The River of Diamonds

But there was no water.

The lake-like sheen was as much a delusion as the name. Perhaps in Caldwell and Shelborne's time it might have earned it, for there was solidified mud in the pan. The contorted corpse of a moringa tree, squat, silver-barked, stood near it, and a moringa stores water and lives on it for years. But it, too, had died of thirst. There was no sign of Shelborne's mule wagon. I knew that he must have lied about it, for no vehicle could possibly have traversed the dunes. The other side of the ancient watercourse was as impassable to the wheel as to the foot — mile upon mile of endless file of razor-edged outcrops of rock.

I searched Strandloper's Water for Caldwell's. grave. There was nothing except a fireplace of blackened stones near the moringa tree skeleton. The place was as featureless as a mirror. Had Shelborne's year in the desert been fiction too? I began to wonder: water there was none, nor animal life, vegetation, insect or shade. The pitiless glare forced us back into the sundial shadow of the isolated monolith. We slept, oblivious, in its shadow until the sun moved and woke us. We cursed and shifted; slept and were woken by the sun; cursed and shifted yet once again. At sunset the stunning chill struck at us.

We decided to return to the coast.

The Uri-Hauchab mountains, fine and near on the map, took no account of the Namib. We were without much food and our precious water supply was dwindling. Our bodies were beaten, lame, exhausted. The fountainhead recurred again and again to my mind, but what I most wanted was water, shade, shelter from the desert's pitilessness. We decided to rest the next day and make for Mercury the following night.

That was, until I heard the Bells that night; until Johaar saw the moving helio in the dunes; until the water demijohn burst.

The Bells brought me out of sleep. Through the insulating sand came the familiar long reverberation. The river-bed trembled under me, but its tremor was slight compared to the heave of Mercury. I was awake in a flash, but Koeltas was before me, sitting up in his sleeping-bag, rifle in hand, his eyes wide with terror.

'Shelborne!' he — said thickly. 'Shelborne brings the Bells… We die…'

'Shelborne is at sea on his way to Waivis Bay,' I snapped.

Johaar was muttering to himself.

'Let's march,' said Koeltas.

The hell with that — at this time and the state we're in,' I replied roughly. I lay down again, my thoughts racing. My sealed gas pockets on the sea-bed would obviously not be audible at this distance and through the intervening land mass. They could not explain the Bells, then. Koeltas sat and smoked his rank tobacco endlessly. The dunes were black and white under the hard moon, like some unreal zebra's flank. The Bells, the ancient river line… What, I asked myself if we were lying on the dome roof of a gigantic underground cavern, not only stretching under Mercury in the form of the Glory Hole, but under the desert itself? Could the mushroom-shaped blowholes be vents from it? With the uplift of the coast, had the river been forced underground, now flowing beneath its original bed? Had Strandloper's Water run dry for the same reason? If we were on top of the diamond fountainhead, the diamonds must be under an overburden of sand which would make even the Oranjemund experts with their tournadozers and tournascrapers blanch. Yet, I believed, Caldwell had found some way in… It was impossible to prospect: I had no trommel and even if I had, you need water to wash gravel. Water was life, and our store was scanty enough.

It was scantier in the morning.

I was aroused by an urgent, hysterical note in Johaar's voice.

The half-gallon jar was cracked, frozen from the bitter night. There were chunks of ice left, but most of it had been lost. We gathered the precious pieces together and thawed them in empty cans, carefully pouring the food-tainted liquid into my two canteens. Koeltas had one bottle left. During our wretched, silent breakfast the Bells sounded softly. Koeltas's eyes were staring. A day lying around under the scourge of the sun would send them both round the bend.

'Kulunga!' muttered Johaar. 'Kulunga comes!'

'Pull yourself together!' I said sharply. 'Who the hell is Kulunga anyway?'

'He walks among us, but you don't see him,' he replied, as if glad to get it off his chest. 'Man-god. He has two baskets. One has the good things, the other death. Kulunga comes here.'

'Rubbish!'I replied.

'No,' he went on seriously. 'Kulunga kills, or I kill Kulunga.' He took out his big knife and looked round 'Maybe Shelborne is Kulunga.'

There was no use trying to rationalize his primitive fear. 'Listen,' I told him and Koeltas. 'We can make out for two days more with the water we have. It will take us every bit of that to reach the sea. We trek — now!'

The bolt snapped shut and he pointed the Remington at me from where he sat, cross-legged, not six feet away. 'We go on,' he snarled. 'If we go back, the Bells will kill us. Maybe ahead we find water. Maybe not. We die anyway. But better die away from the Bells.'

I looked at the hard, closed slits of eyes and at the rifle. Two days! That would take us, going hard, to Uri-Hauchab. Or almost. If I was right about the ancient river and the lift of the land, its underlying bedrock might have been cupped at the mountains into a lake or a dam… Shelborne had lived for a year in the desert — among the wild peaks of Uri-Hauchab he might have found water and game…

I replied, 'It suits me to go on. But I don't like doing things at gunpoint, see. I don't want a couple of lily-livered yellow bastards hanging like a stone round my neck in a tough spot like this.'

Koeltas was dispassionate. 'Mister, if I shoot you, Johaar and I have more water. No one will know. No one will find you. No one come to look for you.' Shelborne might have used the same logic about Caldwell.

'Rhennin will send a helicopter to bring me out,' I bluffed. Shoot me, and they'll take you back and hang you.'

He didn't smile, but the muscles jerked along the line of his cruel lips and high cheekbones. He went on grudgingly, 'I'd like to shoot you for the water, mister. But you're as tough and as slim as a Richtersveld goat and maybe you bring us alive out of this, huh?

'I haven't any intention of dying,' I said tersely. 'Right, let's trek then. Beyond Strandloper's Water we'll pick up the course of the river…'

Johaar was on his feet. 'Kulunga!' he mouthed. 'Kulunga!' He pointed to the dunes high above.

I swung round in time to catch the helio flash. It was gone in a split second. The dunes were empty.

'Kulunga comes!' he raved. 'I go and kill Kulunga!'

I grabbed him by the shoulder, but he brushed me aside. Knife in hand, he started across the river-bed.

'Johaar!' I yelled, following him. 'Come back, you bloody fool! There's nothing there! A bit of bright quartz, that's all…'

I stumbled and fell. Koeltas was beside me. Johaar was on his way to the nearest defile.

'He sees spooks,' said Koeltas casually. 'Let him go — more water for us.'

'He's crazy! He'll die in a couple of hours out there…'

'Look how the spook gives him strength,' said Koeltas nonchalantly. Johaar moved at speed across the last patches of river-bed before entering the wadi. 'First it burns him up and then it kills him! Let him go!'

'I won't leave a man to die,' I replied. 'Fair enough, let him chase things in his own mind. He'll drop soon — I'll go and bring him in.'

He looked at me with a curious sadness, as if I were a child. Then he shrugged. 'We wait today, drink no water. Tonight we follow his tracks.'