Chapter 12: Botany

Wednesday

Brenda Oliver woke up feeling vastly better than the day before. After their late afternoon nap on Tuesday, the pair had gotten up and dressed, and driven down to the Leilani Resort at the other end of the beach. It wasn’t much different than the Haka Nuva Inn, and they had dinner there before returning and going to bed.

Now, completely over her hangover and well rested, Brenda hopped out of bed happily when the alarm went off. Steve cracked an eye open and said, “You look happy this morning. Feeling better?”

She nodded. “Much better. Are we still collecting samples?”

It was his turn to nod. “We didn’t get anything done yesterday, so I have to do some today.”

“Sorry about that.”

“You can make it up to me later.”

She smirked. “I thought I did that yesterday afternoon.”

He gave her a disdainful look. “I meant academically.”

Brenda gave him a raspberry for that. She headed to the bathroom to shower and get ready. When she left, he went in. Brenda wondered what to wear, but only briefly. Despite her agreeing that ‘Knickers Just Get In The Way’, that simply wasn’t realistic in the tropical jungle. She was going to have to treat the day as a workday, and for that she would need to wear work clothes. Forget about heading out in a halter top and miniskirt. She needed to wear long pants, a long-sleeved shirt, and industrial strength underwear. She also skipped the sandals for some heavy leather shoes. She had gone collecting with her husband before; glamorous and romantic it was not!

Steve nodded approvingly when he came out of the bathroom. He pulled on some khakis and a denim shirt, and some work boots. He also grabbed a couple of baseball caps, tossing one to his wife. Brenda pulled her hair back in a ponytail and settled the hat on her head. “Ready to go, Indiana Jones?”

“I don’t raid tombs. I raid gardens,” he replied. He went over to the table and grabbed his smartphone off the charger.

“All we need now are some pith helmets,” answered Brenda. “Give me a moment. I want to pack a change of clothes.” She knew that they would both be dirty and muddy after collecting samples all day. She dumped everything out of the beach bag, and then repacked it with some clean clothes and a pair of sandals. Steve nodded in understanding and tossed her some stuff for himself. If it had just been him, he wouldn’t have cared and have simply driven back dirty. Brenda was a bit pickier than that.

Breakfast was at the buffet downstairs, but they also ordered some sandwiches and water bottles in a cooler for lunch. She wasn’t sure where they would be, but she knew they wouldn’t be able to break free for lunch. “So where are you... we ... going today?” she asked over breakfast.

“It’s an area on the north side of the island. It doesn’t seem likely to be that difficult to get to, but you can never tell until you get there. We’ll need to take the main road all the way around to the north side.”

“We can’t go up and over?”

He smiled and shook his head. “Haka Nuva is pretty rugged once you get away from the coast. It gets steep and the roads are... minimal. Going around will get us there in a fraction of the time.”

“Okay, just curious. You have a map?”

“Out in the Land Rover, along with some aerial photos. They probably won’t help much, though. Everything is some sort of green in the photos. It’ll probably be GPS coordinates all the way.”

The waitress returned with their cooler and Brenda finished her coffee. “Whenever you’re ready, Doctor Livingston,” she said. Steve downed his coffee, signed for their meal, and then stood. He grabbed the cooler and Brenda grabbed everything else, and they went outside to the parking lot.

The pair settled their gear in the Land Rover and climbed in. The roads in town were adequately paved with asphalt, but within five minutes they were leaving town and heading out on gravel roads, which dropped their speed significantly. Traffic wasn’t bad, though the locals tended to drive much, much faster than Steve felt safe. He and Brenda discussed the plans for the morning as they drove around the island. They wouldn’t get to the site until mid-morning.

Botanical sampling was just one more area that modern technology had affected. In the days of Doctor Stanley, heading into the jungle and taking samples could mean taking hordes of native bearers along. Samples would have to be crated up and carried along with them, and it could take months or longer for samples to go from the spot they were collected back to civilization for study. The Maltesano Islands in the Twenty-First Century was nothing like that.

