Mad Science Cafe

by Ross, Deborah J.

  “Richard,” she said, unsure whether the excitement she felt deep in her abdomen was seeing howler monkeys with nut-sized brains using weapons for unknown purposes, or Richard’s firm, warm hand around her waist. His fingers played a tattoo around her ribs and the thrill went all the way around her body and down into her thighs.

  You are a strange person, Ginny Baumann, she thought. She looked sidelong at Richard’s profile. The beard was a barbaric black mass, totally wrong on him, but she decided she liked it.

  “Come on,” he said, squeezing her one more time. “Let’s have something to eat, go back out. Hey Mike! Get her a tablet—oh wait,” he said. “You’ve got your own, right?”

  Ginny nodded. Yes, she had her own tablet, and a phone—and how many of her messages had he ignored?

  “Mike” was the lanky grad student in the Red Sox cap with the Romanesque beak slathered in zinc oxide. He blinked at her and she sensed the simmering resentment against a favored female common to all male grad students working under alpha males like Richard. Mike was a strong observer, however, as he gave her an efficient once-over and she realized that in a second or two, he’d taken her measurements and seemed to be estimating what her breasts would look like unencumbered by bra and shirt.

  She decided that Mike was one to watch. She wondered how many of the observations he’d done—was he her competition in the research stakes? Or was it one of the others—the bottom-heavy brunette who was standing by the cookfire with her arms crossed, or the freckled, crew-cut blonde with the snub nose?

  As they shared lukewarm black beans and rice, thankfully minus Antonio’s nuclear chilies, Ginny learned the other two women were Siobhan, the brunette, and Katie, the blonde with minimal hair. As they talked, Ginny realized she’d mistaken Katie for a lesbian simply because of the hair and her petite, boyish build. It was obvious Mike and Katie were involved, which also explained the toxic glances coming from Siobhan. If Ginny had been Gerald, the brunette probably would have been hanging on her shoulder by now. Since she wasn’t, and it was obvious that Ginny was close to Richard, it was a certain recipe for jealousy and resentment. As generally the hottest member of any research team, Ginny was used to that.

  Between Richard and the spear video and the others, Ginny had barely noticed that Antonio had disappeared. He returned just as they finished their meal.

  “Oh!” said Richard. “Have a look at this.” He showed Antonio the spear video.

  Antonio watched, his eyes flickering with interest. “Ah,” he said. “Yes, they will retrieve insects this way.”

  “We were wondering,” Richard said, “If it might be possible they might be hunting small game. But we haven’t seen it.”

  Antonio’s mouth curled as he watched the video again. He shook his head. “No,” he said. “Termites and grubs. The howlers do not eat meat.”

  “I don’t know, my friend,” Richard said. “Care to come out with us? We’re going to do another four hours of observation.”

  Antonio shook his head. “I have an appointment.”

  Ginny wondered what sort of appointment Antonio might have in the jungle. She had no idea where he lived. As far as she knew, he could have a treehouse or a villa or a complete village all to himself. He waved briefly, then strode away through the mud and reeds in the general direction of the excavations at Ciudad Blanca.

  On the way to the observation site, Ginny continued to think about Antonio. “I didn’t know we were working with Francisco Morazán University,” Ginny said to Richard.

  “We’re not, precisely,” he said.

  She resisted the urge to blurt, “But Antonio said he was—”

  “Oh,” Richard said. “You mean Antonio. He works for the Honduran government. Did he tell you he was with the University?”

  Ginny nodded.

  “Sometimes he says that. I suppose it’s easier that way.”

  “So if he works for the government, what is his…role?” Was Antonio supposed to be spying on them?

  “If we find anything of value, he’ll take it,” Richard said. “Other than that, we’re free to watch the howlers. He’s a pretty good guy.”

  “He seems that way,” she said, thinking of how effortlessly Antonio had gotten her to the camp, with only the mishap of a hot chili pepper and no animal attacks, snake bites, sprained ankles, or parasite infestations.

  The howlers did not range very far, so three blinds and a roughly-constructed platform halfway up a ceiba tree sufficed to observe the tight-knit, stable group of a dozen adult howlers, five juveniles, and four infants.

