Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates

luminous and the dark are inseparable? Reminds me a bit of neutral angels, if you’re familiar with the term.”

“Um. I daresay he’s evolved intellectually since I had a go at him.”

“For a dude whose brain is stuffed in a pyramid, that’s hardly surprising. That laugh of his is starting to get out of control, though. Sounds a lot like Woody Woodpecker. Friend of mine used to cackle like that to amuse the bar girls in Bangkok.”

“Indeed? Well, do continue. What else?”

“Ah, well, gee, I don’t know. We just kicked that gong around all night, like I said. Then, for breakfast, we ate my grandmother’s parrot.”

Switters had not eaten Sailor Boy on purpose. At the time, in fact, he wasn’t aware that it was Sailor Boy he was eating. The gourdful of thin gray stew contained, so he presumed, the rubbery flesh of an overage chicken. It wasn’t until later in the day, after awakening from a four- or five-hour rest, that Fer-de-lance showed him the headdress that, prior to his departure, End of Time had woven from Sailor’s feathers. By then, it was too late to retch.

The shaman had eaten the parrot to appropriate its magic. “You’re lucky he didn’t eat you as well,” Fer-de- lance had snarled when Switters expressed outrage. “Who do you think you’ve been dealing with? Some quaint poseur from central casting?” The parrot stew was served to Switters as a test. “He wanted to see how strong you are,” said the mestizo.

There were other tests in line. Fer-de-lance challenged Switters to don the headdress at sunset and go stand alone in the forest. That would be the signal for End of Time to return, whereupon he would reveal himself, pyramid and all, and personally administer to the gringo blanco the vision root.

“What was I going to do,” asked Switters, “turn tail and run? I’d come this far. My courage was in question. And, besides, I’d yet to lay eyes on the guy. Before curiosity kills it, the cat learns more of the world than a hundred uninquisitive dogs.”

Thus, he replaced his Panama hat with poor Sailor’s plumage (How would that look on video?) and as dusk pressed the dimmer switch, transforming the verdant disorder of the diurnal jungle into a muscular monolith, an enveloping solid throb, a Stonehenge of whispers, a phantom colonnade, he walked gingerly away from the lodge to go stand alone in the gloom. He neither saw nor heard End of Time’s approach. Switters was standing there, staring, listening, barely breathing, unable, for some reason, to remember a single lyric to “Send in the Clowns,” when he felt something touch his shoulder, causing him to nearly jump over a treetop.

“How did he look?”

“You know how he looks. Like a youngish Amazonian Indian with the skyline of Cairo on his shoulders.”

“His facial decoration? What color, what pattern? Achiote berry or tinhorao bark? His necklace? Bone, feathers, claws, seeds, or teeth? These details are significant.”

“For Christ’s sake, Pot!”

“You took no notes?” The tone was accusatory.

“Not after that turkey bone went up my snout. I spent the next eight hours riding the quark. Pursued by my own ghost down the Hallways of Always. Hobnobbing with giant metallic cockroaches and transgalactic jive bulbs. You’ve been there. What do you expect?”

“Yes, but you did agree. . . .”

“The Hallways of Always, pal. One dies in there and is reborn. One doesn’t take notes. Come on, Pot. If not watched carefully, you could turn into another tedious anthropologist.”

“Impaired while under the influence, but what about prior to and following?”

“Very little of either. And somehow I don’t believe ‘impaired’ is the right word.” He paused. “Listen, I’m quite aware of the sort of stuff you’re after, and I’m sure that picturesque details by the dozen will come to mind eventually. Right now, my biocomputer’s down. I’m. . . . Death and resurrection, not to mention breakfasting on the longtime family pet, can take a lot out of a guy. Okay?” Again, he closed his eyes.

