Project Itzamna

Ruby and Carmine stepped out of the unit and, seeing one another's wide-eyed expression behind their visors, knew that they were thinking the same thing: all those hours logged in the simulator hadn't truly prepared them for the experience of the rainforest after all. It hadn't adequately recreated the powerful humidity, for one thing — they were wearing top-grade masks, of course, as it definitely wouldn't do to introduce germs from their environment into this one, or to take any back — but the thick wetness of the air hit them both through their suits like a solid weight.

And it was loud. After the coffin-like silence of their travel pods, wherever they emerged always seemed loud at first, but this was something else, layers of breeze and rustling leaves and chirps and trills. The vague 'nature sounds' audio file their lab supervisor had piped it into their workspace for a while hadn't touched this.

And, of course, the sun. That would never get old or any less dazzling no matter how many trips they took.

Carmine let his pack fall to the jungle floor and leaned forward, hands braced on his knees, and Ruby thumped him amicably on the shoulder. He never adjusted to the sensation as easily as she did. "Don't throw up in your suit," she reminded him. The vacuum system would take care of it, but it did little for the smell. He swatted at her, far too accustomed to her teasing to reply.

"At least we hit the right spot," he said, carefully straightening up and gesturing to indicate the sound of the Swasey Branch river rushing nearby. As if on cue, a blaze of red soared across their lines of vision and out of sight through the trees, and they followed its progress in the air before shooting each other excited looks.

"Welcome to Belize," Ruby said, and they hoisted their kits onto their backs before setting off in the direction of the macaw's flight, carefully picking their way over the lush carpet beneath them. Carmine opened his gloved hand to consult the screen set into his palm.

"Red Bank is 5.4 miles north-northeast," he confirmed. The volunteers and protectors who fended off poachers weren't here yet, but it would've been extremely unwise to be seen by anyone at all, so they'd elected to keep themselves hidden in the jungle surrounding the village and hope to spot their quarry there. They'd both brushed up on some basic phrases in a few of the local Mayan dialects just in case, but they were well aware that no amount of sweet-talking in any language would satisfactorily explain what they were up to, so it was best just to avoid trouble. Minimal impact, as their motto went.

A deep, guttural and frankly terrifying roar suddenly tore through the canopy over their heads. "Howler monkey," Ruby and Carmine said in unison. They'd been reminded about that one a few times during their training, as no one wanted the mission ruined by one or both of them fleeing in terror from what sounded like a mythological beast.

"Nothing to worry about there, unless you're dressed like a giant leaf," their field instructor, Anders, had assured them. "Now the jaguar, definitely worry about him. You won't hear him coming til you're his lunch." He had a moderately sadistic habit of growing more animated and cheerful as he explained the assorted threats in their destinations. Privately, Carmine didn't mind — in this case, Anders' chilling description of the spotted beast, with its rippling movements, amber-colored eyes and deadly claws, had the opposite of its intended effect: he was really rather hoping to catch sight of one.

"Alouetta pigra," Ruby added automatically.

"So named by?"

"Barbara Lawrence. In?"

"Eighteen— I mean, 1930s." They often fell into this pattern of rapid-fire quizzing; they had spent so many days and late nights together with their flashcards, desperately hoping to be selected for important tasks of this nature, that rattling off facts had become their natural response to hearing any relevant noun. It annoyed almost everyone else in their group — but then, no one else in the group had been chosen to travel this far.

Ruby craned her head back, gazing up into the canopy in search of the deafening primate in question, and she walked into a tall achiote shrub, her pack knocking a few of the bright red fruits to the ground. Carmine snickered.

"Minimal impact," he intoned, and she rolled her eyes at him. The importance of not harming or altering anything (or anyone) in their path in this trip had been drilled into them to a near-maniacal degree, even more so than staying out of sight, and debate still raged daily in the lab, the mess hall and the bunks about just how much impact qualified a little and what the potential consequences could be. There were simply too many factors at play for anyone to be entirely sure, but most agreed that minor disturbances, the likes of which would be routinely caused by the native species and the vagaries of nature anyway, probably couldn't do any real harm.

Ruby crouched down to inspect the fallen fruits, which looked like fuzzy strawberries. Unable to resist, she picked up one of the pods and toyed with it, prompting her digi-glove to flash a cheerful NON-TOXIC up at her.

