They came on a water-beetle round a curve in the stream. It stood in the shallows munching a green scum of algae which clung to the bankside.
Olsen shot deliberately into its armoured side.
It dropped into the water and lay at the centre of receding ripples. The ripples died away, leaving the beetle and its motionless mirror image.
“I’ll show you something, Henry,” Bill said.
He led them to the beetle and the three men strained to turn the big carcase on to its back; they stood side by side and lifted in unison; the beast went over with a sucking, squelching sound and Olsen opened up its mud-stained belly with his machete.
The effect of the shot had been explosive. The grooved lead slug had fragmented; the tube had burst inside the body—shooting venom deep into the tissues. Olsen recovered the fragments of slug and displayed them on his palm, turning them this way and that with his thumb. “The Bill Olsen Wasp Venom Dum Dum!” he laughed. Patent applied for… What shall we call them, W.V.D.D.s or just B.O.s?” He dropped the flattened quarters into the muddy water. “Let’s find something bigger.”
They walked into the plantation.
A heavy dew was vapourizing in the mid-morning sun, drifting down the slopes toward them in a thin mist. On the brow of the hill they came on to the track which led north to the house. At a point where the plantation ended a promontory of green chickweed straggled out into the open desert. The hunters walked under the cover of the weed and rested in the shade of its round fleshy leaves.
They lay and squinted across the glaring sunlit plain. Far away and coming towards them moved a domed brown shape. The sun flashed from its polished surface and as it approached they saw it was a huge insect.
“What the hell is it?” asked Olsen.
Henry shaded his eyes, “Stag beetle,” he said.
It came at a steady pace, veering neither to right nor left, leaving a churned-up double track in the flat plain, surmounting small clods and crawling straight across any ant lion craters which were in its path.
It was flanked by a half dozen scavenger ants. As the beetle drew nearer, the ants darted ahead and raced past the concealed men into the plantation.
The beetle was an old male, huge, battered and powerful. One of its six legs was lame, adding a discordant squeak to the measured clanking of the other five. It hissed and wheezed like a steam engine and at thirty paces they could clearly see the swivelling eyes beneath its jutting horns. The great hulk was protected by armour-plating which was dented and scarred by past battles.
Dilke knelt and brought his bow slowly to his shoulder.
“Leave him, Mat! I want him.” Olsen stepped into the sun. He waited till the towering creature was abreast of him. He waited till the nearest foreleg lay back, revealing the underpart of its thorax—then he pressed the trigger. The bolt zapped into the lightly armoured belly and vanished. The hissing stopped.
The beetle teetered forward, then the front legs stiffened and snapped straight, the back legs collapsed and the beast sat down with a noise like a ton of scrap iron being dumped. The ground shook; there was silence.
They stared at the thing for a minute.
A shimmering blue fly zoomed down, skidded in the loose sand and turned to face the motionless beetle, then it ran on twinkling legs towards it. Bill Olsen said quietly, almost to himself, “You beauty!”
They set off home; from halfway up the hill they looked back. At the end of the avenue of carrots they could see the dead beetle. It sat propped up at an angle, its long horns aimed at the sky—like a sculptured howitzer cast in bronze: Memorial to the Glorious Dead.
Two more buzzing dots spiralled down and the three men turned and walked south.
It was late when they reached home and retired to their hammocks.
“I feel like a hot bath and a damn good booze-up!” Bill Olsen exclaimed.
“You’ll have to wait a long time for either, Bill,” said Dilke.
“You never know your luck, Mat,” Olsen winked across at Henry, pushed at the wall with his foot and sang in Afrikaans to the rhythm of his swinging.
Dilke transferred his gaze from the flickering light on the chamber ceiling to Olsen. “You’re in very high spirits, Bill. What’re you up to?”
“You never know your luck, Mat,” Olsen repeated. “What time are we collecting the mechanical wonder-boy tomorrow? Let’s make an early start.”
“Do you know what he’s up to, Henry?”
Henry shook his head.
