Roger grimaced, shrugged and turned ahead. Trust in the Lord, Raine supposed; He certainly hadn’t provided a place to land a plane. Trees stretched to the horizon in a thousand shades of vibrant green.
Cade swung to peer past her out the rear side glass and his pupils widened like a startled cat’s. His eyes swerved to hers and they stared at each other, unsmiling.
Raine felt a hot slide of sensation down her spine. Weird, how she could respond to a man who was her enemy. “You tried to kill me,” she said in a level voice.
“What?”
“You tried to plant dope on me, you bastard! Why?” she called, raising her voice, though with headphones on he’d never hear her.
Eyes fixed on her mouth, he shrugged, shook his head.
“Jerk,” she said, just for the record.
He laughed, shook his head again—and reached to touch her lips.
Bastard! She snapped at him, but he was too fast. He yanked his fingers out of range, examined them, then grinned as he shook them theatrically.
“Yeah, and that’s only a sample,” she growled, looking away. A gust of wind buffeted their wings; the plane swooped like dandelion fluff in a gale.
When she turned forward again, Cade’s amusement had faded to a bleak appraisal.
Moody devil. Goose bumps rose along her arms. He meant her and hers ill; he’d never tried to deny that. Still, for a while there on the flight to Singapore, she’d thought—hoped?—that they were competing in a contest where the basic tenets of civilization held. Economic ruin was the worst she had to fear from him.
But if that’s not where Cade draws the line… They were bound for the jungle. Long Badu marked the edge of it; she’d found no map to show what lay beyond that dot on the river. In Long Badu there would be a headman of the village. But tradition was the only law recognized out here, and how could that apply to a quarrel between two foreigners?
They’d have to settle it among themselves. And Cade was bigger, stronger, faster. A match for her in wits?
Looks like I’m going to find out. The wind smacked the plane again and it dropped—leaving her stomach in free fall.
Once the worst of the storm had rumbled past, the rain continued. Unable to see the ground, Raine dug out Trey’s briefing papers.
“Language” was a topic worth reviewing. He’d written:
Bahasa Indonesia is the official tongue, a crazy blend of Malay, Dutch, trading Arabic, Indian, with dashes of Chinese and English. For instance, to say: Drop the Anchor, you say: Lego jangkar! (Try it three times real fast.)
But for this trip don’t bother to learn it; it won’t serve you past the coast. Once you hit Dayak country, Bahasa Indonesia is just another foreign language. You’ll need a guide to speak for you, or you’ll have to mime your way.
She flipped to the next page, which dealt with “People.”
Indonesia has more races than even America. Its islands were settled in overlapping waves spreading out from Asia, over the past 30,000 years. High on the unmapped central plateau you’ll find Borneo’s earliest arrivals, the Punan—small, shy, light-skinned nomadic hunters; probably kin to Australia’s aborigines.
Lower down the mountains and along the rivers you’ll find the land Dayaks—there are at least twelve separate tribes of them, the Iban, the Kenyah, etc., but generally speaking, they’re slash-and-burn farmers and ex-headhunters. Good-tempered, tatooed party-hearties mostly, who could drink your average frat boy under the table. If they declare a dance, look out; it’ll make Mardi Gras seem like a tea party at the vicarage.
Then down along the coast you’ve got the sea Dayaks and the Malays, descendants of Indonesia’s notorious pirates. Lots of Chinese. Javanese immigrants, plus Dutch and Brit colonial left-behinds.
“Been there, done that,” Raine told him and glanced up as the plane banked to the right. They’d turned away from the main river to follow a smaller tributary winding southeast. “Wait a minute, I thought—”
Cade must have had a similar notion—that Long Badu was located along the Kapuas, not one of its many branches. He looked away from his window with a frown, swiveled a mike attached to his headset into position and spoke.
Raine got a crackling in her ears, nothing more. “Hey, you got a mike!” Fuming, she watched as they discussed something urgent. Cade unfolded a map, stared at it. Roger reached over to tap it, with an emphatic negative.
