The Orchid Hunter

by Sandra K. Moore

  “Why did you do that?” Yagoda asked. “That’s dangerous!”

  While Kinkaid talked and Yagoda tried to wrap his brain around our little trek, I got up and tore myself a hunk of bread off the loaf by the fire. I scooped the bread into the stew and tasted. Heavenly. I sighed and headed back to my chair but Yagoda had sat down in it.

  “Hey,” I said to him.

  He gave a start and popped out of my chair, then sat cross-legged next to Kinkaid’s chair to continue their conversation about the trip to the station.

  Ah, yes, scientists. Yagoda didn’t have a clue how insulting he was being. He was just a one-topic kind of guy. All the brilliant ones are like that. Harrison certainly was. Had been. The stew was magnificent.

  “Have you heard anything from the Yanomamo about it?” Kinkaid was asking when I scraped bottom and tuned in again.

  Yagoda shook his head, throwing a few wispy hairs off his white-bread afro. “We have three Yanomamo workers, but none of them have mentioned fighting the miners. Are you going to talk to the village leader?”

  “Yes.” Kinkaid pulled off his glasses and scrubbed his eyes with his fingers. “I need some sleep first. And a shower.”

  “You’re in luck,” Yagoda said. “Bernard is back in the States for a semester, so you can have his hut.”

  We picked up our gear and followed Yagoda along the circle to a smallish hut that housed a cot, a table, a chair and a cooking fireplace. No separate sleeping room for Bernard. But the screens were in good shape, and the walls went all the way to the floor, which meant our chances of being crept upon were slimmer than usual. Yagoda produced a spare cot and a couple of blankets. The little stone-floored patio area had a full-fledged solar-heated hot-water bag shower suspended above it. Things were looking up again.

  But lying down after a fifteen-mile overnight hike, finally clean, in clean clothes, in a relatively comfortable bed, under shelter, with a full stomach, my brain refused to shut up. My body wanted to crash, but my mind raced as I lay staring at the ceiling beams.

  Was Kinkaid’s moth the secret to my finding the Death Orchid, or was I on a wild-goose chase? No, it had to be the same insect. Corpse Moth, Death Moth. The moth’s coloring matched the medicine bowl. The medicine bowl had been in Harrison’s apartment along with his notes pointing to this area. I was in the right place.

  What had happened to Harrison? What would have caused him to leave academia and go to work for the arch-capitalist von Brutten? I couldn’t shake the feeling that Harrison had been coerced somehow into working for my employer. Some weakness had made him a victim, possibly of von Brutten, possibly of someone else. Maybe he’d gotten scared or depressed and run away. I could see him doing that. Or had he actually come down here to harvest a Death Orchid only to get himself killed, perhaps by another orchid collector?

  Speaking of, what about Lawrence Daley? He knew von Brutten wanted the orchid, and he would have followed me to steal it. I’d used yet another alias when I made my travel plans, so it was possible I’d given him the slip. I shook my head. No, Daley was too motivated by cash and revenge and downright orneriness to let me get away with this orchid. He was a known quantity and I’d dealt with him before.

  But who was the Brain, the guy I tackled on the River Walk in San Antonio? Where did he know me from? Was he one of Harrison’s grad students? It could be he was working with Harrison on von Brutten’s Parkinson’s project, but I couldn’t envision a mild-mannered medical research scientist pulling a desk apart looking for a map to the Death Orchid. If he’d been working with Harrison, it made sense that von Brutten would have known about him and told me. No, the Brain must be working for someone else. But who?

  That brought me to the not-blood-stained notebook page. Marcus Donovan, using the considerable resources of the CIA tech lab, would be able to figure out the stain in next to no time, at least according to his reputation. Had he left me a voice mail like he said he would? I’d have to wait until I got back to Boa Vista to check my messages.

  I could call Scooter then, too. Was he doing okay? Hank and Marian were probably taking good care of him, like they always did while I was away. Marian worked for her room and board, so at least with the barmaid living in Scooter’s trailer, he’d have someone with him day and night. And home-cooked meals.

