PART TWO
69. And so Once More Into the Breach, Brave Friends
The prau glided over the clear waters of the creek, guided by the deft paddle of the aged Dayak who brought the frail craft expertly alongside the bamboo dock that connected the village of Omandrik with the outside world.
A white man — an American — dressed in mosquito boots, jodhpurs, a sweat-stained white shirt and crushed bush hat, had been watching the arrival of the native craft from the relative coolness of the long-shadowed veranda of his house. He rose without haste and checked the chambers of the.38 calibre Cross & Blackwell revolver that he habitually carried in a well-oiled chamois holster strapped under his right armpit. Then, moving easily through the sultry tropic heat, he shambled down to the pier.
The first man to step off the ancient steamboat was a tall Arab in flowing white robes and a white and yellow headdress of the Hadhramaut. He was followed by an enormously fat man of indeterminate age, wearing a red fez, a crumpled suit of white silk, and sandals. The fat man might have been taken for Turkish, but a keen observer, noting the faintly slanted green eyes nearly lost in rolls of fat, would have guessed him to be a Hungarian from the Carpathian steppes. He was followed by a short, emaciated, provisional English boy of some twenty years of age, whose over-quick gestures and trembling hands proclaimed a terminal amphetamine user and beneath whose denim jacket might be glimpsed the dull-grey corrugated surface of a hand grenade. Lastly, a girl stepped off the boat, smartly dressed in a flowered cotton shift, with long dark hair streaming over her shoulders, her beautiful features betraying no hint of emotionality.
The new arrivals nodded to the American on the dock, but no words were exchanged until they had all assembled on the veranda, leaving the helicopter pilot to tie down his craft with the help of several good-natured natives.
They sat in bamboo armchairs, and a white-coated house-boy brought round a tray of icy gin pahits. The fat man lifted his glass in silent tribute and said, "You seem to be doing nicely for yourself, Jamieson."
"I can't kick," the hard-faced American replied. "I'm the only trader in these parts, you know. I do a fair business in emeralds. Then there's the rare birds and butterflies, and a little gold gets panned in the alluvial streams inland, and an occasional trinket comes my way from the Khomar tombs. And, of course, I pick up various other things from time to time."
"One is surprised at your convenient lack of competitors," said the Arab, in flawless Lancashire English.
The American smiled without humour. "The natives around here wouldn't allow it. I'm something of a god to them, you know."
"I have heard something about that," the fat man said. "Rumour has it that you paddled in here about six years ago, more dead than alive, without a possession to your name except a pack containing five thousand doses of anti-plague serum."
"I heard the same story," said the Arab. "And a week later half the population was down with bubonic."
"Just a lucky break for me," said the unsmiling American. "I was right glad to be of assistance."
"By gad, sir," said the fat man, "I drink to you! I do admire a man who makes his own luck."
"What do you mean by that?" Jamieson asked.
There was a short, ominous silence. But the tension was broken by the sound of the girl laughing.
The men stared at her. Jamieson frowned and seemed about to question her misplaced levity. Then he noticed that the English speed freak had his right hand close to the white bone handle of the long knife he carried under his shirt in a white leather pouch between his scrawny shoulder blades.
"Something itchin' you, son?" Jamieson asked, with deadly mildness.
"If there is I'll let you know," said the boy, his blue eyes blazing. "And my name isn't «son», it's Billy Banterville. That's who I am and who I expect to be, and anyone who says otherwise is a dirty liar and I'll be pleased to take him apart — take him apart — take him apart… Oh, my God, my skin is crawling off, what's happening to my skin, who lit the fuses of my nerves, why is my brain boiling? My head hurts, I need, I need."
The fat man looked towards the Arab and nodded imperceptibly. The Arab took a hypodermic syringe from a flat, black leather case, filled it with a colourless liquid from a plastic ampoule, and deftly injected the solution into the boy's arm. Billy Banterville smiled and lay back in his chair like a jointless puppet, his pupils so enlarged that no whites could be seen, an expression of indescribable happiness upon his thin, tight face.
A moment later he vanished.
"Good riddance," said Jamieson, who had watched all of this without comment. "Why did you bother to keep a character like that?"
"He had his uses," said the fat man.
The girl had herself under control now. She said, "That's it, you see. Each of us has his uses, each of us has something that is necessary to the others. You might consider us a corporate entity."
"I see," said Jamieson, although he didn't. "So each of you is irreplaceable."
"Not at all," said the girl. "Quite the contrary. Each of us stands in constant fear of replacement. That is why we try to stay always in each other's company — to avoid sudden and premature replacement."
"I don't get it," Jamieson said, although he did. He waited, but it became evident that no one was going to expatiate upon the subject. Jamieson shrugged his shoulders, suddenly ill at ease in the uncanny silence. He said, "I suppose you'd like to get down to business?"
"If it would not be too much trouble," said the tall Arab.
"Sure," Jamieson said. The Arab made him feel uneasy. All of them made him feel uneasy. All except the girl. He had some ideas about her — and some plans.
Fifty yards from Jamieson's house the laboriously cleared area ended and jungle abruptly began — a green, vertical labyrinth in which a seemingly infinite number of randomly connected planes receded endlessly towards some unimaginable centre. The jungle was infinite repetition, infinite regression, infinite despair.
Standing just within the jungle margin, invisible to observers in the clearing, were two men. One was a native, a Malay to judge from his green and brown headband. He was of medium height, stocky and strongly built. His aspect was thoughtful, melancholic, tense.
His companion was a white man, tall, deeply tanned, perhaps thirty years of age, conventionally handsome, dressed in the yellow robe of a Buddhist monk. The incongruity between his appearance and his dress vanished in the fantastic contortions of the surrounding jungle.
The white man was seated cross-legged on the ground facing away from the clearing.
He was in a state of extreme relaxation. His grey eyes seemed to be focused inward.
Presently the native said, "Tuan, the man, Jamieson, has gone into his house."
"Yes," said the white man.
"Now he returns. He is carrying an object wrapped in burlap. It is not a large object—perhaps one-fourth the size of a young elephant's head."
The white man did not answer.
"Now he unwraps the burlap. Within, there is an object of metal. It is of a complicated shape."
The white man nodded.
"They have all gathered around the object," the native went on. "They are pleased, they are smiling. No, not all of them. The Arab has a strange expression on his face. It is not exactly displeasure. It is some emotion that I cannot describe. Yes, I can! The Arab knows something that the others don't. He is a man who thinks he has a secret advantage."