Naturally her action was ineffective, and in a moment she collapsed across the man. He, too, had had enough; his legs stopped moving as he lost consciousness. She had succumbed again to the drug, he to my strangle; ironically they finished in each other's arms.
"Let go," Dulce snapped at me. "She said you are killing her husband."
Actually I had already eased up. A judo strangle is a controlled thing, quite safe when properly applied, and I hadn't gotten to be a fifth degree black belt without knowing how to do it right. I was subduing him, not killing him, despite his attempt to kill me.
"Her husband?" I demanded as I disengaged. Sometimes I'm slow on the uptake; I have admitted that many times. Now I knew where I'd seen this man before. The picture on Oba's dresser: him.
"He brought me to meet you. He helped me escape from Mirabal, and here you are, like the tomcat you are, seducing his wife! No wonder he lost control!"
"Fat chance," I said, rubbing my back, trying to alleviate the continuing agony there. "The food was drugged, and we were posed. Remember when you and I dined together? That's how the Death Squad strikes."
Her eyes widened. Dulce was no dummy. "She is drugged. And he tried to kill you without even questioning—" She paused. "But you—why aren't you drugged?" And her suspicion of me was strong again.
I explained tersely. Then: "Obviously this was another trap. Someone wanted me dead, and wanted you to think I had betrayed you. Just how convenient was your escape from Mirabal, and how did you know where to find me?"
Her eyes narrowed. "Too convenient! This man had word from a santerio or something, a note telling you to be here. He told me he was a friend of the ninjas who wanted to make a deal with the MR-26 Movement, so if I would come with him and meet with Fu Antos—" She stopped, shaking her head at her own gullibility. "Obviously he's no friend of the ninjas! He must be Mirabal's agent, sent to track down the ninjas, using me and you. And his wife is in it with him."
The man was beginning to stir. "I don't think she's in on it," I said, getting into my pants. "But we'd better get out of here; she obviously still loves him." Indeed, Oba was clutching the man even in her unconsciousness.
Dulce smiled grimly. "Hurts your male ego, doesn't it."
"Yes." Better to let her think that than the truth, that Oba and I had been every bit as intimate as the pose suggested, at another time. But I certainly wanted no more to do with Oba now; I don't like adultery. Let her return to her husband, whom she still loved despite her injured ear, just like her namesake goddess. If only I had been able to understand her whole meaning, during the pantomime dance.
We moved out quickly, leaving Oba and her husband to come to what terms they might. Maybe this time Xango would stay at home a little longer. His wife had quite a bit to offer, if he cared to try her out.
We sneaked out the back door, dodged around the building and down the street, alert for pursuit, but there was none. It seemed Mirabal hadn't figured his neatly laid trap would miss.
"So the colonel arranged to have me killed, in your presence," I said as we walked along, putting more distance between us and the restaurant. "But why?"
"Obviously so I would panic and run to the Black Castle for help, whereupon they would follow me and ascertain its location," she said. "I'm afraid I was naïve."
"You know where the Black Castle is?" I asked, surprised.
"Not exactly. But the ninjas did make an overture to the urban guerrillas. That was why I believed the Capoeira agent. Before we raided the prison, I learned that there was a ninja stronghold in the jungle, and I know its location to within about fifty miles. I did not know the connection to you, until Mirabal informed me. If we contact the Indians in that region, they will put us in touch."
"And we can warn Fu Antos how far Mirabal has penetrated his network," I said. "The ninjas are in terrible danger. Mirabal is savage and smart, and he has the whole resources of the government. Yes, we have to do it." Then I paused, startled, my hand at my throat. "The Figa!" I exclaimed. "I lost my Figa!"
Dulce eyed me. "Don't tell me that doll even had you wearing a native amulet!"
"It's bad luck to lose it," I said, my ears heating. "It must have come off during the fight."
"We're not going back there!" she said sharply. "That would really be bad luck."
"No, of course not," I agreed, chastened. After all, it was only a magic charm, of no actual value. Maybe I was upset because it had been all that remained to me of Oba, with her dancer's body and dancer's stamina.
