“Maybe not,” he said. “If I could swim across with a rope we could tie it to a tree on each side and swing ourselves over on it.”

  “You saw what would happen to you if you tried swimming across,” Tarita said impatiently.

  “Kolben,” Nick said. “He will be crossing at the stone crossing four miles up?”

  “Undoubtedly,” she answered.

  “Do you think he will leave the stones for us?” Nick asked. The girl said nothing, but he knew he had made his point. If the stones could be moved, Kolben would destroy the crossing.

  “We go over here,” he said.

  “Impossible,” she said, giving him another impatient look. “We’ll have to go back. There is another spot downriver, maybe five miles.”

  “That’ll put us back a whole day!” Nick exclaimed. “Not on your life. Look, I know something about the piranha. If they have a bloodied carcass to attack, every one of them in the area will attack it until they’ve stripped it bare. Everything else is safe until they’ve stripped the carcass.”

  He turned to Atutu and, with gestures more than words, told the little Indian to go back and cut down the tapir from the spring trap. As Atutu vanished, Nick turned to Tarita, who stood with arms folded, pressing her breasts up still higher, little nipples peeking out from over the tops of her folded arms. “Down, boy!” he told himself. He saw the stubbornness in the girl’s posture.

  “I can do it,” he said. “While they’re busy stripping the tapir, I’ll take one end of the rope, swim across with it and tie it to the other side. You’ll hold the other end and tie it to a tree on this side.”

  “Impossible,” she snapped, looking at him with a haughty annoyance. “They’ll finish the tapir when you’re halfway across. You’ll never make the other side. All you’ve done is waste more time sending Atutu back for the carcass.”

  Nick gazed across the river, watched a branch pass by and again realized how swift the current was in midriver—deceptively swift. He gauged its width against the current and tried to estimate how long it would take the piranha to strip the tapir. It was a thoroughly imponderable set of elements. Then he thought of Kolben getting a full day’s march on them in addition to his present lead.

  “I’ll make it,” he said grimly, sounding more confident than he felt. He noticed that Tarita was glaring at him, her brown eyes a deep, angry fire. Atutu appeared, dragging the heavy tapir behind him, sinking down to the ground in exhaustion with it.

  “Good boy,” Nick said to the little man. “You big fella.” The native smiled between long breaths. Nick handed him one end of the rope. Atutu nodded in understanding.

  “I’ll take the other end,” Tarita said as Nick started toward the water with it.

  “This is my party,” Nick said. “I’m going across.”

  She stood before him, blocking his path, and with a quick, catlike movement, snatched the rope from his hand. She started for the water, pausing to tuck the sarong up between her legs, deftly making it into a kind of tight panty. She had dismissed him, and Nick’s eyes narrowed. He recalled the condescending tone she had used about taking the rifles, the way she had ignored his call to her the previous night when she disappeared into the jungle, the impatient, chiding glance she had tossed him when he warned her not to chase the tapir. And now she was disregarding him again, being very western again, very disdainfully, haughtily western. It was time he straightened out this little morsel, he told himself. He didn’t go after her. Instead, he grabbed a section of the rope and yanked hard, and saw the end fly out of her hand. He gathered in the rope casually as she marched back to him, lips grimly set, jaw determined, angry.

  “Give me the rope,” she demanded, her eyes black pits of anger.

  “Like hell,” Nick said, pleasantly smiling at her.

  “You are insisting on doing this,” she said. “I have given my word to guide you. I will go across.”

  “You’re staying here,” Nick said. “And don’t give me that guide bit. You’re only doing this because you want to make a point, because I’m not taking your advice. You’re not being a guide, you’re being a fancy, European-school snip.”

  Nick watched her eyes blaze.

  “And you’re being a complete idiot,” she snapped back. “I told you you couldn’t do something and now you’re willing to commit suicide to try and prove me wrong, all because your masculine ego is hurt.”

  “My masculine ego isn’t hurt, honey,” Nick said. “But your little ass sure as hell will be if you don’t cut this out.”

