Uncontacted, page 2
“We considered that possibility, but it doesn’t explain why only some people died. Many more thousands of persons living in those cities drank the water than the 500 or so who died, and no one else is even sick.”
Puzzled silence once again filled the tent and the airwaves. “It must be some sort of targeted attack, sir,“ Antonio began. “What else could—“ But the president cut him off.
“Targeted, perhaps, yes. But it still doesn’t seem like terrorism. Let me explain. There is something I have not yet told you. Something I would like to remain confidential for as long as possible, though it is doubtful that will last long.”
“The information will not leave our camp unless directed by your office, sir.”
“Thank you. First of all, every one of the victims was a tribal descendant of indigenous rain forest peoples found in either the Brazilian or Peruvian Amazon.”
“Sounds like maybe a hate crime, then?”
“Perhaps. But there is one more thing. Something quite odd. All of the victims share the same birthday.”
“Exactly the same?”
“Not the same year—the deceased are of many ages, young and old—but every single one of them, so far as we can tell through identification and reports from next of kin, was born on the same day: February 29.”
Chapter 2
Antonio swatted a weird-looking bug off his shoulder while he tried to process what he was hearing in the communications tent. “February 29th, that’s leap day.”
The radio crackled with the Brazilian president’s response. “Correct. Very strange. My people are looking into it now, whether this can be some sort of hoax. But listen, as I said, time is short, and there is something I need you to do for me.”
“Go ahead with the details, Mr. President.” Antonio and Richards leaned in closer to the radio’s speaker.
“I would like for you to visit some of the tribes in your area and see if they are okay. Pay a visit to them and just check up on them and see if anything seems unusual. Do they have any deaths? Illnesses? If your communication skills are sufficient, you may tell them I asked you to check up on them in light of recent events, otherwise, simply visit them and report back on what you find. Can you do that?”
Antonio and Richards nodded to one another. It was something they could do easily enough. They had come into contact with some of the tribal people of the Amazon now and then over the years. Antonio pressed the transmitter.
“Affirmative, Mr. President. We’ll get going right away and report back by end of day.”
The president breathed an audible sigh of relief over the radio. “Thank you so much. You have no idea how much this means to me. We have people en route as well, but as you know the jungle is vast, and you are already in the middle of it.”
Antonio signed off and turned to Richards. “What do you say we split our team up into two groups of five: so we have two left over to stay here to mind the camp, and five each head out in different directions to make tribal contact.”
“I head up one contact team and you head up the other?”
Antonio nodded. He and Richards, both in their late forties, were by far the most experienced members of the outfit, so the choice made sense. “Let’s get set up to move out.”
#
Three hours later, Antonio and his team of four other expedition members—three graduate students and a professional lab technician--made the first tribal contact. After the sweat-drenched, bug-infested hike through jungle that needed to be constantly kept at bay with machetes, it was a relief to hear the voices of other humans, indicating that their long trek was coming to an end.
For Antonio in particular, he was reassured, since he hadn’t been positive they’d come across a tribe here. The indigenous people didn’t always stay in the same location for very long. What’s more, Antonio himself was not an expert on tribal people—he was an ecologist, not an anthropologist—but fortunately his ultralight work had enabled him to see the locations of tribes in the area in recent years, and this one, at least, was still in the same place.
His team, with him in the lead, trooped in single file along a narrow game path until they reached a tree with a multitude of arrows stuck into it. A warning. A signpost. You have arrived at our place. No sooner had Antonio acknowledged the arrows than a tribal man, slight of stature but lithe, wiry and sinewy, stepped from the riotous plant life without a sound.
He carried a short wooden spear but smiled upon seeing the newcomers. He said a couple of words in his native language that Antonio recognized from previous encounters as a friendly greeting. Antonio held a hand back to his team, telling them to wait in place. Then he repeated one of the same words back to the tribal man, whom Antonio knew was a lookout for his people, responsible for alerting them to approaching danger.
Antonio pointed to himself and then his group, and then gestured to the tribal man and beyond him, where his camp was. He could hear activity there, the normal hubbub of daily tribal routine, water being splashed as cookware was washed, children laughing, roosters crowing and dogs barking.
“You go?” the guard said in the broken Portuguese that was his only connection to modern day language. Antonio and the rest of them nodded enthusiastically, and the tribal man beckoned to them as he turned and jogged down the path.
After a short distance they reached a large circular clearing with a few wooden longhouses along the far edge. Clusters of tribal people were gathered here and there—a group of women around a cookpot, some men untangling a large fishing net, a group of children kicking a soccer ball around. It was plain to see that these people had plenty of contact with the modern world: several of them wore T-shirts with corporate logos on them, a few wore shoes, a couple that Antonio saw even wore digital wristwatches. He knew from experience that they liked them because they were shiny baubles, but they could care less about using them to tell time. They knew what time it was by the position of the sun in the sky. They went to sleep and woke up each morning with the kind of regularity one gets when one doesn’t sleep longer on the weekends because she has to get up early the other five days of the week, Antonio mused.
