“Well, he says no and I believe him, up to a point,” Cooksey answered, after a considered moment. “He says Jaguar killed the man, which gives me pause.”
“What do you mean?” asked Luna.
“I mean it sounds like this ‘jaguar’ is a kind of god to him, so it might be a figure of speech, as we would say when someone of whom we disapproved met with a bad end, ‘God punished him.’ On the other hand, it could be a case of shape-shifting.”
“Which is…?” said Luna.
“It’s a form of ritual. I’ve observed it any number of times in the field. A shaman takes some drug, usually a form ofayahuasca, which is an extract of theBanisteria vine together with other plant materials, and goes into a trance, during which his animal tutelary spirit takes possession of him and confers special powers. These can be things like superhuman strength, the ability to see in the dark, the ability to travel in spirit form, and so on. It’s no longer him, d’you see, but the animal spirit. And in that case, our Moie could possibly have committed a murder and have no real knowledge of the crime.”
Jenny noticed that Rupert’s face had assumed the dreamy half smile that it wore when he had heard something he didn’t want to hear and wished that someone would do something to make it go away. “That’s unfortunate, then,” he said. “Obviously, that greatly reduces, or rather eliminates, the possibility of him being of any value to us as an organization. In fact, I’m not sure it wouldn’t be the best thing, all things considered, for us to inform the police.”
Luna’s face had become pale under her tan, and her eyes had become all pinched looking, which Jenny knew was a signal that something bad was going to happen, and so it did.
“Thepolice! Rupert, what thefuck are you talking about? What the hell have we been fighting against besides the kind of shit that’s going down in the Puxto, of which Moie is living evidence?Living evidence! And you want to lock him up because some Cuban scumbag got himself killed?”
In his most maddeningly reasonable voice, Rupert replied, “Of course I don’twant to lock him up, but giving, ah, refuge, to someone who may be a serious felon would compromise the principles of our organization and open us to, ah, the possibilities of criminal prosecution. You can see that, surely?”
That was a big mistake, Jenny thought: when Luna got that pinched look what you wanted to do was either agree with her or get the fuck out of town for, like, three days.
“No,” said Luna, “what I see is that, in fact, this organization has no principles at all, except making some rich people feel good about their money. Oh,I don’t buy tropical hardwoods andI use shade-grown fair trade coffee in my three-thousand-dollar espresso machine, give me a fucking good citizen medal! And so let me make it really, really clear. If anyone calls the cops on that man, I personally am off the reservation on it. I will blow the whistle. I will let every enviro in the world know what went down, who he is, and what’s happening. I will call every TV station in town. There’ll be TV crews in permanent residence outside that gate, and you can explain why the preservation of the rain forest is important but not quite important enough for Rupert Zenger to take any risk at all of even being suspected of doing an illegal act. I don’t care if you kick us out, I don’t care if me and Scotty have to sleep in our fucking van and live on rice and beans-”
“We could make a tape,” said Geli Vargos into the angry speech; Luna stopped her rant, and they all stared at Geli. “We could tape his story, just him talking into the camera, with a voice-over, and then we could add subtitles translating what he said. And send out copies to the media. That would expose the Consuela company and put pressure on the Colombians to stop them from destroying a national park, especially since the Puxto got set up by contributions from enviro organizations in the first place.”
Rupert said, “I don’t see how that solves our problem. A tape like that is meaningless to the media unless they have confirmation that the man is what and who he says he is. A little brown man with a bowl haircut and tattoos could be anyone. So we would have to identify ourselves in any case, present him for interviews…”
“No, it’s a good idea,” said Luna. “If we do it right, it’ll cause a sen sation. He’ll be a public figure, and it won’t matter if he’s an illegal immigrant.”
“Why won’t it, Luna?” Rupert asked.
“Because if we do it right, a mass mailing of tapes, by the time the INS gets around to it, it’ll already have happened. We’ll have the interviews already. I could offer Sunny Riddle an exclusive on it, the epic voyage from the Orinoco. And after that, hell, let them take him and stick him in the jail. Let them repatriate him. He doesn’twant asylum, for God’s sake. He just wants his forest intact. And we could get a book out of it, too, we could get a grant, send a team back to Colombia, Moie in his natural habitat. Jesus, it would put this organization on the map!”
“I see we’re no longer concerned,” offered Professor Cooksey in a dry tone, “that this fellow might be in the habit of carving people up while in a drug-induced trance?”
“Actually,” said Rupert, “we have no real evidence of that, do we? It’s just, ah, speculation, as you admit yourself. And Geli’s right. And Luna. It could be a big breakthrough for us.” He turned away from Cooksey and regarded the two women with his benign brown eyes. “Now, how shall we arrange this taping? Perhaps a more anonymous location would be best, away from the property.” He took a large bite of chocolate chip cookie and awaited their response. Professor Cooksey turned his head and looked Jenny full in the face, as if he knew just what she was thinking.
Jenny got up and walked out, not bothering to collect the snack tray or ask if anyone wanted anything, as she usually did. She rarely felt anger, because what was the use of getting angry, anyway? But she had not liked what she’d heard. She thought Professor Cooksey could have made an objection, or she could have herself, although she never spoke up when organization business was discussed. The conversation had reminded her unpleasantly of other conversations she had heard, between social workers and foster parents, about her. They always spoke over her head, as if she wasn’t there, deciding what to do about herproblem. Of course, Moie wasn’t actually there, but they were treating him the same way, as a hassle and not as a real person who might have something to say about what was going to happen to him. Professor Cooksey was the one who spoke most often to Moie, knowing the language and all, but he mostly talked about plants and the kind of weird stuff he did in his home in the rain forest, and about gods and spirits.
She walked through the courtyard and down a garden path to the pool. There, as she had expected, was Moie, gazing morosely at the waterfall and humming to himself. She squatted down next to him and asked him how he was doing.
He said in Runiya, “When I first came to the land of the dead, I thought youwai’ichuranan could move the stars in the sky and I was very afraid. Cooksey says that isn’t so. But this is nearly as bad. You make a little world here, as in this pond, as in your garden, but it is all wrong, allsiwix, and it hurts my belly to see it. The creatures are alive, but the thing is dead. Have you never once listened to what a plant or animal has to say?”
She nodded and smiled. “Yeah. It’s pretty cool. See, it’s like all natural. The pump runs off solar. The sun, see”-she pointed to the sky-“it makes the water go around. Sun, waterfall, see?”
“You are a most strange being,” said Moie. “If I could speak to you properly, I would examine you and find out why you are barren, even though the Monkey Boy drags you into his hammock very often. I should ask Cooksey about this, although perhaps it is part of being dead that you make few children. Also I wonder where your elders are. I have heard some tribes eat their elders and so perhaps you do this as well. Again, I will ask Cooksey.”