High Adventure

by Donald E. Westlake

  “What I’m getting at is,” he said, “in the rainy season, in the wet six months of the year, this is all swamp through here, bog, simply impassable. There’s no way to change it, not the sluice at the bottom of an entire watershed.” Then, chuckling a bit, his pointing fingers making an arc westward of her site, he said, “Oh, I suppose a billion dollars to put a dam across here between these mountains might help a little, but even so it wouldn’t work, you’d still have ground seepage, all these other mountains draining. So you see the difficulty; for six months of the year, total swamp.”

  “But the Mayans specialized in clearing swamp,” Valerie objected. “Along the coast, there are evidences of milpa farming two thousand years ago where now it’s all swamp again.”

  “The Mayans never tried to divert the runoff from eleven mountains,” Vernon said drily. “But even so, there’s the other problem, the underground fault. Without it, your site would be perfectly fine, it would contain perhaps Belize’s only lake, but as things are the land can’t retain the water, it all just runs right through, to these two streams and that one. So, for the dry six months of the year, the swamp becomes almost a desert. No lake, no water, nothing will grow, nothing at all can exist there.” Tapping the map with his hard fingernails, he said, “No, I’m sorry, Miss Greene, this is the one parcel of land in all Belize where not even the Mayans ever lived.”

  Valerie, despite herself, was a bit daunted by what he had said, but she did have the computer results to buoy her, and the faith of the two New York foundations, and the results of her own study, so she said, “I’m sorry, um—” not knowing whether to call him Vernon or Mister Vernon, therefore calling him um instead of either “—but I really want to go see the place for myself.”

  “Of course, that’s your privilege,” Vernon said, smiling at her to show it was no skin off his nose. “In fact,” he said, “if you were to go there now, just today, the area would look very nice indeed. The rainy season ended a few weeks ago and the water is still draining away, so the vegetation hasn’t all died yet but the ground is dry.”

  “I would like to see the place,” Valerie said firmly, aware of the office door opening behind her, “and as soon as possible.”

  “Ah, here’s the Deputy Director now,” Vernon said, smiling, gesturing for Valerie to turn about and look.

  The man she saw was an inch or two shorter than herself, barrel-bodied, older than 50, with tightly curled black hair, skin the color of milk chocolate, eyes and teeth that flashed with pleasure at the sight of her, and a strong aura of self-confidence, mastery. Without being offensive about it, he would dominate any room he entered.

  As he dominated this one, approaching Valerie, thick-fingered hand out to be shaken as Vernon performed the introductions: “Deputy Director St. Michael, this is Miss Valerie Greene, an archaeologist from the United States.”

  “Delighted,” St. Michael said, closing her hand briefly in both of his. (His hands were warm, not unpleasantly so.)

  “You recall, Deputy Director,” Vernon was saying, “the correspondence concerning undiscovered Mayan ruins, possibly to be traced by computers at the University of California at Los Angeles.”

  “Yes, of course.” St. Michael beamed at her, as though he’d just this minute invented her. “Miss Greene, of course. And how is Los Angeles?”

  “Actually,” Valerie said, “I came here from New York.”

  “Ah, New York! I love that town.” St. Michael’s beam turned reminiscent, then waggish. “Cold up there right now,” he said, “but give me a New York restaurant any day. Even in January. Has Vernon been helpful?” (Which didn’t help much in the first-name-last-name question.)

  “Very,” she said. “Though he has been trying to discourage me.”

  “Oh, I hope not.” St. Michael waggled a finger at Vernon, saying, “Never discourage our friends from the north.”

  “I don’t think Miss Greene can be discouraged,” Vernon said. “She showed me the area where she expects to find the temple, and I had to tell her the problems.”

  “Problems?” Even this St. Michael reacted to with an undercurrent of waggish humor. Valerie was surprised to realize the man was—despite all the obvious differences—reminding her of Orson Welles in “The Third Man.” She half-expected him to call her Holly.

  “Well, here, sir,” Vernon was saying, pointing to the topographical map again, “you know this piece of land, you’ll see the difficulty right away.”