"Don't even think about it," Carmine said with another slight laugh, though plainly she already was and he knew it. He could tell just by the way she looked at it. "You know we can't take anything else back."

"It's used as a medicine here, you know," she pointed out, aware that he did, in fact, know. The local plants had been required study, too. "Could be useful." But he gave her a quelling look that was half amusement, and she let the prickly fruit fall back onto the jungle floor. Such a small prize probably wouldn't have been worth the lecture she'd get from Dr. Wells for breaking the rule, but the feeling of holding a piece of vibrant, fresh fruit straight from the vine like that, even a semi-inedible one, was exciting enough to make her consider it. Back home, that was a delicacy reserved for the very few.

They continued their trek for another minute or so without speaking, adding to the jungle noise only the sounds of their footsteps and the fabric of their suits shushing against itself as they turned their heads this way and that, trying to take in as much as they could as the daylight brightened steadily. Keeping the trip as short as was reasonably possible was another unfortunate requirement, no matter how tempting the desire to explore.

"I think I actually believe the Hillyer story now," Carmine admitted quietly, and Ruby nodded. There had long been an unconfirmed rumor about a researcher from the early days who had gone rogue on one of his missions, the details of which changed with every telling, and simply opted not to return. Many assumed that he'd met with an unpleasant accident of some sort, possibly a computing error with his return voyage, but others preferred to believe the more adventurous version, that he'd ended up somewhere so thrilling that he chose to defy the biggest rule of all. Being overheard sarcastically muttering that you were going to "do a Hillyer" on an upcoming trip was a good way to find yourself reassigned, but everyone still talked about it, and it often became a game of sorts late at night, with everyone fantasizing about their ideal escapes as the drinks and candlelight dwindled.

"I think I'd pick somewhere a little more temperate," Ruby offered. They'd come in early February to avoid both the rainy season and the extreme heat, but even at this hour of the day their suits' patchwork cooling systems were proving, as predicted, less than optimal.

He grinned back at her. "Really, you haven't changed your boring answer yet? You'd still pick Paris in the Belle—"

She abruptly stopped him with a hand thrust into his chest. "Look," she whispered, her expression rapturous. He followed her gaze, and there it was ahead of them: a copse of polewood trees, filled with an eye-popping flock of vividly red, blue and yellow scarlet macaws. Many were still asleep, though some had awakened and were shuffling around on their branches, picking at their bright feathers and nibbling at the trees' fruit.

For a moment the two stood motionless, gazing at the tableau before them, with Ruby finally letting out a quiet and somewhat unscientific "Wow." Then — they seemed to move almost in unison — they both set their packs on the ground and retrieved what they needed for the task: for him, a set of elaborate goggles attached to a headset, and for her, a long, thin rifle with a scope.

They assembled and fired up their tools with quick, practiced motions, and Ruby lifted the rifle to her shoulder and asked "Linked?" Carmine flicked two switches.

"Linked." The two devices were now connected; each could see what the other saw through their lenses. "Who's gonna be the lucky couple?" They both trained their gazes on the dark green tangle of leaves, the colorful birds standing out like swipes of an ecstatic painter's brush.

"These two?" Ruby indicated two similar-sized macaws perched together towards the middle of the canopy. Something about the way they leaned towards each other suggested a bond — or perhaps just a crooked branch.

Carmine focused on the pair, using the buttons at his temple to zoom in and scan their biometrics. "78 centimeters, point-nine-five kilos … yeah, they're partnered, but about twelve years old," he read out. "Sorry, guys." Ideally, they wanted a pair that had already formed their lifelong bond — the species' habit of monogamy had inspired many, many jokes of only slightly varying content from the others in the lab back when the mission was first taking shape — but were closer to their peak sexual maturity, meaning that these two, ironically enough, were too old. "Maybe here?"

Ruby, her eye pinned to the scope, shifted her gaze to his blue circle on the screen that had found another pair, these two positioned towards the edge of a branch on the far right. "That'd be an easy shot," she noted. Not that she was likely to miss anyway.

He examined the birds, and red text skittered across their screens. "Both female."

