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“Are they hostile?”

  “Depends on how much contact they’ve had with white people, and what kind of contact it’s been. Normally they aren’t actively hostile.”

  “What do we do?”

  “We see what they want.” He carefully kept his hand away from the pistol. This was a band of hunters; the six-foot arrows they carried were tipped with poison, probably cyanide, not a substance he cared to screw around with. He spoke with them in their language. The oldest of the Yanomami, a dignified man with graying hair, replied.

  After a few moments of conversation she could see the Indians relax, the stern cast of their features easing into smiles. The gray-haired man said something as he slapped his hands together several times, and they all laughed.

  Ben was chuckling too.

  “What’s funny?” she asked.

  “Oh, nothing.”

  He couldn’t have said anything that would have made her more suspicious, or more curious. “What? You’d better tell me.”

  “He just wondered why we were making slap-slap in the rain, instead of in our funny little moloca—that’s ’house’ to them, ’tent’ to you.”

  Jillian could feel her face heat up as she realized there had been several very interested but puzzled witnesses to their lovemaking, but at the same time she had an almost overwhelming urge to laugh. “Slap-slap?” she asked faintly.

  Ben’s eyes were alive with merriment. “Yeah, you know.” He lightly clapped his hands together, re-creating with devilish accuracy the sound of wet bodies moving together in hard rhythm. “Slap-slap.”

  Quickly she put her hands over her mouth, but the laughter gurgled out anyway. The Yanomami began laughing again, genially joining her mirth.

  He looked smug. “I gather they were also impressed by both my . . . shall we say presence, and my technique.”

  “Shut up,” she gasped, trying to gulp back the giggles. “Or I’ll slap-slap your face-face.”

  His expression changed to one of pure ecstasy. “Oh, God,” he said. “Would you?”

  The band of Yanomami were pleased to offer their hospitality, and Ben decided it would be more dangerous to risk insulting them by refusing than it would be to go with them and risk Dutra and Kates reaching the boats before they did. The Indians escorted them to the moloca, the communal house where all the people in the band lived. It was a huge, round, thatched structure, undetectable from the air. The band was fairly small, Ben explained, only about fifty people, though the groups seldom numbered more than two hundred.

  All of the villagers poured out to greet the two newcomers, the naked brown children shy and giggling, the women deftly separating Jillian from Ben, whom the men urged in a different direction.

  “What do I do?” Jillian called, curious yet a little alarmed.

  Ben looked over his shoulder and grinned at her. “Smile and look pretty,”

  “Thanks so much,” she muttered, then took his advice and smiled at the women. They varied in age from a toothless, wizened matriarch to lissome young girls with budding breasts. The women were bare-breasted; indeed, none of the villagers wore anything resembling a shirt. The men wore a sort of rolled breechcloth that tied in the back over their buttocks, while the women wore girdles, fashioned of many strings, that left their buttocks bare.

  She didn’t speak a word of their language but was relieved to find that a couple of them spoke a little Portuguese, so communication on a basic level was possible. Evidently they were in the midst of preparing the communal meal, and were happy simply to have her company while they worked. She was soon sitting on the ground with a baby in her arms and two toddlers crawling back and forth over her legs.

  The men returned with Ben, all of them seeming in good humor. He winked at her but remained with the men while they ate. She continued to play with the baby while she ate the simple meal of fish, manioc, and fresh fruit. She knew about manioc. It was a tuber, an excellent source of carbohydrate and the staple of their diet. It was also an excellent source of cyanide, which they used to tip their weapons. Like the blowfish, one had to know how to prepare the manioc or eating it could be one’s last experience. Since no one keeled over, she felt safe in assuming that it had been correctly prepared.

  After the meal, Ben came over and squatted down beside her. “Hey, you look pretty natural doing that,” he said, tickling the baby’s foot.

  She gave him her sweetest smile. “I’m so glad you think so, since I had to leave my birth control pills at the Stone City.” She didn’t bother telling him that she had been nearing the end of a cycle and thus the chance of conceiving was very small. She expected to start her menses any day, and only hoped they reached the boat before she did.

  To her surprise, Ben only gave her a long, considering look rather than panicking as she had expected. “Would you mind having my kid?”

  Her smile faded, and unknowingly changed to something much softer as she looked down at the squirming, cooing baby in her lap, then back up at him. “We’ll talk about that if it happens,” she finally said.

  He gave a short nod, and changed the subject. “We’re going to stay here tonight. I don’t like losing the time, but they seem inclined to be friendly right now and I’d sure hate for that to change. We’re safe enough while we’re with them, anyway.”

  “But what if Kates and Dutra get to the boats ahead of us?”

  “The headman said he and some of the men will take us to the river tomorrow. We’re a little closer than I thought we were. They seem to think they can find where we left the boats; hell, they were probably watching when we came ashore. I told them what happened, and that we may be followed by men trying to kill us. Datta Dasa, the headman, said they would protect us until we leave. After that, we’re on our own.”

  “Again,” she said.

  “Yeah. Staying here is a risk we have to take, though, so we might as well go with the flow. While we’re here, we’ll have a chance to clean up with the soap they make, and really wash our clothes.”

  “What are we going to wear while the clothes are drying?” she asked politely.

  That wicked grin flashed. “Exactly what the Yanomami are wearing.”

  19

  If he thought she would be discomfited, she showed him. Her profession had taught her to be at ease with other cultures, so she didn’t protest. Instead she happily went with the women to their well-hidden forest pool where they swam daily, stripped off for the second time that day, and plunged into the water. They hadn’t been in the pool for five minutes when a child ran up carrying a very recognizable bundle: Ben’s clothes. Jillian was amused at how neatly he had outmaneuvered her, knowing that she wouldn’t refuse to wash his clothes when he requested it in front of the entire village. These people would be shocked if she did so, for in their culture each sex, each person, had assigned duties and there was no argument about performing them. That was simply the way it was.

  Before tackling the laundry, however, she indulged in personal use of the gelatinous soap the women provided, fresh smelling and pale green in color. It lathered without effort, and she scrubbed herself with it from head to toe. It felt wonderful to be really clean again.

  She used the same soap on their clothes, and after they climbed out of the pool, a friendly young woman—whose name, Alcida, revealed contact with the outside world—gave her a kind of detangler and conditioner to work into her hair. The smell was sweet and delicate, like fresh flowers. After she’d used it, the wooden comb the women produced almost glided through her hair.

  She put on a string girdle, which left her entirely bare behind, as it consisted of a small band around her waist and a series of braided strings in front. With all of the other women wearing the same minimal covering, however, she didn’t feel as naked and uncomfortable as she would have thought. Maybe she liked nudity more than she’d suspected before, but she thought it rather more likely that the faint glee she felt at being so attired—or unattired, depending on how one looked at it—was caused by the smug