Amazonia. Part 49

ACT FIVE.

Root.

UNA OE SATO, "CAT'S CLAW".

FAMILY:Rubiaceae.

GENUS:UriCaY7a.

SPECIES:TOmentOSa, Guianensis.

COMMON NAMES:Cats Claw, Una de GatO, Paraguayo, Garabato, Garbato Casha, Samento, Toron', Tambor Huasca, Ann Huasca, Una de Gavilari, Hawk's Claw

PART USED:Bark, Root, Leaves.

PROPERTIES/ACTIONS:Antibacterial, Antioxidant, Antiinflammatory, Ant.i.tumorous, Antiviral, Cytostatic, Depurative, Diuretic, Hypotensive, Immunostimula.nt, Vermifuge, Antimutagenic

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

Betrayal.

AUGUST 1 7, 7:05 A. M.

AMAZON JUNGLE.

Nate woke to find his arms around a naked woman. Her eyes were alreadyopen. "Good morning," he said.

Kelly inched closer to him. He could still smell the rain on her skin. She smiled. "It's been morning for some time:"

He rose to one elbow, which wasn't easy in a hammock, and stared down into herface. "Why didn't you wake me?"

"I figured you could use at least one full hour of sleep." She rolled out of the hammock, setting it swinging, and artfully drew off the single blanket and wrapped it around her.

With one hand, he grasped for her.

She stepped out of reach. "We have a long day ahead of us:"

With a groan, he rolled to his feet and pulled his boxers from the pile of hastily discarded clothes as Kelly gathered her things. Through the rear door to the room, he stared out at the jungle.

Last night, he and Kelly had talked into the wee hours of the morning, about fathers, brothers, daughters, lives, and losses. There were still more tears. Afterward they had made love again, slower, with less urgency, but with a deeper pa.s.sion. Sated, they had collapsed into the hammock to catch afew hours of sleep before dawn.

Stepping onto the rear deck, Nate studied the forest. The morning skies were blue and clear, last night's storm longgone, the light sharp andbright. Raindrops still clung to every leaf and blade, glistening like jewels. But that wasn't all. "You should see this," he called back to the room.

Kelly, now dressed in her khakis with her shirt half b.u.t.toned, joined him. He glanced to her, stunned again by her beauty. Her eyes widened as she stared beyond the deck's edge. "How marvelous. . ."

She leaned into him, and he instinctively circled her with his arm.

Covering the upper limbs of the tree, drawn by the moisture, were hundreds of b.u.t.terflies, perched on branches and leaves, fluttering through the bower. Each had wings about a handspan wide, brilliant blue and crystalline green.

"Morphospecies," Nate said. "But I've never seen this color pattern:"

Kelly watched one specimen waft by overhead through a beam of sunlight. It seemed to shine with its own luminescence. "It's like some-one shattered a stained-gla.s.s window and showered the slivers over the treetops."

He tightened his arm around her, trying to capture this moment for-ever. They stood in silence and awe for several minutes. Then distant voices intruded, rising up from below.

"I suppose we should go down," Nate finally said. "We have a lot to accomplish:"

Kelly nodded and sighed. Nate understood her reluctance. Here, iso-lated above everything else, it waspossible to forget, at least for a while, the heartaches and hardships ahead of them. But they could not escape the world forever.

Slowly, they finished dressing. As they were about to leave, Nate crossed to the rear deck and unhooked the bamboo-and-palm-leaf awning so it fell back across the rear door, returning the room to the way he found it.

Kelly noticed what he did and moved nearer, examining the hinges along the top margin of the door.

"Closed, it blocks the doorway . . . pushed open and stilted, it's a shade cover for the deck. Clever."

Nate nodded. Yesterday he had been surprised by the ingenuity, too. "I've never seen anything like it out here. It's like my father mentioned in his notes. An example of the tribe's advancement over other indigenous peoples. Subtle engineering improvements, like their crude tree elevators."

