The Canopy

by Angela Hunt

  No. She wouldn’t think of those things. No panic allowed, not today. She would not allow her brain to focus on anything negative. She would find something else to think about.

  “Baklanov,” she called over her shoulder, “how many others are still climbing?”

  He coughed, then cleared his throat. “Carlton and his woman. Olsson, of course.”

  “Of course.” The botanist had promised to bring up the rear.

  Carlton had assembled an international team, whose members were subsidized by several organizations for varying reasons. The World Health Organization had sponsored Baklanov, a leading researcher in Russia, in order to expand the international library of bacteriophages, an area of study that held great promise for Alex’s own research. During correspondence exchanged prior to the trip, she and the Russian researcher had agreed to work together during this expedition.

  Alex met Valerik Baklanov for the first time at the airport in Lima. Tall and broad, he had moved through the crowd with the awkward gait of a man who has been sitting for too long. His clothing smelled of tobacco and sweat, but his eyes softened with kindness when she introduced herself, and the smile he had offered her ten-year-old daughter, Caitlyn, had been genuine.

  Yes, she had been immediately impressed with the serious scholar. Like her, he had given his life to his work.

  On the hourlong flight from Lima to Iquitos, he gave her a brief history of his science. Alex knew the Russians had been utilizing microscopic viruses to fight bacterial infections for generations. The tiny disease killers had been discovered during World War I, but phage research came to a screeching halt in the United States with the arrival of penicillin. Why would a patient want to swallow a spoonful of live viruses when a tiny white pill could accomplish the same purpose?

  All living things, however, struggle to survive, and deadly bacteria had adapted to the threat of antibiotics. Resistant bacteria strains were forcing scientists to find new methods of fighting illness, and some bright doctor at the World Health Organization had remembered a drab Russian research center where the doctors were so poor they treated patients with live viruses instead of antibiotics.

  Baklanov had laughed when he explained how phages had come to Russia. Canadian biologist Felix d’Herelle, who had discovered bacteriophages along with Englishman Frederick Twort, happened to be a Communist and an ardent admirer of Stalin. After the war, d’Herelle moved to Russia and established what would later be known as the Eliava Institute. When the Western world abandoned Stalin—and phage research—d’Herelle and his team kept culturing bacteria and feeding them to phages in an effort to determine which phage devoured which bacteria.

  “We have had many setbacks over the years,” Baklanov said, the hand in his lap twitching for a cigarette. “The city is poor, especially now that the Soviet system has been dismantled. The refrigerators where we keep our cultures fail when the power often goes out, and sometimes we lose years of work. But it is simple research, really.” He winked at Caitlyn. “This little girl could do it.”

  “I think I could.” Caitlyn looked at him with the expression of a diva presented with an insultingly simple song. “I would need an EM, though.”

  One of Baklanov’s bushy brows rose. “She has an electron microscope?”

  Alex laughed. “Of course not. But she is familiar with the lingo, and she’s seen an EM at our lab.”

  A wry half-smile twisted the corner of Baklanov’s mouth as he went on with his explanation. He had come to the rain forest in search of new bacteriophages, for the little bacteria-assassins seemed to have one-track minds. Though hundreds of phages existed, each virus killed only one variety of bacteria. Predator and prey had to be perfectly matched for a cure to be effective.

  Phages lived everywhere, Baklanov assured Alex. Though they were only one-fortieth the size of the average bacterium, they swarmed in almost every conceivable medium, busily eating germs.

  “Under the electron microscope,” Baklanov explained, leaning toward Caitlyn, “they show up as translucent spiderlike creatures with box-shaped heads, rigid tails, and a tangle of legs for gripping their prey. They are so tiny that a single drop of purified H2O—” he reached out and tapped the water bottle on the airline tray—“may contain a billion of them.”

  Caitlyn, who had been most impressed by Baklanov’s quest, announced that she would begin a study of bacteriophages as soon as they returned to Atlanta. Alex had been more dubious—phage research might provide the key she had been seeking, or it might prove to be another blind alley. Only time would tell.

