Amazonia. Part 46

"That's good news," Kouwe said tightly.

Nate recognized the tension in the other's voice. "What's the matter?"

Kouwe frowned. "Something I can't exactly put my finger on."

"Maybe I can help:" Nate glanced to the laptop, then unplugged the device from the solar cells. With night approaching, juice would not be flowing anyway. He checked the laptop's battery and then tucked it under his arm. "I think it's time we all compared notes:'

Kouwe nodded. "It's why Kelly and I came down. We have our own news.

Again, Nate saw the worried look on the professor's face. As Nate stood up, he was sure his ownexpression mirrored Kouwe's. "Let's get everyone together."

The pair ducked out of the cabin and into the late afternoon sunshine. Free of the stifling cabin, they felt almost chilled by the slight breezes. Nate crossed over to where Kelly and Sergeant Kostos were talking.

Manny and Camera had joined them.

A few steps away stood one of the Ban-all tribesmen. It took Nate a moment to recognize him. It was their guide from earlier. He had washed off the black camouflagepaint, revealing brown skin and a crimson tattoo on his bare chest.

Nate nodded to Kelly as he stopped beside them. "I heard that Frank is doing better."

Her face was pale, distracted. "For the moment:" She noticed the lap-top under his arm. "Were you able to learn anything about your father?"

Nate sighed. "I think everyone should hear this:"

"It's time we put a plan together anyway," Sergeant Kostos said. "Night is coming.

Kouwe pointed to the three-story dwelling in the towering nightcap oak. "Let's get everyone up to the dwelling:"

No one objected. In short order, the group mounted the long ladder and headed up the tree. Tor-tor remained below, on guard. Nate glanced down as he climbed. The jaguar was not alone down there. The Ban-ali tribesman stayed at the foot of the ladder, plainly a.s.signed to their group.

Reaching the top of the ladder, Nate climbed onto the decking of the abode. The entire party cl.u.s.tered on the deck or stood inside the doorway to the lowermost level, a communal room. Above, the two other levels were a honeycomb of smaller, more private chambers, each with its own tiny deck or patio.

The tree house had clearly been some family's domicile, comman-deered for their use. Personal touches abounded: bits of pottery and wooden utensils, decorations done in feathers and flowers, abandoned hammocks, tiny carved animal figurines. Even the smell of the place was not the deserted mustiness of the tiny cabin, but the subtle scent of life. Old cooking spices and oils, a hint of bodily odors.

Anna Fong crossed to him. She had a platter of sliced figs. "One of the Indian women dropped off some supplies. Fruits and cooked yams. Bits of dried meat:"

Nate remembered his thirst and took one of the moist fruits, biting deep into it, juice dribbling down his chin. Wiping his lips with the back of his hand, he asked, "How's Olin doing with the GPS signal?"

"Still working on it," she said in a hushed, scared voice. "But from the amount of swearing, it doesn't sound good:'

Kostos raised his voice from the doorway. "Everyone gather inside!"

As he stepped aside, the party moved into the common room. Inside, Nate saw the other platters of food. Even a few pails of a dark liquid, smelling of fermentation.

Professor Kouwe examined one pail's contents and turned to Nate in surprise. "It's ca.s.siri!" "What's that?" Kostos asked from the doorway as he closed the flap.

"Ca.s.sava beer," Nate explained. "An alcoholic staple of many native tribes:"

"Beer?" the sergeant's eyes brightened. "Really?"

Kouwe scooped up a ladleful of the dark amber liquid and poured it into a mug. Nate saw bits of slimy ca.s.sava root floating in the pail. The professor pa.s.sed the mug to the sergeant.

He sniffed it, nose curling in disgust, but he took a deep swig anyway. "Ugh!" He shook his head.

"It's an acquired taste;" Nate said, scooping a mug for himself and sip-ping it. Manny did the same.

"Women make it by chewing up ca.s.sava root and spitting it into a pail. The enzymes in their saliva aid in the fermenta-tion process:"

Kostos crossed to the pail and dumped the contents of his mug back into the pail. "I'll take a Budweiser any day"

Nate shrugged.

Around the room, the others sampled the fare for a bit, then began to settle to woven mats on the floor.

Everyone looked exhausted. They all needed a decent night's sleep.

Nate set up the laptop on an overturned stone pot.

As he opened it and turned it on, Olin looked at it hungrily, his eyes red. "Maybe I can cannibalize some circuitry for the communication array." He shifted nearer.

But Nate held him off. "The computer is five years old. I doubt you'll find much to use, and right now its contents are more important than our own survival:"

His words drew everyone's attention. He eyed them all. "I know what happened to the other expedition team. And if we don't want to end up like them, we should pay attention to its lessons:"

Kouwe spoke up. "What happened?"

