by Thomas Hopp
“My Mustang!” I cried, moving to touch a fender like the shoulder of a dear friend I thought I had lost. The midnight blue paint-job was scraped and dented all over, but the car was intact. “How - ? Who?”
“We ran a cable down from the pickup,” John explained, slapping the roof of his own rig. “Pulled her right up to the road. No sweat. Tleena drove her here.”
My joy at having my beloved car back was tempered by distress at its barely drivable condition. I looked over the dents that covered it from top to bottom and side to side, grumbling to McKean, “No car chases this time. Do you remember telling me that?”
McKean replied, “I’ll try to get ImCo to cover the cost of repairs. After all, the damage occurred while discovering the company’s greatest new source of revenues.”
“Next time, we’ll take your car.”
“Perhaps.”
Gordon got in the passenger seat of the pickup and John sat behind the wheel.
“You know,” old Steel said. “It isn’t all about saving one whale or another, anyway. What’s important is saving all the whales. Saving all the different kinds of whales. But whales have no stronger allies than Makahs. We’re the ones whose lives depend on whales. Not the protesters. The protesters can take up a new cause any time they want. They can go off to Africa and protest starvation, or to the Middle East and protest war, and they can forget about whales any time they want. But a Makah can never change what he is. He’s a whale eater when he’s born and he’ll be a whale eater when he dies. A Makah is bound to whales like nobody else. If whales die off, then Makahs die off too. If Makahs were in charge of whales all over the world, don’t you think we’d make sure they were safe and healthy and strong? We’d make sure there was no pollution in their waters, no drift nets to trap them, no ships’ propellers chopping them up, no military sonar deafening them underwater. And then with solemn prayers for forgiveness, we would take one or two of them to feed our children. We would do it quickly and mercifully because they are us and we are them.”
John Steel cranked the ignition and the old truck rumbled to life. “We’d better go before we miss our ferry,” he said.
“Aren’t you going with them?” I asked Tleena, who remained with McKean and me on the curb.
“No,” she said, waving goodbye to John and Gordon as they pulled out and headed for the ferry terminal. “I told Father I’ll be staying with Aunt Edna for a while.”
McKean excused himself and returned to the lab, leaving me and Tleena standing on the sidewalk. I suggested we take a walk along the waterfront, given that the clouds had parted into an afternoon sunbreak. We strolled for quite some time, arm in arm, passing the fronts of piers and enjoying the fresh salt air. Near the Seattle Aquarium we paused at a balustrade overlooking the lively green waters of Puget Sound. The outbound ferry sounded its horn. Sunlight glinted off the waves and lit Tleena’s face with radiant, rippling light. Before I could speak, she said, “Father thinks I’ll be staying with Aunt Edna, but that’s not the whole truth.”
“It isn’t?” I puzzled.
A delicious smile came over her face. “I’ll go to Aunt Edna’s tomorrow. Tonight I’ll be with you, Phineus Morton, if you’ll have me.”
My heart leaped inside my chest. “Of course, Tleena! I’d be delighted!”
She wrapped her arms around my neck, and we kissed.
Epilogue
It has been quite a few months since Peyton McKean created his synthetic cure for the Neah virus. News media for a time touted Dr. McKean as “The Greatest Mind Since Sherlock Holmes’ for solving the mystery of the virus’s origins and its means of neutralization. The disease was attacked in a sweeping public-health offensive orchestrated by Kay Erwin and carried out by the CDC working with the National Guard. As soon as ImCo’s large-scale production facility was at full capacity, the drug, now dubbed “Imcoline,” was distributed by hazmat-suited soldiers moving in convoys of Humvees and trucks throughout Western Washington.
They delivered the cure to neighborhood after neighborhood until every resident got a dose. The virus’s inroads on the Seattle side of Puget Sound were eradicated before they could spread. Although urban centers on the Olympic Peninsula like Bremerton and Aberdeen had been deserted briefly in fear of the virus, life returned to normal once McKean’s medicine was circulating in their citizens’ bloodstreams.
