Dakii pointed ahead and continued.
Nate hesitated. Strange lichens grew on the walls, glowing softly. The musk was almost overpowering, now rich with a more fecund odor. Dakii pushed on.
Nate glanced to Kouwe, who shrugged. It was encouragement enough.
As they continued forward, the root branch that ran overhead split and divided, heading out into other passageways. From the ceiling, drapes of root hairs hung, vibrating ever so gently, rhythmically swaying as if a wind blew softly through the passage. But there was no wind.
The top of Nate's head brushed against the ceiling as the tunnel lowered. The tiny root fibrils tangled into his hair, clinging, pulling. Nate wrenched away with a gasp.
He shone his flashlight overhead, wary.
"What is it?" Kouwe asked.
"The root grabbed at me."
Kouwe lifted a palm to the root branch. The smaller hairs wrapped around his fingers in a clinging embrace. With a look of disgust, Kouwe tugged his hand away.
Nate had seen other Amazonian plants demonstrate a response to stimulation: leaves curling if touched, puff pods exploding if brushed, flowers closing if disturbed. But this felt somehow more malignant.
Nate fanned his flashlight across the path. By now, Dakii was waiting several yards down the passage. Nate urged the others to catch up. Once abreast of Dakii, Nate studied the splitting roots that now turned riotous, dividing and cross-splitting in all directions. Small blind cubbyholes dotted the many passages, each choked and clogged with a tangle of roots and waving hairs. The little cubbies reminded Nate of nitrogen bulbs, seen among root balls of many plants, that served as storage fertilizing sites.
Dakii stood before one such alcove. Nate shone his light into the space. Something was tangled deep inside the mass of twining branches and churning root fibrils. Nate bent closer. A few wiggling hairs curled out toward him, questing, waving like small antennae.
He kept back.
Deep in the root pack, wrapped and entwined like a fly in a spider's webbing, was a large fruit bat. Nate straightened in disgust.
Kouwe leaned in and grimaced. "Is it feeding on the bat?"
Anna spoke behind them. "I don't think so. Come see this:"
They both turned to her. She knelt by an even larger tubby, but one similarly entangled. She pointed into its depths.
Nate flashed his light inside. Entombed within was a large brown cat.
"A puma," Kouwe said at his shoulder.
"Watch;' Anna said.
They stared, not knowing what to expect. Then suddenly the large cat moved, breathed. Its lungs expanded and collapsed in a sigh. But the movement did not look natural, more mechanical.
Anna glanced back at them. "It's alive:"
"I don't understand," Nate said.
Anna held out her hand. "Can I see the flashlight?"
Nate passed it to her. The anthropologist quickly surveyed several of the other alcoves, moving through the neighboring, branching passages. The variety of animals was impressive: ocelot, toucan, marmoset, tamarin, anteater, even snakes and lizards, and oddly enough one jungle trout. And each one of them seemed to be breathing or showing some signs of life, including the fish, its small gill flaps twitching.
"They're each unique," Anna said, eyes bright as she stared down the maze of passages. "And all alive. Like some form of suspended animation:"
"What are you getting at?"
Anna turned to them. "We're standing in a biological storehouse. A library of genetic code. I wager this is the source of its prion production:"
Nate turned in a slow circle, staring at the maze of passages. The implication was too overwhelming to contemplate. The tree was storing these animals down here, learning from them so it could produce prions to alter and bind the species to it. It was a living, breathing genetics lab.
Kouwe gripped Nate's shoulder. "Your father."
Nate glanced to him in confusion. "What about my-?" Then it hit him like a hammer to the forehead. He gasped. His father had been fed to the root. Not as fertilizer, Nate realized, swinging around, aghast, but to be a part of this malignant laboratory!
"With his white skin and strange manners, your father was unique,' Kouwe said in a low voice. "The Ban-ali or the Yagga would not want to lose his genetic heritage:"
Nate turned to Dakii. He could barely speak, too choked with emotion. "My. . . my father. Do you know where he is?"
Dakii nodded and lifted both arms. "He with root:"
"Yes, but where?" Nate pointed to the closest tubby, one with an enshrouded black sloth. "Which one?"
Dakii frowned and glanced around the maze of passages.
Nate held his breath. There had to be hundreds of passages, countless alcoves. He didn't have time to search them all, not with the clock running. But how could Nate leave, knowing his father was down here somewhere?
Dakii suddenly strode purposefully down one passage and waved for them to follow.
They hurried, winding deeper and deeper into the subterranean maze. Nate found it increasingly difficult to breathe, not because of the sickening musk, but because of his own mounting anxiety. All along this journey, he had held no real hope his father was still alive. But now . . . he teetered between hope and despair, almost panicked with trepidation. What would he find?