Four Unpublished Novels

by Frank Herbert

  Monti lowered her hand from her eyes. “Let’s just say that I have to go in there, and that I’m willing to pay whatever it costs to get my way.”

  “Even to getting yourself and your boy killed?”

  She swallowed. “I don’t think it’s that dangerous.”

  “You mean you won’t let yourself believe it’s that dangerous. Would you consider leaving the boy, and just going by yourself …?”

  “David has to go with us. That’s part of it. I’m bringing him down to stay with his father.”

  Jeb stared at her. “Does Bannon know you’re coming?”

  “No. It’s a surprise.”

  “I thought he’d written for you to come down … that everything was okay … that …” He broke off. “Do you have even the faintest idea what that rancho is?”

  She shrugged. “Some kind of a plantation. They’re growing stuff for drugs.”

  David cleared his throat, spoke in a squeaky voice: “And they’re trading with the Indians.” He blushed.

  Jeb glanced at the boy, back to the mother. “That’s a jungle plantation, Mrs. Bannon. It’s new, raw. And there are Indians: Jivaro. The Jivaro are not tame Indians.”

  “My dad never said it was dangerous,” said David.

  “David’s very healthy,” said Monti. “He’s had all of his shots: yellow fever, typhoid—everything. I’m sure he won’t catch anything.”

  “Except maybe a poison dart—or a spear in the guts!”

  She paled. “You’ll go to any extreme to get out of taking us!”

  “A visit might be all right,” said Jeb. “A short visit, but—”

  “Poison dart!” said Monti.

  “There’s always the possibility that a Jivaro will take a sudden dislike to you,” said Jeb. “And he may decide to add your tzantza to his collection for no reason you’d ever understand.”

  “What’s that?” asked David. “A tzantza?”

  Jeb kept his attention on Monti, spoke coldly: “A shrunken head.”

  She drew a sharp breath. “You’re just trying to frighten me!”

  He shrugged. “Some people go in there and never have a bit of trouble with the Jivaro. Some say the Jivaro are damn fine Indians, but—”

  “Roger would’ve said something if it was dangerous!”

  “I guess so.”

  “I’ll pay you thirty-five hundred dollars,” she said.

  The haunted mood of his morning dream returned to Jeb. It enfolded him like a thrown net. He felt swept up in a current he couldn’t escape, and this feeling aroused a core of determination within him. He shook his head. “No!”

  “Forty-five hundred, Mr. Logan.” She managed a bitter smile. “You see, I’m a determined woman.”

  He remained silent, shocked.

  “How long would it take us?” she asked.

  He shrugged.

  “About nine hours?” she asked.

  “More or less.”

  “That’s about five hundred dollars an hour,” she said.

  “It’s a lot of money for one ride,” he said.

  Her mouth shaped into the reflex smile. “And what’s money if it won’t buy what you want?”

  David took Monti’s arm. The boy looked pale, angry. “Mother, let’s go back and find somebody else. This guy’s afraid!”

  Jeb took the sting of the words, drew in a deep breath, fought for control. Then: “You’re right, kid. I’m yellow. Scared as hell. That comes from having brains enough to know what can happen in those mountains and that jungle.”

  “I’ll make it an even five thousand dollars,” she said. “Take it or leave it.”

  He felt the net draw closer, thought about five thousand dollars: the money to buy a new port engine for the amphibian, to buy new radio equipment, to bring in another relief pilot … money to grease a few official palms and smooth out the red tape.

  Mother and son stared at him.

  Jeb took his flying cap from its hook above the map table, jammed it on his head. It was a symbolic gesture. Monti knew his decision before he spoke.

  “All right!” His words were sharp, bitten off. “We’ll go to Ramona. If they’ll sell us gas at Ramona, we’ll go the rest of the way.”

  She exhaled a long, sighing breath.

  And Jeb knew from the feeling of the net around him that they’d be able to buy gas at Ramona.

  Monti spoke the thought: “They’ll sell us the gas.”

