Amazonia

He sniffed it, nose curling in disgust, but he took a deep swig anyway. "Ugh!" He shook his head.

"It's an acquired taste;" Nate said, scooping a mug for himself and sipping it. Ma

Kostos crossed to the pail and dumped the contents of his mug back into the pail. "I'll take a Budweiser any day"

Nate shrugged.

Around the room, the others sampled the fare for a bit, then began to settle to woven mats on the floor. Everyone looked exhausted. They all needed a decent night's sleep.

Nate set up the laptop on an overturned stone pot.

As he opened it and turned it on, Olin looked at it hungrily, his eyes red. "Maybe I can ca

But Nate held him off. "The computer is five years old. I doubt you'll find much to use, and right now its contents are more important than our own survival:"

His words drew everyone's attention. He eyed them all. "I know what happened to the other expedition team. And if we don't want to end up like them, we should pay attention to its lessons:"

Kouwe spoke up. "What happened?"

Nate took a deep breath, then began, nodding to the open journal file on the laptop. "It's all here. My father's expedition heard rumors of the Ban-ali and met an Indian who said he could take the research team to their lands. My father could not resist the possibility of encountering a new tribe and took the team off course. Within two days, they were attacked by the same mutated species as we were:'

Murmurs arose from the others. Ma

Kouwe interrupted. "Before we get into theories and conjectures, let's first hear what we know for sure:" The professor nodded to Nate. "Go on. What happened after the attack?"

Nate took another breath. The tale was not an easy one to tell. "Of the party, all were killed except Gerald Clark, my father, and two other researchers. They were captured by the Ban-ali trackers. My father was able to communicate with them and get them to spare their lives. From my father's notes, I guess the Ban-ali native tongue is close enough to Yanomamo:"

Kouwe nodded. "It does bear a resemblance. And isolated as the tribe is, the presence of a white man who could speak the tongue of the Ban-ali would surely give them pause. I'm not surprised your father and the survivors were spared:"

The little good it did, Nate thought sourly, then continued, "The remaining party were all badly injured, but once here, their wounds were healed. Miraculously, according to my father's notes: gashes sealed without scarring, broken bones mended in less than a week's time, even chronic ailments, like one team member's heart murmur, faded away. But the most amazing transformation was in Gerald Clark:"

"His arm," Kelly said, sitting up straighter.

"Exactly. Within a few weeks here, his amputated stump began to split, bleed, and sprout a raw tumorous growth. One of the survivors was a medical doctor. He and my father examined the change. The growth was a mass of undifferentiated stem cells. They were sure it was some malignant growth. There was even talk of trying to surgically remove it, but they had no tools. Over the next weeks, slow changes became apparent. The mass slowly elongated, growing skin on the outside:"

Kelly's eyes widened. "The arm was regenerating."

Nate nodded and turned. He scrolled down the computer journal to the day almost three years ago. He read aloud his father's words. " `Today it became clear to Dr. Chandler and me that the tumor plaguing Clark is in fact a regeneration unlike any seen before. Talk of escape has been put on hold until we see how this ends. It's a miracle that is worth the risk. The Ban-ali continue to remain accommodating captors, allowing us free run of the valley, but ba

Nate straightened up and tapped open a new file. Crude sketches of an arm and upper torso appeared on the screen. "My father went on to document the transformation. How the undifferentiated stem cells slowly changed into bone, muscle, nerves, blood vessels, hair, and skin. It took eight months for the limb to fully grow back."

"What caused it?" Kelly asked.

"According to my father's notes, the sap of the Yagga tree:"

Kelly gasped. "The Yagga . . ."

Kouwe's eyes widened. "No wonder the Ban-ali worship the tree:"

"What's a Yagga?" Zane asked from a corner, showing the first sign of interest in their discussion.

Kouwe explained what he and Kelly had witnessed up in the healing ward of the giant prehistoric tree. "Frank's wounds almost immediately sealed:"

"That's not all," Kelly said. She shifted closer to get a better look at the computer screen. "All afternoon, I've been monitoring his red blood cell levels with a hematocrit tube. The levels are climbing dramatically. It's as if something is massively stimulating his bone marrow to produce new red blood cells for all he lost . . . at a miraculous rate. I've never seen such a reaction:"

Nate clicked open another file. "It's something in the sap. My father's group was able to distill the stuff and run it through a paper chromatograph. Similar to the way the sap of copal trees is rich in hydrocarbons, the Yagga's sap is rich in proteins:"

Kelly stared at the results. "Proteins?"

Ma

Kelly nodded. "A prion. One with strong mutagenic properties:" She glanced over her shoulder to Ma

Ma

"My father suggested a similar conclusion in his notes," Nate said quietly. In fact, there were numerous files specifically on this matter. Nate had not been able to read through them all.

"And the giant cats and caimans?" A

"Established mutations, I'd wager," Ma

"Then why don't they leave the area?" A

"Perhaps some biological imperative, a genetic territorial thing:"

"It sounds like you're suggesting this tree manufactured these creatures purposefully? Consciously?" Zane scoffed.

Ma

"Impossible:" Zane shook his head.

"Not so. We've seen versions of this phenomenon already." Ma

Nate frowned, picturing the attack on Sergeant Kostos by stinging ants. He remembered how an ant tree's stems and branches were hollow, serving both to house the colony and feed it with a sugary sap. In turn, the ants savagely protected their home against the intrusion of plants and animals. He began to understand what Ma