Shadow of the Jaguar

by Steven Savile

  “It could be much worse, friend Connor. Many of our ruins are so remote that a visitor must walk for a day or two just to reach them. In comparison, a few miles is no hardship at all.”

  Cutter enjoyed Connor’s expression as just the thought of walking for two days in the smothering heat of the Amazon drained all the energy from the young man’s body.

  “Chin up, Connor,” he said, smirking. “Think of it as good exercise. Ask yourself, what would Luke Skywalker do?”

  “Probably smack you around the head with a lightsaber,” Connor grumbled.

  Cutter chuckled.

  They finished their breakfast and packed up what they anticipated needing; with a ten-mile hike on the cards, it was all about travelling light, taking plenty of water, energy bars and so forth, along with some essential equipment and emergency supplies.

  It was ironic that their cover had demanded that they bring so much gear. After all, an expedition with no equipment was going to raise every curious eyebrow in Peru. But now that they were out here in the wild, everything needed to be light and easily transportable. And they didn’t need to maintain the sham when there was no one to see them. Connor took his PDAs, as well as the handheld anomaly detector — a small receiver locked to the 87.6 FM frequency with a GPS screen display built in. It had enough battery power to last around three hours, so he took a single spare. If they needed to listen to the thrum of static for more than six hours, the odds were that they were going to be in trouble, and another battery wouldn’t help all that much.

  Cutter insisted that they each carry at least four litres of water. Given the extreme heat, they were going to shed all of that on the long walk.

  Stephen was quiet, subdued even for his normal brooding self. Cutter watched him around Abby and Connor. He seemed ill at ease — uncomfortable in his own skinwas the phrase Cutter would have chosen. It was a little sad to see how much of the old Stephen had been stolen by Helen when she left through that anomaly. He wasn’t the arrogant young man he had been; the world had hurt him. It hadn’t lessened him, though. Rather it had reshaped him.

  The notion that a man was the sum of his experiences struck him again. Stephen was different because the world had treated him differently. He had loved and lost, and that old cliché didn’t offer much in the way of comfort. He didn’t talk about it, but who could he talk to, really?

  Cutter? Hardly.

  Connor?

  Abby?

  None of them were the kind of friends Stephen could turn to when he needed to share his burden, so instead he bore it alone. Cutter wanted to feel sympathy for him, but the very basis of their friendship had been impacted by the affair. No, Cutter couldn’t bring himself to feel sorry for the man. He had brought it upon himself.

  The SAS men, Lucas and Blaine, set about their own preparations with astonishing efficiency. They had been fully briefed back in the UK about the danger posed by any anomaly and what could conceivably come through. There would be no surprises for them. They stripped their kit down to a bare minimum, though both — Cutter noticed — remained armed. They weren’t about to underestimate the hostility of the environment or romanticise the trek, as the others might have. They moved with the same kind of economy of gesture that marked them as men of war.

  He wondered what passed through their minds as they stripped their pistol mechanisms down and cleaned out the barrels. Did they think of killing, or protecting, or nothing at all? How did they sleep, under such circumstances? How did they lie down? How were they not jumping at every sound and shadow? He couldn’t begin to imagine their lives. He most certainly would not have wanted to share them.

  “Have either of you checked in with Stark?” he asked, sitting down on his own bunk, unpacking and repacking his gear.

  “Earlier this morning,” Lucas said. “All quiet on the Western Front.”

  “That’s good to know. One less thing to worry about.”

  “Bet he’s chuffed to bits at having pulled babysitting duty,” Blaine said, tugging the drawstrings on his backpack to cinch the top closed. He hiked it up onto his shoulders and effortlessly shrugged it into place.

  “Least he’s not walking ten bloody miles,” Connor moaned. “Give me a hand would you?” He struggled to balance the pack and the bottles of water he had secured to it, while tying off the cord and trying to smooth down the canvas he had laid over the electrical gadgets to fend off the moisture in the air.

  Cutter got up to help. “Multitasking at its most primitive, eh?”

