Kill Decision (9 page)

Haloren studied her too. Then he stopped suddenly. “All right, then. I’ll leave you to it.”

“Hey!”

Haloren turned.

“I promise not to tell anyone you’re not really an asshole.”

He saluted before heading off. “Much appreciated.”

She smirked, shaking her head as she watched him fall in alongside another researcher heading in the other direction.

*   *   *

M
cKinney hung
in an arborist saddle sixty feet above the jungle floor. A cacophony of tropical birds and vervet monkeys echoed in the trees around her. She shaded her eyes against sunlight glittering between the leaves overhead and examined the tree’s crown, looking for weaver nests. Fortunately she didn’t see any.

The lowest branches of this Outeniqua yellowwood tree—or
Afrocarpus falcatus
—were still twenty feet above her. Her rope hung down from a branch even farther up. She had launched a throw line over it with a crossbow and hauled her climbing rope up after it, securing both ends using climbing knots and a dual line technique she’d learned as a grad student to hook up her harness.

Readjusting her position, McKinney gazed out across the jungle from this hilltop tree at the densely forested peaks of the Usambara Mountains still shrouded in mist in the distance. There was an immense diversity of sights and smells. It was always breathtaking up here. She never failed to notice how beautiful these mountains were, wrapped in low cloud cover and jungle canopy—humid and profuse with life. Reveling in the natural world was as close to the spiritual as McKinney got. She knew it was on this continent—possibly in this very jungle—that the first hominids arose, beginning the journey that separated mankind from the other animals. Becoming self-aware. She felt humbled by the vast stretch of history this place had seen.

She looked down to track the progress of her companion, a sinewy African boy of about ten. He, too, wore a rock-climbing helmet and sat in a climbing saddle suspended from a separate rope. He was laboriously working his way up—his booted foot looped through a rope stirrup. The boy grunted as he pushed up with his leg, ascending another few inches, then readjusting his knots.

McKinney pointed. “Don’t grab the Blake’s Hitch, or you’ll lose ground. Keep your hands below it. That’s better, Adwele. Good.” She smiled at him. “How you holding up? Need a rest?”

He shook his head. “No, miss. I’m good to go.”

She nodded. Adwele was always good to go, ready to learn something new. Unafraid. “Don’t push too hard. Take your time and concentrate on form.”

He glanced down. Then looked up, flashing a white smile. “Look how high we are!”

“Check that out. . . .” She leaned back on her rope and pointed at the hills. “This is the way birds see the Amani.”

Adwele looked out at a view he’d never seen, though he’d lived his entire life here. A grin spread across his face.

McKinney could see the wonder in his eyes, his growing fascination with the natural world. She saw so much of herself in him. It gave her pause.

A maternal pang was all it was, she knew. The lost decade of her postdoc work, the long hours and low pay of an associate professor. While other people were settling down, she’d been traveling in the remote regions of the world doing field research. It was an adventurous life, but not one suited to being a parent. Besides, there were already enough people in the world, and what she was leaving behind for future generations was her research. She took a deep breath.

“Let me see how your knots are holding up.” She walked the tree trunk to come alongside him. McKinney checked Adwele’s rig section by section. “Stopper knot’s still solid. Nice bridge. Figure-eight looks good.” She examined the Prusik knot wrapped around the main line and pushed the loops more tightly together. “Was this slipping when you ascended?”

“A little.”

“Keep it snug like this, and it won’t slip even if the rope gets wet.” McKinney glanced below them. “About time to add another safety knot too. Every ten feet. Remember.”

“Yes, miss.” Adwele nodded and deftly tied a slipknot into the rope that trailed away beneath him. There were similar knots at intervals in the line below.

She rapped on his helmet with her gloved hand. “You’re becoming a pro. Now, remember, it’s important to follow all of the steps. What happens when we get careless?”

“Hospital or worse.”

McKinney nodded. “Yes. Very good.”

“Why does Professor Haloren use a metal tool to climb instead of all these knots?”

“You mean an ascender? Because Professor Haloren is lazy.”

Adwele laughed. “He says you’re cheap.”

“Equipment can malfunction, and when it does, you’d better know how to do this yourself. Once you can tie these knots without thinking, you can use an ascender if you like.”

Adwele was already gazing past her, up into the tree’s crown. He pointed. “Look, a kipepeo.”

McKinney followed his arm to see a pink, parchmentlike butterfly flexing its wings on the leaf of a nearby tree. “
Salamis parhassus
. Also called ‘the Mother of Pearl Salamis.’”

Adwele took a small notebook and pen that hung by a short cord to a carabiner on his harness. He flipped through the pages and entered a tick mark. He counted. “Fourteen more than last year so far, and there’s still a month to go. Is it the butterfly farmers at Marikitanda?”

“Could be. Although it could also be because you’re surveying more.”

Adwele nodded as he put his notebook away. “My sister says I cannot become a scientist. She says it is a white man’s job, but I told her that you’re a woman, and you are a scientist.”

McKinney gave him a serious look, then planted her feet firmly on the tree trunk, far above the jungle floor. “Do you know why I love science, Adwele?”

He shook his head.

“Because science is the best tool we have for finding truth. For instance, to the naked eye you and I look very different, but it took science to help us see that there’s almost no genetic difference between us. And that’s a great truth. Remember that.” She slapped him on the helmet playfully. “It’s what you put in here that counts.” And she poked him in the chest. “And what’s in here. Don’t let anyone ever tell you you can’t try for something, Adwele. No one knows what you’re capable of yet—not even you.”

“Yes, miss.”

“Time to head back.”

He nodded.

“What’s the first step when descending?”

