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The Tiger Complex (1/19) by LoneGunGuy
Summary: While investigating a gruesome catastrophe in the
Amazon rain forest, Mulder and Scully struggle against a
mysterious killer, their own suspicions and the unforgiving
jungle itself.
Rating: R for language and violence
Classification: XA
Feedback: Anything and everything to lonegunguy@aol.com
Spoilers: Minor references to Terma, Quagmire, Field Trip
Archive: Gossamer, and anywhere else with permission. Also
available at http://members.aol.com/lonegunguy/x-files.html
* * *
"In the rain forest, death wears many faces. [Here] if one
stares at an object for long enough, it will eventually
metamorphose into something else. A patch of withered bark
becomes a butterfly. The pile of leaves at one's feet is a fer-de-
lance waiting to strike. Everything is hidden, camouflaged.
Soon reality can no longer be trusted. One sees a tiger lurking
in every pattern of shadows. Some call it paranoia. I call it the
tiger complex."
-- from the private journal of Fox Mulder
* * *
The jungle thrived in darkness. Sundown came with the
familiarity of an old blanket, curling itself around boughs and
surrendering itself to the night: but in the interim, a thousand
gleaming eyes blinked themselves awake, hooded birds singing
like spirits of the dead, jaguars emerging from the shadows to
feed.
The old man Quassapelagh had been hunting pacas since early
evening, his arrow notched and at the ready. He was a big
Tirio, broad at the shoulders, with the quiet step that came
from years of moving through the undergrowth: you walked
on the balls of your feet, careful not to make a sound,
knowing that one hot snap of a broken twig would send your
game fleeing like a clutch of four-legged puddings. It was
tedious, patient work. Once he might have become frustrated
after ten minutes of this hide-and-seek and struck before the
pacas had strayed sufficiently from the river; but age had
taught him the importance of patience so far as these rodents
were concerned. They were not stupid beasts.
So when he had drawn close enough for the kill, he froze,
crouching behind a ceiba tree whose trunk loomed above him
like the monumental neck of an apatosaurus, buried up to its
shoulders in the loose sandy soil.
Not breathing, the old Tirio drew his bowstring taut, keeping
the edge of the arrowhead perpendicular to the ground. Fifty
yards away the pacas nosed, snuffling, for fallen figs. The one
closest to him was a large boar, perhaps twenty pounds in
weight, its earth-colored flank spotted with whiteness, its eyes
like bright stones.
Quassapelagh marked it. Measured the distance. Aimed
carefully, almost intuitively, at that mystical juncture where
the jugular boiled close to the surface -- and loosed his arrow.
It flew ninety feet in blur of hoko feathers and buried itself in
the paca's throat. Blood burst forth. The paca fell squealing to
its knees, dry sandy dust puffing up around its flailing
haunches. Screaming, the herd broke apart, crashing towards
the river in panic. Ignoring them, the old man drew another
arrow in a movement more fluid than water, let it fly, feeling
his pulse quicken as the dart plunged deep into the wounded
animal's side. He readied another shaft but held back.
Watched.
The dying paca rose, staggered blindly forward, collided with a
tree and fell to the ground, stunned and whimpering.
After a moment it grew still.
Shouldering his kill, Quassapelagh turned and headed home,
the rain forest uncoiling before him like the entrails of some
prehistoric beast. His eyes gleamed like those of an oilbird. He
was naked except for a breechcloth, some straggling designs of
berry juice sliding in ancient tessellation across his chest,
muscles rippling as he walked, burnished snakewood bow
slung across one shoulder. The dead paca swung from his
other hand. He had tied the piglike rodent's legs together with
a vine and looped the knot over his fingers, holding it carefully
against his side so that the carcass would not drip.
For many minutes he pressed onward, his strong body parting
unseen curtains of damp. The paca's flank scratched his thigh
as he swung it, the hairs bristly or soft depending on which
way they rubbed. In an odd tactile way, he found this
fascinating. He was tired, content -- and did not immediately
notice the light shimmering above the distant treetops.
But once seen, it could not be ignored. The old man stopped
beneath the trees. The light lay perhaps fifty miles to the
south. It was not fire. It flamed in cold phosphorescence, a
single coronal finger rising from the forest, blazing with
electricity. Rooted to the ground at some unseen spot, it
danced in limpid watercolor hues, red and milky yellow: a
ribbon of light, a dragon's tongue. A sterile flame emerging
from the canopy.
Almost without thinking, he dropped his catch and bow and
shimmied up the nearest tree, his sensitive hands finding and
gripping minute depressions in the bark. Fifty feet up, he
found a sturdy branch and hoisted himself onto it, clinging
with his knees to its smooth thickness.
Now Quassapelagh had a fine view of the jungle, the ocean of
treetops broken only by the alien luminescence flickering
against the sky. As he watched, the light became the color of
blood. It climbed halfway to the moon and fell back, languid,
almost lazy -- yet deadly, too, and luminous, a fine, heart-
rending, palpable glow. He was high enough to feel warm
breeze against his back. It made the hairs in his nostrils
bristle.
Below him, the herd of pacas was coughing with fear.
Watching the wings of fire glistening above the hylaea,
Quassapelagh knew. It was the Mai d'agoa. The cycle had
begun again. Squeezing his eyes shut to that ancient brilliance,
to the pale fire that rose from the trees as somber and
unwavering as a knife, he slid down the tree. He retrieved his
kill and ran back to the village, back to the shells of huts and
thatches deserted by his people, leaving him alone to
remember the secrets that this dark forest kept....
And when, in the days that followed, man after man began to
float downstream, their bodies strapped into rafts and
cocooned in plastic like bugs smothered in the chrysalis, the
old Tirio was not in the least surprised.
* * *
Mulder paced across the roof of Fort Gambaro, the sooty tar
paper crinkling beneath his feet. The cell phone at his ear.
"You're at the Embassy?" he asked.
"No, at TeleSur. The telecommunications company. It's the
only place you can make a decent phone call in this
godforsaken jungle." Doyle's voice was creased with static, like
a scrap of newsprint that had been folded too many times.
There was a gulping sound. "Listen, we need to talk."
"So talk."
"Nuh-uh. I don't trust these phones. I'm talking to you face to
face." Doyle's voice was soft, with the trace of a lisp, but now
it had an edge of suspicion. "Maybe I'm paranoid," he said,
"but we've probably got someone listening to this friendly
conversation of ours. You know that."
Mulder paused. From the rooftop he had a fine view of
Paramaribo. It was a haphazard city, thrown together at
random in the shadow of the rain forest. Multistory buildings
stood alongside thatched huts. Hindu temples flanked high-
rises and corrugated metal shacks. "I know that."
"I'll bet some asshole is listening right now." Doyle's voice
rose, no longer addressing Mulder but shouting at the
hypothetical eavesdropper at the end of this hypothetical
wiretap: "You hear me, fucker? Think we don't know you're
there? Think we give a shit? Jesus Christ -- "
"Jesus, Doyle, cool it for a second." Mulder turned away from
the view, his hair wisping in the hot breeze. "What did they tell
you at the Embassy? You can say that much over the phone,
right?"
"Not much to say. This whole process is shit from the top
down." Doyle took another pull from his water bottle. "Here's
the deal. We couldn't free Baker even under normal conditions
-- maybe we could see him, talk to him, make sure he was all
right, but he'd still be a prisoner of the state. But this
quarantine screws everything over. Our hands are tied. We
can't even see Baker until this Aquino guy or some other
Surinamese high roller gives us the good word."
"Is that what they're calling it? A quarantine?"
"Yeah. It's -- "
"That's total bullshit," Mulder said. He shifted the cell phone
to his other hand, waved an arm at the edifice beneath his
feet, as if Doyle could see the gesture. "We've got twelve dead
bodies lying in a fucking meat locker and they're worried
about keeping the one survivor under lock and key? If there
was a hot agent involved, this whole fort would be a disaster
area by now."
"You think I don't know that? I know what's happening. It's a
fucking con game, man." Doyle blew air. "That's what it is.
These jungle dictators are screwing us over big time."
"Maybe they are." Along this side of the fort ran the River
Suriname. It sparkled like molten metal. "Why?" Mulder finally
asked.
"Why what?"
"Why are they screwing us over?"
"You want to know?" said Doyle. "Meet me in an hour and I'll
tell you a few things."
Mulder checked his watch. It was eleven o'clock. "I can't. I'm
going with Kovac to meet Aquino. Kovac said he'd meet me
here once -- "
"Now? Mulder, listen to me. Shit." Brief silence on the other
end of the line. "You can't stall them till I get there, can you?"
"I doubt it. This is Aquino's domain."
Even as he said the words, Mulder felt how false they were.
This was no man's domain. He lifted his eyes from the river
and saw the rain forest stretching out beyond the city limits,
extending onward until the trees became a blur of green and
orange and black at the horizon. The jungle enveloped
everything he saw -- omnipresent, inescapable, the foaming
flowers, acalyphas, morning glories, thickets of bamboo,
toucans, bellbirds, a riot of color and sound. Mankind was
only a visitor to this corner of the world. Even with all the
bureaucratic bullshit you had to wallow through, you couldn't
forget that.
Doyle was speaking again. "Listen, can you do me a favor? Just
do something for me."
"Go ahead."
"Find out what Baker told them. Don't be obvious about it, but
send out some feelers. Get a reading on what Aquino knows. I
mean, Baker's a good man, but -- " He stopped. Laughed
nervously. "Shit, you know what I'm talking about. I wouldn't
put anything past those sons of bitches. You know what went
down in that building, right? In Fort Gambaro, after the coup?"
Mulder knew. In the old days Fort Gambaro had been used as a
detention camp for political prisoners. They had been tortured
here, and worse -- you could almost feel it in the walls, the
residue of ten years. That was why he was on the roof. He
didn't like to remain in those rooms, absorbing ancient pain
from the woodwork. "I seriously doubt they've been shoving
bamboo strips up Baker's fingernails," Mulder said. "Or even --
"
He broke off. Kovac was coming towards him, his boots
drumming against the rooftop. Mulder lowered his phone,
asked: "Time?"
Neil Kovac nodded with a hint of impatience. He was in his
forties, gaunt but solidly built, with enormous granite
cheekbones and thinning hair. "Time," he said, his voice like
sandpaper. "Is that Doyle?"
"Yeah."
"Hang up." Kovac lit a cigarette, shook out the match. In the
heat, the smell of tobacco was acrid and sharp.
Mulder turned back to the phone. "Doyle, it's time. Call me
back in an hour."
"I will." Doyle lowered his voice. "Listen, don't forget what I
asked. This guy Aquino is going to paint you the picture he
wants you to see. You know the quarantine is bullshit.
Remember that." There was a gulping sound as Doyle finished
his water, then the click of a telephone settling back into its
cradle.
Kovac was looking at him. "Everything all right?"
Mulder snapped his cell phone shut, slid it into the back
pocket of his shorts. "Yes."
"Let's be off, then."
They went inside. Kovac opened the rooftop door that led to
the stairs and Mulder found himself among dank smells and
old dust. The stairwell was poorly lit. He extended a hand, felt
nothing but raw brick. The Dutch had built Fort Gambaro in
the seventeenth century, using European bricks and mortar. It
towered above the river like a monolith of dried blood. It was
perhaps the ugliest building he had ever seen. "Doyle's
worried," Mulder said.
"Yes, well, I believe we are all worried at the moment." Kovac
had a clipped, precise way of speaking that made it sound as
though English wasn't his first language -- it was too formal,
somehow, and flat, as if he were reading a printed transcript.
The ember of his cigarette bobbed in the darkness as they
made their way downstairs. "Do you have a shield?"
"A what?"
"A shield," Kovac repeated. "An FBI badge which you can
attach or clip to your person."
"Yeah, I do," said Mulder, pulling the ID from his pocket. "You
want me to wear it?"
"Yes." Kovac opened another door. They stood in a corridor of
paralyzing brightness: it might have been a hospital were it not
for the stifling, oppressive heat. Despite the fans in the ceiling,
the building sweltered. "I'm trying to lay our cards on the
table," Kovac explained, glancing at Mulder's clothes. "It would
have been good if you had worn a dark suit or FBI fatigues."
"It's a hundred degrees outside, and not much cooler in here,"
Mulder said, clipping the badge to his belt. "I'm not going to
asphyxiate myself for the sake of some half-assed show of
force. What is this, anyway? You trying to intimidate
someone?"
"Something like that. What about your weapon? Where is it?"
"Confiscated. I guess they have problems with people who
carry guns into the heart of the Surinamese military-industrial
complex." Mulder stopped in the middle of the hallway. "Level
with me. What's the point of trying to set me up as this big bad
dude?"
"The point?" Kovac checked his pocket watch. "The point,
Agent Mulder, is that we have little bargaining power at this
point in time. We are weak. And when you are weak you create
the illusion of strength. That's an elementary law of survival in
the rain forest. It's called the flash and dazzle approach. You
use bright colors and shapes to startle the predator. This is
what we are attempting. We are flashing our eyespots at
Aquino and hoping that he blinks."
"And if it doesn't work, what then? We play dead and hope he
goes away?"
The tightest flicker of a smile. "Let's hope it doesn't come to
that."
"With all due respect, fuck this. I didn't come to scenic South
America to play the heavy in some confidence game. If all you
wanted was a Bureau-approved paper tiger, I could have
named a number of agents who are significantly more
physically intimidating than I can be."
"Beginning with Agent Scully?"
"That's right, beginning with Agent Scully." Mulder shook his
head, amused in spite of himself. "Come on," he said. "What's
this all about?"
"You tell me," Kovac replied. "What do you think this is
about?"
"This is what I know." Mulder glanced from side to side, then
leaned in close. "Two days ago an undulating stream of light
emanated from the jungle in the immediate vicinity of your
plantation, a reddish-orange eruption rising in a long
continuous ribbon from within the rain forest."
"And this is why you came?"
"It was what first attracted my attention. This light. It's known
as the Andes glow. There are similar sightings in South
America every few years. We don't know what it is, or what
causes it." He paused. "But within eight hours after this latest
glow was seen, twelve men died in the jungle. Your men.
Americans. Of the thirteen individuals who were at your
plantation two days ago, only one made it back to the city
alive. I'm rather interested in hearing what this man has to say.
Because this has happened before."
Kovac was silent for a moment. Then he nodded his head
sharply to the left. Mulder turned, saw a red door standing at
the end of the hallway. It was unmarked, smooth, like the
entrance to a broom closet. Kovac said: "You want to hear
what that man has to say? He's right there. All you need to do
is get him released." He turned. "Follow me."
They went to the door and Kovac knocked twice. At the second
rap the door swung open. Mulder looked inside and realized
that he was staring at nothing. No one stood there. For one
crazy instant he thought that the door had opened on its own,
like something from a haunted house.
Then he looked down, and realized his mistake.
* * *
End of (1/19)
The Tiger Complex (2/19) by LoneGunGuy
http://members.aol.com/lonegunguy/x-files.html
* * *
The satchel was a part of her life. It was a black valise with
silver clasps, like a doctor's bag, except when you looked
inside you knew that these tools had been designed not to heal
but to eviscerate those who were beyond any help. Dana Scully
had bought it in Washington a few months after joining the
Bureau, and now the leather was battered and worn from
being tossed into trunks and glove compartments, squeezed
into knapsacks or her good Samsonite bag, hauled, mangled,
splattered with fluid. But she had kept it throughout six years
of abuse, and after a while she brought it with her wherever
she went.
You never knew where death might be waiting.
Scully set the satchel on the restroom sink and opened it. Her
knives were strapped to the inside flap -- the scalpels, the long
prosector's knife -- but she ignored them for now and brought
out the button mask and gloves and goggles and scrubs, all
rolled up and wrapped in sterile paper.
She slipped on the scrubs, then looked into the mirror. The
woman looking back at her seemed tired -- there were pale
crescents under her eyes -- but she didn't feel tired, no, Scully
never allowed herself to feel tired going into an autopsy where
she had twelve bodies to disassemble. If you were exhausted
when you began a job like that, you would collapse like a pile
of rags before you got to your third cadaver. Cutting was hard
work. The muscles in her forearms and biceps would be aching
like hell before the morning was over.
She put on the button mask and the goggles. Tied back her
hair and fitted the surgical cap to her head. This bathroom was
old and poorly lit and the toilet was of the ancient pull-chain
kind. The walls smelled of mildew.
She pulled on her gloves.
Scully tucked the satchel beneath her arm and stepped into
the corridor. She was in the basement of Fort Gambaro. It felt
like a catacomb, a crypt, the ceiling fans chopping like the
blades of a blender.
There was a woman in the hallway. She had been marching
briskly, arms swinging like those of a Prussian soldier, but now
she stopped. She was young, with blonde hair framing delicate
features. She produced a badge, held it up for Scully to see.
"The name's Haniver," she said. "FBI."
Scully's ID was in a pocket on the front of her satchel. "Scully.
The same." She tugged down her mask so that Haniver could
see her face.
"A pleasure. Here to do the autopsy?" Haniver glanced down at
Scully's celery-colored scrubs. "Silly question, right? Come
on," she said, resuming her rapid walk. "We've got twelve little
Indians lined up in a row."
"We?"
"Yeah." Haniver halted again. "They didn't tell you? I'm from
the terrorism division. Chemical weapons. This is what I do."
"You're a doctor?"
"I went to medical school. I went to law school, too, but that
doesn't make me a lawyer. I hope you aren't -- "
"The jealous type?" Scully said. "No. If you want to assist, pull
on some scrubs and lend a hand, by all means."
She offered Haniver her satchel -- but the other agent smiled,
lifted an orange nylon knapsack. "I brought my own. Give me a
second to change."
Haniver went into the restroom, propping the door open so
that they could talk. Scully stood in the corridor, waiting,
staring up at the hypnotic revolutions of the fans. "How long
have you been in Suriname?" she asked.
Through the bathroom door, Haniver's voice echoed across
the tiles. "I landed an hour ago. Looks like your office got the
word before mine did."
"Barely." Scully fussed with her gloves, pulling the latex tight.
"In all honesty, I'm not sure why I'm on this case."
"Twelve American citizens were the victims of terrorism on
foreign soil. It's the FBI's jurisdiction, isn't it?"
"You think we're looking at a terrorist attack?"
"Like I said, this is what I do." Haniver emerged in green
scrubs, tucking her blonde hair beneath a surgical cap. She
was perspiring. "It's too damned hot in this dungeon," she
said. "But I hear they stored the bodies in a -- what was it
again?"
"A meat locker."
"Oh. Why?"
Scully started down the hall. "Officially it's because the
University Hospital couldn't handle the overflow. Really it's
because someone wants to keep an eye on these bodies."
"Graveyard politics. Jesus." Haniver snapped on gloves. "A
meat locker. You sure it's at the right temperature?
"I called ahead."
They stood before the big steel door. Scully put her hand
against the metal -- she could see it reflected faintly in the dull
surface -- and saw that the lock was a simple one, a pin on a
chain. But someone had taped seals across it. The seals were
on slick paper, with the flag of Suriname and a dense Dutch
text that Scully couldn't decipher. She fitted a blade to her
scalpel handle and was about to slice through the seals when
Haniver took her by the wrist.
"No spacesuits?" she asked.
"Not unless you feel the need," Scully replied. "Even if there
were some threat of contamination -- just look around you.
We've got fans in the ceiling. Ventilation ducts. This isn't an
airtight facility. Whatever our victims carried with them must
be halfway to Brazil by now."
She cut the seals and gripped the handle. The door swung
slowly open, like the entrance to a mausoleum. The whisper of
cold and death in their faces as they pulled on their masks and
went inside. Twelve bodies lay before them like dark Christmas
presents, zipped into black bags and lined up on a pair of
wooden tables. Some pork loins still sat on the corner shelf,
waiting to be breaded and baked in the cafeteria on the second
floor.
"And then there's Baker," Haniver was saying.
"Excuse me?"
"Nick Baker, the one survivor. He's been in quarantine ever
since -- well, you read the report. He ferried these bodies up
the river and he's been under observation ever since. If he's
still alive and shows no sign of infection -- "
"The danger is probably gone, right." Scully turned to Haniver.
Only her blue eyes were visible above the mask. "Let's look at
our first victim."
"This is where we're doing the autopsy?"
"It's either here or the hallway floor. Either way, this is going
to be a hell of a mess." Scully looked around for her dissecting
table, finally saw the steel slab lying just inside the doorway.
The tabletop was curved like a shallow basin to keep fluids
from dripping down. An old-fashioned hand-pump rested on
top. "Fill this with water from the sink in the bathroom," Scully
said, handing the pump to Haniver. "I'll prop the door open
and try to set the thermostat to a reasonable temperature."
When Haniver returned, Scully had already managed to lift the
first body onto the steel table. Its tag read "Albert DeFillips."
The locker was warmer than before but Scully still shivered
slightly, scalpel at the ready, as Haniver unzipped the body bag
and pulled its halves apart to reveal the cargo it contained.
The two women stared at the body inside.
"Shit," Scully finally said.
"Yeah." Haniver looked up. "Looks like we got sloppy seconds."
Scully couldn't take her eyes off the man inside the bag. Albert
DeFillips was a white male in his middle thirties, balding
slightly, with that odd expression of tranquillity and calm that
often characterized the faces of the dead. He had already been
autopsied. The familiar forked incision ran up his belly, but it
had been sewn back together. Scully could smell feces from
when his intestines had been emptied. He had been
disassembled and reassembled by hands other than her own,
and she didn't know who had done it. "I can't believe this," she
murmured.
"Wait," said Haniver. "The brain."
"What?"
"Did they take his brain or leave it? That's what I need to
know. Look at this." Haniver took one of DeFillips's hands and
showed it to Scully. "He's got blue fingernails. And look here."
She dropped the hand. Lifted the dead man's eyelids. The irises
were brown but irises were all he had: the only blackness was
a microscopic spot in the center, like the dot of a pencil. "Blue
fingernails. Pinpoint pupils. You know what that says to me?"
Scully did. "A nerve agent."
"That's right. We need to take a look at the brain. Open up his
skull and see if they left anything."
"Hold on." Scully examined DeFillips's head, pushing apart the
soggy brush of his hair. Sure enough, the incision was there, a
deep stitched cut running from ear to ear across the top of his
scalp. Scully used the point of her knife to cut the stitches one
at a time. A small amount of coagulated blood oozed out
beneath her blade. She frowned and tugged the skin down the
dead man's face, laying bare the smooth ostrich egg of his
calvarium.
The skull had already been sawed open. Scully removed the
top of DeFillips' brain pan. She wasn't sure what she would
find. The question of what to do with the brain after an
autopsy was often taken as a gauge of the cutter's personality.
Back in the States you cut it open on the spot, or you stuck it
in formalin to let it harden, or you slid it back inside the skull
when you were done, or you did a number of other things.
Scully had no idea what they did in Suriname.
"What the hell?" Haniver said.
A strange damp membranous substance tumbled out from
DeFillips's skull. Scully reached down, took a bit of it between
her fingers. It was very thin and pulled easily apart.
"What is it?"
"It's brown paper. They stuffed his skull with crumpled brown
paper." Scully paused. "I know where the brain is."
With her scalpel, Scully cut open the incision in the corpse's
chest, then unfolded him like an origami doll. "Jesus," said
Haniver. The man's insides were a mess of organs. His heart,
lungs and bowels had been dropped back inside without any
care for order. His brain had been laid on top, like a rare
garnish.
When Scully spoke again, her voice was grim. "This was a rush
job. You cut someone open, fine, but when you're done you
put the pieces back together. It's hard to fit the brain back
into the cranium, though, so when you're in a hurry you just
toss it into the chest cavity, like this. Whoever did it was
pressed for time."
"Someone was trying to finish before we got here."
Scully nodded. "The other bodies. Are they the same?"
Haniver walked over to the long tables, unzipped one bag after
another. "Yes."
"I can't believe this," Scully said again. She felt a sudden rush
of anger. After working as a federal ghoul for six years she had
developed her own set of values, her own strange sense of
violation. Getting stuck with the leavings of someone else's
postmortem was a violation like that. "These were American
bodies," she said. "If the Surinamese cut these men open on
their own, there'll be hell to pay."
Haniver zipped the cadavers back up. "I don't think the
Surinamese did this."
"No? Then who did?"
But Haniver didn't say anything. Instead she came back, her
thoughts locked securely behind her deep gray eyes, and
helped Scully lift the viscera from within the desecrated
corpse.
* * *
Ferdinand Aquino, the unofficial opposition leader of the
Republic of Suriname, leaned back in his wheelchair and lit a
cigar with a wooden match.
"Rubber," he said. "That's where it all began, you know."
Aquino was a tiny Dutchman with a sharp beard and a head of
bushy red hair. His ruined legs were like broomsticks, but his
upper body was wiry and strong. Standing, he couldn't have
been more than a shade over five feet tall; when he answered
the door in his wheelchair Mulder had looked right over him
and seen nothing, which was why the FBI agent had thought,
briefly, that the door had swung open of its own volition.
Now Aquino tasted the smoke thoughtfully. "Until 1876, the
Amazon was the only place in the world where you could find
rubber trees. The Indians knew about them for ten thousand
years before the first colonists landed on these shores. For
most of the nineteenth century, rubber was currency to us. We
manufactured tires for half the world." His eyes misted over
with nostalgia, as if he had seen the marvels of which he
spoke.
"The rubber industry was in Brazil," Kovac said. He and Mulder
sat at the other end of Aquino's desk, which loomed before
them like a solid acre of polished wood. The cigar irritated
him. Aquino had made him extinguish his own cigarette before
entering the office.
"It was in Amazonia." Aquino waved his hand dismissively.
"Borders do not concern me. Let elected officials worry about
where to draw the line, or how to inscribe a triangle within a
semicircle. I look to the larger picture. In 1876 an English
botanist stole seventy thousand pounds of rubber fruits and
planted the seeds in Indonesia. He stole rubber from the
Amazon. Like Prometheus. Today, if you want to deal in
rubber, you must be able to speak Bahasa."
Kovac did not make the obvious point, that Aquino was a white
male living in a nation that had been colonized and
recolonized so many times that the official language was
Dutch, the predominant religion was Hindi and the majority of
the population was black.
Instead, he tried to get his bearings. The office in which they
sat was ostentatious and somewhat vulgar compared to the
rest of the building: like Paramaribo itself, Fort Gambaro
seemed to have been assembled from the spare parts of other
civilizations, its spaces ranging from the sterile white
corridors of the upper level to the museum on the ground
floor, and the dark catacombs below. It almost reminded him
of the jungle, with its many layers and understories.
This office, then, was the canopy, the only place where light
could shine. A skylight had been set into the ceiling. Through
it, the sun beat down like the mantle of God Himself.
"What's the point of this story?" Mulder asked.
"The point is that the theft of rubber began the long process of
technological espionage which has plagued our continent to
the present day," the general said. "A process which you seem
eager to continue."
"You believe that we have stolen something from Suriname?"
said Kovac.
"I do not believe anything." Aquino sighed and steered his
wheelchair from behind the desk. He moved the wheelchair
the way another man might play an idle game of cat's cradle:
Kovac imagined Aquino tracing unseen patterns on the thick
carpet, diamonds, criss-crossing lines, like the marks on the
back of a fer-de-lance. "I do not believe, I do not assume, I do
not make conjectures or indulge in speculation. I know. I know
that you are trying to cheat us, my friend."
"I am only a private businessman."
"That does not absolve you from suspicion. On the contrary, it
heightens it. I don't pretend to trust Americans; I do business
with them because my country demands it."
"We have been through this many times," Kovac said. He knew
that Aquino wasn't listening but went through with it anyway,
talking in his clipped, precise manner. "My company is a
manufacturer of cosmetics. In our industry we utilize many
exudates from tropical plant species, including the oil of the
copal tree, or the tree of heaven. Two years ago we
approached your Ministry of Natural Resources with a
proposal to set aside one hundred acres of rain forest for the
harvesting of copal oil. This proposal was approved and we
have not reneged. We have paid your country generously for
the use of your land. In return, you have always granted us
unimpeded access into the interior. But now you refuse it.
Why?"
By now the cover story had become almost second nature to
Kovac, and he rattled it off like a professional. He watched
Aquino carefully, looking for a response. The general puffed
on his cigar, then wheeled back behind his desk. "They say
that nature works imperfectly," Aquino said. "Like an artist
with a hand that trembles. I hear that tremble in your voice,
Kovac, and I know that you are lying."
Kovac kept his face perfectly still, like some clay that was
hardening to stone. He was not dismayed or even surprised.
He had anticipated this, and he knew what needed to be done.
His mind began to turn in a new direction.
Apparently satisfied, Aquino turned to Mulder. "And what of
you? What interest does the United States government have in
these matters?"
"I'm not here as a representative of the United States
government," Mulder said, his voice formal. "I'm here to
investigate the deaths of twelve American citizens. I have no
interest in any transactions that Mr. Kovac has made with you
or your government except as it relates to my investigation."
"In that case, why are you here?"
"There is a man," Mulder said quietly. "His name is Nick Baker.
Two days ago he airlifted twelve dead bodies into Paramaribo
after ferrying them down the river from a plantation deep
within the interior. He was alone. Immediately after landing at
Pengel International Airport, he was arrested and taken into
custody here, at Fort Gambaro, ostensibly for a quarantine but
really so that you, General Aquino, could detain and question
him at your leisure."
Mulder leaned forward. "I want to talk to this man. He is the
sole survivor of a disaster which took place somewhere in the
rain forest, a disaster the nature of which remains unknown."
A brief silence.
"Not so unknown," Aquino said.
He reached beneath his desk and pressed a hidden button.
Kovac heard a hiss of static, a mechanical cough, and then the
room was filled with the sound of a man's voice, scratchy and
filtered through wave after wave of interference.
Kovac recognized the voice immediately.
"This message was intercepted two days ago," Aquino said
above the din. "It was transmitted by radio from your
plantation to an office building in Paramaribo, a building that
has been rented in your name, Kovac, for the past two years.
We haven't been able to identify the speaker for ourselves,
although I'm sure you know who it is."
Kovac nodded. "James Lifton. We hired him to perform graft
work on the copal trees." Then he listened to the recording for
what seemed like the thousandth time, his pulse no longer
quickening as the voice rose in intensity from a whisper to a
whimper to a scream, only to shatter itself to pieces, in the
end, on the head of the shortwave beach....
The voice said:
"Hello Parbo, Parbo, BFDP headquarters in Paramaribo come in
please...we've got two men dead, at least two, maybe
more...can't go outside...from where I'm standing I can see
Albert lying on the ground...he's covered with the little
flames...fire on the trees...urgent situation...they're dead,
they're all dead, and something's coming...Jesus there's fire on
the trees but they aren't burning, everyone's dead and there's
fire on the trees...it's all around me...listen to me, please,
please listen, listen to me -- "
And then came an enormous crash and a strangled scream,
and all was silent except for the low faint whine of feedback
and the hum of wind through the treetops.
* * *
End of (2/19)
Subject:
*NEW* The Tiger Complex (3/19) by LoneGunGuy
Date:
15 Jul 1999 07:10:30 GMT
From:
lonegunguy@aol.com (LoneGunGuy)
Organization:
AOL http://www.aol.com
Newsgroups:
alt.tv.x-files.creative
"The Tiger Complex" (3/19) by LoneGunGuy
http://members.aol.com/lonegunguy/x-files.html
* * *
"There is something exquisitely depressing," Haniver said,
"about cutting these men open for the second time."
They were on their seventh corpse. The routine was numbing.
Once each autopsy was done, Scully would roll the body away
and Haniver would take the hand-pump and wash the residual
blood and bile from the slab, letting the fluids trickle through
holes in the table to the basin beneath. She could hear the
dripping sound it made. The meat locker was still very cold
and they were tired. At one point Scully almost cut herself, the
scalpel blade slicing neatly through the latex on the back of
her hand but somehow not scratching the skin.
Their discoveries were monotonous. Each body had pinpoint
pupils and fingernails with a bluish cast. Their lungs were
clotted with mucus. Haniver wanted to get a tissue sample
beneath the microscope as soon as she could. But there was
more than enough for a diagnosis. Albert DeFillips had told
them himself.
Some kind of nerve agent had entered his blood and crossed
the lining of his brain and he had convulsed and lost
consciousness and suffocated to death as his respiratory
system short-circuited and his legs beat out a tuneless rhythm
on the white jungle soil.
Eventually the results became so familiar that the FBI agents no
longer had to discuss them aloud. They could speak of other
things.
"Depressing," repeated Haniver. "They're all jumbled up inside
because someone has been here first. It's a mess. It isn't how
this is meant to be."
"No, it isn't." Scully was up to her elbows inside a black man
with rippling muscles and a gray mustache.
"I don't know about you, but whenever I open someone up
there's usually that thrill of anticipation. You know? Because
you never know what they'll look like on the inside." Haniver
spoke as one would speak of a pleasant memory, a stroll
through a meadow or an art museum. The inside of the human
body was a museum that few were allowed to explore. "I've
been in the morgue," she said, "when they've taken apart
mundane bodies and flabby figures and revealed the most
beautiful viscera you could ever imagine...."
Scully nodded. "When I was in medical school I had to take the
subway home each day. I would look at my fellow travelers
and dissect them in my mind. I would take comfort in what lay
beneath the surface, even when I was looking at a drunk, or
some craven teenager."
She lifted out the dead man's organ tree. "You see? We're all
different on the inside. The heart or liver is as individual as a
face." She pointed to the delicate webbing of arteries. "The
branching vessels always ramify in their own way. But you
need to take apart hundreds of bodies before you start to see
it."
They finished the seventh body. They were more than halfway
there. The two women were bringing the eighth victim to the
table when Haniver said: "Listen, I've only been assisting so far.
How about letting me be prosector on this one?"
"Sure." Scully stretched, cracked her knuckles. "I'm tired of
this. You want the knife?"
"No thanks," Haniver said. "I brought my own."
She kneeled, opened her orange knapsack and from a leather
sheath drew a blade so striking that Scully jumped slightly
backward at the sight of it. It was at least ten inches long, with
a smooth edge and a strangely twisted handle that Haniver had
wrapped with black friction tape. She lifted the knife and
brandished it in a showy way that made Scully more nervous
than the weapon itself.
"That's a big knife," Scully finally managed.
"It's a catalogue item," Haniver said, letting it play with the
light. "They make it from a steel railway spike, the hardest
steel in the world. I can't work with standard prosector's
knives, you know -- the blades are too narrow and too long."
She turned with her knife to the next corpse. "Shall we
resume?"
"We shall." Scully unzipped the body bag and wondered
whether Haniver knew how to use the knife the way it was
meant to be used. She looked down.
This corpse was different.
Scully had gone through every external examination with care
and knew for a fact that the other victims had been unmarked
except for the occasional scratch or bug bite. But this man --
young, sandy-haired and rather good-looking -- had a broken
head. His skull had been bashed in like crockery.
"His name's James Lifton," said Haniver, reading from the tag.
"Looks like he had a pretty bad break."
A man's voice from behind them: "Looks like they all had a
pretty bad break, Jenny."
The two women turned. Mulder stood in the entrance to the
meat locker, peering inside, his hands in his pockets. Scully
opened her mouth and was about to say something when
Haniver cut her off:
"Fox?" she said, her face radiating nothing but delighted
surprise. "Holy Jesus, Fox!"
Then Haniver ran to him and hugged him with the big knife
still clutched in her hand. After a moment Mulder hugged her
back, looking sheepishly at Scully over the other woman's
shoulder. Scully just stood there. She didn't know whether it
was a flicker of jealousy or a feeling more profound than that,
but something about this sudden show struck her as wrong.
False. As if Haniver were putting on a show for Mulder's
benefit.
Then the feeling passed. Scully stripped off her gloves, went to
the others.
Haniver was still talking. "Jesus, Fox, I haven't seen you in --
shit, it must be five or six years. How's that assignment of
yours going? And your partner? What's -- " She broke off and
turned to Scully. Her eyes were huge.
"Oh my God!" Haniver said, smiling in crazy disbelief. "You're
Dana Scully!"
Scully smiled back.
* * *
"But you've got to understand," said Haniver, "that this woman
is very distinguished-looking."
"That's right." Mulder took a swallow of coffee and grinned
into the cup. "That's right, she would walk into the store with
this gray scarf over her head, and her expensive gray gloves --
"
"Let me finish this one, all right?" Haniver turned to Scully,
settling into the story. "So this very proper, handsome woman
goes up to the clerk behind the counter at the diamond
boutique and says, 'Excuse me, miss, I'd like to see a 1.25 carat
diamond with a round cut, please.' Because she's engaged, and
her fiancee wants her to shop around for the ring."
"She even shows the clerk a picture of the lucky husband-to-
be," Mulder said.
"So she takes the diamond," Haniver continued, "and looks at
it for a bit, asks about the price, then goes 'Thank you very
much,' hands it back and walks away. And the clerk forgets all
about it until she totals up her inventory that night and
discovers a small weight discrepancy. Just a fraction of a
carat. This fraction of a carat is missing. So what do you think
happened?"
They sat in the cafeteria on the second floor of Fort Gambaro,
paper cups of coffee in their hands. The room was deserted
except for them and a handful of sunburnt Dutch tourists
reading manga comic books. Scully drained the last of her
coffee. "I don't know. What happened?"
"In San Francisco," Haniver said, "this woman purchased a
small diamond, maybe half a carat. Then she drove to Seattle.
In every large city along the way she would stop at a diamond
boutique and ask to see a stone of the same cut and a slightly
larger weight. Then, when the clerk wasn't paying attention,
she'd switch the two diamonds, keeping the larger one and
leaving a stone that weighed a few points less. After twelve
cities she'd doubled the size of her diamond and quadrupled
her original investment."
"The Bureau got involved because she crossed state lines," said
Mulder. "It was Haniver who tracked her down. She called
every diamond boutique on the west coast and asked if they
were short a couple of carats. Then she plotted her path on
the interstate system and nabbed her the following week."
