High Flyght – Chapter 13

“Get your gear on!” Darmit points his index finger into the air. “We’re going outside!”

He takes a bottle of vodka from Ken’s hands, shoves aside the offered shot glass, and chugs straight from the bottle.

Jinzo looks at me with wide eyes, and Gus laughs.

“I’m not going outside.” My voice quakes, and I’m too scared to hide it. “My father is the adventurous type, not me.”

Darmit strides to the door. “Everyone has a sense of adventure.”

“Ehhhh, I think I’m more the space and stars type than the jungle type.” I wave my hand above my head.

“Space scares the shit out of me,” he growls, getting his boots back on. “It’s unnatural.”

I don’t have the guts to tell him it’s more natural than what’s in the jungles of Rio.

“You gotta see it for yourself to know the truth of things here.”

He hits the heater on the door panel, and that’s when the guys realize Darmit means business. He’s just arrived, and he wants to leave right the fuck now. Ken, Jinzo, and Gus all scramble for their things while I stand dumbfounded.

I want to sit and talk, not run out the door.

“I’ve been overdue to return for ten days because I’ve finally seen it in action.”

The door heats up, and sizzling comes through from outside.

“I’ve gone into that jungle a thousand times at least, many times with your father, and I always suspected something strange was going on.”

He points to my boots sitting in the drying area. Sigh. Fine.

I trudge over to put them on like an obedient child.

“Then that pushy bastard, Ed Dantès, kept showing up and asking questions about the plants, and I had to try for myself.”

“Did you say Ed Dantès?”

Oh shit.

My stomach flips over, and I rush to get all my gear on. My fear of what’s happened is overcoming my fear of what I’ll find in the jungle.

“Who’s Ed Dantès?” Jinzo asks, leaning close as the door opens and Darmit grabs a broom.

“Do you read the classics? Like Earth classics?” I follow Darmit out the door.

“No? Should I?” He hustles up next to me. “I can start if that’s something you like to talk about.”

“Sure. I know just the book for you to start with.”

I concentrate on the walkway, getting past the slime and not stepping on any jellies. If I look at the walkway, I can’t see the fish climbing in the trees, or the snakes winding through the branches, or the one-meter wide raptors circling the sky above. My skin crawls, but I soldier on.

At the end of the walkway, we meet up with Darmit’s crew. They’re chatting in Portuguese, smoking a cigarette they pass between them, and checking their gear. I’m both comforted and freaked out by the size of the blades in their belts. One man shoulders a hunting rifle, something only livestock farmers carry on Ossun. My family doesn’t own any guns. Too much insurance needed and too many permits to keep track of. Otherwise, they’re illegal as hell.

“This way.” Darmit waves us forward with his crew. “It’s only about a twenty-minute hike to the south.”

“What?” I ask, shouting through the downpour.

“You’ll see! You won’t believe me unless you see it.”

He descends the metal grate stairs, a rolling gait to his step due to the hip bruising he got on the way in. He concentrates on brushing jellies off before he steps on each riser.

“This guy’s insane!” Ken shouts at me. I widen my eyes and jerk my head at his crew.

One guy raises his hands. “He’s not wrong.”

I really, really, really don’t want to go into this jungle. My dad is the courageous person in the family, not me.

But I’m supposed to be the brave one. I’m supposed to find my brother and buy back the farm. This is all on me.

I plod after Darmit, through the jungle underbrush and along a vague trail. The only time I take my eyes off the way in front of me is to glance back at Jinzo, Ken, and Gus. They all look as miserable as I feel. At least down here the rain is not a torrential downpour. It’s a steady stream of larger drops, filtered by all the leaves above. I would glance up, but I’m afraid of what I’ll see there.

After ten minutes of silence, the trail skims past a river on our right.

“Look,” Jinzo calls out, pointing to the raging rapids.

A school of adolescent squid are making their way up the river. Their tentacles wave in the air as they climb over each other, grab rocks, and hoist themselves through the water. I swear under my breath as a shiver travels up my spine. Backing away slowly from the edge of the trail, I keep going until I’m up against the guys.

Ken’s mouth is open. “I had no idea they got that big.”

Jinzo laughs. “Those are babies compared to what tried to eat Vivian.” His hand finds mine and squeezes it. “Come on. Let’s keep moving.”

Why? Why keep moving? I stumble along in silence as I try to process the decision tree that got me to this point, where I’m walking into the jungles of Rio during the most dangerous time of the year.

