A large, middle aged man had deplaned. He was standing directly in front of her, a foot taller and two-hundred pounds heavier than she.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Megan yelled.
"I'm here to see you Dr. McPhee," he replied evenly.
"Not without permission! And I'm damned sure nobody gave you authorization to barge in with that thing." Megan pointed to the chopper as if it were an evil genie. "You've terrified my children. You outsiders are so bloody ignorant."
"Hold on a minute," the huge one interrupted good-naturedly. "Read, please." He handed her an official looking document. Megan read attentively.
"Satisfied?"
"Not bloody likely. You've wrangled an authorization. So what? You haven't got my permission, and that's all that counts." She studied the big man; he looked familiar somehow. "These people are probably the last stone age men left on earth," she continued heatedly. "They’re very fragile."
"I'm not going to bother your little savages."
"You've more than bothered them already; and who are you to call them savages! You, that machine, those men with their arsenal," pointing to the big man's bodyguards, "violate everything I'm trying to do. I'd like to know how you got permission from the Royal Geographic to fly in here?"
"It's not so difficult when your name is Joseph Brown."
The pudding face; The accent - crude, grating - definitely "New Yaurk" and not the least bit refined.
"I knew I'd seen you before; I do get newspapers occasionally, even here. Joseph Brown; industrialist, philanthropist, amateur anthropologist and archaeologist, self-made billionaire - mover and shaker to the world. Okay Mr. Brown. So you're a big shot. But you could have paddled up river like any other tourist if you were so bloody anxious to observe the Kenyah. And you could have arranged it through me. I'd have made damned sure you wouldn't have upset my people"
"In the first place my dear young lady, I didn't come to see your aborigines. I came to see you. And secondly, I don't have a whole lot of time for red tape. Besides, can you really picture this body surviving a three hundred mile trek up crocodile-infested rivers in a dugout canoe?"
In spite of herself Megan McPhee cracked a smile. Images of a plump, overfed missionary being boiled in a large pot flashed through her mind.
"You have a point," she conceded.
"Where can we talk. This sun is killing me." Joseph Brown smiled benignly.
"Come along, then," she replied resignedly.
All of a sudden they were surrounded by Kenyahn warriors. They had summoned up the courage to confront the strangers who had dropped from the sky. In the event that the interlopers intended harm to Megan, the tribesmen were armed with stone-tipped spears, and machetes made from ragged shards of volcanic glass. These were smallish men. The tallest being no more than five feet in height. A singular distinguishing characteristic was a grotesquely distended lower lip. At birth, each male baby had a hole cut in his lower lip which was then stretched so as to accommodate eventually a wooden disk up to four inches in diameter.
The creeping influence of civilization was evidenced however by the fact that a few of the younger warriors had insisted that the tribal witch doctor sew the opening shut. The surgery was crudely done. As a result saliva dripped constantly from their partially closed lip holes.
The Kenyahn warriors were naked except for a "G" string made from snake skin which covered their privates. The women of the tribe took great pride in their own nakedness which they emphasized and highlighted by plucking out their pubic hairs. The Kenyahns had a well developed sense of modesty however. Their peculiar form of propriety demanded that women stand up to urinate while men peed in a squatting position.
The Kenyahn warriors were beginning to make threatening gestures towards Joseph Brown and his bodyguards. Megan spoke a few short words of what, to Brown, sounded like gibberish. The little men seemed to relax a bit, but they still held their machetes chest high. Megan turned to Joseph Brown. "I told them you were a friend of mine. They're not entirely convinced. So I'd strongly suggest that your men go back to the helicopter and stay put. The Kenyahns, until very recently, ate their enemies. I don't think you want to provoke any kind of confrontation." This was not said with tongue in cheek; she was dead serious.
Megan led Brown towards an elongated thatched hut at the jungle's edge. The structure was about thirty feet long and fifteen feet wide. It was the largest dwelling in the village. A spacious single room, not doors; no windows, with a high vaulted ceiling.
"City Hall," Brown observed.
"In a manner of speaking - yes. It's the tribe's Community Centre. A place for council meetings, festive celebrations; that sort of thing. The Kenyahns would have taken great offence if I had let you into my hut. Such a thing would be improper for an unmarried female."
"Yet it's Okay to eat people."
"Isn't that what makes the study of anthropology so interesting Mr. Brown?"
He smiled broadly.
The smoke filled air inside the "Long Hut" made Brown's eyes water. There were piles of ashes on the mud floor of the hut. These were residues from ceremonial tribal feasts; the ashes were alive with fleas.
Brown observed a number of sitting platforms scattered around the room. The furnishings were constructed from cypress boughs and covered with straw mats. They had been built just high enough off the ground to be out of jumping range of the fleas.
Bunches of ripening green bananas hung from the ceiling along with baskets of cassava roots which would be grated into manioc flour, a staple foodstuff in the Kenyahn diet.
Before sitting down, Megan picked up a long pole and began poking at the ceiling. She worked methodically, pushing back the grassy fronds, and scraping the pole along the ceiling beams. Anticipating Joseph Brown's question, she said matter-of-factly, "Tarantulas and scorpions like to nest in the ceiling. Snakes come in looking for mice." She shrugged. "Sometimes, they fall out of the ceiling."
Maybe she was trying to psyche him out. Brown couldn't be sure. In any case, he had no intention of rising to the bait.
"Not a problem. Where I grew up, this place would be considered first rate."
"Sit down Mr. Brown. What's on your mind?"
Brown opened a dossier, and began to read.
"Your sister; Maureen McPhee; born June 2, 1986; like yourself a bit of a child prodigy; completed public school at age eleven, graduated high school at age fifteen, after a five year enriched programme; top 1% of her class too; presently enrolled at Ohio State University, a third year undergraduate programme, majoring in Ancient New World Civilizations; she intended to follow in your footsteps Dr. McPhee - post graduate work leading to a Doctorate; her chosen field of study, she hoped, would be in the area of pre-Incan and Mayan cultures of Central and South America. Bad luck; the car crash; not her fault; black ice; not her fault at all; paralyzed from the waist down. A real shame. Not likely she’ll be going on digs any time soon.”
Megan stormed, “ What gives you the right to mock my grief; it was a cruel thing to say; now, get out.”
“Hold on, please. I’m deeply sorry if I upset you. it wasn’t my intent. I’m here to give you some good news. At least hear me out.”
"You have nothing I care to hear about; goodbye, Mr. Brown.”
“What if I was t’ tell you that that I had the means to fix your little sister; allow her to walk just like you and me.”
“I’d say you were a charlatan and a liar. My sister’s paralysis is irreversible.”
“What