"Not quite so glamorous as catching a serial killer. But when I
arrested her in the store, the bitch fought me. I mean, she got
her nails in good."
"You were in the paper for that. I clipped the article."
Haniver shrugged. "I was slumming. That was after that mess
in Tokyo. They took me off chemical weapons for six months
and had me busting little old ladies for grand larceny." Her
face clouded briefly; then she grinned at Mulder. "You clipped
the article, huh?"
"I did."
"Why the hell didn't you give me a call? Back at Quantico we
were the best of friends."
"Back at Quantico we had our share of trouble. The
marksmanship instructor said you had the strongest hands
he'd ever seen. I believed him, because half the time they were
wrapped around my neck."
Haniver smacked him on the shoulder. "That's because half
the time you were a stuck-up son of a bitch."
"I guess some things never change."
The conversation fell into a lull. Scully toyed with her cup,
peeled the paper out into a long corkscrew helix. They'd
managed to finish the rest of the bodies fairly quickly, working
on two at a time, Haniver and herself hacking away while
Mulder watched in silence. Near the end it had been almost
dreamlike. She had watched her own hands slicing stitches,
her lips puffing vapor, her mind wandering.
Her mind was wandering now. Mulder had said something.
"What's that?"
"I said there's something wrong with this case." Mulder told
them about his meeting with Aquino, the accusation that
Kovac was lying, the taped radio message, the refusal to
release Baker. "If this investigation is stalling," he said, "it's
because the Surinamese don't trust Kovac. Frankly, I don't
blame them."
"What do you mean?"
"Kovac says his plantation was harvesting copal oil for use in
cosmetics. I can buy the first part. I've seen the
documentation, I've seen the pictures, and there's no doubt
they were growing copal trees down there. But...."
He trailed off. Hesitated. "But if they were using the trees for
something else," he said, choosing his words carefully,
"something more interesting, they would have every reason to
conceal it. Suriname treats its land as the patrimony of the
state. When a foreign investor comes to them with a plan for
natural resource exploitation, he deals directly with the
government, as a joint venture. Under such circumstances,
someone like Kovac might be less than candid about his
reasons for going into the rain forest."
"What do you think is really going on?" Haniver asked.
"I don't know. But in fifteen minutes I'm meeting with
someone who probably does."
"Who?"
"Isaac Doyle. You know him?" When Scully and Haniver shook
their heads, Mulder explained. "I've been talking to him on the
phone for a while now. From what I gather, he's been part of
Kovac's team from the beginning -- he was here in Paramaribo
when they got the emergency transmission. I did a background
check. Doyle changed majors twice in college, from
psychology to entomology, then from entomology to his
current field. He's a geneticist."
Scully raised an eyebrow. "You think we're dealing with some
kind of bioengineering program?"
The sharp ring of a cell phone prevented Mulder from
answering. The three agents checked their phones
simultaneously, bringing them out like soldiers on a rifle drill.
Mulder was the winner. He spoke briefly with the caller, hung
up, turned to the others. Drummed his fingers on the table for
emphasis. "That was Doyle," he said.
* * *
There were layers upon layers. In 1991, when Suriname finally
returned to democracy after a decade under military rule, the
army abandoned all but the topmost floor of Fort Gambaro.
Ferdinand Aquino still held court in his well-feathered canopy
nest, but the lower levels remained empty and unused.
Eventually the building was renovated and exhibits were
brought in, gourds and arrows and yellowing charters, and the
first two floors became a museum of the history of Suriname.
But beneath the surface the catacombs remained, and the
crypts: a museum of a secret history, a secret language, where
tourists did not walk and cameras were not permitted.
Stepping inside, Mulder's first thought was that he was back in
the gulag.
"It does kinda look like that, doesn't it?" Doyle said. "It's our
common legacy. Take all the countries in the world, all the
governments, peel away the surface and you'll find something
like this. The cages in the basement. Thank God for the
underlying unity of the fucking human race."
The corridor was long, lit by a naked bulb that swung from the
ceiling. On both sides stretched a series of cages, tiny cubicles
hammered together from piping and chicken wire, their hinges
smashed, the doors hanging. Inside each was barely enough
room to stand upright.
This was the lowermost level of Fort Gambaro, far beneath the
earth, where the political prisoners had been brought during
periods of military dominion. It reminded Mulder of the
complex at the rear of the zoo where lions and tigers prowled
at night, sleeping on concrete floors in cages that were far too
small, breaking their teeth on the bars. He said so.
"I know. It creeps me out, too." Doyle hooked his fingers
through the fencing that made up the walls of the nearest
cage. The dust left dark gray lines on the palms of his hands.
"But with all this chicken wire, there's no way they can tap our
conversation. Too much interference."
Doyle was thin and bearded, his hooded black eyes never
seeming to focus on one object but skidding smoothly, like
bits of ice on a skillet. Mulder thought he looked a little like a
dried-out Persian prince. "You have something to tell me?"
Mulder asked.
"Hm?"
"On the phone you said that the government of Suriname was
trying to screw us over. Those were your words, Doyle, not
mine."
Doyle fished a matchstick from the front pocket of his shirt,
began to chew on it. His motions were precise, maybe a little
too quick, like someone who was good with his hands but
rarely had much to do with them. "This is a fucked-up
country, Mulder," he said at last. "You've got to realize that.
These people are grabbing at whatever they can."
"What do you mean?"
"You know anything about Surinamese history? Fuck it, of
course you don't. This is a pissant nation by any standards.
We're shoehorned here between Guyana and French Guiana, a
pimple on the back of Brazil. You think the United States gives
a shit about what happens here? Suriname has precisely one
thing going for it, and that thing is going down the tubes as
fast it can."
"What is it?"
"Bauxite. For making aluminum. As long as they've got bauxite
mines, the United States will return their phone calls. But
they're mining themselves out. They'll be able to last maybe
five, ten more years, but after that....?" Doyle flicked his
matchstick away. "They're desperate," he concluded. "They've
been experimenting with diamond or gold mining, shrimp,
timber, but it's hopeless. Their infrastructure is shot to hell.
Dutch aid is all that keeps them going."
"But this thing with Kovac could change all that. Is that what
you're saying?"
Doyle gave a little shrug.
"It's not cosmetics, is it?"
"You might call it that." The geneticist giggled. "Cosmetics.
We're painting a new face on our project -- the face we want
Suriname to see. But the mask is cracking. If we don't get
Baker out soon, the whole operation could be in deep shit." He
fixed Mulder with his odd wandering eyes. "That's why I need
your help."
Mulder met the stare. "What are you talking about?"
"I need you to get Baker out of quarantine before he kills the
whole deal. You're with the government, you must be able to
do something -- "
Doyle was giving him credit for more power than he had.
Mulder might have said so, but something held him back. The
thought that he might be able to force Doyle's hand. "Maybe I
can," he said, leaning against a cage. The wire sagged,
creaking, beneath his weight. "But you've got to level with me
first. Kovac isn't in the cosmetics business, is he?"
After a moment, Doyle shook his head. "No."
"Tell me what he does."
"He's with the DOE."
This was unexpected. "The Department of Energy?" Mulder
asked.. "He works for the government?"
"Didn't you feel the strings being pulled? That pressure was
coming from on high, man. This isn't about twelve dead men,
this is about the technology and money we've poured into this
fucking project for the past two years. I'm not going to let the
Surinamese take it all away from me. They knew about it, they
were ready to pounce, they had our plantation under fucking
satellite surveillance for the last six months -- "
"Wait." Mulder grabbed Doyle by the shoulder. "Are you saying
that there are satellite photographs of the plantation? That
they were still taking pictures when this disaster happened --
when these men died?"
"I'm saying more than that," Doyle said, freeing his shoulder
from Mulder's grip. "I'm saying that they were responsible. I'm
saying that Aquino and his coalition killed those men. They
killed them and now they're getting ready to take over the
whole fucking country, just like they did twenty years ago." He
grinned. "What do you think of that?"
Mulder didn't respond. Around them, the cages seemed to
close in like jaws.
* * *
End of (3/19)
"The Tiger Complex" (4/19) by LoneGunGuy
http://members.aol.com/lonegunguy/x-files.html
* * *
Nick Baker opened his eyes. For a second he didn't remember
where he was. There was canvas beneath his back, a sour taste
in his mouth. Above him, the mottled wasteland of the ceiling.
In his dream there had been a sky exploding with billions of
stars. He had tried to count them all and his brain had short-
circuited beneath the suffocating weight of zeroes, the
numbers crowding away his memories, pressing against the
inside of his skull. Then a great irregular shape had risen
against the sky, blotting out the heavens, and he awoke.
Now Baker sat up and looked around. The room was bare and
depressing and dark. The bathroom was to his left, its walls
stained a vile green. He tried to concentrate, to gather his
thoughts.
He was not alone. In the middle of the room was a table, and
at this table sat Ferdinand Aquino. The crippled general had a
blue surgical mask tied around the lower half of his face,
hiding his nose and mouth. Baker knew that it was only
pretense. If Aquino were really worried about some kind of
infection, he would have worn goggles to protect the
membranes of his eyes, and probably gloves as well. The mask
was only for the sake of decorum.
Best to deal with him directly. "Good morning, Aquino," Baker
said. He rose from the cot and sat down at the table. The
package taped between his shoulders pressed urgently against
his back.
"Good morning," the general said.
There was a tray on the table between them, a dish with some
fruit and a jug of water. It had been there since yesterday.
Aquino gestured to the platter, his eyes glittering like shards
of quartz. "You haven't touched your food," he said, his mouth
working behind the mask.
"I'm not hungry." Baker rubbed his eyes. Aquino had been
waiting here for a long time, he knew, hoping to catch him off-
balance when he awoke. He needed to focus. "Thank you
anyway."
The general clucked his tongue. "I must say, we are beginning
to worry. You have been fasting for two days. Is it stress, or an
upset stomach? Do you dislike the meals that we have
provided?" His fingertips danced gleefully across the tabletop.
"Or you afraid that we might try to poison you?"
Baker suspected that this conversation was being recorded,
and spoke accordingly. "I'm worried you might try to feed me
something without my knowledge or consent. I like to know
what medications my doctors are prescribing. I can name a
number of drugs you may decide to use. Sodium amytal is
odorless and tasteless, and it loosens the tongue. That's what
you want, isn't it?"
Aquino shook his head, amused. "I have never met anyone
more paranoid than you."
"I have reason enough to be paranoid."
"Even if we wanted to introduce a drug into your system,
there is more than one way of doing so." Aquino smiled, the
mask bunching around his face. "We could slip a needle into
your arm as you slept, for example."
"No," said Baker. "You wouldn't do anything that might leave a
mark. I'm going to be released eventually."
"But of course. We have no plans to keep you any longer than
necessary."
"Then let me go."
"I am afraid that is impossible. You are in a state of
quarantine. Whatever questions we ask are merely intended to
further our investigation into certain medical matters." Aquino
leaned forward. "You brought twelve dead bodies into our city.
Certainly you must have expected that your actions would
inspire curiosity and concern on our part."
There was a wet spot on the mask from where the general had
been speaking. For some reason Baker couldn't look away
from it. "I've told you everything that you need to know," he
said.
"And the rest is silence, I suppose."
Baker stood. "I need to use the bathroom."
Aquino only looked at him, murderous good humor dancing in
his eyes. "Then use it."
* * *
Incredibly enough, there was a lock on the inside of the
bathroom door. Baker did his morning business, washed his
hands and stared into the basin for a long time. There was a
voice in the back of his mind. He tried to ignore it but soon it
became impossible.
The package between his shoulder blades. He needed to look
at it. For the past two days it had been hidden away in the
small of his back. There was a place midway up the spine that
allegedly went unnoticed in a routine pat-down search; he had
read about it years ago, in some true crime paperback bought
for an airplane ride, and in the rain forest he had secured the
package there with a crooked X of duct tape.
It was his cross to bear.
Baker pulled off his shirt. He had been wearing these clothes
for longer than he cared to remember, and the smell of death
had permeated the fabric. When he raised his arms, he stank
like a lion. He looked at himself in the mirror, looked at the
purplish bruises blossoming angrily across his chest, the
shallow red scratches where he'd cut himself without feeling
it.
"Hell," he said.
The trip back to the airstrip had been a difficult one. He had
carried the bodies one by one through the undergrowth, and
by the end had been quite ready to lie down and take his place
among the dead.
Now Baker reached behind him and peeled the duct tape from
his skin, wincing as a few hairs came away with the package. It
was in his hands. It was a stack of Polaroids held together with
a rubber band and wrapped inside two plastic bags. He had not
examined the pictures when he took them, and he wasn't sure
why he needed to look at them now.
For some reason Baker thought of Quassapelagh. The airstrip
in the jungle ran along the edge of a Tirio village, and in that
village there lived a man. He was an old Indian with gleaming
black eyes and a face like a dried apple, but he was still strong
and graceful and at home in the world, hunting the pacas,
growing manioc and cassava in his garden, living alone with a
shelf of books and the murmur of wind in the treetops.
For Quassapelagh was a bit of a Thoreau. He had worked
during his youth on boats and ships throughout the
hemisphere, learning the way of ropes and sails, and later of
the great propellers and engine rooms. By night he had
educated himself with battered paperbacks and secondhand
textbooks, moving from Paramaribo to Port-au-Prince, from
Caracas to Puerto Cabezas, and from there ending up
somewhere in Louisiana.
He spent two years in America and decided to return home;
but when he came to his village again, he found an abandoned
shell, empty of people, eroded by insects. There was no
mystery here, no ominous light above the trees: Christianity
and the allure of quinine and tennis shoes had civilized the
Tirios and destroyed, in a generation's time, a way of life older
than the pyramids.
And so Quassapelagh had taken it upon himself to remain in
the jungle, maintaining the old ways.
Standing there in the bathroom, the photos in his hands, Baker
thought of the long conversations he had shared with
Quassapelagh. Whenever the BFDP team needed to send
someone into Paramaribo for a few days, Baker usually got the
assignment, mostly because he was fluent in Sranan Tongo and
the various Indian dialects one might encounter along the way;
and as a result, he had spent many nights as the old Tirio's
guest.
He remembered one night in particular. They had been sitting
in the dusty clearing at the center of the village, stirring the
embers of the fire, when Baker had offered to show
Quassapelagh some pictures of his family. Quassapelagh had
politely declined to look. Baker had asked why.
The Indian had rested quietly for a moment, lying on the
sandy soil. "Have you ever wonder, Baker," he finally said,
"why my people refuse to have their pictures taken? No doubt
you have notice. For we do become rather upset when you
bring out the camera."
"I had noticed that, yes."
"Know why?"
Baker had stared into the reddish coals. "I always assumed it
had something to do with beliefs about the spirit -- that there
was concern that the camera could take a person's soul away.
Or that by possessing a man's image you somehow had power
over him...."
But Quassapelagh had frowned. "Without meaning to offense, I
must refer to that as James Frazer bullshit. The white man
always thinks that the Indian has primitive idea of the soul,
that it escapes from one's mouth as one sleeps and wanders
through the jungle, or that it can be sucked away like water or
air. But we have a more interesting idea of the soul than you
do."
"What do you mean?"
"We understand how it fit with the body. European man either
drowns his flesh with physical pleasure, fats and gravies, or he
whip it into submission to bring himself close to God. But the
Tirio live in the open. We are confident in the strength of our
flesh, and in the strength of the soul also."
"So you don't think a camera can take your soul from you."
"Course not."
"Then why do you object to photographs?"
"Because we understand change, and we cherish it. Maybe you
not understand. But the human face is always evolving. I do
not mean over the centuries and millennia, but on a moment
by moment basis. Your face changes as I look at you, like sea
anemone or sand dune. It is very wonderful. The face of the
earth is the same. You look at a tree and see it standing like a
pillar, but it is not a pillar, and it holds up nothing but itself.
The change is the pattern of the world. And a photo kills it
more savagely than death itself."
Quassapelagh's eyes had reflected the fire, his pupils dots of
red. "Even a dead man is changing. His expression on the
second day is different from the first. There are minor
distortions of the skin. He looks maybe a little sadder and
more thoughtful as the time passes by. But when you take
picture, he stops changing, and this is an obscenity to us."
Now Baker slipped the bag from the bundle of photographs
and began to flip through them, a sour taste at the back of his
throat. There were perhaps thirty photos altogether. He had
taken pictures of the men and the damaged communications
shed and the trees with the bodies lying beneath. Here was
DeFillips on the ground. There was a smear of dirt on his face.
His eyes were half-open, as if peering out sardonically from
beneath the lids.
The next photo was of James Lifton, his forehead a bloody
wreck. The light was bad and the colors dull like Polaroids
always were, flesh tones overexposed until they resembled the
inner rind of an orange, everything slightly out of focus. The
next photo. The next. And the next. Baker looked at each
picture for a long time, as if expecting the faces to move, the
men to rise and walk again. But he knew that Quassapelagh
had been right.
It was an obscenity.
* * *
"You know, Doyle's right about one thing," Mulder said. "The
army wouldn't take over Suriname until they were assured of
economic self-sufficiency. Whenever the military seized power
in the past, they were forced back to democracy within a few
years because the economy couldn't handle the change. They
need money from the Netherlands. If they return to military
rule, Dutch aid will cease and they'll be left to their own
devices. The whole process is doomed from the start, unless
they find some way of supporting themselves."
He and Scully stood in the museum on the first floor. This
level was partitioned into many galleries, many rooms, a
pasteboard labyrinth in which every chamber had its own
theme, its own parceled bit of Surinamese history: the Hall of
Agriculture, the Hall of Science, the Hall of Colonialism.
This was the Hall of Primitives. The walls were hung with
feathers, blowguns, woven hammocks. The mannequin of a
Waiwai tribesman stood near the entrance, wilting in the heat.
Behind a red velvet rope was a Tirio killing box -- a bamboo
enclosure the size of a telephone booth in which a hunter
could await the approach of a jaguar. There was a slit in the
door for the arrow. Mulder opened the door, looked inside.
The killing box was empty except for a crumpled candy
wrapper written in Hindi. The interior smelled of hay and dry
rot.
"So do you buy Doyle's theory?" Scully asked. "That Aquino
killed these men to get his hands on whatever they were doing
in the rain forest?"
"No," said Mulder. "I don't think anything human was
responsible for what happened there."
Mulder had his hands on the red velvet rope, on the heavy
metal stand, hooking and unhooking it as he spoke. The brass
clip made a clicking sound in the silence. Around them, the
room was deserted.
"So what are you thinking?" she said.
"I'm thinking about the Andes glow."
Scully remembered Mulder sitting in the basement yesterday
morning, going through a stack of photos, a fuzzy finger of
luminescence blazing up through the middle of each: now
blue, now yellow, now red, like the afterimage from a burst of
sunlight, towering high above the hills or treetops. "It isn't an
isolated phenomenon," he said now. "There have been at least
twenty authenticated sightings in South America since 1931.
It's a diffuse electrical discharge phenomenon, a pillar of light
rising from the mountaintops -- like the Brown Mountain
lights."
Scully shuddered at the memory. "But there were no
mountains in this case."
"It doesn't matter. This is an atmospheric force."
"I'm afraid to ask what causes it."
"Promise you won't laugh?"
"No."
But Mulder's eyes had that teasing gleam they got whenever he
was about to venture anything particularly bizarre; Scully
sensed that something good was coming. "Doyle gave me the
idea," Mulder said. "He mentioned that the Surinamese had
been keeping the plantation under satellite surveillance."
Doyle was beginning to sound more paranoid than Mulder
himself. "Do you believe him?" asked Scully.
"Not really. But it got me to thinking. In all likelihood, any
such satellites would have been launched from French Guiana.
Look." From his back pocket Mulder produced a rumpled map,
unfolding it and spreading it across the bench behind them. He
jabbed it with his finger. "The European Space Agency has
maintained a launching station at Kourou for years, right
across the border from Suriname. It's a standard rule of
thumb. When you want to build a satellite tracking system, you
put it as close to the equator as possible."
He straightened up and turned to Scully, still with that mad
gleam in his eye. "So?" he said, waiting for her response.
Scully held out her hands. "So...what?"
"The Andes glow and similar discharge phenomena are often
associated with sightings of unidentified flying objects,"
Mulder said patiently. "I think the rain forest outside of
Paramaribo is a major hotbed of alien activity."
"You think that aliens are monitoring satellite launchings in
Kourou?" Scully asked, incredulous.
"No," Mulder said. "I think that the aliens are launching
satellites of their own."
She looked at him. He was grinning but serious. For some
reason she thought of Jenny Haniver. He and Haniver had gone
through Quantico together, first as rivals and then as friends --
and nothing more, he had assured her, but she had her doubts.
Had they spent long afternoons together over cups of coffee?
Had Mulder dangled these strange theories before Haniver's
eyes? If so, how had Haniver responded? Scully tried to put
herself back in time, tried to imagine a younger, more
innocent Fox Mulder, perhaps with the beginnings of a
mustache curling nervously on his upper lip, hashing out
Kierkegaard or Ted Bundy over a steaming cappuccino, and
found that she couldn't....
But then Mulder seemed to go crazy.
One moment he was standing there calmly, waiting for her
reply, and then he was grabbing her by the arm and pushing
her by the small of the back towards the killing box. Scully was
too surprised to protest or struggle, and before she knew it
Mulder had unhooked the red velvet rope and flung open the
killing box door and shoved her inside.
Then he squeezed in after her and closed the door behind
them. Inside it was dark and musty and cramped -- the box
had been designed to hold one person at a time, and she and
Mulder were uncomfortably close. The bamboo dug into her
back. Scully hissed: "Mulder, what the hell -- "
Mulder clapped a hand over her mouth. In the darkness,
Scully's eyes went wide. For a second she thought that he was
going to do something sexual and her mind raced, trying
desperately to find a dignified way out of this situation.
Then she heard the voices.
Mulder was nodding his head toward the arrow-slit in the
bamboo door. Nudging her toward it. The slit was at her eye
level. The voices. Scully heard who was speaking. In a flash,
she understood. She managed to turn halfway around inside
the box, scraping her arm painfully in the process, until she
was in a position to look outside. The arrow-slit was
rectangular and trimmed with some kind of animal fur.
Looking out was like staring through a camera viewfinder.
At first she didn't see anyone. Then Neil Kovac stepped into
her field of vision. She had met him at the airstrip that
morning, and recognized him even though his back was
turned. He was standing next to the mannequin at the other
end of the room, speaking in his cold, formal tone to a man
whom Scully had never seen before. He was young, Semitic,
with a small dark beard. The two men were arguing.
Scully listened.
* * *
End of (4/19)
"The Tiger Complex" (5/19) by LoneGunGuy
http://members.aol.com/lonegunguy/x-files.html
* * *
"We must look at this situation with some degree of
objectivity," Kovac said. "Even if Aquino grants us free passage
into the rain forest, this does not mean he has lost interest in
what we are doing."
Inside the killing box, Scully felt the pressure of Mulder's chest
on her back as he leaned forward, trying to get a better look at
the two men. Finally he rested his chin on her shoulder and
they peered through the arrow-slit together, breathing slowly,
regularly. Though the faint perfume of mold and dried grass
came another odor, one that Scully immediately recognized. It
was her partner's curiosity. It wafted up from his body, as
palpable as sweat.
Kovac came closer to the box, still talking. "Once we leave, I
believe that Aquino will follow us in three or four days' time.
When this comes to pass, we must be prepared to conceal our
work."
"No." The other man followed Kovac across the room. A
matchstick dangled from the corner of his mouth. "Fuck this. I
say we fuck Aquino, fuck this whole deal. We've spent too
much time -- "
"Do not curse me, Doyle."
"And fuck you too, all right?" Doyle said. "Listen, you wouldn't
be here if it weren't for me. Remember that. You're a fucking
bureaucrat, Kovac -- you don't know anything about your own
processes. There's major technology at stake. We've already
invested -- "
"Spare me your bullshit." Kovac lowered his voice to a fierce
whisper. Scully strained to hear him. "I was working in this
jungle before you could cross the street by yourself. There are
issues here of which you have no knowledge."
The two men were less than six feet away from the killing box.
Scully could see a vein pulsing its way up Doyle's forehead like
a larva. "I know enough, goddammit," Doyle said. "I know the
DOE has poured more than two hundred million dollars into
this project so far. They're gonna want results."
"We have given them results."
"We've given them shit, Kovac. I can be on the phone in five
minutes. I can tell them you want to torch the place. What do
you think they'll say to that?"
"They trust my judgment. If we must burn the plantation to
keep it out of Aquino's hands, so be it. We can begin again
somewhere else."
"We've been here for two years. By the time we get BFDP up to
speed again, someone will have busted a cap in our ass, maybe
the Brazilians, or the Costa Ricans, it doesn't matter -- but
someone will have a viable feedstock system within two years."
Doyle's matchstick snapped in two. He spat out the pieces,
flicked the rest of it away. "And I guarantee it won't be us."
Scully was ransacking her memory for these terms -- BFDP,
feedstock -- when her eyes crossed. Something yellow and
glittering had appeared less than an inch from her face. It was
a spider. She stiffened. It was the size of her thumb and was
lowering itself from the roof of the box on a length of white
silk. She could see each of its spindly legs etched against the
light. She hadn't thought about the bugs. The killing box was
made of bamboo and vines and dried grasses and it probably
harbored insects by the hundreds.
Outside, the conversation continued. "That would be an
expensive loss for you, wouldn't it? How much money have
you invested in feedstock since the project began?"
Doyle's voice: "That's none of your fucking business."
"On the contrary. Are you afraid for your investment? You
stand to lose just as much if our plantation falls to the
Surinamese. It might have been burned for all the good it will
do you then. Worse, because Suriname will have the feedstock
and the process will be lost."
Now the spider was almost touching her nose. She prayed
desperately that it wouldn't decide to disembark on her face.
But it did. Scully couldn't move her arms, couldn't do anything
but hold herself like a statue, the sweat pouring down, as the
spider brushed against her cheek. She couldn't see it anymore
but she could feel the tickling. It crawled along her jawline.
Jesus Christ.
"That's why we need to bring in the fucking cavalry," Doyle
said. "Ferdinand Aquino killed these men. If we can prove he
did it, we can indict that son of a bitch and keep him away
from BFDP."
"Then prove he did it," Kovac said.
"That's the FBI's job."
"Then let them do it. They are the professionals. We have five
days, a week at most. After that, we must be prepared to
destroy everything we have worked to accomplish."
The spider was on her chin. If it crawled down her shirt she
would scream and claw open the door and fall in a heap on the
ground. Very professional. But Kovac's voice was growing
fainter. "You don't own anything," he said, "until you can
throw it away. When the Lycians were about to be conquered
by Persia, they herded their wives and children and slaves into
the citadel and burned it to the ground. They died fighting.
The sacrifice I ask of you is puny in comparison...."
His words faded away until they were lost. Scully ventured a
look outside. The men were gone, and the Hall of Primitives
was empty again.
In an instant they were outside. Scully had flicked the spider
away from her chin and was brushing her T-shirt and jeans
with both hands to dislodge any unseen occupants when
Mulder took her by the arm. His face was flushed, his hair
sticking up in the back. "We need to follow them."
"What?"
"Something's happening. C'mon, Scully, live a little." He
grinned and was off.
Scully stood there for a moment, trying to think of an
adequate comeback. In the end, she muttered something
under her breath and followed him, brushing imaginary
cobwebs from her hair. Mulder stood at the entrance to the
Hall of Primitives, peering around the corner. "I think they're
about to split up," he said without looking around. "I'll follow
Doyle. Keep an eye on Kovac. He just walked into the Hall of
Agriculture."
They parted company. Her heart was beating faster than she
liked. She strode through the Hall of Colonialism, glancing at
neither the fragrant model of a three-masted ship to her left
or the framed documents of conquest to her right. The
museum was almost empty. Scully got to the far wall, flattened
herself against it and leaned forward just far enough to look
into the next room.
Kovac was there. He went past the iron plows and photographs
of terrace farming and through the next doorway, his steps
purposeful and quick.
Scully counted to three and followed.
As an afterthought, she reached into her pocket and switched
her cell phone to silent mode.
The next room was a corridor with two stairwells and an
elevator. Scully got there in time to see the elevator doors
slide shut. She looked up at the old-fashioned dial, saw the
arrow tremble and begin to move -- Kovac was going up. She
dashed to the stairwell, flung open the door, took the steps
two at a time.
There were five floors to choose from. Instinct told her that he
was headed for the top. Scully was in good shape and was only
slightly out of breath when she emerged at her destination.
She opened the door a crack, looked out. Saw a hallway of
spotless hospital white. Kovac was already halfway down the
corridor, his boots clicking against the tiles as he headed
toward a red door at the far end of the hall. When he finally
reached it, he stood there for a full minute, hesitating, his
wiry, callused hands clasped behind his back.
Finally Kovac knocked. A few seconds later, the door swung
open, and he went inside, shutting the door behind him.
Scully stepped into the hallway. She was about to examine the
door more closely -- it was unmarked, and there was no knob
on the outside -- when her cell phone vibrated warmly against
her hip. She answered it.
It was Isaac Doyle.
* * *
Ferdinand Aquino allowed Kovac to talk for a long time, and
when he had finished, the two men sat in silence. It five
o'clock, and the sun no longer shone through the skylight like
a net of hammered gold; it hung above the horizon, red and
ripe, leaving the office heavy in with shadow.
The Dutchman took a cigar from the humidor on his desk but
did not touch a match to it yet. He produced a small penknife,
cut off the end with one careful slice. The blade of the knife
was made from sharpened crystal. Aquino was a fastidious
smoker, and he disliked the taste that steel left behind.
"So what price do you expect me to pay for this knowledge?"
he asked when he was done.
Kovac leaned back into the softness of his chair, his legs
crossed. "I think you already know."
The blue spurt of a match. "You will be granted passage into
the jungle," Aquino said, toasting the end of his cigar.
"I want more than that. First, a guarantee that you will not
come charging after us for five days. Second, some
information." Kovac straightened up. "I have been honest with
you," he said. "In many ways I have been honest beyond my
own best interests. Now I demand some honesty in return."
"I did not kill your men, if that is what you want to know,"
Aquino said flatly.
Kovac ignored the denial. "If you did," he said, "I bear you no
ill will. I only want to know how it was done."
"I did not do it."
A long pause. "There is something else, then."
"Yes." Aquino opened one of the smallest drawers in his great
desk, removed a flat box the size of a sardine can. He slid it
across the polished wooden surface. Kovac took the box
without looking inside. Pocketed it. It made a small bulge in
the front of his vest.
"I will give you another thing," said Aquino after a moment.
"Something for which you did not ask." He parceled out his
words with care. "If I suspected someone of killing twelve of
my countrymen, even if they were men for whom I held no
love, I would do no business with him. Perhaps I would kill him
where he stood." He hesitated. "This arrangement of ours tells
me that you serve something other than your homeland. My
advice is to weigh your allegiance carefully."
In the dim evening light, Kovac's face looked more like granite
than ever. "Is that all?" he asked.
"Yes."
"In that case," Kovac said, rising, "I want to see Baker."
* * *
"They're called the trees of heaven," Doyle said. "Imagine it.
Imagine that you could plant a tree that yielded gallon after
gallon of high-quality diesel fuel, natural oil that could be
poured directly into an engine, running more smoothly than
refined gasoline. Then imagine planting thousands of these
trees. Hundreds of thousands. Millions. And leasing the
technology to the nearest developing nation."
"Start over," said Haniver.
They stood in the basement of Fort Gambaro. Empty cages
stretched on either side like the husks of a previous life, the
loosened skins and chrysalides of some unimaginable
metamorphosis. Scully heard water rushing through the pipes
above their heads. The three FBI agents faced Doyle, the harsh
shadows of chicken wire criss-crossing the floor between
them.
Doyle ran both hands through his hair. "I've already explained
this, for chrissake. I bioengineered the trees myself. I was
working at Oak Ridge at the time but I got hired by the DOE
when they saw the results I was getting. No one had ever
thought of it -- although it's so obvious in retrospect. Copal oil
is naturally rich in hydrocarbons. All I did was raise the yield. I
had something big, I knew it, even before Kovac took the trees
and cloned them and raised them in bulk to see if they were
feasible as a commercial energy source."
"Diesel fuel. You were processing these trees as sources of
diesel fuel?" asked Mulder. After all the buildup, all the
doubletalk, this solution seemed absurd.
"You'd better fucking believe it," Doyle said. "The DOE was
investigating the potential of copal oil as an alternative energy
source. They've been doing this for years. It's called the
Biofuel Feedstock Development Program -- "
Scully made the connection. "BFDP."
"That's right."
"Is biofuel really such a hot item?"
"Let me put it this way. This plantation may be located in
Suriname, but our real target is Brazil. 150 million people.
Half the land area of South America. But their fossil fuel
reserves aren't worth shit. Their oil is being drained drop by
drop and their coal is mostly sulfur and ash. Right now they're
desperate for alternatives -- which is where we come in. If we
can supply Brazil with a working source of energy before
anyone else, it'll be a sweet deal for all concerned."
"So you bought a hundred acres of savannah in Suriname,
telling the government that you were harvesting the copal oil
to manufacture cosmetics," Scully said. "Progress was good,
until -- "
" -- until all hell broke loose."
"Fine," said Mulder. "But why lie to us? I can understand why
you might want to feed the Surinamese a load of bullshit,
assuming that you were going to cheat them out of their one
real chance at economic self-sufficiency. But why give us the
same cover story?"
"We needed plausible deniability. That's the phrase you federal
spooks like to use, right? Plausible deniability. We knew that
you and Kovac were going to face Aquino together, so we fed
you the same line we gave the general."
"But we're here to investigate," Haniver said. "If you lie to us --
"
"Investigate?" Doyle snorted laughter. "Let me tell you about
our priorities. My first concern is making sure this plantation
doesn't go belly-up like a fucking porpoise. If we find out who
killed those guys in the jungle, terrific. If we have to settle for
a segment on 'Unsolved Mysteries,' then so be it. But if the
plantation goes down, everybody loses."
"Have it your way," Haniver said. But there was a cold edge to
her voice. For a moment her good-natured demeanor peeled
away. "But if we find out you've lied about anything else, we're
hitting you with obstruction of justice. We're hitting you hard.
Because you aren't the only one with priorities."
"I came clean."
"You came clean because you couldn't trust Kovac anymore,"
Mulder said. "I know what's going on. If Kovac had his way,
you'd torch the plantation and start again somewhere else.
Given what happened there, that's probably a good idea. But
you can't let him do that, because you've invested your own
money in the project -- "
"How the fuck did you know that?"
Mulder grinned. "I'm a federal spook."
"Jesus." Doyle turned away, shaking his head. "You act like I'm
the only one who ever twisted the truth to save his own ass.
Get used to it. You're standing in a part of the world founded
on convenient fabrication. What do you think colonialism is all
about, anyway? That's the way things work here. Whenever the
government of Suriname changes hands, it's always in a
bloodless coup. They don't have the guts to fight a real war.
Deceit is power. Except maybe in this room."
"This room?" Scully asked, not sure where this monologue was
headed.
"Yeah. Look around you."
The cages. The partitions. It was a labyrinth of wire and
shadow, a place where unpersons were brought, desaparecidos
shackled to the walls to await interrogation. An image came to
Scully, a vision of herself here, not among the prisoners but
among the guards, truncheon in hand, her boots shiny and
black. Or Haniver. Haniver with her interstate diamond thief
chained to the ceiling, asking questions, hanging the woman
from her regal gray scarf....
"You know what this is?" Doyle asked, gesturing to the rows of
shattered cells around them. "This is the museum of clear
ideas. You step outside this room and it's all lies, man, it's all
fucking lies. The Dutch colonists made a landfall and took the
jungle from the Indians piece by piece, and then the French
stole it from the Dutch, and the English from the French --
because you can't make honest war in the rain forest. There's
nowhere to fight. It's all camouflage, all mimicry. You sneak
around and break treaties and never show anyone your true
face. Except here."
Doyle kicked one of the cages. It rattled beneath the blow.
"Here you had prisoner and torturer eye to fucking eye. They
didn't pretend to be anything they weren't. You want honesty,
you strap someone to a table, bring out the electrical prod.
Outside this room there's nothing but suspicion, or
imagination."
It was time to go. They went back upstairs, leaving the cages
behind. Scully felt the beginnings of a headache gathering
inside her skull. She thought about the forest that was waiting
outside. The mad multiplication of growth, trees crowding
trees, vines and funguses weaving together until the entire
jungle might be one enormous organism....
They were on the first floor again. The museum, the Hall of
Primitives.
Kovac was approaching them. His eyes seemed to narrow at
the sight of Doyle with the three FBI agents -- perhaps a trace
of suspicion crawled across his craggy face -- but the shadow
was gone as quickly as it appeared. He smiled. Scully sensed
that something big was on the way.
"I have good news," Kovac said.
* * *
End of (5/19)
"The Tiger Complex" (6/19) by LoneGunGuy
http://members.aol.com/lonegunguy/x-files.html
* * *
The window overlooked the jungle. Mulder lifted the blind and
gazed out at that endless immensity, the ranks of trees
stretching silent and impassive to the edge of the world.
Beyond the glass and brick of Fort Gambaro lurked something
primitive, unknowable, a forest that constantly rebuilt itself
into ever more enormous and mysterious shapes. A great
mottled hawk hung motionless in the sky. The clouds above
were pregnant with rain.
Mulder turned back. The room was empty except for a table
and two chairs. Nick Baker sat there. Baker was a large man,
bearded and muscular, his eyes unnaturally sharp and
watchful. His hands were folded on the tabletop. He was
waiting.
"Can I get you a glass of water?" Mulder asked. "We may be
here for a while."
"I'm all right." Baker's voice was soft.
Mulder sat down across from Baker. "In that case, the first
thing I'll need to do is....Hold on." A battery-operated tape
recorder sat on the table between them. Mulder popped a tape
inside, pressed a button. He leaned down to speak into the
microphone: "This is Special Agent Fox Mulder deposing
Nicholas Baker in Paramaribo, Suriname on the date stamped
above, sworn and attested." He rewound the cassette, played it
to make sure it was recording. "Mr. Baker, I -- "
"I'd like to see your badge," said Baker, not taking his eyes
from Mulder's face.
