“We have none,” Michael said.
“I must have water. My mouth…it’s not right.”
“We have no water,” Michael said carefully, for Gantt’s eyes were bright and wild with fever.
The ace put a hand to his forehead. “I’m burning up,” he said, as if this were news.
“Rolfe? Just lie down and be—”
“I must insist on water.” It had been spoken in German. “Would you deny a thirsty man?”
“Listen to me. Do you know where you are?”
“I’m… I’m…yes, I’m in the infirmary.” He nodded, verifying this illusion to himself. Again, he was speaking his native tongue. “I remember… I was flying. Then…there was oil on my windscreen. I couldn’t see. I knew I was going down. I jumped, and my parachute opened. What happened to my plane?”
“It crashed.”
“The lights,” said Gantt. “Why are the lights so dim?”
“Lie down,” Michael instructed. He decided to add, “Right there, on the bed.” He heard the clicking of the dice at his back.
Gantt looked around, obviously confused. He felt for something that was not there. “I don’t like it,” he said, in almost a child’s voice. “So dark in here.”
Some of the scorpion’s poison had gotten into his system, Michael knew. From what he’d read, there were thirty different varieties of scorpions in the Sahara and four of them were lethal to humans. The one that had stung Gantt was as toxic as a cobra. The venom could cause first high fever and hallucinations, then convulsions, and finally heart failure. It just depended on how much Michael had been able to get out of the wound.
“Yes,” Gantt said. “I think I will lie down.” He curled himself up again on his side on the parachute, and he closed his eyes.
Michael waited. He caught the boy watching him as the dice went back and forth.
A few minutes passed. Gantt appeared to be sleeping, his chest rising and falling.
He twitched suddenly, but it was a passing muscle spasm. Then he opened his eyes and sat up again, and now he glowered at Michael with an expression nearing rage.
“I said I need water. It is very uncivilized to keep water from a thirsty man. Do you hear me, sir?”
“Rolfe, there’s no more water.” Even as he said it, Michael knew it was hopeless.
Gantt was a wanderer in the desert beyond reason.
Gantt was silent.
And silent still, his dark-hollowed eyes fixed upon Michael Gallatin or whoever he thought Michael Gallatin to be.
“You can’t treat your patients in this manner,” Gantt said quietly. “These men here…they all deserve better, sir. They shouldn’t be so disrespected.”
Michael had no idea what situation the flyer thought he was in, or whether it had really happened in some way or was strictly fantasy. He saw Gantt’s hand go to the Walther’s grip.
“I want water. For all of us. Now.”
Michael spoke German: “Very well, then. You’ll get it. There’s a jug under the bed. Right there.” He pointed at nothing. “Reach under and bring it out.”
Gantt stared blankly at him.
“Under the bed,” Michael repeated firmly. “Right there.”
The dice stopped clicking.
“Thank you, sir,” said Gantt, and he leaned over to get the imaginary jug under the phantom bed.
Michael moved as fast as he could. He plucked the Walther from Gantt’s waistband and when the man looked at him, puzzled, Michael hit him as lightly as possible across the back of the head with the pistol’s grip. Lightly as possible, but hard enough to put him to sleep and quench his thirst.
Gantt lay on the parachute. His body began to convulse, the arms and legs twisting. For a moment it appeared as if, even unconscious, he was about to get up and go for the waterjug, but then he collapsed again and lay thrashing. Michael put the gun aside and got his sweat-stiff shirt. He knelt beside the man, and with difficulty due to the one hand forced the cloth between Gantt’s teeth. It might prevent him from biting his tongue off, or not, depending on how strong the convulsions became.
Then all Michael could do was crawl away and sit with the Walther in his hand.
He watched Gantt suffer, as the last of the light faded.
The convulsions became more violent. This hideous phase lasted about fifteen minutes before Gantt suddenly became still.
Michael checked his pulse. Weak. But the man was alive.
The night turned cooler. A group of jackals came nosing around, until Michael stood up and ran them off with a few stones. His Rolex showed the passage of almost three more hours before Gantt stirred and spat the cloth out and got slowly up on his hands and knees. He retched so hard it seemed his guts would spill out. Then Gantt moaned and cursed and said in a voice barely intelligible, “Damn, my head hurts.” He had spoken in English. After that, he curled down again in a fetal position and went to sleep.
Michael also slept. His last impression was of the boy, sitting cross-legged under the starry sky, the Commonwealth soldier’s dusty tam on his head and his face hidden by the keffiyeh. Whether he was asleep sitting up or not was anyone’s guess, but at least for the moment his left hand was motionless and the dice were silent.
Four
They reached the well when dawn was a thin streak of red across the horizon and the world was made of different depths of darkness.
How far they had come this night, Michael didn’t know. His legs felt ragged. His left arm was a dead weight. He had left his kitbag behind, to save his energy, but he carried both guns in the parachute pack and Gantt—weak and dispirited—had not protested. Every step Michael took might end in a stumble. But he’d kept going, one of three, walking right behind the boy and following behind him the Messerschmitt ace.
The well was not pretty. It lay up under an outcropping of rock and so was shielded from the sun. Uneven stones were built up around a small pool the size of a bathtub in a cheap hotel. Dried animal dung was scattered about where the jackals and wild dogs had unsuccessfully tried to mark their territory.
Pretty or not, the well was full of gorgeous water. Gantt’s cracked lips parted in a gasp of need and he flung himself forward past Michael and the boy.
He hung over the stones and pushed his face into the water. He reached in with both arms and splashed water over his head. He reached down deeper, into the cooler depths, and when his hands came back up Michael saw the entrails roped around them, and suddenly the gashed-open bloodless torso that the entrails had spilled from surfaced in front of Gantt’s face, and also bursting to the surface was a decapitated human head, mouth and eyes open, that bore the purple hole of a rifle bullet.
Gantt shrieked; there was no other way to describe the sound. He fought out of the blue entrails that bound his wrists, and staggering back he nearly fell over the boy, who also retreated—but in utter silence—from the grisly mess that fouled the well. Gantt went down to the ground among the animals’ leavings and clawed frantically at his own mouth until the blood ran from his lips.
Michael approached the well. He had already smelled the beginnings of putrefaction. Desert heat was not kind to a corpse. By the end of another day, the odor would even keep the animals from coming near. There was another scent in the air also: salt. He figured the water had been salted as well as fouled by human remains. He walked a few paces away and knelt down on his haunches to think.
He thought he understood the motive for this brutality. “The Dahlasiffa,” he said to Gantt, who had crawled on his belly a distance away and lay with his hands to his face. “They’ve poisoned this well to keep other tribes from drinking.” In the strengthening light, he found the camel tracks that led southward. “Their own village must not be far. They’ve likely got a well there. They’re probably demanding tribute from other tribes.” He stood up and looked over the hammada toward the south. A muscle worked in his jaw. “We need water, or we’re going to die.” He spoke to Gantt not harshly but firmly: “Stand up.”