The Canopy

by Angela Hunt

  Watching the black lake through narrowed eyes, Alex could only agree.

  12 APRIL 2003

  7:03 P.M.

  Moving through rain that fell in solid sheets, Michael decided that shelter was definitely a desirable thing. The gentle mist that routinely watered London’s streets and soothed the parched leaves of her rose gardens bore no resemblance to the water pouring from a rip in the heavens above Amazonia.

  They had finished the rafts. Now they just had to escape death by drowning in a sudden deluge.

  Bancroft had risen early, pulling the men from their hammocks and leaving the women to fish for breakfast at the water’s edge. While Chavez had prepared the skillet and Delmar used his hat to snag fresh water sardines for bait, Bancroft had walked through the forest, tagging trees that would be suitable for use in his construction project. They had only one ax—a lightweight tool from Olsson’s field equipment, but they had put it to good use. While Olsson chopped down slender trees, Michael and the others whacked at ropy liana vines with whatever blades they had on hand—the hunting knife he’d purchased in Iquitos soon proved its value.

  The work was tedious, but Michael found it a nice change from the constant walking. The canopy of the deep forest provided shade from the broiling heat, but there was no escaping the sun when he neared the clearing at the lake.

  He had been hacking his way through a particularly tangled vine when the sight of a banana tree stopped him in mid-swing. An armload of ripe bananas hung from a stalk, and the bounty fell into his arms with one well-placed cut. Enjoying a moment of unexpected bliss, he walked among his companions distributing the fruit. After such a haphazard diet, the potassium in the plantains would do them all a world of good.

  As he handed bananas to Olsson and Baklanov, he saw Delmar look up, his forehead crinkled in thought. Puzzled by the man’s attitude, he waited until Delmar was alone, then offered the man a piece of fruit.

  “For you,” he said, extending the banana. “I hope I’m not handing out poisonous plantains by mistake.”

  Delmar took the fruit. “No.”

  “Then . . . is something wrong? I caught your expression a moment ago. You looked like you weren’t too keen on the idea of me passing these around.”

  The man jerked his head toward the spot where Michael had been working. “Look closely at the banana tree.”

  Michael turned, barely able to spot the long-leafed plant through the intervening growth. “I don’t understand. They’re just ordinary plantains, aren’t they?”

  “See the tree next to them? Papaya, and picked clean. You think you have found wild fruit, but someone planted those trees . . . probably the tribe you seek. You have just raided their crop.”

  Michael stared at the native guide as guilt rose like a geyser within him. “Blast, I’m sorry. I had no idea.”

  Delmar shrugged. “They wouldn’t have come for the food with so many people about.” A wry smile curled on his lips. “Take what you can find, eat it. Survival is all that matters here.”

  Michael exhaled deeply as he moved away. He supposed Delmar had a point, but it didn’t feel right to take crops from people who had nothing but what the jungle could provide.

  Still . . . the bananas would only rot if he left them on the ground. Someone had to eat them, and heaven knew they needed nourishment.

  He found Caitlyn and Alexandra by the lake and gave them two pieces of fruit. “Eat up,” he said, injecting a stern note into his voice. Caitlyn seemed to be faring well, but the dark circles beneath her mother’s eyes had deepened.

  “Thanks, Doc!” Caitlyn peeled her banana like a kid ripping into a Christmas present.

  Michael turned to the mother. Not wanting to disturb the chip on her shoulder, he had been trying his best to remain out of Alexandra’s way. “How are you making out?” he asked, trying to keep his voice pleasant.

  A wry smile tugged at her mouth. “That expression could use a bit of adjustment when you speak to Americans. But we are doing well, thank you.”

  “Really?” He slipped his hands into his pockets. “It may not be gallant to notice, but you look a little weary.”

  Her arched brows rose a trifle. “Who wouldn’t? I’ve been sleeping in a hammock, hiking for days, and I’ve spent the morning slapping a lake in the hope of catching a few bites of food for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. The rustic life is not easy.”

  He smiled, grateful for her attempt at levity, then jerked his thumb toward the forest. “I’d better go back. The lads will be thinking I’m shirking my duties.”