Without expression, Mulder dug the ID from his pocket and
handed it over. Baker examined the Bureau seal, the laminated
photograph. "You know, I have no idea what an FBI badge is
supposed to look like," he commented.
"But you think this may be a fake."
"If I were Aquino, this would be the first thing I'd try. Bring in
some Dutchman whose accent wasn't too bad, give him a tape
recorder and a fake ID and have him claim to be an FBI agent
who was here to take my testimony."
"You don't believe I'm an American?"
"Prove it to me."
"I saw the Orioles play the White Sox three days before I left
Washington," Mulder said without hesitation. "Ripken singled
in the bottom of the ninth to drive in Belle for a 7-6 win. It put
Baltimore five games back in the AL east."
"I don't follow baseball nowadays," said Baker.
"I suppose you wouldn't." Mulder fiddled with the tape
recorder. "You know, when they suspected someone of being a
German double agent during World War II they would
administer a cultural literacy test. Questions only an all-
American boy would be able to answer. Like who won the
World Series in 1937; or the name of Mickey Mouse's
girlfriend."
Baker smiled wanly and asked to see Mulder's wallet. The
collection of debris among the credit cards and Virginia
driver's license -- receipts, ticket stubs and a few hard pods he
recognized as sunflower seeds -- was convincing enough for
him. "Fine," he said, handing back the billfold. "Let's get
started."
"First I'll need to ask you some questions about your physical
condition," said Mulder, repocketing his wallet. "You were in
Surinamese custody for almost forty-eight hours. You were
treated humanely?"
"Yes."
"No cuts or bruises? Nothing we might want to photograph?"
"No."
"All right." The preliminaries complete, Mulder reach down
and switched off the tape recorder. "Before we get to what
happened in the jungle, there's something I should clarify," the
FBI agent said. "I don't like this arrangement any more than
you do. This deal with the tape and the deposition makes it
look like I'm collecting evidence to send to some grand jury or
smoke-filled room back in Washington, I know, but that isn't
the case. I pick my own assignments, and I'm only here
because I'm interested and concerned. Understood?"
"Understood," said Baker.
"Good." From his briefcase Mulder pulled a battered legal pad,
flipped to the middle. He uncapped a felt-tip marker and
switched the tape recorder on again. "Let's start at the
beginning. You're an employee of the Department of Energy?"
"I'm a consultant," said Baker. "I've been on the payroll for
two years now, but I wouldn't consider myself an employee --
I've yet to see the inside of a federal building."
"Why were you hired?"
"Mostly because I knew the jungle well, and because I spoke
Tirio and Sranan Tongo. I'm an ethnobotanist," Baker
explained. "For the past ten years I've been working with
native peoples, researching their traditional herbal medicines,
trying to record this information before it disappears."
"You're a conservationist."
"You might say that."
"But you were working with the DOE on a project that could
have meant the mass exploitation of the Amazon rain forest,"
Mulder said. "Didn't you have some doubts about what you
were doing?"
Baker looked down. For some reason his eye was drawn to the
tape recorder. He could see the cassette through the
transparent plastic window, the spindles turning spools of
filament. It was a whirlpool, a wheel. He had a sudden vision of
Indians winding rope around a gigantic winch, dragging a
battleship up the side of a mountain.
"I didn't think their research would amount to anything," he
said, clearing his throat. "The plantation did no damage to the
surrounding hylaea. We planted the trees in an area that had
been naturally cleared of cover. This wasn't a slash and burn
operation."
"It doesn't matter. I'm not trying to make a point." Mulder
doodled on his legal pad without looking down, shapeless
whorls and circles emerging from beneath his pen. "You were
serving as a consultant for the DOE," he said. "You'd been
working on the project for almost two years. But you weren't
at the plantation when everyone died."
"No, I wasn't."
"Where were you?"
"I was several miles downriver at the time."
"Why?"
"We'd been suffering from a minor insect infestation.
Butterflies were on the copal trees, laying their eggs there, and
the caterpillars were eating the leaves. The pesticides seemed
to be working, but when I radioed Doyle about it, he was
pretty pissed off. I was supposed to fly back to the city and
bring a few sample chrysalides so we could figure out how to
control the bugs in the long run."
"So you were on your way to Paramaribo."
"Right. The way it works," Baker said, "is that you have to take
a raft up the river for thirty miles or so. At that point, there's
an abandoned Tirio village with an old airstrip, about a
hundred miles from the city. You need to charter a plane to
pick you up from there."
"Why was the plantation founded so far off the beaten path?"
asked Mulder.
"There were a number of factors. The first site we tried had a
layer of gravel just beneath the surface. The roots couldn't
penetrate. So we were forced to move the entire operation
thirty miles upstream."
"Okay. So you were at this abandoned village when you saw
the Andes glow, the light above the treetops. And you decided
to return to the plantation to investigate." Mulder turned to
the front of his legal pad, checking a detail. "This is what you
told the pilot, by the way, the one who flew you back to the
city with the bodies -- he confirms that you spoke to him
about an unusual glow."
"Yes," said Baker, although in truth he remembered nothing
about his flight back to Paramaribo beyond the faint odor of
decay and his own numb horror. He felt something like that
now. Even the smell seemed to have returned. It came back to
him in a rush, the stink, the heaviness of death in his arms, the
slipperiness of the soil. The kernel of darkness waiting to
sprout. Baker sighed, looked at Mulder, waited for the
question that would unlock the rest.
"And what did you find at the plantation?" Mulder asked.
* * *
It was May 22, near the end of the rainy season. Even from two
hundred yards away Baker could sense that something was
wrong. Between the BFDP facility and the surrounding forest
stood a high chain-link fence topped with barbed wire; there
was a chained gate, a padlock. He could see the light glinting
off the dull steel. The rain was coming down hard; he was
wearing a cagoule, a rain jacket that hugged his knees like a
penitent's cloak. For ordinary hiking, the cagoule was too
goddamned hot. By the time he got to the gate, he was
sweating rivers.
He didn't see the bodies until he was almost close enough to
touch them. The rain had buried them face-down in the mud.
He unlocked the gate and pulled the chain away, the pulse
pounding in his forehead, unable to look away from the three
lumps on the ground. All the spit in his mouth had dried up.
His tongue felt like a piece of leather.
Baker staggered over to the corpses -- his mind gone, his body
moving like a shambling automaton, a golem -- and turned one
of them over. The face was caked with dirt. He wiped it away.
It was Albert DeFillips. The sand had left a pattern on his
forehead. Baker screamed. He turned over the next corpse.
Daniel Kwon. Alongside him lay John Fuller. His mouth was
filled with black sputum. They had been running for the gate
when they died and their legs had kept running even after they
hit the ground, spasming and kicking up the soil and digging
into the dust.
Baker was sick. He vomited over them, oh Jesus, he vomited
right on Fuller's shoes. It felt like his heart and stomach were
going to come up with the puke. For a long time he thought
that he was dying, that he'd caught whatever had killed these
men. He prayed for something, didn't know what, felt only an
incoherent yammer bubble up from his soul.
Somehow he was on his feet and shouting. Calling names. But
nothing answered him except the thundering downpour, the
sound of water coursing across millions of leaves and
exploding into droplets on the earth.
He walked down the gravel path. Twenty yards down he found
David Harris. The shock was beginning to wear away. When he
stumbled across Jonathan Kinski -- staring up at the flat iron
sky, his eye sockets brimming with water -- Baker didn't even
pause. He stepped over the body and shut his eyes with grim
certainty: he was dead or dreaming or insane. Dimly Baker felt
hands tearing at his hair. They were his hands.
At the southernmost end of the plantation lay six cinderblock
buildings with roofs of corrugated metal. Three or four bodies
were scattered on the ground, like dolls on a playroom floor.
There is a limit to the amount of horror that the human brain
can experience and still survive. After a certain point, the
emotive functions shut themselves off. Baker kept waiting for
that internal click, that detachment, but it never came. He
knew that this march would never end. He peeled his cagoule
off and left it on the ground, hoping in some dim way that the
rain would obliterate him.
He was at the point where the rows of copal trees began. The
trunks were slim and evenly spaced so he had no trouble
looking between them and seeing two more corpses lying in
the orchard, sheltered somewhat by the branches. He
screamed again because a voice in the back of his mind had
been making a tally -- two bodies here, three at the gate, four
at the cinderblock compound, Harris, Kinski meant that there
was one more, oh God, there was one more --
"Jesus," he whispered.
A moment ago, he had seen something. It had passed
unnoticed beneath the haze of his consciousness but now it
resurfaced and sent fear rocketing into his heart. He turned
back to the cinderblock buildings. He was soaked. It felt like
the skin of his torso was sloughing off.
Five of the buildings were intact. The sixth was in ruins. The
walls had caved in and the roof had collapsed, sagging
impotently, sluicing the rain down to the ground. It was the
communications booth. It had been rammed repeatedly until
the blocks had crumbled and splintered like broken
earthenware.
Baker's shoes crunched the concrete as he stepped beneath
the overhang. The radio had been demolished. There were
leaves on the ground. James Lifton lay across the lacerated
threshold, his head smashed like a melon, the water pouring
across his face and filling the depression in his skull.
Lifton was the last one. They were all dead. Everyone in the
plantation was dead.
Baker sat down. After a while, the storm stopped and the sun
came out again. The sun had been blazing for almost fifteen
minutes before he began to think clearly. He was alone in the
forest without any means of communication, surrounded by
bodies that would begin to decay in the heat very soon. His
eyes swam at the thought of the task ahead of him and he
sensed that he was about to faint. He bit the heel of his hand
hard enough to draw blood. That seemed to help.
A moment later he got up and went to work.
There was a Polaroid camera in the lab, and some orange
plastic flags the researchers used to tag the trees. Baker took
picture after picture and stuffed them into his pockets before
they had a chance to develop; then he marked the spots where
the men had fallen and took the dead into his arms and
carried them one by one to the riverside. He was a strong man,
but near the end his arms trembled. The bodies had already
gone stiff. He wrapped them in plastic and laid them into the
rafts like vikings, but instead of setting the boats afire he
chained them together and set off down the river. He was
Charon. His eyes burned as if they were ringed with flame.
* * *
Baker watched in silence as Mulder flipped through the thick
stack of photographs. The last picture was of Lifton, his ruined
face soft and bloated from the water. It was strange how the
act of documenting the bodies seemed to kill each victim a
second time. Death always meant humiliation, no matter what
form it took.
"You understand why I need to go back," he said when Mulder
was done.
Mulder set the photos down. "I don't think that's such a good
idea."
"But you're going into the jungle. You wouldn't be here unless
you were planning some kind of expedition with Kovac and
Doyle and the others. Tell me."
"We're leaving tomorrow," said Mulder. "But I don't think you
have any obligation to come along."
"No. Listen to me." Baker's voice was filled with urgency but it
was tired, too, tired and broken from the horrors he had
survived: "Twelve men died at that plantation. They were
struck down by something I can't understand or explain. The
same thing could happen if you follow in their footsteps."
"I'm well aware of the danger."
"Let me ask you a question. Are you sure of your own ability?
When you're in the rain forest there's nothing between you
and death except your own strength and intelligence. Do you
have perfect faith in these things?"
"I don't think anyone is capable of perfect faith. Questions like
that tend to degenerate into Jedi master bullshit." Mulder
shook his head. "But if I weren't at least somewhat confident
in my own ability, I wouldn't do some of the things I do."
"Then you're in a better position than I am. You've got no
reason to be afraid. There's danger, yeah, but you can face it
on your own terms -- you can depend on yourself. If you walk
into danger on your own two feet you can trust them to bring
you out again." Baker paused. "But I have every reason to be
afraid. If you leave me behind, I'll understand the danger and I
won't be able to do a damn thing about it. It's the waiting I
can't stand."
He clasped his hands together. "A few years ago I was living
with the Arawaks, trying to learn their recipe for arrow
poison. They took me hunting. When we were a few miles from
the village, one of the men I was with accidentally nicked
himself with an arrow. A scratch, nothing more. But he knew
that the curare was in his system. He dropped his bow and
stretched himself out on the ground, very calmly, and said
good-bye to us. Then he died, and there was nothing I could
do." Baker looked up. "It's a bitch to be the survivor."
"I know."
"Then take me with you. I have no hidden agenda. If you think
that Kovac or Doyle have anything in mind except their own
concerns, you're dead wrong. They're good men, but they're
more interested in protecting their investment than anything
else. Kovac cut some kind of a deal with Aquino to set me free
and grant him access to the rain forest. I'm sure of it."
Mulder switched off the tape recorder. "What kind of a deal?"
"I don't know. But when a disaster like this takes place, the
wheels start rolling before the bodies have even cooled. More
than one deal was made over the last two days, and not all of
them will work to your benefit. Ultimately, I'm the only one
you can trust."
"Why's that?"
"Because for the last two days," Baker said, "I've been in
quarantine."
* * *
The video image was small and grainy, and after a while
Haniver felt her eyes going out of focus. She sat in the
bathroom on the sixth floor of Fort Gambaro, the door locked
and bolted behind her. The bathroom window was small, set
close to the ceiling, with a crank that swung the frosted glass
away from the side of the building: she had stood on the toilet
to clip the antenna to the windowsill, running the wire down to
the transmitter itself.
She placed the transmitter on the porcelain lid of the toilet
tank and sat backwards on the commode to face it, her thighs
almost hugging the sculpted base. It was a small gray box with
a keyboard, a microphone and a square LCD screen. On the
screen was the faint image of a man.
"We recently heard from Kovac." The man's image was
refreshed once every second. It was like looking at a
succession of still photographs. As he took the cigarettes from
his inside pocket and stabbed one into his mouth, his
movements were jerky, erratic. "It appears that he has been
making substantial progress, which is more than I can say for
you." The quick spark of a lighter.
"I need time," said Haniver. "I can't compete with Kovac in the
city. Once we enter the jungle -- "
Her correspondent took a delicate drag of smoke: that is, she
saw the cigarette frozen midway to his lips, then a snapshot of
the inhalation, then a wreath of pixellated smoke encircling his
head. "Kovac has obtained satellite photos of the plantation at
the time of the accident, did you know that?" he asked. "He
has made arrangements to send them to us in Washington."
She inhaled sharply. "I didn't know."
A sour smile creased the man's wrinkled face. "I would advise
you to find these photos and examine them yourself. That is,
of course," he added, voice amused, "if you want to stay in the
game."
Haniver fumed silently. She knew when she was being toyed
with, when she was being strung along for someone else's
advantage. She knew that whatever new information she fed
them would be relayed to Kovac immediately, if only to keep
them both bitter and suspicious and ever more eager for the
prize. But it wasn't her place to complain. When you lived in
the museum of clear ideas, you got used to the company you
kept.
"I'll find the photographs, Mr. Spender," Haniver said.
Her hands gripped the edge of the toilet tank. The porcelain
was feverish to the touch.
"Believe me, I will...."
* * *
End of (6/19)
"The Tiger Complex" (7/19) by LoneGunGuy
http://members.aol.com/lonegunguy/x-files.html
* * *
Together at last.
The six members of the BFDP expedition team sat around a
conference table on the topmost floor of Fort Gambaro. The
pitted wooden tabletop was covered with a thick topsoil of
topographical maps, sketches and aerial photographs of the
plantation, itineraries, equipment lists, folders, transcripts.
Another inch or two and it would go to mulch, Haniver
thought.
She wondered where Kovac had hidden the satellite photos,
and how he was planning to transport them back to the States.
Kovac was not the sort of man to trust the Surinamese postal
service, she thought, especially if he had received the photos
from Aquino in some illegal transaction. The problem nagged
at her, made it difficult to focus on the task at hand. Her mind
kept wandering.
"I don't think we're dealing with an organic pathogen," Scully
was saying, the autopsy results spread before her. "These men
were running from something, something they could see or
feel or taste. Judging from the condition in which the victims
were found, I'm guessing that it was some kind of nerve agent.
We're sending samples back to the States for toxicology, but
the lethal dose may be too low for us to find anything
concrete. Haniver?"
It took a moment before Haniver realized that she was being
prompted. Eventually she agreed. "We're prescribing
pyridostigmine and diazepam tablets for all of us, starting
tomorrow. They'll help shield the brain from any immediate
dihabilitation. It isn't complete protection, but it should
increase the treatable interval by a minute or two."
"But it's a messy death," said Scully. "Vomiting, involuntary
defecation. The victims were in a lot of pain when they died."
At some point in the evening, someone had produced a bottle
of tequila. The thought of the next day's labors was enough to
dissuade most of them from drinking, but Mulder had a shot
in his hand, apparently forgotten, and Doyle was calmly
working his way towards inebriation. Currently the geneticist
was slumped across the table, gazing blearily at the bottle.
"Fuck."
"Have we got the necessary protective gear?" Baker asked. "I'm
talking about space suits, disinfection rigs, biohazard
detectors -- "
Kovac nodded. "Most of our equipment has been shipped into
the rain forest already. When we arrive at the Tirio village
tomorrow morning, the rafts and biosuits will be there. Under
ordinary circumstances, we would then take the river directly
to the plantation -- "
"But not tomorrow," Mulder said. "Tomorrow we're treating
this as a biochemical disaster area. Once we're half a mile
downstream, Scully and Haniver will disembark and sweep the
buildings. If the place is clean, we'll proceed from there."
Mulder finally seemed to notice the glass in his hand,
swallowing the alcohol at a gulp. "Jesus," he said, coughing
and clutching his throat.
Haniver ignored him. "I want the bodies shipped to the CDC in
Atlanta for further testing," she said to Kovac.
"Arrangements have already been made. The exception is
Albert DeFillips; he will be sent to Washington instead. His
estate has demanded an independent autopsy."
"I'm not sure I approve of that," Scully said.
"I do not blame you," replied Kovac. "But we have twelve
corpses and twelve potential wrongful-death lawsuits on our
hands. I have no choice but to cooperate with these families."
Doyle straightened up suddenly. "You are absolutely right. It's
a sacrifice that needs to be made. Like Joan of Arc, or those
fucking Greeks." He tried to pour himself another shot and
missed by several inches. "What were they called? The ones,
you know, who locked their wives in the citadel and set the
fucking place on fire. What did you say they were called?" He
was very drunk by now.
"The Lycians." There was perhaps the trace of a smile on
Kovac's face. "They were called the Lycians. Herodotus, Book I.
They bound themselves by terrible oaths and were slaughtered
by the Persians."
And that was all it took.
Haniver felt a twinge of revelation, as simple and sweet as the
act of plucking a lemon from a tree: and like that, she knew
where Kovac had hidden the photographs. Her mind buzzed
with excitement but she fixed her eyes on the slush of papers
scattered across the table, not looking at Kovac or anyone
else, desperate not to betray herself. She needed to get
downstairs. The thought hammered itself into her skull again
and again. She needed to get downstairs.
She counted to twenty and rose from her chair. "Excuse me,"
she said, leaving the table. There were sleeping bags and foam
pads lying on the floor around them: they would be spending
the night here. Her orange knapsack was tucked away beneath
a pile of other equipment. Her knife was inside the front
pocket. She would need the knife. She picked up her
knapsack, headed for the door.
"Where are you going?" Mulder asked, turning halfway around.
"To the bathroom," Haniver said, and then she was out.
* * *
Into the hallway, glancing quickly from side to side. The fort
was dark and apparently deserted but there were sounds
filtering up from the lower floors, voices and the distant clank
of moving objects. A ghostly murmur of activity beneath her
feet. She hoisted the knapsack onto her shoulders and headed
off.
Between the fourth and fifth floor Haniver ran into a couple of
Surinamese soldiers. She heard them coming up the stairs and
ducked out of the stairwell, into the hallway, moving on until
she was around the corner. Then she peeked into the corridor.
The two soldiers stood less than thirty feet away, dark-
skinned, their short-sleeved uniforms the color of the desert.
Rifles slung across their shoulders. They spoke softly in Dutch.
One of them laughed, showing his bad teeth.
She didn't know what the soldiers would do if they found her.
Probably nothing. But something about the situation bothered
her deeply. Haniver waited until the soldiers had turned and
gone down the hall, their boots clicking softly in the darkness.
Then she crept back into the stairwell, careful not to make any
noise as she descended.
There was light on the third floor.
Haniver hesitated. A heavy door led into the hallway, a bright
but somehow secret illumination shining through its
rectangular window. Haniver knew that she needed to reach
the basement before anyone saw her; but like the girl in the
nursery rhyme, she had to look.
She peered through the square of dusty glass. In the corridor
there were many soldiers, leaning against the clean white wall,
smoking, talking quietly among themselves. There were
packages lying at their feet -- and that was all she saw before
withdrawing and heading downstairs again, her heart
pounding. Something was happening. There was no doubt
about that.
Haniver allowed herself to wonder about it for the next two
flights. After that, the task at hand forced all other
considerations from her mind.
For now she stood before the door of the meat locker, the dull
surface of the steel shimmering in the darkness. She pulled the
pin and took the handle in both hands, turning it and pulling
back: then came the caress of freezing air on her forehead as
she stepped inside, shivering. It was colder than she
remembered. The bodies were stacked on the long tables, all
in a row, like stones lining a cemetery path. She could see her
breath.
She dropped her knapsack on the metal floor and unzipped
the front pocket. Lifted out the knife. Clipped the sheath to
her belt. Albert DeFillips was the first body on the far left,
according to the tags. She unzipped the body bag and looked
for a second time into those blank brown eyes, eyes like
marbles, their pupils sucked up and swallowed by dead irises.
Haniver glanced down and saw what she had expected to see.
The stitches on the corpse's belly had been disturbed. She
unsheathed her knife and cut the threads with the tip of the
blade, one by one, relishing the soft snap as she inserted the
point below each X-shaped loop and sliced upward. Softly the
flaps of skin spread apart. She donned a latex glove, folded the
flaps back -- they were triangular, limp, like sails that the wind
had abandoned -- and looked into the bloody mess of
DeFillips's insides.
She switched on a flashlight and peered into that darkened
cave, that rich clotted jungle of chaotic eviscera. Beneath the
limp sac of his stomach she found what she was looking for.
The flat metal case had been sealed inside a plastic bag,
nestled snugly among the tired organs and sweetmeats. She
took the bag between her forefinger and thumb, lifted it out.
Peeled off her bloodstained glove, let the box slide into the
palm of her hand. Opened it. Inside the box was a spool of
microfilm, coiled up like a tapeworm.
Haniver let out a long sigh of satisfaction. According to
Herodotus, the Persian general Harpagus had once sent a
secret message through enemy lines by sewing it up inside the
paunch of a dead hare. Kovac probably thought that no one
else read the Greek historians except for him, the arrogant
bastard --
Behind her, the door of the meat locker swung shut.
"Shit!" she cried, dropping her flashlight. It struck the floor.
The bulb broke in a burst of sparks and suddenly she was in
darkness, surrounded on all sides by the frozen dead. The
blackness was total. She couldn't see a goddamn thing. Her
breaths went short and panicky -- she tried to control it but
couldn't -- and the cold entered her lungs, stinging the back of
her throat. The fragile bones of her elbow and forearm felt
like they had gone to ice.
Haniver backed up slowly, feeling for the table. Her left hand
plunged into something clammy and wet. "Oh God," she
whispered. She was wrist-deep in the open gorge of DeFillips's
chest. The edge of his broken ribcage caught her wristwatch as
she yanked her hand away, the stickiness still on her
fingertips. Haniver wiped them on her jeans and stumbled
back to the door of the meat locker.
Here it was. Haniver ran her hands across its cold smooth
surface, felt droplets from her breath condense on the metal:
but even before she got there, she knew. There was no handle
on this side, no fingerholds. Nothing. The door was as
featureless as a mirror, or a frigid pond crusted over with ice.
She was trapped.
She tried to think. If she screamed now they might hear her.
There were ventilation ducts in the hallway just outside the
meat locker; she could bang against the door, shout, and
perhaps she would be found. But something inside her
blanched at the thought. She didn't want to be rescued like
this. Especially if the soldiers found her first. Perhaps if she
waited, she could find some other way out. The cold was bad,
but it wasn't unbearable; and there was enough oxygen here to
last for hours.
But then there were the dead. The frozen eyeless dead.
Somehow that was the worst part. Haniver had visions of the
cadavers rising from their wooden slabs, unzipping their body
bags from the inside. Twelve dead bodies. Jesus Christ. Here in
the darkness, almost anything seemed possible. She felt the
skin begin to crawl on the back of her neck, and for a second
it felt like cold fingers were brushing across her shoulders, the
dead rising calmly and casually with their clouded marbles for
eyes --
Haniver pocketed the microfilm and unsheathed her big knife.
That made her feel a little better. But the fear was still there. If
there was anything she hated, it was this feeling of weakness
and helplessness and irrational dread. It plagued her. It had
always plagued her.
"Inferno," she heard herself say.
While she was at Quantico, she had been taught how to deal
with fear. Fear came from the innermost core of the mind:
there was a mammalian brain built over an avian brain built
over a reptilian brain, and at the very center lurked a fishy
core of consciousness from which fear rose like a sulfurous
bubble from the bottom of the sea. To kill the fear, you had to
force yourself to be human. There was more than one way to
do this. Haniver recited poetry.
Now she searched her mind for something, anything.
Something structured, rhythmic. She knew that structure was
opposed to dread: dread arose from open spaces, from
infinity, from the vacuum whistling around your ears as you
stared into the abyss. Divide it up and parcel it out. Conquer
it. Haniver cleared her throat, felt the ice there, hesitantly
murmured some Dante against the dark: "Nel mezzo del
cammin di nostra vita," she said, "mi ritrovai per una selva
oscura, che la diritta via era smarrita -- "
And as if by some poetic incantation, there was a rasp of metal
against metal and the door of the meat locker swung out into
the hallway. Haniver stood there, astonished, the last syllable
dying on her lips. In the corridor, a shadow. A man. She
strained to see a rifle or uniform.
It was Mulder. When the light from the hallway illuminated her
face and he saw her standing among the bodies, he stepped
back in surprise. "Haniver? What are you doing here?"
Haniver tried to seem as unruffled as she could. "I might ask
you the same question," she said.
Mulder stepped into the freezer. "I don't think you're in a
position to trade accusations with me, Haniver." They locked
eyes for a moment, each daring the other to speak first.
Haniver was conscious of the knife in her hand, of the blood
on her clothes, of the particles of ice that were forming deep
inside her skull. Finally Mulder broke his own silence. "I'll be
honest with you," he said, "but only if you do me the same
courtesy."
"You're looking for something," she replied.
"So are you. Odds are we've got the same thing in mind."
"Try me."
Another silence. Then Mulder took a photograph from his
pocket. It was one of Baker's photos of the dead men. It was
Albert DeFillips. He pointed. "Look here." Haniver saw
something protruding from the breast pocket of the corpse. A
silver of red cardboard with a spiral binding. A notebook.
"It's his project diary," Mulder said. "Baker recognized it. He
claims he didn't touch anything when he ferried the bodies
back to Paramaribo, but we have a box upstairs with the
contents of DeFillips's pockets, and the notebook isn't there.
It's missing."
"You think the diary might be down here?"
"Unless you've already found it."
"I never saw or heard of that notebook until now," Haniver
said defensively.
"Is that right?" Mulder gestured to the body on his left.
"DeFillips looks a little worse for wear, wouldn't you say?
Looks like you've been doing some digging on your own time.
Tell me why."
"I needed to check something."
"And it isn't anything I need to know, is it?" When she didn't
say anything in response, Mulder shook his head. "You know,
Haniver, you haven't changed a goddamned bit since the
Academy. Jesus. You were always after the brass ring -- "
" -- and you weren't," Haniver said. "That was why we parted
company."
"I know. When I heard that you'd gone into chemical weapons,
I knew why. Terrorism detail is the most direct way to the top
of the Bureau." He paused. "Until that shit in Japan a few years
ago. I heard about that. They sent you there to investigate the
subway bombing. It could have been your big break. But you
stepped on some Japanese toes, clashed with the local police.
They filed a complaint and you've been working penny-ante
assignments ever since. Am I right?"
Haniver smiled bitterly. "Word gets around fast in the FBI. I
had a hunch you could hear everything from that basement
office."
"You went your way, I went mine," he said. "And now we meet
again in the rain forest."
"Funny how the world works, isn't it?"
"Yeah, it's funny. But I know why you're here. You're here
because you think this could turn into a high-profile case.
Twelve Americans, a terrorist attack. This could be your ticket
to the top floor." Mulder paused again. "I don't want you
working against me, Haniver. I know that the glory needs to be
divided in the end, but I'm not here to take anything from
your personal rising star. Do we understand each other? I need
your trust."
Trust. Standing there with her knife in one hand and the
square bulge of the microfilm pressing hard against her thigh,
Haniver reflected that few words were more devoid of
meaning under such circumstances as these. She remembered
what Doyle had said. You can't make honest war in the jungle.
Outside the museum of clear ideas, you never show your true
face to anyone.
"We all have our motivations," she said.
* * *
As a student at Georgetown, Haniver had worked in the
Smithsonian on weekends, and as a result she had a good
sense for the layout of most museums. She found a supply
closet on the first floor of Fort Gambaro and picked the lock
in less than thirty seconds. Inside she found what she was
looking for -- a microfilm viewer that clipped onto a modified
flashlight. She brought it upstairs, avoiding both Mulder and
the soldiers who still prowled the hallways.
The bathroom on the sixth floor. As before, she closed the
door and bolted it behind her.
With trembling fingers she pulled the metal box from her
pocket. Opened it. Took the spool of microfilm, threaded it
through the viewer and turned off the lights.
Haniver switched on the flashlight, projecting the satellite
photographs onto the faded yellow ceiling. They were rather
primitive monochrome photos but the resolution was good.
She adjusted the brightness. Here. The first picture had been
taken six days ago. Haniver could see the gray rectangles of
plantation buildings, the cinderblock barracks where the DOE
team had lived and worked. The copal trees were planted in an
orderly formation beyond the compound, the neat rows of
feedstock hemmed in by denser and more chaotic rain forest
on all sides.
Haniver sat down on the tiles, moved to the next picture. It
was dated three days ago, just before the distress call. Nothing
had changed. Impatient, she scrolled through the next six or
seven pictures. Apparently this was a selection from some
larger archive. Judging from the timestamps, the Surinamese
had been taking snapshots of the plantation every hour or so.
Now she reached the day of the catastrophe. The first three or
four pictures were, again, maddeningly monotonous. In one
photograph Haniver thought she could see bodies scattered on
the ground, but she wasn't sure.
Then she saw something. The building at the far end of the
compound was flattened. Misshapen. She remembered Baker's
testimony. The sixth cinderblock structure -- the
communications booth -- had been demolished by some
unknown force. Something big.
But it wasn't right. There weren't any roads leading through
the rain forest. If anything larger than a car had driven into
the plantation, there would have been signs of it. Uprooted
vegetation. A hairline change in albedo. But as Haniver
searched the satellite photos, running her eyes across the
shadings and contours, she realized that there was nothing of
the sort. The surrounding jungle was untouched. Which meant
that any attack on the plantation had to have come from the
air.
"The air," she whispered.
Haniver saw it.
On the northeast corner of the satellite photograph there was
a shadow, an elliptical gray patch slightly darker than the
surrounding forest. She scrolled to the next picture. An hour
later, the shadow was gone. She scrolled back and stared at
the image. It could have been almost anything, a cloud, a
surface irregularity on the lens of the satellite itself. But she
knew that it wasn't. She could see wings, something that could
have been a fuselage -- but it wasn't an airplane. She didn't
know what the hell it was. But she knew what it meant.
Just as the men were dying, just as the communications booth
was being destroyed, something had flown above the BFDP
plantation. Something extremely large. She could estimate its
size by comparing it with nearby landmarks. For a full minute
she calculated mentally, assuming that the object had been
flying close to canopy level when the snapshot was taken.
When she finally arrived at a figure, she couldn't believe it and
tried again, sitting there among the stale bathroom smells, the
flashlight hot in her hands. But no matter how many times
Haniver rechecked her work, she always came to the same
goddamned conclusion.
The object flying above the plantation had been at least one
hundred feet long.
Maybe more.
* * *
End of (7/19)
"The Tiger Complex" (8/19) by LoneGunGuy
http://members.aol.com/lonegunguy/x-files.html
* * *
Into the jungle. Their plane banked to one side and
approached the airstrip that missionaries had built many years
ago, a thin line of dirt slicing through the forest like a burn.
Since that morning they had flown nearly one hundred miles
over pasture, field, savannah and finally the knotted canopy of
the hylaea itself. The landscape was repetitive but fascinating:
rippling seas of green lay trussed by sinusoidal rivers,
gleaming like mercury in the sun. "A number of these rivers
have not yet been named," said Kovac, speaking loudly over
the thunder of the engine. "But I will not exaggerate. This
territory is not unknown. Do not imagine that you will be
exploring places that the white man has never seen. It has all
been charted and mapped for years."
"But don't discount the mystery," Baker said, his naturally soft
voice almost inaudible beneath the clatter of propellers. "I've
led botanical expeditions into this area before, and we found
new species every time. Only a bare fraction of the plant life in
Amazonia has been catalogued -- "
" -- and even less has been analyzed," added Scully. "The
chemical properties of ninety-eight percent of the jungle have
never been adequately tested. This is the greatest pharmacy in
the world, and we're cutting it down acre by acre."
"You think the cure for cancer is down there?" Haniver asked.
Scully touched the bridge of her nose, almost by reflex. "It
could very well be."
Now the canopy rushed up to meet them at an alarming rate.
Scully saw that the forest had been cleared in one place to
make a village, thatch and bamboo huts huddling around a
central common. The soil was a rich, vivid red: there were
gardens behind the houses, the ground planted thickly with
green vines and uniform tall stalks. Next to her, Doyle
groaned, his head in his hands. He had been complaining of a
hangover for most of the morning. His eyes were bloodshot
and dry.
Mulder peered through the window. "Isn't this where you saw
the glow?" he asked Baker. "Can you show me exactly where it
was?"
"I don't think I could," Baker said, scanning the horizon. "I was
in the village when the light appeared. I didn't have a very
good view of the rest of the rain forest. But Quassapelagh
might have a better idea."
"Quassapelagh?" Mulder pulled out his notebook. "How do you
spell that?"
"How the hell should I know? I told you about him," Baker
said. "He was out hunting when I saw the glow. From what I
gathered, he climbed a tree to get a better look at it."
"Will he be willing to talk?"
Baker shrugged. "If he wants to talk, he'll come to you. But if
he doesn't, I -- "
Before Baker could finish, the plane landed with a thud,
cutting him off and jolting everyone a few inches forward.
Doyle swore and clutched his temples. The airplane coasted
along the runway, bouncing, gritting dirt beneath its spinning
wheels.
Kovac, unruffled, checked the watch dangling by a chain from
his safari vest. "It is almost twelve," he announced, his head
bobbing as their plane jounced over another dip. "If all goes
according to schedule, we should be at the plantation by mid-
afternoon."
"These things rarely go according to schedule," Haniver
replied.
After another hundred yards they slid to a stop, the air around
them heavy with scarlet dust. The propeller slowed to a
standstill. The doors opened. And suddenly they were in the
jungle.
Stepping out, Scully immediately felt the sun beating down on
her bare head. The air smelled of loam. A bird was singing, its
voice throaty and mournful. Through the red haze she could
see the crowns of trees towering hundreds of feet above her,
branches hung with vines, orchids blooming in minor floral
explosion. There was an impression of gigantism and crushing
density, of life teeming and pressing forward and crowding
together with a relentless Gothic abandon that made her feel
like an insect.
"You feel it, don't you?" Mulder said, coming up beside her. "I
don't care how often this place has been charted and explored
and mapped, but Christ, there's something new here. It's so
obvious. Scully, we're so goddamned arrogant...."
"Excuse me?"
Mulder took her aside from the plane, lowering his voice. "I'm
talking about the human race, Scully." His face was concealed
by the clouds of dust but she knew that his eyes were
gleaming. "We've always assumed that alien visitors would be
primarily interested in our own species, that they would focus
their attention on human society. But why? I think that the
aliens might naturally gravitate towards the Amazon rain
forest."
She looked at him. "You think this? Since when?"
"Since two minutes ago. This rain forest has the highest
species richness of any imaginable ecosystem -- ninety
thousand species of plants, more animals than we could ever
hope to catalogue. Compare that to our average suburban
community, where all forms of life except for crabgrass and
housecats have been systematically weeded away. The aliens
are here, Scully. I can't imagine them turning aside from such
an incredible scientific prospect."
The dust cleared. Mulder was grinning.
Scully shook her head. "Sometimes I can't tell whether you're
joking or not."
"It varies from week to week," Mulder said.
They went back to the plane. Baker and Haniver had already
unloaded most of the equipment from the cargo hatch. There
were I-frame packs, biosensors, medical kits, machetes. They
laid them out on the ground like offerings to the trees looming
high above. The forest hugged the edge of the airstrip like a
curtain before a stage, a living veil masking some monstrous
holy of holies.
Doyle soaked a handkerchief with his canteen, folded it
carefully and placed it within the crown of his hat, for a
cooling pad. He squinted up at the sun. "We should go," he
said. "I want to be at that plantation before my head
explodes."
"You will be," said Kovac. He had been discussing something
with the pilot, a burly Creole, and now turned to the others.
"We should find the rafts ready at the riverside. But we also
need to retrieve the biosuits from the Tirio village."
Scully stepped forward. "I can do that."
"I'll come with you," Haniver said.
In the end Baker joined them both, saying that he wanted to
speak with Quassapelagh. It was a walk of several hundred
yards from their end of the airstrip to the village. They moved
slowly through the heat, trying to keep beneath the relative
shade of the treetops. In the open, the sun was merciless.
When they were halfway there, Baker removed his own floppy
straw hat and placed it on Scully's head; she smiled quizzically
at him, but was grateful and did not remove it.
