“Then how do you think you can do it?” Donald demanded. He hauled on the line and brought himself face to face with the scientist, sweat making the interior of his suit clammy.
Sugaiguntung did not answer directly. He continued in the same passionless voice, “Then I tried another method which held promise. I developed a series of template solutions in which one could bathe genetic material, allowing the desired reactions to proceed unhurriedly and avoiding violent deformations of the molecular lattices.”
“Yes, I read about that,” Donald snapped. “Was that the method?”
“It worked on simple genes, but not on ones as complex as the human. The stability of the template organics tended to deteriorate faster than the process could be completed.”
“In God’s name, then, what—?”
“Also I had some success with stabilising genes at the temperature of liquid helium. But the return of the frozen material to normal activity took so long it was clearly uneconomic on the mass scale. Besides, unless the increase of temperature was perfectly smooth, at any moment a deviation of a degree or two could induce a dissociation in the genes and waste all one’s previous trouble. Discarding that, I next investigated the tuned sonic resonances which—”
He’s not telling me anything. He’s talking for the sake of talking. Why?
Donald stared all around. A faint stir of breeze touched him on the cheek. Was it his imagination or was the mist lifting? Christ, yes it was! Over there, distinct against the stars, the cone of Grandfather Loa lowering at him!
Unless the submarine turns up right away, we’ll be exposed as clearly as if we were—
The thought stopped, kicked aside from his mind by the fearful realisation of the reason for Sugaiguntung’s garrulity.
He whispered, “You drecky bleeder! Have you turned on your beacons?”
Not waiting for an answer, he tugged on the line with one hand and fumbled for his suit-knife with the other. He dragged the blade free while his imagination filled the air with the sound of patrol-boats closing in, the hiss of energy-bolts grounding in water and blasting up geysers of steam. He meant only to slash at the thongs holding the beacons on Sugaiguntung’s suit, separate the power-leads and drop them to the ocean-bed.
But Sugaiguntung divined his intention and tried to catch his arm. The water hampered him, and the clumsy suit. A movement halfway between a kick and plunge threw him off his aim. The knife went home.
There was a monstrous eruption of bubbles from one of the inflated compartments, and the last of them turned dark. He snatched back the knife, a roaring in his ears and a tingling all over his skin.
“Femoral artery,” Sugaiguntung said, now as before without any trace of emotion. “Don’t try to staunch it. I won’t let you. It is the least I can do to repay my people for the treachery I committed, doubting the word of those who knew better than I myself did. I have been … disloyal … but I go to join my ancestors in a way which…”
His head lolled suddenly to one side, and his upturned face showed a faint, enigmatic smile to the stars the parting mist had now revealed.
There was even yet not enough light to show the colour of the water, but Donald knew it was red. Staring, letting go the knife, letting go the rope, he saw it glow brighter and brighter, the brilliance of lava, and Grandfather Loa erupted in his brain and claimed the latest victim of all the uncounted thousands slain by his wrath.
When the submarine surfaced and he was dragged aboard, he had stopped screaming, but only because his throat was too raw to utter another sound.
tracking with closeups (31)
UNTO US A CHILD
When the girl Dora Kwezi appeared at the door of the schoolroom Frank Potter did not at first notice her. He had his back to the class, writing up a passage on the board and practically shouting over his shoulder because of the drumming of the rain on the roof. She had to call him twice before he heard her.
“Mr. Potter! Mr. Potter sir!”
He turned. She was splashed with mud almost to the knees and her frock was pasted to her handsome young body with the rain. What could have brought her out in this frantic hurry?
“Mr. Potter, please come to your missus!”
Oh my God. But it can’t be. Please God, it can’t be—it’s too soon, another five weeks!
“Go on with what I was telling you to do,” he said mechanically to the class, adding to the oldest boy as he passed his desk at the rear, “I rely on you to keep order, Lemuel!”
Then he seized his umbrella, opened it, and dived out into the pouring rain in Dora’s wake.
Across the squelching quagmire of the village “square”, up the verandah steps and into the small bungalow assigned to them. When they first came here Sheena had looked about her in despair and begun by listing all the things it didn’t have which she regarded as essential to mere survival. There wasn’t even a piped water-supply; a tank on the roof had to be filled from a water-truck at weekly intervals.
Yet it was a place where they could have their child, legally …
“She in the bedroom!” Dora said, pointing, and Frank thrust past her, dropping the umbrella without bothering to close it.
Sheena was stretched out on the bed with her eyes closed, her face very pale, her belly stretched large as a pumpkin under her too-tight dress. Beside her, bathing her face with a rag and iced water, was the nearest approach this forsaken little village could boast to a doctor: Dora’s mother Mamma Kwezi, the midwife and layer-out.
“Is it—?” Frank demanded, and could not finish.
Mamma Kwezi said with a shrug, “It is soon, but I have seen early pains before.” Her English was good but thick with Shinka consonants.
Frank dropped beside the bed and took Sheena’s hand. On his touch, she opened her eyes and gave him a wan smile that almost at once died into a grimace of pain.
He said inanely, “How long since it started?”
“Over two hours, I suppose…” Her voice was harsh.
“Why didn’t you tell me before, for heaven’s sake?”
“But it’s far too soon, Frank! It ought to happen next month some time!”
“It is bad to be afraid,” Mamma Kwezi said. “I was born, you were born—it is a thing for everyone, after all.”
“But if the baby is five whole weeks premature, then—” Frank checked himself, belatedly aware that this was the worst kind of talk to let Sheena hear.
“Yes, it will be weak, that cannot be helped,” Mamma Kwezi sighed.
“We’ve got to get her out of here—to a proper hospital!”
Mamma Kwezi looked at him with big round eyes. She gestured to Dora, hovering in the background, and relinquished to her the task of bathing Sheena’s hot face. Drawing Frank aside, she regarded him sadly.
“How will you take her, sir? The road to Lalendi is all mud, and in this rain—”
“I’ll phone for a copter!”
But even as he spoke the words he knew they were ridiculous. The pelting rain was practically a solid sheet of water now, the last violent spate before the winter dry period set in.
“No, a hovercraft! That can get through mud, it can get through anything.”
“Yes, sir. But can it get here from Lalendi, and back, in … well, two more hours?”
“Will it be that soon?”
“It will not be any longer. I have felt a—” Mamma Kwezi put her hand on her own ample belly, at a loss for the word.
“Contraction?”
“Yes. The water will break in a little while, I think.”
Frank’s world slipped off its axis and spun crazily. Mamma Kwezi put a sympathetic hand on his arm.
“She is a good healthy girl, sir, and you too are a strong father for the child. I am very experienced and careful and I have good medicines and the book they sent from Port Mey with the newest advice which I have read and remembered. It is not like an old juju-woman.”