But conversation was subdued. Some people feared that the trip was over and done, that Arden might call it off and have Vargas turn the boat around. Those who knew Arden best, however – Maggie, Tim, and Mel – were confident that with a night to sleep on it he would see things as they now did; that is, that the spear attack, whatever its cause, could not have had anything to do with him personally. Despite Cisco’s metaphysical mumblings, the evidence against it was inarguable, and Arden, a scientist through and through, would understand that once he’d gotten over his initial shock.
So what, then, was the attack about? Vargas, at his station behind the buffet, professed to have no idea. In his six years on the river he’d never heard of anything like it.
“This is your first passenger trip, isn’t it?” Mel asked him between forkloads of spaghetti. “You usually ship cargo, right? So is it possible that the Chayacuro, or whoever, don’t want you bringing people – tourists – in? That this is a warning to you? You know, ‘Don’t screw up our pristine rainforest’?”
No, it wasn’t possible, Vargas told him. There were two other ships out of Iquitos already in the tourist trade. The Dorado and the Principe de Loreto both had every-other-week cruises to Leticia and back, and such a thing had never happened to them. So why pick on his poor Adelita? What was special about this trip? No, no, there was nothing – He frowned momentarily, as if an answer, and not a very welcome answer, had crossed his mind, but he only opened his mouth, shut it, and shook his head. No.
Tim, like everyone else, had seen the shadow cross his face. “Captain, you don’t think we’ll be attacked again?”
“Again? No, no, of course not. Well, I don’t think so…”
The answer, half-baked at best, didn’t appear to do much to ease Tim’s mind. He cleared his throat. “I know it’s not up to me, everybody, but I think that if there’s any possibility of future attacks, well, it might be better to call the whole thing off and go back. Who needs this?”
“I think Tim has a point,” Duayne said. “It grieves me to say it, but perhaps we’d better call it a day. We’re agreed that we have no idea what this is all about, so how can we know they won’t try again? Maybe next time we won’t all be so lucky.”
“Oh, that’s totally ridiculous,” Maggie barked. “Whoever it was, we’ve already left him forty miles behind. There are no roads out there. How is he supposed to keep up with us? In a dugout canoe?”
“But we don’t know that there’s only one of them. He was waiting for us, wasn’t he? How do we know there won’t be others waiting for us?”
“Well, for Christ’s sake, we’re traveling down the middle of the river, aren’t we?” Maggie said. “We’re miles from shore. What’s some Indian with a spear going to do, shoot it out of a shoulder-mounted missile launcher?”
“And how do we know it’ll just be some guy with a spear?” Duayne demanded. “Somebody obviously doesn’t want us here, that’s the only thing we know for sure. Maybe it will be a missile-launcher next time. Maybe-”
“Oh, ridiculous,” Maggie said again, this time with a snort. “Don’t get carried away, take a deep breath.”
“It is not ridiculous,” Duayne said, flaring up. “I’ve done my research on the area, Dr. Gray. We’re quite near the Colombian border. This region of the jungle is a well-known route for getting coca paste out of Peru into-”
He was interrupted by a crash from the buffet table. “Sorry, sorry,” croaked Vargas, bending to pick up the plates he’d knocked onto the floor.
“Into Colombia,” Duayne continued. “There are drug lords out there, and they have all kinds of weapons. Isn’t it possible that we’ve accidentally gotten in the middle of some kind of drug war? That they’re warning us… that they think… well, I don’t know what they think, but-”
“Not likely, Duayne,” John said. “If some drug lord wanted to send us a message, trust me, he wouldn’t get some Indian to do it with a spear. Besides, when those types give you a warning, they don’t want you guessing as to where it came from or what it means. They want you to know.”
“All right then, John, you tell us: what was it all about?” Duayne said.
John, sipping on his Nescafe and powdered milk, shrugged. “Beats the hell out of me.”
“We may be reading way too much into this,” Gideon said. “For all we know, some crazy kid might have done it, maybe not an Indian at all, just some teenager out for a thrill.”
