James Rollins - Amazonia

"This is the jungle," Nate answered. "If you sleep on the ground, you'll find all sorts of nasty creatures sharing your bed by morning. Snakes, lizards, scorpions, spiders. But be my guest:"

Frank grumbled but continued to wrestle with his own bed site. "Fine, I'll sleep in the damn hammock. But what's so important about the netting anyway? We've been plagued by mosquitoes all day."

"At night, they're a thousand times worse. And if the bugs don't bleed you dry, the vampire bats will."

"Good:"

She glanced over the bed he had helped make, then turned to him, her face only inches from his as he straightened from his crouch. "Thanks:"

Nathan was again struck by her eyes, an emerald green with a hint of gold. "Y . . . You're welcome:" He turned to the fire and saw that others were gathering for an early evening meal. "Let's see what's for dinner."

Around the campfire, the flames were not the only thing heating up. Nathan found Manny and Richard Zane in midargument.

"How could you possibly be against placing constraints on the logging industry?" Manny said, stirring his filleted fish in the frying pan. "Commercial logging is the single largest destroyer of rain forests worldwide. Here in the Amazon we're losing one acre of forest every second."

Richard Zane sat on a log, no longer wearing his khaki jacket. His sleeves were rolled up, seemingly ready to fight. "Those statistics are greatly exaggerated by environmentalists. They're based on bad science and generated more by a desire to scare than to educate. More realistic evidence from satellite photography shows that ninety percent of the Brazilian rain forest is still intact:"

Manny was near to blustering now. "Even if the rate of deforestation is exaggerated as you claim, whatever is lost is xxxxxxxxxxlost forever. We're lo"They're all over the place here. At night, you want to be careful even sneaking off to the latrine. They'll attack anything warm-blooded:"

Kelly's eyes grew wide.

"You're vaccinated against rabies, right?" he asked.

She nodded slowly.

sing over a hundred species of plants and animals every single day. Lost forever."

"So you say," Richard Zane said calmly. "The idea that a cleared rain forest can't grow back is an outdated myth. After eight years of commercial logging in the rain forests of Indonesia, the rate of recovery of both native plants and animals far exceeded expectations. And here in your own forests, the same is true. In 1982, miners cleared a large tract of forest in western Brazil. Fifteen years later, scientists returned to find that the rejuvenated forest is virtually indistinguishable from the surrounding forest. Such cases suggest that sustainable logging is possible, and that man and nature can coexist here:'

Nate found himself drawn into the discussion. How can the

actually advocate rain forest destruction? "What about peasants burning forestland for grazing and agriculture? I suppose you support that, too:"

"Of course," Zane said. "In the forests of western America, we think it's healthy for fires to burn periodically through a mature forest. It shakes things up. Why is it any different here? When dominant species are removed by either logging or burning, it allows for the growth of what are termed `suppressed species,' the smaller shrubs and plants. And it is in fact these very plants that are of the most medicinal value. So why not allow a little burning and logging? It's good for all concerned."

Kelly spoke into the stunned silence. "But you're ignoring the global implications. Like the greenhouse effect. Aren't the rain forests the proverbial `lungs of the planet,' a major source of oxygen?"

" `Proverbial' is the key word, I'm afraid," Zane said sadly. "Newest research from weather satellites shows that the forests contribute little if any to the world's oxygen supply. It's a closed system. While the greenery of the canopy produces abundant oxygen, the supply is totally consumed by the fire of decomposition below, resulting in no net oxygen production. Again, the only real areas of positive production are in those regions of secondary forest growth, where new young trees are producing abundant oxygen. So in fact, controlled deforestation is beneficial to the world's atmosphere:"

Nathan listened, balanced between disbelief and anger. "And what of those who live in the forest? In the past five hundred years, the number of indigenous tribes has dwindled from over ten million to under two hundred thousand. I suppose that's good, too:"

Richard Zane shook his head. "Of course not. That's the true tragedy When a medicine man dies without passing on his experience, then

world loses great volumes of irreplaceable knowledge. It's one of the

reasons I kept pushing for funds to finance your own research among the

fading tribes. It's invaluable work:"

Nathan narrowed his eyes with suspicion. "But the forest and its people are intertwined. Even if what you say is true, deforestation does destroy some species. You can't argue against that:"

"Sure but the green movement exaggerates the true number lost."

"Still, even a single species can be significant. Such as the Madagascan

periwinkle."

Zane's face reddened. "Well, that surely is a rare exception. You can hardly think that such a discovery is common."

"The Madagascan periwinkle?" Kelly asked, confusion in her eyes.

"The rosy periwinkle of Madagascar is the source of two potent anticancer drugs-vinblastine and vincristine:"

Kelly's brows rose with recognition. "Used in the treatment of Hodgkin's disease, lymphomas, and many childhood cancers:"

Nate nodded. "These drugs save thousands of children every year. But the plant that generated this life-saving drug is now extinct in Madagascar. What if these properties of the rosy periwinkle hadn't been discovered in time? How many children would have needlessly died?"

"Like I said, the periwinkle is a rare finding:"

"And how would you know? With all your talk of statistics and satellite photography, it comes down to one fact. Every plant has the potential to cure. Each species is invaluable. Who knows what drug could be lost through unchecked deforestation? What rare plant could hold the cure to AIDS? To diabetes? To the thousands of cancers that plague mankind?"

"Or perhaps even to cause limbs to regenerate?" Kelly added pointedly.

Richard Zane frowned and stared into the flames. "Who can say?"

"My point exactly," Nate finished.

Frank stepped up to the flames, seemingly oblivious to the heated debate that had been waged over the campfire. "You're burning the fish," the tall man said, pointing to the black smoke rising from the forgotten frying pan.

Manny chuckled and pulled the pan off the fire. "Thank goodness for the practical Mr. O'Brien, or we'd be eating dry rations tonight:"

Frank nudged Kelly. "Olin almost has the satellite feed hooked to the laptop." He checked his watch. "We should be able to connect stateside in

another hour:"

"Good:" Kelly glanced over to where Olin Pasternak was busy around a compact satellite dish and computer equipment. "Perhaps we'll have some answers from the autopsy on Gerald Clark's body. Something that will help."

Nate listened. Maybe it was because he was staring into the flames, but he had a strange foreboding that maybe they all should have heeded the Yanomamo shaman and burned the man's body. As Richard Zane has said

CHAPTER FIVE

Stem Cell Research

AUGUST 7, 5:32 PM.

INSTAR INSTITUTE, LANGLEY VIRGINIA

Lauren O'Brien sat hunched over her microscope when the call came from the morgue. "Damn it," she mumbled at the interruption. She straightened, slipped her reading glasses from her forehead to the bridge of her nose, and hit the speaker phone.

"Histology here," she said.