Night of the Jaguar Read Online Free PDF Page B

The Old Woman, the Otter, the Dolphin, the Snake, all vanished and replaced by a meaningless jumble. It was only with difficulty and the help of Jaguar that he suppressed his panic. The machines of the wai’ichuranan must be mighty indeed if they could rearrange the stars. Still, Jaguar ruled the night, even here, and that was something. He calmed himself and paddled to shore, heading for what looked like a small piece of forest embedded in the great cliff houses of the dead.
    Muddy sand beneath his feet, he left the plank and walked onto the shore. There were trees here, some strange but others familiar, this great fig, for example. He paused and sniffed the night air. It stank of strange gases, like the ship, but he could also detect the lives of animals, some strange to him, others almost familiar. He began to feel a little better. At least he would not starve.

Two
    J ennifer Simpson awoke early to birdsong, a mockingbird trilling in the garden and the finches in their wickerwork cage on the patio of the big house. The mockingbird finished a long phrase and then began to imitate the finches. She slipped from the bed and stood naked in the doorway of her cottage, a rangy, high-breasted girl with a mass of thick red-gold hair down to the small of her back, and covered from head to toe with pale freckles. Her face was oval, finely featured, with pale blue eyes as blank and open as a child’s. (An observer, and there was one, thought “Botticelli,” not for the first time.) The air was as cool as it would get today, and every surface of leaf and stem in the garden was covered with glistening dew. It was her favorite time of day, because although she didn’t mind communal living, she harbored a lust for privacy. She took a mask and snorkel from a hook on the porch post, retrieved a rolled-up waxed paper bag from a niche in the rough stone wall, slipped her feet into rubber flip-flops, and started down the coral-gravel path. After a few yards she encountered an enormous spiderweb laid across it, occupied by one of those spiders with a spiky body that looked like it was made of highly colored plastic. She reached for the name of it and came up empty. Scotty was always telling her the names of things, but it was hard to keep them all in her mind. Nature Boy, Kevin called him, but privately, and also The Hobbit.
    From the terrace of the house Shirley let out a scream and then yelled “Come and get it!” three times. Jenny stopped and looked back over her shoulder, waiting to see if the noise had roused Kevin. No, and she was glad of it, because although she loved him and all, he had a way of hovering, and she wanted this time to herself. She knelt and eased herself under the web, shuddering a little when it caught on her back. The rule was nothing was killed in the garden, everything lived in balance, no pesticides, no fertilizers, the way nature intended. Jenny was down with that, and Scotty seemed to make it work.
    The pool had been dug out of living coral rock, and the spoil from the dig had been used to build a little hill on which grew dozens of different kinds of bromeliads and orchids. From near its crest a good-size waterfall, driven by a solar pump, burbled merrily down into the pool. The water was clear as air. Scotty had arranged for it to feed the garden sprinklers, from which it seeped back through the porous soil to return to its source, just as nature intended water to do. The rain made up for any loss. She spat into the mask, rinsed it out, slipped it on, and lay down upon the rippling surface.
    It had been designed to imitate a natural pond in Amazonia, and it was big, a half-acre of surface and forty feet deep at the deepest. Rupert, the owner, had been to Amazonia a number of times and had built the pool with that in mind, although he had never got it to balance right until he found Scotty. Scotty was a genius at practical ecology, so said Rupert. Everyone had a genius, that was Rupert’s idea, and given