The Orchid Hunter

by Sandra K. Moore

  “Since when did Marcello become your errand boy?” I glanced back. The kid followed, still wearing his Day-Glo green climbing harness and twanging his bowstring at bugs and leaves as he pretended to shoot them. Pretending, of course, not to be interested in what we were doing.

  “I think he’s got a crush on you,” Rick observed.

  “I seem to have that effect on men. Have no idea why.”

  “Don’t you?”

  I didn’t dare meet his eyes. “Maybe he’s just not used to seeing a woman out of her customary realm of duty,” I said. “So why are you using him as errand boy?”

  “He’s the adopted son of the headman’s favorite warrior. And he’ll be a huya soon—”

  “A who?”

  “Huya. Young man of responsibility.”

  I glanced at Marcello’s tiny self. It made sense. Kids in the jungle got married at twelve, were grandparents at thirty and died around fifty. Life just happened faster here.

  “You think Porfilio will be able to do anything?” I asked, thinking about the colonel’s temporary insanity.

  “The colonel can be forced to cooperate,” Rick said firmly.

  “Forced? Isn’t that a bad idea? I mean, you don’t want to start a range war.”

  “I’m not talking about a war. I’m talking about a clear assessment of facts. The Brazilian government has to start backing up its laws with enforcement. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “Ideally, yeah,” I said. “But the National Foundation of The Indian is underfunded and understaffed. You know how big the Amazon is. How can they possibly—”

  “Sometimes it takes will to get the job done.”

  I recognized the gleam in Rick’s eye. Scooter got it sometimes when he was talking about conservation. No matter what came out of my mouth, Rick wasn’t going to hear it. Time for me to keep my trap shut on the subject.

  “Check this out,” I said instead.

  I unclipped the trap from my belt and handed it to Rick. His eyes widened as he took it and his steps slowed to a halt. In true entomologist fashion, he started mumbling to himself about the tympanum, proboscis, labial palps, wing venation and so forth. After watching him a minute or two, I wondered if I got as hot and bothered looking at orchids.

  I hoped not.

  “I need my glasses,” he said abruptly, tearing his attention away from the moth and walking again. “We have new quarters. We got kicked out of the communal living area. The headman said we should stay in our own hut from now on.”

  “Nice of him to make us so welcome,” I said dryly.

  “He figured we foreigners needed our own space. They built us a hut this morning.”

  “Yeah, but does it have a shower?”

  “No, but they told me where there’s a pond to bathe in.”

  “Is that communal, too?”

  Rick cast me that grin. “Only if you issue an invitation.”

  “Like that’ll happen,” I retorted. “Where’s this hut?”

  It wasn’t bad for emergency living quarters. The walls didn’t meet the floor, so the creeping things might be an issue, but if we kept the deet sprayed on we’d be okay. Besides, they’d strung hammocks up for us. And since we were in Death Orchid territory, I wasn’t going to complain too much. Somebody had already moved my duffel bag inside.

  Rick collected his bug gear and went outside to study his moth. I was surprised to see a bunch of electronic equipment emerge from his big duffel: a handheld Global Positioning System like mine, a transmitter, a couple of small-screened monitoring devices, and a closed tray of what looked like tiny computer chips that must have been bug trackers.

  “The pistoleiros didn’t break your stuff?” I asked.

  “Not the stuff that mattered.” He settled on the ground and took out a slide gauge. The moth fluttered as he slipped his gauge through specially designed trap holes to get his first measurement. He jotted notes in a half-size notebook.

  I eyed the computer chips. “Is that homing equipment?”

  He nodded, not looking up from his notebook.

  “To track the moth?”

  Rick glanced at me. “Yeah. You curious about it?”

  “After all the trouble we went to to catch it, I want to know everything about it. In detail.”

  He was silent for a moment, scribbling, before he asked, “Have you found your bromeliad?”

  I shrugged. “Not yet.”

  His lips pressed to a thin line and I could sense for the first time his disapproval. “Is it not a priority for you?”