  “I doubt anyone would think that, Doctor.”

  He lifted a brow, wondering what she meant, but she only lowered her makeshift fishing pole and began to thrash it in the water.

  Lowering his head, he returned to the forest while thoughts of Alexandra Pace hovered around the edges of his mind. He had been thinking about her when the rain began to fall, and when some chivalrous impulse sent him running to see if the women had found shelter, he found the five of them huddled beneath a wide-leafed shrub, as wet as muskrats.

  Caitlyn had pointed at him and laughed, humored, no doubt, by his own resemblance to a drowned rat. Alexandra had given him a smile, then wrapped her arms around her shoulders and shivered.

  At that moment he’d had to resist walking forward to pull those two under the protection of his arms.

  After sunset, as their soaked party sat on palm leaves and tried to dry out around a fire that spat sparks into a star-studded sky, he laughed as Caitlyn led the group in a rousing chorus of “Ninety-nine bottles of Inca cola on the wall.”

  They had worked hard, but two rafts, both sturdy and seaworthy, waited on the shore, ready for sunrise. Buoyed by a sense of accomplishment, their spirits soared high enough to forget their growling stomachs, wet clothing, and aching muscles.

  When the party broke up, Michael settled into his hammock and lifted his eyes to the heavens. He had met many determined researchers in his lifetime, many of whom were quite ruthless in their efforts to best competitors in the field. The first to publish earned the honor of naming diseases, elements, even cells. Stanley Prusiner, the scientist who first coined the term prion for infectious proteins, had won the 1997 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his discovery. The news had brought little comfort to Michael; Prusiner only put a name on the entities responsible for Ashley’s death.

  Alexandra Pace, however, did not seem the type to seek personal recognition. She worked for Carlton, she seemed content to labor in relative obscurity, and she had not once mentioned publishing a paper on her work. Yet he had never met a more driven researcher.

  What fire burned in her heart? What force drove her forward?

  Was she simply obsessive? Or perhaps a bit mad?

  He sighed as he laced his hands over his chest. She might well be out of her head, but she was a caring mother, a sharp wit, and a most interesting companion. A person altogether worth getting to know . . . once she sheathed her claws.

  12 APRIL 2003

  7:30 P.M.

  After settling Caitlyn into her hammock, Alex maneuvered her way into hers, then pulled the mosquito netting over her bed and secured its edges. She ached from head to toe; even her fingertips pulsed with weariness.

  Stretching out on the damp hammock, she closed her eyes and tried to force herself to relax. Last night she had slept two or three hours, and she needed at least as much sleep tonight if she were to continue to function. Her muscles were still obeying, but on several occasions during the day she had tried to move one of her arms and discovered that it hung as limp as a noodle from its socket.

  Ataxia—the inability to voluntarily coordinate muscles. Today, her arms, tomorrow, who knew?

  Rest, Alex. Deep breaths. Think about the day, think about tomorrow, but relax as much as you can. Sleep will not come until your body and mind are at rest.

  As always, her thoughts turned to the day just passed. After spending half the morning uselessly beating the shallow waters
with a fishing pole, she had handed the stick to Lauren in order to join Caitlyn, Emma, and Deborah at the clearing, where the men were building the rafts. After the guys laid out a group of appropriately sized logs, under Bancroft’s direction the women took lengths of vine and wove them under and around each log, lashing each to its neighbor. The work had scraped and cut Alex’s fingers, but she’d gladly suffer the pain if Bancroft’s rafts carried them safely to Kenway’s healing tribe.

  “I feel like we’re part of the Swiss Family Robinson,” Caitlyn had chirped, her face red as they worked in the equatorial sun.

  “Get the sunscreen from my bag,” Alex interrupted. “Smear some on those freckles, will you? You’re going to be in severe pain if you don’t.”

  At the water’s edge, Lauren squealed as something splashed in the shallows. “Help! Something’s in there!”

  Deborah rolled her eyes. “That’s the point, Lauren. Whatever it is, we want it. Caiman, electric eel, fish, piranha—if it moves, spear it.”