  “I do?” St. Michael strode over to the map, he and Vernon consulted for a few seconds, and then St. Michael thumped his finger against the map, saying, “Here, you mean?”

  “Right there, yes, sir.”

  “I see.” St. Michael brooded at the map, suddenly very thoughtful. Valerie took a step closer.

  Vernon said, “I did explain about the drainage problem, the underground fault—”

  “Yes, yes, Vernon, of course,” St. Michael said, still thoughtful, still brooding at the map. But then, his good humor regained, he smiled roguishly at Vernon, saying, “But the Mayans had minds of their own, didn’t they? No telling what the buggers might do.”

  “But, sir,” Vernon protested, pointing at the map, “no one could possibly—”

  “Abandoned their own cities,” St. Michael said, overriding his assistant, plowing blandly on, “going off into the jungles for no rhyme or reason.” Turning to Valerie, he said, “Isn’t that right, Miss Greene?”

  “That’s the great unsolved mystery of the Mayan civilization,” Valerie agreed.

  “Exactly,” St. Michael said. To Vernon he said, “Disease didn’t get them. Not war, not famine. They were healthy, civilized, doing very well for themselves, then one day, up they got and marched off into the jungle, and a thousand years later most of them still haven’t come back. Just walked right out of their cities.”

  “Not all at once, though,” Valerie pointed out. “It happened in different places at different times, over hundreds of years.”

  “But sooner or later,” St. Michael prompted.

  “Oh, yes,” she agreed. “Eventually, they turned their backs on their entire civilization.”

  “You see?” St. Michael opened his arms in triumph, smiling at his assistant. “If those people would leave a city for no good reason, who’s to say where they wouldn’t build one?”

  Vernon was clearly not entirely convinced by this logic, but an assistant knows when to retire and leave the field to his number one. “You might be right, sir,” he said, with only the slightest visible reluctance.

  “Or I could be wrong,” St. Michael cheerfully replied. “I expect Miss Greene will soon be able to tell us.” He smiled again at the map, thinking about something or other, then turned to Valerie, saying, “I do know that piece of land, though not well. I know its owner.”

  “Oh, yes?”

  “He’s a compatriot of yours, named Kirby Galway.”

  The name meant nothing to Valerie. She said, “Would he object to my going out there?”

  “Now, why would he? As a matter of fact, Miss Greene,” he said, moving away from the map at last, coming over to stand just a bit too close to Valerie, looking for a quick instant at her breasts before gazing her frankly and openly in the eye, “as a matter of fact, it’s possible we could be of help to one another.”

  Valerie thought, Why does he make me nervous? She said, “Of course, if I can.”

  “I’ve been interested for some time,” St. Michael said, “in what Kirby Galway plans to do with that land. In my position here, you can see I would be.”

  “Ye-ess.”

  “But also because of my position,” St. Michael said, shrugging slightly, smiling at himself, “I can’t really ask him the Question Direct. He might be afraid of government interference, red tape, that sort of thing. I don’t want to pester people, I want development of our Belizean land. My department wants it. This is just a … personal curiosity. Do you see what I mean?”

  “I think so,” Valerie
said.

  “You could go in there,” St. Michael said, “no official connection, no interest in anything but Mayan ruins, and when you came back, you could tell me what else you saw.”

  “Do you mean,” Valerie (who read the newspapers) said, “marijuana?”

  St. Michael seemed honestly startled, then amused. “Oh, Miss Greene, not at all! Oh, no, the conditions there would be completely wrong.”

  “As I said,” Vernon put in quietly.

  “No, I’ll tell you what I have in mind.” St. Michael reached out to lightly touch her forearm. “Nothing criminal, nothing like that at all. Miss Greene—Valerie, is it?”

  “Yes.”

  “May I call you Valerie? And you must call me Innocent.”

  What an idea. Valerie stared at him, speechless.

  “We have here in Belmopan,” Innocent St. Michael said, squeezing her arm gently, “just one excellent restaurant, called the Bullfrog. Not up to New York standards, but very nice. Please permit me to treat you to lunch at the Bullfrog, where I will tell you exactly how I hope you will be able to help me.”