Smithe walked away. Head bowed, nose pointed at the toes that, like fans of pink pickles, spread over the tips of his flip-flops, neck knotted, meaty hands clasped behind his broad back, he paced. Aware of the sort of stuff I’m after? he thought. Not bloody likely. Smithe, himself, was neither comfortably nor completely aware of the “sort of stuff” he was after. Direct testimony, certainly, yet something as far beyond ordinary field notes as End of Time was beyond Chief Sitting Bull; data that might fuel disquisition and exegesis of an academically pragmatic caliber, that might even make something agreeably quotidian out of the bizarrely exotic, yet would not conceal from the sensitive some flavor of the cosmological rites that had blown most of the patio furniture off his personal lanai. He supposed, in short, that he was searching for planks to bridge a rupture that had widened within him and without, ever since he had so unwisely . . .

“Do you have to sulk like that?” Switters’s voice was tired but tough. “If word gets back to End of Time that you’re deficient in the category of joie de vivre, he’ll—”

“He’ll what?” snapped Smithe testily.

“He’ll cancel your damn rendezvous.”

Smithe halted in mid-stride. His chin withdrew from his chest like a city slicker’s hand from a branding iron. “What rendezvous?”

“The one I set up for you.”

“Are you ragging me?”

“Potney! If you can’t trust a Yank, who can you trust?”

“He’s actually agreed to meet?”

“At the next new moon. Be here or be square.”

“You’re serious. How in the world? . . .”

“All in a night’s work.”

“For an errand boy?”

“Precisely. Although in the gastrointestinal aftermath of ingesting fricassee a Sailor Boy”—he winced and it was not at all contrived—”I watched the errand I was sent to run, run through me.”

The bells of his own jubilation prevented Smithe from hearing this last, which was just as well, regardless that in his elated state he might not have found it egregiously offensive. He was positively thrilled. His pale eyes sparkled, and strong white teeth, heretofore unrevealed, came out of the lipwork. “Bloody marvelous,” he crooned. “Bloody marvelous.”

Smithe struck a match to the cork-tipped Parliament he’d removed from a case some minutes earlier but not yet lit. “My work concerns itself with what Linton has called ‘social heredity,’ which, as you might suppose, consists of the learned, socially transmitted habits, customs, morals, laws, arts, crafts, et cetera of whole cultures: tribes, bands, clans, villages. Groups of socially related people, in other words. To focus on a single individual within a group, even such an extraordinary individual as our End of Time, is virtually unprecedented. Unique in the annals. Um. The paper I intend to prepare will be controversial, surely, but if viewed in a broad light, could well, unless I’m rationalizing wildly, do my reputation a power of good.” He said all this as if he’d just that moment thought of it. “Could right things with Eleanor, too,” he added almost as an afterthought.

“Wouldn’t be surprised.” Switters smiled. “Nothing like a jolt of unexpected boldness to make a woman’s nipples stiffen. Why, just before I left the hotel, I e-mailed a young Christian lady of my acquaintance that I was coming to palpitate her clitoris the way a worker ant milks its favorite aphid. That’ll burst her buttons, I guarantee. Unless my aged grandmother intercepts and intervenes.”

Smithe looked him over with active bemusement. The Englishman seemed incapable of judging when Switters was speaking earnestly and when he was merely being flippant. (The truth of the matter was, Switters could not always judge that, himself.)

In no way, however, did Smithe’s confusion lessen his gratitude. He thanked Switters over and over for interceding on his behalf. Then, abruptly he stubbed out his cigarette on a blackened post and said, “It’s barely noon. If we set out at once, I daresay we could reach Boquichicos by nightfall. What do you say, old boy? Shall we get cracking? Brisk march will do wonders for your condition. You can impart further detail over dinner at the hotel. My treat. Dinner.”

“The haute cuisine of Boquichicos is a lovely prospect,” said Switters, but he made no move to extricate himself from the hammock. Rather, he lay there looking troubled. He plowed his fingers through his badly tangled curls. He ran his tongue over his palate, tasting the bitter film left by parrot goulash and yopo vomit. He had to