"Here's the bus," Dulce said. "We have a long ride."
"We do?" I hadn't realized we were taking a bus. But we were, and we did. I snoozed off and on, and Dulce remarked how the land here was no good for farming, the soil being thin and poor under the seemingly luxurious canopy of trees.
And so we rode into the wilderness, heading away from the city of the future, toward the castle of the past. We got off at a tiny village, a mere cluster of huts, and walked into the dense tropical forest.
We did not suffer from hunger. Huge, heavy nuts lay on the ground under the big trees. Dulce found edible roots, and fruits that hung on little stems poking out directly from the massive trunks. I'm no nature expert, but I'm not entirely naive about the wilderness; I had been a beret in Indochina years back, and learned to forage from the land. But Dulce evidently knew more about this particular locale than I did. She had pills to purify the water and kill the liver flukes that infested it, and knew how to make a fire. She spied an armadillo, and I killed it with a karate blow to the head. I was sorry for the creature, but it was food.
We came across an abandoned patch of cultivated land where the Indians had tried to grow some fruit. There were a few tubers, plantains and mangos, guavas and avocados remaining.
I was ravenous, after my missed banquet, and afraid we might not find as much food further along, so I stuffed myself. My stomach rumbled as it encountered the roast armadillo, and all that avocado didn't help, but I didn't want to waste anything. Dulce only looked at me and shook her head. "Little boys and ice cream..." she murmured. It was her way of remarking on my gluttony, or perhaps she was bitter about something else. Like a slender dancer, nude, in my lap.
We walked. The floor of the deep jungle was not bushy, though there was a great deal of mossy growth. In fact, we could have ridden bicycles through it, only watching out for animal burrows and raised roots. My notion of tropical forest being dank and impenetrable was completely false. Well, not completely; it was indeed a tangled mass above, high in the canopy. Huge liana vines climbed the trunks of the trees and hung everywhere, just as in the Tarzan movies. We could not see the sun at all; every square foot was covered by leaves. And the jungle floor was no crawling mass of pythons, headhunters and carnivorous plants; there were animals, but we knew of their presence mainly by their sounds and traces. It really was quite peaceful.
The air was hot, for though this was the winter season in North America, it was the height of summer here in South America, and we were nearer the equator. Dulce, wiser than I, soon stripped to the buff, and made me do likewise. "The earth is antiseptic here," she said. "It is the sweat-soaked clothing that brings smell and illness. To be bare is to be healthy, only stay out of the sun."
Like Adam and Eve, I thought. Could it be that the innocence of the first man and woman was the source of their health? That when they emerged from the healthy shade of the forest and put on grime-holding clothes, they put on disease as well? Then what a paradise we lost when we gave up our nudity! I glanced sidelong at Dulce. Her unfettered beauty threatened to raise the beast in me, and I had to look away.
At night, fatigued from a long walk, we stopped in a moonlit clearing. We gathered a mound of dry leaves for a bed; if it rained, well, we were naked anyway, and would dry. It was a novel fun feeling, this Adamic and Evian repose in the forest.
However, the obvious, un-innocent thought occurred to me, actually it had been building ever since we went natural, and I made i
t known to Dulce. Or rather, it made itself known, when her thigh banged against it. It was a wonder she didn't get bruised, for this particular serpent was rocklike. Would it tempt her? But first I had to confess my relationship with Oba. "We were posed, there in the restaurant, but before that, in Rio—"
"It is all right," she said coolly. "I do not own you. I am not a jealous female. I know how men are."
Cutting words! I would have preferred to have been bawled out. "She helped save me from the Death Squad," I continued lamely.
"Men are polygamous. It is unrealistic to expect otherwise. I do not have to love you to get in bed with you."
She meant that I did not have to love her. She was tightly controlled, so I had only a hint of what was suppressed inside her, but that hint was a glimpse into an awful chasm. She loved me, unworthy as I knew myself to be, and what could I say? For me, love was a many-fickled thing. Yet after my fiancée, Chiyako—Dulce relented. She stroked my cheek in the dark. "I am sorry, Jason. I know you loved once, and never again. The Chinese girl."
