A gem-backed beetle, trapped beneath Stumpfs mosquito net, hummed around in diminishing circles, looking for some way out. It could find none. Eventually, exhausted by the search, it hovered over the sleeping man, then landed on his forehead. There it wandered, drinking at the pores. Beneath its imperceptible tread, Stumpf s skin opened and broke into a trail of tiny wounds.
They had come into the Indian hamlet at noon; the sun a basilisk's eye. At first they had thought the place deserted. Locke and Cherrick had advanced into the compound, leaving the dysentery-ridden Stumpf in the jeep, out of the worst of the heat. It was Cherrick who first noticed the child. A pot-bellied boy of perhaps four or five, his face painted with thick bands of the scarlet vegetable dye urucu, had slipped out from his hiding place and come to peer at the trespassers, fearless in his curiosity. Cherrick stood still; Locke did the same. One by one, from the huts and from the shelter of the trees around the compound, the tribe appeared and stared, like the boy, at the newcomers. If there was a flicker of feeling on their broad, flat-nosed faces, Locke could not read it. These people - he thought of every Indian as part of one wretched tribe - were impossible to decipher; deceit was their only skill.
'What are you doing here?' he said. The sun was baking the back of his neck. 'This is our land.'
The boy still looked up at him. His almond eyes refused to fear.
'They don't understand you,' Cherrick said.
'Get the Kraut out here. Let him explain it to them.'
'He can't move.'
'Get him out here,' Locke said. 'I don't care if he's shat his pants.'
Cherrick backed away down the track, leaving Locke standing in the ring of huts. He looked from doorway to doorway, from tree to tree, trying to estimate the numbers. There were at most three dozen Indians, two-thirds of them women and children; descendants of the great peoples that had once roamed the Amazon Basin in their tens of thousands. Now those tribes were all but decimated. The forest in which they had prospered for generations was being levelled and burned; eight-lane highways were speeding through their hunting grounds. All they held sacred - the wilderness and their place in its system - was being trampled and trespassed: they were exiles in their own land. But still they declined to pay homage to their new masters, despite the rifles they brought. Only death would convince them of defeat, Locke mused.
Cherrick found Stumpf slumped in the front seat of the jeep, his pasty features more wretched than ever.
'Locke wants you,' he said, shaking the German out of his doze. 'The village is still occupied. You'll have to speak to them.'
Stumpf groaned. 'I can't move,' he said, Tm dying-'
'Locke wants you dead or alive,' Cherrick said. Their fear of Locke, which went unspoken, was perhaps one of the two things they had in common; that and greed.
'I feel awful,' Stumpf said.
'If I don't bring you, he'll only come himself,' Cherrick pointed out. This was indisputable. Stumpf threw the other man a despairing glance, then nodded his jowly head. 'All right,' he said, 'help me.'
Cherrick had no wish to lay a hand on Stumpf. The man stank of his sickness; he seemed to be oozing the contents of his gut through his pores; his skin had the lustre of rank meat. He took the outstretched hand nevertheless. Without aid, Stumpf would never make the hundred yards from jeep to compound.
Ahead, Locke was shouting.
'Get moving,' said Cherrick, hauling Stumpf down from the front seat and towards the bawling voice. 'Let's get it over and done with.'
When the two men returned into the circle of huts the scene had scarcely changed. Locke glanced around at Stumpf.
'We got trespassers,' he said.
'So I see,' Stumpf returned wearily.
'Tell them to get the fuck off our land,' Locke said. 'Tell them this is our territory: we bought it. Without sitting tenants.'
Stumpf nodded, not meeting Locke's rabid eyes. Sometimes he hated the man almost as much as he hated himself.
'Go on ...' Locke said, and gestured for Cherrick to relinquish his support of Stumpf. This he did. The German stumbled forward, head bowed. He took several seconds to work out his patter, then raised his head and spoke a few wilting words in bad Portuguese. The pronouncement was met with the same blank looks as Locke's performance. Stumpf tried again, re-arranging his inadequate vocabulary to try and awake a flicker of understanding amongst these savages.
The boy who had been so entertained by Locke's cavortings now stood staring up at this third demon, his face wiped of smiles. This one was nowhere near as comical as the first. He was sick and haggard; he smelt of death. The boy held his nose to keep from inhaling the badness off the man.
Stumpf peered through greasy eyes at his audience. If they did understand, and were faking their blank incomprehension, it was a flawless performance. His limited skills defeated, he turned giddily to Locke.
They don't understand me,' he said.
Tell them again.'
'I don't think they speak Portuguese.'
Tell them anyway.'
Cherrick cocked his rifle. 'We don't have to talk with them,' he said under his breath. They're on our land. We're within our rights -'
'No,' said Locke. There's no need for shooting. Not if we can persuade them to go peacefully.'
They don't understand plain common sense,' Cher- rick said. 'Look at them. They're animals. Living in filth.'
Stumpf had begun to try and communicate again, this time accompanying his hesitant words with a pitiful mime.
Tell them we've got work to do here,' Locke prompted him.
'I'm trying my best,' Stumpf replied testily.
'We've got papers.'
'I don't think they'd be much impressed,' Stumpf returned, with a cautious sarcasm that was lost on the other man.
'Just tell them to move on. Find some other piece of land to squat on.'
Watching Stumpf put these sentiments into word and sign-language, Locke was already running through the alternative options available. Either the Indians - the Txukahamei or the Achual or whatever damn family it was - accepted their demands and moved on, or else they would have to enforce the edict. As Cherrick had said, they were within their rights. They had papers from the development authorities; they had maps marking the division between one territory and the next; they had every sanction from signature to bullet. He had no active desire to shed blood. The world was still too full of bleeding heart liberals and doe-eyed sentimentalists to make genocide the most convenient solution. But the gun had been used before, and would be used again, until every unwashed Indian had put on a pair of trousers and given up eating monkeys.
Indeed, the din of liberals notwithstanding, the gun had its appeal. It was swift, and absolute. Once it had had its short, sharp say there was no danger of further debate; no chance that in ten years' time some mercenary Indian who'd found a copy of Marx in the gutter could come back claiming his tribal lands - oil, minerals and all. Once gone, they were gone forever.
At the thought of these scarlet-faced savages laid low, Locke felt his trigger-finger itch; physically itch. Stumpf had finished his encore; it had met with no response. Now he groaned, and turned to Locke.