Lost in the Jungle

by Bill Nye

  Find your inner sloth.

  Chillax.

  I checked the watch again. Seven minutes left. Setting up the antenna was my first job. Hank had modified it so that it could be connected to the computer. Now I laid it carefully along the length of the limb. Pepedro had torn some straps off his backpack so I could tie it down, and I used these to secure the half closest to me. Then, following Hank’s instructions, I bent the upper portion toward the sky.

  Next, I removed Matt’s laptop. My hands were still shaking. I tried not to think about how much my brother loved the machine or how easily it could slip out of my grip and plummet to the ground.

  Four minutes remained.

  I laid the computer on top of the backpack so the front edge was pushing against my chest. A small cable extended out from the bottom of the modified arrow, and I reached around, grabbed the end, and plugged it into the computer. A light breeze drifted through the top of the trees. The branches waved and swung, opening a clear view to the sky. The spot was better than I’d guessed.

  With three minutes to go, I switched on the laptop.

  A million years were crammed into the next sixty seconds. The screen blinked to life. I entered Matt’s password—he warned me that he’d change it the minute I got back down—and breathed a sigh of relief as the machine booted up. Luckily, Matt had made this part of the process easy. Once I launched his program, all I had to do was click the big green “connect” button in the bottom right corner of the screen. His codes would do the rest of the work.

  And I tried. Honestly, I tried. But Matt’s precious computer had chosen that moment to throw a mild tantrum. Alicia’s watch said I had less than two minutes left. The touch screen wasn’t working. I was moving my finger all around the square black pad at the base of the keys, but nothing happened. The annoying little arrow on the screen, the one I needed to move just a few inches to the right, refused to budge. And I tried everything. Telepathy. Singing. Begging. Ava would’ve suggested restarting the computer. Hank probably would’ve told me to be patient. Pepedro? Maybe he would’ve kicked the machine. Lefty, of course.

  Desperately, I started tapping random buttons. Nothing worked until I hit the tab key. A thin rectangle appeared around the green “connect” button. I hit enter, and Matt’s laptop cooperated. “Yes!” I screamed.

  Two macaws perched in another part of the tree shrieked back. Complimenting me on my stroke of genius? Maybe. Either that or they were telling me to shut up.

  While the program ran in the background, I opened Hank’s e-mail account and sent the messages he’d drafted.

  A blue wheel appeared in the center of the screen, and a thick green bar gradually filled it in from the top, moving clockwise. First a quarter, then half. The bar was advancing slowly but steadily. The satellite’s new orders were being transferred, and the machine was processing its new commands.

  Cheryl was listening, and this wasn’t a miracle or magic. This was pure science, the result of the very real genius of my brother and sister. Was I tempted to check YouTube to see if I’d passed sixteen million views? Of course. But I resisted. As the program and the e-mail server talked to the satellite in the background, I opened a Web browser. The laptop would only be in contact with the satellite for a few minutes at most. Then Cheryl would cruise past the horizon, and Ronaldo would be off-line.

  In terms of brainpower, I can’t match up with the geniuses. So any time I have a chance to do a little extra reading or research, a shot to learn something they don’t already know, I take advantage. Up in the tree, I typed the name of the floor company, Super Andar, in quotes and clicked the search button. The connection was painfully slow. Only about thirty seconds remained when I clicked through to the company’s site. There was nothing interesting up top. I scrolled down the page until several rows of small photographs appeared. Each picture was a portrait of one of the leaders of the company. Our bleached-blond nemesis appeared in the third row. But that wasn’t the picture that surprised me. At the very top, in a row all to herself, there was a photograph of the leader of the company, the boss Joao had mentioned, and it was someone we’d already met. Someone who’d been “helping” us almost from the moment we arrived in Manaus. High above the rainforest, I stared at an image of a woman who should’ve had a wart on the end of her long and twisted chin.

