Cry Wolf - Smith Wilbur - Страница 28
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Gulf.
Jake broke the spell of silence and loneliness that held them.
"All right, my children. Let's make camp." They had landed on the
open beach between the ruined city and the headland, and now the
evening wind was sweeping dust and grit across their exposed
position.
Jake selected a sheltered hollow under the lee of the ruins, and they
moved the cars up and parked them in the protective hollow square of
the laager.
The ancient buildings were choked with piled sand and thick with the
spiny camel-thorn growth that blocked the narrow streets. While
Jake and Gregorius checked the fuelling and lubrication of the
vehicles, and Gareth scraped a fireplace against a shielding stone
wall, Vicky wandered off to explore the ruins in the dusk.
She did not go far. A tangible sense of menace and human suffering
seemed to emanate from the rubble of buildings that had been burned
over a century before. It made her skin crawl, but she picked her way
cautiously along a narrow alleyway that opened at last into an open
square.
She knew instinctively that this had been the trading square of the
slave city and she imagined the long chained lines of human beings.
The pervading aura of their misery still persisted. She wondered if
she could capture it on paper, and make her readers see that it had not
changed. Once again, a consuming greed was to place a nation in
chains, once again hundreds of thousands of human beings would be
forced to learn the same misery that this city had engendered. She
must write that, she decided, she must capture the sense of outrage and
despair she felt now and convey it to the civilized peoples of the
world.
A small scuffling sound distracted her and she looked down, then drew
back with a shudder from the finger-length purple scorpion, with its
lobster claws and the high curved tail bearing a single-hooked fang
that scuttled towards the toe of her boot. She turned and hurried back
along the alleyway.
The chill of horror stayed with her, so that she crossed gratefully to
the bright fire of thorn twigs that blazed under the ruined wall.
Gareth looked up as she knelt beside him and held out her hands to the
blaze.
"I was just coming to look for you. Better not wander off on your
own."
"I can look after myself," she told him quickly, with an edge to her
voice which was becoming familiar.
"I agree." He smiled placatingly at her. "A bit too damned well
I sometimes think, "and he dug in his pocket.
"I found something in the sand as I was digging the fireplace." He
held out a broken circle of metal which gleamed yellow in the
firelight. It was fashioned as a snake bangle, with a serpent's forged
head and coiled body.
Vicky felt her irritation evaporate magically. "Oh, Gary," she lifted
it in both hands, "it's beautiful. Is it gold?"
"I suspect it is." She slipped the heavy bangle over her wrist and
admired it with a glowing expression, twisting it to catch the light.
"Not one of them can resist a gift," Gareth thought comfortably,
watching her face in the dancing firelight.
"it belonged to a princess, who was famous for her beauty and her
compassion to besotted suitors," said Gareth lightly.
"So I thought how fitting that you should have it."
"Oh!" she gasped. "For me." And impulsively she leaned forward to
kiss his cheek, and was startled when he turned his head quickly and
her lips pressed full against his. For a moment she tried to pull away
and then it did not seem worth the effort. After all, it was a truly
magnificent bracelet.
In the light of the single hurricane lamp, Jake and Gregorius were
studying the large-scale map spread on the engine bonnet of Priscilla
the Pig. Gregorius was tracing the route they must take to the shed of
the Awash River and lamenting the map's many inaccuracies and
omissions.
"If you had tried to follow this, you'd have got into serious trouble,
Jake." Jake looked up suddenly from the map, and thirty paces away he
saw the two figures in the firelight come together and stay that way.
He felt his pulse begin to pound and the blood come up his neck,
scalding hot.
"Let's get some coffee, "he grunted.
"In a minute," Gregorius protested. "First I want to show you where we
have to cross the sand desert-" He pointed at the map, tracing a route
and not realizing that he was talking to himself alone. Jake had left
him to interrupt the action at the fireside.
Vicky awoke in the first uncertain light of dawn to the realization
that the wind had dropped. It had whistled dismally all night, so that
now when she pulled back her blanket, it was thickly powdered with
golden grit and she could feel it stiff in her hair and crunchy between
her teeth. One of the men was snoring loudly, but they were three long
blanket-wrapped bundles close together, so she was not sure which of
them it was. She fetched her toilet bag, towel and a change of
underwear, then slipped out of the " laager, climbed the slope of the
dune and ran down to the beach.
The dawn was absolutely still, the surface of the bay as smooth as a
sheet of pink satin as the glow of the hidden sun touched it. The
silence was the complete silence of the desert, unbroken by bird or
beast, wind or surf and the dismay she had felt the previous day
evaporated.
She stripped off her clothing and walked down the wet sand that the
tide had smoothed during the night and waded out into the pink waters,
sticking in her belly against the sudden chill of it, and gasping with
pleasure as she squatted suddenly neck deep and began to scrub her body
of the night's grit and dirt.
When she waded ashore, the sun was cresting the sweeping watery horizon
of the Gulf. The tone of light had altered drastically.
Already the soft hues of dawn were giving way to the harsher brilliance
of Africa to which she had become accustomed.
She dressed quickly, bundling her used underwear in the towel and
combing her wet hair as she climbed the dune.
At the crest, she halted abruptly with the comb still caught in the
tangle of her hair and she gasped again as she stared out into the
west.
As Gregorius had told them, the still cool air and the peculiar light
of the rising sun created a stage effect, foreshortening the hundred
miles of flat featureless desert and throwing up into the sky the sheer
massif of the highlands, so that it seemed she might stretch out her
hand and touch it.
It was dark purplish blue in the early light, but as Vicky watched in
awe, it changed colour like some gargantuan chameleon, becoming gilded
with bright sun colours and beginning at the same time to recede
swiftly, until it was a pale wraith that dissolved into the first
dancing heat mirages of the desert -day, and she felt the sultry puff
of the rising wind.
She roused herself and hurried down the dune into the laager.
Jake looked up from the pan of beans and bacon that was spluttering
over the fire and grinned at her.
"Five minutes for breakfast." He spooned a mess of food into her
pannikin and offered it to her. "I thought about night travel to avoid
the heat but the chances of smashing up the cars on rough going was too
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