Jorge looked at Max. “Tell him to keep his thumb down.”
The linguist pointed at the lighter and said something to the boy. Osak tried again, this time keeping his thumb in place. The flame flickered to life, and the boy to jump with excitement. He stared at it for a moment before finally bursting into laughter.
“I could just eat him up,” Katiya said. “His reaction is priceless.”
Zane bent over and patted Osak on the back. “We can also thank him for dry gear.”
“Sometimes I think they understand the jungle better than scientists,” Jorge said from a cloud of smoke. “It’s one thing to visit this place for a week or two, studying this or that. It’s another thing to have to survive out here from the moment you’re born.”
“There is so much we can learn from them,” Katiya said.
“Right now I’d like to know where the nearest bar is,” Zane said.
“Three days, and you already have the shakes?” Katiya asked with a wink.
Zane smiled at her then sat down. “On a more serious note, we need to ask him if he knows anything about the crater.”
“We do know how to get there, don’t we?” Katiya asked.
“I know how to get to the crater rim,” Jorge said, “although I’ve never actually been there.” He leaned forward and used the palm of his hand to clear away a few leaves, exposing the soil. Then he picked up a nearby stick and drew a line in the dirt. “This is the trail we’re on now. Eventually we’ll come to a place where you can either keep going straight or turn off to the right.” He drew another line, this one perpendicular to the first. “If you turn right, it will take you in a big loop back to where we crossed the stream yesterday.”
“That’s the route that everybody takes,” Zane said. “Ecotourists, birdwatchers, adrenaline junkies.”
“But instead of turning right, we’ll keep going straight,” Jorge continued. “That’s where… how do you say in English… the going gets tough. The trail will be narrower. We may even have to hack our way through in a couple of spots.” He used the stick to extend the first line a few more inches then drew a circle at the end. “My contacts tell me that if we continue in that direction, we’ll eventually arrive at the crater rim.”
“The slope is fairly steep,” Zane said as he touched the edge of the circle, “but Jorge was told it shouldn’t be too difficult to get to the bottom.”
“And after that?” Katiya asked.
“Once we reach the valley floor, we’ll officially be inside our target zone. Where we go after that depends on what we find. If there are trails, then obviously we’ll use those as much as possible. That’s where I was hoping our friend could help us.” He nodded at Osak.
Katiya looked at Max. “Can you ask him if he knows anything about the crater?”
Max turned and addressed Osak. On several occasions, the linguist reached out and touched the lines drawn in the dirt. After speaking for a couple of minutes, he stopped and allowed everything to sink in.
At first Osak didn’t seem to understand. He simply stared at the lines without expression. Was he even familiar with the concept of a map? Surely he was.
Suddenly a look of recognition spread across the boy’s face. He tapped the circle with a finger, repeating the same phrase over and over.
Max nodded. “He knows about the crater.”
Osak spoke again, this time in a lower tone.
“Apparently the Papaqua see it as a forbidden region, a dark place of myth and legend. He seems shocked that we’d even want to go.”
Osak tapped the circle and uttered a short phrase.
“He said many have gone in, but only a few have come out,” Max said.
“The ones that made it out… what did they say?” Zane asked.
Max posed the question to Osak, who spoke for several minutes. When he was finished, Max said, “He says that he’s never spoken to any of them himself, but that his tribe has passed down the stories. Apparently the ones who made it out were reluctant to say much about their time there. In fact, some refused to talk at all. The ones who did share spoke about seeing spirits and strange creatures.”
Amanda let out a little gasp.
The last thing Zane wanted was for his group to have an unreasonable fear of their destination. It was imperative that they not give in to irrational fear. “Look, we know the crater is in a dark corner of the jungle. My guess is that some of these legends are true, but the likeliest explanation is that many of the people who entered either got lost or were killed by predators.”
“What about the ones who did make it out?” Amanda asked. “They saw spirits and strange creatures. That doesn’t sound like jaguars and ocelots.”
Zane shrugged. “As I said, it’s a dark place… but I believe that’s only in a biological sense. I’d guess their imaginations ran wild.”
“I’m just not sure it’s that simple, Zane,” Katiya said.
“Did you ever get lost out in the woods as a kid?” Zane asked. “Well, I did. And once you realized you didn’t know the way home, things began to change. All of a sudden the trees got bigger and nothing looked familiar. Panic set in and gave you brain fog. That’s a recipe for hallucinations. It’s also how legends are started.”
“These were probably grown men, that’s the difference,” Katiya said. “These aren’t children wandering around in the woods at dusk.”
“He also told me something else. I think it might be helpful.” Max grabbed a stick and used it to draw a dot inside the circle. “He says that there’s a mountain right in the center of the crater. His people believe that many of the strange creatures come from that mountain.”
Zane’s eyes narrowed. He wondered if that was the anomaly that Ross and Chris were looking at back in DC.
“Why do they believe that?” Amanda asked.
“He didn’t say. Apparently the ones that made it back said the closer you got to the mountain the crazier things got. He didn’t use this word, but it’s similar to us saying a certain place is haunted.”
Katiya bit her lower lip then said, “I wonder if this has anything to do with why we’re here. I mean, don’t you find it more than a little strange that the very place we’re going to search for an alien presence is also a place the indigenous people say is haunted? To me it couldn’t be clearer. They saw aliens.”
“It’s not unreasonable to make that connection,” Zane agreed.
“It’s interesting they said things got stranger in close proximity to that mountain,” Amanda said. “Can you think of a better place from which to transmit a signal?”
Zane nodded then looked at Brett. “Do you remember seeing anything like that on our sat photos?”
“No, but I can’t rule out the presence of a mountain, particularly if it’s covered by jungle vegetation. Remember, it’s very difficult to discern topography from a satellite photo. You’re looking straight down at some of the thickest rainforest in the world.”
“I agree,” Katiya said. “If you’re looking straight down, it would likely appear to be one giant swath of green.”
Brett’s eyes narrowed. “I do remember that something caught my attention when I was reviewing the photos. It was a narrow area devoid of vegetation. I assumed it was a stream of some sort because that’s the one place where the canopy was broken. But now that I think about it, the line formed a circle.”
“I don’t follow you,” Katiya said.
“If the bottom slope of the mountain is steep or rocky, you wouldn’t see a lot of trees there.”
Katiya nodded.
“Where in the crater was it?” Amanda asked.
“If my memory serves me correctly, it was right here.” Brett tapped inside the circle. “Dead center.”