You are doing fine, Dr. Pace. Keep going, but whatever you do, do not look down!”
Alexandra Pace gritted her teeth as Milos Olsson’s patient voice floated up from the rainforest floor. The stocky Swedish botanist had probably been climbing trees and mountains since he was old enough to wear lederhosen, but the act of traveling upward via muscle and rope was still new to Alex . . . and more than a little unnerving.
“Just clip and pull.” The new voice belonged to Deborah Simons, the American entomologist who was clambering up the rope ten yards above Alex. The outdoorsy Texan had taken to the sport of tree climbing like a monkey. “Hey, if this gal can get the hang of it, anybody can.”
Clip and pull? Closing her eyes, Alex dangled in space as the words brought back memories of hot Saturday afternoons sipping a Diet Coke beneath the hair dryer in her favorite salon. Now the nearest hair dryer was probably two hundred miles away, and few people in the Amazon jungle had even seen a Diet Coke. . .
“Dr. Pace, you awake up there?” Someone beneath her jiggled the rope, snapping her out of her daydream even as the motion sent adrenaline spurting into her bloodstream.
“I’m moving!” She slipped her foot into the prusik loop attached to the main line, then stood, the prusik holding her weight while her right hand nudged the mechanical ascender another twelve inches upward. The metal Jumar slid easily along the purple rope, its surface cool beneath her damp palm.
“One,” she whispered, reciting the count she’d rehearsed a hundred times the day before. Olsson had the entire team practice climbing a tree in front of the lodge, and Alex had been surprised when most of her teammates took to climbing as enthusiastically as teenage boys took to driving. She had scaled the thirty-foot tree three times, gaining confidence in the technique, but today her muscles were stiff and complaining.
She squinted as she tipped her head back to see the purple line disappearing in a ceiling of green leaves. This was no thirty-foot tree. The strangler fig’s uppermost branches filled the forest canopy over one hundred thirty feet above the ferns carpeting the jungle floor.
“Two.” She sat back, leaning her weight on the carabiner linking her pelvic harness to the guide rope, then tugged the lower prusik upward with the toe of her sneaker.
“Consider Eupithecia orichloris,” Deborah had explained yesterday. “Think of yourself as an inchworm moving steadily up the tree.”
Alex was certain no worm had ever inched his way up this particular specimen of Ficus Americana. Too many hazards lay along the path of the trunk—ants and birds and wasps and snakes and even plants that would delight in snacking on any worm that happened by. The odds of an unperturbed passage weren’t much better for human climbers, so she and her teammates were climbing this tree as if it were a mountain, with ropes, carabiners, and harnesses.
“It’s simple, really,” she muttered under her breath. “Just part of a day’s work. And necessary for your research.”
“Move along, will you, madame?”
Alex glanced down in time to see Louis Fortier, the French perfumer, jiggle the rope beneath her. “We are eager to climb, too.”
“I’m moving!” Blowing out a breath, she stepped on the prusik again and slid the Jumar upward. Leaning back on the carabiner, she was about to lift the loop around her sneaker when her fingers spasmed, making her lose her grip on the line. The weight of her backpack pulled her backward, her unattached left leg flew upward, and for a horrifying instant fear froze her scalp to her skull. Then the carabiner snapped against her harness, preventing her fall, and the rope around her right shoe tightened.
Gasping, with both arms helplessly beating the air, she hung upside down like a pinioned parrot.
“You are all right, yes?” Olsson called.
Alex forced herself to draw a deep breath and calm her pounding heart. She was not all right. She was as far from all right as she had ever been in her life. But no one could know her secret.
Summoning what she hoped was a measure of dignity, she directed her gaze down to the place where a knot of researchers huddled around the rope. “I’m fine. My hand slipped.” With an effort, she folded her arms around her head as an inquisitive wasp investigated her face. “I seem to be stuck, however.”
“You are not stuck.” Olsson’s no-nonsense tone told her she would have to get herself out of this predicament. “Reach up from the waist, Dr. Pace, and catch the rope with your fingers.”
She closed her eyes. Olsson spoke with the confidence of an athletic man who could still run and jump and bend without pain. He had never lived inside the body of a thirty-something-year-old woman for whom regular exercise consisted of frequent trips to the coffeemaker.
And he had no idea her central nervous system had begun to shortcircuit.
Drawing in a breath, she lifted her head, then urged her arms and fingers to reach toward her toes.
She couldn’t do it.
She fell back, squinching her eyes into knots while her brain railed against her situation. This was the result of a simple slip, perhaps one more related to exhaustion than to her condition. And though panic attacks were one of the symptoms of her illness, she would not panic here, not now, not today . . .
“Twinkle, twinkle, little star.” She sang the old nursery rhyme under her breath. She’d loved the song as a child, and in medical school she’d discovered that singing it brought peace to her jittery nerves. The reason probably had something to do with the security of childhood and the resilience of embedded memories, but psychology had never particularly interested her.
Struggling against tears, she was calmly whispering the rest of the song when Valerik Baklanov, her research partner for this expedition, stepped up to the rope. “Momentum will help you counteract the gravity,” he called, compassion streaming through his Russian accent. “Swing, Alex, like a child. Then you can reach the rope.”
She nodded, not trusting her voice, and began to rock from side to side. While Deborah Simons squealed overhead, Alex swung herself forward, finally building enough momentum to reach upward, catch the rope, and pull herself upright.
Thank the stars, this time her fingers had obeyed. She clung to the guideline, closing her eyes as the walls of the jungle swayed around her, then forced herself to look up.
“Sorry,” she called to Deborah, who had vanished into the canopy.
“Dr. Pace,” Olsson called again. “We are waiting for you to ascend.”
Of course they were. And while they waited, they were probably thinking she was the most uncoordinated American woman ever to step foot in the jungle, but that was okay. She’d rather they think her uncoordinated than know that her body had begun to weaken.
Determined to make up for lost time, Alex drew a deep breath and stood in the prusik, then slipped the ascender upward.