first, and they both perked up then because I was so sure. We went up that river for half the day and everything was quiet. Most of the time I was still thinking I’d gotten it right, and then I started to think we had gotten it wrong, and I was just about to say that, I was getting up my nerve, when we came around a bend and there were all these people on the shore in loincloths with their foreheads painted yellow. It was like they’d been standing there forever, waiting for us, and I didn’t remember exactly what the Lakashi looked like. I was so tired by then and I was so confused by all the wrong choices I’d already made that I honestly didn’t remember.”
Marina leaned forward from the bed where she was sitting. She put her hands on Barbara Bovender’s knees. All of the rivers in the Amazon and she knew which one this story had taken.
“So I said, ‘There they are!’ and Milton was slowing down the boat and he was whispering to me, ‘Are you sure, are you sure?’ He’s met the Lakashi before. They come down to Manaus selling timber, sometimes they’ve come with Annick. He knows this isn’t right, and then I know it isn’t right, and the river is narrow there and they all raise up these bows and arrows and they’re huge.” She is crying now, and she takes her trembling hands out from beneath her legs and begins to wipe her eyes.
“You’re okay,” Marina said. “You found me. Milton got you out.”
She nodded but her fingers could not get far enough ahead of the tears to wipe them all away, there were simply too many of them. “He did. He was so fast. Milton deserves some sort of medal. He’d never driven that boat before and he slammed it around so fast we nearly went over. When I looked back the air was full of arrows. Arrows! How can that be possible? And then I saw something. I thought I saw something.”
“What?” Marina said.
She shook her head. “It was worse than anything, worse than Mr. Fox or us getting lost or those people shooting at us.” She looked up at Marina and blinked her eyes and for a moment the crying stopped and a look of utter seriousness crossed her pretty face. She took Marina’s hands. “I saw my father running through the trees,” she whispered. “I don’t know what you’d call it, a vision, a visitation? He was coming straight towards me, coming down to the water, and I threw myself on the bottom of the boat. There were arrows in the boat and Milton said not to touch them. I tried to look back for him but Milton said to keep down. Marina, my father is dead. He died in Australia when I was ten years old. I think about him all the time, I dream about him, but I’ve never seen him. He came there for me because he knew I was going to die.”
“Did Milton see him, or Mr. Fox?”
She shook her head. “Mr. Fox was on the deck and Milton was driving. I don’t think they would have been able to see him anyway. I think he was only there for me.”
“Who would have known you were missing?” Dr. Swenson was saying to Mr. Fox when Barbara and Marina walked into the lab. Dr. Budi could not stop shaking her head and the two Drs. Saturn stayed very close together. The misery that comes from having a good imagination was writ large on Thomas Nkomo. “I suppose the Inca Cola man would have wanted his boat back at some point. When Jackie Bovender came home from his surfing expedition in two or three weeks they would have come here together. Don’t you think so, Barbara? He would have come looking for you then.”
Barbara Bovender, now the center of everyone’s nervous attention, made the slightest gesture towards a nod.
Dr. Swenson held out a hand towards this confirmation. “One man missing a boat, one man missing a wife. What do you think I should have told them when they arrived? I wouldn’t have had any idea where you were.”
“If you had a telephone no one would have to risk their lives to find you,” Mr. Fox said. How was it possible that Marina could not go to him? Why didn’t he come to her now having survived a rain of poison arrows? How could he not take her in his arms regardless of who was in the room? He looked so out of place in his lightly embroidered white shirt and khaki pants, as if he had dressed up for a party whose theme was the Amazon.
“This is about my not having a telephone? Do you think Dr. Rapp came to the Amazon with a telephone? I am trying to finish my work. First you send a man down here who dies and when you decide to follow him it seems you are determined to die yourself and take two of my people with you. It is disruptive, Mr. Fox, can you understand that? You do not advance your own case by continuing to throw these tragedies in my path.”
