Analog Science Fiction and Fact - 2014-05

by Penny Publications

Amanda smiled again. "But of course. We wouldn't have it any other way."

  Karen rose from the table, her eyes on Hitoshi and Emily. "They won't like it."

  "I've seen how they look at you," Amanda said, standing as well, the carton tucked under one arm. "If you lead the way, they'll follow."

  When morning came, however, the survey team kept to its usual routine. They had set up camp on one of the largest of the six hundred islands in Milne Bay, a region off the southeastern tip of Papua New Guinea that remained largely unknown to naturalists. As always, they had strung several sites in the forest with mist nets, which consisted of stout webs of black nylon, three meters by ten, with horizontal pouches to catch any birds that flew into the mesh.

  Karen had not told the others about the arrangement. After returning to the tents the night before, she had revealed only that Amanda was one of her former students, with an interest in tracking pitohuis. "There's no point in disclosing the rest until we're sure it's possible," Karen had said to Amanda. "First we need to see if we can get these birds at all."

  Amanda had agreed that this made sense. Later, however, Karen saw her engaged in a tense conversation with Patrick, her colleague, who did not seem entirely convinced by the approach, and as the day went on with no sign of pitohuis, Amanda grew visibly restless.

  Shortly after lunch, however, they were called over by Hitoshi. The older of the two graduate students had been monitoring a net lane along a slippery ridge, and as Karen approached, she saw a bird struggling in one of the pouches, its bright plumage recognizable at once.

  Karen crept forward, moving quietly so as to avoid panicking the pitohui, and carefully extracted it, wrapping her first two fingers around the bird's neck and cradling the body in her palm as she untangled its feet with her other hand. Holding the pitohui by the upper leg, she lifted it out, mindful of its beak and claws, and wrapped it quickly in a towel.

  A table had been set up at a tarp under the trees. Emily was there already, seated on a folding fabric stool, with Amanda watching from nearby. As Karen carried the bird over, it struck her that the two younger women could almost be sisters, although they were a decade apart in age.

  As Amanda looked on, Emily prepared the isoflurane, which was administered from a portable vaporizer. Keeping the bird in her hands, Karen held it steady as Emily slipped a mask made from a syringe case over the pitohui's beak and started the flow of anesthetic. Once the bird had grown limp, they took a blood sample and swabs from the mouth and cloaca, then attached a transmitter using a suture and subcutaneous prong. The transmitter itself weighed less than three grams, with an antenna four inches long extending between the bird's wings.

  A few minutes later, the pitohui recovered and flew away. Amanda remained by the worktable, watching the bird until it had disappeared into the trees by the ridge. "So what happens now?"

  "We wait," Karen said. "If we want to find where it roosts, we'll take our first reading after sundown."

  Amanda turned aside. "Good. You can tell your crew that we're heading off tonight."

  Hiroshi, who had been packing up the samples, seemed surprised. "Heading where?"

  Karen glanced at Amanda. As her students listened, she explained the situation, saying only that they would help the new arrivals follow the pitohui to its roosting site. They seemed doubtful, but in the end, as Amanda had predicted, they trusted her enough to accept it.

  Later that evening, they triangulated the bird's position with a directional antenna and receiver. Plotting the lines, they found that they intersected at an outlying island a considerable distance from where the bird had been released. Karen explained that birds often roosted on small offshore islands, commuting to the main island during the day, and that if they wanted to find more pitohuis there, they would need to arrive at their destination before dawn.

  Before their departure, she asked around the village about the island in question, knowing that it would be necessary to obtain permission from any landowners. According to the lo cal headman, it had never been inhabited, with a rocky shore and poor soil that discouraged farming or settlement. He also insisted that they take his nephew Bulisa, a sleekly muscled youth of twenty, as a guide.

  They set out shortly after midnight. For the last three weeks, they had traveled on a sail-boat, the Rosalind, crewed by a retired couple eager for the chance to visit these unfrequented islands. The only other crew member was a deckhand, Jesse, who was taking a year off from college.

