The Canopy

by Angela Hunt

  Olsson laughed. “It’s easy.”

  “Easy for y-y-you.” Determined not to look down, she kept her eyes on the bearded face among the leaves and pulled her feet out of the prusik loops. To her astonishment, once she gripped the “handrails” and established her balance, walking on the rope was not as dizzying as she’d feared. Olsson’s strong voice urged her forward, and by the time she reached him, she discovered that he’d led her to the very heart of the tree, where someone had built a sort of platform.

  Relieved at the thought of resting in anything solid, Alex dropped into the stick-and-straw structure, then snatched at the edges when it rocked slightly. “Don’t tell me,” she said, swallowing the panic in her throat, “you just happened to discover a prehistoric pterodactyl nest.”

  “It does look a bit birdlike, doesn’t it?” Olsson took an admiring look at the odd formation. “For a split second I wondered if perhaps this could have been the home of a gigantic bird, but I don’t think so. The center has been padded with grasses, and I found a few banana peels around the edges. This is definitely man-made.”

  “I don’t care. I’m just grateful it’s here.”

  Olsson grinned at her as he wound a length of vine between his thumb and elbow. “This nest will be a bit cozy for the five of us, but someone did a good job of constructing it. It’s been well maintained, too. Those banana peels are only a few days old.”

  Sitting up, Alex fingered the grass beneath her and found it fresh, still green in spots.

  “The grass.” She looked at Olsson, her jaw dropping. “Why, those patches of grass between the fruit trees aren’t a fluke, they’re crops. They grow the grass to maintain this tree house.”

  Olsson lifted a brow. “You may be right; such fields do not occur naturally anywhere else in the forest. You’d probably be surprised how much work is required to keep the forest from taking over those little patches.”

  “No wonder the women and children work in the fields every day! They’re not only gathering food, they’re tending this . . . thing.” She shook her head. “Such wasted effort. Energy they could spend on hunting or weaving is going into the maintenance of a useless bird’s nest—”

  She paused as Bancroft’s voice floated from beneath them. “Alex? Olsson?”

  “Keep coming,” Alex called. “You’ve almost made it.”

  A few moments later, Bancroft’s red face appeared through a tapestry of green leaves. Though drenched in perspiration and breathing heavily, the former soldier seemed in good spirits.

  “Great heavens,” he panted, squinting up at them. “What are you sitting in?”

  Alex managed a weak laugh. “Come on over. You’ll see soon enough.”

  After walking the tightrope, his biceps clenching as he gripped the vines, Bancroft climbed into the nest and scrambled toward the grassy center, bending forward until Alex and Olsson could unstrap the native woman who hung like a corpse from the soldier’s back.

  For a moment Alex feared their patient had died during the climb, but though her eyelids hung heavy and her pulse was weak and thready, Shaman’s Wife still breathed. Speaking in a soothing voice, Alex helped Bancroft settle the woman in the most heavily padded section of the nest, then she tugged on a spray of leaves from an overhanging branch to provide their patient with some shade.

  After snapping the slender limb from the branch, she rubbed the broken end over her palm. When a thin smear of wetness appeared on her skin, she brought her hand to her nostrils and sniffed. Might the cure be found in sap formed only in the canopy? Was it possible that others with the shuddering disease had climbed up here and broken off a branch in the same way, seeking shade from the blast of the setting sun?

  After jamming the leafy branch into the woven nest so that it provided a margin of shade for Shaman’s Wife, she plucked other leaves, then rubbed and tasted them. Olsson gave her an indulgent smile, like a parent amused by the antics of his child. “I have already gathered samples,” he assured her. “Leaves from the canopy as well as the understory. If an unusual element exists in this layer of growth, we will find it.”

  “The curative agent may be something quite ordinary,” Alex thrust another broken stem into the woven nest, “but something we’ve never applied to cellular physiology.” She twisted the branch, adjusting it until the shade speckled the sick woman’s face. Sighing, she looked at Olsson. “Like looking for a needle in a haystack, isn’t it?”

