Although known as a genus of tropical parrots, Amazonas is the largest estado in Brazil, housing primarily the Amazon River Basin. I can't comprehend why author Ryan would settle for such a non-evocative title when the name of this novella should certainly be The Slave Tree. Yeah, it's a journey up the Amazon set at the end of the Age of Exploration. Immediately, amazonas vittata start chortling, Heart of Darkness!, Heart of Darkness! but this story is as similar to that one as it is to Poe's The Gold Bug, but without the cipher's conclusion.
Henrietta—our post-'n'-proper Victorian protagonist—is worried her husband Edwin is going insane. Edwin has pretty much been shanghaied by a gorilla-like thug named Crown who has talked him into a woozy partnership involving harvesting a unique and special tree deep in the Amazon jungle. Greed is the hook and Edwin—a weak and loathsome failure of an egomaniacal wimp—is the bait, as Henrietta later becomes the fish. Crown's got a goon squad of half a dozen natives, a bungalow in the junglalow, and a "sack of guns"(p.83) to back his bullying plays. They manage to get to the tree, Edwin's hysteria flows into malaria, Crown skull-shoots his native gang 'cause they now know where the tree is, and Henrietta does whatever Crown wants, except sex, which would just muddle up the hidden motivations and covert hostilities.
So, what the fook is the Slave Tree? Well, it looks more like a logo of a tree than a tree, and has pea-like pods six or so feet in length that drop periodically from its branches. Think Finney's 1955 Invasion of the Body Snatchers but with more botanical influence, because it does not make alien replicas of humans, it creates originals.
"These things are worth a fortune. We'll collect them, harvest them. They'll be worth even more than rubber. Slave labor without slaves. No problem with laws. These things aren't men, they're not human."
—Crown, p.80
The problem is keeping these pod people alive, since they apparently can't make it without a little EMT. That's where Henrietta comes in; Edwin's now as dead as his dream, and Crown has always seen them as nothing more than chattel commodity. Things blow when Crown castrates their lone survivor-of-the-pod, Henrietta takes a mortal gut shot, but not before she gives Crown a Brazilian Necktie. Pod man? He bleeds out the final postscript, and the forest "began moving forward to reclaim the ground it had lost only briefly in its ageless span of time, its secrets still held deep and silent in its heart"(p.124).
Admittedly, when there is no explanation for what's at the center of the maze when you find it, I have a tendency to think in allegorical terms. I actually like this kind of technique, as it engenders mystery and a search for contextual clues which make the read more expansive. The problem is falling into the deus ex machina pit, perilously so when you're dealing with possibly the Tree of Life. You know, God's tree. Fortunately, author Ryan keeps it close without flopping out some heavy symbolism or transparent allusions.
Just a little bigotry baiting, but nothing like snakes or apples or something, eh?
