Fever Dream - Douglas Preston [1]
The seated figures were Aloysius X. L. Pendergast and his wife of two years, Helen. They were at the tail end of a hunting safari in the Musalangu Game Management Area, where they had been shooting bushbuck and duiker under a herd reduction program granted by the Zambian government.
“Care for another sundowner?” Pendergast asked his wife, raising the cocktail pitcher.
“Another?” she replied with a laugh. “Aloysius, you wouldn’t be planning an assault on my virtue, would you?”
“The thought never entered my mind. I was hoping perhaps we could spend the night discussing Kant’s concept of the categorical imperative.”
“Now you see, this is exactly what my mother warned me about. You marry a man because he’s good with a rifle, only to find he has the brains of an ocelot.”
Pendergast chuckled, sipped his drink, glanced down at it. “African mint is rather harsh on the palate.”
“Poor Aloysius, you miss your juleps. Well, if you take that FBI job Mike Decker’s offering, you can drink juleps day and night.”
He took another thoughtful sip and gazed at his wife. It was remarkable how quickly she tanned in the African sun. “I’ve decided not to take it.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not sure I’m ready to stay in New Orleans with all that it entails—the family complications, the unpleasant memories. And I’ve seen enough violence already, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know—have you? You tell me so little about your past, even now.”
“I’m not cut out for the FBI. I don’t like rules. In any case, you’re all over the world with that Doctors With Wings outfit; we can live anywhere, as long as it’s close to an international airport. ‘Our two souls therefore endure not a breach, but an expansion, like gold to airy thinness beat.’ ”
“Don’t bring me to Africa and quote John Donne. Kipling, maybe.”
“ ‘Every woman knows all about everything,’ ” he intoned.
“On second thought, spare me the Kipling as well. What did you do as a teenager, memorize Bartlett’s?”
“Among other things.” Pendergast glanced up. A figure was approaching along the trail from the west. He was a tall Nyimba tribesman, dressed in shorts and a dirty T-shirt, an ancient rifle slung over his shoulders, carrying a forked walking stick. As he approached the camp, he paused and cried out a greeting in Bemba, the local lingua franca, which was answered by welcoming shouts from the kitchen tent. He then proceeded into camp and approached the table at which the Pendergasts were seated.
Both rose. “Umú-ntú ú-mó umú-sumá á-áfíká,” Pendergast said by way of greeting, and grasped the man’s dusty, warm hand, Zambian-fashion. The man proffered his walking stick to Pendergast; there was a note wedged into its fork.
“For me?” Pendergast asked, switching to English.
“From the district commissioner.”
Pendergast shot a glance at his wife, then removed the note and unfolded it.
My dear Pendergast,
I wish to have a conversation with you immediately via SSB. There has been a nasty business at Kingazu Camp—very nasty.
Alistair Woking, DC
South Luangwa
PS. Dear chap, you know perfectly well that regulations require you to have SSB communications set up at every bush camp. It is most annoying to have to send a runner like this.
“I don’t like the sound of that,” said Helen Pendergast, looking over her husband’s shoulder. “What do you think this ‘nasty business’ is?”
“Perhaps a photo tourist has suffered the amorous advances of a rhinoceros.”
“That’s not funny,” Helen said, laughing all the same.
“It is rutting season, you know.” Pendergast folded the note and shoved it in his breast