Page 36 - Unlikely Stories 4

The Vaccinators

The group’s spokesman, an elder apparently acting as their
authority on all medical, spiritual and practical matters, finally agreed
to the inoculation. Satisfied with the outcome, Plompkin told them
he would return in ten days for the booster shots that were required.
He completed his rounds after making note of the location. He
stayed in Kachamungee long enough to make his report and stock up
for the second trip. It was agreed to keep knowledge of his discovery
secret until after the vaccinations had concluded.
That much is known. The date he was expected back at the
Ministry came and went. After it became obvious that neither he nor
his team had left any clue to their whereabouts, we left that issue to
the civil authorities as our attention turned to administering the
second vaccine to anyone he had not visited before disappearing.
Accordingly, I assembled an expedition to retrace Plompkin’s
journey, intending quickly to find the last place he had succeeded in
his mission.
We traveled relatively rapidly from village to village, resting no
longer than custom required in any of them once I determined that
its inhabitants had been vaccinated the second time by Dr. Plompkin.
In reply to queries by my Ndarfn associates, none of these people
indicated Plompkin or his team behaved any differently than they had
on their first visit. I admit that I had been harboring dark thoughts
about his own men plotting against him: robbing and killing the
doctor, and fleeing into the bush. As events unfolded, I was only
partially correct in this hypothesis.
At last we came to the small clearing Plompkin had designated as
the home of the last Ndarfn to be found by the modern world. To
my surprise, it was almost uninhabited. One man was found huddled
in a makeshift shelter outside the complex of huts and animal pens. It
was the headman, now a pitiful sight. Clearly on the verge of
starvation, he gave no resistance once detected by sharper eyes than
mine. We interrogated him after providing food and water. And this
is what he told us.
He and his followers did not dispute the value of being vaccinated
against ictovirus, a terrible scourge. But they had understood the
procedure in their own terms, as apotropaic magic, confirming their
deeply held beliefs in charms and potions. And they did want not any

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