by Angela Hunt
“Never, but chicken droppings are used as fertilizer for vegetables. So Ashley either contracted the disease from prion-contaminated plant foods or she encountered a strain with an incubation span of more than eleven years.”
Alex brought her hand up to push a hank of hair from her eyes, then checked to be sure Caitlyn was not eavesdropping. She wasn’t— the girl was laughing with Duke Bancroft, who also seemed to have a soft spot for children.
“Long incubation times are not unusual for prion diseases.” She pushed the words over her suddenly reluctant tongue. “The strain that causes fatal familial insomnia can incubate as long as sixty years.”
He leaned back, frowning, then shook his head. “I’ve always heard that FFI and Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker disease are genetic.”
“I don’t think so. Why would one or two prion diseases be inherited when none of the others are? Consider the principle of Occam’s razor—when two theories compete, the simpler is more likely to be correct.”
Kenway propped his elbow on the table, then parked his chin in his hand. “Go on.” His voice brimmed with interest.
Alex didn’t hesitate. “Isn’t it more likely that the supposedly genetic diseases are really long-incubating varieties? After all, incubation time and patterns of brain damage are the only observable differences in prion-based encephalopathies.”
He did not answer, but his gaze shifted to his plate, then to Caitlyn, who had cupped her hand to whisper something in Duke’s ear.
Alex felt a small, obscure twinge of unease. If she had discovered Kenway’s secrets on the Internet, what might he have found out about her? Had she mentioned the cause of her mother’s death in that long and rambling interview with the reporter from El Tiempo?
Of course, Kenway might not be thinking about Alex and Caitlyn at all. He might be staring off into space and Caitlyn’s movement just happened to arrest his attention.
In a desperate attempt to direct his thoughts away from the hereditary aspects of prion diseases, Alex lightly tapped his arm. “Are you really a religious man, Doctor?”
He turned toward her. “I am.”
“Then tell me this—did you pray for your wife when she was ill?”
He blinked, and she knew the question had struck at something deep within him.
“Do you always lob such personal queries at breakfast?”
“Anytime I can,” she answered lightly. “It’s the researcher in me. I’ve never believed in waffling around.”
His eyes fell to her plate, where two soggy waffles sat in a pool of amber-colored syrup, then a soft smile curved his mouth.
“I begged,” he said, his voice fainter than air. “I entreated God every day, in every way I knew.”
She crossed her arms. “Then I don’t see how you can still call yourself religious. Your God failed you, Dr. Kenway.”
“He didn’t fail. He had another plan.”
Shaking her head, she shifted to face the table. “To think I was worried about traveling with a religious zealot. Until you can prove that your almighty God is stronger than a minuscule prion, I’ll trust you to keep the religious talk to a minimum.”
He closed his eyes as his face rippled with anguish. “There are things you can’t understand,” he said after a long moment, “until you have a go at them yourself. I don’t see Ashley’s death as a defeat—in all important aspects, it was a victory.”
“Sure it was.” Hauling her gaze from his stricken face, Alex sliced a piece of her now-cold waffle with the edge of her fork. “I’m afraid I don’t live in Bizzaro World, Dr. Kenway. I’ve ‘had a go’ at grief myself, and I will never be able to see a prion death as a victory. Not ever.”
When he sighed and rubbed a hand across his face, she could hear the faint rasp of the stubble he had neglected to shave. “I will pray for you,” he said finally, picking up his fork.
She thrust a forkful of waffle into her mouth, then forced it down in a hard swallow. “Save your prayers, Reverend Doctor. Save everything. I appreciate all you’ve done so far, but at this point, I think it’s best if you agree to come along and just observe. Be our team physician if you like. But leave the research and data collection to me.”
A faint glint of humor filled his eyes. “You don’t trust me?”
“I know how men are—since you’ve brought us this story, machismo honor will compel you to make us see a healing tribe even where one may not exist. I need a research partner who will be dispassionate and impartial—that’s why I’m working with Dr. Baklanov.”
