Luana (24 page)

“Relax, Mur,” advised Barrett softly. Murin looked up, sighed.

Three men crowded in the doorway. Two were old, but the grips on their spears were firm. Barrett sensed others crowding around these first three. Sure enough, a group of women entered and helped Murin remove the rest of his bindings. Barrett, Isabel, and Luana were likewise freed.

One of the old men, who’d been looking uncertainly around their dim prison, abruptly began shouting excitedly in the dead dialect. There was no need for translation. They’d finally discovered that Kobenene was missing. There was considerable commotion in the crowd outside. Straining, Barrett thought he saw three shapes move off in the direction of the stream. He hoped they’d catch the bugger, but not kill him.

Barrett reserved that right to himself.

They were marched ceremoniously across the cavern floor. A crowd of women and a few children trailed. The women sort of cackled softly, but the men were determinedly silent. There was no howling and screaming. It was eerie. Again, Barrett was struck by the difference between their current captors and the Wanderi. There was a more civilized ruthlessness in operation here.

The procession halted. Across from them, a metal gate formed of criss-crossing bars of alloyed gold was set into the naked rock of the cavern wall. A second, solid door of wood now formed a bridge across a narrow, but deep dry moat filled with sharpened stakes.

The warriors formed two lines and took up positions along the two chains leading into the cliff wall. Others brought torches forward. Away from the early morning sunlight, this side of the cave was still dark. But not that dark, Barrett reflected. The torchbearers lined up two deep, forming a ring of fire around the metal gate. They weren’t there just for supplementary illumination, nor did he think their purpose was purely ceremonial.

There didn’t seem to be a formally arrayed chief or witch doctor, though the old man who came forward could have passed for either. He had the dignity, if not the finery. At a signal from the patriarch, the two lines of men began to haul on the chains. Slowly, ponderously, the heavy golden gate was raised, disappearing into a slot cut in the roof of the tunnel it barred.

Maybe they were just going to lock them up in a safer place. Sure, that was it! That explained the lack of ceremony and screaming, of the festival atmosphere. Apparently they were worried by Kobenene’s escape and didn’t want to take any more chances.

A spearpoint prodded him. They walked forward across the wooden bridge.

At least it wasn’t the cruel joke that was one possibility, he mused in relief as they reached the other side. The razor-sharp stakes set in the bottom of the narrow moat were not used for executions. The bridge had held. They stood there, watching, as the oldster gave another sign.

The metal gate dropped slowly in front of them, and the wooden bridge started to come up. Barrett saw the Bantu inheritors watching him, until the rising wood shut out their faces. Eventually it shut tight and they found themselves standing in near total darkness.

Barret stretched out a hand. “Isabel?” He heard a short gasp, moved towards it.

“Here, George.” He turned slightly left, took another step, and bumped against her. He drew her close, remembering her fear of the dark.

“Luana, Mur . . .?” Murin answered, and . . . silence. He tried again. “Luana!”

“Quiet!” Her voice came from somewhere slightly ahead, deeper in the cave, and it was tense. Then the short hairs rose at the back of his neck, at what she told them next.

They were not alone in the cave.

“Can’t you smell it?” Luana whispered.

Barrett took deep whiffs, feeling at once silly and terrified. He reckoned himself a brave man, braver than most. But the girl’s soft admonition, coupled with the stygian darkness—well, it was almost too much.

There was nothing—no, that? A faint, heavy, musty odor. And it was getting stronger.

“What is it, Luana?” The reply was taut, controlled.

“Cat-smell . . . and yet,” she sounded confused, “it is not. I cannot recognize—” Sudden quiet, then, “Make no fast movements, or sounds!”

They waited, in silence as enveloping and all-consuming as the dark. Barrett strained his eyes, saw nothing; strained his ears, and heard—was that a faint hint of heavy breathing?

The reason for the circle of torches became obvious.

Kobenene kicked a last time and burst out of the cave into clean, honest daylight. He swam for the camp and beach.

“Kwa nje!”
he shouted. “Watch out!”

The men on shore heard him. There were ready hands to help him from the water. Someone threw him a towel and he began drying himself. Everyone of the excited bearers had two questions.