  “I’ve been busy helping with your moth,” I said, feeling annoyed. “And sitting by your bedside hoping you wouldn’t die.”

  “Thank you. I appreciate that.”

  His tight-lipped formality pissed me off. Where was his attitude coming from? Time to go on the offensive. “Last time I looked, my bromeliad wasn’t your business.”

  He raised an eyebrow and finally gave me his full attention. “So far, you’ve been more interested in my moth than your plant.”

  “It’s my vacation. I’ll damn well do what I want.”

  “What are you really after, Jessie?”

  “I’m actually a psychologist studying the anal-retentive nature of bug nerds,” I replied. “You’re my first subject.”

  He ignored the sarcasm. “I’m not stupid. It’s the orchid, isn’t it? You work for a private collector.”

  “My job isn’t your business, no matter what it is.”

  “It is if you’re here to steal a rare exotic at the whim of people with more money than sense.”

  Only idealists had that kind of nerve, strutting around trying to solve the world’s problems. “I don’t need a lecture from you about what I do for a living. My client is a serious conservationist.”

  “Because he hires you to bring him back an orchid he thinks no one else in the world has? For the prestige? Jeopardizing serious research with his egotism?”

  “Because he manages to reproduce the rarest plants when the best brains in the orchid-growing business can’t,” I retorted, a good head of steam building up. “Because he’s convinced this one is special. Because his pharma might be able to use this one to create a Parkinson’s cure.”

  And I swear to you I heard the next words coming out of my mouth when I really didn’t want to say them. “Because he’ll save the life of the man who raised me. That’s why I’m here, not looking for bromeliads and following your moth around. Because Scooter’s dying.”

  His eyes narrowed. Thank God I didn’t start bawling. I was mad enough to. As he set the trap on the ground, I scrambled up and headed into the jungle. Anything to get away from Mr. Idealistic Judgment.

  I heard footsteps behind me, then a soft “hey.” He caught hold of my arm.

  I jerked from his grasp. “Don’t ‘hey’ me. It’s not your business.” And then, to my everlasting humiliation, the tears came. “Just don’t kill that moth,” I said, glaring at him through them. “I need to use it tonight to hunt my orchid.”

  Then I turned away and stalked deeper into the impenetrable forest.

  A half mile into the jungle, the low voices tipped me off a split second before the stench did. I crouched silently, peering through the underbrush at the three Yanomamo warriors squatting next to a small cook fire.

  One dropped a handful of leaves into a black iron pot of witches’ brew while another swung the pot slightly off the flame, regulating the temperature. If they were doing what I thought they were doing, no woman should be witnessing the ritual. Maybe I didn’t count because I wasn’t one of their women. They could be just cooking up something for the shaman, I mused.

  But one man holding a jaguar-skin pouch nodded at the other two, then took a slender arrowhead from the pouch. He attached it to a notched stick and carefully dipped it in the cook pot. When the arrowhead came out, it was coated with a slimy black paste. He set the arrowhead, pointing away, on a wide fallen log to dry.

  I watched him doctor a dozen ar
rowheads before I backed off as quietly as I could.

  They were cooking curare, a poison capable of killing a man in ten minutes, a poison for which there was no cure.

  The Yanomamo were preparing to go to war.

  Marcello found me about thirty minutes later in a little liana forest where I lay on a flat rock, staring up at the midstory and trying not to think too much. I had to smile at the green webbing still tied firmly around his waist and legs. My throat tightened up. What would happen to him if things escalated out of control with the miners? Would this entire village be wiped out as if it were a bothersome colony of ants rather than a community with its own social rules, its own mores and religion and idiosyncrasies?

  I knelt to be at eye level with him as he approached. His black eyes, fathomlessly deep in his brown face, gleamed with barely checked mischief. He grabbed my hand with his small ones and tugged me. Come on, he was saying, I have something to show you. When I hesitated, he frowned, tugged harder.

  Marcello wasn’t playing around. He meant business. Fear pricked my gut. Had Rick had a relapse? Had he overdone it with his yoga grandstanding earlier?

