by Dan Pollock
“My mistake,” Sam said.
Presently a primer-spotted Mazda pickup rolled under the crossbeam gateway and crunched to a stop on the gravel beside the Land Rover, and Félix Rosales climbed out. The young archaeologist wore khaki walking shorts and a tank-top affording maximum exposure to swollen deltoids, biceps and triceps. This was one scientist, Sam figured, who’d logged more hours in the gym than the lab.
Sam gave them a quick tour of the casa grande, depositing Bernardo in a leather recliner in the den. The youth quickly fathomed all the remote buttons, zapping a Venezuelan telenovela—undoubtedly one of the favorites of Enrico’s wife and daughters and sisters-in-law—in favor of tag-team, superhero wrestling.
In the kitchen, they picked up a thermos of coffee, a cooler packed with beer, soda and sandwiches, and headed out the back door to the airstrip where the gleaming Cessna waited.
Chapter Ten
As they approached the airstrip, Jacqueline unzipped her shoulder bag, took out a small Sony camcorder and began filming—first Sam and Félix, then the ranch buildings and the purple-streaked morning landscape. She certainly looked professional, Sam thought. She even photographed his little twin-engine, sparkling white with maroon-and-gold trim.
“What kind of plane is it, Sam? It’s really cute.”
“A Cessna 310.”
“It looks brand-new.”
“Vintage 1979, with a wash-and-wax. I prefer to call it a classic.” Sam smiled. “Cessna stopped making small planes back in ‘86. Hardly anybody makes ‘em now in the U.S. Sharp lawyers took care of that. Damn near wiped out the whole industry with product-liability lawsuits. But I wouldn’t trade this one in, even if I could.” He slapped a wingtip tank as he walked by. “The 310 suits me fine. It can take me and five full-grown folks just about anywhere I want to go, just about as fast as I want to get there. And up where I live in Oklahoma, it’s perfect for getting down to the main road to check the mailbox.”
“Hmm, did I warn you about Sam?” Jacqueline called over her shoulder to Félix as they went up the retractable double step into the forward cabin. “Don’t take everything he says literally.”
She moved nimbly into the right-hand seat, and Félix slid behind her. Sam stowed the cooler aft, then paused beside the young archaeologist: “So, how was Dr. Laya this morning?”
“Angry with me for coming. I must be back by one.”
“Ordinarily that wouldn’t be a problem. But now that Jacqueline has cast doubt on my veracity, I better not promise anything. Still want to go?”
Félix nodded. “Oh, yeah. Actually I’ve never seen Salto Angel in person.”
“The tallest waterfall in the world, right in your own back yard, and you never went to see it?” Jacqueline asked.
“Most Venezuelans can’t afford to fly, Jake,” Félix said, invoking a nickname Sam had never been invited to use. “Even the lucky ones with jobs. And flights over Angel Falls cost thousands of bolívars.”
“Oops!” Jacqueline turned to face Félix, looking slightly chagrined. “There I go, exposing my cultural insensitivity. I suppose you think I’m terribly spoiled?”
“I would never say such a thing!”
“Spoken like a real South American gentleman.”
“No. I think you are fantastic, Jake—you and Sam both, for taking me along.”
“Happy to do it, Félix,” Sam said. “I’d even take Arquimedeo, if he asks.”
“Actually Arqui has flown over quite a bit of the Gran Sabana, doing aerial photo surveys for archaeological sites. That’s really what got him interested in Cerro Calvario.”
And then the clever little bastard snookered me into bankrolling him to explore it, Sam thought, taking the left-hand seat. He turned to his passengers. “Okay, folks, time to buckle up—seat belts and shoulder harnesses. And strap on your headsets. It’s about to get real noisy in here.”
Sam had completed his preflight before their arrival and had gotten a benign forecast from the airport at Puerto Ordaz—scattered morning cumulus, building to thunderclouds by late afternoon. Now he went through the prestart checklist, peripherally aware of Jacqueline watching his movements. After turning on the master switch and surveying the comm radios and navaid frequencies, he adjusted the controls for fuel mixture, propeller and carburetor. A few strokes primed the motors. Next he made a visual sweep down the runway and around both props, before keying the ignition.
