by Peter Tonkin
‘Did you say something, Your Highness?’ asked Parang quietly.
Sailendra turned to glance at the young man, looking away from the rocky upslope of the road only for an instant. Parang had been quiet all day, since reporting for duty soon after the sudden dawn. But then, he had been under almost as much stress as Sailendra had himself. Had been working almost as hard. Though, with the early night he had been allowed last evening, he did look well rested.
‘I was thinking about Councillor Kenan,’ said the prince.
‘Yes, Your Highness?’
‘If anything else goes badly wrong, he’ll carry the council and take control of Pulau Baya altogether.’
‘It is possible.’
‘Do you suppose he plans it?’
‘I believe the chief councillor is concerned about the position we find ourselves in. It is almost unbelievable that in this day and age we cannot find a way of reaching out to the wider world and warning them of our predicament. Or that someone somewhere would have registered the tremor that the landslide must have caused.’
The truck ground up between the peaks which seemed, strangely, almost as two-dimensional here in the pass between them as they seemed from the distance of Bandar Laut Bay. ‘Fate seems to be against us. Or karma. Or whatever. Perhaps we have done terrible things in past lives...’ suggested Sailendra, changing down as the truck’s nose fell on to the southern down-slope. Here the road was suddenly muddy, as though the narrow pass had brought them into another climate zone altogether.
‘Or in present ones,’ agreed Parang drily, leaning back into his seat and reaching forward with one straight arm against the dash. ‘But still, the fact that Dr Nurul possessed a cellphone that usually communicates with her colleagues at the University in Jakarta...’
‘Only to find its battery dead. And her charger incapacitated by the lack of current in the grid since the power station went down in the landslide!’ Sailendra pounded on the steering wheel of the truck. The Baya/Java Strait gleamed wickedly under the bludgeoning afternoon sun beyond the steep lushness of the first soft- fruit farms. ‘Has no one on the island got a cellphone or a radio that works?’
‘Seemingly not, Your Highness. At least, not with the power grid down. There may be individual generators...’ He gestured away towards the distant shanties of the corrugated-iron farm buildings.
‘Which do not produce power at wattages needed to recharge cellphones.’
‘Or radios...’
‘Receivers in plenty. Transmitters, apparently not!’
‘Except of course in the Baya Broadcasting building. Beneath about a million tons of mud!’
‘And not one ship in the harbour. Nothing. Except that one vessel that promised to pass on our emergency message...’
‘I believe we have no more hope of that, Your Highness. Maybe it was a false signal. Who knows?’
‘Whoever knows, I hope I meet up with him some day!’ snarled the frustrated prince. He eased his over-tense shoulders. ‘And your own phone?’ he asked for about the tenth time in the last thirty-six hours.
‘Reliant on the mast that used to stand almost at the top of Guanung Surat, just upslope from the transmitter mast belonging to Baya Broadcasting. Like almost every other cellphone on the island,’ mourned Parang. ‘A victim of the modern ways.’
‘You sound like Councillor Kerian,’ joked Sailendra.
‘It must be my Bugis blood,’ answered Parang, apparently joking too.
The truck slopped through puddles, spraying up ochre waves on to the luxuriant greenery of the roadside. ‘The fruit farms seem to have survived,’ observed Parang, changing the subject. ‘Though I can’t see anyone actually working the fields.’
‘They’ve probably gone to Baya City to help Councillor Kerian’s epic rescue attempts, like Dr Nurul’s workers from the prawn fishery,’ said Sailendra, only half joking, his voice sounding unexpectedly bitter, even in his own ears.
‘Possibly, Your Highness.’ Parang sounded unconvinced. ‘The banana plantations will give us a better idea on both counts. As to the storm damage and the presence of workers.’
The conversation died then and both men became lost in their thoughts as Sailendra swung the truck round to his right and began to toil back up the slope along the increasingly precipitous road that led above the banana plantations towards the high rice paddies.
‘It’s the rice paddies I’m worried about,’ he confided to Parang, after a while. ‘Some of the new ones are on pretty steep slopes. I know we’ve dug them in pretty carefully - and taken infinite pains over the irrigation. But that rainstorm the night before last tore the northern side of Guanung Surat. Helped by illegal logging, fair enough. But there’s no knowing what it could have done down here.’ He swung round to glance at his secretary once again, the fine features of his face suddenly twisted in naked anguish. ‘These people were relying on me. On me personally, man to man. I should have come to check on them sooner, Parang.’
That apparently innocent and fleeting glance away from the road ahead had consequences that were far-reaching; almost fatal. The front wheels of the truck simply jumped into a wide puddle lying apparently still across the road in front of them. Jumped, and, instead of landing on a shallow bottom, fell away vertiginously.
Had Sailendra been paying just that tiny bit more attention, he might have seen that the apparently restful surface was simply a pool in a plunging stream that had in fact torn this part of the road away before cascading on down the hillside. Only a pile of boulders wedged in the precipitous valley held the water back just enough to give the fatal illusion that there was a still pool with a solid roadway beneath it. The truck lurched forward into the wild rush of tumbling rivulet, therefore. At once a flood of dirty water - the colour and seemingly the weight of molten gold - was hurled against the bonnet. It drowned the engine in an instant, and pushed on with the relentless force of blow after blow. The whole vehicle swung round, its left front tyre demolished the makeshift dam that had held the seeming puddle on the road, and the truck itself settled on to the slope beneath. And here it hesitated, with the water still thundering down its shaking length, threatening to spew it down still further into the uppermost plantation.