  Jeb stepped to the door, recalled the small mountain of luggage they’d unloaded from the Victoria. He considered the flying distance, worked the almost automatic calculation of weight-over-fuel that was like an instinct with him. It gave him a perverse feeling of pleasure to say: “Start cutting down your luggage. You can take sixty pounds between you.”

  “What should we wear?” she asked.

  “Cottons … Khaki. It gets damn hot over there.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “Let’s get moving. We’ve just about enough time to make it before dark.”

  Already, his mind was moving ahead into the flying problem: We’ll be heavily loaded. I’ll have Manuelo stir up the river ahead of us with a motor boat—give us a little chop to help get off. Dr. Iriarte has Jeep cans for carrying the extra gas. I’ll have to send some boys after them. Now, where the hell did I put my jungle kit?

  “Maria!” he called.

  “Si, patron?” She came out of the kitchen, tears running down her cheeks.

  Jeb looked at the tears, surprised.

  “Patron, you are going in the airplane!” she said. “My vision …”

  His trapped feeling became anger. “Maria! Stop that damned foolishness! Send some of those children off the street to bring Dr. Iriarte’s gas cans. All of them! Get my jungle kit, then start making us a lunch.”

  She bowed her head. “Si, señor.”

  The courtyard became a scene of bustling motion.

  Jeb found himself caught up by the excitement, but he still felt that he had been outmaneuvered. And there was the dark instinct from his nightmare.

  He would not have called himself a deeply superstitious man, but in the minutes just before the takeoff he almost cancelled the flight.

  It was the fretful stiffing of Premonition … the dream.

  Something about a river … and death.

  But the mood passed. The pilot within him took over. There came the moaning of the motor at full throttle. The pontoons stuttered through the light chop of Manuelo’s motor boat. Then they were off the water, lifting up into the clean air where sawtooth peaks stretched across the horizon: a stark barrier in black rock and cold white snow.

  The plane’s cabin was an isolated piece of civilization: clean fabrics, glistening Plexiglas, chrome, the round eyes of gauges—and the droning motor in the background.

  Monti sat on Jeb’s right. She had changed into a man’s tan shirt, dark green riding breeches, Jodhpur boots. The silver scarf still tied her red hair. An indrawn look pinched her features. Already, her mind was projecting ahead to the meeting with Roger.

  Will he be happy to see us? Of course he will! What a godforsaken place for him to choose. Why couldn’t he just sit back and let me support him? What’s he trying to prove? Jesus! It’s been more than seven months! Has he changed?

  David sat directly behind her, crowded by the stack of empty Jeep cans tied down beside him. The boy wore a light blue shirt and jeans: colors that accented his sunburned look. Like his mother, he was silent, but unlike his mother, his eyes moved to catch each change in the landscape.

  For the first time since they’d left the States, David was allowing himself to recognize his own feelings and thoughts. Excitement tensed his throat and chest. The veneer of adult cynicism that had rubbed onto him from the Bohemian atmosphere surrounding his mother began to slough away. More and more, there appeared a twelve-year-old boy filled with the vibrancy of adventure.

  I’ll bet there’s lots of hunting at the ranch, he thought. And Indians. After mother leaves, and we’re
alone: Dad and me …

  He chewed nervously at his lower lip.

  The plane entered the pass. Peaks climbed the sky above them on both sides. Turbulent winds shook the little ship. The passengers bounced and jerked. Wings creaked. The Jeep cans banged.

  David lifted the camera from his neck, took a picture through the side window. The thin air added to his feeling of exhilaration. He took another picture straight ahead through the propeller blur.

  Then they were through the pass. The ground receded. The air became even rougher from the thermal winds pouring up from the hot country ahead.

  “There’s the jungle,” said Jeb.

  David lifted against his safety belt, peered ahead.

  It was a cauldron of liquid green boiling over the edge of the world. The immensity of it filled him with a momentary sense of fear. The green stretched out forever, and it was not life—it was something alien, an enemy.

  Jeb tipped the plane’s nose down slightly, eased back on the throttle, adjusted the carburetor heat, the trim tabs, re-set the gyrocompass.