Annoyance seemed to struggle with humor on his face as he picked up his knife and attacked his breakfast. “Whatever you say, Dr. Pace.”
7 APRIL 2003
7:55 A.M.
Afresh wave of guilt assaulted Michael as he watched Alexandra Pace help her daughter step from the dock into the boat that would carry them downstream. She’d caught him off guard at breakfast, disarming him with a couple of well-placed barbs and cutting his faith off at the knees.
Well, perhaps he was overstating the case a bit. His faith had proven itself strong enough to support him through the grief of Ashley’s illness and death, so it could certainly withstand the stings of an American woman’s acid tongue.
Still, he had felt woefully unprepared in the face of her ambush. But how could he explain faith to a woman who viewed her life through the unflinching eyes of reason? She’d spoken of grief—and he had no trouble believing she knew it well. Beneath that glib tongue and defensive posture, some sorrow had hardened her heart to everything but her daughter.
He ought to keep his distance, set a defensive perimeter around the woman and not venture closer than ten feet, but something about her piqued his interest. In less than five minutes’ conversation she’d proven herself an expert on prion diseases in an era when few physicians knew much about them; in less than an hour she’d demonstrated her admirable devotion to her daughter. So she did have a soft side.
With luck, he might get better acquainted with it.
Blowing out his breath, he dropped his pack to the dock and looked around. Their traveling party of thirteen—an unlucky number, if one put stock in such things—was taking two boats downriver to Libertad, a small village near the spot where Ya-ree had stepped out of the jungle. From Libertad the team would set out on foot. They had no idea how long it would take to find Ya-ree’s village, but a man with a perforated bowel could not have walked for more than twenty-four hours. After learning that information, Alejandro Delmar, the Brazilian tracker, estimated they would need five or six days to find the settlement they sought.
Just after the group finished breakfast, Delmar had spread a map of the area on a table and run his fingertip over a series of grids. “I have a GPS device,” he said, pointing to a box hanging from his belt. “We will go into the jungle and move through the center of each square on this grid, looking for trails.”
“What if there are no trails?” Deborah Simons interrupted.
Michael brought his hand up to cover a smile. The large-boned entomologist from Texas was as outspoken as Alexandra, but she lacked Dr. Pace’s bite. He had liked her immediately.
“If there are people in the area,” Emma answered, “we’ll find trails. The jungle is impossible to penetrate without them.”
Cocking his head to one side, Delmar tapped the map. “If we find nothing on the first pass, we will double back to a fixed location here, then press forward at a different angle, making a path through the jungle until we have completely covered the target area.”
He tilted a brow at Carlton, who grunted in approval. “A good plan, Delmar. It shouldn’t take long. If there are Indians living in the area, we’ll find them. And if they have the cure we’re looking for, well—” his grin widened—“we’ll sweet talk it out of them, right?”
The anthropologist had groaned softly at that comment, but the group broke up and moved out to prepare for the journey.
Now Michael smiled in chagrin, mentally com
paring the tiny compass in his bag with Delmar’s GPS, which could bounce a signal to a satellite in space, then reveal the latitude, longitude, and sometimes even the altitude of the device. Duke Bancroft and Raul Chavez also carried GPS devices, so the odds of anyone in their party becoming lost were virtually nonexistent, as long as they remained with the group.
He moved back as Louis Fortier, the effervescent French perfumer, stepped into the boat and took a seat on the bench next to Alexandra and Caitlyn. Duke Bancroft sat at the head of the boat, and Valerik Baklanov, the Russian, sat at the back with Milos Olsson and Tito, one of the young men from the lodge. Tito and Hector, regular “drivers” for Yarupapa, had agreed to take the group to Libertad and pick them up when summoned either by radio or messenger.
Michael hesitated on the dock. With a driver and six passengers each, both boats had been comfortably filled, so he was literally the odd man out. He glanced back at the second boat, then decided that given Caitlyn Pace’s small size, logic dictated that he ride with the first group.
