Two can play that game, Joao thought. And he said, “I watch a man at work.”
Chen-Lhu stared. It wasn’t the kind of answer he’d expected—too subtly penetrating and leaving too much uncommitted. He reminded himself that it was difficult to control uncommitted people. Once a man had invested his energies, he could be twisted and turned at will… but if the man held back, conserved those energies…
“Do you think you understand me, Johnny?” Chen-Lhu asked.
“No, I don’t understand you.”
“Really, I’m quite uncomplicated; it’s not difficult to understand me,” Chen-Lhu said.
“That’s one of the most complicated statements any man ever made,” Joao said.
“Do you mock me?” Chen-Lhu asked, and he put down an upsurge of dismay and anger. Johnny was acting most out of character.
“How could I mock if I don’t understand?” Joao asked.
“Something has come over you,” Chen-Lhu said. “What is it? You are behaving most strangely.”
“Now we understand each other,” Joao said.
He goads me, Chen-Lhu thought. HE goads ME! And he asked himself: Will I have to kill this fool?
“See how easy it is to keep busy and forget our troubles,” Joao said.
Rhin glanced back at Chen-Lhu, saw a smile spread across his face. He was speaking mostly for my benefit, she thought. Wealth and pleasures—that’s the price. But what do I pay? She looked at Joao. Yes, I hand him a bandeirante on a platter! I give him Joao to use as he sees fit.
The pod floated backward down the river now, and Rhin stared upstream at hills that disappeared into drifting clouds. Why do I bother with such questions? she wondered. We don’t stand a chance. There are only these moments and the opportunity to take whatever pleasure we can from them.
“Are we down a little on the right side?” Joao asked.
“Perhaps a little,” Chen-Lhu said. “Do you think your patch is leaking?”
“It could be.”
“Do you have a pump in this stuff?”
“We could use a sprayhead from one of the hand units,” Joao said.
Rhin’s mind focused now on the weapon in Joao’s pocket, and she said, “Joao, don’t let them capture me alive.”
“Ahh, melodrama,” Chen-Lhu said.
“Leave her alone!” Joao snapped. He patted Rhin’s hand, looked out and around the pod on all sides. “Why do they leave us alone like this?”
“They’ve found a new place to wait,” Rhin said.
“Always look on the black side,” Chen-Lhu said. “What is the worst that could happen, eh? Perhaps they want our heads in the fashion of the aborigines who lived here once.”
“You’re a great help,” Joao said. “Hand me the sprayhead off one of those hand units.”
“At once, Jefe,” Chen-Lhu said, his voice mocking.
Joao accepted the metal and plastic hand pump unit, slipped back to the rear hatch and down to the float. He paused there a moment to study their surroundings. Not a sign of the creatures he knew were watching them. Downstream at a bend in the river, a rock escarpment loomed high over the trees—distance perhaps five or six kilometers.
Lava rock, Joao thought. And the river may have to get through that rock some way.
He bent to the float, unlocked the inspection plate and probed with the pump. A hollow sloshing echoed from the interior of the pontoon. He braced the pump against the side of the inspection hole, worked the toggle handle. A thin stream of water arched into the river, smelling of poisons from the sprayhead.
The yelping cry of a toucan sounded from the jungle on his right and he could hear the murmur of Chen-Lhu’s voice from the cabin.
What is it he talks about when I’m not there? Joao wondered.
He looked up in time to see that the bend in the river was wider than he’d expected. The current carried the pod now away from the rock escarpment. The fact gave Joao no elation. The river could meander a hundred kilometers through here in this season and return to within a kilometer of where we are now, he thought.
Rhin’s voice lifted suddenly, her words distinct in the damp air: “You son of a bitch!”
And Chen-Lhu answered, “Ancestry is no longer important in my land, Rhin.”
The pump sucked air with a wet gurgling, the sound drowning Rhin’s reply. Joao replaced the cap on the inspection hole, returned to the cabin.
Rhin sat with arms folded, face forward. A red blush of anger colored her neck.
Joao wedged the pump into the corner beside the hatch, looked at Chen-Lhu.
“There was water in the float,” Chen-Lhu said, his voice smooth. “I heard it.”
Yes, I’ll bet you did, Joao thought. What’s your game, Dr. Travis Huntington Chen-Lhu? Is it idle sport? Do you goad people for your own amusement, or is it something deeper?
Joao slipped into his seat.
The pod danced across a pattern of eddy ripples, turned and faced downstream toward a shaft of sunlight that stabbed through the clouds. Slowly, great patches of blue opened in the clouds.
“There’s the sun, the good old sun,” Rhin said, “now that we don’t need it.”
A need for male protection came over Rhin, and she leaned her head against Joao’s shoulder. “It’s going to be sticky hot,” she whispered.
“If you’d like to be alone, I could step out on the float,” Chen-Lhu mocked.
“Ignore the bastard,” Rhin said.
Do I dare ignore him? Joao wondered. Is that her purpose—to make me ignore him? Do I dare?
Her hair gave off a scent of musk that threatened to clog Joao’s reason. He took a deep breath, shook his head. What is it with this woman… this changeable, mercuric… female?
“You’ve had lots of girls, haven’t you?” Rhin asked.
Her words elicited memory images that flashed through Joao’s mind—doe-brown eyes with a distant look of cunning: eyes, eyes, eyes… all alike. And lush figures in tight bodices or mounding white sheets… warm beneath his hands.
“Any special girl?” Rhin asked.
And Chen-Lhu wondered: Why does she do this? Is she seeking self-justification, reasons to treat him as I wish her to treat him?
“I’ve been very busy,” Joao said.
“I’ll bet you have,” she said.
“What’s that mean?”
“There’s some girl back there in the Green… ripe as a mango. What’s she like?”
He shrugged, moving her head, but she remained pressed close to him, looking up at his jawline where no beard grew. He has Indian blood, she thought. No beard: Indian blood.
“Is she beautiful?” Rhin persisted.
“Many women are beautiful,” he said.
“One of those dark, full-breasted types, I’ll bet,” she said. “Have you had her to bed?”
And Joao thought: What does this mean? That we’re all bohemian types together?
“A gentleman,” Rhin said. “He refused to answer.”
She pushed herself up, sat back in her own corner, angry and wondering why she had done that. Do I torture myself? Do I want this Joao Martinho for my own, to have and to hold? To hell with it!
“Many families are strict with their women down here,” Chen-Lhu said. “Very Victorian.”
“Weren’t you ever human, Travis?” Rhin asked. “Even for just a day or so?”
“Shut up!” Chen-Lhu barked, and he sat back, astonished at himself. The bitch! How did she get through to me like that?