by E. E. Knight
At the bow, Williams dropped an anchor.
“Guerrillas,” Francisco explained. “They burned the dock and the old house that was being used as a ranger station. They have been driven away, but there is no money to rebuild. What would be the point? Few want to come here except those interested in the ruins.” He opened the gate at the ship’s rail and dropped a gangplank. “Hurry.”
“Why hurry?”
“This part of the mountains. No good. The forest people do not hunt here.”
To Lara it looked no different than any other stretch of river, save that the channel had grown rockier and the hills crowded closer.
“Is it the ruins?”
“I don’t know. Even the Shining Path never stayed here long, just passed through.”
Lara threw the pack with her VADS gear over her shoulder. “Thanks for the warning.”
Heather navigated the gangplank first. Borg and Lara, with Francisco’s help, got the gear to the grassy riverside. There was a path, flanked by tree trunks pitched the color of railroad ties.
Lara pressed a booted foot outside the path. The ground was spongy and wet but firm. A helicopter might be able to get in here, provided the pilot was sharp enough to perform a hover pickup.
“You’re not going on vacation anytime soon?” she called to Williams.
He laughed. “Lady, my whole life’s a vacation.”
“Keep your radio on,” she said.
“You call anytime, I’ll come get you. But allow for a couple days’ notice if I’m at the other end of the route. The Tank Girl isn’t an airport cab service.”
“He’s got that right,” Heather said, quietly enough that it wouldn’t carry out to the barge. “New York taxis are cleaner.”
Lara inventoried the luggage. Something was bothering her, but she couldn’t put her finger on it yet. She gave Francisco a hundred American dollars as he handed her the bag with the jump gear. “Extra danger wages.”
He pocketed the bills smoothly. “Thank you, beautiful lady. Sleep light.”
“I will.”
“You deserting or what, Cisco?” Williams bawled. “Daylight’s wasting!”
Francisco nodded at Lara. He ran down the rock-drift, lifted the tether line, and trotted up the plank just before it fell. No good-byes, just like the man with the canoe.
Heather swatted at her exposed arm. “Damn bugs!”
Lara tossed her a bottle of DEET. “Use it. A little does a lot. Careful; it can melt plastic.”
Lara and Borg found a pole and began to put together a hammock gear-tote when they caught sight of a broad-brimmed sulfur-colored hat bobbing swiftly through the brush from the treeline, as if whoever was wearing it was jogging.
“We are being welcomed after all,” she said, touching Borg’s elbow and pointing.
Borg craned his neck. “A man, I think.”
A figure that looked more like a beekeeper than a park ranger emerged from the tall grass. His broad felt hat had netting fixed over his face and bound at the neck, and he’d tied his sleeves and pants at the cuffs. He wore thick work gloves over his hands. All in all, Lara thought that he resembled the Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz.
“Whoo—that was a run,” he huffed. “I dressed and left as soon as I caught sight of the boat. Captain Williams wastes no time. Sorry about the outfit. Ran out of repellent. I’m Alex Frys.”
Lara suddenly realized what had been bothering her. Williams had left no supplies, no mail, for Frys or for the Peruvian ranger, Fermi.
Frys extended a gloved hand. “Lady Croft, I presume?”
A nervous little laugh at the end of his question—along with his glittering eyes and the sweat on his face behind the netting that dangled like a veil from his hat—made Lara wonder if he’d been in the jungle too long. Malaria? His skin clung tight across his cheekbones.
Perhaps just a man in the throes of an obsession. She shook his hand.
Frys turned to the others. “Heather Rourke. Pleased to meet you. The press could be helpful to me in unmasking these murderers. And who is this strong-looking gentleman? A bodyguard?”
“Nils Bjorkstrom,” Borg said. He gave a short bow rather than shaking hands. Frys kept his eyes fixed on Borg’s and away from the artificial limbs. “Not a bodyguard. I am here out of concern for someone thought to be in the ruins on that mountain you watch.”
“A woman?”