The Guardsmen faced increasingly difficult situations as their two-pronged assault moved northbound up the Pacific coast and westbound on the Straight-of-Juan-de-Fuca shore. Nevertheless, small towns were rescued one by one. Only the towns nearest the outbreak’s origin were a challenge. Port Angeles on the east, and Forks on the south of Neah Bay, had descended into chaos. Even those towns, however, sheltered majorities of unharmed people who had heeded the calls to stay at home. Most had survived on stored food and emerged from hiding as the Guard restored power and moved through the streets bullhorning the call to get a dose of Dr. McKean’s chemical salvation.
Virogen produced an identical product under license from Immune Corporation and distributed it on the East Coast and in the Midwest. Small outbreaks occurred at or near airports in Denver, Chicago, and Miami, but these were quickly contained by feeding Imcoline to the victims and all their neighbors, coworkers, and other contacts.
Despite the Neah virus’s lethal nature, it claimed only 177 fatally-infected victims all told. A further 345 people recuperated with lasting sequelae including emotional and neurological disturbances. David Curman died from his exposure to the brain-killing effects of the Holloman vaccine. Stuart Holloman himself remains hospitalized long-term in a peculiar conscious-coma condition, in which he is unresponsive to the world although apparently wide awake. The production and further testing of Holloman vaccine is permanently banned by the FDA. However, a new vaccine engineered by Peyton McKean utilizing only the G2 proteinis making its way through careful preclinical testing in hope of developing a backup therapy for Imcoline. The new vaccine, given the trade name NeahVax, is set to become ImCo’s most successful product and has rocketed the company’s stock to all-time highs on the New York Stock Exchange.
Peyton McKean himself has been reinstated as an ImCo employee, although he has not been given any greater rank. On the contrary, another Holloman subordinate, Ronald Lindahl, a man McKean once described as Holloman’s greatest ass-kisser, has been elevated to replace the man he so often kowtowed to. Nonetheless, McKean has been recognized by scientists around the world for defeating the virus. His scientific credentials have advanced even if his seniority at ImCo has not.
Concerning the source of the epidemic, namely the Spaniard’s virus-contaminated coffin, the facts are obscure. A new house now stands on the spot where the tomb was discovered. The dark crypt itself was decontaminated with a flood of chlorine gas and then obliterated with a fill of muddy soil. Leon Curtis, now fully recovered and immune to the Neah virus, was bold enough to enter the crypt one last time before its destruction and remove the Spaniard’s sword and scabbard, which after sterilization have taken their place among the cultural artifacts housed at the Makah Museum in Neah Bay, including the now decontaminated parchment.
The exact fate of the bentwood cedar box and the bones of Capitan Nuniez are the subject of much speculation by Alma Kingfisher and others at the Makah Elder Center. It is known that federal agents swarmed the lot for two weeks overseen by the BIA man, Grayson. It is known that the coffin, removed before the crypt was gassed and filled, was put into a large military truck with biohazard insignia on its back doors. It is known that the truck left town eastbound under armed National Guard escort. Beyond that, all is guesswork. The most favored notion is that the coffin and its contents now reside in an isolation facility at the Biological Warfare Unit in Fort Detrick, Maryland. What will become of them next is anybody’s guess.
Sean McKean, with the vigor of youth, made a rapid recovery and was reunited with his mother after the quarantine lifted. He shows no lasting mental effects and, as
before, evidences signs of possessing a full measure of his father’s vast mental capacity. My neighbor Penny Worthe narrowly missed a dose of the bad vaccine, but she is hale and hearty and as nosy as ever.
Even my peace lilies have prospered, as Penny pointed out they need standing water in the saucers under their pots. Since I adopted her method, their brown spots have gradually cleared up.
The bank towers and other money-making skyscrapers of Seattle were shut down for a few unforgettable days. Whether their normal denizens paused during that time to contemplate what is truly important in life, who knows?
The town of Neah Bay was never significantly threatened because most whale-eating residents were resistant to the virus. Today life there has resumed its charming tribal contrast to the bustling babalthud city of Seattle two-hundred miles and a few centuries to the east.
John Steel completed his high-school equivalency studies under Tleena’s tutelage and awaits word on his application to the University of Washington. Gordon Steel remains a mysterious figure, hidden away in his longhouse at Spirit Cove. He provides sea spinach for all in Neah Bay who have a taste for it, and that means most people. His source of blubber is obscure because Spirit Cove is remote from the prying eyes of babalthuds, but it seems likely no Makah child will ever again lack a serving of vitamin W.
As for Tleena Steel and me - well, that’s another story.