Exceptions to Reality (23 page)

“There have been reports of song-sightings since then,” Sanchez pointed out. “The survivors of Masaki’s party all confirm it.”

Fanole rolled onto his side, propping his head up on one big, weathered palm. “You stay out here long enough, it’s easy to start hearing things as well as seeing them.”

“Masaki vanished while tracking a singing akialoa,” Loftgren insisted stubbornly.

“Maybe.”

“Those with him heard it, too. The weather and the terrain got so bad, they all gave up and fell back, except Masaki. But they heard it.”

“Maybe.” The guide was incorrigible. “Next you’ll be telling me you expect to find an o‘o‘a‘a, too.”

“No.” Loftgren’s voice dropped. “No, I’m afraid the o‘o‘a‘a is gone. But not the akialoa. I won’t accept it. It’s too beautiful to not exist any longer.”

From his file pouch he drew forth a folded eight-by-ten. Like every other picture he carried, like every map, it was laminated to protect it from the all-pervasive, all-destroying moisture. Unfolded, it revealed a painting of a small bird with a distinctive brown patterning and a lighter buff underbelly. Attractive but hardly spectacular.

Except for the downward-curving sickle-beak, which was fully one-third the length of the creature’s body. It was this remarkable protuberance that set the akialoa apart from its immediate relatives and for that matter, from all but a few other birds in the world. It had last been seen in the Alakai in 1973, and the possibility of its continued existence was the reason for Loftgren’s university-sponsored expedition.

To find the akialoa, he mused as he gazed at the painting, the details of which he knew as intimately as those of his own body. Finding it would guarantee publication in
Science, Natural History,
the
Smithsonian, National Geographic
—they would be fighting one another for the right to be first to publish his words and pictures. A coup for the department and for the entire university. Perhaps a chair dedicated in his name. Promotion to professor emeritus of ornithology. The world would be his—or at least that small portion of it that concerned itself with birding.

Kinkaid had plunged into the Alakai seeking the elusive scimitar-billed bird and had vanished. So had the esteemed Masaki. Now it was his turn, and he fully intended to succeed where they had failed. If the akialoa still lived, it would be left to professional ornithologists such as himself to devise a scheme for ensuring its survival. Only they had the knowledge and ability to do so.

But first he had to find one.

The rain was lighter when they awoke. Carefully, they packed their equipment and set out again. Halfway up a steep, slippery, moss-bedecked slope he was delighted to find an outcropping of ohi’a trees. Fully mature at eight inches high, they were all more than a hundred years old. Later he spotted a thriving specimen of gunnera, the world’s largest herb, with its unique eight-foot leaves. Miniature trees and giant herbs. Reversed proportions, he reflected, were the norm in the Alakai.

Later that day the sun came out and they saw their first birds. Sanchez picked up a pair of bright red apapane, but it was Fanole who pointed out the endemic anianiau and the rarer i’iwi. Loftgren felt left out until he saw a tiny elepaio sheltering from the sun beneath a palapali fern.

Of the akialoa, however, there was no sign.

It was raining seriously when they entered the first bogs, edging around them where possible and wading through—sometimes up to their waists—when it was not. Fluttering fragments of fluorescent tape tied to tree branches were all that marked the trail, and these were hard to see in the fog that had settled over the swamp. Several times Loftgren had to admit he would have been lost without Fanole to lead the way.

On the third morning they turned off the intermittent trail and plunged into abject wilderness.

No one bothered to comment on the damp anymore because they were all soaked from head to foot. It was a distinctive, all-pervasive dampness that made you feel as if your skin were slowly sloughing off your body. White ridges appeared on palms and fingers; it felt as if at any minute your flesh would burst into flagrant, pustulant bloom. Forward progress was now measured in yards instead of miles.

By the end of the week the formerly resolute Sanchez had had enough.

“I want out, Martin.” Despite the protection offered by the battered but still-intact slicker, water trickled down the graduate student’s sensitive face into his eyes and mouth and ears.

Loftgren regarded him sternly. “There’s no ‘out,’ here, Julio. This isn’t a library research project. We stay until we’ve found what we came for or until we run out of supplies.”

