Page 36 of Factory Controller

“They could at least point us in the right direction,” I reply.

“Oh, that’s right. You’re a rare mutant breed of man who asks directions.” She licks her lips and smiles. “Is there any water left?”

I lift the canteen from my belt and give it a swirl. A tinny, minuscule trickle responds to my efforts. “A little bit. Smoke means a fire, though, and that means we can make some more drinkable water if nothing else.”

I forge on and come across a place with a rocky beach. Grinding to a halt, I turn to Heather and place a finger over my lips, then motion for her to come forward.

“Is that a kid?” she asks.

“Uh huh.”

The beach is an ideal fisherman’s camp, and a boy of about ten takes full advantage of it. He stands on a rock in the water, wooden spear cocked over his shoulder, ready to strike. Despite his youth, he seems every bit the predator.

Behind him, a lean-to shelter sits a stone’s toss from a rack of fish smoking over wide, low embers. I see other spears leaning against a palm tree and know there must be other fishermen about.

“Is he from a tribe you recognize?” Heather asks.

I squint at the boy and shake my head. “I don’t think so. It’s hard to tell, since he hasn’t earned manhood yet. That’s when they don most of their distinctive markings.”

“What should we do? Should we go and talk to him?”

I suck in air through my teeth and shake my head. “I don’t know about that. He could be from one of the uncontacted tribes in the area. They’re known to be pretty hostile to whites.”

“Do we have much choice, though? We have to take the risk. Otherwise, we’re going to die of thirst, or dysentery if we give in to the thirst and drink river water.”

“Fair enough. Let’s go say hello.”

We come out of the brush and approach the boy. I make sure to hold my hands out to my sides, palms open so he knows I’m not bearing a weapon. The boy takes note of us immediately. He shifts his stance on the rock so he can toss the spear through my gut instead of the white belly of a fish.

I try a greeting in the most common tongue among the indigenous tribes, Arawak. His face scrunches up in confusion. So, not Arawak. At least he didn’t try to skewer me. I next utilize Panoan, another common dialect, to no avail.

I’ve worked most of the way through my list of tongues when Heather tugs on my arm.

“Trent? Trent, I think someone’s coming.”

I turn about and see a man with half his face painted red emerge from the forest, and he’s not alone. A half dozen leanly muscled, half-naked men surround us with spears, eyes hard as black diamonds.

On a whim I try Chapacuran, an obscure dialect I only know in passing. The men lower their spears and regard me with suspicion, but much less hostility than before.

“Thank God you speak their language.”

“Enough to keep us from getting killed,” I reply nervously, watching the men consider our fate. “I hope.”

“How do you know so many languages, anyway?”

“For a while, before I settled down in my little riverside castle, I spent a lot of time embedded with native tribes. I knew I’d have to learn how to survive down here if I were to stay. After a while I guess I pick them up a lot more easily.”

“Huh. You’re a linguist, natural born.”

“I’m a cunning linguist, you mean.”

Heather rolls her eyes. “You know, for a while there, I was really starting to like you.”

The tribesmen decide not to kill us. We’re escorted to to their village, where we speak with their chief Upuna. Thankfully, the man speaks Arawak.

When I explain the situation, he nods gravely. Their tribe, too, has felt the sting of the human traffickers. He also explains where we are. We’re not as far off course as I had thought we were, less than ten miles from the nearest village where we can secure transportation to Macapá.

His people are accommodating in the extreme, allowing us to bathe and providing refreshments. A lot of the village children cluster around us as we bathe, which upsets Heather a lot until I tell her these people don’t have a nudity taboo.

---