"She's dead," I said. And winced, feeling an internal pain. But that might have been indigestion from all the unfamiliar jungle food. Brazil nuts are pretty greasy and concentrated. Avocados had a lot of fat, too. And that armadillo, well, my stomach hadn't forgiven me for that yet, it seemed.
So we made love, but it was not as good as before. After that we chatted a while, and decided that in the morning we would make up some bits of bark to be like caracoles, the voodoo coconut fragments, and try a throw to indicate the direction we should take to find the ninjas. It seemed Dulce was not a complete skeptic about such magic, and neither was I, now. Though the loss of my Figa complicated that.
I woke in the night. I had a pain in my right side just under the ribs. That lingering indigestion would not go away! I knew I shouldn't have stuffed myself; why had I done it?
I got up and paced about, hoping to release a little gas pressure and be done with it, but the pain only intensified. I leaned over and vomited, and that seemed to help, but only for a little while. The misery spread to my back, and became so bad I wanted to cry out.
Dulce woke. "You're sick!" she exclaimed.
"Something I ate," I muttered.
"I ate the same, and I'm not sick." She looked at me worriedly in the moonlight, and came to put her hand on my arm. "It can't be your conscience, because you don't have much."
"Well, I did get kicked in the back pretty hard in that fight," I said, ignoring her unkind dig. "I felt something go, then, but I had to keep going—"
"Lie down," she said. Obediently, I returned to the leaf-bed, though that did not alleviate my condition. This was one hell of a stomach-ache, not a kind I had had before.
She ran her hands over my body, squeezing here, pressing there, and there was nothing sexual about it. She must have had medical training in Cuba; she had marvelously gentle hands. I suppose the Communists are good at such things, inculcating all the necessary skills in their agents.
"I don't think it's appendicitis," she murmured as she turned me over and probed my abdomen.
"Can't be," I said. "My appendix was taken out years ago."
When she poked into my stomach on the right side, I groaned aloud. But she continued, gauging the locale by my reactions. One particular spot seemed to generate pure pain at the slightest pressure. "That's what I was afraid of," she said at last.
"What?" I gasped, relieved that she at last had some diagnosis.
"Gallstone."
"What?"
"You have a gallstone, by the signs," she said. "I have seen it before. It usually does not develop so suddenly, but your recent exertions may have accelerated it."
"Gallstone?" I repeated stupidly. "I told you I got kicked a couple of times. In the side and back. It really hurt! Maybe something was ruptured."
"Be quiet," she said, just like a nurse with a balky patient. "The liver produces bile; that neutralizes the strong acids coming into the intestine from the stomach and helps break down fat. The bile is stored in the gall bladder until it is needed. Sometimes stones form from parts of the bile that have settled out of solution, and these stones can block the duct so that the bile cannot get out. This interrupts the digestion, and can cause the most severe pain the body can experience."
"Now she tells me," I moaned.
"It can be controlled for a while by diet and drugs."
"Here in the jungle?" I demanded.
"But the only real cure is surgery."
"Surgery!" Like most athletic men, I have a morbid fear of surgery.
"It is very simple, as these things go. Just to remove the stone, so the bile can go through. But—"
I knew: how could I undergo surgery, here in the wilds of the Amazon?
"We will get help, at the Black Castle," she said.
"Yes! Fu Antos, he cured me before. He has terrific power. He can use his ki to—"
"I was hoping they would have a surgeon there," she said.
"Oh, yes. But how can we get there, even if we find the way? I'm not sure I can walk far."
"I'll carry you if I have to." And she wasn't fooling! But I thought of being draped across her shoulders, all that pressure on my stomach while she staggered along, and I quailed.
"I'll make do, somehow," I said. "If only we could stop the pain."
"Your jacket!" she said, delving into our bundle of clothes.
"What?"
"The food in your pocket."
"I dumped that out. Anyway, I'm not hungry." The understatement of the night! "And it's drugged."
"Yes. It will serve as an anesthetic, in small amounts. We can scrape some from the cloth—"
"I'd rather not," I protested, remembering my prison experience. "That drug has all sorts of bad connotations. And it might aggravate my condition."
