Dakii stood before one such alcove. Nate shone his light into the space. Something was tangled deep inside the mass of twining branches and churning root fibrils. Nate bent closer. A few wiggling hairs curled out toward him, questing, waving like small antennae.
He kept back.
Deep in the root pack, wrapped and entwined like a fly in a spider’s webbing, was a large fruit bat. Nate straightened in disgust.
Kouwe leaned in and grimaced. “Is it feeding on the bat?”
Anna spoke behind them. “I don’t think so. Come see this.”
They both turned to her. She knelt by an even larger cubby, but one similarly entangled. She pointed into its depths.
Nate flashed his light inside. Entombed within was a large brown cat.
“A puma,” Kouwe said at his shoulder.
“Watch,” Anna said.
They stared, not knowing what to expect. Then suddenly the large cat moved, breathed. Its lungs expanded and collapsed in a sigh. But the movement did not look natural, more mechanical.
Anna glanced back at them. “It’s alive.”
“I don’t understand,” Nate said.
Anna held out her hand. “Can I see the flashlight?”
Nate passed it to her. The anthropologist quickly surveyed several of the other alcoves, moving through the neighboring, branching passages. The variety of animals was impressive: ocelot, toucan, marmoset, tamarin, anteater, even snakes and lizards, and oddly enough one jungle trout. And each one of them seemed to be breathing or showing some signs of life, including the fish, its small gill flaps twitching.
“They’re each unique,” Anna said, eyes bright as she stared down the maze of passages. “And all alive. Like some form of suspended animation.”
“What are you getting at?”
Anna turned to them. “We’re standing in a biological storehouse. A library of genetic code. I wager this is the source of its prion production.”
Nate turned in a slow circle, staring at the maze of passages. The implication was too overwhelming to contemplate. The tree was storing these animals down here, learning from them so it could produce prions to alter and bind the species to it. It was a living, breathing genetics lab.
Kouwe gripped Nate’s shoulder. “Your father.”
Nate glanced to him in confusion. “What about my—?” Then it hit him like a hammer to the forehead. He gasped. His father had been fed to the root. Not as fertilizer, Nate realized, swinging around, aghast, but to be a part of this malignant laboratory!
“With his white skin and strange manners, your father was unique,” Kouwe said in a low voice. “The Ban-ali or the Yagga would not want to lose his genetic heritage.”
Nate turned to Dakii. He could barely speak, too choked with emotion. “My…my father. Do you know where he is?”
Dakii nodded and lifted both arms. “He with root.”
“Yes, but where?” Nate pointed to the closest cubby, one with an enshrouded black sloth. “Which one?”
Dakii frowned and glanced around the maze of passages.
Nate held his breath. There had to be hundreds of passages, countless alcoves. He didn’t have time to search them all, not with the clock running. But how could Nate leave, knowing his father was down here somewhere?
Dakii suddenly strode purposefully down one passage and waved for them to follow.
They hurried, winding deeper and deeper into the subterranean maze. Nate found it increasingly difficult to breathe, not because of the sickening musk, but because of his own mounting anxiety. All along this journey, he had held no real hope his father was still alive. But now…he teetered between hope and despair, almost panicked with trepidation. What would he find?
Dakii paused at an intersection, then stepped to the left passage. But after two strides, he shook his head and returned to follow the trail to the right.
A scream built up inside Nate’s chest.
Dakii continued down this new passage, mumbling under his breath. Finally, he stopped beside a large cubby and pointed. “Father.”
Nate grabbed the flashlight back from Anna. He dropped to his knees, shining his light inside, oblivious to the questing root hairs that wrapped around his wrist.
Within the mass of roots lay a shadowy figure. Nate moved his light over its form. Curled in a fetal position on the soft loamy floor was a gaunt naked frame, a pale man. His face was covered by a thick beard, his hair tangled with roots. Nate focused on the face hidden beneath the beard. He was not entirely sure it was his father.
As he stared, the man inhaled sharply, mechanically, and exhaled, wafting root hairs from his lips. Still alive!
Nate turned. “I have to get him out of there.”
“Is it your father?” Anna asked.
“I…I’m not sure.” Nate pointed to the bone knife tucked in Kouwe’s belt. The professor passed it over to him.
Nate stood and hacked into the root mass.
Dakii cried out, reaching to stop him, but Kouwe blocked the tribesman. “Dakii, no! Leave Nate be.”
Nate fought through the outer cords of woody roots. It was like the husk surrounding some nut. Beneath this layer was a mass of finer webbings and draperies of rootlets and thready hairs.
Once through, Nate saw the roots penetrated the man’s body, growing into it as if it were soil. It must be how the Yagga sustained its specimens, feeding them, supporting organ systems, delivering nutrients.
Nate hesitated. Would he harm the man, kill him, if he hacked the root’s attachments? If this was indeed some type of suspended animation, would its interruption trigger a massive systems failure?
Shaking his head, Nate slashed through the roots. He would take his chances. Left alone, the man would surely die a fiery death.
Once the body was free of the root hairs, Nate tossed the knife aside, grabbed the man by the shoulders, and hauled him into the passage. The last clinging roots broke away, releasing their prey.
In the tunnel, Nate collapsed beside the man. The naked figure choked and gasped. Many of the tiny rootlets and hairs squiggled from his body, dropping away like leeches. Blood flowed from some spots where larger rootlets had penetrated. Suddenly the man seized, contracting, back arching, head thrown back.
Nate cradled the man in his arms, not knowing what to do. The thrashings continued for a full minute. Kouwe helped to restrain the man and prevent further injury.
The figure jerked into a final convulsion, then collapsed with a mighty gasp.
Nate exhaled with relief when the man’s chest continued to rise and fall. Then the eyes fluttered open and stared up at him. Nate knew those eyes. They were his own eyes.