It was only a few minutes later, however, that they landed on the ideal pair: both close to five years old, having already recently mated. This likely meant that they were in their aggressive breeding stage, but, well, that would be the biologists' problem back home, if all went as planned. Once Carmine confirmed their eligibility, Ruby took careful aim and fired at them both. The two birds rose from their branch with loud squawks, outraged by the disruption, but the drug took rapid effect, giving them just enough time to flap, for once ungracefully, to the jungle floor.

They rushed forward to the now-unconscious birds and, as Carmine shot a quick look up into the canopy, hoping none of the macaws' friends would misunderstand their intentions and swoop down in revenge, extracted and reassembled the modified Faraday cage they'd brought along. By now they could've done it with their eyes closed. They gently maneuvered the pair into the cage and clicked the lock shut. They each took up a handle of the crate to carry between them, and the job was done. Only the simple matter of their return remained.

Something moved in the brush close by and they both whipped around in alarm. "Vodyanoi," Carmine hissed, nearly dropping his end. Had someone from a nearby village been watching their furtive, thieving process? Or was he about to get his foolish wish to come face-to-face with spotted feline death?

An odd-looking pig-like creature ambled into sight, looking only mildly interested by the suited and helmeted visitors' presence. Ruby snorted.

"Tapir, locally known as the mountain cow. Probably won't maul you," she recited. "And by the way, the profanity of choice around here is probably still something like 'yikes' or 'oh crap.'"

"Yeah, yeah, thanks," he shot back, consulting his digi-glove map again."Should we get back to the pods, or do you want to keep naming stuff?"

The walk back seemed shorter, even with their bulky cargo. They said little, their excitement at accomplishing their task and making it this far unscathed diminished by the unsurprising-yet-depressing understanding that they were unlikely to ever return to this majestic place. In fact, a job well done meant fewer of these types of assignments would be needed, and as the newly risen sun winked through the thick greenery all around them and a keel-billed toucan, nearly as bright as their birds, eyed them warily from a tree, it was almost hard to remember the importance of their goal.

Back at the unit, a quick retinal scan and the hydraulic door opened with a hiss. "We should get to name them," Ruby said abruptly, as they secured the cage in its intended spot. "That's only fair, isn't it?"

"Let's not jinx ourselves," he countered, shooting her a grim look as he settled himself in his pod and began updating his mission log. "At least not until we make it back."

It was true, Dr. Wells had always warned against bonding or sentimentalizing when it came to their test subjects, but Ruby wasn't fooled; time and time again, whenever an experiment failed, she'd seen the doctor pause quietly just for a moment over the unmoving pigeon, as if silently thanking it for its contribution to their work. And finally, finally, about three months ago it had happened, they'd gotten the chemical compound just right and the pigeon had returned from its trip alive and well, looking only slightly ruffled and irritated by the experience. How they'd celebrated, knowing how much could now be done.

It was hitting her now, a little belatedly, the meaning of what they'd done. Ruby slid one gloved finger through the cage and gently stroked the red feathers. "You're gonna save so many lives," she said quietly, and it was a mark of the strength of their friendship that Carmine didn't laugh, nor did he demand of her the name of the ornithologist who had made that vital discovery about the scarlet macaw's impressive longevity, had figured out how to replicate and modify the genetic enzyme so that it could be administered to humans. (Dr. Eleanor Passerini, as they both well knew. She'd only had time to test it on a small fraction of the diseases that it could combat before she, and the macaws, had been lost in The Cataclysm. But her research had survived.) What else would they learn from the birds, and their progeny, and theirs, and theirs…?

Ruby slid into her seat beside Carmine and secured herself in. The log updated, they performed their final safety checks before scanning their thumbprints on the keypads to double-verify the travel information blinking on the screen in front of their eyes:

Departing: 3 February 2003, 06:47:19 Central Time Zone, 16.593339, -88.610462

Arriving: 14 October 2278, 16:23:03 Global Standard Time, 62.611428, 9.680543

Total journey time: 6.4148s

They allowed themselves one last look at the jungle through the thick glass of the porthole. "So places like this really existed pre-C," he mused aloud.

Ruby nodded slowly. "Sometimes I almost didn't believe it either."

A thoughtful pause. Then: "How about Rumine and Carby?"

"What? No!"

"Why not? Those are fun names."

"They're horrible names. Do we hate these birds, for some reason?"

Carmine laughed. Just before he closed the hatch, a flash of black and gold fur passed along the edge of the window.