Promised Land (11 page)

I guess Chao Phrya and its purple jungle must have been vaguely conducive to running off at the mouth. It was getting to be a habit, and not just with me. When the going gets rough I usually clam up tight and devote myself to looking after number one. But I was getting intellectual in my old age. I wondered whether it might not be me who was caring far too much about everything that went on around me.

‘What are we going to do tomorrow?' asked Linda finally.

‘I'm going on,' I told her. ‘I have to. Eve will come with me, and maybe Max. If Danel returns, we'll go with him instead of with Max. If he's well, that is.'

‘You'll have no interpreter,' she pointed out.

‘We'll just have to get along without,' I said.

‘You'd better get some sleep,' she advised.

I nodded, and stood to leave the tent. ‘If anything happens,' I said, ‘call me.'

I went out, sealing the flap behind me. I looked in on Eve and Mercede. Both were fast asleep.

The other tent was dark. I didn't want to stumble around in the dark, so I took a lantern in with me, expecting to find Max in his sleeping bag, dead to the world.

He wasn't.

He'd gone.

When the next morning
dawned, I checked with both tents. Micheal was worse. He was awake, but his eyes seemed glazed, his speech was faint and lacked coherence. His dark golden skin was gradually turning flame-red. He looked discomfited, but he didn't feel hot. His heartbeat had increased dramatically since the night before, but for all I knew that might mean absolutely nothing.

Mercede had also begun to sicken. She claimed that she was all right, but I thought that this might be an instance of the language proving misleading. There were all sorts of things the phrase could be taken to mean.

I prowled around outside, feeling slightly angry, trying to sort out the implications of Max's desertion. I knew which way he had gone—there was only one trail of destroyed vegetation, and that was the one which Danel had ploughed. Max had gone after him.

Eve came out to join me.

‘What if he doesn't come back either?' she asked.

‘Well,' I said acidly, ‘what if he doesn't,
captain
? We now have no gun, no call circuit and two sick natives. We are right in the shit without a shovel. What
do
we do, captain?'

I was in a bad mood.

She was impressed by the waspishness in my outburst, but pride wouldn't allow her to retreat.

‘You're the specialist in alien environments,' she said. ‘You're the ace survivor. I only give the orders. You're supposed to provide the advice.'

‘Thanks,' I said. ‘The only way your false rank ever comes in useful is to make it easier for you to pass the buck to me. Privilege, hey? How do you feel about the loneliness of command?'

‘You're a bastard, Grainger,' she said. Pretty coolly, I thought.

‘Yeah,' I said. ‘But you love me anyway.'

‘An arrogant bastard,' she amended.

‘That as well,' I conceded.

She went back inside, leaving me to savour my bitter mood alone. I think the buck was already resting securely in my arms.

Onward, I remarked sardonically, Christian soldiers.

How many? asked the wind.

One, I told him. Who else can I reasonably take?

Eve will expect to go with you.

Fuck Eve.

Some other time, he said.

You have got a sense of humour, I accused.

It wasn't mine, he assured me. It was yours.

But I hadn't time to mess about with fancy remarks. I'd been sitting around too long. I wanted to be up and away. I began to pack.

Eve came to find me just as I'd got everything tied up into a neat bundle.

‘Where do you think you're going?' she asked.

‘After him,' I said. ‘Where else?'

‘Like hell you are,' she said.

I was genuinely amazed. ‘But you just told me it was all up to me,' I complained. ‘I'm the expert, remember? I give the advice, okay? Well, I'm taking it as well. I'm going after him. You and Linda stay here.'

‘We wait,' she said.

‘I can't.'

‘The question I asked you,' she reminded me, ‘was: “What if he doesn't come back?” We'll wait first and see if he
does
come back.'

‘How long?' I demanded. ‘Another day? Another week? Hell, we've no weapons, no caller, no nothing. Just food and water. If I'm going to sit around in the middle of a jungle, I want adequate equipment. I'm going after Max bloody Volta-Tartaglia if only to get his bloody gun.'

‘Stay here,' she said. She didn't have to add anything. I knew perfectly well it was an order. I proceeded to disobey it. I marched out of the tent.

Straight into the arms of Max Volta-Tartaglia.

It just wasn't my day.