  The last question I had was whether von Brutten was doing something about Cradion already, or was he waiting for me to return with the Death Orchid, playing the games powerful people play when they’re orchestrating world events from on high?

  “Are you okay?” Kinkaid’s voice startled me out of my near-comatose reverie.

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “You were making little noises. Like a bad dream.”

  I threw one arm over my eyes, playing drama queen. “I was whimpering, wasn’t I? How humiliating.”

  “No—” and there was a chuckle behind the word “—you just seemed…disturbed. Upset.”

  I sighed and put my arm back down. When I turned my head, I looked up close and personal into the face of that naughty bedroom fantasy. Bug nerd, I reminded myself. Appearances aren’t everything.

  Right, another part of my brain laughed. Carlos’s appearance had nothing to do with jumping into bed with him.

  “I have a lot to do and not much time to do it,” I replied.

  “Same here.”

  “What’s your timetable?”

  Kinkaid heaved a sigh, then rolled off his back to lean on his elbow and look at me. He wore a white muscle-tee undershirt and the bit of chest I could see was smooth skinned, unadulterated by even a hint of hair.

  I like my guys burly, I thought, calling up images of Carlos’s perfect body. Burly with nice chest hair a girl can run her fingers through.

  “The Corpse Moth is kind of an unknown species,” he said. “I can only guess how long it lives and what its mating behavior is like. Dr. Yagoda first spotted it five days ago, so I’m counting down. I hoped to be looking for it last night.” He shrugged his smooth shoulder. It was evenly tanned, dark against the white T-shirt. “What about you?”

  “I have to be back to start a new job in a couple of weeks,” I lied.

  “What do you do?”

  “Nursery work. Breeding, crossbreeding, that kind of thing.”

  “So this is a research trip for you?”

  I nodded, wondering what his smooth, tanned chest felt like to a girl’s cheek. Warm, probably. Too warm in this heat.

  “I have the feeling we’re looking for the same thing,” he said.

  My lungs froze up. “What do you mean?” I asked, trying to sound casual.

  “You know, the one great find of your career—the find that gets you noticed by universities.”

  “Oh.”

  “We’ll both find what we came for,” he said confidently, rolling onto his back again and stretching. “What we were meant to find.”

  Great. Kinkaid was a split personality: entomologist and Pollyanna. And gymnast, if you counted the wild stunts he’d pulled at the mine. Stunts that could’ve gotten us both killed.

  Scooter, I thought to the old man, you’d better be around when I get back because I’m going to a lot of trouble for you.

  As my brain finally gave in to exhaustion, I heard Scooter’s chuckle. Don’t you worry none ’bout me, Ladybug, he said. You just worry ’bout yerself.

  Good plan.

  “Dammit!” Kinkaid said, staring into what I suspected was an empty trap. The trap rested on a tree branch, baited with some kind of scent he insisted the Corpse Moth found attractive. Where he got that information, I have no idea. Probably Yagoda.

  “Didn’t get one, huh?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Dammit,” I agreed.

  We had plenty to curse about. Two days of getting drenched with rain, two nights of finding not even a suggestion of the Corpse Moth. Even Kinkaid’s Pollyanna side seemed subdued today. Maybe it was the last thunderstorm’s positive ions. Those have an ill effect on
the human animal.

  The positive ions certainly had me feeling a little on edge. For the past half day or so I’d had the distinct, hair-on-the-back-of-the-neck impression we were being watched. But every time I glanced behind me, nothing but vines and palm fronds and deep green.

  “Maybe the moth’s habitat is another part of the forest,” I suggested.

  “If anything, I’m not putting the trap high enough. The Corpse Moth usually doesn’t venture out of its strata.”

  “Maybe it was slumming.”

  “Dr. Yagoda was very specific about where he last saw the moth.” Kinkaid picked up his backpack.

  “Yeah, well, my science gods have been wrong before, so maybe yours is this time.”

  He shot me a hard glance as he shrugged on his pack. “Hero worship isn’t my style.”

  “I’d believe you if every other word out of your mouth wasn’t the man’s name,” I remarked.

  “I respect his judgment,” Kinkaid said testily.

  “So do I.”

