Insects: A Novel (6 page)

20

Cody Boyd understood
how dependent he was on Howard Duncan’s good graces, so that when Duncan returned to the apartment following the trip with Maggie Cross, a trip that was rightfully his, he swallowed his pride and responded enthusiastically when Duncan described what they’d found in the forest.

“There were hundreds of dead insects, which Fernando couldn’t explain. He was completely mystified. You know how talkative he can be; well, he didn’t say much on the trip other than that it appeared that something had changed and that maybe the insects are no longer infected with the fungus. He’s going to examine specimens he brought back to figure out what’s going on.”

“Were they in good shape?”

“Yeah, a bunch of them were crushed, but there were handfuls that looked in good shape, assuming their insides haven’t turned to mush. It was really humid and warm, but they were in the shade.”

“So, the expedition is still on?”

“Oh, yeah, definitely,” Duncan said animatedly. “In fact, we’re going to spend all of our time setting it up, getting supplies, a guide, boats, whatever. I think Maggie will pitch in to make up any shortfall.”

“Did she say that?”

“Not in so many words, but I’m going to talk to her this afternoon and try to pin her down. Hell, she’s rich. It’s not like she can’t afford it. And she’s serious about entomology, and I can’t see how anyone who’s serious about entomology, amateur or professional, wouldn’t jump at the chance to hunt down this insect, especially now when it seems to be displaying a completely different behavior.”

This was more like it, Boyd thought. Missing out on a side trip where only dead insects were found no longer seemed important.

“I’m going to see Maggie. We need to get things going. While I’m doing that, you talk to Fernando and come up with a map of where he says we have the best chance of finding
blaberus
. We can’t afford to waste time or get off on the wrong track.”

Boyd liked the urgency in Duncan’s voice. It meant that he was determined and wouldn’t let anything get in the way. Besides, he could use his camera to document the expedition and create a video. It wouldn’t be a reality show, but it would be the next best thing. A documentary about finding a new species. Ideas were beginning to come to him. He envisioned millions of hits on YouTube for the teaser version. Judging from the reaction he’d received when he brought it up at the meeting, he wouldn’t mention making a video for distribution, just that he was documenting the expedition. Duncan was accustomed to Boyd’s shooting pictures and video. It was part of his job as an assistant.

21

Duncan and Cross
sat at an old oak bar table tucked away in a corner of the huge kitchen. She served coffee and thinly sliced pound cake. Duncan could not resist the cake. Asked what she thought of the trip to the forest, Cross admitted that she was both excited and fearful.

“I think I was more excited than anything else,” she said. “Not knowing what we would find and then what we did find and how we went out into the field and found all those dead insects, and seeing where that poor man died was something I’ve never done before, or even imagined doing. It was like an adventure.”

“It was, wasn’t it?” Duncan agreed, finishing off his second piece of cake. “Of course, there’s more to come if we can put together an expedition quickly. Frankly, I’m not sure everyone in the group can afford it.”

Cross smiled and sipped her coffee.

“What does it cost to do an ‘expedition’?” she said, using air quotes.

“Pretty much what I discussed at our meeting. Of course, that was before this incident. Things are a little different now,” he said, pausing momentarily. “I’m thinking our best opportunity to study blaberus in its habitat is to start at that cabin we went to yesterday. I’m thinking our best chance of finding a colony is by following carcasses. And we know they’re there,” he said, drawing closer to Cross. “You saw them, right?”

“Yes, I saw them. And I agree. It makes sense to start there.”

Duncan sat back in his chair, taking a deep breath.

“But we need to get started before the trail gets cold. Professor Azevedo has been studying these bugs for years, and he’s never seen more than a handful at a time. He knows more about them than anyone else in the world, and I think he’ll help us find them.”

“What if we find them?”

“That’s what we want to do. I don’t understand the question.”

“Won’t it be dangerous?”

“Dangerous? I suppose it could be, but dangerous in what way?”

“Well, didn’t they kill a man?”

“We can’t assume that. It could be that he had a heart attack, and they just came along and like any scavenger consumed the body.”

“I thought I heard you tell the police inspector that they killed the man.”

Duncan hadn’t realized she had been listening.

“Well, that’s what I suggested because, you know, he’s a homicide inspector, and it was just so his boss wouldn’t come down on him for investigating what could have been a death by natural causes. He seemed to be intimidated by his boss. Plus, it was the only way we could get him to take us to the site.”

“Oh,” she said, brightly. “So you don’t really think they’re killers.”

Duncan cleared his throat.

“I can’t say for sure, but according to everything Azevedo knows, that’s not how they behave. But that’s beside the point if we’re going to do a field study. You’ve done that before.”

“Yeah, that’s one of the things I like about entomology. You get to go places that hardly anybody gets to go and see things that only a few people get to see. I’ve got plenty of friends who like to talk about the exotic cities they’ve visited, but I’ve traveled all over the world and, frankly, it gets boring. I mean, how many castles and cathedrals does one have to see?”