  Except for Fortier and Olsson, who had become partners because of their mutual interest in plants, the other team members were working independently. Emma Whitmore, an anthropologist from the University of Southern California, had come along to study indigenous people groups—and had wisely decided to keep both feet on the ground and work at the lodge while the others, as she put it, “played Tarzan and Jane.”

  The only people actually playing on this trip appeared in the porthole opening moments after Baklanov. First came Kenneth Carlton, CEO of Horizon Biotherapies and Alex’s employer, followed by his administrative assistant, Lauren Hayworth.

  Alex resisted the impulse to roll her eyes when the pair crawled through the canvas opening. She could understand why Carlton had organized this expedition—with antibiotic resistance on the rise in Western countries, every savvy health company in the world had trained appraising eyes on Baklanov’s work with bacteriophages. Carlton had shown considerable ingenuity, in fact, by allowing other researchers to join the team, thereby disguising his primary motivation.

  Alex wouldn’t have been at all surprised if Louis Fortier or Emma Whitmore had no idea what Carlton had up his sleeve, but anyone in the medical research field would have caught on in a heartbeat. Bacteriophages appeared to be the definitive answer to antibiotic resistance, so if Carlton and Baklanov came to some sort of agreement on this jungle journey, Horizon Biotherapies would soon be miles ahead of the competition.

  Alex had no trouble admiring Carlton’s business acumen. She could even respect the chutzpah required to assume Baklanov would warm to Carlton’s generous support. But how Kenneth Carlton could leave his wife and two teenage sons at home in order to escort a nubile twentysomething faux assistant to a remote jungle lodge—well, it didn’t take a degree in cellular technologies to deduce that Carlton’s marital fidelity had suffered a malignant mutation.

  She didn’t think much of his moral standards, but as an employer he paid well and granted Alex the freedom to conduct her research. His womanizing didn’t affect her, so she had no complaints.

  She pushed herself up to her hands and knees, then glanced at Baklanov. “Want to start at the south edge?”

  The Russian pushed a hand through his uncombed gray hair and regarded the southern horizon with blue eyes set in shadowed circles. After a moment, he shrugged. “Why not?”

  Alex started forward, her stomach tightening, but a moaning noise made her hesitate. Behind her, Lauren Hayworth had crawled onto the raft and was lying prone on the mesh. “I don’t think I can do this,” she whimpered, clawing at the fabric as if she wanted to sink her nails into it for security. “I want to go down, Ken.”

  Shading her eyes, Alex glanced up in time to see a look of frustration flit across Carlton’s face. “We can’t go down now, Lauren. You came all the way up—rest for a while, then we’ll go down.”

  “I won’t move.” Lauren kept her head down, speaking to the canopy’s surface. “I can’t even look around. I’ll be miserable the entire time—”

  “Then keep your misery to yourself, chérie.” Louis Fortier, who was still bounding over the raft as if he’d been born on a trampoline, dared to answer the woman’s complaints without even looking to see if Carlton minded his bluntness. “We do not mind you taking up space so long as you do not make us all miserable in the process.”

  “Hear, hear!” From the spot where he was spreading out his tools,
Baklanov voiced hearty agreement.

  Watching the prostrate younger woman, Alex realized she hadn’t been the only one affected by the height and the sensation of instability. Olsson had warned them that the raft took some getting used to, but nothing could ever really prepare a person for this experience.

  Pausing on her knees, Alex looked around. Several of the others had untethered their harnesses in order to move freely around the raft; only when they knelt at the edge did they snap them to the outermost safety lines. She could remain attached—the six-foot extension rope gave her room to walk around—or she could take a bold step toward battling the panic that sat like a lead weight in her chest, ready to batter her heart at the least provocation . . .

  Feeling like a paratrooper about to jump without a parachute, Alex curled her fingers around the metal carabiner, pressed on the clasp, and pulled it free. Gulping back her fear, she crawled over the pontoon to Baklanov, who had settled at the southern edge of the platform.