  I followed Marcello down a narrow path to a remote hut identical to the one the Yanomamo had built for me and Rick. It was some distance from the village, like it might be the shaman’s, but instead Father João stood outside the doorway. He beamed beatifically at me.

  “Please,” he murmured, gesturing to a seat on the other side of the doorway. He sank to the ground after I sat cross-legged. Marcello hunkered down next to me and draped an arm over my knee.

  “Thanks for helping with Rick,” I said.

  The priest waved his hand. “I did nothing. But I will convey your thank-you to the shaman.”

  I swallowed and nodded. Yeah, that was fair. The shaman had saved Rick’s life with his weird herbal concoction and I’d be stupid to ignore that fact. I just didn’t like being wrong.

  “Why did you send for me?” I asked.

  “Perhaps I can tell you why I am here,” Father João replied.

  Not in the mood to listen, I still couldn’t muster enough rudeness to say so. When I didn’t say anything, he went on.

  “I came to this village years ago, when mines started opening up all over the Amazon Basin. Poor southern men came here, looking for money and secure jobs, so they started to work for mines. Not just gold, like the one you saw, but bauxite and oil wells, too. Or they brought their families and took farms alongside the Transamazon Highway.

  “I knew the Yanomamo and their neighboring tribes wouldn’t survive the new diseases, so I came to give them preventative medicine. In most cases, it was good. The longer I stayed, the more I learned about their medicine. It is written in a wise book that when a shaman dies, a library is lost. This is true.”

  Father João nodded at me sagely before adding, “And so when someone is bitten by the fer-de-lance or touches a poisonous toad, I wait first for the shaman.”

  He looked at me expectantly for a long moment. “Okay,” I said finally, not knowing what else to say.

  “Marcello lost his village in a different way.” The priest smiled at the boy fondly. “He understands some of what I am saying to you because he started learning English very young.”

  “Do you run a school?” I asked, startled. It didn’t seem like something this particular priest, interested in maintaining the native culture, would do.

  “Oh, no! Marcello was found running the streets of Boa Vista. His village had suffered attack by corrupt gold miners, so he walked down the Amazon tributaries until he found a city.”

  Marcello had found a city all right. Boa Vista was about a couple hundred thousand people worth of city.

  “He was brought to me to bring back here,” Father João continued. “The alternative was an orphanage, where he would know nothing of his culture, his language, his customs.”

  “How old was he when he walked to Boa Vista?” I asked, curious.

  “He believes he was six.”

  I looked at the kid, sitting there quietly, his dark eyes soft and fathomless. He’d walked a helluva longer distance than I had during Scooter’s little experiment, and he hadn’t had the assurance of someone coming to find him if he got lost. Or giving him a hot meal when he got where he was going. Here was a kid with gumption I appreciated, clever and self-sufficient. And, if I were to be completely honest, he was pretty adorable to boot.

  When I smiled at him, he leaned on me trustingly, still gazing at me with those wide eyes. Great. Him and Rick.

  Maybe not Rick anymore. My smile died. Maybe it was just me and the kid now.

  “So why did you tell me this?” I asked Father João, putting my hand on the back of Marcello’s neck. The kid was just this side of purring. “Do I look like I need a history lesson?”

  “It is so you’ll understand when I tell you you aren’t welcome here, you and your kind, Dr. Robards.”

  What the—? The priest’s tone hadn’t changed, I sensed no menace in his words. But the message was as clear as the Evil Eye’s: get out and don’t come back.

  I stared at the padre’s gentle face for a full minute, wondering if my eternal soul would go straight to hell for cold-cocking a priest.

  “What do you mean, ‘my kind’?” I asked softly.

  “Mercenaries. Hunters. Whatever it is you call yourselves.”

  “How do you know what I—”

  “A man came through the village yesterday,” Father João said, “which is why you were taken to the communal hut. He was looking for you, Dr. Robards. And the orchid.”

  It must be Lawrence Damned Daley. “Was he English? Or funny English? Like he was pretending?”

  Father João nodded.

  “Did he have anyone else with him? Indians or Brazilians?”

  “Four Brazilians. Pistoleiros.”