Nate took a deep breath, then began, nodding to the open journal file on the laptop. "It's all here. My father's expedition heard rumors of the Ban-ali and met an Indian who said he could take the research team totheir lands. My father could not resist the possibility of encountering a new tribe and took the team off course. Within two days, they were attacked by the same mutated species as we were:'

Murmurs arose from the others. Manny raised his hand as if he were in cla.s.s. "I found where they incubate those b.u.g.g.e.rs. At least the locusts and piranhas." He described what he and Private Camera had discovered. "I've got my own theories about the beasts:"

Kouwe interrupted. "Before we get into theories and conjectures, let's first hear what we know for sure:"

The professor nodded to Nate. "Go on. What happened after the attack?"

Nate took another breath. The tale was not an easy one to tell. "Of the party, all were killed except Gerald Clark, my father, and two other researchers. They were captured by the Ban-ali trackers. Myfather was able to communicate with them and get them to spare their lives. From my father's notes, I guess the Ban-ali native tongue is close enough to Yanomamo:"

Kouwe nodded. "It does bear a resemblance. And isolated as the tribe is, the presence of a white man who could speak the tongue of the Ban-ali would surely give them pause. I'm not surprised your father and the sur-vivors were spared:"

The little good it did,Nate thought sourly, then continued, "The remaining party were all badly injured, but once here, their wounds were healed. Miraculously, according to my father's notes: gashes sealed without scarring, broken bones mended in less than a week's time, even chronic ail-ments, like one team member's heart murmur, faded away. But the most amazing transformation was in Gerald Clark:"

"His arm," Kelly said, sitting up straighter.

"Exactly. Within a few weeks here, his amputated stump began to split, bleed, and sprout a raw tumorous growth. One of the survivors was a med-ical doctor. He and my father examined the change.

The growth was a ma.s.s of undifferentiated stem cells. They were sure it was some malignant growth.

There was even talk of trying to surgically remove it, but they had no tools. Over the next weeks, slow changes became apparent. The ma.s.s slowly elongated, growing skin on the outside:"

Kelly's eyes widened. "The arm was regenerating."

Nate nodded and turned. He scrolled down the computer journal to the day almost three years ago. He read aloud his father's words. " 'Today it became clear to Dr. Chandler and me that the tumor plaguing Clark is in fact a regeneration unlike any seen before. Talk of escape has been put on hold until we see how this ends. It's a miracle that is worth the risk. The Ban-ali continue to remain accommodating captors, allowing us free run of the valley, but banning us from leaving. And with the giant cats prowling the lower chasm, escape seems impossible for the moment anyway.

Nate straightened up and tapped open a new file. Crude sketches of an arm and upper torso appeared on the screen. "My father went on to docu-ment the transformation. How the undifferentiated stem cells slowly changed into bone, muscle, nerves, blood vessels, hair, and skin. It took eight months for the limb to fully grow back."

"What caused it?" Kelly asked.

"According to my father's notes, the sap of the Yagga tree:"

Kelly gasped. "The Yagga . . ."

Kouwe's eyes widened. "No wonder the Ban-ali worship the tree:"

"What's a Yagga?" Zane asked from a corner, showing the first sign of interest in their discussion.

Kouwe explained what he and Kelly had witnessed up in the healing ward of the giant prehistoric tree.

"Frank's wounds almost immediately sealed:"

"That's not all," Kelly said. She shifted closer to get a better look at the computer screen. "All afternoon, I've been monitoring his red blood cell levels with a hematocrit tube. The levels are climbing dramatically.

It's as if something is ma.s.sively stimulating his bone marrow to produce new red blood cells for all he lost . . . at a miraculous rate. I've never seen such a reaction:" Nate clicked open another file. "It's something in the sap. My father's group was able to distill the stuff and run it through a paper chromato-graph. Similar to the way the sap of copal trees is rich in hydrocarbons, the Yagga's sap is rich inproteins:"

Kelly stared at the results. "Proteins?"

Manny scooted next to her, looking over her shoulder. "Wasn't the dis-ease vector a type of a protein?"

Kelly nodded. "A prion. One with strong mutagenic properties:" She glanced over her shoulder to Manny. "You were mentioning something about the piranhas and the locusts. A theory."

Manny nodded. "They're tied to this Yagga tree, too. The locusts live in the bark of the tree. Like some type of wasp gall. And the piranhas-their hatchery is in a pond tucked among the roots. There was even sap dripping into it. I think it's the sap that mutates them during early development:'

"My father suggested a similar conclusion in his notes," Nate said qui-etly. In fact, there were numerous files specifically on this matter. Nate had not been able to read through them all.

