Ma-ma came next, with the baby clinging round her neck. As soon as she was clear of the bottom Hooa tried to follow, but Li barked Stop to her and Goor echoed the call and pulled her back. Ma-ma was in any case a good deal heavier than Li. When she was almost up, strands began to give and the mat swayed in towards the waterfall. Li grabbed at the tangle and managed to cling on till Ma-ma came over the lip and lay gasping.
There, Li called, and signalled to Hooa to climb in a different place, close against the fall. Hooa was frightened, so Goor shoved her aside and took her place. He was heavier still, but the vine held and he reached the top, soaked by the spray from the fall.
Hooa followed, but there were several people now at the top of the gully waiting their turn. The panic of their flight from the beach was still strong in them. Despite yells of Stop from above, two of them had begun to climb before Hooa was half-way up. Others followed. With a series of crashes the whole mat gave. Hooa was swung sideways, right into the waterfall, clinging to the remains of a main stem, while the rest of the mat tumbled down on the people below.
When the mat gave, Li had tried to grab it as before and had almost fallen with it. Now, craning over the edge, she could see Hooa hanging in the fall, unable to move. The stem, she clung to snaked over the edge and inland to a shapeless corky mass which was in fact the base-stock of the vine from which each year it sent out fresh strands to clothe the cliff. Li went and studied the stem and guessed it was strong enough, but found Hooa’s weight too much to allow her to move it sideways along the cliff. Come-help, she called. Goor came, and then Ma-ma, and together they simply hauled on the stem, dragging Hooa up through the streaming water, until she reached the top.
The others were still below, calling anxiously. Without the vine the gully was a dead-end. There was no way out, except back down to the beach. Li tried lowering the stem which Hooa had used over the cliff in a fresh place, but its end dangled out of reach above the grasping hands below. It would need to be longer. She followed it inland to a point where it branched from another stem and started to bite her way through. The sap was bitter, shrivelling lips and tongue, like the juice of the gourds themselves, but she persisted until she could break the stem free. She washed her mouth out in the stream and tried the stem over the edge.
It reached, but the people didn’t know how to climb a single stem. Their ancestors in the forest would have done it easily, but in their long sea-centuries their feet had evolved, become paddlers and standers and lost the ability to grasp. They had to cling with their hands to the stem, making no attempt to climb, while their friends above hauled them to the top. Rasping on the cliff edge the stem quickly lost strength and broke when the third trip had scarcely started. They needed a mat of vine, not a single stem. Li went and inspected base-stock.
She found that the vine began as a single stem, twice as thick as her arm. This branched into other stems, which branched in turn and so on, forming the mat. The first stem was far too thick to bite through, but the wood where she felt it seemed fairly soft. She picked up a stone and began to bash the main stem, then turned, called to Goor to help and gave him the stone. While he hammered steadily at the stem, she and Ma-ma and Hooa hauled at the vine itself until it gave. They dragged it to the cliff edge and lowered it. The broken strands now reached to the people below.
Again, of course, they tried to climb several at once, but this time they felt the mat giving, not because it was breaking but because the four people at the top weren’t strong enough to hold the weight. They leaped clear. Li and the others just managed to cling on and reposition the mat, and now those below realized they had to wait their turn, and though they jostled to be next in line, climbed one at a time. The last of them, Rawi, pregnant with Presh’s baby, was half-way up when a new figure appeared in the gully. It was Greb. He must have heard the commotion up on the cliff and climbed up to drive these escapers back down on to the beach and under his control.
In terror Li tried to haul the mat out of his reach, yelling Help. The others joined in and the mat came up with a rush, bringing Rawi with it. Timidly Li returned to the edge of the cliff and peered over.
Greb was standing below, staring up, with his face snarling and his mane bushed out. Rapidly he scrambled up the side of the gully, as Li had done, and saw that there was no way further. He went back, pushed through the waterfall, and found that it was the same that side. By now all the escapers had lined the cliff and were staring down. He balanced himself, displayed ferociously at them and yelled his challenge, so terrifying a figure that despite being for the moment safe from anything he could do to them, several of them backed away out of his sight beyond the cliff edge.
Then somebody found a stone and threw it. It missed, but others did the same, forcing him to retreat down through the waterfall into the gully. Yells rose. They kept up a hail of clods and stones, hitting him several times, until he backed out of range.
Some kind of commotion was happening on the beach. He looked, displayed once more, briefly, and then went scrambling down to re-establish his dominance over his unwilling followers.
NOW: WEDNESDAY MORNING
THE TENT WAS like an oven, so Vinny dragged her cot into the shade of the big awning. It was still roasting there, and it seemed impossible that she could sleep, but almost at once she did.
Vinny’s dreams were dreams of heat, of a shimmering marsh which somehow she had to lead the others across. There was one safe path. If you stepped off, the crocodiles would get you. She was the one who knew the way. She walked confidently between the reed-beds and the others followed. (What others? They were vague in her mind, but she knew they were there, though she mustn’t look round.) Something on the path. A flat white bone with a hole in it – a sign someone had left for her. She stared into the mists ahead for her helper. No. And when she looked down again the bone was broken. And she’d forgotten the path. If she looked through the hole she would see it again. Someone behind her was reaching to take it away and she would be lost and the crocodiles were coming nearer. They knew . . .
She woke rigid with terror, heard the crunch of boots on shale, Dr Hamiska’s jovial laugh, and then they were standing round her, great black figures against the glare beyond the awning. There was a sense of tremendous good humour about them, of things going really well, but still half in her nightmare she had a certainty that it wasn’t real, that any moment it was going to break down into shouts and rage. She wanted to be alone, but they were all around her, too big, too black against the glare, staring, laughing, plotting something . . .
She forced herself properly awake and sat up.
‘Lunch ready then?’ cried Dr Hamiska. ‘Roast goose and all the trimmings? Cherry pie? Champagne?’
‘I’ve been asleep,’ said Vinny crossly, as she stood up, looked for Dad and moved to his side.
‘Feeling better?’ he muttered.
‘Yes, thanks. Have you found anything else?’
‘A pig mandible. More shells for you to sort. Jane’s brought in a deer femur with what could be butchery marks on it.’
‘Are butchery marks,’ said Dr Hamiska. ‘Have faith, Sam. And that second shell of yours, Vinny – that’s excellent. With the first, it is clear that the blows were deliberate. You can show them to Wishart tomorrow.’