"I could use an elevator right now;" Kelly noted, stretching a kink fromher back. "It does make you wonder, though;' she went on, "about the Yagga-about what it's doing to these people:"

Nate grunted in agreement, then turned to rea.s.semble his own pack. There was much to wonder about here. Once ready, Nate gave the room a final inspection, then crossed to the door where Kelly crouched.

As Kelly slung her pack to her shoulder, Nate leaned in and kissed her deeply. There was a moment of surprise . . . then she returned the kiss with a matching pa.s.sion. Neither of them had spoken of where the two would go from here. Both knew much of their urgency last night had come from a pair of wounded hearts. But it was a start. Nate looked forward to seeing where it would lead. And if her kiss was a clue, so did Kelly.

They parted, and without another word, they headed to the ladder leading down to the common areas of the dwelling.

As Nate descended, cooking scents swelled around him. He reached the bottom rung and hopped off.

After helping Kelly down, they both walked through the common area to the large front deck. Nate's stomach growled, and he suddenly remembered his hunger.

Around a stone hearth set into the deck, Anna and Kouwe were finish-ing the final preparations for breakfast. Nate spotted a loaf of ca.s.sava bread and a tall stone pitcher of cold water.

Anna swung around with a platter of honest-to-goodness bacon in her arms. She lifted her bounty.

"From wild boar;" she explained. "A pair of tribeswomen arrived with a feast at daybreak."

Nate's mouth watered. There was also more fruit, some type of egg, even what looked like a pie.

"No wonder your father stayed here for so long;" Private Carrera mumbled around a mouthful of bacon and bread.

Even this reminder of his father failed to squelch Nate's appet.i.te. He dug in along with the rest.

As he stuffed himself, Nate realized two of their party were missing. "Where are Zane and Olin?"

"Working on the radio," Kostos said. "Olin got the GPS up and run-ning this morning:" Nate choked on a piece of bread. "He got it working!"

Kostos nodded, then shrugged. "He has it recalibrated, but who knows if anyone's receiving."

Nate let this information sink in. His eyes flicked to Kelly. If the signal was received with the revised coordinates, they could be rescued as soon as this evening. Nate recognized the glimmer of hope in Kelly's eyes, too.

"But without the main radio to confirm," Kostos continued, "we may just be spittin' in the wind. And until I get solid confirmation, we proceed with our backup plan. Your mission today-along with Kelly and Zane-will be to make sure Frank is ready for a quick evac if necessary."

"Plus to gather some of the tree's sap," Kelly said.

Kostos nodded, chewing hard. "While Olin works on the radio, the others of us will split up and see if we can't find out more from the Indi-ans. Get Intel on those d.a.m.ned repellent powders:"

Nate didn't argue with the sergeant's plan. GPS or not, it was safest to proceed as cautiously and expeditiously as possible. The remainder of the meal was finished in silence.

Afterward, the party vacated the dwelling in the nightcap oak and climbed down to the glade, leaving Olin alone in the dwelling with his satellite equipment. Manny and the two Rangers headed in one direction, Anna and Kouwe in another. The plan was to rendezvous back at the tree at noon.

Nate and Kelly headed toward the Yagga with Richard Zane in tow. Nate hitched his shotgun higher.

The sergeant had insisted every member of the party go armed with at least a pistol. Kelly had a 9mm holstered at her waist. Zane, ever suspicious, had his Beretta in hand, eyes darting all around.

In addition to the weapons, each of the three teams had been equipped with one of the Rangers'

short-range Saber radios, to keep in contact with one another. "Every fifteen minutes, I want to hear an all-clear from each group," Kostos had said dourly. "No one stays silent:"

Prepared as well as they could be, the group split up.

As Nate walked across the glade, he stared up at the giant prehistoric gymnospore. Its white bark glistened with dew, as did its leaves, flickering brightly. Among the tiered branches, the cl.u.s.ters of giant nut pods hung, miniature versions of the man-made huts. Nate was anxious to see more of the giant tree.

