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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