CONRADS QUEST FOR RUBBER - Leo Frankowski

There wasn't a mark on either of the men, and from Gregor's description of what happened to him, it didn't seem to be a poison. It looked like death by electrocution, but how could a fish electrocute anybody?

We buried Antoni in the sand by the dying river.

That evening, we were sitting around the campfire, depressed by the loss of yet another of our number. Conversation had waned, and I was starting to think about going to sleep, when two tiny men walked up to our fire, as bold as you please! They sat down and shared out between them a fish that we had baked but nobody had wanted to eat. Then they ate it, smiling and nodding at us!

We were stunned. These people looked like something out of a children's fairy tale! They were perfectly formed, well-proportioned, and even quite handsome, but neither of them came as high as my waist! I doubted if either of them could have weighed forty pounds. Yet these were adult men, well-muscled, and with underarm and genital hair.

When they had finished their meal, with gestures we offered to cook some more for them, but they declined. Nor were they interested in any smoked fish. They did accept some water from us, lightly laced as it was with whiskey, and appeared to enjoy it considerably.

I took out a small belt knife and began to whittle on a piece of wood. This got their attention! I gave the knife to one of them, and he was delighted with it. I think he was more amazed with the knife than we were with him. Tomaz gave a similar knife to the second little man, then got out a machete and showed them how to chop up a nearby bush.

We now had them sufficiently interested that I didn't think they would run away on us. It was time to teach them how to speak Pidgin!

The first lessons hadn't gone very far when the bushes around us parted and a dozen or so additional people came out and sat around our campfire. They weren't all little men. Some of them were little women.

These new people were greeted by the two we had already made friends with, and it was obvious to us that they had stayed in the bushes to see what sort of reception we would give their friends.

Since the newcomers were well-armed with spears, bows, and peashooters, they had been prepared to come to the rescue, if we turned out to be the bad guys.

We were trying hard to be the good guys, and we were soon passing out smoked fish and very watered whiskey, and putting more fish on the fire to cook. I went to the canoe and came back with knives enough for everybody in the party, and things soon got very pleasant.

We were going to have to spend some time in this area, at least until the dry spell ended, and we were glad that we could now spend it with friends, albeit small ones.

Chapter Thirty

From the Journal of Josip Sobieski

WRITTEN MARCH 11, 1251, CONCERNING DATE UNKNOWN, 1250

JUST BEFORE we went to sleep, our guests went back into the forest. Even with a fire, and with a sentry awake, they did not feel comfortable out in the open. They couldn't have gone far, though, because they were back again at first light.

They waited respectfully as the three of us recited our morning oath. Later, once they learned Pidgin, they had us translate it for them, and many of them started reciting it with us, as did, eventually, Jane.

They called themselves the Yaminana, and they said that the land for miles around owned them. They really thought that way. They did not own the land. It owned them. Another curiosity was that they did not consider themselves to be "real." We, the big people, were the real people. They were just the Yaminana. To their minds, they were something between the animals and the real people, but not members of either group.

The women were mostly gatherers, collecting more than half the food the tribe ate. They took care of the children and did the cooking. As with the other tribes we had seen, these roles were maintained with great strictness. A woman of the Yaminana would no more go hunting than a European would fornicate with his mother!

The men were primarily hunters, waiting silently for hours until a bird, a snake, or a monkey came within the relatively short range of their weapons before shooting. They liked fish, but disliked being on the ground in the open, which fishing generally required. Thus, they were pleased when we brought in all the fish that everybody could carry, before we made the trip to their village.

They were experts with poisons and with traps. The only big predator, aside from the dragons and some of the snakes, was a big spotted cat. It was quite capable of killing a full-sized human, but the Yaminana did not fear it. Rather, it feared them, their poisoned arrows, and their traps. Usually, the big cat avoided the little people.

I know that we could never have survived had we stumbled unsuspectingly onto their village. They had to point out to us each of the deadly tricks that awaited the unwary. The worst, or at least the most common, were pointed sticks steeped in poison, which were stuck in the dirt along the trail. Step on one, and you were laid up for a month, if you were lucky. If not, you were dead.

