We can live anywhere, as long as it's close to an international airport. In any case, you're all over the world with that Doctors With Wings outfit 'I don't know-have you? You tell me so little about your past, even now.' 'I'm not sure I'm ready to stay in New Orleans with all that it entails-the family complications, the unpleasant memories.Īnd I've seen enough violence already, don't you think?' It was remarkable how quickly she tanned in the African sun. He took another thoughtful sip and gazed at his wife.

Well, if you take that FBI job Mike Decker's offering, you can drink juleps day and 'African mint is rather harsh on the palate.' Pendergast chuckled, sipped his drink, glanced down at it. You marry a man because he's good with a rifle, only to find 'Now you see, this is exactly what my mother warned me about. I was hoping perhaps we could spend the night discussing Kant's concept of the categorical 'Aloysius, you wouldn't be planning an assault on my virtue, would you?' 'Care for another sundowner?' Pendergast asked his wife, raising the cocktail pitcher. Safari in the Musalangu Game Management Area, where they had been shooting bushbuck and duiker under a herd reduction program Pendergast and his wife of two years, Helen. The evening chatter was underlain by the distant roar Which mingled with the clattering of pots and pans in the kitchen tent. The low murmur of their conversation, punctuated by an occasional laugh from the woman, was almost indistinguishableĪmid the sounds of the African bush: the calls of vervet monkeys, the screech of francolins and chattering of fire-finches, The coolness did not extend to the woman, who was lazily fanning herself with a largeīanana leaf, stirring the thick mane of auburn hair she had loosely tied back with a bit of salvaged twine. The man, slender and tall, was remarkable for a cool, almost icy paleness

They were dressed in dusty khakis, long pants and sleeves, protection against the tsetse flies that came out In the shade of the central tree, two figures, a man and a woman, were seated in camp chairs on either side of a table, drinking Scent of burning mopane wood and roasting kudu. A thread of smoke from a cooking fire twisted up through the cover, carrying with it the tantalizing Several dusty canvas tents circled a beaten area shaded by a grove of old musasa trees, their branches spreading like emerald Makwele Stream rose in the east like blunt green teeth, framed against the sky. T HE SETTING SUN BLAZED THROUGH THE AFRICAN bush like a forest fire, hot yellow in the sweltering evening that gathered over the bush camp.

Fever Dream by Douglas Preston