Soon they drew within sight of the village. Perhaps a dozen
huts stood before them. Some were sturdy buildings with walls
of bamboo; others resembled brown tufts of thatch raised high
on spindly legs; the rest were barely lean-tos, freestanding
roofs with open sides. Most were deteriorating, crumbling,
many partially destroyed by fire or insects. "Not all of these
houses are the work of Tirios," Baker said. "In the old days,
the missionaries would gather hundreds of Indians into a big
village like this, regardless of tribal background. It made them
easier to convert."
"It's a ghost town," Haniver said, looking at the dry empty
husks. It looked as if a flock of enormous birds had nested
here before taking flight for the antipodes.
"So why did Quassapelagh stay?" asked Scully, trudging
alongside Baker.
"I was hoping you might be able to ask him yourself," Baker
said. "Usually he meets us when we land." He glanced from
side to side. "This worries me," he said, but did not elaborate.
They arrived at the storage hut. It was no more than a thicket
of palm leaves and dried grasses, bundled together into a
dome-shaped rotunda ten feet tall. Scully ducked her head and
went inside. The interior was far cooler than the surrounding
air: firewood, shovels, unfinished canoes, carved wooden
stools and miscellaneous bric-a-brac lay bundled together in
the darkness, cluttered but somehow redolent of a hidden
order. There was no dust on the bundles, and the thatch of the
walls and ceiling was clean-smelling and free of mold.
"I feel as if we're trespassing," said Haniver.
"Trespass is an unknown concept in this place," Baker replied.
He knelt in the middle of the hut. Before him stood a large
metal trunk covered with various seals and insignias. He broke
the seals and lifted the lid. Inside were six yellow biohazard
suits, neatly folded and velcroed into bundles complete with
boots, hoods, gloves, hoses, gas masks and respirator units. He
pinched the fabric of one of the suits between his finger and
thumb. It was thick rubberized nylon.
As they took the suits out of the trunk and set them on the
ground, Haniver happened to look up and see several bows
and arrows stuck into the thatch of the roof, like pins in a
pincushion. "Curare," she said.
"What?" asked Scully.
"These arrows. I wonder whether any of them are poisoned. I
just finished scanning a bunch of arrow-poison into the mass
spectrometer at Quantico, you know, so we'd have their
signatures on file. I did a lot of reading on the subject. It's
pretty lethal stuff."
"None of these arrows have curare on them," said Baker,
pulling one out of the roof and examining it. The arrow had a
short blunt head made from a fragment of bone. "You don't
leave poisoned arrows lying around where they can scratch
you by accident. I've hunted with Indians before. They carry
their arrowheads separately...."
He trailed off, looking up at the ceiling. Scully followed his
gaze. There was a damaged patch next to the arrows, a region
of the roof where the weave was messier than the rest of the
thatch. It was clear that something had been hanging there
very recently. As she watched, a few pieces of dried grass
drifted down.
"What are we looking at?" Scully asked.
No response. When she lowered her eyes again, she saw that
Baker was gone.
* * *
There were footprints in the red dust. Baker saw the clear
impression of five toes and a rounded heel on the ground just
beyond the threshold of the hut -- and suddenly he was off and
running, following the trail through the village, obeying some
instinct or intuition he could neither explain nor understand.
He knew that the markings were recent. Quassapelagh had
retrieved a bow and quiver of arrows from the storage hut
only a few minutes ago. From there, he had gone into the rain
forest. His footprints made a straight line for the trees.
Baker was a fast runner, and within ten seconds he had
followed the footsteps to the edge of the village. He passed
through the garden, moving through the seemingly random
rows of manioc and papaya and banana trees, searching in
vain for more marks on the ground. Another dozen paces and
he would be in the jungle. He knew that the trail would be
easier to follow there.
He squeezed through a spindly bamboo thicket and found
himself in the emerald depths of the forest. Monkeys
chattered overhead. Baker made his way through the dimness,
moving more slowly and carefully now: it was easy to lose
one's bearings here. The gray trunks of trees towered above
him like petrified stakes. The soil beneath his feet was mossy
and almost bare.
He took a deep breath.
Ever since their plane had landed, he had been keeping the
memories at bay: but now they crowded around him like
demons around St. Anthony. He had not anticipated how bad it
would be. For a moment it felt as if he were not at the Tirio
village at all, but thirty miles upstream, approaching the edge
of the plantation where twelve bodies waited in the boiling
rain....
He couldn't stop thinking of those arrows. Baker had been in
Quassapelagh's storage hut many times, could recognize the
different kinds of arrows he kept. The shafts tipped with a
blunt head of bone, for example, you used to hunt colorful
birds. The idea was to stun the birds without killing them. You
could cage them and trade them alive to Dutch merchants,
who sold them for pets, or pluck a few of their feathers and
set them free.
There were other arrows for other purposes. Some had big
lanceolate heads, for hunting tapirs and pacas; others were
crafted from bamboo, or the sharp front teeth of a peccary.
Each had its own designated place in the thatch of the roof.
But there was another kind of arrow of which Quassapelagh
rarely spoke. The shaft was long and trimmed with eagle
feathers, and the head was an isosceles triangle, razor-sharp,
painstakingly carved from what Baker recognized as a man's
thighbone. These arrows always hung separately, in a quiver of
their own -- and these were the ones that had been missing
from the storage hut.
"Quassapelagh," Baker said.
For there he was. The old Tirio sat on a rotten tree stump, eyes
closed, legs dangling from his perch. His seat was black and
twisted, stunted and eaten by rain: the tree had fallen long ago
and now only the stump remained, its roots like thick coiled
ropes. He seemed like an extension of the wood, so dark and
still did he sit. Baker was less than six feet away before he saw
him.
Quassapelagh was perhaps five feet tall, his face lined and
weary, his long hair the color of a raven's wings. Designs of
purple pigment spiraled up and down his legs. A red
breechcloth and beaded belt encircled his waist. In his left
hand he clutched a snakewood bow.
At his feet lay a jaguar.
It was a medium-sized beast of perhaps two hundred pounds,
its yellow hide spotted with orange and black. It was wounded
in three places. The arrow had entered through its right eye,
piercing its brain and exiting through the rear of its skull: the
Tirio were not known as the world's greatest archers for
nothing.
A deep incision ran across the cat's belly. Baker looked down
and felt his own bowels turn to ice. A tiny speckled forepaw
protruded from inside the jaguar's womb. It was a female, and
she had been pregnant with cubs.
A thin sliver of flesh had been removed from her back. Baker
saw that Quassapelagh's hands and mouth were bloody.
The old Indian opened his eyes. "I have eaten of her," he said.
Baker only stood there, the waves of shock rolling across his
body. He was no anthropologist but he knew that pregnant
animals were taboo in Tirio culture -- indeed, in almost every
culture. A nameless dread blossomed in his heart as he stared
at the dead animal and stammered: "W-Why did you eat of
her?"
Quassapelagh turned to face him. His eyes were cold. "Do you
sense the abyss between us, Baker?"
He did. For a long shivering moment the jungle seemed to
recede from him on all sides. He understood, as if for the first
time, the enormous difference between Quassapelagh's world
and his own. He stared at this man, this aging Tirio with whom
he had spoken so many times, sitting around a fire or hiking
through the rain forest: and for an instant the air between
them seemed troubled, as if a pane of frosted glass had slipped
across his field of vision.
The Tirio slid down from the stump, kneeled alongside the
dead jaguar. His wrinkled face was utterly unreadable. "In
ancient Egypt," he said, "it was so."
"What?"
"During the day of the pharaohs," Quassapelagh said
thoughtfully, "they were never allow to eat the flesh of the pig.
It was a taboo flesh, you understand? You were not permitted
to touch. Except for one night in the year, when they would
feast on the taboo animal; and on this night, they were require
to speak only the truth to one another. For to ingest what is
forbidden compels us to be honest." He fixed one of his black
eyes on Baker. "Are you honest with me?"
Baker cleared his throat. His heart was like a small frightened
animal in his chest. "I don't know what you're talking about,
Tamo," he said. Tamo was Tirio for grandfather.
"Hrumph," said the old man. He prodded the jaguar with the
end of his bow. "Two cubs inside the belly. It is an omen,
Baker. I have taste of taboo flesh, so I am compelled to be
straightforward with you." Quassapelagh rose, gestured to the
blackened stump at his right. "Sit down, my friend."
A few hesitant steps forward and Baker sat on the edge of the
stump. The wood was fragrant and slightly moist. Now he was
very close to the dead jaguar. He saw that the left eye of the
cat, the one that had not been pierced by the arrow, was half-
open. The emerald green iris sparkled even in death. "An
omen?" he asked.
Quassapelagh nodded. "Two cubs in the belly mean two deaths
in the world."
"Two deaths?" Baker repeated numbly. The unreality of this
situation was too much for him. He felt as if he were
sleepwalking. "What do you mean, two deaths?"
"There is pattern in events," said Quassapelagh. "Magic is
nothing more than attempt to understand this pattern. Why
did man believe you can see the future by cutting open some
beast and examining the entrail? Only because it is all part of
the greater pattern. You cast the yarrow sticks, and that is
pattern. You consult the stars, and that is pattern too."
Baker looked at the tiny paw poking out from between the
jaguar's haunches. The fur of the embryo was wet and matted
with amniotic fluid. He knew that jaguar cubs were born blind,
their eyes sewn shut. "We're heading back to the plantation
today," he heard himself say, as if from a great distance. "Are
you telling me that there will be two more deaths?"
"I tell you nothing. I went hunting for the jaguar, knowing that
I will receive message if I do so. Here is the message."
Quassapelagh indicated the unborn cubs with a flick of his
bow. "Lend whatever interpretation you will."
But the interpretation had already been decided. "I came back
to the jungle to make sure that no one else got hurt," said
Baker.
"Did you really?" asked the Tirio.
"Yes."
Instead of replying immediately, Quassapelagh regarded him in
silence. Baker was slightly uncomfortable under the scrutiny,
but bore it without complaint. The old man's eyes felt like a
tiny insect crawling along the inside of his skull. Baker was
very conscious of his broad tanned face, his beard.
Finally Quassapelagh seemed satisfied. He smiled. "It is good to
see you again, Baker," he said -- although his eyes still had that
strange coldness, and the smile did not touch the upper half of
his face. Quassapelagh slipped a hand into his breechcloth,
removed a small wooden knife. In the uncertain light, his smile
seemed to deepen. "I want you to do something for me. It may
seem strange, but it is a matter of importance. Or rather, I feel
it to be so."
Quassapelagh bent down over the carcass of the jaguar. The
body was still steaming. He took the stiff scratchy hide in his
hands and ripped it away from the back, the tendons snapping,
further exposing the place from which he had already removed
a strip of the animal's meat. The knife was made from a sliver
of bamboo, and it was very sharp. As Baker watched, he sliced
away a narrow piece of warm flesh, took it into his hands.
"You must eat," he said, extending the meat towards Baker.
A deep revulsion seemed to well up within his chest. "I can't
do that," Baker said.
"You must," Quassapelagh repeated, the blood dripping from
between his fingers. "I would not ask something so strange
unless I believed in it wholeheartedly. If you are returning to
your plantation, you step into danger of which there is no
word to describe. The jaguar tells us that lives will be lost. But
the jaguar is not correct necessarily. You came back to prevent
further suffering, if you say the truth. Then take this, and eat,
and you will have a piece of the jaguar within you."
Baker looked at the scrap of meat. Even at this distance, he
could sense the life coursing through it still: the cells would
not all be dead yet, for they did not understand that their life
had been taken away. He wondered how long it took for all the
cells in a dead man to grow silent. He remembered taking the
bodies into his arms, remembered bringing them down to the
river and tying them into the rafts, and knew in his heart that
even as the men went stiff and cold, part of them had still
been alive as he ferried them down the dark waters.
Outside himself, Baker took the jaguar flesh, like a
communion, and ate of it.
* * *
End of (8/19)
The Tiger Complex (9/19) by LoneGunGuy
http://members.aol.com/lonegunguy/x-files.html
* * *
On their way down to the river, Haniver turned to Scully. "Can
I ask you a question?"
The two of them hiked through the jungle with the biohazard
suits in their arms. The air around them felt curdled, almost
sweet, thick with mist and quivering with the sounds of
invisible animals.
"Go ahead," said Scully.
"Do you think the pathology of the dead researchers might be
consistent with curare poisoning?"
Looking around, Scully considered. The fog and trees formed a
sculpted wall like the narthex of a cathedral, the canopy
shattering the sunlight into shafts of amber. Only the tension
of the moment, she thought, kept the vegetation from
creeping forward and swallowing them alive.
"I don't think so," she said. "Both curare and nerve gases work
by suffocation, so there might be some superficial similarities;
but these deaths were far too violent to be the result of arrow-
poison. There was vomiting, involuntary urination and
defecation. In comparison, death by curare seems positively
peaceful."
"With regards to pure curare, you're right," Haniver said,
stepping around a tangled root buttress that rose suddenly in
her path. "But most tribes don't use curare alone. They have
traditional recipes with an active ingredient and a number of
admixtures, components that for religious or cultural reasons
are included in the poison along with the curare plant itself.
Tainting it. Strengthening it, supposedly. Most scientists
thought the admixtures were just hocus-pocus -- "
"Eye of newt, toe of frog...."
"Exactly. But some believe that these seemingly extraneous
ingredients may intensify or exacerbate the symptoms,
rendering the poison more potent. Deadlier." Haniver wiped
the sweat from her forehead. "Maybe the symptoms we saw
were the result of admixtures."
"What's your point?" Scully asked, struggling beneath the
weight of the suits.
"What if these men were killed by curare? What if the facility
was attacked by a hostile tribe of Indians?" Scully began to
object, but Haniver kept talking. "Think about it. When we did
the autopsies we weren't thinking in those terms. We were
examining the mucous membranes, looking for signs of an
atmospheric attack -- but we weren't checking for puncture
wounds, at least not specifically."
"You're saying we overlooked something?"
"I'm suggesting the possibility."
"Fine," said Scully, halting beneath a tree. "Let's rest for a
moment." She set the biosuits down, removed her hat. In the
distance, she could hear the crash and murmur of the
riverbank, the sound of the current lapping against stone. The
thin soil felt like muscle beneath her feet. She fished a rubber
band from her pocket, tied her hair back in a makeshift
ponytail.
Haniver placed her suits on the ground, leaned against the
smooth trunk of a tree. "You're wondering why a tribe might
want to attack the plantation," she said.
"The thought did occur to me."
"Relations between the indigenous Amazon cultures and our
intrusive white society have never been peaceful. I'm not
trying to force my own conclusions, you understand. This is
public knowledge."
"Public knowledge." Scully let the phrase fall between them
like a tennis ball.
"That's right. And if you and your partner weren't so busy
chasing aliens, you might have done some research and come
to the same conclusion." Haniver shook her head. "I'm sorry.
That was uncalled for. But you should know that it isn't many
years since the Sikiyana tribe in Brazil declared war on foreign
rubber tappers, killing many in the process -- "
"Because the rubber tappers burned their villages and
scattered their families," Scully said. "Did your research tell
you that? Before we left Washington I read every available
account of tribal violence in Amazonia from 1975 onward and
concluded there was no reason to suspect it in this case. So
don't assume that I didn't do my homework." Scully felt a
small grain of anger gathering behind her eyes. This had been
a test, she realized. If there was anything the past few years
had taught her to resent, it was being tested without her
knowledge.
Haniver bent down, picked up the biosuits again. "I stand
corrected," she said coolly. "But just because tension is buried
doesn't mean it won't occasionally erupt at certain times."
"Case in point," Scully said.
Haniver smiled weakly. "I'm sorry," she said again. "I'm just
trying to suggest a hypothesis. Which is more than anyone
else seems to have ventured thus far."
Scully picked up her suits, resumed her hike through the
forest. "It's too early for that."
"It's never too early," said Haniver, following close behind.
"The sooner you imagine your enemy, the sooner you can
defend yourself against him. These suits are a defense against
one kind of enemy. But they aren't arrow-proof."
"I suppose not."
They walked in silence for another minute. Then Scully
stepped through the dense undergrowth and found herself at
the riverside. The water was broad and black, the surface
misted with vapor and dotted with the translucent eyes of
four-eyed fish -- globes of jelly floating like periscopes above
the waterline. The sense of the river as a living creature was
very strong. It reminded Scully of a serpent, rippling in scaly
folds, reptilian current slithering along the bank.
Mulder and Doyle stood several hundred yards downstream,
packing supplies into the rafts. These dugout canoes were
perhaps fifteen feet in length, equipped with outboard motors
and orange nylon canopies for the cargo. The paddles had
been thrust into the sandy soil. Kovac leaned on one of the
oars, gazing into the river with an expression of rapt
awareness, as if he were trying to read his own future in the
eddies.
Scully was about to call to them when she was struck silent by
the muted roar of an engine high above. Leaning back, she saw
their plane take off from behind the treetops, disappearing
quickly into the burnished sky.
For an instant, the sense of isolation was overpowering. Scully
closed her eyes and felt the forest stretching around her for
millions upon millions of acres, luxuriant, gigantic and dark.
When she opened her eyes again, she saw that Mulder was
approaching her. He had stripped down to a T-shirt and
shorts, his hair plastered down with sweat, the beginnings of a
sunburn blooming on his nose. "Scully," he said, "this place is
amazing. I've been here less than an hour and already I'm
sensing something special. I should have brought my Kirlian
equipment, the auras here must be absolutely -- oh, shit."
Thirty yards away, he tripped. Scully almost laughed, but
checked it in time: you were always dangerously close to
losing your balance on this bank, your boots snagging
themselves on hidden stranglers or knotted growths of fungi.
In the forest itself, the struggle for sunlight kept undergrowth
to a minimum; but next to the river, everything flourished and
tangled together and multiplied.
Mulder bounced up again. "I'm all right. You see? Bioplasmic
energy must be off the chart here...."
Haniver leaned in, whispered. "He hasn't changed much, has
he?"
"This is one of his better days," Scully replied. But she had
caught a glimpse of the look in her partner's eyes, and realized
that he was playing the clown for a reason. She smiled. Mulder
sometimes exaggerated certain aspects of himself, bringing his
spookier side to the forefront as if daring others to
underestimate him; and from what she knew of Jenny Haniver,
Scully guessed that she might be just the type to make that
mistake.
The two women met Mulder halfway, the denseness of the
vegetation forcing them to waddle. When they were a dozen
feet apart he asked: "Where's Baker?"
"Good question," Haniver said. "He took off after we got to the
village. I'm guessing he went to look for Quassapelagh."
Mulder checked his watch. "I'll need to find them both," he
said. "Wait here." He turned away, heading for the jungle.
"Mulder, hold it." Scully tried to catch up with him, but she'd
only gone a few feet when the toe of her sneaker snagged on
something and she found herself tipping forward. She was
falling. Scully pinwheeled her arms, looked up, saw a tree
branch beckoning just above her head; she lunged for it,
succeeded only in snapping off a green twig with a bunch of
pale avocado flowers at one end. Finally she managed to steady
herself. Took a breath.
Looking up idly, she saw that the branch from which she had
broken the twig was covered with small brown ants. One fell
onto her shoulder; she flicked it away in disgust.
There was a brief pause, like the downbeat in a silent comedy.
Then a cracking sound -- and suddenly ants rained down on
Scully from all sides.
There was no time to breathe, no time to think; one moment
the air was clear and a millisecond later the world was filled
with crawling, biting darkness. Scully screamed, instinctively
squeezing her eyes shut and shielding her face, but it was too
late -- the ants were everywhere -- she felt them stinging and
squirming over her skin, vomiting milky liquid, the white-hot
pricks of their microscopic jaws digging into her skin and still
they cascaded down, millions upon millions of ants, their tiny
bodies forming a living maelstrom of pain that battered her
like fierce raindrops and buried her gasping beneath them --
Something collided with her body, pushing her to one side. She
was thrown off her feet, toppled, fell, and suddenly felt
freezing water rush up to meet her and cover her, the top of
the river closing over her head, plunging her into relief, fish
dashing away from her in fright -- Scully blew bubbles, felt the
ants slowly detach themselves from her skin, drifting away. A
pair of strong arms encircling her waist. She kicked, flung her
arms out. Drove towards the light. She surfaced, heaving and
sputtering, the sun painfully brilliant on her eyes.
Baker was treading water beside her, his hair wet against his
forehead. It was a long moment before either of them could
speak. "Are you all right?" he said.
Scully ducked her head beneath the water again, hoping for
the icy coolness to shock her back into some sort of sense.
She resurfaced, her hair in her face. "Yeah," she said -- and
became aware of a dozen stinging welts covering her forearms,
the back of her neck, her scalp. She touched them gingerly,
winced at the pain. The current had swept her down to where
the rafts were being loaded; the others stood in a cluster by
the riverbank, their faces etched with concern. She looked at
Baker. "Where the hell did you come from?"
"The jungle," he said. "I was about to join you when you
triggered the attack. Lucky for you, the ants were sluggish.
Otherwise you'd have been bitten even more badly."
"Fuck," said Scully. It was all she could manage.
"Yeah," Baker said amiably. "Let's get out of here before the
crocodiles see us." He saw the look on her face. "I'm kidding."
He took her by the shoulders and guided her gently back to
shore. About thirty seconds had passed since she had snatched
the bough from the tree.
* * *
"Ow," said Scully, hissing from between her teeth.
"Jesusfuckingchrist, ouch."
"Hold still," Baker said, brandishing a pair of tweezers. "The
ants left their jaws in your skin. If you leave them there, you'll
get infected."
Scully spread baking soda paste across her arms. "I'm the
fucking doctor here. Don't tell me about infection. Ow!"
They were back in the Tirio village. Scully sat on a wooden
stool beneath a roof of palm leaves; Baker knelt by her side.
For the occasion he'd donned a pair of horn-rimmed
spectacles, probing carefully with tweezers, examining the
bites. There were twelve in all. They contained formic acid,
and would continue to irritate for another day or so. "If
nothing else," he said, "you've learned the first law of survival
in the jungle. Don't trust anything -- not even the trees."
Scully smiled. Baker worked on her arm a while longer, then
began to check her scalp, running his fingers carefully through
her hair. After a few seconds had gone by, he said: "This is a
symbiotic relationship, you know."
Scully wondered whether this was Baker's idea of a come-on.
"Pardon me?"
"Between the tree and the ants. It's a rather lovely example of
co-evolution. The ants live in the hollow stem, feeding on
pockets of nectar. In return, they patrol the area, killing
insects and caterpillars, clipping intrusive plants. They even
attack cattle and humans that happen to come too close. The
odor sets them off."
"Tell them I was impressed." Scully looked up, her forehead
covered with white paste. Fifty yards away Mulder and
Quassapelagh were walking and talking at the edge of the
village. The old Tirio had been strolling alongside Baker when
the mishap with the ants had occurred; afterwards, he had
introduced himself politely to the others, and Mulder had been
instantly fascinated by Quassapelagh and his life story.
Now, as Quassapelagh listened, Mulder gestured in so graphic
a manner -- his hands swooping up into a parabola, then diving
back down again to describe a cylinder in the air before him, a
pillar, a beam -- that Scully had no difficulty in following their
conversation:
"Have you ever seen something in the sky?" Mulder asked.
"Something you couldn't explain?"
"There are many things I cannot explain. I believe that you and
I have this in common." The Tirio leaned on a knobby staff of
white wood. "There is one important difference, however," he
said. "I live among my mystery, but you must fly several
hundred kilometers to find them."
"Believe me," Mulder said, "I can find plenty of mystery
without leaving my own country."
"Maybe it is mysteries of a different order." Quassapelagh
nodded at the dense woven fabric of the rain forest, the lianas,
the convoluted webs of epiphytes. "You can explain little of
this, I bet. I do not mean to accuse you. But the Tirio had a
culture older than your cathedrals, and when the Tirio
accepted cattle farming and shopping centers and abandoned
the jungle, the wisdom lost in the process was older than your
Bible, and more frightening. Because it can never be written
down." He paused. "We might speak, for example, of the Mai
d'agoa."
"The what?"
"You see? To you, it is only words. To us, perhaps something
more. But listen. If our wisdom is older than yours, the light in
the treetops is older than our wisdom, you understand?
Perhaps older than the jungle itself."
Quassapelagh laid a hand on Mulder's shoulder. From another
man, it might have seemed a gesture of reassurance. From the
old Tirio, it was a warning. A judgment. "Three days ago, I have
seen twelve men return from the jungle. I do not need to tell
you that they were dead. Now you pursue the same path. Have
you considered this fact?"
"I always consider," said Mulder.
"And what did you conclude?"
"I don't know. By the time I concluded anything, I was already
in Suriname."
A thin smile creased Quassapelagh's face. "Tell me what
brought you here."
"It was a story," Mulder said, his hands in his pockets. "Thirty-
two years ago a group of Dutch businessmen went into the
jungle to survey the site of a proposed bauxite mine. These
guys may not have been native, but they were smart -- between
the six of them they had maybe one hundred years of
experience in the rain forest. While they were in the interior, a
strange light emerged from the treetops. The Ministry of the
Interior received sightings from as far away as Brazil."
He kicked a stone out of his path, saw the minor puff of dust it
made. "When the team didn't report back to Paramaribo on
schedule, a rescue party was organized. They found the six
missing men less than eighty miles from where this village
stands. They were all dead. It's a classic case of paranormal
homicide. For my entire life, I've been waiting for a chance to
solve this goddamned mystery."
Quassapelagh nodded. "And are you prepare to face it
yourself?"
"I don't plan on getting killed, if that's what you mean," said
Mulder.
"In that case, we shall meet again."
The two men halted. Mulder looked around and saw that they
were standing in a lush garden, unfenced, the leaves twisting
together above the ground. The soil was loose, powdery. It was
hard to tell where deliberate planting ended and the forest
began. To his eyes, the garden seemed a chaos of different
plants -- manioc, papayas, yams, tobacco, cashews, cotton,
squashes.
"Do you garden, Agent Mulder?" asked Quassapelagh.
"No. But I do own several houseplants in various stages of
death or senility."
"You should learn the Tirio way. We toss a handful of seeds
onto the earth, see if any sprouts come up. In the long run, it
is the only method that works."
"I sense a parable coming."
"You are correct. I apologize; when one lives alone for a long
time, one begins to speak in aphorism whenever one has
company. But listen. The good gardener is the one who
imitates nature. When I traveled as a youth, all the farms I saw
were divided into rows, columns. Men weeded and fenced off
their fields and sprayed their food with chemical substances
and never realized what made their crops so vulnerable in the
first place. For man cannot rebel against nature and survive
for long."
"And how am I supposed to survive?"
"Tend your garden. Guard against those who would corrupt.
This jungle will test you harshly, try to deceive you. In the rain
forest, death wears many faces. You must learn to recognize
them all."
Mulder shut his eyes. It was almost three o'clock. From behind
and to his left he heard Kovac calling, telling him to move
down to the river. Beyond these words he could hear other
noises. The cries of birds. The faintest crooning of wind
through the trees. When he opened his eyes again,
Quassapelagh had disappeared.
* * *
End of (9/19)
The Tiger Complex (10/19) by LoneGunGuy
http://members.aol.com/lonegunguy/x-files.html
* * *
Doyle dunked his canteen into the river, scooped it out and
poured the water slowly over his head. "Ahhh," he said,
shaking his damp hair. "Never let it be said that I don't enjoy
the simpler pleasures in life."
The droplets splattered Scully, who sat behind him with the
casefile clutched in one hand. "Watch it," she said, uncrossing
her legs. She set the folder onto her lap, glanced down
momentarily before repositioning herself in the canoe. Her
feet were propped against a molded plastic suitcase that lay
snugly in the bottom of the hull. She had been watching it
carefully ever since opening it by mistake after her accident
with the ants, searching blindly for a first-aid kit. Instead of
gauze and adhesive bandages, however, the case had contained
two sinister-looking assault rifles, disassembled and packed in
black polystyrene.
She had looked up quickly, seen Kovac staring at her. Their
gazes had locked. Without lowering her eyes, she had closed
the case again, latched it tightly. Put it away. But now she was
keeping track of its whereabouts at all times.
The two boats puttered down the river, motors murmuring
with the current. Haniver, Mulder and Kovac floated slightly
ahead of the others, Doyle, Scully and Baker close behind.
Kovac and Baker knelt in the rear of their respective canoes,
each holding a paddle as a rudder, steering with quick, expert
strokes.
They cut through the dark waters with a languorous ease,
moving past jungle on both sides. It was a landscape of
monumental size and complexity, eighty-foot trees cloaked in
mosses and epiphytes, fungi sprouting from the ground like
sweetmeats, lianas twining in the canopy. The more Scully
looked, the more intricate her surroundings became. At one
point Baker guided the canoe over to where a number of
bromeliads hung heavily over the water, carefully plucked a
thick-stemmed plant and showed Scully how a certain species
of tadpole -- found nowhere else in the world -- swam,
matured and completed its entire life cycle in the bowl-shaped
interior. "I know how it feels," she said.
Even the air seemed alive. Dragonflies buzzed above the water.
The sunlight was kaleidoscopic and blinding. Mulder and Doyle
had stripped to the waist an hour ago; the others apparently
knew better, for both pairs of exposed shoulders were soon
raw and peeling with sunburn. "I feel like a fried egg," Doyle
said to no one in particular. "In two hours you'll be able to
strip off my skin and make a sampler."
"Is that a promise?" asked Scully.
In the other boat, Haniver trailed her fingers in the river.
Three inches down, their tips became invisible. "Black water,"
she murmured to herself. "White soil. We're in poisonous
territory."
"What do you mean?" Mulder was fiddling idly with a deck of
cards, fanning it with a flick of his wrist, trying for a one-
handed shuffle.
"The poorer the dirt, the more dangerous the plants.
Amazonia has the most infertile soil in the world, but supports
a lush and diverse ecosystem. How? Hoarding. All the nutrients
and minerals are stored in the plants themselves -- and the
plants will fight to the death to protect themselves. That's why
they evolve defense compounds. It's a war zone."
Haniver flicked the water from her hands. "This area is the
worst of all. The soil is oligotrophic -- it's old, white, eroded
down from mountain ranges. It's about as nutritious as beach
sand. So the plants evolve more lethal defenses to make sure
their nutrients aren't stolen. That's why you never see insect-
eaten leaves in the rain forest. Even when leaves fall to the
ground, they're still so full of alkaloids and tannins and
cyanide compounds that the animals can't go near them; the
minerals are recycled back into surface roots almost
immediately. Meanwhile the toxins are leached out by rain and
flow down to the river. That's why the water is black. It's full
of poison."
Mulder listened to her speech in silence, then shook his head
in amusement. "You know, I hate to admit it, but I've missed
these little lectures of yours," he said. "Reggie Purdue once
told me that you were the most didactic split-tail he'd ever
known. I could understand what he meant."
"I remember. I had him sign a notarized statement to that
effect, and framed it and hung it in my first office. But you did
a good amount of lecturing yourself, if I recall. We needed a
moderator and stopwatch before we could have a normal
conversation." Haniver leaned back in the boat. "Those were
good times, Fox. Why haven't we spoken since?"
He shuffled the deck. "Because we hated each other's guts.
Remember that?"
"It was fun, though. You were the only one worth competing
against, really."
"Funny how we had to meet again in the jungle." He squared
the cards, tried for a bridge: but the deck burst beneath his
fingers, scattering everywhere, the ace of hearts and the queen
of diamonds pinwheeling upward and landing in the river.
They floated pathetically downstream to the other raft, where
Scully leaned over, fished them out of the water and shook
them dry.
Mulder realized that Haniver was eyeing him. When he turned
to her again, there was a gleam in her pupils that he didn't
like. He recognized that look, knew what was coming.
"I'll bet I solve this case before you do," Haniver said.
"We'll see about that," Mulder replied.
"Hold it." It was Kovac, his voice tense. Looking back, Mulder
saw that Baker had cut his engine and was drifting with the
current. Not taking his eyes from the other boat, Kovac did the
same. The silence was sudden, overwhelming. Even the birds
seemed dead in the trees. The only sound was the lapping of
water against the hull.
Kovac dipped his paddle into the river, edging the craft toward
the starboard bank. "Is this the place?"
Baker did not reply. He kept his eye on the edge of the river,
saw a sandy shelf jutting out of the jungle. Guided the canoe to
that spot and beached it. Climbed out. Took the bowline and
lashed it to a nearby tree. With Scully and Doyle rising slowly
and Kovac fighting the current to make it to shore, Baker
stepped several yards into the jungle, looked around -- and
only then did he speak.
"Yes," he said. "We're about half a mile away."
* * *
Scully began to unload the biohazard equipment, unzipping
two of the plastic envelopes and pulling out the hooded suits.
The rubbery fabric was slippery in her nervous hands. Her
heart was pounding but she didn't know why. It felt as if the
jungle was holding its breath. Beneath the canopy, where it
was marginally cooler, some stray whorls of mist still enhaloed
the broad trunks, muting the violent colors of the flowers and
draping the ground in gray fog.
The loose, sandy earth was warm but damp. The sky was
cloudy. This did not diminish the heat but stifled it, dampened
it, made it less dazzling and more palpable on the skin.
Haniver stepped onto the bank, squatted beside her. "Ready?"
Scully asked.
"Of course," Haniver said. But she was pale. "Does the forest
feel strange here, Scully?" she asked, looking around at the
trees. "Does it feel different to you?"
"Yeah."
"The air is wrong." Haniver paused, as if she were trying to
find an adequate analogy. "Once I worked on a homicide case
where four men had been walled up inside a church basement.
They had enough air, but no food or water. In the end, they ate
each other. Afterwards we took bleach and disinfected the
room, but you still could smell it. You could smell what had
happened there. That's what it feels like now." Haniver
shivered despite the heat. Removed her life jacket. "Okay, suit
me up first."
As the others watched in pensive silence, Haniver donned the
biohazard suit. It came in several pieces, first a loose jumpsuit,
its zipper sealed with velcro and an adhesive flap, then boots,
boot covers, heavy gloves. Bending down to pick up the
respirator, Haniver found that any physical exertion rendered
the suit suffocatingly hot. Perhaps an inch of air lay between
her skin and the impregnated paper lining. It soon rose to
sauna temperature. "Christ," she said, sweating. "I should have
gone into another line of work."
"We're not taking any chances," Scully replied, putting on her
own suit. She took a last swallow from her canteen, pulled the
hood down across her face, leaving only her eyes visible. Her
voice was muffled when she spoke. "This is a third-level
chemical weapons situation. Like it or not, the suit goes with
the job."
"That doesn't mean that the equipment isn't a pain in the ass. I
designed half of these suits myself -- I know what they're
meant to do -- but I'd still kill for a piece of ice."
Doyle, standing next to the boats, offered his own brand of
commiseration. "Look on the bright side, Haniver. Maybe
you'll sweat off some of those unsightly extra pounds."
Instead of responding, Haniver strapped on a communications
headset and tossed the receiver to Doyle. "Check the
reception," she said. "Am I coming in clear?"
Doyle fiddled with the knobs. "Yeah."
"Good." Haniver's voice buzzed through the radio. "Go fuck
yourself, then."
She opened a case, removed two gray devices like handheld
vacuum cleaners. Their snouts were blunt and triangular. An
indicator light on one end flashed green. "Know what these
are, Scully?" she asked.
"Electronic noses. I've used them before."
"They've been programmed with the molecular signatures of
two dozen lethal chemical compounds, blister agents, toxin
agents -- whatever we could think of. We had to guess. But if
any lethal substances are present above a few parts per
million, the light will flash red."
After all had been readied and their equipment had been
checked and double-checked, the women were ready to enter
the forest. Almost. Scully handed the electronic nose to
Mulder, then used both hands to secure the respirator unit
around her neck. Switched it on. A soft hissing filled the hood;
she took a breath, tasted warm, stale air. Her eyeholes fogged
up almost immediately.
Stepping forward, Mulder pulled the sidearm from his
shoulder holster and handed it to her. "Take it," he said. "Just
in case."
Scully took the pistol in her glove-clumsied grip. For one
moment, their fingertips brushed. "Here's hoping that I won't
need to use it," she replied.
"Here's hoping." Then Mulder turned to Haniver, his face
impossible to read. "Take care of yourself, Jenny. I wouldn't
want to lose you here in Suriname."
"I wouldn't want to give you the satisfaction," Haniver said,
smiling. She strapped her big knife to her side, ran through a
mental checklist. "Where are the auto-injectors?"
"Here." Kovac pressed a plastic syringe into the palm of her
hand. It was ribbed and cylindrical, a stout yellow tab jutting
from one end. "This is a Swedish model," he said. "It contains
HI-6 and atropine. If you suspect that you have been exposed
to a nerve agent, jam it into your thigh and squeeze the
trigger. It could save your life."
"Thanks," said Haniver. "Here's hoping we won't need to use
these, either."
And so she and Scully stepped beneath the trees. The four men
watched until the women had gone too far to be seen, the all-
encompassing dimness of the jungle gradually devouring their
rubber-suited bodies; afterwards, uneasy, they paced alongside
the canoes, pitching stones into the river, listening to the
radio, waiting for a sign.
It was the longest hike of Scully's life. Twenty feet in, she was
quite willing to turn back. The sweat trickled down her face
and neck, along the sides of her body. Whenever she tried to
wipe her goggles, they clouded over again before she could
take another six steps. The respirator weighed heavily on her
chest. Around her, the forest lay in primal darkness. Indistinct
shapes seemed to writhe just outside her field of vision. Her
hood and the breathing apparatus created a conch shell effect,
the air around her ears throbbing with murmurs of crinkling
fabric and latex grinding against latex. Her ant-bites itched.
Worst of all, she had to pee. Knowing that it was a nervous
reaction did not lessen the pressure on her bladder.
Then there was the thought of what they might be
approaching.
If Haniver had similar problems, she hid them well. Her eyes
were veiled, focusing on her feet as she and Scully trudged
onward. Conversation was almost impossible. Fifteen minutes
passed with only one brief exchange:
"Did you and Mulder ever date?"
