In the boreal forests, untouched since time began . . .

Maggie joined her husband Rob on a research mission into the wilderness
of northern Maine. Instead of finding a land of beauty and peace, they
found themselves caught in a nightmare-one that Maggie knew would never end.

PROPHECY

i

ii

David Seltzer

BALLANTINE BOOKS NEW YORK

iii Copyright ©1979 by Paramount Pictures Corporation

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a
division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada
by Ballantine Books of Canada, Ltd., Toronto, Canada.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 78-74246

ISBN 0-345-28034-2

Manufactured in the United States of America

iv

To Hector M'tal

v

1

1

Prologue

Snow fell upon the Manatee Forest, ushering in the awesome silence of
winter. It fell for five days and nights, burying the trees that
provided work for the lumberjacks, icing the river that provided food
for the Indians. The men of the forest retreated, huddling for warmth
within the confines of small shelters, subsisting on meager supplies,
until the coming of spring.

The other creatures of the forest were better prepared. Through millions
of years of evolution they had adjusted, with body structure and
bio-rhythm, to the famine and cold that lay ahead. The insects ensured
the safety of future progeny by depositing their eggs beneath the water
and below the frostline, where they would be impervious to the elements
above. The birds would migrate to warmer climes; the coldblooded
reptiles and amphibians would assume the same body temperature as the
environment, freezing solid, then thawing to life with the coming of
spring. The few warm-blooded creatures who could survive on the meager
vegetation buried beneath the snow would remain awake through the
winter, their bodies and numbers thinning as they foraged the bleak
terrain. Those that demanded a greater supply of food would hibernate,
falling into a deathlike coma with heartbeats and respiration that could
barely be perceived.

Hidden beneath the white blanket that blurred the border between Canada
and Maine, tens of thousands of animals lay slumbering in the darkened

2

silence of their dens. Some would emerge with new offspring that had
been born while they slept; others would not emerge at all, expiring
quietly from old age or starvation, permanently sealed in their earthen
tombs. Concealed from the eyes of man, these secret pockets that held
life in suspended animation were used over and over through the years,
some of them dating back centuries in time. They ranged in size from the
teacup-shaped nest of the chipmunk to the ten-foot-wide cavern of the bear.

But this year there was a new hibernation den. And it had a size and
configuration unlike any ever built before. Nestled within craggy cliffs
at the edge of a frozen lake, it loomed almost thirty feet high and
twenty feet wide, and the air within it was thick with the strench of
rotting carcasses. The tenant's sleep had been restless. It was eager
for the coming of spring.

As the sun moved closer to the earth, the snow that covered the Manatee
Forest began to thaw, stimulating the forest's creatures into
wakefulness. From its subterranean sanctum dug in the mountains above
the tree line, a seven-hundred-pound black bear awakened early and
stalked in search of prey. The ground was still covered with a thin
white crust, creating a trail of paw prints behind him as he descended
to the lake, broke the ice with his massive paw, and drank his fill of
water. Satiated, he surveyed the environment, detecting the sound of
bark being torn from the base of a tree. Following the sound, he spotted
a massive buck feeding in the distance, its stately antlers turning as
it sensed that danger was near.

The bear moved slowly, knowing that the deer could not escape him; the
deer seemed to know it, too, its posture sagging with resignation as it
watched the lumbering specter of death approach. At the last moment the
deer spun and the bear charged; the pursuit was silent, save for the
muffled impact of paws and hooves upon the snow and the grunt of exerted
breath as the bear quickly overtook its prey. With a

2

single swipe the bear's claws ripped into a rear leg and the deer went
down, blood seeping into the snow as it struggled, then stopped,
watching the bear move in for the kill.

It would not be a swift death. The bear did not have to hurry. There was
nothing in this forest that could steal its meal away.

But as it ambled forward, it heard a sound from directly behind. It was
an abrupt squeal, a voice unlike any the bear had ever heard. A shadow
suddenly loomed overhead, and the bear spun, squalling like a frightened
fieldmouse. It tried to run but was jerked upward with such force that
its body ripped from its hide, the skinless torso taking flight and
slamming hard onto the ground. The legs continued to pump, running in
place, even after the head had been neatly sliced from the shoulders.

The wounded deer staggered to its feet, dragging limp hindquarters,
finding safety in a thick stand of trees. There it turned and watched
with dispassionate eyes the sight of its predator being turned into prey.

The head of the bear was devoured on the spot, the body carried back to
the den among the cliffs. There it would be eaten at leisure, its bones
thrown onto the pile of carcasses that would grow higher throughout the
spring, creating a macabre scaffolding that would reach to the top of
the thirty-foot walls. The architect of this cavern had no taste for
hooves and claws; they had been severed and left rotting on the earthen
floor.

Before long, hands and feet would lie rotting there, too . . .

3

4

4

5

5

1

To Robert Vern, the coming of spring in Washington, D.C., meant more
than cherry blossoms and the start of punting season on the Potomac. His
own experiential calendar marked the change of season with a shift in
the nature of human misery. Winter was the time of gas leaks, child
battering, pneumonia, and asphyxiation; spring was the brief overture to
the rat bites and sewage problems of summer.

In his four years of working for the Department of Public Health, he had
seen the tenements go from bad to worse. And he was swept with a sense
of personal failure. He was a doctor. His patient was the entire ghetto.
And its heartbeat was failing, despite his efforts.

In the complicated tangle of cause and effects, a change in national
mores was having a dramatic effect on urban development. The young
middle-class working corps, who had once paired up, gotten married, and
lived in suburbs where they could send their children to "good" schools,
were staying single now, invading the heart of the city and creating a
land boom on which every owner of real estate was prospering. Areas once
designated for public housing were being rezoned, and the ghettos were
getting squeezed. In a single one-block tenement area where two thousand
blacks once lived, there were now six thousand. Families of eight were
inhabiting single rooms, spilling out onto the fire escapes, and
sidewalks, so desperate for

6

housing that they were at the complete mercy of the slumlords. If they
complained that there was no water, they would be thrown out into the
streets.

If there was one single group of people whom Robert Vern felt vengeance
toward, it was slumlords. On bis never-ending rounds of the tenements he
saw the mark of their greed everywhere. He filed lawsuits against them
and faced them down in court; ultimately, even if they were penalized,
they always won. They owned the real estate and it was in short supply.
The tenants knew better than to appear in court and be identified.

Then there were the politicians. The endless stream of sunlamp-tanned
bureaucrats who showed up to have their pictures taken at the openings
of housing projects, then became unavailable to assist when the projects
lost their funding and turned into crime-ridden ghettos. There seemed to
be no solution for it, and no end. No one, except Robert Vern, seemed to
care.

To the community of people among whom he worked, Vern was an irritant,
an idealist who refused to grow up. He even looked younger than his
years; his six-foot frame and boyishly handsome face would have been
more credible carrying a football on a college campus than a doctor's
bag in Washington. The age of youthful enthusiasm was gone from the
capital, dead with Kennedy and the Peace Corps; but Robert Vern was
still imprisoned within that time capsule, fired with the belief that
the sheer energy of one man who knew right from wrong might ultimately
prevail. His social conversation was diatribe, his zeal frightening. Few
dared to befriend him for fear of getting caught up in his combat with
the world.

And yet, in his dealings with the impoverished and disinherited, he was
a man of consummate gentleness. He literally ached for them, sometimes
even felt guilty for having been born with all the possibilities in life
that they would never have.

He had spoken to a psychiatrist once, at a fund-

7

raiser for community mental health services, and after a lengthy
conversation the psychiatrist had suggested that Rob go into therapy. He
observed that Rob suffered from what he called a "Savior Syndrome," a
neurosis that makes one behave in a God-like manner to compensate for
some kind of guilt or for the lack of a simple feeling of human
self-worth. Such people, the psychiatrist went on to explain, can feel
worthwhile only when they associate with the weak and helpless. Those
who need them.

The superficial analysis had irritated Rob, but he knew that it touched
upon a basic truth. There was plainly a disparity between what he was
trying to accomplish, and what he could accomplish. It made him fear
that he was acting more out of his own needs than those of others. At
the age of thirty-nine he was at a crossroads, his mind given to
analyzing not only where he was going, but where he had been.

He remembered that even as a young boy he had had a desire to heal. When
he bought tropical fish for his aquarium he always passed over the
healthy ones, choosing instead those that were covered with white spots
or limped through the water with battered fins. He toiled over them day
and night, curing icthiomy-atosis and dropsy with the same kind of
dedication he had witnessed in his own father, a country doctor, who had
died when Rob was twelve.

He had gone to college on scholarship, then on to medical school. After
graduating with honors, he spurned the rewards of private practice to
minister to the needs of those who could afford no medical treatment at
all. He went to Brazil with the Peace Corps, where he became expert in
the diseases borne of environmental squalor; then, two years later, to
New York, where that field of expertise became his specialty. He worked
at Bellevue Hospital, an institution that is to the medical profession
what the Ford Motor Company is to automobile production. An assembly
line, through which patients move so fast and continuously that they all
begin to look alike and the

8

doctors themselves lose their sense of identity. Rob worked a
twenty-hour day, and it was there, on a night when he was feeling lost
and alone, that he met a young woman named Maggie.

Maggie Duffy, now Maggie Vern, Rob's wife of seven years, was at that
time a student at the Juilliard School of Music. She had brought her
cello and two friends with violins into the Children's Ward, to serenade
on Christmas Eve.

After all these years, it was still Rob's fondest memory of her. She was
playing Brahms, her cheeks wet with tears from the sight of the
children; she used a Kleenex, which she kept tucked under the cello
strings at the very top of the instrument near the tuning knobs, to dry
her tears between selections. When she played, it was as though she were
completely at peace; a single entity expressing a single feeling. That
feeling was compassion.

They spent that night together, walking the cold, deserted streets of
Times Square, feeling, in the uncommon emptiness of Christmas Eve, as
though they were the earth's only two survivors. With a sense of
urgency, as though they might never cross each other's paths again, each
told the other the entire story of their lives. And by dawn of Christmas
morning, over coffee and cherry pie at the Automat, each secretly knew
that they had found their life's partner.

It was Maggie's optimism that Rob most admired; her naivete, her
openness, her vulnerability. In many ways she was like an innocent
child; easily hurt, quickly consoled, exuberant one moment, pensive the
next-responding immediately and instinctively to everything around her.
Whereas Rob dwelt in the province of the mind, she followed the dictates
of her feelings. Together they were a perfect combination.

Their first apartment in New York was just off Columbus Circle; Rob used
to watch Maggie through the kitchen window, dragging her cello behind
her as she walked to her morning class at Juilliard. She often took a
glass of water with her to nourish a small

9

plant that had somehow managed, against all odds, to crack through the
asphalt directly in the middle of the street and survive the traffic.
She would pause there and give it an encouraging word or two, leading
passers-by to believe she was dafiy. She was not daffy. She was Maggie.
And Rob loved her now, as then, more than anyone he had ever known.

But the intimacy they experienced during their years in New York was
gone. The move to Washington had been like stepping out of a field of
flowers into a raging river that swept them apart. Maggie had become
first cellist with the Washington Symphony, occupied with rehearsals by
day and performances by night; Rob was swallowed up in the never-ending
battle that he now seemed to be losing. In recent months, he was often
asleep when Maggie came home from her concerts, and gone before she
awakened. No longer did they spend time drinking wine and talking about
their feelings; no longer were there the long nights and late mornings
when they dismissed the problems of the world and made love. Their
contact was fragmented and shallow, their conversation had become
practical, their lovemaking perfunctory and infrequent. It was
disturbing to both, but neither spoke of it. It was a cycle they
couldn't seem to break.

Maggie was putting in extra hours now, rehearsing for the opening of
subscription season; Rob was beleaguered by a heavier-than-usual flood
of emergency calls. For the last three days they had communicated mostly
by telephone, and through notes left on bed and refrigerator. The
message was simple, somehow sad. The note always said, "I love you."

As Rob sat now in the passenger seat of a speeding ambulance, responding
to an emergency call from the tenements, he forced his thoughts away
from Maggie. The distressing distance between them was something he felt
helpless to control. He turned his mind back to the problems of urban
decay, and came up with a thesis that somehow consoled him. Even though

10

the tenements were being squeezed by the influx of nonmarried working
people, perhaps the collapse of the institution of marriage would have
one positive effect. With fewer marriages there would be fewer children.
Fewer innocent victims caught in the unstoppable whirlpool.

But the thought of children brought him back to Maggie. It was the most
difficult subject between them; the mere mention of it made them see
each other as adversaries. Maggie was thirty years old and becoming
anxious. Rob had seen enough starving infants to realize that
overpopulation was the earth's most urgent problem; he believed it was
unfair to bring a child into such a difficult world.

He closed his eyes now, trying to find some peace. The ambulance slowed;
the driver beside him sighed with frustration.

"I should've taken A Street."

Rob followed the driver's gaze up Pennsylvania Avenue, where a
demonstration in front of the White House was blocking traffic.

"Back up."

But it was too late. They were hemmed in.

"Turn on the siren," Rob ordered. "Push right through."

As they inched forward, Rob gazed at the demonstrators. They were
American Indians, a hundred or so of them, their faces made up with
garish war paint, some carrying bows and arrows, their voices raised in
shrill, murderous cries. Seeking any target as an outlet for their
anger, a group of them charged the ambulance, banging on its hood. One
young militant danced around it with a spear in his hand.

"Jesus Christ," muttered the ambulance driver.

Rob kept his eyes forward. He knew the syndrome. The rage born of
helplessness. He'd seen it in the tenements, too. Any white man, no
matter what his motives, represented the Establishment. It was always
those who came to help who bore the full brunt of anger. Firemen were
shot at by snipers, social workers

11

were threatened with their lives. The good guys had the same skin color
as the bad guys, and the bad guys were beyond reach.

"What the hell are they trying to prove?" asked the driver.

Rob didn't answer. He suddenly remembered he'd promised Victor Shusette
that he would attend the hearing on Indian Affairs. He checked his
watch. It was too late. He wouldn't make it back in time. An emergency
call from the tenements usually meant that a life was hanging in the
balance. Now, with the traffic jam, he didn't know if he'd make it there
in time either.

"I showed it to the man, he say it was chicken pox!"

The black woman who shouted at Rob was enraged, and rightly so. Her
six-month-old infant, whom Rob was examining in its crib, was covered
with festering rat bites. Crowded around them hi the one-room tenement
dwelling were the woman's five other children, no more than a year apart
in age, and a mob of people from the street, drawn by the sound of the
ambulance. The room was filled to capacity; the heat was unbearable.

"I say to him, there's rats in here!" the woman cried out, with tears in
her eyes. "He say to me, this is chicken pox. I say to him, there ain't
no chickens in here, there's rats in here! And them rats bit my baby!"

Rob eased the stethoscope from his ears and felt the infant's pulse.

"You know what he say to me?" the black woman shouted. "He say the rats
got to have room to live, too!" She burst into sobs, her children
clinging to her. "That's what that bastard landlord said to me! The rats
got to have room to live, too!"

Rob looked for the two ambulance attendants, their white faces barely
visible at the back of the

12

crowded room. He gestured to them and they began pushing through.

"What you gonna do?" the woman demanded.

"I'm going to put your baby in a hospital."

"Then what?"

"He'll get well."

"And then he'll come back here and get bitten up again!"

"Not if I can help it."

"You can't help shit!" the woman sneered.

Rob stood firm and took it. She pushed her face close to his.

"You been here before," she snarled. "You said that before."

"No," Rob answered, "I've never been here before."

"Last winter. Upstairs. That lady who died of pneumonia when they turned
the heat off. You took a dead body outa here and said we'd have the heat
turned back on."

Rob remembered. "The heat was turned on," he said quietly.

"For one week! Then it was turned off!"

Her angry eyes locked into his, and Rob's guts tightened.

"You gonna take my baby away and fatten him up so we can serve him to
the rats again?"

"Where do I find your landlord?"

"That's one goddamn good question!"

"Do you know where he lives?"

"Sure. He lives in Virginia. He lives with you rich rats up there!"

"I'm trying to help you-"

"Bullshit! Bullshit! You makin' a livin' here, is all! You don't care
what happens here!"

The room went silent and she buried her face in her hands. Rob touched
her shoulder and she angrily pulled away. "Go on, take him!" she cried.
"Get him adopted or somethin'! I don't want him to have to come back here!"

"Will you come with me to court?" Rob asked.

13

"No!"

"I can prosecute your landlord if you'll come and complain."

"He'll throw us all out!"

The woman was right. She knew from the experiences of others that the
visibility of any individual here was dangerous. That was why, when
their frustration reached a breaking point, it was expressed by mobs.

"Get outa here!" she screamed at Rob. "And take my poor, sick baby with
you!"

Rob nodded in defeat and signaled the ambulance attendants to head for
the door. He followed them but paused, gazing back at the weeping woman
surrounded by her children.

"She don't mean what she says," a man said from the crowd. "It ain't
your fault that you can't help us."

Rob felt a sudden swelling in his throat. He turned and left the room.

Outside the tenement, the streets were filled with bodies stripped to
the waist in the unseasonably warm weather. As Rob pushed through them
toward the ambulance, he knew that if it got too warm too fast, it would
be chaos here by summer. The shower of bricks and bottles that rained
down on government vehicles came in direct proportion to the duration of
summer heat. By all indications, it would be a deluge by July.

Taking his seat in the back of the ambulance, he paused to wipe his
forehead, then turned his attention to the baby. Its eyes were riveted
upward; it had suddenly ceased to move. The ambulance siren began to
wail and Rob lunged for his bag, pulling out a syringe with trembling
hands. Then he stopped, his face white with fear, and lowered his ear to
the infant's unmoving chest. He listened for a moment; then, suddenly,
unexpectedly, Rob began to cry. The baby began to cry, too. It was
alive. And Robert Vern realized how close he was to cracking.

14

14

2

"The situation in our forest, Mr. Senator, can be likened in the
following way . . ."

In the Senate Subcommittee Hearing room, five Senators sat behind a long
table, illuminated in an island of light, listening to the words of a
young American Indian who testified with eloquence and passion. He was
there to protest the theft of his tribal land, a
three-hundred-square-mile wilderness area that was about to be leveled
by the lumber industry.

"If I came to your home, you would likely welcome me. If I needed food
and shelter from you, it would likely be given. Indeed, if I demanded my
own room within your house, and if you had such a room, you might be
kind enough to give it to me."

The Indian paused, his voice becoming tense.

"But if I claimed that your house and everything in it belonged to me,
and I ordered you out, you would no doubt become angry! And that is
exactly what is happening to the original people of this land!"

A smattering of applause rose from isolated spots in the darkened
viewers section, quieted by the sound of a gavel. Victor Shusette
strained to see his watch. It was plain that Robert Vern was not going
to be here. Shusette would have rather not been here either. At the age
of fifty-six he felt too old and tired to face the pressure of the
position that his Agency was being placed in. The Environmental
Protection Agency was supposed to be nonpolitical. But it was being
forced into a hotbed of politics.

15

"I can appreciate your feelings, Mr. Hawks-" a Senator said.

"Can you appreciate the facts, Mr. Senator?"

"That's what I want to deal in. I want to deal in the facts . . ."

"Then let us deal in these facts. The purchase of all Indian land in the
Northeast Territories was accomplished under the provisions of Treaty
Nine . . ."

The Senator raised his voice. "Will you let me finish, please-?"

"And Treaty Nine was never ratified by Congress!"

"Mr. Hawks-"

"There has never been another treaty in the history of this country that
has been implemented without the full approval of Congress. This is your
constitution I'm talking about! These are your laws I'm talking about!
This is your so-called justice I'm talking about. And I'm asking you a
question!"

The Senator had begun to bang his gavel.

"I'm asking you a question! Would this have been done to people whose
skin is white?"

Another burst of applause came from the darkened auditorium. The gavel
continued banging until there was silence.

"Are you finished, Mr. Hawks?"

"I'm finished with this speech, if that's what you mean."

Laughter rang out; the Indian was smiling. He knew just how to leaven
the proceedings when it was needed, knew just when to make his attacks
and when to retreat. A few of the Senators were smiling, too. They knew
they were being manipulated by a master in the craft of verbal combat.

John Hawks was not an easy man to reckon with. He was articulate and
poised, and he had righteousness of his side. No one knew exactly where
he had come from; his rise in the ranks of militant spokesmen had been
meteoric. Three weeks ago no one had heard of him. Today he was the
chosen representative of the group calling themselves O.P. It stood for

16

Original People. A hastily formed amalgam of Masa-quoddy, Ashinabeg,
Yurok, Wampanoag, and Cree, tiny tribes along the Maine-Canadian border
who were trying to protect their land from a company called the Pitney
Paper Mill.

"What I was about to say, Mr. Hawks," the Senator continued, "is that
although I can appreciate your feelings, the blockade you've constructed
in your forest is against the law."

"The law will not bring justice," Hawks declared.

"The blockade will lead to confrontation."

"Abstinence from confrontation will not bring justice."

"You're aware that the Supreme Court has issued a restraining order
against this blockade?"

"Which Supreme Court is that, Mr. Senator?"

The Senator looked at him warily. "The Supreme Court of the United States."

John Hawks sat back and smiled. "That's not a very high supreme court,
Mr. Senator. My supreme court is much higher."

Whistles and cheers resounded in the darkness; Victor Shusette had heard
enough.

Leaving the Senate chambers, he walked out onto the front steps of the
old Senate Building and squinted into the sun. The branches of the
cherry trees were turning white and their fragrance wafted through the
air, but it did not bring him the pleasure that it had in the past. This
spring he was facing a problem. After a lifetime of building the
Environmental Protection Agency into a respected force, he was now
watching it being suddenly placed in jeopardy. In the land dispute
between the lumber company and the Indians, the Agency was being used as
a pawn. The Pitney Lumber Company was planning to exercise its right to
harvest the timber in the Manatee Forest; the Indians were standing in
their way. The lumber company had the money with which to win the legal
war, but the Indians had gained national sympathy. The result was that
the Supreme Court was unwilling

17

to make a decision. They had turned to Shusette to provide them with an
Environmental Protection report as a means of breaking the deadlock.

It was not as simple as it sounded. The lumber companies employed over
half the working people of Maine. The working people of Maine supported
their Senators. Their Senators had control of the purse strings that
kept the Environmental Protection Agency alive. One Senator in
particular, the Republican from Maine, had already started working the
territory. Shusette had received an invitation to go fishing at his
private cabin on the Kennebec River on the opening day of salmon season.
It was easy to resist this kind of obvious bid, but there were others
that were not so easily ignored.

In Washington one hand, it was said, washed the other. Fittingly,
Shusette had noticed, politicians were a breed of one-handed men. They
seemed to rely on their right hand. For handshaking, gesturing, and
pointing fingers in people's faces. The left hand was usually kept in a
pocket or in a tight fist, no doubt concealing what the handshaking,
gesturing, and finger-pointing was all about.

In the case of the Republican Senator from Maine, the left hand
concealed a grab bag of threats and promises. The promise that if
Shusette's Agency wrote a positive, or sufficiently ambiguous, report,
he'd honor their sacrifice of the first round by giving up the next. If,
for instance, they reported that wide-scale timber cutting in the
Manatee Forest would not be detrimental to the environment, the Senator
would support a suggestion that the cutting be "limited" rather than
total. If, on the other hand, the Environmental Protection report came
in totally negative, the Senator could wage war on the Agency with the
full financial resources of the timber lobby behind him. He could
campaign to discredit their report; he might even introduce legislation
that would curtail their future involvement in the controversy over
cutting trees.

The showdown between the Pitney Paper Mill and

18

a handful of Indians calling themselves the Original People was not just
a minor skirmish. The results of this isolated land dispute had
precedent-setting ramifications, and the Environmental Protection report
would provide a powerful weapon for one side or the other to use.
Shusette wondered how many of his field workers had already been
contacted by the timber lobby, received invitations to parties, or been
given hints of political jobs. They were a dedicated group and, as far
as Shusette knew, incorruptible. But the pressure on whoever took this
job would be enormous. It was for all these reasons that Victor Shusette
had thought of Robert Vern. He was from outside the Agency; his
integrity was unquestionable, his dedication to the cause of human
justice was beyond compare. He had no political ambitions and could face
down any politician. And he had the healer's gift of dealing with the
kind of emotional turmoil that existed in the Manatee Forest. Moreover,
he had reached the end of the line in Public Health. Shusette knew that
Robert Vern was psychologically ready for a change.

"Rob?"

Victor Shusette moved tentatively down the darkened hospital corridor
toward the lone figure leaning against the wall. It was past midnight,
and he had looked everywhere for Rob, had even called his wife just an
hour ago, awakening her to find that he still hadn't returned home. On
an off chance he drove to the hospital and found that Rob had been there
since two in the afternoon, trying to save the life of the tenement infant.

The silhouetted figure before him looked like Rob, but Shusette couldn't
be sure. He had never seen Rob standing still before. Since they'd first
met in the Central Commissary a year ago, their conversations had always
been conducted in transit; Shusette hurrying to keep Rob's pace as he
ran from one point to

19

the other. The man standing before him now was plainly exhausted,
drained of every bit of life and energy.

"Victor," Rob said. "What brings you here?"

"Mohammed comes to the mountain." He paused to assess his friend. "You
all right?"

Rob nodded. "Have a cigarette?"

"You smoke?"

"Not since I was twenty-two."

"Taking it up?"

"I might."

Shusette produced a cigarette and Rob lit up, taking a puff without
inhaling, not liking the taste.

"I'll take it."

Rob gave it to Shusette, then moved to a bench, where he sat with
exhaustion.

"How's the baby?" Victor asked.

"Weak. How'd you know about the baby?"

"I keep a close eye on you."

Rob was beyond banter. He lay down on the bench, one arm crossed over
his eyes, as though settling in for the night.

"Not going home?" Victor asked.

"Waiting for an EKG."

"Too tired to talk?"

"No."

"I'll let you alone if you're too tired."

"I can listen."

Shusette paused, glancing down the hall in search of a chair. There was
none. He slid down to the floor, sitting against the wall. From a
distance they would have looked like a couple of derelicts.

"I wanted to tell you about that hearing this morning."

"I'm sorry I missed it."

"I am, too. It was really something. The Indians are going on the warpath."

"A few of them attacked my ambulance."

"They've got good reason. To be angry, I mean."

"Don't we all."

20

"This paper mill ... the Pitney Mill . . . bought timber rights to a
hundred thousand acres of forest, under the provisions of Treaty Nine.
The Indians claim that Treaty Nine was never ratified by Congress."

"I read about it."

"The Indians have blockaded access to the forest, keeping the lumber
company out . . . the Supreme Court's filed a restraining order against
the blockade . . . everybody's ready to kill each other, and the whole
thing is holding for an Environmental Protection Report."

Shusette paused, letting Rob absorb it. He didn't want to go too fast.

"That's a land dispute," Rob mumbled. "What does the Environmental
Protection Agency have to do with a land dispute?"

"It's a judicial cop-out. No one wants to make a decision."

"Political football," Rob mumbled.

"The Superbowl," Shusette added. "Whoever writes this one up is going to
make or break the lumber industry. I'd say it could make or break the
earth's entire environment. The land environment, anyway."

"Then all you have left is the ocean and the sky."

"Wouldn't mind winning one out of three."

Rob sat up, rubbing his eyes. "I sometimes envy you, Victor."

"Why is that?"

"Earth, water, and sky. Seems very simple to me."

Shusette was amused. "Does it?"

"The issues are right out there. You go into battle, and you win or lose."

"Usually lose."

"But the losses are decisive. And so are the victories."

"That's true."

Rob rubbed his face, issuing a long sigh. "Me . . . I just do
'housework.' I'm like a maid in a house full of destructive kids. I
clean up one room, and by the time I move to the next, the first one is
messed up

21

again." Rob's face was somber, bis voice soft and without expression. "I
stand in the middle of this mess, and I shout, 'This has got to stop.'
And no one listens." His eyes roamed to Shusette, who was visible only
as a cigarette puffing in the near darkness. "What does it take to get
someone to listen?"

Shusette shook his head.

"My wife once told me," Rob continued, "she met an artist. A painter.
And he told her that a great , work of art is never finished. It's just
abandoned." He smiled sadly to himself. "I wonder if the same is true of
great intentions."

"Sounds like you're about to give up."

"Do I?"

"Are you?"

"Maybe."

Shusette struggled to get up from the floor, his bones aching as he
hobbled to the bench and sat down next to Rob. "Want to know something?"
he asked.

"Sure."

"If I could have planned your side of this conversation, I couldn't have
done it better."

Rob glanced at him, not understanding.

"I've been waiting for you to get fed up with what you're doing."

"Why?"

"I'd like you to come over to the EPA."

Rob shook his head.

?It's bigger, Rob. The stakes are higher. You're spending the night here
trying to save one sick baby when you could be holding the lifeline of
the entire species in your hands. You go to court to clean up one room
in a tenement when you could be using that same energy to clean up the
entire planet that tenement stands on."

Rob was silent.

"You want potency?" Shusette continued. "I'm prepared to put a job in
your hands that could affect the entire land mass of this country."
Shusette locked

22

into Rob's eyes. "I'm talking about putting you in a pivotal place in
time, and events, where you can have an effect on your entire world."

Rob remained silent. Shusette knew he had a hook in him.

"I'm talking about this land dispute."

"It's not my field, Vic."

"I trust you."

"Trust me about tenements. Not about trees."

"I can teach you what you need to know. There's nothing mysterious about
it, it's all written down in books."

Rob studied Shusette's face in the darkness. "Why me?"

"Because you have intelligence and you have tact. And you have integrity."

"That's very flattering, but it doesn't answer the question."

Shusette rose and stood before him. "I'll tell you the truth. I'm
walking through a mine field on this one, and if I don't step carefully,
the whole Agency can get blown up. The timber lobby is breathing down my
neck. The politics are hot and heavy. That forest is turning into a war
zone."

Rob was skeptical. "It can't be that bad . . ."

"Not for you, no. You're accustomed to war zones. I've got all the tree
experts I need. I need someone who can deal with people. That's what
you're expert at. If you'll let me bone you up for a few days, there'll
be nobody better equipped to do this than you."

Rob pondered it in silence, then rose. He paced the corridor, his
footsteps echoing in the stillness. He was tempted by Shusette's offer
and it made him feel disloyal. As though, by entertaining the thought of
change, he was somehow cheating on the people who counted on him. He
thought about the black woman and her baby. And his promise to help them.

"What are you thinking?" asked Shusette.

"I feel like a married man dreaming about a mistress," Rob replied.

23

"Maybe that's a good way to think about it. Just a mistress. Just
something to try."

Shusette could see that Rob was wavering. "Just give me two weeks of
your life," he said. "I need you on this one."

24

24

3

The street demonstration conducted by the American Indians in front of
the White House had reached a fever pitch by the following day. Maggie
Vern watched it from a taxi as she headed back to the doctor's office
she had visited two days prior. Rob had not returned home at all last
night, remaining at the hospital to monitor the life-and-death struggle
of the tenement infant. He had called to tell her that he would likely
be returning there again tonight after putting in a full day at his
office. It was just as well. She was in no condition to face him.

At the doctor's office she waited in the company of women in varying
stages of pregnancy, keeping her eyes riveted on the page of a magazine.
Her palms were moist and her toes hurt from being curled in her shoes,
which was a habit of hers when she was nervous. Sometimes she wouldn't
even realize she'd had a tense day until her toes started aching at
night. For the past two nights, while she waited for the test results,
her toes had been throbbing.

She knew that if the test was positive, she would have to deal with
something she didn't have the strength for. Her husband was a powerful
man, articulate and passionate, always able to convince her that his way
was right. As far as having children was concerned, she had heard him
recite the litany many times. There were ten million unwanted children
in the world. Population control was the responsibility

25

of everyone, regardless of their economic means. The society was
failing. The environment was failing. It was irresponsible to bring
another child into the world.

In the early years she had agreed with him. His beliefs were her
beliefs. She found excitement in sharing his sense of purpose. She was
raised in the sheltered environment of upstate New York, exposed to only
the homogenized people and products of an upper-middle-class world, and
to her Robert Vem had been a magnetic and dashing figure. A man of the
world, alive with passion, filled with the belief that he could shape
the future in the palm of his hand. It made her own life seem trivial,
her horizons limited, her intellect insubstantial. Her feeling in those
early years was gratitude; it was miraculous to her that this giant of a
man could have loved her.

The gratitude had now eroded into a smoldering resentment, but the
feelings of inferiority still persisted. Maggie felt a sense of shame
that she could not rise above her own needs. She felt selfish for
wanting to be happy.

Ironically, the life they led in Washington was one that anyone looking
on from the outside would envy. They were each accomplished in their
fields, recognized for their work, and they occasionally rubbed
shoulders with people who made history. Maggie had played her cello at
the White House; Rob had sat on a dais with Andrew Young at a seminar on
World Hunger. To all who knew them, they appeared as independent,
strong, and fulfilled people. The very essence of what modern marriage
was supposed to be.

What Maggie knew was that it was no longer a marriage at all. It was a
bed-and-board arrangement between two people who lived separate lives,
and whose values were growing more divergent with each passing day. When
they found themselves together, they talked of daily events, masking
their crying need for intimacy. They never talked about their feelings

26

any more, their secret hopes and dreams. It was as though that were a
forgotten language; a language of their childhood that didn't apply to
their roles in the adult world.

Maggie had thought for a while that time itself would bring them closer
together. But it was not happening, and she felt she could wait no
longer. In recent weeks she had been waging a battle with depression.
Not the kind of feeling she once referred to as the blues. This was
different; a desire, when she awakened each morning, to close her eyes
again and find oblivion in the deathlike darkness. She had even thought,
at odd times of the day, for no apparent reason, of suicide. Of being
found dead in some bizarre way. Once when she saw a blood-donor truck,
on that day of the year when everyone is suppose to give blood and get a
boutonniere in return, she wondered whether if she went from hospital to
hospital giving blood, she might simply expire. A noble death. One that
Rob might approve of. Giving her all to those who needed it.

The depression lifted, however, when she realized she was no longer
menstruating and might be pregnant. For the first time in months she
felt the loneliness leave her. She felt somehow warm and loved. Loved by
Rob, even though he knew nothing about it.

She had not intended to become pregnant. She had merely relaxed her
precautions. She and Rob were so rarely together, in the same bed at the
same time, with enough energy to make love, that the exercise of
inserting a diaphragm became in itself a rejecting experience. When it
had to be removed, unused, in the morning, it accentuated her feeling of
being unwanted.

Maggie knew that if she were pregnant, it would provoke a crisis beyond
any she had ever faced. It would cause anguish and recrimination, and
would possibly confront her with the kind of decision that she did not
even dare to think of. Rob would refuse

27

to have a child. And the need within her was overwhelming.

"Maggie?"

The doctor who summoned her was someone she had known since they first
moved to Washington. Peter Hamlisch had been Rob and Maggie's next-door
neighbor in their first apartment in Georgetown. When Maggie had come in
earlier that week she was turned over to a laboratory technician. This
was the first time in three years that she had seen Peter.

"My God," he said. "Look at you."

"That bad?" Maggie smiled.

"That good. Come on in."

She followed him down a corridor and into his office, where he closed
the door, gesturing toward a chair. Maggie remained standing.

"I can't believe it," he said. "Has it been two years?"

"Going on three."

"How's Robert?"

"Fine. Working hard."

"Still keeping the same hours?"

"Oh, yes."

"And how 'bout you?"

"Busy."

"We keep meaning to get to the symphony . . ."

"That's okay."

"I saw your picture at the White House . . ."

"Bad picture."

He smiled, delighted to be with her. "You look glorious. But then again,
pregnant women always do."

It took a moment to sink in. Then it hit like a body blow.

"Sit down." Hamlisch laughed. "I didn't know you'd be so surprised.
Women are usually very certain about these things."

"Are you sure?" Maggie asked in a shaky voice.

"Yes," Hamlisch answered, somewhat puzzled by her tone.

Maggie slowly sat in a chair, feeling so many con-

28

flicting emotions that they all blurred into numbness.

"You all right?"

She nodded, trying to force a smile, but was unable to sustain it.

Hamlisch's intercom buzzed, and he hit one of the buttons. "Hold the
calls," he said. Then he turned his eyes to Maggie.

"I take it this isn't good news."

Maggie shook her head, not knowing how to respond.

"I assumed it was a planned pregnancy," Hamlisch said. "I wouldn't have
been so casual about it."

Maggie's fingers touched her parched lips. She didn't trust her voice.

"It's not the end of the world, you know," Hamlisch said. "You're very
early in your pregnancy. Women deal with this every day of the week."

She shook her head quickly, pressing her hand to her eyes in an attempt
to halt the tears that she feared would slip past them.

Hamlisch put his hand on hers, and the moment of touch released her
emotions. She wept quietly, the sounds soft, childlike.

"I want you to sit in this office for the next fifteen minutes,"
Hamlisch said. "I have one patient to see. Then I want to take you to
lunch."

They didn't go to lunch; Maggie had no appetite. Instead, they walked
the hot streets of Washington, Maggie wiping her eyes as she talked,
until she was finally talked out. She described, in every way she could
think of, how and why her marriage was wrong; how and why she so
desperately needed Rob and didn't know how to reach him. She felt
disloyal to be divulging her unhappiness, but somehow relieved to hear
herself expressing it.

Hamlisch had listened, mostly in silence, occasionally asking a
question, encouraging her to continue until he was sure she had said
everything there was to say. He was compassionate and understanding. And
he cared for both of them.

29

They stood now by the long reflecting pool in front of the Washington
Monument, a place Maggie had once journeyed to by bus to join twenty
thousand black people in their demand for freedom. The grass had grown
back now where it had once been trampled down; a group of small children
floated toy boats in the water as Maggie and Hamlisch looked on.

"You know," Hamlisch said with a sigh, "I once heard a description of
Albert Einstein. Someone said he was a 'visionary' not so much because
of what he saw, but because of what he refused to see."

"That wasn't Einstein, it was B. F. Skinner," Maggie replied softly.

"Was it?"

"Scientific Monthly. Rob gets it."

Hamlisch sat down at the edge of the reflecting pool. Maggie sat beside
him, using a wadded-up handkerchief to wipe her eyes.

"I was thinking of Rob when I said that," Hamlisch added.

"I know."

"He has blind spots, but men who accomplish things always do."

"So you think I'm selfish?" She did not ask it defensively; more as
confirmation of what she herself believed.

"I think you're in a bind."

She dipped her handkerchief into the water and wrung it out, pressing it
to her forehead and eyes. "God, I've cried so much lately, I think I'm
going to get dehydrated."

"Do you love him, Maggie?"

"Yes." Her answer was without emotion or hesitation. It was a simple
fact of life.

"What if you have to make a choice?"

"I'm unable to make that choice."

"Is it possible that if you waited . . . ? To have a child, I mean?
Maybe in a few years he'd feel mellower about it."

"I couldn't do that."

30

Her eyes went blank. "I'm unable to kill anything. I couldn't do it."
She turned to Hamlisch, trying to make him understand. "I already love
it. And I feel like it loves me." She shook her head, feeling foolish.
"Is that just nonsense?"

"No."

"No matter what happens, 111 never . . ." Her voice broke off and her
posture stiffened. "No matter what happens, it's going to be born."

Hamlisch watched her closely. "Then I guess you've made a decision."

She didn't respond.

"When are you going to tell Rob?"

Maggie rose and moved slowly away from him. "How long before it shows?"
she asked.

"Two months. Maybe three. Women who want to conceal it can sometimes go
to four."

He'd read her thoughts.

"It's not a good idea, Maggie. I've seen women do that. Unmarried women,
usually, who try to ignore it until it's too late for an abortion. They
weaken themselves emotionally. The one time in your life you have to be
adult is when you're pregnant."

"When is it too late for an abortion?"

"Don't do that, Maggie."

She knew he was right.

"No matter how he feels about it," Hamlisch said, "it's his life, too.
He has a right to make his decisions, just as you have a right to make
yours."

"Just a thought," Maggie whispered.

"Go to his office right now," Hamlisch advised. "Get it out in the open."

"I'm frightened, Peter," she whispered.

"He'll say no, and you'll get angry. I think anger is more appropriate
than fear right now."

He took her hand and they walked to the street; Peter snotted a passing
taxi and hailed it down. She directed the driver to take her to the
Public Health Building.

But Rob was not in his office when Maggie arrived.

31

She waited a full two hours and in that time the anxiety built up within
her to a point where she knew she couldn't face it. At the last moment
she fled. The confrontation would have to wait. She would carefully
choose her time.

It was 2:00 a.m. when Rob returned home. The tenement infant had died.
The infection caused by the rat bites had been complicated by anemia.
The heart had given way to a conspiracy of assaults. Rob had seen infant
deaths before. This one had hit him particularly hard, accentuating his
sense of futility.

He moved quietly into the bedroom, not wanting to awaken Maggie. The
moon's soft light spilled throueh the window, illuminating her face as
she lay in slumber. He sat on the bed beside her and brushed a wisp of
hair from her eyes, noticing a faint mark running from the corner of her
eye across the bridge of her nose. It was a path traced by tears. She
had been crying.

He studied her for a long time, swept with sadness that he did not know
the reason for the tears. He thought to awaken her, but decided against
it. Tomorrow was Thursday. She had an early rehearsal. He leaned down
and kissed her, hoping it would somehow reassure her that she was safe.
Then he slipped off his clothes and lay quietly beside her.

Sleep was difficult, for his mind was in turmoil. He thought of the
offer that Victor Shusette had made to him. Perhaps a new job was what
he needed. The only other alternative to the work he did now was private
practice. It was somehow inevitable, but to Rob it seemed like
retirement. He was still young enough to accomplish something on a
global scale, and there would be other benefits in working for the EPA.
No more emergency calls or all-night sessions at the hospital, no more
early-morning appearances in court. It would mean he'd have more time to
spend with Maggie. Perhaps that in itself was worth it.

32

As he drifted into slumber, he was thinking about trees. Soon, he was
dreaming.

He saw himself walking through the tenements. The tall, lopsided
buildings with their zigzag fire escapes were nestled in the midst of
towering trees. The fire escapes were filled with bodies. Black bodies.
Hundreds of them. And they all held spears. Maggie was beside him and
she was frightened. The black bodies began streaming downward, their
faces covered with war paint, their voices rising in a shrill cry. Rob
grabbed Maggie in his arms and ran into the forest, but became lost in
the trees. She screamed and clung to him, begging him to save her, but
suddenly they reached a drop-off and could run no farther. Rob paused
and looked up into the sun. And, directly from the center of it, a spear
came searing down at him.

Rob awoke panting. His body was bathed in sweat. He rose on trembling
legs and pulled the curtains, to shut out the moonlight. But the moon
was so bright he could still see it's shape through the curtains.
Returning to bed, he managed to close his eyes again, and this time fall
into dreamless, exhausted slumber.

33

33

4

The same moon that lighted Robert Vern's bedroom shone down on the
Manatee Forest, gently illuminating the tops of the endless expanse of
trees. The wind was warm, rustling the surfaces of the lakes, creating
tapestries of glittering sequins from the reflection of the moon.

From the time of the planet's creation until now, this
three-hundred-square-mile plot of earth had been allowed to remain as
God meant it to be. The morning sun still filtered through the trees,
given definition as clear as laser beams by the fog; the towering black
spruce and red balsam still spiked a mountainous skyline. Dawn still
came with the discordant orchestration of loons, dusk with the faintly
drumrolling wing-beats of the ruffled grouse. And darkness was still
punctuated with the sudden and unexpected cry.