All told, he thought, gazing around the settlement, it looked pretty much like business as usual for an Amazonian tribe. No one seemed upset, and he certainly couldn’t see any evidence of recent deaths or mourning. But he had come all this way specifically to make sure, so some level of communication would be required.
While his team traded items with the tribe members (candy bars were always popular, as were simple manufactured items like pens, lighters, pen knives, etc.), Antonio pointed to the central longhouse and pantomimed himself going inside it to a group of men who had walked over to greet him. Most wore loincloths only and were extensively tattooed, but a few of them wore at least one western clothing item. Once they figured out he was asking permission to enter the structure, they nodded enthusiastically and ushered him right to the steps of the open-air building. It had partial walls built of thatched palm, and a roof, but there was a gap from ceiling to the top of the wall, to facilitate air circulation.
Antonio entered, accompanied by one of the tribesmen, who chattered excitedly in his native language to the other people inside, a group of elder men and women, smoking a pungent-smelling herb that Antonio recognized as rapé. Antonio was not an expert on tribal structure, but he knew enough to realize that these were the elder statesmen of the group, the leaders. Knowing his tribal dialect would be woefully insufficient to get his point across, he tried his best Portuguese on them, explaining that he wanted to know if everyone in the tribe was okay, if anything bad or strange had happened lately.
The elders bore confused looks on their faces as they turned heads, looking at each other, bewildered. They all shook their heads at him. Enough Portuguese was spoken for Antonio to get that no one they knew had died recently, except for a wild boar they had kept as a pet for many years. Antonio thanked them, left an offering of assorted modern day items that were fascinating and useful to the tribe and their children—combs, fidget spinners, fishing line, chewing gum, squirt guns, lighters--and then exited the longhouse.
Back in the outdoor common area, Antonio met up with his team members and asked them if they had turned anything up. None of them reported anything other than typical trading interactions, and so they bid the tribe goodbye and set off back through the jungle to their camp.
#
Back at camp, Antonio found Richards’ team already there, having returned from their own excursion. He caught up with Richards in the kitchen tent, where he was helping prepare the night’s meal of fresh caught river fish, canned beans, and s’mores for dessert.
“How’d it go?” Antonio picked up a can opener and began helping his friend prepare the food.
Richards shrugged and shook his head. “We located the Caimbé tribe, but they said they were fine, and everything seemed totally normal. No one dying or anything like that we could tell.”
Antonio related his own team’s similar experience. “What do you say tomorrow we try the same thing one more time?”
Richards agreed. “I think the gang’s up for it.”
Antonio dried his hands on a dish cloth. “I’ll head over to the comm tent and update President Rocha on our progress.
#
Almost twenty-four hours later, the full team was assembled back in the jungle camp after another outing seeking contact with tribes even further afield than the ones of the previous day. Like yesterday, both sub-teams had again made contact with a tribe, but also like yesterday, neither tribe reported anything out of the ordinary, nor had they even heard of anything unusual. It seemed to be just another day of life in the Amazon.
As they sat around a fire eating dinner, all of them remarked how tired and sore they were from the long hikes. Their usual research didn’t normally require such arduous treks. While the grad students and techs compared war wounds—blisters, scratches, insect bites, minor bruises—Richards asked Antonio if he’d contacted the president yet.
“Soon as the meal’s done.” He washed down a bite of fish with a can of Guarana soda. “Wanted to solidify our plans first, before I talk to him.”
Richards shot him a concerned glance. “Our plans are to get back to our research, right? I mean, we do have our own work to do…”
“Right, but I was thinking there’s one more thing we can try to help with this situation.”
“I’m all ears.”
“In the morning, I’d like to take the ultralight up and have a look to the northeast, see if I can reach one of the tribes out that way. Different direction than we’ve hit so far.”
Richards let his fork fall onto his plate. “Antonio, there are no settlements in that direction for…I don’t know how far.”
Antonio nodded rapidly. “That’s the whole point. Things might be different out that way. I just figure, since we have the plane, that it might be worth a look.”
“What are the chances you’ll be able to land, even if you do see a tribe out there? I doubt they’ll be so accommodating as to clear you a landing strip on sight. And they don’t use radios.”
Antonio shot him a mock smile. “Really? Gee, I guess you’re right. But still, simply by flying in low, I might be able to see if anything seems out of whack. Then I’ll mark the position and return to camp. After that, we would have the option of going to it on foot, after talking to the president to confirm that’s what he wants.”
Richards stroked the stubble on his chin while shaking his head slowly. “Hey, I know it can’t hurt for us to get in the president’s good graces, but even if they pay for everything and support us…” He glanced at his digital watch. “…we’ve all got other obligations to get back to at home, Antonio. This grant is not the only thing on my plate right now, you know that.”
“Of course. Look, how about this: we spend one more day on this—tomorrow—that’s it. I’ll fly up, take a look, and then I’ll radio Brazil the coordinates of any settlements I come across if they’re more than a day away for us. That way they know we’ve done our part, even gone above and beyond a little bit. Without their support, Peter, this research wouldn’t even be possible. We depend on working down here for a lot of our grants, not only this one. And, keep in mind: I can still run the science platform to collect more data while I’m flying, so we’ll still be furthering our research agenda.”