  “That is the nature of research,” he answered. “But when we find the answer—ah! Then the work is worthwhile.”

  Yes . . . but sometimes the answer came too late. Field trials proving the effectiveness of Salk’s polio vaccine weren’t conducted until 1954, but during the epidemic of 1916, that disease struck nine thousand children in New York City alone. And how many lives were lost before medical researchers produced the “AIDS cocktail” that effectively slowed the destruction of the deadly HIV virus?

  “Here comes the doctor,” Bancroft announced. He and Olsson shifted positions to make room for one more.

  Leaning back into the nest, Alex hugged her knees and closed her eyes. She had to admire Kenway’s tenacity. He no longer had any personal stake in prion research, yet curiosity and commitment to a single patient had brought him to this precarious predicament. . .

  Grudgingly, she admitted the man had courage.

  19 APRIL 2003

  5:30 P.M.

  From a huge woven basket two hundred feet above the floor of the Amazon basin, Michael marveled at the sunset on the western horizon. Brilliant red rays spangled the heavens and the jungle canopy beyond, streaking the heavens white and purple and gold.

  He shot a quick glance at Olsson, whose heavy eyes were halfclosed. “Do you ever get used to it?”

  The botanist’s eyes widened. “To what?”

  “The . . . majesty of it all. The simple wonder of sitting on top of the world.”

  “Oh, that.” Olsson folded his hands over the receding paunch at his belly, then wriggled his shoulders into the grass lining. “When you have climbed into as many canopies as I have, Doctor, your body tends to appreciate rest more than wonder.”

  “I don’t think I could ever get used to it.” Michael glanced at his companions. Bancroft studied the sunset, too, though he kept scowling as he slapped at mosquitoes. Alexandra appeared to be watching the horizon. He waved his hand before her empty eyes, then smiled when her expression shifted into a scowl.

  “What?”

  “Just checking to be sure you were still with us.”

  “Where else would I be?”

  Leaving her to her thoughts, Michael studied the sky and inhaled deeply as his spirit soared. Surely even Alexandra had to realize that the loveliness unfolding before them had to spring from something other than the evolution of nature.

  As the sun dropped behind the western rim and stars appeared in the periwinkle sky, something rustled the leaves a few meters to the south of their perch. Michael felt Alexandra tense beside him. Bancroft muttered a low curse and rose up on one knee to investigate. A moment later the intruder appeared, bathed in the silver light of the rising moon: a sloth.

  “Oh, my.” Bancroft chuckled. “We’ve disturbed him.”

  Alexandra edged closer to Michael. “I’m more concerned about him disturbing us.”

  Bancroft dropped back into his place. “Don’t worry—they are complete vegetarians, and the world’s laziest mammals. Deb told me all about them on the trail. She likes them because she says moths and spiders live in sloths’ fur. She is . . . fascinating.”

  As Bancroft’s voice fell, Michael knew the man was surrendering to melancholy. If this night did not hold a cure for Shaman’s Wife, they would almost certainly have to resort to violence if they were to rescue Deborah Simons. And an attack, however well planned, might cost them dearly.

  Michael ran his hand across his grizzled jaw line. If this were a Hollywood movie, they’d sneak up on the village of the Angry People and take out
the enemy warriors with weapons formed of vines and twigs. They’d rescue Deborah and discover the cure of the century conveniently hidden somewhere, all without shedding a drop of blood.

  But this was no movie. They’d already lost Fortier, Carlton, Hayworth, and Chavez. If a group of unarmed civilians and one soldier went up against experienced warriors equipped with poison darts, spears, and arrows, they’d be lucky if anyone survived.

  He glanced at his teammates. The climb had stamped a look of tired sadness onto Alexandra’s delicate features, and the pale rays of the rising moon had bleached all signs of color from her cheeks. Olsson lay on his back, his eyes closed in weariness, and Bancroft’s depression was almost palpable, a laboring, hulking presence among them. Shaman’s Wife lay propped up against the curve of the nest, her eyes glazed and her mouth slack. Death was almost certainly only hours away.

