Luana Page 16

  Chapter XI

  He’d worried about Isabel all night, but the following morning she was alert and ready to leave. Apparently she’d fully recovered from the double trauma of finding the plane and losing Albright.

  Either that or she was hiding it well.

  “You’re positive there’s nothing more you want to do here?” he asked her, smiling reassuringly. “I don’t think you’ll be coming back this way, soon. Not if I have anything to do with it, anyway.”

  “I think we’ve done everything, George.” She hitched her light pack higher on her shoulders. “I . . . I’d have liked to bury them, but—”

  Luana heard, could not keep down the hazy memories. She wasn’t being blunt, only honest.

  “The jungle buried them. It’s better that way. I am not sure—it was so long ago—but I think, and hope, that Chaugh’s mother did it.”

  Isabel’s face twisted and she looked at her sister oddly. For the first time she clearly saw the tremendous gulf that separated them.

  “That . . . that’s nauseating!”

  “Would you prefer me to say they had been taken by the hyena and jackal and carrion birds? Or buried, as is your strange custom, to be food for worms and grubs and dung beetles?”

  Isabel was not mollified. “I suppose that in a similar situation you’d . . . eat me.”

  Luana was equally defiant. “And why not? Flesh is flesh, meat is meat.”

  “Okay, girls,” Barrett interposed himself hurriedly. “You’ve each made your point. I think we’d better get started.”

  “Yes, George,” Isabel agreed. “But why the hurry? If, as Luana insists, we’ve nothing to fear from the Wanderi any more, there’s no need to run back to Mpanda.”

  “We’re not going back to Mpanda—or Nairobi—yet.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He met her gaze. “Listen, Isabel! You’ve had your dream come true. Now, by God, I’ve a chance, a real chance, to take a crack at mine!” He was a little surprised at the vehemence of his assertion. He turned to Luana.

  “You still willing to take us to the place where you found the necklace?”

  “Necklace? What necklace?” asked Murin.

  Barrett dug into his pocket. “This necklace—”

  He pulled out the incredible bauble and tossed it to his partner with calculated casualness. Murin missed it and it landed in the dirt at his feet. He stared, then fell to his knees and scooped it up. His lower jaw hung loose.

  “Don’t pay any attention to it, Mur. It’s just another figment of crazy ole George Barrett’s fevered imagination. You know, too-long-in-the-sun-Barrett? Too many safaris with fat old bankers from Berlin and Zurich, too much booze, too many bro . . . phoney old history books. Just a figment I wasted five years and eleven trips into this stinking jungle to find.

  “It’s only a necklace. Not,” he added, “that it isn’t enough both to prove my theory and pay for someone else to do the looking. But I’d like one look, just one look, for myself, at the place where Luana found it, hey?”

  “Ah, yes,” agreed Murin breathlessly. “Sacre bleu! Gott in himmel!” He held it up to the light and inspected it with a professional eye. Isabel walked over next to him and stared through it at the sun.

  “It’s . . . it’s not a diamond, is it?”

  “Why Isabel!” said Barrett in mock surprise. “Don’t tell me there exists in your innocent, if luscious, little form a slight desire for the filthy lucre also?”

  She strode deliberately up to him. “I’ve found out what happened to my father. And how, and why.” She pointed over at the leather hamper that housed, along with other effects, four plastic slipcases and their long-preserved contents.

  “I’ve salvaged what I can of his work and his reputation. That’s enough for me. Besides,” and she slipped her hand determinedly in his, “you wouldn’t want the company of a woman who was as mercenary as you, would you? But everyone dreams of being rich, George. It’s one of the few little boy-and-girl dreams we can share all the way to the end. So if this is so important to you, I’ll have to have a look too, I guess.” She smiled.

  He kissed her then, gently, a tender, fluid blending of lips and tongue that conveyed everything without heavy pressing or shifting.

  The bearers crowded around, too. Barrett let the necklace pass from hand to hand. One of them had worked in the mines in South Africa before deciding dignity was more important than a DeBeers paycheck. He confirmed Barrett’s estimate of the stone’s worth.

