Scent

by Kelly, Clint L.

  “Good morning, Mr. Blankenship.” Joy Spretnak, the plump, middle-aged receptionist, stood as he passed. “Mrs. Dixon says she hopes if you have a moment, you would please stop by the boardroom to hear an important announcement. Nice tie.”

  It was the same dark-blue-striped tie he always wore on Fridays, but he seemed to have become Joy’s personal project, though he couldn’t begin to imagine why.

  He smiled and said nothing. The cup and its steaming contents was in its proper place just to the right of center on his spotless desk, so he proceeded to the men’s room.

  About to push the restroom door open, he glanced down the hall to Cassandra Dixon’s dark-walnut office. Behind the floor-to-ceiling windows facing the hall, a second Planted Earth employee was inside, presumably to care for Cassandra’s rampant philodendrons, thick and tough with age.

  Instead, the man was hunched over Cassandra’s desk, rifling through her papers.

  Royce squared neat, narrow shoulders and two-stepped soundlessly to the door of the office. He stared at a broad back, now bent over the open drawer of a filing cabinet, then glided closer.

  Eyeing the stand of philodendron vines to the right of the thief, Royce slowly closed his hands on a double set of sinewy growth. Quickly he whipped the noose around the man’s neck and yanked.

  The thief let out a strangled yell, which brought Joy screaming into the room.

  “Security! Security!” Royce shouted. “Miss Spretnak! Throw boiling water in his face!”

  The intruder whirled, ripped the philodendron out of its pot, and pawed at Royce, who now clung to his back. Dirt clods sprayed the room. Royce poked his fingers in the man’s eyes, which produced a bellow of rage.

  Royce held on for dear life. “The water! The water!” he shrieked. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Joy dash for his office.

  Glued to the miscreant’s burly back like a cowboy on a bull, Royce was determined to ride him to the finish.

  Joy ran into the room and watched them whirl. She bobbed back and forth, dodging revolving legs and flying clods of root ball.

  Afraid of getting burned, Royce yelled, “Wait until I give the signal! Steady, Miss Spretnak, steady. Now! ”

  She flung the contents of the cup and caught the thief square in the ear. The man bellowed again, slipped, and fell to the floor, Royce clinging to him tight as cellophane wrap.

  “Somebody arrest this man!” Royce hollered.

  The intruder cursed. When he tried to rise, Joy kicked him in the shin. She grabbed the paper spike off Cassandra’s desk and thrust it at his cheek. “One more move out of you and I’ll poke your eye out!”

  Two building security officers and the senior management team ran into the office. Royce, who had lost a shoe, maintained a chokehold of vines while Joy, her normally neat coif now a tangle of dirt clumps and leaves, held the imposter at spike point. Between them the red-faced man in green uniform dug at the vines around his neck and struggled to retreat from the metal prong near his eye.

  “Who are you? Who sent you? Call the authorities!” Royce barked. “The man’s a thief and I will press charges! Get me the police! Get them now!”

  By the time the police arrived, Skip, Forrest, and Mark had broken up the melee. Cassie seethed as she watched Joy serve the disheveled Royce a fresh cup of hot water, and housekeeping clean up the dirt and other office debris.

  “This is a new low, even for Brenda and her lackeys,” she said to Mark, who was standing near her.

  Mark shook his head. “You’d think the titans of glamour would at least show some sophistication when it comes to dirty tricks.”

  Cassie’s foot tapped the parquet floor. “So much for Azure being dismissed as a failed venture. They want to know what we’ve got, and they’re willing to stoop to get it. They wouldn’t do that unless they were convinced we’re on the verge of something big.”

  “That’s why today’s TV appearance is so critical. It puts the competition on notice that Azure is not about to roll over and play dead. You ready? Your cab should be here in a few minutes.”

  Cassie could be transparent with her VP. “I thought I was ready, Mark, but first Royce doesn’t show for the strategy meeting, then a thief helps himself to proprietary information, and a brawl breaks out in my office. I don’t know if I can do this.”