4
They hurried off next morning, eager to pick up the stores, although Dilke was a little subdued by the thought of the new man who had been wished on him.
On one of his hunting trips Olsen had found a disused ant track which went most of the way from the hut to the house and they made fast time along it, reaching the gap between the French windows before noon. The potted plant was dead; its leaves, like black, withered hands, lay on the floor and they walked under them and climbed the cable to the window seat.
A man sat on a box, dressed in air-force blue.
He sat with his head in his hands, among a pile of bags, boxes and packing cases like a traveller who has spent all night on a railway platform.
Olsen gave his Bantu call and the man jumped up, knocked over the box on which he had been sitting and stared at the approaching figures.
All three were tanned and covered in trail dirt; armed with bows and knives—like savages.
The man in blue had a strained white face; he looked uncertain, as though unable to decide whether to make a run for it or raise a white flag. Dilke walked up and shook his hand.
“This is Bill Olsen… Henry Scott-Milne… I am Mathew Dilke…”
He waited for the man’s name.
There was a pause. “00.25/4, Sergeant Charles Wallis, sir,” he swallowed.
All three eyed him solemnly, his eyes behind his spectacles flickered from one face to the other, desperately avoiding their nakedness. As the silence lengthened a slight flush colored his white face and suddenly he looked down and fumbled at the button of a patch pocket. He produced an official envelope and gave it to Dilke. “This is from Major Price, sir.”
Dilke opened it and while he read Bill Olsen moved silently up to Sergeant Wallis and stood almost touching him. Through the dust from the trail Olsen’s body still showed the shirt, shorts and sandals patterns, the once-white areas were now coffee brown against the deeper mahogany red; he looked as if he was on his way to a corroboree. He reached out a hand and put h|s finger on a moulded button. Wallis flinched nervously. The brown hand took a sleeve between finger and thumb and silently rubbed at its texture; then he turned abruptly and walked away to the corner of the window and passed behind the curtain.
“Hang on to this.” Dilke returned the letter and started to inspect the equipment. Henry was searching the boxes for his camera and slide rule. Dilke stood before a big packing case marked this way up.
“What the hell is this?” he asked.
“That was my idea, sir.” Wallis stepped forward anxiously. “It’s an electric motor; I thought we could run a drill from it and maybe other equipment.”
“And what will you power it with?”
“We could have a battery delivered if we can’t use the mains.” Under the interrogation Wallis showed a hint of stubbornness.
“We are half a day’s march from here, how do you think we’re going to get it there? It must weigh a ton.”
Wallis looked at the floor. “I could dismantle it, sir.
Dilke turned his back. “Where the hell has Bill got to?” As he spoke Olsen came from behind the curtain and approached them, grinning. He had a polythene demijohn in each hand and another tucked under one arm.
Dilke’s expression changed; he laughed and took the proferred bottle. “One apiece,” said Olsen, putting down the third next to Henry. “Oh! Sorry, Sergeant. I was forgetting you. Here, have a swig, you look done in.”
Charles Wallis politely r
efused the drink, then sat down on his box. They began methodically to unpack the equipment and lay it out in a row. The new crossbows were packed together head to tail, each one in an oiled wrapping, and the men undid their parcels as if it were Christmas morning. The bows gleamed a dull, olive-green; the tensioning levers worked fast and the revolving racks, made to hold six bolts, clicked smoothly round. Olsen had ordered a number of solid bolts in addition to the tubes and he loaded the chambers of his bow and shot them off rapidly into the wooden frame of the window. They flew fast and straight, and formed a vertical line with a hand’s width between each bolt. Olsen whooped and ran to retrieve them.
Dilke was cheered by the excellence of the equipment and by the whisky. He turned to speak to the new recruit. Sergeant Wallis was sitting on the box, his cap folded and tucked under his tunic epaulette, the flap of his breast pocket unbuttoned and his brilliantined hair in disarray. He sat with his clasped hands between his knees and stared through the window. For a weapons expert he showed-surprisingly little interest in the crossbows and it occurred to Dilke, for the first time, that the man’s pallor might be caused by illness and not be just a sign of a sedentary life.
