“God,” he muttered in disgust. “There are live things crawling up there.”
“We stay in our part of this little world, they stay in theirs.” Durkin, incorrigibly task-oriented, glanced at his watch. “Time to get to work, Kroll.”
The research building was the best-built structure in the compound. Its corrugated metal roof protected the lab at one end. The rest of the large interior was occupied by rows of bubbling aquariums. The lights here and in the other buildings, the ceaselessly humming aquarium pumps, the laboratory electrical outlets, and the emergency radio in the mess hut were powered by a throbbing gasoline-fueled generator in the adjacent shack. So Durkin informed Kroll as he toured his superfluous assistant through the lab, then into the area of the holding tanks.
“That was the damned thrum-thrum-thrum I heard all night,” Kroll said with a grimace.
“After you’ve been here a while, you won’t notice the generator at all. Now in this first tank—”
“Felicia doesn’t join us for breakfast?”
“Seven’s too early for her.” Durkin tapped his forefinger on the edge of the murky tank to focus Kroll’s wandering attention. “In here is an impressive example of Electrophorus electricus. Notice these two fine wires leading to the volt meter on the side of the tank. The purpose—”
“Wait a minute, Durkin. In English, okay? Electro-for-what?”
“I thought the technical name was self-evident, along with your keen visual observation.”
“Looks like a fat watersnake to me.”
“It’s an Amazon electric eel, capable of a discharge up to five hundred fifty volts. Enough to stun a horse.”
“Why him?”
“I don’t follow you, Kroll.”
“What are you doing with this guy?”
At least that crude question was a flicker of interest.
“I’m tabulating precise measurements of its discharge rates, voltage peaks, and eventually, its controllability.”
Kroll shrugged. “Why?”
“There may be certain medical, even military applications. The latter is classified,” he said with a degree of satisfaction. “Next, we have three tanks of Sphaeroides annulatus.”
“Uh huh. Look like fish to me.”
“They are fish. Not native here, they’re west coast Gulf puffers. Saltwater fish, but the foundation has no facility in that area, so they’re here. The flesh is edible, even delicious. But the intestines, liver, gonads, and skin contain tetrodotoxin, a deadly poison.” Durkin was in lecture mode now, a status he enjoyed. “The victim first notices tingling of the lips and tongue. That develops into numbness of the entire body, respiratory difficulty, hemorrhages of the skin, muscle twitches, tremors, then convulsions. There’s no antidote and only a forty percent survival rate. The foundation is interested in the puffer’s pharmacological possibilities.”
“Swell,” was all Kroll had to say.
They moved on to an outsized tank of brownish water that seemed paved with large, fleshy discs.
“Stingrays,” Kroll offered, apparently unimpressed by a creature so commonplace.
“Potamotrygon motoro, the Amazon variety of freshwater stingray. The venomous stinging barb on this variety is situated well out on the tail instead of at its base.”
“So?”
“So that weapon near the end of the long whip of a tail makes the Potamotrygon among the most dangerous of the species. The wound is hugely painful, of course, and stings in the upper-body areas have been known to be fatal. Again, there is no specific antivenin.”
Kroll bent to peer into the tank, shrugged, and straightened. Durkin waited for his obvious question, but he said nothing.
“The purpose of the rays’ being here is the simple extraction of venom for shipment to a Miami research lab in search of an antidote.”
Sweat began to stain Kroll’s shirt, not from the impact of this little hall of aquatic terrors, Durkin surmised, but from the oppressive humidity.
“Next we come to Urinophilus erythrurus, members of the catfish family, known locally as ‘candiru.’ ” Durkin crouched to observe the dozens of tiny fish hovering near the bottom of the brackish tank. “Barely two inches long — some of them not even that — these are one of the most fascinating of the dangerous marine animals. They may have a unique military application if—”
But Kroll wasn’t listening. His attention had wandered upward to the slot of a window across the narrow room, then beyond to the woman who ambled across the compound toward the mess hut. Lithe in blue slacks and a white blouse, Felicia was on her way to breakfast.
“Kroll? Kroll!”
“Yeah, what?”
“Your first duty is to take that broom over there and sweep this place clean.” Agata would be happy, Durkin thought, to be relieved of her research building cleaning duties. Dynamic balance, in a way, since she was now cooking for another mouth.
“Sweep? Hell, this is a dirt floor.”
“All the more reason to keep it swept. After that, report to me in the lab. There are housecleaning opportunities there as well.”
That should take care of Mr. Alexander Kroll for today. Durkin strode into the lab, satisfied that he had properly fitted the man into the scheme of things. At the bottom.
But at lunch, with Felicia joining them briefly, Kroll appeared newly energized.
“Quite a little chamber of horrors your hubby has there.” He nodded over his shoulder in the direction of the lab. “Convinced me to stay out of the river at all costs.”
At least I made some inroad into that pudding of a brain, Durkin thought, but he still didn’t like the way Kroll’s eyes addressed Felicia alone.
“Back to work,” he ordered as Agata cleared away the remains of her version of Caldeirada, a fish stew thickened with farina and doused with a peppery sauce.
In the afternoon, Durkin instructed the two Bororo men to repair the siding on the generator shed, and he sent Kroll to help them. That ought to complete stage one of the useless fellow’s basic training. The Indians were not delighted to spend the steamy afternoon replacing warped boards with newer ones from the lumber stockpile, but they stuck at it. Which was more than Kroll did. At 3:45, Durkin discovered he was missing.
...And found him sprawled on the little verandah behind the residence, a glass of lemonade in hand, and Felicia seated nearby.
“I was under the impression that I’d told you—”
“Enough’s enough, professor. Seems to me we have a minimum to do and all the time in the world to do it.”
“The foundation is expecting—”
“Oh, Emmett,” Felicia broke in. “It’s his first day. Besides, I haven’t had anyone from the outside to talk to since we’ve come here.”
Thus dismissing Durkin, she turned back to Kroll. “The Turners in Bryn Mawr, did you know them, too?”
That night after supper (“Fish again?” Kroll had snorted as if the chef at this resort had lost all imagination), Durkin found his patience further stressed as he and Felicia prepared for bed.
“He has no interest in what we’re doing here,” he grumped. “And the man didn’t finish what I told him to do. So endeth the day with Mr. Kroll.”
“But he is amusing in a way.” In the dim light from the naked twenty-five-watt bulb overhead, Felicia’s sea-green eyes were more alive than Durkin had noticed in weeks. Months. His heart stuttered.
“Amusing?”
“He’s brought all the latest Main Line gossip.”