  “I am not about to spear one of those crocodile things.” Lauren marched toward them, then dropped her sharpened stick at Caitlyn’s bare feet. “Why don’t you try your luck, kid?”

  Alex turned to face Carlton’s girlfriend. “She’s busy. But if you need something to do, you might look for some fruit. Kenway found bananas. If you look around, you might get lucky.”

  The young woman raked her hand through her hair, then stalked off, but Alex knew she wouldn’t wander far from the group. Women like Lauren were ornamental around the office but useless when thrust into the real world . . .

  Or an Amazonian rain shower. Without warning, bruised and swollen clouds swept over the lake; a moment later, spits of rain filled the rising wind. The touch of a breeze was odd enough, for winds rarely penetrated the canopied rainforest, but these gusts whipped the lake, coaxing the black waters into whitecaps.

  A wave of wet heat swamped over their camp, then the sky opened and rain came down, erasing the world.

  The women had retreated into a natural arbor where they huddled under the leaves of a giant elephant’s ear bush (Alocasia odora, Olsson later informed them) and resigned themselves to wetness. A few moments later, Kenway had come charging over like a lunatic, his dark hair turned into slick black ribbons by the rain, his eyes wide with something that might have been protective concern . . . and, unless her feminine instincts had completely atrophied, that concern had been directed particularly at her and Caitlyn.

  Groaning, Alex turned onto her side in an attempt to derail that particular train of thought. Dealing with Caitlyn’s infatuation with the noble doctor would be difficult enough when the expedition ended. She would not—could not—afford to make things harder by encouraging an unrealistic relationship.

  She felt a smile twitch the muscles at her cheek. He had looked . . . interesting, though. Like Natty Bumppo from The Last of the Mohicans, rising out of the wilderness to rescue the woman who’d won his heart.

  No—she knocked her fist against her forehead. What was she thinking? Better to worry about survival, about her health, about her daughter. Maybe these fantasies were an undocumented aspect of her illness, part of a mental weakness too embarrassing to be reported.

  Blowing out her cheeks, she stretched along her hammock and felt the wetness of her socks against the fabric. Water could be hard to manage in the field. One of her colleagues had once gone on a jungle expedition and washed her clothing in a stream. Afterward, she made the mistake of hanging her wet clothes on a bush to dry. While she worked, flies landed on the wet cloth and deposited their tiny eggs amid the woven strands. Days later, the researcher had been wearing her shirt when the larvae hatched. The larvae then burrowed into folds of the researcher’s skin, leaving her to later wonder how she had come to be intimately infested with maggots.

  Alex rubbed her hand over her face in an effort to scrub the distasteful memory away. Such realities were inescapable in the tropics. Maggots and their ilk were probably one of the reasons natives found it easier to wear no clothing at all.

  “Still awake, Alexandra?”

  Kenway’s deep voice startled her out of her reverie. When her eyes flew open, she saw him standing a few feet from her hammock, his form silhouetted by the dying campfire.

  “Good grief, Kenway!” She pushed herself up onto an elbow. “If I was sleepy, I’m certainly not now. You almost scared me into adrenaline overload.”

  “Sorry.” He stepped closer, daring to lean one hand on the tree supporting her hammock. “I saw your hammock moving and thought you might be awake.”

  She stared past him into the darkness. “What’s the matter? Something wrong, or are you experiencing temporary insomnia?”

  He laughed softly. “I think I could sleep standing up—which is why I’m walking around. I did lie down, but Bancroft came by to ask me to take the first watch. He’s gone out to look for Chavez.”

  The confession strummed a shiver from Alex. Chavez had gone out to hunt for game about an hour before sunset. It was now an hour past.

  Her heart began to thump almost painfully in her chest.

  Don’t panic.

  With an effort, she turned her thousand-yard stare toward Kenway. “Are you worried about him?”

  “I’m afraid I am. I treated Ya-ree, remember? Someone from some tribe in these parts speared the fellow. I don’t think the natives around here take kindly to intruders.” He gentled his tone. “But Chavez is an expert, right? While I wouldn’t be too keen about roaming around in the dark, he knows the jungle. And he was carrying a very big gun.”