  My innocent look must have been working because he said, “Will you do me a favor?”

  I smiled my sweetest smile. “Where do you want your trap?”

  He glanced up without moving his head.

  “Canopy, huh?”

  “If it’s not too much trouble.”

  “Hey, I was headed up there anyway. Besides, I owe you. You save my life, I save your career.”

  He turned away too late. I saw his grin and answered with a genuine smile he didn’t see. As he moved off, I noticed his oversize shirt had shrunk with the washing he’d given it at the research station. Now it barely fit shoulders that were broader than they’d first looked.

  We started the trek back up the mountainside to the hollow where I’d left my climbing gear. Over the past two days, as Kinkaid hunted the Corpse Moth and I pretended to hunt bromeliads, we’d worked our way some miles away from the Ixpachia Research Station, which was fine with me. I didn’t much care for His Highness Yagoda or the Stepford grad students he’d brought with him. Rick was much more real, more human, than those cookie-cutter geeks.

  On the other hand, our little treasure hunt took us back toward the mine, which I didn’t like because it kept me on high alert for the pistoleiros. And backtracking slowly over the miles I’d covered at high speed a few days before was annoying. It felt like wasted effort.

  But we’d worked out a schedule that suited us both, traveling in the morning and setting up camp in the early afternoon. Then while Kinkaid loaded his bug traps, I’d climb to the canopy and spend the afternoon looking around. Early the next morning he’d check his traps and we’d be off again to the next likely site. Hiking as fast as we did, we were a good seven miles away from the station even moving just a few hours a day.

  I guess I worked so well with Kinkaid because he was a scientist with his mind on the prize and nothing else. It felt like the camaraderie I’d had in grad school when a few of us struggled to identify one of Harrison’s ambiguous specimens or do a genetic analysis. Intellectual equals with no funny business to get in the way.

  “What do you like best about your work?” Kinkaid asked as we hiked around a fallen tangle of liana vines and richly composting plant matter.

  That was easy. “The chase.”

  “I prefer the find.”

  “Why the find? It’s all over at that point.”

  “It’s only over if you value the hunt above all else. I like everything that comes after the find. The study, the understanding. Learning everything there is to know.”

  “Well, yeah, but what about the excitement?” I glanced back at him. “The thrill of something new?”

  He shrugged. “It’s still there. The more you learn, the more you learn you need to learn. I never get bored.” His bad-boy look lurked under his lenses again. “There’s always something new if you know how to look for it.”

  I let that ride without comment.

  “So you only hunt?” he pursued.

  “Usually.”

  “Ah.” His tone of voice said, That explains a lot.

  I shot him a glance. The grin was back. I ignored it. Cheeky boy.

  Climbing gear comes in handiest when you’re already up a tree. A botany lab I saw in Peru last year was practically a canopy-based city, a complex of lines and pulleys and even wooden platforms anchored in the emergent hardwoods to hold scientists, rudimentary equipment and specimens. Very neat stuff, and if I hadn’t been heading off with a pair of rare Brassias at the time I might have lingered to appreciate the engineering that went into building it.

  But the first task was to get up the tree.

  “Do you want the headset?” Kinkaid asked.

  I looked at the miked headset he’d borrowed from Ixpachia and shook my head. “I’ll be up and down in no time. Let’s not bother.”

  I buckled up my harness and used a piece of flat webbing to make my running anchor. The hardwood I’d picked to climb was a kapok with massive flying buttress roots—a kissing cousin to the swamp cypress but with a much wider base. I hooked a coil of rope across my chest and clipped some additional webbing to my harness, then fed the running anchor around the tree’s huge foot. Kinkaid waited quietly.

  Walking up a tree is kind of like rappelling down a cliff—you have to do exactly the opposite of what instinct tells you to do.

  Here’s how it works. You’ve got a running anchor rope that goes around the tree trunk, with both ends attached to your harness. You toss that rope up the tree trunk a little ways and walk up the trunk to it.

  But the trick is that your legs are stuck out nearly in front of you, like you’re sitting down. Your weight holds you tight against the anchor line and you don’t slip. In theory, you can brace your feet on the trunk and kind of lean there all day long. Next time you’re in a narrow hallway, try bracing your hands and feet against opposite walls and hanging off the floor. Same general principle.

