Elephant Song - Smith Wilbur. Страница 16

I won't be joining you.  I want to go back anyway.  Somebody has to warn Johnny Nzou.  Cheng's smile evaporated.  You are giving yourself a great deal of unnecessary trouble, I assure you.  I suggest you telephone him from Mana Pools or Karoi.  Didn't I tell you?  They cut the telephone wires.  Doctor Armstrong, that is preposterous.  I am sure you, are mistaken.  I think you are exaggerating the seriousness of this-'You think what you like, said Daniel with finality.  I'm going back to Chiwewe.  He stepped back from the window of the Mercedes.

Doctor Armstrong, Cheng called after him, look at those rain clouds.

You could be trapped here for weeks.  I'll take the chance, Daniel told him blithely, but to himself he thought, just why is he being so insistent?

Something is starting to smell distinctly rotten here.

He walked quickly back towards the Landcruiser.  As he passed the trucks he noticed that neither of the rangers had dismounted from the driver's cabs.  They were both looking sullen and neither of them said anything as he passed close beside them.  All right, Gomo, he called, pull your truck forward so I can get past you.  Without a word the ranger obeyed. Then the second truck rumbled past and finally the Ambassador's Mercedes came level.  Daniel lifted a hand in farewell.

Cheng barely glanced in his direction but gave him a perfunctory salute before following the trucks around the bend and heading on down towards the Mana Pools turn-off.  What did the Chink have to say?  Jock asked as Daniel reversed back into the roadway and put the Toyota to the steep gradient.

He says it was all quiet at Chiwewe when he left there an hour ago, Daniel replied.  That's a fair do.  Jock reached into the cold box and fished out a can of beer.  He offered it to Daniel who shook his head and concentrated on the road ahead.  Jock opened the can for himself, took a long slug, and belched happily.

The light began to fade and a few heavy drops of rain splattered against the windscreen but Daniel did not slacken speed.  it was completely dark before they reached the crest of the escarpment.  The lightning blazed through the darkness, illuminating the forest with a crackling blue radiance and thunder rolled across the sky and cannonaded the ridges of granite which rose on each side of the road.

The rain began to fall like silver arrows in the headlights, each drop exploding in a white blur against the glass then streaming down it so copiously that the wipers could not clear the windshield fast enough.

Soon it was oppressively humid in the closed cab and the windscreen began to mist over.  Daniel leaned forward to wipe it clear with his hand but when it smeared he gave up the effort and opened his side window a few inches to let in the fresh night air.  Almost immediately he wrinkled his nose and sniffed.

Jock smelt it at almost the same moment.  Smoke, he exclaimed.  How far are we from the camp?  Almost there, Daniel replied.  Just over the next ridge.  The odour of smoke thinned out.  Daniel thought that it might have come from the cooking-fires in the servants compound.

Ahead of them in the path of the headlights the gates of the main camp sprang out of the darkness.  Each whitewashed column was crowned by the bleached skull of an elephant.  The sign read: WELCOME TO CHIWEWE CAMP THE HOME OF THE ELEPHANTS and then in smaller letters, All arriving visitors must report immediately to the Warden's Office.

The long driveway, lined on each side with dark Casia trees, was running ankle deep with storm water and the Toyota's tires threw up a dense fog of spray as Daniel headed for the main block of buildings.

Suddenly the reek of smoke was thick and rank in their nostrils.  It was the smell of burning thatch and wood with a foul underlay of something else, flesh or bone or ivory, perhaps, although Daniel had never smelt ivory burning.  No lights, Daniel grunted as he saw the loom of dark buildings in the rain ahead.  The camp generator was not running; the entire camp was in darkness.  Then he became aware of a diffused ruby light that shimmered over the wet Casia trees and played gently on the walls of the buildings.  One of the buildings is on fire.

Jock sat forward in his seat.  That's where the smoke is coming from.

The Toyota's headlights cut a broad swathe through the gloom and then focused on a huge amorphous dark pile ahead of them.  The misted windscreen obscured his vision and for some moments Daniel could not decide what it was.  The strange glow seemed to emanate from it.  Only as they drove closer and the lights lit it more clearly could he recognize it as the blackened, smouldering ruins of the ivory godown.

Horrified by what he saw, Daniel let the Toyota roll to a halt and he stepped down into the mud and stared at the ruin.

The heat of the flames had cracked the walls and most of them had collapsed.  The fire must have been an inferno to have produced such heat.  It still burned and smouldered despite the cascading rain.  Oily streamers of smoke drifted across the headlights of the truck and occasionally the flames flared up fiercely until the heavy raindrops beat them down again.

Daniel's sodden shirt clung to his body and the rain soaked his hair, smearing his thick curls over his forehead and into his eyes.  He pushed them back and scrambled up on to the tumbled masonry of the wall.  The collapsed roof was a thick mattress of black ash and charred beams that clogged the interior of the devastated godown.  Despite the rain the smoke was still too dense and the heat too fierce to allow him to approach any closer and discover how much of the ivory still lay under that blackened pile.

Daniel backed away and ran to the truck.  He climbed into the cab and wiped the rain out of his eyes with the palm of his hand.  You were spoton, Jock said.  It looks as if the bastards have hit the camp.

Daniel did not answer.  He started the engine and gunned the Toyota up the hill to the warden's cottage.  Get the flashlight out of the locker, he snapped.

Obediently Jock knelt on the seat and groped in the heavy tool-locker that was bolted to the truck bed, and came out with the big Maglite.

Like the rest of the camp the warden's cottage was in darkness.  The rain streamed down from the eaves in a silver torrent so that the headlights could not illuminate the screened verandah beyond.  Daniel snatched the torch from Jock's hand and jumped out into the rain.

Johnny!  he yelled.  Mavis!  He ran to the front door of the cottage.

The door had been smashed half off its hinges and hung open.  He ran through on to the verandah.

The furniture was shattered and thrown about in confusion.

He played the torch-beam over the chaos.  Johnny's cherished collection of books had been tumbled from their cases along the wall and lay in heaps with their pages fanned and their spines broken.

Johnny!  Daniel shouted.  Where are you?

He ran through the open double doors into the sitting-room.

Here the destruction was shocking.  They had hurled all Mavis's ornaments and vases at the stone fireplace and the broken shards glittered in the torch beam.  They had ripped the stuffing out of the sofa and easy chairs.  The room stank like an animal cage and he saw that they had defecated on the carpets and urinated down the walls.

Daniel stepped over the reeking piles of faeces and ran through into the passageway that led to the bedrooms.  Johnny!  he shouted in anger and despair, as he played the torch-beam down the length of the passage.

On the end wall was a decoration that had not been there before.  It was a dark star-shaped splash of paint that covered most of the white-painted surface.  For a moment Daniel stared at it uncomprehendingly and then he dropped the beam to the small huddled shape that lay at the foot of the wall.