The First Bird: Omnibus Edition

by Greig Beck

  Matt remembered that many scientists had agreed with Brenner. Perhaps they shared his belief in the common language ancestry theory, or perhaps they were simply awed by the enormity of his academic status. Matt wasn’t, and being young, he had no time for being polite. The fact was, he just didn’t buy the theory. No matter how persuasive the man’s argument, the proposition didn’t work.

  Matt had written a small and simple rebuttal, and posed a few questions. He expected a polite response, and maybe a professional debate. Instead, he got silence. After that, it was as if a swarm of academic locusts had been unleashed on Brenner’s work. It seemed the questions Matt had asked were good ones. Unfortunately, Brenner had no good answers.

  Those academic locusts had shredded Brenner’s paper. At the time, Matt thought it weird that the linguistics giant had never defended himself. He just seemed to surrender. After a little while, Matt had forgotten about it, and moved on. Not Brenner, it seemed.

  Matt cleared his throat. “Professor Brenner, I just asked some obvious questions. You needed to have the answers. We all do, that’s why we hang our work out in the daylight. If no idea ever got challenged, we’d have automatically believed the Earth was flat, or that mankind was solely responsible for climate change.” Brenner exhaled more smoke, watching Matt. He dropped his cigarette into the damp soil and ground it out.

  Matt slid forward a little. He tried to keep his tone conciliatory. “I read all your work, and there were some terrific ideas there. I wanted to believe, really I did, but I just couldn’t.” Matt waited a few seconds, but the man still gave him nothing. He felt exasperated. “C’mon, Professor Brenner, you hypothesized that the ancestor language had its genesis nearly one hundred and eighty thousand years ago. But that’s improbable, and impossible to prove. Given the millennia that had passed, every single word would have been altered, changed, substituted, or even just dropped. There could never be any recognition of what it used to be.”

  The older man lunged forward, his face coming within inches of Matt’s. “Bullshit.” The sounds of the forest stopped for a few seconds, and every member of the camp swung to look in their direction. Fortunately, the forest forgave them quickly and resumed its chorus, making it impossible for the group to listen in.

  Matt wiped spittle from his face as Brenner pulled his lighter and another cigarette from his shirt pocket. He pointed the lighter at Matt like a gun. “The analysis was empirical. Humans were fully anatomically capable of language and communication at that time, and the matrilineal ancestor would have had the intellect, as well as the physical capability, for sophisticated communication. We started banding together – how do you think they managed that?”

  Matt shook his head. “Wolves band together. So do lemmings. Look, I just think that modern man of about fifty thousand years ago, and by that I mean sapien-sapien, or at least Cro-Magnon, would have been better equipped to produce complex speech. I never said that there wasn’t communication prior to that – just not a real language, ancestor or otherwise.”

  The older man leaned back, looking a little deflated.

  Matt inched forward. “Professor, I …”

  “Fuck off!” Brenner stuck the cigarette in his mouth and got to his feet. He looked down at Matt, and for a moment it seemed as though he was about to say more, but instead he just made a disgusted noise in his throat and strode away.

  Matt sat for another few seconds and then sighed, standing and sticking his hands in his pockets. He wandered back to where Megan, Carla, and Jian sat, temporarily postponing their conversation to watch him, hoping for an update on the flare-up. He sat down and started drawing on the ground with a stick.

  Megan put her arm around him. “So, how’s your day going, champ?”

  “Had better.” He slumped, resting his chin on his hand, and stared into the fire.

  Carla leaned around in front of Megan. “What just happened? I thought you guys were about to come to blows. Are you going to tell me that the profession of linguistic expertise is akin to some sort of contact sport?”

  Matt snorted and flicked the stick into the fire. “Nah. I reviewed a paper of his years ago. It was a pretty good piece of work, and it seems it was to be Brenner’s defining moment – the cherry on his linguistic cake, so to speak. But I found a few flaws and asked a couple of simple questions. They were just supposed to initiate a discussion – it happens every single day, to every single academic – but instead it started a wholesale collapse of his theory. He hasn’t forgotten about it.”