This feeble try at an explanation was received with the dubious expressions it deserved, not that anybody could come up with anything better. After a moment, Duayne spoke up again, more mildly than before:
“Anyway, it’s not just the cruising part we have to worry about. What about when we’re out there in the jungle, botanizing and so forth? How do we know who might be watching us, waiting for us, following us? How do we know-”
“Okay, I got a suggestion,” said Mel, who hadn’t participated thus far. He twisted around to see Cisco, who was sitting apart from the others, his chair pushed so far away that it was backed up against another table. He had passed on the main courses, eating nothing but the bread pudding, a second large helping of which was being spooned from the soup bowl he held on his lap. “Cisco, if I remember right, you said our treks the next couple of days would be on the south side of the river, is that right?”
Cisco, working hard on the pudding, looked reluctantly up from it. “What?”
“These hikes and things, we’re supposed to be taking them on the south bank, right?”
It was dishearteningly obvious that Cisco had no idea what Mel was talking about, no memory of what he himself had told them a few hours ago. “Yeah, that’s the plan, you got it,” he said.
“Well, what’s so special about the south side? I mean, aren’t the plants and things pretty much the same on either side?”
A shrug. “Pretty much. Same microclimate.”
“Okay, so why don’t we just stay away from the south side? That’s where the damn spear came from, and if people are really worried that somebody else might be waiting further down, we can do our treks on the other side. That’d put seven miles of open water between us and them.”
“I guess we could do that,” Cisco agreed. “Hell, I don’t care. Whatever you want.”
“Are there any Chayacuro on that side?” Tim asked.
Cisco, seeing that he wasn’t going to be able to devote his full attention to the pudding for a while, sighed and put it on the table behind him. “No one knows where the Chayacuro are, buddy. See, they’re not a tribe, like you’re thinking of a tribe, with a chief and a village and everything. They’re a bunch of small bands, maybe three or four families in each one, and they don’t stay any one place more than a couple of seasons. They say there used to be bands on both sides fifty years ago, but who knows anymore? My guess is no.”
“What about other groups?” Maggie asked. “Friendly groups, I mean. Remember, we want to meet with some curanderos. Do you have any contacts on that side?”
“Lady, I got them everywhere. The Orejon, the Boruna. I can dig you up a couple of old-school shamans, the real thing, pals of mine.”
“Good. Captain, would you have any problem with the change in route?”
Vargas, still at his station behind the buffet table, shook his head. “No, no trouble. It would only be for tomorrow anyway. The following day we will divert to the Javaro, which will take us into different country.”
“Okay, then,” Mel said, “ no problemo. Let’s do it.”
“Shouldn’t we clear it with Dr. Scofield first?” Tim asked.
Mel shrugged. “So we’ll clear it with him.” He laughed. “You think he’s going to object to putting the whole Amazon River between us and the Chayacuro?”
“Well, but…” Tim was frowning. “Cisco said he was guessing. What if there are Chayacuro on both sides? How do we know that the ones on the south side won’t warn the other ones that we’re coming?” Tim, it appeared, was not as ready as some of the others to consign the Chayacuro revenge idea to the trash basket.
Cisco responded with a derisive snicker. “How the hell would they know what we’re going to do? And what would they warn them with? Cell phones? E-mail?”
Tim took offense. “Hey, you’re the one who said they had all these” – He put his hands up beside his ears and waggled his long fingers – “all these woo-hoo powers that us poor norteamericanos can’t understand. What, they can’t use them to communicate with each other?”
Cisco looked pityingly at him. “Not across seven miles of open water,” he mumbled to his bread pudding and went back to eating it.
ELEVEN
When dinner was finished and most of the passengers had gone back to their cabins to rest, or shower, or read, Gideon remained on the lower deck. The smashed side window of the bar had been boarded up with a trelliswork of one-by-three lumber, and he was peering through it at the substantial gouge that the lance had left at the junction of floor and baseboard.
“Hmm,” he said. He backed slowly away from the bar until he reached the starboard railing – three and a half paces – walked back to stand in front of the bar, turned to look behind him toward the distant, darkening shore, turned again to look down the deck toward the front of the boat, looked laterally across the breadth of the Adelita, and folded his arms.
“Huh,” he said.