  On the fringe of his vision, he saw Atutu watching, wide-eyed. Words were flying too fast for the little Indian to understand, but he knew what was going on, nonetheless. Once again Tarita snatched the end of the rope, turned her back on Nick and strode toward the river. She called something to Atutu and Nick saw him start toward the tapir, then hesitate and glance up at Nick. Nick moved after her this time, spinning her around at the water’s edge.

  “You’re a product of two worlds, all right,” he said. “And you’ve picked up the stubborn perverseness of both of them.”

  He brought his arm across in a short chop, making certain to aim the blow downward so nothing would harm those beautiful white teeth. The blow caught her on the point of her lovely chin and she collapsed instantly. Nick managed to catch her as she crumpled, easing her gently to the ground. Something in Atutu’s eyes bordered on admiration and enjoyment as Nick went over to him, and together they flung the heavy carcass into the river, tossing it as far as they could.

  Nick took off his safari jacket and trousers, put the Luger down on the ground atop his clothes, and watched as the current began to catch the heavy carcass, slowly turning it in the water. Nick tied one end of the rope around his waist and Atutu moved slightly behind him so he could let it play out. As he watched, Nick saw the water around the carcass suddenly come alive and begin to chum. The piranha had zeroed in on the carcass.

  He ran, diving headlong from the bank into the river in a long, shallow dive. He struck out at once, powerful legs kicking, long arms driving, sending his body knifing through the warm water. He cast a glance back at the carcass, saw it trembling violently, being moved back and forth as a thousand tearing jaws bit into it. The shore suddenly looked very far away.

  As he moved out farther into the river he felt the current pull at him just below the surface, trying to move him downriver toward the crazed piranhas. He kicked out, renewing his efforts, feeling the current grow stronger as he neared midstream, robbing him of precious time, forcing him to use strength he needed to make it across the river. Then he heard Atutu’s yell.

  “Big fella go!” the little man was screaming. “Big fella go!” Nick knew what the cry meant and he shot a glance back at the carcass of the tapir. In their frenzied snapping and pulling at it, the piranha were turning it over in the water, bringing the top, fleshy part into the water. He saw that more than half of the animal was now only a skeleton of fresh white bone. The piranha were finishing their meal rapidly. He’d be dessert soon. Nick felt his leg muscles begin to tire and he stretched out to avoid a cramp. That would be his end, now. If this were a swimming meet, he knew he’d have set some kind of record.

  He was three-quarters of the way there, when suddenly he felt the current slacken. It was as though an anchor had been lifted from around his legs, and the relief gave him an added burst of strength. He knew he would need it as he glanced back to see only water, the carcass stripped clean and sunk. Thousands of needle-sharp teeth were moving through the water, searching, being attracted by the thrashing form in their river.

  He couldn’t see, but he could feel the movement of the water at his back, a sudden, swirling movement, a fierce agitation of the water caused by the horde of darting, rushing shapes. He felt his feet suddenly touch bottom and half stumbled, half ran toward the shore. A sharp, almost painless slash cut into the calf of his leg and he leaped forward, drawing his legs up under him as he rolled onto the bank. He had just time to see the water behind him alive with the dark, hurtling shapes.

  He lay there on the bank, his chest heaving, feeling the trickle of blood on his leg. It had been close, so close that he felt only luck and not his own calculations had saved him. He edged backward as his breath returned, and pulled the rope out of the water. Across the river, he saw that Atutu had already tied his end of the rope around a thin tree and was dancing happily on the riverbank. Tarita had come to and her gaze followed Atutu’s arm pointing over to where Nick was slowly getting to his feet. Nick secured the rope to a tree trunk with a good double-hitch and then waved to Atutu for him and Tarita to start crossing.

  Tarita obviously had told the little Indian to go first, and Nick watched as he grasped the rope with both hands, swung his legs up and over and began to pull himself across. Atutu had slipped on the safari jacket, slung both bows over his shoulder, and carried Nicks trousers in his teeth. At midriver the rope dipped perilously close to the water, but it held. When Atutu dropped to the ground before Nick, N3 pressed his small shoulder reassuringly. Tarita was on the rope already, swinging herself across. When she reached the other shore she dropped to the ground and advanced on Nick. He saw the dark fury in her eyes, the blazing beauty of her loveliness.

