“Same thing. Why isn’t that part of the brain imaging?” Mandoha looked more closely at the image. “And what is this gray substance by the—where the hippocampus should be?” He glanced at Kate. “I’ve never seen this.”

She looked back at the corpse, then at the technician. “Do you have a backup scanner?”

The technician repeated the process with a second scanner. The image looked the same. Mandoha turned to Kate. “Well?”

“Let’s cut him open.”

Within minutes the pathologist was lasering through bone. He put down his laser and placed his hands above and below the skullcap. He pried it apart, and both physicians conducted a visual examination of the brain’s exterior.

“Nothing so far,” Mandoha remarked. “Would you like to take some slices for examination?”

“No, not yet. I want to get to the part where we had no image.”

He continued lasering until he had split apart the lower back side of the skull. He removed the left section.

Kate’s jaw dropped. Her eyes fixated on the area where there had been no image. She picked up a hemostat and poked at a silver goo oozing out of the area. It adhered to the instrument like motor oil.

“What the—”

10

Abby emerged from the vehicle nauseated and shaking. Riding in a car with Kate in Papua New Guinea had been unnerving, but this was much worse. The cars in America had no drivers. She felt so powerless. Every oncoming vehicle seemed headed right for her, and she’d shriek and duck down in her seat. She finally resigned herself to a permanent reclining position, eyes closed, until the car had stopped and instructed, “Please exit the vehicle.”

Abby set her suitcase on the sidewalk and watched the vehicle drive away. She stared at the house in front of her. For the second time in twenty-four hours, an unfamiliar feeling gripped her: panic. She had felt it first on the plane—not just on takeoff, with the terrifying roar and speed. Anxiety overcame her midflight when she realized how unprepared she was to handle even simple tasks outside the jungle.

Kate had done her best to prepare Abby, but who could have remembered to explain the myriad of gadgets, rules, and customs attached to just one activity: airplane flight? How was she supposed to know the way to lock the bathroom door, much less flush the toilet? How was she supposed to know that at various times passengers were restricted to their seats? Or that strangers were unaccustomed to being greeted by someone walking down the aisle? She found it frustrating, encountering her own ignorance at every turn.