They reached the thick, k.n.o.bbed roots, and Kelly guided them between the woody columns to the open cavity in the trunk. As Nateapproached, he could appreciate why the natives calledtheir tree Yagga, or

Mother, The Symbolism was not lost to him. The two main b.u.t.tress roots were not unlike open legs, framing the tree's monstrous birth ca.n.a.l. It was from here that the Ban-ali had been born into the world.

"It's big enough to drive a truck through," Zane said, staring up at the arched opening.

Nate could not suppress a small shudder as he entered the shadowy heart of the tree. The musky scentof its oil was thick in the pa.s.sage. All around the lowermost tunnel, small blue handprints decorated the wood wall, hundreds, some large, others small. Did they represent members of the tribe? Did his own father's palm mark this wall somewhere?

"This way," Kelly said, leading them toward the pa.s.sage winding up the tree.

As Nate and Zane followed, the blue prints disappeared eventually.

Nate glanced along the plain walls, then back toward the entrance. Something was bothering him, but he couldn't exactly put his finger on it. Something didn't look right. Nate studied the flow channels in the wood, the tubules of xylum and phloem that moved water and nutrients up and down the trunk. The channels ran down in graceful, winding curves around the pa.s.sage walls. But down below, where the pa.s.sage bluntly ended, the flow channels were jagged, no longer curving smoothly. Before he could examine this further, the group had pa.s.sed beyond the tunnel's curve.

"It's a long climb," Kelly said, pointing ahead. "The healing chamber is at the very top, near the crown of the tree:"

Nate followed. The tunnel looked like some monstrous insect bore. In his study of botany, he was well familiar with insect damage to trees: mountain pine beetle, European elm bark beetle, raspberry crown borer. But this tunnel had not been cored out-he would stake his life on it. It had formed naturally, like the tubules found inside the stems and trunk of an ant tree, an evolutionary adaptation. But even this raised a new ques-tion. Surely this tree was centuries older than the first arrival of the Ban-ali to this region. So why did the tree grow these hollowed tubules in the first place?

He remembered Kelly's muttered words at the end of last night's group discussion.We're missing something . . . something important.

They started pa.s.sing openings through the tree's trunk to the outside. Some led directly into huts, others led out onto branches with huts beyond. He counted as they climbed. There had to be at least twenty openings.

Behind him, Zane reported in on the Saber radio. All was well with the other teams.

At last, they reached the end of the pa.s.sage, where it ballooned out into a cavernous s.p.a.ce with slits cut high in the walls to allow in the sun-light. Still, the chamber was dim.

Kelly hurried over to her brother.

The small shaman stood across the room, checking on another patient. He glanced up at their approach.

He was alone. "Good morning," he said in stiff English.

Nate nodded. It was strange knowing these words were most likely taught to the man by his own father.

He knew from reading his father's notes that this shaman was also the Ban-ali's nominal leader. Their cla.s.s structure here was not highly organized. Each person seemed to know his place and role. But here was the tribe's king, the one who communed clos-est with the Yagga.

Kelly knelt at Frank's side. He was sitting up and sucking the content of one of the tree's nuts through a reed straw.

He set his liquid meal aside. "The breakfast of champions," he said with his usual good-natured smirk. Nate saw he still wore his Red Sox cap-and nothing else. He had a small blanket over his lower half, hiding his stumped legs. But he was bare-chested, revealing plainly what was painted there.

A crimson serpent with a blue handprint in the center.

"I woke up with it," Frank said, noticing Nate's gaze. "They must have painted it on me during the night when I was drugged out:"

The mark of the Ban-all.

The shaman stepped to Nate's side. "You. . . son ofWishwa Kerl."

Nate turned and nodded. Apparently their guide, Dakii, had been telling tales. "Yes, Carl was my father."