"02 - Blue Gold (b)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cussler Clive)

"My guess, too. These two fellows with spears might mean join me to fight. Little guy and the animal could stand for hunt." He chuckled. ' Almost as good as a cell phone."

"Better," Gamay said. "It doesn't use batteries or cost you per minute."

Paul asked Ramirez if he could open another bag, and the Spaniard gladly assented.

"Fishing kit," Trout said. "Metal hooks, fiber line. Hey," he said, examining a crude pair of metal pincers. "Bet this is a pair of pliers for pulling hooks out."

"I've got you beat," Gamay said, emptying another bag and pulling out a connected pair of small wooden circles with dark transparent surfaces filling their openings. She attached the apparatus to her ears with fiber hoops. "Sunglasses."

Not to be outdone, Ramirez also had been poking through bags. He held a gourd about six inches long, unplugged the wooden top, and sniffed. "Medicine perhaps? It smells like alcohol."

Hanging from the bottom was a miniature bowl and a wooden handle with a flat piece of stone and an irregular wheel on a rotating axis. Paul stared thoughtfully at the gourd, then took it from the other man. He filled the dish with the liquid, brought the wooden device near, and flicked the wheel. It scraped across the stone and emitted sparks. The liquid ignited with a poof.

"Voila," he said with obvious satisfaction. "The very first Bic cigarette lighter. Handy for starting a campfire, too."


More interesting discoveries followed. One bag held herbs Ramirez identified as medicinal plants including some he had never seen. In another was a slim, flat piece of metal, pointed at both ends. When they placed it on a glass of water it swung around until one end pointed toward the magnetic north. They found a bamboo cylinder. When held to the eye the glass lenses imbedded inside offered about an eight-power telescopic magnification. There was a knife that folded into a slim wooden case. Their last find was a short bow made from overlapping strips of metal like a car spring and curved to provide maximum pull for an arrow. The bowstring was of thin metal cable. It was hardly the primitive design one would expect to find in the rain forest. Ramirez ran his hand over the polished metal.

"Amazing," he said. "I've never seen anything like this. The bows the villagers use are simple dowels pulled back and tied with a crude bowstring."

"How did he learn how to make these things?" Paul said, scratching his head.

Gamay said, "It's not just the objects themselves but the material they are made of. Where did it come from?"

They stood around the table in silence.

"There is a more important question," Ramirez said somberly. "Who killed him?"

"Of course," Gamay said. "We were so overwhelmed by his technical accomplishments that we forgot that these objects be long to a dead human being."

"Do you have any idea who might have murdered him?" Paul asked.

A dark cloud descended on Ramirez's brow. "Poachers. Wood cutters and burners. The latest are men who collect valuable plants for medicine. They would kill anyone who got in their way."

"How could a lone Indian be a threat?" Gamay asked.

Ramirez shrugged.

Gamay said, "I think that in a murder investigation you are supposed to start with the corpse."

"Where did you hear that?" Paul said. "I may have read it in a detective novel." "Good advice. Let's take another look."

They walked back to the river and uncovered the body. Paul rolled it over onto its stomach. The smaller entry wound indicated that the man had been shot in the back. Trout gently re moved a carved pendant from around his neck. It showed a winged woman holding her hands in front of her as if she were pouring from them. He passed it to Gamay, who said the figure reminded her of Egyptian engravings of the rebirth of Osiris.

Paul was taking a closer look at the reddish welts on the dead man's shoulders. "Looks like he's been whipped." He rolled the body onto its back again. "Hey, check out this strange scar," he said, indicating a pale thin line on the Indian's lower abdomen. "If I didn't know better, I'd say he had his appendix out."

Two dugouts arrived from across the river. The shaman, whose head was adorned with a brilliant crown of feathers, announced that the grave was ready. Trout covered the dead body with the blanket, and, with Gamay at the tiller, they used the inflatable to tow the blue-and-white canoe to the other side. Trout and Ramirez carried the body a few hundred yards into the forest and buried it in the shallow hole. The shaman surrounded the grave with what looked like various dried chicken parts and solemnly warned the assemblage that the spot would be forever taboo. Then they towed the empty canoe to midstream, where the current would catch it, and set the dugout adrift.