"And the giant cats and caimans?" Anna asked.

"Established mutations, I'd wager," Manny said. "The two species must've been altered generations ago into these oversized beasts. I imagine by now they're capable of breeding on their own, stable enough genetically to need no further support from the sap:"

"Then why don't they leave the area?" Anna asked.

"Perhaps some biological imperative, a genetic territorial thing:"

"It sounds like you're suggesting this tree manufactured these creatures purposefully? Consciously?"

Zane scoffed.

Manny shrugged. "Who can say? Maybe it wasn't so much will or thought as just evolutionary pressure:"

"Impossible:" Zane shook his head.

"Not so. We've seen versions of this phenomenon already." Manny turned to Nate. "Like the ant tree:"

Nate frowned, picturing the attack on Sergeant Kostos by stinging ants. He remembered how an ant tree's stems and branches were hollow, serving both to house the colony and feed it with a sugary sap. In turn, the ants savagely protected their home against the intrusion of plants and ani-mals. He began to understand what Manny was driving at. There was a dis-tinct similarity.

Manny went on, "What we have here is a symbiosis between plant life and animal, both evolved into a complex shared interrelationship. One serving the other:"

Camera spoke up from her post by a window. The sun was slowly set-ting behind her shoulder. "Who cares how the beasts came to be? Do we know how to avoid them if we have to fight our way out of the valley?"

Nate answered her question. "The creatures can be controlled:' "How?"

He waved to the laptop. "It took my father years to learn the Ban-ali secrets. It seems that the tribe has developed powders that can both attract and repel the creatures. We ourselves saw this demonstrated with the locusts, but they can do it with the piranhas, too. Through chemicals in the water, they can lure and trigger an aggressive response in the otherwise docile creatures. My father believed it's some type of hormonal compound that stimulates the piranhas' territoriality and makes them attack wildly."

Manny nodded. "Then it's lucky we wiped out a majority of the adult horde so quickly. I imagine it takes time for their hatchery to grow a new supply. Just one of the disadvantages of a biological defense system:"

"Perhaps that's why the Ban-ali keep more than one type of creature;" Camera noted astutely. "Backup troops:"

Manny frowned. "Of course. I should've thought of that:"

Camera faced Nate. "Then there are those cats and giant caimans to consider."

Nate nodded. "Gatekeepers, like we thought, set up to defend the perimeter. They patrol the entry points to the heart of the territory. But even the jaguars can be made docile by painting a black powder over one's body, allowing the Ban-ali to pa.s.s freely back and forth. I imagine the compound must act like caiman dung, a scent repellent to the giant cats:"

Manny whistled. "So our guide's body paint wasn't all camouflage:"

"Where do we get some of this repellent stuff?" Kostos asked. "Where does it come from?"

Kouwe spoke up. "The Yagga tree." He had not moved, only grown more pale with the telling of the tale.

Nate was surprised by the professor's quick answer. "They're derived from the Yagga's bark and leaf oils. But how did you guess?"

"Everything ties back to that prehistoric tree. I think Manny was quite correct that the specimen behaves like an ant tree. But he's wrong about who the ants are here:'

"What do you mean?" Manny asked.

"The mutated beasts are just biological tools supplied by the tree for its true workers:" Kouwe stared around him. "The Ban-ali:"

A stunned silence spread over the group.

Kouwe continued, "The tribesmen here are the soldier ants in this relationship. The Ban-ali name the tree Yagga, their word for mother. One who gives birth . . . a caretaker. Countless generations ago, most likely dur-ing the first migration of people into South America, the tribe must have stumbled upon the tree's remarkable healing ability and became enthralled by it. Becomingban-yin-slaves. Each serving the other in a complex web of defense and offense:' Nate felt sickened by this comparison.Humans used like ants.

"This grove is prehistoric," the professor finished. "It might trace its her-itage back to Pangaea, when South America and Africa were joined. Its species may have been around when man first walked upright.

Throughout the ages, there are hundreds of myths of such trees, from all corners of the world.The maternal guardian. Perhaps this encounter here was not the first:"

This thought sank into the others. Nate didn't think even his father had extrapolated the history of the Yagga to this end. It was disturbing.

Sergeant Kostos shifted his M-16 to his other shoulder. "Enough his-tory lessons. I thought we were supposed to be developing an alternate plan. A way to escape if we can't raise someone on the radio:"

"The sergeant is right:" Kouwe turned. "You never did tell us, Nate. What happened to your father and the others? How did Gerald Clark escape?"

Nate took a deep breath and turned back to the computer. He scrolled down to the last entry and read it aloud.