Lab Notes: a novel Read Online Free Page B

not fear that I am a bandido. And they can be certain I will not rape their wives or daughters.”
    The three men lowered their eyes.
    Guilt compelled Olimpia to drop her gaze also; she had not disclosed the entire truth. According to her research, head shrinking was not the only cephalic art the Winotos practiced. Another of their specialties was mind control. It was reported that the Winotos ’ Shaman used a treatment, involving local tree lichen, to render a person amenable to suggestion—even at great distances. Olimpia was not sure what it all meant, but she intended to find out. The burning objective of her jungle trek was to obtain a sample of that tree lichen, with or without the Shaman’s approval.
    Eduardo broke the silence. “How do you feel about Olimpia going into the wilderness, Padre?”
    “It may have been preordained. Olimpia has wanted to come to this area for over a year. Then I was assigned here six months ago, after the American missionary priest, Father Lawrence, contracted malaria. But enough about the Garzas. Tell us something about the Carrera brothers.”
    Gabriel explained the reason for their impending jungle trek: During the relatively dry winter season, crews had constructed four-meter high dirt levies about three quarters of a kilometer square around dense stands of catevo trees along river tributaries, and they chain-sawed the trees to the ground.
    Spring and early summer rains flooded the levies, floating the logs to the surface. Gabriel and Eduardo and their crew would be dynamiting narrow openings in eight adjacent levies, slowly releasing forty-foot logs for transport down the river.
    Mosquito screens had been rolled down, and candles that cast amber glows from wall niches burned low. After finishing a dessert of bananas and shredded coconut, the Padre said the hour was getting late and expressed his gratitude for “such a sumptuous feast.”
    Gabriel and Eduardo escorted their guests toward the door. Gabriel walked slightly behind Olimpia with his hand ever-so-lightly touching her arm.
    Outside, the air was almost liquid. A hazy three-quarter moon illuminated ghostly forms of the jungle’s steamy breath. Olimpia summoned her armed guard from the shadows of the courtyard. He lit a lantern and led the Garzas back to the rectory.
    An agreement had been struck: Olimpia and her entourage would accompany the Carrera’s flotilla as far as the confluence of the Rio Atroto and Rio Destino , a three-day trip.
    It seemed like a perfect plan.

μ CHAPTER FOUR μ
     
    To: Olimpia Garza
    From: Diane Rose
    Subject: Possible career move
    Dear Olimpia: Vincent and I are being courted by a biotech company (Bayside Research Inc) in Houston. Raymond Bellfort, BRI’s president, stopped in Pittsburgh two months ago on his way home from a biotechnology convention in Boston. He phoned and invited us to lunch, stating that he was recruiting scientists.
    -DELETE-
     
    Dear Olimpia: In a research environment where a grant from the National Institutes of Health is far from a guarantee, I thought it well worth our time to meet with a recruiter from a Houston biotech company to determine what his organization had to offer.
    -DELETE-
     
    Diane spun her desk chair away from the keyboard, shaking her hands as if drying nail polish or limbering up for the Flight of the Bumblebee . An email to Olimpia frequently had false starts like this. It wasn’t writer’s block—she’d been known to plug up Olimpia’s internet server with her wordy missives. It was more like an emotional block. After the words “Dear Olimpia,” any form of expression, other than lifeless facts, seemed to get hung up between her brain and the keyboard.
    Too often, notes intended to be friendly read like term papers. And when asking Olimpia for advice, Diane frequently presented her problems and goals with backup research as if submitting them for a grade. Her grandmother would have called it a “Twinkie Complex.”
    Twinkie was her