“What’s going on?” Raine leaned between the front seats, trying to see for herself, but Cade folded the map with a smirk.
The plane buzzed lower, found a clearing in the forest and circled. Raine could see two longhouses built along a rushing creek. Garden patches and palm trees, chickens and dozing dogs. Children running beneath them, looking up and waving their arms with glee.
Roger made a pass at what must be the landing field, rousting pigs, a flock of geese. He climbed sharply upward as they neared a wall of trees, circled again. This time when they made their approach, the pigs were retreating on dainty trotters, shooed by the children. People came hurrying from all sides to stand along the borders of the field, shouting and waving.
The plane set down—bounced so high Cade banged his head on its ceiling—rumbled and bumped over the rough ground. Rattled finally to a halt. “This is a very short stop,” Roger announced. “Don’t forget any of your gear.” He slid out his door, to be swarmed by the people of Long Badu.
“What did he say back there?” Raine demanded. “About the map?”
“Proprietary info, sweetie.” Cade swung out his door and shouldered his pack.
“Double rat!” Raine sat, collecting herself; the minute she left the plane she’d lose all privacy. Clearly strangers were a rare and welcome entertainment; Cade stood surrounded by wide-eyed children. “Roger,” she said as he opened the cargo compartment and grabbed a box. “What was that business with the map back there?”
“Huh!” Roger grumbled. “Lord save us from tourists. He bought a ride to the wrong place. This is New Long Badu, not Old Long Badu-on-the-Kapuas, which is twenty miles to the north.”
Uh-oh. “Umm, I guess I got confused, too. Any chance you could fly us—I mean me—there?”
Roger snorted and tossed another box to a waiting pair of hands. “Not possible. We don’t fly to Old Long Badu. Its people are wicked and stubborn. Refuse to see the Light. You’ll have to walk if you want to go there, but I don’t advise it. And now, please, if I don’t make Long Pa by dark…”
“Of course, but—” Quickly Raine drew a folded paper from her pack. She’d meant to ask him about this in transit, but Cade had foiled that plan. “Have you ever seen this lake before, from the air?” She showed him her sketch of the mountain range below a butterfly-shaped lake, all she’d seen of the map in Lia’s watch.
Roger barely glanced at it. “No.” He dragged a burlap bag toward the door.
“Please, it’s important. You’re sure?” Beyond the pilot’s shoulder, Cade stepped into view, peering into the cargo space. She folded the sketch and tucked it into her trouser pocket.
“Quite. We don’t have fuel capacity to fly beyond the mountains, and there’s no place to land. Now please…”
“Okay, okay.” Raine hopped down out of the plane, hauled her pack after her and shrugged into it as she turned to face the crowd.
The laughing and chattering faltered…faded away. Thirty or more honey-colored, dark-eyed faces stared aghast. A girl of perhaps eight pointed and cried “Bungan!” Shrieking with fearful laughter, she darted off to a safe distance, then turned to bounce on her toes and point. “Bungan! Bungan!”
The adults muttered and drew inward on each other.
“She’s not Bungan! Don’t be ridiculous!” Roger yelled, his face reddening. He burst into fluent speech, in which the word Bungan figured large.
“Who do they think I am?” Raine begged, tugging at his sleeve.
“The children think you look like…like Bungan, but they don’t believe in her anymore. She’s
just a…something from their ignorant, heathen past. A sort of white goddess creature. A she-devil. Fertility and rice harvests and all that garbage.”
“At least they got the she-devil part right.” Cade was grinning like a crocodile.
“She’s. Not. Bungan!”
“Bungan, Bungan!” shrieked a pack of giggling children.
Roger threw up his hands, slammed the cargo door and snapped to Cade, “Would you give me a spin?” He swung to shake his finger at Raine. “And you—don’t encourage this nonsense. Don’t let them give you any eggs!” He scrambled into the plane and glared at one and all through the windshield.