  Michael gave himself a stern mental shake. If he were not careful, he’d slide into the abyss of despair with the others. They actually had reasons to celebrate—they had brought a sick woman into the kapok canopy, the shaman had promised to ask the Great Spirit for help, and though Michael had no idea which spirit the shaman meant, he believed in God, with whom all things were possible. . .

  Closing his eyes, he began to recite a poem he had memorized at some troubled time of his life: “The heavens tell of the glory of God. The skies display his marvelous craftsmanship.”

  His voice wasn’t much above a whisper, but the effect was as great as if he’d shouted from the treetop. The chittering of insects shifted to a lower hum and Bancroft stopped slapping at mosquitoes. Even the wind, which had been sighing amid the leaves, seemed to pause and listen.

  “Day after day they continue to speak;

  night after night they make him known.

  They speak without a sound or a word;

  their voice is silent in the skies;

  yet their message has gone out to all the earth,

  and their words to all the world.

  The sun lives in the heavens

  where God placed it.

  It bursts forth like a radiant bridegroom

  after his wedding.

  It rejoices like a great athlete

  eager to run the race.

  The sun rises at one end of the heavens

  and follows its course to the other end.”

  Silence sifted down like a snowfall, then insects once again filled the air with a warm, ambient chirr.

  “That is beautiful,” Olsson said, his voice thick.

  “Roger that,” Bancroft agreed.

  Alexandra, Michael noticed, said nothing.

  Bancroft leaned forward, rubbing his palms against his arms. “Sounded familiar to me. Who wrote it?”

  “David, I think.” With an effort, Michael pulled his tingling right leg out from under his left. “It’s part of the Nineteenth Psalm. I wish I knew the rest, but I’m afraid I haven’t studied the Scripture as well as I should.”

  “Sheesh, can we just put a lid on the true confessions?” Alex glared at him, her tone as frosty as the moonlight. “You guys are talking like we’re going to die up here or something.”

  A flash of teeth gleamed through Olsson’s tangled beard. “A good storm would bring us down, I think. Winds of thirty, perhaps forty knots could knock us out of this tree—”

  “No storms will arise tonight.” Michael lifted his hand in a gesture of truce, then rubbed the back of his neck and grinned. “We’re up here to exude positive thoughts, right, Alexandra? If you are so convinced faith is nothing more than optimism, you must believe that happy thoughts have the power to save our patient.”

  “I never said that.” He didn’t have to look her way to know she was glaring at him again. “I came up here because I’m desperately hoping to find something in this canopy that can help prion patients. If by some remote chance Shaman’s Wife is even a little improved in the morning, I’ll know I have witnessed all the variables that might have initiated her cure.”

  Frowning, she plucked a handful of dried grass from the lining of the nest, then sniffed at it. “This grass—we didn’t see it growing anywhere else in the jungle, did we?”

  “Grass won’t grow in the rainforest,” Olsson muttered. “Not enough sunlight.”

  “Maybe this is the answer.” She held the dried bits aloft, examining them in the moonlight. “The women and children gather it, don’t they? And the men are exposed every time they walk to the shabono—”

  Michael watched as the beginning of a smile tipped the corners of her mouth. She would place her hopes in grass, then. Despite Ya-ree’s story, despite the fact that she had been walking in that grass for three days with no visible signs of improvement, she would rather believe in grass than in a Spirit with the power to heal.

  He looked away as a wave of guilt slapped at his soul. If he were more skilled, he could explain things better, make her see how unreasonable she was to place her faith in only observable things. He should have been stronger, more vocal, more adept at answering Alexandra, Emma, all of them.

  He had studied medicine at university, not theology. But a theology course would have served him well, considering that several diseases seemed to spring from troubles of the soul. . .

  Crossing his arms over his bent knees, he gave Alexandra an apologetic smile. “Whatever you say, Doctor.”

  Olsson pushed himself up from the floor and leaned back into the curve of the woven structure. Looking thoughtful, he laced his fingers together, then touched his fingertips to his lips. “You seem to be forgetting, doctors, that the shaman’s story involved more than the kapok tree. Didn’t you say, Dr. Kenway, that your Iquitos patient spoke of lights guiding him through the forest?”