It was the place where the Manatee River flowed into the Espee, creating
a watershed known to the Masaquoddy, Ashinabeg, and Wampanoag Indians by
sixty different names. All of them describing the bountiful life that
existed within.

But in recent years, the Indian names had given way to others. The
largest body of water, the lake with a small island in its center, once
known as Lake Waba-goon was now called Mary's Lake, named for the wife
of Morris Pitney, an industrialist from Georgia who'd come in 1930 and
founded the Pitnev Paper Mill on the shores of the swift-running Espee
River. The pond

34

once called Talak'tah was now listed on Forest Service relief maps as
Flat-iron Pond because it reminded Mary Pitney of the steam iron she
pressed her husband's pants with.

The Pitneys were dead now, but their imprint on the landscape was
permanent. The Pitney Paper Mill, now passed into other hands, had grown
on the charts of stockbrokers and Wall Street economists into a
corporate conglomerate, one of five absentee landlords who owned over
half the land in Maine and looked upon its forests as a cash crop
waiting to be harvested. The towering pines that were once called by the
names of Indian ancestors, each one considered an individual personage,
had now been counted and measured, classified by size and weight, and
labeled with price tags.

The major products of the Pitney Paper Mill were wrapping paper,
disposable grocery bags, and toilet tissue. For the latter product, and
the noxious fumes that hovered along a three-mile section of the Espee
River, the Indians referred to the paper mill as D'hanat Y'oah 'tha. The
Farting Giant.

Unlike the Indians of the American Western Plains, the American Forest
Indians had been a passive people, conditioned perhaps by the gentleness
of their environment to accept changes within their lives and to
accommodate trespassers who came to live within their borders. Thus the
small tribes of Masaquoddy, Ashinabeg, Yurok, and Wampanoag were content
to give the paper mill its small share of the massive forest. As long as
they gave wide berth to the lumberjacks with their trucks and chain
saws, the two civilizations lived separate lives, occasionally crossing
each other's paths, gazing at one another with nothing more than
curiosity. The lumberjacks felled trees and processed them into pulp;
the Indians netted salmon and dried them in the sun. It seemed there was
little connection between the two.

When the once benign temperament of these Indians began undergoing an
insidious psychological change,

35

they still failed to make the connection. The Indians were confused by
it and feared that if it became known that violence was beginning to
sweep through their ranks, they would be accused of drunkenness: the
historical verdict of the white world, used to avoid any responsibility
for Indian outrage.

It was true that the growing aberration in behavior, which they called
katahnas (seizures), resembled the effects of intoxication. Dizziness,
hallucination, loss of coordination and, often, unexplainable outbursts
of rage. One man turned on his own wife and children, another ran into
Mary's Lake and drowned. At first the incidents were isolated and
infrequent, vaguely explicable in terms of the movement of the stars and
the personalities of the men whom these katahnas struck. But now it was
becoming more generalized- and more frightening because it was harder to
recognize. The once dramatic symptoms were becoming muted, the entire
community falling under a kind of lethargy and haze that would lift for
periods of time and then descend again like a cloud of smoldering gloom.

There was another secret kept by the Masaquoddy, too; unspoken because
it brought shame to those who had suffered it. A growing rate of
stillbirths and deformed children. By tradition the Indian women bore
their children in the forest alone, and thus for a long time maintained
the awful secret even from each other. The evidence of their changing
chemistry was buried in shallow graves throughout the Manatee Forest.

The first member of the tribe to gather enough evidence to become
alarmed was Romona Peters, a full-blooded Masaquoddy woman, twenty-eight
years of age, who bore the Indian name Oliana. It meant Spring Fawn.
With her light skin and doelike eyes, she was given this name by her
grandfather, Hector M'rai, the former chief and now oldest living member
of the tribe. But Romona's fawnlike appearance was misleading. She had
the courage of a vixen. At the age of twelve she was raped by a lumberjack

36

in the forest and, by herself, went into the town of Manatee to report
him to the sheriff. It was her first lesson that the word "justice" had
little application to the American Indian.

From then on, she strove to accumulate enough knowledge to become a
force of change. But the goal remained elusive. Having to leave school
at the age of thirteen, which was customary for Indian women whose labor
was needed in the village, she used the Androscoggin Public Library as
her school, spending every available moment there, poring over books
that she rarely understood, attempting to grasp as much of the
vocabulary and ways of the white world as possible. As she passed
through her teens, the library was the focal point of her life, her
heaven and her hell. She was often taunted by her white contemporaries
there, snickered at as she trod a continual path from the reading room
to the big dictionary on the pedestal, trying to understand what she was
reading. The carpet was worn thin there and she was blamed for it,
finally forbidden by the librarian to use the dictionary more than once
a night. This random quirk of cruelty, more than any other factor,
curtailed her one opportunity for progress. Eventually she gave up. The
frustration and humiliation were just too painful.

But now, as a result of recent events, she had gone back to the library.
Having seen a woman return from childbearing in the forest in a state of
near shock, with her arms empty and her stomach flat, Romona questioned
her until the woman brought her to the grotesque remains. It was a
stillborn fetus, almost full term. But it looked more like the product
of a whelping than a human birth. The head was outsized, the eyes large
and flat, without lids. The fingers were long and tapered, resembling
claws; the legs were like hindquarters, rounded and much shorter than
the arms.

The woman begged Romona not to reveal her secret, and Romona agreed. But
she persuaded the next woman who was about to go into labor to let her
serve as a midwife to the birth. It happened again.

37

A different variation this time, not so severe. But once again, the
stillborn fetus had animalistic qualities. At the same time there were
successful births; natural, normal children. But like a discordant tune
played softly beneath an orchestration, the stillbirths and deformed
fetuses continued to appear; occasionally some were born alive, their
first outcries quickly muted by frightened mothers in the forest.

It was Romona's instinct to seek help, but her experience with the
official white world was sufficiently frightening to make her hesitate.
She did not want to go there until she was fully armed with as much
knowledge as possible. It was for that reason that she returned to the
library, certain that the answer to the changes in he physiology of her
people could be found somewhere in that vast storehouse of information.

It was difficult now, even more so than when she was a child, for Romona
to steal time for her forays to the library. She had the full care and
charge of her aging grandfather, Hector M'rai, who was also suffering
from the crippling effects of the katahnas. In the last six months his
mind had gone dim and his hands had begun to tremble. It was not merely
the product of his age. From spending a lifetime at his knee and under
his tutelage, Romona Peters knew that her grandfather was not a man
destined for senility.

Among the Masaquoddy people, Hector M'rai was a legend. He had lived
through six incarnations, still spoke the ancient language, and was a
storehouse of Indian lore.

He lived apart from the rest, in a compound he'd built with his own
hands, following construction designs that he alone remembered. He
called his camp-side M'ay-an-dan'ta. The Garden of Eden. It consisted of
three tenee-like shelters, built of rough-hewn logs and animal skins;
they were as different from the falling-down corrugated-board shanties
that his people lived in as night is from day. In the midst of this
changing forest the camp was an oasis where time

38

stood still. A kind of museum. A shrine to a life that no longer existed.

it was uuiicult for Romona to tear herself away from M'rai, for she
feared each time she left that it might be the last time she would see
him alive. But each night before sundown, she journeyed into town to
pore through the encyclopedias and medical pamphlets at the public
libary. She knew that the katahnas and the stillbirths were somehow
linked together, and she sought always to find that link.

It was in the preface to a book on nutrition that she caught her first
clue. It said that food intake was the single most causative factor in
both human health and behavior. Beyond that, it said that the actual
cultural characteristics of an entire community of people could be
influenced by what, as a group, they ingested. It described a tribe in
Africa, called the El Molo, who had, in recent years, become aggressive
and given to epileptic seizures when frightened, due to protein
starvation in a land that had been poached of wild game. Protein, it
said, bridged the synaptic gap in the command-chain of neuromuscular
response.

She cooied down every word she didn't understand. On a single page there
were sixty-seven of them. Some of them, like "synaptic gap," weren't
even in the dictionary .

The book also had a section on prenatal care. Once again there was a
mention of protein, this time as a prime factor in the development of a
healthy human fetus. Romona went to the card catalog that she had used
as a child and found that there was an entire book on the subject of
protein. At the back of the book there was a table of protein-enriched
foods. Sud-denlv she was confused-highest on the list of
protein-enriched foods was fish. There could not be a lack of protein in
the Indians' diet, for they were fishermen. E'fVitv oerrent of what they
ate was fish. She struggled, with everv b't of logic she could summon,
to make sense of it. Diet was the key. But what, in their diet, was
causing the biological havoc?

39

She knew that the diet of the Masaquoddy people had remained for
centuries virtually unchanged, with the exception of canned goods, which
were new to this generation. The canned goods were all bought from the
same store, the only one in Manatee that catered to Indians. Was it
possible that the Masaquoddy were being poisoned? No. The cans were sealed.

She never knew how close she had come to making the connection when her
quest for knowledge was suddenly cut short. Overnight a sudden storm of
violence had erupted between the Indians and the townspeople; it became
dangerous for Romona Peters to venture into town.

A group of lumberjacks had happened upon an Indian in the forest whose
behavior was stuporous and disoriented. He was somehow lost in the midst
of everything familiar to him, literally turning in circles, bumping
into trees. They had laughed at him and taunted him, provoking a rage.
He attacked them and they beat him within an inch of his life. The
beating led to a reprisal. Ten days later, the body of a lumberjack was
found, in similar condition, beaten by a group of Indians. The word
spread quickly: the Indians were drunk and spoiling for a fight. The
lumberjacks were only too happy to give it to them. In retaliation, they
raided a small Indian fishing village. Shortly after that, two
lumberjacks failed to return from a night crew. They had vanished in the
forest. And it was said that the Indians had killed them.

After thousands of years of living in peace with their environment, the
Indians now lived in a state of fear; afraid to go to their nets in the
morning, dousing their fires at night, listening to the wail of two
bloodhounds that searched the Manatee Forest for some sign of the
missing lumberjacks.

As Romona Peters sat in the darkened silence of her grandfather's
encampment, she listened to the

40

cacophonous duet of the bloodhounds and watched the three searchlights
of the rescuers who followed them. They looked like tiny fireflies on
the distant mountain, dancing and darting through the trees. Every night
for a week she and her grandfather had followed the progress of the
rescue team. They knew tonight that something was different. There was
an urgency in the sound and movement that had not been there before.

From the Indian village two miles away, the entire population of the
Masaquoddy people also watched, sensing, as Romona and M'rai did, the
sudden build-up of tempo. In fact, the movements of the rescuers were
being monitored by thousands of pairs of eyes. The animals of the night,
predator and prey, huddled in silence, tensing with the increasing
crescendo.

The rescuers themselves felt it, too. After a week of listless
wandering, the dogs had suddenly been seized with the kind of hysteria
that meant their goal was near. A scent had wafted by them at sundown
and they had taken off like cannon-shot, their voices shrieking with
eagerness, their massive bodies straining against the harnesses that
linked each to a human rescuer, tied to it at the end of a forty-foot leash.

When excited by scent, the bloodhounds were hard to control: their
two-hundred-pound bodies functioned as mindless extensions of the nose.
The eyes ceased to function, the mind ceased to work; the animals were
enslaved, seeking union with the source of the scent like drug addicts
following the lure of opiate. In their frenzy, darkness had no meaning,
nor did obstacles. Were thev not literally tied to human masters, they
would have smacked blindly into barriers or sailed off cliffs.

As the dogs' voices now rose with heightening urgency, the men behind
them lurched and staggered, branches lashing at their faces as they were
dragged across the perilous terrain. They were on unfamiliar territory
hP--a M-rV. m the mountains and moving dangerously fast; but they were
unwilling to slow the

41

dogs for fear of their losing the scent. Behind the two leashmen, each
tied to a dog, ran a third man, struggling beneath the weight of a
two-way radio strapped to his back.

"Slow them down!" he gasped.

"They're hot!" one of the leashmen shouted back. "It's got to be close!"

The dogs came to an incline and their movement slowed. But when they
reached the crest and started down, gravity abetted their eagerness,
pulling them with the speed of roller coasters. The men were now running
full-tilt, swept with a momentum they were helpless to stop. And then
they saw it. An angular path of white water roaring through the forest
and coming to an abrupt end in the darkness just ahead.

"Water. It's a waterfall!"

"It's a drop-off!"

"Stop them!"

The leashmen heaved backwards, digging their heels into earth. But the
dogs refused to be stopped, pulling even harder against the resistance,
coming closer with each moment to the gaping chasm that loomed in the
moonlight ahead.

"JESUS . . . !"

"I can't ... I"

"Help me!"

One of the men grabbed a tree trunk and managed to hold firm, snapping
his bloodhound backwards, jolting it into a daze. But the other leashman
stumbled and fell, clinging to the leash as he was dragged forward,
helpless to do anything but cry out as his dog hurtled toward the ledge.

In a sudden, breathless moment, the radioman took flight, leaping
directly atop the dragged man. At the same moment, the bloodhound sailed
off the edge of the cliff.

His flight lasted but an instant before it was halted. On top of the
cliff, the human anchor had held.

Just five feet from the cliffs edge, the radioman

42

clung tightly to the man beneath him. The dog swung silently in midair.

"Help us!" the radioman shouted. They were slipping, inch by inch,
toward the ledge, the leash vibrating as the dog beneath them struggled
in fear. The second leashman fumbled with his belt, quickly unhitching
it and tying it to a tree. His dog was lying on the ground, dazed from
the jolt, its eyes staring upward at the moon.

"Help us, goddammit!"

The second leashman ran from the trees, falling across his companions
and grabbing the taut leash, heaving back on it with all his weight.
Clinging desperately to one another, they inched back like a six-legged
crab, until they had put ten feet between themselves and the cliff, and
stabilized themselves behind the stump of tree. The man who had been
dragged was cut and bruised; the other two clung tightly to him, for the
two-hundred-pound dog was still suspended from the end of the leash that
was connected to his belt.

They gazed at each other with frightened eyes, numbed by the near fatality.

"You all right?"

"I couldn't get the release . . ."

"I've never seen them do that. . . ."

"Whatever they're after is down in that gully."

"If it's down there, it's a dead man."

"They don't bay like that for a dead man."

"Let's get the dog up."

With shaking arms, they grabbed the taut leash, snaking their hands
through it to get a firm grip.

"Heave!"

They pulled in unison, gaining three feet of slack. Then they grabbed
hold again.

"Heave!"

They pulled again. But this time, to no avail. It was as though the
dog's weight had suddenly increased beyond their strength. Digging their
heels into the dirt, they continued to pull, their teeth gritted with exer-

43

43

tion, their eyes meeting in confusion. It was becoming a struggle, a
test of strength, as though something were pulling from the other end.

"Oh, God . . ." one of them moaned as they were abruptly dragged forward.

"Hold me!" cried the leashman who was tied to it. "Help me!"

One of them thrust an arm into the dragged man's belt, locking himself
into the combat. The other man let go, but the dragged man grabbed onto
him, clinging to him like a drowning man going under.

"No .. . I" one of them sobbed as they were dragged unstoppably forward.
And with a sudden jerk their bodies left the ground, catapulting into
the air, their screams echoing as they cartwheeled downward into the chasm.

Only one of them lived long enough after hitting the ground to see what
it was that had pulled them. It stood over him, emitting a quiet squeal,
and raised an arm that revealed a skinfold beneath it, with veins traced
like tree branches, back lit by the moon. It was all the man saw before
his head was severed from his body, the chemical reaction called memory
quickly dissipating as the head smashed against a tree.

44

44

5

As John Hawks sat in grim silence, gazing out the window of the train
that took him from Washington, D.C., to Maine, he saw dawn breaking over
the stately pinnacle of Mount Katahdin. It was a sight he had not seen
for seven years.

That last visit to the place of his birth, when he was twenty-one, had
been a profound disappointment. He had been seeking ancestral ties,
re-immersion into a culture he had forsaken. But he found that the
Masa-quoddy people had fallen into cultural limbo. The village he
remembered from childhood as beautiful and magical had become a garbage
dump; a collection of huts made from cast-off materials, the ground
littered with unusable machinery and the skeletons of defunct automobiles.

Proximity to the white man's world had taken its toll. The incipient
feeling of inferiority had created an appetite for mimicry. Washing
machines were purchased even though the village had no electrical power
source, transistor radios abounded even though nothing but static could
be picked up because of the barriers of mountains. Automobiles were
bought and junked there because no gasoline could be afforded. White
Woolworth brassiers could be seen intruding between the earth colors of
the women's animal-hide jackets and their rich brown skin.

And yet, in spite of all this material weakness, the Masaquoddy still
had their pride. Pride enough to

45

avoid contact with the whites. Pride enough to resent John Hawks for
having been a part of the white world.

It was likely that there was white blood in John Hawks. It was his
blessing and his curse. It had entered too far back in his lineage for
him to trace, but it was discernible on his face. His features were
fine, his skin was light. He had once taken secret delight in the
knowledge that he could pass for white. But now he hated that knowledge,
for it had filled his life with confusion.

It was because of his looks that he had been selected by Mary Pitney
when he was twelve to be taken from the Masaquoddy village and educated
at a boarding school in Portland. As owners of the lumber company on the
shores of the Espee River, the Pitneys considered themselves
philanthropic people. They were in their seventies then, and wanted to
make sure, before it was too late, that they earned their passports to
Heaven. There were two other Indian children selected. One was from the
Yurok tribe, one from the Ashinabeg; Hawks was the third. The Yurok
killed himself when he was a teenager. The Ashinabeg died in Vietnam.

Hawks was the only one who survived the ordeal; he survived it by
deception: losing his tribal accent, dressing as the white children
dressed, and learning that it was better to be white than red. For many
years he made a conscious effort to forget where he was born; he even
invented a history of descendance from a wealthy Bostonian family, who,
he said, were all deceased. The Pitneys had died by the time he was
sixteen, leaving him an educational fund administered by a bank in
Portland; he himself was an orphan. There was no one, except his inner
self, to remind him of the truth.

But the lifetime of deception took its toll. Passing for white in a
country heavily populated with Indians, he was often privileged to
conversations normally reserved for whites only. The jokes were
torturous, and he forced himself to laugh at them.

46 46

After boarding school, he won a scholarship to the University of Maine
in Orono. It was there that the truth came out and humiliated him. He
had become enamored of a girl who was wealthy, well-bred, born and
raised in Boston. Having heard his story about coming from a wealthy
Bostonian family, she took it upon herself to research the facts. Hawks
left college immediately after, with the sound of laughter ringing in
his ears.

Angered and ashamed, Hawks went back to his village, but found that they
would not accept him, either. He dressed in buckskins, and tried to
reinterest them in living the way that Indians once lived, but they
considered him a joke. Like a bird telling a wolf how a wolf should be.
There was only one person who extended kindness to him. Her name was
Romona Peters. She and her grandfather, among all the people in the
village, were the only ones who tried to maintain a hold on Indian life.

To Romona, John Hawks represented everything that she herself was unable
to be. He had education and a knowledge of the world outside of the
forest. She, in turn, had a purity that he envied. She was Indian
through and through, and had no desire to copy the ways of the white world.

The attraction between them was instant and, even though it was
forbidden by Indian law, they became lovers. But the very differences
that brought them together drove them apart. It was in 1971, and the
Pitnev Paper Mill was sending out the first signal that it would one day
make a claim to the entirety of the Indian land. Workmen were tearing
down the old, outdated pulping mill and building a gigantic factory on
the shores of the Espee River. John Hawks alone knew that it meant
trouble. From his exposure to newsnnners and television, he was familiar
with the land-grab that was going on in the Pacific Northwest, and saw
that the new factory, when completed, would be capable of gobbling up
the entire forest. He attempted to rally the Masaquoddy people behind him,

47

but they resisted. Even Romona was against him. She was a pacifist, and
claimed that confrontation would lead to their downfall. Beyond that,
she felt that confrontation was premature. She believed it was Hawks's
anger at the Pitneys for disrupting his life, rather than the reality of
a new factory, that was provoking his rage.

There were bitter words between them, and John Hawks left Manatee
Forest, he thought forever.

He went to where the action was, observing other tribes who were
battling industry for their land. As he witnessed successive battles and
defeats, he learned that there was only one tactic that halted the
momentum of land-grab. That tactic was violence. Not that there was
victory in violence. There would never be victory, no matter what. But
there was satisfaction in violence. As much as Hawks liked to trade
verbiage with the industrialists and politicians and beat them at their
own game, he knew that ultimately they considered him harmless. Like a
dog that had been taught to walk on its hind legs, but would ultimately
have to return to all four. It was only when the dog showed his teeth
that he was respected.

Having followed the trail of destruction from forest to forest and tribe
to tribe, Hawks had wound up in Washington, where demonstrators were
finally massing, to join a chorus of protest against the theft of Indian
land. To his surprise he found representatives there from his own part
of the world eager to have someone unite them and act as their
spokesman. It was the opportunity Hawks was waiting for. He had
predicted what had come to pass; they looked to him now to save them.

It was not only that he was given the power to represent his peonle. He
was, at last, given validity as an Tndian. In spite of some throwback
genes and a vocabulary that sounded like the white man's dictionary, he
could now declare to the world that, in his heart, soul, and spirit, he
was at one with his people.

48

His three meetings with the House Subcommittee on Indian Affairs were
token gestures, both on his part and on theirs. The war of words was
heavily loaded on the side of government. "Justice" had as much meaning
as "tennis court." A concept valid to only those who could afford it. It
was plain that the industrial complex felt it could mow down the forest
like grass beneath a lawnmower, with little or no resistance from the
people who rightfully owned it. They were about to find out differently.
For John Hawks was prepared to fight.

As the small train wound around the base of Mount Katahdin, Hawks
thought about Romona. He wondered if she was still there, if she would
welcome him. He had thought of Romona often over the years; for periods
of time he'd thought of her constantly. He knew that if, as a child, he
had not been taken from his village, he and Romona would have grown up
together and been married. He would have been a fisherman, she the
mother of several children. He cursed the Pitneys for the confusion they
had caused him; he was glad for the opportunity to fight back.

He remembered a conversation he'd had with Romona's grandfather seven
years ago, when the old man gave him a stern warning about the forces of
anger. "It is not the purpose of one family to vanquish another," M'rai
had said. "For one family to point the finger at another and say 'This
is the villain' is as destructive as having that finger pointed at you
yourself." Hawks had replied that if a man refused to fight for what was
his, he deserved to have it taken away from him.

"If it is truly yours," the old man replied, "you do not have to fight
for it."

"No one's going to help us, old man," Hawks remembered saying.

"The forest will help us," M'rai had replied. "Katahdin will help us."

Hawks had been amazed at the old man's childish-

49

ness. But that was his beauty, too; his belief in the ancient legends.

Katahdin was perhaps the first legend that any Masaquoddy child ever
learned: the mythical beast whose physical makeup was a mixture of every
creature that God ever created. It was said that in times of need,
Katahdin would awaken from his slumber to defend whichever of God's
creatures needed protecting.

Hawks closed his eyes and envisioned the old man standing in a
desecrated wasteland where the trees once stood. He wondered if,
finally, the old man would lose his childlike belief in Katahdin,

"It's a *boreal forest,' Maggie. You know what that means?"

Robert Vern stood in the bedroom of their small Georgetown apartment,
packing a suitcase as he spoke, his voice raised over the sound of an
orchestra coming from the living room. There, Maggie sat in a
stiff-backed chair, playing a cello solo to an accompaniment that blared
from the speakers of her portable tape recorder. It was Schumann's Cello
Concerto, a difficult selection that was to open the subscription season
of the Washington Symphony. It was because she had been chosen to play
the solo that she was unable to accompany Rob to Maine.

"Maggie? You hearing me?"

Rob waited for a response, but none came. His voice had been loud
enough. She just wasn't answering.

Her dark and silent mood had begun a week ago, and Rob was deeply
troubled by it. It had apparently started the night he noticed her tears.

He had remained at home the following morning to speak to her about it,
but she was uncommunicative, passing it off as nothing more than a bad
dream. But he knew it was something more. On successive nights he had
noticed a bottle of Valium on her bed table;

50

she had never before used drugs to go to sleep. Twice he pressed her on
the subject; both times she avoided it. It was as though she had become
afraid of him. Sometimes when she watched him, there was accusation in
her eyes.

He was frightened now of pressing too hard, for when he searched his
mind for a possible answer, his stomach tightened with fear. With all
the time they spent apart, it was possible that Maggie had become
attracted to another man. It was something he couldn't deal with. In the
seven years of their marriage, he had remained faithful; he was deeply
committed to her and could not bear to think that she was not the same.
If, in fact, she had a lover, Rob knew it was his own fault. He had
taken her for granted, just assumed she would always be there.

The thought of it caused him so much anguish that he pushed it from his
mind, forcing his attention back to the job at hand. Picking up a stack
of thick books, he placed it next to his medical kit. The titles of the
books were Soil Erosion, Hydroculture, Industrial Hazards; just a few of
the dozens he'd been poring over since he'd accepted Victor's offer to
go with the EPA. He was uneasy about the decision. It somehow didn't
seem right. He felt he was in over his head, in a field that didn't
really suit him. Nevertheless, he'd given his work, and was committed to
no more than the two weeks ahead of him.

For the past six days, he'd immersed himself in research, getting
special dispensation to stay in the Washington Library after closing
hours, and had spent a weekend with a veteran field worker in the
forests of New Jersey. He had learned how to collect soil samples and
analyze them for water absorption and mineral content; he could identify
over forty members of the Pinaceae genre of trees. He could even
determine the age, health, and amount of waterfall over a ten-year
period by examining the under bark of a tree.

Now. a few hours before his departure to Maine, he felt he was close to
being ready. The books would

51

provide the rest. He'd start studying them on the plane.

Closing his suitcase, he sat for a moment on the bed, listening to
Maggie play. He often envied her her occupation because it brought her
peace instead of frustration. When she played the cello, she was able to
express feeling simply, directly, and with immense clarity. She was a
gifted musician.

Rob rose from the bed and walked to the open door, gazing in at her. She
was facing him, and caught his eye.

"It's beautiful," he said.

She responded with a nod and continued playing.

"Brahms?" he asked.

"Schumann."

"Lot of cello."

"He loved the cello," she answered as she continued to play. "He said it
was the one instrument that can be embraced like a lover."

"It's kind of quiet over dinner, though," he said.

"Tell me about it."

He saw it in her eyes again. The accusation that he had failed her. He
moved inward, sitting on the arm of her chair.

"You know ... if this job is something I like . . . you'll have me
around the house again."

"Will I?"

"Um-hm. Trees don't get sick in the middle of the night, I'm told."

"Bet they do. They just can't tell anybody."

Rob was seated just behind her. He was taken with the tilt of her neck
and the fragrance of her hair. Tentatively he leaned down and kissed her
shoulder.

She stopped playing but didn't turn; the music on the tape recorder
continued as she gazed forward.

"What is a boreal forest?" she asked.

Rob was stopped for a moment, then remembered he had called out the
question from the bedroom. "You heard me."

"Uh-hm."

"Why didn't you answer?"

52

"Can't shout when you're playing 'Schumann.'"

"A boreal forest ... is something that hasn't been touched since the
beginning of time."

She lowered her head, not answering.

"That make you sad?" he asked.

"I guess."

"Why?"

"Because I can relate to it."

He touched her and she turned to him.

"What is it, Maggie?" Rob whispered.

Her eves misted, and she turned away.

"Just blurt it out."

"I can't do that," she whispered.

"Why not?"

"Because it's not that simple. It's . . . complicated. It's not just
something I can say."

She searched his eyes, trying to make him understand. "I need hours. I
need days. I need to be with you. Feel close to you. I need the kind of
time we don't seem to have."

He drew her gently to him, her head pressing against his chest.

"Remember how we used to sit and talk?" she asked sadly. "Just . . .
endlessly? Just say whatever popped into our minds? My God, we used to
sit up all night drinking wine . . . and when morning came we'd pull
down the shades . . . and before we knew it, it was night again."

He nodded.

"Why don't we do that any more?" she asked plaintively.

"We're two busy people, Maggie."

"One of us is lonely."

Rob slowly shook his head. It was an expression of helplessness.

"I don't know what to do, Maggie . . ."

"I know how you feel about your work, and I admire that ..."

"It's more than my work . . ."

53

"Exactly. It's as though you had a mistress. At least if it were a
mistress, I could compete."

"I don't have a mistress," Rob said softly.

"Of course you don't, but . . ."

"Do you?"

The words had come out before he could stop them.

"Do I what?"

"Have a lover?"

She was taken aback. "Of course not."

He studied her expression carefully. "You sure?"

"Well, if I'm not sure, he couldn't be much of a lover, could he?"

"I'm serious."

She couldn't help laughing, but she stopped when she saw how pained he was.

"I've only loved one man in my life," she said quietly. "Isn't that a
silly thing at the age of thirty? If I admitted that to any one of the
girls in the orchestra, they'd laugh me off the stage. Do you know,
there's a girl there who-" She stopped herself, suddenly bursting into
laughter.

Her abrupt shift of mood was so inappropriate that Rob was disoriented
by it. But he couldn't help laughing with her.

"There's a girl there who . . . what?" he asked.

"For starters, she plays the clarinet. If you get the symbolism."

"Yes."

"Well, she doesn't like pills or diaphragms. The pills make her sick and
the diaphragms aren't a hundred percent effective. I mean, people do get
pregnant even when they use diaphragms."

"Not usually."

"But it does happen, am I right?"

"In theory."

Rob maintained a smile, but there was something wrong with the
conversation. Maggie was babbling.

"Well, anyway, she thinks you can get pregnant with a diaphragm, and so
she buys these . . . you

54

know . . . what do you call them? For a man? Condoms?"

"Um-hm."

"She goes to the university dispensary and gets them by the dozens. I
saw them. She keeps them in her purse. They come all connected together
in plastic, like machine-gun bullets or something, in a long chain, and
she orders a hundred of them at once, and she just opens her beach bag
and they feed them in over the counter."

She stopped and suddenly laughed again, slapping her hand to her mouth.
"Can you imagine?"

"Nope."

"You know how many men she's slept with? Between five hundred and a
thousand. That's what she told me. Can you imagine? That she's not sure
about a mere five hundred?"

It was so bizarre that Rob began to laugh again.

"Who is she?"

"I'm not going to tell."

Their laughter faded and they sat gazing at each other, the classical
music still playing softly in the background. Their eyes held, the mood
softening to the moment when one of them had to speak. But neither
wanted to.

"Do you know what just happened, Rob?" Maggie whispered.

"What?"

"You and I laughed with each other. How long has it been since we did that?"

Rob nodded in saddened agreement. "Long time."

"That's what I need, Rob. To feel easy with you. And free. And relaxed.
If I could just have some time for that, then I could say everything
that's on my mind."

"What is on your mind, Maggie?"

She stiffened, feeling her toes curling in her shoes. "Ymi're leaving in
three hours. I need more than that."

"Come with me."

55

"I can't."

"We'd have two weeks, Maggie. No telephones. No emergencies. They're
putting me in a log cabin. On an island. In the middle of a lake.
Nothing around but trees and water."

"How can I do that?"

"How can you not?"

Maggie knew she was trying to avoid the inevitable. She was
subconsciously doing what Dr. Hamlisch had warned her not to-trying to
avoid the subject of her pregnancy until it was too late. If she went
with Rob, it would have to be revealed. And she would have to face the
conversation that she most feared. But perhaps, in that setting, it
could be handled. If it could be handled anywhere, that would be the place.

"How cold does it get?" she asked.

"You didn't answer my question."

"Yes, I did. I want to know what to pack."

56

56

6

The morning sun was muted by a cloud bank that hung low over Manatee
Forest. The humidity was rising and there were distant rumbles of
thunder across the mountainous horizon. The voices of two loons on
Mary's Lake resounded within the cloud-lidded enclosure as animals of
all sizes and shapes trundled out from the tree line to go through their
early-morning rituals of washing, drinking, and feeding at the lake.

Up in the mountains, at the foot of a cliff, a family of raccoons tasted
human flesh, snarling and fighting over the bits and pieces of decaying
meat strewn across the ground. The body of a man suspended above them,
his neck tangled in a leash, created no fear in them. The uniquely human
smell had departed within hours, leaving just the stench of a rotting
carcass, tantalizingly out of reach of the ravenous raccoons.

On the plateau above them, a chewed leash tied to a tree was all that
was left of the one bloodhound that had survived the massacre. He had
gnawed through the thick tether and followed his nose back to the
nearest point of civilization. There, at a forestry station, a ranger
had summoned the sheriff, whose men repeatedly attempted to entice the
dog into leading them back into the forest. But the animal refused. He
would not even turn his head in the direction from which he had come.
Two days had passed with

57

no sign from the rescue team. In another few days it would become
evident that they were never going to return.

The sheriff of Manatee County was making every effort to keep the new
disappearances quiet, but there were certain people who were privileged
to the information. One was Bethel Isely, the managing director of the
Pitney Paper Mill.

Isely was forty-four years of age, born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia,
schooled in public relations, hired just six months ago to bring his
wife and three children from Atlanta and work for the Pitney Paper Mill.
Though he knew little about lumbering, he was an expert in the art of
swaying public opinion. Under his auspices there had been two barbecues
for the townspeople, and a large grant of money dispensed to the three
local churches. The few dissenting voices initially heard in regard to
the paper mill's planned expansion had been smothered beneath a cascade
of literature on the positive effects of culling and harvesting trees.

Isely took his job seriously, and believed what he had to believe. There
were good arguments to be made both for and against timber cutting, and
he could righteously argue the side that provided him with his
livelihood. The fact that his livelihood had never been better added to
his conviction. The Pitneys had given him a house, two cars, and a
salary of seventy thousand dollars a year.

He knew, however, that it would all be in jeopardy if the man who was
arriving today from the Environmental Protection Agency filed a negative
report. Taking every precaution, he had put in extra hours, researching
every aspect of timber cutting that he could think of. He even
researched the man himself, discovering that Robert Vern was an M.D. and
had a wife named Maggie who played the cello. Leaving no stone unturned,
he even learned a thing or two about cellos and symphonies. He hoped
that Vern was bringing his wife, for then Isely could more easily

58

convince him to turn the visit into something of a vacation.

Isely was well prepared, ready to answer any question, willing to make
himself available to Vern full time. The Pitney Paper Mill was a model
of efficiency and high standards. He could truly be proud of what he had
to show.

As he dressed to go to the airport, he glanced out the window to check
the sky. By the look of it, the spring rains were about to begin.

Not far away, John Hawks was making plans, too. But not for the arrival
of Robert Vern. He did not know that the man from the Environmental
Protection Agency was arriving today; even if he had, it would not have
altered his course of action. The barricade was going back up. From this
day on, no vehicle from the lumber company was going to be allowed to
use the main road into the forest. Hawks knew they could ferry their men
in by boat along the Espee River, or fly them by float plane into Mary's
Lake. But it would cost them time and money, and substantially cut into
their efficiency rate. The road blockade would squeeze them into taking
the Indians seriously.

Hawks had been in the forest for only twenty-four hours, having gone
directly to the village and summoned an army of ten able-bodied men. It
was different now than it had been seven years ago. The Masaciuoddy had
finally gotten angry enough to fight. They were being victimized from
all sides; accused of being murderers when they were not, of being
drunks when they were not.

Hawks had had little time to digest the mvriad problems that besieged
the villagers, but had listened with concern as they told him of the
katahnas, the seizures that struck without warning, confusing the minds
and bodies of their people. They showed him a man who was in the throes
of it. He was racked with fever and raging with hallucinations.

59

At this particular moment, the katahnas were not widespread. Fearing
contact with the lumberjacks or townspeople, the Indians had stopped
going to their fishing nets, and were living within the confines of
their village, subsisting on whatever small game they could catch and
their surplus of canned goods. As mysteriously as they had come, the
katahnas had suddenly tapered off. Only one man in the past three weeks
had been affected.

Hawks did not know what to make of the strange affliction and, because
it was in a period of recession, failed to understand its alarming
proportions. He would investigate it another time. On this day his
priority was the blockade.

With his army of stalwarts, he now moved through the forest toward the
main road. The men ranged in age from sixteen to thirty; none of them in
their lives had ever stood up to a white man before. Hawks had cautioned
them to leave all weapons behind. They would defend the forest with
their lives, but they would not be accused of threatening life. The only
semblance of a weapon among them was a long-handled ax, brought for the
purpose of making shelter in the event of rain.

As they moved silently through the forest, they passed close to the
encampment of the old man, M'rai. Hawks could see the crossed poles of
his tepees protruding through the tops of the trees. When he first
arrived at the village, Hawks had inquired about the old man, and was
told that M'rai, too, was suffering frequently from the katahnas. They
said his mind had grown dim and he often hallucinated, wandering alone
through the forest at night, and spinning tales of the beast Katahdin,
who, he claimed, came to drink at the shores of his secret lagoon.

The so-called secret lagoon was a sacred place to the Masaquoddy; by
tradition, the private sanctuary of the oldest man in the tribe. It was
said that everything grew large there, larger than life. But Hawks
remembered sneaking in as a child and being pro-

60

foundly disappointed to find that it was just another pond in the forest.

The myth of the secret lagoon had once reached the ears of some flower
children from New York, and they had gone there planting marijuana seeds
in the hope that they would grow to gargantuan size. They were chased
off by the Indians; the sheriff's deputies had plowed up the ground with
picks and shovels to make sure the seeds didn't blossom. Hawks wondered
if a few of the seeds might have survived. If the old man was chewing
cannabis while he meditated at the pond, that could well explain his
visions of Katahdin.

As they now came closer to the old man's encampment, Hawks paused and
gazed in through the trees. It was just as he had left it: in the midst
of this troubled forest, an oasis of peace and beauty. Three huge,
conical tents made from animal hides stood in a circle, a large fire
pit, rimmed with stones, in the center. A line strung between two poles
held drying animal skins and strips of jerky; an elegant, handmade
archer's bow leaned against a tree. It was a bow that Hawks himself had
used when, as a child, he was tutored in archery by M'rai.

The smell of animal fat hung in the air; another reminder of Hawk's
youth. As he stood there, he felt transported in time.

"Noa'hgna'aught N'hak'tah," one of the men behind him said. He was
warning Hawks that no one was allowed in the old man's encampment
without invitation. The language of Hawks's childhood was still familiar
to him; he had some command of it and could make himself understood.

"D'hana'ht Yo'ahtha," Hawks replied as he pointed in the direction of
the road. The men moved off, leaving him alone. Since he had arrived
back in the forest, Hawks had refrained from asking anyone about Romona.
He could not pass by without knowing if she was there.

Stepping forward into the compound, Hawks called her name.

61

"A'hanspanitah Oliana .. . ?" After a moment, one of the tent flaps
pulled back, and she appeared. She was more beautiful now than he
remembered her. Her dark hair had the sheen of a forest animal's; it
draped gently against her shoulders with the contour of a graceful
waterfall. Her body was lean and agile and stood straight as only an
Indian woman's could. But her eyes were vulnerable and filled with hurt.

She stood in silence, overwhelmed to see him. "Thank God," she whispered.

"I'm back to stay."

"I'll fight with you now, John," she whispered. "I'll fight beside you.
We're dying in here."

"Come with me now."

"Where?"

"The first battle is today."

Without hesitation she followed, watching Hawks move in front of her
through the forest as though he belonged there. He was all Indian now;
she could see it in the way his feet touched the forest floor. There was
much she wanted to tell him. About the stillbirths and the sickness. But
he was filled with single-minded purpose now. She would wait until he
was ready.

As the small twin-engined Cessna dipped beneath the cloud cover, Rob and
Maggie looked out its small window, catching their first glimpse of the
forest below. Maggie's cello was propped upright in an empty seat behind
her, Rob's doctor's kit beside it. The symbols of the two personalities
that had kept them apart for so long were riding separately behind them.

Hours earlier, in a hurried call to the symphony conductor, Maggie had
promised to continue practicing the Schumann on her two-week vacation if
they would substitute for her until she returned. The conductor
complained, but Maggie was firm; the assertive-

62

ness of the moment had acted on her like a shot of vitamins. She felt
confident and proud of herself for taking a step toward solving her dilemma.

For his part Rob, too, was grateful that she had come. In the limbo of
sky-transit they were more at ease with each other than they had been in
months. They had held hands all the way, recounting fond and funny
memories, both reveling in their closeness. They were swept with a
feeling of well-being, a sense that everything between them was going to
be all right.

"Isn't it beautiful . . ." Maggie whispered as she gazed down at the
lakes and trees below.

Rob nodded, awed by it. "I forgot the world could look like this."

"Maybe that's our trouble, huh? Can't see the forest for the trees?"

He smiled appreciatively.

"Really," she mused, "I think we get so caught up in details that we
forget what life is all about."

"What is life all about?" he asked. He was half joking, but sincerely
wanted to hear her answer.

"Us. What's inside of us. If that's empty, then there's nothing."

"You feel empty inside?"

She kept a straight face. "No."

"Me, neither. Not right now, anyway."

They glanced at each other, and he kissed her cheek.

"Can this be true?" she asked. "Have I done something right lately?"

He laughed and cradled her head against his shoulder, his eyes drifting
to the window.

"You know," he mused, "yesterday I walked the streets of a city where
six thousand people live in a single block, stacked up on top of each
other and side by side, asking only for enough space to lie down at
night and stand up in the morning."

Maggie glanced up at him. His eyes were on the forest.

"Today I'm flying over three hundred square miles of wilderness that a
handful of people are claiming is

63

all their own." He shook his head, unable to fathom it. "Children die of
malnutrition while farmers pour surplus supplies of milk down the drain
. . ."

"Why do they do that?"

"To drive the prices up."

"How awful."

"That's what it's all about. Profit. The tenements . . . the trees . . .
starvation . . ."

His voice trailed off, his eyes etched with despair.

"Can I tell you something?" Maggie asked softly.

"Mmmm."

"It's wonderful that you worry about those things. It's something I
don't seem capable of doing." She paused, wanting to make her thoughts
clear. "But the part that worries me is that you sound as if you feel
personally responsible."

"I guess I do."

"There's only so much you can do, Rob. The world is too big."

He nodded and glanced at her with appreciation.

"Ever read Small Is Beautiful?" she asked.

"What's that?"

"It's like it sounds. It's a book."

He looked at the unopened book in his lap. "Bet it can't compare to
Hydroponics and Industrial Hazards," he joked. "Now, that's an exciting
book."

"Don't tell me the ending," she quipped.

He smiled sadly to himself and shook his head. "I fear what the ending
is. I really do."

The plane swooped low and the Androscoggin airport came into view. It
was no more than a dollop of cement surrounded by wilderness; on the
gravel road leading to it, Rob saw two yellow cars kicking up a cloud of
dust as they headed fast toward the landing strip.

Within minutes the plane was on the ground, Rob and Maggie stepping out
into the bracing wind. It was like a tonic to them; they pointed their
noses directly into it, closing their eyes as it washed over them.

64

"Smell it!" Maggie groaned in ecstasy.

"Pine."

"Mmmmmm. I'd like to bottle it and take it home."

"There's plenty out there. Look at those mountains."

Near them on the runway, a man and woman were tying down their private
plane while their two children, a boy and girl of about ten and twelve,
squealed with delight as they picked through their belongings. The boy
caught Rob's eye and called over to him:

"You going camping?"

"Well, sort of," Rob answered. "We're going to be in a cabin."

"We're going to be outside! On a mountain right beside a waterfall! It's
gonna take three days just to walk there!"

"Sounds hard," Maggie responded.

"That's the fun!" the boy exuberantly shouted back. Beside him, his
sister was shielding her eyes as she gazed into the sky.

"What the heck is that?" she exclaimed.