  “Are you kidding? You’ve given birth!” When she didn’t react, Mark took her hand and gave it a friendly pat. “That was a joke, m’ dear. Stop worrying about Royce. Nobody fights like a badger for the corporate honor unless he’s foursquare behind you. He may be eccentric but he’s no turncoat. As for thievery, whoever’s responsible has paid you a compliment. You’re right.

  They wouldn’t risk detection unless they were afraid.”

  The muscles of Cassie’s jaw were rigid. “You’re the right guy for head cheerleader. So you think I should go on air and put the world on notice?”

  Mark grinned. “My money’s on Nick and you to unleash Cassandra on an unsuspecting world. Get ’em talking now, anticipating, salivating, so that when it does release, people will throw their pocketbooks at your feet.”

  Cassie hoped Mark was right. Her nerves were taut with the morning’s events, but she would give it her best and send whoever was responsible a clear message. “Okay, Mark. It’ll be great for morale, especially mine.”

  “That’s the spirit. I’ll brief the police, press charges against the bogus plant guy, calm the Nose — although the receptionist appears to be handling that nicely — and keep a tight lid on things while you’re out. Now go break a leg!”

  Cassie brightened. “Nothing says good times like a televised jab to Brenda’s smug chin!”

  Chapter 4

  Night came suddenly to the jungle, inky and achingly remote.

  A snuffle here, a rustle there, a last guttural protestation before the cacophonous world fell silent. The night forest steamed, the air it exhaled thick and wet and secretive.

  The light had gone out, and with it all trace of the intoxicant that had set Nick’s heart racing. Grabbing the pack, he scrambled back down to the water’s edge, frantic to plunge after the aroma of the gods — only to find it had vanished. Ephemeral as the genie in Aladdin’s lamp. Nothing but the thousand-year-old pungency of rotted leaves and fecund earth.

  With its going he panicked. What if Ruggers miscalculated? What if the twelve days are up and the orchid is clamped closed for another year? What if Ruggers got it right and the celerides just took it in its herbaceous little heart to end its efflorescence prematurely and call it a year? It wouldn’t be the first time nature did what nature wanted.

  Nick’s sensitive nostrils still retained the residual quiver of that beguiling fragrance. He could picture thousands of brush-shaped receptors at the top of his nasal passages waving in futility, the memory of that enticement haunting the nerve “hallways” leading to the scent interpreters at the brain’s center. Nick slumped by the stream, its bubbling chatter strangely muted by the night, and felt sick with loss. He had not even the strength to hold his throbbing face and neck, and instead let them dangle between trembling knees, low to the water, where it was perceptibly cooler. Occasionally he splashed water on the bee welts that riddled his chest and face.

  Gradually a more likely truth seeped in. Plants, like all other living things, experienced a “downtime,” when the rapacious growth of the rain forest ebbed as if gathering strength. Little wonder. Many tropical species were known to grow feet a day. The celerides merely rested.

  Nick set his jaw and hoped to heaven he was right. What else could he do? He was in an exotic land where orcas ate sharks and kangaroos climbed trees. Here men fished with nets made of spiderwebs and yams were sacred. At Wewak he had listened with amusement to bushmen speak pidgin, a musical mixture of Melanesian dialects and English. Like good citizens everywhere, they complained that the government was broken, or gone bagarap. He made a mental note to kid Ruggers that thanks to the missionaries, a helicopter would forever
be a mixmaster bilong Jesus Christ.

  A heady amalgam and altogether unsettling. But for all his amusement, he had listened carefully. There were only 1,300 words in pidgin, and with his language skills, a couple days of linguistic immersion and he had acquired enough to get by. Still, he maybe should have listened to temptation and gone south to Daru, where trade in pearls and crocodile skins was said to be brisk. He could make a stake, a new life, then send for Cassie. Together they would bury themselves in a paradise where no one could find them, and Charles Revson of Revlon and the other dimdims (white foreigners) could just fight over the bones of Azure World to their hearts’ content.

  The snap of a branch high overhead jerked him back to the present. A heavy object fell out of bed and in a rapid succession of heavy cracks, ended on the ground in a crashing thud. There was a split-second pause before whatever it was — monkey, lemur, or one of the tree kangaroos, most likely — scampered away through the undergrowth in search of a more secure perch for slumber.

