by Andre Norton
“To where?” cut in Lorens. “Pardon, Juffvrouw Cortlandt, but where did you say you must take this?”
“To Hu Shan’s. Why, surely you must know that big curio shop in the Old Town. It’s only about a block from your office. They have the most unusual pieces of jewelry, no two alike. And he certainly is busy enough, the store was almost crowded when we were there. Look, is that pilot trying to attract your attention, Mijnheer van Norreys?”
Lorens glanced over his shoulder. It was Soong, his broad face half masked by goggles, standing by the wing of his plane. When he saw Lorens he waved.
“I must be late.” Lorens caught up his bag. “May I hope to see you again, Juffvrouw Cortlandt?”
“We’re planning to sail on the ninth. Dad’s business has been delayed again. But if you ever come to America, don’t forget to look us up. Good-bye, Mijnheer van Norreys!”
He bowed and hurried off to join Soong.
“I am late,” the Chinese pilot greeted him. “For that I am sorry, and” — he grinned, showing strong yellow teeth — “I would be even sorrier if it were Mijnheer Piet whom I had kept waiting. This way — you will be more comfortable with me in the pilot cabin, I think — ”
“But what — ” Lorens stared into the interior with open amazement. The once luxurious passenger cabin of the transport plane had been stripped of chair seats and carpet. Crates and boxes filled most of the space except along the walls where benches were bolted, curious depressions evenly spaced along their surfaces.
“For paratroopers” — Soong nodded toward the latter. “See, that is where the parachutes rest. Now all we need is a company of trained troopers. No, we no longer fly passenger ships; this is for necessary materials and troops — if we can find any.”
He wormed his way through to the control cabin, and Lorens, tossing his bag behind a crate, followed, to take the co-pilot’s cushioned seat. Even here there were changes, several new gadgets had been added to the board before them.
“Sometime” — Soong indicated one of these — “that may help us drop a few hundredweight of steel on the yellow monkey ones — and may I be the one to do it! These may not be as well armed, but I have heard that they are not unlike the American Flying Fortresses. Perhaps we shall have a chance to compare them soon — ”
“How?”
Soong shrugged. “I have heard rumors; the wind blows the idle words of men in many directions. This field at Salabania would be an excellent base for bombers. It is the best one Mijnheer Piet has found so far — good cover, near supply lines, almost everything we could ask for. And, so far, a secret.”
They had climbed steadily, and now Java was a curved green sword on the sea. Lorens flattened his nose against the glass of the cockpit to watch the Sunda Straits pass below — the old pirate waters where the fighting craft of Malay rajas used to lie in wait for merchantmen.
And now Sumatra’s mountains were rising out of the morning clouds, jungle-clothed, darker, more exciting than the terraced heights of overpopulated Java. Here and there a tongue of ribbon road thrust out into the wilderness, or they could see a patch which marked the village and cleared fields of some transplanted emigrant colony. Whole villages had been sent out from Java to build new homes and open up the land, their project carefully fostered by the government.
“If we only had more time,” said Lorens, trying to count the patches he could see.
“Time is a dragon which can be driven by no man,” Soong returned. “Time is sea water trickling through the fisherman’s net. What man can borrow time as he borrows cash from the moneylender in the market place?”
“Are you quoting Confucius?” asked Lorens.
Soong laughed. “No, I am quoting Soong. It is interesting to dress up one’s words in ceremonial robes — then the most trivial statement wears a mandarin’s button. And why do you need time, Mijnheer Lorens, apart from wanting to prepare against the coming of those northern heroes who pant to deliver the East from her chains?
“We’ve started so much, big things. And perhaps all for nothing! Why, give us another five years of peace and the Indies will be a nation — All we need is a chance!