He didn't give me time to speak. ‘It's a good job you're ready,' he said. ‘We've got to get back to Danel in a hurry. I wasn't expecting to find him clapped out. He's dead weight, and we're going to have to carry him. The bugs have definitely got to him. He needs help quickly.'

I was very tempted to lose my temper. But it would only have made matters worse.

‘Don't you think,' I said mildly, exercising masterful control, ‘that you could have notified us that you were going? Don't you think that it would have been friendly to leave the caller? Also the gun? You're playing silly games with our
lives
.'

‘I couldn't leave the caller or the gun,' he said. ‘You know I've got orders.'

‘
Orders
!' I spat. ‘What about discretion? How about
reason
?'

‘I knew you'd be all right,' he said confidently. ‘I was only going to be gone a couple of hours. It took a bit longer than I thought. I should have been back before morning, along with Danel. I was sure he'd stop when he found out he couldn't make it.'

‘Why didn't you tell us?'
I hissed.

He shrugged. ‘Didn't seem necessary,' he said.

I knew damn well that the reason he hadn't told us was that we'd had an argument not long before he'd decided to set out on the joyride. But it didn't make sense, even if it was the reason, and there was no point in airing it right now. We had to get back on the road.

‘Okay,' I said. ‘Let's move. But this time leave the gun and the caller.'

‘Not the gun,' he said. ‘They were very insistent about the gun. But I'll leave the caller. Fair enough?'

It wasn't, but what was the point in arguing?

We compromised, and we set off.

It took me five miles to walk the burn out of my seething anger. It took another seven or more before the trail we were following suddenly thinned out.

A glance at Max served to confirm my suspicion. We had got there. And the cupboard was bare.

‘This is where he was,' said Max. ‘I swear it.'

‘What did you leave with him?' I asked.

‘Nothing. He was out cold. There was no point.'

‘What did you take away from him?'

‘Nothing,' he said again. ‘I....'

‘I know,' I said. ‘You didn't see the point. So he still has the gun as well as the axe. But no food and no water.'

‘I guess so.'

‘Thanks for the confirmation,' I said. ‘Well, there's no point in hanging around. He went thataway.'

I pointed in the direction of the trail. It was the same direction he had been heading before. It was a good direction. Straight as a die. Anyone else wandering around in a forest with trees so big that visibility was never more than thirty yards would have wandered about erratically. But without a compass, Danel was taking the shortest route to wherever he wanted to go.

‘He must be delirious,' said Max.

‘Or determined,' I said. ‘What's he heading for, do you know?'

‘There's supposed to be a mountain,' said Max. ‘Not a big one. The ground rises quite a bit as we go into the forest from here. The trees still maintain total cover, but the undergrowth isn't so thick higher up. But I don't know for sure that's where he's headed. For all I know he's just going on and on without any idea of a destination.'

I decided to hope that wasn't true.

I began to walk on.

‘Wait,' he said. ‘I think you ought to go back.'

‘Why?' I asked.

‘They'll be expecting us back at the camp. The situation's changed and they ought to be informed. So should home base. We can't just go on walking forever. We can't rely on finding Danel today.'

‘This burst of consideration,' I pointed out, ‘seems most out of character.'

‘Okay,' he said. ‘Okay, so I should have told you where I went last night. If you must know, I only intended to take a short walk. It wasn't until I'd gone a couple of miles that I decided to keep going. That's why I didn't take any of the supplies or leave the caller. Well, now things are different, aren't they? We have to think things out. I'll find him, if possible. If it's not, I'll come back. You'll be all right, if you sit tight. Base will send the copter out to you. If you complain about the arms situation, they might even relent enough to drop you another gun.'

I didn't want to go on alone, because this struck me as being a potential wild goose chase anyhow. Therefore, I decided, if anyone was going back it had better be me. And someone ought to go back—I was sure enough of that. I made a mental note to write the whole of the farce out of my memory at the earliest possible moment. Everything had gone wrong for some time now. The whole expedition looked like a washout. Not even a hard-fought failure. Just a deflatory collapse. I was in the right frame of mind to jack it all in and go home, at that particular moment.

Wearily, I began to trudge back along the well-worn trail. I was far from happy. It seemed like a long way.

