Invasive Species by Joseph Wallace Read Free Book Online Page A

will it take to reach him?”
    â€œWeeks.” He grimaced. “If you’re very lucky.”
    â€œWill they get there first?”
    He flicked a hand eastward, toward the vast rain forests of Central Africa and the savannas and deserts beyond them. Then west toward the Atlantic Ocean and the New World.
    All the places the thieves had already reached, or soon would.
    â€œFirst, second,” he said. “Does it matter?”
    Mariama said, “I have to believe it does.”
    Seydou Honso smiled at his daughter, his expression full of love and grief.
    â€œI know you do,” he said.

SIX
    Ujiji, Tanzania
    THE FIRST THING Sheila Connelly’s gaze always sought out, every time she rode the Lake Tanganyika ferry from Kalemie, Congo, to Ujiji Port, was the mango avenue beyond the marketplace.
    The mango trees had been standing for two centuries or more. By now they were bent and twisted, their branches hung with weaver birds’ nests, their trunks riddled with holes where the ravages of time and weather had rotted them out. But still surviving, still flowering each year, their boughs still heavy with fruit in the right season.
    Ujiji’s mango avenue had long provided shade for the caravans of goods that crossed the lake from the vast, untracked forests of Central Africa and headed east. Sculptures and tapestries and weapons of many kinds, and foodstuffs, and slaves.
    Countless thousands of slaves. Men and women captured in the forests of the Congo, carried across the lake in the bilges of ferries like the one Sheila was riding now, then driven on a death march across the plains and deserts of East Africa to their ultimate destination: Arabia.
    Sheila wondered if the captives had known, as they stumbled, bound and whipped, past the fruiting trees, that these mangoes would be the last reminders of their tropical home they would ever see. Did any of them ever reach up and pluck a ripe, sun-warmed fruit as they passed, or had they been too terrified that they’d be punished if they did?
    The hulking steel ferry, the
Uhuru
, let loose with a blast from its horn and, spewing dirty white water, approached the wharf. Sheila dragged her eyes and thoughts back to the present and scanned the harbor area. There were plenty of people there waiting for the ferry, but her mother didn’t appear to be one of them.
    This was typical. Undoubtedly Megan Connelly was somewhere in the crowded marketplace, haggling over something she’d decided she had to own, picking up some last-minute supplies for Sheila’s visit, or merely shooting the breeze with vendors she’d known for years.
    Sheila couldn’t blame her. The markets were still the lifeblood of a port city, of a society. Even now, you never knew what you might find: bins full of tiny bananas, totems wrought of rosewood by artists from some barely known rain forest tribe, wooden spears with stone points.
    And, instead of slaves, disease. Mystery pathogens. Unnamed viruses and bacteria brought on the ferry from their birthplaces in the heart of Africa.
    Sheila knew more about the diseases than anything else at the Ujiji Market. She was a physician, out of her residency just five years, who’d signed on to work in the overflowing refugee camps of the war-torn countries of Central Africa. She’d thought it important to repay some of the debts owed by the world’s wealthy societies to those who’d been dealt a worse hand.
    But standing by the rail as the ferry docked, Sheila wondered if this part of her life was reaching its end. She was wearing out, losing interest.
    She knew the signs of burnout. She’d seen enough of it.
    *   *   *
    MEGAN CONNELLY SEEMED tired, too. Worn.
    â€œWhat’s wrong?” Sheila said as they hugged. “You look awful.”
    That was Sheila. She always said what was on her mind and had no patience with those who didn’t. This had tended to make her life noisy and