“How do you know?”
“I know they have a woman working with them.”
“Then she is still alive, at least. Thank God.”
“Won’t you follow me?” Frys said. Borg picked up his pack, and he and Lara took the pole bearing the rest of their gear.
A poison dart frog, impossibly green against the pathway log it clung to, jumped out of the way as they started up the trail. Lara caught a serpentine flash of mottled coral in the stalks as a deadly fer-de-lance went after the frog’s movement. Biting flies tried to get at her scalp through her hair. She dabbed repellent across her tightly bound mane.
“The heat’s bad down here, I know,” said Frys. “Once we’re in the canopy tower, you’ll be more comfortable. Welcome to paradise!”
10
Thanks to the supplies and gear, the trek up the small mountain took the better part of the afternoon. Even Borg began asking for breaks—he had the heavy end of the pole going uphill—as they reached the halfway mark.
Lara arrived at the canopy tower wet and enervated. The afternoon rain found its way through the canopy via a million cascades, turning the hike into an uphill slog under a series of shower heads. Once thoroughly soaked, though, with the greasy layers of sweat and insect repellent washed away, she felt cooler and clean … for about five seconds. The footing on the path had been poor. They’d slipped many times, and each fall required a break while they got set to lift the equipment again. While the way had been cleared by machetes, undergrowth, decomposition, and mudslides had broken down or covered the wood-chip path. Here in the rain forest, paths did not last long.
Lara looked up at the platform, almost eight stories high. Supported both by the three-meter-thick Samauma tree in which it sat and and a long spiral staircase paralleling the smooth-sided trunk like another tree, it looked to be about the size of a modest one-bedroom flat. She was happy to see a cargo net and winch for hauling up their gear.
“Not powered by anything but muscle, sorry,” Frys said.
“Where is your police friend?”
“Fermi? Back in Puerto Maldonado. I was worried something would hold you up, so he went down to expedite things. Naturally, you showed up right after he left. Serves me right for getting anxious.”
“He didn’t take a little launch called the Plato downriver, did he?”
“I think so. Sergeant Fermi knows all the captains. The Plato can make it upriver, to some of the mines in the mountains; it happened to be passing, and he hailed it over the radio. Why?”
“We met her on the river. The captains of our boat and the Plato had a minor altercation.”
Frys chuckled behind his veil of mosquito netting. “That’s how it is down here. Everyone is either crawl-over-broken-glass friends or enemies, it seems. Care to come up? It’s dry.”
Luckily the stairs had a rail. Lara lost count of the tightly turning steps after seventy-two, when Heather sat down and moaned: “That’s it. Between the slope and these steps, I need a rest.”
Frys offered her his arm, and the party continued their slow, clockwise climb.
The canopy tower had been built to last. Thick hardwood beams, fixed to the tree with steel cable, made a platform for a one-room house with wide windows under a sloping overhang. Lara marked a trapdoor allowing access to the underside of the house where it joined the top branches of the tree, presumably for repairs.
At the top, their host stripped off his hat and, with it, the netting, and wiped his high forehead with a towel. He still looked a little like Shakespeare, but she’d never pictured the Bard with a suntan a
nd graying facial hair. “No mosquitoes up here.”
Frys’s camp gear lay scattered around the inside of the house. Above the windows, lines of hooks for equipment or hammocks or perhaps even weather curtains extended around all four walls. A tiny toilet room filled the northeast corner, with a spigot mounted above a stainless steel basin next to the WC’s door. A pipe fixed to the wall ran up from the spigot to what Lara assumed to be a rain catcher on the roof. On the other side of the toilet room, a case on the wall—she saw a fringe of broken glass—held a newly tacked up map.
The western viewing window, the one facing the ruins of Ukju Pacha, had a portable telescope with University of Dublin stenciled on its barrel. The university’s telescope rested on its own tripod, with a camera mount attached to the eyepiece.