  In the background, Vernon looked knowing. In the foreground, Valerie felt confused. “Thank you very much,” she heard herself saying. “That sounds nice.”

  7

  TO LIVE FOREVER

  From the air, Kirby could see the wheel marks of yesterday’s landing; scuffed paler streaks through the grass and clover of the field. And here he was, about to make a second set of the same stripes. Another irritation; somehow, all those lines would have to be obliterated by tomorrow.

  He flew on, up and over the hill—from the air, his temple wasn’t visible at all—and buzzed the Indian village in the cleft beyond, to let the boys know he wanted to see them. Bare-assed kids between the low brown huts waved at him as he circled overhead. He waggled his wings in reply, then flew back to the field and landed.

  He had already walked partway up the cleared temple side—about at the spot where Witcher and Feldspan had yesterday discovered the jaguar carving—when the group appeared above him, rising up onto the flattened temple top. They were half a dozen short, chunky men in rope-soled shoes or barefoot, wearing old work pants and homedyed shirts. Four carried machetes loosely at their sides. They had the flat, blunt, enigmatic faces of Maya Indians, and they waited in silence for Kirby to climb the rest of the way to the top.

  “Well, Tommy,” Kirby said, when he reached the top. “Hiya, guys. Let me catch my breath.”

  Tommy, whose shirt was several shades of green, said, “Something wrong, Kimosabe?” His joke.

  “Nothing we can’t handle,” Kirby told him. “Not us guys.”

  Luz—red shirt, badly torn—said to Tommy, “He means us guys.”

  Kirby grinned and looked out over his mousetrap. It was better, and the world was beating a path to his door. His temple door.

  This is where he’d been standing, just under two years ago, when he’d first met Tommy and the others, and when their unusual alliance had begun. Of course, the top hadn’t been cleared then; there was no temple.

  Kirby stood panting atop the low scrubby hill in hot sunshine and gazed out in disgust over his land. His land. “Innocent St. Michael,” he muttered, looking out over the blasted heath and his blasted hopes. He had never felt so low.

  In the six weeks he had owned it, this land had undergone a ghastly transformation, like a vampire left out in the sun. The grassy field down there on which he had first landed was now a cracked dry moonscape, pale tan, as lined and creased as W. H. Auden’s face. Even the corpses of the grass so recently growing there had dried to ash and blown away.

  The upper slopes of his land were, in their way, even more terrible, having become a landscape from Hieronymus Bosch. Gnarled and twisted trunks produced leathery sharp-edged leaves. Yellowish grass in long razor-sharp clumps stubbled the rise. Nasty fork-tongued creatures that only a luggage maker could love moved in and out across a landscape of rocks and boulders and scaly dry dirt. Birds cawed in derision as they flew westward, toward the verdant hills, the blue shapes of the Maya Mountains, lush with rich dark soil, fecund with greenery. “Fuck you,” Kirby told the birds.

  They went on, their laughter fading, and in the silence he could almost hear the land as it dried, as new seams and cracks opened in the dead skin of his ranch. Cynthia, baking in the sunglare down below, looked ready to fall into one of those lesions and disappear into the baked dry bowels of the Earth. Kirby was of half a mind to join her.

  Movement attracted his attention down the opposite slope, where he saw half a dozen wiry-haired Indians making their slow way up toward him, little dust-puffs rising from each step. Good, he thought, now I’m gonna get killed for my watch.

  He put his watch in his pocket. Too bad he couldn’t put his boots in his pocket. Put his whole self in his pocket. Maybe he could trade them; they’d let him go, and he’d give them Innocent St. Michael. They could rend him down for a lifetime supply of lard.

  The Indians, squat tough-looking men with hooded eyes and gleaming machetes, reached the hilltop and stood gazing at him. One said, “Hello.”

  “Hello,” said Kirby.

  “Nice day.”

  “If you say so,” said Kirby.

  “Cigarette?”

  “No, thanks,” said Kirby.

  “I meant for me,” the Indian said.

  “Oh. Sorry, I don’t smoke.”

  The Indian looked disgusted. Turning, he spoke to his friends in some other language, and then they all looked disgusted. Shaking his head at Kirby, the spokesman said, “It used to be, the one thing you could count on from Americans was a couple of cigarettes. Now you all quit smoking.”