Rob and Maggie looked skyward, amazed at what they saw. Dangling on the
end of a rope suspended from the bottom of an approaching helicopter was
a huge dog. A bloodhound, its four legs pumping anas though it were
swimming instead of flying, its tail rotating as if, by instinct, trying
to function as a propeller.

"It's a dog!" laughed the boy. "A flying dog!"

Maggie laughed, too, and turned to Rob. "What do you suppose they're doing?"

"Damnedest thing I ever saw," Rob mumbled.

He looked around the airstrip to see that others were as amazed as he,
everyone squinting upward into the brightly overcast sky.

Then Rob spotted the two yellow cars he'd seen from the air. They bore
the emblem of the Pitney Paper Mill and swerved directly onto the
landing strip beside them.

"Mr. Vern?"

65

The man who spoke from the driver's window of the first car was
round-faced and rosy-cheeked, prematurely bald, with a bright, engaging
smile. He stepped out, revealing he was soft around the middle, and
walked with a duck-footed gait, his hand extended as he approached them.

"Bethel Isely," he said. "Pitney Paper Mill. Have a nice flight?"

Rob knew that he was to be met at the airport, but didn't know it would
be by representatives of the paper company.

"Uh ... yes . . ." Rob mumbled as the man pumped his hand, "This is my
wife, Maggie Vern . . ."

"Mrs. Vern . . ."

"Hello."

"Mighty glad you came along, Mrs. Vern. Be a shame to miss out on a
treat like this."

He spotted the uneasy look in Rob's eye. "Hope you don't mind my coming.
Some of the locals don't know exactly how to get where you're going, and
I thought you might need some help."

Rob was slow to respond. "To tell you the truth, I don't know if I feel
right about being met by the paper company . . ."

"Fine, fine. I'll call you a cab. They don't usually go into the forest,
though."

"Well, how does one get in there?"

"Private car. That's the ticket. We'll rent you a car. I thought I'd
save you that trouble by bringing an extra one for you, but that's fine.
I want you to do what you want to do."

"That's very nice of you," Maggie said.

"I didn't want you to have any trouble," Isely responded. "I even packed
in some supplies so you'd have everything you needed for a few days. My
wife insisted on sending some home-cooked food, and I said, 'No, no,
these people are going to think we're putting pressure on them.' "

"I'm really sorry to seem ungrateful," Rob said.

66

"I understand completely," Isely responded. "That a Rogeri?" he asked,
pointing to Maggie's cello.

"Montagna," she replied with surprise. "You know cellos?"

"I know wood. That's got a balsam back, a spruce belly, and a maple
bridge. Three different types of trees in there."

"Very impressive," Maggie replied.

"You know," Isely continued, "there wouldn't be near as much music in
the world if people didn't harvest trees."

Rob had to laugh. "I'm glad you're not putting any pressure on," he said.

"Am I comin' on too strong?" Isely replied with a smile.

"It's all right," Rob said. He liked the man in spite of his pushiness.

"Well, I'll be right up front," Isely said. "Your trip here is real
important to me. I wanted to come here so you wouldn't think I was your
enemy. Us lumber people are human, too. We don't want to do anything
wrong, any more than you want us to."

"I appreciate your saying that."

"You want to rent a car, it's fine with me, but I'd prefer to take you;
Just let me have your ear while we drive to the lake, then I'll let you
alone."

Rob caught Maggie's expression. She clearly didn't want the man to feel
slighted.

"Okay," Rob said.

"Fair enough," declared Isely. Then he turned toward his cars. "Kelso?
Take these people's bags. Johnny, you handle that cello and be mighty
careful with it. It's worth a heap of money."

Five men climbed out of the second car and began grabbing luggage. They
wore plaid shirts that showed long undershirts protruding from the
sleeves; their boots were caked with mud. They were obviously lumberjacks.

"Mrs. Vern? You want to sit in front?" Isely asked.

67

?Could I ask you a question?" Maggie responded.

"Anything at all."

She squinted toward the sky, her eyes following the bloodhound, which
was now hovering almost directly over them, being lowered slowly toward
the ground.

"What's that dog doing up in the air?"

"Those choppers can't take a sudden weight shift. They carry the dog
underneath so they'll know he's staying in one place."

"Where are they bringing him from?" Maggie asked.

"The mountains."

"Do they usually fly them out?"

"Well, he was in pretty deep."

Both Rob and Maggie sensed that Isely was avoiding something.

"Somebody's pet?" Maggie asked.

"Well ... not exactly."

Rob caught Isely's eye. "What's the mystery?"

"Oh, no mystery, really. That bloodhound, he was a part of our Search
and Rescue Team. I figure that's the dog. I don't think there's any
other bloodhounds in these parts."

"Someone was lost?" Maggie asked.

Isely nodded. "People from our company, as a matter of fact. Couple of
lumberjacks. Went out on a night crew and never came back."

"Did they find them?"

Isely's face sobered, his eyes following the bloodhound's descent. "No,
sir."

"What do you suppose happened to them?"

"Oh, I don't know-got lost, I guess," Isely said, dismissing it. "We
ready to go here?"

They followed him to the car, Maggie's eyes still fixed on the
bloodhound, who was pawing the air as his feet neared the ground.

"So they're just giving up? The rescue team's corning back?"

Isely paused, wondering whether or not to tell them. "There is no rescue
team any more."

Rob and Maggie exchanged a glance of confusion.

68

"I don't understand," Rob said.

"Three men and two dogs went in there. Only one dog came out. He showed
up at a ranger's station; no sign of the people who brought him in there."

"What happened to them?"

Isely shook his head. "Guess they got lost, too."

"A rescue team?" Maggie asked. "Is that possible?"

Isely had gotten himself into it now, and there was no getting out. He
gestured Rob and Maggie to the side. "We're being honest with each other
here, so I'll tell you the truth. This particular forest isn't too safe
right now. That's why 1 thought I'd better take you in."

"Why is that?" Rob asked.

"The Indians are angry in there. They're trying to keep the lumber
company out any way they can."

Rob and Maggie listened intently, uneasy with what they were hearing.

"There's no need for you people to worry. They wouldn't mess with people
from the government. This is sort of a family matter that's going on here."

"You're saying the Indians did something to those people?" Rob asked.

"That's awful hard to prove. There's no evidence. Things with the
Indians are real sensitive right now."

"Have you questioned them?"

"The sheriff has."

"And what do they say?"

"They say they don't know anything about it. They say those people were
taken by Katahdin."

"What's Katahdin?" Rob asked.

Isely shook his head with grim amusement. "One of their legends. They
call it Katahdin."

"Like a 'Big Foot,' you mean?" Maggie asked.

"Yeah, except this one's a little uglier. The size of a dragon, the eyes
of a cat, they've got everything thrown in except the kitchen sink.
Speakin' of the kitchen sink, my wife baked you a pie. I got it in the car."

He walked around to the driver's door and got in

69

the car. Rob and Maggie exchanged a long look before they did the same.

"The idea of Katahdin," Isely continued as he closed his door, "is to
frighten the lumberjacks out. They're almost as superstitious as the Opies."

"Opies?" Rob asked.

"O.P.'s. Original People. That's what they call themselves. The
Ashinabegs, Masaquoddy, Wam-panoag, Yurok-they've all joined together
now and call themselves the Opies."

He put his keys in the ignition and started the motor.

"But what about those people?" Maggie asked with concern. "The ones who
disappeared?"

"I can only tell you, if it had been up to me, I wouldn't have sent a
search party in. I'd have sent a posse."

"So you're convinced the Indians did it."

Isely looked across Maggie, into Rob's eyes.

"They stagger around drunk half the time in there, Mr. Vern. It's a damn
sad thing, but it's true. My men have seen them bumping into trees in
that forest. We heard that one Indian man ran right into the lake and
drowned. Another man showed up at the hospital with knife wounds all up
and down him, from being attacked by his own brother."

Rob and Maggie sat in silence.

"I'm afraid the only explanation is booze."

"Where do they get the booze?" Rob asked.

"We don't know. Since the craziness started, nobody in town is allowed
to sell it to them."

Maggie turned to Isely with apprehensive eyes.

"So what you're saying is . . . that those people disappeared because
the Indians did something to them."

"A rescue party doesn't get lost, Mrs. Vern. Neither do my lumberjacks."

He shifted gears; the two cars moved slowly out of the airport.

70

The drive from the airport took them through the town of Manatee; its
one business street looked as if it were created for a postcard. There
were three churches, two stores, a post office, a library, a jail; all
were lined up side by side. But there was also a quality of loneliness.
Few people were on the streets; the branches of the trees were still
bare, the wind vocalizing as it swept through them.

Four miles beyond the town, they turned onto a dirt road, the car behind
them following close, engulfed in their dust as they rumbled into the
wilderness. Isely explained that the road they were traveling on
disappeared every winter and had to be cut fresh with bulldozers each
spring. It was an imperfect job; Isely held tight to the steering wheel,
which lurched in response to boulders deeply imbedded in the narrow
corridor that stretched through the endless expanse of trees.

The talk had tamed to the subject of lumbering. Rob was impressed by
Isely's knowledge; there wasn't much he didn't know, including the EPA
standards and regulations concerning pulping procedures.

"Now, this stuff about the paper companies ruining the forest is pure
myth," Isely said as they penetrated deeper into the forest. "We've been
operating a small-scale pulp operation upriver on the Espee here for
twenty years now. We plant seeds every time we harvest, and that land is
more stable today than it was when God himself made it."

Rob took this with a grain of salt. He knew from his own research that
it took a hundred years to regrow a black spruce just to the thickness
of a man's leg. Isely glanced over at him and read his skepticism.

"To give him his due," Isely added, "God didn't have modem science to
help him. He didn't have hydroponics, silvaculture techniques, and
chemical analysis procedures to determine soil erosion."

"Oh, I think he did pretty well under the circumstances," Rob said.

"What with his limited education," Maggie added.

71

Isely laughed. It was his special talent to join the laughter when he
himself was the joke.

"Where you people from? Born in Washington?"

"New York," Rob answered. "How 'bout yourself?"

"Right here."

"You have a Southern accent."

"Damn! I thought I'd lost it. I was just testin' to see if you could tell."

Rob chuckled. There was something endearing about the man.

"I'm from Atlanta. Lived there all my life. That's how I tied into this
job. I started doing public relations for the Pitney company there."

"Why Atlanta?" Rob asked.

"That's where the head offices are."

"The Pitney Paper Mill is based in Georgia?"

"Oh, yeah. All the lumber companies are from out of state. But we own
over half the land in Maine, so to us it's just like home. It's our own
back yard and, believe me, we're going to tend it."

To Rob, this particular piece of information was chilling. The forests
of Maine were owned by absentee landlords. It was the same situation
that existed in the tenements. The lumber companies, with the protection
of distance, could be as ruthless as the slumlords. They didn't have to
look at, or live with, the misery that their actions might cause.

The car suddenly slowed; Isely breathed a sigh that sounded like
fatigue. Ahead of them on the road, a ragtag group of Indians had
materialized from the surrounding foliage, clearly intending to block
the car. They were dressed much like the lumberjacks, in plaid shirts,
boots, and blue jeans; they stood tall and firm, shoulder to shoulder.
They were plainly ready to do battle.

"What's happening?" Rob asked as Isely stopped the car.

"Something against the law is what's happening."

"Who are they?" Maggie asked.

72

"The O.P.'s I was telling you about."

"What do they want?"

"We'll find out."

One among them stepped forward. He was tall and fine-featured; his
clothing was fresher than the rest. His buckskin jacket had fringes on
the shoulders; his belt buckle was shiny and new. Rob's powers of
deduction told him that the man was new to this forest. He approached
their car, sauntering with the kind of take-your-time authority an
arresting officer on the Washington Causeway would. He paused at Isley's
window, putting his hand on the sill. Rob noticed that his fingernails
were clean. He wondered if he was an Indian at all.

"Mr. Hawks?" Isely asked.

"That's right," Hawks replied.

"Heard you were headin' our way . . . nice to see you."

The man leaned down, studying each of their faces. "Who are you?" he
asked Isely.

"My name is Bethel Isely."

"So you're Isely," Hawks said. It was plain he didn't like the name.

"This is Mr. Vern and Ms wife," Isely explained. "They're from the
Environmental Protection Agency. I'd appreciate being let through."

Hawks's eyes fastened onto Rob. The power within them was frightening.
Maggie averted her gaze, looking out through the windshield. She saw
that one of the Indians was a woman. The two had found each other's
eyes. Romona glared at her intently.

"I was told you were coming here to work independently," Hawks said to
Rob. "That's what the Senators said."

"I am working independently," Rob replied. He was surprised at the sound
of his own voice. It seemed weak and uncertain compared with the Indian's.

"Why are you in this car?" Hawks challenged.

Rob gritted his teeth. He had known it would be a mistake.

73

"He's in this car because I persuaded him, Mr. Hawks," Isely replied. "I
met him at the airport and I brought him here because I was afraid that
something like this might happen."

"You made a bad choice," Hawks said. "No car from the lumber company
gets through."

Isely responded with a snort of amazement. He looked at Rob, then back
to Hawks.

"This is against the law, Mr. Hawks," he warned.

"How do you select which laws can be broken?"

"I'm not going to sit here and argue with you. The Supreme Court issued
a restraining order against this blockade."

"The Supreme Court never ratified Treaty Nine. This land is ours. We
have a right to stand here."

The Indian woman was approaching now. She came and stood directly beside
Hawks, as if to support him in case he might be weakening.

"Hello, Romona," Isely said coldly.

"Mr. Isely," she replied in kind.

"You a part of this, too, Roraona?"

Her mouth tightened. "By birth, Mr. Isely."

"You're gonna get yourself in a heap of trouble," Isley said.

"That's a fact, Mr. Isely," she replied.

Her eyes met Maggie's again. Maggie was withered by her glance.

Isely emitted a long sigh, turning his eyes forward.

"Can we walk in?" Rob asked Isely.

"Ten miles?"

"Isn't there some other road?"

"I'm afraid there isn't."

"Let's back up," Rob said.

But Isely ignored him, turning to Hawks.

"John, I want to tell you something," he said.

"Mr. Hawks," Hawks corrected.

"Mr. Hawks . . . You've got one minute to tell your friends to get out
of the way."

"I'll do it right now, Mr. Isely." Turning to his men, he gave them a
signal to move aside. They did,

74

revealing a heavy metal chain, strung, and padlocked, between two trees
at either side of the narrow forest road.

Isely flushed, his entire body bristling. "I guess it won't do any good
for me to tell you to unlock that chain, will it?"

"Try it," Hawks said.

"Will you please unlock that chain?"

"No."

Isely quickly stepped out of the car. "Kelso?" he called to the car
behind him. "Cut down those two trees, please."

Inside the car Rob and Maggie exchanged a frightened glance. Behind
them, the sound of a motor suddenly broke the silence. One of the
lumberjacks, the biggest among them, got out of the car with a portable
chain saw already buzzing in his hand.

Suddenly there was movement everywhere. The Indians backed away, the
lumberjacks stepped forward, Hawks raced to the chain, where he picked
up a long-handled ax, holding it up as a warning.

"Now, John-" Isely began, but he was interrupted by Hawks.

"I'm Mr. Hawks!" Hawks shouted over the din of the buzz saw.

"Mr. Hawks, this is downright silly!"

"You're not going through!"

Hawks's eyes were wild, and there was fear in them now. Rob scrambled
out of the car, grabbing Isely by the arm.

"I said I don't want to go through there."

"I do."

"I don't see the point."

"The point is not to be intimidated."

"Look . . ."

"If we turn away, we'll have one hell of a mess on our hands. They'll go
back and tell their people they won, and next time there'll be three
times as many standing here. This is going to get snubbed out right now."

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"If anyone is hurt here . .."

"No one's going to get hurt here-they're bluffing." He turned to his
men. "Kelso! Take 'em down!"

The lumberjack with the buzz saw moved forward. Rob could see from the
expression on his face that he was eager to do battle. He was bigger
than Hawks and outweighed him, and he was out for blood. He was
literally smiling, his tobacco-stained teeth showing in a menacing grin
as a small, eager sound, like a child's giggle, climbed upward from bis gut.

Romona stood beside Hawks, her fists clenched at her sides, her jaw
rigid, as though braced for a blow. Hawks reached out and gently pushed
her aside, standing his ground as the lumberjack bore slowly down on him.

"Rob!" Maggie cried from the car.

"Don't let this happen, Isely!" Rob shouted.

"Will you move aside, Hawks?" Isely called out.

Hawks raised the ax, holding it angularly across his chest. "You'll cut
my head off before you cut these trees!"

"Have it your own way!" Isely replied. "Kelso. Hit that tree!"

"Wait a minute!" Rob cried. But his voice was drowned out by the sound
of the buzz saw hitting bark.

What happened next was a blur. As the chain saw hit bark, Hawks knocked
it upward with the handle of his ax; for a moment the two men stood as
gladiators. Then their weapons collided. Sparks flew as metal hit metal.

"Stop!" Maggie screamed.

But it was too late. The men were locked in cornbat, circling, feintmg
with their weapons, the onlookers running forward, all crying out at once.

"John, don't!" Romona cried.

"Stop him, Isely!" Rob pleaded.

"Kelso!"

The air was alive with clanging metal, the onlookers

76

fading back in horror and disbelief. The buzz saw lunged and the ax
swung in a wide arc, both men spinning and dodging, widening their arena
of combat. The lumberjack was on the offensive; Hawks used his weapon
defensively, deflecting and lurching as the chain saw sliced past his head.

With a resounding blow, the buzz saw collided hard with the ax head;
Hawks was knocked off balance, stumbling backward, hitting the ground.
The lumberjack leaped toward him, but Hawks's foot caught him firmly in
the chest, thrusting him backward into the air. Hawks sprang to his feet
and streaked after him, shrieking in a bloodcurdling war cry as he spun
the ax overhead. The lumberjack fell back against the hood of a car and
Hawks flew at him, pinning him with the ax handle pressed hard against
his neck. The lumberjack was helpless now, his eyes bulging as Hawks
pressed harder.

"That's it!" Isely warned. "Let him up!"

"Drop the saw!" Hawks shouted.

"Drop it, Kelso!" Isely commanded.

But the lumberjack would not. Baring bis teeth, he snarled like an
animal, his knee suddenly raising between Hawks's legs. Hawks's entire
body shuddered, but he held firm, baring down harder on the ax handle.
The lumberjack kicked upward again, and Hawks was weakened.

"Stop them!" Maggie cried.

The lumberjack summoned all of his strength and kicked a third time; the
impact was crippling and Hawks spun away. He struggled to regain his
footing, but the lumberjack kicked out, his boot sinking into Hawks's
stomach. Hawks doubled up and the lumberjack kicked him in the face. The
impact sent him sprawling backward and the lumberjack leaped for Mm.
Hawks rolled and sparks flew as the chain saw hit rock where, a moment
ago, Hawks's neck was. They rolled on the ground now, Hawks trying to
fend off the chain saw with the ax handle. But the handle

77

splintered into matchsticks, and suddenly all movement stopped. Hawks
lay immobile, his eyes wide and staring up into the lumberjack's as the
chain saw lowered to just inches from his Adam's apple.

"Call it!" the lumberjack snarled. "Your head or those trees!"

"You destroy this forest, and this forest will destroy you!"

"You got it!" the lumberjack shouted. The chain saw lowered until it
skimmed flesh.

"Stop!" Rob cried as he ran forward. "Stop it! Get off him!"

"Get up, Kelso!" Isely shouted.

"Tell him to open the chain!" the lumberjack yelled.

"Open it, Hawks!" Isely demanded.

"No!" Hawks bellowed to his people. "Don't open it!"

"I want to kill him!" screamed the lumberjack.

"Open it!" Rob shouted.

"No!" Hawks cried.

Rob turned to Romona. Her eyes were wide with fear.

"Open it!" Rob shouted at her. "Open it, goddammit! What the hell does
this prove?"

"That they are murderers!"

"Don't open it!" Hawks screamed.

"Murderers!" Romona shrieked at Isely.

"No!" Rob shouted to Romona. "It doesn't prove a damn thing! This
blockade is against the law! These people have a right to go in there!
You stopped them! You raised a weapon! This man will die here and it
won't prove a goddamn thing!"

The buzz saw skimmed a line of red on Hawks's neck. Romona's eyes were
swept with fear.

"Whoever has that key," Rob declared in a near sob, "is guilty of murder!"

"Don't open it!" Hawks cried as a stream of blood trickled from his neck.

78

"I'm killing him!" the lumberjack shouted.

In a sudden movement, Romona ran to one of the other Indians, ripped a
key chain from his belt, and raced to the padlock.

"No!" Hawks yelled.

She unlocked the chain, throwing up her hands to show she had done it.
Suddenly there was silence. The chain saw went quiet. No one moved. The
forest was filled with an awesome hush.

The lumberjack still lay atop Hawks, glaring into his eyes. Then he spat
on him. Hawks lay unmoving. Then the lumberjack slowly stood, straddling
him in triumph.

"If there wasn't a white lady here," he snarled through his teeth, "I'd
piss on you."

Then he turned and walked back to his car, the other lumberjacks
following him. Their car doors slammed one at a time.

"I'm sorry about this, Hawks," Isely said quietly. "Truly, I am." Then
Isely walked to his car. "Mr. Vern?" he said, looking to Rob. Rob stood
close to Hawks, gazing down at him. He could feel what the man was going
through.

"Are you all right?" he asked Hawks quietly.

Hawks did not reply. Nor did he move. The lumberjack's spittle was still
on his face; there was a rip in the skin on his neck where blood was
quickly clotting. Rob also saw something else. There was moisture at the
corners of Hawks's eyes.

"There's nothing to be done here," Isely said to Rob.

Rob slowly nodded and walked to the car. He moved in beside Maggie,
whose eyes were fixed on the Indian woman. She had her back to them, her
forehead bowed against a tree. Maggie knew she was crying.

"I'd have given anything for that not to have happened," Isely said to
Rob. "I just . . . didn't really think he'd fight."

79

"Let's go," Rob mumbled.

The two yellow cars of the Pitney Paper Mill pulled slowly forward, over
the chain, and drove into the forest.

80

80

7

The drive from the blockade to Mary's Lake passed in silence; Rob,
Maggie, and Isely were numbed by the sudden and unexpected violence that
had occurred. Isely had made a weak attempt to justify his persistence
in running through the blockade-something about the Indians being
willful children, needing to be disciplined. It fell on unreceptive
ears. Rob and Maggie refused to respond.

They reached the lakeshore near evening. There was a fine mist on the
surface of the water; swallows swooped low in silent aerobatics. The
glass-smooth water was dappled by the mouths of hungry fish as they,
too, sought what the birds were after. Mayflies, an insect delicacy that
was served up only once a year.

Rob had read of the mayfly when he was a first-year biology student, and
it had had a lasting impact on him. For the life cycle of the mayfly was
unique in the evolutionary plan. After incubating for twelve months in
the mud on the lake floor, these tiny, gossamer insects had just one
night to live. On that night they hatched from their eggs and swam
upward, preyed upon by the fish as they sought the safety of the water's
surface. Those that made it quickly sprouted wings and took to the
skies, devoured by the birds as they struggled up toward the light of
the moon. The few that survived would meet high in the sky, their bodies
touching, male to female, and in the moment of touch, fertilization
would occur. By

81

morning they would fall dead upon the water's surface, the convulsions
of their death agony expelling their eggs. The eggs would slowly drift
downward, sinking into the mud on the lake floor. There they would sleep
for twelve months, waiting for their one brief night of awareness.

When Rob had first read of this life cycle, it had raised speculation
that he had never been able to resolve. The mayfly came and went, asking
nothing, taking nothing, living and dying in the brief moment that
nature had intended. Were there, in the course of those twelve hours,
youth and old age? Was knowledge gained? Could it be that, because of
their size, their minutes were like hours, their hours like years? Could
man himself, seen through the eyes of some greater creature, perhaps be
perceived as living and dying in the blinking of an eye?

As Rob stood beside Maggie at the shore of the lake, he was reminded of
these questions. Perhaps it was man's need to question that was the
source of his torment. Were there no questions, nothing would go
unanswered. Perhaps his own life was the same as the mayfly's, with no
more purpose, beyond that which he invented, than to perpetuate life itself.

"Look at the birds," Maggie whispered.

"Mayflies," Rob answered. Then he took her hand and they stepped into
the small rowboat that Isely had left for them. He had left a car as
well, so they could be free to move from the cabin to town or throughout
the forest at any time they wished. Were it not for the violence at the
blockade, it all would have been ideal. But Rob and Maggie felt wounded
now. Perhaps irreparably so.

Their small outboard motor hummed as the boat cut a wedge in the
unbroken surface of the water; the birds dove around them, and fish
jumped from the water, unaffected by their intrusion. Before them, in
the middle of the lake, stood a small island, the pinnacle of an aquatic
mountain that barely broke the surface and supported a small grove of
pine trees. On

82

the island stood a single cabin. It was small, made of logs and mortar,
with a front porch that led onto a dock, which was illuminated by a
flickering signal light.

"Looks nice," Maggie said as their boat inched through the water. But,
in fact, it did not. It looked isolated and foreboding. The cabin was
silent and dark, as though it had been uninhabited for years.

"Hold out that oar, okay?"

She followed Rob's directions, keeping the boat from bumping the dock.
They tied the boat and sat for a moment in silence. It was so quiet,
they could hear each other breathe.

"We've got to snap out of this," Rob said quietly.

"I know."

They stepped out of the boat; the shuffling of their feet on the dock
resounded in the air around them.

The sky was streaked with orange; a pale blue backdrop was sneaking into
gray. The moon was faint and almost full, hazed behind a tangle of
mayflies, rising in a cloud above the lake. Rob paused and looked up at
them before entering the cabin.

"Well. This isn't bad," Maggie said with relief. Rob quickly moved to a
kerosene lantern. It lit with a hiss and they gazed at each other across
its stark, white light.

"Look at the fireplace," Rob said.

It was made of stone and occupied one entire wall.

"Wow," was all Maggie could say.

"It's not bad, Maggie. The place is really nice."

She forced a brave smile. "It really is, isn't it?"

"It's beautiful."

Rob explored the cupboards and found that someone had taken great pains
to see that the cabin was well stocked and comfortable for their
arrival. There was everything there that they could possibly need.
Canned goods, hammer and nails, an ax, candles and matches, a first-aid
kit, even a game of Scrabble. There was a new couch and chair in front
of the fireplace, a freshly cleaned gas stove, an old-fashioned icebox
with a block of ice in it, and large jugs of

83

bottled water standing on the sink in the kitchen area.

The entire cabin was just one large room, but the kitchen area was lower
than the living room, and the sleeping loft above it created a half
ceiling. Maggie climbed the narrow, stairwell to the loft and found a
double bed with a down comforter, tucked just beneath the eaves. It
looked welcoming, and calmed her apprehension. She walked to the loft
railing and looked down at Rob.

"No bathroom?" she asked.

"Guess not."

"Yoiks."

"Too rugged?"

"Nah," Maggie responded bravely.

"No light switches up there, are there?"

"I'm afraid not."

"Guess we go native."

"Guess we do."

"You up to it?"

"You bet."

They paused.

"Margaret?"

"Yes, sir?"

"It's going to be nice."

"I know it will."

They both set to work; Maggie unpacked while Rob lighted another
kerosene lantern, then started a fire in the gargantuan fireplace. There
were two canoe paddles, mounted like crossed swords above the fireplace;
Rob took them down, fearful that the flames might lick upward at them.
With his experience as a Public Health inspector, he knew this place
could go up like tinder.

"What about dinner?" Maggie called from upstairs.

"Well . . . we've got canned goods, and Mrs. Isely's cherry pie."

"I don't think I feel like eating Mrs. Isely's cherry pie."

Rob paused, catching sight of a fishing pole standing in the corner.
"How 'bout fresh trout for dinner?"

84

"Don't I wish."

"Want some?"

"You bet. And some baked potatoes."

"Will you clean them?"

"The baked potatoes?"

"The fish."

"What fish?"

"The fish I'm going to catch."

Her face appeared over the loft railing. He held up the fishing pole and
disappeared out the front door.

Maggie spent a long moment gazing down into the main room of the cabin.
The fire was blazing now, the thick logs hissing and crackling, filling
the air with the scent of pine. She went downstairs and unpacked her
cello, bringing a chair to the center of the room where she would be
warmed by the fire's glow, While Rob found peace in his way, she would
find it in hers. She tightened her bow and tuned the instrument with
light finger picks on the uppermost parts of the strings. Then she began
to play. The sound filled the small cabin, its gentle mood edging out
the tension of the day.

Standing outside on the dock in twilight, Rob could hear her music, and
it filled him, too, with a sense of peace. It wafted from the open cabin
door and floated out across the lake, seeming to stretch to the very
peaks of the distant mountains. He knew he was a fortunate man.
Privileged in every way. He wondered why he took so little time to
appreciate it.

Far across the lake, along the shallows of the distant shore, the
silhouetted figure of a large, four-legged animal moved silently as it
grazed. It paused and raised its head, as though listening to the music.
Rob could see that it was a moose. There was a calf beside it; it, too,
gazed toward the source of the odd, musical sound. Rob wished that
Maggie could see it, and was about to call her when suddenly a fish hit
the end of his line. It was a small salmon, surging and leaping, quickly
tiring as Rob brought it in and raised it to the dock. Hooking a finger
beneath its gill, he held it

85

up to examine it, admiring its shiny silhouette against the darkening
sky. It was a moment of consummate beauty; Rob wanted to savor it.

He took off his belt and tied the fish to it, then lay down on the dock,
gazing up into the sky. The stars were beginning to appear, brighter
than he had ever seen them, and the sky had a kind of depth to it that
made him feel he was gazing into eternity. But the moment was suddenly
shattered. There was a resounding crash in the water, as though a huge
boulder had been dropped. Rob sat bolt upright, his head spinning in the
direction of the sound. Just twenty feet from him, the water had been
disturbed; circles widened outward and melted into calm.

Rob's eyes traveled to the shoreline, the only possible place from which
a boulder could have been thrown. There was nothing there. Just shadows
and silence. The water was smooth again. A light breeze drifted across
the lake, bringing with it the smell of night in the wilderness. Dark
and damp, and mysterious. Rob scanned the water's surface and detected a
tiny dark shadow moving toward him through the mist. It was a small
black duck, chortling to itself as it paddled shoreward to bed down for
the night. It was apparently unaware of Rob's presence; it headed
directly for the dock. Rob sat stock-still. He could see the glint of
its eyes as it moved forward. But suddenly it shrieked. Its wings
flapped in a spastic attempt to fly as something dragged it down. In a
split second it was gone. The chop in the water that gave evidence of
its brief struggle quickly faded to calm.

Rob sat immobile. Stunned. Then he saw it. Just a foot from where the
duck had disappeared. A swelling in the water that indicated something
large had flashed just beneath the surface. The water had become
engulfed in darkness, and Rob was relying on the light of the moon as
his eyes followed the reflective swells and swirls. Whatever they were,
there were several of them, probably fighting over the remains of the
duck. Then suddenly something rose in a spray.

86

It was a fish. A salmon. Gargantuan in size. At least four feet long,
with a girth as thick as a man's body. It sailed upward into the air,
its body vibrating as it crossed the circle of the moon. It crashed back
into the water with a resounding smack, like the sound of a boulder
being dropped from high altitude.

Then everything went silent. All traces of movement were gone.

Rob watched the water as mist gathered on its surface, and became so
thick that everything was obscured. In moonlight, the lake had come to
look unearthly, like a crater of steam.

He picked up the fish he had caught, rose on trembling legs, and headed
slowly back to the cabin.

On a far shore of the lake, John Hawks sat alone, in darkness, gazing
across at the island. Tiny spots of light showed in the windows of the
cabin there. He remembered, when he was a boy, the sense of mystery
attached to that island. There had been no cabin there then; the Indian
children used the island as a test of their courage. When any one among
them could swim back and forth to it without stopping, particularly at
night, they had taken a major step toward joining the ranks of their elders.

There was said to be a spirit living on the island. An angry spirit
whose face and form were uncommonly beautiful. According to legend, the
spirit had been banished to the island by jealous siblings, and in its
loneliness it had become demented. The sounds of dawn and dusk were
attributed to this spirit; the cry of the loon, the moanlike call of the
moose. The spirit was called N'ayh'an'tak'tah. Literally translated, it
meant Crazy Beautiful. It was also the name of the island.

The cabin on the island was built by Morris Pitney, and thereafter the
island was declared off Umits to the Indians. Many believed that that
was why the Pitneys had suddenly, within two months of each other, died.
Crazy Beautiful had killed them. Her methods had

87

been bizarre. They had slept with their mouths open, as whites commonly
did. The spirit N'ayh'an'tak'tah was a woman; her breasts were filled
with poison. As they slept, she dripped her poison into their mouths.

When Hawks recalled legends such as these, he understood why the whites
looked upon the Indians as children. The whites did not understand that
an unbridled imagination was a gift to be cherished, given only to man.
Those Indians who became absorbed into the white world lost it quickly.
It took careful nurturing to maintain. The old man, M'rai, had nurtured
the gift well. His imaginary visions were crystal clear, and he could
describe them in such detail that it seemed as though they were real.

After the confrontation at the roadblock, Romona had taken Hawks to the
old man's encampment, where she treated his wounds with valerian root
and peat moss. It had taken the sting from the flesh, but not from the
spirit. In the hours that elapsed. Hawks had sat in silence, staring
into the fire at the old man's encampment while M'rai spun tales of the
creatures of the forest. He spoke of K'hrah'nitah, his secret lagoon,
where the tadpoles grew so large that they could be eaten like fish.
Where the inchworms spanned half the length of a man's hand.

The old man urged them both to come to the pond and see, but they
refused. They would not trespass into the sacred lagoon. They would not
disappoint him by failing to see the things he saw.

After M'rai retired, Hawks and Romona sat without speaking, their eyes
fixed on the glowing coals of the fire. When she whispered his name,
Hawks had risen and walked alone into the forest.

As he sat now at the shore of the lake, he replayed the events of the
roadblock in his mind, trying to slow it down from the blur in which it
had happened. He wondered if he'd known when it began that he was
prepared to give his life. He wondered if others who had died fighting
for what they believed in had had that knowledge.

88

John Hawks did not envision himself as ever growing old. Not that he
would remain young. There was simply a void in his imagination, as
though the future did not exist.

From the darkened foliage behind him, Hawks heard the sound of movement.
But he instinctively knew there was nothing to fear. The crickets
continued to chirp, indicating there was no menace afoot. Their chorus
at night meant that there was good will in the air. When there was bad
feeling-if a man walked in anger or a predator stalked-the crickets fell
silent.

"John . . . ?"

It was Romona. She emerged gracefully, like a moving shadow, and slipped
down beside him. In the darkness he could sense the whole of her. Her
scent was like leather and pine. Though their bodies were not touching,
it felt to him as though they were. His skin responded to the proximity
with a vague, tingling sensation on the side where she was close. He
turned and could see only her eyes. They shone like an animal's as she
gazed out at the island that seemed to float suspended in the mist.

"Do you suppose they'll sleep with their mouth's open?" she whispered.
Hawks smiled. They sat for a time in silence, both staring out at the lake.

"Your pride will kill you, John," she said softly. "You learned it from
the white man. It doesn't serve you."

Hawks turned to her, his mood hardening with the insult.

"I learned pride from the Indians," he said.

"There is a difference between dignity and pride."

"Is there?"

She nodded. When she spoke, her tone was soft and caring. "Dignity comes
from knowing what you cannot accomplish. Pride is the opposite." Hawks
turned away.

"You've been going to the dictionaries again," he said.

"Yes."

89

She moved closer to him, hoping he would turn to her. But he did not.

"We don't need you to die for us, John," she said. "We need you to live
for us. We need you to heal our wounds, not deepen them. I was wrong in
saying I would fight beside you. I didn't know that you meant to die."

"I didn't mean to die," he responded quietly. "I was willing to die."

"You're angry at me because I didn't let you?"

As her words sunk in, Hawks remembered what it was like to be with
Romona. She had a wisdom that penetrated his facade. In response to her
question, he could only shake his head. "I don't know," he finally
whispered.

"If you died today, it would have been the death of a willful child. If
you are intent on dying to help your people, don't die before you've
helped them."

Hawks watched small waves lap up against the shore. The body of a
crawfish glistened in the moonlight as it picked through shining pebbles
just beneath tfee surface.

"I have little to give except my life."

'There is much you don't know. Much that is happening in this forest
that you don't know."

"The katahnas, you mean?"

"You know of them?"

"Yes."

"Do you know of the stillbirths?"

Hawks gazed at her in confusion. "No."

"Our bodies are going bad. And our minds are going bad. Our insides are
as sour as the milk in N'ayh'an'tak'tah's breasts." She leveled her eyes
with his, and spoke with quiet intensity. "Our women are giving birth to
badly formed children. In this 'year there have been eight. Six were
born dead. Two were put to death." She paused, feeling revulsion at the
image that flashed through her mind. "These babies are . . . unfinished.
They look much like animals."

90

Hawks could see the pain in her eyes. He shook his head, unable to
fathom it.

"We're dying," she said. Her voice was trembling now. "Our people are
dying in here." "Who knows about this?" "No one. Just me. The women are
ashamed to tell."

"Why haven't you told anyone?"

"I was afraid."

Hawks rose and looked toward the island. He could see shadows moving in
the windows of the small cabin, and he could hear music wafting out
across the water. While he stood here listening to the death knell of
his people, they were listening to music. His jaw clenched with anger.

"The people in town are angry at us," Romona said. "They say we've
killed their people. I was afraid to go and tell them what I know."

Hawks looked down at her. "Who did kill then-people?"

"No Indians killed their people."

"Who did?"

"No one knows."

Romona looked up at him, her eyes vulnerable and helpless. "Who can we
trust, John?"

Hawks's fists clenched at his sides. At a time when they most needed to
defy the white world, they found themselves dependent on them. With
their health failing, there was nowhere else to turn.

"What about the government people?" Romona asked.

Hawks's mouth turned into a sneer. "The last people to trust are
government people."

"He looked like a good man. I could see he was a good man."

"We need a doctor. Not a politician."

"Then come with me to town," she urged.

Hawks looked down at her. "Dr. Pope?"

"Yes."

"He won't do us any good."

Hawks knew Winston Pope well. He was the only

91

local practitioner of medicine, and he was on the payroll of the lumber
company. His main service was to provide emergency care for the
lumberjacks, and to treat their families. Once a year he made an
obligatory tour of the Indian villages to give them inoculations, but he
did it with resentment, as if he were inoculating so many head of cattle
for hoof-and-mouth disease. Now that the Indians were in head-to-head
combat with the lumber company, it was unlikely that Dr. Pope would have
any sympathy for them.

"How many pregnant women in the village?" Hawks asked.

"Just two right now."

"We'll take them to Portland."

"They won't go."

"You'll have to convince them."

"They're ashamed . . ."

"A white doctor won't come eighty miles from Portland to examine two
pregnant Indian women!"

The crickets suddenly went quiet. Romona, too, recoiled at the harshness
in Hawks's voice.

"I'll do what I can," she whispered. Then she rose to go.

"Mona."

She paused, looking back at him. He walked slowly toward her, his face
coming into the moonlight. It was etched with anguish.

"Don't go away now."

"There's nothing more to say."

"I know," he whispered.

She looked at him with uncertainty, and he lowered his head, not knowing
how to express himself.

"You know what my grandfather says, John? About words?"

He shook his head.

"That man invented them to hide his feelings."

When Hawks looked up at her, his eyes were misted.

"I'm glad you can still be frightened, John," she whispered. "I was
afraid the human part of you was gone."

92

From the darkness that surrounded them, the crickets slowly resumed
their chorus.

"I'm telling you, Mag. It was a world's record. It was more than a
world's record. I've never heard of a salmon that big!"

Rob paced the main room of the cabin as Maggie stood in the kitchen,
cooking the small salmon that he had caught. He was agitated and
bewildered, filled with disbelief that he had actually seen what he saw.

"It was at least four feet long!" he exclaimed.

"Well," Maggie replied, as she sprinkled salt on the sizzling salmon
steaks, "this was the land of Paul Bunyan, wasn't it? And his giant ox,
Babe?"

"Was that Maine?"

"Sure was."

"I'll tell you, there might have been something to it. Maybe Paul Bunyan
did exist."

She laughed, somehow enjoying his bewilderment. It was refreshing to see
him so puzzled. It brought out the child in him.

"That fish was a giant. I mean a freak. And it looked like there was
more than one of them."

"Maybe you'll go home with a trophy."

"You don't believe me."

"I always believe fishermen."

"You think I don't know what I saw?"

"It got away, didn't it?"

"Maggie." He moved into the kitchen and gestured for her to look at him.
"I'm a sane man. More than sane. I'm a scientific man."

"You're a brilliant man," she cooed.

"You're not taking me seriously."

"Yes I am. Would you hand me that fork?"

"I'm telling you, I saw the biggest fish I've ever seen in my life."

"By the light of the moon . . ."

"Yes, it was dark out."

She flashed him a playful look as she dug into the

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frying fish. "Your Honor, my client says he saw the biggest fish he ever
saw. Now, the fact that it was pitch-dark out has no bearing whatsoever
on his testimony."

Rob was stopped, realizing she could be right. "You think I didn't see it?"

"I'm your defense lawyer. I believe everything you say."

"Maybe it looked bigger in the dark, huh?"

"Your Honor, we plead temporary insanity."

"But it ate a duck, Maggie!"

"Your Honor, it ate a duck."

"I saw it."

"Tomorrow, try to catch it. Maybe it'll taste like duck."

He threw up his hands in surrender. Maggie giggled as she blew on a
forkful of hot fish, gently putting it in her mouth.

"Might have been a duckling, I suppose," Rob mumbled. Then he shook it
off, reaching for some paper napkins and putting them on the table.

"Mmmmmmmm!" Maggie moaned ecstatically as she mouthed the hot fish.
"Taste it!"

She held out a forkful to Rob and fed it to him. His eyes rolled with
approval.

"Ambrosia . . ." he groaned.

"This is all I want to eat as long as we're here. I want fish for
breakfast, lunch, and dinner."

"No problem." Rob grabbed for some plates, putting them on the table. "I
do happen to be one of the world's greatest fishermen."

"You fish and I'll eat," Maggie replied as she wrapped a towel around
her hand to pick up the skillet.

"Now, that's a relationship."

As she put the skillet on the table, he bent over her and planted a kiss
on her neck. It stopped her in mid-movement.

"How very nice," she whispered.

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She turned and their eyes met, both of them filled with profound
appreciation of each other.

"I'd forgotten it could be like this," she said.

"So did I."

She felt tearful, and was embarrassed for it.

"Like to see our wine list?" Rob asked.

"Just have my usual."

"Chateau Lafitte?"

"Mogen David."

"Mogen David coming up."

He spun around to an ice chest, producing a bottle of wine.

"Where'd you get that?" she laughed.

"It was here."

"Someone left it?"

"Compliments of Mr. Isely, no doubt."

"Ah. Wine and cherry pie."

"Other bureaucrats are bribed with Rolls-Royces for Christmas,
all-expense-paid vacations. Me, I get wine and cherry pie."

"Well, hell," said Maggie, sitting down, "I don't like Rolls-Royces."

"I don't, either."

"Then again, I don't like Mr. Isely."

"I don't either."

"Pour the wine and bring on the pie."

"Corruption, corruption . . ."

Maggie giggled, and so did Rob. They had successfully shaken off the
frightening events of the day, and no matter what lay behind them or
ahead, for this moment they were high on being together; determined to
savor every moment of it.

