* * *
“The structure of the family is typically patrilineal among Holaini and trends towards the matrilocal among the southern Shinka, especially in the cities where maximal movement of male labourers is found. However, both sexes enjoy equal rights before the law and folklore indicates that women of forceful personality were accepted into male councils before the advent of the European. The elaborate familial terms of aboriginal Shinka are giving way to a simplified pattern probably related to the English and much influenced by missionary teaching. However, it has not yet been determined…”
* * *
“The ideals of the community were examined both in Shinka and English with marked variation between the results. In English targets such as ‘wealth’ and ‘to be President’ scored high; in Shinka qualities such as (translating loosely) ‘public respect’ and ‘likable behaviour’ scored high. It has not yet been settled whether this is due to a real conflict or is a function of superior availability of the terms…”
* * *
“As is common in primitive societies there is a high reliance on proverbs and folk sayings in social conversation. However, the content is somewhat idiosyncratic.
“The universal admiration for Begi is well exemplified in the phrase ‘You could welcome Begi in your house’, a term of praise for someone whose family does him credit.
“Full study of the differences betwen Shinka and Holaini usage, as well as of Inoko and Kpala influence, must await…”
* * *
“To all study groups from Chad Mulligan:
“You don’t yet know! You haven’t yet established! You aren’t quite sure about!
“How about letting me have something I can take a proper grip on—soon?”
continuity (41)
SEWN ON WITH NEEDLE AND THREAD
An hour after sundown Jogajong shook Donald’s hand and gave him into the charge of one of his lieutenants. Escorted by four armed guerrillas and accompanied by four more carrying Sugaiguntung swathed in a sort of cocoon of plastic strips, he set out along a different trail from the one he had been brought in by. On his back, haversack-fashion, were the neatly rolled anti-radar flotation suits in which he and his companion would have to spend perhaps hours of lonely dark waiting before the coast was clear for the submarine.
The trail was rough and the black-light goggles he had been loaned were inefficient. Here, crossing one of the slopes radiating away from the foot of Grandfather Loa, the ground was too warm for the vegetation and the human bodies around him to show up except as blurs. Used to walking soundlessly through the dark jungle, the Yatakangis with him seemed to exude contempt whenever he brushed against a hanging branch or threatened to lose his footing on some lump of mud.
Somehow, though, the distance was covered and they reached the first stage’s end at the headwaters of a small river. A crude wooden platform jutted out of the bank, and moored to it was a shabby praheng driven by a stern-sweep. The boatman was waiting immobile, cross-legged on the jetty, smoking a cigarette cupped very carefully between his palms which nonetheless glinted like a firefly when his fingers parted.
Sugaiguntung was placed gently in the bow of the boat and covered with old sacks. Donald stepped aboard next and sat on a midships thwart. Behind him came two of the guerrillas, their bolt-guns across their laps. He could not help wondering how much attention they were paying to him, how much to their ostensible task of watching for spies on shore. With not a word spoken except the password to identify the party, they drifted into the centre of the narrow stream and the boatman began to work his sweep with a faint rhythmical creaking like a cricket’s.
The river was like a tunnel floored with water. The trees on either bank leaned together overhead, their crowns trailing strands of creeper and dangling moss. Occasionally a nightbird shrieked, and once some monkeys were disturbed, probably by a snake, and Donald’s spine crawled at the unexpected racket.
At the junction where this river joined a larger, they passed a village with not a light showing. In case of someone being wakeful, however, Donald was told to lie down on the bottom boards. When he was allowed to get up again they were well out in the middle of the main stream, riding with the current at a good walking pace, and the boatman had shipped his sweep, holding now a small paddle that served for rudder.
This is the twenty-first century. The thought crossed Donald’s mind for no special reason. This is Yatakang, one of the countries best-endowed with natural wealth and certainly not scientifically backward: witness, Sugaiguntung. And here I am being carried through the night in a rowing-boat.
Habitation began to become more frequent along the banks. This was one of the trickiest stages of the journey. Donald got off his thwart again and knelt on the bottom boards, his eyes just above the gunwale. A white police launch was tied up at a post facing a village larger than the first one, but there seemed to be no one on board. They passed it without incident and when it was well astern the boatman resumed his sweep. Their progress without it had slowed. Thinking the matter over, Donald deduced that they were approaching the estuary and running against the influx of the sea.
At the river-mouth itself there was a long necklace-strand of buildings, a small port devoted mainly to fishing to judge by the stretched nets on poles which were revealed by a few dim electric lights along the waterfront. Once more, however, no one was in sight; the boats would be out for their nightly expedition and it would be pointless to sit around and await their return before dawn. Donald began to breathe a little more easily.
A short distance from shore the boatman turned his fragile craft broadside to the direction it had been travelling in, and one of the guerrillas took up a flashlamp from the bottom of the boat. He hung it over the side after switching it on. It glowed pale blue. Donald guessed it was radiating mainly in the ultra-violet.
Ten minutes of interminable waiting passed. Then a larger boat, a fishing-prau, appeared from the drifting night mists that shrouded the surface of the water, exhibiting another lamp of the same blue tint as well as its normal running lights. The boatman went past Donald, tossing fenders over the side. Shortly, the two vessels bumped together, almost without noise for the big soft pads separating them.
Awkwardly, Donald helped the two guerrillas to manhandle Sugaiguntung into a rope sling that the sailors on the fishing-prau threw down. They guided him as he was lifted and vanished over the gunwale; then Donald followed and was seized by several hands.
The skipper of the prau greeted him and told him to put Sugaiguntung into his flotation suit right away because they planned to rely on the mist to make their drop closer to shore than they had anticipated. Donald did not question the wisdom of the decision. Everything had gone from him except a certain wan despair at the idea of returning home. The Donald Hogan who had lived in the world’s wealthiest country was lost forever, and he could not tell how the stranger who bore his old name would respond to the resumption of his former life.
He complied listlessly, easing each of Sugaiguntung’s limp limbs in turn into the soft plastic suit and pressing the valves on the inflation bottles. The scientist should be unconscious for about another hour.
He made a thorough check of the associated survival equipment—water-dye capsules, radio and sonar beacons for dire emergency, lifelines, iron rations, knife … After a little consideration he removed Sugaiguntung’s knife from its sheath and gave it to the skipper. He had said, back at Jogajong’s camp, that he had changed his mind. For the sake of insurance it might be as well to have him unarmed—not that an old man weakened by recent illness could offer any resistance to an eptified killer.