"Yep."
Scully might have asked more, but was abruptly silenced by a
light tap against the top of her hood. Then another. Another.
Looking up, her first, irrational thought was of the ants -- but
then she saw the drops spattering in starbursts before her
eyes, the thick globules falling with tiny splashes to the
ground. She groaned inwardly. "It's raining," she said.
"And I thought this day couldn't get any worse," said Haniver,
the sound of her voice almost obliterated by the drumming of
the drops. "I'm worried that this will affect the readings."
"Could it be a problem?"
"Yes. Maybe. I don't know. The water won't hurt the noses, but
it might make trace chemicals more difficult to detect." She
trailed off, listening to someone on the headset. She nodded.
"I'll ask her. Scully, you feel like going further?"
Standing like an anthropomorphic slug beneath the rain that
now poured down in earnest, Scully said, "I'm not turning back
now."
"Good. Neither am I."
Now their progress had all the slimy frustration of a paralytic
dream. The water turned the eroded soil beneath their feet
into a kind of slush, the timid silt making footing unsure even
as they sank into the mire, forcing them to move even more
slowly than before. The storm had a suffocating physical
presence, thousands of tepid fingers striking their goggles and
ricocheting off in microdroplets and making it impossible to
see more than a few feet ahead.
Inside the suit, Scully could smell the sour tang of rubber. She
felt as if she were walking on the back of some predatory
beast, its flanks heaving beneath her: and suddenly the image
of Albert DeFillips came to mind, the dead man lying beneath
the copal trees, his pants full of shit, his lungs full of the black
mucus that had risen in his throat and choked him to death...
A chain-link fence loomed out of the fog with a ghostly
suddenness. Scully halted before it, her heart thudding.
Looking up, she saw a sign. Her eyeholes swimming with rain,
she was barely able to make it out, the red stenciled letters
running like blood in the rippling water: BIOFUELS FEEDSTOCK
DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM, they said.
And below that, in blue: UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF
ENERGY.
* * *
"We made it," Haniver said into her mouthpiece. "We're at the
fence. Over."
Her headpiece crackled as Kovac responded. "Good. Keep
going to your right and you should come to a swinging gate
chained with a padlock. Let us know when you arrive. Over."
Haniver turned to Scully and motioned for her to follow. The
other FBI agent was slow to respond, her eyes fixed on what lay
beyond the fence: row after row of smooth-limbed trees, serial
numbers carved into the trunks of each. Somber, uniformly
spaced. The brownish-gray bark of some had been peeled off
in rectangular strips, leaving exposed sections of lighter
cambium, as if the trees had been flayed alive. Copal. Trees of
heaven.
The gate stood fifty yards away. Walking parallel to the
plantation edge, her left hand brushing against the fence,
Haniver scanned the ground with the electronic nose. No
results yet. But she would find something sooner or later.
The downpour didn't concern her greatly. Despite the
apprehensions she had voiced to Scully, Haniver was aware
that rain's reputation for cleansing was greatly exaggerated.
There were fields in Europe, she knew, where pockets of
mustard and nerve gas from World War I could still be found,
occasionally killing cows that wandered too far out onto the
moor; the poison had lingered on throughout eighty years of
wind and rain and snow. These men had died only a few days
ago, making it probable that some deadly residue still
remained. Not even a tropical storm could change that fact.
At the same time, though, substances could still be sluiced
from place to place -- always downhill. For that reason, she
had requested and memorized a radiotopographical map of
the facility, shades of gray indicating elevations to the nearest
hundredth of an inch. Ground was always irregular. There
were always depressions, inclinations in the soil, places where
dissolved chemicals would collect. Haniver planned to sift
through these places with a fine sieve.
Knowing this didn't make their prospects any more certain,
however. There was no indication of what they might find.
Autopsies had revealed little of value; Baker had provided
nothing of importance, beyond a few photographs. This was
the first truly scientific inquiry into the situation. Meaning that
certain standards had to be upheld.
Haniver glanced behind her. "Scully. Remember to tread softly.
We're treating this as a crime scene."
"I'm aware of that," Scully said crossly. "But remember -- if
your nose flashes red, get the hell out of here."
"Which is what the reindeers said to Rudolph."
They were at the gate. Beyond the barrier stood concrete
buildings, metal roofs shrieking tinnily as raindrops coursed
over their corrugated surfaces. Beneath her feet, the ground
was gritty and soft. Haniver shifted uneasily in place and
announced their location. A moment later, Kovac's voice
buzzed over her earphones: "All right, open the padlock. The
combination is 13-37-39. Over."
Haniver reached for the dial, fumbled at it with her gloved
hands. It took two tries before she succeeded. The lock
undone, she removed it, unwound the chain and let it fall to
the mud with a dull clank. Lifted the hasp. Pushed the gate
open.
It yielded easily, its lower edge describing a shallow arc in the
soil; Haniver stepped back but the gate's momentum kept it
opening, yawning further inward until it collided, clanging,
with the inner side of the barrier. An obscene shiver went
through the fence. It made her jump. Haniver waited for her
nervousness to subside, but it did not. Instead, she thought of
DeFillips sinking into the dirt beneath the copal trees, the
emptiness of his face, his eyes without pupils -- and what they
might have seen just before their sight was blotted out forever.
But such thoughts accomplished nothing. Haniver knew this as
well as anyone.
Side by side, she and Scully entered the plantation.
* * *
End of (10/19)
The Tiger Complex (11/19) by LoneGunGuy
http://members.aol.com/lonegunguy/x-files.html
* * *
The first thing Haniver noticed was the quality of the light.
Despite the storm and the overcast sky, stepping from the
forest into the BFDP compound made an enormous difference
in the visual nature of her surroundings. With the canopy
removed, the perpetual twilight of the hylaea was replaced by
flat chalky luminescence. The turbulent darkness of the jungle
was one thing; the two-dimensional pallor of this plantation
was quite another.
The only spots of brightness were the small orange flags that
had been staked at several places in the soil. Under certain
circumstances, the gaudy squares of plastic might have
seemed cheerful. But Haniver knew their true significance, and
was chilled by it. Each flag indicated the spot where Baker had
found a dead body.
A trio of such markers clustered close together by her feet.
She'd seen the photographs, could match them with the tags
without difficulty. Here Baker had found the first corpses:
three men struggling toward the gate, cut down in mid-step by
some unseen force that had left them dead and convulsing as
they tried to flee. She knelt and swept the nose along the
ground. Nothing.
"All right," she said, turning to Scully. "We'll do this
systematically. First the buildings, then the surrounding area.
We've got two dormitories, a kitchen, a lab and refinery, the
nursery, the storage area and the communications shed. Take
your pick."
"I'll do lab, nursery and storage." Scully pointed in the
direction she planned to take. "Those three on the right. How
much time will it take to scan each?"
"I'd guess maybe ten minutes apiece. I'll meet you back here in
half an hour."
Scully lifted the pistol. "If I find a trace of anything suspicious,
I'll step outside and discharge a single round into the sky. That
will be our signal to evacuate as quickly as possible. Agreed?"
"Agreed."
The two women separated. There was a narrow gravel path
leading to the barracks where the BFDP researchers had lived
and worked; beyond the dormitories sat the demolished
communications shed, and beyond that the copal trees, their
solemn ranks extending for more than a mile into the
savannah. It was a fairly small plantation, Haniver realized.
Sweeping the entire compound would probably take less than
three hours.
Inside her hood, Baker's voice crackled over the radio.
"Haniver," he said. "I want you to describe everything you see.
Give a running commentary. Over."
Haniver complied. "I'm approaching the living quarters,
checking the path along the way," she said, speaking in a low
monotone. "Readings so far have been negative. No sign of any
toxic substance. The rain is coming down hard, same as where
you are, I assume."
"We're huddled under the canoe. Over."
"I'm at the first building. Give me a second to check the
exterior." She lifted the biosensor, scanned the wall before
her. Found nothing. Moving around the periphery, she
repeated her search and came to the same conclusion at all
four sides, the quartet of sweeps taking her five minutes all
told. "Results still negative. I'm going in."
The building was forty feet long, windows set into the
cinderblocks every ten feet. Pressing her face-shield against
the nearest pane of glass and blocking the light with her free
hand, she was able to make out the interior. "I'm looking
through the window. I can see the desk, a bed. A Magritte
poster on the wall. 'Natural Graces,' the caption says."
"That was Lifton's room," said Baker. "Keep talking."
"I'm at the door. It's unlocked. Correction: there is no lock."
She frowned and moved inside, stepping over the low concrete
stoop and across the threshold. The sound of rain echoed
resoundingly, magnified by the roof above. "I'm indoors.
There's a central corridor stretching in front of me. Three
doors on either side of the hall. The walls seem very thin."
Haniver saw a light switch, tried it. "No electricity."
"We'll need to get the generator restarted ourselves. How's the
ambient light?"
"Dim. I can see all right, though. There's a window at the far
end of the hall. The interior appears undamaged. All the doors
are closed." Haniver reached out, tried one knob, another.
"Locked, too."
"Check the floor. I left the keys in the hallway."
"Got it. Unlocking door number one." Haniver stepped inside
the first room, quickly took in the monastic furnishings, the
unmade bed, the small fan, the desk cluttered with papers. A
lathered razor sat on the windowsill. A pair of pants lay
draped over the back of a chair. "It's cramped, maybe eight by
twelve feet. No sign of evacuation. I'd say that he was planning
to return soon." She scanned the room. The closet. "It's clean.
I'm moving on."
The next cubicle was unfurnished, but she checked the floor
and bare walls anyway, again coming up with nothing. The fear
in her stomach dissolved a little. She moved to the next room.
Nothing. Across the hall. Nothing. The bathrooms,
claustrophobic and green, with chemical toilets. Nothing. The
fear was almost entirely gone. She'd only seen a fraction of the
compound, but results thus far were enough to make her
doubt the presence of anything deadly.
When the fifth room yielded a similarly innocuous reading, her
nervous anticipation was supplanted by a strange annoyance.
If there were no poisons here, there was nothing for her to
report, nothing for her to analyze; and thus she was worse
than useless. For the first time, she allowed herself to wonder
what would happen if she came back empty-handed. She didn't
think that the men she was dealing with would be especially
forgiving. If she failed to bring something back to Washington,
her career could be fucked forever.
Haniver moved into the last room. Here at last something was
different: the window was open. Rain blew inside in periodic
gusts, dripping down the desk and soaking the thin carpet
beneath. An open book beneath the sill was already
waterlogged, its pages bloated with moisture. Haniver stepped
inside. The rug squished under her feet. She was about to shut
the window before thinking better of it. "It's a crime scene,"
she said to herself. "Tread softly."
"What was that?" Baker asked over the radio.
"Uh, I'm in the fourth room. It's pretty wet in here. Some
books, some folded garments on the bed. Not much else. I'll
just sniff for hazardous substances and move on." Haniver
swept the electronic nose across the ceiling, the walls, the bed,
the desk, reacting without surprise as the light at the tip of the
device remained stubbornly green. She was about to leave
when she remembered the closet. Turned back. Saw that the
closet door was slightly ajar.
She opened it.
A deformed human child sat inside. Its wrinkled face was red,
its fanged mouth dripping with blood. It rose, fixed two great
rheumy eyes on her, and shrieked.
Haniver shrieked back. She stumbled backwards, hands before
her face, striking her head against the wall as the hideous child
leapt with frightening agility onto the desk, scattering papers
and knocking the sodden book to the floor. It was coming for
her. No, wait -- she tried to regain control -- no, it was
climbing onto the windowsill. Baring yellowed fangs, it crawled
partway outside, howled at her once more, and was gone
before she could recover her senses.
"...happened?" Mulder's voice was buzzing through her
headphones. "Jenny? Are you all right?"
A second passed before Haniver was able to respond. Her right
hand clutched the biosensor in a white-knuckled grip, her
fingernails digging into her palm through the gloves. She
remembered a line of Dante. Forced herself to relax.
"A monkey," she finally managed. "Holy Jesus Christ. It was
only a monkey."
Doyle's voice came faintly over the headset: "Must have been
some monkey."
"Fuck you, Doyle." Haniver straightened up, checked her suit
for rips or tears. "It was in the fucking closet. Jesus." She
groped for the closet door, opened it again. In the corner was
a half-eaten piece of fruit, red and dripping juice. The same
liquid she'd seen around the monkey's mouth. Not blood,
juice. She'd simply surprised a bald-faced silver monkey that
had been eating its lunch while taking convenient refuge from
the rain. Nothing strange or disturbing.
"I hate this place," she said.
Baker seemed impressed when he heard the description. "Bald
face and silver fur? Sounds like a uakari -- very rare species.
You're lucky to have seen one."
"I'm thrilled to know that." Haniver paused, caught her breath.
"Actually, it's a good omen. Primates and humans have similar
metabolisms; nerve agents affect us in the same way. If
monkeys can live here safely, it's a safe bet that whatever
killed those men is long gone."
A crackle of static, then Kovac's voice. "Be as it may, I still
want you to go over the rest of the compound."
"Right," Haniver said, stepping back into the hallway and
shutting the door behind her. Evaluating things. Her knees still
trembled slightly; her head still hurt where she'd bumped it
against the wall. The pain made her irritable, but the memory
of the fear was worse. She didn't like to be afraid, didn't like
to lose control of her emotions. Worst of all was the fact that
the others had been indirect witness to her failing.
Now, grimly, Haniver swore to never panic again as she just
had. To keep her weaker instincts in check. To show the
others just how cold-hearted a professional she could be.
Resolution made, Haniver said: "I'll get started on the other
buildings now. It should be about twenty more minutes before
Scully and I are finished." She paused. "But I think I already
know what we're going to find."
* * *
Nothing.
The plantation was clean. Even after Scully and Haniver had
radioed for the men to join them, even after Mulder and Doyle
and Kovac and Baker had brought the equipment and suited up
and gone over the trees and buildings and surrounding
savannah inch by inch, section by section, not a molecule of
any lethal substance could be found -- not in the runoff, not in
low-lying areas, not indoors, not outdoors. Even when the rain
stopped and the noses were recalibrated -- nothing.
Haniver pretended relief, but in reality she was bitterly
disappointed. She was down to the zero again. Kovac didn't say
anything, but she could see the sour satisfaction in his face;
briefly she suspected that he had found something and hadn't
told the others, so she went back in secret and swept his
sector of the plantation herself, waiting for the light to flash
red.
But she had come up empty. And now Haniver wasn't sure
what to do next.
There was still her theory about the curare, Haniver reminded
herself. It was less than spectacular, true, but at least it was
something concrete, something to offer the goons in
Washington: the best poisons were natural ones, she would
remind them, and the best goddamned neurotoxin the military
ever found was the venom of the blue-ringed octopus -- so
why should curare be any less useful?
So she spent the rest of the day searching the outer regions of
the plantation for signs of Indian presence, looking for vines
and shrubs that might be used to make poison, for the telltale
remains of campfires or lean-tos or anything else that might
buttress her explanation of the disaster. But the surrounding
forest was maddeningly untouched. If Indians had visited the
area in the past few days, her eyes were too unskilled to see it.
Baker might be able to tell, but Haniver wasn't ready to recruit
Baker just yet.
It was late at night when Haniver finally gave up, having
unearthed nothing but more frustration. There was no sign of
any human presence in the jungle. And then there was that
photograph. That satellite image with the strange dark blur in
the northeast corner. Haniver still didn't know what to make
of that.
But when it was dark and she knew that she was alone, she set
up her video transmitter and beamed a message across the
ocean, explaining the situation to her contact as he lit a
cigarette and looked at her with his strange dead eyes.
In the end, he suggested that she consult Mulder.
* * *
Other members of the team spent the day in similarly insular
pursuits. After restarting the generator -- which burned copal
oil for fuel -- and checking the electricity throughout the
camp, Baker wandered the compound in a state of moody
introspection, eyes veiled and thoughtful as he examined the
orange flags, remembering each victim, each stiffened body in
his arms. In less than an hour he had made a complete circuit
of the markers, as if he were retracing the stations of the
Cross.
"I'm waiting for something," he said.
"What do you mean?" asked Scully. She had joined him a few
minutes ago, taking samples of the soil, labeling the vials and
sliding them into her pocket: soon the tubes would go into the
centrifuge, spinning to fraction out their components,
separating silt from sediment and perhaps leaving a few grains
of something deadly at the bottom of each.
"I'm not sure what I mean," Baker said, his voice more
bemused than sad. "Back when I was in Paramaribo, whenever I
thought about coming back to the plantation, I would get the
shakes. I was convinced that when I finally got here again, I
would break down -- that I would see these flags or someone's
pipe on the windowsill and start tearing my hair out. But that
hasn't happened yet. It's strange."
"It isn't so strange."
"Do you think I'm repressed?"
"Not necessarily." Scully spooned up a gram of dust. "There
have been times when I've returned to places where something
terrible happened in the past, expecting the dead to rise, the
memories to start flooding back. But usually the flood doesn't
come. Not even a tingle." She labeled the tube with a felt-tip
pen, pocketed it. "A place is just a place. The only ghosts are
the ones we bring with us."
"Do you really believe that?"
Scully rose. "If there's one thing I've learned, it's that houses
aren't haunted; people are haunted."
"Did the FBI teach you that?"
"No, I read it in a paperback."
Baker smiled but didn't reply. He could still feel the lump of
jaguar's flesh in his chest, as if it had lodged somewhere
around his heart and refused to descend any further. He had
not eaten much of anything since then, and the taste was still
in his mouth: the fierce dark tang of the meat, the blood like
liquid copper. Baker wondered briefly if he had gone insane.
Certainly that had been an insane act, the blood on his teeth,
kneeling alongside that weathered stump with the dead cat
before him.
And yet the flesh of the jaguar seemed to have done
something. Baker looked at Scully and asked himself whether
she would understand. He liked Scully, was even attracted to
her on some level, but concluded that she was probably not
the sort of person in whom he could confide. She would worry
about the feline immunodeficiency virus, insist that he take
some antibiotics: which, he admitted to himself, might not be
such a bad idea under the circumstances....
Baker stopped. Doyle was sprinting down the gravel path, hand
outstretched, carrying a tiny object in his open palm. He wore
a strange pair of goggles, his eyes swimming behind thick
lenses.
He slid to a halt before them, sides heaving. "Check this out,
Kovac," he said.
"I'm Baker."
Doyle raised his goggles. "Oh, hello. I can't see a goddamned
thing with these lenses, you understand." He extended his
hand again. "Check it out anyway."
Scully examined the small brown lump. "It's a chrysalis."
"You're goddamned right it's a chrysalis," he said. " And you
know what that means? It means we've got lepidoptera
invading the plantation." He fumed, turned to Baker. "I told
you the fucking pesticides wouldn't work."
"These butterflies began to infest the trees last week," Baker
explained to Scully. "That's why I was heading to Paramaribo
when the accident happened." He took the chrysalide into his
own hand, felt its dryness, its insubstantiality. "Do you think
this could be an allelochemical problem?" he asked Doyle,
bracing for the explosion he knew would follow.
"Shut up," Doyle said. "All right? Just do me a favor and shut
the fuck up."
"It was an innocent question."
"You know the answer. This can't be an allelochemic, because
if it is, we're all fucked for life." Doyle took back the chrysalis.
"I'm dealing with this invasion myself. Let these bastards build
their day-care centers all over my trees. I'll kill 'em all, and let
God sort them out." He gave a mock salute and marched away.
When Doyle was out of range, Baker said, "He gets a little
tense sometimes."
"I've noticed," Scully said. A short pause. "What the hell was
that about?"
"It's an investment thing. If the infestation is due to an
allelochemical deficiency, the DOE could scrap this entire
project."
"I'm not sure I understand."
"It's a bioengineering problem," Baker explained. "When you
tinker with the genetics of an organism, like we did with the
copal trees, you always get some random side effects that you
can't predict."
"Like what?"
"Well, plants defend themselves against their enemies using
allelochemics, byproducts of metabolic processes that end up
stored in cellular tissue. Usually these are just random
molecules that don't do anything. But occasionally they'll have
some defensive value, something in their properties that kills
ants or butterflies, for example. So the plant survives and
passes the allelochemic on to its offspring. It's an elegant
example of evolution at work."
Scully began to head towards the next orange flag. "So you're
saying that these trees may lack a defense compound."
"Exactly. There's a chance that when we modified the trees to
produce higher levels of hydrocarbons, we crippled their
ability to produce an allelochemic that protected them against
certain insects. Butterflies which couldn't lay eggs on copal
trees in the wild can now devour the leaves to their hearts'
content."
"And Doyle is pissed off."
"For good reason. There's no way we'll be able to sell this
technology to Brazil if an invasion of butterflies is enough to
bring production to a halt. People are looking for a dependable
energy source, not something that goes to hell every time an
insect swarm comes along."
Scully knelt beside the final flag. "So if this is a real problem,
what happens?"
"We start again, I guess. It doesn't matter much to me -- I've
got no personal stake in the success or failure of this project --
but Doyle wants to retire before his thirtieth birthday, and
BFDP is his golden ticket. If it craps out because of a few
butterflies, he'll have lost at least a million dollars, maybe
more."
"Jesus," said Scully. "The past few days must have been hard
on him."
Baker knelt alongside her. "They've been hard on all of us," he
said.
Scully leaned down to retrieve one last sample of dust; and as
she did, Baker caught a glimpse of the back of her neck. The
red bites were still there. He had suffered a few of these welts
himself when he ran beneath the hail of ants and pushed Scully
into the river; and for the first time, Baker asked himself what
had compelled him to do that. The act seemed to have risen
from outside his own courageousness, or lack of it. He
realized now that there had been no choice in the matter.
Perhaps the jaguar's flesh had done something after all.
* * *
End of (11/19)
The Tiger Complex (12/19) by LoneGunGuy
http://members.aol.com/lonegunguy/x-files.html
* * *
Night descended upon the rain forest. A chorus of flutelike
whistles heralded the darkness, swelling voice by voice until
the entire jungle filled with song. "It is the great tinamou,"
Kovac said, listening raptly to the music. "Arguably the
homeliest bird in the world. But at sunset it sings like an angel.
One bird calls and soon others respond. So for a short time
their loneliness is broken."
At Mulder's insistence, the team prepared to sleep only in
rooms that had not been occupied before, thus avoiding
contamination of the evidence. Only four cubicles were
available. After some wheeling and dealing, Haniver and Scully
were given their own quarters, with the men pairing up
separately -- Mulder and Doyle, Baker and Kovac. There were
hooks in the walls from which hammocks could be slung.
They flung open the windows and turned on the fans, but the
heat remained almost unbearable. The men stripped down to
their shorts. Mulder opted to wear his shoulder holster to bed;
it chafed against his burnt skin. He tried to sleep, but his mind
remained abuzz with the problems that the day had presented.
He lay sweating, listening to the noises of the night. Tinamous.
The high chatter of monkeys.
Doyle said something. Mulder stirred and groaned to himself.
"What's that?"
The geneticist's soft voice came spiraling out of the darkness.
"Truth or dare," said Doyle.
"I always pick truth."
"Somehow that doesn't surprise me. Let me get right to the
point: I want you to level with me, man to man, with none of
the doubletalk bullshit I get from the others. You're here for a
reason, aren't you?"
Mulder opened his eyes, stared up at the ceiling. "We're all
here for a reason."
"I want you to be straight with me. Don't think I don't know
your reputation. I've been talking with Haniver, and she and I
agree that you wouldn't be here unless you thought that
something pretty fucking strange had gone down in the rain
forest. So what is it?"
"Listen, whatever Haniver told you -- "
"Forget what Haniver told me, man. If you think I give a shit
about how crazy your ideas sound, you're wrong. I'll go quid
pro quo. Tell me something nuts and I'll top it."
Mulder rolled over onto his side and said it. "I have a hunch
that the BFDP researchers may have been killed by
extraterrestrials conducting some kind of experiment in the
jungle."
A long silence.
"Shit," said Doyle. "I can't compete with that."
Mulder was groping around for something to throw when
Doyle spoke again. "But hey, I admire you for not being
bashful about it. At least you come right out and say what's on
your mind. That's more than most people can manage. I mean,
fuck it. I don't represent myself with one hundred percent
honesty -- you can't get ahead in this world without telling a
shitload of lies -- but I respect those who do."
"You sound like a romantic."
"I am a romantic. Can't you tell?" Doyle folded his arms behind
his head and leaned back into his hammock's springy mesh.
"You want to hear my story?"
"What story?"
"Quid pro quo, remember? Let's put our fucking cards on the
table and see if you're crazier than I am." He launched into the
story. "This happened maybe three years ago. It was a lousy
night. I'd gotten drunk out of my fucking mind because of
some girl and I was wandering the streets. I staggered into a
movie theater, ended up in the front row. I just needed
someplace to rest. But they were showing this really fucked up
silent film, a movie about Joan of Arc -- "
"Wait -- what?" Mulder asked, unclear about where Doyle's
story was headed.
"It was the creepiest thing I'd ever seen. Boring as hell, full of
camera angles and all kinds of pretentious shit. But something
about this woman got to me. The actress playing Joan. She
wasn't pretty, she looked like a ten-year-old, but something
about her eyes hit me hard. I wanted to climb up on the screen
and take her in my arms and comfort her. After the movie was
over I sat through it for a second time, just looking at her.
Later I found that she was an Italian actress who had been dead
for fifty years -- she only made this one movie, for chrissake --
but I fell in love with her anyway. I fell in love with a dead
woman on a movie screen." He was silent for a moment. "So
what do you think?"
"I think we should call it a draw," Mulder said.
A knock prevented Doyle from responding. The two men
looked at each other for a moment; then Doyle leapt down
from his hammock, strode barefootedly to the door and
opened it. A lone figure stood silhouetted in the hallway. It was
Haniver. She had a flashlight in her right hand. There was an
odd plastic attachment covering the lens.
"Hello," said Doyle.
"Hello," Haniver said. "I've got something to show you."
They viewed the satellite photos in silence. Haniver projected
them onto the darkened wall, scrolling through the microfilm
frame by frame until the final photograph shone before their
eyes: Mulder stared at the shadowy patch above the northeast
corner of the plantation and felt a strange sense of vertigo
invade his body, as if he were falling into that blackness.
Because something had been flying above the plantation.
"Where did you get these?" Mulder finally asked.
"It doesn't matter," said Haniver. "Just tell me what you think
this shape is."
"You already know what I think."
"The shadow of an alien spacecraft?" Haniver asked. "Fine.
Let's run with it."
"What?" said Doyle.
Haniver clicked off the flashlight, plunging the room into
complete darkness. "Listen, right now I'm willing to accept any
hypothesis, no matter how absurd it may seem. I've got no
ideological scruples to maintain. I just want to solve this case."
"That's a noble sentiment," Mulder said.
Even as he said this, Mulder heard a thumping sound coming
from the floor. He realized that Haniver was tapping her foot
against the rug in impatience. "The hell with noble sentiment,"
she said. "I'm trying to close the books on a multiple homicide
that seems to have everyone bewildered, except for you. If I
need to take a walk on the spooky side to conclude this
investigation, I will."
Her disembodied voice was tense and all business. This wasn't
right. Haniver was still tapping her foot. "Let's cut to the
chase," Mulder said. "What do you want from me?"
"I want you to work with me, to trust me." Haniver was still
tapping her foot. "This case is too important for us to grope
separately towards the finish line. I share my evidence with
you, and I expect you to reciprocate." Suddenly she turned to
Doyle. "Please stop tapping your goddamned foot -- it's driving
me insane...."
"Me?" Doyle's voice sounded confused. "Mulder's doing it, for
Christ's sake."
Mulder froze. The rapping sound continued, growing more
relentless in the silence. A droplet of sweat trickled down the
side of his face. "Uh-oh," he said.
Haniver stood slowly. She extended a hand, searching blindly
for the light switch. Found it. Flipped it up. The fluorescent
tubes flickered, blinked, then flared brightly, etching the
details of the room into stark relief.
What they revealed turned Mulder's blood to ice.
A snake lay coiled in the middle of the floor. The fer-de-lance
was nearly four feet long, a glistening pattern of black and
brown diamonds cascading across its narrow back. It thumped
its tail against the carpet, dully, again and again, as if it were
pounding out the bossa-nova rhythm to a song only it could
hear: Tap. Tap. Tap. Its eyes were slits. When it opened its
mouth, Mulder could see two great fangs, rows of smaller
teeth, pink tongue flicking in and out to taste the air.
Mulder reached for his gun. Haniver saw the movement. "No.
You won't be able to get a clean shot." She glanced at Doyle,
saw him backing into a corner, his face white. Looked down
and saw a blanket at her feet. The open window. The snake.
When it bit you, its venom corroded your blood vessels and
made your flesh rot. Necrosis. Instant decomposition around
the wound. Without antivenin you were as good as dead.
Haniver remembered the monkey, remembered losing control,
remembered her own fear and humiliation: and knew what she
had to do.
Gritting her teeth, Haniver bent down and took the two
nearest corners of the blanket into her hands. Moving
cautiously toward the snake, which still lay in the middle of
the room, perhaps confused or blinded by the light, Haniver
held her breath, crept forward until she stood directly above
the fer-de-lance -- and flung the blanket across it. It exploded
in a rage of hissing and spitting, wriggling madly, but she
seized it through the fabric, felt it spasming, its lithe body
squirming obscenely in her arms. She rushed across the room
with the hideous bundle, ran to the window and threw the
snake outside, blanket and all.
That was all it took. Haniver closed the window. She was
trembling all over.
"I hate this place," she said.
Without thinking, Mulder stepped forward and put his arms
around her. He was shaking even harder than she was. He felt
the tremor in his voice, tried to conquer it: "Don't do anything
like that ever again. I mean it. You have no idea how dangerous
-- "
"I knew." Haniver pulled away from him and went to the
window, pressing her forehead against the glass. The blanket
lay outside on the ground. Empty. The snake was gone. Her
heart still thundered, but there was something like
exhilaration building inside her. "Vedi la 'l nostro avversaro,"
she said softly.
Doyle was in the corner, pale and sweating. "Holy mother of
God," he finally said. "How the fuck did that happen?" He took
a wobbling step forward, made his way to the window. "How
did that thing climb up? How did it get inside?"
"Forget how," Haniver said, moving into the hallway. "Right
now, I'm more interested in another question."
* * *
"Why?"
They were in Kovac and Baker's room. All six members of the
team had been assembled, Scully and Doyle on hammocks,
Baker and Kovac leaning against the walls, Mulder and Haniver
standing alongside the door. Outside, the rain lashed against
the roof and windows, the drops rattling down the drainpipes.
Kovac lit a cigarette, puffed it thoughtfully. "I will grant you
that it is strange," he said. "My experience is that jungle
animals are not normally inclined to invade human dwellings.
But so far there have been two such encounters -- the monkey
that Haniver discovered this morning, and this episode with
the fer-de-lance. It is enough to make one wonder."
"No kidding," said Doyle. "I don't mean to impose my personal
problems on the rest of you, but I fucking hate snakes. I have
enough trouble already without having to deal with shit like
this...."
"Are you aware of anything that might lead to such unusual
behavior among the animals?" Scully asked, ignoring him.
"A change in the environment, maybe," said Baker. "When
animals begin to act in bizarre ways, the cause can usually be
traced back to some irregularity in the food chain, or the
introduction of an alien species."
"Like man?" said Mulder.
"It's possible. Our policy is to affect the environment as little
as possible -- we don't cut down existing tree cover or touch
the water supply -- but it happens. These projects always have
unpredictable effects on the rest of the rain forest."
Kovac agreed. "These animals are sensitive to any change. You
may see this forest as some eternal system, but it is not: it is
an extraordinarily complicated balance between animals,
plants, men and climate. Upset one factor and it all comes
crashing down. And it happens. I remember one such
occasion...."
He tilted his head back, watching as the gray sworls of his
cigarette smoke rose toward the ceiling. His voice assumed a
nostalgic tone. "Thirty years ago I was working on Barro
Colorado Island, in Panama. It was an El Nino year. During the
rainy season, two fruiting peaks usually occur, periods when
the herbivores feed and fatten up in preparation for the
annual dry spell. That year, for some reason, one of the
fruiting peaks did not take place. Less than one-third of the
usual amount of fruit was produced. It was a famine. The food
was gone, the foragers starved, and the predators starved with
them. The rain forest became a tomb."
He flicked away ash, glanced out the window. "The bodies
were everywhere. Monkeys, agoutis, porcupines, jaguars,
sloths -- all dead, lying on the ground. The vultures could not
keep up with the surplus." Kovac smiled to himself. "It was at
this time that the monkeys began to attacking the camp. It was
war. They were desperate. They discovered how to open the
doors, invaded the kitchens and storage cabinets, went after
bananas and bread, tore open bags of flour, leaped on the
tables as we ate. Completely unnatural behavior. Hunger drove
them to it. Perhaps fear as well."
"You think something similar is happening here?" Haniver
asked, studying his face carefully.
"I do not know. For two years this team has monitored the
condition of the forest, and it has found nothing strange.
Without further information, I would not care to hazard a
guess."
"So it could be anything."
"Yes," said Kovac. "Nearly anything at all."
* * *
The next morning dawned cold: overnight, temperatures had
dropped nearly fifty degrees. Scully awoke, shivering, groping
for a blanket that wasn't there. She tumbled out of her
hammock and headed for the shower. The water was icy,
pumped straight from the river with a bare handful of filters in
between. She brushed her teeth, applied eyeliner, ran a comb
through her damp hair and went outside, the mist embracing
her like an impotent lover. Six o'clock.
Haniver and Doyle sat in the kitchen with cups of coffee in
their hands. It was a clean, cramped room with stainless-steel
fittings and plastic cupboards filled with soup and bins of
flour. Scully noticed that Doyle had donned a pair of high
leather boots, tucking the ends of his jeans into thick socks.
"Protection from snakes and scorpions," he said. "Let's just say
I spent a restless evening."
Scully poked through the cupboards for something to eat,
finally settled on a package of ramen, breaking off the noodles
and eating them raw. Haniver slid a mug of coffee in her
direction. "We're spraying the trees for bugs today," she said.
"You can come along if you like."
Scully sipped from the mug, grimaced. It tasted like Haniver
had found a pot of coffee that someone in the original team
had made days ago. "Think you'll be able to cover the entire
plantation?"
"We're focusing on the worst of the damage," said Doyle. "It
doesn't amount to more than maybe ten or twelve acres, tops.
I mean, fuck it. We couldn't do much more than that if we
wanted to. We're spraying by hand." He indicated the canisters
of poison sitting near the door. Each had a nozzle-and-spigot
assembly and a bulky gas mask.
Scully shook out two pyridostigmine and diazepam tablets into
her hand, swallowed them whole. "Love to join you, but I can't.
Mulder is planning to search the compound, to dig up
whatever evidence he can find. He wants me to come."
Haniver nodded. "I know. I'd go along with him, but I need to
monitor the pesticide dispersal, make sure that the chemicals
don't interfere with my side of the investigation." She drained
her coffee. Scully noticed that the big steel knife was strapped
to Haniver's waist. "Mulder's been working since dawn, going
over the compound with an electroscope, recording the
atmospheric charges. Drawing a graph. He claims it will tell
him something. He was at the communications booth last time
I checked."
"Thanks."
She went outside. The communications booth stood three
dozen yards away, half-covered by a yellow tarp. She lifted the
plastic, went in. Mulder was kneeling with the electroscope,
fiddling with the dials. The floor around him was strewn with
broken chunks of concrete, shards of glass, bits of cement. In
the midst of it all lay a pool of dried blood, an orange flag
staked in the center. It looked like a strange tropical rose.
"This was where he found James Lifton," Mulder said, not
looking up. "The guy who sent the emergency transmission.
Remember what he kept saying?"
"Fire on the trees." Scully stepped over the greater portion of
the damage, saw that Mulder had been sifting through the
debris. "Find anything interesting?"
"There are some unusual electromagnetic signatures, but
nothing conclusive. I'm still looking for bits of paint, metal
scratches, anything that might indicate what wrecked this
building, but there's nothing here but blood and leaves."
"But something smashed into it."
"Right." Mulder stood. "I came out here yesterday with the UV
lamp. There was no trace of nitroglycerin, no explosive
residue. It was a brute force attack." He paused thoughtfully.
"Someone or something wanted these men dead. Once it
notices us, I suspect that it will feel the same way."
"Is that really what you think?"
"I'm not sure what I think. Quassapelagh said that death wears
many faces in the forest, that I must learn to recognize them
all. But what if there's only one face? One avatar? A single
incarnation of death with infinitely many masks."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
They went outside. "Every culture has its unholy places,"
Mulder said. "There are countless civilizations on this planet,
countless religions, countless modes of belief -- but each has
its own concept of tainted ground, of places that must not be
approached for the evil that grows there. What if this is such a
place?"
He watched as Haniver and Doyle headed for the trees of
heaven, gas masks covering their faces. "There's something
strange about this plantation. It feels like nothing here has
changed for a million years. As if something has kept this area
untouched while everything else sprouted and flourished
around it, thriving, but careful to keep a distance."
Scully shook her head. "I can't buy that. Even if there are
haunted places, they don't become haunted until humans
impose their own fears upon them. Left alone, the natural
world doesn't cling to its ghosts: it selects, evolves and moves
on." She looked at Mulder. "Besides, I thought you suspected
alien activity."
"I'm not so sure about that anymore," he said.
* * *
End of (12/19)
The Tiger Complex (13/19) by LoneGunGuy
http://members.aol.com/lonegunguy/x-files.html
* * *
Haniver was spraying pesticides on a copal tree when the
lowermost branch abruptly exploded. She'd glanced at it
briefly, seen only a thick, blunt limb that someone had
pruned, the stump eight inches long and jutting out at an odd
angle: but when she brought the nozzle close, the bough burst
open in a flutter of wings and feathers, detached itself from
the trunk and flew rapidly away.