  “Obviously.” Megan narrowed her eyes in the direction of Brenner – in her book, Matt’s enemies were her enemies.

  Jian grunted. “It is disappointing when we find that our idols have feet of clay.”

  Matt laughed without humor. “Feet, legs, and up to the armpits, I’m starting to think. Well, I can guarantee I’ll be off his Christmas card list this year.”

  Megan smiled broadly. “I’ll send you two to make up for it.” She kissed his cheek. “So, Henry Kissinger, who are you going to make friends with next?”

  Matt nudged her with his elbow and turned to return her kiss. “I was thinking about going straight to the top, and spilling hot coffee on Max Steinberg’s lap. Anyway, enough about my social skills. What have you guys been talking about?”

  “Mitigators.” Carla glanced briefly at Jian, as though seeking his approval to proceed. He nodded, and she continued. “Nothing in Professor Jorghanson’s notes indicated there was any physical problem with the specimen he brought back, or the native population, or any other animals in the vicinity. His notes were a little vague on the actual location of the creature. He did refer to a wall of flowers and thorns, and a hidden sacred place, but he didn’t actually find the bird himself – one of the tribe caught it for him. After that, there’s nothing until he is on his way home.”

  Carla gazed into the distance – she seemed to be seeing the dead academic’s notes as she spoke. “Anyway, somehow, between the time he boarded the flight and the time he disembarked, something switched on the parasites. They went from what we think was an annoyance, to something far more communicative and deadly.”

  Jian nodded. “We believe there was a biological balance, and that something was holding the parasite in check within its local environment. Dr. Nero mentioned mitigators. What we are looking for is something that mitigated or attenuated the mite – slowed or stopped it from killing its host. Generally, effective parasites try to form a balance with their host – killing it does not benefit the parasite. Some additional factor was added, or removed, which turned the sarcoptes scabiei primus from an effective parasite to an ineffective one.”

  Matt remembered the images of the skinless Jorghanson. “Ineffective is not the word that jumps to mind. So, we’re looking for that mitigating factor – that makes sense. What do you think it could be?”

  Jian shrugged. “It’s impossible to know yet, but we do have plenty of exemplars we can use to model our suspects. We actually know a lot about our natural environment’s existing biological retardants.”

  “Retardants – sounds like we’re looking for a fire blanket,” said Megan.

  Carla took over. “Sure; we’re looking for anything that obstructs or decelerates the mite’s aggressive potential in the local area.”

  Megan was nodding. “You mean like some sort of natural insecticide?”

  Jian nodded once. “Very good, and yes, that is the number one contender. But it could also be bacterial. We know that a microorganism called bacillus thuringiensis produces toxins that act as a larvicide against caterpillars, beetles, and mosquitoes. So, another contender.” He held up a hand, counting on his fingers one by one. “It could also be a reciprocal parasite like a nematode, or perhaps an entomopathogenic virus. We might also be looking for a predator; there are wasps so small that they prey on greenfly eggs.” He shrugged and spread his hands, as though signifying the size and complexity of their search.

  Carla took the baton up again. �
��At this point, anything and everything is on the table. It might be in the flora population – sap, bark, pollen … After all, some plants produce chemicals that can stun pests. After eating geranium leaves, black beetles can become stunned for twenty-four hours, rendering them vulnerable to attack from other predators. Other plants produce a natural birth control; they can engineer forced termination of an egg-clutch, or even render an insect infertile. We know this because we are exploring all of these avenues to try and mimic the natural defensive capabilities of plants, and allow us chemical-loving humans to reduce the amount of toxins we are pumping into the earth.”

