James Rollins - The 6th Extinction

The woman bent lower over the pictures, slipping on a pair of reading glasses. She shifted through them and gave each a good look. On the group photo, she tapped one face.

“This the man. He smiles in picture, but not when he was here. He was very”—she glanced up to Jenna—“ intense .”

Painter retrieved the photograph and studied the man in the picture. Jenna looked over his shoulder. The suspect had ebony black hair, combed back from a handsome pale face with piercing blue eyes.

“Did you overhear them speaking at all?” Painter asked.

“ Não . They go to her room. He leave, but I no see him.”

“And no one else came?”

“ Não .”

Painter nodded and passed her a few bills of Brazilian currency. “Obrigado.”

She pushed the bills back with a shake of her head. “I hope you find your friend. I hope she not with that man.”

Jenna patted the woman’s hand atop the bills. “For Senhor Cruz, then. Buy him some nice fish.”

The woman smiled, then nodded, her fingers crinkling the bills off the bench. “ Obrigado .”

Jenna headed with Painter out onto the porch.

“Did you learn anything?” Drake asked, waving for Schmitt and Marlow to close in.

Painter sighed. “Someone came to visit her, someone from her past, from Dark Eden.”

Drake glowered. “Then that must be our guy.”

“Who is he?” Jenna asked.

“He was the founder of Dark Eden.” Painter did not sound happy and explained why. “According to all reports, he died eleven years ago.”

Jenna glanced back to the guesthouse.

So it seems we’re still chasing ghosts .

“Isn’t the view beautiful?” Cutter Elwes asked.

Kendall wanted to argue, to lash out, but even he could not find the gumption as he stared beyond the wrought-iron rails of the balcony.

The sun was just cresting the rim of the tepui. The thunderstorm had cleared during the night, leaving the skies a dazzling blue overhead, but mists still clung to the summit, adding to the illusion that this was an island in the clouds. The morning light cast those mists into shades of honey amber and dusky rose. The plateau itself seemed to glow with the new day, glistening in every shade of emerald, while the pond was a perfect reflection of the cloudless sky.

It was tempting to let his guard down in the face of such inspiring beauty, but he remained steadfast. He sat stiff-backed across the table from his host, a breakfast spread between them: a kaleidoscope of colorful fruits, dark breads, and hot platters of eggs and lentils.

No meat … not for Cutter Elwes.

Kendall had picked at the offering, but he had no appetite, his stomach churned at what this day surely held for him. Cutter intended to make Kendall cooperate, to share his knowledge, but he would refuse.

At least for as long as I can .

In the past, few people successfully withstood Cutter, and Kendall doubted that reality had changed. He had envisioned all manner of torture during the night, the fear allowing him little sleep. Any thought of escape — of even throwing himself off this mountain — was dashed by his ever-present shadow.

Even now Mateo’s hulking form stood guard by the balcony door.

Trying to steer the conversation away from what was to come, Kendall eyed his escort. “Mateo… he’s native to these jungles. As is his sister, your wife. What tribe are they from? Akuntsu? Maybe Yanomami?”

From his days searching rain forests and jungles for extremophiles, Kendall was familiar with several of the Brazilian indigenous tribes.

“You look upon them with the eyes of a Westerner,” Cutter scolded. “Each tribe is very distinct, once you’ve lived among them. Mateo and my wife are actually members of the Macuxi tribespeoples. Their tribe is a subgroup local to this region. They’ve lived in these forests for thousands of years, as much a part of nature here as any leaf, flower, or burrowing snake. Their people are also unique in another way.”

“How?” he asked, hoping to keep the conversation along this track.

“The tribe demonstrates an unusual number of twin births, both fraternal and identical. In fact, Ashuu was born in triplet grouping. A very unusual one. She has an identical sister— and a fraternal brother, Mateo.”

Kendall crinkled his brow. Two identical girls and a boy . He had heard of such unusual cases — of women who gave birth to identical twins along with a fraternal third, called a singleton. While births like that did occur naturally, it was more often the result of the use of fertility drugs.

Kendall lowered his voice, curiosity getting the better of him. “Do you think Mateo being born a singleton… could it account for his unusual size?”

“Possibly. Maybe a genetic anomaly secondary to just a strange triplet configuration. But what I find more fascinating is the tribe’s unusual record of multiple births. It makes me wonder if there isn’t some naturally occurring analog to a fertility drug in the local rain forest, some undiscovered pharmaceutical.”

It was an interesting proposition. The rain forests were a source of a great number of new drugs, from a cure for malaria to some powerful anticancer medications. And there were surely hundreds of other discoveries still to be made. That is, if the rain forests continued to thrive, instead of being slashed and burned for farmland or cut down by logging companies.

But this raised another question.

“You know a lot about this tribe,” Kendall said. Even recruited them into working for you . “So how did you gain that level of cooperation? Especially up here. As I recall, most natives fear these tepui.”

“Not so the Macuxi. They revere these plateaus as the home of the gods, believing that the ancient tunnels, caves, and sinkholes are passageways to their underworld, where great giants pass on the wisdom of ages.” Cutter stared beyond the balcony toward the lower forest — toward a vast dark sinkhole that was visible in the daylight. “Maybe they were right.”

Kendall imagined Cutter thought of himself as one of those godlike giants, a keeper of great knowledge.

Cutter continued. “Did you know my great ancestor, Cuthbert Cary-Elwes, was a Jesuit priest? He lived among the Macuxi for twenty-three years and was greatly loved by these people. He’s still remembered in stories, a part of the tribe’s oral histories.”

Kendall suspected the calculating and persuasive man seated across from him had used that past to sway these local tribesmen to his cause. Did he marry Ashuu for the same reason, to cement that bond by marrying into the tribe? Kendall knew how fiercely these natives respected both family ties and old obligations, even debts that spanned generations. To survive in the harsh jungle, a society had to be close-knit, to watch each other’s back.

Cutter stood up abruptly, brushing his palms together. “If you’ve had enough to eat, we should get to work.”

Kendall had been dreading this, but he forced his legs to push himself up. If nothing else, he intended to learn what Cutter planned — then fight him as fiercely as he could.

Cutter led him back indoors and over to an elevator cage wrapped in French wrought iron, like something out of an old hotel. Once Kendall and Mateo joined him inside, Cutter pressed the lowermost button.

Through the bars of the iron door, Kendall watched the floors drop away. They passed through a vast library, then a parlor with a huge fireplace, until finally they reached the ground floor with its cavernous entry hall — but the elevator didn’t stop there.

It continued descending.