LITMIR.BIZ

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by a large, glass-roofed shed. In front of the shed were a few parking spaces in a muddy area. Vin Drake and Alyson Bender were already there, standing next to a red BMW sports car. They both wore boots and hiking clothes. The students were piling out of the Bentley. They became less boisterous when Peter stepped from the taxi.

      “Sorry, Peter…”

      “Sorry about your brother…”

      “Yes, sorry…”

      “Any news?” Erika kissed his cheek, took his arm. “I’m so sorry.”

      “The police are still investigating,” Peter said.

      Vin Drake shook his hand with a firm grip. “I don’t have to tell you this is a great, great tragedy. If it proves true, and I hope to God it does not, it’s a dreadful loss to all of us personally. To say nothing of a terrible setback to our company, which Eric was such a part of. I am so sorry, Peter.”

      “Thank you,” Peter said.

      “It’s good the police are investigating.”

      “Yes,” Peter said.

      “They haven’t given up, lost hope…”

      “Quite the contrary,” Peter said. “It seems they’re taking a new interest in Eric’s boat. Something about a missing cell phone? One that may have broken up inside the engine compartment? I didn’t really follow what they told me.”

      “A cell phone in the engine compartment?” Vin frowned. “I wonder what that could—”

      “As I said, I didn’t really follow,” Peter said. “I don’t know why they would think there was a phone there. Perhaps my brother dropped his…I don’t know. But they’re also going to check phone records.”

      “Phone records. Ah yes. Good, good. No stone unturned.”

      Had Vin turned paler? Peter couldn’t be sure.

      Alyson licked her lips nervously. “Were you able to sleep, Peter?”

      “Yes, thanks. I took a pill.”

      “Oh good.”

      “Well.” Vin Drake rubbed his hands, turned to the others. “At any rate, welcome to the Manoa Valley. What do you say we get to the business at hand? Gather round, people, and I will give you your first insight into how Nanigen works.”

      Drake led them from the parking lot toward the forest. They passed a low shed housing earth-moving machinery, although, as Drake said, “You’ve probably never seen machines like this before. Notice how small they are.” To Peter, the machines looked like tiny golf carts fitted with a miniature backhoe, with an antenna drooping over the top. “These diggers,” Drake went on, “are specially manufactured for us by Siemens Precision AG, a German company. The machine is able to precision-dig soil with millimeter accuracy. Which is then placed in the flats you see in the back of the shed. Those flats are thirty centimeters square—about a foot square—and either three or six centimeters deep.”

      “And what about the antenna?”

      “As you see, the antenna hangs directly over the backhoe. The antenna enables us to locate precisely where to dig and to keep a record in our data files of the exact place where the sample of soil came from. This will all be clear as the day goes on. Meanwhile let’s look at the site.”

      They plunged into the forest itself, the ground suddenly uneven beneath their feet, the trail narrow and twisting among the giant trees overhead. The massive trunks were wrapped with broad-leaf vines; the ground was covered with plants and bushes to knee height, and the overall impression was of a thousand shades of green. The light filtering through the tree canopy overhead was pale yellow-green.

      Drake began, “This may look like a natural rain forest…”

      “It doesn’t,” Rick Hutter said. “And it’s not.”

      “That’s correct. It’s not. This area has been cultivated since the 1920s, when it was an experimental station for Oahu farmers, and more recently for ecological studies run by the university. But in recent years nobody has bothered with this tract, and the land reverted to a more natural state. We call this area Fern Gully.” He turned and walked down the trail while the students followed him, going slowly and looking at things, occasionally stopping to examine a plant or flower.

      “Moving along now,” Drake went on, speaking briskly, “you’ll notice a profusion of ferns. Prominently around us you see the big tree ferns, Cibotium and Sadleria, and lower down to the ground, the smaller Blechnum, Lycopodium, and of course—” he indicated the mountainside with a swipe of his hand—“up there, the uluhe ferns, which cover the mountain slopes over much of Hawaii.”

      “You missed that uluhe fern right at your feet,” Rick Hutter broke in. “It’s called Dicranopteris, also known as false staghorn.”

      “I believe so,” Vin Drake said, barely concealing a flash of irritation. He paused, and bent down on one knee. “The pe‘ahi ferns line this path, the larger ones are maku‘e ferns, which spiders like to live on. You will notice the large number of spiders here. Some twenty-three species, in all, are represented in this small area alone.” He stopped in a clearing, where trees opened into views of the mountainsides around the valley. He pointed up to a peak on a ridge overlooking the valley. “That peak is called Tantalus. It’s an extinct volcanic crater that looks down on this valley. We’ve been conducting research at Tantalus Crater, as well as here in the valley.”

      Alyson Bender fell into step alongside Peter Jansen. “Did the police contact you today?” she said.

      “No,” he said. “Why?”

      “I wondered how you knew they were searching the boat…and the phone records.”

      “Oh.” In truth, he had made that up. “Well. It was on the news.”

      “Was it? I didn’t hear. What channel?”

      “I don’t remember. Five, I think.”

      Rick Hutter came over and said, “Really sorry, Peter. Really sorry, man.”

      Jenny Linn had been walking close behind Vin Drake, and she said to him, “But I don’t understand your research program—like what you’re actually doing here in this forest.”

      Drake smiled at her and said, “It’s because I haven’t explained it yet. In simple terms, we’re planning to collect samples from a cross-section of the Hawaiian ecosystem, from Tantalus Crater down into the Manoa Valley, where we’re standing.”

      “Collect what kind of samples?” Rick Hutter said, hands on his hips. He was wearing the usual Rick outfit, jeans and an outdoor shirt, sleeves rolled up and now damp with sweat, looking as if he was on a bushwhack through deep jungle. He had the usual combative look on his face, too, his jaw set, eyes narrowed.

      Drake smiled and answered, “Essentially we will collect samples from every species of living thing in this ecosystem.”

      “What for?” Rick went on. He stared straight at Vin Drake.

      Drake stared right back at Rick. A cold look. Then smiled. “A rain forest is the greatest repository of active chemical compounds in nature. We are standing in the middle of a gold mine full of potential new drugs. Drugs that could save uncounted human lives. Drugs worth uncounted billions of dollars. This forest, Mr., uh—”

      “Hutter,” Rick said.

      “This lush forest, Mr. Hutter, contains keys to the health and well-being of every person on this planet. And yet this forest has barely been explored. We have no idea what chemical compounds actually exist here, in the plants, in the animals, in the microscopic life-forms. This forest is terra incognita, absolutely unknown terrain. It’s as vast, as full of riches, and as unexplored as the New World was for Christopher Columbus. Our goal, Mr. Hutter, is simple. Our goal is drug discovery. We’re searching for new drugs on a vast scale beyond

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