  “Did you tell him I was here?”

  “He passed through in the afternoon before you arrived. It’s why we took the precaution of hiding you when you showed up.”

  “You took a chance,” I said grimly. “I appreciate that.”

  “Don’t,” Father João replied. “I would have turned you over to him if I’d had to, to protect this village.”

  “He’s not dangerous,” I assured him, then paused at the memory of him leaning over a cliff aiming a semiautomatic at me. “Not to you, anyway.”

  “This place is a—what do you call it?—powder keg waiting to blow up. The mine’s pistoleiros roam, threatening the Yanomamo they find. Now you and your mercenary ilk are hunting each other. All armed.”

  I’d hoped he hadn’t noticed the rifle poking at both ends of my duffel. Ah well.

  “I don’t plan on hurting anyone, especially not these people,” I insisted, pointing toward the village. “I just want my orchid. That’s it.”

  “And yet you bring the pistoleiros in pursuit, as well.” Father João crossed his arms over his chest, the first antagonistic gesture he’d shown.

  “They tried to hold us when our plane went down. It’s not my fault they’re chasing me around.”

  No, it was Kinkaid’s, pissing into the fuel tanks. But everyone saw me, an Americano woman, taking down the pistoleiros and setting the donos on his ass with a fire hose. Kinkaid was just a take-it-or-leave-it nuisance.

  “There is another man, an American, chasing through the forest, as well,” Father João said.

  What?

  Had some other orchid collector got wind of what I was doing? Or had Daley brought a buddy with him? No, Daley working with someone else didn’t compute.

  My mind finally flashed on the Brain. The Brain had told the Whiner that if they couldn’t find Harrison’s map, they’d have to send someone called “Noah.” Was Noah here, now, looking for the Death Orchid? Or had the Brain come himself?

  “Can you describe this man?” I asked.

  Father João shrugged. “I saw him from a distance. He did not come to the village, but stayed away.”

  “Ho
w do you know he was an American?”

  The padre smiled. “He was big. Very tall.”

  That didn’t sound like the Brain. “Was he losing his hair?” I motioned on my own head to show him where.

  “No. This man had light hair, cut short, almost like the military. What is that called? Crow—”

  “Crew cut,” I corrected absently, staring at the palm growing behind the padre’s hut.

  Well, dammit. It must be the man called Noah.

  “It is in everyone’s best interests if you leave this place and never return,” Father João insisted gently. “You bring too much danger and uncertainty with you.”

  “The mining operation is all yours,” I pointed out. “I had nothing to do with that. Whether I’m here or not, the mine will be a problem for the Yanomamo.”

  “Your friend sees a solution,” the padre observed. “He is willing to help.”

  I got the message. Rick was okay but I wasn’t. The fleeting stab—of not being welcome, of not belonging—annoyed me.

  “I have my own priority—”

  “I’m sure you do, Dr. Robards,” the padre said. “I do not wish to pass judgment on your actions or motivations. I wish merely to protect the innocents around you who will only suffer the consequences should you choose to remain here.”

  He had a point. The pistoleiros were likely to shoot everything in sight to kill me, on the colonel’s orders. There was no telling how dire, how explosive, that situation really was. The pistoleiros might have guns, but the Yanomamo had their curare-tipped arrows and impeccable aim. War wasn’t inconceivable. Then the military would get involved and within hours there wouldn’t be anything left of these people.

  “Don’t worry,” I told him. “I won’t be here for long. Two, maybe three days.” I had only ten days left to get the orchid back to von Brutten. If Scooter was still alive.

  “That may not be soon enough,” Father João replied. “The village headman will meet with the man called Porfilio tomorrow. Your friend Rick will be present to help facilitate, of course.”

  “I won’t be here,” I told him. “I’ll stay out of the way.”

  “It is for the best,” Father João confirmed.

  I glared at the padre’s serene face for a moment. I could understand his wanting me out. Daley was after me. Some unknown military-type American was lurking in the forest. And Father João had nothing to offer me beyond what he’d already given: a bed for the night and advice.