Kobenene had no time for curiosity. He reached excitedly for the rifle, trying to tell them everything at once.

“Barrett, Murin, and the two women have been captured! A strange tribe of evil ones, who live inside the mountain! Only I managed to escape. The whites are all dead! We will be, too, if we do not start back immediately!” He grabbed.

Entebbe kept a firm grip on the weapon and backed away. Now, Entebbe was no genius, but he was no man’s fool, either. This fat servant of the dead would-be murderer said too many things too quickly. Boss George had left him in charge. That charge was embodied in the rifle. He wasn’t about to surrender it so easily.

“Didn’t you hear me, you country bumpkin? We’ve got to get out of here! Now!”

“Maybe we do and maybe we don’t,” the bearer replied, eying the other warily. “If so, we go when I say so, not you.”

Kobenene was astonished, then furious. “I’ll break your goddamn neck, you ignorant—”

Entebbe took two quick steps backwards and lowered the muzzle of the .470. It pointed right at the other’s most prominent target. The startled Kobenene stopped in his tracks. His hand went reflexively for the machete that wasn’t there. The same thought occurred to Entebbe. He tossed the fat man his clothes. After a second thought, he let him have the big knife, too. Let him try something if he wanted to. Kobenene had kept to himself the whole journey. It was obvious he thought himself better than them. No one in the group would grieve if Entebbe felt compelled to shoot him. There was a click as he slipped a round into the chamber.

Kobenene seemed to sense the other’s thoughts. Then he looked back towards the mountain, looked again.

“All right, see for yourselves!”

Keeping one eye on Kobenene, Entebbe turned with the others to look at the rock.

One man emerged from the sheer wall, brandishing a spear. Two others followed, swimming awkwardly. They gesticulated at the camp in a definitely unfriendly manner.

Entebbe set the rifle to shoulder, making sure he was out of Kobenene’s leaping range, and squeezed off a shot. He was no marksman, but he wasn’t shooting to kill anyway.

The shot exploded on the wall, sending stone shards flying. The shell whined into the distance. Taking one look at where the invisible spear had struck, the leader of the pursuing trio turned and ducked back under the surface. His two companions were well ahead of him.

Kobenene had taken a hopeful step forward. But Entebbe rapidly swiveled around to face him once more.

“What’s the matter with you?” the fat man pleaded. “Don’t you see I’m telling the truth?”

“How come you are still alive?” asked Entebbe.

Kobenene was about fed up with this dumb hick. “I told you, I escaped. Barely, just before they came for us.” He held up his scarred palms. “No one else had the courage to burn themselves free.”

Ah, the fat fool’s ego had betrayed him! These men had all been present at the
pigam ua.
Anything this great hulk could do, Boss George could do also.

“Well?”

Entebbe looked around at his fellow workers. They were all watching him, waiting for instructions. Though he was no more than the least of them, Boss George had left him in charge. They would proceed on his word. It was an unaccustomed position, and he hesitated.

If this fat fellow’s story were true, they could sit here for weeks, for months even, waiting for dead men to rejoin them. Next time Kobenene’s strange pursuers might return in force, and a single shot not be enough to frighten them away. Nor would the single gun help if another tribe of Wanderi came upon them, or even the regrouped members of the first.

But if George Barrett
were
still alive—

Entebbe didn’t care much about the others. The silly American woman made his nervous and the other female frightened him more than he would admit. Murin he did not know. But for a white man Barrett was fair and just. He paid on time and didn’t put on airs, and called them by first names, and, wonder of wonders, demanded
not
to be called
bwana.

And in giving Entebbe command and the rifle, he’d signed another, deeper contract.

“We stay,” he said finally, surprised at the firmness in his voice.

Kobenene was too angry and frustrated to argue. He looked around at the circle of watchers and said tightly, “What about the rest of you? Are you all going to stay with this madman and get slaughtered by savages?”

A few of them wouldn’t meet his eyes, but no one said anything, either.

He started going rapidly through the hampers and cases. Once he came across the carefully stacked workbooks of John Hardi. He ignored them. He didn’t need the pittance they could promise, anymore.