  “Guess what?” He grinned at her. “I made it. Or weren’t you watching?”

  She swung at him, a furious, roundhouse blow he could see coming as she wound up. He deflected it easily, catching her wrist in his big hand. She was trembling in anger and he thought of pulling her against him, soothing that fury with his hands moving over those beautiful, twin peaks. If Atutu hadn’t been standing there, he might have done so. Instead, he just held her wrist in a tight grip.

  “Temper, temper!” he chided and he grinned inwardly as he thought about her being two people. She was indeed angry enough for two. “You just hate to be proved wrong,” he said. “A female characteristic … in any world.”

  “Don’t try it again,” she said through clenched teeth.

  “Don’t make me,” Nick countered, dropping her wrist. She glared at him as she rubbed her wrist with the other hand.

  “Shall we move on?” she asked, bringing her fire under control, turning it into ice.

  “By all means,” Nick smiled. He almost added, Now that we know who’s boss. But he decided not to. For one thing, it would only be adding insult to injury. For another, he wasn’t completely certain the message had been fully accepted yet.

  Tarita set an angry, blistering pace, even though they had come onto a matted, densely vined section of jungle that forced them to hack out every foot with their short-bladed machetes. They halted when daylight began to fade and the jungle came alive again with its cacophony of sound. Atutu appeared with a small deer that he expertly cut into sections and roasted on a hastily improvised spit. It proved to be delicious.

  After clearing up the remains and tossing them into the brush for the scavengers of the night, Nick lay down and thought of the human scavengers that also roamed the jungle. Crossing the river had perhaps put them in the lead, ahead of Kolben. This was important. He knew the Chinese in their persistent, self-punishing fashion would catch up, and the Russians would somehow plow their way through. As they were all zeroing in on one relatively small section, the one who reached the area first would be in the best position to find the prize.

  And he also knew that as they neared the area and their paths drew closer together, Kolben’s attempts to eliminate his rivals would grow more desperate and more plentiful. He obviously believed Nick to be his greatest threat, probably because of Tarita’s help. He would try again, Nick was certain. The man plainly felt that with Nick out of the way he could beat the others to the electronic brain or eliminate them at his leisure. Nick half smiled to himself. He was indulging in a bit of dangerous thinking, concentrating on Kolben this way. Neither the Russians nor the Chinese would hesitate to eliminate the competition, he knew. It could be fatal to overlook that.

  He was stretched out, musing idly, when he felt the slender form at his side and looked up to see the girl kneeling beside him, unsmiling, serious.

  “What you did at the river today was impossible,” she said. “But you did it. Yet you should have listened to me. You were lucky. Do not try it again. Please listen to me.”

  “Don’t worry, honey,” he said. “I’m not about to give any encores on that one.” She was right, he knew. It had been a suicidal thing to do. But of course she did not know how many such suicidal things he had managed to bring off in his lifetime.

  “I … I’m sorry I got so angry at you,” she said, quietly. “I… I didn’t want to see you killed.”

  The fire had died out, and the blackness had closed in around them. Even Nick’s eyes, as close to a falcon’s as a human’s can be, could not pierce the inky black night except to see the dark outline of her form. She was a lovely, disembodied voice from out of the darkness. Damn this place, he cursed inwardly, realizing how much he wished there was a moon to bathe those lovely breasts in its soft glow.

  He heard her as she settled down close by and he lay back on the ground, staring up into the blackness. A wry smile crossed his face as he thought of how often, as he was trying to crawl someplace unobserved, he had cursed the light of the moon. He let his mind try to imagine her form as she lay within arm’s reach, her full, round breasts pointed upward, inviting, seeking, waiting. He turned off his imagination before it went too far.