  Mike had taken the liberty of naming a number of the group after sports figures, including the large males Jeter, Cabrera and Kobe, and the diminutive female Anna Kournikova. The infants had seemingly acquired the nicknames of four of the seven dwarves: Sleepy, Grumpy, Happy and, although he seemed bright enough, Dopey.

  They were formally observed under identifying letters and numbers related to their observed age and dominance, with AF and AM designating adult males and females, and juveniles and infants designated JM, JF and IM and IF.

  So far, only AFs had been observed making and using the spears. Although far from the Amazon, the fact that the females seemed to be the club-and now spear-users had already encouraged the younger scientists to call them Amazon warriors.

  Ginny allowed Richard to convince her to climb the rope ladder first, fully aware of what he was observing on the way up. The observation platform was a 10 foot-square deck of rough planks held together with steel clamps that were already rusting in the humidity and heat. After Richard climbed onto the platform, he arranged the blind and silently knelt beside Ginny, who was on her stomach, setting up her tablet so she could record any observation with a single touch.

  They stayed this way for a long time. The howlers were mostly sleeping, although one of the larger males, AM-3, aka Jose Cabrera, was chewing determinedly on a leafy branch. A few satisfied hoots emanated from him as he swallowed the leaves and fibers.

  The small female, Anna Kournikova, roused from her slumber and crept through the branches toward the largest male, Kobe Bryant. She curled her small body near him. Ginny watched as the male selected a bright green leaf from his branch and held it out to her. Her lips curled and she took the leaf gently from his hand.

  “He’s feeding her,” Ginny whispered.

  “They’re in love,” Richard said.

  It was all Ginny could do to keep from laughing. Richard’s sly smile let her know it was okay to laugh. He got down on his stomach next to her and put his hand on her rear.

  The rest of the afternoon passed in much this manner. Richard seemed to have gotten much more observation of Ginny done than of the howler monkeys. Ginny grew so distracted by Richard’s clever hands that she nearly missed one of the juveniles retrieving a stone from a tree hollow and using it to mash a less-choice branch and leaves into a more digestible meal of arboreal paste.

  “Even the young ones are using the stones?” she whispered.

  Richard nodded. He slipped his hand up her thigh close to her crotch. The blind concealed them as much from the others in their stations as it did from the monkeys.

  My God, Ginny thought. They could probably make love on the platform and no one would know. This idea was pushed from her head as a horrible mental picture formed of half a dozen howlers gathering in the branches above to stare at the pink, hairless primates and their absurd forms of play.

  “Jesus!” came Mike’s voice. He was on the other side of the trees in one of the ground-based blinds. “Holy Christ!”

  Richard’s hand flew away from Ginny’s thighs and he was scrambling off the platform before she could think what to do. After a moment’s hesitation, she followed.

  Richard bounded toward the other blind, and she followed. A chorus of howler cries, the famous cacophony of the rainforest, rose up. So much for the quiet observation cover, Ginny thought. The branches above swayed with terrified howlers scrambling away.

&
nbsp; “Aw, holy CRAP!” Mike said.

  Katie and Siobhan emerged from their blinds. The team gathered around Mike. A white streak of zinc oxide smeared his thin cheek. His eyes were huge. “Look!” he said, holding out his phone.

  At first, all Ginny could see was fluttering tropical foliage. Then a massive howler emerged—AM-1, Kobe Bryant, the dominant male. He had a tree rat in his mouth and was chewing ravenously.

  “He’s playing with it,” Siobhan said.

  “No way,” Katie said. “That’s meat and he’s eating it.”

  Richard said nothing, merely nodding. He patted Mike on the shoulder. Mike gave him a look of resentment mixed with admiration.

  “Great job, Mike,” Katie said. Everyone murmured their agreement. In the midst of this, the howlers had vacated three trees over. Ginny didn’t think about the rapidity of their movement until they had returned to camp and were watching Mike’s video over and over.

