by Andre Norton
Gong shrugged. “The old girl is washed out — teetotal. I’ve a cracked head and general contusions. Miss Cortlandt won’t admit to anything, and — ”
“And I?” prodded Lorens, his eyes holding the black ones above him with a desperate demand. “Suppose you answer with the truth — this is no time — ”
“For sugar-coating? All right, then, and this is the straight goods. You were slammed around when we came down, one of the bales ripped moorings and landed on you. As far as we can discover, at least one leg is broken and — ”
Carla shook her head in protest. “That’s all, really, Lorens, and lots of people have their legs broken.”
Pain was still only a vague gnawing sensation far inside him. He actually was conscious of just a dizzy light-headedness, as if the real Lorens van Norreys had stepped out of this broken body under the wing of the wrecked plane. And so he had to rest before he answered her, because this new Lorens was afraid, desperately afraid, of the thing that he must do now, do so well that at least one of those standing by him would never realize what it cost him.
“This is desert,” he began, and over the girl’s shoulder he held to Gong’s eyes again. “I take it that we are low on provisions.” The general tide of weakness which was creeping over him again. “I have heard that there are mission stations along the fringe of this country. If you start walking, follow the coast along, you can reach one of them. We aren’t expected, and no one will hunt for us here.”
Let them go, only let them go quickly, before he lost all hold on his will and began to shriek out the unforgivable — that they could not leave him here alone! If he could just keep that locked behind his broken teeth until they were beyond recall.
“But you — !” Carla had the power of breaking him down, even those two words made it that much harder. Hadn’t Gong any sense? Couldn’t he just take her and go?
“You can get me help from the mission” — there, that was done well, argument, keep his mind on that. “Don’t you see, our only chance depends upon your getting through.”
But Carla didn’t get up. And Gong made no effort to urge her. She was talking again, “Gong will go. I’m done. I couldn’t walk a mile without giving out, and then I’d only be a drag on him. Alone, he can get through and bring back help.”
“You’ve got to take her.” Lorens levered himself up on one elbow and appealed directly to the Chinese.
“He’ll do nothing of the sort. And you, lie flat there. Thank goodness I had sense enough to sit through all those first-aid classes — some of it has stuck in my head.
Don’t you see, your story about the missions may be true. And we can’t afford to toss away a chance. Gong is the strongest of us now; he has the best chance of finding help.”
“I know something about this stretch of country,” the pilot added. He had unfolded a map across a rock outcrop and was computing distances from one pencil point to another. “There is a mission about twenty miles from here. I’ll follow the coast up as far as there” — he made another dot on the map — “then strike inland by compass. Then — ”
His words faded away into the roaring which filled Lorens’ mind. But he clung to one thought fiercely, he wouldn’t be alone. He had done his best, and they would have none of it. He would not lie and watch them go away. And maybe they might have a spark of hope after all.
He did not see Gong shoulder a tiny bag of provisions and strike out boldly into the wild wasteland. Nor did he see Carla sit unmoving to watch him go, only raising her hand once in salute just before he dropped out of sight.
...Gong had much trouble in the desert. He was forced away from the sea by cliffs he could not climb, and so was lost. But after two days he was found by native trackers and taken into the mission. And so our help came at last. Though of that I can remember nothing at all.
Carla was ill in a nursing home for some time and now she has gone to join her father. There is and was so much kindness for all of us, and everything that could be done for our comfort and pleasure was.
But all I can think of now is going back — as Gong has already done, flying a bomber to India. Last night, in a news broadcast on the wireless here, they told of the last message to come out of Java. It was:
“We are shutting down now. Good-bye till better times. Long live the Queen!”
May those better times come soon. As they will while such men as DeWitte, Heys, Gong, and your General MacArthur will and work together to make them.
Now I must finish this letter, for there are sounds in the hall which mean that the sister is coming with the supper trays. And she will be in a very scolding mood if she finds me still writing. Even Piet, who is stationed near here and so comes often to see me, shows fear of her voice!
Good night and good-bye for a little while, my good American friend,
Lorens van Norreys
Somewhere in
the United States
21 April, 1942
Dear Lawrence:
This is being written on a train somewhere between your great city of New York and the border of Canada. I am more sorry than I can express that we could not meet while I was in your country, but it has now become an urgent question of time.
For my chance has come and I am really off to the wars at last! Only one man can do my job and he is Lorens van Norreys. It seems strange to me that it took a sentence of Piet’s to make me understand this —
9
LAND OF LIGHTS ABLAZE
‘…Then I bethought me that in all this expanse of empty sea there was no other Christian creature to look upon the favoring breeze as a gift of our Lord God — ”
Lorens allowed the scuffed calf-bound volume to slip down from his eye level. Certainly no one could call the Pacific an ‘empty sea’ now, no matter how it had appeared to a venturous spice trader in 1593. He could count one, two, four, five, freighters without even turning his head. And every once in a while a watchdog destroyer made its rounds of the convoy pack.
