Conrad Starguard - Conrad's Quest for Rubber Part 22

JUST BEFORE we went to sleep, our guests went back into the forest. Even with a fire, and with a sentry awake, they did not feel comfortable out in the open. They couldn't have gone far, though, because they were back again at first light.

They waited respectfully as the three of us recited our morning oath. Later, once they learned Pidgin, they had us translate it for them, and many of them started reciting it with us, as did, eventually, Jane.

They called themselves the Yaminana, and they said that the land for miles around owned them.

They really thought that way. They did not own the land. It owned them. Another curiosity was that they did not consider themselves to be "real." We, the big people, were the real people. They were just the Yaminana. To their minds, they were something between the animals and the real people, but not members of either group.

The women were mostly gatherers, collecting more than half the food the tribe ate. They took care of the children and did the cooking. As with the other tribes we had seen, these roles were maintained with great strictness. A woman of the Yaminana would no more go hunting than a European would fornicate with his mother!

The men were primarily hunters, waiting silently for hours until a bird, a snake, or a monkey came within the relatively short range of their weapons before shooting. They liked fish, but disliked being on the ground in the open, which fishing generally required. Thus, they were pleased when we brought in all the fish that everybody could carry, before we made the trip to their village.

They were experts with poisons and with traps. The only big predator, aside from the dragons and some of the snakes, was a big spotted cat. It was quite capable of killing a full-sized human, but the Yaminana did not fear it. Rather, it feared them, their poisoned arrows, and their traps. Usually, the big cat avoided the little people.

I know that we could never have survived had we stumbled unsuspectingly onto their village. They had to point out to us each of the deadly tricks that awaited the unwary. The worst, or at least the most common, were pointed sticks steeped in poison, which were stuck in the dirt along the trail. Step on one, and you were laid up for a month, if you were lucky. If not, you were dead.

Their village was largely built up in the trees. Indeed, it might have been them that I had spotted, months ago, just before the fevers. .h.i.t my platoon. It made sense, given the small size of the people and the fact that the forest around here regularly flooded.

Their community was made up of perhaps four hundred people. Well over half of their population consisted of children, and we saw only a few really old people among them.

They were much lighter-skinned than the natives we had seen earlier, perhaps because of their habit of staying in the dense forest, out of the sun. Their hair was not as black as the others', either, but often shaded into a dark brown. They were tiny, with the adults averaging about a yard tall, yet their proportions were approximately those of normal people, except for the eyes, which were about the same size as my own. Placed in a tiny head, they seemed huge. All told, they were as attractive a people as I have ever seen.

They went about completely naked, avoiding all jewelry, decorations, clothing, and body paint, save for the ubiquitous insect sap.

If they needed something with them, such as their weapons, they carried them in their hands and never slung them over a shoulder, even while climbing trees. They didn't wear belts, baldrics, or anything like a backpack or pouch. We wondered if the reason was that, being small, if danger threatened, they wanted to be able to drop everything, to run, and to hide.

My men and I had long been reduced to wearing loincloths, a piece of old bedsheet going from the back of the belt to the front. The native chief objected to them, on the grounds of sanitation! He felt it was unhealthy to thus hold the body's natural dirt against it. We demurred, but a few days later our loincloths disappeared in the night.

The other tribes that we had met had insisted we indulge in an orgy with them. The att.i.tude seemed to be that if we were not going to be their enemies, we must be their best friends. No middle ground was possible. The little people had the same att.i.tude, only more so.

When we were introduced to their elders, everyone was all smiles and nods since we couldn't speak with them yet. I gave the chief a knife, an axe, and a machete. He gave me his favorite new wife!

Not just to use, but to keep. Forever. This bothered me, for while I was sure that my love, Maude, would forgive my s.e.xual indiscretions-once I told her of the peculiar circ.u.mstances- how could I possibly explain bringing home another woman?

I couldn't p.r.o.nounce her name, since it contained two clicks and a whistle that were used in the local tongue as well as the usual vowels and consonants. I never learned to manage these strange sounds.

The locals actually laughed at me every time I tried to p.r.o.nounce them. But her name ended with "b.o.o.boo," and she didn't seem to mind me calling her that.

My problems were increased by the fact that I was attracted to her. She was a pretty little thing. She was perfectly, deliciously formed, and had all of her dimensions been doubled, I would have recommended her to any good friend.

But despite her full, pointed b.r.e.a.s.t.s, her slender waist, and her flaring hips, I could not quite convince myself that anyone that tiny could be an adult. And even if she was old enough, there was the physical problem of our relative sizes.

How could I possibly copulate with someone so tiny without doing her serious damage?

