Whit looks up toward the moon as if looking for inspiration, and then begins. “I know what this looks like. That you think I’m responsible for the attack upon our clan. And in a way, I am.”
I watch him, using the same techniques of perception that he taught me to judge the truthfulness of his words. He is careful and keeps his face a blank page.
“It is true that I left Alaska to contact potential buyers of our Amrit, as I’m sure this boy’s father told you.” Whit watches me as carefully as I watch him back. He is trying to figure out how much I already know. I stare, unflinching.
“I went with the elders’ approval,” he says, and seeing my eyes narrow, he holds a hand up and backtracks. “Not their approval to spread word of the drug. That was my own doing. But I left our territory on occasion in order to get a reading on the outside world . . . on what events had occurred, so that we could stay informed of anything we needed to know.”
“I figured that out when I saw the modern books you brought back,” I say.
“It was important for us to keep abreast of developments in society,” Whit explains.
“Why?” I ask.
“We needed to remain hidden, so it was important to know that we were staying off the radar of the outside world.”
“You could have done that by going to Anchorage and reading a newspaper,” I say. “Why the science books?”
Whit sighs. “Some of us never stopped pursuing our areas of research. It was essential that we stayed abreast of environmental and scientific breakthroughs.”
“As essential as it was for you to betray us and sell our secrets to the highest bidder?”
Whit exhales and looks disappointed. Like he had been hoping I would see things from his point of view. He glances at Miles again. “Really, I would prefer that this boy not be pointing a dangerous weapon in my direction when he obviously doesn’t know what he’s doing with it.”
Miles says, “Hey!”
“You can put it down,” I say to him, and turn back to Whit. “You’ve been watching us.”
“Of course I have. I wanted you to arrive here in one piece. Safely,” Whit says. “And, as an aside, I didn’t mean for Jake to shoot the boy.”
“Well, that makes everything better,” Miles says with a scowl, and places the crossbow on the ground beside him.
Whit ignores him. “Juneau, none of this has turned out as I wanted. I love the clan as much as you do—”
“I sincerely doubt that,” I interject.
“You don’t have to believe me,” he says. “But everything I’ve done has been for the good of the clan.” I can’t help the look of disgust on my face, but stay silent. I want to hear what he has to say. “Just how much did Blackwell tell you?” he asks.
“Start from the beginning,” I command.
“It was your mother, father, and I who came up with the formula for Amrit,” Whit says. “We had a sort of think tank within the Gaia Movement, composed of the people you know as the elders. We were discussing solutions to restoring ecosystems, and one of the emphases was preserving endangered species—specifically those native to the United States. The zoologists in the group posited the theory that if the life expectancy of animals was extended, it would allow more breeding cycles, and thus more offspring—a giant step toward species preservation.
“At that point your mother came forward with a story she had heard as a child—a local legend, as I remember it—from her homeland of Mongolia.”
“Mongolia!” I exclaim. “My mother was Chinese.”
Whit looks uncomfortable. “Apparently her line originated in southern Mongolia. Surely your father would have told you about . . .”
I ignore that twist of the knife. Yes, it hurt—profoundly—that I was hearing this first from the man who betrayed my clan instead of my own father. But getting upset wasn’t going to help anything. I quash the feelings for now, and decide to let them out in target practice later. “Keep talking,” I insist.
“The story involved giving a wounded she-wolf a magical elixir that not only healed the wolf, but allowed it to live for several human-generations, spawning many litters of wolf cubs.
“Your mother began researching the origins of the legend, and the ingredients that could have been involved. I found similar stories in ancient Hindu texts, which called it Amrita. Since he is a chemist, your father began working with some of the plants and minerals mentioned in both your mother’s legend and the texts I had found. Finally, we developed what we thought could be a workable formula. Our target test group was to be Mexican gray wolves, red wolves, and other wild canid species. We tested it first on laboratory mice, and then on a small trial group of dogs. It immediately became clear that animals given the Amrit became immune to disease.