  As they headed across the darkened water, the wind began to rise, and the team spent most of the journey below deck. When Amanda left to place a call to her firm, Karen turned to Patrick, hoping to learn what he thought of his colleague's proposal. "What do you make of all this?"

  Patrick smiled. "Amanda thinks highly of you, and I've learned to trust her judgment. In any case, we both want the same thing."

  He reached into his pocket and removed a plastic vial. When he handed it over, Karen saw that it contained a melyrid beetle preserved in ethanol, its orange and black coloration remarkably similar to that of a hooded pitohui. When Emily pointed out the similarity, Patrick nodded. "It's interesting, isn't it, how the same colors appear when batrachotoxin is present. You see it in frogs in Colombia as well. It's a distinctive warning sign. And it's one we've learned to pursue."

  He took back the vial, warming to his subject. "I've always been surprised that so few companies take this approach. Countless firms are trying to develop botanical drugs, but the trouble is knowing where to start. It simply isn't practical to screen every plant in the rain forest."

  "That's why local information can be helpful," Hiroshi said, leaning against the bulkhead. "We're very interested in ethnobotany."

  "As are we. But we also go even closer to the source. For the last few years, we've been focusing on aposematic animals, especially insects. Warning coloration advertises the presence of promising chemicals. Plants produce complex molecules that insects can put to use. To see them persist further up the food chain, as we do here, is especially striking."

  He slid the vial back into his pocket. "And that's why I'm willing to go along with Amanda. The approach may be untested, but the colors are worth following. Batrachotoxin occurs in three other bird species, but the ones with the most potent poison are also the most brightly colored. Assuming, of course, that you can tell the real thing from the mimics."

  Karen glanced up as Amanda returned to the cabin. "Yes. And it can be hard to know the difference."

  A minute later, Jesse, the deckhand, appeared at the door. He was lanky and tan, with an easy smile, and Karen had gathered long ago that Emily had eyes for him. "We're close."

  They went up the ladder to the aft deck, where a light swell was visible on the waves. Beneath the full moon, Karen got her first glimpse of their destination. Through her binoculars, she saw a small island of uplifted coral, its rocky beach giving way to forest and interior peaks of limestone.

  It soon became clear that there was no suitable anchorage, which meant they needed to take the dinghies. As the sailboat made a wide tack along the surrounding reef, the team obtained another set of readings. Karen was triangulating the results when Hiroshi approached with Bulisa, the villager who had offered to serve as a guide. She glanced up from her laptop, which indicated that the bird's transmitter was still on the island. "What is it?"

  "I've been talking to Bulisa," said Hiroshi, who spoke passable Yele. "He says he can take one of the dinghies closer to shore to look for a place to land. I'd like to go with him. We can't do much from this far out."

  At first, Karen thought he was trying to impress her. A second later, she caught him looking at Amanda, who was listening from nearby, and realized that there might be other factors at work here. "Go ahead. But I want you to bring Jesse. And if you run into trouble, don't take any chances."

  Ten minutes later, the three men climbed into the dinghy and set out across the water, with the sailboat holding station a kilometer from the island. Fo
r the next hour, Karen remained on deck, keeping an eye on the weather as the wind turned the boat slowly around on its anchor chain. Finally, she saw a gleam of light on shore, and word came over the radio that they had found a potential landing site. After loading their equipment into the second dinghy, Karen headed out with Amanda, Emily, and Patrick, the water choppy but bearable.

  They followed the flashlights to a clear stretch of beach, where they pulled the dinghy onto the sand. As Hiroshi came up to meet them, Karen saw that the first dinghy was nowhere in sight. "We couldn't find a place to land, so we anchored at the reef, put on the cover, and swam the rest of the way," Hiroshi explained. "We were going to go back for it, but we can't until the waves settle down."

  While Jesse and Bulisa went looking for a sheltered campsite, Karen took another set of readings, which indicated that the transmitter had not moved. She turned to the rest of the team. "Amanda and I will head into the forest. Emily and Hiroshi can set up the net lanes."