  “They want to live forever,” suggested one of the other Indians.

  Was that a veiled threat? Kirby said, “I’ve got some gage in the plane, if you’re interested.”

  “Now, you’re talking,” said the spokesman. The one who’d made the possible threat translated for the others, who all managed to perk up while remaining essentially stoic; it was like seeing trees smile. Meanwhile, the spokesman told Kirby, “We’ve got some home-brew back in the village. Make a dynamite combo.”

  “Where is this village?” Kirby asked. He was thinking, maybe they’re on my land, maybe I could charge rent.

  “Back that way,” the spokesman said, negligently waving his machete, not quite decapitating any of his friends.

  “How much shit you got?” asked the perhaps threatener.

  Kirby said, “How big’s your village?”

  “Eleven households,” the man said seriously, as though Kirby were a census taker.

  “Then I’ve got enough,” Kirby said.

  The spokesman smiled, showing a lot of square white teeth. “I’m Tommy Watson,” he said, extending the hand without the machete.

  “Kirby Galway,” Kirby said, taking the hand.

  Nodding at the alleged threatener, Tommy Watson said, “And this is my cousin, Luz Coco.”

  “How you doing?”

  “Sure,” said Luz Coco. “Let’s go get your stash.”

  They all walked down the hill together, and Kirby got the two Glad Bags out of the pocket in his door. “I don’t have enough papers for everybody.”

  “That’s okay,” Tommy said. “We’ll get some toilet paper from the mission.” He spoke to his friends again, and a disagreement took place. Hefting the Glad Bags in his palms, Kirby leaned against his plane and waited it out. What the hell, there was no hope anyway.

  Kekchi is a language containing a lot of clicks and gutturals and harshnesses even when people are being friendly with one another; when they’re arguing about who has to go over to the mission for toilet paper and therefore miss the beginning of the party it can sound pretty hairy. But eventually two of the group acknowledged defeat and went sloping away, glancing mulishly back from time to time as they went, and Kirby joined the rest of them in a walk over his sun-bleached hill and halfway up the next slope and around
into a green and cheerful declivity in which the 11 wood-and-frond huts were placed higglety-pigglety on both sides of a swift-moving, clear, cold, bubbling stream. “You bastards even have water,” Kirby said. They were by now well away from his land.

  Tommy looked at him in wonder. “Jesus God,” he said. “So that’s what you’re hanging around for. You bought that swamp.”

  “Desert, you mean,” Kirby said.

  “You haven’t seen it in the rainy season.”

  “Hell and damn,” Kirby said.

  But there was little time for self-pity. Kirby had to be introduced to all the villagers—fewer than a hundred people, none of whom had more than a smattering of English—and the party had to be gotten under way. The home-brew, which came out in a variety of recycled bottles and jars, was a kind of cross between beer and cleaning fluid, which in fact went very well with pot.

  Tommy said the village was called South Abilene, and maybe it was. Most of its residents were actually very shy, prepared to accept Kirby’s presence—and his donation—but otherwise staying well within their stoic dignity, though they did express amusement when their two friends came back from the mission all out of breath, carrying rolls of toilet paper and pamphlets explaining the Trinity.

  These were the descendants of the people who had built the temples. Their relationship with the world had narrowed since those glory days; now, they were farmers, jungle dwellers with only a tangential connection to the modem age. Small villages like this were scattered through the Central American plains and jungles, their Indian residents clinging to a simple self sufficiency, almost totally separate from the technological civilization swirling around them. They had given up both temple building and war; they neither fought nor praised, nor even very much hoped; they subsisted, and survived.

  Tommy Watson and Luz Coco were the only South Abilenians fluent in English and, so far as Kirby could tell, the only sophisticates in the crowd, whose conversation and manner betrayed a wider knowledge of civilization. With their half-mocking existential hip form of the traditional Indian fatalism, they were like a couple of Marx brothers wandering through a Robert Flaherty documentary. They were so total a contrast, in fact, that Kirby would have loved to know their story, but they insisted he tell them first how it happened that he had bought the farm.