I hasten my steps to try to catch up to Darmit.

“Hey. Hey!” I grab him by the arm to stop him.

“What? We should keep moving, or the animals will take notice.”

“I want to go back. We don’t need to go see whatever it is you want us to see. This is dangerous and pointless.”

He pulls the vodka bottle out of his jacket. How… what? I don’t even remember him grabbing it!

“Nah. You want to get a leg-up on that other guy? You’re gonna have to come.”

I sigh as he turns and keeps on going. “What guy? What do you want me to see?”

What could it be? Why is he so intent on showing me this one thing?

My memories flash to the cargo bay, and Ken’s hand over the plant there.

Running to catch up to Darmit, I trip over a tree root and crash into a tree trunk. The jolt knocks a giant, bright green snake out of the tree straight onto one of Darmit’s men. Ken dodges left, Jinzo dives to the right, and Gus trips and falls backwards. The man with the snake on him screams, and the snake thrashes and hisses. One of the other men grabs it by the neck, and its body whips through the air. Jesus, it must be at least two meters long. With the snake’s head in one hand, the man grabs his machete and chops its head off.

My vision darkens around the edges. That’s going to be in my nightmares for ages.

A dark green bird soars down from the tree and lands on the snake’s body. Sinking its claws into the snake’s green scales, it throws back its head and lets out a shrill shriek.

“What the…?” Breath refuses to stay in my lungs. This is the most alien thing I’ve ever seen. “Why is it crying like that?” Bile creeps up my throat. I’m going to die, I know it.

“Come,” Darmit says, slipping his hand under my armpit and hoisting me to my feet. “It’s shocking, I know. Just keep moving.” He puts me back on the trail, turns me away from the snake and bird, and aims me in the direction we were hiking. “You’re not going back. Look, I’ve been hiking this jungle for decades. I’ve seen shit that’ll chill your blood and give you night terrors. But through it all, your father just kept returning. He didn’t care about the animals like most of those book-learning, library-loving xenobiologists. He was after the plants.”

Darmit takes out his machete and hacks through the underbrush. I look back, and everyone is behind us again, although Ken and Gus are three shades whiter than they used to be. Jinzo is closest and listening in.

“And I kept telling him that pharmaceuticals based on Rio plants were a waste of time and money. Whatever he put out there, Athens would just reverse engineer it or they would send their own teams into the jungle to find the same thing.”

“Why did he keep coming then?” I step in the same footprints that Darmit leaves behind him.

“Because he was certain there was a key to the plants. That sure, they worked with some people, but not with others, and that human biology had something to do with it.”

We break through the underbrush and end up right next to the river again. Out across the expanse of water, only fish are hopping along the currents.

“Here!” Darmit beams as he stretches out his arms to a bush with giant, white bell-shaped flowers hanging from waxy, dark green leaves. “Watch.”

Darmit approaches the bush, and after a few paces, when he’s less than a meter away from it, the bush shudders. First, a tendril stretches out, followed by the branches swaying towards Darmit and his out-stretched hand. A smile broadens his cheeks, and his eyes soften as he edges in closer.

“Aw, listen to it. It’s so sweet.”

I furrow my brow as I strain to hear what he hears, but I hear nothing.

The man is entranced, almost hypnotized. It’s like he’s fallen in love with a puppy or some adorable creature, not an alien plant.

“Hey, maybe you shouldn’t,” Gus insists, reaching out to grab Darmit’s coat.

Darmit blinks himself out of a trance-like state, and he clears his throat. “It’s okay. It’s always like this at first.” He breathes in through his nose, a deep, chest-expanding breath. “It smells like those vanilla pastries I got as a kid in Segundo.”

I shake my head. “I don’t smell anything.”

Darmit’s men stand guard at the river, but I call one over.

“Are you sure your boss is fine?” I ask, keeping my voice low. “Any knocks to the head or anything lately?”

He frowns and shakes his head. “Nah. He’s the same as ever.”

Before I can stop him, Darmit steps into the clutches of this plant, and it wraps its stalks around him. His eyelids droop, and my heart races into a panic. If this plant kills him, we are fucked. I have no idea how to get back or what else he has to say to me.

“My mom used to quilt in her spare time,” he says, slurring his words as if drunk. “She spent hours every evening combing the second-hand stores for fabric she could piece together.” Darmit inhales again. “Stitch in and out. In and out. The walls were painted a light green, and there was a chip in the doorframe from where we knocked it bringing the sewing machine in.” He breaks into a laugh. “My brother was so pissed that he had to fix it.”