Startled, she watched as the creature she'd taken to be part of
the tree flapped towards Doyle, veered to the right and sailed
into a clutch of trees. A moment later it was gone.
"Didn't see that coming," Haniver said.
It was nearly one o'clock in the afternoon. The pair had been
working on the trees for upwards of six hours, trading
spraying duties whenever they felt like it. Even with the masks,
the stench of chemicals was overpowering. From the
beginning, Doyle had bitched amiably about possible
carcinogenic side effects, while Haniver had been more
concerned with getting the smell out of her hair. Either way,
the pesticides seemed to be doing their job. The chrysalides
were curled and shriveling, falling to the earth like dry leaves.
Doyle had been on his knees gathering specimens when the
strange creature flew past him. Now he straightened up with a
jerk. "What the hell was that?"
"It was a bird. It was sitting on the trunk -- I thought it was
part of the tree."
He rose to his feet, eyes wary. "That's why this jungle bothers
me. You look at something long enough, and it changes into
something else. Nothing is what it fucking seems." He stopped
and pointed over Haniver's shoulder. "There's another one."
Haniver turned. It was thirty seconds before she saw what he
was gesturing at, and when she did, she was not surprised that
it had taken her so long: perched on the nearest tree of heaven
sat a medium-sized bird, its feathers ranging from cream-
colored to muddy brown. Its head, spine and tail were aligned
precisely. The bird did not flutter, did not move a muscle. Its
eyes were tightly closed. Frozen, barely breathing, its body
rigid and straight, it easily passed for part of the tree -- an
exquisite, bizarrely unsettling example of defensive
camouflage.
It made Haniver uneasy. The disguise was too perfect. Once
her eyes adjusted to the mimicry, she could look at trees and
see the birds hiding in plain sight, dotting limbs and trunks for
acres around them. A silent army, omnipresent and unseen.
She understood why it had made Doyle nervous. Even ordinary
branches seemed suspicious now. It made you wonder what
else was there.
She focused on the butterflies. They flitted aimlessly from
branch to branch, their narrow, elegant wings colored a dull
orange. Only a handful of mature individuals could be seen;
more common were their larvae, white and tan caterpillars
with rows of blunt spines. "The adults won't come back until
it's time to lay eggs," Doyle had said. "Copal trees don't have
much attraction for mature butterflies -- they probably feed
elsewhere, on nectar. They're only using the plantation as a
nursery."
"What species are they?"
"Heliconids, maybe. I'm not sure. Most butterflies will
concentrate on a single species of host plant. For Heliconids,
it's the passion flower, always. Anything else is weird. Either
this is a new species of butterfly or it's an existing variety that
has adapted to feed on copal leaves, the sons of bitches. Which
is possible. When you introduce a genetically-engineered
organism into the wild, you'll usually put some new wrinkles
into the food chain. It's annoying as hell, but it happens."
Now Doyle knelt and gathered the fallen pupae. The
chrysalides were brown, angular, with two winglike projections
running along one end. When you picked them up, the ridges
rubbed together, squeaking. Doyle regarded the sound with
glee. "Listen to the bastards screaming. They know their days
are numbered."
"You used to be an entomologist," Haniver said. "Shouldn't you
have more compassion for our six-legged friends?"
"I'll let you in on a secret," he said, taking a small glassine
envelope from his pocket and slipping the pupae inside.
"Regardless of what you might believe, most entomologists
aren't especially compassionate toward bugs. Look at me. I was
a model youth. It was science that corrupted me. When a man
decides to pursue a career in entomology, he won't stay sane
for long. You can't spend twenty years skewering grasshoppers
on cards and putting moths in the killing jar without losing
some of your humanity. That's why I switched to genetics."
"You're exaggerating."
"I'm not. Read Theodor Reik sometime. He realized that it isn't
sex that lies at the heart of psychological aberrations -- it's
murder. The fear of committing murder is the source of all
our neuroses. The kid jerking off in the bathroom doesn't feel
guilty for complicated psychosexual reasons; he's afraid that
his father will catch him in the act, forcing the kid to kill him
and commit the sin of patricide."
"That's great. But what does this have to do with deranged
entomologists?"
"Why are people afraid of bugs? It isn't because they pose a
threat. It's because they're easy to kill. They're fragile.
Squishable. You can destroy an insect's life without trying --
which is very unsettling to our delicate moral sensibilities.
Murder, no matter how insignificant, always stains the spirit.
We project our fears onto the objects of our wrath and
imagine that they frighten us, when in truth we despise the
depravity in our own souls. Which is why women are so
terrified by crawly things -- they want to kill and are repelled
by the thought."
"That doesn't make sense," Haniver said. "I step on bugs all the
time, and I'm not particularly afraid of them."
"Maybe you're repressed," said Doyle straightfacedly. "I mean
it. Hey, I'm not casting the first stone here. I've got problems.
My grandmother was killed in Auschwitz and I stick moths in
cyanide -- how's that for your knotty sense of Jewish guilt?"
He paused as one of the butterflies lit on his shoulder, its
wings brushing against his neck. He flicked it away absently.
"Which is why many entomologists are totally fucked up,
psychologically speaking," he concluded. "We anesthetize
ourselves to our own nature. We pretend to be fascinated by
insects when we're only concealing our revulsion beneath a
different name."
"I don't buy that." Haniver looked around her. Ranks of flat
gray copal trunks extended for hundreds of yards on all sides
-- but the surrounding jungle still loomed above them,
branches embroidered heavily with vines and colorful growths
until it seemed as if the jungle were knitting a cage around the
entire plantation. A lone butterfly bobbed before her face.
Haniver brushed it away.
Strange apprehension rose in her gullet, sharp and insidious.
Like sour wine.
* * *
They stood at the riverbank. It was early evening. The roar of
howler monkeys rattled high in the treetops, mixed with the
shriller cries of parrots and cicadas. Soon pacas would
emerge, and moths. Perhaps jaguars as well.
The news was anticlimactic and surprised neither of them. "I
have received word from Paramaribo," said Kovac, removing
his hat. "At seven o'clock this morning, Ferdinand Aquino
seized control of the Surinamese government."
Baker knew that there had been a transmission from the city,
but Kovac had remained silent about the details until now.
"How did it happen?"
"It was a bloodless coup. He dispatched troops to the homes of
key members of the National Assembly, surprised them while
they were eating breakfast. We both know that Aquino had
been planning something similar to this for years," he
concluded. "But I am afraid this coup will present us with a
number of problems."
"Go ahead," said Baker, knowing what was coming.
"Previous insurrections have crumbled at the first sign of
intervention from America or the Netherlands. This time,
Aquino is determined to see the coup to completion." Kovac
ran a hand through his thinning hair. "Therefore, he has
declared a no-fly zone above Paramaribo and the surrounding
rain forest. The airports have been closed. Unauthorized
planes will be shot down without warning...."
"So we're stranded here."
Kovac lit a cigarette, shook out the match. "For the moment."
"For the moment?" Baker stared into Kovac's face. There was a
faint trace of amusement there that set off alarm bells in his
head: in a split second, everything seemed to fall into place.
"What kind of deal did you make with him, Kovac?" he asked.
"I am afraid I don't know what you mean."
"Aquino spent two days pumping me for information about the
project," said Baker. "I didn't give him a damned thing, but he
released me anyway. Why?"
Kovac looked at him calmly. "What do you think, Baker?"
"I think that you sold us out," Baker said. "Aquino wouldn't
cut his ties with America and the Netherlands unless he had
something to fall back on. BFDP would fill that need. I think
that you fed him the information in exchange for passage into
the jungle. You told him everything just so he'd give you a
head start at the plantation before he sent his troops to seize
the compound."
"He should arrive within the next four days." Kovac took one
last drag, then dropped his cigarette to the ground, crushed it
underfoot. "I always took you for an insightful man."
"Maybe not insightful enough. I still don't know why you did it.
What do you have to gain?"
"Something greater than biofuel," said Kovac.
In the evening light, Kovac's eyes were hidden by shadow. The
projecting bone of his forehead made his expression difficult
to read. "There are more important things at stake here than
the outcome of one DOE project," he continued. "This glow is
more interesting than either of us could ever have imagined.
DeFillips knew. The first time it appeared, he and James Lifton
chased it down to its source...."
"How do you know that?"
"I read it in his journal."
The missing journal. Baker remembered the red notebook in
DeFillips's front shirt pocket, the one that Mulder had tried so
desperately to find. "You had it all this time."
Kovac nodded. "I would advise you to forget about BFDP. The
copal trees were a dead end in any case; the butterflies have
confirmed this. I am concerned with salvaging what little
personal benefit I can derive from this fiasco. You might wish
to begin thinking in the same terms."
After a moment Kovac headed back toward the plantation, the
white sandy soil crunching beneath his boots. Baker lingered
behind, his hands thrust into his pockets, his mind troubled
with conflicting emotions. He watched the current, watched as
the dark water contorted itself in swells and rough eddies
along the crumbling bank, broad and frothing with foam. He
felt tired and uneasy and confused.
A cracking sound came from behind him. Baker turned. He
saw nothing at first, then noticed a disturbance in the
branches high above. Something fell through the canopy,
snapping twigs and bringing small leaves down with it. It
seemed to fall for a very long time, crashing though layer by
layer. Finally it broke through a final barrier and collided with
the ground twenty yards from where he stood, sending up a
puff of dust from the soil. Falling, it had been a blur. But he
had glimpsed the arms and legs, the sable hairs. It was a
monkey.
But monkeys didn't just fall from trees. He ran over to where
the animal had landed. Kovac had already reached the spot,
was kneeling and looking at the monkey with a frown. "It's
dead."
Baker didn't need to be told. He'd seen how heavily it had
fallen. He studied the body: silver fur, reddish skin, bald head
and face. Uakari. The same species that Haniver had found in
the closet. Baker nudged it with the tip of his boot, noticed
how supple the muscles were, the heat of the flesh. It had died
within the last few seconds. Its small fists were tightly
clenched. Leaves adhered to its coat.
The monkey's lips were bluish. Its eyes were open. And there
were no pupils.
"Do not touch it," Kovac said quietly. "Find Haniver and Scully
and tell them to come here." He looked up at the canopy. It
was silent and peaceful. A few birds fluttered through the
trees. Details were impossible to discern beyond a dozen
yards: anything could have been up there.
"It's beginning again," Baker said. "The symptoms are the
same."
"Maybe. But we will know nothing until we perform a
necropsy."
Baker could tell that Kovac was nervous. He didn't blame him.
His own heart thudded painfully against his ribs as he ran back
toward the compound with a thousand possibilities crowding
his brain. Behind him, Kovac stayed with the body, circling the
area slowly, face turned upward, swatting the flies.
Within twenty minutes, four team members had gathered
around the dead uakari. Scully tagged the spot, then rolled the
monkey onto a plastic sheet and did a quick inspection. Many
broken bones from the fall. No visible puncture wounds,
although the fur made it hard to tell. "This should be fun," she
said. "I haven't dissected a monkey since medical school."
"The mouth," said Kovac.
Scully slipped on a latex glove, pried open the tiny jaw with its
rows of sharp teeth, peered inside. "There's black sputum in
his throat, same as the others. Looks like he choked on his
own mucus. Let's bring him down to the lab."
Haniver nodded. "We've got a spectrometer. I can run its
blood for curare. Be careful." They each took an edge of the
plastic sheet, bore the uakari stretcher-style back toward the
compound. "We'll need to do an analysis of its stomach
contents," she said.
"I doubt we're looking for anything it ate," said Baker.
"Defense compounds are found in leaves. This monkey is a
frugivore. Its small intestine isn't long enough to digest
anything that might be poisonous."
"Maybe it's into nouvelle cuisine. Either way, we aren't
assuming anything."
The lab. They brought the monkey inside. Scully cleared a
table and swept the smooth steel clean of implements and laid
the uakari onto the counter like a sacrificial offering. The
overhead light illuminated the uakari's face, showing how its
simian features still preserved some trace of the horror of the
moment, the skin stretched tight around eyes like billiard
balls. The monkey's expression was hauntingly human. It did
look like a child, ancient wrinkles welling up from within its
infantile body. Haniver rummaged through the drawers, came
up with scalpels and spatulas and gloves. She looked at Scully.
"How do we want to handle this?"
"It's the same as dissecting a human being," Scully replied.
"Except we've got less to work with."
They began. Baker stood off to one side, brooding, his
thoughts clouded, tense. After a while he ceased paying
attention. Only flashes came through. Scully slicing open the
scalp and peeling down the monkey's face like a banana.
Sending Haniver out for a hacksaw. The brain. The lungs,
samples held beneath the microscope to reveal the
characteristic bronchoconstriction and rupturing of tissue. He
didn't need to be a doctor to know what that meant: he only
needed to look at Scully's pale, worried face. There was no
doubt. It was the same thing.
Kovac abruptly excused himself and left without explanation.
Watching as he left the room, Baker thought he saw something
odd in the man's expression, a hardness in his jaw that
bothered him. He had a hunch about where Kovac was going,
but ignored it. Returned his attention to the necropsy. Scully
slit open the entrails, emptied them into a dish. Partially-
digested fruit, a handful of seeds still intact. No leaves or
vegetable matter. They took a blood sample.
Doyle entered the room. "Listen to what -- " He saw the uakari
and stopped in mid-sentence. "You're kidding."
"I'm afraid not," Haniver replied. "Make yourself useful and
hand me those forceps." She was sweating, streaked up to the
elbows with gore. The monkey lay unfolded on the table, the
coils of its intestines unraveling like thick pasta. Photographs.
Scully bottled samples of lungs, brain, aqueous humor, ileum,
skin, blood. She was about to turn away when Haniver stopped
her. "Hold it."
"What?"
"It's got something in its hand."
The uakari's fists were small and clenched. Baker and Doyle
moved closer to the table, leaning forward to see as Haniver
gripped the hairy wrist and began to pry the fingers back one
by one. It was difficult. The joints were already stiff. It took
her more than a minute before she saw what the monkey was
holding.
When she did, she couldn't believe it.
* * *
Kovac hiked rapidly beneath the elephantine trees, brandishing
his assault rifle with unconscious grace. Thirty-round
magazine. In his skillful hands, it had an effective range of half
a mile and could put a bullet through a concrete wall with
enough velocity to kill on the opposite side.
Above him, the sky was the color of a bruise; clouds gathered
at the horizon, ominous and swollen with rain. He paused
beneath a tall acacia tree. Took his bearings. He was taking a
westward course through the hylaea, away from the river.
Behind him, the lights of the BFDP compound shone faintly
through the barrier of the jungle. The laboratory window was
illuminated. They were probably gathered around the uakari,
he thought, taking apart its eviscera and putting it back
together, hoping to learn more from the steaming cadaver
before it was too late. But the monkey had already told Kovac
everything he needed to know.
Setting the rifle down, he unbuttoned the left breast pocket of
his safari jacket. Dug inside. Removed a sheet of notebook
paper, unfolded it. Checked a detail.
He was close. The rain forest pressed in on all four sides,
thousands of species erupting in close-packed tumult. But he
needed to ignore the complexity. See beneath the mask.
Kovac continued onward. A few insects lit upon his face, his
neck, but he paid their bites no heed; his mind was intently
focused on the atmosphere, the sky, the ground, trying to
sense anything strange, anything out of place. He had worked
in the rain forest long enough to sense the difference. It was a
simple matter of shutting off one's higher functions, giving
over to instinct. It was how the animals knew. Logic played no
part in their fear. They simply felt the wrongness, the
imbalance of primal forces -- and they responded with terror.
A rustling shook the bushes ahead of him. Something
struggling through the undergrowth.
He raised the rifle, finger tensing on the trigger. Then he
relaxed as a scrawny paca freed itself from the brush and
meandered unsteadily away, snuffling. It was small, weighing
perhaps thirteen pounds. It was alone. That was strange.
Usually they traveled in groups.
Kovac might have wondered more at this, but was soon
distracted by another circumstance: the monkeys in the trees
had grown silent. One moment the air was filled with their
monotonous wailing; seconds later, as if a switch had been
thrown, the jungle went perfectly still. He narrowed his eyes,
took a step backward.
Then night turned to day.
Fire blazed through the heavens, and although Kovac had been
expecting it, he fell back.
The ribbon of light coursed upward from a locus hundreds of
yards away. It seared his pupils, a great conical flame
trembling with orange electricity. For the first time he realized
the inadequacy of the words "Andes glow." They did not
convey the utter strangeness of this light. They did not even
come close.
Looking at the brightness stretching hundreds of feet into the
sky, he knew that he was witnessing a phenomenon of
unimaginable age, a luminescence that seemed to burst from
the oldest arteries of earth, nursed in the bowels of some
untouched auroral fountain. His mouth hung open.
And like that, it was gone.
Like a reel of film run backward, the ribbon diminished and
shrank and was swallowed again by the treetops.
Darkness returned, closing over the sky with a vengeance. The
monkeys began to scream with renewed vigor. That broke
Kovac from his trance. He ran towards the place where the
light had vanished, strides powerful and sure. There was no
room for fear, only excitement, the adrenaline flooding his
body. A faint green afterimage shimmered before his eyes like
desire itself.
"Almost there," he gasped. "Almost there, you goddamned
mother of the -- "
Kovac tripped. He stumbled, wrenched his wrist as he tried to
break the fall. Straightening up, he sensed immediately that
something lay at his feet. Many things.
It took a second for his eyes to see what was lying on the soil
in front of them. Lumps, perhaps six or seven. Small slick
bodies scattered over an area of ten square meters. Pacas.
They were all dead. Their mouths were encrusted with spit and
bile. Their convulsive struggles had dug shallow trenches in
the dirt.
They were burning. Kovac blinked, looked again. There was no
mistaking it. The pelts of the pacas were covered with many
small flames, flickering and spreading in the light breeze,
yellow and orange tongues of fire. But there was no heat. No
smoke. No light. The atmosphere above the pacas was cool and
undisturbed and eerily silent.
Kovac stepped back. Looked up.
The trees around him were aflame. He stood in the middle of
an inferno but he hadn't even broken a sweat. Little dark
flames coursed up and down the trunks, covering the
branches, running along the bark and the leaves, playing
across the boughs -- but they consumed nothing. He reached
out with a tentative hand. Felt no heat. The air wasn't even
warm.
"Fire on the trees," he whispered.
Then the flames detached themselves. One, two, a hundred.
Growing on the trees like strange orange flowers, they
separated themselves from the trunks, fluttered gently in his
direction. A dozen smoldering blossoms landed on his left
shoulder. "Christ," he said. He shook his arm, trying to
smother the cold fire, to brush it off; the flame burst beneath
his open palm, fell to the ground, but another took its place
within seconds. Still not understanding, he stepped on the leg
of a dead paca, heard the bone splinter beneath his weight,
almost lost his balance again. The flames were on his vest -- on
his legs -- on his hair -- multiplying, moving restlessly, coming
in from all directions. He felt them on his face, tickling. Their
feelers. Eyes glittering like crystals. Then he knew.
Butterflies.
They swarmed through the air to fill every cubic yard above
the ground, the sound of their wings like pieces of tissue paper
being rubbed together. There were thousands of them pressing
against his body, covering his face, flapping coldly against his
skin. They were yellow and black and orange, bright, fiercely
colored -- like fire. He could feel their tiny bodies, their legs,
their antennae as they squirmed down the open collar of his
shirt, beating their wings like fans and crawling over each
other in their insectile frenzy.
Quick needles in his skin, small pinpricks of irritation. They
were biting him. The itch was maddening. They tried to crawl
into his ears. Kovac flailed with his free hand, tried to fight the
butterflies away, but wave after wave returned to take the
place of those that had come before. Millions. They were
fragile. Like nothing. His open hand struck a clump of insects
and they exploded like Chinese firecrackers, a crackling of
torn membranes, flaming tiger patterns --
Kovac fell over a dead paca. Went down. His finger tightened
on the trigger of the gun and sent a volley of bullets shooting
outward, the harsh crack-crack-crack punching holes in his
eardrums -- and then an enormous bolt of pain tore through
his lower leg. His ankle. He'd shot off his goddamned foot. He
tried to rise but the agony was unbearable. He could hear
blood flowing onto the ground, his blood running like a faucet,
but it seemed a distant sensation, unimportant. The butterflies
were still everywhere. He had been bitten only five or six
times, but his limbs were slowing, stiff, heavy like lead. Kovac
tried to scream but the butterflies filled his mouth. He bit
down convulsively, felt the thin filaments crunch beneath his
teeth, their tiny squirming bodies, hot fluid filling his throat.
He gagged. Then spasmed. Once, twice. The assault rifle fell
with a dull thud.
Kovac lay face-down among the dead pacas, the toes of his
boots digging small hyphens in the soil. After a while even that
motion stopped.
The butterflies left.
* * *
End of (13/19)
The Tiger Complex (14/19) by LoneGunGuy
http://members.aol.com/lonegunguy/x-files.html
* * *
Haniver lifted the mangled butterfly from the monkey's paw
and held it up to the light. Its delicate wings had been crushed
and folded, and she could see colored scales flaking off like
fine powder -- yellow and orange spots, flaming and criss-
crossed with longitudinal streaks of black. The wings were
narrow and blade-shaped. Eyes like chips of ruby.
Doyle pressed in to get a closer look. "It's not the same kind,"
he finally said. "The butterflies on the copal trees were
different. This isn't the same species."
"So what is it?" asked Scully.
"I have no idea." Doyle took the tweezers, brought the
butterfly beneath a large magnifying loupe. Switched on a light
from beneath. Illuminated and viewed at many times its actual
size, the head was frighteningly alien, its mandibles jutting like
needle-nosed pliers from a beard of coarse black hairs.
Frowning, he said, "This isn't right. It has biting mouthparts."
Haniver leaned forward. "Is that strange?"
"If you're a butterfly, it's pretty fucking amazing. Butterflies
evolved a tubular proboscis millions of years ago; all that
remains is a tongue for sucking nectar. Everything else
degenerated. But this one has all its oral Ginsu knives in place.
Either it's a mutant or a species that has remained unchanged
since the days of the dinosaurs...."
The door burst open. It was Mulder, face flushed with
excitement. He spoke quickly, looking back over his shoulder
all the while, the words spilling out in an intense rush: "Scully
-- everyone -- get out here right now -- it's happening...."
"What?" asked Baker, rising in alarm.
"The glow. It's fantastic." He spun, ran back outside. Doyle set
the butterfly on a metal tray, grabbed a Polaroid camera from
the shelf and tossed it to Baker; Scully and Haniver stripped
off their gore-bespattered gloves and headed for the door.
Outside, the eastern sky was sullen, the moon rising dreamily
above the horizon; but when Scully faced the other direction,
away from the river, it could have been midday -- a strange
and unnatural midday, the light orange and cold on her face. It
reminded Scully of some chemical discharge, burning
phosphorus or pure sodium. Then she thought of the burning
bush.
The light was bright but not difficult to look upon. Baker
raised the camera, snapped a picture; the gears whirred and
spat out the undeveloped photo. He shook it, laid it on the
ground before him, took another. "I doubt these will develop
properly."
"We aren't trying to photograph the light itself," Mulder said,
scribbling a hasty diagram. "We just need to know where it
comes from, so we can chase it down later."
"Why not chase it down now?" asked Scully.
As she spoke, the light suddenly dwindled and sank down into
nothingness, sucked back into the canopy like a crepe paper
streamer. The sunset seemed very dark in comparison.
Mulder's face was clouded with disappointment. "That's why,"
he said. "The glow only lasts for a short time. You don't want
to dash into the jungle like -- "
Mulder was cut off by a burst of dull, rapid pops from the
jungle. The sound was distant and muffled -- it took him a
second to recognize the gunshots -- but when he did his eyes
widened and he turned around. "Where's Kovac?"
Their faces told him everything he needed to know. "Shit," he
said, looking back out into the jungle.
"He left a few minutes ago," said Scully. "I didn't ask where he
was going...."
Baker was pale. "I know where he was going." He started in the
direction of the gunshots, his mind resounding with horrors
that he didn't want to name.
Mulder put a hand on his shoulder. "Wait." There was silence
for a moment. No one spoke -- they listened to the sounds of
the jungle -- and suddenly the same thought crashed into
everyone's mind at once. There were no sounds of the jungle.
No birds were singing; there were no monkeys in the treetops.
The rain forest had gone as quiet as a graveyard.
Doyle glanced uncertainly from side to side. Haniver was on
his left, her shirt still splattered with monkey blood; Scully was
on his right, looking intently into the darkness. He followed
her gaze. The edge of the forest lay perhaps a hundred yards
away. The space between the trees was as black as
construction paper but he peered into it anyway, searching for
something -- he didn't know for what; for a little while the
irregular border of the jungle looked like some elaborate
optical illusion, the pattern of shadows making him see
movement where there wasn't any, as if something were
prowling just beyond the limits of his vision....
Then he realized that something was.
"Get inside." Doyle began to inch slowly backwards. His voice
was low, almost conversational. "We need to get indoors right
now."
"Goddammit," Baker said fiercely, "I am not leaving Kovac out
there alone. Not this time -- "
"Don't you get it?" shouted Doyle. "Don't you fucking
understand?" He took Scully and Haniver by the arms, began
to drag them back towards the building with a madman's
strength -- they protested, struggling -- but Doyle was acting
like a man possessed. "It's headed for us," he said, gasping for
breath. "Listen, I saw them in the trees, I saw them in the
jungle -- the light is a signal, a sign. Look, goddammit, look at
the fucking trees!"
Baker looked. The trees were on fire and the flames were
spreading this way. Except they weren't flames; they were --
"Oh my God," he said. The camera slipped from his fingers, fell
to the ground and broke. He went backwards in a stumbling
run. Doyle had already herded Haniver and Scully into the
laboratory and now he stood in the doorway with his eyes
riveted to the inferno of red that had broken through the tree-
lined barrier and was hurtling itself towards them on a million
razor wings. A din filled the air like all the earth's oceans
crashing together at once. It rose into an alien roar, shaking
Baker to his very soul as he ran; Mulder followed him indoors,
his face distorted with excitement and terror.
Doyle came inside and slammed the door shut but the sound
continued. The glassware on the shelves rattled. Haniver
instinctively covered her ears with her hands. Scully tried to
say something but couldn't. The words wouldn't come.
Then darkness descended. Up until then the room had been
faintly lit by the setting sun, its dusky light entering from
outside, but now the windows went black. Scully couldn't see,
but she heard the noises. The sounds of tiny bodies pressing
themselves against glass. She staggered on numb legs to the
window. It was covered with a dark writhing mass of insects.
They were flying and smashing themselves into the glass. She
heard them moving across the roof, rubbing their antennae
against outside walls. They had spread out across the entire
building.
Without thinking, she and Mulder linked hands.
Baker stood in the middle of the room, listening to the
fluttering of wings. His heart was pounding but he could think
only of Kovac alone in the jungle. Sudden anger filled him and
he struck a wooden stool with one hand, sent it flying across
the room. "Jesus," he said.
Next to him, Doyle paced back and forth, his fists clenched,
his breath coming in short ragged gasps, his eyes fixed on the
squirming carpet of insects outside.
Through her shock Haniver could smell the poison. She dimly
understood that if one of the panes cracked a hundred
thousand creatures would pour into the room before she
could scream.
The sound of flapping wings filled the world. Scully knew that
it would drive her insane before long -- her mind would snap
beneath it like a twig. She felt herself going unhinged; for one
moment she envisioned taking the stool that Baker had thrown
and smashing all the windows, then turning her gun on
herself....
It did not stop immediately. Instead it grew gradually softer as
the butterflies detached themselves one by one from the side
of the building, windows still grimy with their splattered
bodies. They were leaving. Finally the gray light of evening
began to enter the room again through chinks and cracks in
that living shroud: and like that, the butterflies had vanished.
All of them. Silence returned like a wave of thunder.
Haniver stood with her hands over her ears, shaking. She
remembered the monkey and the snake and told herself that
she was all right and that she was not going to lose control.
She hated her fear and the silence; she hated the flat evening
light; she hated all these things with a violence that made her
weak.
"They're gone," Mulder said. He had fallen to his knees, still
holding Scully's hand. He was trembling. "Oh Christ, I hope
they're gone."
Haniver began to cry.
* * *
It was a long night. The generator had died, but Baker found a
kerosene lamp in one of the lower cupboards. Before lighting
it, he went to all the windows, pulled down the shades and
taped them securely shut.
There was no question of any of them going outside, so the
five remaining team members huddled around the glow of the
lamp, looking across at one another, hoping to see some shred
of reassurance. But there was none. Mulder and Scully's hands
were still tightly clasped -- it seemed right somehow -- and
Haniver sat next to Doyle, her eyes puffy and red. Only Baker
kept his distance from the others, his thoughts returning
obsessively to the same problem, the same man.
He weighed his words for a long time before he spoke up. "We
aren't leaving without Kovac," he said.
Doyle looked at him as if he were crazy. "We sure as fucking
hell aren't going to stay here. I'm not too eager to abandon
this project, either, but even I have my limits. I say we get the
hell back to Paramaribo. Forget Kovac. There's no way he
could have survived what we just saw."
"This isn't some kind of fucking game," Baker replied angrily.
"I'm not about to abandon Kovac until I know for goddamn
sure that he's dead. Show me his body and I'll agree with you.
But until then, we don't know anything." He turned to Mulder.
"Tell me the truth. If Scully was the one who was missing,
you'd go after her, wouldn't you?"
Mulder stared into the bright flame of the lamp. "Of course I'd
go after her. I'd go after her in a split second." He felt Scully
squeeze his hand; squeezed back. "But I'd count on you all to
hold me back and keep me from killing myself," he added.
"Let's be rational about this," Haniver said slowly. "It's going to
be difficult to get out of here in any case. Between us and our
rafts there's a half-mile walk through the jungle which I'm not
too eager to undertake. Even in our biohazard suits it's going
to be one hell of a mess. That's the first point." She paused.
"The second point is that we can't remain here, either.
Remember what happened the last time someone tried to hide
indoors?"
Doyle remembered. "Oh shit, that's right -- the building was
demolished." He swore to himself, then turned to Mulder. "You
think the butterflies did that?"
"I don't know. If the rains hadn't washed away most of the
evidence, I might have a better idea. But no, I don't know what
destroyed the communications booth." He fell briefly silent. "I
hate to say this, but Haniver is right. The only option we have
is to send a distress call and get somebody to airlift us the hell
out of here. Then we can worry about Kovac."
Baker hesitated. "There's something you need to know." He
told them about the current situation in the city: the military
coup, the total ban on air traffic. As he spoke, he could see the
dejection and disbelief invading their faces. "It could be
several days before the army permits any aircraft to enter the
forest," he concluded. "I hate to say this, but it looks like
we've been left on our own."
"Then there's only one course of action available to us," said
Haniver. "We take the river back to the Tirio village. I think we
can do it. But not without a better idea of what we're up
against."
Scully looked around. "Is there any doubt now about what
killed those men?"
The reply was silence.
"So these are poisonous insects," Mulder said. "Poisonous
butterflies. Doyle, what's the scientific precedent on that?"
"Good fucking question." Doyle retrieved the specimen that
had been found clutched in the uakari's paw -- the monkey
was still sitting on the counter -- and returned gripping it in a
pair of tweezers. In the flickering light, the insect seemed
ready to fly away at any moment. "Butterflies aren't poisonous
in a conventional sense," he began. "Most can't even bite you
-- although they can jab their proboscis into your arm if
provoked. If that happens, there's a chance that you'll suffer a
reaction and go into anaphylactic shock, which could kill you
if you're particularly sensitive.
"But that isn't what we're dealing with here," he continued.
"First of all, this butterfly has biting mouthparts. That's pretty
fucking rare. Maybe in Malaysia, you'll find a couple of really
ancient species with this kind of dental work. They aren't
poisonous, though. Whereas this little guy has some potent
shit running through his veins, and an impressive injection
system. In short, he's a killing machine. He's a flying syringe."
"And there are millions of them out there in the jungle," Scully
said. "That's what I don't understand. How could a species like
this go undiscovered for so long?"
Baker gingerly took the butterfly from Doyle, examined its
orange and yellow pigments, the flames coursing across its
translucent wings. "This butterfly could be flying above us all
the time," he said, "and we would never know it."
"What do you mean?"
"It's part of the tiger complex." Baker tried to explain.
"Taxonomists recognize certain broad patterns of color --
called complexes -- as characteristic of many different species
of butterfly. In the jungle, different complexes fly at different
heights because their colors match the light penetration at
those levels. When they fly at the proper altitude, they're
invisible."
He held up the butterfly. "The tiger complex occupies a layer
of forest two to seven meters above the ground, a level in
which yellow and orange and black predominate. That's why
the swarm appeared so quickly. One moment, there was
nothing; the next, and it looked like the trees were on fire. But
the insects were there the entire time. We just couldn't see
them until they descended to our level."
"So we won't notice them until they've already begun to
attack," said Scully.
"That's right."
No one said much of anything after that. Eventually they came
to some kind of consensus. Scully pointed out that since the
butterflies were prone to attack after dusk, if the team only
ventured abroad during the day, sunlight might afford them
enough protection to find the river. Doyle agreed, suggested
that they also wait for the next heavy rainfall. "Poisonous or
not," he said, "these butterflies have the same habits as any
other winged insect. They won't fly in swarms when there's a
hard rain falling."
It was agreed. They would spend the night in the labs, and
make a run for the river, wearing their biohazard suits, at the
first sign of rain the next morning. This meant another ten
hours of waiting. For some reason, this struck them as the
worst part.
They prepared to pass the night. Baker found a stack of foam
mattresses on one of the shelves, rolled up like jellied pastries,
and spread them across the floor to inflate by themselves. The
monkey was still lying on the counter. Doyle took the cadaver
and was sliding it into the freezer when he noticed a six-pack
of beer sitting on a lower shelf, right there alongside leaf
cuttings and soil samples. He cracked one for himself, then
offered one to Mulder. The FBI agent took it.
The two of them sat drinking morosely, sitting on tall lab
stools, listening to the sounds of the forest outside. "I can't
enjoy this shit anymore," Doyle said introspectively, staring at
the can in his hands. "After that night in the movie theater,
whenever I got drunk I always saw Joan of Arc swimming in
front of me, like a fucking guardian angel."
"Are you seeing her now?"
"I guess so." He sipped thoughtfully. "I wonder about that
sometimes. I pray to her when I get really wasted, and I'm a
fucking Jew, you know? But I'm not even praying to the real
Joan of Arc. I'm praying to the actress, the one in that silent
film. What was her name again?" Doyle scrunched up his face,
trying to remember. "I don't know. Remind me to look it up if
we ever get out of this alive."
Doyle took a final swig. "It's funny. This actress has been dead
for at least fifty years. But somehow I've always thought that if
there's a heaven -- I mean, if there's a place where all the good
spirits hang out -- then she's probably up there with the real
Joan, and they're best friends. Like no one could understand
Joan of Arc better than some Italian chick who played her in a
movie once." He crumpled the can and threw it away. "Fuck it,
I don't know what I'm saying anymore." He looked at Mulder,
his eyes watery and bloodshot. "You a religious man?"
"Maybe. I'd like to be."
"I don't buy that for a second," said Doyle. "I don't think you
follow any cross except the one you nail yourself to every
morning." He coughed. "You pray to anything, Mulder?"
"Me?" Mulder hung his head. "Hell, at times like this I pray to
Scully. At least she's someone I can count on."
He raised his beer. "Here's a toast to idolatry," he said, and
drained the last few drops.
* * *
They went to bed. Baker blew out the lantern and they were in
darkness, each alone with his or her own thoughts.
For Haniver sleep felt like it should have been the most
unthinkable thing in the world; but when she lay down and
shut her eyes, she realized that she was exhausted. The
mattress was surprisingly soft. Haniver listened to the sound
of breathing for a while, and suddenly felt bitter tears in the
back of her throat. Kovac was on his way to Washington. She
knew it. Perhaps this had been his deal with Aquino. Perhaps
he was headed downstream at this very moment, waiting for a
lone airplane to retrieve him and samples of the butterflies
from the Tirio village.
Either that, or Kovac was dead. Haniver felt herself desperately
hoping for the latter possibility.
With that sullen thought, she drifted into sleep.
That night, Haniver had a dream. She dreamt that she stood in
a forest where nothing grew: no trace of green, no leaf or
flower. The trees around her were skeletal and dead. There
were brambles at her feet. The air filled with cries of suffering
and despair; she turned around and around but couldn't see
where the voices came from. Then someone suggested that she
break a branch from the tree before her, a huge, contorted
plant of immense age with strange man-faced birds perching in
its boughs. Haniver reached out her hand and snapped off a
twig --
* * *
End of (14/19)
The Tiger Complex (15/19) by LoneGunGuy
http://members.aol.com/lonegunguy/x-files.html
* * *
Baker did not sleep. He stared up at the ceiling, his eyes like
spheres of dry ice. The rest of the team had already dropped
one by one into slumber. He could recognize the sounds that
each made in the dark. Mulder lay snoring on the smooth
formica counter; Doyle made soft and strangely endearing
coughing noises as he drew his blanket more closely around
him. But Baker did not sleep.
There were some images you could never wash from your
mind, no matter how carefully you bleached and scrubbed. For
Baker, it was the memory of that river. Of guiding the rafts
down those black waters, ferrying the flesh of the men with
whom he had lived and worked. You never really got to know a
man until you had zipped him into a body bag and carried him
through the jungle, Baker thought. Something about that dead
weight stirred your compassion more deeply than words ever
could.
Baker remembered the taste of the jaguar's blood in his
mouth. By taking that fierce communion, he realized now, he
had entered into a contract. Not with Quassapelagh, but with
himself. The thought of the two dead cubs in the cat's belly
haunted him like a promise that had to be kept.
In eating the flesh of the mother, he had taken the cubs as his
own. They were dead in the womb, but he had pledged himself
to resurrect them. That was the meaning of the oath.
Do not accept death, Baker told himself. This is not why you
were chosen to survive.
Which meant that he needed to find Kovac.
