The Female of the Species

As they drew nearer, Gray slowed. The man in the flames looked straight at her. Gray stopped. Took a step. Stopped. The sound of her breathing at Errol’s side cut off altogether, as if she’d forgotten to inhale. Finally she herself stepped into the surreal molten glow of the fire, and stood, once more a statue; stone.

Errol looked away from his mentor to the man on the other side of the fire. Flames licked across his line of vision; the face burned among the yellow tongues. Errol found it hard to swallow.

But Charles Corgie was dead. Charles Corgie had fired his gun at his own bomb and exploded. Or were Il-Ororen lying again? Had they allowed Corgie to escape and made up that final episode? Then how would they have known about bombs to make up such a story?

On the other side of the fire there was a tall, dark Caucasian with a hat. His hair was black, his stubble heavy and rising, his eyes sharp and unblinking, but he could not be more than twenty-five. Even if Corgie had slunk away to rule another tribe, or moved to Nairobi and sold car insurance for thirty-seven years, he would still be over sixty now.

Errol started to speak, but Gray shook her head. She smiled more sweetly than he’d ever seen. In the hiss of escaping steam and the pop of knots, Gray seemed lost in a dream from which she had little eagerness to wake.

“What is your name?” asked Gray at last.

“Sarasola,” said the man. “Raphael Sarasola.”

Now, thought Errol. Wrong name. The joke is over. But Errol did not sense the feeling in the air change.

“I was unaware,” said Gray with evident pleasure, “we’d become a tourist attraction.”

“You made it one,” said Raphael.

“You read my book?”

“The parts that interested me,” he answered coolly. It was something Charles would have said.

Several women crept up to Raphael and laid offerings of bananas and dried meat at his feet and scurried away. Raphael looked at them without enough surprise, as if he was used to being given things. He picked up a banana, and peeled it.

Gray could not take her eyes off him. “How did B.U. happen to send me an assistant who hasn’t even read the whole book?”

“There are other ways of getting what you want besides spending a lot of time in the library.”

“You’ll have to explain those sometime.”

“I won’t have to. But I might.” Errol thought distinctly, He doesn’t behave like a graduate student. “Don’t worry, though,” said Raphael. “They sent you the right man, all right.”

“Yes,” said Gray. “I think they did.”

There was more silence; the fire popped. Errol was beginning to feel something he’d never felt before. Terror.

“I’ve been traveling for two days,” said Raphael. He threw the skin of his banana into the fire and watched it sizzle. “I’m tired.”

Gray led Raphael to the hut where she and Errol were staying. Errol trailed after them.

“That’s my mat,” Errol mumbled when Gray showed the new assistant where to sleep. Gray didn’t seem to hear. “That’s my pillow,” he said more loudly as Raphael unrolled his sleeping bag.

“You can live without it for the night,” said Gray quietly. “He hasn’t slept in days.” She whispered good night and walked softly out of the hut, pulling Errol with her, as if leaving a sleeping child.

They ambled back toward the fire. “You didn’t introduce me,” said Errol after a time.

“Sorry,” said Gray, not paying the slightest attention.

They sat down on the warm stones before the bonfire, and though she’d been in bed only an hour before, “absolutely disgusted and tired and stupid,” Gray’s eyes were alive now, and she sat on the edge of the stone rubbing her hands together. “You know, I’m getting a lot of ideas for this film,” she said. “It could be exciting.”