“You don’t mind, do you, if I take some food? And water? And maybe a spare machete?” Entebbe shook his head.

It would be dangerous to try the return journey alone. But if by some miracle Barrett and the others escaped, he would get back before them. There was a trail of slashed vines and bushes all the way back to Mpanda.

At the big river he’d take the raft, then set it free. Any survivors trailing him would have to chance the crocodiles, or take the time to build a new one. Yes, he’d have a sizable start. And he could move faster going alone.

He glared back at the assembled bearers, who stood watching him silently.

“All right, you fools, you back-country cretins! Don’t say I didn’t try to save you. Dogs, monkeys! I gave you a chance. Now it’s off my conscience!”

Feeling full of righteous indignation at their stupidity, and surging excitement at the power and wealth soon to be his, he shouldered the makeshift backpack and struck off the way they’d come.

A few hundred meters out of camp, Chaugh broke his back.

It was definitely breathing Barrett heard. Slow and heavy, like an old steam engine. It didn’t come from any of the four humans, he was sure. Isabel started in his arms and he had to fight to choke off his own shout at the unexpected, abrupt movement. He whispered softly to her.

“Remember . . . no noise.”

She nodded, even though Barrett couldn’t see it.

A pair of tiny glowing coals, pits of fathomless red-orange, appeared in the blackness. Hot lava circles they were, fresh from the depths of the Earth . . . prime gems let by their own inner light. Now that his eyes had grown accustomed to the dark, he saw that there was some little light in the cave, peeking in around the edges of the wooden door.

But not enough light to show him the shape of the coal-possessor.

They flickered once. Another pair appeared alongside the first, and to the left, another. Soon there were a dozen pair of the enigmatic, fiery pinpoints floating opposite them.

There was a weird, quavering growl . . . it was answered by a familiar high snarl, not from the distant eyes (for surely that’s what they were . . . devil-eyes) but from close in front of them. Another growl, a deep-throated alien cough the likes of which the experienced Barrett had never heard. It was utterly new and alien.

Another snarl from Luana was answered by several husky growls and coughs.

Barrett tried to keep his voice as low as possible.

“Can you understand these . . . cats?”

Her reply floated back to him from a point in the pit only meters away. It was uncertain.

“They are cats . . . and yet they are not. Their minds are . . . slow. Not like Chaugh or Jukakhan. But I think—” She stopped, and he heard her make a rapid series of low growls and mewing sounds. They were answered.

“Move to the right side of the cave—right as facing in. Press close to the wall—and stay.”

Barrett and Isabel complied, nearly stumbling over Murin in the process.

“What is it? What are you going to do?” Damn this darkness! He couldn’t see a thing.

Luana was suddenly next to him, close, warm. “They were curious about me, so I told them things. And more besides, things that would not otherwise have occurred to them.”

“I shouldn’t wonder,” replied Barrett. “You even smell like them, a little.”

That was one of the things that had bothered them since their first meeting, and he hadn’t been able to pin it down until now, in the closeness of the cave. Her odor varied between that of a young girl and, say, Chaugh’s.

“They wish desperately to leave here,” she continued. “They have lived locked in this long cave as long as the oldest among them can remember. When the wooden door-bridge is raised and shuts out the light, they know food has been thrown in. But they are afraid of the fire. I have told them some things and explained others. They’d not the brains to think of them.”

Luana pressed herself tightly to him more tightly than was necessary, he thought.

“Stay very close to the wall. They can see a little, even in this, but not well.”

Barrett turned away from her and looked past Isabel, deeper into the cave. The red points seemed to have moved far into the distance. Luana snarled then, so close and loud that his hands clenched tight around Isabel. How he wished he had the Express now, despite Luana’s assurance!

The glowing eyes blurred suddenly, swept past him. His nostrils were overwhelmed by the concentrated smell of cat that wasn’t quite. Five or six of the things struck the metal gate high and together.

Abruptly the cave was filled with light as the metal bars and wooden door were smashed flat, like cardboard. They formed a neat bridge across the spike-strewn dry moat.