“Back to the Paleozoic,” Nate murmured. “If so, what might be out there in that vast biological storehouse?”
“And what might still be living?” Anna added.
Kouwe cringed. It was both a wondrous and frightening thought. He waved Dakii onward. The sight was too terrible to stare at any longer, and time was running down for both them and the world.
They wound along the lip as it circled the chamber. Dakii led them to another opening, back into the tunnel maze again. Though they left the chamber behind, Kouwe’s mind dwelled on the mystery there. His feet slowed, and he found himself marching near Nate and Carl. Sergeant Kostos was on the other side.
“When I studied anthropology,” Kouwe said, “I read many myths of trees. The maternal guardian. A caretaker, a storehouse of all wisdom. It makes me wonder about the Yagga. Has man crossed its path before?”
“What do you mean?” Nate asked.
“Surely this tree wasn’t the only one of its kind. There must have been others in the past. Maybe these myths are some collective memory of earlier human encounters with this species.”
He recognized the doubt in Nate’s eyes and continued, “Take, for example, the Tree of Knowledge from the Garden of Eden. A tree whose fruit has all the knowledge in the world, but whose consumption curses those who eat of it. You could draw a parallel to the Yagga. Even when I saw Carl trussed up among the roots, it reminded me of another Biblical tale. Back in the thirteenth century, a monk who had starved himself seeking visions from God told a tale of seeing Seth, the son of Adam, returning to Eden. There, the young man saw the Tree of Knowledge, now turned white. It clutched Cain in its roots, some penetrating into his brother’s flesh.”
Nate frowned.
“The parallels here seem particularly apt,” Kouwe finished.
Noticeably quiet for several yards, Nate was clearly digesting his words. Finally he spoke. “You could be on to something. The tunnel through the Yagga’s trunk is not manmade, but a natural construct. The tunnels had to have formed as the tree grew. But why would the tree do so unless its ancestors had encountered man before and had evolved these features in kind?”
“Like an ant tree has adapted for its six-legged soldiers,” Kouwe added.
Nate’s father roused. “And the evolution of the Ban-ali here, their genetic enhancements,” Carl rasped. “Have such improvements of the species happened before? Could the tree have played a critical role in human evolution? Is that why we remember it in our myths?”
Kouwe’s brow crinkled. He had not extrapolated that far. He stared behind the others to where the giant cat stalked. If the Yagga were capable of enhancing the jaguar’s intelligence, could it have done the same to us in the distant past? Could humans owe their own intellect to an ancestor of this tree? A chilling thought.
A silence fell over the others.
In his head, Kouwe reviewed the history of this valley. The Yagga must have grown here, collecting specimens in its hollow root system for centuries: luring them in with its musk, offering shelter, then capturing them and storing them in its cubbies. Eventually man entered the valley—a wandering clan of Yanomamo—and discovered the tree’s tunnels and the wonders of its healing sap. Lured in, they were captured as surely as any other species and slowly changed into the Ban-ali, the Yagga’s human servants. Since that time, the Ban-ali must have brought other species to the tree—feeding the root to further expand its biological database.
And left unchecked, where would it have led? A new species of man, as Carl had feared after the stillborn birth of Gerald Clark’s baby? Or maybe something worse—a hybrid like the piranhas and locusts?
Kouwe squinted at the twisting passages, suddenly glad it was all going to burn.
Dakii called from up ahead. The tribesman pointed to a side tunnel. From the passage, a slight glow shone. A dull roar echoed back to them.
“The way out,” Kouwe said.
7:49 P.M.
Nate hurried as best he could with his father.
Sergeant Kostos growled constantly under his breath on the other side, counting off the minutes until the bombs blew.
It would be a close call.
The group sped toward the sheen of moonlight flowing from ahead. The roaring grew in volume, soon thundering. Around a corner, the end of the tunnel appeared, and the source of the noise grew clear.
A waterfall tumbled past the entrance, the rush of water aglow with moonlight and star shine.
“The tunnel must open into the cliff face that leads to the lower valley,” Kouwe said.
They followed Dakii to the tunnel’s damp exit. The rushing water rumbled past the threshold. The tribesman pointed down. Steps. In the narrow space between the waterfall and the cliff, a steep, wet staircase had been carved into the stone, winding back and forth in narrow switchbacks, down to the lower valley.
“Everyone head down!” the sergeant yelled. “Move quickly, but when I holler, everyone drop and hold on tight.”
Dakii remained with Sergeant Kostos to guide his own people.
Kouwe helped Nate with his father. They scrambled as well as they could down the stairs, balancing between haste and caution. They hurried as the others followed.
Nate saw Kostos wave Carrera down the stairs, then followed.
Behind them emerged the two cats. The jaguars hurried out of the opening and onto the stair, clearly glad to be free of the confining tunnels. Nate wished he had their claws.
“One minute,” Kouwe said, hobbling under Carl’s weight.
They hurried. The bottom was still a good four stories down. A deadly fall.
Then a sharp call broke through the water’s rush. “Now! Down! Down!”
Nate helped his father to the steps, then dropped himself. He glanced up and saw the entire group flattened to the stone. He lowered his face and prayed.
The explosion, when it came, was as if hell had come to earth. The noise was minimal—no worse than the dramatic end of a Fourth of July fireworks show—but the effect was anything but insignificant.
Over the top of the cliff’s edge, a wall of flame shot half a mile out, and flumed three times that distance into the sky. Currents of rising air buffeted them, swirling eddies of fire moving with them. If it wasn’t for the waterfall’s insulation, they would’ve been fried on the stairs. But the waterfall was a mixed blessing. Its flow, shaken by the blast, cast vast amounts of water over them. But everyone held tight.
Soon bits of flaming debris began to tumble over the edge and down the fall. Luckily the swift current cast most of the large pieces of trunk and branch beyond their perch. But it was still terrifying to see entire trees, cracked and blown into the stream, tumble past, on fire.