“I was looking for Dr. Singh,” he said, tapping his glasses up the bridge of his nose with his index finger, a nervous tic Marina knew to be the slightest outward manifestation of simmering fury. “I hadn’t had any word from her. I couldn’t take the chance that another one of my employees was sick or in danger.”
Another one of your employees, Marina thought. Well, there you have it.
“But you endanger them yourself!” Dr. Swenson said. “You throw a person in the river and then make a spectacle of jumping in to save them.”
Before Mr. Fox had a chance to answer, Dr. Budi stepped between them. “I must ask that you stop this now,” she said, her voice unexpectedly strong. “Dr. Swenson, this is not right for you. This argument has ended. You must sit.”
The room fell suddenly silent and in the silence they could hear the unexpected sound of Dr. Swenson struggling to catch her breath. There was no ignoring Budi’s advice. Dr. Swenson sunk down heavily in her chair and put her swollen feet up on a box in front of her. Nancy Saturn came over with a glass of water and Dr. Swenson waved her away. When she spoke again her voice was calmer. “Look at as much data as you need to reassure yourself, Mr. Fox. The two Drs. Saturn will help you. Tomorrow when it’s light, Dr. Budi will take you to see the Martins, and after that you will get back on the Inca Cola and go to Manaus. That is all the hospitality I am capable of extending.”
“Dr. Singh is coming with us.” Mr. Fox said. It was not a romantic gesture but the first counteroffer in an ongoing negotiation.
Dr. Swenson shook her head. “That will not be possible. Dr. Singh has agreed to stay until I deliver my child.” She put her swollen hands on either side of her belly. “The big reveal, Mr. Fox. Seventy-three years old and I am pregnant. If you trouble yourself to look around in the morning you will see that I am not alone in my condition. We are very close to being able to bring you what you want if you could only control your impulse for disruption. I’m keeping up my end of the bargain. I expect you to start keeping yours.”
For a moment Mr. Fox was too far behind. He had missed the rodent trials, the studies in higher mammals. He had no knowledge of a first efficacious dose or the multidose safety studies. He had seen no reports on the probability of technical success, and then suddenly he was six months into the first human dose. First in Man, that’s what it would always be no matter how inherently sexist the implications. Given all there was to absorb it took a moment for the news to settle in, but when it did the look on Mr. Fox’s face was as tender and pleased and surprised as it had been on a night thirty-five years before when his own wife Mary had made a similar announcement. He took a few tentative steps towards Dr. Swenson. He softened his voice. “How far along?”
“Nearly seven months.”
“I’m not qualified to do the section,” Marina said to her. “I’ve told you that. You need to go to a hospital.”
“I would feel more comfortable with Dr. Singh,” Dr. Swenson said. “We can’t afford any breaches in security at this point. I can’t go to the city to have a child. I’ve seen her operate several times now. She does a brilliant job. I have no questions as to her complete competence.”
While Marina had come far enough to contradict Dr. Swenson when they were alone, she still lacked the skills to do so publicly. There was no way to point out that these compliments were her road to perdition.
“We could bring in an obstetrician from Rio,” Mr. Fox said. “We could bring one in from Johns Hopkins if you’d like.” He had already forgotten about the trip from Manaus, about Mrs. Bovender, about the Hummocca. The drug worked, that was all he had ever needed to know. He didn’t care about the paperwork, the trees, he didn’t need to see Marina. He could get back on the boat tonight.
“What I would like is what I have already said. I trained Dr. Singh myself. You can spare her for a little while longer.”
“I can,” Mr. Fox said.
Marina started to say something but Dr. Swenson cut her off. “Dr. Budi is right, I am tired. Walk with me back to the hut now, Dr. Singh. I’ve done enough for tonight.” She held up her hand and Marina took it. The skin between Dr. Swenson’s fingers was cracked and bleeding. Mr. Fox touched Dr. Swenson’s shoulder before they left the room and she nodded at him in return.
Once they were safely under the cover of darkness, the stars spreading their foam over the night sky, Marina started in. “I told you I wasn’t going to stay,” she whispered sharply over the grind of insects’ wings, over the