At length, Richards nodded. “Fair enough. But you better be airborne at first light.”
#
The next morning, Antonio watched the sunrise break over the canopy from the cockpit of his Huntair Pathfinder. Even this early, and a hundred feet off the ground, the air was warm and sticky. He’d taken a small backpack with him, knowing he’d need items to trade if he did encounter a tribe, and that meant he had to hunch forward in his seat, but so far he was okay with that. One thing he noticed right away, though, was a lack of air currents. There was almost no wind, which made for smooth flying that would allow for maximum range. He knew the winds tended to pick up a bit in the afternoon, but hopefully he could make a contact and be back at camp by then.
A flock of birds took wing from the canopy beneath him as he checked his compass heading and adjusted his course toward the vast, unbroken expanse of greenery that lay toward Peru. So primal, he thought, gazing down at the primary growth rain forest. For all the reports of logging and clearing for palm oil plantations—and those were serious ecological threats—the Amazon still reigned supreme as one of the last unbroken wildernesses on the planet. Endless hectares of trees—an ocean of chlorophyll—spread out beneath him as he coasted over in his fragile craft.
Antonio was under no illusion that spotting a tribal settlement, even from his bird-like perch, would be a simple matter. He had to keep his eyes constantly trained far enough ahead that he could look for breaks in the canopy—areas where a tribe would have a settlement—and then peer straight down as he passed directly overhead. And all that while maintaining his awareness of the plane’s instrumentation. Even though this was a flight with a different purpose, as he had promised Richards, he also kept the research gadgets in operation—the science platform of sensors and gauges.
He kept his focus in this manner as early morning transitioned into mid- and then late morning. He made hourly radio contact with his camp as he continued to fly deeper into the rain forest. So far there was nothing noteworthy to report. After a while the monotonous drone of his ultralight’s whiny engine, along with the never-ending carpet of green below, combined to cause him to almost nod off. When he jerked awake after hearing a thin canopy-top branch whip the undercarriage of his plane, Antonio knew he had to snap out of it. He reached into a pocket of his pants and removed a small canteen that he’d filled with coffee from this morning’s camp breakfast. Cold by now, but who cares? He took his hands off the plane’s controls just long enough to unscrew the lid and then chugged back the caffeinated liquid.
As he flew on, he became aware that the topography of the jungle was changing. No longer an uninterrupted flat basin, he began to see hilltops rising and falling—green humps covered with trees. He checked his fuel gauge, knowing this meant he had ventured far from his camp. He was okay for now. And then he saw it. Ahead, rising from the jungle floor was a large, verdant hill, or maybe even a small mountain.
Antonio aimed his airplane toward the geological feature. As he neared the mountain, he pulled up on the ultralight’s stick to follow the ground’s contour upward. When he got closer, he spotted a shimmering band of something, like a vertical stripe on the big hill. It took him a moment but he finally realized he was looking at a high waterfall. He flew past the spectacular natural feature, the haze of water droplets forming a rainbow as the sun rose higher in the sky. He looked past the haze to the land itself, trying to make out its ground-level features. He thought he saw what looked like a game trail—a very narrow path—winding its way up, but he couldn’t be certain.
He was in the process of turning the ultralight around to make another pass when he heard a high-pitched beeping come from his dashboard.
An alarm.
What?! Antonio’s gaze roved over his instrument console, where a red light blinked frantically. As he watched, two more joined the first, along with another alarm, this one low and buzzing. The needles on his gauges began spinning around nonsensically. But he forced himself to stay calm, summoning his inner pilot, and using logic to make sense of the situation. The plane itself was fine, Antonio decided. The thrum of the motor was nice and constant, sounded good. Rather than relying on the fuel gauge, he physically turned around in his seat and looked at the fuel tank—just a large plastic gas can, really—and noted the liquid sloshing around inside. Plenty left. The prop was spinning, the wings and tail were intact…It’s just the electronics, they’ve gone haywire.
He could think of no good reason for this, had never experienced anything like it before, nor did he have time to figure it out right now.
The plane dipped left as he neared the waterfall, which created a chaotic swirl of air currents around it. Geez, watch it, will you! He admonished himself while righting the craft. His new course put him on parallel flight path with the game trail that looked like it ran right into the waterfall itself. Then he had to veer out of the way of a tall tree that spiked above its counterparts. He slowed the plane to do so, cautioning himself not to cause a stall as he did so. That’s it, easy does it…hey, what’s that?
Down below he got a peekaboo view of a swatch of flat land through the canopy.
And that was when he felt it. A thunk. Sort of a low, metallic pinging coming from the chassis of his aircraft. Thinking it was related to the instrument malfunction, he leaned out of the pilot’s seat and visually inspected the side of the airplane.
There, wedged in between the frame and his bucket seat, protruded a wooden shaft about four feet long, with bird feathers on one end.
