Tim parked the Jeep outside the modest clinic built around the stumps of great trees recently felled to clear a section of the adjacent jungle.
He walked through the front door and came onto a scene of mayhem. His boots crunched on pills that had gotten scattered on the floor as he looked at a scene of toppled chairs and cabinets, broken bottles, and other signs of a struggle. With a sinking feeling in his stomach, he looked for a doctor.
One of the physicians found Tim, and the angry man unloaded on the foreign visitor. Tim tried to pick up on the rapid flow of the man's native language, but his shallow understanding failed him. He had to beg the man to slow down. "What happened?" Tim asked in English and repeated, he hoped, in the native language.
The man frowned fiercely. ""Your friend happened, Mr. Johnson."
"Richard!" Tim exclaimed. "He did all this?"
"He broke free of his restraints, attacked the staff, and ran off," the doctor answered. "I will be sending a bill to your foreign expedition." It was evident from the man's tone that he had an ingrained dislike of outsiders.
"Where did he go?" Tim asked.
The man pointed through the open door toward the edge of the jungle. "He went there," he answered in English and then, in his own language, added the equivalent of "Good riddance!"
Tim stared toward the edge of the encroaching jungle. He knew that to step only a few feet inside that rampant growth of trees, vines and other vegetation was to become engulfed in a shadowy impenetrable green expanse.
Garok the jungle man might be equipped to survive in the hostile jungle surroundings. Garok in Richard's body was singularly ill-suited to a primitive life in the primeval surroundings of the vast jungle.
He was so worried that he almost forgot the other reason for his visit. "Doctor, did you happen to see my friend with a small relic in his possession?" Tim took out a wrinkled sheet of paper on which he had drawn a crude illustration of the butterfly relic.
"So, your friend is a thief, too, is he?" The doctor asked as he gave a quick glance at Tim's sketch. "No, I didn't see him with that."
Tim started to ask if he could search for the relic, but then saw all the debris from the jungle man's escape. He told the doctor to keep the sketch. "If anyone does come across that relic, please call me. It's very important."
The doctor kept the drawing, but Tim sensed that the doctor had no intention of looking for the relic or anything else on his behalf. Tim walked out of the clinic and back to his Jeep. One small road had been cut into the jungle by loggers, miners, and other foreign economic interests.
Tim revved the engine. "Perhaps he hasn't gotten far," he said aloud as he drove the Jeep onto the road that entered the jungle like an ugly surgical incision.
He spared a thought for his friend back at the headquarters. Ironically, as long as Richard remained in the cage, he was probably far better off than Garok at the moment.