  A share in the relic and anything else they might find was promised to every man. It would be a cooperative venture all around. Kobenene found it sickening. His estimate of Barrett went down several notches. For a professional hunter he sure lacked the killer instinct. No wonder he’d let Kobenene’s hand up during the pigana.

  Handshakes and congratulations passed around the little circle. No, it was no longer a standard safari. The diamond, the escape from the witch-men, had transformed it. Barrett didn’t mind being just the man who led, instead of the leader.

  Kobenene claimed to be able to translate a few of the words inscribed in the gold links. It made Barrett respect the big man even more—and convinced him to watch the other even closer. Everyone spoke Swahili these days, but the ancient Bantu dialects were something else again.

  They left the plane behind them, a funeral gift to the forest, to return to the birds and small lizards and one wizened mongoose, and struck off to the south. Hills greeted them again, rising sharply to true mountains. But their route continued to stay level, in the deepening valleys, and the undergrowth was not as bad as it might have been. And they encountered no swamps, thank God! It could have been much worse.

  Also, for the first time they encountered an occasional cooling breeze, flowing down from the soaring peaks. The intermittent refreshing zephyr did more for their spirits than anything else.

  The place Luana led them to, after days of steady marching, was not bursting with gold and gems. But at least it was comfortable.

  “I hope,” said Barrett, craning his neck and staring upwards, “you don’t expect us to go up that, Luana. I won’t . . . not even for two necklaces!”

  They’d emerged from the cloying forest at a bend in a small river. A beach of sand and gravel crunched under their feet. It was flat and clean, except for a few thorn bushes that could be easily cleared away. It would make an absolutely ideal location for a camp.

  It might also be the ideal sunning place for the local reptilian population. But a quick inspection revealed this section of stream to be devoid of the carnivorous monsters. Sweeping towards them from the left, the river curved around the sandy peninsula and disappeared southward.

  Across the water, again slightly to their left, a sheer rock wall rose hundreds of meters straight into a sky of gunmetal blue. Only distant, overhanging greenery marked the top of the awesome escarpment.

  Directly across from them the wall was heavily striated, and pockmarked like rotting cheese. Barrett was no geologist, but he recognized the difference here from the usual volcanic basalts and lavas that dominated the Rift valley. Somehow, a few vines and flowers made a living in tiny holes in the rock.

  The cliff curved sharply in front of them to slam up against equally dense forest on the other side of the stream. Directly in front of this bend the river broadened slightly to form a fairly deep, still pool before narrowing again and regaining its mantle of ivory foam.

  It was a gorgeous spot, all right. Continually cleansed by the fast-flowing stream, the pool was clear and fairly free of choking algae and water scum.

  It would take a while to get set up. And while Barrett and everyone else were trembling with impatience, there was nothing to be gained by hurrying except cramps.

  “Do you come here often?” he asked Luana.

  “No. Only the once. I was crossing the river here and saw the shiny thing on the bottom.”

  “And the Wanderi never come here?”

  �
�No one comes here. It is a forbidden place. I do not know why.”

  When it became known that Luana had found the necklace lying in the silt at the bottom of the pool, everyone, including the bearers who didn’t know how to swim, wanted to go diving. Barrett tried his best to calm them, showing a patience he didn’t feel. It didn’t matter who found what, they would all share.

  The men grumbled. But there was nothing to prevent even non-swimmers from exploring the shallows. Barrett didn’t try to discourage this activity. The men had to have some outlet for their own dreams—he ought to know—or nothing would get done in camp at all.

  The next morning he stripped to his shorts and slipped slowly into the pool. Luana, Kobenene, and Isabel followed. Murin wanted to look also, but Barrett preferred to have him on shore with their single remaining rifle. Just in case they’d missed an isolated floating log that was really something else.

  The water was delightfully cool and clear. Below, the few thick green water plants danced in the current like shreds of old Christmas ribbon. The bottom was a continuation of the little beach they’d camped on. Mostly sand and gravel, with very little mud. Despite the current, Barrett found that rather surprising.

