Micro

Peter Jansen stayed out front, picking the route, cutting tirelessly at obstacles with the machete, and pausing every now and then to sharpen the blade with the diamond sharpener. The blade could cut anything as long as its edge was maintained. He tried to keep everybody’s spirits up. “Do you know what Robert Louis Stevenson said about travel?” he said, calling back to the others. “He said, ‘It is better to journey hopefully than to arrive.’ ”

“Fuck hope, I’ll settle for arrival,” Danny Minot remarked.

As he marched along at the back of the line, Rick Hutter glanced at the others, studying them. He considered Karen King. He really couldn’t stand her. She was full of herself, arrogant, aggressive, thinking she was such an expert in spiders and arachnids and hand-to-hand combat. She was good-looking, but beauty wasn’t everything. Even so, Rick felt somewhat better that Karen was with the group. She was a fighter, you could say that much for her. Right now she seemed icy, cold, alert, on edge, weighing every move. As if she was in a fight for her life…well, of course she was. He despised her and yet…he was glad to have Karen around.

Next Rick studied Erika Moll. She walked along pale, frightened. Erika was holding herself together, on the edge of some kind of emotional crack-up. The fungus devouring Jen’s body…this had gotten to Erika, Rick thought. If Erika didn’t pull herself together, she might be doomed. But who could say just which of the humans possessed the strength and cunning to get out alive from this kingdom of tiny horrors?

As for Amar Singh, Rick thought he seemed resigned to his fate, as if he’d already decided he was going to die.

Danny Minot trudged along in his duct-tape slippers. That guy’s tougher than he looks, Rick thought, watching Danny. He could be a survivor.

Rick looked at Peter Jansen. How did Peter do it? He seemed so calm, almost gentle, at peace with himself in some deep way Rick couldn’t fathom. Peter Jansen had become a true leader, and it fit him well. It was as if Peter had come into his own in the micro-world.

There was Rick Hutter himself.

Rick was not a reflective person. He rarely thought about himself. But he did now. Something strange was happening to him, and he couldn’t quite understand it. He felt okay. Why, he wondered, did he feel okay? I should feel terrible. Jenny is dead. Kinsky got ripped by ants. Who’s next? But this was the expedition Rick Hutter had always dreamed of, yet never thought possible. A journey into the hidden heart of nature, into a world of unseen wonders.

In all likelihood, he would die on this quest. Nature was not gentle or nice. There was no such thing as mercy in the natural world. You don’t get any points for trying. You either survive or you don’t. Maybe none of us will make it. He wondered if he would vanish here, in a small valley on the outskirts of Honolulu, swallowed up in a labyrinth of threats almost beyond imagining.

Got to keep going, Rick thought. Be smart. Be clever. Get through the eye of the needle.

After what seemed like miles of walking, Rick noticed a strange, bittersweet smell drifting in the air. What was it? He looked up and saw tiny white flowers overhead, scattered like stars through a tree that had snaky limbs and smooth, silver-gray bark. The odor of the flowers resembled semen, but with a nasty edge of something harmful.

Yes.

Nux vomica.

Rick called to the others to stop. “Wait a minute, guys. I’ve found something.”

He knelt by a gnarled root, which poked from the ground. “It’s a strychnine tree,” he said to the group. With his machete he began hacking at the root, until he’d revealed a strip of inner bark, which he chopped out, working carefully with the machete. “This bark,” he explained, “contains brucine. It’s a drug that induces paralysis. I would have preferred the seeds, because they are incredibly toxic, but the bark will do.”

Handling the bark carefully, trying not to get any sap on his hands, he tied a rope to the bark and started dragging it along behind him. “We can’t put this in my pack. It would poison everything,” Rick explained.

“That bark is dangerous,” Karen said.

“You wait, Karen, it’s going to get us food. And I’m hungry.”

Erika stood aside and sniffed the air, watching, keeping alert for the warning smell of ants. The air felt slightly heavy as it went in and out of her lungs. Everywhere she looked, every crack and cranny in the soil, every blade of grass, every little ground-hugging plant, teemed with small living things-insects, mites, nematode worms. And she could actually see masses of soil bacteria, tiny dots in clumps. Everything was alive. Everything was feeding on something else. It reminded her…she had begun to feel really hungry.