The dinner passed with more banter about Rob's fish story, and a lot of
silences as they gazed across the table at each other and drank wine.
The fire had faded to embers now; the sounds of the forest could be
heard from outside: a chorus of night insects, the cry of a hawk
circling high overhead.

Rob sat back, watching Maggie, basking in the peacefulness of the
moment. She poured what was left

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of the wine into her glass and drank it down, closing her eyes as she
listened to the sounds of the forest.

"The woods ... are lovely, dark, and deep . . ." she whispered, reciting
the lines of her favorite poem. "And I have promises to keep . . ."

Rob smiled. Her three glasses of wine had had an effect.

"My little horse gives his harness bells a shake," she continued, "as if
to ask if there's some mistake . . ." She couldn't remember the rest,
her eyes opening and roaming as she searched for the missing words.

"To harnesses," Rob said as he raised his glass.

"To mistakes," she mused.

"To the woods."

"Mustn't forget the woods."

"Dark and deep . . ."

She raised her empty glass to his and smiled sadly. "And to promises ...
we must keep."

Maggie closed her eyes again; slightly dizzy, slightly euphoric,
slightly melancholic. Rob rose and slipped a cassette into the tape
recorder; it filled the cabin with gentle music. He moved to Maggie,
whose eyes were closed, her head resting on her hands, and he touched
her hair. She made a noise that sounded like purring. Taking her hand,
he led her to the couch. They eased down together, she moving her head
onto his lap, basking in the warmth of the fire.

"Want to know something?" she whispered.

"Mmmmmmm."

"I was proud of you today."

He nodded, recalling the events at the blockade. "Wasn't that . . .
crazy?" he whispered.

"You were so brave."

"I was scared."

"You didn't show it."

"Didn't dare."

"Wouldn't life be so much easier," she said, her voice lilting slightly,
"if we weren't afraid to show we were afraid . . ."

96

"Had too much wine?" Rob whispered.

"Not enough."

"No?"

"Still afraid to be afraid . . ."

Rob smiled, She was drifting. And she was absolutely beautiful. He
reached down and stroked her forehead, then swept his hand gently along
her eyelids. She breathed deeply and nestled close to him.

"That Indian woman?" Maggie whispered.

"Mmmmmmm?"

"I was jealous of her."

"Really?"

"She had real courage. ... To be strong when she was frightened ... to
demand her own way. It's the kind of courage that I don't seem to have."

"Oh, I think it takes a lot of courage to put up with me."

"I love you," she answered.

Rob leaned down and kissed her. She accepted it without moving, then
smiled as she savored it. "Sometimes ... I love you so much," she said,
". . . that I wish there were more of you."

"Well, I could gain twenty pounds."

"I mean ... I wish there were more of us."

Within the darkness behind her closed eyes, she realized what she had
said. She hadn't planned it, it had just come out. She opened her eyes
and saw it had had its effect. Rob's expression had turned somber.

"Could we talk about it?" she asked in a whisper.

"Now?"

"Why not now?"

"Everything's so perfect now."

"I see."

She could feel the wall coming up between them. The intimacy was so
transient, so fragile, it took only a few words to shatter it. Maggie
struggled in her mind for clarity; she tried to force that haziness away.

"Either we're too far apart ... or too close together. Is that it?"

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Rob's posture sagged with fatigue, his head sinking back against the
couch. Maggie slowly sat up, a sense of loneliness sweeping through her.

"Just . . . talk?" she whispered. "Is that going to spoil everything?"

"You know how I feel about it," he answered sadly.

"About the state of the world, you mean."

"Yes."

She reached up and rubbed her forehead. She was losing heart. She hated
that she was groggy; she wanted more than anything to be articulate.
There were so many ways she had rehearsed this conversation, and now she
was so unprepared.

"Listen," she whispered. "When I was a child, my mother told me to
finish everything on my plate because there were starving children in
the world. And it didn't make any sense to me." She looked up, trying to
catch his eye, but he was staring at the fire. "And now . . . you tell
me I shouldn't get pregnant, because there are starving children in the
world. And that doesn't make any sense to me, either."

"It does to me."

"What is it, Rob?" she asked gently. "Are you afraid?"

He rose from the couch and walked to the fire, gazing into the
smoldering embers.

"Is that it?" she asked. "You're afraid?"

"I don't know, Maggie," he whispered. Then he shook his head in mute
reiteration. "I don't know about a lot of things any more."

Maggie's sobriety was Teturning. She realized that she had never heard
Rob admit confusion before. In all the years that they had been
together, she had never known him to be uncertain. It gave her hope. She
watched and waited, wanting him to say more.

"I feel like . . ." His eyes searched the air as though looking for
words. ". . . like I've been going around a race track at a hundred
miles an hour . . . and I wound up where I started." He gazed back into
the fire. "And no one else was even in the race."

98

She was deeply moved. She knew she'd heard a confession that he would
share with no one else in the world.

"Can I help you?" she asked on a trembling breath.

Their eyes met and held.

"I need some time," he answered.

He slowly approached, kneeling in front of her and gazing directly into
her eyes. "I've felt so close to you tonight."

She nodded, raising a hand to touch his cheek gently.

"Can't we just be like this for a while?" he asked. "Just be close?"

His tenderness was so compelling that she couldn't help believing that
some small step had been taken. "Yes," she whispered. His lips moved to
hers and she came into his arms, their bodies melding into a close,
almost desperate embrace. She slid her face onto his shoulder and closed
her eyes as if in prayer. She, as much as he, wanted to cherish this
closeness. They had two weeks here. She would wait until the end.

"Should we go upstairs?" she whispered.

He nodded and took her hand, leading her up the narrow stairwell to the
sleeping loft, where they undressed and slipped beneath the soft brown
comforter. The lights from the fire flickered on the rafters above them,
and the cassette that played symphony music ran to its finish, leaving
just the sound of their breathing as they made love. It was intense and
passionate, both swept into a single movement, Maggie whimpering as she
felt herself being pulled upward by an overwhelming force to a peak that
caused her to cry out and burst into tears. Then she clung to Rob. He
stroked her hair, as if to console her.

They fell silent, Maggie watching shadows from the firelight play on the
ceiling as Rob slept in her arms.

It was Maggie who heard it first. A faint, barely audible scraping sound
coming from the floorboards

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of the porch outside. It stopped; replaced by a rapid thumping, which
rose in intensity, then ended abruptly. Feeling Maggie's body tense, Rob
stirred. And the noise came again. It was as rapid as a jackhammer now,
a muffled vibration just outside the downstairs door. They sat up and
listened to it, their eyes wide with apprehension.

"What is it?" Maggie whispered.

Rob shook his head. "Did you unpack the flashlight?"

"It's downstairs."

Rob rose from the bed, wrapped a blanket around himself, and quickly
descended the stairwell. He found the flashlight and moved to the door.
The sound was increasing in intensity, growing louder and faster with
each passing moment. Maggie rose and stood looking down from the loft,
her face illuminated by the firelight below, casting shadows that
accentuated her fear.

"What is it?" she whispered.

"I don't know."

Rob unbolted the door and grabbed the handle. He paused, summoning his
courage.

"Don't open it," Maggie hissed.

He glanced up at her, then back at the door. He could literally see the
loose floorboards vibrating beneath his feet. Then, in a sudden
movement, he pulled open the door; his breath sucked in with shock.

"What is it?" Maggie cried.

At Rob's feet lay a raccoon, face up, convulsing. Its eyes were glazed
and froth poured from its mouth, its talons quivered at the end of limbs
that shook in every fiber.

Rob looked up at Maggie.

"What is it?" she cried again.

"It's a . . ."

"Watch out!" she screamed.

In a sudden blur of fur, the animal spun to its feet and leaped for Rob,
latching on to his back.

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"God! God!" Maggie shrieked.

"Jesus!" Rob cried out. He spun and lurched, dancing grotesquely in the
firelight, but the animal held firm, sinking its teeth into Rob's side,
its vicious snarl rising above Rob's cry of pain.

"Rob!"

He managed to rip the blanket off him and the animal fell, dazed for a
moment, but quickly focused on Rob and darted after him again. It lunged
at Rob's feet as he sought to escape, catching his knee and clinging
tight, sinking its teeth in just below the thigh.

"Oh, God," Maggie sobbed. "Someone help us!"

"Knife!"

Maggie ran down the stairs as Rob pulled the snarling animal off him,
hurling it across the room where it hit a wall and fell with a
resounding thud. But it wasn't finished. Foam and blood poured from its
mouth; it focused on Maggie as she raced toward the kitchen.

"No!" Rob screamed. The animal streaked across the room as Maggie ripped
open a drawer, knives and forks splattering on the floor around her.

"Watch it!" Rob shouted. Maggie spotted it just in time. She jumped up
on the table, the animal smashing into a cabinet beneath her. The
raccoon was staggering now, wobbling as it once again searched for a
target. Rob shouted at it, trying to get its attention away from Maggie,
and the animal turned on him, shooting forward with full fury. Rob ran
to a far wall, his body colliding with a canoe paddle that clattered to
the floor beside him. As the animal bore down on him, he grabbed the
paddle and swung. It caught the raccoon directly in the stomach; a puff
of dust rose from the impact, but the raccoon clung hard to the canoe
paddle, climbing toward Rob as he swung it around to the fire. Rob
smacked it hard against the edge of the stone fireplace and the animal
took flight, hurtling directly into the flames.

It went up in a ball of fire. Maggie screamed.

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Suddenly it was over. The animal lay stiffened, face up, smoldering in
the flames.

Rob stood, naked, his body streaked with blood. Maggie lay, curled up
and sobbing, on the small kitchen table.

102

102

8

With the onset of spring, the overture to dawn started early. The eerie
voices of the loons began in darkness, bridging the hour when night gave
way to morning.

Within the silence of his cabin, Rob heard the voices of the loons, and
it chilled him. His palms were sweating; the handle of the butcher knife
stuck to his fingers as he studied the brain tissue of the dead raccoon,
smeared, in bits and pieces, all over the kitchen table.

He had seen plenty of rabies, observed at least a hundred brain
histologies performed on rats, cats, and dogs taken from the slums. He
had no microscopes here or surgical knives, only a butcher knife and a
magnifying glass. But the signs he was looking for could have been
observed with the naked eye.

What he saw was at once a relief and a mystery. Whatever the disease
was, it was not rabies. But it was something that Rob had never seen
before. The brain tissue had lost its substance. It had simply turned to
mush.

He wrapped the remains of the raccoon in newspaper, saving a small
chunk, the size of a quarter, which he sealed tightly in a mason jar.
Then he went outside with his blood-soaked parcel and deposited it in a
trash can that stood near the porch, using a section of firewood to
weight the lid. He'd bury it in

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the morning. He knew the odor of flesh could attract bears.

He gazed out at the lake; it was gradually gaining definition as the sky
began to lighten. The haze was lifting, creating a veil of steam that
obscured the shore. He rubbed his eyes and moved back into the cabin,
closing the door softly behind him and gazing up toward the sleeping loft.

All was quiet. In the hours after the attack, Maggie had been so
overwrought that Rob had insisted she take Valium in order to sleep. He
had sat with her on the bed until she drifted into slumber. Just before
she did, she mumbled to him that she wanted to leave there.

"It's against us," she had said.

Rob felt it, too. The atmosphere was alien. The violence at the
blockade, the sight of the enormous fish, the raccoon attack. In the
short time that they had been here, they had suffered an assault on all
their civilized senses.

Though he shared her uneasiness, Rob fought down the impulse to leave.
He had a job to do. He would try to do it as quickly as possible. The
survey involved taking soil samples and photographs, and visiting the
lumber mill. If he worked steadily at it, it was possible to finish in
five or six days.

He moved to the tape recorder and slipped in a blank cassette, then
carried the machine to the couch, where he sat back, bringing the
microphone close to his mouth so he could whisper into it and not awaken
Maggie.

"May thirtieth . . ." he began. Then he paused to check his watch. "Five
A.M. Brain histology. Raccoon." He played it back to himself to make
sure it was recording, then continued. "Cortical atrophy at the anterior
end of the calcarine tissue . . . going into the depths of the sulci of
the lateral lobes . . . involving the hypothalamus, midbrain, and basal
ganglia. Gennari striation completely gone . . . total declive of the
cerebellum." He stopped and switched off the

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machine, then switched it on again. "Cause of damage . . . unknown."

He turned off the tape recorder and closed his eyes. As he drifted
beyond awareness, he heard the demented cry of the loons.

At the same moment Robert Vern was drifting into slumber, a family of
campers was awakening. A ten-year-old boy and a twelve-year-old girl
stirred in their sleeping bags, their father was already moving about,
lighting a small fire over which he would cook breakfast.

Travis Nelson was at home in the forest. He had been born and raised in
New Hampshire; his own father had been a great outdoorsman who tutored
his son in everything from which mushrooms to pick to how to set rabbit
snares. It was the most valuable training he'd ever had. Even though his
own life's course had taken him far from the wilderness, he'd always had
a sense of security in the knowledge that he could survive under
primitive conditions. He wanted, now, to pass that on to his own children.

By profession, Travis Nelson was a history teacher, employed by the
public school system in Newton, Massachusetts. By hobby, he was a
licensed pilot who for years had stashed away small savings from his
teacher's salary to finally buy his own single-engine Cherokee. Its
maiden flight was from Boston to Manatee just yesterday. This was the
first real vacation that he had ever taken with his family. He had
waited until he could afford it, and until his two children were old
enough to absorb the things he wanted to teach them. Ten-year-old Paul
was a born adventurer, twelve-year-old Kathleen was determined to be as
rugged as her brother; Travis's wife, Jeanine, was game for anything.
The only thing that had disturbed her were the words of a forest ranger
who warned them, as they entered the forest, that they were going into
the Manatee Wilderness Area at their

105

own risk. People had gotten lost in there, he said, and the authorities
were "investigating."

Travis recalled the sight of the "flying bloodhound" when they had
arrived at the Manatee airport; it was no doubt part of the
"investigation." He himself had no fears. He knew how to blaze a trail
and follow a compass, and he knew that a fire was ample discouragement
for bears foraging in the night. But he was troubled by the word
"investigation." It sounded so policelike.

"Dad?"

The face of his son, Paul, appeared from a narrow opening in the zipper
at the top of his sleeping bag. He had slept completely enclosed within
it, like a caterpillar in a cocoon, to protect himself from mosquitoes.

"I think I can hear it," the boy whispered. "The waterfall."

Travis smiled. "It's still two days away."

"What do I hear?"

"The wind in the trees."

The boy rolled onto his back, the entire sleeping bag rolling with him.

"Is it gonna rain?" he asked, gazing up at the sky.

"Better not."

"Are we gonna do like you said? Sleep by ourselves one night?"

"Think you're up to it?"

"Sounds scary."

"Nothing to be scared of."

"Is Kathleen gonna do it?"

"I don't know."

"If she can do it, / can do it."

The face of Kathleen appeared from her sleeping bag. "I can do it."

"I can do it, too," Paul rejoined.

"I guess we're going to do it, then." Travis smiled.

"What if we roll off the cliff?" Kathleen asked.

"We won't sleep close to the cliff."

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"Maybe we should sleep at the bottom of the waterfall instead of the
top," Kathleen said.

"Maybe. We'll see."

Paul got to his knees within the sleeping bag and inched toward the
fire. "I can't get this unstuck," he said, pulling at the zipper from
the inside. His father reached in under the boy's chin and, with a yank,
got the zipper down.

"I think we ought to live like the Indians lived," Paul said as he
stepped out of the sleeping bag. "Just eat what we can catch."

"I think that's a good idea," his father answered. "I just happened to
catch a little bacon during the night."

"How'd you catch it?" Kathleen asked.

"That's a joke, dummy," Paul said.

"I know, dummy," she answered wearily. "What I said was a joke, too."

"Oh."

Travis chuckled as he laid the strips of bacon on the fire. He had
planned this vacation for over a year; he felt it was going to fulfill
every expectation.

By noon, Robert Vern had awakened, and, without delay, began his survey.
Maggie was still jittery, afraid of being left alone in the cabin; she
accompanied him through the forest and watched as he collected soil
samples, which he put in small vials that rattled within the pockets of
his jacket as he walked. It was the only sound to be heard as they moved
through the trees. The day was overcast; the morning fog had lingered,
creating oppressive humidity and a hushed atmosphere around them.
Moisture clung to the thick carpet of ferns on the forest floor; Rob's
and Maggie's pant legs were soaked to the thigh.

"Look there," Rob said, pointing upward through the trees.

Maggie followed his gesture and saw something that looked like a
wood-shingled roof, about a half a

107

mile away, protruding above the tops of the trees.

"Looks like a tree house," she said.

"It's a ranger station. I could probably get some good photographs from
up there."

He held out his hand to her and she took it; he could feel a sudden
tension in her fingers.

"What's wrong?"

Her eyes turned toward the forest.

"What's wrong?" He repeated.

"I don't know . . ."

He gave her a reassuring smile and started forward. Then he froze, his
eyes also turning toward the forest. They both remained stock-still.

"You hear something?" he asked.

"There's something in there," Maggie answered on a trembling breath.

A twig snapped in the foliage just in front of them; Maggie closed her
eyes. Her breath shuddered as the sound came again.

"Open your eyes," Rob whispered. His voice was filled with awe.

Twenty yards ahead of them, the stately form of a deer emerged from the
trees. It stood as still as statuary, its antlers held high, conveying a
power and dignity that was overwhelming.

"Just look at that.. ." Rob hissed under his breath.

Maggie clutched his hand, weakened by the immensity of it. She had seen
deer before, from a distance or in cages at a zoo. But seeing one this
close, with nothing separating her from it, made her appreciate, for the
first time, the meaning of the word "wild." She felt small and
vulnerable, like a trespasser in a king's domain.

"Never . . . ever," whispered Rob, "have I seen anything so beautiful."

The animal swung its head with regal aplomb, then turned and began
moving away. But the power and dignity quickly faded. It staggered
forward on its front legs, a limp hindquarter dragging in the dirt. One
of the rear legs had been nearly severed, but had some-

108

how healed, leaving the animal a permanent cripple.

As the deer disappeared into the foliage, Rob and Maggie watched with
anguished eyes. They began to walk again, silent and somber, trudging
through the thick growth of ferns.

"Nothing's as it seems, is it, Rob?" Maggie said. "Nothing's as pretty
as you want it to be."

He gripped her hand tightly, and they continued plodding forward. Within
a half hour they had reached the base of the ranger station.

The station stood in a small clearing, on a rise that overlooked the
lake. It was a small redwood shack built atop fifty feet of crisscrossed
scaffolding; a narrow, ladderlike stairwell stretched almost straight up
from the ground to the top.

There was a sense of isolation to it that went beyond the physical. It
was somehow alien, as though it existed in exile, separate and apart
from everything that surrounded it.

"Anybody up there?" Rob called.

There was no answer.

"Hello?" Rob shouted.

Still there was no response. Rob spotted a cord hanging down from the
door at the top, weighted with a rock.. He pulled it and a bell sounded.
It was a light sound, like a dinner bell. He pulled it a second time and
waited in silence.

"Guess nobody's home," Maggie said.

"These towers are never supposed to be empty. They keep watch for forest
fires."

"Maybe he's asleep."

"I want to get some pictures from up there."

He mounted the narrow stairwell and began climbing upward, Maggie
following. It was higher than it looked; as they ascended, Maggie began
to feel queasy. Midway she paused, closing her eyes.

"Rob . . . ?"

He stopped and looked back at her.

"I'm getting dizzy," she said.

He descended a few steps and took her hand. "Is

109

this the lady who one year ago wanted to climb Mount McKinley?"

"This year's different."

"Just out of shape, that's all."

She looked directly into his eyes. "I think it's more than that." She
was about to say more when they were suddenly interrupted by a voice
from above.

"You people go back down! You aren't allowed up here!"

The face of the forest ranger thrust itself from a small window above.
He was a man of about sixty, his face heavily lined and thick-skinned,
set in a bulldoglike scowl.

"Go on, get down!"

"Uh . . . excuse me, we're from-"

"I don't give a goddamn where you're from. I'm not going to tell you
where I'm from, so don't tell where you're from."

Rob and Maggie exchanged a long glance.

"He looks like that bloodhound," Maggie whispered.

"Go on! Get off!"

"I'm from the government," Rob called up.

The forest ranger was visibly jolted.

"The government?"

"Yes, sir."

"I work for the government."

"I'd like to take some photographs. Just take a few minutes of your time."

The ranger smiled, the force of gravity causing tobacco spittle to form
on his lips. "Come on up, pardner!"

"I think he's daffy," Maggie whispered.

"Can you make it?" Rob asked her.

"Hold my hand."

They climbed up with effort and stepped onto a narrow porch where the
ranger awaited them at his open door.

"I'm glad you came," he said. "It's about time. Laiken is my name."

110

"Thank you," Rob mumbled as he crossed the threshold, bringing Maggie in
with him.

"You government workers hold hands all the time?" Laiken smiled as he
closed the door behind them.

"This is my wife."

"She's a beauty."

"Thank you," Maggie said.

"My wife was a beauty, too. More beautiful even than you, present
company included."

Maggie laughed, not knowing what to say.

"Want to see her picture?"

"Yes," Maggie said.

They were both taken off guard by his sudden familiarity, and sensed
that there was something wrong. A quick glance at his living conditions
told Rob more. The small glass and redwood enclosure was littered with
rumpled clothes and overused magazines; empty food tins and discarded
liquor bottles were stacked in a corner on the floor. And the air was
thick with an overwhelming stench. It was an odor that Rob had smelled
before. Uremia. An aroma that exudes from the skin pores of alcoholics
who have consumed so much liquor that their livers are no longer
filtering out bodily toxins. The man's eyes were discolored, too.
Another sign of liver ailment and alcoholism. The forest ranger was,
mentally and physically, in a state of alcoholic deterioration.

As he rummaged through a littered bookshelf for the photograph, both Rob
and Maggie saw that one of the ranger's hands was wrapped with a
makeshift bandage of rags and blood-soaked cotton. The color of the
blood told Rob that the wound was fresh and, because of the unsanitary
bandage, would soon be infected.

"What do you think?" the ranger asked as he found the photograph and
held it out to them. It was aged and blurred, the woman in it hardly
visible.

"That's your wife?" Maggie asked.

"God bless her dead soul."

"Very pretty."

111

"Not any more."

Maggie couldn't help laughing. "Probably not," she said.

"No . . . not any more," he said as he gazed at the picture.

A moment of silence passed, the man sadly replacing the photograph on
the bookshelf.

"Mind if I get some pictures?" Rob asked.

"No, help yourself. You want me to smile?"

"Beg pardon?"

"For the pictures."

Rob almost laughed. "Oh, uh ... no, I just want to get some pictures of
the trees."

The ranger smiled, as though sharing some secret.

"I'll just sit and wait here," he said, moving to a rocking chair,
"until you're ready to question me."

Rob glanced at him with uncertainty, then began to snap photos while
Maggie browsed through the Uttered bookshelf, trying to find some way to
keep herself occupied.

"So you people are from Washington," the ranger said.

"Um-hm," Rob replied. "Is that the Espee River over there?"

"Wouldn't be no other."

"So I guess that smokestack is the pulp mill."

"You with the FBI?"

"The FBI?" Rob answered with surprise.

"Yeah. You with the FBI?"

"EPA."

"FBI, EPA, it's all the same."

Rob smiled and shook his head, then attached a long-distance lens onto
his camera and focused on the smokestack that rose above the trees on
the shores of the distant Espee River. The pulp mill was much bigger
than he'd expected. It looked like a huge factory. The metal pipes and
holding tanks that snaked around it were all glistening and new.

"I figured you'd be up here soon," the ranger said.

"Is that right?" Rob replied.

112

"Gotta find out the facts, don't we?"

"I guess we do."

"Yes, sir. When people get murdered, that's what we gotta do."

Rob turned and looked at him; he saw that Maggie was doing the same.

"Don't we?" the ranger said.

"What do you mean?" Rob asked.

"Them lumberjacks. The ones that got killed, I'm innocent, and I'm ready
to answer anything you want to ask me."

Rob and Maggie exchanged a glance. They had finally gotten the drift of
the man's confusing conversation.

"Whenever you're ready to ask me something," the ranger said, "I'll be
happy to answer. Already told the sheriff everything I know, but he
didn't seem to want to believe me."

"No?"

"Said I was drunk. You think I'm drunk?"

"I don't know," Rob answered. "Are you?"

"I drink some, but I know what I saw."

Maggie took an interest and sat on the arm of a chair near him. "What
did you see?" she asked.

"I told him I'd take a lie detector, I'll tell you the same damn thing."

"I'll believe you," Maggie reassured. "What did you see?"

The ranger looked at her and smiled. "My voice sound strange to you?" he
asked.

"No."

"Does to me. Rattles in my head. Maybe it's my ears, not my voice."

Maggie was completely baffled.

"Maybe it's my hand," he said, holding up his bandaged hand.

"What happened to your hand?" she asked.

"Didn't even know I was bit till I saw the blood."

"Something bit you?"

The ranger nodded and pulled a crumpled piece of

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paper from his pocket. "You like poetry?" he asked. "I wrote me a poem."

Maggie looked at Rob. The conversation had gotten totally beyond her.

"What did bite your hand?" Rob asked as he packed up his camera.

The ranger ignored him, gesturing toward Maggie with the tattered piece
of paper. "Go on. Take it. It all rhymes up. Everything rhymes." Maggie
hesitantly took it.

"Maybe you can put it out in Playboy magazine," he said. Then he
suddenly gasped with laughter, wheezing and coughing as he slapped his
thigh. Maggie watched him with compassion. The man was plainly out of
his mind.

"Mind if I look at that hand?" Rob asked. "I'm a doctor."

"You are?" the ranger said with surprise.

"Uh-hm."

"Well, I'll be damned." He burst into laughter again.

Rob pulled up a stiff-backed chair in front of him, and opened the
dressing on his wounded hand. It was an animal bite, the marks of sharp
incisors clearly visible in the puffy flesh.

"What did this?" Rob asked.

"Him," the ranger answered, nodding toward the corner. There, amid a
pile of rubbish, lay the body of a dead cat. Maggie gasped at the sight
of it and quickly shut her eyes.

"Died just last night," the ranger said. "Bit me and then he died.
Didn't even know I was bit till I saw the blood."

Rob rose and walked to the body of the dead cat. There was dried saliva
around its mouth.

"Can we go?" Maggie asked quietly.

Rob knelt and picked up the dead cat. It was stiff, its body arched
grotesquely, as though it had died in a back bend.

"Can I take this away for you?" Rob asked the ranger.

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"I don't know why he turned on me," the ranger said. There was sadness
in his voice now. "I was always good to him."

"I'd like to examine it."

"We always ate dinner together," the ranger continued. "He liked fish
the best. Liked it cooked. Now, that's some unusual cat . . . don't you
think?" His eyes began to glisten and he quickly turned away. Maggie
watched him in silence, her eyes filled with sympathy.

"You ought to soak your hand in warm water," Rob said.

The ranger nodded and began to weep. It was a pathetic sound, as though
the act of crying caused him physical pain.

Rob gestured toward the door, but Maggie was reluctant to leave the man
like this. Finally, she rose.

"We'll be back, all right?" Maggie said to the ranger. "We'll be back
here before we leave."

"Bury it deep, will you?" the ranger replied through his tears. "I don't
want that thing to eat it."

Rob and Maggie exchanged a puzzled glance, then stepped outside.

They stood in momentary silence on the narrow porch, saddened by the
misery that existed here.

A breeze had begun to blow, rippling the surface of the lake; the
tattered piece of paper the forest ranger had given Maggie fluttered in
her hand as she opened it and tried to decipher the childlike scrawl.

"Three . . . little . . . searchlines," she said, reading quietly aloud.

"Searchlights," Rob corrected as he gazed over her shoulder.

"Searchlights," she continued, "burning bright. All went out in a
turrible fight." She paused, looking at Rob, then went on. "See him by
the lake next day . . . big as a dragon . . . with wings that was . . .
gray."

The breeze came stronger; Maggie's hair wafted into her face as she
stared at the note, trying to make out the rest.

"That's it?" Rob asked.

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"The rest is crossed out."

Their eyes met, and neither spoke.

"Does it sound like something you've heard before?" Maggie asked.

Rob thought about it and shrugged.

"Big as a dragon?"

He slowly shook his head.

"It's this man's job to sit and stare out at this forest," Maggie said.
"You said so yourself. He's supposed to be here night and day."

Rob looked at her and smiled.

"This poem is about what he saw."

"He's blind drunk, Maggie. What he sees are hallucinations."

"As big as a dragon? That's what Isely said at the airport."

"If you were that drunk, you'd see dragons, too."

She thought about it and nodded. Then she grimaced with embarrassment,
suddenly feeling foolish.

"This place is getting to you," Rob said as he took her hand and started
down.

"I'm afraid it is."

"Let's go fishing, huh? Let's just mind our own business for a while."

They climbed carefully down the narrow stairs, Rob securing Maggie with
one hand, holding the stiffened carcass of the dead cat in the other. As
they walked back through the forest, they smelled rain in the air. There
was a rumble of thunder from a cloud bank hovering dark and low over the
peaks of the distant mountains.

The family of campers, Travis Nelson and his wife and children, felt the
first drops of rain and decided to pitch their tents and wait it out. It
would delay their climb to the waterfall, but the uphill journey would
be too difficult on saturated ground. They set up camp by the shores of
Mary's Lake, in the hope that the downpour would end by morning.

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But it did not. The cloud bank that had moved in hung over the
wilderness basin like a permanent lid, sending down a seemingly
inexhaustible supply of rain. Within two days, new buds had broken
through the ground; the once bare branches of trees were lined with the
light green felt of spring. The forest animals took shelter for the
duration, accepting hunger with the instinctive knowledge that when the
deluge ended, the ground would swell with plenty. The rain that was
absorbed into a thirsty earth would hydrate dormant seeds, bringing
sustenance to the small creatures that thrived on vegetation; they, in
turn, would provide a food source for the meat eaters. The food chain
that began with microscopic fungus ended with the largest predator; a
bear that consumed a deer was eating acres of vegetation that had
brought the deer to adulthood.

In the rain- and wind-whipped trees, the only figure that moved was that
of Robert Vera. Maggie had became increasingly nervous with the
confinement caused by the rain; he was eager to complete his work as
soon as possible.

The brain histology he had conducted on the dead cat had been
inconclusive. There was damage there, not unlike that of the raccoon,
but the hours that had passed between the time the animal had died and
when it was examined, had caused the brain cells to atrophy. It would
require sophisticated equipment for proper analysis; as soon as the rain
stopped, Rob would send some tissue samples, along with some from the
raccoon, to the laboratory in Washington.

For now, there was little to do but trudge through the mud on the
island, which was quickly becoming a swamp, and examine the changes
caused by the rain.

As far as Rob's ecological survey was concerned, the rain itself was
providing important answers. The soil was clay-based and therefore
absorbed an enormous amount of rain. If the trees were to come down,
denying the soil the root system that hungrily sucked up excess water,
the soil would become oversaturated.

117

It would cause new seedlings to drown, and in ten years' time the entire
forest would become an ecological wasteland.

There were, of course, artificial ways to save the new seedlings. They
could be cultivated separately, in a controlled environment, and
replanted once they had become stable. If the Pitney Paper Mill were
willing to make this kind of costly and time-consuming commitment, it
could override the immediate effects. But promises were easy to make and
impossible to police. The lumber company could agree, then fail to meet
its obligation. The Environmental Protection Agency did not have the
funds to undertake a constant watch.

Rob had read of the duplicity of the lumber companies. The publicity
budget of a single lumber company was probably equal to what the
Environmental Protection Agency survived on, and supported a full staff
with, for an entire fiscal year. In terms of their respective messages
reaching the public, the lumber companies had a clear edge. In
television advertisements and brochures, they convinced the public that
they were refoliating as fast as they were defoliating, but the simple
mathematics would tell even a school-child that that was impossible. It
takes fifty seconds to cut a tree. Fifty years or more to grow one.

As Rob trudged knee-deep in mud through the turbulent forest, he was
awed by the power of the elements around him. It was little wonder that
the Indians had assumed that lightning and thunder were sent down by the
gods. Rob wondered if his own explanations were any better. Surely the
perfection of the environmental system, from the respiration of the
smallest insect to the motion of the planet itself, left a gap that
scientific logic could not fill. Man himself was physically among the
weakest and most vulnerable of the earth's creatures; perhaps his
analytical mind was no more than a defense mechanism, a bully that rose
up to compensate.

Rob's isolation in this new world had opened up

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resources in his mind that he was eager to probe. He wondered if man, in
his most primitive condition, was not the predator but the prey. In
prehistoric times, when saber-toothed tigers roamed the American
forests, men must have been like rabbits, cowering in silence and fear.
It was an established fact that the evidence of man's cultural
development, his cave paintings, his written language, began with the
evidence of his campfires. Perhaps there was an important relationship
there. If fire provided protection from the animals at night, it would
have given primitive man the first opportunity to speak with his fellow
man without the fear that the sounds he made would attract predators. If
he hunted by day and hid by night, the fact of fire might have given him
the first comfort to speculate, to dream, to let his mind roam. On the
complicated and hazardous road to survival, perhaps it was something as
sudden as the first controlled fire that allowed man's mind to begin
developing into the abstract and, ultimately, self-defeating mechanism
that it was today.

The speculation led in a circle of defeat. If indeed there were a master
plan, if the creation of the planet were more than chemical accident,
was man designed as the tool for destruction? Or did the master builder
go too far? Perhaps man was created in God's image. Perhaps they both
were prone to developing one machine too many . . .

To find himself speculating in this way was a revelation to Rob. He was
a man of science, not easily given to thoughts of mysticism or God. It
was, perhaps, because he felt so small here, so vulnerable compared with
the size and power of everything around him. Also, there was the cello
music coming from the cabin, its haunting sound rising and falling on
the wind, enhancing the sense of mystery.

Maggie had become claustrophobic; music provided her only relief. In
Rob's efforts to complete his job as quickly as possible, he had become
consumed with his research, walking the island by day, burying him-

119

self in reading material and writing his report by night. Maggie had
read every magazine in the cabin, all outdated periodicals, played
Scrabble by herself until she had become sick of it, and experimented
with how many ways there were to prepare the salmon that Rob easily
caught in the lake and brought home for dinner every night. Their supply
of canned goods was running low, and they were subsisting mainly on
fish. The diet was as monotonous as the rest of their existence.

On the third day of rain, they hazarded the boat ride from the island to
the shore, but found that the road into town had been damaged by the
rain. It was ten miles long, and even though they were eager for
supplies, they were fearful of getting stuck in a pothole. They returned
to the cabin, hoping that in the morning the sun would shine.

For John Hawks and Romona Peters, the rain was a welcome relief. They
had pitched camp together deep in the forest and for three days and
nights lain in each other's arms, forgetting the torture and frustration
of their lives on the outside. In the deluge, the lumbering activities
had come to a halt; Hawks did not have to deal with the fearful spectre
of the roadblock. It was as though nature had intervened to halt the
catastrophic momentum of events.

Romona had spoken with the two pregnant women in the Indian village, and
they had flatly refused to accompany her to see a doctor in Portland.
There was nothing to do now but wait. If either of the two children
these women gave birth to were deformed, Romona would take them, living
or dead, to be examined by someone who could give her some answers. For
now, all she could do was push the troubling thoughts from her mind and
allow herself to be soothed by the sounds of rumbling thunder.

The only troubling aspect of the rain was that it had somehow given rise
to a renewed epidemic of the

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katahnas. The Indian villagers had used the first day of rain to empty
their heavily laden salmon nets and smoke the carcasses of the fish in
their smokehouse. For two weeks prior, they had been living on canned
goods, reluctant to go to the river for fear of being confronted by
villagers or lumberjacks.

Now, three men were felled with seizures, trembling with fever as the
chill wind swept through the silent Indian encampment.

Word of the new onset of katahnas reached Romona and Hawks on the third
night of rain; they went to the village to investigate. There they
visited each of the three men, all delusional and frightened. Hawks was
bewildered and, for the first time, understood the severity of the
mysterious illness. The katahnas struck without warning, and there
seemed no explanation for why, or when, they hit.

As he and Romona walked back toward their encampment, they were swept
with a sense of defeat. It was as though the forest itself had turned on
them.

In the quiet of the night, an owl hooted above them and took flight;
they stood and watched it as its powerful wings propelled it toward the
glowing circle of the moon. The clouds had parted and the rain had
stopped. The downpour that had provided respite from the problems that
beseiged them had passed as quickly as it had come. The trees glistened
in moonlight, and Hawks and Romona knew that in the morning their battle
would resume.

But it did not hold until sunrise. They were awakened at night by the
sound of an approaching land-car, its motor groaning as it lurched
toward them, cross-country, through the forest.

Hawks stepped out of their tent and his eyes were hit with a spotlight.
He could see the silhouettes of three men approaching him in the glare,
rifles held loosely at their sides.

"You John Hawks?"

"Yes."

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Hawks shielded his eyes and saw that they were garbed in the attire of
lumberjacks; the man in the middle was apparently in charge. He held a
plastic drinking cup in his hand.

"Someone in that tent?" he asked.

"No."

"Then you won't mind if we fire some buckshot in there."

One of them quickly cocked his rifle.

"Wait."

"Tell him to come out."

Romona emerged from the tent, three flashlights turning on her
frightened eyes.

"Well, well . . ." one of them muttered.

"My name is Romona Peters. I am the granddaughter of Hector M'rai."

She stood stiffly, with her head erect, a slight tremble of her chin
betraying her fear.

"What do you want?" Hawks demanded.

"Turn around."

Hawks remained still.

"I said turn around."

"Why?"

"I want to check for concealed weapons. I hear you carry a mean ax."

"I won't turn around."

One of the rifles slowly lifted.

"Turn around."

"Do as he says," Romona urged.

"Better listen to your squaw."

"I won't turn around."

"I'll turn around," Romona quickly said. She turned her back, and one of
the men approached her from behind. Hawks made a move for him, and a
rifle barrel swerved close to his face; the sound of a hammer clicking
back echoed in the night.

"Did you come here to kill us?" Hawks gasped.

"Why don't you just wait and see."

The man behind Romona reached around her and

122

cupped her breasts; Hawks tensed and two rifle barrels jammed into his
head, stopping him.

"Let them do this, John," she whispered in a trembling breath.

"See there? She likes it."

"Get him off her," Hawks growled through his teeth.

"Just checking for weapons-"

"Get him off her!" Hawks shouted.

Romona whimpered and Hawks lunged for the man; the man grabbed Hawks by
the collar, spinning him against a tree, the two rifle barrels poking
hard into his neck.

"You'll have to kill me," Hawks gasped.

"We'd rather you watched."

"Please let us alone," Romona implored. "We've done nothing to you."

"You're trespassing."

"We'll leave!" she cried.

"We're not trespassing," Hawks hissed.

"This land is owned by the Pitney Paper Mill."

"This land belongs to my people."

"Now, that's just not true, Indian."

"What do you want from us?" Romona moaned.

"We want you out."

"We're not leaving."

"I think you are."

The man in charge raised the plastic cup he'd been holding, as if to
toast Hawks, then suddenly threw its contents onto the crotch of Hawks's
pants. Hawks could smell gasoline. He tried to run, but the other two
pinned his arms against the tree, overpowering him.

The man in charge moved slowly forward, putting a pipe in his mouth and
lighting it with a butane lighter. His eyes were on Hawks as he turned
the flame up high. Then he slowly lowered the lighter until the dagger
of flame was just out of reach of Hawks's gasoline-soaked pants.

"You have twenty-four hours to leave this forest,"

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the man with the lighter said. "If you aren't gone by tomorrow night,
we'll be back for you."

Then he switched off his lighter and the threesome backed away. Hawks
stood, unmoving, as he watched their car turn and lurch away into the night.

124

124

9

Rob and Maggie responded to the sight of the morning sun like prisoners
who had been in solitary confinement seeing the first light of day. It
was a tonic to them, filling them with energy and refreshing their
spirits. They quickly organized for a trip into town.

The lake sparkled in sunlight as they crossed it in their small boat;
when they reached shore, they saw that the road to town had already
begun to dry. They put down the canvas top of the car that Isely had
left for them, and let the fresh air wash over them as they drove
through a glistening green forest. Rob had a momentary concern that they
might be stopped again by Indians because they were in a lumber-company
car, but when they passed the place where the roadblock had been, there
was no one there.

"Think they gave up?" Maggie asked.

"Doubt it. I'd like to get rid of this car."

They turned onto the main highway and drove into town, parking in front
of the library, which was Maggie's first priority. She would look for
some books, then shop while Rob went to the bank and cashed some
traveler's checks; then they would rendezvous at the post office, where
Rob was planning to send soil and tissue samples back to Washington.

They were so exhilarated to be out of the confines of their cabin, to be
walking on cement instead of mud, to be rubbing shoulders with other
human beings who nodded and said good morning, that they failed

125

to notice they were being watched. John Hawks and Romona Peters had also
journeyed to town and spotted the lumber-company vehicle, recognizing it
as one of the two that had run through the blockade. In the small,
one-street town, they waited quietly for the opportunity to confront them.

Hawks had come to demand that the sheriff provide protection from the
men who had threatened them the night before. The sheriff of Manatee
County had listened without sympathy, not even making the gesture of a
lie that he would look into it. It was his customary way of dealing with
the Indians; simply to nod until they were tired of talking. Romona had
tried to dissuade Hawks from wasting his time, for she knew this sheriff
well. He was the same man she had tried to appeal to when she had been
raped as a twelve-year-old girl. Now, sixteen years later, she saw the
same hint of amusement glinting behind his eyes.

The sheriff's name was Bartholomew Pilgrim; a heavyset man, fifty years
of age, he was allowed to continue as head of local law enforcement over
the years, more out of public lethargy than from support. There was
little crime in the town of Manatee, little need for effective
personalities in public office. He, the president of the local bank, the
mayor, the three pastors of the churches, the board of the Chamber of
Commerce, were all of a generation that grew up together, supported one
another and, once seated, held firmly to their jobs. Recently, the chief
operating officer of the Pitney Paper Mill, Bethel Isely, had joined
their ranks. In its small-town way, it was a ruling junta; each defended
the other for the good of the whole.

Bartholomew Pilgrim had been alerted to the presence of John Hawks in
the Manatee forest; the news of the events at the blockade had been
brought to him by Bethel Isely. But he could not deal with Hawks in the
way that he would have liked to. He had been cautioned by his superiors
in Portland that the

126

Indian spokesman for the O.P.'s was known in Washington and had to be
dealt with, on an official basis, delicately.

On an unofficial level, it was different. As long as no law enforcement
personnel could be accused of harassment or violation of civil rights,
Pilgrim could close his eyes to events like those that happened to
Romona and Hawks the night before.

As Hawks spoke to the sheriff, he could see in his eyes that he knew
what had happened to them, and had likely sanctioned it.

"Gee, I'd sure like to help you, my friend-"

"Don't call me your friend."

"I'd sure like to help you, pal, but there's nothin' much I can do."

"It's your job to protect me."

"It's my job to protect the citizens of this county."

"I am a citizen of this county."

"No, no, you're from out of town."

"I was born here and I'm living here."

"I wouldn't advise that. If I were you, I'd move on down the road."

"I'm not moving anywhere."

The sheriff sat back in his wooden swivel chair; it creaked beneath the
weight of his massive body.

