Halfway down the hall he stopped at the sound of a familiar voice. The diamond-hunter's low, smooth tones, urgent now, and commanding.
"I return this to you. I have come very far to do it, s'nhor."
And Dan Craddock replying in a stumbling whisper that held amazement and fear.
"But you weren't there! There was nothing there, except—"
"We came later," Pereira said. "By the sun and the waters we guessed. Then at last we had the answer."
Raft let out his breath. A board creaked under him. Simultaneously he heard a—a sound, a susurrus of faint wind, and felt a sense of inexplicable motion.
Startled, he hurried forward. The passage lay blankly empty before him. Nothing could have left the laboratory without his knowledge. But when he stood on the threshold he faced Craddock, and Craddock alone, staring in blank, astounded paralysis at nothing.
Quickly Raft searched the room with his eyes. It was empty. The window screens were still in place, and, moreover, were so rusted that they could not be removed without considerable noise.
"Where's Pereira?" he asked curtly.
Craddock turned to face him, jaw slack. "Who?"
"The man you were just talking to."
"I—I—there was nobody here."
"Yeah," Raft said. "So I'm crazy. That wouldn't surprise me, after what's happened already tonight." He noticed a booklet in Craddock's hand, a ring-bound notebook with its leather cover moulded and discolored by age. The Welshman hastily stuffed it into his pocket. Avoiding Raft's probing eyes, he nodded toward the microscope.
"There's the blood. I must have bungled it somehow. It's all wrong." Yet he didn't seem unduly surprised.
Raft put his eye to the lens. His lips tightened.
"So I am crazy," he said.
"It is funny, isn't it?" Craddock said, inadequately.
It was more than funny. It was appalling. The vascular system has certain types of blood cells floating free, of course; they have a definite form and purpose, and intruding organisms may affect them in various ways.
But this specimen on the slide showed something Raft had never seen before. The red cells were oval instead of disc-shaped, and in place of the whites there were ciliated organisms that moved with a writhing, erratic motion.
And moving fast—too fast!
"They've slowed down a lot since I first looked," Craddock said. "In the beginning they were spinning so quickly I couldn't even see them."
"But what sort of bug would do that? It's destroyed the phagocytes. Pereira ought to be dead, if he hasn't a white blood cell in his body. No, there's a mistake somewhere. We'd better run some reagent tests."
They did, going through the routine, but found nothing. Te every test they could devise, the reaction was that of apparently normal blood. Furthermore, the writhing ciliate things seemed not to be malignant. When toxic matter was introduced the ciliates formed a barrier of their own hairy bodies, just as phagocytes should have done, but three times as effective.
A specimen slide glittered and trembled in Craddock's mutilated hand.
"It's an improvement," he said. "Those bugs are better than whites."
"But where are the whites?"
"Deus, how should I know?" Craddock's fingers slid into the pocket where he had placed that discolored notebook. "I'm not in charge here—you are. This is your problem."
"I wonder if it is," Raft said slowly. "Just what was there about the—sun and the waters?"
Craddock hesitated. Then a wry, crooked smile twisted his mouth.
"They appeared quite normal to me," he said. And, turning on his heel, was gone.
Raft stared after him. What was behind this? Craddock obviously knew Pereira. Though how that interview had been held, Raft did not know. Ventriloquism? He snorted at the thought. No, Pereira had been in the laboratory with Craddock, and then he had, seemingly, walked through solid walls.
Which meant—what?
Raft turned to the microscope again. There was no help there. In the sane, modern world of 1985 there was simply no place for such irrationalities. Incidentally, where was Pereira now?
He wasn't in the office where Raft had left him. And as Raft hesitated on the doorway, he heard a sound that brought blood pumping into his temples. He felt as though the subtle, half-sensed hints of wrongness had suddenly exploded into action.
It was merely the faint pop-popping of exhaust, but there was no reason for the motor launch to be going out at this hour.
Raft headed for the river. He paused to seize a flashlight. There were faint shouts. Others had caught the souhd of the engine too. Merriday's bulky form loomed on the bank.
Raft leveled the light and sent the beam flashing out into that pit of shadows. The smooth surface of the river glinted like a stream of diamonds. He swung the beam. There was the motor launch, ploughing a black furrow in the shining water as it melted away into the gloom where the flashlight's rays could not penetrate.
But just as it vanished the light caught one full gleam upon a face—Pereira's face, laughing back across his shoulder, white teeth glittering in the velvety beard. Triumph was arrogant in his laughter, the elation Raft had sensed before.
There was someone with him; Raft found it impossible to make out who that someone was. The Indies were running along the cleared bank, and a couple of them had put out in a canoa, but that wouldn't help. Raft drew the pistol he always carried in the jungle. The thought of sending a bullet after that arrogant, laughing face was very pleasant.
"No, Brian!" Merriday said, and pulled down his arm.
"But he's getting away with our boat!"
"Dan Craddock's with him," Merriday said. "Didn't you see?"
The pop-popping of the motor was fainter now, dying into the dim murmur of the Jutahy drums. Raft stood motionless, feeling bewildered and helpless.
"Nothing we can do till morning, anyway," he said presently. "Let's go back inside."
Then a voice he did not know jabbered something in Portuguese.
"He has gone back to his own land—and he has taken something with him."
Raft flashed the light up into the face of the aviator, da Fonseca, his flyer's cap gripped in one hand as he fumbled at his throat, groping, searching. The pupils of his eyes were no longer tiny. They were huge.
"Taken what?" Merriday said.
"My soul," da Fonseca said quite simply.
There was a moment of stillness. And in that pause da Fonseca's words fell with nightmare clarity.
"I had it in a little mirror around my neck. He put it there. It gave him the power to—to—" The thin, breathless voice faded.
"To do what?" Raft asked.
"To make men slaves," the aviator whispered. "As he did with the doutor."
Craddock! Raft had a sudden insane relief that the Welshman had not, then, gone off willingly with Pereira, in some mysterious unfathomed partnership. Then he was furious with himself for instantly accepting such a fantastic explanation from a man so obviously mad.
Yet it was an explanation. There seemed to be no other.
"Let me down," da Fonseca said, stirring against the hands that held him upright. "Without my soul I cannot stay here long."
"Carry him inside," Raft said. "Bill, get a hypo. Adrenalin."
Da Fonseca had collapsed completely by the time he was laid gently on a cot. His heart had stopped. Merriday came running with a syringe.
He had put on a long needle, guessing Raft's intention.
Raft made the injection directly into the heart muscle. Then he waited, stethoscope ready. He was conscious of something—different. Something changed.
Abruptly he knew what it was. The drums. They were louder, shouting, triumphant. Their beat was like the throbbing of a monster heart—of the jungle's heart, dark and immense.
Da Fonseca responded. Raft heard the soft pounding through the instrument, and those heart-beats were timed exactly to the rhythm of the Jutahy drums. His lids lifted slowly. His voice was hollow, chanting.