The plane snarled and bucked down the field, hit a bump and clawed for the air. Everyone watched it out of sight, then a collective sigh passed around the group, and Raine would have sworn it was relief. Somebody made a comment, which won a burst of laughter.
Raine looked around. The headman was unmistakable. An old guy, his bare chest and shoulders were covered in blue-star tattoos. His big wrinkled hands were blue from wrist to first knuckle. He was the only man who hadn’t picked up a box of cargo. His smile was serene and complacent as a tomcat’s contemplating a cageful of canaries. These were his people; this was his world.
Always give the top man your first respect, her father had taught her, since a child. Eyes modestly lowered, she crossed to stand before him. Putting her palms together, fingers up, she bowed her head over them—then looked him in the face as she gave him a tentative smile.
His eyes were almost black, alive with intelligence. “Bungan?” he inquired with a teasing twinkle.
She smiled wider and shook her head, then tapped her chest. “Raine.”
Chapter 19
She might be a she-devil, but Cade couldn’t help admiring Raine, as the afternoon slipped swiftly into dusk. She was good with people. With no words in common, she could still make herself liked and understood.
The only point she hadn’t been able to get across was that he and she weren’t a couple. It was an easy mistake to make, considering they’d dropped out of nowhere together. And that he’d aimed several back-off stares at the younger studs of the village, when they tagged along behind her, enthralled by the sway of her hips.
Not that he felt in the least possessive of her charms; it was simply a matter of maintaining his place in the pecking order. The men of the village would figure him for a big white marshmallow, if he allowed other guys to make moves on “his” woman.
So they’d been treated as a twosome, with Raine as the Graceful Facilitator, and Cade playing Strong and Silent. The headman had invited them up into the larger longhouse—a thatched communal dwelling some two hundred feet long by maybe forty wide, standing above the damp tropical ground on carved twelve-foot pilings.
The whole village had gathered to watch the fun. Could the guests pass the test? To enter you walked up a log—a crude, steeply slanting staircase with steps hacked into its mossy trunk at intervals. Raine had laughed, spread her arms and almost danced up the timber, unimpeded by her heavy pack. Determined not to make a fool of himself, Cade had proceeded more cautiously—then he’d looked down at the final step and almost fallen off in surprise. A howling gargoyle face dared him to step over it and onto the veranda.
“He keep bad spirits out of house,” explained a young man, following Cade up the tree trunk.
That was their introduction to Ngali, who’d just returned from hunting. Nephew of the headman, he’d spent a year working for the missionaries, down at their school in Sintang. With Ngali’s arrival, everyone settled on the broad, covered veranda that served as front porch and favorite living space for the occupants of the longhouse. It was time to “share news.” By which they seemed to mean, not, “what’s happened in the world?” but, “what have you done lately?”
Raine obliged by describing her voyage across the sea in what Ngali translated as a very big longboat. The dolphins she’d seen, the fires from the oil platforms at night, a green bird that spoke its thoughts—all of them bawdy or wicked or wise.
Cade cocked his head at her. Are you making this up? Where had she sprung from? But he’d have to wait for an explanation; the village wanted his contribution. So he described their flight on the MAF plane, what the river looked like from above, the storm. The way he banged his head when they landed won an appreciative chortle.
Then Ngali stood to act out his hunt of this afternoon. He’d stalked a deer over hill and dale, but his spear had missed—his expression of outrage and woe won a big laugh. Then he’d met a—he gave the word in Dayak—and of course, that had ended that. He had to come home.
Raine asked for a clarification of what he’d met, and Ngali seemed to be miming a caterpillar crossing his path. Lost in translation, Cade concluded.
From sharing news the tribe segued straight into grill-the-guests. Where do you come from? How many days by longboat is that? Are you very rich and important? How many children do you have? What—none? Their hosts stared with pity and consternation; skeptical glances were cast at Ngali, as if they figured he’d got it wrong. Judging from the number of toddlers underfoot, breeding was either the favorite pastime in Long Badu, or everyone’s civic duty.