Baker rolled over onto his side, propped his head up on one
elbow. Looked at the others. They were all asleep, curled in
anonymous lumps on the floor. He could leave quietly and
none of them would notice. He could go into the rain forest
and find Kovac and bring him back. It would be easy.
In the back of his mind a rational voice told him that the DOE
administrator was dead; but reason didn't have much to do
with this. Baker had known that rational voice all his life. To
ignore it was to practice the art of being human.
Baker found himself standing.
He didn't know how it had happened, but now he was standing
and stepping carefully over the sleeping forms at his feet,
careful not to make a sound, not thinking any longer but
letting himself be carried by something beyond what he
understood about himself.
The door leading to the outside was all the way across the
room. At one point Haniver stirred and muttered something in
her sleep -- something in a language other than English -- and
Baker froze. Held his breath. It felt as if his heart was
pounding loud enough to wake them all. He stood there, a
bead of cold sweat trickling down the small of his back. But
eventually he moved onward. Of course.
At the door Baker paused, but only for a second. Then he went
outside.
The night air was too hot, like the inside of an oven. He walked
quickly down the path, his shoes crunching against the gravel.
He wondered if some of the butterflies could have remained
on the roofs, perhaps, or nestled in the eaves of the
buildings....It took him less than a minute to cover the ground
between the lab and his destination, but it seemed like much
longer. Finally he arrived at the barracks, reached out and
twisted the knob with numb fingers. Pulled.
The door wouldn't open.
Baker swore. The goddamned door wouldn't open. He twisted
the knob this way and that, listening all the while for the
flutter of wings behind him, the hairs on the back of his neck
rising, waiting for the tickle of segmented legs....
Finally he tugged on the door with his entire body, hard, and it
came open with a groan. It had been stuck against the jamb,
probably expanding with nocturnal moisture and warmth.
Christ. He went inside and slammed the door in the jungle's
face.
He caught his breath and crept down the dark hallway,
counting the doors by feel. The third led into the bedroom he
had shared with Kovac. He opened it. Inside was a clutter of
papers and charts; the two men had spent the afternoon going
over topographical maps of the plantation. Kovac's pocket
watch still sat on the desk. For some reason this comforted
Baker, as if the watch was sure that its owner would return
soon.
He took it, clenching the cold circle of metal in his large fist,
and went over to the biohazard suits. They were hanging in the
closet. They were too bulky and heavy for ordinary hangers, so
they came with a special rig of their own, a collapsible metal
grille with hooks for the gloves and hoods and respirators.
Baker took down the pieces, began to pull them over his
muscular body. It was hard work, as usual; it took maybe ten
minutes before he was completely suited and ready to leave.
Baker was about to go outside when he remembered the field
kit. The rucksack sat in one corner of the room, compact and
waterproofed at the seams. He brought this pack whenever he
went into the jungle; it was filled with small articles he liked to
have for himself -- elastic bandages for puttees, mylar
blankets, a hatchet, airplane glue for botfly bites, that sort of
thing -- but it also had a pair of night-vision goggles, a heavy-
duty model he'd bought from army surplus. He hung them
around his neck like binoculars. Then he picked up the field
kit and left the room.
Outside, he felt a lot better. The suit was hot, but it offered
enough security for him to look around with some degree of
composure. He raised the goggles to his eyes and switched
them on. They were hard to use through the stiff plastic of his
face mask, and it took a second for him to adjust to the green
smokiness of the world; but soon he could clearly see the
outlines of trees, the epiphytes swaying gently in the warm
wind.
The jungle was too damned quiet. All he could hear was the
hiss of the respirator, and the blood throbbing in his ears.
Before he headed into the forest, there were a few things he
wanted to check. He walked clumsily back to the lab on
rubber-soled feet. Examined the walls and the windows. There
were still a few dead butterflies stuck to the glass. He
wondered why he had found no insects four days ago. Then he
remembered the rain. The bodies would have been washed
away and obliterated beneath the drops, leaving no trace of
their coming. They were delicate things.
On the ground was the Polaroid camera he'd dropped and
broken during the butterfly attack, along with two photos
sitting next to each other on the sandy dirt. He knelt, picked
up the pictures, brushed away the grime. Both depicted the
same area of the forest, the Andes glow emerging from behind
the trees. The glow itself had not shown up well; the reddish-
orange streak resembled a longitudinal smear or blotch where
the photograph had failed to develop. But there was a tall
ceiba tree emerging from the canopy at about the right place.
He would aim for that.
Baker set off into the jungle.
Walking was easier beneath the trees. Through his goggles the
jungle looked ghostly and dead, like a petrified forest at the
bottom of the ocean. He moved carefully, keeping his bearings
with the trees he passed. When you were deep in the jungle,
you wouldn't find two of the same kind of tree too close to
one another, so you could mark your progress by their names
-- mimosa, cecropia, frangipani, cacao, acacia, strangler fig....
He passed what he thought was a large moss-covered stone.
Then he realized that it was a paca, dead, covered with a
writhing blanket of insects. They had been going at the animal
pretty good; the hide was loose, like an ill-fitting fur coat, and
the eyes were gone. He toed it with the tip of his boot, rolled it
over, looked for orange and yellow wings. He didn't see any,
but that didn't mean much. Even if the paca had been killed by
the butterflies, their bodies would have been devoured by
other bugs.
Baker straightened up and was about to resume walking when
he thought of something. Unzipping his field kit, he fished
around until he found a can of luminescent orange spray-
paint. He shook it up, listening to it rattle, and then painted a
small cross midway up the trunk of the nearest tree, about
eight feet from the cadaver. Marking the spot. At the rate the
bugs were going, the paca would be gone by morning.
He tucked the can back into his bag and went onward. He
could see the trunk of the ceiba tree in the distance, smooth
and gray, with big buttressed roots. Another hundred yards
and he found himself standing in a small clearing.
Kovac was there.
Baker fell to his knees. For one hideous moment he thought he
was going to get sick and vomit right there inside the
biohazard suit, the puke splattering against his face shield; he
closed his eyes tightly and tried to stop the dizzying sickness
that was spiraling through his skull. It felt like he'd been
punched in the gut.
"Fuck," he finally gasped, his lips moist. "Fuck."
He sat there for a long time, beneath the ceiba tree. Looking.
He couldn't bring himself to go closer or turn away. He just sat
there. Kovac lay face-down in a heap of dead pacas. His assault
rifle had fallen in the dust by his feet. The bugs had been at
him, too.
After the sickness passed, Baker felt dull and empty inside,
like he didn't give a damn about anything any longer. It was
hot inside the suit. He considered ripping out the seams and
pulling the hood right the fuck off his head -- the danger
didn't seem to matter anymore -- but then he thought about
what he might smell. If nothing else, the respirator protected
him from the stink. Only the stench of his own fear and sweat
filled the hood. He inhaled it like a drug.
A voice from his right. "Baker."
He turned. It was Mulder, wearing a biohazard suit, a hooded
flashlight in his hand. "I woke up and you were missing,"
Mulder said, "so I assumed that -- "
Mulder noticed Kovac and fell silent. He raised his flashlight,
shone the thin finger of brightness across the body. The
insects scattered wherever the light touched the corpse. His
arm fell heavily to his side. Switching the light off, he came
over to Baker, sat next to him. They brooded side by side
beneath the tree, not speaking, insulated from one another by
thick layers of latex and the lukewarm hint of death in the air.
"It's a bitch to be the survivor," said Baker at last.
"Yeah."
Baker studied his thick gloves for a long time before speaking
again. He tried not to look at the body. Dull buzzing in his ears
and he remembered shooing away the flies as he floated the
twelve dead men downstream. The insects always found you
first. In Africa they believed that the first maggot to emerge
from a dead man's flesh was his soul, struggling to escape. But
here the bugs only ate.
"There's something you need to know," he said.
Fighting to keep his voice steady, he told Mulder about his
final conversation with Kovac. "I think that when Kovac
realized the project was in trouble," he concluded, "he wanted
to secure some measure of compensation for himself. The
copal trees were a dead end -- the butterflies were proof
enough of that -- but he didn't want the past two years to have
been a total loss. So he made a deal."
"With Ferdinand Aquino?"
"But it wasn't just Aquino. There's someone else involved. He
wouldn't tell me much about it, but this deal must have been
something special. I worked with Kovac on this project for
years. I know he wouldn't throw it away unless he was sure of
some enormous payoff. Even before we returned to the rain
forest, he'd already made up his mind."
"So he exposed the entire project to Aquino -- "
" -- in exchange for passage into the jungle and a few days of
lead time," Baker finished. "He figured that the copal trees
were a dead end, so he didn't feel too guilty about handing it
over to the Surinamese opposition. He just needed to get here
before anyone else did."
"But why?" asked Mulder. "If he was selling out the project
anyway, what was so important here?"
"He was looking for something."
"For what?"
"It had something to do with the Andes glow. That's why he
ran out here. He followed the glow to its source and was
attacked by the butterflies. He brought that goddamned
assault rifle with him -- I guess he was expecting something."
Mulder looked at Kovac's body, the rifle lying uselessly by its
side. "What do you think it was?"
Baker turned to Mulder. There was resolve in his voice. "I
think we should check his pockets," he said.
"That's easier said than done." But Mulder went over to the
body anyway. Face-down in the dust, Kovac looked like a
shattered scarecrow. He crouched, brushed the bugs away
from Kovac's shirt. Baker knelt beside him, looked at the
corpse through his night-vision lenses. Turned out its pockets.
Nothing inside but a few large beetles, their antennae bobbing
stupidly in the night air.
Baker removed his goggles. "We'll have to roll him over."
"You better be pretty damned sure about this," said Mulder.
"I am."
Baker took Kovac by the shoulders and pulled. The body
flipped over atop the dead pacas. He tried not to look at
Kovac's ruined face as he dug through the pockets on the front
of the vest, undoing the buttons with his clumsy fingers.
In the left breast pocket Baker found what he was looking for.
It was a sheet of lined paper, torn from a spiral notebook.
"You know what this is?" he asked.
Mulder took the sheet, unfolded it. "A page from DeFillips's
project journal."
"Kovac had it all the time. He told me about it but didn't tell
me what it said."
"Let's find out." Mulder shone the flashlight on the page. It was
wrinkled and worn but still legible. Its date was May 21, the
day before the author had died. Mulder read it aloud,
stumbling over the occasional illegible scrawl: "'Three hours
since James and I went to track down the light. Didn't find it
but found something else in the clearing five hundred meters
from camp. I still can't bring myself to report. It was alive. The
Tirio call it the Mai d'agoa. But I don't think -- '" He stopped.
Baker nudged him. "Keep going."
"That's all there is." Mulder turned the page over, saw that it
was blank. "The Mai d'agoa," he said thoughtfully. "I know that
word. Quassapelagh said it to me, but he didn't elaborate...."
He looked up. "Do you know what it means?"
"Yes," said Baker. He took the page from Mulder's hands,
examined it with a frown. "The Mai d'agoa is an Indian legend,
like he says here. If you travel up and down the Amazon you'll
hear it from every tribe along the way. So far as I know, it's
been seen in every part of the jungle, but always without
scientific confirmation."
"What is it?"
"It's supposed to be a serpent, a water snake hundreds of feet
long," said Baker. "The mother of the river, or spirit of the
river. That's what the name means. It's probably an
exaggerated traditional description of the anaconda, but some
cryptozoologists keep searching for a long-extinct dinosaur
species, like the one that's supposed to live in the Congo...."
"The Mokele-Mbembe." Mulder began to get excited. "Yes, I
know about that."
"Well, that's the story. You sit around the campfire in these
villages and you hear it. It's nothing new. DeFillips probably
heard it when he first came to this part of the jungle."
"Do you think the BFDP team could have found something like
this?"
"I don't know. I've been working in the rain forest for years,
and I never saw anything close to what this thing is supposed
to be. I can't see how anything that gigantic could elude us for
so long. These goddamned butterflies are strange enough by
themselves."
Mulder looked down at Kovac's body. "That is a problem. I
don't know what the butterflies could have to do with the Mai
d'agoa. It's too much to swallow at once."
"Yeah." Baker took a silver space blanket from the field kit,
shook it open and spread it gently across Kovac's body. It was
too short to cover his feet. Christ. No matter how often you
did something like this, you never got used to it. If you ignored
the feet, anything could have been beneath the blanket -- a
stone, a pile of equipment, or even just a swelling of the
ground.
There was something else he needed to say. But he chose his
words carefully. He didn't know how Mulder would react. "We
should speak with Haniver."
"What?"
"I think that Haniver is somehow a part of this," said Baker. "I
think that she and Kovac were working for the same men."
Mulder took his time before responding. There was no visible
emotion on his face, but Baker could sense the agitation
beneath the surface. "Baker, you'd better have a damned good
reason for saying that," he finally said.
"She's been sending video transmissions to someone."
Mulder exhaled sharply. "I didn't know that."
"It's true. She goes into the bathroom and closes the door
behind her, but then she puts the antenna in the window. I've
seen it. I think she's beaming reports to Washington."
"And she's looking for the same thing as Kovac?"
"Haniver has her own agenda." Baker took the can of paint
from his field kit, sprayed an orange cross on the trunk of the
ceiba tree. One diagonal slash, and then another. The four-
footed ideogram glowed softly in the darkness, a grim
memorial of the place where Kovac had been slain. "They were
competing," he said. "They were going after the same prize,
and whoever found it first was the winner."
Mulder smashed his fist against the trunk of the tree in sudden
fury. "Shit."
"What is it?"
"Do you know what this is?" Mulder asked. "This is fucking
black ops. It's the Pentagon. This is the way they always work.
There's never only one insider: they always buy two, and play
them off each other. That's how you get results. It's survival of
the fittest, and Kovac just got selected out of the gene pool...."
There were two flushed spots on his cheekbones, places where
the anger had erupted. "And Haniver?" asked Baker.
"Haniver's still going for the gold." Mulder fixed his eyes on
the trunk of the ceiba tree, on the marker. The marker was in
the shape of a St. Andrew's cross. It was an X. "Maybe I'm
crazy, but I think she's searching for the Mai d'agoa."
"That's what Kovac thought, apparently." Baker put the can of
paint back into the kit, slung the pack over his shoulder.
"When we found the dead monkey, Kovac knew that Haniver
would be busy with the dissection for an hour or two, which
gave him a chance to get to the clearing, to look around
without interruption. That's why he rushed into the jungle
while everybody else -- "
He broke off. Mulder's face had gone white.
Baker was about to ask what was wrong when he heard it. The
noise had been there the entire time, he realized, an
undercurrent thrumming like electricity beneath their words,
troubling the air above. The air in the tiger complex. He sighed
heavily. Had something already descended? He didn't want to
know. Perhaps if he turned around he would see nothing.
Perhaps.
Baker turned around.
The trees were on fire.
* * *
End of (15/19)
The Tiger Complex (16/19) by LoneGunGuy
http://members.aol.com/lonegunguy/x-files.html
* * *
The two men flung themselves to the ground as butterflies
exploded around them in a screaming whirlwind. The air was
pushed aside in a burst of paper-thin wings as the insects filled
every inch of space above their heads -- it was like striking a
match in a room full of propane gas. Mulder had his head in
the dust. His eyes squeezed shut. The thundering switchblade
howl filled his ears and he felt the pressure on his shoulders
and legs and back as the bugs landed on him in droves and
looked for a place to bite. He was completely covered. The
butterflies were everywhere. He was drowning in a sea of
flame.
Baker had fallen beside him. He groped blindly, found the
other man's hand. Grabbed it. Baker grabbed back. They clung
to each other as the swarm climbed across them, their
mandibles working uselessly against rubber, crawling over
them in wave after wave after wave.
"Oh God," Mulder said. He couldn't even hear his own voice.
The fluttering was too much. Irrationally he tried to rise, to
run, but the mass of insects on his body was too heavy -- he
couldn't move his arms or legs, only vaguely felt Baker's hand
in his. He didn't know how much longer his biosuit could hold.
He felt like he was suffocating, like it hurt to breathe, and he
thought for one horrifying second that he had been bitten and
was feeling the first effects of the poison. Then he realized
that his lungs and ribcage were being squeezed, sandwiched
between the sandy earth and the monumental bulk of
butterflies pressing down above them. He gasped. Gulped for
air. The compression and the claustrophobia were too much.
Mulder wanted to scream. He was going to scream.
Then he was on his hands and knees. He'd managed to rise
into a crawling position. He could move. He didn't know
whether the butterflies had begun to depart or whether the
adrenaline was flooding his veins and giving him enough
strength to drag himself forward but in the end it didn't
matter. Baker had risen too, was straining with every tendon
and nerve in his body to get to his knees. Now they were face
to face. The men supported one another, propped each other
up as they struggled into a standing position, the insects
colliding with their hoods.
They were up. They were on their feet.
They flung their arms around each other and ran, not caring
which way they went. They crushed butterflies underfoot.
Pushed their way through a solid wall of orange and yellow
wings. Mulder extended an arm and swept aside cloud after
cloud of bugs but more came in their place. His mind had gone
away. In its place was something driven by raw animal terror --
he had to move -- to keep moving, to fucking fight and claw
and tear his way to safety --
They collided heavily with the ceiba tree, almost went down.
Mulder knocked his head against the trunk. Felt an egg-sized
lump form almost immediately. The pain was dizzying and
intense, but Baker caught him and kept him from falling: they
both understood that to fall again was to die, to lie there on
the ground forever and not rise again until the butterflies had
chewed their way through the suits. There was no question
about it. They had to keep moving. The insane yammer of
wings filled Mulder's ears and made him think that this was
truly Hell, a nightmare where his legs were mired in mud and
the air slammed and battered his body as he ran, one
exhausted step after another. Another. And another. It was too
much, oh Christ, it was too fucking much....
And then they were out.
The air cleared. The night was still darker than death but the
bugs were gone, somehow they were gone; the men could walk
and breathe again -- they had emerged from the cloud. Their
suits were still covered with living insects but they were fewer
and the layers were thinner; Mulder and Baker shook the
insects loose, brushed them away, left them bruised and
disoriented on the ground and squashed them beneath their
boots.
Soon the dirt was covered with dead or dying butterflies and
the men were coated with gore, black blood, bits of wings and
body segments. They took the clean dust at their feet and
scrubbed the suits, did their damnedest to remove all traces of
the attack. They did so without speaking, by mutual consent.
They were shaking hard enough to make their teeth rattle like
dice in their heads.
"That was too fucking close," Mulder said.
"Yeah." Baker stopped and turned away. "Jesus, I think I'm
going to be sick."
"I'd hold it in if I were you."
Baker closed his eyes, tried to fight the sour taste at the back
of his throat. "I'm not used to this," he said. "I've been up
against all kinds of shit in this forest but never anything like
that. No. They were trying to fucking annihilate us."
"They're going to keep trying," Mulder said. "Let's get the hell
out of Dodge."
They moved on. Eventually Baker realized that they were lost.
They had been stumbling through the jungle for hundreds of
yards -- he had no idea in which direction -- and everything
looked strange. He couldn't even see the moon; it was hidden
behind the trees. And they had left the flashlight and goggles
back in the clearing.
"It just keeps getting better and better," he said.
Mulder understood their predicament. "Now what?"
Baker sank down. "We spend the night here."
"You're kidding."
"We don't have much of a choice. We could wander forever in
the dark and stray farther and farther away from the
plantation. In the daylight we'll have a better chance of finding
our way back."
Mulder tried to catch his breath. "Do you think we're safe
here?"
"I'm guessing that the butterflies are territorial. If we don't
bother them, they won't bother us."
"And what if you're wrong?"
"Then we're fucked." Baker looked around. This was as good a
place to make camp as any: the ground was level and the soil
was reasonably soft. He lay on his side, working his hip back
and forth to make a shallow depression in the dirt. Closed his
eyes.
Mulder followed his example, putting his ear to the soil -- and
then suddenly sat up. He had heard the rumor of distant
rumblings. Or so he thought. There had been something
nervous about the ground. Mulder lay down again, listening to
the earth. No doubt about it. There was a strange life to the
soil. As if it echoed with the footfalls of unseen beasts, herds
moving from one place to another in the night, trampling the
dust beneath their hooves. It was not a sound so much as a
sensation, a faint aura of uneasiness radiating up from the
dirt.
"It's always like this," Baker said abruptly. "The ground, I
mean. You feel it?"
"Yeah, I feel it," said Mulder.
"People come to the forest, see the natives sleeping in
hammocks and assume that it's because of the heat. But that
isn't why. Not by a long shot. It's because the ground is so
damned alive. It's the worst soil in the world, but it's alive
anyway. It's haunted. I've never known anyone who could
manage a restful sleep on it. It gives you bad dreams."
"I've learned to enjoy my bad dreams." Mulder turned over
onto his back, the sandy dust gritting beneath him. Looked up
at the canopy. The trees towered above him, skyscraper trees
woven together with lianas and vines and figs. He could see
stars in a few places, shining down through cracks in that
living roof.
He wondered what he would do if those stars were suddenly
blotted out by a swarm of creatures so alien that they hardly
seemed part of this universe. He knew what alien meant, had
known his share of xenophobia in the face of the unknown,
had even faced an insect attack or two before -- but then there
were these bugs. These butterflies in the tiger complex. Baker
was right. They threw themselves at you and kept coming until
you were dead. They would splatter and destroy and crush
themselves in the process and it didn't seem to matter.
Baker had been nursing similar thoughts. "It still doesn't make
any sense," he said. "We're looking at an incredibly aggressive
insect species, one that attacks and kills everything in sight at
no apparent benefit to itself. It's crazy. There's always a
balance to these things. If one organism in the environment
doesn't practice moderation, the entire system collapses. It's a
basic law of evolution."
"Mankind doesn't seem to have any trouble breaking that law,"
said Mulder.
"We're overdue to pay the penalty. I can accept that; we've
only been around for forty thousand years. But these
butterflies are a different story. You heard what Doyle said. If
their physiology is any clue, these insects are as old as the
dinosaurs." Baker exhaled. "I can't understand how they could
exist in the rain forest for so long without affecting the
ecosystem in visible ways."
Mulder pondered this. He had an idea -- one of his goddamned
insane ideas -- and wondered whether he could share it with
Baker. If it had been Haniver or Scully he wouldn't have said
anything; he'd known these women for years, yet neither
seemed to understand how quickly his notions came, or how
long he waited before venturing to speak his mind -- even
though his speculations seemed absurdly premature when they
finally came. As if there were a sibyl inside his head, inscribing
her prophecies on leaves and scattering them to the four
winds -- except for the ones he managed to save.
Sometimes these ideas were so strange he didn't know whether
to burn them or redeem them for the infinite. This was one of
those moments. "Maybe the butterflies weren't in the
ecosystem until we came here," Mulder said at last.
"Excuse me?" said Baker.
"Bear with me for a second. Let's assume that a connection
exists between the Andes glow and the insect attacks -- that
the light serves as some kind of signal that a swarm is
coming."
"That seems fairly obvious."
"But the timing is irregular. We know from the project journal
that at least three hours elapsed between the first appearance
of the glow and the butterfly attack, because team members
had enough time to investigate and record the sighting. But
when we saw the glow, the butterflies attacked within minutes.
Do you know what that suggests to me?"
"I can't wait to find out."
Mulder began to speak rapidly, trying to force his ideas into
the air before they disappeared beneath the turbulent haze of
his imagination. "I think the glow is the visible sign of some
sort of forging process. Maybe some kind of defense
mechanism. Whenever human activity enters the rain forest, it
disturbs the environment, upsets the balance of nature in
some way. If the intrusion is large enough -- something on the
level of the BFDP plantation, for example -- maybe it triggers a
immune response, a swarm of killer insects generated to
destroy any invaders, like antibodies annihilating a specific
strain of bacillus."
Baker sat up. "That's crazy."
"Let me finish. The butterflies don't disturb the ecosystem
because they come into existence only when necessary. This
explains why the interval between the Andes glow and the
arrival of the insects has been getting shorter. The jungle's
immune mechanism could remain dormant for years, even
decades, before being awakened again; at first it would take
days or hours to create a new swarm, but once the cycle began
in earnest the butterflies could be released ever more swiftly
into the forest. The Andes glow is the electrical byproduct of
this process, some kind of bioplasmic discharge caused by the
spontaneous birth of millions of insects...." Mulder trailed off,
sensing some skepticism. "What do you think?"
Baker took up a handful of gray soil, let the dust trickle
thoughtfully through his fingers. Remembered T.S. Eliot. "If I
were a younger man, I'd say that you were demented," he said.
"Maybe you are. But living in the rain forest for the past few
years has taught me -- well, shit, it's taught me that the reality
of the jungle is so strange that I can't dismiss anything out of
hand. The ant-trees, for example. You remember, the ants that
ambushed Scully near the river...."
"Of course I remember."
"That's an immune system of sorts. The ants protect the tree,
killing parasitic plants, caterpillars; if you touch the trunk or
snap off a twig, they rain down on you by the thousands. I
could imagine a similar relationship between the butterflies
and another plant species. It would explain why the swarm
didn't pursue us beyond a certain point. Once we were out of
its territory, we no longer represented a threat."
"And perhaps the symbiotic relationship could progress to
such an extent -- "
" -- that the tree could spontaneously generate and give birth
to the insects? I don't know about that." Baker paused.
"There's something else, though."
"What?"
"There has to be a plant involved at some point. Butterflies
wouldn't be able to generate this kind of poison on their own;
their metabolism isn't complex enough. This means that
they're absorbing it from some sort of plant, possibly when
feeding on leaves during the larval stage." He looked up at the
canopy. "I guarantee it. Somewhere in this jungle there's a tree
or shrub or vine that hasn't been discovered yet. But it
contains the deadliest poison that mankind has ever seen."
* * *
Eventually the two men managed to sleep. It was a hot and
feverish slumber; every ten or twenty minutes Baker would
raise his head, open his eyes and for a few disorienting
moments be unable to remember where he was, until the
memories came crashing back and sent another salty wave of
despair across his heart. The dust wouldn't let him rest.
But sooner or later he would grow still and his breathing
would become more regular and he would fall asleep there on
the earth, side by side with Mulder.
There was another thing.
In the narrow gap between his suit and respirator a butterfly
lay curled. It was a beautiful insect, wings orange and black
and yellow, eyes like burning coals. Overlooked by the two
men in their mad rush to cleanse themselves of the other bugs,
it lay flattened against the rubber like a glittering brooch,
waiting for the right time.
For its time --
* * *
Haniver awoke with a start. Her dream was etched vividly in
her mind. She had been kneeling in a forest where the trees
were as white as bone, gathering a heap of brambles, laying
them before a hill of thorns, a strange sense of pity stirring in
her chest, and --
She sat up. Her left arm was numb, verging on pins and
needles. Rubbing it absently, Haniver looked around the
laboratory. Although the windows were still shaded and taped
shut, she could see yellow lines of daylight shining through. It
was morning. The others were already gone. She had overslept.
"Shit!" Haniver rose on shaky feet and headed for the door,
her arm hanging from her shoulder like an alien piece of flesh.
She tried to check her watch, had to grab her useless wrist and
physically raise it to eye level. It was seven o' clock. Somehow
she had managed to stay unconscious for almost ten hours. It
was almost time for her next report.
Glancing down, she saw that her shirt was still splattered with
monkey blood. Jesus. She had been sleeping in the gore of the
necropsy and hadn't even noticed it. She felt incredibly filthy,
wanted to peel off her clothes right there: she had to take a
shower, to scrub away the blood and grime and exhaustion,
before finding her video transmitter, before sending her
report, before joining the others.
The others. Haniver reddened at the memory of last night. She
had cried in front of them all: only a few tears, but each drop
had boiled over with her own humiliation and self-loathing. It
felt like they should have steamed away, leaving angry burns
around her eyes.
Sometimes she wished that she could purge herself of all
emotion, just scorch it all away, leaving nothing behind but the
ash of a disciplined hardcase. As it was, she realized that she
did better in cases where everyone was already dead. Give her
a subway station crammed with bodies and she could cut them
all open and trace the path of gas down each stagnant
bloodstream; if Jonestown happened again, she could clean up
the mess and spear paper cups with the best of them....
Outside, her dread vanished. The jungle looked peaceful and
passive; the gray morning sun flattened out the features of the
plantation, made them dull and uninteresting and hardly
terrifying. Last night felt like a nightmare, a fantasy that could
be bleached away like a yellowing photograph: but she knew
better than that. Dead butterflies were still splattered against
the laboratory window.
Haniver removed a glassine envelope from her pocket,
unsheathed her knife and carefully scraped a few bugs from
the glass. When samples were collected and safely put away,
she felt a lot better.
She turned, sprinted down the path.
Inside the dormitory, the shower was already running. Haniver
grabbed the towel and knapsack from her room, paused in
front of the closed bathroom door. She heard the muffled
sound of the water. Rapped on the door with her knuckles.
Scully said something unintelligible through the splashing
noises.
Haniver didn't reply. She was hot and sweaty and covered with
monkey gore and after a moment realized that she didn't want
to wait. So she just stripped off her clothes and went in. Inside,
the shower curtain was closed. She drew it aside, startling
Scully. The soap tumbled from her hand. "Wha -- ? Haniver?"
Haniver mimed a downward knifing motion, hummed a few
bars of Bernard Hermann. "Mind if I join you?" she asked.
"There's room enough for two...."
"I guess so, but -- "
"Thanks." Haniver climbed into the shower, nudging Scully
aside to stand beneath the nozzle. The water was icy cold but
it was exactly what she needed. "Sorry about this."
"Um, that's okay." After an awkward moment Scully joined
Haniver beneath the freezing droplets, the hair plastered to
her head like a helmet. Rinsing away the suds, she tried to
make conversation. "How does the weather look?"
"The sky is pretty cloudy. Rain shouldn't be more than a few
hours away." Haniver produced a bottle of lemon-scented
shampoo and lathered up, her slippery shoulders rubbing
against Scully's back. "I assume that we're leaving as soon as
the weather cooperates."
Scully stood silently for a moment, shivering, skin prickling
from the chill. "I don't know. I hope so." She looked worried.
"Mulder and Baker are missing."
The bottle slipped from between Haniver's fingers. It hit the
floor of the shower and bounced twice. It was a few seconds
before she could speak. "How long have they been gone?"
"They could have been out all night. I didn't notice they were
missing until this morning. They took their biohazard suits, so
they should be all right." But Scully's voice betrayed a deeper
anxiety as she opened the curtain and stepped out of the
shower, dripping.
"And what about Kovac?"
"Nothing."
"That's bad." Haniver pulled the curtain shut again. She
watched through the semi-translucent plastic as Scully's
silhouette toweled off, propping one leg up on the toilet seat,
then the other. Haniver's heart filled with a vague uneasiness,
and perhaps the beginnings of paranoia. First Kovac, now
Mulder and Baker. There was something at work here, some
kind of machine that she could only watch from the outside,
guessing how the gears were meshing. The freezing water from
the shower drowned her anger, leaving it to smolder. She
wondered what kind of deal the three men might have made.
"How did we miss it?" Haniver suddenly said. She had not been
aware that she was going to speak.
"Miss what?" asked Scully, wrapping herself in a towel.
Haniver turned off the water, teeth chattering. "We were
careful, we did the autopsies together -- so how did we miss
the goddamned butterfly bites?"
"There were bites everywhere," Scully said. "The men had been
living in the jungle. We didn't think it was unusual." She
opened the door and went out. "The lethal dose is probably no
more than a single bite," was the last thing she said.
That was what Haniver wanted to hear. After Scully had exited,
she emerged from the shower, dried herself off, took her
damp towel and stuffed it beneath the door. Pulled on shirt
and shorts and attached the knife to her belt. Fished a rubber
band from her pocket, gathered her hair back in a wet
ponytail. She regarded herself in the mirror and decided that
she looked all right under the circumstances.
Finally Haniver took the video transmitter from her knapsack
and placed the antenna in the window. Plugged it all in and
turned on the power.
Hearing the familiar burst of static, she felt far from home and
inexplicably lonely. For a heartbeat's time she wondered
whether any of this was worth it. There were moments when it
seemed like her life was driven by momentum alone. By
inertial forces. Sometimes she would stop and look at what she
did -- or listen, really listen for the first time, to what she was
saying -- and feel as though she were acting a role in someone
else's story.
Then Haniver blinked her eyes and the feeling disappeared, as
it always did. It was replaced by apprehension. In a few
seconds she would know whether or not Kovac had made it
back with the poison. The butterfly specimens were in her
pocket, pressing against her heart. The screen flickered and
the image of the chain-smoking man appeared before her.
The bathroom door opened.
Haniver's hand slammed down on the ABORT switch hard
enough to crack the case. The screen went black again. But she
had been a fraction of a second too late. She could see a pair
of dusty boots in the doorway. They were yellow biohazard
boots. There was no hurry to lift her eyes and see whose they
were. For some reason she remembered something that Dante
had once written -- something about how the urge to escape
scorn made you unjust against your own just self.
Haniver understood what Dante had meant.
* * *
End of (16/19)
The Tiger Complex (17/19) by LoneGunGuy
http://members.aol.com/lonegunguy/x-files.html
* * *
It was Mulder. He had removed his hood but still wore his
biohazard suit. It was grimy beyond belief, encrusted with the
white dirt of the rain forest, with smears of ichor, of toxic
blood. He was tired. He looked at Haniver with equal parts
exhaustion and anger, a hung-over, defeated anger that fit his
face well. As if he were used to this kind of betrayal.
Mulder drew his pistol, letting his arm dangle by his side.
"Call him back," he said.
Haniver's eyes flicked down to the gun. "Are you threatening a
fellow agent, Fox? You don't need to do that."
"Maybe not." Mulder gestured toward the video transmitter
with the barrel of the pistol. Now his exhaustion seemed to be
bleeding away, leaving only the anger behind. "Just call him
back, Haniver."
Haniver turned to the transmitter. Her knees and hips ached
from squatting on the bathroom floor for so long. There was a
small red button on the side of the transmitter case and
Haniver pressed it without hesitation. A soft buzzing noise
began to emanate from within the innermost workings of the
machine: and then a sudden feverish heat. She had triggered
the self-destruct protocol.
Flames erupted from the case and swiftly consumed the
transmitter in less than fifteen seconds. The sharp, acrid smell
of melting plastic hung in the air.
Click of the safety latch. Mulder was pointing the pistol at her
head. "Get up."
Haniver rose slowly. "Where are we going?"
There was a trace of a smile on Mulder's face. "We're going
outside," he said.
"The butterflies could come back."
"All the more reason for you to talk quickly," he said. "Let's
go."
They exited the bathroom. Haniver left the smoldering box of
the transmitter behind. They went down the hall with Haniver
in the lead, Mulder following with the gun. Some kind of crazy
calm had wrapped itself around her heart, a feeling she had
known only a few times before. There had been an incident in
Seattle. She had been standing in the corridor of a shabby
apartment building, about to apprehend a suspect who had
been cooking up nerve gas from bleach and drain cleaner,
when three bullets had smashed through the wooden door and
hit her just below the edge of her Kevlar vest.
She had felt warm blood pour across her hands, but there had
been no pain or fear: only a numbing sense of peace as she
returned fire and killed her unseen assailant and leaked vital
fluids across the spinach-colored carpet while her partner
called 911. It had not been an out-of-body experience: if she
had sensed her soul pulling apart, she would have gripped the
earth with her fingernails and gone screaming into that infinite
light. Here there had been only silence, except for the
strangely soothing sound of her own heart's blood ebbing
away.
That was how it felt now.
They went outside. Haniver kept walking until she realized that
the sound of footsteps on the gravel path behind her had
stopped. She turned. Mulder had seated himself on the
ground, and the pistol was back in its holster. He looked out
into the jungle. The rows of trees were dark and monumental;
more than ever the rain forest resembled a solid wall of
growth, clotted with the leavings of the past. Haniver sank
down next to him and thought about the butterflies.
Long silence.
"Did Kovac send you?" asked Haniver suddenly.
Mulder closed his eyes. "No."
"You aren't a part of this?" she asked. "You don't know
anything about this?"
"No." Mulder peeled off his gloves. It was a delicate, almost
clumsy operation to undo the flaps and velcro tabs, but finally
he managed to take them off and look at his naked hands.
Compared to the big yellow gloves, they seemed tiny, almost
shriveled. "But I want you to tell me."
Haniver looked down. From the loose sandy soil between her
feet sprouted a blade of grass, rough and serrated like the
edge of a sword. For a long moment there seemed to be
nothing else in the world except this blade of grass and the
bead of dew depending from its tip. Its green was vivid against
the dead white earth. "They want the poison," she said. "Kovac
brought it to their attention."
"He approached them first?"
"Yes." Haniver undid her ponytail, ran a hand through her
damp hair. "They moved in the same circles," she said
miserably. "Kovac worked with the DOE for fifteen years
before going into the jungle. He would have met these men in
Washington -- the ones who step out of the shadows whenever
something needs to be buried in the name of national security.
Maybe he did one of them a favor once, and kept the phone
number. When the bodies started coming in from the forest
and he realized the project was doomed, he gave them a call."
"And offered them a new biological weapon."
Haniver nodded. "Looking back, it's obvious that this could
not have been an act of ordinary terrorism. Terrorists don't
work like that. Either they advertise their involvement or they
make sure the bodies are never found. They don't leave twelve
dead men in the middle of the forest with no sign of what
killed them. No. This was something new."
A cloud passed before the sun, plunging the place where they
sat into shadow. Haniver felt as if she were giving birth,
purging herself in one savage labor of all the clotted, tangled,
secret eviscera that had been gestating inside her. "The few
details we had were enough to set the wheels rolling," she
continued. "If this was a chemical attack, it was unlike
anything we'd ever seen. If it was the result of some natural
toxin, it was one of the most lethal poisons on record."
"So they came to you in Washington."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"They needed another angle," said Haniver. "They wouldn't
entrust a job like this to only one man. I had the right
background. I knew chemical weapons. I accepted their terms
and arrived in Suriname only a few hours after you did."
"And what did they tell you about the case?"