  In drier times the stream probably ran much shallower here. And fast enough to scour the bottom clean of such lighter sediments. There were slow, dull fish the color of antimony, and fat fresh-water shrimp who would provide welcome change to the sparse camp menu.

  And rocks. Plenty of rocks. All of them good, honest stone—without a semi-precious one among them. Not even an agate or chalcedony.

  There were no diamond necklaces. Not even a ring.

  Nothing.

  Barrett used floats the second day. The pond was not terribly wide, or the current very strong, but he had them made anyway. It gave the men something to do.

  Made from hollow gourds and inflated flsh-bellies, the floats were anchored to the bottom with heavy rocks. They would let the divers rest on the surface and save strength for diving, not treading water. It also saved their breath, which was needed for increased complaining as their lack of success continued.

  The third day found Barrett ready to quit. The fourth day Luana found the cave.

  They stood on the beach, Luana slick and panting, while everyone crowded around. She pointed towards the rock wall where it dropped into the deepest part of the pool.

  “It’s only this far,” and she stretched her hands about a meter apart, “below the water-top. It lies in the shade, and water plants grow in and all around it. I found it only by chance.”

  “Not surprising,” Barrett noted, “if it’s as well concealed as you say. Hell, we were all looking down, not sideways! How big is it?”

  Luana tried to show with her hands, failed, and picked up a stick. She drew a rough oval outline in the soft gravel.

  “Only about a meter high and not much wider,” he mused, studying the crude sketch. “Not very promising. How deep does it go?”

  Further than her arm would reach. Beyond that she could not tell. Or see. It was very dark.

  Barrett considered carefully. He was no fool. What he wanted to try would be dangerous enough even with proper precautions. Now, that necklace didn’t fall from any passing plane, nor did the river look particularly navigable. Oh, it might be passable. In higher water, it would run slower. Or the party that lost the necklace might have just been crossing the river, on their way to God knew where.

  But there was that slight, nagging chance that the necklace had been washed out of the small cave. Because according to Luana, there was a slight but definite current pouring out of it. Maybe, just maybe, there was a broken chest or case or something full of this necklace’s cousins and aunts and uncles.

  They still had two all-weather flashlights. All-weather didn’t include submersion, but they should last long enough underwater for his needs. They were at least as waterproof as he was. There was also the unbreakable nylon line. He’d tie a loop to his waist, time himself—he could hold his breath for at least a minute and a half, maybe more—take the flash and swim inwards for sixty seconds. Then he would turn and kick his way out.

  If he pushed off the bottom and walls of the cave he could probably go faster, farther . . . but the bottom might be sharp, or too deep. Better just to swim, hard and fast and straight. Then a tug on the line would bring him out much faster than he would go in. Murin and Kobenene and the two girls would be waiting on the other end. Their pulling would more than make up for the thirty second difference.

  It had damn well better make up for the thirty second difference!

  Of course, if he were real lucky, and the roof of the cave rose— Let’s see, one jerk to indicate he’d found air enough to breathe, two jerks to bring him out—fast.

  It was already too late to try. The next morning, the entire camp rose with the sun. Isabel was the first in the water—to scrub herself.

  “Okay.” He examined their faces as he held onto a little chink in the rock wall. He was hovering just over the cave entrance. The cord had been snugged tight round his waist, the knots double-checked.

  “This is going to be very short and simple. Remember, one tug and everybody can relax. Two tugs and you all pull hard. Don’t worry about hurting me.

  “Mur, let’s check watches.” Sixty seconds on his partner’s turned out to be the same as sixty seconds on his own. He smiled, gave them all a last look. “Three or four or five tugs, and you can give your regards to my bookie.” It was a safe joke. Crocs didn’t care much for holes, and they hadn’t seen one in four days.

  He switched on the light. “Back shortly—don’t go ’way.” One hyperventilation, a deep breath, hold it—he slipped under the surface.