The memories. It’s like he’s there, experiencing this moment as if it’s happening now.

I cover my mouth with my hand and shake the raindrops from my eyelashes.

The jellies and the squid. The green bird and the snake.

The pairs.

Are there pairs between the plants and people? The ecosystem here is so diverse, it could be possible a pair exists for every person. Or maybe multiple people to a plant? And judging by the way hard-as-nails Darmit surrendered so easily to this plant, the plant’s effects are alluring or addictive.

I approach the bush slowly, but if it has any idea I’m here, it’s not showing it. It doesn’t move towards me; it has ‘eyes’ only for Darmit. Inching my hand out, I pinch off one of the giant white flowers right below the bulb. Nothing happens. I almost expected a scream or the bush to go ballistic or something. I deposit the flower into the waterlogged pocket of my coat. Being careful not to fall into the clutches of the plant, I reach for Darmit this time, get my fingers into his jacket, and pull him free.

Darmit looks down into my face. “He knows. I brought him out several times, right after your father left Rio. He wanted to see each site, take samples from every plant your father touched or interacted with. Athens Industries paid all his bills. He boasted about the fancy apartment they bought him on Rio. He was in deep. I told your father from the beginning that this was all a losing proposition. Athens Industries will always come out on top.”

He tears his eyes from mine and stares over my head into the distance.

“Who did you bring out here?”

“Dantès. About four months ago, I brought him out here to look for new plants. We were on the north side, and he discovered this fern. It followed him, and he was fascinated by it. Then, one moment he was there. The next, he was gone. Just disappeared. We looked for him for days and never found him.”

I close my eyes and fit the pieces of the puzzle together in my head.

“He’s related to you,” Darmit says, leaning in to look at my face. The effect of the plant is starting to wear off as his voice steadies. “Same eyes.”

“Fucking shit.” It’s a stab to the heart. I’m going to kill my brother. Kill him. “Do you have a datapad?”

Darmit shakes off the plant-induced lethargy and pulls a datapad from his inner coat pocket. I activate my wristlet, find the photo of Tomu and his girlfriend, Sonia Kopack, and send it to Darmit. He nods as he looks at his datapad.

“Yep. That’s him. I’ve seen this woman too. She picked him up once from the transit station.”

“Tomu. His name is Tomu Kawabata, my fucking brother.” I sigh as I lift my face to the pouring rain. “And Ed, or Edmond Dantès, is from The Count of Monte Cristo. It was his favorite book growing up.”

Of course, he’s latched onto the hero of a novel about revenge. That boy has no real imagination whatsoever.

I settle my hand on my hip as I turn to the guys. “Well, now we know why we can’t find Tomu. Motherfucker has figured out how to disappear. He found ZBINRB, the invisibility fern. Dad found those too.”

Jinzo shakes his head. “He’s long gone, Viv.”

“He’s right,” Ken says, eyeing the memory bush. “And maybe he should stay gone.”

Gus throws up his arms. “I’m lost. Does someone want to explain what happened here?”

I’ll have to deal with Gus later. I switch on the scientist inside of me and turn to Darmit. “How do you feel? This is not the first time you’ve interacted with this plant.”

He grins. “I feel great. Amazing. And my memory becomes clearer the more times I interact with the plant. Joe over there?” He points to one of his men. “He’s tried to interact with the plant, smell it, eat it. And once, he had a concrete memory pop forward in his head. But, meh.” He shrugs. “Nothing like what’s happened to me.”

Ken and the heightened empathy plant interacted much like Darmit and his plant did. I rub my bottom lip with my thumb and stare at Ken. His eyes are locked on Darmit’s memory plant. He must suspect that he has a connection to the one in the lab.

“Boss, it’s time to go. Squid are incoming.”

Downriver, the squid we passed earlier are swimming this way. Yes, let’s get the hell out of here. As quickly as possible.

Darmit settles his hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry to bring you bad news. We’ll get you back to the hotel in one piece.” He jerks his head to the men, and they urge us forward.

“We’re not staying the night,” I say, following behind him. “I can’t lose precious time now. We have to get moving.”

Tomu is out there, and now he’ll be even harder to track. I can only hope Carlos had luck with the previously buried datapad.

Darmit nods and takes out his machete. “I’ll call you a shuttle as soon as we’re in the canopy.”

“Forget it. I’m asking someone to come get us.”