Muller, Kal. New Guinea: Journey Into the Stone Age. Lincolnwood, Illinois: Passport Books, 1997. Print.
Souter, Gavin. New Guinea: The Last Unknown. New York: Taplinger Publishing, 1966. Print.
Van Enk, Gerrit J. and de Vries, Lourens. The Korowai of Irian Jaya – Their Language in its Cultural Context. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Print.
Sky Above Mud Below. Dir. and Perf. Pierre-Dominique Gaisseau (organizer and leader) and Gerard Delloye (assistant leader). Lorimar Home Video, 1962. VHS.
This is an amazing video filmed as it happened in 1959, when a group of explorers set out on a seven-month attempt to cross the jungles of Papua (then called Dutch New Guinea). Winner of the 1961 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
Acknowledgments
I am not capable of creating a book such as this on my own. I have the following people, among others, to thank for their assistance.
When it comes to editing, my son Micheal Smith is extremely talented, and his tireless and meticulous suggestions are invaluable. If you find a sentence or detail in the book that doesn’t seem right, it is likely because I failed to implement one of his suggestions.
My wife Trish is always the first to read my work, and therefore she has the burden of seeing my stories in their roughest form. Thankfully, she kindly points out where things are a mess. Her suggestions are what get the editing process started. She also helps with various promotional efforts. And finally, she not only tolerates my obsession with writing, she actually encourages it.
I also owe thanks to my former colleague, Monique Agueros. She provided expert editing suggestions in spite of being an amazingly busy person. Thanks, Monique!
Finally, I am thankful to all the independent freelance designers out there who provide quality work for independent authors such as myself. Jake Caleb Clark (www.jcalebdesign.com) created the awesome cover for DIFFUSION.
Copyright © 2015 by Stan Smith
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
To those who would do good with the powers they possess.
Infusion
Definition:
the introduction of a new modifying element or quality into something
Chapter One
1977 - Irian Jaya, Indonesia
Peter Wooley made his way up the rope ladder, feeling strong but awkward as his feet searched for each woven rung. He paused and looked down. The forest floor was at least forty meters below. The rope, made of intertwined strands of spider silk, was remarkably thin, but Peter knew it wouldn’t break. What did concern him, though, was that this was likely his last opportunity to climb it.
The rope ladder, or yebun, was suspended from the ceiling of a hanging hut, and Peter entered an opening in the hut’s floor as he climbed the last few meters. He stepped from the ladder to the floor. The hut bounced from the added weight, but he had become accustomed to this during the three days since his arrival at the hanging village.
Two tribesmen stood to the side waiting for him. Both were a good ten centimeters shorter than Peter and were easily recognized by the pincushion arrangements of feathers protruding from their hair—green lorikeet feathers for Sinanie and white cockatoo feathers for Matiinuo. Both men appeared to be no older than thirty, but Matiinuo was actually the village elder. Besides the feathers, the men wore few adornments and no clothes other than short, functional penis gourds, or mbayap. Behind the tribesmen stood Samuel, a peculiar Englishman who for some reason had been living among these villagers. Samuel gazed at Peter for a moment, allowing him to catch his breath, and then raised his brows as if asking if he were ready for what was to come. Peter felt unsure but nodded anyway. Without a word spoken, the men turned and walked out of the hut into a long hanging corridor. Peter followed.
Once again Peter marveled at the sensation of walking through a tunnel suspended in the canopy of the tallest rainforest trees he had encountered in all his travels. But this time it felt rather like a death march.
He fiddled with a talisman hanging from a cord around his neck. It was a sculpture of a tree kangaroo, meticulously carved from stone. Matiinuo had given it to him the previous day. Peter had assumed it was a token of friendship, but then Samuel had explained that it was more an offering of assistance. Matiinuo believed the tree kangaroo might help Peter succeed in the task demanded of him, but Samuel had also made it clear that if Peter failed, he would be killed.