  As Hiroshi unloaded the nets, Emily remained where she was. "Actually, if you don't mind, I'd like to come along."

  Karen glanced over at Amanda. For a moment, she hesitated, although she would have found it hard to explain why. Finally, she nodded. "Fine. Bring whatever you think you'll need for the day."

  Looking down the beach, she saw that Patrick was unpacking his own gear, which included a light trap and a portable generator. Then she set off with the others toward the signal, the sky brightening overhead.

  From his place on the sand, Patrick watched as the three women went into the forest, then turned back to his own work.

  For most of the trip, he had been watching Karen, as well as her interactions with Amanda. Anyone who survived for as long as she had was obviously shrewd and resourceful, but she was evidently still coming to terms with the new arrangement. He also suspected that she didn't know the whole truth behind the proposal, or how much of a hunch Amanda was really playing.

  Once his own equipment was ready, Patrick went in the opposite direction, heading for a dense line of forest. Bulisa had indicated that he wanted to come as well, and as they passed into the trees, Patrick had trouble keeping up with the guide, who carried nothing but a bush knife and a rope of tobacco.

  Moving out of sight of the beach, he found that the canopy blocked out nearly all the morning light. After hiking for a quarter of an hour through thorns and scrub, he paused in an area dense with shadow. As Bulisa watched, smoking, Patrick set up his light trap, stretching a white sheet across a folding frame. From his bag, he unpacked the generator and hooked it up to three mercury vapor lamps, which he trained on the sheet. Then he settled in to wait.

  After a few minutes, he could see that Bulisa was growing bored, chopping aimlessly at the brush with his knife. Using hand gestures, Patrick managed to tell the guide that he could leave. Bulisa rose at once and headed into the trees, his footfalls all but silent, and disappeared.

  Patrick sat back against a pandanus tree, keeping his eyes on the illuminated trap. The glowworms came first, followed by butterflies and locusts, landing on the fabric or falling to the dropcloth below. He made a note of each species he observed, but held off on collecting specimens for now.

  A moment later, he rose. Moving closer to the dropcloth, he saw an insect with familiar coloration. He picked it up gently, turning it over in his gloved fingers. It was a melyrid beetle.

  As he examined it, he began to grow excited. Until now, he had been skeptical of Amanda's proposal. She was talented but impatient, and he had spent enough time in the field to know it never paid to hurry. As he looked at the beetle now, however, he sensed that her approach might be worthwhile after all.

  He let the beetle go, marking which way it flew. Shining his flashlight on the ground, he turned over leaves and checked the undergrowth. A few yards from the light trap, he saw more of the melyrids at his feet. They had gathered near a shrub at the base of another tree, its tall spikes covered with tubular orange flowers just large enough to fit over a fingertip.

  Patrick was about to examine it when he heard something in the tree overhead. It was low and resonant, like the hooting of an owl.

  He pointed his flashlight up. For an instant, he thought he saw movement there, but as he passed the beam across the branches, he could make out nothing but the knifelike network of leaves.

  A second later, he heard the sound of hooting again. This time, it was behind him.

  Patrick turned back toward the insect trap. Something was moving on the other side, sil houetted by the lamps against the fabric. He caught a momentary impression of a dark, winged shape, then saw the sheet billow inward as whatever was there climbed rapidly up the frame.

  When it reached the top, he saw it clearly for the first time. Then it came for him, and he screamed.

  II.

  Karen moved carefully along a fallen log, making her way across the river. The bank here was slippery, hedged in by sago palms, and the decomposing vegetation created a smell like that of fermenting beer.

  Amanda knelt by the river's dark surface. "Black water. That's a good sign. The soil is poor, so plants evolve lethal defenses to protect their nutrients. When the leaves fall, the toxins are leached out by the rain and flow into the river. White soil, black water. It's a clue we've learned to follow."