  That David’s a funny kid, he thought. Not like a kid. He acts too grown-up to be happy. And then he wondered at himself: Does being grown-up mean being unhappy?

  The mountains slipped behind. Now, the jungle poured beneath them.

  An hour and twenty minutes later the dark adobe walls and tin roofs of Ramona came under their left wing. The town sat on a point to the north side at the juncture of the Rio Tapiche and Rio Itecoasa. A wide stretch of dirty concrete steps reached down to the water on the Itecoasa side. Launches and dugouts nosed against the foot of the steps like a jumble of thin insects.

  Behind the town a thick wall of jungle held civilization at bay along an indefinite balancing line: here a finger of cultivation invading the green, there a creeping-in of wild growth attacking the houses.

  Figures moved along the concrete steps, looked up.

  A rippling shadow of the plane passed over the town and out across the Itecoasa. The river was a sheet of dark glass roiled by an imperfection where the narrower Tapiche joined it.

  Jeb banked for an upriver landing.

  Monti glanced at her wristwatch. “Two thirty-five,” she said. “I thought you said it’d take more than six hours.”

  He tugged at the visor of his cap. “We were lucky and found a tail wind.”

  “Where’s all the danger that frightened you so?”

  Jeb smiled. “So it’s been milk run—this far.”

  She sniffed.

  He dropped the flaps, aimed the plane up the Itecoasa. Now, they were low enough that the river became a wide, flat lake between low walls of green. Heat poured in the vents: a burning wash of air that inflated the cabin with moisture and a kind of molten tension.

  “My god, it’s hot!” said Monti.

  The plane feathered out on a cushion of air, splashed down opposite the town. Jeb gave it right rudder, taxied up to the concrete steps to dark people with volatile features. Voices called out in Portuguese and Spanish. Hands clutched at the wings. Jeb shut off the motor, fearful that one of the dark figures would stumble into the propeller. He opened his door, slipped down to the float.

  Now, he became conscious of the town’s odor: an exhalation of bad breath—fetid earth, rotting fruit and flesh. Black flies arose from the bottoms of the launches and dugouts, invaded the plane.

  Monti slapped at her arms.

  Jeb singled out one of the smiling, jabbering faces around the plane, pressed a bill into the man’s hands, told him in Spanish that he was in charge of keeping the aeroplano secure. The man replied in Portuguese, but apparently he understood. He immediately started ordering his companions to stand clear.

  David released his safety belt, leaned forward. “May I get out, Mother?”

  She stared at the scene outside, her mouth drawn into a curve of distaste. “I guess so, but stay in sight where we can call you.”

  Two soldiers in green uniforms, peaked caps, carbines over their shoulders, appeared at the top of the steps.

  Jeb worked his way along the float, leaped to the steps and climbed up to the soldiers. They stared at him suspiciously until he passed over his pilot’s license and Brazilian flight permit folded around two fifty-milreis notes. The documents came back to him without the money.

  “Gasoline?” They looked at each other with a kind of resigned wonder at the stupidity of all foreigners. One shrugged. The other shrugged.

  “Un momento, señor,” said one.

  They went back into the town, strolling unhurriedly down a palm-shaded street through green shadows and hot patches of sunlight.

  Jeb fidgeted, stared at the town, at the river.

  I was a damn fool to take her word about the gas here, he thought. If we can’t get any … we’re stuck. He looked down at a scattering of outboard motors on launches and dugouts. Oh, hell! We’ll get gas here all right. We just won’t like the price.

  Presently, there appeared at the head of the steps a small, chocolate-dark fat man with thick-lidded bloodshot eyes. He wore a wrinkled blue suit, a damp white shirt, a red tie spotted by perspiration.

  “A message about gasoline?” he asked. “By wireless? What message? What gasoline?”

  Jeb sighed. Another fifty-milreis note changed hands.

  The man looked speculatively at the airplane, as though weighing its probable salvage value. He glanced at Jeb, smiled, turned back into town. He strolled at the same casual rate as the departed soldiers.