Duncan smiled and nodded in agreement, though his travel was almost entirely work related and often required some sort of result to justify the expense. Though he didn’t have an ambition of becoming wealthy, he was focused on achieving a level of scientific fame that eluded most career scientists, most of whom labored anonymously for years so that their names could be included among the contributors to papers published in obscure journals.
Reptilus blaberus
was his ticket to fame, if not fortune.

“So,” she said, putting her hand on his, “how much will this cost?”

Duncan felt his heart skip a beat. He slid his hand over hers and asked if she’d like to go out for dinner. She squeezed his hand.

22

Fernando Azevedo had
a brief but productive conversation with Cody Boyd and was enthusiastic about participating in Duncan’s expedition. Boyd asked where the expedition should start. The professor didn’t respond but was almost certain that they should return to the site where Barbosa’s body had been found. His reluctance to respond immediately was academic. The professor had just begun dissecting several relatively fresh juvenile specimens he’d collected at the site when Boyd came into his office and returned to his work as soon as the young man left.

The work of teasing apart tiny organs and muscles was done under a large magnifying glass. Unlike earlier dissections when he knew little about the insects, this time he knew exactly what he was looking for—namely whether the parasitic fungus that killed the majority of newborns within a week of birth had lost its lethality, or indeed whether it was even present. The specimens had yet to reach adulthood. They were at most in early adolescence if such could be said of
blaberus
.

Even though the specimens had started to decay, he was hoping to find a clue that would help him understand how an apparently huge colony had formed. Since all of his assumptions about the insects were based on the fact that few grew into adulthood, he found himself back at square one and realized that everything he had written about them might no longer be valid. It seemed to him now that it was just as well that no journal had accepted his work for publication. Had any done so, he would now be writing a new paper repudiating his previous conclusions. Of course, this would have damaged his reputation, but at least it came honestly from a new discovery rather than from sloppy work. He knew his age would’ve been held against him, and he might have had to give up his office and emeritus status. So far, it was all to the good.

Under a microscope, he studied slides he’d made of portions of the specimen’s brain stem. He found no remnant of infection by the fungus even in the smallest specimen. However, he detected crystals distributed through portions of the brain stem that he’d never seen in previous specimens. He attached a camera adapter to the microscope and, using a digital camera, took several photos of the crystals and printed them using a color inkjet.

The crystals looked like a dense collection of needles or hairs radiating along one edge.

Now what? he thought. This was something he had never seen. He had no experience identifying the properties of crystals and couldn’t even guess as to what it was. Whatever it was, it came from the same forest that was home to
blaberus
. He knew he needed help, so he packaged the slides along with copies of the photos and left his office, bound for the chemistry department where he hoped to talk to someone who could help him identify the crystal.

23

Duncan didn’t return
to his apartment until the morning. Boyd sat at a small table in the efficiency kitchen sipping coffee and reading the previous day’s
New York Times
. Right away, Boyd noticed that Duncan was smiling and in a good mood. The first thing that popped into his mind was that his boss had fucked Maggie Cross. He couldn’t wait to tell Stephanie and Carlos. He’d been telling them all along that Duncan and Cross were going to fuck. Carlos said no way. Stephanie was less certain but sided with Carlos.

“I just can’t believe she’d do it,” Rankin had said during one of their nights out. They favored tourist bars, which they regarded as safer than the local bars and clubs. None of them had adapted to the culture. They were there to study insects, not people.

“What did Azevedo tell you? Duncan asked while pouring himself a cup of coffee.

“He said he’d go on the expedition.”

“That’s great! We’ll need him if we run into any wildlife police. We don’t have a permit to collect these insects, and he does.”

“He probably knows the area much better than we do,” Boyd said as he sent a text to Rankin.

“Where does he think we should start?”

“Where you and Maggie went the other day.”

“Really! Did he say why?”

“Didn’t say and I didn’t ask, not having been there,” Boyd said with only a hint of bitterness.

”NO WAY!!!!” Rankin texted.

Sipping his coffee, Duncan couldn’t help but smile. Not only had he spent the night with Maggie, but he was virtually certain that she would underwrite part of the cost of the expedition, especially expenses related to security. He had realized she had an adventurous mind—even though she was physically timid—the moment she squeezed his hand when they were at Barbosa’s field. This raised his confidence to a high level and, along with it, his mood.

“Way!!!” Boyd texted.

Duncan asked him whom he was texting. Boyd put his phone in his pocket.

“Steph,” he said. “She wanted to know if we were going to meet again.”

“I think so, don’t you?” Duncan said, gently slapping Boyd’s knee as he rose with his coffee and stepped into the cramped living room. “We need to get this thing put together ASAP. I’ll call the professor and find out if he can recommend a guide or security guards. You should put a list of equipment we need to bring and provisions for the group for up to a week.”

“A week? That’s a long time.”