About a mile from camp, I noticed a sudden profusion of cropper tracks criss-crossing the trail. They had not been there on the outward journey. We had seen cropper tracks often during the previous few days. They came in all sizes—the term just meant ‘harmless animal' or something like it. They didn't make anywhere near the mess of the ground cover that we did, of course, unless they were cow-sized and moving in sizeable herds, but they always left a noticeable track. The undergrowth was very quick to regenerate, but the track was always obvious for a day or two.

There was nothing particularly sinister about finding a lot of cropper tracks intersecting our trail, but they did seem slightly odd. Herds of croppers moved in single file, as a rule, so that they didn't trample more vegetation than was necessary. But this herd—if it had been a herd and not several groups—had been moving with a much greater degree of independence.

Almost as if they had been in too much of a hurry to stick to the etiquette of the situation.

Within half a mile of the camp, I began to hear noises. It was a distant rustling. It seemed to be coming from a fairly wide range of direction. I wasted no time in building up a healthy degree of fright. There was something nasty in the vicinity, and I was unarmed. So was the camp. I took the knife from my belt, not because I anticipated its proving useful, but because it made me feel better.

I didn't run, but I moved forward quickly.

There was a noise of somebody running, and almost as I heard it, I saw who it was.

It was Mercede, and she was coming toward me as fast as she could go. She didn't seem to see me. She seemed to have every intention of passing right by me and running forever. She was running away from something that she was very frightened of indeed. My first thought was spiders, but then I remembered Max's offhand dismissal of the things he called magna-drivers.

Driver ants. Large ones.

I moved into her way, and called her name. She looked at me, suddenly, without any expression in her face. Then she cannoned into me.

I caught her and held her still. She didn't struggle, but seemed glad of the opportunity to collapse, as though she were signing her fate over to me. I don't know whether she knew me, or whether she thought I was Danel, or whether she cared.

I stared into her face, and her blind eyes stared back. For a moment, I thought that she was simply stricken by fear, but then I began to suspect that she really was blind.

But there was no time to explore the problem in depth. The enemy was coming. I didn't know whether to go toward the camp, back the way I had come, or away from the general direction of the sound, which was almost at right angles to our course.

‘Where are the others?' I barked. ‘Tell me.'

‘Mmmm...,' she gasped.

‘Magna-drivers,' I filled in for her. ‘I know that. What about Linda and Eve and Micheal?'

She shook her head violently. I moved slightly, in the direction of the camp. She grabbed hold of me, and she wouldn't let me go. I realised that the sound now filled nearly a full quadrant of direction. From just left of the trail to the camp to just right of an intersect across that trail. And it was getting louder.

‘We can't stay here!' I shouted at her.

She clung hard to my arm.

‘I've got to go back,' I told her. I lacked conviction. I didn't want to go toward the sound of rustling.

‘No,' she said. ‘They ran. All ran. All ran.'

And they hadn't run together. The idiots. But there were the trees, of course. It's far too easy to get separated in a forest if you're in a hurry. Especially if you're in a panic.

‘We've got to get out of the way,' I said. Not to Mercede—she already knew that. I was talking out loud, to excuse the fact that I was about to turn coward and run away.

‘Go,' she said. ‘Go fast.'

And so we went. It was no time for hesitating, no matter how much doubt I was in. I glanced back over my shoulder, and I couldn't see a thing. But I could still hear that rustling getting louder, and I could readily imagine it was the clicking of a thousand pairs of well-oiled scissors—a murmurous clickety-click. Jaws clicking.

We turned and we ran, hand in hand. I steered us along our own personal highway. I don't know how she managed to stick to the highway while she was running away from the camp, because it became quickly obvious that she was quite sightless.

She kept dragging me away to the right, away from the noise. Two or three minutes served to convince me that she was probably right. There was no point in following the trail. Avoiding our pursuers had to take priority over all else. We began to put substantial distance in between ourselves and the nasties. They weren't very fast. The sound did begin to die away.

It didn't matter too much that we were getting lost. We were all lost. The trip wasn't just a washout any more. It was an incipient tragedy. The
Zodiac
s had overplayed their hand. They had insisted that it was all easy, all under control. They had insisted that there was no danger, that nothing would go wrong.

If I ever survived to say ‘I told you so'—to Denton, to Max, or to anybody else—I would be lucky. Nothing short of luck could save us now. I felt sick, because luck is one thing I always hope that I never have to rely on.