High Adventure Read online

  The dust had all settled and Kirby was hunkered in the shade of Cynthia’s left wing, scratching a picture of a horse in the dry dirt (it looked like a dog, or maybe a frog), when Tommy and the villagers arrived. “Well,” Tommy said, “you’re feeling pretty good about yourself, huh?”

  “Pretty good,” Kirby admitted. “We’re back in business.”

  “You mean we get to put the temple back up?”

  “Sure. I’ll be around Belize City this week, maybe go out to San Pedro, find a live one, or go up to the States for a while. We’re full time in business again.”

  Luz said, “You bring any gage?”

  “Not this time. You don’t want too much of that anyway, Luz, it’ll rob you of ambition.”

  Tommy turned to look at Luz, squinting, trying to visualize him robbed of ambition.

  Kirby had opened the cargo door at the left rear and the passenger door behind the copilot’s seat on the right, and the villagers methodically stowed all the packages they were carrying, then each one stolidly headed back to South Abilene. Mostly they didn’t look at Kirby at all, but if he did catch somebody’s eye that person would give him a shy smile and a nod and that was all. Tommy and Luz were the link between Kirby and the Indians, and nobody ever tried to bridge the gulf.

  Kirby wasn’t even sure, in fact, why the Indians went along with this scam. They liked the money, obviously—most of it went into colorful clothes and sweet processed foods from town—but he had the impression they could get along just as well without it. It seemed sometimes as though they did it for its own sake, that they found it fun to recreate their ancestors’ art and artifacts. The shyness linked up with that idea, the modest appreciation of his appreciation of their skills.

  Watching as Cynthia was loaded, Kirby said, “I hope you gave me a lot of Zotzes.”

  “Well,” Tommy said reluctantly, “actually, no.”

  “Not a lot? How many?”

  “Well,” Tommy said, “actually, none.”

  Kirby gave him an exasperated look. “Come on, Tommy, you know how they love Zotz in the States.”

  “Maybe so,” Tommy said, “but down here old Zotzilaha is bad news. People don’t like to make him.”

  Luz said, “These are very primitive assholes here, you know. They do Zotz, they figure Zotz maybe gonna get them.”

  Kirby understood the problem, but it was still a real annoyance. Zotzilaha Chimalman, the bat-god of the ancient Maya, was the most fearsome of the Mayan demons, a grinning evil creature who lived in a gruesome cave surrounded by bats. One of his tasks was to divert the souls of the recently dead from the path leading to Mayan paradise and send them instead to the eternal darkness of hell. In “Popol Vuh,” the great Mayan creation myth, Zotzilaha appears as Camazotz, the enemy of man. After less than 400 years of Christianity, the Indians still found their ancient gods potent, and none more so than Zotzilaha Chimalman, the powerful personification of evil, the bat-god who flies, who owns the night and who destroys human beings out of sheer joy in his own viciousness.

  It was easy to understand why the villagers didn’t like creating images of Zotzilaha, but the problem was that naturally the great demon-god was extremely popular among Kirby’s customers. Give a sophisticate a devil to play with any day; heros are boring.

  “Tommy,” Kirby said, “I really need some Zotzes.”

  “I’ll talk to my troops,” Tommy promised.

  “Why don’t you do some yourself?”

  Tommy looked vague, his eyes wandering away as he shrugged and said, “I’ve been busy.”

  “Jesus, Tommy. You, too?”

  “You’ll get your Zotzes,” Tommy said defensively. “Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Not wanting a fight with Tommy, Kirby made a point of going over to the plane to watch how the loading was coming along. Luz’s sister Rosita came over to Kirby and said, “You ain’t been around.”

  “Been busy, been busy.”

  “How’s your wife?” There was some sort of edge in Rosita’s voice, some sort of glint in her eye.

  Kirby pretended not to notice. “Worse,” he said. “She keeps seeing spiders on the wall.”

  “Maybe there is spiders on the wall. Most walls got spiders on them.”