The propellers spun and, one after another, the 260-horse engines caught, melding into a full-throated roar. Sam nudged the throttle, and the Cessna began to trundle along the rough taxiway onto the only slightly smoother runway. He took it down to the end, where the hardpan gave way to rutted earth and clumps of grass. Then he spun and halted for the final runup.
After testing the controls and rechecking instruments, Sam planted his feet on the brakes and throttled up. As the revs climbed and the engines reached full scream, the Cessna began to shudder, like a two-and-a-half-ton sheet-metal cat waiting to pounce. As Sam held it there, he turned and read the childish excitement in Jacqueline’s eyes.
After a last skyward scan, he trimmed for takeoff, released the brakes and let the plane fling itself forward. He fed it more throttle, till the savanna went streaking along the side windows. Sam had used up nearly half the twenty-five-hundred-foot strip, watching his airspeed indicator, before he eased back on the yoke and felt the Cessna lift off the deck.
Once gear and flaps were up and rpms and fuel mix were adjusted, he spoke into his headset: “I’m going to take you over Cerro Bolívar first. That’s the only iron mountain on which—so far—no ancient artifacts have been uncovered. Then we’ll head back south.”
The mountain appeared a moment later, a reddish hogback rising 1,800 feet above the grasslands and stretching west-to-east nearly four miles. As it loomed larger, they began to see the huge scars that had transformed the massif into a vertical open-pit mine. Cerro Bolívar’s sides had been blasted and bulldozed into a spiraling series of fifty-foot-wide benches, which, viewed from above, resembled the hachures on a contour map. Yet there was a raw beauty in the scarifying. The exposed ferrous rock was streaked and veined with a lurid variety of mineral hues—ochers and vermilions, rusts and golds, even pinks and maroons—and dotted, here and there, by the green of shrubbery.
As they passed directly overhead, Jacqueline pointed her palmcorder down. “I can see tiny yellow trucks down there.”
“They’re around a hundred tons each,” Sam said.
“Félix, look.” Since the archaeologist was behind the wing’s leading edge with an impaired downward view, she urged him to lean forward. “Is that what will happen to Cerro Calvario?”
“If our government permits it,” Félix said, peering over her shoulder. “Of course, you might try to talk Sam and your father out of their plans.”
She glanced over at Sam. “You don’t really think it’s justified, do you, Sam?”
“This is going to sound real evasive, but why don’t you ask your father first?”
“I already did. In fact, I told him last night I thought it was unthinkable to go ahead with mining—I mean, considering what Félix and Arquimedeo have already discovered.”
“And what did he say?”
“He doesn’t like to discuss business with me. Or politics. He doesn’t mind lecturing me, though—as long as I sit in silent worship.”
“Somehow I can’t picture your doing that.”
“It doesn’t happen a whole lot. Not that I don’t respect his opinion—on a lot of things really. But—I mean, you don’t exactly have to be a radical green, or a neo-Marxist or whatever, to know we don’t have the right to bulldoze everything in sight, just to max out earnings for a bunch of stockholders.” She took a breath. “That’s heretical, I know. But I’m on Félix’s side on this.”
“I was beginning to suspect that. Speaking of lectures...”
“Sorry, Sam.”
Sam laughed heartily. “You can speak your
mind all you want around me, Jacqueline. I might learn a few things. By the way, that’s Cerro Calvario coming up on the right. Anybody want me to waggle the wings?”
*
Fifteen minutes later they crossed over a sweeping curve of the Río Paragua, its surface shimmering in the morning light. Ten minutes after came another river, the iron-tinted Caroní, a major tributary of the Orinoco. Stretches of the Paragua, the Caroní and their feeder streams, Sam explained, were still being dredged for diamonds and gold.
“And other treasures,” Félix added. “For instance, the alluvial terraces also contain pre-Columbian relics, which some people consider even more valuable than gold.”
Sam ignored the editorial comment, busy banking left to follow the Caroní between its jungled banks south to another affluent, the smaller Carrao. As the Cessna leveled out, Sam resumed over the headset:
“From here on we’re in Canaima National Park. It runs all the way to the Brazilian border, but we’ll only see a tiny corner of it today. Now, if you look ahead there on the right bank of the river—that little clearing and lagoon? That’s Canaima Camp. We’ll be stopping back there for lunch.”