  Howlers were slow and sleepy. Their deep-throated cries were an evolutionary response to their somnolent lifestyles and requirement for large amounts of foliage to maintain their weight. It was much more effective to stay put and eat while warning others of predators for up to a three-mile radius, the distance a howler monkey’s cry could travel in the rainforest. Howlers were basically arboreal primate versions of the koala or the panda.

  Except these howlers used rocks and spears. One of them was eating another animal. Richard’s joke about the love match between Kobe Bryant and Anna Kournikova somehow seemed less of a joke. They were exhibiting chimp-like…human-like behaviors. They were showing love.

  Richard said what everyone was thinking. “I think we’re watching evolution in action. This is their great leap forward.”

  o0o

  Richard and Ginny were up all night. They were not making love. Ginny helped Richard put the data into a longitudinal format.

  “I think you must be my good luck charm,” he told her. The increase in advanced behavior observations was clear. The plot of observed instances of tool use hockey-sticked upward on the exact day Ginny had agreed to leave Ames and go to Honduras. Ginny even wondered, knowing as she did how foolish it was, if each new observation coincided with some type of love text between the two of them.

  The morning observations went slowly. Suddenly the howlers were back to being howlers. Eating, sleeping, hooting, grooming, and defecating: all seemed to hide shyly in thick leaves and branches.

  Then came another cry from Mike. “Whoo-hoo!”

  The previous day’s events unfolded similarly, only this time, Mike had a video of the big male Kobe Bryant plying tiny Anna Kournikova with neatly-cubed pieces of mango or papaya that looked for all the world as though they’d been purloined from someone’s lunch. They could very well have been, although the nearest source would have been the teams of excavators and assorted hangers-on at Ciudad Blanca, five kilometers away. And five kilometers seemed a little too far for even a big howler to travel for a dish of nicely-prepared fruit.

  “That looks exactly like the fruit my mom used to cut up for me,” Siobhan said.

  “Agreed,” Richard said. “There are enough tourists around that it must be from them. Antonio would know which tourists are in the area.”

  “I came in on the plane with some,” Ginny said, recalling the couple from Minnesota. They’d mentioned seeing a waterfall and she was certain they had planned to visit the excavations at Ciudad Blanca. “Is there a waterfall or other sightseeing attraction around here?”

  Richard shrugged. “Dozens.”

  Monkeys stealing tourist fruit was not exactly earth-shattering, although Mike emphasized that other monkeys did that, while the shy, reticent howlers did not. Capuchins, for example, were well-known for stealing any sweet items they could get their dexterous little hands on. This was another example of new behavior for the howlers, but not as notable as Kobe Bryant’s bloody rat feast.

  “Hey,” Siobhan said. “While we’ve been talking, they’re on the move.”

  Everyone turned. She gestured toward the trees, filled with swaying branches. Leaves fluttered down. The group looked at each other for a moment, then back up at the ceiba trees. The howlers were moving fast to the west, toward Ciudad Blanca.

  “Come on!” Richard said. He grabbed his pad and started trotting through the jungle. Ginny followed, amazed her legs were able to move that fast in the oppressive rainforest heat. It felt like running under a hot, wet blanket.

  “God, I’ve never seen them move like this,” Katie said, puffing and panting just like everyone else. “They usually creep up and down a single branch.” Puff. “It takes them a day just to move one tree.”

  “We’ve gone about 30 trees so far,” Mike said laconically. His long legs carried him with ease. He alone in the group seemed to be relatively at ease with a fast jog through the rainforest.

  Ginny wished they’d get to their destination. Soon.

  This was not to be. After a quarter of an hour, they had begun to lose the howlers in the rainforest.

  “Pick up the pace!” Mike commanded.

  Huffing, Ginny called out, “What are you? Some type of long-distance runner?”

  “Ultra-long distance,” Mike called back over his shoulder. “My dad started training with me when I was 10. We’ve done all the long races. Chimera, Bishop, Ohlone Wilderness.”

  “How long is long?” Ginny asked.

  “100 miles,” Mike said. “There’s one that’s 162 miles, peak to peak. It’s better at high elevation.”

  “Oh, my God,” Ginny said under her breath. She imagined following the howlers all the way to the coast, then turning around and running back.