  “Not these walls,” Kirby assured her. “It’s a very clean hospital, completely clean.”

  Rosita nodded, scuffing her filthy toe in the dirt. By daylight she was, paradoxically, less attractive and more interesting. The wild girl tends not to be too interested in personal grooming. “Sheena says—” she said.

  “Who?”

  “Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.”

  Oh; a comic book. “Sorry,”

  Kirby said. “What does she say?”

  “She says she figures you don’t got a wife at all.”

  Kirby stared. “She what?”

  “She says she figures you’re some kinda con artist,” Rosita said. “Well, that’s what you are, huh?”

  “Not with you, Rosita.”

  “Huh.” The glint in Rosita’s eye was on the increase. “What Sheena says, she says you just don’t wanna get married, or maybe you just don’t wanna marry me, so you make up this wife in the crazy hospital, you can’t get a divorce unless she gets sane again.”

  “That’s what Sheena says, is it?” Kirby was beginning to get a little irritated.

  “Yeah. That’s what she says.”

  “You talk to Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, and she talks back to you.”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, you tell Sheena,” Kirby started.

  “Tell her yourself. She’s over in the village.”

  What Kirby might have said next he would never know, because Tommy and Luz came over then and Tommy said, “Come on back to the fort, Kimosabe, let’s party.”

  “Can’t today,” Kirby said. “I’ve been letting things slide, I’ve got to get moving again.” The truth was, he was too impatient right now for partying. A week and a half sitting around was more than enough.

  Luz said, “We got a surprise for you.”

  Rosita said, “I already told him about it.”

  They all frowned at her, Kirby in bewilderment, the others in exasperation. “Asshole,” her brother Luz commented, and Tommy said, “What did you do that for?”

  “I don’t owe him no favors,” Rosita said, and went away with a straight back and a little whip-switch movement of the behind.

  They all watched her go. Tommy said, “Kirby, I got the feeling your wife just died.”

  “Somebody put some ideas in that child’s head,” Kirby said. Maybe somebody at the mission, he was thinking. He was very bitter. “I really better not come back to town this time.”

  Tommy and Luz agreed. Cynthia was loaded by now, so Kirby climbed aboard, waved, and waited till the Indians were partway up the hill on their way home before he started the engine, not wanting to strangle them in dust. Then he turned his trusty steed aside, got up to a gallop, and became once again airborne.

  He wasn’t happy with the way he’d left things; turning down their party invitation, getting static from Rosita and not dealing with it very well. Circling around in the sky like a lazy wasp, he decided to go over and buzz them once more, waggle his wings, let them know everything was still basically okay.

  The line of Indians, single file, had crested the hill and started down the other side. Kirby flew east, then came back low, right down on the deck as he crossed the dry plain, leathery snakes ducking their heads, the hill looming up ahead. He ran up the hill, Cynthia’s wheels just yards above the scrub, and burst with a roar over the top, suddenly visible and extremely audible to the people on the other side.

  The Indians loved it. They fell around laughing, holding their sides, pointing at Cynthia as she circled, waggling her wings. Even the plane seemed to grin.

  Kirby rolled over them once more, then headed down and around for South Abilene to give the shut-ins a treat. The cluster of huts came into view and a fig
ure ducked into one of them, out of sight, as Kirby flew over. He gave them some throttle, stood Cynthia on her tail over the village, and heard some of the cargo shift around. Deciding to quit endangering the merchandise, he leveled out and turned north-northeast, toward the Cruzes and home.

  Nice day. Nice lot of artifacts aboard to sell to Bobbi and to Witcher and Feldspan. Nice to be in motion again.

  A memory tugged at him as he flew along, the many dark greens below, the pale blue high above. The memory of that figure who had run away into one of the huts as he’d come over town. In his memory that figure was awfully pale. And had his eyes deceived him, or had the figure been female?

  Sheena?

  Queen of the Jungle?

  4

  FATHER SULLIVAN DRIVES BY

  Valerie stuck her head out the hut door and watched the nasty little plane buzz away at last. “Him again!” she said.