At their cruise altitude of 7,500 feet, the resort camp constituted only a small scar in the luxuriant, riverine greenery—a slash of asphalt and raw earth, a scatter of palm thatch, a molten gleam of quiet water below a white froth of cataracts. Then the jungle closed back in and they were into the Gran Sabana, the Great Savanna of southeastern Venezuela.
As Canaima slid behind to starboard, the first of the great sandstone plateaus, or tepuis, were already visible out the portside windows. Sam reached into a map case and handed Jacqueline a well-thumbed National Geographic with an artist’s rendering of the region. This showed a cartographic panorama of these majestically eroded tablelands interlaced with canyons and rivers. Jacqueline found Canaima on the map, then called out the names of the formations appearing on their left—Kurún Tepui, “Kurun Mountain,” Cerro Venado, “Deer Hill,” and several more. “Next stop Angel Falls,” she announced, passing the illustration back to Félix. “How much farther now, Sam?”
“About thirty miles—ten, fifteen minutes. If the falls are veiled in mist, don’t worry. We can try it again later. Anyway, you’ll have plenty to look at. I’ve flown over some spectacular stuff in the U.S.—Yosemite, Zion, the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley. Believe me, what’s coming up is as good as it gets.”
“Perhaps we should hire you for our tourist bureau,” Félix suggested.
“Hell, no! I don’t want this corner of paradise stomped flat. Let the hordes keep going to Club Med or Rio or Disney World—all the places they’ve already gunked up. But let’s keep ‘em out of here.”
“Now you sound like an environmentalist, Sam,” Jacqueline observed.
“Guess I do,” he admitted with a grin.
“Also an opponent of progress and industry,” Félix put in. “After all, a tourist invasion would help Venezuela’s struggling economy, more perhaps than another iron-ore mine.”
“All right, you’ve both drawn the old man’s blood. Now let’s all sit back and enjoy the ride, okay? We’re gonna start climbing here—another fifteen-hundred feet, if we want to get sufficient clearance over Auyán Tepui, which, in case you didn’t notice, is that big sonuvabitch mountain dead ahead.”
Chapter Eleven
It was not a mountain so much as a vast, flat-topped island rearing out of the rain forest. Its sheer sides—which, as they neared, became striated ramparts of red and ocher rock—soared more than three thousand feet. And its wedge-shaped, northernmost apex cleaved the green waves of vegetation like the prow of some gigantic, monolithic ship.
Another tepui, called Roraima, which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had selected for his fanciful tale, The Lost World, was larger, Sam explained. But this approaching colossus, with its deep, waterfall gorges and crenelated rock towers, Sam considered the most dramatic of Venezuela’s great table mountains. Its brooding size, and the fact that it was often hidden in clouds and thunderstorms, had inspired its Indian name, Auyán Tepui, Devil Mountain.
The drone from the Cessna’s engines changed pitch as Sam worked to find the steepest angle over the huge obstacle. With three aboard and a conservative 140-knot cruise climb, he could only manage around fifteen hundred feet per minute, but this was enough to lift them above the mountain rim and to reveal a forbidding summitscape of barren black rock.
The pockmarked surface passed slowly beneath them, veiled in ragged streamers of mist, in places vanishing into crevasses and elsewhere fissured into a labyrinth of storm-sculpted pillars. Tangled among these eerie formations were darkish clumps of vegetation, tenacious shrubs and dwarf trees. Higher, flat-topped against the encircling skyline, were other “lost worlds,” members of a geologically ancient chain of tepuis marching south to the borders of Brazil and Guyana.
Suddenly the summit dropped away and they were looking down into a green-bottomed gorge. The enclosed forest floor was threaded by a silver stream, the runoff of several waterfalls they spied along the ragged parapets. One of these cascades, Sam pointed out, burst from an opening halfway up a sheer cliff.
“It’s fantastic!” Jacqueline switched on her camcorder. “But where’s Angel Falls?”
“Wrong canyon. Although this one did show up a few years back in a scary movie about spiders.”
The gorge passed beneath them and was succeeded by another expanse of summit. Félix, meanwhile, had moved forward between the front seats.
