ONCEthe excitement of the spider episode had died down, the regular passengers, all of whom except Scofield had spent the night in the Lima Airport, trudged off to their cabins to recuperate. Phil, who had had a good night’s sleep in Iquitos, but who rarely passed up the chance for a snooze when he was traveling, did the same. Gideon and John went back to their cabins to unpack to the extent that the closetless, drawerless accommodations allowed, then came back downstairs to the open-air salon at middeck, pulled a couple of chairs up to
the boat’s starboard railing, and, in the shade of the upper deck and the soft breeze from the ship’s motion, settled back to watch the jungle go by.
There wasn’t much to watch. In the middle of the afternoon, with a blazing sun hanging motionless overhead, the jungle was hazy and still, seemingly without inhabitants other than an occasional darting swift or flycatcher or swallow along the shore. The already slow-moving river seemed to have slowed down even more. The two men did a lot of yawning, maybe even dozing, for a pleasant half hour, and then their desultory, sporadic conversation, which had mostly concerned giant spiders, turned to their shipmates.
“So what do you think of our companions?” Gideon asked lazily. “Interesting bunch, wouldn’t you say?”
“Not too bad, all in all. And yeah, this ethnobotany stuff could be interesting. I don’t know about Scofield, though. I mean, maybe the guy’s a big-time expert, but he’s a phony right down to his toenails. All that chuckle- chuckle crap and that cutesy business with the pipe.” He dug an imaginary pipe stem into his cheek. “The others can’t stand him. I don’t know if you noticed. Even Duayne’s got something against him, and he never even met the guy.”
As it often did, John’s perspicacity caught Gideon by surprise. Not that he thought John was dumb—far from it—but the man didn’t show much, and even when he seemingly wasn’t paying attention he was taking things in.
“I noticed.”
“And what about the Cisco Kid?” John asked. “Oh, that’s gonna be great, following
“Yes, he was a little... off, all right. Obviously, the guy has a problem.”
“Yeah, the problem is, his brains are fried. He’s put in a lot of years stuffing stuff up his nose, or however they do it down here.”
He wrinkled his own nose. “I smell smoke.”
Gideon pointed toward the shore. “There’s a fire. Several fires.”
Up ahead, atop a high bank, was what looked like the epicenter of a gigantic bomb blast, a huge wound in the jungle, a good three hundred feet across, littered with hundreds of felled trees and piles of burning, smoking, head-high debris. At least a hundred nearly naked men were scrambling through the hellish scene, trimming branches with machetes and chain saws and tossing them into the smoldering piles. An earthen ramp, red and raw, had been chopped into the bank, and on it lay some of the trunks, tilting down toward the river, where an old barge waited. Another group of workers toiled, their brown backs glistening, pulling and pushing one of the trunks down toward the barge with nothing but chains and ropes and rough posts used as levers. Shouted orders and cries could be dimly heard through the racket of the chain saws.
“It’s like something out of the
“Or the building of the pyramids,” John said. “Not a machine in sight. Not a backhoe, not a crane.”
“And how would they get a crane there?” said Vargas, who had strolled up behind them. “They could barge it down the river, yes, but how would they get it up the bank? Forty feet, almost vertical.” He shook his head. “Impossible.”
“What are they doing?” John asked. “Is it logging?”
“Oh, yes, logging. There are many such. Ugly, yes? And do you know what is the most amazing thing about it?”
They looked at him.
“It wasn’t here at all two weeks ago,” Vargas said. “The forest here was untouched. And two weeks from now, they will be gone, doing the same thing somewhere else along the river.”
“It’s controlled, though, isn’t it?” Gideon asked. “I mean, there are regulations, oversight . . .”
Vargas smiled. “This is Peru, my friend. It’s regulated by how much money changes hands.”
“How long does it take to grow back?” John asked.
“Oh, it grows back quickly enough. A year from now, all will be green again. From here, it may look the same, but it will not be the same, it will no longer be, I forget the word, natural forest, first forest . . .”
“Virgin forest?” offered Gideon.
“Yes, professor, virgin forest. No, it will be all brambles, and thorns, and swamps, and mosquitoes. The big trees won’t be back for a hundred, two hundred years.”
Silently, the three men watched the gash disappear behind a wall of jungle as the boat moved on. All were glad to see it go.
“Well, well,” said Vargas brightly, to introduce a change of subject. Had they spotted any of the Amazon’s famous pink dolphins yet? No? Well, they must be sure to look for them, they were something that shouldn’t be missed. Would they care for a drink from the bar? Technically, it wasn’t yet open, but it would be no trouble at all— it would be a pleasure—to pour something for them. In their cases, of course, he whispered with a wink—an actual, literal wink— there would be no charges at the end of the voyage, and the same went for their excellent friend Phil. Their tabs would discreetly be made to disappear, poof. Only please—he looked around and leaned closer—don’t tell