  The tribespeople were coming back into the village, all laughing and talking and slapping one another’s shoulders. They’d loved being endangered by that airplane, Valerie could tell. Only Rosita looked less than delighted by it all. Could it be …

  Valerie went over to Rosita, and pointed toward the now-gone plane. “Him?” she asked. “Is he the man you told me about?”

  “You bet,” Rosita said grimly. “And I just give it to him straight, what you said to me, and he got pretty shifty. I bet you right all along.”

  “I know I’m right! That man?”

  Rosita looked alert. “You know Kirby?”

  “Kirby Galway, that’s right, that’s his name!”

  “You know him, Sheena?”

  Valerie had long since given up trying to get the tribespeople to quit calling her Sheena and call her Valerie. Even though her hair wasn’t blonde, and even though her remaining rags of clothing bore no resemblance at all to a tiger skin, and even though she had never swung from vines in her entire life, nevertheless when she had stumbled into this village a week ago the man called Tommy Watson had at once dubbed her Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. And so had everyone else, deeply amused, once he’d explained that comic book character to them. In fact, it was during his description of the comic book Sheena, in Valerie’s presence, with some of the comparative details becoming rather personal, that Valerie had let them all know she understood Kekchi and wished they wouldn’t talk about her in quite that manner.

  “She speaks our language!” Tommy had cried, in delight and wonder. “She is Sheena!”

  In fact, the variant of Kekchi spoken in this village was not at all the same as the pure language she had so doggedly learned, but at least it was similar enough so she could understand most of what was said to her, unless the person spoke very fast.

  And as to their calling her Sheena, after three days and nights of wandering through forest and jungle and swamp and desert Valerie would have agreed to any condition in return for a full meal and a safe bed. That the only condition imposed was that she answer to the name of Sheena was odd, but not difficult. Sheena she became, Sheena she had been for a week, and Sheena she would go on being for …

  … who knew how long?

  She didn’t dare go back to civilization, at least not yet. Who knew how many more of them were in that rotten racket together? Kirby Galway; the driver who had locked Valerie in that filthy hut; the man Vernon who had come to give the driver his orders. And of course Innocent St. Michael must be the ringleader, the brains behind the whole scheme.

  She had been foolish to let Vernon know she recognized him, because that was what had tipped the balance at last and made them decide they had to commit murder. Even though that nasty dark room had been very hot and humid, a chill had gone through her when she’d heard the driver say, “Say it out, Vernon. Say what you want,” and Vernon answer, “She has to die.”

  After Vernon left, Valerie stood quaking in the darkness of the inner room, wondering if she had the strength to fight off the driver, knowing she did not. It was so dark in here she couldn’t see if there might be a stick or something lying around that might help.

  Was there anything in the structure itself that might become a weapon? Valerie made her way to the rear wall and, partly by sight, partly by touch, made out that the slabs were nailed to vertical two-by-fours, a foot and a half apart, with here and there a horizontal two-by-four for extra support. Perhaps one of those horizontal pieces could be worked loose? She tried one, just at eye level, pried it a bit, pushed on it, and the two-by-four with the whole slab behind it, six feet long, simply fell off the building, with a clatter that made Valerie go rigid. Her head turned to stare at the closed door, but nothing happened, so the driver hadn’t heard or was possibly out somewhere.

  Digging a grave.

  It was then just a matter of moments for Valerie to force an opening large enough to eel through, ripping her left sleeve on a nail stuck out of the boards. The sky ahead was completely black, with visible stars. Above, it modulated through bruised-looking blues and sullen reds to become orange on the far side of the shack. So east must be straight ahead, which meant that north—and Belize City—were to her left. Miles and miles and miles away to her left.

  Valerie struck off northward, moving as quickly as possible in the uncertain light over the uncertain ground. A half moon shone with increasing brilliance off to her right—giving her a guide to move north by—but its light wasn’t really much use.