  When you’re ready to move up the tree, you have to lean forward just enough to give you the slack to hike the anchor up the trunk a little. It’s scary the first forty times you do it, but after that it gets to be old hat. Years ago, telephone repairmen who worked the poles used the same technique to climb before some bright spark thought of installing those metal L pieces in the pole to make a ladder.

  My only real challenge, one the telephone repairmen didn’t have, was the ubiquitous tree branch. I had to string a second running anchor over the branch, lean on it, then release the first running anchor that was below the branch. Piece of cake.

  As I passed from the midstory into the canopy, sweating like a pig, I suddenly wondered if the Evil Eye was going to catch up with me. If Scooter were here, he’d be warning me to watch for snakes “extry careful.” Hell, if Scooter were here, he’d have me wearing some kind of herbal charm around my neck to ward them off. I’d probably catch the damned thing on a branch and choke myself to death.

  I’d reached the canopy. Time to concentrate on setting my sling. I tossed a line of webbing over a stout branch and pulled hard. When the branch didn’t give, I clipped a locking carabiner to the line. Then the same procedure on a different branch, for safety’s sake.

  I hooked a new anchor line through the carabiners and attached it to my climbing harness. This anchor would take all my weight. Yanking on the anchor didn’t budge the slings. Good.

  I passed the climbing rope through the two independently hung carabiners. It would take me home when I was ready to leave, and I’d leave it overnight for tomorrow’s trip up to check the trap.

  “Rope!” I yelled down to Kinkaid.

  “Ready!”

  Under most circumstances I’d handle the rope work myself, but I was kind of glad to have him belay me while I set the trap. I don’t have enough hands to maneuver and hold myself steady and set bug traps all at once.

  I dropped the rest of the coil. Ordinarily a hundred feet of rope would tangle on itself or catch on something, but it fell straight, unmolested, through
the midstory to land near Kinkaid’s feet. Things were looking up.

  Kinkaid grabbed the rope and took up the slack. The other end I tied to my harness. Then it was a simple matter of unhooking the running anchor line holding me to the tree and stepping into the air.

  This is the part where it’s best not to look down. Even now, after years of climbing cliffs, ledges and trees, my calves tingled when I looked down. Why does fear go straight to the knees?

  I swung, breathless, away from the kapok. A hundred or so feet below, Kinkaid leaned back, ready to catch me if one of the two slings broke.

  Everything held.

  I had to admit to myself, as I strapped the bug trap on a tree limb directly above me, that it was nice not to have to go it alone for a while. My nightmares aren’t about falling. They’re about landing. And lying there. Indefinitely. Starving to death, or maybe being picked on by scavengers. Vampire bats. Or being gnawed by a jaguar while still alive.

  I pulled out my field glasses and surveyed the botanical wealth. Bromeliads, yes, everywhere. A half-dozen orchids of various identifiable persuasions, endless vines, a cautious capuchin monkey watching me while it chewed a piece of fruit.

  A flash of white that wasn’t light caught my eye and I paused. Below me, woody liana vines crawling across the midstory treetops had made themselves into a giant hammock filled with what my colleagues call biomass. Don’t let the fancy name fool you. Basically, biomass means “living matter.” In this case, the biomass was “a compost pile.”

  But compost piles that hang in trees make great places to find epiphytes—plants that grow on the tree but aren’t parasites. Oddly, the biomass doesn’t smell too awful because everything breaks down so fast. Beetles burrow through the rotting leaves, the epiphytes anchor their roots, rainwater leaks through from top to bottom. It’s just mucky.

  True epiphytes, like bromeliads and some orchids, survive off whatever sheds onto them, whether rain, bugs or dead leaves. And if they happen to get lucky enough to be seeded in a hanging compost pile, so much the better for them.

  Right now, my heart started to pound as I scanned the biomass for that white flash. A flower would be too much to hope for and my luck wasn’t ordinarily that good, but it didn’t hurt to give the compost pile a once-over.