Amazonia. Part 57

She nodded, turning away. "But remember, guys . . . tick-tock:" She glanced significantly at them, then took off.

Note faced Dakii. Howto tell the man that his entire homeland was about to be wiped out? It wouldn't be easy. Note sighed. "Let's keep heading to the root:"

As they continued down, Nate and Kouwe flanked the tribesman and slowly communicated the danger here. Dakii's confused expression slowly twisted into horror as he got the message. The scout's feet stumbled as he walked, as if the knowledge were a physical burden.

By now they had reached the tunnel exit, surrounded by a gallery of blue palm prints. Beyond the opening, the light in the glade had taken on a dark honey color, suggesting sunset was at hand. Time was running out.

"Is there another way out of the valley?" Nate asked again.

Dakii pointed to where the tunnel ended at a slightly concave wall cov-ered with the blue prints.

"Through the root. We go through the root:"

"Yes, I want to see the root, too, but what about the way out?"

Dakii stared at him. "Through the root," he repeated.

Nate nodded, finally understanding. Their two missions had just become one. "Show us."

Dakii crossed to the wall, glancing over the prints, then he reached out to one near the innermost wall.

He placed his palm over it and pushed with arm and shoulder. The entire wall pivoted on a central axis, opening a new section of pa.s.sage, winding deeper underground.

Nate glanced up, recalling that the flow channels here hadn't exactly matched. A secret door. The answer was before him this entire time. Even the palm prints on the walls-they were like the one on the Ban-ali sym-bol, guarding the double helix that represented the root.

Anna slipped a flashlight from her field jacket. Nate patted his own jacket, but came up empty. He must have lost his. Anna pa.s.sed him hers, indicating he should go first.

Nate moved to the door. Wafting out was the musk of the tree, humid and thicker, dank like the breath from an open grave. Nate readied himself and pushed through the opening.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

The Last Hour.

7:01 PM.

AMAZON JUNGLE.

As Louis's band took a rest break, he checked his watch. It was an hour before the explosion would turn the upper valley into a whirling firestorm. He focused his attention on the swamp lake ahead. The setting sun had turned the water a tarnished silver.

They were making good time. Skirting to the south of the swamp, where the jungle was thickest and the river channels many, they would eas-ily slip away through the dense forest. He had no doubt of that.

He sighed contentedly, but with a trace of disappointment. Everything was downhill from here. He always felt this way after a successful mission. Some form of postcoital depression, he imagined. He would return to French Guiana a much richer man, but money didn't buy the excitement of the last couple of days.

"C'est la vie,"he said.There will always be other missions.

A small ruckus drew his attention back around.

He saw Kelly being shoved to her knees by two men. A third was on the ground a couple of yards away, rolling, cursing, clutching between his legs.

Louis strode over to them, but Mask was already there.

The scarred lieutenant pulled the moaning guard to his feet.

"What happened?" Louis asked.

Mask thumbed at the man. "Pedro reached a hand down her shirt, and she kneed him in the groin:"

Louis smiled, impressed. One hand settled to the bullwhip trophy at his waist.

He sauntered over to Kelly, now on her knees. One of her two captors had his fist tight in her hair, pulling her head back to expose her long neck. She snarled as the two men taunted her with the vilest innuendoes.

"Let her up," Louis said.

The men knew better than to disobey. Kelly was yanked to her feet. Louis took off his hat. "I apologize for the rudeness here. It won't hap-pen again, I a.s.sure you:"

Other men gathered.

Kelly fumed. "Next time I'll kick the a.s.shole's b.a.l.l.s into his belly."

"Indeed:' Louis waved off his men. "But punishment is my depart-ment:' He tapped the bullwhip on his side. Earlier he had struck the woman as a lesson. Now it was time for another.

He turned and struck out with the whip, splitting the twilight with a loudcrack.

Pedro screamed, covering his left eye. Blood spurted through his fingers.

Louis faced the others. "No one will harm the prisoners. Is that understood?"

There was a general sound of agreement and many nods.

Louis replaced his whip. "Someone see to Pedro's eye:'

He turned back around and saw Tshui standing near Kelly, one palm raised to the woman's cheek.

As he watched, he noticed that Tshui had wrapped her fingers around a curl of fiery auburn hair.

Ah,Louis thought,the red hair. A unique trophy for Tshui's collection.

7:O5 PM.

In the flashlight's glow, Nate noticed that the pa.s.sage beyond the hand-printed door was similar to the main tunnel, but the woody surfaces were of a coa.r.s.er grain. As he walked, the musk of the tree flowed thick and fetid.

With Dakii at his side, he led Anna and Kouwe down the tunnel. It narrowed rapidly, twisting tighter and tighter, causing the group to crowd together.

"We must be in the tree's taproot," Nate mumbled.

"Heading underground," Kouwe said.

Nate nodded. Within a few more twisting yards, the tunnel exited the woody root, and stone appeared underfoot, interspersed with patches of loam. The tunnel headed steeply downward. They now ran parallel to the branching root system.