When Dilke spoke the sergeant stood up.
“Are you feeling all right?”
“I feel tired, sir, and a bit sick, sir.”
Dilke sat on a box facing the man and motioned him to sit down.
“Look, Sergeant, you can forget the “sir” bit while you’re here. This isn’t a time for the formality of rank and all that nonsense. My name is Mathew—what are you usually called?”
“Charlie, sir.”
Dilke saw that Charlie used “sir” the way Olsen used “bloody”—unconsciously.
“Well, Charlie, we have a pretty good hike back to our base and I want to take as much of this gear as we can, so we won’t be travelling very fast—do you feel well enough to start now?”
“Yes, sir,” Charlie realized he had used The Word and he looked down with an embarrassed smile.
Henry joined them, he held a slide rule and its case and spoke with unusual vehemence. “Mathew. They haven’t sent the camera.”
Dilke made a sympathetic face but before he could speak Sergeant Wallis said, “Oh, yes, sir, they said that that was difficult. The technical people are still working on it. I think it’s the optics that are holding them up.”
“What about your glasses?” Henry asked sharply.
Wallis glanced apprehensively at Dilke. “But they need compound lenses for cameras. I think they’re trying plastics instead of glass,”
“Damn!” Henry slapped the rule into its case.
Dilke smiled consolingly then began briskly to organize things. They discussed which equipment they would take on their first trip: the weapons, the radio telephone, the electric torch, the axe and a length cut from the big coil of wire.
Dilke reported the safe arrival of the equipment to Department 7a, then they loaded up and started the journey. A fourth bow had been sent for Charlie Wallis and each man carried a cross bow kit. Dilke shouldered the radio phone and the other items were shared out. Charlie hesitantly descended the swaying wire, his boots slipping on the smooth cable, and when they left the house and started the ascent of the rockery slopes he made hard work of the long climb. They rested frequently and finally Dilke took from him the quiver of bolts, leaving him with a token crossbow to carry.
To Charlie Wallis the journey was a nightmare. He was stifled by the heat and his joints ached with his efforts to keep up with the party. He walked in third place followed by Bill Olsen; as the hours passed his breathing quickened and he walked with his head down, stepping out doggedly through a sea of exhaustion. All his efforts were concentrated on putting one foot before the other; he hardly registered the incongruity of the bus in Park Lane and when they finally reached the allotment shed patches of sweat blackened his uniform and his feet were blistered and raw.
Dilke looked anxiously at the grey-faced stumbling man and wondered how he would manage the climb to the ledge. When they reached the foot of the box Wallis looked up at its towering face and he turned a shade paler. They rested for ten minutes; Dilke and the others talked cheerfully amongst themselves and to the withdrawn sergeant.
“We’d better get going, lads, before it gets too dark to see. Do you feel up to it, Charlie?”
Charlie nodded.
Dilke pointed out the route up the box side, tracing in the air with his hand the ledges and crevices up which they must climb; and then with himself in the lead and with Wallis, Henry and Bill Olsen following they began to climb. When they reached the ledge it was quite dark and the glow from the lire greeted Dilke as his head came above the platform ledge. He turned and dragged the exhausted Wallis up and, while Henry made up the fire and Bill Olsen prepared supper, Dilke showed Charlie the quarters. Indicating the fourth hammock Dilke urged him to climb in and later they brought him his food and drink. Charlie drank a little water, swallowed a few mouthfuls of vegetable stew, then lay back and stared at the ceiling. The three men sat in the chamber talking rather quietly together as if in a sick room, glancing occasionally at the still figure in the hammock. At last he closed his eyes and they heard him breathing more regularly as he slept. They were awakened in the night by a shout.
“No. Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes.”
Dilke shone the torch on Wallis’s hammock. The man’s eyes were closed, his jaw muscles worked convulsively, they could hear his teeth grinding. Dilke switched off the torch.