“Hope I’m not crowding anyone,” he said, taking the single remaining seat on the right side of the boat. Settling his arms on the pack in his lap, he found himself almost knee-to-knee with Alexandra. She said nothing, but slipped one arm around her daughter while using the other to settle her straw hat more firmly upon her head.
Michael drew a deep breath. If the woman didn’t defrost a little, this trip to Libertad would be very chilly indeed.
Propelled by Tito’s oar, the boat moved away from the dock. When the young man started the outboard motor, Michael felt the vibration run through the boards beneath his feet. Scooping out two holes in the muddy brown water, the engine puttered steadily at the stern as they left the lodge behind.
For ten minutes they rode without speaking, each of them silently drinking in the sights of the river. Michael leaned back, propping an elbow on the gunwale, and marveled at the high-water marks on passing trees—amazing, that the river could rise and fall several meters within a matter of months.
Caitlyn Pace, imbued with a child’s natural exuberance, quickly put an end to the silence. “Look, Mom—see those dots on that tree? They’re fruit bats. They’re sleeping now, but they’ll fly away at sunset.”
Michael suppressed a smile when Alexandra shivered dramatically at the thought.
Caitlyn turned on the bench, pointing out the distant gray rises of river dolphins, the calling macaw, and the occasional serpentine trail of a snake in the water. The girl was a virtual sponge, Michael decided, absorbing everything she saw and heard. While her mother had been bouncing around in the treetops, this girl had been learning from the guides at the lodge.
Caitlyn giggled when they passed an orchid-laden tree with marmosets scampering in its branches. As they slowed to maneuver around a submerged trunk in the river, Caitlyn reached out to pluck a green pod from an overhanging branch.
Alexandra put out a warning hand. “Be careful, honey.”
“It’s okay, Mom. Lazaro called this the medicine tree. And he showed me how to do this.” With ease the girl cracked open the pod, then withdrew a yellow husk. “Lazaro said the boys use these for skipping stones—they count the number of skips, then tell each other that’s how many wives they’re going to have when they’re thirty.”
While Alexandra smiled indulgently, Caitlyn cracked the yellow husk, revealing a green seed shaped like a semicircle with scalloped edges. Grinning, she slipped her finger through a natural cleft in the seed, then clamped it on her earlobe.
Grinning at Michael, she lifted her hands to her head in a model’s pose. “Neat, huh? Lazaro said the girls use these for earrings.”
Michael nodded. “It’s aces. A fetching color, actually.”
“And totally free. Lazaro says the medicine tree grows everywhere.”
“The medicine tree?” Alexandra bent to pick up one of the broken husks. “Did he say what else they use these for?”
Caitlyn shrugged. “He only talked about the stones and the earrings. I didn’t ask about anything else.”
“Hey, Olsson,” Alexandra called. She held up the green seed. “Recognize this?”
The botanist grinned. “Enterolobium cyclocarpum, or elephant’s ear tree. Very common in these parts.”
Michael watched as Alexandra pulled one of the seeds from her daughter’s earlobe, then sniffed at it. “They grow everywhere?”
“That’s what he said. Look—they’re all along the riverbank.”
Michael turned. Caitlyn was right—apparently the tree was as plentiful as mosquitoes.
When he turned again, Alexandra’s eyes were abstracted and distant. “If they’re abundant. . .”
“They’re probably not what we’re looking for,” Michael finished her thought. “But it wouldn’t hurt to test a sample, would it?”
They rode in silence for a while. When Caitlyn hung one arm over the boat to trail her fingertips in the water, Michael asked, “Aren’t you worried about piranha?”
She grinned. “Lazaro says they won’t bite you unless you’re bleeding. He’s never been bitten and he swims in the water all the time.”
“She’s braver than I am.” Alexandra met Michael’s eye. “I cringe when I think about all the creatures living in this river. And when I remember that it also serves as a sewer for nearly every family in the jungle—” She shuddered again, and this time Michael did not think she was pretending.
Jerking her thumb over her shoulder, she gestured to Baklanov, who was puffing on a cigarette as if his life depended upon it. “Dr. Baklanov specializes in bacteriophages. He would have a grand time analyzing the bacteria and viruses populating this water.”