"That's true." She considered, then brightened. "I know! I saw wild coca plants growing, back a mile or so. Wait here."
"I don't care for any cup of coca, either!" I objected. "Anyway, it's pitch black. You can't—" But she was gone.
She was quite a girl, I thought. Evidently she could make her way in the dark with confidence. She was certainly one worth marrying, if I knew what was good for me. Was it really necessary that I love her? But of course there was her Communism, that I doubted she cared to give up, even for me. I had a fleeting little nightmare: Dulce standing proudly, torch raised, like the Statue of Liberty, declaiming, "I could not love thee half so much, loved I not Marx more."
Before long she returned with what felt like a handful of leaves. "Chew this," she said.
I was in no condition to argue. I don't even remember what they tasted like, and it was too dark to see them. So I chewed. And you know, in due course I began to feel better. My pain diminished, and strength returned.
"Hey, this herbal remedy is great!" I exclaimed. "What did you say it was?"
"Cocaine," she said succinctly.
I laughed. "No, I'm serious. This stuff really helps. What—"
"The coca plant. Not cocoa. A lot of people confuse the two. The drug cocaine is extracted from it. It is an excellent anesthetic."
"I'm an addict!" I exclaimed, appalled.
"One dose does not an addict make, not in this form. The natives chew it all their lives without much ill effect. Right now it's better than being in pain from the gallstone."
I could not debate that. I kept on chewing.
Next morning I felt much better. In fact, I felt terrific. We ate a little more fruit, then went on to discover a small stream with a nice pool. I rinsed off, then stood on the bank and watched Dulce with open appreciation as she bathed. She was like Venus. This life could not last, but what an idyllic interlude!
It ended abruptly. Indians appeared. One brought his bow up, aimed, and loosed an arrow at me. I reacted automatically: my arm swept across and deflected the arrow just before it struck me. I could not simply let it go past; it might strike Dulce.
A second Indian aimed. I w
as ready; I tried to catch the arrow in midair, but only knocked it aside again. Still, I did it with a flourish, trying to make it look easy. It wasn't easy; had I not had some practice in this sort of thing, I would have been brought down.
A third Indian, a big buck, charged me with his spear, screaming. I screamed right back at him, a piercing kiai! yell, just as he hurled his weapon. I caught the spear, reversed it, and poked it between his legs, sending him into a jarring tumble. Then I held the point to his throat, showing how easily I could kill him. The other Indians, amazed, came up and kneeled before me. Dulce emerged from the water. "That was beautiful, Jason," she murmured.
She faced the Indians and addressed them in Portuguese. After a brief dialogue, she turned to me. "They are headhunters, but have decided to be friendly. We are invited to visit their village."
"Headhunters!"
"They don't practice it any more. And they will send a runner to notify the ninjas. I believe we can trust them."
Just like that! I was glad I had gone out to impress them instead of really fighting them. I didn't want to lose my head, on top of my bodily problems. But of course I had known that the Indians of this area were allies of the ninjas.
The village treated us royally. I had to make another demonstration of arrow deflecting so everyone could applaud, and Dulce and I made a mat and demonstrated some judo throws. Ippon seoi nage, o uchi gari, koshi guruma, just the ones we could do without clothing, since we remained nude. Many of the Indians were nude too, so that didn't bother me.
That evening we feasted. Dulce tried to warn me to go easy, but I was sure she had been wrong about the gallstones, and I was feeling so good I pitched right in. The main course was some kind of meaty stew, very good. I washed it down with plenty of native beer. The water, you see, was not safe because of the flukes, and I was thirsty as hell. But along about my third helping of stew, I drew out of the pot what looked like a baby's hand. Horrified I stared at this confirmation of their cannibalistic culture, but Dulce explained it was only monkey meat. Nevertheless, I decided I had eaten enough.
And that night I had another gallstone attack that made the first seem mild. Dulce gave me more coca leaves, and warned me that if the gall bladder burst I could die, unless I had surgery very soon. I promised never to go off my diet again, and finally this attack abated.
Amazon Slaughter & Curse of the Ninja Page 21