  Nick sighed. What about Beth? What would his headstrong daughter do while they were prospecting for pearls? Probably run off with that hairdresser and never speak to them again. And Cass. She’d be in a fragrant fury at his defeatism. There was no way on earth she would simply walk away from Azure without one hellacious fight. Ever since his fool dalliance with Brenda Gellase, he’d regretted it. Cass was convinced that Brenda, to get back at him for breaking off the affair, was behind Azure’s present troubles. Maybe not so farfetched.

  The memory of that first, virgin whiff of the celerides gripped him with desire. He had to have that flower. The world had to have that flower. The loss of it was unthinkable, but if defeated, he would roast over hot coals before revealing the plant’s location to either creditor or competitor.

  Nick had bet the farm on this gamble, all their chips on one roll of the dice. They were so far in debt, it would take a freighter full of miracles to bring them back. Or lucky sevens.

  He frowned at the analogy. In Las Vegas, casinos injected into the air certain aromas that increased a customer’s willingness to gamble by as much as fifty-three percent. Of course, it wasn’t the first time false optimism had flowed from a bottle, as any alcoholic could attest. But it irked Nick that he was as prone to risk as a cocky, Bermuda-shorted New Yorker out to take the house in Sin City.

  How did he keep getting into these tight places?

  His father’s favorite Fijian saying came to mind. I like it. If not to like it, must to like it. If not must to like it, then forced to like it.

  It didn’t help. He didn’t like it. He couldn’t accept defeat. Please God, bring it back. Please don’t snatch it away. If you do . . . if you do . . . I’m gone bagarap.

  At dawn, and the sudden chatter of life around him, Nick stirred.

  Sometime past midnight, unable to sleep, he had bathed his head and upper torso in the stream, toweled off, and by the light of a hands-free miner’s lamp applied a home-remedy paste that Ruggers said would combat any insect damage, “and the bite of a werewolf, come to that.” Should a pack of the hairy creatures decide to attack, the foul smell of the stuff was sufficient to send them yelping. Ruggers had been evasive when it came to ingredients. Nick had recoiled when his nose detected a faint whiff of dung, and thanked God it was fast-drying.

  Nick glanced under the mosquito netting at the thin brown smear on his chest and was relieved to see that the swelling had receded. The burning had diminished as well.

  He turned to check for the map in a pocket of the pack. His hand froze in midair.

  His nostrils quivered.

  Yes . . . yes . . . unmistakable . . . overpowering the smell of the paste . . . stronger now . . . sweeter now . . . there . . . it is . . . it is!

  He sprang to his feet, jammed a granola bar in his mouth, yanked on a T-shirt, danced into his pants, checked that the headspace analyzer was still secure in the pack, and threw everything else inside the pack on top of it before securing the flap. Boots half-laced, backpack slung by one arm, heart and head throbbing, Nick bolted downstream.

  At first the going was slow and awkward. Thwarted by branches, snarls of roots, and shin-cracking boulders, he pushed away from the stream bank twenty yards and found a wild-pig path wide enough to follow. He did not speculate on the size of creatures that could clear a trail that size.

  A quarter of a mile, and dizzying aroma strengthened all about him. He imagined the forest air hazy with it, much like the drifting smoke from a campfire. He broke into a lope, heedless of the trailing vines and buzzing insects that whapped his sweaty body. A loose bootlace caught in a stony crevice, and only half continued with him on the pell-mell descent.

  He plunged into a small, sunlit glade at a leveling of the trail. The giant root balls of two fallen trees formed two sides of a neat triangular bowl, the third fashioned by the stream, which had cut into the forest close to the pig path.

  The enchanting aroma filled the glade with mixed messages, at one moment soft and demure, innocent and babylike, at the next provocative and sensual, enticing and fertile with longing.

  Nick slowed and stared. Of the nine thousand plant species in Papua New Guinea, two thousand were ferns and fernlike, and three thousand were orchids. The glade contained half a dozen different ferns and a riot of orchids. Several pale to light-purple flowers, looking for all the world as if carved from wax, grew on a host tree-fern, six feet off the ground. Vivid yellow orchids with blue-streaked “tongues,” lithophytes, laced a stair of small boulders dredged up from the forest floor and entangled in the roots of the fallen trees. Cascades of blood red orchids, epiphytes, were suspended from the soil trapped in the top of the root balls, floating in air like tiny parachutes.

