Westlake, Donald E - Novel 43 (27 page)

 
          
They
had survived. She would survive. In the meantime, were there discoveries to be
made in this wilderness, finds of archaeological interest and importance? She
surveyed every rut and arroyo, frowned at every rock.

 
          
And
yet, the distraction wasn’t total. In the back of her mind, she already knew
this wasn’t an adventure of the kind she’d dreamed of while half dozing over
her textbooks. She had imagined a life of purpose and work with some limited
hardships—nothing a sturdy pair of boots couldn’t handle—but not all this,
this, this . . .

 
          
Danger.

 
          
Confusion.

 
          
Trouble.

 
          
She
had come out to find the world, knowing she knew nothing about the world, and
was this it? A hot and stony place, alone, with no comforts and no certainties.
All her old beliefs seemed to flow out of her with her perspiration, leaving
her miserable and confused and dizzy. Plodding along, walking because there was
nothing else to do, she soon forgot to look at stones for significance, holes
in the ground for meaning. Here was the meaning: There was no meaning.

           
She hadn’t wanted to know any of
this.

 
          
The
next three days were terrible. In the middle of the day she would rest in
whatever shade she could find, while all morning and all afternoon she walked
northward, seeing no one, never finding any road. Each night she slept in
another uncomfortable tree. The occasional quick cold stream provided water for
bathing and drinking, and on the morning of the third day a brief torrential
downpour did her laundry, but she never did find anything to eat. Berries, she
thought, but there were no berries. Roots, she thought, but had no idea how to
recognize an edible root nor where to dig for it nor what to dig for it with.

 
          
I
could
die
out here, she thought,
getting lightheaded from the sun and the lack of food. The thought was
frightening, but what was even more frightening was that the thought was also
tempting. To give up the struggle, to lie down and rest, to stop being hungry
and itchy and tired and stiff. She fought off that temptation by thinking about
Innocent St. Michael, and Kirby Galway, and Vernon, and Fred C. She would
not
die. They would not get away with
it. She would live through this experience somehow, and
bring those devils to justice!
Thus thinking, while her shoes
disintegrated on her feet and her sunburned skin peeled and her empty stomach
begged for something more than cold water, Valerie soldiered on.

 
          
It
was near sundown on the third day when, coming up along another stream,
starting to look for tonight’s tree, she had stumbled into this little Indian
village, where a great fuss had been made of her and where the head man, Tommy
Watson, had announced, “It’s Sheena, Queen of the Jungle!”

  
 
          
And
so that’s who she was, and who she had been for a week. The tribespeople had fed
her and given her a place to sleep, and the next morning had treated all her
many cuts and scratches and abrasions; not with ancient tribal remedies but
with mercurochrome and Unguentine and Band^Aids. “From the mission,” they told
her.

 
          
The
mission. If she were to go to the mission, surely she would be safe? But then
she thought again about the man she was dealing with, Innocent St. Michael, an
important government official, a rich and powerful man, and she realized two
frightening things: First, he must know she had the evidence to bring him down.
Second, he must know his henchman had failed to silence her.

 
          
Wouldn’t
a man like Innocent St. Michael have spies all over the country? Even assuming
the absolute probity and integrity of whatever priests or doctors or nurses
might be at the mission, wouldn’t there be other people there as well, locals
who could betray her? And how safe from Innocent St. Michael would she be in a
small and isolated mission deep in the jungle?

 
          
The
same fears kept her from telling the truth to her benefactors, the Indians of
South Abilene. At first she claimed to be suffering amnesia, but that piqued
their curiosity too much, so at last she let them understand she was a rich
girl who was running away from a marriage arranged by her father. She had been
flying her own small plane when an unexpected storm had dashed her against a
jungle mountain. The rest they knew.

 
          
They
were delighted by that story, and made her tell it over and over, with more and
more details. She added yachts, a severe limp to the elderly wealthy groom, a
dipsomaniac mother helpless to save her daughter from being sold to the highest
bidder. (Her Kekchi improved and improved.) They lapped it up, wide-eyed,
loving every minute of it, and agreed the best thing she could do was stay here
in South Abilene until her father would be so amazed and relieved to see her
still alive that he would allow her to call off the wedding.

 
          
“And
you’re a pilot,” Tommy Watson said.

 
          
“That’s
right.”

 
          
“We
got a pal who’s a pilot. Nice fella. You and him, you’d get along terrific.”