Dakii pointed ahead and continued. Nate hesitated. Strange lichens grew on the walls, glowing softly. The musk was almost overpowering, now rich with a more fecund odor. Dakii pushed on.

Nate glanced to Kouwe, who shrugged. It was encouragement enough.

As they continued forward, the root branch that ran overhead split and divided, heading out into other pa.s.sageways. From the ceiling, drapes of root hairs hung, vibrating ever so gently, rhythmically swaying as if a wind blew softly through the pa.s.sage. But there was no wind.

The top of Nate's head brushed against the ceiling as the tunnel low-ered. The tiny root fibrils tangled into his hair, clinging, pulling. Nate wrenched away with a gasp.

He shone his flashlight overhead, wary.

"What is it?" Kouwe asked.

"The root grabbed at me."

Kouwe lifted a palm to the root branch. The smaller hairs wrapped around his fingers in a clinging embrace. With a look of disgust, Kouwe tugged his hand away.

Nate had seen other Amazonian plants demonstrate a response to stimulation: leaves curling if touched, puff pods exploding if brushed, flowers closing if disturbed. But this felt somehow more malignant.

Nate fanned his flashlight across the path. By now, Dakii was waiting several yards down the pa.s.sage.

Nate urged the others to catch up. Once abreast of Dakii, Nate studied the splitting roots that now turned riotous, dividing and cross-splitting in all directions. Small blind cubbyholes dot-ted the many pa.s.sages, each choked and clogged with a tangle of roots and waving hairs. The little cubbies reminded Nate of nitrogen bulbs, seen among root b.a.l.l.s of many plants, that served as storage fertilizing sites.

Dakii stood before one such alcove. Nate shone his light into the s.p.a.ce. Something was tangled deep inside the ma.s.s of twining branches and churning root fibrils. Nate bent closer. A few wiggling hairs curled out toward him, questing, waving like small antennae.

He kept back.

Deep in the root pack, wrapped and entwined like a fly in a spider's webbing, was a large fruit bat. Nate straightened in disgust.

Kouwe leaned in and grimaced. "Is it feeding on the bat?"

Anna spoke behind them. "I don't think so. Come see this:"

They both turned to her. She knelt by an even larger tubby, but one similarly entangled. She pointed into its depths.

Nate flashed his light inside. Entombed within was a large brown cat.

"A puma," Kouwe said at his shoulder.

"Watch;' Anna said. They stared, not knowing what to expect. Then suddenly the large cat moved, breathed. Its lungs expanded and collapsed in a sigh. But the movement did not look natural, more mechanical.

Anna glanced back at them. "It's alive:"

"I don't understand," Nate said.

Anna held out her hand. "Can I see the flashlight?"

Nate pa.s.sed it to her. The anthropologist quickly surveyed several of the other alcoves, moving through the neighboring, branching pa.s.sages. The variety of animals was impressive: ocelot, toucan, marmoset, tamarin, anteater, even snakes and lizards, and oddly enough one jungle trout. And each one of them seemed to be breathing or showing some signs of life, including the fish, its small gill flaps twitching.

"They're each unique," Anna said, eyes bright as she stared down the maze of pa.s.sages. "And all alive.

Like some form of suspended animation:"

"What are you getting at?"

Anna turned to them. "We're standing in a biological storehouse. A library of genetic code. I wager this is the source of its prion production:"

Nate turned in a slow circle, staring at the maze of pa.s.sages. The impli-cation was too overwhelming to contemplate. The tree was storing these animals down here, learning from them so it could produce prions to alter and bind the species to it. It was a living, breathing genetics lab.

Kouwe gripped Nate's shoulder. "Your father."

Nate glanced to him in confusion. "What about my-?" Then it hit him like a hammer to the forehead. He gasped. His father had been fed to the root.Not as fertilizer, Nate realized, swinging around, aghast,but to be a part of this malignant laboratory!

"With his white skin and strange manners, your father was unique,' Kouwe said in a low voice. "The Ban-ali or the Yagga would not want to lose his genetic heritage:"

Nate turned to Dakii. He could barely speak, too choked with emo-tion. "My. . . my father. Do you know where he is?"

Dakii nodded and lifted both arms. "He with root:"

"Yes, but where?" Nate pointed to the closest tubby, one with an enshrouded black sloth. "Which one?"

Dakii frowned and glanced around the maze of pa.s.sages.

Nate held his breath. There had to be hundreds of pa.s.sages, countless alcoves. He didn't have time to search them all, not with the clock running. But how could Nate leave, knowing his father was down here somewhere?

Dakii suddenly strode purposefully down one pa.s.sage and waved for them to follow. They hurried, winding deeper and deeper into the subterranean maze. Nate found it increasingly difficult to breathe, not because of the sickening musk, but because of his own mounting anxiety. All along this journey, he had held no real hope his father was still alive. But now . . . he teetered between hope and despair, almost panicked with trepidation.What would he find?

Dakii paused at an intersection, then stepped to the left pa.s.sage. But after two strides, he shook his head and returned to follow the trail to the right.

A scream built up inside Nate's chest.