During the planning stage for the expedition, Steve had researched the best methods for getting samples back to Albany from halfway around the world. Two major technologies would allow this far faster than historically had been done. First, overnight freight service could be accessed almost anywhere in the world. He had pre-printed hundreds of shipping labels ahead of time, including barcodes for identification, for DHL, an international shipping company. There was an office on Maltesano, and daily shipments out. He had picked up numerous shipping cartons while in Maltesano at the beginning of the trip. After packing a carton, he could slap on one of his shipping labels, tape up the carton, and get it to the nearest town. It would go on the next ferry back to Maltesano and the DHL office. It would be in Albany in forty-eight hours.

Central to this was the second technology, advanced computerization. No longer did a scientist need to write notes in the jungle and lug them around, hoping not to lose them or have them get damaged. In addition to his regular laptop, Steve had packed along a rugged and waterproof military-grade tablet computer. When out in the field, he would first collect a sample of a plant. Then he would take a picture of it with the tablet, along with a picture of the sample bag it was to be packed in. The sample bags were already pre-labeled with a barcode. The photo would automatically add a date-time stamp as well as a geocode based on GPS data the tablet automatically obtained. A text app then allowed Steve to write on the tablet about the sample, and there was also a microphone app that allowed him to add verbal information. Later, when packing the samples for shipment, he would take photos of the samples with the shipping label. All the photos and data were automatically uploaded to cloud-based storage that could be accessed by grad students and assistants back at Empire State University. By the time Steve and Brenda arrived back home, the grunt work of sorting and storing samples would already be finished!

None of this meant that there still wasn’t some labor involved. When they got to the area their maps and satellite photos had suggested would be a good place to collect some samples, there was no place to pull off the road. A steep drop-off was on the right and a steep climb was on the left. They had to continue another two miles to find a place along the shoulder they could park. Steve and Brenda climbed out of the Land Rover and loaded some empty labels and sample bags into a pair of backpacks, along with several bottles of water. Steve locked the vehicle and pocketed the keys, and they headed back along the road.

“Are we going to have to go back two miles?” asked Brenda. She was healthy and in good shape, but two miles was still two miles.

Steve smiled at her. “Feeling weak or feeling lazy?”

“Hey!”

He laughed. “No, I don’t think so. The terrain and vegetation look the same throughout the area. Split the difference. One mile is a brisk walk for fifteen minutes. We will briskly walk for fifteen minutes and stop there. Fair enough?”

“Fair enough. Is there anything particular we are looking for?” she asked, stepping out after her husband as he began walking down the side of the road.

“I want to find the puka puka plant.”

“Steve, feeling inadequate?” she teased.

“Very funny. I am perfectly secure in my masculinity, thank you very much!” he told her. “No, there is very little available research on the puka puka plant. I found one decent photo, and a few descriptions, and not much else. The last time anybody actually took samples and tried to ship them home was almost thirty years ago. They sent them by ship, and by the time the samples arrived, they had rotted. We can avoid that. From the time the samples get to the DHL facility in Maltesano, everything gets refrigerated and is shipped that way back to Albany. Deterioration should be minimal.”

“And the photos and GPS say we should find puka puka plants here?”

“Not precisely. The data shows that lava lava plants will be there. According to the literature, if you find lava lava flowers, puka puka plants will be very close. Again, the existing literature doesn’t specify why.”

The pair continued hiking back along the road, working up a sweat in the morning heat and humidity. After fifteen minutes, Steve stopped and set a waypoint on his GPS tracker. “Ready?” he asked Brenda.

She looked around skeptically. “There’s no snakes, right?”

“Just trouser snakes!” he laughed.

“Steve!”

“No snakes, no poisonous spiders or bugs, no lions, tigers, or bears, oh my!”

“You’re just a barrel of laughs.” She reached into her pack and pulled out a bottle of water. She drank some and then passed it to him when he held his hand out. “No animals?”

“Plenty of animals, but nothing big and mean, or not too big and mean. The largest native predators, in fact, aren’t even native predators. One is a species of rat, and the other is feral pigs, both of which landed with the Western Europeans when they showed up. The pigs can be nasty, I hear, so if you see one, back away. Still, it shouldn’t be bad. Just think Porky Pig on steroids.”