Mel, who had gone into the dining room with an empty plastic water bottle a few moments earlier, came out with a filled one and a handful of miniature bananas.
He stopped near Gideon. “Trying to figure out if you can get a bottle out between the boards?”
Gideon smiled. “I figured it was worth a shot.”
“Well, forget it. I already tried. Can’t be done.” He continued on his way to the forward stairs.
Gideon went through his pacing and gazing and arm-folding a little longer, then climbed the stairs himself, hoping to find Vargas in the wheelhouse, which was located at the front of the upper deck, forward of the cabins. He spotted the captain through the open window, looking very nautical, smoking a thin cigar and leaning over a navigational chart with a pencil while one of the crewmen steered.
Vargas looked up, smiling. “Yes, Professor Oliver? How can I help you?”
“Captain, I’d like very much to have a look at that lance again. Where’d you put it?”
“But it’s at the bottom of the Amazon. I threw it overboard. Do you think I would have a thing like that on my boat?” He caught himself as he began to cross himself and turned it into a scratch of his throat instead. “Some of my crew, you know,” he said in a confidential, man-to-man tone, “they’re very backward, very superstitious.” With a meaningful roll of his eyes, he cocked his head toward the steersman. “They think such a thing would bring us bad luck.” He laughed at the silliness of it.
“Ah, I understand,” said Gideon. “Well, too bad.” He smiled. “Save the next one for me, will you?”
“Ha-ha-ha,” laughed Vargas. “Yes, the next one, ha-ha.” He waited, peering around the wheelhouse corner post until Gideon was out of sight, then crossed himself.
The Amazon is the greatest river in the world, possibly only the second-longest after the Nile (geographers are still arguing about it), but certainly the widest, and by far the first in volume. From its mouth pours almost a quarter of the world’s river water; four times that of the Congo, the second greatest river, and ten times that of the Mississippi. In one day it delivers as much water as the Thames does in a year.
Yet its pace is measured, even sluggish. From its beginnings at the base of the Andes to its mouth on the Atlantic Ocean on the other side of the continent, nearly four thousand miles away, it drops an average of a quarter inch a mile, barely enough to keep it moving, so being on it is more like drifting on an enormous, quiet lake than like being on a river. This sense of drifting, of passive floating, is enhanced in the dark, when not even a suggestion of the black, lightless jungle is visible.
It was in the dark, a couple of hours after dinner, that Phil, John, and Gideon were sitting out on deck, their legs stretched out, enjoying the tranquil, exotic ambience of the vast river. They were not in the salon on the lower deck, but on the flat, open roof of the vessel. Phil had discovered a stairwell leading up to it from the cabin deck, and they had carried up chairs from the salon to enjoy the solitude and the fresh breeze. There was no awning to protect against the sun, so the area would have been hell during the day, but at night it was different. Earlier there had been a brief, hard rain – Phil said it was very nearly a daily late-afternoon occurrence – so the heat had moderated and the gentle, moist wind from the boat’s slow progress was like lotion on the skin. And more than two stories above the river as they were, there was an exhilarating feeling of being on the very roof of the world. Gideon had showered and changed clothes before dinner, and his fresh shirt was only barely damp with perspiration. Above, the carpet of stars was so stupendous and crowded that he had at first thought that the Milky Way was a huge cloud of smoke from the fires of another unseen logging operation.
The Adelita traveled at night with the aid of a single, powerful spotlight bolted to the front of the wheelhouse. This was flicked on for fifteen or twenty seconds every couple of minutes to sweep the milky surface of the water for a few hundred yards ahead in a slow, back-and-forth arc that brought home how very isolated they were, and in what an alien place they traveled. The stars themselves were exotic, the unfamiliar configurations of the southern hemisphere not even recognizable as constellations to a stranger’s eye.
Phil had picked up a liter bottle of aguardiente in Iquitos and had poured generous portions into the tumblers they’d brought from their rooms.
John took a first sip, rolled it critically around his mouth, and swallowed. “Whoa boy, now this is what I call, mmm…” He had another judicious taste, swallowed again, and blew out his cheeks. “… real rotgut. How much did you pay for it, Phil?”
“Four soles, a buck thirty.”