"I'm gonna tell you somethin', old pal," he said. "I'm not against you
people, and neither is Mr. Isely. Matter of fact, he's a very generous
man. After I heard about the blockade, I was all for bringin' you into
this jail. I'd have been perfectly within my rights to put you under
arrest. But Mr. Isely, he said no. He said that John Hawks is a good old
boy, and we just got to give him a little time to move on down the road."

"I'm going nowhere."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"If anything happens to me, people will find out about it."

"I'm sure they will."

"You will be held responsible."

127

"I hope you take care of yourself, then." It was after this exchange
that Hawks and Romona exited the police station and spotted the
lumber-company vehicle parked in front of the library. Now, with his
life threatened, Hawks knew that he had nowhere to turn except to the
man from the government.

"This is a hell of a vacation you sent me on, Victor." Rob pressed one
hand to his free ear and spoke loudly into the telephone as he stood in
a phone booth on the corner next to the post office. "I get away from
the rats, and the raccoons attack me. The Indians are out for blood, and
the lumberjacks are only too happy to give it to them. I'll tell you, it
makes the tenements look like a rest home." Rob paused and nodded. "I'm
going to get this done as quick as I can. I'll finish up the report when
I get back to Washington."

Victor Shusette sat in his office in Washington, listening with concern.
His choice of Robert Vern to conduct the field survey in Manatee had
backfired on him, and the last thing he wanted to hear was that Rob was
going to make fast work of it. The timber lobby had learned that Vern
had no experience as an environmentalist; the fact that he was qualified
by virtue of his having been tutored by veteran field workers, and by
reason of his own native intelligence, meant little to them. They now
had a possible cause with which to discredit his report. It was too late
for Shusette to reverse his choice; if he did so, it would further
damage the Agency's credibility. Credibility was all they had to sell,
and credibility was a fragile commodity. In many ways, people looked
upon the Environmental Protection Agency as they would look upon a
police force. Even though it could function perfectly for years, a
single questionable incident or the transgression of one individual
could bring out all the hidden resentment toward it and collapse the

128

entire structure. Whatever report Robert Vem brought back had to be
airtight, documented with an overkill of thoroughness to make up for any
doubt about his abilities or experience.

"I hate to tell you this, Rob, but I want you to stay there as long as
possible."

Eight hundred miles away from Shusette, Rob stood in the phone booth and
listened, his expression turning more sober as Shusette explained the
situation they were in.

"Victor," Rob broke in, "I want to explain something. I was a little
glib a minute ago. When I said the Indians are out for blood, I meant
it. They say they've killed a couple of people up here."

"What are you talking about?"

"That's what people say. And from what I saw, I can see why they say
that. I saw real violence."

"You're saying you think you're in danger?"

"I'm saying I'm not terribly comfortable up here. And neither is Maggie."

"You want protection? I can arrange that."

"No, that's not what I want."

"Tell me what you want. What can I do?"

"I want to leave here, Victor. I want to do the job I came to do, and
leave here as soon as I can."

"If you come back too fast, it's not going to look good. If you're not
in any real danger, I'd like you to stay there as long as you can."

Rob didn't answer.

"Rob?"

"I'm here."

"Look, if you have to come back, then come back. I'm just telling you
that appearances are important right now. If you want, I'll take over
for you."

"No," Rob answered with fatigue.

"If you can, give it another ten days. I'll be satisfied with that."

"Yeah."

"Check in with me, huh?"

"Right."

129

Rob hung up and leaned against the wall of the small glass cubicle, his
eyes set with despair. More than anything, he hated failure; he had
never before so unwittingly set himself up for it. The field survey had
been a mistake from the start; he cursed himself for allowing Shusette
to talk him into it. It was the appeal to his ego that had made him grab
for it; the promise that he could do something that could make a real
and permanent difference. Now, by virtue of his inexperience, it was
earmarked for failure.

He had promised Maggie that they would leave as soon as possible, but if
he did that, he'd be throwing the whole thing away.

As he gazed out toward the street, he spotted Maggie heading into the
grocery store. She was wearing boots and a riding jacket, the wind
gently lifting her hair. Her arms were loaded with books, and she walked
with energy, looking like a girl crossing the street of some small-town
college campus. He rarely saw her at this distance; it reminded him of
the mornings he used to watch her from the window of their New York
apartment. It filled him with sadness at how complicated their lives had
become.

The conversation he'd had with Shusette had swept him with fatigue. It
made him feel like surrendering. The obsessive treadmill he'd been on
for the last four years was suddenly slowing beneath him. There was
nothing he could do to alter the course of the planet; he sensed that
here more than anywhere. Walking among the towering trees, he had gotten
a true perspective of his own size and strength. He was no more than an
ant. And he was trying to push over skyscrapers. This job had been a
last-ditch, desperate attempt to make his mark, and he was being
defeated. They knew in Washington what he had sensed from the start. He
had no business here.

"Mr. Vern?"

Rob was jolted by the intrusion; he turned to see John Hawks waiting for
him outside the pay phone. The woman, Romona, was there, too. Their expres-

130

sions were intense, no more gentle now than they had been at the blockade.

Rob stepped out into the street, feeling apprehensive.

"My name is John Hawks."

"I remember."

"We want you to come with us."

"What for?"

"We want to speak to you."

"Right here will be fine."

Hawks saw the fear in Rob's eyes and was surprised by it. It was rare
that a white man gave him credit for equal strength.

"Are you afraid of us?"

Rob paused. "Yes."

"Because of what you've heard?"

"I haven't heard anything."

Hawks knew it was a lie. "You haven't heard we're drunks? We're violent?
We're murderers?"

Rob studied Hawks, uncertain of his attitude. He didn't know if he was
trying to reassure or frighten.

"That's what they say about us, Mr. Vern. They discount our rights by
telling these lies." He moved closer; Rob could smell the dampness of
his leather jacket. "We are not drunks. And we are not violent. My
people are fishermen, and their lives are clean."

Rob was uncertain of how to respond. Hawks stiffened, misreading the
silence as a threat of dismissal.

"I tell you this not out of choice, but from necessity."

"Why is that?" Rob asked.

"They're going to kill me."

"Who is?"

"The lumber company."

"Why would they do that?"

"Isn't it obvious?"

"They have a right to enter the forest-"

"I'm not speaking of the blockade."

131

The sharpness of Hawks's voice created a silence; the men assessed each
other as adversaries.

"Please," Romona said quietly. "We want you to come with us."

"Why?"

"No one from the government has come here before. We want you to see who
our people are so you can go back and tell them."

"Look," Rob said. "I can understand how you feel, but my work here has
nothing to do with-"

"Are you deaf like the rest?" Hawks interrupted. He was bristling now,
fighting to control his anger. "I was educated at your schools, Mr.
Vern. I'm a well-educated man. I've studied your laws and I've perfected
your language, but it did me no good. Your laws do not apply to Indians,
and your language is wasted in an Indian's mouth because you refuse to
hear!" He came close to Rob, his face taut with rage. "Why is it you
refuse to hear!"

The words hit Rob at the wrong time. He was fed up.

"Perhaps you don't even hear what I'm saying now," Hawks goaded.

"Oh, I can hear," Rob shot back. "But I can also see. You're surprised
that people call you violent. . ."

"The violence you saw was provoked."

"By whom?"

"It was necessary."

"It was suicidal."

"Hawks's eyes bore into Rob's. "Tell me. For what you believe in, are
you willing to die?"

Rob backed off, unwilling to escalate any further. "Look, I'm here to
study the environment?"

"And what is your concept of the environment? I want to know. Is it
dirt? Is it trees? Rocks?"

"Come on, this is-"

"The environment is us!" Hawks declared. "It's what we're made of! It's
being torn and mangled, and so are we!"

"My people are sick, Mr. Vern," Romona said.

132

"Their minds are confused. They tremble and fall, and it has nothing to
do with alcohol, as the townspeople claim."

"Tell him," Hawks commanded.

"I've acted as midwife, Mr. Vern. I've seen the results of this chaos."

Rob looked from one to the other, unable to comprehend what they were
saying.

"Tell him all of it," Hawks said.

"Children born dead, Mr. Vern. Born deformed. So badly. . . ." She
faltered. "They must be put to death."

"What?"

"Children that look more like animals than men."

Rob was stunned. It was plain by the woman's intensity that she was
telling the truth. But he was unable to make any sense of it.

"We need help, Mr. Vern. Desperately. And no one will help us."

"The end of our forest is the end of our people," Hawks proclaimed. "So
don't talk about the 'environment' as though it had nothing to do with us!"

In the silence that followed, Rob saw Maggie approaching. As she came
close, she hesitated, sensing the tension in the air. Rob held out his
hand to her.

"These people want us to go with them, Maggie. There are things they
want to show us."

As they drove through the forest, Romona described to Rob the history
and details of the seizures, the stillbirths, and the deformed fetuses.
And she told of her own futile quest at the public library to find some
explanations. Maggie listened in silence, her heart going out to the
young Indian woman. She thanked God that the fetus within her own womb
was slumbering safely, and secretly, protected from the tragedies that
had befallen these people.

Rob questioned Romona with professional thoroughness, then revealed to
her that he was a doctor.

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It caused her to raise her hands to her eyes, concealing tears of
gratitude. Maggie reached out to touch her, but Romona withdrew. The gap
between their two worlds was too wide to be bridged with a single gesture.

"Have you done experiments with animals?" Hawks asked.

"Some."

"Of what sort?"

"Routine things. Drug effects."

"I've seen caged animals become sick and die. I've seen them turn sick
and abort their young. I've seen them become crazy and eat their young.
This is what happens to a natural creature when it discovers it's become
imprisoned."

"I've seen that, too. But it doesn't explain what you're describing.
Stress can play a big part, but it can't cause all this."

"My grandfather says that when men turn against the forest, the forest
turns against men. He says we will all suffer from this profanity."

They passed a fork in the road and Hawks touched Rob's arm. "Stop here."

"Why?" Romona asked.

"They'll never be back. I want them to see everything."

Rob pulled the car off the road and they all got out, following a narrow
footpath toward the encampment of Hector M'rai.

The trail was a gauntlet of thornbushes that tore into their clothing
and scratched their faces. A cloud of blackflies buzzed about their eyes
and whined in their ears; Hawks broke through spider webs as he led the
way. All of these things were indications to Rob that few people used
this trail.

A chilling thought came suddenly into Rob's mind. A glance at Maggie
told him that she was thinking the same. The Indians had been accused of
murder, and both Rob and Maggie had witnessed the violence that John
Hawks was capable of. They had allowed

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themselves to be brought deep into the forest, where they were defenseless.

"Where are we going?" Rob asked.

"Just ahead," Hawks replied.

Rob stopped.

"I want to know where we're going."

Hawks pointed ahead. "You can see."

Maggie took Rob's arm and they moved tentatively forward, stepping into
the sudden oasis of beauty, known to the Indians as M'ay-an-dan'ta. The
Garden of Eden. Three large tepees stood in a circular compound,
surrounding a large fire pit rimmed with stones. A line strung on poles
held drying animal skins; an elegant archer's bow leaned against a tree.
In the midst of this embattled forest, it was like an artist's rendering
of Early American history. An oasis where time stood still.

"It's . . . beautiful," Maggie whispered.

"What is this place?" asked Rob. "Is this the village?"

"No," Romona replied.

"It's all that's left of what we once were," Hawks said. "I wanted you
to see this before you see what we've become."

"My grandfather built it. To him, this place is sacred. He lets no one
come here."

Rob moved to the center of the encampment, gazing up at the trees. He
could feel the sense of peace that existed here. "I can see what you're
fighting for."

"We're not fighting to live in the past any more than you are," Hawks
replied. "We're fighting for our share of the present. We're fighting to
have the same choices that you have. We're fighting for everything that
you would fight for."

Rob accepted the words in silence. He recognized in John Hawks the same
kind of man that he himself was. The zeal was the same, the rhetoric was
the same, the frustration was the same. The only difference was that
John Hawks, as an Indian, was denied the right

135

to be angry. "What I meant to say was," Rob said softly, "that this
place is very beautiful."

Romona turned to one of the tents. "A'hns-pahni'-tah, M'rai?" she
called. "My grandfather is not well," she said to Rob. "He, too, has
suffered from the katahnas."

"Y'ahn'ta'tha?" a voice called back.

"A'han-pahni'tah Ki'ythi."

A tent flap pulled back, and M'rai emerged. He was dressed in buckskin,
but also wore a necktie, and his hair was slicked back in a way that
Romona had never seen it before.

"N'iyhn-tah?" Romona asked quizically.

"N'ahn-mohn'i'ka," the old man replied as he smiled.
"A'yah'al-mah'nitah." He moved with difficulty, pulling himself into an
erect posture, his head trembling slightly as he attempted to arch it
with dignity. His eyes turned to Maggie, and she returned his smile.

"He says he knew he had visitors coming," Romona translated.

"How did he know?" Maggie asked.

"M'rai knows such things," Romona replied. It was plain from the way
Romona looked at the old man how deeply affectionate she felt toward
him. Maggie, too, had an instant feeling for him. There was a gentleness
in his smile that made her feel as if she were being embraced.

"Would you tell him," Maggie asked, "that we're pleased to be here?"

"He speaks some English," Romona replied. "I taught him myself."

"Welcome," the old man said.

Rob, too, was captivated. But he was assessing the old man with a
professional eye. He saw that M'rai's eyes were dimmed with cataracts,
and that the knuckles of his fingers were scorched and burned, possibly
from cigarettes.

"These people are from the government," Romona said to M'rai. "We're
hoping they will help us."

136

"How many?" the old man asked.

"There are two of us, sir," Rob answered.

"Is that enough?"

Rob chuckled. "Well, we're working hard."

"That's good."

M'rai extended his hand toward Maggie, and she came forward.

"A soft woman," he said as he felt her hand.

"Too soft," Maggie replied.

"Just right."

"Your home is very beautiful," Rob said.

"Thank you."

"Don't mistake these tents for his home," Hawks interjected. "His home
is this whole forest."

"You know," Rob mused as he turned to Hawks, "I visited a place just one
week ago where eleven people were living in a single room."

"Yes?"

Rob sensed Hawks's defensive tone. "I just wanted you to know-"

"That we're asking too much?"

"That some people are fighting for a single inch of living space-"

"Because they fought too late!" Hawks declared. Then he grabbed up the
archer's bow, glaring into the forest.

"This camp is all as the old people did it," Romona said, trying to
restore calm. "M'rai is teaching us so someone here will remember. There
are underground tunnels beneath the frost line to store perishables . .
. one can move from one tent to the other without showing himself."

Hawks threaded an arrow into the archer's bow and angrily released it;
it hit with a resounding thud into the bark of a tree. "He taught me
this as well."

Romona was becoming visibly uneasy. She again tried to distract Hawks's
anger. "When he had his eyesight, M'rai was a great archer," she said.
"They say he could hit a hummingbird by the light of the moon."

137

"Is that right?" Rob replied.

"We have big hummingbirds," the old man said.

Rob laughed, but then realized that M'rai hadn't intended it to be funny.

"It's true," M'rai said. "Here, everything grows big. Very big. Bigger
than you can imagine."

"Well," Rob replied, "I did see a salmon that took my breath away."

"It is the Garden of Eden," M'rai said. "Would you like to see?"

"Yes."

"Come, then."

"Where?" Romona asked.

"The pond."

Romona reacted with disbelief. "You'd take them to the pond?"

"Yes."

"What's the pond?" Rob asked.

"No one is allowed at the pond," Romona replied. "Not even other
Indians. It's the private sanctuary of the oldest man in the tribe."

"I can do as I wish," M'rai said.

"Don't expect them to see what you see, old man," Hawks cautioned M'rai.

To this, M'rai smiled. "I expect nothing. That's why I see everything."

He moved into the forest and they all followed, traveling another narrow
foot trail, this one well-worn, which led to the secret lagoon. In all
the years that Romona had been with the old man, she had never walked
this trail. And she felt that it was wrong to do so now. She sensed they
were trespassing and knew that if M'rai was not losing control of his
faculties, he would never have allowed it to happen.

"No one has come here before," M'rai said as they walked. "No one who
has seen this is alive. Except me."

Hawks smiled to himself, recalling the time, as a boy, when he had
sneaked in here. He still remem-

138

bered his disappointment on finding that there was nothing unusual about it.

"One time some hippies came," the old man said, "to grow bad seeds."

"Marijuana," Hawks explained.

"But they were chased away before they saw anything," M'rai added.

"What is there to see?" Maggie asked.

The old man pointed into a clearing. They all stopped, absorbing the
wonder of what they saw there.

Nestled in the midst of towering trees was a still pond, a shimmering
circle of pale blue water, surrounded by lush foliage and twisting
vines. The trees were bent forward, as though paying homage, and the
leaves of the bushes were larger and greener here than anywhere else in
the forest. It was an though in this single spot it were midsummer
instead of spring. And the differences did not end there. As Rob walked
slowly forward, he noticed a profusion of fungus; every tree trunk was
covered with it, tendrils reaching out at odd angles into the air. And
there were mushroomlike growths attached to the bark of the trees; some
of them were the size of an elephant's ear.

Rob approached the water's edge and saw, through the shimmering pale
blue surface, images that were difficult to discern. They looked like
thick packages of logs that had been tied together and then apparently
sunk into the pond.

Hawks, too, was carefully assessing the environment. The pond was
different than when he had seen it as a boy. It did indeed have a
mystical feeling now. A near physical sensation that made him uneasy. He
walked to the water's edge and stood beside Rob, and saw that Rob's eyes
were troubled, as though searching for some kind of answer.

"It is like the Garden of Eden," Maggie whispered behind them. "It's
magical."

"We were once a magical people," M'rai said.

"It's true," Romona added on a hushed breath. "And this was the most
magical place of all." She

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walked slowly forward, overawed that she was actually standing here. She
turned to Maggie, wondering if she could possibly understand her
feeling. "This lagoon is the setting for many Indian legends."

"We heard about one of them," Maggie replied with a smile.

"Yes?"

"Katydid . . . dadin ... or something?"

"Katahdin," Romona corrected.

"Katahdin is no legend," the old man interjected.

M'rai's words caught Rob's attention. He glanced his way with troubled eyes.

"My grandfather is the oldest person in our tribe," Romona said with
embarrassment. "It is his duty to foster these beliefs."

"I've seen him," the old man protested. "Here on these very shores."

Hawks stepped forward to silence him. "This is what makes people think
the Indians are drunk, old man. Our legends are best kept to ourselves."

"He's real," M'rai implored.

"What does he look like?" Maggie asked.

"Are you humoring him?" Hawks snapped.

Maggie was taken aback. "No."

The old man turned to Maggie, calming her with his smile. "He is a part
of everything created," he said quietly. "From clay to man. And he bears
the mark of each of God's creatures." He spoke slowly and distinctly, as
though teaching a child. "When he sleeps he looks like a mountain. When
he stands, he is the size of a tree."

"You say that with affection," Maggie answered softly.

"He has awakened to protect us."

"Nothing will protect us," Hawks sneered. "They say we killed those
people. That will be their excuse for killing us."

"Mr. M'rai?" Rob called from the shoreline. "Are those logs in there?"

140

M'rai walked to the edge of the pond, his eyes straining to see where
Rob was pointing.

"There, toward the middle. Under the surface.."

"They come twice each year," the old man replied. "By magic. Then they
move into the lake."

"This pond leads into the lake?"

"Beyond the trees there. Water comes from the river and leads into the
lake."

Following the old man's gesture, Rob could make out a shimmering avenue
of water snaking through the distant trees. The pond was not
self-contained, as it appeared; it was a small pocket formed by an
offshoot of the river.

"Does the water have the same color over there?" Rob asked. "The same
light blue?"

"Coming in, it does not. Going out, it does."

"So this color begins here in the pond and then goes out into the lake."

"It disappears in the lake. It returns to dark blue. The color is from
the magic in the water. It is only here, in this secret place."

Rob exchanged a glance with Hawks. Hawks was beginning to get the message.

"Look!" Maggie called out. They all turned toward the water and saw a
V-shaped ripple, created by something swimming just beneath the surface.

"What is it?" Rob asked.

The old man turned to Hawks, gesturing as he spoke. "A'han'tka'Prodai
th'ay'andan'tah." He picked up a small hand net made of twigs that was
resting beside a tree. "N'hoan'thaiy'do'e," M'rai instructed.

"He says he will show you why he calls this place the Garden of Eden,"
Romona explained.

Hawks took the hand net and waded into the water, making a swipe at the
swimming creature, missing it.

"Stay there," M'rai said. "He must come up again."

At that moment Rob caught sight of an exposed root system at the base of
a tree. The roots had literally risen out of the ground, as though
seeking sustenance from the sky.

141

Maggie noticed his expression change. "What's wrong?"

"Those are feeder roots. They're supposed to be under the ground."

There was a splash from beside them; Hawks grunted with satisfaction,
wading to shore with a large object flapping in his net. He approached
them and dumped it out onto the ground. All stared down with revulsion
and shock.

"Is it a fish?" Maggie gasped.

"No."

Wriggling at their feet was the outsized form of a polywog. Its head was
lumpy and misshapen, and it was fully ten inches long. And there was
more wrong with it still. One of its eyes protruded bul-bously from the
socket, as though forced out by some pressure from behind, and one of
its partially developed legs was much longer than the other, almost as
long as the tail.

The old man surveyed their faces and smiled. "I told you, things grow
big here," he said.

Rob quickly looked up and riveted into Hawks's eyes. "You've seen this
before?" he asked.

"No."

"No one has seen them," M'rai said proudly. "They are only in this pond."

Rob was shaken. It had all come together. The sunken logs, the
coloration of the water, the profusion of fungus . . .

"This pond feeds into the lake?"

"Yes."

"And it comes from the Espee River?"

"Yes."

"And that's where the paper mill is?"

"Yes."

Rob's fists clenched. He paced quickly, then stopped, addressing the old
man.

"Don't eat anything from this water. Don't eat anything from this
ground." His voice was trembling. "Don't eat anything from here."

142

"Why?" the old man asked.

"This ground is poisoned. This water is poisoned."

The old man was shocked. Then he suddenly laughed. It was beyond his
understanding.

"How far is the paper mill?" Rob demanded.

"Three miles upriver," Hawks answered. "It's best to go by boat."

"Wait here for us," Rob ordered.

"What about the village?" Romona asked.

"I'm going to the paper mill first," Rob seethed. He turned on his heel,
heading for the trail.

"Mr. Vern," Hawks called after him. "I'm in danger in this forest
tonight. I can't stay here."

"Where can I find you?"

"Your cabin at sunup."

The point where the Espee River entered Mary's Lake was easy to find. It
was a wide avenue of churning water, lined with salmon nets that were
strung across the mouth of it on poles.

As Rob sat at the motor of their outboard boat, he glared straight
ahead, too angry to speak. He knew from the massive amount of reading he
had done that there were certain life forms that were extremely
susceptible to chemical change. The most susceptible were those that
went through two or more stages before they reached the adult form, such
as salamanders and frogs. He remembered specifically of reading about a
pond in New Jersey that had produced six-legged frogs after the trees
around it had been sprayed with a chemical pesticide called Deldrin.
There were no pesticides being used here in the Manatee forest; it was
all too obvious that toxic chemicals were being used by the lumber
company. The aberrated color of the foliation around M'rai's pond, the
exposed root system, and the deformed polywog were all clear barometers
of a dangerously toxic environment.

As their small boat cut through the churning water,

143

the roar of industry began to fill the air. The river separated into two
channels; Rob followed the narrower of the two, guided by the growing
sound. It led to a bend where the landscape suddenly changed. The
surface of the water became oil-slicked and pockmarked with Pepsi cans
and the belly-up bodies of dead fish; the huge edifice of the Pitney
Paper Mill loomed like a giant, its smokestack spouting brown fumes that
muted the sun. The shoreline was littered with tree stumps; huge
tractors hauled logs across ground that had been mulched to mud. And
there was an overwhelming stench in the air.

Rob and Maggie found each other's eyes, their disgust expressed in
silence. The outboard motor began to groan and Rob realized that the
water had suddenly become shallow. The waterway had narrowed to a single
avenue directly down the middle of the river, flanked by mountains of
sludge that had accumulated on either side. In fact, there was no way to
get the boat to shore.

"Over there!" a voice called from the shoreline. Rob looked up and saw a
group of lumberjacks waving him in a direction upriver toward the far
side of the factory. But it was too late. The stern of his boat hit a
silt drift and the motor quit on him. He was stuck a good fifteen feet
from the shore.

"Got a rope?" a lumberjack shouted.

Rob had a docking rope, but it was too short.

"Won't reach!" he called back.

"Hang on!" Rob and Maggie waited as the man ran to a truck and returned
with a long coil of rope, which he threw out to them. Rob tied it to the
bow; four men on the shore pulled the boat across the silt until they
could pull it no farther.

"I'm looking for Mr. Isely," Rob said.

"His office is upstairs."

"Can you get me any closer here?"

"You'll have to wade. But watch it; you can really sink into this stuff."

Rob took Maggie's hand and they eased over the

144

side, sinking almost knee-deep into the mud. Two of the lumberjacks
waded in to help them, one of them lifting Maggie onto the shore.

"You want Mr. Isely?"

"Yes," Rob replied as he climbed to the shore.

"This way."

Rob and Maggie followed the men toward the factory, the noise growing
louder as they approached. Just outside the doors, they were stopped by
a uniformed guard who phoned upstairs to get permission for them to proceed.

"Name?"

"Robert Vern."

The guard repeated the name into the phone, then nodded, handing each of
them a set of earphones and a hard hat.

"There's a self-service elevator just inside the door. Take it up to four."

As Rob and Maggie entered the building, a barrage of heat and noise
overwhelmed them. It was like a huge warehouse, filled with gargantuan,
roaring machines that dwarfed their human masters. Men could barely be
seen within the maze of twisting tubes and gleaming tanks that shot
steam and glowed with heat as they processed crude timber. The
temperature was easily a hundred degrees; Maggie was struck with nausea
as they waited for the freight elevator to arrive.

"You okay?"

She nodded. "How do people work in here?"

The elevator arrived and they stepped in, the doors clanging shut around
them. As they ascended, their eyes fell upon a row of gas masks. A sign
beneath them read: "Use in the event of warning bell. Proceed
immediately to the outside."

The elevator jolted to a stop and the doors opened, revealing Bethel
Isely. He was dressed in a suit and tie, wearing a hard hat and a
genuinely welcoming smile.

"You can take the earphones off!" he shouted as

145

he extended his hand to them. "It's nice and quiet up here!" Then he
took them to his office where a secretary offered coffee. Both Rob and
Maggie refused; Rob was eager to survey the plant.

"I want to know how everything works here," Rob said firmly. "From start
to finish. I want to know about the entire procedure."

"No problem. It's real simple. You want to follow me?"

The tour began on the roof of the factory, where they stood at a
handrailing, gazing down at stacks of cut timber piled as high as
mountains. Men below fed the timber into a conveyor belt that ran up the
side of the building, bringing the short sections of barkless logs onto
the roof, where they splashed into a tank of water, then floated across
the length of the roof in an artificial stream.

"This stream is called the flume," Isely explained as they walked along
the length of it. "All the wood that's unfit for lumberyards is cut into
four-foot sections and fed down this channel toward the grinding
machines. We use stone grinders to turn the logs into pulp. Once we've
got pulp, we bleach it so the color will turn from brown to white. Then
we press the pulp into paper. That's really all there is to it. It's a
very simple process and a very conventional industry. With the exception
of volume, it's no different today than it was sixty years ago."

"What is the volume?"

"At the moment?"

"Peak capacity. How many logs can you process in a day?"

"Five acres, maybe."

The answer fairly knocked the wind out of Rob; Isely was quick to
lighten the blow. "That's if we wanted to rush. But we're in no hurry.."

"How long in terms of a single tree? How long does it take for it to
turn into paper?"

Isely could see that Rob was upset. "I never timed it."

146

"An estimate."

"You know, the primary goal of any industry is to be efficient . . ."

"You must know, then."

"What I'm trying to say is, it's something we're proud of."

"I asked you a simple question."

"Ten minutes."

Rob was staggered. The trees that were being fed down this stream toward
the grinders had been standing on the earth for perhaps ten centuries.
Now, within ten minutes they would be rendered into a condition where
they could be written on, or wrapped around something, or used for
someone to blow their nose on and then thrown into a trash basket. Man's
powers to undo were mind-boggling.

"I want to see the rest of it," Rob demanded. "All of it."

"You can see whatever you like. We've got nothing to hide."

Rob took Maggie's hand and they descended a narrow metal stairwell to
the third floor, where massive grinding machines chewed the logs into
pulp. The noise level was thunderous. Isely had to shout directly into
Rob's ear to be heard.

"The logs are crushed mechanically in there! No chemicals! We break them
down with heavy stones!"

"Then you bleach it?"

"What?"

"Do you bleach it next?"

"We bleach it!"

"I want to see!"

They descended another stairwell to the second floor, where the dark
brown pulp spilled into steaming vats and emerged on a conveyor belt,
its color transformed to white. It was from here that the acrid stench
emanated; the air was barely breatheable. Maggie held her hand over her
nose and mouth; she was beginning to feel woozy again.

147

"You all right, Mrs. Vern? You can sit over there by the door."

Maggie nodded gratefully and went to a fire exit, where she sat on the
stairs and gasped for breath. Rob watched her for a long moment and
determined that she was all right. Then he turned back to Isely.

"Why do you bleach it?" Rob shouted over the din.

"With the exception of grocery bags, no one likes paper that isn't
white. Don't ask me why. Just a quirk that people have. I wish they
didn't. It would save us a lot of money."

"What do you bleach it with?"

"Chlorine. But it stays right here in the plant. It's a hazard for us,
because the chlorine can turn into gas. It would be a lot safer for us
if we could pump it out into the water, but we know it would play hell
with the environment. And the last thing we want to do is disturb the
environment."

"It doesn't go into the water?"

"Not a drop. It's easy to test for. You're welcome to test the water. We
do nothing here that isn't recommended by the EPA. We follow your rules
religiously."

"I want to see more."

"This way."

Maggie followed as they descended the last stairwell down to the main
floor, where they had initially entered. The heat level was more intense
here than anywhere else in the factory. It was here that the white pulp
was put into pressers that looked like steamrollers, and emerged as a
huge, continuous sheet of paper.

"That's the whole of it!" Isely said. "Once the pulp gets down here,
it's pressed into sheets and dried into paper."

"How does it turn into paper?"

"The pulp is fibrous. When it's pressed, the fibers entwine, creating a
solid."

Rob looked around at the huge machines, his face

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betraying frustration. "And the only chemical you use here is chlorine?"

"Yes. No, excuse me. There's a caustic agent mixed with the chlorine.
It's biodegradable, recommended by the EPA, and stays with the chlorine.
It does not go into the watershed."

"Just as clean as a whistle, huh?"

"Beg pardon?"

Rob turned to him, assessing him with a wary eye.

"Something wrong?" Isely asked.

"What happens to the logs before they get here?"

There was something in Rob's voice that alerted Isely. It was more an
accusation than a question.

"They get floated down the river to the plant."

"That's it? You just float them directly to the plant?"

"That's right."

"You don't hold them anywhere? They don't stop anywhere along the line?"

"Sometimes. If we get stacked up . . ."

"Where do they stop?"

"They normally don't:'

"But sometimes they do. Isn't that what you just said?"

"Yes."

"Where do you hold them?"

"Various places."

"Ponds? Do you hold them in ponds?"

"Probably. It softens them up to soak them."

"So soaking is part of the process."

"They get soaked coming down the river."

"But extra soaking is more desirable."

Isely was beginning to take offense at the interrogation. "As a matter
of fact, it's not. If they soak too long, they sink and get algae on
them, and the algae goes into the pulp."

"All right, let's back up a minute."

"What is this? The third degree?"

"I'm just asking you some questions."

"I'm happy to answer your questions."

149

"I'm glad to hear that, because I have a few more."

Maggie looked at Rob in an effort to calm him. She was becoming uneasy
with his anger.

"You say that 'sometimes' the logs are held in ponds?" Rob challenged.

"Yes. When we've got too much surplus to process."

"I saw mountains of cut logs out there. Would you say you have a surplus
right now?"

"Yes."

"And how often is that the case?"

Isely didn't respond.

"This is easy for me to find out," Rob warned.

"What are you getting at?"

"How often do you have too much surplus?"

"Fairly often."

"Maybe all the time?"

"I don't know."

"But more than occasionally."

Isely was beginning to bristle. "I don't know."

"Aren't you in charge here?"

"I'm in charge here, but I don't know everything."

"It's your job to know everything!"

Isely leveled his eyes into Rob's. "I'm new to this, Mr. Vern. Just like
you are."

Rob stiffened with anger; Maggie touched his arm to calm him.

"Do you soak the logs in chemicals?" Rob demanded.

"Not to my knowledge."

"What does that mean?"

"You're out of my area on this. The transport is handled by a private
contractor. We have no jurisdiction over what he does."

"I asked you a question!"

"And I answered it!"

"You are responsible for whatever effluent comes out of this process!"
Rob shouted. "You hire the contractor, you sell the product, you are
accountable for whatever goes on here!" He pushed his face close to

150

Isely's. "Now, I want to know what chemicals you're using."

"I want to ask you something!" Isely shouted back. "How many pages in
that report you're going to write?"

"Answer my question!"

"How many pages? A hundred? A thousand? And how many copies? Five
hundred, maybe?"

"I want to know what chemicals you're using!"

"We're talking about five hundred thousand sheets of paper just for your
report. Am I far off?"

"I asked you-"

"And how many sheets in the rest of the filing cabinets in Washington?"

"You're not answering-"

"I am answering. I supply, and you demand! You're responsible, too!
Unless you want to start filling your filing cabinets with rocks, and
wiping your nose with cactus-"

"What chemicals are the logs soaked in?" Rob shouted over him.

"None!" Isely snapped.

"I don't believe you."

"Then test the water!" Isely raged. "That's what we do! If the logs were
soaked in chemicals, it would squeeze out in the pulping process right
into the watershed in front of this plant!" He was fuming; his face
reddened with anger. "We take samples out there every tenth day, and
there's not a damn thing floating in that water that we don't know
about, and that isn't perfectly safe for this environment!"

"Why are there dead fish out there?"

"If you knew more about your work, Mr. Vera, you'd know the answer to
that! The water's overused in this section of the river. There's not
enough oxygen to support aquatic life within a half-mile radius, and
that's perfectly acceptable to the EPA and has no effect on the rest of
the water. And it has nothing to do with chemicals."

151

151

The tirade silenced Rob. It was plain that Isely knew what he was
talking about.

"Do you know how to test water, 'Dr.' Vern?"

"I know how to test water."

"Then test it! We've got nothing to hide!"

Isely turned on his heel and entered the freight elevator, the doors
clanging shut on his angry scowl. Rob sagged with fatigue and took
Maggie's hand; they exited into the cool outdoors.

Outside the factory, the muted sun was hovering low against the horizon.
Rob and Maggie walked to their boat in silence, wading into the deep mud
and crawling with effort over its side. Rob used an oar to push the boat
out of the silt drift and into the narrow channel, then started the
motor and headed back down the river. Within minutes they had reached
the mouth of the Espee River, where it spilled into Mary's Lake. Rob
noticed the body of a dead beaver tangled in one of the nets.

The sun was beginning to set; the bats had come out to feed on the
profusion of insects given birth by the rain. They dove and swooped
against an orange-streaked sky as silently as butterflies in a field of
flowers.

The irony of this land was that it looked so unconquerable. Regardless
of what havoc was churning beneath the surface, it maintained a calm and
implacable face. It was the sum of all of its parts and had a kind of
collective courage; all the more difficult to dissect because everything
was so inextricably entwined.

As their small boat cut across the calm surface of the lake toward the
island, they sat in silence, inhaling the tranquilizing fragrance of
pine trees. In the heat and noise of the paper mill, Maggie had
experienced a stirring in her stomach that was unlike any feeling she
had ever had before. It felt like movement. But not the kind of pleasant
movement she had heard described by other pregnant women. It felt sharp
and rebellious, as though her insides were in conflict. It was subsiding

152

now, the tonic of fresh air and quiet soothing her nerves.

From her position in the stern of the boat, she turned and faced Rob,
noting the despair in his eyes. She knew he was unaccustomed to defeat,
and she wished there were some way she could help him.

"Isn't it possible that tadpoles can sometimes grow big?" she asked meekly.

"The roots were coming out of the ground, Maggie. The foliage there was
different from anywhere else in the forest. The color of the water was
wrong."

"Does it have to be from the lumber mill? Couldn't it be something else?"

He shook his head in despair. "I don't know."

Maggie noticed that her boots were covered with a thick layer of
grayish-brown ooze. It had gone all the way to her boot-tops and leaked
down to her toes. She dug her fingers into the narrow space at her boot
top and grimaced at how slimy the mud felt as she rolled it between her
fingers. "Ick." Then she washed it off her hand by trailing it in the
water. She repeated the motion, scraping mud, then washing her hand,
ritualizing it with a kind of unconscious rhythm.

"I believe him," she said as she continued scraping the mud away.
"Isely, I mean."

"Why?"

"I don't know. He makes too many mistakes to be a liar."

"Makes too many mistakes to be a good liar."

"I don't think he was lying."

As Rob watched her cleaning the mud from her boots, he began to take an
interest. As the grayish-brown slime trailed off her hand into the
water, he detected glints of reflection in it, as though it contained
tiny grains of something metallic.

"Besides," Maggie continued, "if he were lying, how could he have
offered to let you test the water? I mean, if there were something in
it. How could he let you test the water?"

Rob's eyes traveled to Maggie's boots as she scraped

153

away more mud, and he saw there, with chilling certainty, a faint streak
of silver in the imprint left by her fingers. His expression suddenly
went cold.

"Maybe it wasn't in the water," he answered.

Maggie caught his tone and quickly looked up at him.

"Maybe it was heavier than that," he said.

The look on his face frightened her. "What do you mean?"

"Look at your boots."

She did, and saw what he saw. She pulled a large clod of mud from the
instep of her boot and separated it in her hands, uncovering a tiny
nugget of a soft, metallic substance.

"It looks like silver," she said. "It looks like a filling from a tooth
or something."

"Is it soft?"

She squeezed it. "Yes."

"Silver is hard."

"What is it, then?"

"Wipe your hands and touch it."

She quickly dried her free hand on her wool scarf, then delicately
touched the puttylike blob.

"Is it dry?"

"Yes," she answered with amazement.

Rob's face hardened with anger. But there was triumph in his expression,
too.

"What is it?" Maggie repeated.

"They used to give us a trick question in medical school. I remember it
because I got it wrong."

"What was it?"

"What's the only liquid that isn't wet?"

"What's the answer?"

Rob's face was flushed with excitement. He now had something to go on.

"Mercury."

154

154

10

As the night creatures foraged beneath gentle moonlight in Manatee
Forest, Robert Vern toiled intensely within his cabin, his face
illuminated in an island of harsh white light from a kerosene lantern
that stood on the kitchen table beside him. The thick stack of books
that Victor Shusette had given him were slowly and grudgingly giving up
their answers. For five continuous hours Rob had devoured one text after
the other, feverishly jotting notes and checking cross-references, until
now, at one o'clock in the morning, the enormity of what he had
discovered began to take hold.

Maggie was in the loft, asleep; the pin-drop silence within the cabin
accentuated the awesome clarity with which the discovery was unfolding.

An index at the back of a book on industrial poisons had supplied over a
hundred symbols for chemical compounds containing mercury that were used
in industry. One by one, Rob had set about narrowing them down. His own
knowledge of chemistry was both an asset and a liability. Though it
enabled him to understand the language, it prevented him from taking the
direct route that someone more naive might have taken.

He knew that for a chemical to have such a profound effect on living
organisms, the chemical itself had to contain living organisms. He
therefore dismissed the laboratory-created synthetics and concen-

155

trated on the biochemicals-the living cultures, made from mold, viruses
and bacteria. But two hours of searching ended in frustration. After
tracing each one of them down, he found that their uses were primarily
pharmaceutical and agricultural. None of them had any possible
application to the lumber industry.

Starting fresh, he began to work with the synthetics, the jViorganic
chemical compounds, more commonly used in industry: the caustics and
antiseptics used for hygenic purposes and to keep machinery parts clean.
One among them began to stand out. It was called PMT. It was used for
vegetation control, to keep algae from forming on machines such as oil
rigs and sewer pumps that had to function under water. Rob recalled
Isely's telling him that if the logs soaked in water for too long, aglae
formed on them, and this was undesirable. It was possible that they were
using this or a similar compound in the ponds where they soaked their
surplus logs, to keep them clean.

But it still didn't make perfect sense. PMT was not organic. It was
synthetic. Inorganic. Inorganic substances could only cause external
harm, that of pollution. What Rob was looking for was something that
could cause internal, biological chaos. He was looking for an organic
substance.

Turning to a book on chemical analysis, he broke down the elements of
PMT, and in so doing, found the key. PMT was the symbol for inorganic
methyl-mercury. The "methyl" stood for methyl-nitrate. Methyl-nitrate,
when ingested by a living organism, could turn organically viable as it
was absorbed into the body. In other words, inorganic methyl-mercury
could become an organic substance, the kind he was looking for.

Rob quickly drew a diagram to fix in his mind how the chemical
chain-reaction worked. PMT is spilled into the water. The microscopic
grains of mercury within it act like magnets with each other, each grain
slowly finding another and collecting into small balls.

156

The same magnetic attraction that draws the mercury together also
collects plankton, the microscopic vegetable components of algae.
Instead of fixing itself to the submerged logs, the algae grows on the
small balls of mercury, which become heavy as they grow larger and sink
down to the mud. The tadpoles, the minnows, the aquatic insects that eat
algae, consume the green furry balls of mercury, and, as it goes through
their bodies, it becomes organic. Those smaller creatures are eaten by
larger ones. The concentration of methyl-mercury begins to escalate as
it travels up the food chain. A single minnow will carry a minuscule
amount of toxin in his body, a salmon will eat a thousand minnows. A
bear with eat a thousand salmon. By the time the mercury has reached the
top level of the food chain, the creatures that have ingested it are
filled with toxin. Their waste products go into the ground, fertilizing
the foliage that is eaten by the herbivores: the deer, the rabbits, the
mice, the vermin. The entire environment becomes toxic.

But this was not all that Robert Vern was to discover on this night. He
turned, finally, to a book called Legal Precedent with Regard to
Industrial Decisions, which detailed case histories of the most
catastrophic industrial accidents of the technological age. Listed in
the table of contents was something called "MMT." The symbol was
different from PMT, but he quickly determined that the difference was
only semantic, reflecting a change in the language of chemistry over the
last twenty years. MMT and PMT were one and the same. Inorganic
methyl-mercury.

What Rob found within the pages of this book made his blood run cold.
The chapter on MMT was a detailed account, with photographs, of the most
devastating industrial accident known to man. The pictures looked as if
they might have been taken in a war zone: hospital photographs of maimed
and disfigured people, deformed children, old men with glazed eyes and
demented smiles. They were photographs taken in 1956, in Minamata,
Japan. In that year, in

157 PROPHECY157

that place, an entire community of one hundred thousand people had
become diseased and disfigured and had died from methyl-mercury
poisoning. A paper mill on the shores of Lake Minamata had been pumping
methyl-mercury for fifty years into a watershed that was used as a
source of drinking water for the entire population. Not one man, woman,
or child had escaped its distastrous effects. When the symptoms first
became evident, it had been called the "Drunk Sickness" or the "Grinning
Sickness" or the "Cat Sickness," so named because the population of pet
cats, who ate only fish from the lake, were the first of the animal
species to go insane and die.