5
When the early light filtered in, Dilke awoke. Charlie stood just inside the chamber door looking out into the huge gloomy cavern of the shed, as if afraid to leave the chamber. Dilke swung out of his hammock and silently approached.
“Good morning, Charlie, how have you slept?”
Sergeant Wallis quickly turned his head, his eyes were wide, tears lay on his cheeks.
Dilke was embarrassed and he stepped past the man on to the platform. Wallis wiped his cheeks with the palms of his hands and followed Dilke outside. “I’m sorry if I’ve been any trouble, sir. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I didn’t sleep too well. Maybe it’s the drugs.” Wallis had said what Dilke had suspected from the moment he had seen him seated on his box staring out at the garden.
“I expect it’s because of the long march from the house and the climb at the end of it. Let’s get some breakfast going, you’ll feel better after that; and you’d better take it easy today and maybe get some more sleep. Tomorrow we’ll have a look at the radio phone, I’d like you to explain it to me.”
Wallis cheered up a little. He sat by the fire and fed it from the wood pile. Later, when Henry and Bill came out, stretching and yawning, he returned their “good mornings” quite brightly. He remained behind when they went for a swim and when they returned he had set up the radio in a corner of the chamber and he offered to give lessons on its operation. His mood of cheerfulness lasted till the afternoon, when he became lethargic and silent. He retired early and they heard him tossing restlessly during the night.
Charles Wallis was clearly a sick man. It was plain that this new world frightened him; he was afraid to descend to the floor of the shed and he watched the busy insect life with fascinated apprehension.
Dilke decided that Charlie could be most useful as fulltime radio operator and keeper of the sacred flame, allowing the others to concentrate on fact-finding and fieldwork.
The next day they journeyed to the house and returned with the rest of the gear, leaving only the motor and a couple of bottles in Olsen’s secret cache.
Charlie had supper ready when they returned and the following morning he was up early and prepared breakfast; he was generally happier, but his mood of melancholy sometimes returned. He was most animated when describing the workings of the radio and he gave Dilke a course on its function and operation. They sat side by side in the chamber with the instrument and a chart of its controls before them. Charlie detailed each dial, knob and b
utton and then turned the radio on its face and revealed its interior. Dilke was impressed by its complexity and fine finish: it was a maze of printed circuits and minutely soldered joints.
“Extraordinary! How have they done it, Charlie? This is a hundred times better than my old set.”
Charlie’s eyes glowed with enthusiasm.
“They’ve done it in stages. Not even a Japanese bead stringer could work to the fine tolerance necessary for this size of radio, and the same goes for these tools,” he held up a wallet containing screwdrivers and pliers and a soldering kit.
“They’ve done it in three stages. There are three teams of engineers and craftsmen: the first lot are reduced to about one foot high—and they have made the smallest machine tools and bench instruments they can. The second lot are about two inches high and they use these tools and tiny instruments to make even smaller ones. And finally the third and smallest team—about half an inch high— have made this radio and your crossbows and Henry’s slide rule and…” the thought came to him… “my uniform and boots and things!”
Charlie beamed.
“I wouldn’t change places with them,” said Dilke.
“Sir?” asked Charlie.
“What happens to them later? Sooner or later we’ll be making our own stuff, then they’ll be on the shelf.”
“Oh, no,” said Charlie. “They can join us then. When the intermediate stages are no longer needed their miniaturizing will be completed.”
“Now that is clever.”
Dilke sat back and shared Charlie’s joy at the elegance of the concept.
“And the labs are working on DeMin, Sir.”
“DeMin?”
“Deminiaturizing. The technocrats have been promised they may be able to go back…” Charlie was disconcerted by the intensity of Dilke’s gaze… “back to their proper size.”
“Who told you that?”
“A stage-three engineer, sir.”
“An escape route,” Dilke reflected. “It sounds plausible. And might help recruitment.”
Cold War in a Country Garden Page 7