  CHAPTER V

  The ground was shaking and Nick sat bolt upright. Dawn had come again, the gray, filtered light of the jungle dawn, but the ground was shaking, quivering, and he saw Atutu halfway up the trunk of a spiny kapok. Tarita had snapped awake too, and Nick saw fear in her eyes as Atutu called to her.

  “We must run,” she said to Nick. “There is a steep rise, a ridge that leads to high ground. We must get to it.”

  “Wait a minute,” Nick said. “What are we running from?”

  “Peccaries,” Tarita answered. “Wild boars, they are called in Europe and America, only the peccary is worse. And these are the white-lipped peccaries, the worst of the worst.”

  Nick drew upon the vast storehouse of miscellaneous knowledge he kept filed away in the recesses of his mind. He knew of the animal, of course—cousin to the Texas razorback and the European wild boar. They were mean customers, tough-skinned, nasty, equipped with terrible cheek teeth and long, scimitar-shaped tusks that could rip open a foe as a can opener rips open a can. Their bite, he had heard, was worse than that of the big jungle cats. From the fear in Atutu’s face and in Tarita’s eyes, he saw that they knew better than he the full extent of the danger.

  “They move in herds, and this is a huge one,” the girl said. “They are already all around us. They spread out and begin to move in. In such huge herds, they are impossible to fight. They seem to have some way of communicating, and they act together.” She had started to run as she spoke, and Nick stayed close behind her. All around them he could hear the sounds of short, squat bodies moving through the brush and a rooting, pawing, snorting noise. The jungle began to reverberate with it.

  He had heard the sound of cattle stampedes, but this had none of that terrifying thunder. Instead it had a crunching, grinding ominousness to it. The sound of a cattle stampede seemed to tell you that if you could get out of the way you’d be safe. This sound seemed to tell you there was no way to avoid it, no way to safety. Now he could see the shaking of the brush, the quivering of the tall bamboo grass. Tarita was racing through the brush, running as fast as her legs would carry her. Atutu, Nick saw, was close at their heels.

  “They will tear up this area,” the girl said through spurts of breath. “They’ll root out and eat everything, plants, fruits, nuts, frogs, snakes, rodents, insects— everything they can find. They will plow up the land itself, eradicating anything that is edible.”

  Suddenly the girl halted and Nick saw the dark, gray, grizzled shapes, two of them sticking ugly snouts out of the brush at one side, a third on the other. A fourth joined the third one and they formed a gauntlet on both sides of the narrow pathway.

  “The ridge is just ahead,” Tarita half whispered, her breasts heaving as she struggled to catch her breath. Nick saw other thick, grizzled forms moving, felt them closing in. Suddenly there was an ominous, deadly air to the jungle, a feeling of gathering terror. These were but a few, he realized. The trees, the brush, the tall grasses were alive with them. The one nearest them snorted, pawed the ground and lowered his head. A fifth one poked his head out, little pig eyes glinting, a growling, rasping guttural noise welling up from his snout.

  “We’ve got to run for it,” Nick said. “Use your machetes. Just swipe at them, don’t try to fight with them.” Before he could say anything else, a small brown form darted past and raced through the gauntlet, leaping, running, a flashing figure that was past the peccaries before they could gather themselves. Nick caught a glimpse of the little man on ahead, pulling himself up a steep rise on lianas and tangled vines.

  “Come on!” Nick shouted to the girl. “Stay with me!” He pushed off on his powerful legs, needing only two strides to reach the gauntlet. He saw the first of the two peccaries on the left put its head down, snort and charge out. Nick brought down the machete in a vicious swipe, without breaking stride, and felt the sharp blade cut into the beast’s thick grizzled hide. The peccary snarled and squealed in pain as blood gushed from its head.

  Another of the wild boars charged, this time from the right, and once again Nick brought the machete down in an arc. It was enough to make the animal halt, shake its head and back for an instant as blood spurted from its snout. Nick stopped as three more of the mean-tempered beasts moved out to block their path, the first one showing its long yellowed tusks in an angry snarl. All three were clapping their jaws together in a snapping sound, their traditional warning of angry attack. The two bloodied peccaries were closing in from the rear, Nick saw in a quick backward glance.

 

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