"Nothing much. From what I managed to discover on my own, I
thought we might be dealing with curare and some unknown
admixture. But after I came to Paramaribo and found that
Kovac had already commissioned an autopsy, I knew that I
couldn't conduct this investigation in the regular fashion. It
was a goddamned race, and Kovac was always one step ahead."
Mulder pressed his fists against his forehead. Haniver saw that
there was a big purple bruise above his left eyebrow. "So what
was the prize, then?" he asked.
"It doesn't matter now," she said bitterly. "You know what they
had to offer. I could have seen some advancement, some
fucking progress after ten years in the Bureau." She reached
down with her fingers, tore away that blade of grass. "But it
doesn't matter. I think that Kovac made it back to Paramaribo
with the evidence he needed, with samples of the butterflies,
and the game is over...."
As she said these words, Mulder stood and walked away, his
face a hard mask of anger. She followed him. "Fox, wait."
He did not turn around. "This is the worst mistake you ever
made, Haniver."
"I -- "
"Even if you were determined to climb the ladder at any cost, I
never thought you'd prostitute your career to the goddamned
forces of darkness. If you think that the game is over, you're
wrong. Once you get in bed with these men, you become part
of it for life."
Haniver stopped on the path. "Fox, look at me."
Mulder turned around and Haniver hit him in the face. It was
only a glancing blow to the chin, but it took them both by
surprise. The moment froze. They stood facing one another, a
spot of red blooming just above Mulder's jawline.
"I hate you," said Haniver, her voice almost breaking with
amazement. "I do. One day you're going to leave that
basement office and find that not everyone can afford to be a
martyr. You survive because you have the fucking mandate of
heaven. But I don't have that mandate, and I need to work in
other ways."
"Haniver -- "
"I'm not finished." Haniver felt tears coming, fought them with
every ounce of fury and pride she possessed. "Ever since we
first met I knew that you were going to achieve everything I
ever wanted without even trying. You had the looks, the
money, the connections, the talent. If you had played their
game for five fucking minutes you could have owned the FBI.
But you threw it away."
She wiped her eyes angrily. "I never had the advantages that
you seem to take for granted. I've invested everything I own. I
killed myself just to remain on your level. But the promotion
always went to someone else, to someone who knew a senator
or had a famous father in the Bureau. This is what I've always
had to deal with, Fox. So don't accuse me of whoring myself to
the dark side."
Mulder turned, went towards the lab. "I know these men better
than you do," he said. "I've lied and I've sold information and
I've given up more than you can imagine. I've been fucked up
the ass more than once. Don't think I had it easy. I've had to
cut myself deep just to maintain what little freedom I have."
"But what do you do with that freedom? You investigate cases
and file away the evidence and accumulate papers and
paranoia and never do a goddamned thing with any of it -- "
"You're crazy if you think that collaboration will accomplish
anything more."
They stood at the door of the laboratory. "You've got nothing
to lose because you threw it away years ago," Haniver said.
"You act as if you expect everyone to treat their lives the same
way. But I care about myself. I care about my life."
Mulder sighed. For a second he looked terribly old, strain and
anxiety pushing their way up through his skin.
"I care about my life, too," he said.
* * *
They went inside. Tension hung between them like fire but
none of the others seemed to notice. At one end of the lab,
Scully was peering through a double-barreled microscope at a
slice of the monkey's brain; at the other, Doyle took blocks of
styrofoam and placed them carefully within an ice chest --
samples of copal oil and leaf cuttings. Baker had removed his
biohazard suit and laid it across the table, checking it for rips
or tears. His respirator was off to one side.
Looking up from the microscope, Scully met them with a
frown. "Bad news."
"I'm used to that by now," Mulder said. Wearily, he began to
strip off the rest of his rubber suit, dropping the pieces one by
one on the floor. "Lay it on me."
Scully peeled off her latex gloves. "Judging from the way this
toxin behaves in the nervous system, none of our chemical
precautions will do a damned bit of good. The HI-6 or atropine
injections won't slow the poison, for example."
Haniver moved past Mulder. "What about the pyridostigmine
and diazepam tablets?"
"They're about as effective as baby aspirin. If one of these
butterflies bites you, there's nothing we can do but watch you
die." Scully removed the slide from beneath the lens, examined
the dead wafer of gray matter. Her eyes were puffy from
strain. Defeated. "I wish I had something more encouraging to
tell you."
Haniver went over to Baker, helped him to check his biosuit. It
looked like a flayed shell, the empty remains of a creature that
had molted and flown away. "That's a goddamned shame," she
said, picking up the respirator.
"Yeah." Doyle shut the lid of the ice chest. "Kovac never knew
what hit him."
Haniver froze.
Mulder peeled off the last of his suit and waited. There was a
certain coldness in his heart as he wondered what strange
mixture of horror and triumph and fury filled Haniver at the
news. He had been close to telling her several times: but
whenever he tried to say something, he had remembered how
Kovac had died with a mouth full of butterfly wings, and had
swallowed his own words in the same spirit.
"We found him in the jungle," Baker said. "He was killed by the
butterflies."
"He's dead?" Haniver looked as though she had been kicked in
the stomach. "But...." She trailed off, then turned to Mulder.
There was murder in her eyes. "He was dead and you didn't
tell me," she said, still holding the respirator. "I told you
everything, you son of a bitch, but you didn't tell me he was
dead...."
Mulder grabbed the respirator angrily from her hands. "Yes,"
he said. "He ran into the forest and got himself killed for the
sake of everything you and these men represent -- "
In his left index finger came a sudden pain, like the prick of a
needle. Mulder broke off. Looked down.
Lying in the palm of his hand was a tiger complex butterfly. It
was dying. Its wings were ruined and torn but it had crawled
out from under the respirator and injected its poison just
above the first joint of his index finger. The mark was a small
white lump with an inflamed pinhole in the center. The
butterfly had left its head and jaws buried in his skin.
As Mulder watched, it fluttered twice and died.
Time stopped. No one spoke. The moment hung suspended
with something like awe. Every detail of the room around him
-- the tables, the tall stools, the light shining through the
windows, the shock rising in the faces of the others -- took on
the monumental vividness and depth of a Renaissance
engraving.
One thought pounded into his brain again and again. He was
going to die. He thought about the look on Kovac's face when
they had turned him over with his eyes eaten away. The
interval between heartbeat and heartbeat seemed to stretch
out into an infinity of emptiness. Mulder looked at Scully and
saw the agony there, felt the same agony rise inside him, a
sadness born of silence and wasted time. He was going to die.
But this was not right. No. Not like this.
These thoughts moved through Mulder's mind in the space of
half a second. He opened his mouth, was about to speak,
didn't know what he was going to say -- when a sudden hope
shot itself like a bullet into his goddamned heart.
There was no time to think it through. He faced Haniver. "Cut
it off," he said.
Haniver stared at him, not comprehending. "What?"
Mulder crushed the dead butterfly in his fist and dropped the
respirator to the counter. It fell with a dull clank. "Take your
knife and cut off my finger," he said. His voice did not seem to
be his own. "I've got maybe ten seconds left."
He put his hand on the table, fingers splayed wide. Shut his
eyes. "Do it now."
Mulder was right. He had ten to twenty seconds before his
pulse pumped the poison past his lowermost knuckle into the
rest of his body. If she cut off his finger now he might live.
Haniver unsheathed her knife. It was her big blade, made from
a steel railroad spike, pounded flat and sharpened to a razor
edge.
Haniver gripped the handle and stared at Mulder's left hand,
lying flat against the counter like a starfish. Raised the knife
high above her head. Looked at Mulder. He looked back.
For the smallest fraction of a second they shared an unspoken
understanding, an understanding beyond words.
"I'm sorry," Haniver said.
Then she reared back and brought the glittering edge of the
knife down on Mulder's finger as hard as she could.
* * *
Morning came and Quassapelagh strode through the
abandoned Tirio village, the pale mist twining around his
ankles.
Nowadays he rarely spent much time in the village itself,
choosing instead to hang a hammock in the jungle whenever
he felt the need for sleep. His home had become depressing.
He had built the houses with his own hands, cutting the reeds,
bundling them together and raising them with pulleys to make
the roofs; but today everything was falling apart, everything
was crumbling, and Quassapelagh understood that he was too
old to begin again.
He had lived in a dozen countries and watched the sun rise
from a thousand horizons, but the law of entropy held firm no
matter where he went. Only old age could teach you that. You
could create a semblance of order in your own life, but
eventually it turned to dust. Even the forest would dissolve
someday.
But one thing would remain. The Mai d'agoa would outlast the
jungle. It had been here since before the continents had
shifted, since the time when South America and Africa had
nestled snugly together; it would linger long after the face of
the world had been remade again. He knew that now. He had
seen the ribbon of light for the second time, and knew what
would inevitably follow.
But that didn't mean he couldn't stop it. Before, he had
remained passive out of terror in the face of the unimaginable.
Now Quassapelagh tired of waiting.
He went into the storage hut, moved past the piles of wood,
came at last to his bows and arrows. Took them gently down
from the thatched roof. These bows were his pride and joy,
carved from snakewood, glowing softly with beeswax and
berry juice, trimmed with parrot feathers. He knew no other
work of art that could move him so deeply. He selected the
largest bow and set it aside for now.
He chose his five best arrows, running his finger along the
eagle feathers. You didn't use these for hunting pacas or
tapirs. You saved them for larger things, special things. Like
the jaguar.
Or something else.
He set the arrows next to the bow. Then he stood on his toes,
reached behind the pile of unfinished canoes and felt around
until he found the bamboo vial. It was about three inches long,
sealed with a wooden plug. Squatting on the ground, he
opened it -- and carefully let the contents spill out into his
hands.
Quassapelagh looked at the arrowheads for a long time. He
didn't know why he was bringing the curare along. He doubted
whether the poison would be of much use. But there were
some things you couldn't explain. The traditional Tirio legend
of the origin of curare had been whispered to him in the
cradle; it stirred his blood in a way that only the earliest
memories of his childhood could do.
This was the legend:
The first man in the world had loved a woman who could
transform herself into all the creatures of the jungle. He
married her, and she taught him the arts of making bread, and
the secret of the arrow-poison. Anxious to test his new
weapon, he went hunting and killed all the monkeys in the rain
forest until only one was left; it begged him to spare its life but
he slew it anyway; but when the monkey fell from the tree, he
realized that it had been his wife.
That was why curare was sacred. Everything it destroyed
carried with it some buried ancestral memory of this lost love.
It had taken Quassapelagh his entire life to understand that
story. Mankind had once been married to the rain forest, had
known the love that the natural world reserved for its own
kind: but now man was a stranger here. Now love had turned
to hate. He understood that now. Before, he had remained
silent because he had believed that the ways of the forest
should be respected even if that meant standing aside as men
died and the Mai d'agoa awoke; but now he knew better. The
forest was not his home. He no longer had a home.
Thus it was with the sense of something irretrievably lost, with
the bitterness of the man who takes his dead wife into his
arms, that he went towards the river. He gripped his bow,
tucked the bamboo vial of curare into the belt of his
breechcloth. His canoe was ready in the tall grasses. In two or
three hours he would be at the plantation.
With luck, everyone there would still be alive.
* * *
End of (17/19)
The Tiger Complex (18/19) by LoneGunGuy
http://members.aol.com/lonegunguy/x-files.html
* * *
The storm began around nine o'clock. The team was seated
glumly together in the laboratory when Scully heard a light tap
on the roof above; she looked up, heard another, and another.
Rain was falling. A moment later the room filled with the soft
murmur of droplets drumming against corrugated metal. She
turned to the windows. Water splashed against the glass,
leaving small starbursts and finally washing away the bodies of
the tiger complex butterflies.
Mulder sat next to her. His mutilated hand was beneath the
edge of the table, out of sight. He kept it there because he
didn't want to look at it. Scully had injected him with
Lidocaine and the pain had diminished to a dull throbbing
ache, but the sense of emptiness, of loss, was much worse.
His hand was no longer his. Haniver had chopped his left index
finger cleanly off. The bone had snapped like a pencil. Even
through the pain he had seen that piece of himself lying there
impotently on the table and almost screamed: the nail needed
to be trimmed, he had thought in a daze, but now it was only a
scrap of flesh. He only had three fingers left. Scully had
bandaged him as well as she could, but it couldn't disguise that
primary fact. His left hand was narrow, like the hand of an
alien.
But at least he was alive.
"There's still a chance for replantation," Scully had said, taking
the finger and wrapping it in plastic and packing it in sterile
ice. But she was shaking badly. She tried to smile. "Oh God,
Mulder -- you really had me going for a second."
"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I know."
Doyle was mopping up the blood -- it seemed to have spilled
everywhere. He shook his head. "Shit. I've got to tell you,
Mulder, that was the gutsiest thing I've ever seen. That's a
story I'm going to be telling to my fucking grandkids."
"This will all make a good story someday," said Haniver.
She put an arm around Mulder's shoulders, just held him like
that for a long time, as if she were trying to draw some of his
pain into her body. But Mulder only sat in silence, feeling the
dizzying agony bleed away bit by bit. He thought about how it
could have been worse, a lot worse. But it didn't do much
good.
Now, as the rain began to fall, he brought his left hand from
underneath the table and examined it. It was bound in gauze,
surgical tape. His index finger had an itch on the knuckle of its
first joint, even though he no longer had an index finger.
"Fuck," he said.
Baker closed his eyes, listening to the rain. "All right. We need
to suit up and get out of here as soon as we can. There's no
telling how long this storm will last."
They rose. It took Mulder a second to pull himself together for
the trial ahead but finally he joined the others, struggling to
get his suit onto his body with only one good hand. Scully and
Baker quietly helped him dress, attaching his respirator and
tugging on his gloves. The left glove didn't fit very well. The
first finger hung abnormally loose, like an empty egg sac.
Mulder toyed with it with something like horrified fascination.
And then they were ready to go. The five remaining team
members stared at one another, standing there in the middle
of the room in their bulky yellow spacesuits, each breath
heightened and deepened by the hiss of the respirators.
Far above them, the rain continued to fall. Somewhere outside
there lurked a death that none of them wished to imagine: but
there was no denying it. They were in the killing jar. All that
remained was to step into the abyss and accept whatever
came. Baker thought about the weight of the dead men in his
arms. Haniver remembered her own tears. Scully flashed back
to the moment when she'd realized that Mulder had been
poisoned. And Doyle saw the face of Joan of Arc.
"Goddamn," Mulder said finally. "We've all got to die
sometime. Let's give it a shot."
They went outside.
* * *
The sky was the color of burnished iron. The rain came down
hard, pounding and pulverizing the soil into a kind of thin
gravelly clay; beyond the sound of raindrops not a whisper
arose from the jungle, as if all nature had withdrawn to
observe the coming drama in silence.
Baker led the way, the others following behind him in single
file. His boots left waffle-shaped depressions in the wet dust.
His biosuit was still filthy with grime and insect blood; the
water made the ichor run again, dripping in black streaks and
rivulets along his arms. After him came Mulder, Scully, Doyle
and finally Haniver. They each carried one parcel or knapsack.
They trudged down the gravel path, isolated from each other
by their thick rubber cocoons.
The gate. Baker spun the dial of the padlock and pulled it
open, unwound the heavy chain. Took a breath. Beyond this
fence was the jungle and a half-mile walk between them and
the river. He tugged on the gate; it swung easily open until the
way to death or safety stood unbarred before them. The others
filed out one by one. Baker waited until they were all outside
the plantation; then he turned, took the chain and relocked
the gate. He didn't know why.
Walking beneath the trees was like moving through the belly of
a beast. The canopy took the rain and sluiced it and made it
run trembling down the veins of broad leaves, drop by drop,
like bile or the fierce acids of the stomach. Every trunk was
overgrown with life. Mulder's heart was pounding. The stump
of his missing finger had taken on the vague soreness of a
pulled tooth, and it seemed to pulsate inward and outward
with every beat.
Mulder saw a flash of orange on his right. Turning, he felt a
heady jolt of fear -- it seemed like the jackhammer blows of
his pulse would burst through the bandages on his left hand
and fill his glove with blood -- before realizing that it was only
one of the plastic flags, marking the spot where someone had
died.
"Shit," Mulder said. He suddenly perceived how close to the
edge he was. He had been holding himself together with brute
willpower, but if he relaxed or allowed anything to invade his
senses everything would fly apart, everything would collapse.
As if losing a finger had opened a spigot through which his
courage and strength could drain away, flowing out in a mad
rush if he didn't keep everything under tight control. Even the
snap of a twig could undo him.
He kept playing it over and over again in his head. The sharp
pain of the bite. The knowledge that he was going to die. For
all he knew, he was the only one to ever have been bitten by
these insects -- to have felt the poison in his veins -- and
survived. It made him feel like he knew them somehow. He
had been tainted and had cut out the impurity. But a trace
remained. It put fear into his heart. He wished that he could
have that pain again, the unbelievable pain of knife cutting
into bone, just so he could nourish it and use it against the
fear.
The ground in front of him was slippery and damp. He kept his
eyes on that. Baker walked a few steps ahead of him, his boots
encrusted with dirt. They had already gone maybe a hundred
yards. He could hear Scully behind him, struggling to keep up
on -- he smiled -- on her little legs. If he'd ever said that to her
out loud, she would have taken the knife and sliced off
something else for free.
In the air, a lone bird screamed and was silent.
Another hundred yards. Inside his biosuit, Mulder was soaked
with sweat. His shirt felt like a membrane, a loose second skin,
adhering wetly to his back. Behind him the plantation was
already gone, swallowed up by the trees. Now they were
completely surrounded by the jungle, a line of yellow ants
weaving its way through the rain.
He slipped on the slick mud. Another hundred yards and they
were almost halfway there. He glanced over his shoulder at
Scully, caught her eye, saw her trying for a smile but not
managing it. Not quite. Another hundred yards and they had
passed the midway point. They were going to make it. Mulder
felt a flood of crazy hope. He thought he could see the thin
dark line of the river in the distance.
Then the rain stopped.
One moment it was coming down in a torrent; the next, and it
was over. The drops slackened off so quickly that none of
them had any time to realize what was happening. But the
rattle of water against their hoods was gone. At once the forest
went completely quiet; the sound of a falling pebble would
have cut through the air like a bullet. The hush felt sacred, like
the inside of a church.
"Fuck." Doyle's voice was solemn. His eyes flicked uneasily
from side to side. "I knew this would happen."
"Now we need to hurry," said Baker. "It's not too much
farther. We can make it. Come on." He waved them ahead and
the others began to move again, to move as quickly as the
respirators and suits would allow. The only noise was the soft
gritting of soil beneath their feet as they pressed forward
through the rain forest.
None of them spoke. This was the final stretch and they all
knew it. But if the butterflies found them again, no one would
escape. The suits were designed to prevent contamination
from gas or microbes, not to withstand a frenzied attack from
a hundred thousand insects; Mulder knew that his suit
probably wouldn't survive a second assault. One breach was all
it would take. One rip.
He lowered his head and continued onward. Running was
impossible within the protective outfit but he pushed himself
as far as he could go, his bruised head pounding from thirst
and exhaustion. "Goddammit," he said to himself. "Just
another thousand feet. That's all you need -- "
Mulder collided with Baker, almost knocking him down. The
other man had stopped dead-still in front of him. He reeled
backwards, teeth clicking together painfully -- and then Scully
ran into both them, with Doyle and Haniver just barely
managing to avoid the same jam as the entire team skidded to
a halt.
Baker didn't seem to notice. He was staring into the jungle at
something that only he could see. Mulder was about to ask
what the matter was when he saw it too.
Before them stood a majestic ceiba tree. It was perhaps one
hundred feet tall, gray trunk rising smoothly and powerfully
from buttressed roots. The crown was broad and flat. The
thick horizontal branches radiated out like the spokes of
umbrella, draped with mosses and fungi.
An orange cross had been painted on the trunk.
Mulder went numb. He had seen Baker make this cross
himself, using a can of spray-paint to mark the place were
Kovac had died. This was the same tree. He looked down, half-
expecting to see the body lying at his feet, eaten away by the
insects.
But that was impossible. Kovac had gone towards the Andes
glow, away from the river. He had died on the other side of the
jungle. It couldn't be the same tree.
Except that it was. Mulder reached out with his good hand,
touched the shiny trunk, felt the pebbly texture through his
glove.
He turned to Baker. "What the hell is going on here?"
"I don't know." Baker craned his neck back, straining to see to
the uppermost branches. He had forgotten about the
butterflies. A strange kind of vertigo had taken hold of him, a
disorientation, as if the entire jungle had been moved
counterclockwise while they slept. This wasn't right. Kovac had
died beneath this tree. He was sure of it. But now it was in the
wrong part of the rain forest.
He ran his hands across the bark, as if to reassure himself that
it wasn't some kind of optical illusion. Pushed. It seemed firm.
Baker looked at the orange X, asked himself whether it could
have been painted here by someone else, or if he could have
done it himself and forgotten about it. But no matter how he
tried, he couldn't accept any other explanation. It was the
same fucking tree.
"Um, hello," said Doyle. "Would someone explain what this is
all about?"
Mulder didn't reply. Something stirred in the back of his mind
as he looked at the ceiba tree. The pain in his hand was gone.
He allowed his eyes to slowly travel up the trunk, moving past
the cross to the knotted mosses and lichens clinging in places,
the hanging lianas. The sensuous bark itself. As his gaze
continued upward his fear increased. He knew what he was
going to see. He had always known. The terror grew -- he
wanted to stop, to shut his eyes and turn away and flee the
rain forest in ignorance of this last monumental secret -- but
still his gaze moved upward, controlled by something outside
his own body, outside even his own will. He looked on like a
man who was damned.
He looked.
The tree looked back.
Mulder's mind splintered as the final piece of the puzzle fell
annihilatingly into place.
He stumbled backwards. The earth began to tremble. Around
him the others stood frozen with shock as an obscene
cracking and crumbling sound filled the air, the sound of
joints creaking and unfolding and unfurling themselves.
The bark of the tree rippled. A seam appeared along the trunk.
It split open. Mulder saw it happen -- saw the raw white
cambium of the wood expose itself in an incoherent shriek of
snapping tendons as the tree turned itself inside out, its thin
gray skin sloughing away. The branches came down. They tore
themselves out of the canopy. A hail of broken leaves and
funguses and vines cascaded down like bits of flesh as the
branches of the tree extended and stretched themselves, but
they weren't branches anymore, they were --
"Run," Mulder said. "Run!" He turned and pushed the others
back. The spell broke. Baker and Doyle tripped over their own
legs and went down and kept going anyway, crouch-shambling
away on all fours. Haniver followed, unable to take her eyes
from what they had thought was a tree. She remembered the
bird. The fucking bird in the copal trees. It had looked like a
pruned branch. It was the way of the rain forest. Everything
was camouflaged and disguised and hidden, everything
pretended to be something else, and you thought you had
broken through the final level of deception until the ground
itself gave way beneath your feet. Until the truth itself didn't
mean the same thing anymore. Until --
"No," she said.
The Mai d'agoa pulled its roots out of the soil. The roots were
segmented legs.
It flapped its branches. The branches were wings. Mulder
could feel the hot breeze on his face as the heavy pinions beat
twice and rent the air around him with an unholy roar of self-
awareness, of awakening, of resurrection. The wings were
mossy and encrusted with brown filth, like the wings of a
cryptic butterfly. They were enormous. They were the size of
sails. He remembered the satellite photos. The shimmering
blur of darkness that had been captured in the sky above the
plantation.
"Oh God," said Mulder.
He understood.
He understood everything.
There was an agony like the hell of being born. The creature
towering above them writhed and shivered like it would pull
its own body apart, tear itself to shreds just to release itself
from the maddening itch of metamorphosis; and inch by inch
its head emerged from the pulsing core of the trunk. Its head
was covered with slime. Its mouth was glued shut with it. Its
head was triangular, the color of a healing burn, the dead scaly
pinkness of a larva; then it opened its eyes and Mulder saw
that they were huge compound eyes with hexagons of yellow
and orange and black.
The eyes were filled with fluid. They were set into the sides of
its head like those of a fer-de-lance. It was the Mai d'agoa, oh
God, it was the mother of the river -- his brain short-circuited
-- the serpent and the tree and the butterfly welded together
like lovers --
It rolled its eyes and lowered its head. Mulder had forgotten to
run. He stood rooted to the spot, transfixed by the greatest
sight he would ever see, staring up at the creature and not
realizing until it was too late that it was staring back. It had
seen him. It brought its head down until it was only a few feet
away from his face. He could have extended his arm and
touched the raw pink snout. Its face was a horrifying blend of
the reptilian and the insectile. The head was the size of his
entire body.
The man and the dragon regarded one another for a long
moment. Mulder was beyond fear. He might have been a worm
beneath a microscope or a scrap of protoplasm for all the
terror he felt. Or a blade of grass about to be torn. His last
thought was that it had all been a con game.
Then the Mai d'agoa opened its mouth and screamed --
-- and a flood of butterflies poured from its throat. The
pressure took Mulder off his feet and hurled him to the
ground. There was a loud snap and sudden searing pain shot
up and down his arm; he'd broken his wrist, he'd broken his
fucking wrist. The butterflies were hot and brittle and they
crowded across his body searching for a place to bite. Mulder
tried to brush them away but he couldn't. There were too
many. The insects covered his faceplace so that he couldn't
see anything except for the squirming layers of bugs, their
eyes still glittering with the inferno that had forged them deep
within the Mai d'agoa.
Antibodies. The butterflies were its immune system and he was
the virus. His suit was about to give.
Someone grabbed him beneath the arms. He felt himself being
pulled away. The butterflies clung to him like coral but the
other hands fought them off, took big fistfuls and crushed
them and tried to keep more from landing. But the air was
packed solid. He was dragged another dozen yards and left on
the ground. Then someone climbed onto him, covering him,
shielding him one body against another.
"Scully," he croaked.
"Mulder," she said. She was lying on top of him, her faceplace
pressed against his. "It's okay, we're going to make it." But she
was too heavy. The butterflies were pressing down on top of
them both. Beneath him Mulder felt the earth shake and he
knew that the it was moving, that the great serpent was
coming to destroy the two of them. Like bugs. He took her
hand into his and prayed. He didn't know where the others
were. Perhaps they had made it to the river.
Scully was speaking. "We need to keep moving. Mulder, listen
to me. We -- "
She broke off. Mulder felt her raise her head. "What is it?" he
asked. "What's going on?"
Scully didn't reply. She didn't know how to describe it herself.
* * *
Quassapelagh stood there alone, staring at the Mai d'agoa. He
tried to take it all in -- to grasp the creature as a whole -- but
his mind couldn't fit around it. He only had an impression of
enormous size and infinite age, a great crashing through the
trees, the huge maw of the beast breathing a fire that was not
fire.
The Mai d'agoa dragged itself across the ground, its spindly
legs weak beneath the bulk of wings and body. Tiger complex
butterflies trickled from its mouth.
It had not seen him.
It was headed towards the others. Two of them had fallen to
the ground only a few paces ahead -- they would be crushed
within seconds -- and the rest were running towards the river.
The insects would overtake them soon. Unless he acted first.
He could attack the creature, distract it and buy them enough
time to escape.
But then the butterflies would be after him. They would
overwhelm him and bite him and kill him before he had a
chance to flee. He understood what that meant. He had seen
the bodies that Baker had brought to the village. He knew that
the breath of the Mai d'agoa brought pain like no man had
ever felt or could ever imagine. He was not afraid of death, but
he was afraid of that pain.
There was only one thing Quassapelagh could do. In the end,
the decision was surprisingly easy. Taking the bamboo vial
from his belt, he removed the cap, shook out an arrowhead
covered with curare. Planted it on the end of a shaft.
Then he closed his eyes and plunged the arrow into his arm.
The sting was no worse than a pinprick. He withdrew the
arrow, saw it reddened with his own blood.
The poison was in his system. He had perhaps two good
minutes remaining.
Perfect.
Quassapelagh began to hunt. The Mai d'agoa was only one
hundred feet away but he proceeded as if he had all the time
in the world, arrow notched and at the ready, moving in a arc
beneath the trees as he searched for the right place. The beast
of mystery towered before him and he hunted it like a paca.
He was not insensitive to the irony of the situation.
The dragon was moving. It looked like part of the jungle had
uprooted itself and was crawling slowly along the ground,
higher than the tallest tree, more gigantic than the mountains
themselves. The dragon had branches for claws.
The mossy bulk of its body blotted out the sun and plunged
the earth beneath it into shadow. Darkness covered the man
and woman lying on the ground. One more second and it
would be on them. There was no room for mistakes.
He noted it. Measured the distance. Aimed carefully, almost
intuitively, at that mystical point where the beast's life
sparkled like a jewel: and loosed his arrow.
It flew one hundred feet in blur of eagle feathers and buried
itself in the eye of the Mai d'agoa. The eye collapsed like a
balloon. A thick noxious fluid began to pour out in a mess of
jellied humors. The dragon turned to face him and screamed, a
scream that shook the treetops and blasted the clouds into
atoms.
The butterflies detached themselves. They were coming for
him. He did not move. He faced the others and waved them
away, waved them towards the riverside. "Go," he said, staring
down the oncoming rush of insects. "Go now."
It was a moment before the others saw what had happened.
They had been scattered by the attack and were standing or
lying dazed beneath the trees but at last they rose, collecting
themselves, running in the direction of the waters.
Baker was the last to go. Quassapelagh recognized the big man
within the suit, saw him hesitate. He knew that Baker would
find this difficult to accept. He raised his hand in a gesture of
farewell. The message was clear. For every life there was a
pattern, and from that pattern came magic and prophecy: but
from this pattern came the possibility of acceptance as well.
The cubs in the jaguar's belly were a part of the pattern. So
was this.
Baker understood. He turned around and headed to the river
with the others.
Only then did Quassapelagh run. He ran as quickly as he could,
his brown legs scissoring powerfully. The butterflies were
close behind him. He could hear the immense sound of the
Mai d'agoa crashing through the jungle. Its wings stirred a
warm wind against his back.
The poison was working. Quassapelagh pressed onward, feet
growing heavy as they kicked up the dust, his muscles
relaxing, turning to stone. He could feel it but he kept running
and fought the numbness and the paralysis as long as he could,
fought it like an enemy, his heart fierce and full of pride. He
fell, managed to get back up. Then he fell again and was
unable to rise for a second time.
There was a place, he thought, where there was no darkness
and no suspicion and everything was made of light.
Quassapelagh smiled, and discovered that he could no longer
breathe.
With the last strength he possessed he took handfuls of the
soil and clutched the earth tightly to himself. He asked for
forgiveness. Perhaps he received it. By the time the butterflies
arrived and the great shadow of the Mai d'agoa fell across his
inert body, the old Tirio was already dead.
* * *
End of (18/19)
The Tiger Complex (19/19) by LoneGunGuy
http://members.aol.com/lonegunguy/x-files.html
* * *
"We are blind until the hour of our death," Baker said. "The
Mayans understood this. Their mythology speaks of a great
ceiba tree that stretches between heaven and earth, its
branches encrusted with stars. When the soul departs from the
body, it clings to the trunk of this tree and climbs into the
garden of the sky, where it feeds on starlight and understands
for the first time the nature of its life."
Baker sat on the weathered stump in the middle of the jungle.
This was the place where Quassapelagh had butchered the
jaguar, its unborn cubs tumbling to the ground as its womb
was opened and the flesh was sliced from its body. Mulder sat
next to him, his broken arm in a sling. The toe of his boot
traced idle patterns in the dust. It was almost two o'clock, and
the air was green with sunlight.
"And what happens after that?" asked Mulder.
"After what?"
"After the soul understands the nature of its life."
Baker placed his hand on the decaying wood of the stump.
"Probably it blasts itself into oblivion," he said. "I don't think
anyone can make that kind of discovery and survive."
Mulder did not respond. The memory of their escape still
haunted him. The river had brought them away from the
butterflies, their canoe hurtling through the current as the air
behind them quaked from the thunder of monumental wings.
He had squeezed his eyes shut, afraid that he might look
around and see some great darkened shape screaming across
the morning sky; but it had not pursued them. They had
ridden the river all the way down to the Tirio village and
dragged their boats onto the shore. He had only watched,
unable to help. Inside the hood of his biosuit, his hair had
been standing on end.
And so the nightmare had drawn to a close.
There were times when Mulder could look around at the
sharp, savage clarity of the afternoon light and almost
convince himself that it had all been a dream, some strange
hallucination brought on by suspicion and fear and the dark
spell of the rain forest.
But his left index finger was still gone.
He had begun to accept that it was gone forever. There would
be no replantation; it had been too long, and the cells of that
severed scrap of skin and bone were dying one by one. Mulder
reconciled himself to the loss. In Washington he would buy a
burial plot and return the scrap to the earth, in accordance
with Jewish law, committing it to the same soil that would one
day hold his own remains.
Once he had wished for a peg leg, somehow believing that to
live with such a disability would make it enough to simply
endure, to get up each morning and face the struggle of one's
life. As he looked at the bandaged stump of his finger, he
wondered whether he had been right. The next thirty years
would determine it either way, he thought: and the sense of
loss returned to overwhelm him again.
After the five survivors had returned to the deserted village
and removed their biosuits and vomited fear into the dust,
they had gathered together and talked for more than an hour.
There had been only one topic of discussion, although they did
not refer to it by name.
"I think it remains rooted in the same spot," Mulder had said,
"for months or years or even centuries, until something forces
it to assume its true form. It isn't so strange. A bird mimics the
stump of a dead branch, and a moth can resemble a worm-
eaten leaf. Natural selection works in mysterious ways. Maybe
this was the logical conclusion...."
Scully had shuddered, even though the air was sweltering.
"And the butterflies?"
"The butterflies were its immune system."
But there was more. Only at the very end, as he looked into
the eyes of the beast, had Mulder made the final connection.
"The insects we found on the copal trees were a part of it,
too," he had said, his voice surprisingly calm and coherent, as
if explaining these things worked as an incantation against the
fear: "It must generate different kinds of butterflies within
itself, in the same way that our bodies can produce
lymphocytes and phagocytes and red blood cells...."
Doyle had understood. "This is how it feeds."
"Exactly." Mulder's voice had trembled from the force of
discovery. "The butterflies are released to lay eggs on plants
like the copal trees. The caterpillars hatch and consume plant
material, then metamorphose and return to be reabsorbed by
the parent. When we interrupted the cycle by killing the
butterflies, we triggered an immune response. The Andes glow
was an electrical byproduct of that process. But when the tiger
complex butterflies failed to stop the intrusion, the parent was
forced to take drastic measures."
"It attacked the compound."
"Yes."
Haniver had been skeptical. "But -- but how could a creature
like this come into being?"
Silence...and then Baker had reached into his pocket and
removed a plastic envelope. Inside had been the butterfly that
had been clutched in the hand of the uakari, mangled and
crumpled but still recognizable. He had looked into its alien
red eyes and reflected that when you examined it closely, the
tiny head was not unlike that of a fer-de-lance.
"I think the Mai d'agoa was once a butterfly like this," he had
said. "Seventy million years might be long enough to produce
such a transformation. We always pretend to understand
nature," Baker had concluded. "But it has a more extravagant
imagination than any of us can ever comprehend."
Now the others joined them at the stump. Haniver's face was
grim. "We just managed to make radio contact with
Paramaribo," she said, as Scully and Doyle followed behind.
"The military has control of the city. We won't be able to leave
until Aquino comes to take over the plantation."
"And what happens when he gets here?" asked Mulder.
"I don't know," she said.
Mulder wondered what she was thinking. He knew that she had
taken specimens of the tiger complex butterflies and sealed
them inside a plastic bag and taped them between her
shoulders, secure from any searches that Aquino might
attempt on his arrival. The butterflies were fixed to the exact
place on her back where, if Haniver had been an angel, wings
might have sprouted.
He leaned against the stump and studied the faces of the
others. It was enough to have survived, he realized. Even if you
only caught a glimpse of the truth, even if the mystery
remained intact, it was enough to have seen beneath the mask,
if only for a second. You could find it in a tree, or in a crypt,
or in the face of a woman who had been dead for fifty years.
You didn't need to know the future. The darkness beneath the
branches was what counted, and the foaming current of the
river, and the rhythm of wings against the sky.
Scully was looking at him strangely. "What is it?" he asked.
"You're smiling."
"Am I?" Mulder realized that he was. He reached out and took
Scully's hand in his own ruined grip.
* * *
Silence in the rain forest after they had departed.
Wind stirred the trees and the thick vines swayed like
pendulums, although no one was left to count the seconds. A
tinamou moved along the ground, pecking at the dirt for seeds
and insects, its steps deliberate and clumsy. Its plumage was
brown and gray and it looked very much like a speckled
chicken as it plunged its beak into the dust and came up with a
piece of fruit, or a beetle, or a spider.
The tinamou found a centipede and flew onto the weathered
stump to eat it. The bird bit the arthropod in halves and
swallowed part of it whole, its beak pecking against the soft
wood.
The stump began to tremble beneath the tinamou's feet.
Before it could react or fly away one of the roots had pulled
itself out of the ground, seized the tinamou by the neck and
crammed the bird into the black cavernous mouth that had
opened in the fragrant bark.
The mouth closed. There was a muffled squawk and the sound
of crunching bones, and then the forest was silent again.
A moment later, the stump uprooted itself completely and
crawled off into the depths of the jungle, its segmented legs
dragging against the earth. Presently it disappeared into the
darkness.
* * *
THE END
* * *
Author's Note:
"Now my suspicion's on the rise...
I have known, I have known your kind"
-- R.E.M., "Suspicion"
This story was formally begun on May 2, 1997 and posted to
a.t.x.c on July 14, 1999. Needless to say, writing was not
continuous during the interim.
Many thanks to Summer and Lisby, who read an earlier version
of this novel and supplied many helpful comments and
criticisms -- and who also provided the encouragement and
support I needed to rescue this story from the round file and
make it good. "The Tiger Complex" is dedicated to them.
* * *
End of (19/19)
