The male children played games of marbles with small round stones and gourds with holes in the end as jackpots, the winner dancing round rattling the full gourds like maracas—and the girls tried to slip in and steal any of the stones that popped out of the hole during the boy’s gyrations. Inevitably the boy lost some of his winnings, had to chase and trap the girls who snatched them up while their friends ran interference for them. This could be guaranteed to lead on to the Laughing Contest, a slap and tickle routine of sexplay and an endurance test carried on with huge high spirits.
Kayapi and the Bruxo stayed secluded till late on the third day after the birth in the hut with the mat over the door. Then the young Indian reappeared, looking tired but supremely confident, a long distance runner on his winning stretch. He called a crowd together—from the fringe of which the sorcerer’s apprentice looked on, face stubbornly blank, the new mental leper.
When enough had gathered, he went back inside and led the old man out. Blood still clung to the Bruxo’s lips and nose in a dry black crust that flies settled on, which he was too weary to wave off. His bodypaint had run and mixed till he looked like a mess of balled-up plasticine, with his macaw-feather pubic bush tatty and mud-stained now.
The old Shaman looked down at the mud that remained of the flood, and smiled.
Together, uproariously, the Xemahoa men laughed.
They took their laughter seriously, sending it booming round the clearing, chasing away the last gremlins of the flood. Of all the men, only the apprentice refused to laugh, keeping a stiff face and finally slinking away with his tail between his legs—Kayapi laughed volubly in the direction of his retreat, hooting him off the scene.
The Bruxo and Kayapi set off for the hut where the baby lay.
At the taboo hut, Kayapi gestured Chester and Zwingler aside impatiently, took the old man by the arm and led him in. Sole approached Pierre.
“What are they going to do with the baby? Any idea?”
Pierre shrugged his shoulders, contemptuously as Kayapi.
They stayed inside a long time, till the stars came out and the moon to light the clearing. Chester and Zwingler stood behind the other Indians, nervously alert for sounds, Chester fingering the dart gun and Zwingler consulting his watch—and except for the absence of bonfires on their stands of stakes in the deeper floodwater of three days before and the absence of a mother in the hut, it was a replica of the original birth scene. From within the hut after a time came a loud groaning noise, and from the women grouped outside, who hadn’t participated during the events three days previously except as passive spec tators, arose in response a loud groan—mimic birth pains which the Xemahoa men promptly uttered short barking laughs at.
“Fucking thing would have been dead if I hadn’t got it fed,” growled Chester. “This whole thing’s so fucking arbitrary—like you said, Mr Zwingler.”
“They know perfectly well what they’re doing,” Pierre rebuked him loftily, a shade too sanctimoniously so it seemed to Sole.
After a period of groaning and laughter under the moonlight, the Bruxo appeared in the hut doorway, spoke to the tribe.
Pierre condescendingly interpreted.
“Changes are coming to pass. Let me tell you a fresh story of how the snake has come out of the stone again—how he has coiled himself round the outside of the stone. Bruxo says that the child lacks eyes because he doesn’t need them. Eyes are the tunnel the brain looks through. However this child’s brain is already outside of his head, watching us and knowing us without the need of eyes—the brain itself looks out…”
“I sure admire this guy’s inventiveness.”
“Imbecile—this is the birth of mythic thinking. A vast change could be coming over this inbred people.”
“Damn cute opportunism, I still say. Took him three days to work out an alibi—”
“If we could only explain our own culture shocks to ourselves as meaningfully,” wished Sole.
“Quite!” breathed Pierre intensely, giving him the first sympathetic look for many hours.
Then Kayapi came out carrying the ruptured child into the moonlight—the baby uttering sharp kitten cries.
“Christ, be careful,” hissed Chester, handling his dart gun impotently.
Kayapi held the child up high to the stars and moon, walked among the Xemahoa daintily, delicately, as the Bruxo spoke stumblingly on from the doorway.
“The thinking brain has come outside. Have dreams left the Xemahoa people then? he asks. No, for Kayapi my son from Outside, who knows the Outside World, will put dreams back inside the Xemahoa stone. How? Watch him. Water is gone from xe-wo-i—that’s the tree the fungus is parasitic on. The maka-i mother has gone to lie in xe-wo-i’s arms—”
The Bruxo stumbled towards the crowd which divided and fell in behind him and Kayapi, as Kayapi bore the baby out into the jungle, holding it high.
They came to the tree where Chester had lodged the mother’s body—it still hung in the tree crotch. “Hey, is that the tree?”
“How the hell do I know?” snapped Pierre. “I told you I never knew—”
“Big coincidence,” sneered Chester. “Maybe he’s just making out that’s the fungus tree. Somebody must have slipped into their hut and told them I put her there. Everything’s grist to that bastard’s mill—”
“Maybe the Bruxo divined it,” sniggered Zwingler.
“Shut up, he’s saying she is buried in the sky—I suppose he means the air, rather than underground—so that maka-i may have room to reenter the earth and the Xemahoa to dream new dreams—”
“He’s planning on getting rid of the baby, I’m telling you—I can smell it a mile off!”
“Damn it, Chester, we’re powerless—watch!—be an observer.”
“At least until you hear your helicopter coming,” Pierre smiled grimly.
“At least till that.”
Kayapi knelt by the tree roots, laid the baby down on the still wet soil, began scooping at the mud like a dog with his forepaws intent on burying a bone.
Dug a hole.
Some of the yellow clay he exposed he scooped into his mouth, chewed and swallowed down.
“Bruxo says he will return to the Xemahoa people—to the inside of the tribe—bringing inside with him what was outside, the escaped dreams—”
Kayapi picked the baby up—and the women groaned in unison—and the men gave vent to guttural barking laughter.
Abruptly he brought the baby to his mouth, sank his teeth into the brain hernias. For minutes he gnawed as ravenous-seeming as a wild dog or vulture at the baby’s brain hernias, while the women groaned and the men laughed, gulping that living brainmatter down till he’d peeled brain back to the smooth rifted skull.
Sole vomited as Kayapi’s tongue flicked into the fissures deep as he could, slobbering at the soft baby skull in a cannibalistic french kiss.
Finally he thrust the spent body into the hole he’d dug, without touching the hernias of the guts, pressed down the soil around it, hid it; patted the soil down with a smug grin…
Face distorted, Pierre stared at Sole and his pool of root and fish vomit.
“You sell brains, now he eats them!” he screamed. “Oh but the universe is a filthy cannibal place—existence itself is exploitation! Don’t your space monsters just prove that too. Come on Chris, tell me some more about the wonders of the galaxy—then let’s get out there and eat knowledge!” Pierre jabbed a finger viciously up at the overhead leafcover, hiding the bland cold stars…