It was discovered then and there that inorganic methyl-mercury, when
converted by the digestive process to organic methyl-mercury, became a
neurotoxin and a mutagen. As a neurotoxin, it attacked the brain cells,
causing loss of sensation, disorientation, eventually paralysis and
death. As a mutagen, it attacked the developing fetus. Unlike any other
mutagen known to man, it had the capability of jumping the placental
barrier, traveling through the blood-purifying organ which normally
protected a developing fetus from impurities and poisons ingested by
it's mother. PMT actually concentrated in the fetal blood cells; a
thirty-percent-higher concentration than in the blood cells of the
mother. After extensive laboratory tests, methyl-mercury had been
pronounced by scientists the most potent toxin to come of the post-World
War II age. Its wide-scale use in industry was forever after outlawed by
the World Court in The Hague, Holland.

The last page in the chapter was eloquent testimony to the power of PMT.
It was a full-page photograph of a woman, crippled and bent, carrying in
her arms, the body of a disfigured child.

Robert Vern closed the book and sat immobile in the silence of his
cabin. He was too overwhelmed to move; numbed by the proportions of what
he had uncovered. He struggled in his mind to get a grip on it, to
somehow lock in the last pieces of understanding.

158

The poison in Minamata had had fifty years to accumulate. Here, in the
Manatee forest, the paper mill had been operating only for twenty.

Perhaps it could be stopped before it was too late. The unknown factor
was the strength of the chemical used in Minamata compared with that
used here. It was possible that fifty years could be shortened to half
that time, if the strength of the chemical were doubled.

The last question that formulated in Rob's mind was one that began to
stir his emotions. How could they be using it here? How could they? Was
it possible that they were ignorant of its effects? Was it possible that
the change in chemical language that now labeled it PMT instead of MMT,
made them think that it was not the same? Or did it give them an excuse,
a reason to plead innocence.

How could they? his inner voice repeated. How COULD they? In a sudden
explosion of rage, Rob smashed his fist down on the table, causing
everything on it to jump. He rose quickly and threw open the cabin door,
stalking out into the night. There he stood with fists clenched, gazing
helplessly at the stars.

"Rob . . . ?"

He turned and saw Maggie descending from the loft in her nightgown. Her
eyes were frightened as she came and stood in the open doorway.

"What is it?" she whispered.

"Inorganic methyl-mercury," Rob said on a trembling breath. "PMT. It's a
de-sliming agent. It collects algae and keeps it off the logs. That's
what they soak the logs in."

He could see that she did not understand. "It's a neurotoxin. In 1956 it
wiped out a community of a hundred thousand people in Minamata, Japan."

Maggie absorbed his words with confusion. "Why would they use it here?"

"Because it's cheap and effective. Isn't that what Isely said? They're
proud of their efficiency?" Rob was beginning to tremble with rage.

159

"You're sure of this?"

"The Indians eat the fish and behave like they're drunk when they
haven't had a drop of liquor. Isn't that what Hawks said? People think
the Indians are drunk? 'My people are fishermen.'-isn't that what he
said? In Minamata it was called the drunk sickness!" With his breathing
accelerating, Rob began to pace, frustrated that there was no outlet for
his rage. "A raccoon turns vicious and dies, its brain has turned to
mush! A cat, the same! The forest ranger's cat that ate fish? He told us
that! And that old man. That Indian. Did you see the burns on his fingers?"

"That's from mercury?"

"It's from cigarettes! The reason he didn't feel it is mercury. He has
no feeling in his hands! He eats what comes out of that pond! It's a
chemical-soaking pond! That's why there was a tadpole the size of what a
frog should be!"

"The mercury did that?"

"The mercury did that! It's a mutagen! And for twenty years it's been
spilling into this water!"

"A mutagen . . ."

"It's a disaster, Maggie!!"

Maggie moved onto the porch, her expression becoming fearful as she
watched Rob pace in front of her. "You man ... it mutates . . . ?"

"It mutates. And how, it mutates. It's the only mutagen that jumps the
placental barrier. It concentrates in the fetal blood cells thirty
percent higher than-"

"Rob," she said softly, "I want to understand this . . ."

"You want to understand it? J want to understand it! I want to know why
the hell it's being used here!"

"It's in the fish. Is that it?"

"Anything that eats the plankton. Anything that eats the algae. Anything
that eats anything that eats the algae! That means everything!"

Maggie tried to keep her voice calm and not betray

160

er fear. "What does it mean . . . jumps the placental barrier?"

"It adheres to the chromosomes just like it adheres to the algae-"

"I'm not understanding you. What does it mean?"

"Freakism!" he shouted. "Freakism!"

Maggie recoiled, as though hit with a body blow.

"That's what's going on out there!" Rob raged. "That's why there was a
goddamn salmon five feet long! You thought I didn't see it? I saw it!
Why the hell didn't I know?"

Maggie felt a sudden pang of nausea and closed her eyes, trying to keep
herself from crumbling.

"And stillbirths!"

"What?" Maggie gasped.

"That's what that Indian woman said. Stillbirths. And deformed children.
Grotesquely deformed children. Children that looked like animals, she
said! And God knows what else is going on out there!"

Maggie felt herself trembling in every fiber, her mind beginning to
spin. But she clung hard to reality, needing to be strong, needing to
know more. "So if a pregnant . . . animal ate the fish it could . . ."

"It would."

She shuddered and Rob turned, seeing the fear in her eyes. It hit him
like a thunderbolt. "My God."

"Rob?"

"Is it possible?"

"Yes."

Their eyes locked in terror. But their terror was not the same.

"The size of a dragon," Rob whispered.

"What?"

"That poem. The forest ranger. The size of a dragon. Isn't that what it
said?"

Maggie stood in a daze. But Rob was unaware of her torment, swept up in
his own.

"And that old man. That Indian. Didn't he describe that creature as
being a part of 'everything in God's creation'? Isn't that what he said?"

161

Maggie eased herself down on trembling legs and sat on the porch stairs.

"The eyes of a cat," Rob hissed. "That's what Isely said at the airport."

Maggie lowered her head into her hands. The words kept coming and she
was powerless to stop them.

"Listen to me, Maggie," he whispered intensely, "listen to me."

But she was trying to shut it out.

"A developing fetus goes through certain, distinct phases. Each phase
represents a specific stage of evolution. A human fetus. At one stage,
it's like a fish. It his fins and gills. At another, it looks feline.
The face looks like a cat. It develops upward in the shapes and phases
of the evolutionary scale."

Maggie's eyes were glazed. The words that fell on her ears echoed as
though coming from a great distance.

"This chemical, clings to the DNA. DNA is a chromosomal fixative. It
could 'freeze' certain parts at one evolutionary stage, while other
parts continue growing." He paused. "Are you listening?"

"Yes," she responded numbly.

"A pregnant animal-a bear, maybe, ingests the fish . . . and it corrupts
the fetus to the point where it gives birth to a monst-" He turned to
Maggie, who sat unreacting, with deadened eyes. "Maggie?"

"Yes?" she whispered.

Rob gazed into the night, finding it hard to believe the words that he
was about to utter. "There could be a monster out there. A literal monster."

In the silence that followed, a loon began its unearthly cry. It echoed
across the darkened lake, filling the entire forest with its wail.

"How much fish, Rob," Maggie uttered haltingly, "would it take ... to
give birth to a ... ?"

"It concentrates in the fetal blood cells."

"How . . . much?"

"Very little."

162

Maggie knew she was going to vomit. She rose and started for the cabin.

"I'll need proof," Rob said in a deadened tone as he glared toward the lake.

"You're not sure?"

"I'll have to take blood samples. My first priority is the people."

She turned to him, fighting down the nausea long enough to get her
question out. "How long? Before you'll know for sure?"

"If they have a laboratory at the hospital here . . . tomorrow."

Maggie entered the cabin, closing the door behind her. Rob remained
outside, listening to the demented call of the loon.

As Travis Nelson lay beside his campfire reading, he, too, heard the
call of the loon. Checking his watch, he noted that it was too early for
the loons to call. He smiled to himself as he listened, wondering what
had prompted it to waken so early. Perhaps it had responsibilities on
this night, as he did.

The three-day rains had severely hampered his and his family's progress
to the waterfall. They were waiting until the ground was dry before they
attempted the uphill climb. It had been an exciting idea to the children
to scale a mountain and camp out by a roaring waterfall; to assuage
their disappointment, Travis had suggested that they explore the shores
of the lake and learn survival techniques on the way. After walking all
day, they had found themselves at a remote offshoot of the Espee River,
one of three outlets where the rushing water found its way down from the
mountains and merged with the lake. It was a sheltered area, surrounded
by high cliffs, a natural inlet, listed on the Forest Service Map as
Mary's Bend. They had walked a quarter mile upriver and pitched camp in
the trees where they could hear the sound of the rushing water. Travis
had noted several beaver traps and

163

salmon nets along the way, and he had dismantled most of them. The
Forest Service Map listed this area as "protected." It was a spawning
ground; there was no hunting or fishing allowed here. The nets were set
by poachers, probably Indians, who did not heed the boundaries and
limits set by those whom they considered outsiders.

The nets and traps did, however, give Travis the opportunity to teach
his children a lesson on primitive hunting techniques. It had led to a
conversation, as night fell and they sat around their campfire, of what
it must be like to have to rely on one's own courage and resources to
survive in a primitive environment. The children had dared each other to
face the night alone; Travis and his wife, Jeanine, had watched with
amusement as the challenge escalated to a point where neither of the
children was willing to back down. They had each taken their sleeping
bags and a flashlight and moved off separately into the trees to prove
that they had the courage to do it.

Travis had expected them to return within minutes. When they didn't, he
went looking for them. To his relief he found that they were no more
than a hundred yards away, and they had decided to camp out together. He
built them a fire, which they promised to maintain during the night to
discourage any wandering bears; then they bedded down, side by side.
Paul had zipped his sleeping bag up over his head, as was his custom, to
keep the mosquitoes away; Kathleen opted for a liberal dousing of insect
repellent all over her face so she could breathe the cool night air.

Travis had returned to his own campsite and then, at his wife's urging,
gone back to check on the children at midnight. He found that all was
peaceful. The fire was still going; Kathleen's alarm clock was on the
ground beside her, set for 2:00 A.M., no doubt to awaken her for the
purpose of refueling the fire.

Travis had lingered there, moved by the sight of his two children asleep
beside their campfire in the darkened wilderness. They were at once
vulnerable and

164

courageous, beautiful in their innocence, endearing in their effort to
prove that they were brave. The everyday problems and frustrations of
raising children were, for this moment, washed away. It was a scene of
unparalleled peacefulness, and he wanted to remember it.

An owl hooted from the trees above, and Travis saw Paul stir, pulling
the zipper down to nose level and peering out into the night. His eyes
slowly closed again, then he returned to slumber.

Travis stayed as long as he dared without causing Jeanine any concern.
Then he returned to his own encampment a hundred yards away. His wife,
too, had fallen asleep. Curled in her sleeping bag, she looked every bit
as vulnerable and beautiful as the children did. There was something
very special to Travis about being awake in this environment while his
loved ones were asleep. It made him realize how much they depended on
him for protection; how safe they felt in closing their eyes, even in
unfamiliar surroundings, when they knew he was there to defend them. The
feeling of self-worth was so delicious that he was unwilling to give way
to slumber. He remained awake, reading a book of poetry by Thoreau that
he had always loved.

At 2:00 a.m. he heard Kathleen's alarm clock sound. It ran clear to the
end without being turned off. Then he heard the sound of movement
through the trees, and felt satisfied that she had awakened to fuel the
fire. She was the responsible one, Paul was the impulsive one. They were
good for each other, and Travis hoped they would always be close friends.

He closed his book and rolled onto his back, gazing into the heavens. He
had never in his life seen so many stars. He started counting them as he
listened to the sound of Kathleen rummaging among the trees in search of
dry twigs.

As she lay in her sleeping bag, twelve-year-old Kathleen also heard the
sound in the trees. She had been awakened bv the alarm clock but felt so
snug in her sleeping bag that she didn't want to reach

165

out into the chill night air to turn it off. She had let it dwindle to
silence, then debated the relative merits of remaining warm and snug or
getting up to refuel the fire. Paul was asleep beside her, bis nose
protruding from the narrow opening at the top of his sleeping bag. There
was a mosquito on his nose; she reached out to wave it away. Paul
responded with a snort, then rolled over, away from her, and began to
snore. The sound irritated her; she knew she'd have to awaken him. But
just as she was about to, she heard the sound in the trees. It was a
heavy, crunching sound, as though something large were moving toward her.

"Daddy?"

In response, the sound stopped. The crickets stopped, too, the entire
environment falling into a vacuum. Then the sound came again. It was
barely audible this time, a rustle of leaves as though something heavy
had shifted weight in the foliage just beyond the glow of the campfire.

"Daddy?" she whispered.

The atmosphere returned to pin-drop silence. Kathleen forced her eyes in
the direction of the trees. It was a wall of darkness. But she could
hear something breathing in there. And she could smell it. An odor of
dampness, like a basement after a rain. Feeling herself begin to
tremble, she looked at the smoldering fire. It had gotten too low to
discourage the bears. She wanted to cry out to her father, but when she
opened her mouth, no sound would come. She struggled with her shuddering
breath to form words, but they came only as a whisper.

"Daddy . . . ?"

Then the sound moved closer. She could feel it now as well as hear it;
the ground vibrated beneath her as the lurking presence came into the
clearing and hovered near.

Kathleen began to whimper and closed her eyes, her silent tears tracing
a path toward the ground. "Don't eat me, Mister Bear . . ."

Paul heard her voice and his eyes slowly opened.

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The next sound he heard was a heavy thud, followed by a groan. He rolled
over to where Kathleen was. There was nothing there. The ground was
empty where her sleeping bag had lain. There was something leaking down,
splattering on the ground like heavy rain. But the raindrops were red.

Paul lay immobile, as if in a dream. The red raindrops were followed by
snowflakes; a cloud of soft goosedown drifting groundward from
Kathleen's sleeping bag, sticking in the growing pool of red. There was
a crunching sound from overhead. Like a dog breaking chicken bones.
Paul's eyes slowly traveled upward and froze in terror. The gargantuan
shadow that towered over him ate silently, almost lazily. The bloody
rain and feathered snow fell harder, the wetness hitting Paul's forehead
as he lay in a daze, gazing up through the narrow opening in his
sleeping bag through which only his nose and eyes protruded. Then he saw
the eyes staring down from above. They were saucerlike. Flat and
reflective. And they made contact with his own.

Paul rose and tried to run, but he could not. He was trapped within the
cocoonlike confines of his sleeping bag. He fumbled with the zipper, but
it was stuck. It would not budge from beneath his chin. He heard the
thud of Kathleen's sleeping bag hitting the ground; her outstretched arm
sprawled in the dirt in front of him. He screamed and began hopping
toward the trees, crying out in desperation as the lumbering shadow
swept down on him.

From his campfire a hundred yards away, Travis Nelson heard the
desperate cries and bolted to his feet, racing through the forest.
"Paul! Paulie!"

The child's screams continued, growing more frantic. Then they suddenly
stopped.

Travis Nelson raced into the campsite and saw the silhouetted form of
his son's body, flying upward with the weightlessness of a rag doll,
consumed in a billowing cloud of goose feathers, against the light

167

of the full moon. Then he saw the gargantuan form emerging from the trees.

"Oh, my God!" he sobbed.

They were the last words he would ever utter.

John Hawks had spent the night in the safety of the tunnel-like storage
areas dug into the ground beneath M'rai's tents. As the lumberjacks had
promised, they came looking for him. They had questioned M'rai and
Romona then left, satisfied that Hawks was gone. The old man had been
upset by the intrusion into his encampment, and withdrew into isolation.
From Hawks's hiding place beneath the ground, he had heard M'rai
chanting mournfully within his tent.

At dawn Romona and Hawks moved swiftly through the forest to the water's
edge and rafted to the island where Rob and Maggie were awake and
waiting for them. In the cabin, Rob recounted to them his discoveries of
the night before. They listened with rapt attention, their eyes filled
with incredulity and outrage. As evidence of what they were up against,
Rob showed them the photographs of Minamata. If the blood samples Rob
was intending to take from the Indian villagers were positive, they
might be facing a disaster of the same proportions here.

Maggie forced herself to listen this time and concentrate on every
detail. She was on the verge of hysteria and knew that she must face and
understand all of it, or else slip into the irresponsible safety of
emotional collapse. No matter how awful the reality was, she was
determined to cling to it,

Rob had dumped his soil samples from the glass vials, and sterilized
them to hold blood samples instead. He felt that if he got a cross
section of ten men, ten women, and ten children, he would have all the
samples he needed. Hawks was unable to tell him whether or not the
Manatee hospital had laboratory facilities; Rob and Maggie hurriedly
packed some over-

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night things in the event they had to take the blood samples to the
Portland hospital eighty miles away.

At 8:00 a.m. they left for the village. The sky had become thick with
cloud cover, the air was again oppressive. The mosquitoes, gnats, and
blackfties swarmed about their faces as the small boat cut across the
water; the insects were stimulated into aggressiveness by the humidity,
attempting to fill their bellies in the event of another rain. As they
crossed the lake, Rob told Hawks and Romona of his speculation that the
mutative effects of the chemicals might have reached the higher forms of
animal life. He carefully couched his language, not wanting to sound
overly dramatic or appear foolish. In the light of the day, with the
forest around them looking peaceful and benevolent, it seemed more a
flight of fancy than scientific reality to talk of a "monster" lurking
there. But Romona and Hawks did not find it fanciful. They accepted it
in silence.

From the boat landing where Rob's car was parked, they drove along a
narrow, little used road through the forest toward the Indian village.
It was overgrown with foliage and mined with jagged boulders; the ten
miles they traveled took well over an hour.

When they arrived at the outskirts of the village, the leaves on the
surrounding trees were rippling with a light wind that brought the smell
of rain from the mountains. Rob hurriedly unpacked his medical gear and
allowed Romona and Hawks to precede him into the village to explain to
their people what was going to take place. Rob could not hear their
words, but from their gestures and the reactions of the people they
spoke to, he saw that it was not going to be easy to convince them.
Hawks returned and summoned Rob forward.

"We'll visit the sick men first. They will not resist."

"They're afraid?"

"They have known only one doctor. He treats them as though they are
animals."

Rob and Maggie followed Hawks and Romona into

169

the center of the village. It did not look like anything that could be
called an Indian village. It was more like a slum on the outskirts of a
major city; poorly built shacks, made from cast-off materials, that
stood at odd angles, surrounded by rusted machinery parts that littered
the ground. The opened carcasses of drying salmon were spread out on
canvas platforms, the flies buzzing about them in profusion. There were
skeletons of defunct automobiles, a dozen or more, scattered throughout
the surrounding trees.

To Rob, it all had a familiar feel. The people followed him in a horde,
and crowded around him as he entered the first dwelling and examined a
man felled with what they called the katahnas.

Rob made sure that his actions were smooth, efficient, and without
hesitation. He used Maggie as he would use a nurse, calling for
instruments that she pulled from his kit. The man they examined was
raging with fever and suffering febrile tremors. His pupils were dilated
and his sensory reflexes were almost nil. And on his face was a muscle
contortion that looked like a grin, the same kind of demented grin that
Rob had seen in the photographs of the methyl-mercury victims in Minamata.

Rob gave him an injection of phenobarbital to reduce the fever, then
strapped his arm with rubber tubing and drew the first blood sample. In
the tenements in Washington, this procedure would have drawn oohs and
ahhhs from the crowd of onlookers. Here he was watched in stoic silence.
Even the children remained expressionless.

They next visited the two other men suffering the same symptoms. Rob
repeated the procedures, then moved outdoors, instructing Romona and
Hawks to bring a table into the center of the clearing and select ten
men, ten women, and ten children to have their blood drawn. He
especially wanted the two women who he saw were pregnant. If their blood
toxin level was lower than that of the nonpregnant women, it would be
further proof that methyl-mercury was at

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work. If it acted here as it had in Minamata, the poison would be
concentrated in the blood of the fetus, not in that of the mother.

But the villagers were still reluctant. Hawks and Romona had to submit
to blood tests themselves before the others would begin to step forward.
An old man came first, hobbling on bent legs; then a mother with an
infant in her arms. Then they all came forward, holding out their arms
and those of their children, realizing, from Rob's manner and gentle
tone of voice, that he was there to help. In all of his experience, Rob
had never seen such stoicism. They submitted, all of them, without
wincing, without making a sound.

Rob was flanked by Romona and Hawks on one side, by Maggie on the other;
they worked in an efficient routine. Hawks asked name and age; Romona
wrote it down and labeled each vial. Maggie worked with the medical
accessories, sterilizing alternating needles and storing the vials. An
Indian girl of about twelve stood beside Maggie, watching her with
unabashed admiration. She and Maggie exchanged smiles; Maggie reached
out and held her hand. The human contact was as important to Maggie as
it was to the little girl.

Romona looked on with approval. "You'll be a good mother." Maggie
stifled a sudden impulse to cry.

Within twenty minutes Rob had filled his vials, but there were dozens of
people still waiting, wanting to take part.

"Get the slides," Rob said to Maggie. "We'll do finger pricks."

She turned toward the bag.

"They're in the car," Rob said.

Maggie moved quickly, and as she did, she heard the sound of car motors
approaching them from the forest. There were several of them, and they
were converging fast from all sides, their machinery grinding as they
bumped and lurched cross-country through the trees.

Romona exchanged a frightened look with Hawks.

171

Rob instinctively took a defensive stance in front of them. They were
sheriff's cars, and they emerged with a rush, deputies jumping out with
rifles drawn to quickly surround the village.

"What's happening?" Rob gasped.

"They're going to kill us," Hawks answered.

The sheriff stepped forward, holding a piece of paper that fluttered in
the rising wind. "I want everybody out of the houses!" he called. "I
want everybody right out here."

"What's going on?" Rob demanded. The sheriff was shocked to see a white
man there.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"I asked you what's going on!"

"Just step back-"

"I want an explanation-"

"Step back!"

Another car pulled in. It was a car from the Pitney Paper Mill; Bethel
Isely got out from behind the wheel and joined the sheriff in the center
of the clearing. He caught sight of Rob and was plainly pained to see
him here.

"I want the women to my right and the men to my left!" the sheriff ordered.

"I want to know what's going on here!" Rob shouted.

Isely quickly approached him. "You're at the wrong place at the wrong
time, Mr. Vern," he said quietly. "I suggest you pack your things and
get out."

"I demand to know what's happening."

"There were more killings in the forest last night. We're not waiting
around for any more."

Hawks overheard, stiffening with the knowledge that the moment he most
feared had finally come. The battle with the Pitney Paper Mill would end
with the persecution of every man, woman, and child in his village.

"I've got a list of names, and I want the following people to step
forward as their names are read," the sheriff shouted.

172

?Who was killed?" Rob demanded of Isely.

?A family up at Mary's Bend."

?You have some reason to think these people did

it??

"They're guilty as hell, Vern!"

"You have some evidence?"

"The evidence is at the hospital. It's in baskets."

"Russell Windraven, step forward!" the sheriff shouted.

The Indian villagers remained immobile, frightened and confused.

"I said step forward." the sheriff commanded.

A man moved slowly from the crowd; Rob recognized him as one of the men
who had stood with Hawks at the blockade. Rob turned to Hawks and saw
that Hawks was no longer beside him. He was slowly fading back toward
the trees.

"Chester Pinot!" the sheriff shouted, and another man came forward.

Four deputies converged on the two men, locking them into handcuffs.
"Raphael Nightwalker!" the sheriff called. There was a hint of ridicule
in his voice, as though he were announcing the winners of a contest.
"Mr. John Hawks! Mr. Steven Sky!"

Hearing Hawks's name, Rob hurried to the center of the clearing in an
effort to draw attention away from him. "I want to see your arrest
warrants! Right now!"

The sheriff turned to him. "I told you to stay back."

"I demand to know by what right-"

"Somebody take this man away."

The entire circle of deputies converged, giving Hawks the moment he
needed. He spun on his heel, bolting toward the trees.

"Stop that man!" the sheriff bellowed, and three deputies ran toward the
forest to cut Hawks off. Hawks whirled, changing directions in
mid-stride and charged into one of the cabins. A burst of splintering
glass signaled his trajectory through a window at the rear. The deputies
raced behind the cabin just a mo-

173

ment too late. Hawks had disappeared into the thick tangle of trees.

"He'll outrun you on foot!" the sheriff called to his men. "Go after him
in the car."

Three deputies raced by Maggie and jumped into their car; its motor
whined as it bumped off through the trees. From where she stood Maggie
could see that Hawks had not run into the forest but rolled into a gully
behind the cabin.

"Everybody stay where you are!" the sheriff warned. "When you next see
your friend Mr. Hawks, you'll be very happy that you did!"

Rob turned to Romona, who stood in a state of shock. "Mary's Bend," he
said urgently. "Do you know where that is?"

She nodded.

"Just follow me to the car," Rob said as he quickly packed his things.
"Don't look right or left, just stay right beside me."

"They'll kill these men," Romona implored.

"Maggie?"

Maggie ran forward and Rob handed her the rack of vials. "You and Romona
get in the car."

"I've got two men here, I'm looking for five!"

Rob strode to the sheriff. "I want to tell you something," he warned.
"You're not alone here. I'm a witness to this. When you charge these
men, you'd better set bail, because I'm coming back and posting it. And
if they don't come out of that jail in exactly the same condition they
went in, you're going to be very sorry about it. If there's one mark on
any of them! Do you undertsand me?" Then he turned on his heel and went
to the car. Its gears groaned as it lurched away into the forest.

The place called Mary's Bend was inaccessible by road; it could be
reached only on foot along ten miles of difficult wilderness trails.
Burning with anger and frustration, Rob headed for the airport, hoping to

174

requisition the Forest Service helicopter they'd seen carrying the
bloodhound when they arrived. He was desperate to get to Mary's Bend by
nightfall. It looked as if the rains were going to begin again, and if
they did all evidence might be washed away by morning. If he could find
some trace of the animal that he suspected was responsible for the
killings, he would have the tools he needed to act swiftly and
efficiently. Without such evidence, his theories would be no more than
alarmist speculation that would be attacked because of its dramatic
proportions. The word monster was not in the vocabulary of a credible
man. Yet it was the word, Rob was becoming more and more convinced, that
applied.

"Where's the hospital?" Rob asked hurriedly as they sped through town on
their way to the airport.

"Where the main street ends," Romona replied.

Rob made a quick stop there to look at the so-called evidence Isely had
talked about: the bodies of the family that had been killed at Mary's
Bend. He wanted to make sure they would not be disposed of before he had
a chance to examine them.

The "hospital" was not a hospital at all. It was a small emergency
facility located among a cluster of houses at the edge of town, a
one-story green stucco structure comprising seven rooms. One was an
operating room, one was an office, four had beds, and the seventh room
was for storage. It was in the storage room that the remains of the
Travis Nelson family were being held. The larger pieces had been put in
a deep-freeze, the smaller pieces had been packaged for incineration.
Rob had gotten there just in time.

There was no doctor on duty, only a nurse; she summoned Dr. Pope, who
lived two doors away.

Pope was a tall, gaunt man in his late sixties. He was bald and looked
physically weak, and was instantly intimidated by Rob's urgent manner.
Acceding to Rob's demands, he opened up the storeroom and spread out the
remains on two long wooden tables. Some of the pieces had hardened from
the freezing;

175

others were soft and mushy from being wrapped in plastic. It looked like
a grotesque jigsaw puzzle in disarray. In all Rob's years of practicing
medicine, he had never before been seized with such revulsion; the sight
he faced now was beyond his tolerance. The bodies were broken and
disemboweled, as if someone had opened the belly of a cow and dressed
what spilled out in men's clothing.

"Will there be anything else?" Pope asked.

"What makes you think this was done by men?" Rob demanded.

"I don't know what else would have done it."

"Why not an animal?"

"Bears, you mean?"

"Could a bear do this?"

"A bear wouldn't do this. Not to four people at once. I've seen at least
a dozen bear attacks. It never looks like this. When a bear attacks a
group of people, it settles for one."

"These bodies are ripped and torn! Men wouldn't do this!"

"Unless they tried to make it look like an animal."

"You believe that?"

"Animals kill to protect themselves. Or to protect their young. Once
that's accomplished, they don't have any interest in killing any
further. This was an act of vengeance. This was the act of a sick mind."

"Men are going to be accused of murder based on your statements. You
better know what you're talking about."

Pope didn't respond.

"I want everything frozen," Rob ordered. "Every piece there is. I'm
going to have it autopsied. I've got blood samples I want frozen too.
I'll be back to pick it up tonight."

Pope accompanied Rob to his car and took the blood samples; Rob, Romona,
and Maggie headed fast for the airport. By the time they arrived, a
light rain had beeun to fall and the trees surrounding the landing strip
were beginning to sway in the rising

176

wind. Two helicopters were on the ground, both bearing the emblem of the
Forestry Service. Rob's government credentials were sufficient to summon
a pilot from his home ten miles away.

The pilot's name was Huntoon. He was a large and muscular man, with an
abrasive manner and was clearly resentful about having been called out
on such a bad day. He told them that the trip to Mary's Bend would take
only thirty minutes but warned that if the wind rose any higher, he'd be
unable to land. The shoreline at Mary's Bend was surrounded by high
cliffs; a chopper could lift off in winds up to thirty miles an hour,
but not if it ran the risk of being blown against a cliff side.

Before they boarded, Rob urged Maggie to stay behind, but she refused.
Whatever there was to see, she wanted to see. And she expressed it with
a force-fulness that Rob had never seen in her before. He reluctantly
agreed, and they boarded. The winds swept them swiftly up and toward the
distant mountains.

By the time they reached the lake, the wind had shifted and they were
flying against it, the pellets of rain blurring the helicopter's
windshield, so that their only view was out the side windows.

"If there were a large animal down there, could we see it from here?"
Rob shouted to the pilot.

"How large?"

"Large."

"Like a moose, you mean?"

"Larger."

"There's nothing larger than a moose around here."

"Could we see it from here?"

"Oh, yeah. Moose, deer, bear. They start running when they hear the
chopper. They're easy to spot."

"Keep your eyes open! I don't want to land if there's anything big down
there!"

"We'll find out right now. There's the bend. I'll sweep a three-mile
circle."

The helicopter tilted, circling low across the tops

177

of the trees while Rob, Maggie, and Romona studied the ground below.

"That's funny," the pilot said. "There's not a damn thing. Not even a deer."

Romona, too, was puzzled. "This is a protected area. It's usually filled
with game."

"Protected?" The pilot laughed. "That's a joke. The Indians do all their
poaching down there. They set bear traps, beaver traps ... It looks like
they finally wiped the place out."

"That's not true," Romona protested. "My people do hunt there, but the
reason they hunt there is because there's so much game."

"Well, there's nothin' down there now, is there, little sister?"

"Where's the bend?" Rob asked.

"Right below us. See the crevice between the cliffs? Right there where
the river comes out?"

Rob could see, far beneath him, the remains of a tent, torn and flapping
in the wind. "Can we go down?"

"I'm not too crazy about the idea."

"The wind's too high?"

"Not yet, but these things can blow up fast."

"If it's at all possible, I'd like to go down."

The pilot checked his instruments, then radioed back to the airport,
requesting a weather report. He received it and nodded his approval.
"They say it's as bad as it's going to get."

"We can go down?"

"Yep." He spoke into his headset again. "XJ23Y to base. Breaking radio
contact now." Then he turned to Rob. "Got to stay above the mountains to
maintain radio contact. Once you get down in these gullies, the signal
won't carry."

They descended in a swift verticle line and were suddenly buffeted by
down drafts, the helicopter thrown off balance so suddenly that Maggie
cried out in alarm. The small compartment swung around and stabilized,
landing hard on the ground.

178

"Shit," the pilot muttered. "I didn't like that at all."

"Are we all right?"

"Yeah, but I'm not looking forward to that takeoff. You people take your
time. Let's wait till it dies down a little."

Maggie was nauseated from the tumultuous landing and stayed behind with
the pilot as Rob and Romona headed upriver into the crevice where Rob
had spotted the remains of the tent. The environment was hissing with
rain, and the force of the wind here at the base of the cliffs was
double what it had been in the air. Maggie stepped out of the
helicopter, hoping that the elements would refresh her and quiet the
churning in her stomach. She pulled the hood of her parka over her head,
wound her woolen scarf about her neck, and breathed deeply as she gazed
off toward the mountainous horizon. The tips of the mountains were
obscured by dark clouds, and there was lightning; the thunderheads
pulsated and sent out a low rumble of thunder that slowly drifted across
the lake.

"XJ23Y ... is anybody reading?" the pilot called into his radio mike.
"XJ23Y . . . can anybody read?" He switched it off and turned to Maggie.
"I hope we haven't gotten ourselves into a mess here."

A quarter mile upriver, where the crevice narrowed to a tree-lined
avenue of water, Rob and Romona stood in silence, gazing at the murder
site. The signs of violence were awesome. Bushes were uprooted, tree
limbs cracked, bits of clothing clung to the outstretched limbs of
bushes and trees. The ground in front of the shredded tent was stained
dark with blood. A child's tennis shoe dangled from a tree. There were
huge divots in the ground, as though a backhoe had run rampant; Romona
spotted a large mound of earth and walked to it. She lowered herself to
her knees and began to dig.

"What is it?" Rob asked as she scraped the dirt away.

She turned to him with puzzled eyes. "Defecation." The rain fell on her
face as she gazed up at Rob with

179

confusion. "It's buried in the way a cat would bury it."

Rob turned and moved farther upriver into the trees. Romona paused for a
long moment, then followed.

At the helicopter, the pilot had stepped out into the rain beside
Maggie, and was watching the fomenting clouds with concern.

"It's moving in fast. Maybe it'll move out fast." He nodded as if to
reassure himself. "Yeah, it'll probably blow over pretty quick." His
eyes moved to the marshy shores where the lake curled inward to form
Mary's Bend. There the cattails and high grasses swirled with increasing
fury. "Remember what I said about poachers?" He pointed toward the
marsh. "See those poles, over there? That's a beaver trap. Probably got
some dead beavers in it. They catch their necks in it and drown."

Maggie's eyes followed his gesture and she spotted the poles, jutting
stiffly upward among the pliable, bending cattails.

'Til tell you," the pilot continued, "I'm as fair-minded as the next
guy, but one of these days these Indians gotta be taught a lesson. Used
to be when you caught an Indian poaching you just strung him up by the
heels to the nearest tree. Can't do that any more. They gettin' like the
blacks. You lay a hand on an Indian . . ."

Having heard all she cared to, Maggie walked away, heading toward the
marsh. As the pilot watched her go, he snickered to himself, amused that
he had offended her.

Upriver, within the deepening confines of the crevice, Rob and Romona
found another place where violence had occurred. The tattered remains of
two sleeping bags were scattered throughout the foliage, the smashed
remnant of an alarm clock was flattened against the ground. Thunder
rumbled overhead and Rob lifted his eyes. His gaze fastened on a gash
about six feet above his head in the trunk of a tree. As he

180

moved nearer, he could see within the whitened gash, the mark of three
huge claws. "Romona?"

She hurried to him.

"What could have done that?" he asked.

"A bear perhaps."

"That high?"

"It could have climbed."

"Look higher."

Above the gash, caught in a section of splintered bark, was a swatch of
thick black fur. Romona quickly broke a dried sapling about ten feet
long and used it to dislodge the fur, which wafted down into her waiting
hands. As she examined it, the expression on her face told Rob that it
was unlike anything she had ever seen before.

"What is it?" he asked.

She handed it to him, and he spread it apart, revealing hardened fibers
within, almost like the quills of a feather. The thunder rolled louder,
and Rob was swept with a chill.

"It's not bear, is it?" he said quietly.

"No."

"What is it, then?"

Her eyes were distant, set somewhere deep within the forest. "It's
Katahdin, Mr. Vern," she said darkly. "He's no longer a legend."

The foliage behind them suddenly erupted. Romona cried out. A figure
rushed toward them.

It was John Hawks. His face was covered with dried blood that emanated
from a gash in his forehead and his eyes were blank with shock. He
stopped suddenly and held up a wad of the thick, black fur.

"You've seen this?" he cried.

"Yes," Rob answered.

"It's here. What you said is here!"

Romona ran to him and they clung to each other, their faces gripped with
anguish.

"I want to find it," Rob said firmly. "I want the truth to be known."

181

"Truth?" Hawks shouted. "There is no truth here! This is the
manifestation of lies!"

The thunder clapped loudly; as it faded, they heard something that
sounded like a scream. It echoed off the cliff walls and melted into the
whine of the rising wind that whistled through the crevice. Hawks,
Romona, and Rob stood immobile. The scream came again. It was Maggie.
Rob whirled, stumbling over boulders as he raced away. Hawks overtook
him and Romona struggled behind. As they rounded a bend, they suddenly
stopped. Maggie stood in the midst of the swirling cattails, her hands
clasped to her head, her eyes wide with alarm. The pilot was near her,
his posture frozen, as if he had become paralyzed in mid-step. Both were
staring into the marsh. The sky burst with a flash of lightning and a
sharp crackle of thunder. Maggie's eyes turned toward Rob, and he could
see that she was in near shock. He ran toward her, Hawks and Romona
following; when they reached her, she raised a trembling finger and
pointed to the ground.

They all recoiled in horror.

There, in the marsh, at the water's edge, hanging from a poacher's net,
were two grotesquely misshapen creatures. Their body surface was mottled
pink and black; they were about eighteen inches long. One was dead and
fully extended, hanging head down from the hooked claws of its stunted
hind legs. Its body was long and thin, in the shape of a four-legged
animal, but it had skin folds stretched between its clawed hand and its
sides, like those of a bat. It was an evolutionary mockery. The head was
long and furless, with an exocephalic brain that protruded in pink folds
from the side of the skull; the snout was narrow, with sharp teeth
jutting upward from an underslung jaw. And the eyes were huge, blank as
fish eyes, dominating the surface of the face.

The rain began to drive harder, the wind rising in gale force as the
group stood in stunned silence. Hawks's mouth was hard with bitterness.
Romona

182

was rigid, gazing down from the corners of her eyes.

"What the hell are they?" the pilot gasped.

No one answered.

"My people lived with this legend all their lives," Hawks said through
his teeth. "Now this will be taken from them, too."

"One's alive," Romona said.

The second of the two creatures was bobbing on the gentle swell of the
water, belly up, its teeth snarled in the net. Its eyes were half
opened, and its small chest heaved in labored, pumping gasps.

"We've got to get it warm," Rob said. "It's dying of exposure."

"Leave it here," Hawks hissed. "Let it die."

Rob turned in sudden outrage. "Leave it here? Do you know what this is?
This is evidence! This is what's going to save your forest!"

Hawks looked long at Rob, then turned to the pilot. "Your knife."

"No!" Rob shouted.

"I'm going to cut it free."

Hawks took the pilot's knife and waded into the water, Rob beside him.
In an instant the creature was free. Rob lifted it into his arms. "Take
the other one, too."

Following Rob's order, Hawks cut the dead one free, but he was reluctant
to touch it.

"Take it."

"Why?"

"I want them both."

"Why?" Hawks challenged.

"I can open it up and find out what it's made of! I can find out what it
feeds on! I can find out why it exists."

"You've got that one!"

"I'm keeping this one alive," Rob vowed. "This one's going to stay
alive. It's not going to go into a bottle of formaldehyde and be put on
a shelf! If I can keep this alive, there's nobody who'll be able to
ignore it!"

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Hawks snatched up the dead creature by its hind leg; slime dripped from
its nose and mouth as it rose from the water.

Maggie watched with glazed eyes.

"It's got to be wrapped," Rob ordered as he waded to the shore. "Maggie?"

She turned to him, blank-faced.

"Your scarf."

"What?" she asked weakly.

"Give it to me."

Numbly following orders, Maggie pulled out her woolen scarf and Rob
wrapped the small creature in it. It looked like a child of the devil
wrapped in swaddling cloth.

"Let's go," Rob commanded.

"Look at those trees!" the pilot shouted in the rising wind. "That's
forty miles an hour! I can't lift off in this!"

Rob grimaced with frustration. The trees were being lashed by a wind
that howled as it wound through the crevice. "We've got to get out of
here!" he demanded.

"We'll get blown into the walls! You saw what happened coming down here.
Its worse now."

"I've got to get somewhere warm! I've got to keep this alive."

"Take shelter. It'll blow over."

"How long?"

"Few hours, maybe less!"

"That's too long!"

"I can't do it!"

Rob turned to Hawks in desperation. "Where's your village?"

"Too far."

"Ten miles," Romona said.

"Isn't there somewhere closer?"

"Nothing," Hawks replied.

"My grandfather!" Romona exclaimed.

"Those are just tents."

"We can be there in two hours. If we follow the river . . ."

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"In two hours the storm might blow over," Rob protested.

"It might not," the pilot contradicted.

Rob's eyes were desperate as he gazed into the angry sky.

"M'rai's camp," Hawks urged.

"Those tents aren't warm enough!" Rob insisted.

"We can make them warm."

"We can build fires within," Romona added.

"Can we go there, please?" Maggie asked with anguish.

"I think you better do it," advised the pilot.

"There's no other choice," Hawks said.

"We could wait here in the helicopter," Rob said.

"I don't want to wait here." Hawks's voice carried a warning that gave
Rob pause. They were completely vulnerable out here, in the helicopter
or out of it. They were possibly standing in the very lair of the animal
that had caused the destruction. Judging by the height of the claw marks
Rob had seen in the tree, it stood at least fifteen feet tall. He didn't
know if it had reached up or reached down to make those marks. If they
waited in the helicopter, they might find themselves trapped.

"Your grandfather's camp," Rob said to Romona. "Let's go."

The decision was punctuated with a spine-jolting clap of thunder; the
rain fell in a deluge as they headed for the crevice. Rob raced back to
the helicopter to retrieve his doctor's kit; the pilot grabbed his
backpack. Then, bracing themselves against the rain and the wind, they
re-entered the narrow opening between the cliffs and began an agonizing
trek across slippery boulders, up the now-raging river. The pilot ran
alongside Rob, straining to get a look at the grotesque parcel in Rob's
arms.

"What is that thing?"

Rob shook his head and moved forward. He knew it would be impossible to
explain.

Deep into the crevice, they headed toward the trees,

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moving laterally away from the river along an upward slope that led to
the interior of the forest.

Romona went first, followed by Hawks, who held the dead creature by a
hind foot, its limp body dangling and swiveling before Maggie's eyes as
she walked directly behind him. The slime-dripping snout scraped the
ground, accumulating dirt, which gave the mouth the appearance of a smile.

Maggie trudged doggedly, her arms wrapped around her stomach as though
to protect what lay sleeping within from seeing what she saw. She could
feel the weight within her womb, and tried to force away the mental
images of what might lie incubating there. She began counting the steps
that she took, but the grotesque body of the creature that dangled in
front of her kept thrusting itself into her consciousness and taunting
her fantasies. She pushed her face down into her jacket and stifled an
urge to weep. Her mind was swept with confusion, for she could not hate
what was inside her. She had given life to it, and she had wounded it.
It had not asked to be created, it had not asked to be crippled.

Yet the eyes, the underslung jaw of the face that hung before her filled
her with fear and revulsion. A scene flitted through her mind that made
her gasp and begin again to count her steps-she had seen herself
plunging a knife into her stomach.

As darkness fell, the pilot switched on a flashlight, holding Maggie's
arm as she stumbled forward. Rob had opened his jacket and stuffed his
parcel inside. He felt a sudden, convulsive movement as the animal
responded to the heat of his body. It was a good sign; Rob was
determined to keep it alive.