  “Something like that. Ten flippin’ miles, Cutter. No one mentioned marathons when I signed up for this job.”

  “Connor, you do realise that a marathon is more than twice the distance?”

  “Yeah, but it’s only half as hot.”

  Cutter couldn’t quite make the connection, but let it slide; he was sure it made perfect sense in Connor’s head. Lots of things did that made little sense to the rest of the world.

  “Let’s get this show on the road, shall we?” he said.

  To call it a road was an optimistic use of the word — it was more like a bridle path wending its way through ever-encroaching trees. Every dozen or so yards it was rutted or cratered and filled with sucking mud and overflowing puddles left over from the last downpour.

  He didn’t know the genus of ninety per cent of the trees, only that they were towering old sentinels. The group slowed to negotiate a fallen tree that had come down across the road. Cutter saw that it had more rings to its growth than most of the monuments in London could have claimed if stone had similarly marked the passing of time. That one dead tree put things into perspective for him.

  At Nando’s insistence, they had divided themselves into three of the battered old Land Rovers. The SUVs were fine for the mountain trails, but they weren’t suited to the realities of the jungle tracks. Neither Cutter nor Chaplin were about to argue with him, no matter how much they might have liked the air-conditioned interiors. The SUVs looked the part and promised so much, but weren’t truly all-terrain vehicles. The picture Nando had painted involved broken axles, ruptured sumps, tracks too narrow for the wider loads of the SUVs — what it all came down to was a series of long, bone-weary walks back to the reserve without adequate food or water, their transport abandoned.

  The Land Rovers, on the other hand, were workhorses more than capable of handling the extreme terrain the Amazon had to offer.

  Cutter rode with Jenny and Blaine, with Nando in the driver’s seat. Chaplin drove with Abby and Connor, while Lucas and Stephen travelled with Nando’s ranger, Genaro Valdez. They kept in constant radio contact.

  “So tell me, Professor, why are you here?” Nando asked.

  “Because you asked me to come,” Cutter said.

  “No, really?” His voice said that he wasn’t going to be satisfied by anything short of the truth.

  “Something in your email caught the interest of my boss.” This time Cutter didn’t look at him as he offered the explanation. He stared out of the window at the thick-boled trees and at the lichen that grew in their shade.

  “But still, that is not enough to bring in the embassy and the army. I am not stupid, something is going on here.”

  “You’re right. But I’m not sure I can tell you what.”

  “Secrets and lies,” Nando said, as though he understood perfectly, and it disgusted him. “This is my life now. I work more with the government than I do with the animals, it seems. There are so many stupid regulations put on my job, even down to sectors of the rainforest that fall outside of our jurisdiction, where we are not allowed to go. What do they think they are hiding from us? The fabled cities of gold?” He laughed bitterly at that. “I live with secrets, fear not.”

  “Well, if I am right, before the end of today I might be able to show you something you have never seen before.”

  “That is something at least.”

  “I ought to warn you, though, that the next twenty-four hours are pretty much guaranteed to shake th
e foundations of everything you believe in as a scientist.”

  “You make it sound... intriguing,” Nando said, and the disgust had been replaced by genuine curiosity. He decelerated suddenly to negotiate a deep puddle that had turned half of the track into mud. The Land Rover lurched away beneath them, throwing Cutter up hard against the restraint of the seat belt. In the back, Jenny and Blaine had no such security and were thrown about violently. Nando apologised profusely even as he hit another deep pot-hole in the track and had them grasping at the back of the seats to stop them from sprawling all over each other.

  It took the best part of an hour, driving through the stifling heat and the cloying air, to reach the clearing where the rangers had found the curious tracks. Before they got out of the car, Nando cracked open a flask of water and passed it around. They each drank deeply, wiping their hands across their lips before they passed it on to the next to drink. Rarely had warm water tasted so good. He handed out small sesame seed and honey cakes, as well.

  “Good for the blood sugar in the heat,” he promised. They tasted a little like Baklava, sweet and chewy.

  When they got out of the Land Rover, Stephen pulled Cutter aside. “We should warn them,” he said under his breath. “They deserve to know what they might be going up against.”