Their village was largely built up in the trees. Indeed, it might have been them that I had spotted, months ago, just before the fevers hit my platoon. It made sense, given the small size of the people and the fact that the forest around here regularly flooded.

Their community was made up of perhaps four hundred people. Well over half of their population consisted of children, and we saw only a few really old people among them.

They were much lighter-skinned than the natives we had seen earlier, perhaps because of their habit of staying in the dense forest, out of the sun. Their hair was not as black as the others', either, but often shaded into a dark brown. They were tiny, with the adults averaging about a yard tall, yet their proportions were approximately those of normal people, except for the eyes, which were about the same size as my own. Placed in a tiny head, they seemed huge. All told, they were as attractive a people as I have ever seen.

They went about completely naked, avoiding all jewelry, decorations, clothing, and body paint, save for the ubiquitous insect sap.

If they needed something with them, such as their weapons, they carried them in their hands and never slung them over a shoulder, even while climbing trees. They didn't wear belts, baldrics, or anything like a backpack or pouch. We wondered if the reason was that, being small, if danger threatened, they wanted to be able to drop everything, to run, and to hide.

My men and I had long been reduced to wearing loincloths, a piece of old bedsheet going from the back of the belt to the front. The native chief objected to them, on the grounds of sanitation! He felt it was unhealthy to thus hold the body's natural dirt against it. We demurred, but a few days later our loincloths disappeared in the night.

The other tribes that we had met had insisted we indulge in an orgy with them. The attitude seemed to be that if we were not going to be their enemies, we must be their best friends. No middle ground was possible. The little people had the same attitude, only more so.

When we were introduced to their elders, everyone was all smiles and nods since we couldn't speak with them yet. I gave the chief a knife, an axe, and a machete. He gave me his favorite new wife!

Not just to use, but to keep. Forever. This bothered me, for while I was sure that my love, Maude, would forgive my sexual indiscretions — once I told her of the peculiar circumstances— how could I possibly explain bringing home another woman?

I couldn't pronounce her name, since it contained two clicks and a whistle that were used in the local tongue as well as the usual vowels and consonants. I never learned to manage these strange sounds. The locals actually laughed at me every time I tried to pronounce them. But her name ended with "Booboo," and she didn't seem to mind me calling her that.

My problems were increased by the fact that I was attracted to her. She was a pretty little thing. She was perfectly, deliciously formed, and had all of her dimensions been doubled, I would have recommended her to any good friend.

But despite her full, pointed breasts, her slender waist, and her flaring hips, I could not quite convince myself that anyone that tiny could be an adult. And even if she was old enough, there was the physical problem of our relative sizes.

How could I possibly copulate with someone so tiny without doing her serious damage?

The chief made it very clear that this was the way things were done, and if I were to be so crass as to insult both him and his former wife, then we had best get out of his territory now, before he was forced to kill us.

Leaving then would have involved abandoning our supplies, and after seeing the defenses around the village, I shuddered at the prospect of trying to make our way overland, past other, doubtless equally well-protected villages.

With this incentive, I went through a native wedding ceremony, with Tomaz and Gregor at my side. My objections to marriage had made the elders suspicious, and they now felt that we should all become their relatives. Gregor was of the opinion that the natives simply had a surplus of young women to feed.

With the Yaminana, marriage had a lot to do with mutual care, making sure the other was well-fed, taking care of children, and love, in the true sense of the word. It had very little to do with sex. Anytime anyone wanted to have sex with another person, they simply asked, and the favor was generally granted on the spot. Except for reasons like illness, the fact that you were a man who had already done it once today, or that you had prior commitments, to fail to have sex with a person of the opposite sex who asked you politely was a serious, even deadly insult. With this situation, the best tactic was to ask any lady who caught your eye early in the day, so you could turn down the dogs later without fear of repercussions.