The chief made it very clear that this was the way things were done, and if I were to be so cra.s.s as to insult both him and his former wife, then we had best get out of his territory now, before he was forced to kill us.

Leaving then would have involved abandoning our supplies, and after seeing the defenses around the village, I shuddered at the prospect of trying to make our way overland, past other, doubtless equally well-protected villages.

With this incentive, I went through a native wedding ceremony, with Tomaz and Gregor at my side.

My objections to marriage had made the elders suspicious, and they now felt that we should all become their relatives. Gregor was of the opinion that the natives simply had a surplus of young women to feed.

With the Yaminana, marriage had a lot to do with mutual care, making sure the other was well-fed, taking care of children, and love, in the true sense of the word. It had very little to do with s.e.x.

Anytime anyone wanted to have s.e.x with another person, they simply asked, and the favor was generally granted on the spot. Except for reasons like illness, the fact that you were a man who had already done it once today, or that you had prior commitments, to fail to have s.e.x with a person of the opposite s.e.x who asked you politely was a serious, even deadly insult. With this situation, the best tactic was to ask any lady who caught your eye early in the day, so you could turn down the dogs later without fear of repercussions.

Heteros.e.xual s.e.x was enjoyed out in the open, and at all times of the day or night. h.o.m.os.e.xuality and lesbianism were unknown. Strangely, the Yaminana had no clear idea of there being a connection between s.e.x and children. They said that a woman had to have s.e.x at least once in order to "open the path" for children, but after that, s.e.x was just for fun, and children happened when they wanted to.

s.e.x proved to be quite possible with our new wives, and all the rest of the women in the tribe, for that matter, despite their small proportions. I always insisted that my partners be on top, however, for fear of hurting them.

Jane confused the Yaminana, so they ignored her. They did not like the idea of a woman hunting, although they grudgingly admired her abilities with a bow. To my knowledge, she neither asked nor was asked to have s.e.x during her entire stay there.

They were vastly impressed with our guns. When a big, long-nosed sort of wild pig, with three toes, came into the village, I got the chief's permission to shoot it. One shot put it down, and I was later told that it would have taken the Yaminana hours to kill so big a beast, with the likely injury of several villagers.

The chief immediately insisted that I give him a gun, but fortunately he was too small to shoot one.

At his first attempt with one, it knocked him flat on his back and badly bruised his arm. I was happy when he gave up on the idea. As mercurial as these people were, I didn't really want to see them with modern weapons.

Jane had long considered firearms to be instruments of the devil and refused to touch them.

The Yaminana didn't make pottery, and were noticeably more primitive than the other tribes we'd met. They seemed to be less intelligent, and even childlike in most things. They were charming, though, and brought out our paternal feelings. Their children were particularly endearing, and even Jane couldn't help but feel maternal around them, although she was ashamed to admit it.

Still, we wondered if the small size of their heads and brains had something to do with their lack of intellectual depth.

In the course of time, everyone in the tribe was speaking a version of Pidgin, and eventually they seemed to like it so much that they were abandoning their old language. They were a simple people, and they liked a simple language.

For the next six months we and our adopted tribe ate well. Generally, they would find the game, and we would kill it. They did most of the gathering and the hunting and snaring of small game, but our addition of wild pigs, dragons, and big snakes, one of which was fully nine yards long, more than paid our way.

We helped out in another way when the Yaminana were attacked by a neighboring tribe of full-sized people. This was after we had stayed with them for over three months, and we Europeans had regained much of our original strength. Some thirty warriors attacked us, but they didn't have army training, and they didn't have guns.

We killed eleven of them, nine by gunshot and two in hand-to-hand fighting without serious injury to ourselves. The Yaminana accounted for three more, with a loss of seven of their own number, all of them adult men. The women neither hunted nor fought, which was probably why they outnumbered the men.

After the battle we were horrified to watch our little friends gleefully butcher their fallen foes, and then cook them up for dinner!

The chief told me they had to eat their enemies, because the big people who had attacked in the first place wanted to capture some of the Yaminana in order to eat them.

When a Yaminana was eaten by an outsider, his soul was lost to the tribe. Eating their enemies was the only way to return the souls of their lost tribesmen to their families. And anyway, he told us, they were delicious!

Fortunately, he was not greatly offended when we refused to partic.i.p.ate in the feast. It was enough that we had provided the main course.

After I had seen my little wife daintily nibbling off the last shreds of flesh clinging to a human femur, it was weeks before I could kiss her again.

I was also shocked when I saw Jane happily eating her share of the cannibal feast! She said that to her people, human flesh was just another kind of meat. On questioning her later, I found out why she had not eaten our own dead on the Maude; since those men had died of a sickness, the meat was tainted. As to Antoni, she had simply a.s.sumed we preferred fish, as she did.