Upon hearing his name, the Russian coughed, then leaned forward to join in the conversation. “I came here to look for new phages in the canopy.” He gave Michael a conspiratorial smile. “But now that we have arranged to take a side trip, I will gather samples that might contain new phages wherever we find, um, interesting situations. It is not often that a Russian from Tbilisi has an opportunity to study in a tropical forest.”
“It’s not often that I do, either,” Michael answered, glad to find someone willing to engage in relaxed conversation. “I spend most of my time in Iquitos—it’s a nice city, but sometimes the workload drives me mad. We have too many patients and not enough doctors.”
Baklanov rested his elbows on his knees. “I’ve been meaning to ask—what brought you to this place?”
Michael stretched one arm along the edge of the boat. “After my wife died, I took a brief sabbatical. One of my mates suggested a trip to the rainforest—at the time, he could have suggested the moon and I’d have signed on. Anyway, within a fortnight I found myself in Peru. I spent a week in the jungle doing tourist things, then made my way back to Iquitos. I was there, waiting for my flight to Lima, when I decided to see a bit of the city. I wandered around for a while, then stopped into a riverfront café and ordered a pizza and lemonade.”
His voice softened with the memory. “I ate a few slices of pizza and left the rest sitting on the table—didn’t have much of an appetite, I suppose, in the heat. Then the waitress came over and said something in Spanish—the only word I caught was niño.”
“Little boy,” Caitlyn supplied.
Michael smiled. “Indeed. In my confusion, I thought the waitress was asking if I wanted her to wrap up the remaining pizza to take back to my little boy. I tried to explain that I didn’t have any niños, and somehow she realized her mistake. ‘No,’ she said, ‘este niño’—and she pointed to one of the street urchins who’d been trying like the dickens to polish my shoes.
“The truth hit me like a blow between the eyes—the boy was one of the many orphan children who live on the streets of Iquitos. She meant the food for him, and it might have been the only meal he’d receive that day.”
He looked up to see Alexandra watching him, lines of concentration deepening along her brows. Caitlyn was listening with her mouth open in a perfect
O, and Baklanov’s eyes had gone damp.
He gave them a rueful smile. “I handed over my plate, and instantly regretted that I’d eaten as much as I did. I ordered a pitcher of lemonade, too, then called the boy over to sit with me while he drank and ate his dinner.”
Shrugging, Michael let his gaze drift over the brown velvet river. “I knew I couldn’t feed every street child, but I could do something to help this one. The poor boys wore old T-shirts and shorts; most had bare feet. They made a living washing tourists’ shoes with river water they carried in empty pop bottles . . . and when they were sick, they had no one to care for them.”
He shifted to meet Alexandra’s eyes. “That’s when I decided to spend a year or two in Iquitos. The people here are so desperate for help, no one protested when I arrived at the hospital and announced that I’d come to work. They found me an office, threw open the door, and suddenly I had more patients than I knew how to handle. Word got around, and soon everyone came to see me—children, old people, Indians, tourists. I’ve been in Peru three years now, and I can’t say I’ve ever experienced what we’d call a routine day back in London.”
Alexandra Pace cleared her throat and looked away.
“Wow.” Admiration shone in Caitlyn’s eyes. “I’ll bet you speak excellent Spanish.”
Michael laughed. “I’m afraid I’m not too keen on languages. My nurse speaks English, though, and translates for me when necessary. The others on staff take pity on me and speak slowly. Sometimes we resort to sign language.”
“Dr. Kenway.” Baklanov adjusted his cap to better shade his face as he turned toward Michael. “I’m interested in these prion diseases you and Alexandra are investigating. I have spent my life researching the invisible world, but I have never encountered these prions you speak of. I wasn’t sure I believed in their existence until Alex showed me photographs.”
Michael crossed his legs, resting one ankle on his knee. “I thought you were an expert on the subject, Dr. Baklanov. Dr. Pace has assured me that you and she are working together on this expedition—”