  Jeb made his way back down the steps to the plane.

  Monti leaned out the door on her side. “What luck?”

  He held out his hands, palms up. “Quien sabe?”

  Twenty minutes later a crude hand truck bearing two fifty-gallon drums rumbled and sloshed up to the top of the steps. It was pushed by what could only be described as a swarm of children.

  The drums bore a Brazilian government seal with a legend in Portuguese warning that they contained gasoline “for official use only!”

  Again the chocolate-dark man joined Jeb on the steps. “The gasoline is very expensive here, senhor.” He shrugged apologetically.

  “How much?”

  “In dollars, senhor?”

  Here we go, thought Jeb. He nodded.

  The man held up two fingers. “Two liters—one dollar.”

  Jeb winced. He knew that the dark little man would almost double the money on the black-market exchange, thought: Maybe I can shave that some.

  Without warning, Monti spoke from just behind Jeb: “How much does he want?”

  Jeb turned, surprised that he had not heard her come up. “He wants fifty cents American per liter.”

  “Pay it.”

  “But—”

  “I said pay it.”

  Jeb nodded, turned back to the vendor of gasoline, who was smiling broadly at Monti. “Agreed. Start pouring gas.”

  The man bowed, waved to his swarm.

  Presently, the official gasoline began gurgling into the wing tanks and the Jeep cans that were brought out and lined up along the steps. The laboring children scrambled about their work, pushing and shouting. The air became thick with the cloying smell of gasoline.

  Jeb looked around for David, saw him at the top of the steps taking photographs of the scene.

  “I think I’ll look at the view,” said Monti. She started toward David.

  Latin eyes followed her movements. Comments were called back and forth by the men on the steps. The children grinned and laughed.

  Monti turned to Jeb. “What are they saying?”

  Jeb smiled. “They say you have a boy figure—that your breasts are smaller than the average hereabouts … that you don’t have a proper female bottom. Things like that.”

  The anger spots colored her cheeks. “Well! That’s too damn bad!”

  “Take it easy,” said Jeb. “Women have to get used to that sort of thing in a Latin country.”

  “We’ll see about that!” She turned, resumed her climb t
o the top of the landing, and looked out at the river. A familiar feeling swelled in her.

  “Your damned show-off compulsion!” her father had called it.

  She called it “my show-them feeling.”

  The built-up personality of Monti Lee—the ballad singer, the torch singer—came over her. She visualized a microphone before her, called up the Spanish lyrics that had been coached into her for a movie about Mexico.

  One deep breath: the husky voice rolled out over the dirty landing, into the humid, odorous, insect-filled air.

  “Quiéreme mucho, dulce amor mio …”

  All work on refueling the plane stopped.

  She had them under control when she hit the second line.

  Someone raced up the steps. Presently a guitar sounded behind her, filling out the melody. Then another guitar … maracas. An older boy from the swarm picked up the counterpoint by tapping two hardwood sticks.

  Her voice sank to the closing verse: “… tan separados vivir …” She left it hanging there.

  The landing erupted to shouts: “Olé! Olé!” They wanted more.

  She gave them “Siboney” … “Babalu” … “Sin Ti” … “Luna, Luna, Luna.”

  Finally, her voice grew tired.

  But they wanted still more.

  She looked down at Jeb on the landing below her. His face was drawn into a craggy frown. “Tell them I can’t sing anymore,” she said.

  “Tell them yourself!”

  “Wha—Oh!” She began to laugh. “I don’t speak their language. I just know the words to some songs. They’re just … noise.”

  “Some noise!”

  He waved the guitarists away, turned to the crowd on the steps. “The voice is tired,” he said. “No more voice.”

  “Ahhhhhhhhh …” It was a long multiple sigh of regret.

  One of the guitarists wanted to know, “She is a star of the cíne, no?”

  “Kind of,” said Jeb.

  “Oh.”

  Another stepped forward. “You are staying the night? There is a fiesta that …”

  Jeb shook his head, glanced at his wristwatch.