Above their heads the canopy of trees hissed as the wind assaulted them;
the rain was abating, but the wind continued to rise.

They had walked in silence all the way, Hawks's eyes scanning the trees
as he followed Romona. Rob glanced often at Maggie, hoping she would not
realize what it was that Hawks was keeping watch for. But

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she seemed oblivious to everything; the shock of discovering the
creatures seemed to have affected her more deeply than the others. Her
face was like a death mask, devoid of expression.

After three hours, they came to a shallow riverbed. Moving closely
behind one another, they sank into water up to their ankles as they
crossed to the other side.

They walked downhill now, their pace accelerating as they neared their
destination.

"SShhhh!" Romona hissed. "Look there!"

They halted abruptly and gazed through the trees to where a distant,
flickering campfire illuminated the contour of the tents at M'rai's camp.

"There are people there," Romona whispered.

Hawks and Romona crept forward until they could make out the figures of
two men sitting by the fire with their backs to them.

"What's the problem?" the pilot called out.

Rob silenced him with a gesture. He knew that Hawks and Romona feared it
might be the sheriff.

"What's going on?" the pilot asked.

Romona sprang from the foliage and ran into the camp; the men by the
fire turned and stood, revealing that they were Indians. After
exchanging a few words with them, Romona called out:

"John! It's all right! No one else is here!"

Rob grabbed Maggie's arm and they ran to the camp. With the fire blazing
and with shelter from the rain, they felt protected here, grateful and
relieved that the agonizing trek was over.

"The old man is gone," Romona said. "They don't know where."

"Can they help us?" Rob asked urgently.

"They can go to the village and send someone into town."

"Send them."

"Who for?"

"Anybody who can get us out of here."

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Romona turned to the Indians and began speaking to them in their language.

"Wait a minute," Rob said. "Not just anybody. Everybody. I want people
to see this. I want people to know about this. The Indians. The
townspeople. I want them to get everybody down here that they can."

Romona again turned to the Indians. "N'yah'yo-entrdahsh . . ."

"Is there a newspaper in this town?" Rob interrupted.

"Yes."

"I want them down here. With a camera. And I want people from the lumber
company. And I want the sheriff. And I want-"

"Not the sheriff," Hawks interjected.

"I want people to see this!" Rob raged. "While we've got it! While it's
alive! Your stake in this is greater than mine!"

The two Indians suddenly caught sight of what Rob held in his arms.
Their faces went rigid.

"Please help us," Rob begged them. "Please hurry." Then he rushed toward
one of the tents, barking orders as he went. "You said you could make
these tents warm?"

"We'll bring coals in," Romona replied.

"Do it now. Steam some rags. Maggie, take my kit. I need some light in
there. And I need a table. Something to work on."

Maggie and Romona swung into action; Hawks watched the activity for a
long moment, then, with a nod of resignation, turned to the two Indians.
He asked them to do everything that the man from the government wanted.
He told them that the creatures they had with them had been poisoned
with the same chemical that caused the katahnas; that they needed manv
neonle in their forest right now so their people could be cured.

The Indians answered that there was only one working automobile in the
village; if it was not there, they would have to send people into town
on foot. If that

188

was necessary, they could not return here until after midnight.

Hawks nodded. They disappeared silently into the forest, their
silhouetted forms seen for a brief moment against the horizon as it
flickered with lightning.

Hawks walked to the body of the dead creature that he had left in the
bushes on the outskirts af M'rai's camp. It lay on its back, stiffened
now. The front legs were stretched upward, beckoning with talons as
sharp as razors.

Hawks picked it up and tossed it close to the fire. Then he gazed into
the forest, fearing what might be out there.

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189

11

The storm had passed from overhead and now hung above the distant
mountains, striking their peaks with daggers of finger-lightning and
rumbling with thunder that sounded like cannon shot as it boomed across
the lake. The forest surrounding M'rai's camp was becalmed, save for an
occasional surge of wind that sent raindrops splattering down from the
trees; the crickets were meekly attempting to start their belated night
concert but were silenced each time the thunder rolled.

In the two hours that had passed since the Indians left the encampment,
Hawks had foraged for firewood, stripping off the wet bark, and built up
the fire in the center of M'rai's compound to a blazing inferno. He knew
that nothing short of that would dissuade a beast the size of what he
now came to think of as Katahdin.

He had also found M'rai's archer's bow and a quiver containing four
arrows. He tested his marksmanship and found that the lessons of his
youth were serving him well. Of the four arrows he fired, one stuck in
the knothole of a tree. Its tip broke off as Hawks attempted to remove
it. There were only three arrows now. There would be no more target
practice.

Hawks knew that the bow and arrows were pathetically little to defend
themselves with, but if they needed them, each arrow would count.

Behind Hawks, one of the three tents in M'rai's camp was brightly
illuminated from within, casting

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shadows onto the thin tent walls and enabling him to see everything that
was going on inside. The figures of Rob and Maggie stood motionless over
a table; Romona knelt on the floor, fanning a bed of coals. The pilot
was nowhere in sight; Hawks concluded that he was exploring the
underground tunnels.

There was silence in the tent. The air was thick with smoke from the
coals that Romona toiled over as she steamed wet rags; Rob's eyes burned
from it as he gazed down at the weakened infant creature. It was
sprawled out on a chopping block, limp and deathlike, its eyes closed,
its chest heaving in labored gasps. Beneath the harsh white light of
suspended kerosene lanterns, the details of its malformed body were
clear. When die body had been wet, the skin appeared smooth, mottled
pink and black. Now that it was dry, Rob could see that the black part
was fur, soft and downy, like the skin covering of a newborn chick. The
batlike skin folds that extended from the hips to the tiny clawed hands
were extremely fragile, thin as an egg membrane, easily torn. The
eyelids were transparent, so that the pupils seemed to stare out from
them even when they were closed; the nose was no more than two holes at
the end of a ligamentlike protrusion. The teeth were needle-sharp and
even though the creature was unconscious, they occasionally snapped at
Rob when his hands came too near the face.

But for all its grotesquery, the creature was somehow captivating.
Perhaps because it was sick and vulnerable. Perhaps because it was small.

Rob knew that the internal organs might be as deviant as the external
features, but he treated the creature in the only way he knew how: as
though it were a human infant. He had given it five cc's of Adrenalin,
and the heartbeat had responded. It was beating fast now. Almost too
fast. Rob removed the warm rag from the body and fanned it with his
hand. The skin crinkled where the breeze came across it, a sign that the
creature was reviving.

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"Will it die?" Maggie whispered from beside him.

"I don't think so."

Maggie could not help feeling relieved. In the hours of keeping watch,
her perception of the creature had altered. The misshapen body was no
longer ugly but awesome, delicate and somehow beautiful in its own
unique way. The fact that it looked unlike anything she had ever seen
before became easier to accept as the hours wore on; regardless of its
appearance, it was a living, breathing, suffering thing. She felt
protective of it. She imagined that it needed her to defend it.

But deep within the recesses of her mind, she was walking an emotional
tightrope. The fall to one side was the plunge into intolerable reality;
to the other, the abyss of insanity. To accept that this creature was
possibly a replica of what lay incubating inside of her would have
caused her to crumble. To deny it meant to release her hold on reality.
The hormones at work within her body were in conflict with the logic of
her mind. She was trapped between the two, unable either to accept or
deny what was happening to her.

Rob had been aware of her torment but did not recognize the depth of it.
He knew of her compassion for living things and that in recent weeks she
had been emotionally shaky. It was predictable that the shock of finding
the creature might cause her greater personal stress than the rest.

But as time passed, Rob was becoming more and more concerned. She seemed
to be withdrawing into an isolated shell, focusing on the infant
creature as though nothing else existed.

"Do you want another rag?" asked Romona as she approached Rob with a
steaming cloth.

"No. It's getting too hot. Can we get some of the smoke out of here?"

"I can widen the flaps."

The pilot emerged, covered with dust, from a narrow entranceway into the
ground. "Nothin' down there but dirt."

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"No supplies?" Rob asked.

"Not that I could see. It's just crawl space."

"I need a sterile jar."

"I'll check the other tents," Romona answered.

"Just any jar. Anything that seals."

"I've got a jar of vitamins," the pilot said.

"Get it."

"It's in my pack-"

"Look!" Maggie gasped. Her voice was punctuated with a sharp squeal of
pain. The creature was convulsing. Its eyelids had flown open and the
pupils had flipped upward; its body was rigid and shaking in every fiber
as froth poured from between its clattering teeth.

"Hurry with that jar!" Rob barked.

Maggie reached out to touch the creature, but Rob stopped her. "Don't
touch it!"

"Can't you stop it?"

"I don't dare sedate it."

"Can't you do something?"

Maggie clapped her hands to her mouth to stifle a whimper as she watched
with anguished eyes. The body of the small creature was back-bending,
froth and vomit shooting from its nose and mouth.

"Oh, God . . . God . . ." Maggie moaned as she buried her face in her hands.

"Here's your jar," the pilot said.

Rob grabbed it, shook out the contents, and thrust it into Romona's
hands. "Boil it! Steam it! I need something to puncture the cap!"

"My knife," the pilot said.

"In my bag, Maggie. Surgical tubing."

But Maggie did not respond. Her eyes were wide and staring, fixed on the
infant creature that had suddenly gone limp and comatose on the table.

"Maggie?"

"Yes?"

"Surgical tubing. In my bag."

"Yes."

She fumbled in the kit and found the tubing, which

193

Rob grabbed from her and inserted into the small hole he'd punched in
the bottle cap.

"It's steamed as best I could," Romona said, quickly handing the jar to Rob.

Maggie watched with glazed eyes as Rob quickly removed a hanging lantern
and replaced it with the jar, then grabbed for a hypodermic syringe. He
glanced at the comatose creature with uncertainty. He had sensed earlier
that its body temperature was rising, which could have accounted for the
convulsion. Were this a human infant, he would hydrate it intravenously
to bring the temperature down. But it was not a human infant. He didn't
know what the normal body temperature should be, or how it would
respond. He touched the skin. It was dry as sandpaper and almost hot to
the touch.

"Please help it," Maggie pleaded.

Rob nodded and began constructing the I.V. Within five minutes it was
strapped to the creature's tiny arm and, as Rob listened to the
heartbeat through his stethoscope, he nodded with relief. The
respiration had returned to normal and the body temperature was coming down.

From outside, Hawks had watched the flurry of activity, and had a moment
of alarm when he heard the creature squeal. Its voice was powerful and
carried easily into the forest. It had silenced the crickets, and they
had remained silent. The forest was hushed, as though holding its breath.

Hawks strained his eyes, searching the dark. He saw threatening shapes
in every darkened configuration, frightening movements in the rustling
of the trees, and realized that his imagination was beginning to stir. A
sudden sound caused him to jump. It was a small toad plopping lazily out
of the brush, attracted by the glow of the fire. It trundled forward and
planted itself directly atop an anthill; the ants streamed all over it,
biting into its eyes and face.

A sound came from behind Hawks, and he turned quickly to see the tent
flaps parting as someone

194

emerged. It was the pilot. He shined his flashlight on Hawks as he
approached; the two assessed each other in wary silence.

"Looks like the rain stopped, huh?" the pilot mumbled.

Hawks nodded.

"Think your friends are coming back?"

"They said they would."

"Think they will?"

Hawks didn't like the question and was unwilling to repeat his answer.

"If they don't show up pretty soon, I'm goin' back to the chopper and
fly outa here."

Hawks did not respond.

"You from around here?"

"Yes."

"You don't sound it."

"No?"

"You don't sound like an Indian."

Hawks glanced at him. "Neither do you."

"I'm not."

"Does that mean you're not from around here?"

The pilot was puzzled; Hawks moved away.

"That woman in there," the pilot said. "She your squaw?"

Hawks glared at him with revulsion. "Which one?"

The pilot snorted with surprise and shook his head. Then he walked away.
Hawks could hear the sound of his pants unzipping and his belt buckle
rattling as the pilot walked into the forest.

Within the tent, the hanging bottle had dripped its last, and Rob
refilled it. He used a pure saline solution this time, leaving out the
amenopheline additive he'd used in the first bottle. The stimulant had
done its work. The creature had begun to move now, one of its tinv arms
waving in the air as though searching for something to latch onto.

Standing beside Rob, her parched lips parted, her

195

downward stare vacant, as if she were barely maintaining focus, Maggie
responded to the creature's gesture. She reached out, but her hand
stopped, trembling just above the outstretched claw.

Rob turned to her, his eyes filled with concern. Her complexion was
pallid, her expression dazed. He realized that she was near collapse.

"Maggie . . . ?"

Her eyes traveled to Ms, as though finding him across a great distance.

"Touch it," she whispered. "Let it know someone's here."

He took her trembling hand and felt that it was ice-cold.

"Come sit down," he said gently.

"How old is it?" she whispered.

"I don't know."

"Is it just born?"

"I don't know."

"It's a baby," she said, speaking so softly that he could barely hear
her. "It's just born."

Chilled by her tone of voice, Rob turned to his kit, looking for a
tranquilizer, but was interrupted by the pilot, who strode in, picked up
his backpack, and addressed Rob with finality.

"It's all stopped out there. The rain, the wind, everything. I say we go
back to the plane and fly outa here."

"We can't do that."

"Those Indians aren't coming back."

"They'll come," Romona said.

"You wait for an Indian to show up, you can wait for three days."

"They'll be here," Rob said.

"You're wasting your time."

"We're waiting."

"I'm not." He started out.

"Wait a minute," Rob commanded.

"You want to come with me, that's fine."

Rob glanced at Maggie, reluctant to say what he

196

had to in front of her. But it seemed as though she weren't hearing.

"Do you see what's on that table?" Rob asked the pilot intensely.

"A freak."

"A mutation."

"If I found something like that, I'd kill it and bury it."

"It was given birth to by something that probably looks very much like
it. Only a lot bigger. And it's probably close to where your helicopter is."

The pilot's expression sobered and he approached the table, gazing down
at the creature with revulsion.

"I'm trying to keep it alive," Rob said, "to see that no more of them
are born."

Though she seemed oblivious to the conversation, Maggie's fists clenched.

"We need you here," Rob continued. "If we can't make it out tonight,
we'll have to try for the helicopter in the morning."

"You said I shouldn't go to the helicopter."

"I'm guessing that this animal is nocturnal. You can tell that by the
size of the eyes."

The pilot looked unconvinced.

"You heard about the disappearances in the forest?" Rob asked.

"Yes."

"A night crew from the lumber company, a rescue team, a family of
campers. They all disappeared at night. If we have to, we can risk going
to the helicopter in the morning."

The pilot absorbed this in silence, then turned his eyes to Rob. "I've
got a wife at home," he said quietly. "And a kid. They're gonna think I
crashed somewhere. They're scared of my crashing somewhere."

"If you go near that helicopter in the dark, you might never get home."

The pilot gulped hard and nodded. "I'll wait," he said. Then he turned
and disappeared through the tent flaps.

197

Rob looked at Maggie and was satisfied that the conversation had gone
past her. She stood with exactly the same expression and posture that
she had maintained from the beginning.

"Maggie?"

"Yes?"

"Let's go outside. Let's get some air."

She was reluctant.

"Romona's here."

"I'll watch it," Romona said.

Rob took Maggie's arm and led her out into the night. The air was clear
and cold; the fire blazed high, illuminating the circle of trees. Rob
could see both Hawks and the pilot, each at different points in the tree
line, keeping watch. Hawks's archer's bow was beside him, resting
against a tree trunk, the quiver on the ground beside it.

Maggie shivered within her parka and Rob brought her near the fire,
taking the woolen shawl that hung loosely around her neck and wrapping
it close beneath her chin. Her face was blank as she gazed beyond him
into the flames. She seemed so withdrawn and unapproachable that Rob was
hesitant to speak.

"Maggie?" He whispered.

She did not respond.

"I know it's a nightmare. But it'll be over soon."

She remained immobile, as though unhearing.

"We'll be out of here by morning," Rob said gently. "We'll go home. You
don't ever have to think about it again."

She stiffened but made no reply.

"Maggie?"

She turned her head aside. Rob was becoming frightened that he was
unable to reach her. He moved in front of her, but she stared right
through him.

"Remember what the old man said?" Rob asked quietly. "About this
creature awakening to protect them? In a strange way, it's true. What we
found is going to stop what's going on here. No one can ignore this any
more."

198

He waited for a response, but none came.

"Do you hear what I'm saying? There's a reason why this happened. And
there's a reason why we're here."

He was becoming desperate now. He reached for her and she went rigid, as
though warning him not to touch.

"I know it's ugly, Maggie. It's ugly because it wasn't meant to be."

Her eyes finally turned to him. They were hard, glinting in the
firelight with anger.

"How do you know that, Rob?"

Rob shook his head with confusion.

"That it wasn't meant to be," she added.

"It's a sick and deformed . . . thing."

"It's a living thing. Who are you to say it wasn't meant to be?"

Her expression was harsh and taut; the muscles in her neck and face were
tensed to the point of trembling.

"What is it they say?" she asked in a shaking breath. "That God works
... in wondrous ways . . .?"

She shuddered and her breathing suddenly accelerated, hissing through
clenched teeth as her face contorted into a mask of rage.

"Maggie?"

He reached out for her again and she raised both arms to ward him off.
He stood paralyzed, held by her glaring eves.

"What is it?"

"T'm pregnant!" she blurted. "I'm pregnant!"

Rob blanched, his eyes snapping wide with shock.

"I'm pregnant!" she screamed. "And I ate . . . what they ate! What the
mother of those creatures ate out there!"

"Dear God . . ." Rob breathed.

"The fish!" she sobbed. "For six days! Is that enough? Am I growing a
monster, too?"

Hearing her cries, Romona hurried from the tent; Hawks and the pilot ran
forward too.

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199

"I'm pregnant!" she screamed at them. "I've got it, too! I've got one
inside of me! I've got one, too!"

Rob grabbed for her and she spun, suddenly panicking, struggling to get
away.

"No!" she screamed but he caught her sleeve and held firm, attempting to
pull her into his arms. "Get away!" she shouted.

"Maggie!"

"Stop touching me!" she cried desperately. "Let me go!"

With a surge of energy she escaped his grip, backing away with wild and
frightened eyes.

"Are you afraid of me?" she screamed. "I'm the mother of a monster! I'm
the mother of a monster, too!"

"Maggie . . ."

"Don't get near me, don't get near me!"

"Please, Maggie . . ." Rob uttered as he moved toward her.

"You won't kill it! I won't let you!"

"Maggie . . ."

"You did this! You made this happen!"

"No . . ."

"You didn't want to know, you didn't want to hear!"

"Please . . ."

"You hated it! You hated it!"

"Maggie!"

"It's a freak now! It's a monster now!"

Rob stopped, his face etched with anguish as he watched her ranting in
front of the flames.

"It wants to be born!" she screamed. "It wants to be born!"

Suddenly she groaned and slapped her hands to her mouth; vomit spewed
out from between her fingers. Rob ran to her and held her, sinking with
her to the ground, where she wretched and moaned, finally collapsing
into his arms. She gasped and clung to him, her teeth beginning to chatter.

"Hold me . . ." she gasped.

200

"I will. I'm here."

"Don't let me go. Don't let me kill it. I can't kill it."

"No, no," he soothed, stroking her hair. And suddenly she inhaled
sharply, her hands clutching at her stomach.

"It's hurting me!" she cried in panic.

"Lie back."

"It's eating me!"

"It's the vomiting, lie back. . . ."

"Don't let it hurt me!"

"Get my kit," Rob said to Romona. Romona whirled and rushed into the
tent, reappearing instantly with Rob's bag.

"Don't hurt it," Maggie pleaded as Rob pulled her jacket off and rolled
up her sweater sleeve. "Don't hurt my baby . . ."

Rob fumbled with trembling hands to prepare a syringe. He had nothing in
his kit weaker than morphine; he drew a minuscule amount, injecting it
directly into the crook of Maggie's elbow.

"Oh, God!" she shouted. Then she instantly became calm.

"Maggie."

"Yes."

"You're going to be all right . . ."

"No."

"We're going to get through it."

"No. I can't kill it."

"Just relax . . . relax . . ."

Her eyes closed and she sank back against him.

"Please . . . love me," she whimpered. Then she fell silent.

Hawks, Romona, and the pilot slowly disbursed, leaving Rob alone,
cradling Maggie in his arms. His face contorted, and a sob of despair
rose up from his gut. It had the sound of pain, as though it were
breaking through a barrier of flesh and bone to escape from the depths
in which, for an entire lifetime, the feeling of fear had been buried.
Once it broke through, it would not be stopped. Rob's body shook with it

201

as he rocked Maggie in his arms, the forest resounding with the sound of
his tears.

Eventually he quieted, sensing the hush of the atmosphere around him.
The forest was unmoving, as though suspended in a vacuum.

The he heard the movement in the trees. It was distant, a kind of
shuffling sound. Almost inaudible at first, growing louder as he listened.

He roused Maggie and struggled to get her to her feet. The pilot came to
help him with her, his eyes riveted on the forest. Hawks moved into the
darkness of the tree line, straining to see.

Romona emerged from the tent, cocking her ear in the direction of the
oncoming sound.

"It's people," she said with relief.

"Look," Hawks called.

Their eyes followed his gesture toward a line of tiny lights moving
slowly toward them through the trees. They were lanterns and
flashlights, strung closely together, seeming to float like an
illuminated string of pearls in the surrounding darkness.

"They're from the village," Romona said.

"What good are they going to do?" the pilot asked grimly. "We needed cars."

Rob led Maggie into the tent, gathering some burlap for her to sit on
beside the smoldering coals. As he eased her down, he could see that the
effects of the morphine were waning. There was clarity in her eyes.

"Don't let them hurt it, Rob," she whispered.

He shook his head to reassure her. "Wait here."

As Rob stepped out of the tent, the procession of lantern-carrying
Indians was emerging into the clearing. A few of them were young, but
most were elderly, their faces deeply lined and somber. They assembled
in silence, the glow of the fire casting their shadows high upon the trees.

Then the distant sound of a car motor broke the stillness. A beam of
headlights stabbed through the darkness, and machinery rattled as a
small vehicle wove its way through the forest toward them.

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"All right.'" the pilot exclaimed.

"It's the sheriff," Hawks said. Then he turned and headed for the tent.
"I'll stay in the tunnels until you're gone."

The car squealed to a stop at the edge of the encampment, and four men
got out-the sheriff and a deputy, both carrying rifles, Bethel Isely,
and Kelso, the lumberjack who had fought with Hawks at the blockade.

"Put your guns away," Rob said as they approached him.

"What is this, Vern?" Isely asked.

"Leave those guns outside."

"I asked you what's going on."

"Put those guns away."

Isely glanced at the sheriff and nodded. The sheriff handed his rifle to
the deputy.

"Just the two of you," Rob said to Isely and the sheriff. "The rest can
come later."

Inside the tent, Maggie struggled to her feet, taking a defensive stance
beside the table where the infant creature lay. Romona was there, too,
and stood firmly beside her. Isely and the sheriff moved forward and
recoiled, their faces contorting with revulsion.

The eyes of the infant creature stared up at them from behind
transparent lids, and its body began to tremble, as though sensing
danger was near. It whimpered, then went silent, its chest pumping in
rapid gasps.

Rob came up beside Isely. "It's the result of methyl-mercury . . .
spilling out of your plant. It's poisoned everything in this forest.
It's given birth to this creature."

Isely did not answer.

"Did you know?" Rob asked.

Isely's eyes turned to Rob. They were filled with anguish.

"Did you know?" Rob repeated.

Isely's gaze returned to the creature. "I . . . didn't want to," he
whispered.

203

They stood unmoving at the table, gazing down at the infant that was
spotlighted beneath them in the glow of a kerosene lantern hanging
overhead. The atmosphere was hazed with smoke from the coals and there
was a sense of awe, almost reverence, in the air.

Outside, the Indians also stood in silence, their faces illuminated by
the fire, the entire scene dwarfed by an enormous reddish moon that
glowed brightly above them. One of the Indians stepped forward and
entered the tent; others followed.

They filed quietly by the table; the atmosphere hushed, save for the
sound of their shuffling feet as, one by one, they came and gazed down,
then moved away. They expressed no disgust or surprise. Their faces were
calm and accepting, even tender.

The creature had begun its pitiful squeaking sound again; it was
struggling for consciousness. Its sounds came louder, permeating the
thin walls of the tent and reaching into the forest.

Outside, from deep within the recesses of darkness, a sound came in
response. It was an abrupt squeal. From their position beside the tent,
Kelso and the sheriff's deputy heard it; the Indians heard it, too. The
last of the Indians had exited the tent and gathered with the others in
a small group near the fire, their eyes turning toward the forest as the
sound grew louder. The infant squeaked, the squeal came in response. The
tempo was increasing and the sound was coming closer.

Inside the tent, Romona heard it, and the sudden tilt of her head
alerted Rob to listen, too. He left the tent, Romona following, the
sheriff and Isely close behind them. The infant creature continued to
squeak behind them but the squeal that came in response suddenly ceased.
All stood immobile, listening to the silence.

Rob's eyes searched the darkened forest, but he could see nothing beyond
the flickering shadows cast by the fire. Then he heard the sound of
movement;

204

the foliage on the forest floor crunched as something moved in the
darkness. It was coming toward them, the slow and deliberate rhythm
growing louder with each footfall.

"What is it?" Isely whipsered. Romona raised her hand to silence him.

The squeak of the infant became more desperate, suddenly rising in
pitch, and the sound of crunching came faster upon them. It was at the
edge of the encampment now, within moments of invading their sanctuary.
Rob sucked in his breath and clenched his fists. Suddenly the foliage
parted.

It revealed the figure of the old man, M'rai. He stepped into the
clearing and gazed around in confusion, stunned to find so many people
there.

"Welcome." He smiled. Rob and Romona sagged with relief.

Then the environment exploded. The trees behind M'rai shattered as they
were ripped from the ground; an earsplitting squeal of rage rang through
the air. A massive black form hurtled into the clearing, branches
splintering and leaves flying as it lashed out at the men and women who
ran and screamed beneath it. It was a gargantuan enlargement of the
infant, its saucerlike eyes reflecting fire, its underslung jaw dripping
saliva as it bellowed and swiped, throwing bodies into the trees like
rag dolls. The deputy raised his rifle, but just as he did, was grabbed
and hurled upward, his bones snapping as his body flew toward the sky.
The air resounded with cries of panic; people ran everywhere, colliding
with one another in their desperation to escape. Rob stood in shock,
unable to move as the slaughter went on around him; he saw Kelso get
slashed in half by the claws, the top half of his body landing in the fire.

A group of Indians attempted to escape in the car, but it toppled
sideways as the beast attacked it. Men spilled out, screaming as the car
rolled on top of them. Parts of bodies were flying everywhere. The scene
turned to bloody chaos.

205

Inside the tent, Maggie grabbed up the infant, the I.V. bottle crashing
behind her as she screamed and spun, not knowing where to go.

"The tunnel!" Hawks cried as he sprang from the narrow opening in the
tent floor. He grabbed Maggie and threw her into it, then ran to the
outside. "Mona!" he screamed. But Romona was nowhere in sight. The fire
pit had erupted into a shower of sparks; people were wailing and
running, some crawling, through pools of blood. "The runnels!" Hawks
cried out. "The tunnels! Get to the tents!"

The pilot raced forward, attempting to reach Hawks, but the talons
caught him, yanking him upward and hurling him against a tree. The beast
bellowed, whirling toward the sheriff, who was rolling on the ground,
attempting to fire upward with his revolver. The beast's massive foot
came down on his head, and juice squirted upward. Then the huge form
turned on Rob; as its torso swung, Rob saw the pendulous breasts of a
female.

"Watch out!" Hawks screamed.

Rob whirled and leaped away, hearing the tent poles crack behind him.
"Maggie!" he cried.

"She's all right!" Hawks yelled. "Get to the tunnels!"

Rob scrambled on all fours as the beast turned its rage on the tent,
ripping and tearing it as if it were tissue paper.

"John!" Romona screamed.

"The tunnels!"

She raced toward him, colliding with bodies that got snatched up and
disappeared around her, spotting M'rai who stood near the fire pit in a
state of shock, watching the massive form of the beast dancing violently
around him.

"M'rai!" she screamed.

Hawks grabbed her, pulling her toward one of the tents, but before they
could get there, it was ripped from its moorings; they changed
directions, heading for the one tent that remained standing. Isely had

206

gotten there just ahead of them; he was weeping as Hawks pushed him into
the darkened hole, thrusting Romona down behind him. Then Hawks ran to
the outside again. There was practically no one left alive. The air
resounded with the beast's howl of rage as it shredded the remains of
the tents. The only figure left standing was M'rai, watching like an
innocent child; body parts, like broken toys, were strewn upon the
ground around him. Rob was out there, too, desperately attempting to
drag the pilot, whose face was covered with blood, toward the last
remaining tent. But the beast spotted him, bellowing with anger as it
turned and lunged downward.

"Watch out!" Hawks screamed.

Rob leaped away and rolled fast. Talons slashed the ground just behind
his head as Hawks raced away from him and screamed at the beast in an
attempt to distract it. The beast spun, and as Hawks hit the ground, his
eyes fell on the carcass of the dead infant creature he iad placed there
while tending the fire. He grabbed it and held it up, and as the beast
rose to its hindquarters preparing to charge, he flung it at her. It hit
her chest and fell to the ground. Suddenly all movement stopped. The
gargantuan form went silent, its eyes fixed on the body of its dead
infant. As Hawks watched, the huge, hairless head tilted, blood and
saliva drooling from its open mouth. A small sound emanated from within,
almost like a question. Then it lowered to all fours and nudged the tiny
carcass with its nose.

Hawks and Rob eased slowly backward toward the one remaining tent and
paused for a moment, watching.

"M'rai!" Hawks hissed.

But M'rai did not respond. He stood just beneath the towering figure,
his face turned upward.

"M'rai!"

The beast heard Hawks's voice and its large, saucerlike eyes slowly
turned toward him. But it did not move. It looked at the two men and
whimpered. Then,

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without warning, it suddenly charged. Rob and Hawks leaped into the tent
and scrambled into the narrow floor opening, hearing the tent poles
crack and the canvas rip behind them.

The noises gradually faded as they worked their way down into the
subterranean darkness.

There, eight feet beneath the ground, three tunnels converged into a
small earthern cubicle. Maggie was there, clutching the limp form of the
living infant creature to her chest. Isely was crouched beside her,
weeping, his face pressed close to the dirt wall. Rob wrested the
creature away from Maggie and pulled her into his arms; Romona and Hawks
stared at each other in the darkened silence.

On the ground above them, the beast's tirade had ended.

It turned away from the shredded tent and lumbered back toward the body
of its dead offspring. It walked past M'rai without touching him and
stood over the infant, rolling it over with its nose, then licking its
chest in firm, upward movements, as though attempting to reinstill the
life force within. It stopped and whimpered once more, then lifted the
rigid carcass of the infant in its mouth and slowly moved back into the
forest.

M'rai watched as it blended into the night shadows and disappeared into
the trees. There was a smile on M'rai's face. His sanity was gone.

208

208

12

Dawn broke over M'rai's camp, revealing the grim aftermath in all its
bloody detail. The once beautiful oasis looked like a battlefield. The
tents were reduced to rubble and bodies were strewn everywhere, arms and
legs protruding from the surrounding foliage, the ground torn and
blotched with dark stains.

The fire had dwindled to a fine wisp of smoke; M'rai sat before it,
chanting.

As the morning call of the loons sounded from the lake, a pile of torn
animal hides that had once been a tent stirred, and the survivors
emerged, one by one, from their hiding place beneath the ground. Hawks
was first, followed by Romona. Then came Rob. He was bruised and caked
with dirt, and he held the limp body of the still-living infant creature
in his arms. Next came Maggie. Her face was scratched, her eyes dazed.
Rob put his arm around her and turned her toward the forest so she would
not see the nightmarish scene spread out before them. Isely was the last
to emerge; he did not look like the same man. His eyes were hollow, his
cheeks were sunken, as if he had suddenly aged.

Hawks and Romona spotted M'rai and slowly approached him. He turned to
them and smiled.

"A'haniy'aht Katahdin," he said.

Romona knelt before him, gazing into his face. Then she reached up and
gently pulled his opened jacket closely around him.

209

"Katahdin Y'ho'w'atha" the old man whispered.

"What's he saying?" asked Rob as he came up behind them.

"That Katahdin loves him," Hawks answered.

Romona turned away, concealing the tears in her eyes.

Rob surveyed the grim spectacle before them. The car was overturned and
squashed. Arms and legs could be seen beneath it, but none of them
moved. The corpse of the sheriff lay twisted and broken at the base of a
tree; the body of the deputy was close beside it. He lay on the ground,
face up, his skull flattened at the back from the impact.

Maggie stood shivering; Rob walked her to the fire, easing her down to a
boulder at its' edge.

"I'll stay with her," Romona said.

Maggie was holding her woolen shawl loosely in her hand. Rob gently
removed it, wrapped the infant creature in it, and set it down near
Maggie on the ground. Then he and Hawks walked to the edge of the trees,
Isely following.

None of them spoke as they gazed into the misted forest.

"Do you think it's still here?" Isely asked in a faltering voice.

"It's nocturnal," Rob answered.

"Not any more," Hawks said. "It won't sleep until it collects its Utter."

They looked to the infant creature, bundled in Maggie's shawl, lying
motionless on the ground.

"We must destroy it," Hawks said. "We must burn it."

"No."

"Its mother will return."

"Not until night. It's nocturnal. It will sleep."

Hawks bristled. It was plain that the controversy was not over.

"John!" Romona called out with alarm.

They turned and saw her pointing toward the forest. There was movement
there, the foliage swaying as

210

something came toward them. It was the pilot, badly wounded and barely
conscious, crawling on bis belly toward the clearing.

Rob and Hawks ran to him and dragged him forward, propping him into a
sitting position at the base of a tree.

His shirt hung about him in shreds, the strips of material meshed into
streaks of clotted blood that ran from his chin to his belly. His front
teeth were bent inward, and there was a discolored dent where his
forehead used to be. He repeatedly mumbled something that they were
unable to hear.

Rob gently touched the wound on his head; the flesh gave way beneath his
fingers.

"Will he live?" Hawks asked.

Rob rose, moving out of earshot, Hawks following.

"Can he live?" Hawks repeated.

"I don't know."

"We'll have to leave him."

Rob gazed grimly back at the pilot.

"He can't walk," Hawks insisted.

"We could carry him."

"We're fifteen miles from town. We won't make half that distance by
nightfall if we carry him."

"He wanted to leave. I wouldn't let him. I can't leave him here."

Hawks shook his head in warning.

"You go ahead of us," Rob said. "You can make it before nightfall. Send
someone back for us. We'll be on the road."

"You can't carry him yourself."

"Isely's here."

"I can't carry him," Isely said quietly behind them. "I can barely stand."

They stood in frustrated silence, knowing that a decision had to be made.

"We'll go to my village," Hawks said. "It's only two miles. There's
shelter there. My people can send for help."

"How long will it take them?" Rob asked.

211

"Last night it was six hours until a car came."

"They'd make it back by nightfall?"

"If we reached the village by noon."

"Wait," Isley said. "The plane you came in. It must have a radio."

"It won't work unless it's up in the air," Rob replied.

"The ranger's tower," Isely countered. "There's a radio up there."

Rob looked at Hawks.

"It's seven miles," Hawks said.

"That's half the distance to town," Isely urged.

"And three times the distance to the village," Hawks replied.

"But there's a radio there."

"And what's between here and there?"

Isely was stopped.

"Seven miles of open forest," Hawks added, "with trees so thick you
can't see three feet on either side. We can't cross seven miles of open
forest not knowing where the beast is."

"I can," Isely said.

Hawks assessed him with a wary eye.

"I can't carry the pilot," Isely said apologetically. "The only way I
can be useful is by going to the tower. You go to the village. If I can
make contact, you'll get out within hours."

Rob looked at him carefully, wondering if he realized the danger.

"Let me do this," Isely said. His voice made it plain that it was an act
of atonement.

"I'll make a stretcher," Hawks said.

Rob nodded. "Let's move."

While Hawks gathered saplings and torn bits of animal hide to construct
a litter, Rob surveyed the bodies that were strewn around, looking for
signs of life. There were none, and Rob was relieved; they could not
have carried more than one.

In the remains of tbe car there was a rifle that was undamaged; it had
three shells in its chamber. Rob

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took it, ejecting the shells and putting them in his pocket, then
searched through the remains of the tents, looking for his medical kit
and anything else, such as a knife or an ax, that could be useful.

He had not stopped to question why he'd emptied the rifle, but now, as
he watched Hawks from a distance, he realized he had done so because he
feared that the Indian might try to use the gun to put the infant
creature to death.

While Rob picked through the remains of the tents, Isely searched the
pockets in the clothing of the lumberjack, the sheriff, and the deputy,
removing identification and personal belongings to take back to their
survivors. On the body of the sheriff he found a revolver and loaded it
with bullets from the sheriff's belt. Then he assisted Hawks in the
construction of the stretcher, Hawks only grudgingly allowing him to help.

M'rai still sat on the ground chanting, his voice so soft that it was
almost inaudible. Maggie and Romona sat near him on the boulders that
rimmed the fire pit, their eyes riveted on the shawl-wrapped creature
near their feet.

"Is it alive?" Romona asked quietly.

"Yes."

"We must not take it."

Romona reached down and pulled away the cloth wrapping. The small rib
cage was still pumping as the creature clung to life.

"We must leave it," she said.

"It will die."

"Mr. Vern?" Romona called. Rob approached and she rose to confront him.
"We must not take this."

"We have to take it." Rob answered firmly.

"It's a danger to us."

"I'm not going to lose it."

"Then bury it. Come back for it."

"It's alive," Maggie responded.

?Then kill it," Romona snapped.

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Hawks came up and took a stance beside Romona. "Romona is right. It must
be destroyed."

"You can't just kill it," Maggie pleaded.

"If it makes a noise . . ." Romona argued.

"It can't make a noise," Maggie protested. "Look at it! It can't make a
noise!"

Hawks reached for it, and Rob stopped him. Their eyes locked and held.

"You once asked me if I was willing to die for what I believed in," Rob
said.

"There are others here."

"I'm aware of that."

"You'd sacrifice them?"

"No." Rob reached down and picked up the infant creature, unbuttoning
his parka and placing it inside for safety. "If it makes a noise, I'll
kill it. I'll kill it myself. Until then, it stays alive."

Isely approached, sensing the tension in the air.

"You'll agree to that?" Rob asked Hawks.

"If it makes a sound, it dies."

Rob nodded.

"I'm ready to go," Isely said.

"The stretcher's ready," Hawks said coldly.

"Can we see the ranger's tower from your village?" Rob asked Romona.

"Yes."

Rob turned to Isely. "Once you've sent a radio message, I want you to
raise a flag. A shirt. Anything you can find. We'll be looking for it."

Isely nodded. "I'll do my best." Then he turned to leave.

"Mr. Isely?" Rob called after him.

"Yes?"

Rob stood for a moment in silence. "Thank you."

Isely headed off into the forest. They watched him until he had disappeared.

Hawks had found the archer's bow standing untouched beside the tree
where he left it the night before; he slung it tightly across his
shoulders, along with the quiver containing three arrows. Then he and

214

Rob moved to the pilot and lifted him onto the stretcher. His weight was
more than Rob had anticipated.

"I'll lead," Hawks said, turning his back and moving between the
carrying poles. Then they lifted, Rob struggling beneath the weight.
With the parcel containing the infant creature stuffed in the top of his
parka, he couldn't manage.

"Maggie," he called. "Take this."

"I'll take it," Romona called. But there was defiance in her voice.

"You take the rifle," Rob called back to her. "It's by the fire."

Maggie came forward and removed the shawl-wrapped infant from Rob's
parka; she shuddered as she caught sight of the face. The mouth was
caked with dried saliva and the skin had begun to sag from dehydration.

"I think it's dead," she whispered.

"It's not dead. Let's go."

Hawks started forward and Rob staggered until he established a rhythm;
Maggie fell in line just behind him, her face gripped with tension as
she tried not to look at the parcel in her arms.

Romona picked up the rifle and helped M'rai to his feet, holding on to
his arm as they followed the group into the forest.

The two miles to the village were slow going; uphill almost all the wav.
The route was cluttered with fallen timber that they had to crawl over,
sometimes under; Rob's neck ached and his arms trembled with strain as
he struggled with the weight of the stretcher. Hawks moved in silence,
his eyes scanning the forest, which seemed deceptively benevolent. Birds
sang and fluttered overhead; squirrels chattered at them from the high
branches of trees.

In her efforts not to stumble, Maggie had pulled the parcel in her arms
close to her, so she could see

217

over it to the ground. She tried to ignore the stirring that she had
begun to feel in her arms. Warmed by Maggie's body and stimulated by the
jostling movement, the creature was beginning to awaken. Its muscles had
begun to contract and tighten. One of the transparent eyelids had
slipped upward; a single eye stared out from the warm, protected darkness.

"Got to set it down," Rob gasped.

"Keep going," Hawks urged.

"I can't . . ."

"Romona."

Romona hurried to Rob's end of the stretcher and reached for one of the
handles.

"No," Rob said.

"Let her help you."

"I can do it."

"Help him," Hawks commanded.

Romona laid the rifle in the stretcher and hefted one of the handles;
Rob released it.

"How much farther?" Rob panted.

"At the top of the hill, we're halfway," Hawks answered.

Within forty minutes they had reached the crest of the hill and stopped,
gazing down at the lake and the village below. The lake was perfectly
still, un-moving; so was the Indian village. There was not a sign of
life there.

"They're gone," Romona whispered in amazement.

Hawks, too, was stunned, and there was despair in his eyes.

"No one's there?" Rob asked weakly.

"No one."

"The forest has turned against them," M'rai said. "We have angered
Katahdin."

Hawks and Rob set down the stretcher. Rob sank to the ground and rolled
onto his back. He was breathless. His neck muscles were in spasm, rigid
and cramped, and his hands were blistered and bleeding, deeply imbedded
with splinters where the rough-hewn carrying handles had rubbed.

218

"There's the tower," Romona said. Rob struggled to lift his head and saw
the small ranger's tower rising above the trees on a distant shore of
the lake.

"How long have we been walking?" he gasped.

"Two hours. Maybe less," Hawks replied.

"Isely should be there soon."

"Unless he headed for town," Hawks said.

"Why would he do that?" Maggie asked fearfully.

"He knew he could make it by himself," Hawks answered. "Without us, he
could run. He could make it before nightfall."

"He'll go to the tower," Rob vowed. "He'll go there."

Hawks's face was grim as his eyes turned to Rob. "If he doesn't, we're
here for the night."

Rob struggled to his feet and they lifted the stretcher proceeding
downhill toward the empty village.

Isely had begun his journey at a run but was unable to keep up the pace.
He had now established a routine of running three hundred steps and
walking three hundred steps, counting quietly to himself in an effort to
keep his mind off the danger that he feared was lurking in the trees.

In the course of the journey, he had determined that he would assist
Robert Vern in every way he could. If necessary, he would confiscate the
files of the Pitney Paper Mill and bring them to Washington. If called
upon, he would testify and tell everything he knew. It made him feel
safer to think that he would absolve himself of sin.

The ranger's tower was in sight now, its thatched roof spiking upward
through the trees no more than a mile away. It renewed his energy and he
broke into a run. He dodged through the trees like an infantryman
crossing a mine field, until his chest began to burn and his legs ached
beneath him. Unable to continue, he slowed, bis legs wobbling with fatigue.