Brenda gave Steve a skeptical look at that. She had once seen a video of feral pigs on the Discovery Channel, and they didn’t look anything like Porky Pig! She rolled her eyes as he packed away the empty water bottle and headed into the growth off the road. At least with GPS they wouldn’t be lost to the ages.

Once inside the jungle Brenda was very glad for GPS. It would be very easy to get turned around and wander for hours. She stayed close behind Steve, who was occasionally consulting his tablet, which had both a GPS and compass app active. Within a few minutes, they moved into a bit of a clearing. Surrounding them were dark pink and coral lava lava flowers. “Well, if your puka puka plants are near lava lava plants, they should be here,” said Brenda. “What are they supposed to look like?”

“Small green and yellow flowers on something that looks like tall clover leaves,” he replied.

“Like this?” she said, pointing to a plant she was standing next to.

Steve came over and looked. “Maybe. It matches the photo I saw. Only one way to find out, for sure.” Steve knelt and took off his backpack and pulled out a folding camp shovel. He unfolded it and locked the blade into place, and then dug down into the soil carefully around what looked like a thin but strong stalk. Then, setting down the shovel, he grasped the stalk and pulled up. It came up along with a big clump of dirt, which he shook out over the hole. He tapped the root ball with the blade of the shovel, and slowly the dirt fell back into the hole. A minute later they realized that the plant was a puka puka plant. A large puka puka root was to one side of a thinner taproot.

Brenda laughed as the root come into view. It had to be at least eight inches long and two inches wide. “You sure about that masculinity thing, Steve?”

He eyed it curiously, as he continued to knock off the loose dirt. “Now that you mention it ... you want me to clean this up for you, you know, for those times I’m not around?”

“Already got one, remember, and I think this one’s a bit big for my taste.”

He looked up at her and grinned. “So, do women like long puka puka roots or thick ones?”

She didn’t answer, but asked, “So, how do you get the oil? Where’s that?”

He gave her a mystified look, but as he continued knocking off the dirt, he thought about it. Eventually he simply grabbed the root firmly, pulled away the taproot, and dropped that in the hole as well. A small crack appeared at the base of the root and a thin oil welled up through the crack. He pulled out a sheath knife and cut the base of the root off and found a small cavity filled with a thin white fluid. Upending it, the oil seeped out and dripped down to the soil, filling the air with the scent of puka puka oil. “I think that’s how it’s done, Bren.”

“Huh. Well, you found what the plant looks like and how it grows. There’s plenty of lava lava flowers around, too, so it seems like they do grow together.”

“Time to get to work,” said Steve.

With that, the pair stripped off their backpacks and opened them. While Brenda was not a trained botanist, she had spent enough time with her husband on the other islands to understand the technique and learn the procedures involved. Samples of plants were gathered and placed in plastic bags, labels were affixed, photos were taken, texts and verbal instructions were made, and the samples were placed in backpacks for transport back to the vehicle. More than one sample was taken, also. Some of the samples were of leaves, some were of flowers, some were of roots. Both male and female plants were gathered, as were pollen samples. Back in Albany, genomes would be determined on everything. It wasn’t just the puka puka plants that were sampled either. Lava lava flowers were gathered, as well as the vine structures they created, and other plants were gathered. Some Steve Oliver already knew about and others he would identify in the lab.

Steve and Brenda spent the rest of the morning at the site, gathering and packing samples. When they finished, Steve figured out from his GPS and compass apps which way to head to get back to their waypoint, and they trudged back towards the road and, eventually, civilization. Both were hot, sweaty, and muddy by the time they got back to the car. They ate their lunches and then went back to work. They unloaded their backpacks into shipping cartons, and then reloaded them with fresh sample bags and labels, and it was off to the next site. They continued working until mid-afternoon.

Back at the Land Rover, Brenda looked at her husband and asked, “Is that it?”

He nodded. “For today. It’s Wednesday. I figure on getting one more day in collecting samples, but I want to finish by sometime early Friday. After that I am just updating notes and goofing off for the rest of the time. We are leaving on Sunday, regardless.” He gave her a wicked grin. “Saturday, we can go back to Captain Jack’s and see what the pirates are bidding for women.”