Fanole materialized silently at the frustrated student’s shoulder. “The kid’s right. We’re in too deep as it is. If we keep going this way and don’t manage to hook up with the Mohihi Trail, we won’t get out of here.”

“You’ll find the Mohihi.”

“Maybe. I’ve never gone this way before. No one ever has. We could step right off the damn Pali or stumble into Waialeale. You know damn well nobody’s gonna spot us from the air because the cloud cover only breaks fully maybe once, twice a year. No emergency helicopter pickups in here, mister. I say it’s time to leave. You got what you paid for.”

“I paid for an akialoa. We have plenty of food left.”

“We’ve been slogging and bogging for four days and we haven’t seen a hint of one. Nobody knows exactly where we are, and in an emergency it wouldn’t matter if you could raise someone on that satellite phone tucked in your pack anyway. It’s time to go.”

“If we don’t save the akialoa, no one will. Even in the academic community people are losing interest.”

“You can’t save what doesn’t exist,” Fanole replied evenly. “People have been reducing the native birds’ range and food supply for hundreds of years. You know that. Even if there are a couple left, we don’t know if there’s enough of whatever they specialize in feeding on to support them. Long-petaled flowers, bugs, whatever. There’s so little information about the akialoa that we don’t even know for sure what the hell they eat. But that hook of a bill evolved to feed on something specific. We don’t know anything about it from the old Hawaiians because they almost never came up here. Country’s too rough, too many dangerous spirits. Too many feather-hunters who never made it back. Birds like that don’t just switch specialized feeding habits to lobelia or ohi’a in a few decades. The o‘o‘a‘a had a better chance in that respect and it didn’t make it. Be reasonable, man.”

Loftgren regarded his companions. Fanole was unyielding. Sanchez’s expression was a mixture of pleading and anger. Bits of dark, decomposing plant material clung to his forehead and hair, giving him the aspect of a drowned Hispanic dryad.

“All right. But first we finish out the day and then camp. We can start back tomorrow.”

Fanole grunted, willing to concede an afternoon. An exhausted and relieved Sanchez merely slumped to the ground where he stood. Beneath him, the spongy earth immediately began to give way, oozing up around his hips and shoulders. Hastily he rose to search for more solid ground. With the intensifying rain shrouding them in wet shadow, they made camp.

The song woke him. It was sharp, piercing, utterly distinctive. At first Loftgren thought it might be an akepa, but decided the concluding notes were too high.

Hauling himself to the front of the tent, he unzipped the flap and crawled outside. Fog swirled around the temporary shelter, coiling smoke-like through the trees, reducing visibility to a few yards. An errant shaft of sunlight shining momentarily through the clouds briefly pearlized the drifting fog.

It sat in a tree not ten feet away, singing energetically, that remarkable bill parting slightly to emit each series of notes. He stared breathlessly, hardly daring to move. Then it turned to regard him momentarily out of tiny blinking eyes before flying off into the enveloping mist. Alighting somewhere unseen, it resumed its cheerful song.

Loftgren flung himself back into the tent and pawed at his camera bag until he’d extracted the digital unit. Fanole sat up and blinked at him as the ornithologist struggled feverishly with a fresh storage card. Sanchez stirred sleepily nearby.

“Nude Menehune nymphs cavorting in the bogs?” the guide inquired.

“I saw it.” Trying to steady shaking fingers, Loftgren slid the camera into its protective housing, checked the telephoto, then began to tighten the knobs on the aluminum strip that would make the plastic airtight and waterproof. “I heard it first and crawled outside, and I saw it.”

Fanole sat up sharply. “What do you mean, you saw it?”

“On a branch, right outside the tent. It was still singing when I came in for the camera.” He rose, checked to make sure the card was more than half empty, and started for the tent flap.

“Hey!” Naked, Fanole scrambled out of his bag. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

Loftgren paused in the entrance. “Can’t wait. Might never see it again.”

“You idiot, hold up!” Fanole lurched to the opening and outside, where it was beginning to rain afresh. On hands and knees, Sanchez blinked out from behind him, trying to wake up.

“What’s happening? Where’s Professor Loftgren going?”