  Carla leaned forward and rubbed her face, then pushed her hands up through her damp hair. “So, we have a lot of options to sort through, and not a lot of time.” She shrugged, and half of her mouth turned up in a wry smile. “Or it could be something we don’t recognize, and don’t even know to look for. But we’re here, and at least we have the opportunity to search at the source. At a minimum, we need to find a local animal that has an infestation of the primus scabies mite, and then analyze the parasite’s internal chemistry to try and detect some sort of unique trace in its system that will give us a clue to what we’re looking for.”

  Matt nodded slowly, beginning to understand the enormity of the task. He spoke softly. “I hear Steinberg simply wants to catch a live archaeopteryx, get some footage, and then head straight back home. What happens if he finds his specimen quickly, and you haven’t found your answers?”

  Carla seemed to think for a moment before answering. “Then there are three options. One, we all leave together – jump on the Steinberg express, and forget about why we came in the first place. Two, we convince everyone to stay here until our job is finished. It’d mean twisting a lot of arms, and I’m pretty sure we don’t have enough physical, legal, or financial leverage to achieve that. Or, three … and then there were three. We stay, finish our job, and find our own way back.”

  “Four.” Megan spoke without taking her eyes off the fire. “I’d stay too.”

  Carla looked at the young woman for a moment, then nodded. “Good.”

  They sat in silence, each watching the fire as it consumed the pile of damp wood. After a few minutes, Carla drew in a deep breath, and exhaled slowly. “Damn jungles – we shrink them by about fifty million acres a year.” She snorted derisively. “Ninety percent of West Africa’s rainforests are already gone forever. Indonesia’s could be fully logged out by 2020. We’re mowing down the greater Amazon at the rate of a football field a second. These places are our lungs, and the wellsprings of some of the world’s greatest cures … but also the source of some of its greatest killers.” Carla leaned back, her face grim.

  Jian nodded. “Yes, this is true. Like Pandora’s box. As we push back the jungles and enter previously untouched areas, we are finding flora and fauna that harbor devastating illnesses and parasites.” He sat for a second, lost in thought, before turning to Matt and raising his eyebrows. “Or perhaps these things are finding us.”

  “You mean things like Ebola?”

  Jian laughed. “Ebola?” He laughed again, and shook his head. “Ebola is a Hollywood bogeyman – a microbiological Freddy Krueger. It’s probably killed more chimpanzees than it has humans. But things like malaria … we have lost our fear of it. We pop a couple of tablets before traveling, and think it’s all gone away, when in fact it’s still killing over three-quarters of a million people a year. If we don’t read about it, or see it on TV, it just doesn’t exist. The fact is, there are a thousand other things that have crawled, flown, and slithered out of the jungles that are inimical to human life. We guard against viral and bacterial incursions, but we are not as vigorous in our defense against parasites.” Jian looked across at Carla, perhaps expecting her to object, given her role with the CDC, but instead she continued to stare into the fire.

  Jian lifted a canteen from between his feet, unscrewed the cap, sipped, then held it up. “Clean water – we take it for granted, but in some countries it is a rare thing. Water can be a killer. Parasites love it, and love to find their way inside our bodies. Schistosomiasis bores into the skin, and lives in the blood. Guinea worms can enter your system via dirty drinking water and eventually burst from your body as a giant toothed worm several inches long. Then there’s leishmaniasis, cryptosporidium, giardia, chagas disease – the list goes on.”

  “You see, Professor Kearns, the jungle is a wonderland for we entomologists, but sometimes the tiniest creatures can cause the most damage, and must be treated with the utmost respect.” He held up a finger, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a small pocket-sized smart-pad and started to open pages, searching for something. He stopped, half-smiled at the screen, then turned it around for the group to see. “And sometimes the things we entomologists find are not so small …”

  The image on the screen showed a single wasp – black and grotesquely armor-plated with spikes and a shiny yellow-and-black carapace. Its jaws were enormous and hooked at the tips. It was positioned next to a soda can, and the creature was easily the length of the can.