“Instead we must buy that peace with a sword. But there is this for us to remember, a man may labor and build a mighty city which war and a conqueror will level to the sands in a night. But the memory of that city and what was done there will live. And in after years will come some to build anew. No deed, whether of evil or good, is lost from the world; the ripples from it spread out and out, passing from man to man, and in the end it may bear fruit centuries and countries away from where it was first performed. If good is done here, and it is stamped out, we who survive will remember it, and when the time comes we shall begin anew on the roots of the old plan. Peace follows war as the shelled grain comes of the reaping. Sometimes evil sows good, and good evil, and no man can say at the sowing how great the harvest shall be — ”
His words flowed on, and Lorens was reminded of the thin old man he had last seen supported by the pillows of a wide bed. Soong and the Jonkheer would have found a common meeting ground. They both seemed to possess an ironic detachment from this mad world which was whirling mankind about. Both were men of action who no longer could see in action the answer to that heart sickness which was spreading from sea to sea.
“Your men of God” — Soong eased the stick before him a trifle and the ship responded, losing altitude — “teach that good is a mighty warrior in the field against evil, and in the end good will triumph. But do you any longer have faith in such teachings? Yet until a man has faith in something, in his God, his country, his leader, his own strength, he is only a straw blown on the wind. You must have a purpose, for no man who has accepted doubt and despair for a mat fellow can stand armored against all danger. We of China have learned that. And we have won that faith. But you men of Europe seem yet to lack that thread of a common hope which could bind you into one. Hate, a common hate, cannot do it. And fear can produce only a weak counterfeit. But when you have a common faith, then you shall be free. And here is Salabania. Snap your belt, we’re going in.”
The plane circled down over what Lorens could see only as virgin jungle. Certainly there was no landing field here. And yet Soong was coming in as confidently as if a concrete runway was there to receive him. But the Chinese pilot was talking into his radio, using some native dialect.
Again they circled, making a wider loop well above the trees. And then a whole section of greenery fell away and there was a slash of brown bisecting the earth. Soong went into a long, slow glide which swept them across the clearing, then turned and came back With the unfaltering touch of a master pilot he brought them down un-jarred on hard-packed earth, to come up with almost a flourish before a long, low building bowered and covered with vines and bushes.
Native mechanics and ground crew ran out grinning, and a khaki-clad white man followed at a more leisurely pace.
Soong unbuckled his helmet. “Behold Salabania, the newest ace Mijnheer Piet has fastened up his sleeve. Now come and have a closer look.”
The ground crew had already opened the door and were calling greetings as they tugged at the freight. These men were not Javanese, nor were they like any of the natives of Sumatra whom Lorens had seen before. They were taller, and their skins were darker. When one of them yelled a pleasantry at Soong, the Dutch boy saw that his teeth had been filed into points. And the dialect they spoke among themselves was a strange one.
“Who are they?” he asked Soong.
“Men from the Outer Islands, some headhunters from Borneo. Picked men because this is one secret we have faint hopes of keeping. Here comes Mijnheer Heys. Goeden dag!”
The white man avoided a box-laden porter and hurried up to them. “Goeden dag, Lieutenant Soong! And you, Mijnheer, must be Lorens van Noreys. It is good to see you, sir.”
Lorens decided that he liked Heys. The foreman was the sort of man one ran into in the outposts of the Islands, looking older than hi
s years because responsibility had always been his; rather loud of voice and talkative because so seldom did he see another of his own blood; almost pitifully eager to be properly hospitable, and sometimes absurdly shy and thin of skin in his contact with other Europeans. Heys might have been a type picture of his kind. Of medium height, his skin was permanently lacquered by the sun to a shade which made his sparse brown hair seem blond in contrast. He wore a beard almost finically pointed, and eye glasses with heavy dark shell rims.
Heys pushed his guests before him into the largest room of the vine-clad building, by sheer force of will got them into chairs, and had already clapped his hands for the boy with refreshments before Lorens was able to get a good picture of the place which was to be his home for many long days to come.