Fanole stared into the intensifying shower. “He said he heard his damn bird. Says he saw one.”

“Saw one?” Sanchez emerged, arms wrapped across his naked chest, shivering slightly in the early-morning chill. “An akialoa?”

“I guess.” The guide turned and reentered the tent. Sanchez gazed into the fog and drizzle for a moment longer, then retreated.

“Aren’t we going after him?”

The guide’s eyes were unblinking, hard. “Without our equipment? Without planning? Not me, kid. Not me. If he has an ounce of intelligence left in him, he’ll be back within an hour.”

Sanchez hesitated in the doorway, wavering. “And if he’s not?”

Fanole said nothing. He was heating coffee.

Loftgren ran on, pushing through the trees and brush, ignoring the brilliant red flowers that occasionally cropped up in his path. Once, an apapane trilled close on his left. He ignored it, concentrating only on the song that stayed just ahead of him but never disappeared entirely. The bird was moving, perhaps in search of the particular long flowers it needed to feed on that were nearly extinct elsewhere in the swamp, perhaps toward a nest. A nest! What a discovery that would be!

All he needed was a picture; one lousy picture. A single decent clear shot. Then he’d pick his way back to the tent. They could search farther for the bird or return to civilization if Fanole and that simpering Sanchez still insisted on going back. He’d expected better of his most committed graduate student. It was apparent he had the brains but not the dedication. Great discoveries were not made by the cautious or the reluctant.

A second time, the bird lighted in a tree in front of him. He aimed the camera, but the creature flew off as he thumbed the release and he couldn’t be sure he’d gotten the shot. A check of the LCD screen showed that he had not. Damn! It was almost as if the bird was leading him on, deeper into the swamp. Absurd notion. Rare as it was, it would be nothing if not highly skittish. He plunged furiously onward, once wading through a bog that reached up his waist to his chest, then his neck, then to his very chin. You couldn’t swim through a bog, he knew. It was too thick, too dense with organic components. But it wasn’t quicksand, either, fighting to drag you down.

Out of breath, muscles aching, he flailed at a protruding root, got a grip, and pulled himself out. Just ahead the akialoa sang on, its song bright and strong.

Broken branches and thorns tore at his rain gear, at the sweatshirt beneath, and finally at his exposed skin. He ignored it all just as he ignored the profound dampness, just as he ignored the waning light. Dimly he realized that it would be impossible for him to find his way back to the camp by nightfall. Concentrating as he was on listening for the bird, he had no time for mere personal concerns. But he was strong and experienced. He would find his way back tomorrow.

In the brief, bright, burning fury of discovery, he had forgotten about the cold.

There was just a light breeze, but once the sun went down it was enough to drive the chill through his flesh and into his very bones. At times, he found himself remembering from his reading, the temperature in the Alakai could drop to levels that approached freezing. Ordinarily that would not have mattered, despite his light attire—except for the fact that he was soaked to the skin. Curled by the side of a bog, he started shivering as soon as the sun disappeared completely. By the time it was dark he was trembling violently.

He had nothing to light a fire with, even if any of the sodden pulp that passed for wood around him could have been persuaded to nourish a spark. For a while he tried shouting, gave it up when he realized no one would dare come looking for him in the dark.

Eventually the shivering began to subside. He lay on his side, his breathing slow and shallow, realizing what was happening to him. All because he wanted to help a single, rare bird to survive. His greatest fear was not of death, but that no one else would come after him. The public would forget about the akialoa without dramatic rediscovery and intercession by trained ornithologists. Without the support of dedicated scientists like himself, there was no way the species could survive.

An eternity later he became feebly aware that the light around him was strengthening. Had the night passed so quickly? Or was his perception of time failing faster than his other senses? The omnipresent fog and drizzle prevented the sun from reaching the surface, from warming him. Closer to Heaven he might be, but here it was wet and gray.

Searching for more solid ground, he dragged himself with infinite patience away from the bog until his hand wrapped around something hard and almost dry. A solid piece of wood at last. But when he struggled to pull himself higher it came apart in his fingers. Blinking, he examined it weakly in the saturated light. It was not brown, but white. With a great effort he managed to raise his head.