  “Mike’s quite the athlete,” Richard said in a strangled tone. She looked over at his profile and even through the beard, caught the grim set of his jaw and neck muscles.

  “Breathe,” she told him. As a dedicated 5K runner on good days, she at least remembered that lesson. “Don’t let your hamstrings stiffen.”

  “You guys!” came Siobhan’s voice through the foliage. “We have to stop. I can’t keep up.”

  Ginny halted and waited for the shorter young woman to catch up. “Did you bring your water?” she asked. Siobhan’s cheeks were lit with dark pink blotches. She was overheating. Heatstroke this far from camp would be no joke.

  “Mike!” Ginny yelled. “You have to stop. Siobhan could get heatstroke.”

  She saw the long legs slow. Mike’s back bent in a defeated posture. Then he turned and ran back. He sprinted back to them, and Richard and Katie gathered around. “Here,” he said, taking a 2-liter bottle from his pack. “Drink.”

  “You come prepared,” Ginny said.

  “Always,” Richard said. “Mike’s our best asset out here.”

  “I guess so,” Ginny said, watching the trees for signs of the last of the howlers.

  “We’re losing them,” Mike said.

  “Can’t we track the branches and leaves?” Katie asked.

  Mike shook his head. “If we were some type of Moskitia Indian, maybe,” he said.

  “Let’s try,” said Ginny. “Pace yourself, Siobhan. Breathe. Drink water. She can have your bottle for now, right, Mike?”

  He nodded curtly. Without another word, he turned and sprinted away in the direction they had last seen the howlers.

  Ginny followed, ignoring Richard’s volcanic look. She intuited that he hadn’t wanted to keep chasing the howlers. She knew he was tired and getting just as overheated as Siobhan. Well, she thought as she grimly put one foot in front of the other, if he wanted to be with a younger woman, he was going to have to keep up. She had to find out where the howlers were going with such uncharacteristic speed.

  o0o

  “I’ve got them!”

  This time, it was Katie’s light soprano voice calling across the rainforest. The slender blonde had taken a path slightly to the east of the rest of the group, saying that she thought she could smell howler droppings.

  Ginny h
eard the light babble of running water. She broke into a full run, heading toward Katie’s voice. Suddenly, Katie cried out again, much closer. “Stop! Stop! Stop! It’s a—”

  Ginny’s mind registered “no more forest floor” and “open space,” a second before her legs stopped and she turned her boots sideways, sliding as if she was headed for home base back in 8th grade softball.

  “Shit!” she said as her left boot slid out of mud and into air. She grabbed for anything, and got a handful of some type of sawgrass and a few thick vines.

  Her right boot caught on a thick root and she finally came to a stop.

  “Cliff!” she screamed. “Don’t come up too fast!” The rest of the team stopped short.

  Heart pounding, Ginny looked past the top of the escarpment, which was half roots and stones, the other half mud and vegetation. She had nearly tumbled off a 40 foot drop. The water she had heard came from a dozen small streams trickling to the edge of the cliff and running down its muddy dropoff to a much larger stream below that headed off toward the ocean. The stream ran through a narrow valley. Below, the vegetation was sparse and there were only young saplings here and there, no ceibas or other rainforest giants to conceal what lay beneath.

  Someone had made an extensive camp in the ravine, complete with picnic tables, two Porta-Potties, a camp shower, and two barbecues. It was the obvious source of the neatly sliced fruit that Kobe Bryant had fed to his monkey girlfriend, Anna Kournikova.

  “Oh Jesus,” Siobhan said. “I almost killed myself for a tourist trap.”

  “We need to get down there and tell them to stop feeding the howlers,” Richard said.

  The group looked at each other. Chances that any tourists would stop feeding monkeys Cheetos, cut up tropical fruit, and hot dogs were slim and zero.

  “Richard’s right,” Ginny said. “We have to at least try. If they understand it’s a scientific venture, maybe they’ll go along. Maybe there’ll be someone like Antonio with them who’ll understand.”

  Richard gave her a strange look that she chose to interpret as dislike for the Honduran.

  “So how do we get down there?” Katie asked.