The next day, with great ceremony, the Yaminana ate the bodies of their own tribesmen who had fallen in battle.

All of this cannibalism troubled me. I had not been able to make any progress at converting the Yaminana to Christianity and had even given up trying, until I could bring a priest back to do the job properly. Seeing these tiny people eat ing human flesh told me just how remiss I had been in doing my Christian duty toward them. I renewed my efforts to bring them to Christ, but again it was to no avail. I gave up and worked instead on my equipment. The stock of my rifle had rotted so badly that I was obliged to carve myself a new one, out of a native wood that Jane recommended.

The most important event during our stay with the Yaminana, from the army's viewpoint, happened during our first month with them.

Several of their very tiny children were playing a game with a ball, when it rolled into a stream. I waded in to get it for them and was surprised to find the ball shedded water like wax, but it was soft, like flesh. I gave the ball back to the children and went to talk about it with some of the adults.

I was told that the toy was made from the sap of a certain tree, which they were very happy to take me to. At last I had found the almost mythical rubber tree! In fact, there were quite a few of them out there.

I got Tomaz and Gregor and showed them my find. After that, we worked out an efficient way to bleed the trees without killing them, and collected as much of the sap as we could. Over the months, we turned some of it into b.a.l.l.s, in the native fashion, and stored the rest in empty gla.s.s food jars. We also collected samples of the tree's bark and its leaves, to aid others in finding them.

After more than six months of only occasional rain, the great downpours returned in earnest, and the river began to fill. Our canoe had not rotted as our riverboat had, and we soon had all in order for our departure.

We tried to persuade our wives to stay behind, for we weren't at all sure what we would do with them back in Poland, or whether they would like it there. But our tiny ladies were adamant about going with us. We had told too many stories about what it was like in Europe, I suppose. Also, the elders insisted that we take them with us, and their continued goodwill would be important when we returned to establish a trading post here, to bring in the rubber.

We shoved off in much better physical shape than we had arrived in, and with our company now increased to seven. The trip back was long and arduous, but relatively uneventful. At least n.o.body died.

When we at last put in at the fourth trading post we had established, we found it deserted, as was the native village it had been built next to. A day's searching through the ruins of both gained us no enlightenment. There was no evidence of violence. The post and the village had not been burned, but simply abandoned. Near what must have been the church, we found more than two dozen graves, with wooden crosses over them, but no indications as to who was buried there.

Profoundly disturbed, we went on east, to the next post.

The story was the same at the third post and at the second. My men were gone, the villagers were gone, and there was nothing to show why this had happened. It was not as though some other tribes had supplanted the ones we had befriended. The countryside seemed to be devoid of all human life.

At the first post, I found Sir Caspar, the lance leader I had left there a year before. The village behind him looked to have about a third of its former inhabitants left.

He was nearly as naked as we were, sporting little but some pants with the legs cut off, and a pair of native sandals, yet he saluted me in proper army fashion, and it seemed only proper to salute back, even though I stood before him naked and barefoot. In military fashion, I asked him to report.

"It was sickness, more than anything else, sir," he said. "I lost one man to a dragon, and three more to fevers. The people in the village were sick, too, but of some other disease, like the worst cold you ever saw. Nothing we tried did any good, and the native doctors couldn't do any better, on their people or on mine. I got word from the other posts that they were in trouble, but we didn't have any help to send to them. I was bedridden and my men were either dead or shaking with fevers. I haven't heard from the other posts in six months."

I asked him about any other riverboats, and he said they hadn't seen one since I left him there, a year ago.

We went into his native-style hut, and Gregor brought some whiskey up from the canoe.

While the women went out in search of supper, I filled Sir Caspar and his men in on all that had happened to us since I had last seen him.

"My G.o.d. Then we six are all that are left of a platoon of forty-three men? What a disaster!" he said. "And why haven't the other three platoons come looking for us? Could they be in worse shape than we are?"

I said that I didn't know, but I intended to leave in the morning for the rendezvous point, at the island with the flag. I asked him if he wanted to join us.

"No, sir, I don't see how I can. Father David has been making progress here in converting those villagers who survived the plague. He wouldn't even consider leaving without orders from his superiors in Poland. Ronald and I couldn't possibly abandon him."

I saw his point, and promised to return, no matter what I found out. Before leaving, I asked if they had any clothes to spare. Sir Caspar offered me the shorts he was wearing. That was all he had. Even their bedding was gone. I, of course, declined his offer.

Later that night we took advantage of Father David's presence to go to confession.