They made their way through perhaps a hundred meters of hanging tunnel before it opened up into a larger hut. Doorways to five other tunnels were evenly spaced around the walls of the hut. The hut was like the hub of a wheel with six spokes. It was the most important hut in the village, but there were no sleeping mats, fire bowls, or other amenities. At the center of the hut was a section of tree, growing up through the floor and branching into two thigh-sized limbs at chest height. Molded around the Y in the tree was a brownish mass that resembled a ball of clay. From a distance it could have been mistaken for an arboreal termite nest. But Peter knew it was much more than that. It was like nothing he had encountered in his life. It was the reason he had been allowed to live for the last three days, and it was the reason he probably would not live to see another.
After entering the hut, Sinanie and Matiinuo stood to one side of the brown mass and Samuel stood to the other. They waited for him to approach.
“Samuel,” Peter pleaded, “I need more time with it. Maybe if I had a few more days.”
Samuel’s face, which was typically hard to read, now showed what might have been pity. “I will endeavor to convince them of that. You have indeed shown considerable propensity for your task. But I fear they do not believe you are the man they have waited for, and I am inclined to agree.”
Peter sighed. Samuel probably couldn’t help him even if he wanted to. He stepped forward and held his left hand just over the brown substance. He closed his eyes, thinking of the reasons he now had for living. The substance beneath his hand had extraordinary power—he felt obligated to let the rest of the world know. He had to live so he could do that. And he had to live so he could return to Rose, never to leave her again. She deserved that from him. Peter braced himself for the challenge before him. There was too much at stake to fail.
Without opening his eyes, he placed his hand on the substance. As before, it was cool and pliable. His palm tingled slightly. Suddenly a jumble of symbols appeared before his eyes, hanging there in the darkness. He opened his eyes, and the symbols were still there, superimposed over his view of the inside of the hut. Some of them looked vaguely like letters or numbers, but most of them were spirals, angles, or shapes that prior to the last few days would have been meaningless to him. He took a deep breath and reached for one of the floating symbols with his free hand. The symbols had no physical substance, but they responded to his gestures. He shoved them into piles based on characteristics such as the presence or absence of right angles. Once they were sorted into clumps, they disappeared, and another jumble of symbols filled his vision. He sorted them again, and then again, working faster with each group.
To his side, Matiinuo and Sinanie exchanged unintelligible words. Matiinuo was getting impatient. Peter had done these exercises before. He had to go beyond what he had already done or it was all over. With a violent swipe he cleared the virtual slate so that it would populate with all of the 128 symbols. Whatever this substance was, it had been trying to get him to complete an exhaustive sequence of tasks that gradually resulted in him assigning numeric meaning to each symbol, and then conceptual meaning to combinations of the symbols. Apparently the end result was that he would be able to input commands the substance would understand. Back home, Peter had recently purchased a new computer, a Tandy Radio Shack TRS-80, and he had quickly learned to input inst
ructions using the BASIC computer language. He was now convinced the substance in this hanging hut had to be some kind of computer. But it was unlike any he had ever imagined. And he was confident that outside of Matiinuo’s tribe and Samuel, no one else had seen such a computer—at least no one on Earth. Because Peter had seen where the object had come from. It had been shown to him in a dream, a dream so astounding that his life would never be the same even if he did survive this day.
He took a deep breath and moved five of the symbols into a cluster. The rest of them faded away. He had already discovered that this combination resulted in a response. As expected, his cluster disappeared and was replaced by three clusters. This was the computer’s response to his command, but he wasn’t even sure what the initial command meant, let alone the response. He needed more time to master the language. Feeling defeated, Peter sighed.
Matiinuo grunted and then spoke. “Nu ne khelép-té. Wolakholol be-lembu-té-n-da.” Sinanie grasped Peter’s arm, ready to lead him out of the hut.
