When a messenger came to report a radio contact with the patrols between here and Isola, and said something about a lull in aquabandit activity which made it possible to sneak in a submarine tonight, he barely paid attention. He had decided it was better to be a volcano than a man; at least one set no store by what one’s acts destroyed.
* * *
The medicine had brought Sugaiguntung out of his fever but he was left very weak. Nausea had prevented him from keeping down any food for almost three days, and although he had recovered sufficiently to take a little broth and a spoonful or two of savoury rice, the nurse said she had had to compel him to swallow it. Donald abandoned his apathy for long enough to wonder about the advisability of taking him out to the submarine tonight. According to Jogajong the process had to be a complex one, involving a boat, radar-evasive protective suits, and floating alone on the water for anything up to hours before sonar showed it was safe for the submarine to surface and take them aboard. That it had been done successfully a great many times, including the occasion when Jogajong was taken away for training in insurgency, was no reassurance; there were also times on record where it had ended in blood and fire.
He had hardly spoken to the scientist since he fell ill. His delirious ravings had had a certain fascination, like a white-noise concert, but last night when Donald returned to the cave he had only been snoring, and today he had lain quietly on his mattress, answering questions with nods or grunts. Once satisfied that the fever was abating, Donald had preferred to avoid him.
Now, with the question of their departure on his mind, he entered the cave and found the scientist sitting up crosslegged, wrapped in a blanket. He seemed to be lost in thought. When Donald asked if he felt well enough to endure the trip out to the submarine, his answer at first was a counterquestion.
“Can you get me pen and paper?”
“Never mind that,” Donald said roughly. “Do you feel all right now? They’ve arranged to take us away tonight.”
“I don’t want to be taken away,” Sugaiguntung said.
Was the fever still active in his wasted body? Donald asked again, “Do you feel better now?”
“Yes, much better, and I said I wanted paper. Is there any to be had?”
Donald hesitated and bit his lip. After a moment he uttered a promise to get some which he did not believe he could keep, and backed out of the cave. He went in search of Jogajong and found him talking with the nurse.
“Mr. Hogan,” he nodded politely. “I hear Dr. Sugaiguntung is recovering well and may be taken to the submarine as planned.”
“He’s just told me he doesn’t want to go,” Donald said. On hearing the words in his own voice, their impact came home to him. To have done this, to have suffered this, and then to have nothing to show for it…?
His eyes met Jogajong’s, and for an instant he knew he was on the same plane as the rebel leader: he had, in this fragment of eternity, a cause in whose way nothing must be allowed to stand.
“What does he want to do, then?”
“I didn’t ask him.”
“He can’t stay here. The government has good computers. Soon they will notice the pattern of comings and goings centred on this island and draw a conclusion. We shall have to go to a base on another island where people are more sympathetic to the cause. It will be a long, hard trek through jungle and swamp and there will be many dangerous boat-crossings—not good for a sick and aging man.”
“Also he can’t go back,” Donald said, and added to himself: if he could, I wouldn’t let him.
“In some ways,” Jogajong said after a little thought, “it is easier to transport an unconscious man.”
“So I would imagine.”
“It is presumably a last trace of the delirium due to the fever, isn’t it?”
“Of course.” They understood one another perfectly.
The nurse said, “But I gave him enough of the drugs to make sure he—”
Jogajong interrupted her. “You have had no trouble from him when you gave him medicine?”
She shook her head.
“Tonight then, a short while before we are due to send you on your way, Mr. Hogan…”
Donald, however, was scarcely listening. The problem settled, he had gone back to thinking of Grandfather Loa.
tracking with closeups (29)
WHILE THE BALANCE OF HIS MIND WAS DISTURBED
“Mary!”
Standing by the window, staring with a bitter expression at the advancing tide of repetitive suburbs cresting the far side of the pleasant English valley, Mary Whatmough heard her husband’s voice calling her excitedly. She swallowed half the gin that was in the glass she held—she felt somehow guilty about pouring herself large drinks—and turned just as he entered the room, holding up a letter like a flag of triumph.
“It’s from the Beninia Consortium! Listen! ‘Dear—etc’—where are we? Yes, this is the important bit. ‘While we cannot hold out the hope of remuneration as generous as we would accord to an applicant with more specialised skills, we do believe that experience such as you described in your letter would prove valuable to our staff in the preliminary stages of the project. Please let us know when it would be convenient for you to call at our London office and discuss the matter personally.’”
Articulating carefully—the draught of gin had hit her rather harder and very much more quickly than she had expected—Mary said, “It sounds as though some of those blacks have finally seen sense, doesn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Isn’t it obvious? They never were fit to run their own affairs, and now they’ve realised it and asked somebody in to help them who can.”
Victor folded the letter. Then, looking down at it, he began to pleat it into parallel strips. He said without raising his head again, “Ah—I don’t believe that’s exactly the thinking that underlies the project, my dear.”
Across his mind there flashed a brief vision of a pretty girl’s face in a phone screen. In the background, a dark human shape.
Things have changed. It’s no good looking for a rebirth of my world or Mary’s. But I did have a lot of pleasure out of Karen. Perhaps there’s a chance …
“It may not be the thinking,” Mary said. “But it’s the fact, isn’t it?”
“Possibly, of course,” he agreed uncomfortably. “But I hardly think it would be—uh—politic to talk in those terms. It might give offence. Mightn’t it?”
“You’re beginning to sound like my father,” Mary said. That was always—had been for twenty years—the prelude to an argument. “And look where such talk got him! Thrown out on his ear by an ungrateful bunch of upstarts!”
“Well, dear, we wouldn’t be responsible to the Beninians directly, you see—our employers would be an American company working under contract to them.”
“I haven’t any time for Americans. I’ve told you so a thousand times. Trust them to put some snotty brown-nose over you, half your age, who’ll insist on you calling him ‘boss’ and bowing every time he speaks to you! What are you doing?”
Victor had taken the letter and torn it meticulously into four.
“It isn’t any good, is it?” he said. He was addressing the air, not his wife. “She’s bound to get drunk at a party some time and start talking about the prime minister or somebody as a ‘brown-nose’, and then where would I be? Back here, or somewhere worse, so…”
He turned on his heel.
“Where are you going?”
“Oh, shut up, will you?”
She shrugged. Victor was always getting these fits of bad temper. At the Harringhams’ party the other week, for instance. It was a wonder Meg Harringham hadn’t smacked his face. But he’d get over it, same as usual, and probably by this time tomorrow he’d be denying he ever said it. And he only tore the letter into four so it could still be read and it was reassuring after all these years that those stupid Africans had realised which side their bread was—