  The water plants were a barrier in shape only and offered no resistance to his probing, pushing hand. They were too soft to foul the line, another worry out of the way.

  He kicked hard, wishing unreasonably for a pair of good, broad, Cousteauian fins. And why not a whole scuba outfit, while you’re at it, funny boy?

  The pale light showed nothing above but uncaring, inanimate gray. Thirty seconds gone already. It felt like he’d hardly gone any distance at all. Worse, the passage seemed to be narrowing slightly. He’d have to be careful, especially about the bottom. It was starting to caress his rib cage. Watch it, or he’d have no room in which to turn around.

  They’d have a helluva time trying to pull him out backwards.

  Forty-five seconds.

  The bottom continued to rise. And once when he kicked sharply downwards he stubbed his toe on a projection in the floor. The superficiality of the hurt didn’t alleviate the pain. He couldn’t even curse. This didn’t look promising at all.

  Fifty seconds. Fifty-five.

  Still the stone floor rose. He’d seen nothing to indicate this was any more than a tiny hole in the cliff. But if that were the case, he thought angrily, then where was this damn current coming from?

  Of course, the underground conduit could run clear to the Congo.

  Sixty seconds gone. Sixty-five.

  He should already have turned back. Already his lungs were straining. His stomach bumped on the bottom, bumped again.

  Seventy seconds.

  Was that cool air on the back of his neck?

  Carefully, he put both palms on the bottom and gently pushed. The flashlight scraped noisily. His head broke water. His body demanding air, he still lifted slowly. The roof could contact his skull any second. He wanted that meeting to be peaceful. Slow, slow.

  Then his entire upper torso was out of the water and he was wolfing down long, delicious draughts of fresh air. There was a slight breeze in his face, too. The water continued to run down, over, and past him. Sitting in the small stream was chilling, but he hardly noticed.

  He brought the light out of the water and shook off as much moisture as he could. Then he shined it around and up. From behind him the roof sloped gradually upwards. It rose rapidly before leveling off to a ceiling well above his he
ight.

  Stalagtites made fairy shapes in the dim light. Calcite curtains threw the beam back at him tinged with yellow-orange. Stalagmites lifted patiently from the floor, building skyward on the accumulation of centuries of lime-bearing water.

  Here and there stalgmite and stalgtite engaged in cautious mating to form a wasp-waisted column. There were fluted draperies, gravity-defying helicites, and clusters of virgin white aragonite with crystals longer and thinner than the finest sewing needle. They would shatter at a heavy breath.

  Something tugged insistently at his belt-line. He turned the light on his arm to check the watch and realized he’d done nothing but stare at the exquisite cavern for some time. He jerked on the cord once, sharply. Leaving the light on the bank—there was no need in getting it any damper—he turned in the darkness and slid back under water. He had plenty of time. He’d fastened the line firmly to a stalagmite—an easy guide.

  “Nothing to it,” he gasped as he emerged on the other side. “The hole opens into a good-sized cave. I couldn’t tell right off how deep it runs into the mountain, but it’s pretty, and the air is fresh.” His answer to Murin’s unspoken question was more subdued. “I’m afraid it doesn’t have any value to anyone except a manufacturer of plaster, though.

  “Still, it is mighty pretty. It’s sure as hell worth a look. And there might be something interesting at the back of it . . . a box, maybe.”

  “With the luck we’ve had, it’s probably be full of bus tokens,” said Murin dejectedly.

  “Don’t give up so quickly,” Barrett admonished him. The words bespoke a confidence he didn’t feel. “Swim takes a little over a minute. I didn’t see any side passages, so there’s no chance of getting lost.

  “Just make sure you hold onto the line and don’t bump your head, and no one should have any trouble. Anyone who doesn’t want to go?”

  Resounding silence.

  “Okay. Mur, come with me. The rest of you wait here. We’re going to get the other light, and some food, and a few other things. Izzy, I’m gonna borrow your father’s watertight book cases. Don’t worry, the books won’t fall apart in a few hours. We’ll need ’em to put the food in—unless you’d like to eat watery sandwiches.”