  “And how do you propose to convince them that a Plio-Pleistocene relic might be stalking their jungle, Stephen?” Cutter responded. “How do you explain the entire ARC, in a nutshell?”

  “I don’t know. Just tell them,” he pressed, but even as he did his expression said that it was a pointless exercise. They needed Nando to see for himself. The evidence of his own eyes would be difficult to refute. But still, they knew, there was something inherently wrong with not warning him about what they were likely to find out there in the trees.

  “We can’t,” Cutter said. “We just need to do what we can to protect them, until the proper moment arrives.”

  “Ready?” Nando asked, joining them and placing a hand on his Professor’s shoulder.

  Cutter nodded.

  He walked around and opened the Land Rover’s trunk, then lifted out a sheathed machete. He fastened the belt around his waist, so that it hung like a sword, and then secured the bottom of the sheath with its leather ties around his thigh. He drew the blade with a flourish then re-sheathed it.

  “Ready.”

  The sweat peppered his temples and cheeks as he trudged behind the rangers. Mercifully, the trees were not silent. The fauna was making itself heard with a vengeance. It was easy to see why they called the Amazonia the lungs of the planet. The sheer number of leaves from the canopy all the way down to the forest floor was incredible. So many shades of green and so many other colours, as well. Truly the jungle was alive.

  He knelt, reaching out to touch a bright yellow orchid-like plant.

  “I wouldn’t if I were you,” the guide, Genaro, said quickly, when Cutter’s fingers were only an inch or so away from the thick velvet petals. “That one secretes an hallucinogenic residue through its stamen and leaves. The natives have been known to dry it out and smoke it to aid communion with the earth goddess.”

  “Ah, thanks,” Cutter said, putting his hands in his pockets. Now that he was aware of it, he could just make out a fine dusting of powder that lay across the yellow petals. Without Genaro’s warning, he would have taken it for nothing more dangerous or exotic than pollen. The others gathered round to take a closer look, and then they walked on in single-file. No one else reached out to touch any of the beautifully patterned flora.

  “The ecology of this region is an entirely different world, Professor,” explained Genaro, walking ahead of him and pointing out a number of different plants. “That one there —” it appeared to be a clam-like plant, an oversized Venus flytrap “— is a flesh eater.”

  “No way,” Connor said enthusiastically. “A flesh-eating plant? Like Audrey Two? That’s wild. What does it eat?”

  “People,” Genaro said flatly, then seeing the look of horror on Connor’s face, he burst out laughing.

  “You’re so gullible sometimes, Connor,” Abby said, coming up behind them. “This isn’t Little Shop of Horrors with its purple people eater from outer space.”

  Connor ignored her teasing, and resisted the temptation to correct her mistake.

  “So what do they eat?” he pressed.

  “Birds, mainly,” Genaro explained, his chuckling slowly subsiding. “The plant secretes enzymes that break down the flesh, and allow it to dissolve into the leaves.”

  “Crikey. That’s strangely cool.” Connor peered at the plant with fascinated respect.

  “Yes, it is,” Cutter said. “But let’s not test it out. Let’s keep our fingers to ourselves, shall we?”

  “Too right,” Connor said, following his boss’s example and stuffing his hands into the pockets of his shorts. “Are there a lot of dangerous plants around here?”

  “Everything is dangerous, if you don’t know how to handle it,” Genaro replied. “You are aware of the food chain, no?” Connor nodded. “Everything subsists on something else. To protect themselves from extinction, species develop defence mechanisms. It is about survival. No species willingly becomes extinct. They scatter more and more pollens, lure creatures in with their bright colours, and snap their traps shut. It is how they survive.”

  “Sounds just like the West End on a Saturday night,” Connor said. “Only without the prostitutes.”

  “Connor!” Abby cuffed him across the back of the head.

  “All right boys and girls,” Cutter said, “we’ll have none of that.”