  Sighing in relief, she hooked her elbow around the security of a support wire, then clipped the carabiner of her safety harness to the line that ran along the edge. Baklanov, she saw, had secured his line, too, so she didn’t feel like a complete wimp.

  Shrugging her way out of her backpack, she met the Russian’s gaze. “Sorry it took me a while to get here.”

  A smile flitted through the man’s gray beard. “The sensation is a little like being at sea, so you should not be surprised by a touch of seasickness. This is your first time aboard the raft?”

  Nodding, she pulled a box of empty test tubes from her pack.

  “You will become accustomed to the feeling in no time.” Leaning out over the pontoon, Baklanov lifted a branch from the strangler fig’s emergent layer, then extended his free hand toward Alex. Fumbling among the tools he had spread on the mesh, she found a slender glass pipette and placed it in his hand.

  The Russian placed the pad of his fingertip over the end of the delicate tube, then lowered the pipette vertically until the suction end rested within a few water droplets that had collected in the center of a leaf cluster. Baklanov quickly lifted his fingertip and lowered it again, allowing the sudden change in pressure to draw a few drops of the liquid into the pipette.

  Moving cautiously to avoid breaking the seal, he swiveled the pipette to Alex, who offered him a sterile test tube filled with agar, a solution for growing cultures. After punching through the paper seal with the pipette, Baklanov released the liquid and withdrew the slender glass straw. Alex immediately plugged the tube with a rubber cap.

  She smiled as she slipped the test tube back into its padded container. Some of her more laboratory-oriented colleagues would frown at this less-than-sterile working environment, but when in the field, a scientist had to do whatever was necessary to gather specimens. Refinements could wait until the specimens had reached the lab.

  Using a fresh pipette for each effort, Baklanov took samples of moisture wherever he could find them—on the leaves of vines, within open flowers, even from within a broken stem. With every specimen he drew, Alex recorded the time and location in a small notebook.

  “Interesting, how the water collects up here,” Baklanov said as he used a pipette to probe a slurry of bird droppings. “One would think it is raining up, not down.”

  Intent upon watching him, Alex nodded. She had read about this particular phenomenon—due to the respiration of such a vast amount of foliage, water did rise through the canopy, to be collected in rain clouds that would return the liquid to the earth. At that moment she felt nothing but gratitude for the mist that kept them from being broiled alive beneath the hot sun.

  She lifted a brow as Baklanov offered a specimen from the bird droppings for a test tube. Though distasteful, this specimen might be particularly valuable. D’Herelle had first discovered bacteriophages in the diarrhea of locusts.

  “Your phages,” she said, watching the Russian work, “have you discovered any that might have the ability to mutate proteins?”

  The Russian did not answer for a moment, then his lips pursed. “There is one we call T4—it is nothing, really, but a string of DNA wrapped in a protein. When it encounters a bacterial host, it docks and injects its entire DNA payload into the cell, leaving its protein shell empty and useless. The shell then drifts away as cellular debris.” He shrugged. “But that does not answer your question, does it? A discarded protein is not the same as a mutated protein.”

  She capped the test tube. “I suppose you know why I’m asking.”

  One corner of his mouth twitched in what might have been a smile. “I am a little familiar with your work in neurology. Our research has much in common, but still . . . proteins are not bacteria. I am not sure your prions have anything to do with my phages—”

  “I’m hoping there’s a link.”

  She handed the last sterile pipette to Baklanov, then watched as he reached toward a spider web from which several water droplets hung like crystals.

  “There has to be some enzyme or virus that will stop the reproduction of malformed proteins,” she continued. “The brain damage in encephalopathy is cumulative, so if we can stop the process early, we can halt the disease.”

  Unable to lower the pipette without breaking the spider web, Baklanov brought the end of the tube to his lips, then gently inhaled. Alex squinted, then spied a single shining drop in the pipette stem.

  “You are good.” She held out a clean test tube. “I’d have swallowed that one.”

