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The driver slowed the taxi, brought it to a stop before the gate and tunnel. “They’ve been doing some changes up here. Why you want to go in this place?” he said.

“It’s business,” Peter said. Even so, looking at the tunnel, he got an uneasy feeling. With the steel gate in front of it, it seemed like a tunnel of no return. Peter wondered if the gate was to keep people out-or was it to lock people in?

The driver sighed, and took off his sunglasses, and drove into the tunnel. It was a narrow, single-lane passage cored through a shoulder blade of the mountain. The road emerged into a pocket valley. The valley was deeply forested and walled in by the slopes and cliffs of the Ko‘olau Pali. Waterfalls trailed from misty jungle mountains. The road descended, and they came into a clearing, dominated by a large, glass-roofed shed. In front of the shed were a few parking spaces in a muddy area. Vin Drake and Alyson Bender were already there, standing next to a red BMW sports car. They both wore boots and hiking clothes. The students were piling out of the Bentley. They became less boisterous when Peter stepped from the taxi.

“Sorry, Peter…”

“Sorry about your brother…”

“Yes, sorry…”

“Any news?” Erika kissed his cheek, took his arm. “I’m so sorry.”

“The police are still investigating,” Peter said.

Vin Drake shook his hand with a firm grip. “I don’t have to tell you this is a great, great tragedy. If it proves true, and I hope to God it does not, it’s a dreadful loss to all of us personally. To say nothing of a terrible setback to our company, which Eric was such a part of. I am so sorry, Peter.”

“Thank you,” Peter said.

“It’s good the police are investigating.”

“Yes,” Peter said.

“They haven’t given up, lost hope…”

“Quite the contrary,” Peter said. “It seems they’re taking a new interest in Eric’s boat. Something about a missing cell phone? One that may have broken up inside the engine compartment? I didn’t really follow what they told me.”

“A cell phone in the engine compartment?” Vin frowned. “I wonder what that could-”

“As I said, I didn’t really follow,” Peter said. “I don’t know why they would think there was a phone there. Perhaps my brother dropped his…I don’t know. But they’re also going to check phone records.”

“Phone records. Ah yes. Good, good. No stone unturned.”

Had Vin turned paler? Peter couldn’t be sure.

Alyson licked her lips nervously. “Were you able to sleep, Peter?”

“Yes, thanks. I took a pill.”

“Oh good.”

“Well.” Vin Drake rubbed his hands, turned to the others. “At any rate, welcome to the Manoa Valley. What do you say we get to the business at hand? Gather round, people, and I will give you your first insight into how Nanigen works.”

Drake led them from the parking lot toward the forest. They passed a low shed housing earth-moving machinery, although, as Drake said, “You’ve probably never seen machines like this before. Notice how small they are.” To Peter, the machines looked like tiny golf carts fitted with a miniature backhoe, with an antenna drooping over the top. “These diggers,” Drake went on, “are specially manufactured for us by Siemens Precision AG, a German company. The machine is able to precision-dig soil with millimeter accuracy. Which is then placed in the flats you see in the back of the shed. Those flats are thirty centimeters square-about a foot square-and either three or six centimeters deep.”

“And what about the antenna?”

“As you see, the antenna hangs directly over the backhoe. The antenna enables us to locate precisely where to dig and to keep a record in our data files of the exact place where the sample of soil came from. This will all be clear as the day goes on. Meanwhile let’s look at the site.”

They plunged into the forest itself, the ground suddenly uneven beneath their feet, the trail narrow and twisting among the giant trees overhead. The massive trunks were wrapped with broad-leaf vines; the ground was covered with plants and bushes to knee height, and the overall impression was of a thousand shades of green. The light filtering through the tree canopy overhead was pale yellow-green.

Drake began, “This may look like a natural rain forest…”

“It doesn’t,” Rick Hutter said. “And it’s not.”

“That’s correct. It’s not. This area has been cultivated since the 1920s, when it was an experimental station for Oahu farmers, and more recently for ecological studies run by the university. But in recent years nobody has bothered with this tract, and the land reverted to a more natural state. We call this area Fern Gully.” He turned and walked down the trail while the students followed him, going slowly and looking at things, occasionally stopping to examine a plant or flower.