  What had Nick riveted, however, was the magnificent lone orchid at the center of the glade, a terrestrial. It borrowed no support from tree, fern, or stone, derived no sustenance from any host but the rich soil beneath it. With one dominant dorsal sepal and four smaller laterals, and bloom the color of pink champagne, the plant grew a regal two feet tall. Sturdy of base yet slender of bloom, its single flower resembled the delicate lady slipper in form. The resemblance ended beneath the flower’s classic bottom “lip” pouch, or labellum, where a shimmering iridescence gave the illusion of a preening exotic ornamental bird.

  The celerides.

  Unaware that he had been holding his breath, Nick let it out in a gust of exhilaration. He had not a speck of doubt that the fragrant haze enwrapping his head in God’s own scent was emanating from the little temptress at the glade’s center stage. Heart pounding, he rushed to the flower’s side and knelt.

  This close, the concentrated scent was almost anesthetic. Nick fought to keep his wits. He knew not to touch the orchid, for fear of inciting the Waronai tribesmen who populated the territory. He was surprised they hadn’t appeared to protect their sacred interests. Ruggers had had the devil’s own time convincing a Waronai chieftain that no harm would befall the sacred plant.

  Nick had no intention of jeopardizing his friend’s delicate relationship with the people of the forest. Ruggers couldn’t be here now without appearing to be in league with outside interests. The trust of the Waronai was a long time in coming and fragile as bone china.

  Equally important to Nick was his own skin. One false move — some species of orchid bruised extraordinarily easily — and he had it on good authority from the bushmen at Wewak that he would be as good as pepek, or human waste, to the tree people. In any way molest their sacred orchid, and he would be killed. End of story. He remembered the bushmen’s faces flush with menace as they pronounced his fate should he slip up: kilim i dais pinis. Kill him he die finish.

  As if reading his mind, the champagne orchid dipped in a sudden waft of air from somewhere beneath the vegetation lining the streambed. Not usually of a fanciful bent, Nick likened it to a curtsy and almost nodded back. He was smitten. The orchid appeared to gleam and dip coquettishly in the rising heat of day. An entrancing droplet of m
orning dew glinted sunlight from the swollen pink papilla and slid along the underside of the snowy plume and down the central stem.

  A warning signal sounded in the back of his mind, faint at first, then more insistent. He had been cautioned by the veterans of the perfume wars not to neglect the other senses. Human sense was an orchestra, not a solitary instrument, and the per fumer who forgot that was doomed to fail. Nick, dizzy in the spell of discovery, had for a few moments blanked to the fact that something was strangely wrong.

  Usually a banquet of sound at morning light, the forest surrounding the glade was eerily quiet. The muted buzz and clack of insects, yes, but no sound of monkeys or rooting boars or the magnificent birds of paradise. He tried to remember the last time he had heard an animal. It was back at camp. He had been awakened by a flock of sulpher-crested cockatiels and a pair of parrots, cleaning their beaks on the branches overhead. When he moved, the parrots squawked in protest and flew off in an explosion of sherbet-colored wings. The cockatiels had hesitated politely before also taking flight.

  But as he rushed down the trail, the forest on either side had faded to quiet. Here in the glade it was now silent.

  Nick looked around. Nothing else moved.

  He shook his head. It wouldn’t clear. His limbs felt leaden.

  Am I awake or dreaming?

  No sound. Not even the thudding of his heart. Is it still beating? Why can’t I feel my pulse? What . . . what’s happening?

  A wave of dizziness. Nausea.

  Nick fought to arrange his thoughts but could not remember how.

  A moment of clarity. I’ve come to take the fragrance home.

  Waves of confusion. What is this forsaken place?

  “Stop!” he shouted, just to hear a sound. The word was no sooner from his lips than it fell hard to the ground. The unnatural silence formed a wall that sound could not penetrate.