 
          
“Wait
a minute,” said one of the young women, whose name was Rosita Coco. “Just wait
a minute, okay?”

 
          
Her
brother Luz told her, “Just for friends, that’s all.” (Luz and Rosita and Tommy
were the only ones who talked to Valerie in English.)

 
          
“That’s
right,” Tommy told Rosita. “They could talk pilot talk together. ”

 
          
Instead
of which, in the days ahead, Valerie and Rosita talked girl talk together, and
when Valerie heard the story this pilot had told Rosita she was just
outraged.
Wasn’t it like a man, every
time? Valerie put Rosita straight on
that
fellow, and though Rosita didn’t want to believe her pilot was lying, the
evidence was pretty clear.

 
          
Generally
speaking, Valerie got along with all the South Abilenos, male and female, young
and old. They accepted her at once, shared their small bounty with her,
and—encouraged no doubt by her knowledge of their tongue—allowed her to enter
at least as an observer into their social lives. What an ideal position for an
idealistic young archaeologist!

 
          
The
one fly in the ointment in all this was marijuana. The whole village appeared
to be addicted to it, and spent most nights puffing themselves insensible. In
order not to appear prudish, Valerie begged off by claiming a respiratory
disease that prohibited her from smoking in all its forms. “Poor Sheena,”
Rosita said, “I make you some pot tortillas some day, blow you right out of the
tree.” Valerie managed a smile and an expression of gratitude, but so far, thankfully,
nothing had come of the offer.

 
          
Actually,
for Valerie these days marijuana would be superfluous. She was high already,
high on just being alive and high on this wonderful village in which she found
herself. Her initial fears that she might be sexually mistreated faded rapidly
when she saw how thoroughly this was a
family
village; life here was too open and monogamy too ingrained for any hanky-panky.
(Had a few of the boys first met Valerie
away
from town it might have been a different story, of which she remained happily
ignorant.)

 
          
But
the point was, these were Mayas, true Mayas. Unlike the other archaeologists
Valerie had known, her teachers and her contemporaries, she had
gone through
the time barrier, had
actually entered into the ancient civilization the other scholars only studied.
It is true these people were no longer temple builders, were merely the decayed
remnant of a once flourishing culture, but their clothing (apart from the
inevitable blue jeans) bore echoes of ancient themes, ancient designs, ancient
decoration. The faces of the people were the same as the faces on bowls and
stelae a thousand years old.

 
          
And
they still made the old artifacts! When Valerie first stumbled on their little
factory, where stone whistles and bone statues and terracotta bowls were being
manufactured by men and women alike, they seemed almost embarrassed at having
her know, as though wanting to practice the ancient crafts in secrecy and
privacy. But when she extolled their abilities, when she spoke knowledgeably of
their sources and their craft—hurriedly inventing an archaeologist boy friend
in college, to explain the rich girl’s sudden expertise—when she expressed her
true admiration, they lit up, smiled together, almost shyly showed her examples
of their work.

 
          
“But
this is wonderful!” she said, over and over.

 
          
“Do
you really think so?”

 
          
“But
yes, yes! Why—” turning a bone statuette of a leaping jaguar “—you could put
this on display in any museum in the world, and no one would
guess
it was anything but a thousand
years old!”

 
          
“I’m
really glad to hear you say that, Sheena,” Tommy said. “That makes us all feel
really good.”

  
 
          
What
charming people. What a delightful simple lifestyle; except, of course, for the
addiction to marijuana. Civilization with its medicine and information was as
near as the mission, and otherwise their lives were idyllic. I wonder how long
I’ll stay, Valerie thought from time to time, and every reminder that she must
eventually leave this Eden saddened her, made her turn her mind to something
else.

 
          
But
now Kirby Galway had appeared! Out of the blue, quite literally out of the
blue.

 
          
Earlier
today Tommy had come by to say, “Listen, Sheena, there’s a guy coming today to
pick up some stuff. We make some goods for market, you know, tourist stuff.”

 
          
Valerie
could imagine: glossy mahogany statues of Maya priests, cheap pieces of
decorated cloth. The sort of thing primitive people do all around the world,
debasing their culture for currency, hard cash.

 
          
“Probably,”
Tommy had gone on, “you ought to stay here in town. You don’t want this guy
spreading the word there’s a white woman hiding out in South Abilene.”