“Jake, look down there,” he said. “What do you see?”
“Not much. It’s awfully bleak.”
“No, it’s actually full of life. Isn’t that right, Sam?”
Sam nodded, but deferred to the archaeologist, who obviously had a point to make. Félix went on:
“Señor Doyle was not completely wrong about his ‘Lost World’ of dinosaurs. This is the first time I have seen a tepui so close. But, like most Venezuelans, I studied them in school. They are perhaps the oldest rock formations in the world—pre-Cambrian. This is nearly two billions of years old.”
“Where are the big lizards, then, Professor Rosales?” Jacqueline asked. “And don’t tell me they’re all napping in their pre-Cambrian caves.”
“There may be some unusual saurians up here, I cannot recall. But many plants and animals have evolved on these isolated summits that are existing nowhere else—species of orchids and bromeliads and many strange amphibia and insects. Even giant carnivorous plants.”
Jacqueline began to stare keenly at the tepui’s rock-strewn surface.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to take Félix’ word for all that,” Sam said. “Or hire some daredevil chopper pilot to land you up here.”
“This is quite close enough, thanks. Besides, I happen to like the pilot I’ve got.”
“Glad to hear it. Okay, get ready for the main event. We’re about to enter the Valley of the Churún River, also known as Devil’s Canyon. Angel Falls will be on the right in a couple minutes—if we’re going to be able to see it this morning.” Again the plateau slid away, and a great rift valley tilted below as Sam banked right to fly down its center.
“Oh my God!” Jacqueline gasped, raising her camcorder. “There are waterfalls everywhere!”
Sam had noticed the same thing. Thanks to heavy recent rains, there was more than the usual runoff along the canyon escarpments.
Beside him, Jacqueline was tracking and zooming from one breathtaking cascade to the next. The valley yawned before them like a verdant Grand Canyon, with sheer rock walls plunging thousands of feet to green-clad talus slopes and a forest floor vagrantly cloud-shadowed and center-laced by a burnished watercourse, the Río Churún. The sun was now high enough to slant across the rosy sandstone cliffs and cast deep cathedral shadows behind the ridges, leaving untouched the many side canyons and defiles, like the recessed chapels of some winding, primeval nave. Through this vast, magnificent hush the little plane droned, a high-tech p
terodactyl, self-aware and insignificant.
As spectacular as the view ahead was, Sam couldn’t help but notice the girl’s excited reactions, and the occasional delighted glances she threw him and Félix. She also treated them to a scenic commentary, which made up in sheer enthusiasm what it lacked in descriptive variety.
Then, abruptly, she cursed and lowered her Handycam to her lap.
“Out of tape?” Sam asked.
“No—out of my mind! Sam, it’s just too awesome. Unless you happen to have an IMAX movie camera lying around.”
“I don’t seem to remember one on the manifest.”
But an instant later, as Sam took them around a sharply projecting cliff, she snatched up her video camera with renewed zeal. Below on their right Angel Falls was suddenly unveiled in its full-length plunge down the mineral-streaked, exfoliated face of the canyon’s west wall.
Nobody spoke. The only sound was the insistent engine vibrato through the earseals on their headsets. Below them the rain-swollen, mesa-top river simply exploded from the cliff in two majestic horsetail plumes, free-falling in solemn parallel through sunlight and shadow, nearly a thousand meters to the canyon floor and a cauldron of seething vapor.
“There’s a rainbow down there!” Jacqueline cried.
And there was. At the base of the falls, hovering above the swirling mist, was a delicate, prismatic arch. Beneath this, several cataracts interlaced into a silvery stream that went coursing down a rocky channel before vanishing into the jungle en route to the Churún.
Gradually, then, the spectacular view was intruded upon by the starboard engine nacelle, then eclipsed altogether behind wing and windows.
“Hang on,” Sam said. “Preparing to come about. You’ll get it back on your left. And I’ll take us down a bit, too.”
They did a gradual one-eighty, losing both airspeed and elevation on the cliff face. But in the cockpit it seemed as though they hung motionless, while the rough-faceted canyon walls swung round them in a grand cyclorama. Finally the falls wheeled into view, above and below them now. Glancing up, they could see water gouting out of notches beneath the summit; while straight down was the boiling spillway.