Samuel stepped forward and spoke to the tribesmen. “Mbakha-lekhé-nggolo? Nokhu be-Khelép-telo-n-din-da!” After a moment of silence, he turned to Peter. “My friend, for reasons unknown to me, you have shown great capacity for understanding the Lamotelokhai. But my indigene hosts appear unsatisfied. Perhaps if you would agree to stay here and assist me with my studies, they might see that you can be useful to them.”
But Peter sensed that his opportunity had passed. He would likely be killed before the evening rains set in. He simply shook his head at Samuel and turned his gaze one more time to the Lamotelokhai, the mass of clay that was somehow also a computer. He quickly repopulated the symbols and moved some of them into two piles. He had no way of knowing how accurate it was, but based on the meanings of symbol groupings he had established, he hoped that it said, “Help me.”
Sinanie firmly guided him away from the object and placed the rope ladder into his hands.
Samuel and Sinanie took Peter to the hanging hut where he had been forced to live for the last three days. After speaking earnestly to each other in Sinanie’s language, they left Peter alone. As he descended through the opening in the hut’s floor, Samuel assured Peter he would do what he could to convince Matiinuo to allow Peter more time.
Soon the rope ladder went limp. Peter was alone. He waited a few minutes and then climbed to the ground and began running. He knew this was probably suicide, but if he could get far enough before his absence was detected, maybe he could get away. Considering the stakes, he had no choice. For the first time in his life he had something consequential to contribute to the world. And he was willing to risk his life to return to Rose—to give her the life she deserved.
But the forest was extraordinarily dense and progress was challenging. Before long he was bleeding from multiple cuts and had lost the tree kangaroo talisman when it had been ripped from his neck. And disturbingly, one of the real tree kangaroos was trying to follow him. The creature could lead the tribesmen to him.
Skirting a dense stand of plum pines, he nearly collided with Samuel.
“Peter!”
Peter stopped abruptly. He felt a flame of hope. Perhaps Samuel had convinced the villagers to let him go.
“Samuel, I had to leave! I wanted to say goodbye, but I couldn’t risk it. The others—do they know I’ve left?”
Samuel stepped closer, his face etched with concern. “They are aware. You must know you cannot leave this place. It is not yet time.”
Peter scanned the forest but saw no sign of the tribe’s hunters. “I can’t stay here. Please, Samuel! You can stop them.”
Samuel shook his head. “If I am to endeavor to save your life, you must agree to remain. Stay here with me, Peter. There is much for us to do.”
Peter backed away. “All I ask is that you give me a chance. Try to hold them off.”
Samuel’s expression turned to alarm. “Do not, Peter. I beg you.”
Peter turned to run. Suddenly he glimpsed a familiar array of green lorikeet feathers in front of him. But it was too late to stop. Sinanie’s spear pierced his gut. Sinanie rushed forward, driving the spear deeper and knocking Peter off his feet.
Pinning him down with the spear, Sinanie stood above him, gazing into his eyes. Slowly, the tribesman smiled. Peter couldn’t move, and it became difficult to breathe.
Sinanie wasn’t alone now. There were two others. They intended to kill him. He would not leave this forest, and Rose would never know what had happened.
One of the tribesmen picked up a tree limb. He hefted it a few times, assessing its balance, and then swung it at Peter. The blow glanced off Peter’s forehead. Oddly, it numbed the pain of the spear piercing his gut. Peter stared up into the canopy above. For a brief moment, he tried to imagine he was relieved it was finally over.
With intense interest, the tree kangaroo, or mbolop, watched the violence from a low branch of a coral bean tree. Clubs pounded flesh until the flesh was no longer recognizable as a man. And still the clubbing went on. The villagers would make sure the body couldn’t heal and would never leave this place. Suddenly the mbolop gripped the branch and shook it forcefully, its mottled brown and gold body jerking up and down. The creature was agitated at this new development. Although biological in structure, the mbolop was different from the naturally-evolved tree kangaroos it had been created to resemble. It understood its own purpose. And as it watched the disintegration of the man called Peter Wooley, it began to doubt its purpose for the first time. Peter had been important, nearly equipped for what was needed, but he hadn’t been given enough time.
