Amazonia. Part 10

The sound of a slap drew her attention around.

Her brother rubbed at his neck. "d.a.m.n flies."

He doused his exposed limbs and rubbed some on his neck.

Nathan stepped beside her. He had donned an Australian bush hat, and looked like some cross between Indiana Jones and Crocodile Dundee. His blue eyes sparkled with amus.e.m.e.nt in the jungle gloom.

"You're wasting your time with that repellent," he said to Frank. "Anything you put on will be sweated off your skin in minutes:"

Kelly couldn't argue with that. After just fifteen minutes of trekking, she felt damp everywhere. The humidity under the canopy had to be close to a hundred percent. "Then what do you suggest for the bugs?"

Nathan shrugged, wearing a crooked grin. "You surrender. You ignore them. It's a battle you can't win.

Here it's an eat-or-be-eaten world, and sometimes you have to simply pay the price:"

"With my own blood?" Frank asked.

"Don't complain. That's getting off cheap. There are much worse insects out there, and I don't just mean the big ones, like bird-eating spiders or footlong black scorpions. It's the little ones that'll get you. Are you familiar with the a.s.sa.s.sin bug?"

"No, I don't think so," Frank said.

Kelly shook her head, too.

"Well, it has the unpleasant habit of biting and defecating at the same time. Then when the victim scratches the wound, he drives the feces loaded with the protozoan Tripanozoma crush into the bloodstream. Then in anywhere from one to twenty years you die due to damage to the brain or heart."

Frank paled and stopped scratching at the fly bite on his neck.

"Then there are the blackflies that transmit worms to the eyeball and cause a disease called river blindness. And sand flies that can trigger Leishmaniasis, a leprosy type of disease:"

Kelly frowned at the botanist's attempt to shake her brother. "I'm well familiar with the transmittable diseases out here. Yellow fever, dengue fever, malaria, cholera, typhoid:" She hiked her medical pack higher on her ,shoulders. "I'm prepared for the worst:"

"And are you prepared for the candiru?"

Her brow crinkled. "What type of disease is that?"

It's not a disease. It's a common little fish in the waters here, something called the toothpick fish. It's a slender creature, about two inches long, and lives parasitically in the gills of larger fish. It has the nasty habit of swimming up the urethras of human males and lodging there:'

"Lodging there?" Frank asked, wincing.'

"It spreads its gill spines and embeds itself in place, blocking the bladder and killing you most excruciatingly in about twenty-four hours:"

"How do you get rid of it?"

By now, Kelly had recognized the little fish's description and nasty habits. She had indeed read about them. She turned to her brother and said matter-of-factly, "The only cure is to cut the victim's p.e.n.i.s off and extract the fish:"

Frank flinched, half covering him. "Cut his p.e.n.i.s off?"

Nate shrugged. "Welcome to the jungle:"

Kelly scowled at him, knowing the man was only trying to spook them. But from his grin, she could tell it was mostly all in good fun.

"Then there are the snakes . . :" Nate continued.

"I think that's enough," Professor Kouwe said behind them, rescuing the siblings from Dr. Rand's further lecturing. He stepped forward. "While the jungle must be respected as Nathan has suggested so eloquently, it's as much a place of beauty as danger. It contains the ability to cure as well as sicken:"

"And that's why we're all out here," a new voice said behind them.

Kelly turned. It was Dr. Richard Zane. Over his shoulder, she noticed Anna Fong and Olin Pasternak deep in conversation. And beyond them, Manuel Azoted stalked with his jaguar alongside the Rangers at the rear.

She turned around and saw that the grin on Nate's face had vanished. His expression had hardened at the intrusion by the Tellux representative. "And what would you know of the jungle?" Nate asked.

"You've not set foot out of the main offices of Tellux in Chicago in over four years . . . about the time my father vanished, as I recall:"

Richard Zane rubbed his small trimmed goatee and maintained his casual countenance, but Kelly had not missed the flash of fire in the man's eyes. "I know what you think of me, Dr. Rand. It was one of the reasons Ivolunteered for this expedition. You know I was a friend of your-"

Nathan took a fast step in the man's direction, one hand balled into a fist. "Don't say it!" he spat out.

"Don't say you were afriend of my father! Icame to you, begged you to continue the search after the government stopped. And you refused. I read the memo you dispatched from Brasilia back to the States: 'I see no further benefit in extending Telex's financial resources in a futile search for Dr. Carl Rand. Our monies are better spent in new endeavours: Do you remember those words, words that d.a.m.ned my father! If you had pressed the corporate office-"

"The result would've been the same;" Zane said between clenched teeth. "You were always so naive.

The decision was made long before I gave my report."

"Bulls.h.i.t;" Nathan said.

"Tellux was. .h.i.t by over three hundred separate lawsuits after the expedition's disappearance. From families, from underwriters, from insurance companies, from the Brazilian government, from the NSF.

Tellux was under a.s.sault from all sides. It was one of the reasons we had to merge Eco-tek's a.s.sets. It helped insulate us from other rapacious pharmaceutical companies. They were circling like sharks around our financially bleeding carca.s.s. We could not continue funding a search that seemed hopeless. We had a bigger fight on our hands:"

Nathan continued to glower.

"The decisionhad already been made."

"You'll excuse me if I don't shed tears for Tellux:"

"If we had lost our battle, thousands of families would have lost their jobs. Hard decisions had to be made, and I won't apologize for them:"

Nate and Zane continued to stare each other down.

Professor Kouwe attempted to mediate. "For now, let the past lie in the past. If we're to succeed here, I suspect we'll all need to work together. I suggest a truce:"

After a pause, Zane held out a hand.

Nathan glanced to the open palm, then turned away. "Let's go."

Zane shook his head and lowered his hand. He met the professor's eyes. "Thanks for trying:"

Kouwe watched Nate's departing back. "Give him time. Though he tries

to hide it, he's still in a lot of pain:"

Kelly stared after Nathan. He walked stiffly, shoulders back. She tried to imagine losing her mother, then her father, but it was a loss she could not comprehend. It was a well of pain from which she didn't know if she could have emerged. Especially alone.

She glanced to her brother, suddenly glad he was here.

A call rang out from far ahead. One of the Rangers. "We've reached the river!"

As the team continued along, paralleling the river, Nathan found himself lagging behind the others. To hisright, glimpses of the river peeked from the tangle of vegetation that bordered the small brown tributary.

They had been following it now for almost four hours. Nathan estimated they had traveled about twelve miles. The going was slow while one of the Rangers, a corporal named Nolan Warczak, a skilled tracker, kept them on the proper trail.

An Indian guide could have moved with more a.s.surance and set a faster pace. But after reaching the tributary, the small Yanomamo tribesman from Wauwai had refused to go any farther. He had pointed to clear footprints in the loam that led deeper into the forest, following the watercourse.