Sailendra, raised in safety-conscious climes, had worn his seat belt since the off. Parang was still sitting with his arm wedged rigidly against the dash. Both survived relatively unscathed. The truck did not. It was dead and all but buried. Even as they realized it was still, they could feel it slipping into motion once again. With one accord, as though psychically linked, they each threw open their door and prepared to hurl themselves out. Only at the last minute did Parang, seeing Sailendra throw himself to his right, think to scramble across the seats and follow him. So that when the truck was washed away down the slope a moment later, at least the pair were on the same side of the torrent.
‘We have to get back to the cannery, Your Highness,’ gasped Parang, as soon as the easing shock allowed him to talk sensibly. ‘They have more trucks down there. We can drive back to Baya City. Other than that, we walk.’
Sailendra looked at his soaking, shaken, filthy secretary, and shook his head. ‘You’re right, of course, Parang,’ he said decisively. ‘But I came here to check on the paddies and that little incident makes me feel that it’s really important I do so as soon as possible. The whole hillside here could be coming away as well!’
The roadway held no more unpleasant surprises, except for the particularly prehensile nature of the mud. It was hot, too, for the northerly afternoon breeze was funnelled far over their heads by the hill-crest up on their right. Here, the south-facing slope was utterly airless. It would be, Sailendra realized, until the monsoon came by in a few weeks’ time. Until then the wind would gust from the north and the air would sit completely still. And it was summer. And they were only a few hundred kilometres south of the equator. But they were determined, so they proceeded.
The first paddy was only a kilometre further on, but by
the time they reached it the two men were giddy with heatstroke, fatigue and dehydration, not to mention the after-effects of clinical shock from the crash and their narrow escape. They were, in short, all too willing to immerse themselves in its still cool water, in spite of whatever damage they might be doing to the precious shoots. And it was only the greatest self-control - and the liveliest sense of self-preservation - that stopped them from drinking it.
But that first limpid pool cleared their heads and allowed them to look around. The paddies stepped down the hillside in long flights of silver-surfaced stairs. They were carefully angled and irrigated so that even the wild downward rush of the torrential rain that had created the near-fatal rivulet running across the road was channelled and controlled. The paddies ran into each other like a series of gutters on a roof so that the pressure of the water was channelled safely down from one level to the next beneath and so through to the systems in the plantations and the fruit farms and finally out into the waters of the strait itself in a great raw concrete sluice standing between the cannery and the little dock facility.
But the long look that the bathe in that first paddy allowed Sailendra to take showed that the system was by no means working as he had hoped. It did not seem to have handled the downpour at all well: the next paddy beneath them, for instance, was overflowing in a steady cascade, and the next in series beneath it seemed to be faring little better. And these were just the first of many more.
‘Come on,’ gasped the prince. ‘We’ll look at those two nearest. They’re on the way down to the cannery, at any rate.’
Also short of breath after his long walk and luxurious immersion, Parang nodded, and off they slopped together. They sloshed through the paddy knee-deep in the cool water, being more careful of the rice plants now, and feeling the deep, silty mud pull at their ankles as though the fine dark coffee-ground soil could lead, like some kind of quicksand, right down to the black heart of the mountain itself. At the outer edge there was a low wall made of concrete padded with mud, then a step down of nearly two metres into the next paddy, the first of those that were overflowing. Unfortunately, made clumsy by the weight of water in their clothes and by the exhaustion of their adventures so far, the pair heaved themselves over and began to weave almost drunkenly through the lower paddy. Suddenly Sailendra drew himself up, focusing almost fiercely. ‘Look,’ he said to Parang. ‘There’s something blocking the sluice. That’s all that’s wrong!’
Side by side they stumbled over to the lower end of the paddy, where a simple concrete runway led down into the next in the series, blocked like a whale’s throat by a simple filter-grille. There was something wedged up against it, blocking it solidly enough to cause the whole finely balanced system to flood. As Sailendra drew near, he thought dreamily that the blockage must simply be a bundle of old clothes. Then, a little nearer, he wondered whether it might not be the body of some animal washed in here by the deluge.
It was only when Parang and he were standing side by side and their knees, bisected by the silvery surface, were actually up against it that Sailendra realized the truth. The blockage was a dead body. A human body, curled against the grille as tightly as one of the prawns in the ruined fisheries of Bandar Laut Bay. The impression was so overpowering that Sailendra found himself bending to plunge his hand into this water too - to see if it were as warm as the bay had been. He froze halfway through the act, with his fist in the water beside the dead man, struck by the massive stupidity of what he was doing. If the water had been hot, his feet and legs would have warned him long since.