The mbolop jerked its body up and down one more time, then it turned away from the bloody scene. It paused for a moment, listening. It ignored the ambient sounds of the forest and the grunts of the men as they continued to pulverize the remaining flesh into the soil. It was listening for something else. Puzzled, it scurried to the main trunk of the coral bean tree and began climbing, its hind claws digging into the soft bark for leverage. When it reached the highest limb, it stopped and listened again. Nothing—no incoming instructions.
A concept began forming in the tree kangaroo’s consciousness, a plan to do something consequential. The man, Peter, was gone, but perhaps he could still be important. The mbolop began descending the tree, but then it hesitated. Perhaps its plan had formed as a result of incoming commands it hadn’t knowingly detected. It listened again, but still there were only the sounds of the forest and the men below.
The mbolop descended to the ground and approached the brutal scene until it was beside one of the laboring villagers. The tribesman paused only briefly when he noticed the creature then continued pounding the ground. The mbolop sniffed at a small mass of bloody tissue that had not yet been pulverized. It snatched up the mass with its mouth and scuttled back up the tree. It then bounded from tree to tree until it arrived at the churning brown river the villagers called Méanmaél. It descended to the water’s edge, dropped the mass of tissue on the bank, and began gathering and preparing materials: leaves it had chewed, water it carried in its mouth, decaying vegetation, and soil. The creature worked meticulously and without urgency. Narrow shafts of sunlight moved slowly across the forest floor and then vanished as the sun dropped toward the horizon and clouds began to fill the sky. Rain began falling, trickling through the canopy. The forest shifted from green to gray to nearly black. Still the tree kangaroo worked, shoving one pile of raw materials onto another and stamping them together, expelling mouthfuls of river water onto the pile, traveling far down the edge of the river to return with several live beetles and a grasshopper to be chewed and added to the accumulated materials.
Late into the night, the mbolop finally sat back on its haunches and eyed the mound. It was as high as the creature’s shoulders and as long as the height of a man. The tree kangaroo scratched its belly with one of its forepaws. Suddenly it plunged the entire paw through its skin and into its abdomen. After digging around for a moment, the paw emerged holding a
glistening lump of flesh. The creature released the lump onto the pile of materials, then plopped onto its side on the ground, exhausted.
The mbolop listened to the soothing sounds of the roiling river water and night insects as it gazed at the product of its labor. It was almost asleep when the pile of materials began shifting, blending together, changing its shape.
Peter opened his eyes. He could see nothing but mud and leaves, faintly illuminated by dawn’s first light. He realized he was on his side in a fetal position. He rolled onto his back. Above him was a dense forest canopy, sparsely punctuated with glimpses of gray sky. A cloud of flies hovered over him, but they did not descend upon him to bite. He sat up. He was naked. He rubbed his legs above the knees, then held his hands up, staring at them as he clinched and unclenched his fists. He ran one hand over his abdomen and frowned. His appendectomy scar was gone. And so was the birthmark below his navel. His frown intensified as his eyes moved downward. His penis was no longer circumcised. He pulled the skin on it back and then released it, watching with fascination as it moved back into place.
He stood up, testing his legs. They felt strong. He looked around and saw that he was next to a river. After gazing at the brown water for some time, he turned and began walking in the direction the water was flowing.
Traveling was slow, but Peter had made steady progress. Occasionally he was forced to wade or swim across smaller streams that flowed into the river he was following. When he was thirsty, he had to wait for rain or drink the river’s muddy water. He found a few fruits to eat, but for the first few days he wasn’t particularly hungry and it didn’t seem important. On the fourth day he decided he needed protein. Finding it was not difficult; while walking next to the river’s edge during rainstorms, he had seen large earthworms with their bodies partially extended out of the saturated soil. When the evening rains came he found one of these and pulled it from its burrow. The worm was nearly a meter long. He could only eat it raw, but he was beyond being finicky and it provided all the animal protein he needed.
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