City of the Beasts

Chaos follows Alex and Nadia’s interruption, with Dr. Torres attempting to continue the vaccinations. Karakawe announces unexpectedly that he works for the Department for the Protection of Indigenous Peoples and that he has been assigned to find out why so many native tribes have been dying off. He states that he has long suspected Mauro Carías and demands that the vials of vaccine be held as evidence, at which point Captain Ariosto shoots and kills Karakawe. In the ensuing mayhem, Ariosto destroys the vials and Tahama attacks Carías with his club while Timothy Bruce and Kate use their cameras to record the events. Three soldiers and several Indians are killed, including a woman whose infant Ludovic Leblanc rescues. Holding the baby, Leblanc realizes with horror that “they themselves were the savages, not the Indians” (355). 

As Captain Ariosto takes command of the remaining members of the expedition, Alex comes to understand that Dr. Torres has been helping Carías decimate native tribes for years. Her alleged vaccine vials actually contained viruses, and she and her lover Carías had killed hundreds of natives using them. Carías, it turns out, had planned for the International Geographic team to document the vaccinations in order to prove publicly that “the necessary precautions had been taken to protect the village” (358). Ariosto had been Carías’s accomplice throughout and, Alex realizes, is now eager to keep the true story from being revealed and might even kill the members of the expedition in order to keep his secret. 

At Ariosto’s command, one helicopter leaves to take Carías, Torres, and some injured soldiers back to Santa Maria de la Lluvia. Leblanc comes up with the idea to distract Ariosto and so save their lives, telling the others: “We must pretend we do not suspect him, and conquer him with cunning” (362). Leblanc succeeds in putting Ariosto at ease by appearing to take his side, and Ariosto confiscates Bruce’s film to hide evidence of the day’s events. As the camp settles down for the night, Ariosto insists on tying Alex up away from the others as a punishment. Kate fears that Ariosto will kill Alex in the night, and Nadia sends Borobá into the jungle to find help.

Using her mental powers of invisibility, Nadia enters the jungle at night. Meanwhile, Walimai appears to Alex and cuts him out of his binds, using the Swiss Army knife Alex gave him. Nadia joins them and together the three hide in the forest, with Walimai encouraging Alex to negotiate with Ariosto even though he feels doomed to fail. While hiding, Alex and Nadia smell the terrible odor of the Beasts and know that one has attacked the expedition’s camp. In the morning, they find the camp completely empty, without even the dead bodies of the Indians remaining. 

The chapter also includes a section of narrative from Iyomi’s perspective, describing her hesitations regarding the strangers and the vaccines and her ultimate trust in Nadia and Alex. It becomes clear that while Nadia and Alex hide in the jungle, Iyomi summons the Beasts at Walimai’s prompting to spray the ruined village, since it could no longer be a home to the tribe. After the Beasts’ odor stuns everyone in the camp, the tribe comes to move the expedition members out of danger and collect their dead. They also discover the mangled body of Ariosto, who was killed by a Beast in the night.

The members of the expedition regain consciousness in the forest and soon reunite with Alex and Nadia. Iyomi and the rest of the tribe appear to talk with them, saying that they wish to rebuild their village in another part of the Eye of the World. Nadia assures Iyomi that the remaining outsiders will work to help the People of the Mist, and “after endless negotiations about who were friends and who were enemies” (388), Iyomi helps the expedition return to their helicopter. After one shared evening with the tribe, the expedition party packs its things and exchanges gifts with the tribe in preparation for departure. Before they leave, Alex tells Kate of his experiences in the Beasts’ city and she wishes to document it for her assignment, but Alex convinces her to instead write an article about the tribe and how best to protect it, as well as the evils of people like Carías, Ariosto, and Torres. Kate agrees to Alex’s request, and plans to claim that the Beasts are a myth in order to protect them.

Although he has never piloted a helicopter before, César Santos successfully flies the group back to Santa Maria de la Lluvia. There they discover that Carías—accompanied by Torres—has been transported to a hospital in Venezuela with permanent brain damage. Joel Gonzalez and the soldiers who were wounded earlier in the journey have recovered. Padre Valdomero reports to Kate and Leblanc that his interactions with grief-stricken Dr. Torres had further implicated her in the conspiracy to decimate the natives, and he notes that he had long been suspicious of Carías and Ariosto. 

Kate laments that they don’t have hard evidence to prove the conspiracy, at which point César Santos reveals that he recovered a vial of the alleged vaccine from Torres’s supplies. He tells the group that he knew about Karakawe’s true identity and convinced Leblanc to hire Karakawe so that he could join the expedition. Additionally, Timothy Bruce shows Kate that he still has the film on which he recorded Ariosto’s killing of Karakawe, having swapped out the footage before giving film to Ariosto. Kate is overjoyed to discover the evidence and, at Padre Valdomero’s suggestion, she and Leblanc plan to form a foundation to protect the People of the Mist.  

Before parting ways, Alex and Nadia sit together on the dock in the village, considering how they feel “as if they had lived a lot of life since they met” (402). Nadia gives Alex her basket of three crystal eggs, telling him that the stones are actually diamonds and that with Kate’s help, he will be able to use them to fund protection for the People of the Mist. Alex tells Nadia that Kate has been assigned to write another article, this time about a remote area of the Himalayas, and he hopes to go with her, though he suspects that he will need to stay at home with his family. Though they are sad to part, Alex and Nadia agree to write to each other and remain best friends by “seeing each other with their hearts” (406).