“The ruins are about eight kilometers away on that mountain that’s a little higher than this one,” Frys said, standing next to the telescope. Butterflies the size of dinner plates fluttered among the treetops. “Where you landed is opposite. The river goes on a southern hairpin turn here. It actually comes up against the ruins, but I understand there’s a good deal of white water in between.”
A clipboard hung next to the field telescope, filled with notes. Lara had a quick look. Frys had been marking how many people he observed on any given day, along with the equipment they brought into the ruins. “It’s a splendid view if there’s no rain or fog,” Frys continued. “When the sun goes down and the granite of the mountaintops goes red … spectacular.”
“How many people working the ruins, on average?” she asked Frys.
“Usually around ten or so. The most I’ve ever seen is fifteen, but there may very well be more. Hard to tell exactly at this distance, even with the telescope. I think some may be underground, out of view.”
“But no tourists?” Heather said, rubbing her right and then her left quadriceps.
“Shining Path scared them away. It’s tough to get even the Machinguenga into this part of the cloud forest. No guide business to speak of. Which is too bad; this is a biologist’s paradise. I should know: I am one.” He giggled again.
Lara redirected the rain catcher to refill her canteen. She took a mouthful and spat it out the window, then drank. Delicious. If blue sky could be bottled, it would taste like Andean rainwater. “None of Kunai’s people know you’re here?”
“The roof is green shingle, and there’s camouflage-pattern paint on the walls for the bird-watchers. It doesn’t stand out against the rest of the jungle. Besides, even if they see the platform, there’s no reason for them to think it’s inhabited now. I’ve been keeping a low profile.”
Lara leaned out the window and looked at the exterior. Forest lichens and bromeliads living on the canopy tower added their own natural coloration.
“Have you taken any pictures?” Borg asked, noticing a camera mount on the telescope.
“Just a few. So far it looks like a minor archaeological survey. I just get a few figures at this distance. Can’t tell male from female half the time. Tea? It’s one of the few things I’m not out of.”
Over tea, held like a children’s party on the floor with water heated on a small gas camp stove, Frys told them more about his father’s research, how, in recent years, his father had become more guarded and reclusive, taking some of his papers out of the college library. “I thought he was just slipping,” Frys said. “Being alone, after cancer took Mum, hit him hard. In the last year, after he retired, he went on and on about the Méne. If only I’d paid attention.”
Heather looked over her notes. “Cults, ancient markings, secret societies. Murder. Now mysterious goings-on at a mountaintop.”
“Welcome to my world,” Lara said from the telescope. The sun began to break the rain clouds up. With better light, the ruins stood out against the green mountaintop. They did not look like much: just some rings of stones crowning the hilltop.
“You suspect this Kunai in your father’s death?” Borg asked.
“My father feared him,” Frys said.
“He’s the Prime, isn’t he?” Lara put in.
“The what?” asked Heather.
“The leader of the Méne cult,” Lara said.
“Yes, I heard my dad mention that term,” Frys said. “And I came across it in that paper he wrote with Von Croy. I read it before coming out here, thought I might find a clue. A lot of mumbo jumbo, if you ask me.”
“Mumbo jumbo?” Lara shook her head. “Hardly. Some of the Frys-Von Croy paper was guesswork, but it was pretty good guesswork, as far as I can make out. Von Junst actually spoke to some alleged members of the cult back in the 1840s, in Finland, of all places. There have been attempts to resurrect the Méne over the centuries, some more successful
than others. What they said matched another account from the other side of the world.”
Lara spoke as though addressing a room full of students. She gave an overview of what she’d discovered about the Méne, their gods from the deep places of the earth, and the Prime, the man who spoke to and for the Deep Gods. “Their leader, the Prime, cannot lie, or so it is said. He can shape the thoughts of others, give men strength and courage in battle through special gifts brought from meads made from the berries of sacred flowers.
“I believe that’s how Kunai first happened upon the Méne cult. It was an accident. He made a study of native medicines in Peru. Sold a few to a German pharmaceutical firm and became rich. There’s a blossom in this cloud forest called the Orouboran water hyacinth … at least, that’s what it is called now. But back in the days of the Méne, it was called the Dreamflower.”