  Michael nodded, but Alex spoke before he could answer.

  “Hallucinations, undoubtedly. Anyone with neuroencephalopathy might be prone to hallucinations, even aural and auditory illusions. When so many brain cells are destroyed, all of the sensory functions are affected.”

  “I saw no signs of neurological impairment in Ya-ree.” Michael met Alexandra’s direct eyes. “Nor did he exhibit any signs of tremor.”

  “Come on, Doctor, didn’t you say he was febrile? People shiver with fever. Perhaps what you interpreted as a fever chill was actually an athetoid tremor.”

  “But he walked out of the jungle. He said he’d been running for a day and a night.”

  A look of smug satisfaction crept over her features. “Did you see him run? Did you even see him walk?”

  Would the woman not even accept the word of witnesses? Slowly, he looked out into the dark, his eyes hungry for more light.

  “You see?” A triumphant note filled her voice. “You cannot be certain he was not experiencing the symptoms associated with an encephalopathy—”

  “Yes, I can.” Turning, he held her in his gaze. “I have sat by the bedsides of Creutzfeldt-Jakob patients, and I know the symptoms of the last stages. This man had none of them.”

  “And I,” she countered, “have held a vigil with an FFI patient, whose symptoms were quite similar to those of your wife.” Her eyes narrowed. “We have both tended Shaman’s Wife, who probably suffers from some variation of kuru, and I daresay her symptoms are exactly like those of the man you treated in Iquitos. Face it, Reverend Doctor— your Iquitos patient may have lived here, his disease may have even gone into remission, but if you found prions in his brain cells, then prions killed him. Or would have, if peritonitis hadn’t done him in first.”

  Michael threw up his hand, weary of the argument. On some other occasion, he might have found Alexandra Pace’s tenacity quite admirable. Tonight he found the woman’s dogged determination dispiriting.

  “Your patient,” Bancroft asked. “Was he talking at the end?”

  “Except for the very end, yes. He spoke coherently for some time.” Michael glanced at Shaman’s Wife. “He was not insentient. Furthermore, he was calm as he faced death . . . not at all anxious.”

 
Olsson plucked a stalk of grass from the basket lining and stuck it between his teeth. “Then this religion of the keyba was good for him, yes?”

  “I’m not sure,” Michael answered. “But I wish we had time to explore it further.”

  Leaning his head back on the edge of the woven basket, Bancroft crossed his hands over his barreled chest and lifted his face to the expansive sky. “I’d forgotten how bright the stars are,” he spoke in a bedside voice, “when no city lights are around to compete with them.”

  Michael did not reply, but as he crossed his arms and settled in for a bit of rest, he wondered what sort of lights crowded Alexandra’s brain. Something filled her mind and heart, falsely bright agonies that prevented her from seeing any other truths.

  20 APRIL 2003

  5:30 A.M.

  Shifting her stiff muscles in the nest, Alex labored to pass the few remaining minutes of darkness by identifying constellations in the diamond-dusted sky. She had never been particularly drawn to any of the earth sciences, but in the last couple of hours she had begun to wish she had taken a course or two in astronomy.

  Most of her companions had been sleeping since just after sunset. Within five minutes of the onset of darkness Bancroft had been snoring like a proud Texan with a new chain saw. Olsson slept silently, curled in the grass, and in the center of the nest, Shaman’s Wife remained limp and quiet, occasionally moaning in her sleep.

  Next to Alex, Kenway rested his head on the edge of the nest. For once he wasn’t arguing or debating with her, and she welcomed his silence.

  Only two days past full, the moon poured a river of silver light into the canopy, turning her surroundings into surreal black-and-white art pieces. Running her fingertip over the raised veins on the kapok leaves at the edge of their bower, she wondered if the keyba cure lay in the tracks lining the tree’s foliage. They were black now, as blood would be black in this light, but the nourishment moving through them served as the lifeblood of the tree. . .