  17

  DARKNESS IN THE WATER

  Once I’d packed up the gear, I unclipped the cable, wrapped it around the branch five times, and snapped it back onto the end of the dart. Betsy may have been out of battery power, but she could still unspool and lower me down. The only question was how fast I’d drop. The answer? Not quite at the speed of light, but it felt that way. Leaves and branches whipped into me as I crashed down through the canopy. Once the jungle floor was in sight, and I spotted everyone staring up at me hopefully, I realized there was one other question.

  How was I going to stop?

  Frantically, I started pressing buttons and flipping levers, hoping there was some juice left in the battery. Ava was shouting. The sound of the cable unspooling changed. The line ran out, and five feet from the ground, Betsy gave me my second mega-wedgie of the day.

  This one might have been worse than the first.

  I moaned. Matt and Hank helped me out of the harness. Hank leaned in close, squinting as he stared into my eyes, and asked if I was injured. “No, I’ll be okay,” I answered.

  “That was so very brave, Jack,” Hank said. He shook his head. “You continue to—”

  “Did it work?” Matt asked, cutting him off.

  “Wait,” I said. “Hank, you were saying something?”

  “Never mind that,” Ava said. “Did you get there in time?”

  I gave them a double thumbs-up. Pepedro whooped. Hank shook his clenched fists and patted Matt on the back. Maybe I’d ask him to finish that compliment another time.

  “Everything worked?” Alicia asked.

  “I think so,” I said. “Everything went as planned. Mostly, anyway.”

  “Mostly?” Hank pressed.

  They didn’t need to hear about my fall. “The e-mails were sent and the programs transferred,” I said. “Plus I discovered something else.”

  When I told them Dona Maria was in charge of Super Floor, Ava and Matt were surprised. Hank was livid. The Brazilians were horrified that such an important citizen of Manaus was planning to destroy a huge section of the rainforest. And Bobby quietly traced his toe through the mud.

  Alicia pointed at him. “You knew, didn’t you? This whole time, you knew she was with Super Floor?”

  Bobby shrugged.

  “How could you lie to us?” Pepedro asked.

  “I never lied,” Bobby said. “Okay, so maybe that’s not true. I definitely lied.”

  “A bunch of times,” I added.

  “Fine,” Bobby admitted. “But I never lied about Dona Maria. It’s just that you never asked.”

  “So how did you partner up with her?” Ava asked over her shoulder. “Was she the one who sent you into Hank’s lab?”

  “No, that was all me,” Bobby said. “I staked out the neighborhood for five days before figuring out how to get inside.” He glanced at Hank. “That Dumpster is a nice touch, by the way.”

  “So when did you meet her?” I asked.

  “She contacted me after you ditched my limousine driver,” Bobby explained. “Once she found out I was searching for you, Hank, she set me up with the boat, then fixed it so that I could follow the five of you straight to him. Then when you ditched me, I managed to get a message out to Joao the next day, and he picked me up in the helicopter.”

  “How much did she pay you?” Pepedro asked.

  “She didn’t need to pay me,” Bobby admitted. “Our interests were aligned. We both wanted to find Dr. Witherspoon. She wanted to stop him from interfering with her logging operations, and I wanted his battery design.”

  “So did she, apparently,” I added.

  “Yeah, well, I hadn’t
counted on that,” he said.

  “So what now?” I asked.

  Matt didn’t have an answer, and neither did Ava. We all waited for Hank, and he paused for a few seconds before responding. “Now we retrieve our gear and get back to Manaus,” Hank said. “We need to make sure those satellite photographs get through to the proper authorities. Plus I want my drive back.”

  None of us reacted. I didn’t want to say it. Thankfully, Matt did first. “Hank, I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can hike another three days through this jungle. Not without shoes. We need to call for help.”

  “We should’ve done it when you were up in the canopy, Jack,” Ava pointed out.

  “Don’t worry,” Hank said. “I already did. Or you did, Jack, when you sent those e-mails. The nearest river is only a few hours from here. Our ride should be there soon enough.”