“But I thought the Méne were a protoculture, before all civilization and writing. How do we know what they called anything?” asked Borg.
“That’s correct, of course,” Lara said. “What I should say is that those who came after the Méne, who preserved fragments of the old knowledge, the old ways, into civilized time, called it the Dreamflower, at least according to a translation of Babylonian laws I obtained from a rather unpleasant colleague.”
“That sounds interesting,” said Heather. “Who is this unpleasant colleague?”
“He’d be worth a story, but I don’t think he’s involved with this.”
Lara looked through the telescope again. Her vision momentarily blurred. She was dead tired from the long, hot trip. Better to go tomorrow night. “The police, the government, can’t arrest Kunai?” she asked Frys.
“Not enough evidence in Scotland. No sign that he’s been in the UK in years, but he may be traveling with a false passport. Down here, he’s untouchable. According to Fermi, the Peruvians will only act if we get evidence that he’s taking artifacts out of the country. Then the law will step in.”
Lara slowly shifted the telescope, traversing the extensive site. She could make out a line of overgrown ruins, not nearly as well-preserved as some others she’d seen in Peru, and therefore possibly older, running around the distant rounded mountaintop like a king’s crown. She smelled an old secret over there the way a hunter felt game on the trail ahead: tiny impressions, each unimportant in itself but together a red flag, what another, less attuned to the little signals, might call instinct or even precognition.
“We’ll make the Peruvians listen,” she said. “But anything can happen out here. That’s the challenge to those who go into the jungle. It’s got its own law.”
11
After a night wrapped in hammocks they breakfasted on tinned meat and cereal-like breakfast bars.
After breakfast, with the sun now well up from the horizon thanks to their tropical latitude, Borg showed Lara his specialized climbing limbs. Still experimental, they fitted onto his stumps better than his everyday arms.
It was Lara’s first good look at his stumps. Metal capped the limbs just below the shoulder, complete with stout, knoblike fixtures for locking on his arms. A short wire, tipped with what looked like a USB plug, dangled from each metal cap.
“I had a second surgery in Japan. There are
computer chips implanted in the stumps,” Borg explained. “They read tension put on them by different muscle fibers from my shoulders. My everyday arms only use it to open and close the working fingers. The climbing arms can do much more.
“A German engineering firm for climbing equipment and a Japanese robotics company worked together to make them.”
Borg knelt over the open case. The mechanical arms resembled props from a Terminator movie. Each appeared to be specialized.
“The left is really a piton gun. It works on the same principle as a nail gun, only it takes a slightly larger spike. I place a magazine of five pitons in the forearm, here.” He showed Lara the flattened, nail-like climbing anchors with their eye-holes for rope, linked together like a line of nails for a nail gun. “The right one, the ‘claw,’ has a grapnel that also works as an anchor.”
Lara found a moment to admire the four-fingered hand as Borg worked it. The talonlike fingers spread like flower petals, and could reverse themselves. “I have ten meters of cable I can play out, attached to a power winch. Takes me up or down.”
“Must have cost a great deal.”
“The idea was for me to make climbs no other single man could. So far all I have done with them is promotional videos and some easy climbs. Perhaps someday. For now, it will get us back up the Abyss.”
“There’s that boat again,” Heather said from the window. Her hair was bound up at the back of her head in a pair of thick rubber bands.
“The Tank Girl?” Lara asked.
“No, the other one. The boat with the yahoos that threw the dead animal.”
She left Borg and rushed to the window. The Plato waited on the banks of the river, only its bow visible among the trees.
Lara looked back to the landing, three kilometers away, but motion on the trail halfway up their mountain caught her eye. A dozen or more men in khaki pants and black T-shirts, gripping an assortment of assault weapons, rushed out of the forest. Some gestured to guide the others.
“We’ve got callers,” Lara said grimly. She went to her VADS pack.