“It is, but we don’t know how far we have to go to find the colony. Could take a day or two to find them, and then there’s the time we’ll spend collecting specimens and data. And don’t forget this is still the wet season, so make sure we’ve got gear for that.”

“It hasn’t rained for weeks.”

“Just the same, we want folks to be comfortable.”

“Especially Maggie.”

“She’ll be paying for it, so, yeah, especially Maggie.”

24

Most of the
chemistry faculty Azevedo knew had either retired or died, so when he arrived at the lobby of the chemistry department, he naturally gravitated toward the first office he could find. “La oficina del Decano” was posted on a sign on the door, but the professor didn’t notice it. He was excited to be chasing another mystery. And at his age. Seventy-six wasn’t too old to have an adventure, he believed. He felt he could keep up with the youngsters. He was accustomed to the heat and humidity and felt that, though they’d been in the country for two months, they would struggle. If not, he would do what he could to keep up with them. He was not afraid of death, particularly if it came quickly, whether by heart attack or falling off a cliff. He would do what he had to do even if it cost him his life. As he understood, this was an abstraction even to a man of his age who had contemplated death on an almost daily basis for the past decade. What was not an abstraction was that the dead don’t know they are dead.

A young woman sat behind the counter in the lobby. She noticed Azevedo immediately as he entered the office though she did not recognize him as a faculty member. Azevedo had a habit of not wearing his identification badge. As he approached her, she asked how she could help him.

“Do you have an appointment with the dean?” she asked.

Azevedo stopped in his tracks and glanced around the room.

“This is the dean’s office?”

“Yes,” she said, nodding toward the sign on the plate glass door.

“Well,” he said, haltingly. “I, um, perhaps, I don’t think I need to speak with the dean. My name is Professor Fernando Azevedo, and I’m an entomologist and come here in hopes that someone in this department can help me identify a crystal I’ve found in one of my specimens.”

While Azevedo spoke, the young woman looked up his name in the university directory. She was thinking he was older than her grandfather and noticed that he was emeritus and had an office on campus.

“I’m going to call Maria Montes. She’s an assistant professor in our analytical chemistry department. She should be able to help. She’s nice.”

Azevedo nodded appreciatively, smiled and took a seat. The walls were lined with photographs of the dean shaking hands with important political and business leaders, which did not impress him. In his experience, deans had more in common with politicians than scientists. He had little respect for them as academics. But he understood that it took all kinds to run a university and held nothing against them personally. In fact, it was the dean of his department who arranged for his office and a part-time assistant, which he could not have done on his own.

While his mind wandered from photo to photo, a youngish-looking woman entered the room, filling it with a subtle jasmine fragrance that reminded him of his mother. The woman approached the front desk, and the receptionist pointed to Azevedo. Approaching him slowly, she extended her right hand in greeting.

“Hello, Professor Azevedo. I’m Maria Montes. I understand you have a question for us.”

Azevedo rose, shaking her hand and bowing slightly.

“Thank you for coming,” he said, “it’s not so much of a question as it is help in identifying a crystalline structure that I found in a specimen.”

He handed her a folder containing printouts of the photos he’d taken as well as the specimen slides, which were in a small plastic case.

“Hmph,” she grunted. “Let’s go up to my lab. I’m not familiar with this, but we should be able to identify it using your photos.”

The lab was on the third floor, and as she led the way, Azevedo explained where he’d found the specimen and vaguely described his interest in it. Not being an entomologist, she listened politely as the old man talked. She then explained that they would try to match the crystalline structure to the reference photos in a database. She insisted it wouldn’t take long, which pleased Azevedo.

As she predicted, Montes identified the crystal in less than five minutes.

“It’s a quinoid,” she said excitedly. “Specifically it’s
Tabebuia avellanedae
, also known as Pau D’Arco.”

“Really?” Azevedo responded, peering closely at the computer monitor.

“Are you familiar with it?”

“No, not really. I’m just surprised you found it so quickly. You’re certain of this, right?”

“You can see for yourself,” she said, after printing out the screen and setting Azevedo’s printout alongside. “They’re identical.”

Montes clicked on the
Tabebuia avellanedae
, which was highlighted, and a window opened with a description. It said that it came from the inner bark of the Purple Lapacho tree.

“Interesting,” Azevedo whispered as he read the text over Montes’ shoulder. “So it’s a medicinal herb.”

“Yes, but look at all the conditions it is associated with, everything from diabetes to parasites.”

“Have you ever heard of it?” Azevedo asked.

“No. You said you found your specimen in an insect?”

“Yes, but I’m going to have to review my notes before I can draw any conclusions,” he said, dismissing the topic.

“Of course,” Montes said, handing the printout she made to Azevedo. “I hope I’ve been helpful.”

“Oh, yes, indeed,” Azevedo said, enthusiastically shaking her hand. “I thought this might take awhile, but you did it so fast. You young people know how to use today’s technology much better than me. Thank you very much.”

Montes smiled and led Azevedo to the elevator. They shook hands again and as the doors closed his cell phone rang. It was Howard Duncan.