Salabania was a secret, and maybe they could hope that it would remain one for a while. The few buildings were concealed with the help of the quickly growing vegetation itself. The landing field was hidden with an ingenious system of nets into which camouflaging vines and leaves had been woven. It was a small place, not being able to harbor more than four or five planes at the widest stretch of its powers. But, as Soong and Heys proudly and repeatedly pointed out to anyone who would listen, the day might come when four or five planes at the critical moment might decide the history of the Indies for several hundred years to come. The only drawback was that, so far, those four or five planes had failed to materialize. But surely they would be sent — and soon.
Meanwhile, Piet converted his airliners into makeshift fighting planes, hacked out his landing fields, and hoped for the best.
Few of the other fields were as elaborate as Salabania — one or two being merely rough emergency landings. Naturally the enemy was looking for landing fields, too, and those prepared for defense could be as easily used for landing attacking parties. That is why Salabania continued to remain a secret, and that secret known to only a trusted few in both islands.
They had three machine guns, one mounted on the roof of the living quarters. These were serviced by native crews under the command of Sergeant DeWitte, a retired regular. But, Lorens learned, Piet was fighting valiantly to get an anti-aircraft piece.
Their principal job consisted of caring for and improving the field and storing the supplies which they received in a small but regular trickle, both by planes and by porters along the mountain trails. Not that the outside porters were allowed anywhere near the field. The supplies were cached near an abandoned temple where Lorens and a crew from the field picked them up later.
Never since he had left Holland had Lorens felt so cut off from the world, so far removed from the war. Here in a sort of green twilight which was the jungle, where it began to rain steadily day and night with the persistency of the monsoon, he was living another life. It now was a matter of extreme importance whether tinned peaches or tinned pears would be part of the next shipment, whether Pawanii’s trained dove sang better than Kaka’s, whether Hassan would ever be able to teach his monkey to pick tree fruit and bring it back without sampling it on the way. Leather molded, cloth mildewed, and nothing was ever really dry. But the checker game between Dewitte and Heys, an affair of ancient and never-ending rivalry, could fill their evenings with breathless interest.
Lorens, too, found an occupation for those evenings. Pawanii, clambering about on the mountain after his dove, which had escaped one afternoon, had fallen into a mountain stream, bringing several bushels of earth with him. In the fall he had lost his lucky piece, a carved shark’s tooth, and had haunted the stream thereafter, spending every spare moment in fruitless search. Lorens, for want of something better to do one day, offered to help him, and so gathered a collection of very small and rough stones which he recognized from hours of study under the stern tuition of the old Jonkheer. They were badly flawed, it was true, of poor color and too small for cutting, but they were undoubtedly rubies, five of them, which he had brought back in triumph. And some day he would prospect that stream for more.
DeWitte, being victor for the fourth evening in a row, folded up the game board with some satisfaction, then lounged over to look at the treasures Lorens still studied by lamplight, trying to plan some cutting which might give value to at least one of his finds.
“Rubies, eh?” — the Sergeant shoved one of the dull stones along with his forefinger. “Don’t look much like the finished article, do they? Now with pearls you can usually tell with the first look what you’ve got. I remember once I saw a Chinese have a bit of luck — but he was a gambler.
“They brought in a blister — one of those bits of shell which may or may not have a winner inside and put it up to auction. There was an Englishman there, some young fellow with more money than sense. He ran up the price — he’d heard some tall tales about killings made that way — until most of the dealers dropped out. Well, it came to a thousand pounds, and there was only this Chinese bidding against him. The Englishman got it in the end and took it over to the pearl doctor to be opened. We all went along; the excitement had us by then.
“You know how the doctor works, takes off skin by skin and does it slow and sure, may be hours at the job. He took his time at this one with the Englishman sweating off pounds across the table. And then he came to a pearl — but it was a dirty grayish thing no merchant would look at twice. Only that Englishman looked at it, and there was death in his eyes. For all his cockiness you had to feel for him — a thousand pounds for that hunk of grit!
“We were all feeling kind of queerish about it when this Chinese who had been bidding before stepped up and spoke. I’ll give you a thousand pounds for it,’ says he, as bold as one of the brass gods on the shelf over his head.
