Murmurs arose from the others. Manny raised his hand as if he were in class. “I found where they incubate those buggers. At least the locusts and piranhas.” He described what he and Private Carrera had discovered. “I’ve got my own theories about the beasts.”
Kouwe interrupted. “Before we get into theories and conjectures, let’s first hear what we know for sure.” The professor nodded to Nate. “Go on. What happened after the attack?”
Nate took another breath. The tale was not an easy one to tell. “Of the party, all were killed except Gerald Clark, my father, and two other researchers. They were captured by the Ban-ali trackers. My father was able to communicate with them and get them to spare their lives. From my father’s notes, I guess the Ban-ali native tongue is close enough to Yanomamo.”
Kouwe nodded. “It does bear a resemblance. And isolated as the tribe is, the presence of a white man who could speak the tongue of the Ban-ali would surely give them pause. I’m not surprised your father and the survivors were spared.”
The little good it did, Nate thought sourly, then continued, “The remaining party were all badly injured, but once here, their wounds were healed. Miraculously, according to my father’s notes: gashes sealed without scarring, broken bones mended in less than a week’s time, even chronic ailments, like one team member’s heart murmur, faded away. But the most amazing transformation was in Gerald Clark.”
“His arm,” Kelly said, sitting up straighter.
“Exactly. Within a few weeks here, his amputated stump began to split, bleed, and sprout a raw tumorous growth. One of the survivors was a medical doctor. He and my father examined the change. The growth was a mass of undifferentiated stem cells. They were sure it was some malignant growth. There was even talk of trying to surgically remove it, but they had no tools. Over the next weeks, slow changes became apparent. The mass slowly elongated, growing skin on the outside.”
Kelly’s eyes widened. “The arm was regenerating.”
Nate nodded and turned. He scrolled down the computer journal to the day almost three years ago. He read aloud his father’s words. “‘Today it became clear to Dr. Chandler and me that the tumor plaguing Clark is in fact a regeneration unlike any seen before. Talk of escape has been put on hold until we see how this ends. It’s a miracle that is worth the risk. The Ban-ali continue to remain accommodating captors, allowing us free run of the valley, but banning us from leaving. And with the giant cats prowling the lower chasm, escape seems impossible for the moment anyway.’”
Nate straightened up and tapped open a new file. Crude sketches of an arm and upper torso appeared on the screen. “My father went on to document the transformation. How the undifferentiated stem cells slowly changed into bone, muscle, nerves, blood vessels, hair, and skin. It took eight months for the limb to fully grow back.”
“What caused it?” Kelly asked.
“According to my father’s notes, the sap of the Yagga tree.”
Kelly gasped. “The Yagga…”
Kouwe’s eyes widened. “No wonder the Ban-ali worship the tree.”
“What’s a Yagga?” Zane asked from a corner, showing the first sign of interest in their discussion.
Kouwe explained what he and Kelly had witnessed up in the healing ward of the giant prehistoric tree. “Frank’s wounds almost immediately sealed.”
“That’s not all,” Kelly said. She shifted closer to get a better look at the computer screen. “All afternoon, I’ve been monitoring his red blood cell levels with a hematocrit tube. The levels are climbing dramatically. It’s as if something is massively stimulating his bone marrow to produce new red blood cells for all he lost…at a miraculous rate. I’ve never seen such a reaction.”
Nate clicked open another file. “It’s something in the sap. My father’s group was able to distill the stuff and run it through a paper chromatograph. Similar to the way the sap of copal trees is rich in hydrocarbons, the Yagga’s sap is rich in proteins.”
Kelly stared at the results. “Proteins?”
Manny scooted next to her, looking over her shoulder. “Wasn’t the disease vector a type of a protein?”
Kelly nodded. “A prion. One with strong mutagenic properties.” She glanced over her shoulder to Manny. “You were mentioning something about the piranhas and the locusts. A theory.”
Manny nodded. “They’re tied to this Yagga tree, too. The locusts live in the bark of the tree. Like some type of wasp gall. And the piranhas—their hatchery is in a pond tucked among the roots. There was even sap dripping into it. I think it’s the sap that mutates them during early development.”
“My father suggested a similar conclusion in his notes,” Nate said quietly. In fact, there were numerous files specifically on this matter. Nate had not been able to read through them all.
“And the giant cats and caimans?” Anna asked.
“Established mutations, I’d wager,” Manny said. “The two species must’ve been altered generations ago into these oversized beasts. I imagine by now they’re capable of breeding on their own, stable enough genetically to need no further support from the sap.”
“Then why don’t they leave the area?” Anna asked.
“Perhaps some biological imperative, a genetic territorial thing.”
“It sounds like you’re suggesting this tree manufactured these creatures purposefully? Consciously?” Zane scoffed.
Manny shrugged. “Who can say? Maybe it wasn’t so much will or thought as just evolutionary pressure.”
“Impossible.” Zane shook his head.
“Not so. We’ve seen versions of this phenomenon already.” Manny turned to Nate. “Like the ant tree.”
Nate frowned, picturing the attack on Sergeant Kostos by stinging ants. He remembered how an ant tree’s stems and branches were hollow, serving both to house the colony and feed it with a sugary sap. In turn, the ants savagely protected their home against the intrusion of plants and animals. He began to understand what Manny was driving at. There was a distinct similarity.
Manny went on, “What we have here is a symbiosis between plant life and animal, both evolved into a complex shared interrelationship. One serving the other.”
Carrera spoke up from her post by a window. The sun was slowly setting behind her shoulder. “Who cares how the beasts came to be? Do we know how to avoid them if we have to fight our way out of the valley?”