“Nate?” the figure asked in a dry husky voice.
Nate fell atop the figure. “Dad!”
“Am…am I dreaming?” his father asked coarsely.
Nate was too choked to speak. He helped his father, who was light as a pillow, all skin and bones, to sit. The tree had been sustaining him, but just barely.
Kouwe bent down to help. “Carl, how are you feeling?”
Nate’s father squinted at the professor, then a look of recognition spread across his face. “Kouwe? My God, what’s going on?”
“It’s a long story, old friend.” He helped Nate get his father on his feet. Too frail to move on his own, Carl Rand clung to Nate and Kouwe. “Right now, though, we have to get you out of this damn place.”
Nate stared at his father, tears streaming down his face. “Dad…”
“I know, son,” he said hoarsely and coughed.
There was no time for a proper reunion now, but Nate wasn’t going to let another moment go by without saying the words he had regretted withholding the day his father left for this expedition. “I love you, Dad.”
The arm around his shoulder tightened, a small squeeze of affection and love. A familiar gesture. Family.
“We should fetch the others,” Anna said. “And head out of here.”
“Nate, why don’t you stay with your father here?” Kouwe suggested. “Rest. We can collect you both on the way out.”
Dakii shook his head. “No. We not come back this way.” He waved his arm. “Other way to go.”
Nate frowned. “We should stay together anyway.”
“And I can handle myself,” Carl argued hoarsely. He glanced back to the cubbyhole. “Besides, I’ve been resting here long enough.”
Kouwe nodded.
With the matter settled, they began to climb toward the surface. Kouwe gave a thumbnail sketch of their situation. Nate’s father only listened, leaning more and more heavily upon them as they walked. The only words his father spoke during the discourse were at the mention of Louis Favre and what he had done. “The goddamn bastard.”
Nate smiled, hearing a bit of the old fire in his father’s voice.
When they reached the surface, it was obvious the two Rangers had been busy. They had all the Ban-ali gathered. Each bore packs full of nuts and weapons.
Nate and his father remained in the entrance, while Kouwe explained about the addition to their team and what they had found below. “Dakii says there’s an escape route through the root’s tunnel.”
“Then we’d best hurry,” Sergeant Kostos said. “We have less than thirty minutes, and we want to be as far away from here as possible.”
Carrera joined them, her weapon on her shoulder. “All set at our end. We have a couple dozen of those nut pods and four canteens of the sap.”
“Then let’s haul ass,” Kostos said.
7:32 P.M,
As they wound through the root tunnels, Kouwe stayed with Dakii, periodically glancing back at the trail of Indians and Americans. Watching Sergeant Kostos help Nate with his father, Kouwe wished he had had time to rig up a stretcher, but right now every minute was critical.
Though Sergeant Kostos believed the subterranean tunnels would shield them from the worst of the napalm’s fiery blast, he clearly feared the maze’s integrity. “The rock here is riddled and weakened by the roots. The explosions could bring the roof down atop our heads or trap us here. We need to be well clear of these tunnels before those bombs go off.”
So they hurried. Not only for their own sake, but for the world. Inside their packs, they carried the fate of thousands, if not millions—the nut pods of the Yagga, the suppressant for the virulent human prion. The cure to the plague.
They could not be trapped down here.
Glancing over a shoulder, Kouwe again checked the party. The dark tunnels, the softly glowing lichens, the dreadful cubbies with their captured specimens…all made Kouwe nervous. This deep in the system, both walls and ceilings ran wild with roots, zigzagging everywhere, crossing, dividing, fusing. Everywhere were the mounds of ubiquitous root hairs, waving and probing toward any passerby. It made the walls look furry, like a living thing, constantly moving and bristling.
Behind Kouwe, the others looked equally wary, even the Indians. The line of men and women ran out of sight around a curve in the twisting passage. Back at the end, pulling up the rear, was Private Carrera. She kept a watch behind them—where Tor-tor and the giant black jaguar followed. It had taken some coaxing to encourage the two cats inside, but Nate had finally been successful in luring Tor-tor. “I’m not going to leave Manny’s cat here to die,” Nate had argued. “I owe it to my friend to save him.”
Once Tor-tor entered, the large female jaguar had followed.
Carrera remained alert, her weapon ready, in case the wild cat decided it needed a snack while traveling.
Dakii paused at the intersection of trails. Sergeant Kostos grumbled, but they dared not force a faster pace. It would be easy to get lost down here. They depended on Dakii’s memory.
The tribesman selected a path and led the others. The tunnel descended steeply. Kouwe stared at the low roof. They must be a hundred yards underground…and going deeper still. But oddly, instead of the air growing more dank, it seemed to freshen.
After a few minutes, the tunnel leveled out and made a sharp turn, emptying into a huge cavern. The tunnel opening was halfway up one wall of the chamber. A thin trail continued along the nearest wall, a stony lip high above the bowled floor. Dakii stepped out onto the trail.
Kouwe followed, gaping at the room. The chamber had to be a half mile across. Through the center of the chamber, a massive root stalk, as thick around as a giant redwood, penetrated from the roof and continued down through the floor like a great column.
“It’s the Yagga’s taproot again,” Nate said, coming up beside them. “We must have circled back to it.”
From the main root, thousands of branches spread like tree limbs in all directions, toward other passages.
“There must be miles and miles of tunnels,” Kouwe said. He studied the taproot. The giant tree above must be but a tiny fraction of the plant’s true mass. “Can you imagine the number of species encased down here? Suspended in time?”
“The tree must have been collecting its specimens for centuries,” Nate’s father mumbled beside his son.
“Maybe even longer,” Kouwe warned. “Maybe as far back as when these lands first formed.”