Page 67 - An Evening with Maxwell's Daemons

Lost in the Jungle

“I’m not one to use puns simply for a cheap laugh,” declaimed
Rutger Schlager, and glared at the other people seated around the
table in the upstairs room at Maxwell’s Delicatessen, as if daring
them to look in the slightest bit doubtful or amused. “But my title
includes the word ‘lost’, and I mean it in more than one sense. I’m
telling you this now, so you won’t pipe up later with it as some kind
of great revelation. The reader will get it sooner or later; later is
better, of course; and just at the end of the story is best.”
“The setting here is the middle of World War II—ancient
history to the younger set, but still fresh in many minds. Unlike its
predecessor, a good amount of it was fought in the Tropics, in areas
of the world still barely known to the Axis and the Allies; they were
nevertheless strategic, both as regions to control militarily and as
sources of materiel. I needn’t remind you that the Germans lost
primarily owing to bad command decisions, their own fault for
letting a madman lead them to disaster. But almost as important
were the bombing campaigns and blockades interdicting crucial raw
materials passing from the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Africa
to the Third Reich. Oil, of course, but also rubber. Synthetic
versions, none as good as the plant-derived substance, were actively
and desperately being developed by both sides. In the early days of
the war, American intelligence received and decoded messages that
a previously-unknown Central African tree had been discovered by
a German expedition to Equatorial Guinea. Its sap had many of the
same properties as the Amazonian rubber tree. And it could be
hybridized and cultivated in more temperate zones. But it only grew
in one small valley deep in the interior of that Spanish colony, and it
was known only to the inhabitants of a small village there. Spain
was sympathetic to the Nazi regime, despite its legal neutrality, so
these intercepted communications were taken seriously by the high
command in the European theatre.”
“Now the drama begins. Unwilling to take direct action and risk
a violation of Spain’s putative non-combatant status unless the
reports were true, the Americans send in a small reconnaissance
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