“Fine, as long as I get to take home a few puka puka roots! If I were you, Steve, I’d be getting nervous!”

“Like I said earlier, I am secure in my manhood. Or puka-puka -hood. Something like that, anyway.” He reached into the cooler, pulled out a bottle of water, and held it out to Brenda.

She accepted it gratefully. “Thank you!” She opened the cap and took a healthy swig, and then stepped away from the Land Rover and poured some over her head. “I need to clean up and change,” she announced. Turning back to the vehicle, she found the beach bag with clothing and set it on the car seat. She pulled out her clothing and a clean towel. Then, not caring that she was on the side of the road, she pulled off her shirt, shoes, and pants and tossed them on the floor of the vehicle, leaving her wearing just her bra and panties. She poured some more water on herself and scrubbed what could be scrubbed with a washcloth she had packed along.

“I could probably recruit some additional help on these expeditions if the students knew about the scenic delights to be found in the wild,” commented her husband, smiling at her.

“I don’t think so!”

He grabbed for the tablet computer. “I don’t know, Bren. I think this would be great for the college yearbook.”

“And your funeral! Put that down and behave.” She looked him up and down as well. “You need to clean up, too, you know.”

“You mean the wild and rugged look isn’t cutting it these days? I am crushed!” he cried, theatrically.

“Yeah, Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Puka Puka Roots! That sounds like really cheesy porn, Steve.”

He snorted out a laugh and stripped off his own work shirt, tossing it in besides hers. Then, like Brenda, he took off his boots and stripped down to his briefs and washed off with some bottled water. “It’s a damn good thing this isn’t the most heavily trafficked road,” he commented. “Or that there don’t seem to be a lot of police on Haka Nuva.”

“No kidding!” agreed Brenda. “The pirates might be looking for me, but I don’t think they are interested in you, Steve, not unless your puka puka root grows a lot more!”

Steve protested at that but shut up when his wife reached behind her back and undid her bra. That went into the Land Rover, and she pulled out a tank top from the beach bag. She then pulled out a short denim skirt and laid it on the seat. Stripping her panties off, she pulled the skirt on commando-style, and slipped into some sandals. She finished by digging out a hairbrush and worked on brushing her hair out. “There, that’s better. I still need a shower, but I’m decent enough now that I can climb back in the Land Rover without messing it up.”

“Definitely liking the look, Bren.”

Brenda looked over at Steve, whose briefs were beginning to tent out appreciatively. She smiled. “Thank you. Yours is looking nice, too.”

“Yeah, well this isn’t lasting. I’ve got some clothes, too.” He rooted through the beach bag and found a pair of khakis. Brenda pouted at him, so he stripped off his briefs and pulled the shorts on commando-style. “The trick isn’t in skipping out on the underwear. The trick is in making sure not to zip your pants up too quickly,” he said.

“Ouch!”

“I still like your outfit better.”

Brenda smiled. “I’m going for a new look. I’m going to try this at home, too.”

Steve’s eyes popped open at that. “I think they might have a problem with that at school, don’t you think?”

“Oh, not there, don’t be silly, but at home, why not?”

Steve had to stop to think about that. “Think the kids might notice?”

“Steve Junior? If it wasn’t in a video game, he wouldn’t notice the end of the world!” she said with a grimace. Then she shrugged. “As for Heather, I’m not sure. She’ll probably notice, and we’ll have to talk about it, but I don’t think I want to change my mind.”

Steve pulled on a short sleeve camouflage-pattern shirt but didn’t button it. “So, what caused you to decide on the new look? I mean, I like it, but it’s different.”

She smiled at him. “It’s for you.”

“Me?”

She nodded again. “Oh, it’s not just you. It’s for us.” Steve gave his wife a confused look, and she explained, “I was talking to Babs the other day, and she says it is something she does for Tully. She told us that back when they were first married, they went through a rough patch - and no, she didn’t get into details - and she changed to make sure that he always knew that she considered him desirable and wanted him to know that she was always open for business, so to speak.” Steve raised an eyebrow at that, which caused Brenda to grin. “Precisely! Anyway, we got to talking, and the same applies to us. I mean, they’ve been married almost as long as we’ve been alive. Maybe we can learn from them.”

