrange for the sea spinach to be brought in at the loading dock. A few minutes later, Beryl ushered two people into the lab: Gordon and Tleena Steel. Gordon’s traditional robes were replaced with blue jeans, a plaid shirt and denim coat. His gray hair was tamed in a thick braid hanging down his back. Tleena was dressed simply in jeans and a red hoody sweatshirt with a black Thunderbird logo on the front. Her unexpected arrival left me momentarily speechless.

  McKean shook Gordon’s hand. I greeted Tleena with a hug.

  Gordon crowed at McKean, “We’re here to save your white asses!”

  “And our white asses thank you,” McKean replied.

  “How’s your boy, Sean?”

  “Fully recovered and playing with neighbor kids. The resilience of youth is impressive.” McKean’s expression darkened. “I’m sorry things didn’t turn out as well for your son.”

  “What about my son?” Steel said, wearing an inscrutable expression.

  “Er,” McKean balked. “His death.”

  The old man broke into a gap-toothed grin. “That rumor was greatly exaggerated!”

  McKean’s eyebrows raised. “What do you mean?”

  Steel called into the hallway, “John! Are you coming?”

  The day had been full of surprises, but a greater one now walked into McKean’s laboratory. John Steel! He stood tall and straight, his face glowing in healthy contrast to the ruined man I had met in Pioneer Square. I rushed to hug him as tightly as I had hugged Tleena. McKean, overjoyed at the sight of a man he thought dead, shook John’s hand vigorously. John smiled at the astonishment on McKean’s and my faces. “I guess you weren’t expecting me, huh?”

  “Not in a million years,” I said. “I remember the expression on your face when that harpoon went into you. You looked - “

  “Like I’d been killed? No way! Dag Bukwatch always was a bad harpooner. He didn’t get a good stick. It just ran along the side of my ribcage. At first I thought he’d killed me, just like you thought. That’s why I pulled him off the cliff. I figured we’d both die together. And part of my plan worked. Dag’s still out there somewhere. He couldn’t swim any better than he could harpoon. Now he’s crab bait.”

  “But you were wounded - !”

  “That harpoon tore out of my side when I hit the water. I went under deep and I came up spouting like a whale, but I knew right where to swim. I told you about Serpent’s Cave.”

  “Your failed spirit quest - “

  “That’s the place. Right there at the head of Spirit Cove. Surf was roaring right into the cave mouth. But I didn’t fight it like Dag did. A big wave washed me inside. Tossed me up on the rocks. I crawled onto a ledge and stayed put, ‘cause there’s no way out when the tide’s high.’

  “But why didn’t you die of exposure?” McKean asked. “Or blood loss?”

  John smiled. “I already had a stash of firewood in there. And some fire-making tools. And cedar boughs for a bed. I had a pretty bad gash on my side, but I put some seaweed on it - you know, kakalaklokadub. That stopped the bleeding and kept it from getting in
fected. I laid by that fire for two days, feeding myself on mussels and goose barnacles I got off the rocks. Finally, the storm calmed down and the tides changed and the water got low enough so I could get out.”

  “Amazing,” I said.

  “And, you know what else?” John continued. “The first night I was in there I had a vision. Just like I hoped for the first time! Quykatsayak came to me. He crawled up out of the ocean and he hissed in two voices at once. ‘John Steel!’ he said. ‘You are ready to call yourself a man now. I give you a new Makah name. From now on you’ll be called…’” Steel paused and looked at McKean and me. “Well, you couldn’t pronounce it. But it translates to Heals-The-People.”

  “Heals-The-People,” McKean said. “A great name for a descendent of Young Doctor and Devilfish.”

  John swelled with pride. “That’ll be my new job, healing sick Makah people. I’ll learn from my father how to make the old cures and help our people face the future stronger - like Young Doctor did.”

  “That’s a tall order,” said McKean. “But I’m sure you can handle it.”

  Tleena wove an arm through his elbow and smiled at him proudly. “I’m going to help him study for his high-school equivalency,” she said to us.

  “Then I’ll go college,” John added. “Maybe the University of Washington, if I can pass the entrance exams. And then medical school. I’ll combine modern medicine with traditional cures. I’ve got a vision now, and a mission in life, and the blessings of Quykatsayak. Nothing can stop me.”

  McKean turned to old Steel. “Speaking of healing people, let’s put that sea spinach of yours to use immediately. Tleena, would you be so kind as to dish up a dose for every one of my coworkers? There are plates and spoons in the cafeteria. And give the first dose to Biff, there.” He pointed to Sundaralingam, who was rubbing at his eye again.

  I showed Tleena to the cafeteria, and we returned with paper plates and plastic spoons. We ladled out portions of sea spinach for everyone in the lab, including a double dose for Sundaralingam.