  “The newly discovered Indonesian Warrior Wasp – found on the remote island of Sulawesi. It’s five inches long and mostly eats other insects and slow birds. However, it also managed to blind one of the researchers before they could capture this one to study.” He motioned to the other team members. “Mr. Steinberg thinks he is looking for the Garden of Eden, but perhaps he will find something a little less benign.” Jian smiled and pushed the device back into his pocket.

  There was silence for a few seconds, then Matt turned to Megan. “Glad you came?”

  “Pass me the insect repellent,” she shot back, looking queasy.

  *****

  Moema Paraiba muttered and paced in the shadows. A native Tupi, descended from the once-mighty Tupinambá, one of the oldest indigenous peoples in the country, he felt alone and strangely afraid in his own land.

  His people had been in South America for thousands of years, and had seen empires rise and fall. He knew the jungle, knew its secrets … and he knew that where the karaíba, the white ghosts, wanted to go, was madness.

  He had not wanted to guide them into the dark heart of the jungle. He had told Mr. Max that he knew the way to the area, but that some places were off limits, even to his people. He had also said he couldn’t understand the strange picture writing of the Aîuru tapy'yîa people who lived there, and that he doubted he would be able to communicate with them. He actually wanted nothing to do with them – he had heard of the small and ugly tribes that lived in the area, had heard the legends of cannibalism, strange diseases, and the grotesque things that were only kept from the katu-taba, the good people, by the wall of pain.

  He paced back and forth, muttering to himself. Many years ago, his grandfather had told him and his brother the story of when he was a young man. He had joined a karaíba expedition to look for gold in the deep jungles. The bosses who were with them had used guns on the small tribes, and made them flee before them. But he had also told of coming to a mighty cliff wall covered with thorns. It was both deadly and awesomely beautiful. Along the canes bloomed flowers of the deepest red – each looking like a tiny fist of blood. His grandfather had said he could smell their perfume from many paces back.

  The karaíba had captured one of the local Aîuru tapy'yîa and forced him to show them the way inside the wall. Only the bosses went through, six of them, while Moema’s grandfather and his Tupi brothers had waited for them.

  It had only taken a few hours for the screaming to start – first in terror, then in pain – soaring up above the enormous barrier. His grandfather had fled back into the jungle, and had not stopped running for days.

  Moema had wet his pants when the old man described the gruesome sounds he had heard, and the sounds of something big colliding with the barrier. The old man had told him that while running, he realized that the gods had created the giant wall of thorns to keep something terrible in.

  He
shouldn’t be doing this. He muttered and paced some more, hoping that when he came to stand before his gods, he would not be judged harshly for his transgression. He shook his head; he was making the same mistake as his grandfather, but he had been warned, so this was worse. He stared off into the darkness, wondering if he should stay. It would take him many days to get back, but at least he would get back.

  He cursed and spat into the jungle. Aiyee, he needed the money. Jobs were hard to come by, or he’d already be slipping through the trees back to the foot of the plateau. But he’d be left with next to nothing – the boss-man Mr. Max had been smart enough to pay him in instalments, with the largest portion to be paid on their safe return.

  His eyes slid across to the largest group of the karaíba, huddled together around a map and what looked like small television screens. The large one treated him like a slave, and he was sure that sooner or later he would strike or kick him if he had the chance. Moema knew of men like this – always brave and strong when they had a stick, a gun, or money.

  He glanced at the women. Their faces were so pale and long, not the perfect honey-colored round ones of his people. He wondered if they ever smiled. He sighed; this had seemed like a good idea back home. Moema turned and caught his breath. Standing right in front of him was one of the karaíba, the one with the long hair who always sat with the horse-faced women.

  “He-rêr a'ê Kearns – I am Kearns, a teacher.” He held out his hand.

  Moema blinked. The man was speaking old Tupi – and very well. He nodded and mumbled his own name, and took the offered hand, pumping it, but not looking the white man in the eye.

  Kearns spoke again, in the language of his forefathers. “You look nervous. May I join you? I might be able to help.”