She and Selina had been sleeping together for years. Sometimes they made love, but sex wasn’t really the point. After the night’s work was done and all the customers were gone, they lay together for comfort, holding each other close.
“Can I ask you something, Dzhun?”
“Anything. Almost anything.”
“How’d you get Stef to leave you all that money? Was it just telling him that you had a senator on the string?”
“That was part of it. But also I made up a sad story about myself and fed it to him. You know, in spite of everything he was sentimental. That’s why he was thrown out of the Security Forces. I was working for the polizi then, keeping them informed about my customers. When I reported that Stef was working on an important secret project, I got a bonus. Kathmann himself told me about Stef’s weakness,” said Dzhun proudly. “Even way back then I had powerful friends, Selina.”
“Tu nespravimy,Dzhun,” said her friend, smiling and shaking her head. “You’re incorrigible.”
“What’s that word mean?”
Selina told her. Dzhun smiled; she liked the sound of it.
“Well, honey, if you ask me, we live in an incorrigible world.”
The Cure for Everything - Severna Park
Maria was smoking damp cigarettes with Horace, taking a break in the humid evening, when the truckfull of wild jungle Indians arrived from Ipiranga. She heard the truck before she saw it, laboring through the Xingu Forest Preserve.
“Are we expecting someone?” she said to Horace.
Horace shook his head, scratched his thin beard, and squinted into the forest. Diesel fumes drifted with the scent of churned earth and cigarette smoke. The truck revved higher and lumbered through the Xingu Indian Assimilation Center’s main gates.
Except for the details of their face paint, the Indians behind the flat bed’s fenced sides looked the same as all the other new arrivals; tired and scared in their own stoic way, packed together on narrow benches, everyone holding something-a baby, a drum, a cooking pot. Horace waved the driver to the right, down the hill toward Intake. Maria stared at the Indians and they stared back like she was a three-armed sideshow freak.
“Now you’ve scared the crap out of them,” said Horace, who was the director of theProjeto Brasileiro Nacional de Assimilacao do Indio. “They’ll think this place is haunted.”
“They should have called ahead,” said Maria. “I’d be out of sight, like a good little ghost.”
Horace ground his cigarette into the thin rain forest soil. “Go on down to the A/V trailer.” he said. “I’ll give you a call in a couple of minutes.” He made an attempt to smooth his rough hair, and started after the truck.
Maria took a last drag on the cigarette and started in the opposite direction, toward the Audio/Visual trailer, where she could monitor what was going on in Intake without being seen. Horace was fluent in the major Amazonian dialects of Tupi-Guarani, Arawak, and Ge, but Maria had a gut-level understanding that he didn’t. She was the distant voice in his ear, mumbling advice into a microphone as he interviewed tribe after refugee tribe. She was the one picking out the nuances in language, guiding him as he spoke, like a conscience.
Or like a ghost. She glanced over her shoulder, but the truck and the Indians were out of sight. No matter where they were from, the Indians had some idea of how white people and black people looked, but you’d think they’d never seen an albino in their lives. Her strange eyes, her pale, translucent skin over African features. To most of them, she was an unknown and sometimes terrifying magical entity. To her…well…most of them were no more or less polite than anyone she’d ever met stateside.
She stopped to grind her cigarette into the dirt, leaned over to pickup the butt, and listened. Another engine. Not the heavy grind of a truck this time.
She started back toward the gate. In the treetops beyond Xingu’s chain-link fence and scattered asphalt roofs, monkeys screamed and rushed through the branches like a visible wind. Headlights flickered between tree trunks and dense under-growth and a Jeep lurched out of the forest. Bright red letters were stenciled over its hood:Hiller Project.
Maria waved the driver to a stop. He and his passenger were both wearing bright red jackets, withHiller Project embroidered over the front pocket. The driver had a broad, almost Mexican face. The passenger was a blackguy, deeply blue-black, like he was fresh off the boat from Nigeria. He gave Maria a funny look, but she knew what it was. He’d never seen an albino either.
“We’re following the trucker Ipiranga,” the blackman said in Portuguese. His name was stenciled over his heart.N’Lykli.
She pointed down the dirt road where the overhead floodlights cut the descending dusk. “Intake’s over there,” she said in the same language. “You should have called ahead. You’re lucky we’ve got space for them.”
“Thanks,” said N’Lykli, and the driver put the Jeep in gear.
“Hey,” said Maria as they started to pull away. “What’s a Hiller Project?”
Another cultural rescue group, she figured, but the blackguy gave her a different funny look. She didn’t recognize it and he didn’t answer. The Jeep pulled away, jouncing down the rutted access road.
Maria groped in her pocket for another cigarette, took one out of the pack, then stuck it back in. Instead of heading for the A/V trailer, she followed them down the hill to Intake.
She found N’Lykli and the driver inside with Horace, arguing in Portuguese while four of Xingu’s tribal staffers stood around listening, impassive in their various face paint, Xingu T-shirts, and khaki shorts.
“These people have to be isolated,” the driver was saying. “They have to be isolated or we’ll lose half of them to measles and the other half to the flu.”
He seemed overly focused on this issue, even though Horace was nodding. Horace turned to one of the staffers and started to give instructions in the man’s native Arawak. “Drive them down to Area C. Take the long way so you don’t go past the Waura camp.”
“No,” said N’Lykli. “We’ll drive them. You just show us where they can stay for the night.”
Horace raised an eyebrow. “For thenight? ”
“We’ll be gone in the morning,” said N’Lykli. “We have permanent quarters set up for them south of here, in Xavantina.”
Horace drew himself up. “Once they’re on Xingu property, they’re our responsibility. You can’t just drop in and then take them somewhere else. This isn’t a fucking motel.”
The driver pulled a sheaf of papers out of his jacket and spread them on the table. Everything was stamped with official-looking seals andHiller Project in red letters over the top of every page. “I have authorization.”
“So do I,” said Horace. “And mine’s part of a big fat grant fromPlano de Desenvolvimen to Economico e Social in Brazillia.”
The driver glanced at his Hiller companion.