  “This way, Professor,” Genaro said, leading them through the trees. He described the ecology and the history of the place as they walked. “The canopy of Amazonia is less studied than the ocean floor, did you know that? It’s thought that it may contain half of the world’s species. Over 500 mammals, 175 lizards and more than 300 other reptile species. As incredible as it may seem, one third of the world’s birds live in Amazonia. And 30 million insect types.”

  “That’s a lot of bugs,” Connor said.

  “More than one or two,” Cutter agreed. “It really is a hell of a place.”

  “And it would all fall apart without the ants,” Genaro said. “Leafcutter ants, that is. They prune away about a sixth of all the leaves, stimulating new growth in the process. The dead leaves break down and feed the soil. It’s all amazingly self-sufficient.”

  They followed the ranger as he stepped over a thick tangle around the trunk of a tree. Most of the roots stayed very close to the surface, rather than burrowing down deep in search of nutrients. The loam on the top layers of soil was fed by the decaying vegetation, yet there was very little goodness to be found beneath it.

  “It’s hard to believe that more than half of it has been destroyed in the last fifty years,” Cutter said, looking up the length of the almost leafless trunks at the thick canopy above.

  “Criminal, is what it is,” Nando said vehemently, joining him. “Across the world 200,000 acres of trees are burned every single day. That’s 150 acres every minute, or two-and-a-half acres a second being stripped from the earth.”

  “Jesus.”

  “He has very little to do with it — they only made one cross to nail him up to,” Nando said solemnly.

  “Not when you think about it,” Connor disagreed. “I mean, how many Catholics are there with crucifixes on their walls and —”

  “I don’t think we can blame religion for the deforestation of the Amazon, Connor,” Cutter interjected, mildly amused. “It’s got more to do with charcoal burning for industrial power plants, and deforestation to create space for cattle farming, just to meet the hunger pangs brought on by the sight of the Big Yellow M. Logging, mining, and other demands from our so-called civilised society.”

  “Yeah, but I was just saying. When you think about it, with all those icons, that’s a lot of wood just to crucify one man.”

  “I’ll give you that,” Cut
ter said.

  “Well, you better enjoy it now, because it’ll all be gone by the time you retire,” Nando told Connor. “At the current rate of deforestation, we’re looking at no more forest by 2050. Sounds a long way off, but it’s only forty years. We’re losing around 150 species of plants, animals, and insects a day.”

  “Holy shit, but that’s —”

  “Genocide,” Genaro interrupted. “For want of a better word.”

  “Oh, no, I think that word is just fine,” Cutter agreed.

  “In the time of my ancestors, ten million people lived in this forest,” Nando explained. “Now, across the millions of acres, we have less than 200,000 making their homes here. The tribes are dying out just like the insects and the plants. It is the brave new world. That is why I came back here, rather than taking a job in a zoo in England. I wanted to do something. I felt the call in my heart.”

  “I can understand that,” Connor said.

  “People do not seem to understand that the plants are our salvation, far more than merely the providers of air. New drugs for AIDS, cancer, diabetes, arthritis and Alzheimer’s come from plant-derived sources. Fully twenty-five per cent of all drugs are derived from rainforest ingredients, but scientists have barely tested one per cent of the plants our industries are destroying. The cures are all here, all around us — my people have always believed this. I am sorry, this was not the kind of tour I intended to give you. It just depresses me to think of all that we are losing every day of our lives.”

  “No need to apologise, Nando. We owe a debt to these trees, and we are not repaying it with kindness.”

  They trekked on silently, each of them wrapped in his or her own thoughts. Within a few minutes, however, they were gathered around looking down at a series of Thylacosmilus tracks. The ground was covered with them, as though the creature had circled and circled before finally dragging down whatever had drawn it to the clearing.

  “There’s more than one,” Stephen said, crouching down and pointing out the subtle size difference between some of the de-pressions in the soft mud. Cutter leaned forward to inspect the indentations, feeling out the marks with his index finger. Stephen was right, they were substantially different depths, though that could have been accounted for by a shift in weight distribution; perhaps the predator had entered the clearing at a run, and then slowed. Prowling, he wondered.