217

He paused and leaned against a tree, gasping for oxygen through a raw
windpipe and parched lips.

As his breathing quieted, he began to perceive a sound. It was the sound
of flies buzzing, as though there were a hornet's nest nearby. He pushed
himself away from the tree and staggered on, finding a narrow footpath
that seemed to lead in the direction of the tower. The buzzing sound was
louder here, and he saw, on the ground in the middle of the footpath
ahead of him, a teeming mound of insects with flies hovering over it,
ants converging from all directions.

He moved closer and began to detect an odor. It was the smell of rotting
flesh. As Isely continued forward he could see, beneath the glistening
shroud of crawling maggots and flies, the pinkish-black color of the
carcass they were feeding on. He took a step toward it, and his footfall
sent a cloud of flies billowing upward, revealing a shape that caused
him to stop.

There, at his feet, was the rotting carcass of an infant creature
exactly like the one he had seen in M'rai's camp the night before.

Isely had no knowledge that there had been a second infant creature or
that the beast had carried this one away. He stood in momentary
confusion, then shuddered as the smell of dampness swept over him. His
posture stiffened, and he realized he was about to die.

The movement in the brash behind him was swift, followed by an
earsplitting squeal of rage.

Isely did not turn around, for he did not want to see. But in the
millisecond after his head hit the ground, his eyes registered the sight
of his severed torso being ripped and torn to pieces.

By late afternoon, a light cloud cover had begun to move in over the
lake, threatening the group assembled in the Indian village with early
darkness. As they had suspected, the village was completely de-

218

serted when they entered, all the people and their belongings gone.

Rob had faithfully maintained watch; his eyes were blurred from strain
as he continued to stare up toward the distant ranger's tower. It was
almost four o'clock now, and there was no sign from Isely.

Romona was inside one of the flimsy cabinlike structures, tending the
pilot, who was laid out on the earthern floor. He regained consciousness
from time to time and wept, then slipped back into oblivion.

There was a small fire burning in the fireplace. Maggie sat before it,
gazing into the flames. The infant creature was still wrapped in her
shawl; she had tied the shawl tightly around it to make certain it would
not move. She had also draped a piece of the cloth over the small
opening at the top, for she had seen the eyes staring out at her.

In a far corner of the small cabin M'rai rocked slowly, uttering his
soft, mournful chant.

As Romona knelt over the pilot, applying a wet towel to his forehead,
she glanced through the open door and saw that the sky had turned gray.
She was worried about Hawks, for it had been over an hour since he left
the village to scout for help.

The pilot moaned and rolled his head, waving his hand as if to push the
towel away. Romona moved to where she could see his eyes. They were open
again and seemed clearer than before.

"The plane . . ." he whispered.

She took his hand and gently massaged it.

"I can fly it," he pleaded.

"We'll be safe soon."

"I can fly us . . . out of here . . ."

"They're coming for us."

"She'll think I crashed . . ."

"No . . ."

He whimpered and his face contorted as he tried to keep his tears in.
"I'm sorry . . ."

"You're going to be all right."

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He wept, then slipped into unconsciousness. Romona rose and moved outside.

Rob was standing in the center of the village, his eyes fixed in an
upward stare.

"No sign?" she asked.

He shook his head. "We should have taken the road."

"We couldn't have carried the stretcher fifteen miles."

"We're going to have to spend the night here."

Each saw dread in the other's eyes. Their silence was broken by John
Hawks, who came running toward them through the trees.

"Mr. Vern!" he shouted as he raced into the clearing. "Three quarters of
a mile . . ." he panted, "where they're surveying trees, they've left a
skidder."

"A skidder?"

"They use it for transporting equipment. They're like tanks, they can
move through anything."

"Will it run?" Rob asked urgently.

"I can cross the wires."

"How long will it take?"

"It's flat ground, we can get there in thirty minutes."

"To get to town."

"Three hours, maybe four."

"It will be night by then," Romona said.

"It will be night here, too," Rob responded.

"We have some shelter here," she answered.

"Those cabins are matchsticks. If we've got to face the darkness, let's
be close to town."

"I agree," Hawks said.

"All right," Romona answered.

"Let's go!"

They hurried into the cabin and emerged with the stretcher, Romona once
again helping M'rai, Maggie following with the bundled-up creature in
her arms. Hawks still had the archer's bow and quiver strapped to his
back, and the rifle was in the stretcher. Darkness was descending, but
they moved with power now. The possibility of escape had renewed their
strength.

220

Maggie straggled to keep up with Rob; she studied bis face as she moved
alongside him. The veins protruded on his neck as he fought to keep the
stretcher aloft; his jaw was clenched with a sense of purpose. Their
eyes met and they exchanged a reassuring nod. Rob was barely able to
speak as he struggled with the stretcher.

"We're going to get through it, Maggie."

"I know."

The trees ahead of them looked unending, as deep and dark as eternity.
It felt as though they were moving on a treadmill, going nowhere, for
there was no change in the landscape to mark their progress.

Maggie felt a quick spasm go through the body of the infant creature,
and she looked down, opening the cloth around its face. Both eyes were
open, and it stared up at her with a kind of blank affection, the kind
of mindless trust one sees on the face of an infant watching its mother.
Maggie quickly covered the face and focused hard on the forest. She
prayed the creature would not cry out She could not bare to watch it be
slaughtered.

"There!" Hawks shouted.

They broke into a run, reaching the crest of a rise, where they gazed
out over an area of forest laid waste by men and machines. The trees had
been reduced to stumps, the ground pounded to pulp beneath boots and
wheels. Disposable drinking cans and paper garbage littered the ground;
a giant vehicle stood in the center, looking like a mechanical king of
this domain.

"Look at the size of it!" Rob hissed.

It was made of heavy steel, tall as a steamroller, with rubber tires
that were five feet in circumference. A narrow glass-enclosed driver's
compartment protruded from the top of it, and a half-dozen stick-shift
rods could be seen surrounding the driver's wheel.

"Can you drive it?" Rob asked Hawks.

"I'm about to learn. Wait here till I get it running."

They lowered the stretcher and Hawks raced across

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the clearing, swinging himself up into the driver's compartment and
disappearing from view as he slipped beneath the steering wheel.

As Maggie watched, a small, muffled sound came from the parcel in her
arms. She pushed the shawl down hard toward the creature's face, but
caused it to struggle and squeal louder. Rob heard it, and Romona heard
it too; she quickly approached, glaring into Rob's eyes.

"You said-"

"Please," Maggie interrupted.

"Maggie . . ."

"It'll stop."

"Kill it!" Romona demanded.

But their voices were drowned out by the cornbustion of the skidder's
motor. Exhaust fumes poured from a verticle pipe and Hawks jumped down.

"Let's go!" he shouted, running up and grabbing the stretcher.

"John," Romona protested.

"Let's go!" he demanded, cutting her off.

Romona whirled angrily toward Maggie.

"It's quiet!" Maggie insisted. "It stopped!"

"Let's go," Rob commanded.

They raced from the trees to the skidder, Rob and Hawks tying the
stretcher on with ropes that hung from the running board. Romona climbed
onto the open flatbed at the rear that was surrounded with a heavy metal
railing. She pulled M'rai up beside her, Rob did the same with Maggie,
and Hawks jumped into the driver's compartment, snagged for a moment by
the archer's bow strapped to his back.

"I'll hold that for you!" Rob yelled to him.

Hawks shook his head and eased behind the wheel, pulling levers that
made the vehicle suddenly lurch forward, then back. M'rai lost his
balance, but Rob managed to grab him before he fell.

"Hold tight to the rail!" Rob shouted over the din of the motor.
"Everybody get secured!"

Maggie pulled close to the railing, unwittingly push-

222

ing the parcel in her arms close to her face, and she could hear a sound
coming from within. It was not a squeal, it was a purr. She could feel
the gentle rumbling beneath her chin.

"Give me the rifle," Rob called to Romona.

She grabbed it up from the stretcher and handed it across, then braced
her body behind M'rai, gripping the railing on either side of him to
hold him in place.

"Everybody set?" Hawks called.

"Go!" Rob commanded.

The vehicle lurched and spun aboutface, the passengers clinging tight
until it stabilized and started forward. The sound of the motor was
louder when the vehicle was in gear, and it vibrated like a jackhammer
as it bumped across boulders that were strewn in its way. Rob climbed
over the railing and edged his way to the driver's compartment.

"How do we get there?" he asked Hawks.

"There's a riverbed that leads to the lake. We'll follow the shoreline
to the road."

"My car's near there."

"I'd rather travel in this!" Hawks answered, pounding the heavy metal
dashboard with his fist. Rob nodded and edged back to where the others
were, crawling over the railing and bracing his body behind Maggie, as
Romona had done with M'rai.

Night was coming fast and a sharp wind had risen, blowing the trees.
Perched on their metallic stallion, they felt exhilarated, like soldiers
returning alive from battle.

In the driver's compartment, Hawks's body vibrated in every fiber as he
clung to the shift levers. He glanced at the gas gauge; it was less than
half full. There was a roll of heavy tape on the floor near his feet; he
grabbed it, and using his teeth, ripped off a piece and plastered it
across the gas gauge. He didn't want to know.

As darkness began to take hold, the vehicle emerged from a thinly
forested area, and onto an expanse of rolling hills. Hawks knew that the
impenetrable tree

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line to the right stood between them and the lake. There was a dry
riverbed somewhere ahead that ran directly through the trees and down to
the shore. As a child, Hawks used to race the length of it, from the top
of the hills to the shore, and take flight the last few feet, leaping
headlong into the water. It was this riverbed that he was looking for,
but in the near darkness the landscape looked suddenly unfamiliar.

He glanced behind them, wondering if he had passed it, and saw that the
clouds had parted over the distant mountains, revealing a full, glowing
moon. Once darkness fell, it would light the landscape almost as clear
as day. The difficult time was now, before the shadows came to define
the landmarks along the way. Then he saw a streak of yellow through the
trees ahead and to the right. It was the reflection of the moon on the
lake, calm and peaceful below them. Hawks could even make out the
darkened mound in the center of the water, the island where Rob and
Maggie's cabin stood. It was all the more frustrating to see the lake,
for Hawks could not find the avenue of access to it.

"There's the lake," Rob called. "It's just below us."

"I see it!" Hawks shouted.

"Where's the riverbed?"

"I've lost it."

"Turn on the headlights."

In his desperation to see in the dark, Hawks had forgotten that the
vehicle had lights. He found a switch and snapped it on; a spotlight
beamed on the terrain that rumbled toward and beneath them. There was a
lever above Hawk's head; he grabbed it and swiveled the spotlight,
sweeping the beam through the trees. With sudden relief he recognized a
landmark, a huge rock sharply configurated like an arrowhead. They used
to call it M'ahay'ah, the "protector." The riverbed was only a few
hundred yards ahead.

"We're going to make it!" Hawks called back. "We're more than halfway!"

The group on the back of the vehicle looked at one

224

another in triumph; except for M'rai, whose eyes were on the trees. Rob
noticed it and edged close to him.

"Do you see something in there?"

"I see everything in there."

"We're going to make it, old man."

"No," M'rai answered. Then he turned and looked at Rob. "Can you stop
the car?"

Rob stared at him in amazement.

"I wish to get out here," M'rai said. "You will be saved if I can get
out here."

"Why?"

"I can speak with Katahdin. He knows my love for him. I will make him
understand about taking his child."

The vehicle suddenly lurched to a stop, the spotlight swiveling in all
directions.

"Thank you," M'rai said.

Romona grabbed hold of him. "M'rai!"

"He's waiting for me just there," M'rai complained.

Rob grabbed the old man's arms and held firm. "Why did we stop?" he
shouted to Hawks.

"The cut to the lake! It's supposed to be here!"

"It's grown over with ferns . . ." Romona shouted.

"Let me please go down before he gets angry," M'rai protested.

"Tie him to the rail," Rob ordered. "Tie him up." Then he edged to the
driver's compartment. "Keep moving! Keep it going!"

"There's nowhere to go if we pass the riverbed!"

"To your right," Romona said. "Look for the ferns."

"Where?" called Hawks, swiveling the spotlight

"It should be over there!"

From beside Romona, a sharp squeal rose from the parcel in Maggie's
arms. Maggie desperately pushed the cloth wrapping down upon the
creature's face, but the animal began to struggle, its cry of panic
rising in intensity.

"Throw it out!" Romona cried. "It will kill us all!"

"Katahdin is here!" M'rai declared.

225

"Get moving!" Rob ordered. "Get it going!"

"There's nowhere to go!" Hawks shouted.

"Just move it!"

Hawks jerked a shift lever and the mighty vehicle lurched backward, all
grabbing the railing to keep from being thrown. The creature in Maggie's
arms freed one of its paws, the sharp talons waving viciously in front
of her eyes, but as she clung to the railing, she was helpless to stop it.

"Rob!" she called.

"Drop it!" he commanded as he edged toward her.

Maggie stepped back to let the parcel drop, but the talons hooked into
her blouse, the creature squealing in loud, piercing cries.

"Throw it out!" Romona screamed.

"I can't!"

"There's the cut!" Hawks yelled. "There're the ferns!"

His spotlight swiveled to one side of them, and Romona gasped in fear.
Their heads spun around, and they saw it. The reflection of two huge
saucerlike eyes staring back at them from the center of the light beam.

"God!" Maggie screamed.

"Move it!" Rob shouted. "Fast!"

"Holy Mother . . ." Hawks moaned as he fumbled with the shift levers.
The vehicle lurched forward, Romona and M'rai falling to the floor.

"It's coming!" Maggie shrieked.

She fumbled with the surging bundle in her arms, then looked up to see
the foliage explode behind them as the huge specter of the beast charged
into the clearing. Hawks pushed the accelerator to the floor, speeding
blindly into the darkness, the vehicle bumping and lurching as the beast
gained steadily from behind. Against the moonlight it could be seen only
as a mountainous shadow, growing larger with each second. Then the
skidder collided with a tree stump, knocking everyone to the floor.
Hawks fumbled with the gears, and the vehicle spun, barreling down-

226

ward with the speed of a roller coaster toward the trees.

Maggie sobbed as she clung to the floor, the squirming bundle pinned
beneath her. Rob fumbled in his pocket, pulling out a bullet and
throwing it into the rifle chamber. Grabbing the railing, he aimed at
the mountainous shadow, but the vehicle swerved as he fired and the shot
went wild. The beast was almost on them now, the vehicle running
sideways on a hill, tilted at a precarious angle.

"Ram it!" Rob shouted. "Turn and ram it!"

Hawks struggled with the wheel, unable to turn at this speed for fear of
tipping.

"She's on us!" Rob shouted.

The face of the beast was just feet from the flatbed; drool could be
seen cascading from between its glinting teeth as it ran. But at the
last moment it swung away, running parallel to them on the uphill side.

"She's going to tip us!" Rob shouted.

"Throw it out!" Romona sobbed as she crawled toward Maggie. "Throw it to
her!"

"Throw it, Maggie!" Rob screamed.

But Maggie was unable to move, clinging with both hands to the
floorboards. Rob reached down and rolled her over, Romona tore away the
cloth wrapping that contained the infant. With a sudden snarl it leaped
upon Maggie's neck, digging its claws and teeth into her flesh as it
wailed with fear. Maggie screamed and rolled, Rob grappling to pull the
infant off. But he could not disloge it. Its teeth were buried in
Maggie's neck.

"Watch out!" Hawks cried from the driver's cornpartment.

The beast lunged down on them, making jolting contact with the vehicle,
and the vehicle tipped, poised, for an awesome moment, on two wheels in
the air.

"Jump!" Rob screamed.

In a blur of motion, bodies took flight, spilling out in all directions
as the vehicle crashed to its side with tremendous force, then began
rolling and bouncing toward the trees. As Rob hit the ground, he saw that

227

Hawks was still trapped within it, and so was the pilot, tied to the
running board. The beast had turned its attack on the vehicle itself,
assailing it with full fury as it tumbled through the trees.

It crashed to rest at the base of a boulder, and Hawks struggled to get
through the broken glass of the driver's compartment. But he was hung up
by the archer's bow that was strapped to his back. The lumbering shadow
surged down on the pilot, disemboweling him with a single swipe, and
Hawks struggled free, the bow ripping off his back as its string was
severed by broken glass. He grabbed it up and raced out into the night,
trying to get his bearings in the darkness.

Maggie was running toward the lake, screaming in terror as she attempted
to dislodge the creature that still clung to her, its snout deeply
imbedded in her neck. Rob scrambled across the ground to get the rifle
and ran after her, trying to force another bullet into the chamber as he
ran. He spotted Romona as she stumbled through the darkness, screaming
for M'rai.

"The water!" Hawks shouted. "The water! Swim to the island!"

Rob caught up with Maggie, attempting to grab her as she ran, but she
was hysterical, fighting him off and screaming as she stumbled through
the trees. Rob attempted to raise the rifle and point it at the
creature, but Maggie kept spinning and lurching, her head swinging by
the barrel.

"I can't get it off me!" she shrieked. "I can't get it off me!"

"Get to the water!" Rob screamed. "Drown it!"

Behind them, they could hear the sound of metal being ripped as the
beast tore into the fallen vehicle. Rob prayed it would stay there long
enough to allow them to get into the lake.

Hawks was the first to reach the shore; he paused, gazing back into the
darkened trees. "Romona!" he cried.

228

"M'rai!" her voice called back. "I can't find M'rai!"

Hawks charged back up the hill and found her, pulling her downward,
against her will, to the lake, where he threw her into the water.

"Don't leave him!" she screamed.

"Swim to the island!"

Hawks ran back up the hill as Rob and Maggie raced by him, splashing
into the water.

"The island!" Rob yelled.

"Get it off me! Get it off me!"

"Swim!"

"I can't!"

Rob came up behind her, swung the rifle across her chest, and, gripping
it on either side of her, pulled her backward, propelling them into
deeper water.

Scrambling up the bill, Hawks saw the figure of the old man standing in
a daze, watching the beast destroy the skidder.

"M'rai!" Hawks shouted as he ran toward him. "Come away!"

"I will speak with Katahdin," the old man answered calmly.

Hawks grabbed him and jerked him backward, dragging him down the hill.
The beast spotted them and rose to its hindquarters, its massive head
swivel-ing as it honed in on its quarry.

"Swim!" Hawks gasped as they staggered to the shore.

"I will not swim."

"Do you want to die?" Hawks yelled.

"He will not hurt me. I will call him by name."

Hawks grabbed the old man, but M'rai resisted. The trees were cracking
on the hill above them; the beast was coming down.

"He will spare you if I speak to him," M'rai said.

Hawks lifted the old man from his feet and hurled him into the water,
then jumped in behind him. M'rai immediately turned and started back for
the shore.

"M'rai!" Hawks screamed in frustration.

But M'rai proceeded to the shore, wading up to

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the bank, where he awaited the arrival of Katahdin.

"Damn you, M'rai!" Hawks wailed.

"I will not go with you."

In anguish, Hawks forced himself to turn away. With the bow and three
arrows clutched in his hand, he began swimming hard toward the island.

Rob and Maggie had made it into deep water, and they were in trouble.
With his arms wrapped around her, Rob could not use his hands to
dislodge the creature, and his strength was ebbing as Maggie cried out
and struggled in his arms.

"God . . . God . . . God!" she screamed.

"Lie still!"

"It's killing me!"

Rob's eyes were level with the creature's; it stared at him resolutely,
its needlelike teeth firmly locked into the flesh of Maggie's neck.

"Help me!" Maggie cried, and she began flailing, trying to wrest herself
from Rob's grip.

"Maggie, don't . . ."

But she pulled free, the water erupting in a white spray as Rob
attempted to grab her.

"Help us!" Rob shouted. "Hawks!"

John Hawks spotted the flurry of white water and swam hard for them,
Romona following close behind.

"She's under!" Rob screamed. "She's gone under!"

Hawks released the bow and arrows, and dove; Romona managed to get to
Rob and take the rifle from him; Rob disappeared beneath the water, too.
They rose instantly, all three, Maggie choking and sputtering, the
creature still clinging to her neck.

"Get its face under!" Rob cried as he grabbed Maggie's hair.

Hawks pushed down hard on the creature's face, until its snout was below
the waterline. Maggie's eyes were wide and her mouth was stretched open,
her face being pulled from above and below.

"Help . . . me . . ." she gurgled through the w&ter that flooded into
her mouth.

Suddenly the creature's jagged teeth snapped up-

230

ward above the water, and Maggie cried out with relief. Rob grabbed her
in a cross-chest carry, pulling her away. The teeth of the creature
caught Hawks's hand, and he thrust it below the water, grimacing in pain
as he reached down with both hands, fighting to keep it submerged.

"The old man!" Romona cried out as her eyes swung toward the shore.
There, in the moonlight, the figure of the old man could be seen
standing in a posture of calm dignity as the massive form of the beast
crashed through the trees and rose on its hind legs, staring down at him.

As Romona watched, she saw M'rai walk toward the beast, gazing straight
up at it as though in conversation. Then the beast raised one of its
paws and brought it crashing down, smashing the tiny figure at its feet
as though it were a fly. Romona closed her eyes. Without looking again,
she turned, the rifle held high over her head, and began swimming toward
the island.

The darkened mound that protruded from the center of the lake was no
more than a quarter mile from the shore; Romona could discern the
outline of the cabin as she silently sidestroked forward. She could see
Hawks a distance in front of her, the limp silhouette of the infant
creature skewered on one of the arrows that he held, with the bow, above
him. She could not see Rob and Maggie, for there was a mist forming on
the water. It gathered quickly, obscuring her vision, muting all sounds
except her own. Within minutes it had fomented into a graceful carpet of
haze that floated on the surface, isolating Romona from everything
around her.

As she swam, she sensed how effortless it would be to slip silently
under. It felt warm and welcoming and peaceful. The world above felt so
harsh and cruel. Her swimming slowed, until she was merely treading
water. The mist swirled around her, looking like a layer of clouds in
the moonlight, and Romona knew that she did not care if she reached the
shore. The

231

death of the old man had robbed her of the one human being she
completely trusted. There seemed little left now, just an endless battle
for which she no longer had the strength.

"Romona!" Hawks called out

She did not answer.

"Vern!" Hawks cried in desperation.

"I'm here!" Rob called back.

"Where's Romona?"

"I don't see her!"

"Romona!" Hawks cried, his voice crackling with emotion. "Oh, God! Romona!"

"I'm here, John," she responded.

"Romona!" he half sobbed.

"I'm here," she reassured. "I'm all right."

She resumed swimming toward the island.

As Rob and Maggie staggered to the shore and fell exhausted into the
mud, they heard the sound of the beast bellowing from across the lake.
It seemed to vibrate through the water and penetrate the island; the
ground beneath Rob's face reverberated with it as he clung to the mud.
Maggie was beside him, moaning as she struggled to reach dry ground. Rob
crawled to her and took her in his arms.

Hawks stumbled forward, half carrying Romona, and fell to his knees,
able to go no farther. He laid her down beside him in the shallows and
took the rifle that she still clung to, tossing it, along with the bow
and arrows and the skewered body of the dead infant creature, onto the
shore. Then he helped Romona to her feet and they came to Rob and
Maggie, collapsing into the mud beside them.

The beast continued to howl from the distant shore, but they knew they
were safe now. They lay back, grateful for the feel of solid ground
beneath them, none of them moving as the sounds of their heaving breath
gradually faded to silence.

The beast, too, had gone quiet now. Save for the gentle lap of water
against the shore, there was nothing to break the stillness around them.

232

Then Hawks heard a disturbance in the water, a muted splash, as though
something had entered and were swimming toward them. He sat upright and
gazed into the mist; it rolled and swirled unendingly, into an infinity
of darkness. The sound had disappeared, but Hawks remained stock-still,
his ear cocked toward the water.

Alerted to his tense posture, Romona sat up. The sound came again. A
light splash. This time, closer.

"What's wrong?" asked Rob.

"Listen," Hawks whispered.

Rob sat up and looked into the mist. He could see nothing. The water
that lapped gently at the shore rolled heavier, just slightly, but
enough for Hawks to sense the change.

"What is it?" Rob whispered, watching Hawks's expression.

"The waves come heavier."

Rob looked at him in confusion.

"The wind didn't rise."

Maggie struggled to a sitting position, her elbows trembling as she
followed their gaze.

"It's swimimng," Romona whispered.

"We'd see it," Rob gasped.

"No."

"It can't swim," Rob moaned. "It can't swim . . ." It was not a
statement. It was a prayer.

But they could hear it plainly now, the sound of its breath grunting
with exertion; the light splashing of the water coming louder in their ears.

"No . . ." Maggie whimpered.

"Get to the cabin," Rob ordered.

"I can't," Maggie sobbed.

"The rifle . . ." Rob said.

"Up there."

Rob struggled to his feet.

"No," Maggie wept.

"Get up!" Rob gasped.

"There it is!" Romona shouted.

They all turned and saw, through the veil of mist,

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two glowing embers moving inexorably toward them. "God, no!" Maggie moaned.

The beast responded with a gurgling wail, the water around it suddenly
splashing violently.

"Shoot it!" Hawks yelled to Rob. But at that moment the glowing eyes
disappeared, the mist collecting into a solid wall.

"I can't see it," Rob shouted as he pumped his bullet-shells into the
rifle. "Sssh!"

The sounds were gone. The water was suddenly calm, the small waves
lapping against the shore in a gentle, regular rhythm. All held their
breath in the silence.

"Where is it?" said Maggie. Hawks held up a hand

to silence her. But there was nothing to be heard.

"Did it drown?" Rob asked, not daring to believe it.

Maggie slowly stood, so did Romona, all moving

together as they gazed out at the calm, unbroken

water.

"It drowned," Rob said. "It drowned." He turned to Maggie, his face
filled with wonder. "It-"

A huge air bubble broke the surface directly in front of them. Then, in
a cascade of white water, the beast suddenly rose, its arms lashing out
as it bellowed in rage. In a blur of confusion, they screamed and raced
beneath it, the massive talons slashing into the mud as they slipped and
scrambled for safey.

"The cabin!" Rob screamed, dragging Maggie behind him.

Hawks managed to snatch up his weapons, flinging the skewered infant off
one of his arrows as he ran. Romona stumbled, rolling toward the shore,
but recovered her footing, limping badly as she continued. Behind them
the beast paused, lowering to all fours for a brief moment to sniff the
cold carcass of its dead infant. It grabbed up the small body in its
mouth and shook it in a ferocious spasm, biting it in half, flinging the
pieces into the water. Then it rose on its hind legs, turning its
attention to the four small figures

234

staggering toward the cabin along the shore. In a wail of vengeance and
an explosion of mud, it burst into motion.

The cabin was a hundred yards ahead, its shape silhouetted in the
moonlight as the foursome ran desperately toward it, spurred on by the
sound of galloping feet splashing through the water behind them. None
dared to look back, for they could hear that the beast was gaining.

Rob glanced at Maggie and saw her terrified eyes, blood glistening on
her neck, as she straggled farther and farther behind. The beast was
running almost parallel to her, crashing through the shallows of the
lake shore in an ungainly gait but outdistancing them with every stride.
It was pulling ahead now, as though trying to beat them to the cabin.

"She's going to come back on us!" Hawks shouted.

They were almost at the cabin, but the beast was fifty feet beyond them,
its head swiveling back as it prepared to turn. In a smash of
splintering wood, it collided with the dock, the water erupting around
it as it wailed in confusion, and spun.

It gave them the moment they needed to reach the cabin. Hawks hurtled
the porch railing and smashed through the door, the others racing in
behind him.

"Barricade!" Hawks shouted.

"I can't see!" Romona cried.

Rob dashed to where the table was, fumbling to find the kerosene lantern
in the darkness.

"It's coming!" Maggie gasped as she stood at the window.

The beast charged with full fury; the entire cabin shuddered as it made
contact.

"Board the window!" Hawks yelled.

Rob managed to light the lantern and run to the cupboards where he'd
seen a hammer and nails; Hawks grabbed the kitchen table and furiously
assailed it, smashing its legs off and plastering it up against the
window. Rob raced toward him, but the cabin was hit again; stones
clattered down from the

235

fireplace as a howl of anger resounded from outside,

"Boards!" Hawks shouted.

"The bed!" Rob yelled to Maggie.

"The bed?"

"Bedboards!" Rob shouted; then he whirled toward the window and began
pounding nails.

Maggie raced up to the loft, desperately throwing the mattress off the
bed, and raked up the bedboards into her arms; but the ceiling just
above her head began to groan and bend, bowing inward beneath a sudden
weight.

"Rob!" she cried.

Rob ran upward as a huge talon curled in between the rafters, ripping
one out, exposing the sky.

"The gun!" Rob shouted.

But it was too late. Another rafter ripped away and the beast's massive
paw lunged inward. Maggie shrieked and fell to the floor; Rob grabbed a
kerosene lantern and hurled it upward.

"No!" Hawks yelled. "Don't light it!!"

The lantern smashed against the ceiling and Hawks charged up the stairs
with an ax in his hand. The beast's paw surged downward and Hawks swung
hard, a geyser of blood shooting up from where the ax buried deep into
the fur. The paw suddenly withdrew, and the cabin vibrated with a
thunderous howl of rage. Then everything went quiet.

Rob grabbed Maggie, half pulling her down the stairs; Hawks remained in
the loft, ax poised, waiting for more. But all he could see through the
opened rafters was moonlight.

Romona had dismantled a ventilation pipe from the stove and peered out
through the small hole where it had been connected to the wall. "I can
see it," she said. "It's going away!"

Through the narrow opening she saw the hulking figure of the beast
moving slowly, limping as it lumbered toward the tree line. When it
reached the trees it turned. Then it coiled back and suddenly charged,
speeding forward with full momentum.

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"No!" Romona cried.

The cabin was hit with the impact of an earthquake. Romona was knocked
clear across the room as dirt spewed from between the logs of the cabin
wall, and the entire fireplace collapsed in a clattering cascade of
boulders. The foundations beneath the cabin groaned, and they all began
to slip.

"We're tipping!" Maggie screamed.

Rafters above their heads bent and snapped beneath the strain; chairs
and tables slid across the floor. With a sudden jolt, one end of the
cabin hit the ground, the entire structure tilting at a precarious angle.

"It won't hold!" Hawks shouted from the loft. "It's going to get in!"

Rob, Maggie, and Romona stood with their backs against the downhill
wall; Hawks leaped from the loft and grabbed his archer's bow from the
debris. The broken string trailed behind him as he made his way up the
inclined floor to where Maggie's cello lay; when he reached it, he
raised it overhead and smashed it to pieces, ripping out the strings.

A roar came from outside, barreling down on them like a freight train;
the cabin half spun with the impact, the entire front wall splintering
as rafters clattered down around them.

"Your gun!" Hawks shouted. "It's coming in!"

Jolted into action, Rob scrambled for the rifle. Hawks braced the
archer's bow between his feet, working with his teeth and hands,
fumbling with knots that slipped through his fingers as he desperately
attempted to mend its broken string. He groaned with frustration, for it
was plain that the beast was within minutes of finishing them. Its
massive paw burst through the broken front wall and upward through the
roof, slicing a path that revealed its murderous eyes glaring down at
them. The air reverberated with its earsplitting cry.

Romona pulled Maggie close to her, and Rob raised his rifle; at that
moment Hawks's knot connected, his

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hands pulling it tight with such force that he fell backward onto the floor.

With a single blow, half the roof gave way, reveal-inf the full form of
the beast towering over them, its teeth dripping saliva as it wailed in
triumph, extending its arms to reveal the pink skin folds that stretched
beneath.

"Shoot!" Hawks cried. And Rob fired. The beast's jaw became unhinged in
an explosion of bloody pulp, and it reeled backwards. Rob quickly cocked
the rifle and aimed again. Hawks had regained his footing and drew back
an arrow, his arm trembling with strain. The beast lunged forward.

"Again!" Hawks cried. He and Rob fired simultaneously. A hole tore into
the beast's chest and an arrow embedded into the side of its neck. It
staggered, then rose to its full height, its neck expanding in a sudden
swell.

"Again!" Hawks cried as he drew back another arrow.

"It's empty!" Rob yelled.

With a gurgle that sounded like an oncoming flood, the beast's broken
mouth flew open and its stomach contents sprayed out, hitting all
beneath it with the milky debris.

Hawks let his second arrow fly and it streaked into the beast's snout,
the huge animal screeching with pain as its arms flailed furiously
against the cabin, dislodging heavy timbers that began to crash down
around them.

"Run!" Hawks shouted. But there was nowhere to run. The cabin was
collapsing, beams raining down with such force that they broke through
the floor.

Hawks stood apart from the rest, with his last arrow poised, waiting for
the precise moment to let it fly. But before he got the chance, the
beast's paw swooped in and caught him, smashing him into a wall.

"No!" Romona screamed.

Rob scrambled toward him, but the sharp talons got there first, impaling
Hawks and scooping him up,

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squashing his body against what was left of the ceiling. It stuck there
for a moment, then crashed down beside Rob, the bow and arrow still
gripped in Hawks's mangled hand. Rob grabbed for the weapon, dislodging
the arrow, but the beast's paw swiped inward again.

"Rob!" Maggie screamed.

He turned and tried to run, but the talons caught him, snatching him
into the air.

"No!" Maggie shrieked in a bloodcurdling cry. But she was helpless to do
anything but watch. The beast had pulled Rob to its mouth and was
attempting to eat him.

"God! God! God!" Maggie wailed. Then she saw Rob's arm jerk backward,
the arrow still clutched in his hand. With full force he plunged it deep
into the beast's eye, jamming it down until it hit something solid.

For a split moment, everything stopped. The beast stood paralyzed, and a
fine jet stream of blood shot from its shattered eye. It dropped Rob to
the ground and squealed with pain. Then it spun and staggered, clawing
at its eye.

Rob lay outside the cabin in shock, the beast whirling and dancing above
him, squeaking in agony, stumbling, lurching, trying to maintain its
balance. It swayed against the cabin, collapsing the front wall. Rob
heard the women cry out. Then their voices fell silent.

The beast's arms lowered and its posture sagged. The one remaining eye
turned to Rob. Then it dropped to its knees. Its full, maternal breasts
scraped the ground as it crawled toward the lake and collapsed in the water.

Its limp body drifted gently outward until a stream of bubbles broke the
surface around its submerged head.

Then it sank, disappearing from view.

The lake returned to calm and the night returned

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to quiet. The sky was beginning to faintly lighten; the forest echoed
with the call of the loon.

The cabin behind Rob was reduced to rubble; he began to hear the sound
of movement within. Summoning all of his strength, he managed to roll
over and saw Romona crawling out from beneath the debris. Her face was
bloodied and her eyes were empty.

"Your wife is in there," she whispered in a deadened tone. "It fell on her."

With the morning sun, a flight of Canadian geese over Mary's Lake broke
formation, frightened by the sound of approaching helicopters. The
search that began twenty-four hours before, when the sheriff was
reported missing, had been interrupted by darkness when the trail of the
survivors ended at the lake.

To the men in the helicopters, the sight of the island did little to
explain the mysterious trail of destruction. There was just a pile of
timber where a cabin had once stood-and two lone figures standing on the
shore.

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13

The call that Victor Shussette received from Robert Vern had rilled him
with alarm. Little of what Rob said made sense to him, but it was plain
by Rob's tone of voice that it was all true.

Shussette had immediately left Washington and flown to Portland, Maine,
then hailed a taxi to take him to the hospital where Rob was waiting for
him. He had not told Rob of the recent developments in the controversy
between lumber companies and the American Indians; he would withhold the
information until Rob was better able to stomach it. A judgment had been
rendered in the Midwest invalidating the Indians' claim as rightful
heirs to the land they were born on; it set a legal precedent that would
likely be followed in Maine. Although the Pitney Paper Mill would be
fined and forced to shut down their pulping operation until they could
prove that they could meet all health and safety standards, they would
eventually reopen, and claim Manatee Forest as their own.

As Shussette sat now in the taxi on his way to the hospital, he looked
somberly out at the rain. He wondered how many people, other than
environmentalists, suspected or cared that these were the same raindrops
that had been falling to the earth since the time of the planet's
creation. They would be absorbed into the soft ground and eventually
vaporized, rising once again into the sky, where they would ionize with
the atmosphere, form clouds, and descend once again

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into the thirsty earth. From the taxi window he watched the rain
collecting into pools on the hard pavement and running off into sewers
at the gutter.

The sky was beginning to darken. Shussette checked his watch. It was
almost eight o'clock. Maggie had been scheduled for surgery at six.

Maggie Vern felt the first stirrings of consciousness well after
midnight. As she gradually became aware of who and where she was, her
mind grasped at fleeting images that represented the passage of time
between the beast's attack and now. They drifted in fragments, blending
and repeating, as if they existed only in a dream. She saw the cabin
tumbling, then helicopters descending over the lake. She recalled Rob's
face bending close to her, shouting at her to stay alive. Then there
were other faces, partially masked, a light as bright as the sun shining
from behind them.

Without opening her eyes she put her hands on her neck and moved them
down the length of her body to make sure it was all there. Her torso was
tightly taped and she was unable to move. Struggling to raise her
eyelids, she saw tubes snaking down from both sides of the bed; at the
foot of the bed there were metal weights suspended on strings. The tape
meant that she had been operated on; the weights meant that she was in
traction.

As her senses continued to sharpen, she became aware of something else.
Not from anything she saw or felt, but from what her intuition told her.
Her womb was empty. Her pregnancy was gone.

She closed her eyes and floated in darkness, gradually realizing that
there was someone in the room. Footsteps had entered and were slowly
approaching the bed. They were light and soft, the footsteps of a woman.

"Will she be all right?" a voice whispered.

"I think so."

Rob sat in a darkened corner of the hospital room.

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Romona stood beside the bed. Their voices were weak, numbed with exhaustion.

"How about you7" Rob asked.

"I'm going back now. There's some difficulty there." She hesitated,
reluctant to burden him any further. "The police are insisting on
examining the body. It's against Indian law. It means we can't bury John
in the way he would have wanted." Her voice trembled and she paused,
waiting for control. "He couldn't live the way he wanted. He'll have no
peace in death either."

"There'll be no autopsy."

Romona nodded, unable to summon any more words. Rob rose and came to
her; both knew there was nothing left to say. Rob held out his hand and
she took it in both of hers. Then Rob hugged her. Their eyes did not
meet again as she turned and quietly left the room.

Rob looked at Maggie and slowly moved to the bed, sitting on the edge of
it, gazing down at her slumbering face. It was pale and badly bruised; a
well-intentioned nurse had tied a blue ribbon in her hair. Rob reached
up and gently removed it, and her hair wafted back against the pillow.
Then he bent forward and lowered his head.

He felt the touch of a cold hand against his cheek and looked up to see
that her eyes were open. They stared at each other in silence, he taking
her hand and pressing it to his lips.

"I'll be all right," she whispered.

"I . . . know."

Their eyes held and they listened to the rain upon the windows.

"I lost it . . . didn't I?" she asked weakly. "The . . . pregnancy."

"Yes."

"It feels so empty."

"It couldn't be helped."

"Was it . . . ?" She didn't finish the question, but he understood.

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"I didn't see it.?'

"Did someone?"

He nodded.

"Was it?"

"It was damaged."

She closed her eyes and moisture squeezed out at the edges. Rob wiped
her tears away, feeling a swelling in his throat that made it difficult
to speak.

"Maggie?"

"Yes."

"You'll have a baby."

"Yes."

"We'll have a baby."

"Yes," she whimpered.

"It's going to be different, Maggie."

"I know."

She clutched his hand and he gripped hers tightly.

"I've missed you, Robert," she whispered.

"I'm back."

Her hand gradually relaxed and she drifted into slumber.

In his lofty perch that towered high above the tree line, the forest
ranger sat in a rocking chair, his bloodshot eyes watching dawn break
over Manatee Forest. The lake beneath him was calm as glass, reflecting
the orange tint of the sun's first rays; everything was still, not a
breath of wind blowing.

But somewhere within his blurred field of vision he detected movement,
and reached for a pair of binoculars. Surveying the vast panorama of
green, he focused in on a gray mound of earth tinged with brownish
coloration. It seemed to be rolling, as though awakening from slumber.

As he watched, it slowly took shape, rising on its hind legs and
assuming its full stance among the trees. It was a vision like one he
had seen before. Only this one was larger. More powerful in every way.
And there were smaller ones with it. Five of them. They

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scampered from beneath it and followed the mighty creature as it
lumbered toward the lake.

The forest ranger put down the binoculars and closed his eyes, trying to
shake the image away. He knew if he reported it, they would say he was
drunk.

And he feared they would be wrong.

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Epilogue

In retrospect, all things seem inevitable. It is a comfortable
perspective when things have gone wrong.

One can trace a fatal car collision back to the moment the victim bought
the car. Or back further, perhaps, to when he first dreamed of owning a
car. In this way, the last-minute details of stop signs ignored, speed
limits violated, brake systems unserviced can be passed over as being
immaterial to the final outcome.

The history of the earth's environment can be seen in this perspective,
too; fatalistically, as a matter of unseen but inevitable obsolescence.
Or it can be studied in terms of its detail, taking into account the
myriad signals, any one of which could have been heeded to avoid the
final failure.

The biological environment within a simple home aquarium will fail in a
sequence of increasingly evident steps: a decay of the foliation, a
fouling of the water, a browning of the glass, and finally the sight of
the entire community of fish gathered at the water's surface, listlessly
sucking for oxygen. Even to the untrained eye, the unraveling of the
life force becomes plain. If we can singlehandedly reverse it, we
usually do. If it requires the co-operation of two or more individuals,
it will likely be ignored. In fact, the col-

246

lapse of an environment requires a conspiracy of negligence.

Anthropologist Richard Leakey, in his probing into the earth around the
shores of Lake Rudolf in Kenya, Africa, found evidence of human
co-operating dating from a time before man could even be called Man. And
we must ask ourselves at what stage of human development "co-operation"
became repugnant to the human personality. Mystically and
psychologically, man seems to follow the dictate of an inner dynamic
which has been labeled the "ego"; a mechanism that makes each within the
species feel special, like a species unto himself. It is this mechanism
that turned the course of evolution into a drive for "upward mobility,"
an individual striving for comfort and luxury at the expense of the
safety of the community.

Lest one think this is a product of intelligence, it must be pointed out
that there is another animal species which, by the yardstick of
language, has a measureable intelligence equal to and, some say, beyond
our own. Within the community of porpoises, whose communication and
problem-solving capabilities have been developed to the highest order,
the concept of "me" does not, to any detrimental extent, exist. Even if
we discard this example, we must wonder in what perverse equation
"intelligence" leads to self-destruction. If we have the intelligence to
create warning systems, why, then, do we so blatantly ignore them?

The story you have read is based, in its ecological substance, on actual
events. It has been widely reported in journals throughout Canada that
lumber mills there, have for several years been using methyl-mercury-the
same substance that caused the disaster in Minamata, Japan-and spilling
it into the inland watersheds. The failing health, both mental and
physical, of the local Indian populations has been labeled

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drunkenness. The Indians protest that they do not use alcohol.

In environmental drama the term science fiction will soon be obsolete.
Our imaginations have limits. And our realities are catching up with them.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Bob Rosen, John Franken-heimer, Michael Eisner,
Robert Lescher, George Walsh, Gloria Hammond, Mary Ellen Ernest, Barbara
Jacoby and Sylvia Lundgren for their support.

Also my special thanks to Nguyen Van Trung, Thuy Thi Phuong, Timothy
Ethan and Emily Ann.