  Alex propped her head on her hand, her anxiety slipping away as she stared at Kenway through the mosquito netting. The rising moon was brighter tonight, very nearly full, and backlit his profile when he turned to survey the camp.

  Caitlyn was right, the doctor was easy on the eyes . . . and, despite Alex’s previous doubts, apparently genuinely concerned for her and her daughter.

  Perhaps concern wasn’t a bad thing.

  “Thanks for the bananas today,” she said, intending her words as an olive branch. “I noticed you slipped Caitlyn an extra one when no one was looking. While that wasn’t strictly fair, I appreciate your concern for a growing girl.”

  He turned, his smile shining through the darkness. “Maybe I was hoping she’d share it with her mother.”

  “Well.” She looked away, grateful for the cloak of shadows about her hammock. His words roused feelings she had thought long dead, but she couldn’t afford to entertain them.

  “That’s not exactly a compliment,” she said, edging her voice lest he get the wrong idea. “You seem to be telling me I look tired and run down.”

  “You do.” He paused to sip from the water bottle in his hand. “I think we all do, actually. In a few more days, I suspect we’ll all begin to look as wild as the natives on those National Geographic television specials.”

  A moment of silence stretched between them, then he lifted his bottle, positioning it in a sliver of moonlight. “Have you noticed the water in this lake? It’s not muddy like the Amazon. It’s as dark as a good cup of tea.”

  She pretended to shudder. “I can’t get used to drinking brown water. But perhaps if I think of it as coffee . . .”

  She was about to ask if he’d packed any scones or clotted cream in his gear when a startled scream broke the stillness. Hammocks swung, mosquito nets lifted, and Bancroft spilled out of the shadows with his weapon ready.

  Pushing the netting away from her bed, Alex looked to Caitlyn’s hammock. Her daughter’s eyes shone through the fine mesh.

  “Caitlyn, stay in bed.”

  “What’s happening, Mom?”

  “I don’t know, but we’ll let Mr. Bancroft find out.”

  Immediately Bancroft, Carlton, and Kenway sprinted toward the source of the sound. Alex watched them go, a creeping uneasiness at the base of her spine.

  “What’s going on?” Lauren’s voice had risen to a shrill pitch.

&
nbsp; “We don’t know,” Deborah replied calmly. “I’m sure Bancroft will tell us everything in a few minutes.”

  They waited, the seconds stretching themselves thin, and Alex strained to listen through the night sounds. She heard the usual rustlings and chewings and the flutter of greenery on the screen above her head, followed by the rumble of men’s voices and the swishing of tall grass.

  She exhaled in relief a moment later when the three men returned with Louis Fortier between them.

  The little perfumer was weeping.

  “I didn’t see him until I stepped on him,” he cried between sobs. “And then—quelle horreur, what could have happened?”

  Bancroft and Kenway looked at each other, some sort of unspoken agreement passing between them, then the doctor put his hand on Fortier’s shoulder.

  “I have medicine to help you calm down,” he said, leading Louis toward his hammock. “What happened is a terrible thing, absolutely, but you must not lose your head. Not now.”

  Alex watched as Carlton and Bancroft retreated into the darkness, armed with flashlights and a length of rope. Straining to hear, she waited a few moments longer, then jumped when she heard a splash.

  A few moments later, Bancroft, Carlton, and Kenway returned to the campfire. Standing by the flames, Bancroft dropped a gun onto a blanket, then turned to face the circle of hammocks.

  In a moment of clarity, Alex realized that Bancroft had been carrying two guns—one in his hand, and one in his holster. That could only mean—

  “We have found Raul Chavez,” he announced, his face pale in the moonlight. “The carnivore ants got to him.”

  “How?” Deborah had rolled out of her bed and stood shivering in the moonlight. “How could carnivore ants attack a full-grown man?”

  “He was unconscious on the ground.”

  The entomologist shook her head. “That’s insane. Why would he lie down in the jungle when camp lay only a few meters away? Chavez knew better.”