McAuliff rose from the ground and spoke to the Jensens. «It’s Charley. There’s a hill community several miles west of the river; he was going to try to hire a couple of hands.»
Ruth and Peter took their cue, because they very much wanted to. «Well, we’ve still got some equipment sorting to do,» said the husband, rising quickly.
«Indeed we do! Help me up, luv.»
The Jensens waved to Charles Whitehall and rapidly started for their tent.
McAuliff met Whitehall at the midpoint of the clearing. The black scholar dismissed Marcus Hedrik, instructing him to issue preparation orders to the rest of the crew about the evening patrols. Alex was fascinated to watch and listen to Charley-mon speaking to the runner. He fell easily into the hill country patois—damn near indecipherable to McAuliff—and used his hands and eyes in gestures and looks that were absolutely compatible with the obtuse speech.
«You do that very well,» said Alex as the runner trudged out of hearing.
«I should. It’s what you hired me for. I am the best there is.»
«That’s one of the things I like about you, Charley. You take compliments so gracefully.»
«You did not hire me for my graces. They are a bonus you don’t deserve.» Whitehall allowed himself a slight smile. «You enjoy calling me ‘Charley,’ McAuliff?» he added.
«Do you object?»
«Not really. Because I understand. It is a defense mechanism; you Americans are rife with them. ‘Charley’ is an idiomatic leveler, peculiarly indigenous to the sixties and seventies. The Vietcong became ‘Charley,’ so too the Cambodians and the Laotians; even your man on the American street. It makes you feel superior. Strange that the name should be Charley, is it not?»
«It happens to be your name.»
«Yes, of course, but I think that is almost beside the point.» The black scholar looked away briefly, then back at Alex. «The name Charles is Germanic in origin, actually. Its root meaning is ‘full grown’ or possibly—here scholars differ—‘great size.’ Is it not interesting that you Americans take just such a name and reverse its connotation?»
McAuliff exhaled audibly and spoke wearily. «I accept the lesson for the day and all its subtle anticolonialism. I gather you’d prefer I call you Charles, or Whitehall, or perhaps ‘Great Black Leader.’»
«Not for a moment. Charley is perfectly fine. Even amusing. And, after all, it is better than Rufus.»
«Then what the hell is this all about?»
Whitehall smiled—again, only slightly—and lowered his voice. «Until ten seconds ago, Marcus Hedrik’s brother has been standing behind the lean-to on our left. He was trying to listen to us. He is gone now.»
Alex whipped his head around. Beyond the large tarpaulin lean-to, erected to cover some camp furniture against a forest shower, Justice Hedrik could be seen walking slowly toward two other crewmen across the clearing. Justice was younger than his brother Marcus, perhaps in his late twenties, and stockily muscular.
«Are you sure? I mean, that he was listening to us?»
«He was carving a piece of ceiba wood. There is too much to do to waste time carving artifacts. He was listening. Until I looked over at him.»
«I’ll remember that.»
«Yes. Do. But do not give it undue emphasis. Runners are splendid fellows when they are taking in tourist groups; the tips are generous. I suspect neither brother is too pleased to be with us. Our trip is professional—worse, academically professional. There is not much in it for them. So there will be some hostility.»
McAuliff started to speak, then hesitated. He was bewildered. «I … I may have missed something. What’s that got to do with his listening?»
Whitehall blinked slowly, as if patiently explaining to an inept pupil—which, obviously, he felt was the case. «In the primitive intelligence, hostility is usually preceded by an overt, blunt curiosity.»
«Thank you, Dr. Strangelove.» Alex did not hide his irritation. «Let’s get off this. What happened over in the hill community?»
«I sent a messenger to the Maroon Town. I asked for a very private meeting with the Colonel of the Maroons. He will listen; he will accept.»
«I wasn’t aware a meeting was that tough to get. If I remember what Barak said, and I do, we just offer money.»
«We do not want a tourist audience, McAuliff. No tribal artifacts or Afro-Carib beads bought for an extra two-dollah-Jamaican. Our business is more serious than tourist trade. I want to prepare the colonel psychologically; make him think.»
Alex paused; Whitehall was probably right. If what Barak Moore had said had validity. If the Colonel of the Maroons was the sole contact with the Halidon, the decision to make that contact would not be lightly arrived at; a degree of psychological preparation would be preferable to none at all. But not so much as to make him run, avoid the decision.
«How do you think you accomplished that?» asked McAuliff.
«I hired the leader of the community to act as courier. I gave him a hundred dollars, which is like offering either of us roughly a quarter of a million. The message requests a meeting in four days, four hours after the sun descends over the mountains—»
«The Arawak symbols?» interrupted Alex.
«Precisely. Completed by specifying that the meeting should take place to the right of the Coromanteen crescent, which I would presume to be the colonel’s residence. The colonel was to send back the exact location with our courier… Remember, the Colonel of the Maroon Tribes is an ancestral position; he is a descendant and, like all princes of the realm, schooled in its traditions. We shall know soon enough if he perceives us to be quite out of the ordinary.»
«How?»
«If the location he chooses is in some unit of four. Obviously.»
«Obviously… So for the next few days we wait.»
«Not just wait, McAuliff. We will be watched, observed very closely. We must take extreme care that we do not appear as a threat. We must go about our business quite professionally.»
«I’m glad to hear that. We’re being paid to make a geological survey.»
24
With the first penetration into the Cock Pit, the work of the survey consumed each member of the team. Whatever their private fears or foreign objectives, they were professionals, and the incredible laboratory that was the Cock Pit demanded their professional attentions.
Portable tables, elaborately cased microscopes, geoscopes, platinum drills, sediment prisms, and depository vials were transported by scientist and carrier alike into the barely penetrable jungles and into the grasslands. The four-hour field sessions were more honored in the breach; none cared to interrupt his experiments or analyses for such inconveniences as meals or routine communications. The disciplines of basic precautions were swiftly consigned to aggravating nuisances. It took less than a full working day for the novelty of the ever-humming, ever-irritating walkie-talkies to wear off. McAuliff found it necessary to remind Peter Jensen and James Ferguson angrily that it was mandatory to leave the radio receiving switches on, regardless of the intermittent chatter between stations.
The first evenings lent credence to the wisdom of Charles Whitehall’s purchases at Harrod’s Safari Shop. The team sat around the fires in canvas chairs, as though recuperating from the day’s hunt. But instead of talk of cat, horn, spore, and bird, other words flew around, spoken with no less enthusiasm.
Zinc, manganese, and bauxite; ochers, gypsum, and phosphate … Cretaceous, Eocene, shale, and igneous; wynne grass, tamarind, bloodwood; guano, gros-michel, and woman’s tongue … arid and acid and peripatus; water runoffs, gas pockets, and layers of vesicular lava—honeycombs of limestone.