After forty-questions, Raine brought out a series of photos. Pictures of herself and other Ashaways standing near dinosaur bones, half encased in the earth. She passed around a picture of Joe and John Ashaway in their youth, posing proudly before the skull of a T. rex as big as a Volkswagen bug. Cade clenched his jaws as he passed it on to his neighbor.
“Have you ever seen bones like these?” Raine asked the marveling crowd, with Ngali’s help. “I come looking for big bones. Bones in the earth.”
No one had ever heard of such things. “Perhaps these monsters only walk in your land?” the headman’s wife suggested with sympathy. “Your hunters must be very brave.”
After Raine’s show-and-tell, the kerosene lanterns were lit along the gallery. The women served big bowls of rice and bananas and soupy stews that were set down for all on the porch’s planks. Then out came the rice wine and the rice brandy. It was time for dancing, tall tales, entertaining each other. What people had been doing for thousands of years, before TV came along to wreck the fun.
After a bear dance complete with bearskin and bear mask, the rice wine bottles passed round the circle. Then came a delicately sensual, swivel-hipped line dance of the maidens, while the young men groaned and swooned.
More throat-scorching rice wine, then the headman danced a solo. He reenacted a war raid, complete with blood-curdling yells and exuberant slashes of his parang, a short, razor-edged machete. Either this raid happened many years ago, or he was telling a dreadful whopper about how many heads he’d taken. But another slug of Borneo moonshine made it all seem perfectly plausible, wonderfully admirable.
Then Raine was urged to perform. She demurred prettily twice, till Ngali laughed and pulled her to her feet. At which point the sly wench untied her braid and shook her hair out on her shoulders—then produced a kazoo from her pocket. Sounding like a cross between Daisy Duck and Marilyn Monroe, she played the sexiest, silliest “Girl From Ipanema,” Cade had ever heard, while she danced a slow, seductive, shuffle-strut aimed entirely at the Headman. The old guy beamed and chortled and ate it up.
As Cade would have done in his place.
She swayed and sauntered back to her seat in the circle—and sat to yells of delight. Then she beckoned to Ngali and whispered in his ear as the rice wine made its rounds.
“Ho!” Ngali announced, straightening. “We have here, the greatest poet in America!” He pointed at Cade. “Very famous man. He say his poems for King of America and Queen Elizabeth and Fidel Castro! He now honor us with his best and longest poem.”
When he caught up with her, she was toast! But it was too late to wimp out now, with the eyes of the tribe upon him. Cade took a fortifying slug of rice wine, stood and launched straight into “The Night Before Christmas.” And let Ngali translate that!
>
Whether they got a word of it or not, they applauded his efforts hugely, at which point Cade turned to give Raine a triumphant smirk—and found she was gone.
Cade looked pretty wonderful, Raine had to admit, with his T-shirt clinging to his broad chest and his rugged face gleaming with sweat. Standing in the center of the charmed circle with his legs braced to stop his swaying, he belted out her favorite line, “Now dash away, dash way, dash away all!”
“Bungan? Bungan!” Two young women plucked at her sleeves, while they murmured pleadingly in Dayak. They weren’t smiling.
“Trouble? Okay. Sure. Let’s go.” When Western foreigners were urgently wanted, it was generally for medicine, Raine had learned over the years. She stopped by the room the headman had assigned for her and Cade’s packs, to grab her first-aid kit.
Two hours later Raine returned from the other longhouse, sobered but hopeful. The child might make it. She’d stepped on something—a fish in the creek, Raine thought they’d said, though maybe she’d misunderstood. Whatever the source of the wound, it had festered. Since the poultice of herbs on the girl’s foot didn’t seem to be helping, she’d washed it away, then disinfected and drained the wound. Then squeezed on a tube of antibiotic, and bandaged her with a strip of clean cloth.
She’d given her mother three more tubes of the ointment for later. Germs that had never met antibiotics before were often routed by their powers, and tropical people tended to be hardy. And maybe the Bungan mystique would turbo-charge her treatment.
An Angel in Stone Page 15