Having ceased their gymnastics, they inclined their heads just perceptibly in response. They seemed surprised to hear their own language coming out of the mouth of a paunchy white man with drooping mustachios and a bald brown pate. Nevertheless, they palavered amiably with Blair, nodded more than once at Joshua and The Machine, and stalwartly held their ground. Wiping his brow with a handkerchief and humorously pursing his lips, the Great Man returned to Joshua.
“They’re a decent enough crew, I think. Ignorant about human prehistory, of course. We’d probably do well to indulge them in a couple of their whims.”
“What were they saying about me?”
“Why, nothing. Nothing more than what they were saying about the lot of us, that is.”
“And what was that?”
“Referred to us, jocularly, as iloridaa enjekat, I’m afraid. Sounds lovely if you don’t know what it means.”
“Iloridaa what?”
“Enjekat, Joshua. Means ‘those who confine their farts.’ Has to do with the kinds of breeches we wear.”
“Jocularly?”
“Well, I would say so. On the whole, they were quite pleasant.”
“What do they want? Did you tell them to move?”
“I asked them to move, Joshua. However, they’re not going to pack off without a concession or two from the man who had this traditional grazing area proclaimed a state protectorate.”
“They’ve got your number, then.”
“Well, they know who I am, of course. Figured that out readily enough. It tickles them to have run up against the High Mucky-Muck of the interior ministry, so to speak. I’m the chap who displaces living people to dig up the bones of dead ones.”
“They look tickled.”
Kaprow stepped down from The Machine. He stood with one hand on the door, waiting for Blair and Joshua to come abreast. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “If Joshua’s going to get off by tomorrow morning, we need to get set up.”
Blair said, “Dr. Kaprow, a great many things in Africa are on permanent hold. I’m afraid you’re going to have to—”
“We have a schedule. If we don’t—”
“We will, Dr. Kaprow, we will. I should have had a police unit from one of the frontier outposts sweep the area. Unfortunately, the protectorate’s a little too big to fence.”
“Unfortunately,” Joshua echoed the Great Man. He pulled the moist material of his shirt away from his rib cage and wiped his forehead with his wrist. Out here, stickiness was a chronic affliction.
“What do they want?”
“They each want an item in trade, Dr. Kaprow. In addition, two of them would like a special favor.”
“Trade? What do we get?”
“Their cattle out of the road, I would imagine.”
“And the special favor?”
“Let’s meet their specific demands first, shall we? The special favor is going to require a little of our time.”
“That’s exactly what I had hoped to save, sir.”
“Nevertheless,” said Alistair Patrick Blair.
The warriors’ specific requests were simple, either poignant or grasping depending on your relationship to the item forfeited. Joshua yielded a leather belt with a brass buckle on which the jaunty figure of Mickey Mouse had been embossed. Kaprow, bewildered, forked over several American coins, while Blair made a lavishly eloquent presentation of his meerschaum pipe. The air policeman in the Land Rover, despite protesting that its sacrifice would put him in violation of the Air Force dress code, gave up his silver helmet, along with its camouflage net.
Finding that the helmet fit perfectly, the Sambusai warrior who had acquired it began chanting softly and doing gentle leaps, a Mona Lisa beatitude veiling his features. His tribesmen staggered about laughing, unable to puncture his composure with their jibes and catcalls. Then, controlling their mirth, they approached Blair with another request.
“What now?” Kaprow asked warily.
“They’re envious of the helmet, but don’t see any others to choose from. They’ll settle for cardboard sun visors.”
“Oh, good.”
Joshua saw that a group of technicians (Americans) and field workers (Zarakalis) had climbed out of the covered flatbed of the truck behind them. Several were wearing sun visors, which they readily doffed and handed over to Blair to give to the importunate herders. As soon as the Sambusai had put these on, they began leaping with their helmeted comrade. The support personnel from the truck came forward to watch. One or two of them joined the dance, pogo-sticking with good-natured incompetence. The activity reminded Joshua of fuzzy kinescopes of American Bandstand segments on which Philadelphia teenagers had surrendered to a form of rhythmic seizure called the Watusi. It had not looked exactly like this, but then the Sambusai were not the Watusi.
Kaprow said, “All we need now is a punch bowl and some