"Are you all right?" he said, blinking his large hazel eyes.

"I'm fine," Gamay said, although clearly she wasn't. Her laughter was rekindled by the incredulous expression on Paul's face. She choked on a mouthful of water. The prospect of drowning from laughter made her laugh even more. She popped the mouthpiece back into her mouth. Paul paddled the inflatable closer, leaned over the side, and offered his hand.

"Are you sure you're okay?"

"Yes, I'm fine," she said. She regained her composure and spat out the regulator. After a fit of wet-dog coughs she said, "I'd better come aboard."

Clinging to the side of the boat, she handed her dive gear up to Paul, who then reached down and easily lifted her one hundred thirty-five pounds onto the raft. With his tan shorts, matching military-style shirt with epaulets on the shoulders, and floppy brimmed poplin hat, he looked like a Victorian fugitive from the Explorers' Club. The large tropical butterfly perched below his Adam's apple was actually one of the colorful bow ties he was addicted to. Trout saw no reason he couldn't be impeccably dressed anywhere, even in the depths of the Venezuelan rain forest where a loincloth is considered going formal. Paul's foppish attire belied a potent physical strength built up from his days as a fisherman on Cape Cod. The barnacle-hard calluses on his palms were gone, but the muscles from hoisting fish boxes lurked behind the razor-creased clothes, and he knew how to use the leverage of his six-foot-eight body.

"The depth finder says it's only thirty feet deep, so your giddiness is not caused by nitrogen narcosis," he said in his typical analytical way.

Gamay undid the tie holding back the shoulder-length hair whose dark red color had prompted her wine connoisseur father to name his daughter after the grape of Beaujolais.

"Insightful observation, my dear," she said, wringing the water from her tresses. "I was laughing because I thought I was the sneaker when I was really the sneakee."

Paul blinked. "What a relief. That certainly clears things know what a sneaker is. Sneakee, on the other hand . . ."

She flashed a dazzling smile. "Cyrano the dolphin sneaked up and goosed me with his nose."

"I don't blame him." He leered at her slim-hipped body with a Groucho Marx hike of his eyebrows.

"Mother warned me about men who wear bow ties and part their hair in the middle."

"Did I ever tell you, you look like Lauren Hutton?" he said, puffing on an imaginary cigar. "And that I'm attracted to women with a sexy space between their front teeth?" "Bet you say that to all the girls," she said, putting a Mae West huskiness into her voice, which was low and cool by nature. "I did learn something scientific from Cyrano's little love poke."

"That you have a nose fetish?"

She gave him a no-nonsense lift of her eyebrow. "No, al though I wouldn't rule it out. I learned that river dolphins may be more primitively developed than their saltwater cousins and more mellow in general than their marine relatives. But they are intelligent and playful and have a sense of humor."

"You would need a sense of humor if you were pink and gray, had flippers with discernible fingers on them, a dorsal fin that's a joke in itself, and a head like a deformed cantaloupe."

"Not a bad biological observation for a deep ocean geologist."

"Glad to be of help."

She kissed him again, on the lips this time. "I really appreciate your being here. And for all the work you've done computer profiling the river. It's been a nice change. I'm almost sorry to be going home."

Paul looked around at their tranquil surroundings. "I've actually enjoyed it. This place is like a medieval cathedral. And the critters have certainly been fun, although I don't know if I like them taking liberties with my wife."

"Cyrano and I have a purely platonic relationship," Gamay said with a haughty elevation of her chin. "He was just trying to get my attention so I'd give him a treat." "A treat?"

"A fish treat." She slapped the side of the inflatable several times with a paddle. There was a splash where the lagoon opened into the river. A pinkish-gray hump with a long, low dorsal fin cut a V-shaped ripple in their direction. It circled the boat, emitting a sneezing sound from its blowhole. Gamay scattered fish meal pellets, and the slim beak came out of the water and hungrily snapped them down.

"We've verified those apocryphal stories of dolphins coming on call. I can imagine them helping the locals with their fishing as we've heard."

"You've also proven that Cyrano has done a good job of training you to give him a snack."

"True, but these creatures are supposed to be unfinished versions of the saltwater type, so it's of interest to me that their brains have advanced faster than their physical appearance." They watched the circling dolphin with amusement for a few minutes, then, aware that the light was waning, decided to head back.

While Gamay arranged her gear, Paul started the outboard motor and headed them out of the lagoon onto the slow-moving river. The inky water changed to a strained-pea green. The dolphin kept pace, but when he saw there would be no more treats, he peeled off like a fighter plane. Before long the thick jungle along the river gave way to a clearing. A handful of thatched huts were grouped around a white stucco house with a red tile roof and arcade facade in the Spanish colonial style.

They tied up at a small pier, hauled their gear from the boat, and walked to the stucco building, trailing a chattering gang of half naked Indian children. The youngsters were shooed away by the housekeeper, a formidable Spanish-Indian woman who wielded a broom like a battle-ax. Paul and Gamay went inside. A silver-haired man in his sixties, wearing a white shirt with an embroidered front, cotton slacks, and handmade sandals, rose from his desk in the coolness of the study where he had been working on a pile of papers. He strode over to greet them with obvious pleasure.

"Senor and Senora Trout. Good to see you. Your work went well, I trust."

"Very well, Dr. Ramirez. Thank you," Gamay said. "I had the chance to catalog more dolphin behavior, and Paul wrapped up his computer modeling of the river."

"I had very little to do with it, actually," Paul said. "It was mostly a question of alerting researchers at the Amazon Basin project of Gamay's work here and asking them to point the LandSat satellite in this direction. I can finish the computer modeling when we get home, and Gamay will use it as part of her habitat analysis."

"I'll be very sorry to see you go. It was kind of the National Underwater amp; Marine Agency to lend its experts for a small re search project."

Gamay said, "Without these rivers and the flora and fauna that grow here, there would be no ocean life."

"Thank you, Senora Gamay. As a way of appreciation I have prepared a special dinner for your last night here."

"That's very nice of you," Paul said. "We'll pack early so we'll be ready for the supply boat."

"I wouldn't be too concerned," he said. "The boat is always late."

"Fine with us," Paul replied. "We'll have time to talk some more about your work."

Ramirez chuckled. "I feel like a troglodyte. I still practice my science of botany the old way, cutting plants, preserving and comparing them, and writing reports nobody reads." He beamed. "Our little river creatures have never had better friends than you." Gamay said. "Perhaps our work will show where the dolphins' habitat is under environmental threat. Then something can be done about it."