Adwele thought for a moment, then looked down to the base of the tree. He cupped a gloved hand over his mouth and shouted, “Down check!”

McKinney looked down to see an Amani Reserve ranger named Akida wave back and give a thumbs-up.

“Clear!”

She looked back at Adwele. “Okay, good. Remember, we do this slow and steady so we don’t overheat the rope. Two fingers on top of the hitch, with your control hand holding the line. Depress the Blake’s Hitch lightly, and remove the safety knots as we reach them. . . .”

*   *   *

W
alking the mile
or so back to the research camp, McKinney shared the load with Akida, but Adwele insisted on carrying his own pack, struggling as he went. McKinney kept a short length of throw line over her back in a European coil and turned back to watch Adwele.

Navigating around a tree, Adwele started falling backward with the added weight. “Help me, miss!”

McKinney grabbed his rope bag and helped him reseat it on his shoulders. “You got it?”

“I’m good.”

She exchanged grins with Akida, the Amani ranger who brought up the rear. They could both see traits of Babu in the son.

They continued walking the path home. Adwele walked behind her. “My mother says you are too pretty to keep your hair short. You should let it grow so that you can find a husband.”

“Uh, thanks for the advice, but I’m in Africa to do research. And where I come from, women don’t need to rely on a man for a living.” She pointed down at driver ants swarming in a thick line along the edge of the path. “Look.”

Adwele stopped to watch the swarm. “Siafu.”

“Yes.” McKinney pointed. “Do you know that almost every ant you see is female?”

“Even the siafu warriors?”

McKinney nodded. “That’s right. All of the workers, the warriors, and the queen, they’re all girls. The nursery workers determine the caste of the young by how they feed them, but the only time they make boy ants is when they want to create a new colony.”

“Then they need boys sometimes, eh?”

McKinney laughed. Adwele never missed anything. “I guess that’s true. C’mon, smart guy. . . .” She held out her hand to keep them moving. Her gaze happened on a large raven observing them from a tree branch overhead. She was surprised for a moment until she realized that the Amani no doubt held more than a few ravens. Perhaps she was only just starting to notice them.

CHAPTER 6

Wake-up Call

I
t was hot and humid
in the darkness. Another scorching night at the research station. Early December, but Tanzania’s hot dry season appeared to be coming on early. McKinney lay on her cot in a Cornell T-shirt and gym shorts beneath mosquito netting. Unable to sleep, she had rolled her shirt up and was fanning her exposed midriff with a Harvard report on social algorithms. Dripping with sweat, she listened to the sounds of the jungle all around her: animal calls and a relentless thrum of crickets.

Way out here there was no air-conditioning. Not that they couldn’t have it, but it was frowned upon by hard-core field researchers (and grant committees). The technology that did make it out to the bush was always surprising. For instance, she got four bars on her cell phone in the Amani, but adequate medical clinics were rare.

God, it’s hot.

Although her windows were open, they were placed high up the walls with a thick wire mesh for security reasons, inhibiting airflow. There was also a brass whistle on top of the Pelican case next to her cot that she was supposed to use to summon the station’s several askaris in case of trouble. They’d had thieves in the night before, but since the American drone incident in Iraq, the university had doubled the security detail (presumably since a third of Tanzania’s population was Muslim, and the American embassy had been bombed before).

She knew the cost of the added security would be coming out of all their research budgets, and she pondered whether it was another overreaction. They were far from Dar es Salaam, the old capital, and the researchers had had great relations for decades with the local Maasai tribesmen (most of whom weren’t either Christian or Muslim, but worshiped their own monotheist god, Enkai
.
)

Speaking of god: God, it’s hot.

She recalled how the big tourist hotels in Dar es Salaam deeply refrigerated the guest rooms with air-conditioning to keep out malarial
Anopheles gambiae
mosquitoes. She always had to bundle up like an Inuit when she stayed there, even if it was scorching outside. Right now that sounded pretty good. So did a cold beer.

Her mind wandered, as it often did on these hot, sleepless nights—and as always it eventually gravitated to family. To her mother. And then to her father. McKinney had been in a remote region of Borneo when her mother took ill, and she hadn’t gotten back in time. The pain of that was always there on nights like this.

She rolled onto her side and looked at the framed photographs next to the glow of her recharging phone. A photo of her father, her mother, and two older brothers arm-in-arm. How much had she missed in all this time in the field? There was another photo of her, taken while skydiving. Her one hundredth jump, goggles on and thumbs-up in free fall somewhere over Virginia. Her jump partner, Brian Kirkland, had taken the photo. She was no longer with him. Long-distance relationships were always hard. He was a great guy. Married now with a kid.

Should she take a teaching position at the university? Give up field research? She thought of Adwele and his father, Babu, a ranger at the Amani Reserve. Killed by poachers. How would Adwele manage without a father? He was such a bright kid. But was Haloren right? Was McKinney taking an interest in Adwele for her own selfish reasons? Trying to fill a void? That was the worst thing about Haloren: As annoying as he could be, he was disturbingly perceptive.

An odd, unfamiliar humming sound intruded on her thoughts. McKinney looked up toward the window screen on the far side of her small room.

But the sound was already gone.

Jungle sounds. She lay back down and thought of large nocturnal flying insects. A
Goliathus albosignatus
? Goliath beetles had been known to reach four and half inches long. But she’d never seen one around the station. It would be great to catch one.

There was the sound again—this time coming from the window on her left.

McKinney rolled over and gazed up at the screen near the rafters. There was something just outside the window, a hum almost inaudible against the background jungle noise. And there—a shimmering in the night air. Now gone.