In the morning, after we recited our Army Oath, we sang a proper ma.s.s, with Communion, for the first time in entirely too long. Then we left, heading east.

Chapter Thirty-One

From the Journal of Josip Sobieski WRITTEN MARCH 12, 1251, CONCERNING FEBRUARY 10, 1251.

As we came in sight of the island, I could barely believe my eyes! The entire island had been logged over, and a dozen new buildings, all made of concrete-army fashion-were either completed or under construction! At least a full company of men were busily working. Above it all was a huge, multi-element yagi radio antenna.

As we tied our canoe up to one of the docks, a sentry looked at us with his mouth open, then ran to get his superior. He was wearing a clean, summer-weight cla.s.s B uniform, and for the first time in half a year I was seriously conscious of my own nakedness.

I suddenly realized I was coming back a dismal failure. I had been sent out with a steam-powered riverboat, tons of supplies, and a platoon of forty-two healthy, well-educated young men. Now the boat was a rotten mound in the jungle, the supplies were gone, with almost nothing to show for them, and all the men were dead except for the two naked survivors next to me, plus three more, left behind at a trading post-out in the bush-with nothing to trade.

I had lost an incredible thirty-seven out of forty-two of the army's finest young men. If ever a platoon leader deserved to be shot, it was me.

I wasn't sure what their feelings would be about the four women with me. Jane, at least, had certainly earned the right to be one of us, and the others were our wives. I didn't know what army policy was toward non-Christian, native wives. But there was nothing to do but to brazen it out.

As we were unloading the canoe onto the dock, a group of clean, groomed, and uniformed men came out to us, and I was suddenly glad we had left the whiskey barrel back at the trading post. With it, I could see them adding drunkenness to the list of charges against me. Leading the group was Baron Siemomysl himself, the commander of the entire Explorer's Co r p s .

He was smiling!

He completely ignored military formality and said, "Sir Josip! My G.o.d, but it's good to see you alive! We were all worried about you! Welcome to Brazylport! Come, introduce me to your party."

I introduced the men and women of my group to my baron, and told him a bit about each of them.

He seemed delighted with them, but he winced when he noticed the hand-carved stock on my rifle.

"Excellent! I see that you have brought back samples of rubber, besides. But for now, unless you have something urgent to tell me, rooms are being made ready for you, and I'm sure you would like a chance to freshen up."

Which was as polite a way as he could manage of saying that I probably didn't want to report in officially while I was buck naked.

The baron personally led us back to the married housing area, and gestured to the tree stumps and the soil denuded of vegetation.

"We had to clear the entire area in order to clean out all of the nastier plants and animals. We'll be replanting it soon,with safe, useful local plants. Perhaps some of your ladies can advise us on that."

When we got to the married housing area, some troops were just carrying a new set of furniture into a new building. Four women in Explorer uniforms greeted our ladies and whisked them away. I was glad to see that someone had talked Lord Conrad out of his silly "men only"

policy for the corps.

The baron left, saying, "Come and see me as soon as you are ready."

We men were shown the way to the showers. An hour later, scrubbed, shaved, and with my hair properly cut, I walked to the commander's office in a new cla.s.s A uniform, with my tattered logbooks and journals under my arm.

The baron returned my salute and politely asked me to sit down.

"Well, now. The short of it is that as soon as we realized the mistake we'd made, we got another expedition together as quickly as possible. Launching the first expedition without any experienced men was an unavoidable necessity, but sending your company out with riverboats that rotted apart in a few months, with radios that ceased to function in weeks, and with food supplies that went bad even quicker, was downright criminal. The army owes you and your men a serious apology, son.

"We've been here for four months now, and with the buildings mostly up, we've started doing what we came here to do. Namely, to get your people the kind of equipment you need, and to test it on-site. Our first ferrocrete riverboat will be coming down the ways in a few weeks, and then we can start exploring properly! We started testing special paints and preservatives the day we got here, and work is already being done on a radio that works in this humidity. But enough of that. Pour yourself a drink and tell me what has happened to you this past year."

I told him the whole story, and filled my gla.s.s several times in the telling. The short twilight of the tropics had started before I was through.

"That was quite a story, Captain Sobieski. Yes, you've been promoted, and your men have just been promoted along with you. We'll come up with something for your native warrior woman, as well. You all deserve it, and there is a lot of work around here that needs doing. We'll be working together for a long time to come. The rubber you brought in wasn't the first, but a third source of supply will be very valuable, and your discovery will certainly be exploited. Those Yaminana people of yours sound fascinating, and I look forward to talking to your pretty little b.o.o.boo as soon as possible."

I thanked the baron, but said that I was looking forward to a trip home to Poland before long. I had a young lady there who was waiting to be my bride.