But then he noticed something else. Something that drove a spear of panic like a man-sized icicle right through the middle of his being. The water was bubbling. It wasn’t fizzing like champagne. It wasn’t boiling as though to make tea. But it was bubbling, like sparkling water. Like Perrier. The hairs on his submerged hand and forearm were covered with silver already. As was the dead man curled against the grating; every fold of his clothing, each strand of his hair, every part of him submerged beneath the surface of the paddy was covered with tiny bubbles that gleamed like mercury. Gleamed, and gathered and bubbled up in their countless millions into the air they were trying to breathe.
It was some kind of gas. Poison gas.
Sailendra straightened and swung round. The sensation of being impaled on an icicle had been so vivid that it seemed natural enough now to have a splitting headache. A headache so fierce that it almost incapacitated him. Almost, but not quite. His wide gaze swept across the paddies. Took in anew the number that were overflowing. Overflowing because their grilles were blocked. If they were all blocked by dead men, there had been a terrible massacre here. He turned further, to share his suspicions with his secretary. But it was already far too late.
Parang was standing behind him, eyes wide, seemingly turned to rock. His face was pale, especially around his mouth, though his cheeks were bright red. The edges of his lips looked almost blue as did the point of the tongue with which he was licking them. His eyes and nose were running as though he had some kind of influenza.
‘Parang!’ gasped the prince. ‘We must get away from here!’
The secretary answered by slumping to his knees.
Sailendra reached down and took Parang by the collar. He heaved him forward like a sack of rice, caring little enough for the fact that he was probably choking him. Then, step after heaving step, Sailendra started to drag him bodily down the slope, crashing desperately from one paddy down to the next, as though they were falling very slowly down a massive, mountainous stairway, in a wild and weakening search for that first life-giving breath of clean, fresh air.
Chapter 16: Orang-Utan
Richard for one was surprised the next evening to find Inge Nordberg standing where Dr Hirai had stood the evening before, facing down into the packed auditorium preparing to deliver the after-dinner speech. On the screen behind the owner’s classically Nordic daughter was a picture, not of Krakatau as it had stood in 1883, but of Tanjung Puting National Park and Biosphere as it was now. And, perhaps in an attempt to add to the authenticity of her talk, Inge was dressed in a bush shirt, shorts, knee-socks and trekking boots. Oddly, thought Richard, she looked the part - like one of those presenters so popular with wildlife programmes on the television. He glanced around the audience. Nic and he were the oldest here by far. It seemed that it was mostly the youngsters from the pools and the water-sports action that were going into the park. The more elderly were spending a more restful time on the beaches and in the casino instead. But there was no doubt that the Ice Maiden could hold her audience. Even Robin was focused on Inge’s serious face as she swept an errant lock of hair out of her eyes and consulted a dog-eared set of notes. And, he noted wryly, if Robin was focused, Navigating Officer Gruber was simply entranced.
‘We will arrive at Tanjung Puting in a little more than thirty-six hours,’ began Inge, looking up, gazing at her rapt audience and talking with all the confidence of a practised public speaker. ‘But we deliver the initial briefing now, rather than tomorrow evening, so that you have plenty of time to double-check and ask questions. Furthermore, we suggest most strongly that even the fittest and hardiest of you relax tomorrow and get an early night tomorrow night. You will require a lot of stamina to get the most out of your two days in the park. And it has been our experience that even those who overnight in either of the hotels there do not sleep quite as well as they do aboard. Particularly as the vast majority avail themselves of the night tours as well as the day treks. So, after the next, hopefully restful, thirty-six hours before our arrival, you must expect another thirty-six to forty hours that are really quite tiring - though, of course, unforgettably exhilarating.’
Inge turned to the map behind her. ‘The park itself is huge - over four thousand square kilometres. Some of it is unimaginably remote, especially as it is mostly riverine mangrove and jungle swamp and low-lying forest. Obviously you would never be able to explore it all in ten times the time allotted. But in t
wo full days, with an overnight in the park itself, you can see the highlights. You have already started to make decisions about your visit, I know. Entertainments Officer Cappaldi has had to get your individual passes, with the relevant documentation from your passports. You have had to ensure - and confirm with herself and myself - that you are properly equipped, for there are no shops within the park. You have already decided whether you will be overnighting at the hotels in the park or remaining aboard your kolek riverboats to eat, sleep and explore. You have all been assigned a place in a kolek but as these only take groups of four as well as the native crew of two, you may want to decide whether there is a particular pairing or grouping you wish to be a part of.’
Richard caught Nic’s eye at that. The pair of them exchanged terse nods, like Ernest Hemingway agreeing Alan Quartermain as his hunting partner. Which meant, by the look of things, that Robin and Gabriella were spoken for as well.
‘All access to the national park is by water and only by water. There are paths, of course, that take you through the jungle to the points of major interest - the orang-utan sanctuaries, the main monkey groupings, the flora and rarest forest sections, well worth visiting because they remain under so much threat, even here and even now. And there are several Dyak villages in the park as well, for the fullest appreciation of which I understand that the indefatigable Mr Greenbaum has prepared himself by visiting the Museum and Dyak Longhouse in Pontianac yesterday evening.’ She shot Nic a shy smile and he returned a broad, self-satisfied grin.