  Slightly less than two hours later, after we grabbed all our bags from the campsite, we arrived at the edge of a small river and found the Von Humboldt holding its position in the center, with its bow pointing upstream.

  “What’s Bobby’s boat doing there?” I asked.

  “Bobby’s boat?” Hank said. “That’s my boat!”

  “It is?” Matt asked.

  “I might have lied about that, too,” Bobby said.

  “I designed this boat specifically for the Amazon,” Hank said.

  “Yes,” Bobby said, “and my friends stole it.”

  Hank shrugged. “They did? I had no idea. I’ve been so busy in the jungle.”

  Pepedro pointed at the Von Humboldt. “How did she get here? We left the boat miles away.”

  “On the banks of a totally different river,” Alicia added.

  “One of those e-mails you sent a few hours ago was to the Von Humboldt, Jack,” Hank explained. “I sent these coordinates so she’d come to pick us up. I didn’t think she’d get here this quickly, though.”

  Matt was shaking his head. “I should have known. You named it after Alexander von Humboldt, the great scientist.”

  “The guy who shocked himself with electric eels,” I added.

  “Exactly! Impressive, Jack.”

  “How does it navigate?” Ava asked. “I mean, I’m guessing you have laser scanners looking for obstacles on the surface.”

  “And GPS when the boat is within satellite range, obviously,” Matt added.

  “Right, but what about the underwater hazards?” Ava pressed.

  “That’s where Jack helped me out.”

  Matt pointed at me. “Him?”

  If I’d been wearing a bow tie, I would’ve straightened it.

  “Well, not directly,” Hank said. “But your suggestion about eels led me to a pretty interesting breakthrough, Jack. Electric eels don’t just stun their prey with those jolts. They use an electric field to identify obstacles and fish. So I copied their technique and created a new navigation system for boats,” Hank said. “The Von Humboldt can scan for and avoid all kinds of surface and underwater obstacles.”

  My siblings were mesmerized. But I’d turned my attention to another issue. At least fifty feet of open river stretched between us and the boat. That water was probably swarming with piranhas. “That’s great, but how are we getting out there?” I asked.

  “Oh!” Hank declared. “This part’s my favorite!”

  His backpack had a support belt that clipped around his waist. He reached into one of the pockets and removed a small radio with a stubby antenna. He caught Pepedro and Alicia staring. “I know what you’re thinking, but it’s short-range only. I couldn’t have used it to call for help.”

  “What’s it for, then?” Alicia asked.

  Hank lifted his eyebrows three times, quickly. “It’s a remote control,” he said. As he pressed a button on the side of the radio, two panels opened on the roof of the cabin. An aluminum shaft telescoped up out of the hidden compartment and unfolded into a crane with a steel cable at the end. The crane lifted a large plastic case from the roof, swung it out over the edge of the Von Humboldt, and lowered it into the water below.

  The case unfolded before it hit the water. A slightly larger version of our failed fishing boat quickly inflated and cruised across the water, aiming straight for Hank.

  “Are you steering?” Ava asked.

  “No, it tracks the radio,” he explained. “It will drive straight to the remote control.”

  But the boat never made it to Hank. Standing knee-deep in the golden water, Bobby grabbed the bow, then swung it around and shut off the electric motor.

  “What are you doing?” Hank asked.

  Alicia started moving to the boat when Bobby held up his free hand. “Stop!” he said.

  “Why?” Ava asked.

  Slowly, Bobby was backing into deeper water.

  “Bobby,” Hank said, “what are you doing?”

  “I’m going back to Manaus,” he said, “but you’re not.”

  “What do you mean?” Hank asked.

  “What do I mean? For a genius you’re not very quick, are you? I’m going to steer this little craft out to that beautiful boat of yours, return to the city, and steal the drive back from that greedy old hag.”

  “You’re calling her greedy?” Ava snapped. “You’re the thief.”

  Hank waded forward, holding up his hands. “Bobby, please, let’s just talk this through.”

