Latymer was looking impatient. He snapped, “I said, I suppose you do realize how damned important Bluebolt is?”
“I’m sorry, sir. Yes, I do indeed—”
“It’s all very well to talk about Polaris the way they do. With up-to-date anti-submarine know-how, and techniques being devised by Russia for the detection even of craft lying stopped on the ocean bed, Polaris isn’t anything like as secure as the public imagines. On the other hand, the Bluebolt control-station is almost invisible from the air, right smack in a small jungle clearing, well away from any large target. And there’s a lot of territory in those parts, Shaw, which would need a great number of long-range nuclear missiles to saturate it. It’s not like pinpointing the big targets such as cities or troop concentrations. After all, these I.C.B.M.’s aren’t all that accurate. While the station’s intact, we’re sitting very pretty indeed — it gives us great security and it gives us great influence too. Wonderful for power-bargaining at conferences. We’re relying a lot on it.” Again he levelled the ruler at Shaw, “We don’t want anything to go wrong.”
“Of course not. But do you mean there’s a definite threat developing to the station, sir?”
Latymer smiled and with some sarcasm said, “I always knew you had genius, Shaw. How the devil did you guess, hey? Yes, I think there is. So far, there’s been nothing more than a few straws in the wind, possibly rather vague straws, but I don’t like the general picture, the way things seem to be going. The difficulty is, we’re so utterly in the dark as to hard facts. If anyone really knew anything I’d say it was Handley Mason. And he’s dead because of it.” Latymer sat back, pushed a cigarette-box across the desk towards Shaw. The agent, who had been needing a smoke ever since he came in, took one thankfully. He flicked his lighter, held it out to Latymer, and then lit his own. Latymer went on, “All I know is that the natives are being stirred up to something, and that something is — to drive the remaining whites right out of Nogolia, get rid of the Bluebolt station, and negate the treaty under which it was put there in the first place. And — need I add it? — Guess Who’s behind that!"
“Quite, sir. But how are they going to go about it? It’s a pretty tall order, surely, when the Nogolian Government themselves are backing us?”
Latymer didn’t answer directly. Instead, he asked, “Have you ever heard of voodoo, Shaw?”
“I’ve heard of it, of course. But—”
“Well, just listen to me for a while.” Latymer leaned forward, his face serious, looking hard at Shaw. “You may not believe in it, but it’s a brave man or a foolish one who denies the tremendous power of voodoo over the native mind, even if he doesn’t believe in it himself. Agree?”
Shaw pursed his lips. He said doubtfully, “I suppose I do, sir.”
“If you don’t,” Latymer informed him shortly, giving an irritable movement of his hand, “you’re a damned fool. It’s hard fact, not supposition. Well now. Africa’s still a land of gods, Shaw, of ju-ju men and black magic, mainly, of course, in the remoter villages up country, but to a considerable extent in the towns as well. Whatever the progress that’s been made, whatever the education programme, the African remains basically the same as he’s always been. He can’t help that, Shaw — he’s been conditioned that way by a thousand years of mystery and sacrifice and pagan beliefs that go back into time itself, beliefs so deep-seated that they can hardly begin to conceive of life without pagan gods and ancient ceremonial rites, and that conditioning process has been drummed into ’em by resident witch-doctors who make damn sure no one deviates! It’s right inside the African, Shaw, in his blood, his bones, his whole mind and outlook.”
“What about the civilized ones, sir?”
Latymer said, “I suppose it’s a truism to repeat that civilization’s only a veneer, and a pretty thin one at that. It can crack almost at a moment’s notice. Take a town like Jinda.” Latymer waved a hand. “Capital of Nogolia, fine modem buildings. Skyscrapers, some of them, built to American designs by American architects and local labour. Electric lifts, air-conditioning, refrigeration — the lot. And almost entirely run by the Nogos themselves now. Place is full of big stores with all the latest gadgets and fashions and all that. The Jindans, or a lot of them, anyway, go around in the local equivalent of the white collar, and they hold down a whole variety of top jobs in the professions and commerce. They govern their own country — on the English model, even now — and they do it very well indeed. They’re good at finance and law and administration and even diplomacy. But they’re still Africans, Shaw. One generation back their fathers were unskilled, underpaid slaves in the copper or tin-mines, or running about bare-arsed in the jungle and living in mud-and-grass huts, making sacrifices to the appropriate gods, under the thumb of the ju-ju man and their very ancient heritage of superstitious god-appeasement. Right?”
Shaw, who was watching Latymer intently, nodded.
“Well, you don’t change that overnight, Shaw, in fact in my humble opinion you don’t change it even in a couple of generations. And I can tell you this: There’s some pretty queer goings-on in Jinda itself from time to time, and other cities too. You know the sort of thing, I dare say — ritual murders, carved-up bodies found in odd places, sexual orgies in apparently harmless night-spots. Believe me, the ju-ju man is still the law over a very wide sector of Africa and if you ask me he’ll be so for a hell of a long time yet. But it’s not the long-term prospect I’m concerned with — it’s the present, Shaw.” He gave a tight grin. “Want to know why — or are you still convinced I’m talking drivel?”
“I don’t think that, sir,” Shaw told him. “As a matter of fact I do know these things go on.”
“Good! Well now — I’d better explain that Africa is full of things they call Cults, which are based on voodoo and originated mainly in the Melanesian Islands in the South Pacific. They’re not exactly secret societies… they’re really a kind of permeation of ideas, of pagan beliefs again, d’you see, rather than concrete forms which you can pin down in the way you could a secret society. These ideas start with perhaps one man and then spread like wildfire. Once a particular Cult, backed by voodoo, takes a grip on the imagination, it means that immense power passes into the hands of the man who dreamed it up. His followers are like clay to a modeller, completely malleable — he can do anything with them, get them to do just as he wants. Of course, by and large all the Cults are reasonably harmless. But now a new one’s come up, according to our man in Jinda and also reports from the base itself. And it’s at really big thing, a fantastic thing in its whole conception. It’s known as the Cult of Edo. God alone knows who, or what, Edo is, but his name’s spread right through Nogolia in a very short time indeed. The Edo Cult is behind the attempt to get rid of the Bluebolt station, and of course Edo’s been given a flying start by the general anti-white feeling in the rest of the continent and the way all white influence is being cut out.”