  Half an hour from the shack, Valerie all at once came upon the Land Rover. Her feet, seeking out the path of least resistance, had all unknowing found and stuck with the trail she and the driver had taken up from where the little dirt road had ended. And here she was back again, the Land Rover looking more nautical than ever in the watery moonlight.

  Had he left the keys? Certainly not. Frustrated, unhappy, wishing she hadn’t had a useless brother like Robert Edward Greene V but a real brother who would have taught her how to jump ignitions, Valerie sat in the driver’s seat, resting from her exertions and trying to think what she could possibly do next. All at once she heard a racket headed this way, a crashing and muttering as of some ogre in a fairy tale, lumbering through the woods and telling himself about the children he would eat.

  The driver!

  Valerie hopped out and hurried away into the darkness, tripping over roots and rocks, falling once, skinning her knee, and deciding at last to wait right here and not injure herself any more out of panic.

  She lay in deep darkness, amid shrubbery and low twisted trees. The Land Rover sat in a moonlit open space. Valerie was close enough to hear what the driver said as he too entered that moonlit space and paused to search himself with quick anger for the keys, and what he said was:

  “Oh, no, not me, not Fred C! You don’t put Fred C. in one of those jails, oh, no, no you don’t. She’s gone, she’s gone, she gonna raise the alarm, everybody can go to jail but not Fred C., no, sir. Fred C. is gone! Down to Punta Gorda, sell this damn vehicle, go on down to Colombia, down where they got no law at all. Fred C. is out of this story! Where’s the damn keys? Here they are.”

  With that, he hopped into the Land Rover, a second later the starter made its grinding noise, the engine caught, and headlights cut the night into the quick and the dead. The Land Rover jolted backward in a half-turn, those bright beams swinging this way, then it roared off, bouncing like a toy down the road, soon out of sight, then out of hearing.

  Valerie stood. She had the night to herself. But at least she had that road. By morning, she would be back in her room at the Fort George, enjoying a wonderful shower, and Kirby Galway and Innocent St. Michael and Vernon Vernon would all be in jail, right where they belonged.

  If it hadn’t been for the headlights, everything would have been all right. Valerie had been walking almost two hours when she saw them slowly advancing, jouncing along, the beams first looking up at the sky then ducking down to stare at the road immediately ahead then snapping up to gaze at the sky again, and her first thought was: Rescue!

  But her seco
nd thought was: Maybe not.

  She was alone in a strange land. So far, the people she had trusted—Innocent and Vernon and to a lesser extent the driver—had proved false. So she should think very carefully before attracting the attention of whoever was coming this way.

  Could this be the driver, panic over, realizing Valerie wouldn’t get far at night on foot, coming back to do the job after all? It could.

  Could this be Vernon, returning to make sure his orders had been carried out? It very well could.

  Could this be some other friend or ally of those people, who would smile at her and promise to take her straight to the police, but who would take her to her death instead? It most definitely could.

  The headlights jerked closer. Valerie wanted to believe she could just stand here, wave her hand, and be rescued, saved, returned to Belize City. She wanted to believe it, but she turned and hurried away from the road instead, up a rocky slope where she kept feeling too exposed, because of those headlights flashing around all over the place. So she kept going, up over the top, and down into a shallow basin, and waited.

  Some sort of truck engine. She couldn’t see the lights any more, but she could hear the straining engine, hear it approach, become briefly very loud, then recede, then fade away.

  She waited a while longer, mostly because she was very tired, her muscles very sore. Then she made her way back up the slope, and it took much longer than she’d expected to reach the top. When she finally did, there were no headlights to be seen anywhere, so she made her way down the other side and found nothing but a narrow ravine with a little quick stream running through it.

  Where was the road? She kept looking around, but in the moonlight every hill and boulder and shrub looked the same. Still, the road had to be very close by.

  She never found it again. The moon had risen higher in the sky, giving marginally more light but no longer marking the east. The road was gone. It occurred to her to worry about wild animals.