  Bobby backed up farther. The water was almost up to his waist.

  “What if we pay you?” I asked.

  Matt corrected me. “No, we can’t, remember?”

  “Fine,” I said. “Hank can pay you.”

  “I can?”

  “This is ridiculous,” Alicia said. “Bring the boat here.”

  My brother’s eyes bulged. He was watching the water near Bobby. Something was moving. Something large and dark. Pepedro saw it, too. But it was too large to be a caiman and too dark for a boto.

  “Wait,” Hank yelled. “Wait. Jack’s right. I could pay you. How much do you want?”

  “Money? I don’t want money!” Bobby said. “I have money. What I want is a little fame, you know? I’d love to be walking through an airport one day and glance at one of those newsstands with all the magazines, and see . . . me, me, me, me. In a sharp, tight-fitting suit with a purple tie. I’d look casual, elegant, maybe a little brilliant.”

  Alicia interrupted. “What does this have to do with us?”

  “Those battery designs will make me the greatest inventor of the twenty-first century! I’ll revolutionize transportation, and this time my father will have to admit to my brilliance!”

  “We’ll tell everyone you stole the designs,” Ava said. “No one will believe you.”

  The dark shape was behind him now, circling.

  “Oh, princess, don’t you know anything? I’ll keep you tied up in the courts for decades while I’m making billions.”

  Gritting her teeth, Ava snapped, “Don’t call me princess.”

  “I’ll call you what I like,” Bobby said. “If you do manage to survive the jungle and return to Manaus, I’ll already be gone and putting the batteries into production.”

  Bobby started to push away. The dark shape surfaced to his left, then swam beneath the boat. He still hadn’t seen it. And maybe warning him would have been the right thing to do. But he was about to abandon us. And Matt said this species wasn’t deadly. Painful, maybe. But not lethal. “Wait!” I cried.

  He paused. “What? It’s over. You lost.”

  “I’m sure we can make a deal. The battery was kind of my idea, so I have a say in this, too. How about we give you five percent?”

  Hank raised his eyebrows. “Your idea, Jack?”

  Alicia wagged her finger. “No, no, no. Five percent is too high,” she said. “Three percent.”

  Bobby chuckled. “You’ll get zero percent.” He looked over our heads at the surrounding forest. “Assuming you even get out of this place alive. Look,” he said, placing both hands on the side of the boat, preparing to jump in, “it’s be
en real, but I have work to do.”

  Standing beside me, Pepedro tossed a stone into the river half a meter from Bobby’s waist. Instantly, the dark shape darted toward him. The giant electric eel wrapped itself around his right leg and pumped him full of nine hundred volts. Every muscle in his body instantly tensed. His eyes bulged. His teeth clenched. For a few seconds, I thought he was going to explode. Then Bobby released his death grip on the bow of the small boat and fell face-first into the water.

  18

  CRIMES AGAINST THE AMAZON

  The Von Humboldt completed the return trip to Manaus in only two days, since Hank had it drive through the night while we slept. The food was way better than on the first part of our journey. There was a freezer in the hold that none of us had known about, and it was packed with frozen fruits and vegetables. The solar-powered shower that extended from a hidden compartment was probably our favorite surprise, though. The closest thing any of us had gotten to a shower was Matt nearly getting doused by that monkey. We all needed a serious scrubbing, including Bobby, but we didn’t allow him that luxury. Everyone had kind of wanted to leave him there on the riverbank, but there was no way he would’ve survived. So we locked him in the tiniest bunk like a prisoner.

  The city appeared in the distance early Saturday evening, and Hank called for us to join him around his laptop. He was finally able to connect to the Internet, and none of us were sure how to react when we found that Cheryl had worked as planned. The satellite had been reprogrammed. She’d captured images of all the points on Hank’s map, just as we’d hoped. But that also meant we had proof that Super Floor had begun its logging operations. In several photographs, sections of the jungle that were once entirely green had been stripped of their trees.