“The Englishman thought he was plain crazy, I guess. He hadn’t been out in the Islands long — but me, I’d met Chinese, and I suspected something. When the Chinese laid out a wad of notes, that Englishman grabbed ’em quick enough, grabbed ’em and went out of there fast — ’fraid the Chinese might change his mind. But the Chinese just nodded to the doctor to start peeling again. Well, in about an hour that dirty gray skin was all off and the Chinese had him one of the largest pink pearls ever taken along the coast. Never heard what he got out of it, but it must have been plenty. But then he had the nerve to hang on and take the risk. Might just as well been nothing but dirty gray all the way through. He was a game little beggar.”
“What was his name?” asked Lorens, with interest.
“Hu Shan. He runs that big curio shop in Batavia nowadays — ”
Heys had been twiddling the dials of the radio and now, having heard the end of the story, he turned the set on.
— at dawn this morning. The number of dead and injured is not yet known. But it is feared that the American fleet has suffered a heavy blow. The infamy of the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor will be remembered by the American people as long as —
Heys turned, his body tense.
“Here it is!” His voice cut across the static which had drowned out the announcer. “Here comes what we have been waiting for!”
6
OFFERING FOR GANESHA
“But that sounds — that sounds as if — ” Lorens forced the prong of the buckle through the proper hole in the cartridge belt he was putting on.
“As if we are losing?” Heys’ lips curled in a crooked grimace. “Well, we probably are.” He was crouched in a chair before their radio trying to coax out of the cloaking static more than a broken jumble of words.
The door opened and banged behind DeWitte. By all signs of stumbling walk and reddened eyes the tall sergeant was out on his feet. Pepper-and-salt beard showed an inch on his jowls, and he rubbed his eyes with his hands in a curious childish gesture.
“Anything new?” he demanded hoarsely.
“Just odds and ends. All of it bad.” Lorens picked up his rifle and snapped open the breech.
“It looks as if we’ve been forgotten here.” DeWitte allowed his big body to fall back into the nearest chair with floor-shaking force. “
How much grub have we got left?”
“Grub enough, but we’re low on everything else. If we stay here — ”
Lorens glanced up in surprise. “But where else could we go?”
“Look here.” Heys stopped tinkering with the radio and turned to face them both. “What DeWitte just said may be true, they may just have forgotten all about Salabania. All right, where does that leave us? The Japs are sweeping down the island now, they’ve landed paratroops all over the place. We’ll be cut off and wiped out without ever being able to get in a blow first. How long do you suppose we could hold out here?”
The glance with which he swept the flimsy building was one of scorn.
“On the other hand, we can destroy this field and the supplies and cut south to the sea, get across to Java where we can do some real fighting. How about it?”
DeWitte pulled at his protruding lower lip. “There’s a lot in that.”
“But what if they do intend to use this field? What if our men come and can’t land, can’t get the supplies they want?” demanded Lorens. “We have orders to stay— ”
Heys laughed shortly. “Those orders were given before Pearl Harbor. We’ve been weeks now without any at all. I say that if we stay we’ll just be cold meat for the first roving band of Japs to knock off — ”
“Tuan! Tuan!” Someone was pounding at the door, almost beating it from its shaky hinges.
DeWitte reached it first, flung it open, and pulled in the shouting native. It was Pawanii, rain running from his bare shoulders.
“Tuan!” he gabbled at DeWitte. “In sky, many, many white things — ”
“Paratroops! I knew it!” Heys seemed almost glad to have his gloomy forebodings so quickly vindicated.
“Which way — how did you see them?” demanded DeWitte.
“From the high rocks. They fall on outer road.”
“Hmm.” DeWitte loosed his hold on Pawanii and plucked at his lip again. “That means they’ll have a fairly long haul through the jungle to reach us. Gives us an hour — maybe more. Looks as if our problem is settled for us” — he smiled grimly at Lorens. “We’ll have to go now. Let’s follow the second plan.”