Sugaiguntung went on, like a recording: “I know as a scientist that burning a cone of incense can do nothing to appease a volcano, yet when my wife lighted one for Grandfather Loa I smelt its smoke in the house and somehow I—I felt better for it. Do you understand that?”
Donald thought of Norman sending away to his string of Genealogical Research Bureaux and gave a sour chuckle. “I guess so,” he admitted.
“But, you see, I had been thinking: what would they remember me for if the mucker had killed me? Not for the things I am proud of, my rubber-trees and my bacteria that I tailored to suit human needs. They would have remembered me for something I myself did not promise to do, which I myself could not have done! They would have grown to think of me as an impostor, wouldn’t they?” There was a pleading tone to the words, as though Sugaiguntung was desperately seeking justification for his own decision.
“Very likely,” Donald agreed. “And it wouldn’t have been fair.”
“No, precisely, it wouldn’t have been fair.” Sugaiguntung repeated the words with a kind of relish. “Nobody has the right to steal the reputation of someone else and use it to prop up a false claim. That is definite. I shall have a chance to tell the truth now, shan’t I?”
“You’ll have every facility you could possibly want.”
Abruptly a hatch squealed open and the first of the netfuls of fish came squirming loathsomely down into the hold, to die gasping in a foreign element. More followed, and more, until they were a mass that screened the two hiding men from anyone merely peering in at the hatch.
What unexpectedly turned Donald’s stomach was that they made a noise as they died.
The world reduced slowly to a dark stinking nowhere.
* * *
He had almost drifted into sleep because that was the only available escape-route when the skipper called very softly from the hatch.
“Mr. Hogan! We have been lucky—the patrol-boat on duty here is going the other way and we can watch her lights. Be quick and we can put you ashore now!”
Stiffly Donald forced his way over the slippery mounds of fish, their scales clinging to him and giving him patches of phosphorescence like a Yatakangi ghost in a temple painting. When he had levered himself out of the hatch—by touch, because the skipper had extinguished the masthead light—he turned and helped Sugaiguntung out. Soaking from the water which had puddled on the floor of the hold as the fish drained, they stood together shivering on the flimsy deck.
“I have made a signal to the sentries who hide in the trees over there,” the skipper whispered. “They know we are friendly and will not fire on us.”
“What are your crew doing?” Donald asked, seeing that the two other men were leaning over the bow and groping into darkness.
“There is a cable on the sea-bed,” the skipper said. “We do not want to make any noise with the engine and the wind is too light to move us quickly … Ah!”
With a faint splashing the crewmen recovered the cable. To it, they attached a grapple; then, straining their muscles, they began to haul the boat inshore. The sky was heavily clouded, but even so Donald could make out the difference between black sky and black land. A few lights on the slopes of Grandfather Loa, away to their left, flickered mockingly.
The boat jolted and Sugaiguntung caught at his arm, almost knocked off balance.
“Quickly—go ashore now!” the skipper urged. “I see the patrol-boat’s light coming back this way.”
To Donald, there was no way of distinguishing between one and another of the many boat-lights dotting the Strait. He was not inclined to argue with an expert, however.
“What reason can you give for coming here if you’re challenged?” he asked.
“We shall say we wanted to get rid of a latah-fish.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s poisonous. It has spines that make a man mad if they prick him. They would not dare to walk ashore and look for it in the dark because it is dangerous after it is dead.” The skipper thrust at his shoulder, pushing him forward. “But be quick—if they are going to come and talk to us they will wonder why it took so long to throw a small fish into the bushes!”
Donald scrambled down over the side away from the patrol-boat, as the skipper advised. Up to his ankles in the soft sand, he turned to help Sugaiguntung down. He felt the scientist trembling uncontrollably as they touched.
“Straight inland!” the skipper whispered. “Someone will come to meet you. It won’t be a ghost!”
And with that bitter Yatakangi joke he at once had the boat freed from the sand and turned about.
Trying not to make too much noise, Donald guided Sugaiguntung on to dry land. There was only a fringe of sand before their legs were clutched at by stringy grasses and then by shrubs. Casting about, Donald found what might be a path and headed along it, Sugaiguntung two paces behind.
“Stop!” someone said very quietly in Yatakangi.
Donald obeyed, so quickly that Sugaiguntung bumped into him and clutched at him. Now Donald distinctly heard the scientist’s teeth chattering.
Christ, can’t he take it a little smoother? At least this is his own country—he hasn’t been picked up and dumped half a world away from home.
But home had proved as hostile as any jungle, of course.
One—two—three sentries emerged from concealment. It was just possible to see that their heads were misshapen; they all wore black-light glasses. Two of them carried guns and stood back warily while the third, holding only a black-light projector, studied Donald and his companion. Satisfied about their identity, he said, “Follow us! Make as little noise as possible!”
Then there was a time of blind walking down a tunnel that twisted and turned like the intestines of a snake. It must have been cleared out, shaped and reinforced from the actual greenery hiding it, and very efficiently—Donald never caught a glimpse of the sky beyond. Eventually it began to rise.
Sugaiguntung sobbed with exhaustion and the man leading the way slackened his pace a trifle, for which Donald was glad. His sense of direction had lasted almost this far, but was beginning to let him down for lack of external data to supplement his judgment. As far as he could tell, they had headed towards Grandfather Loa—was it his slopes they were now breasting? He towered to nine thousand feet and it would be ridiculous to try and make Sugaiguntung go very far up such a mountain.
Abruptly the man ahead gestured for them to halt. Panting, they did so. There was a half-heard exchange with another hidden sentry. Given the chance to think about something other than walking too fast uphill, Donald realised that the temperature had dropped sharply from its daytime peak, yet ahead there was warm air—he could feel it on his face.
“Go past me,” said the man who had answered the sentry’s challenge. Donald and Sugaiguntung complied.
Within another ten yards they found themselves in a small roofed-over clearing, half-walled by two outcrops of sloping ground. At the far side of it was a dark patch which appeared to be a cave, no more than four feet high. Sitting on the stumps of the trees which had been cut down to make the clearing, then—Donald’s darting eyes spotted clues that could never have been seen from overhead—grafted to standing trees and bent together to provide a camouflage screen, were about eight or nine men and women wearing drab clothes and slung about with weapons. The warm air which he had noticed blowing against his face emanated from a heater in the centre of the group.
One of them rose.
“Mr. Hogan?” he said in a good English accent. “My name is Jogajong. Welcome to my headquarters. You have struck a great blow for freedom in Yatakang tonight. Dr. Sugaiguntung, we are honoured by your presence.”
The scientist mumbled something Donald did not catch.