“Okay,” he replied, though he still gave her a questioning look.

“Well, this is just a way to let you know that I still find you desirable, and that I’m open for business, too.” Brenda blushed as she said this. It seemed like it had been years since she had been this open with her husband. “Steve, I ... when we were talking to Babs, she said that with her and Tully it had been lust at first sight, and that liking each other, and love had come later. You and me, we started out with liking and love, but the lust is still there. I enjoy being with you ... yes, that way ... and I want you to know it!”

“Oh, really?” he replied, grinning madly. He stepped closer to her as she stood there at the open door to the Land Rover. He reached out and began rubbing her breasts through her tank top. “What if I’m still not sure?”

Brenda rolled her eyes, even as her nipples stiffened to impossibly hard nubbins of flesh. She tugged the tank top down to her waist, exposing her tits to her husband, and then pulled her miniskirt up. “Think I mean it now?”

Steve chuckled and let go of her breasts and unzipped his shorts. They slid down around his ankles and he shuffled between Brenda’s wide-spread legs. Brenda climbed onto the seat behind her and arranged herself so that her legs were out the door, and her butt was on the edge of the seat, and Steve moved closer. She helped him insert his cock into her hot and wet pussy, and then groaned as he shoved it deeply into her. The pair couple feverishly, half in and half out of the vehicle, as Brenda urged her husband on. “Fuck me! Fuck me! Cum in my pussy! Cum in my pussy!”

Steve didn’t say anything in return, but simply grunted and groaned incoherently. Much too soon for either one of them Steve reached his breaking point, flooding her cunt with his hot jism.

Brenda hugged her husband afterwards, as she came down from her own orgasm. “Oh, Steve, that was wonderful. I never want you to think I don’t love it when we make love, or fuck, or screw, or whatever. I want to do this every day with you, all the time, no matter what.”

Steve got his breathing under control and stepped away from the Land Rover, pulling up his shorts and tucking himself back in. “Well, I’ll certainly be willing to give it the old college try, hun. I’ll let you explain to the kids about the new dress code.”

Brenda pulled her own clothing back into place and shrugged. “Let’s worry about that when we get back home. I’m probably not going to wear miniskirts and flash my pussy while the kids are around,” she admitted.

Steve laughed at that. “Yeah, that might be a little over the top.”

She smiled back at him. “Then again, the kids are going to be off at college in just a few years, so you never know.”

“Maybe they can find something cheap in California.”

Brenda rolled her eyes at that. Realistically, since Steve was a professor at Empire State, their children would certainly be going to school there, since the tuition would be free. However, if they didn’t have to pay for tuition, room and board in the dorms would be a piece of cake, and then they could always change the locks like they threatened to do all the time, anyway.

Brenda and Steve finished sorting themselves out, and then packed the Land Rover. After that it was back onto the gravel road to head back towards Haka Nuva. A quick shower, maybe a not-so-quick nap, and then dinner, sounded like a good way to finish the day.

That wasn’t to be, however. Barely five minutes after they started heading back towards the resort, a battered pickup truck came down a side road off the mountainside. As the truck moved from the side road onto the gravel, the driver-side rear tire exploded, shredding pieces of rubber and causing the rear of the truck to fishtail out of control. The truck skidded sideways, stopping with the tail end hanging over the edge of the road and into the brush. Steve slowed the Land Rover and came to a stop.

The Olivers jumped out of their vehicle and ran forward to the truck. “Is everybody all right?” asked Steve, pulling open the passenger door.

Inside were a woman and a man, both looking startled and a little shaken up, but otherwise in good condition. “What happened?” asked the woman.

“You blew a tire,” answered Steve.

The driver of the truck looked over at them. “Makes sense. I didn’t hear anything over the gravel, but suddenly the rear end gave way and I lost control.” He unbuckled his seat belt. “Better take a look at things, see how bad it is.” Both he and the woman undid their seat belts and climbed out.