Heterosexual sex was enjoyed out in the open, and at all times of the day or night. Homosexuality and lesbianism were unknown. Strangely, the Yaminana had no clear idea of there being a connection between sex and children. They said that a woman had to have sex at least once in order to "open the path" for children, but after that, sex was just for fun, and children happened when they wanted to.

Sex proved to be quite possible with our new wives, and all the rest of the women in the tribe, for that matter, despite their small proportions. I always insisted that my partners be on top, however, for fear of hurting them.

Jane confused the Yaminana, so they ignored her. They did not like the idea of a woman hunting, although they grudgingly admired her abilities with a bow. To my knowledge, she neither asked nor was asked to have sex during her entire stay there.

They were vastly impressed with our guns. When a big, long-nosed sort of wild pig, with three toes, came into the village, I got the chief's permission to shoot it. One shot put it down, and I was later told that it would have taken the Yaminana hours to kill so big a beast, with the likely injury of several villagers.

The chief immediately insisted that I give him a gun, but fortunately he was too small to shoot one. At his first attempt with one, it knocked him flat on his back and badly bruised his arm. I was happy when he gave up on the idea. As mercurial as these people were, I didn't really want to see them with modern weapons.

Jane had long considered firearms to be instruments of the devil and refused to touch them.

The Yaminana didn't make pottery, and were noticeably more primitive than the other tribes we'd met. They seemed to be less intelligent, and even childlike in most things. They were charming, though, and brought out our paternal feelings. Their children were particularly endearing, and even Jane couldn't help but feel maternal around them, although she was ashamed to admit it.

Still, we wondered if the small size of their heads and brains had something to do with their lack of intellectual depth.

In the course of time, everyone in the tribe was speaking a version of Pidgin, and eventually they seemed to like it so much that they were abandoning their old language. They were a simple people, and they liked a simple language.

For the next six months we and our adopted tribe ate well. Generally, they would find the game, and we would kill it. They did most of the gathering and the hunting and snaring of small game, but our addition of wild pigs, dragons, and big snakes, one of which was fully nine yards long, more than paid our way.

We helped out in another way when the Yaminana were attacked by a neighboring tribe of full-sized people. This was after we had stayed with them for over three months, and we Europeans had regained much of our original strength. Some thirty warriors attacked us, but they didn't have army training, and they didn't have guns.

We killed eleven of them, nine by gunshot and two in hand-to-hand fighting without serious injury to ourselves. The Yaminana accounted for three more, with a loss of seven of their own number, all of them adult men. The women neither hunted nor fought, which was probably why they outnumbered the men.

After the battle we were horrified to watch our little friends gleefully butcher their fallen foes, and then cook them up for dinner!

The chief told me they had to eat their enemies, because the big people who had attacked in the first place wanted to capture some of the Yaminana in order to eat them.

When a Yaminana was eaten by an outsider, his soul was lost to the tribe. Eating their enemies was the only way to return the souls of their lost tribesmen to their families. And anyway, he told us, they were delicious!

Fortunately, he was not greatly offended when we refused to participate in the feast. It was enough that we had provided the main course.

After I had seen my little wife daintily nibbling off the last shreds of flesh clinging to a human femur, it was weeks before I could kiss her again.

I was also shocked when I saw Jane happily eating her share of the cannibal feast! She said that to her people, human flesh was just another kind of meat. On questioning her later, I found out why she had not eaten our own dead on the Maude; since those men had died of a sickness, the meat was tainted. As to Antoni, she had simply assumed we preferred fish, as she did.

The next day, with great ceremony, the Yaminana ate the bodies of their own tribesmen who had fallen in battle.

All of this cannibalism troubled me. I had not been able to make any progress at converting the Yaminana to Christianity and had even given up trying, until I could bring a priest back to do the job properly. Seeing these tiny people eating human flesh told me just how remiss I had been in doing my Christian duty toward them. I renewed my efforts to bring them to Christ, but again it was to no avail. I gave up and worked instead on my equipment. The stock of my rifle had rotted so badly that I was obliged to carve myself a new one, out of a native wood that Jane recommended.

The most important event during our stay with the Yaminana, from the army's viewpoint, happened during our first month with them.