We stay with the People of the Forest for three days. They don’t use calendars, but I’m acutely aware of the passage of time. By now the colonel and his highly motivated search parties have probably found P.J. I’m tormented by the idea that he’s taking out his fury at not being able to locate me on the girl I love.

Eko spends a lot of time in the medicine lodge, trying to revive Kidah. She meditates near him and sings sacred songs to him, she mixes potions and drizzles them onto his lips, and she burns concoctions of flowers and herbs in the fire pit. Kidah slumbers on, unaware of all the fuss.

I make my own journeys to the medicine hut. I tell him about P.J. and why he needs to wake up and help. I try to dial him up telepathically. When no one’s looking I even try to slap the old wizard awake.

Nothing works. He lies motionless, barely breathing.

As the days pass, we become rain forest celebrities. More and more tribesmen keep arriving on foot and in flimsy bark canoes to get a look at us. Eko explains that they’re from different nomadic clans, and that our hosts are enjoying showing us off to all their cousins.

I get to know the People of the Forest better, and I slowly become convinced that Eko was right, and that I should be careful in labeling them savages.

They’re all healthy and mentally alert. I’ve never seen a parent punish a child, or a child rebel against a mother or father. Even the little kids come and go through the dark trees as they please—they are the masters of their world, romping through a vast playground. They learn from their parents to use everything and to waste nothing, and they treat the forest with great respect.

I recall my old classmates in Hadley who grew up in air-conditioned houses, addicted to television, computers, and cell phones. Many of them barely noticed the world around them. They had no sense that they were at all linked to their environment, let alone responsible for it.

As I watch the tribe’s pure and simple life, I keep wondering if technological progress must necessarily lead humanity to ruin. When Eve bit the apple, did it all have to turn out so badly? Or did we just jump ahead too quickly, and make a few wrong turns?

Weighty questions, no time for answers. Every day that we lose increases the chance that P.J. and Gisco will be caught and killed, and that the colonel will extend his power and destruction to the point where it’s irreversible.

After three days, I reach my breaking point. Eko has just spent hours in the medicine lodge, trying to rouse Kidah. When she leaves, I enter.