  Baklanov laughed. “Once you have seen these things under a microscope, my doctor friend, you develop a rather strong aversion to the notion of swallowing unknown substances.”

  “I can imagine. I’ve the same aversion to eating red meat.”

  She looked up as Fortier released a shout of jubilation. Kneeling on one of the open triangles, the perfumer was pulling a white flower through a reinforced cutout in the mesh. “C’est magnifique!” he exclaimed, tenderly bringing the blossom to his face. “It exudes a scent of raspberry with notes of vanilla.”

  Milos Olsson, who had been the last to come through the porthole, crawled toward the Frenchman. “May I?” Taking the flower into his hands, he sniffed, then daintily plucked a petal and dropped it onto his tongue.

  “Good,” he announced a moment later. “It might make an excellent raspberry flavoring. Where did you find it? On a vine or in the tree?”

  As Olsson and Fortier discussed the miracle properties of the flower, Alex wished her assignment were as simple as seek and sniff. Olsson had come to the rainforest in search of new plant species, but his work had a decidedly commercial bent. Last night at dinner he had confessed to being commissioned by a corporation that wanted him to find plants that could be grown cheaply and used as food flavorings. Last year his company had netted over two billion dollars selling botanical ingredients to national food corporations.

  Louis Fortier, on the other hand, cared more for the aroma of plants than their taste. An independent perfumer with a degree in chemistry, he made his living selling scents to top fashion houses like Armani, Estée Lauder, and Christian Dior.

  Alex couldn’t help but be fascinated by the stories Fortier and Olsson told. Last year they had gone together on a raft expedition in the African rainforest. In Cameroon, Fortier had found a plant whose leaves, if rubbed on a person’s foot, produced an astringent sensation in the mouth. Olsson had returned to the States with a piece of bark that produced a strong aroma of garlic and onion—perfect for seasoning potato chips—and a green fruit whose flesh smelled and tasted like beef bouillon.

  “Last year I sold those two flavor products to a soybean company for three million dollars,” Olsson had confided over a jungle dinner of fish, rice, and fried plantains. “They plan to use both plants in vegetarian frozen entrées.”

  Though astounded by her comrades’ financial success, Alex had come to the Amazon to search for only one thing—a compound or process that could change the structure of proteinaceous infecti
ous particles, commonly known as prions. Researchers had only begun to understand protein pathogens in the last decade; most scientists believed a cure for the neurological diseases they caused would not be discovered without years of continuing research.

  Time, however, was a commodity she lacked.

  While other researchers pinned their hopes on gene therapy, Alex had come to believe that even the so-called “inherited” brain diseases resulted from situations where one parent had unknowingly infected a child. Neurological diseases, or encephalopathies, could incubate for decades before a patient displayed any symptoms, so a fetus could conceivably absorb prions through his mother’s placenta and not develop the disease for years.

  Just as she had done . . . and most likely her daughter, too.

  With all her heart, Alex believed a biological answer to prions existed . . . and, if all went well, Baklanov’s expertise in virology might well point her to it. If one of the Russian’s phages—or a substance from Fortier’s flower, or Olsson’s leaves—could instigate a chemical change in a single rod of a prion protein, all her work would be worth the sacrifices she’d made over the years.

  Leaning back on the springy surface of the raft, Alex held up one of the capped test tubes and stared at the drop of liquid shining like a diamond on the agar. These captured phages were unlikely to resemble anything Baklanov had cataloged in his Russian lab, for the canopy was an ecosystem unto itself, home to hundreds of plants, animals, insects, and organisms not found anywhere else on the planet.

  If the canopy’s visible world contained so much diversity, what must its invisible world contain?

  1 APRIL 2003

  11:47 A.M.

  Dripping like a wet sponge, Michael backed through the double doors of the surgery, then moved toward the sink to peel off his bloody gloves. After doffing the gloves and tugging the surgical mask from his face, he picked up a bottle of lukewarm water and gulped it down, then reached for a towel to mop his neck and forehead. His patient would probably not survive more than a few hours, but he had done his best.