  Karen sensed that she was showing off for Emily's benefit. Over the last few hours, as they picked their way through the forest, she had noticed the graduate student listening intently to everything Amanda said. She descended to the far side of the bank, where the two younger women were waiting. "Keep it down. We don't want to frighten the birds away."

  Amanda looked up at the canopy, which was broken at intervals by shafts of curdled light. "Should we get another reading?"

  Karen nodded. "You can take one here. I'll pace off a hundred yards and do another." She glanced at Emily. "Are you coming?"

  "I think I'll stay," Emily said. "I'd like to get a closer look at the riverbank."

  Karen only headed off without a word. Glancing back, she saw the two women bending over the receiver, their heads close together, and felt a curious pang of jealousy. Then she turned aside.

  So far, their progress had been slow, and she expected that they would not return to camp until nightfall. The forest was full of barbed ferns and long tunnels of rattan, which they had to hack through with machetes, clumsy in the long sleeves they wore against mosquitoes. At fifty, Karen was in excellent shape, but as she watched Amanda and Emily move with comparative ease through the undergrowth, she was reminded that she was no longer as young as she had once been.

  When she was one hundred yards away, she took a reading, noting the direction of the signal and her own coordinates. Then she raised her binoculars. She had often heard birds flying overhead, but it was hard to get a good look, and she had not observed any pitohuis.

  Karen passed the binoculars across the crown of a pandanus tree, then brought them back to the same spot. For a second, she thought she had glimpsed something moving in the leaves. She studied the tree without result for another minute, then shouldered her pack and retraced her steps.

  The walk back was easier, since she had left a clear path through the scrub. When she drew close to the others, she heard them talking, and for reasons she didn't fully understand, she paused to listen. Amanda was halfway through a response to a question: "—ten times more poisonous than curare. One hundred and fifty micrograms is enough to kill a human being within minutes."

  Emily's voice carried easily under the trees. "So why are you so eager to find it?"

  Amanda had evidently given this answer before. "The most potent poisons often lead to the most useful drugs. Look at digitalis. Digoxin will stop your heart, but it can also start it again. Batrachotoxin has similar properties. It locks the sodium channels in nerve and muscle cells so they can't reset or fire, which may have applications in treating heart failure. But we need to find the plant first."

  Karen heard Emily moving bac
k toward the river. "Can't you just synthesize it?"

  "Yes, but it's expensive," Amanda said, her voice coming closer to where Karen was standing. "Most alkaloids are easier to extract from the source. But the plant alone may not be enough. The beetles seem to modify it, so we need to look at the whole system, as far up the chain as it goes."

  From behind the tree where she had halted, Karen saw Emily kneel on the bank. "It sounds like an interesting problem."

  "It is. That's why I joined Allelon. It allows me to keep doing the work I care about."

  As she listened, Karen sensed that the mood was shifting. Making her way toward the others, she reflected that although she had tried to pass her values and experience along to her students, it would be harder for them than it had been for her. She had always been concerned with the problem of survival, and by keeping her head down and spending more time in the field, she had lasted for longer than anyone could have expected. In the end, however, she had outlived her usefulness, with nothing left but a spotless reputation and a diminishing circle of influence.

  When they triangulated their readings, the results pinpointed the signal to a region of forest half a kilometer away. As they moved on, Amanda picked up the thread of the earlier conversation. "Of course, the real danger is deforestation. These islands have never been completely surveyed, and they're full of undescribed species that run the risk of being destroyed."

  "I can see why you'd be worried," Karen said, stepping over a row of pitcher plants that gaped up like mouths from the ground. "If the forest disappears, your business model goes with it."

  Amanda smiled tightly. "Allelon takes these issues very seriously. The more we learn about what we have here, the greater the incentive to protect it. It's the most powerful argument for conservation I've found. And we could use your expertise. Your example would mean a great deal to what we're doing—"

  Karen noticed that Emily was watching for her reaction. "I'm flattered. But I'm afraid I'm too old to change my ways now."