“Reading again? Surely by this time you’ve about exhausted the ship’s library. What have you now?”
Piet’s hand reached over his shoulder to scoop up the book.
“ ‘A Truthful and exact account of the voyages of Hughes Zoon der Bet, captain-navigator, in the seas of the Eastern Indies, and of the divers wonders he found there.’ Divers wonders, hmm.” Piet dropped down on the edge of the hatch beside Lorens’ chair. “Bet we could show him some divers wonders he didn’t see then.”
Lorens shifted his aching feet. That dull throb of pain had become such a part of him that he would have felt incomplete without it. Just as he could not now honestly remember what it had been like to walk with a full stride instead of with his present half-dipping step.
“Such as submarines and dive bombers,” he said.
Piet was ruffling through the pages, stopping now and again to puzzled out a line or two of the black-letter seventeenth-century print.
“I don’t think,” Lorens continued, “that you could really have surprised him with those. He had an open mind, that lad. Read what he has to say about the peculiar banqueting customs of the Dyaks — if you can stomach his eyewitness account. After a couple of years spent poking around in that part of the world, the first European to see most of it, he could swallow almost any sight or story without disbelief. And all for a peck or so of pepper, mind you!”
“Today it’s for a gallon or so of oil.” Piet closed the book. “Other days, other riches. Now you can’t be really interested in anything but those colored rocks of yours, and some Chinese sees wealth and fights for it in squares of rice fields. Maybe he’s the one who has discovered the truest wealth. Food is riches, the means of getting food is riches, the land on which food is grown is riches. And in this war it will be food which will influence the scales. Bread will overweigh bullets. That’s why maybe your pepper-seeker wasn’t so far off the beam after all.”
Lorens watched the waves curl away from the knife-cut of the nearest f
reighter’s bow. The sun was high and hot, but it had not yet poked probing fingers into this patch of shade by the hatch. Instead a breeze whipped their hair and blew vigorously down the open necks of their shirts.
“Tomorrow this time, if we’re in luck, we’ll see land,” Piet said. “Our yellow friends must be losing their grip; we haven’t had but one sub alarm since we left port.”
“If they know the chance they have missed, why, right now they must be grinding those large teeth the cartoonists always give them.” Lorens grinned. “Capt. Piet van Norreys and his Air Force — ”
“What’s left of it!” There were deep lines from Piet’s beaked nose to his pinched-in lips which had not been there two months ago. Just as there was a pink bullet blaze across the oak brown of his forehead. And the sunlight picked out points of silver in the cropped brown-yellow hair above his ears.
“If we could only have met them with planes!” His fingers tapped out a broken rhythm on the edge of ‘Zoon der Bet’s Voyages.’ “If we’d only been able to hold in the air! We had the men, if only — ”
“You still have the men,” Lorens reminded him. “And you’re on your way to the planes. You’re all right — ”
But he, Lorens van Norreys, he wanted to shout, would never be all right. He would never take his seat in one of those planes, know the supreme satisfaction of feeling its response to his hand in the air. Just as he would never again shoulder a rifle and march with other men. The war would go on for Piet, for the twenty-five others who had sailed from Australia under Piet’s command — just as it was going on for DeWitte drilling men on Australian fields, for Soong in the air over Moresby, for Gong in Chungking, for Wim Smits and Hu Shan, each playing his deadly game in the enemies’ own strongholds. But for him the war had ended in a strip of desert country. He was only useless baggage now, in spite of all of Piet’s fine speeches about his need of him. What was he doing on this freighter bound for America? They could have sent another flyer in his place.
Only, Piet was right, there wasn’t another to send. Not right now. Too many were gone, swallowed up in sea and jungle, going out in a blaze of satisfied vengeance as had the chap who had crashed his damaged bomber on the deck of an enemy transport.
“Wonder what the Jonkheer would think of this.” Piet lit a cigarette. “Not much left of his world now. Or of — ”
“Norreys,” Lorens supplied. “At least you have a job to do. But, honestly, Piet, you must admit that I have not. Damaged jewel merchants won’t bring a high price in this market — ”
“No? The Jonkheer managed to run the House of Norreys from an invalid’s chair for a good many years. And we all flourished.”
“I” — Lorens smiled mirthlessly — “am not the Jonkheer, and this is no world for the House of Norreys. We’re finished — done — the doors are locked — ”
“You wouldn’t have said that three months ago.”
“Three months ago I was a Norreys, not a — a lopsided, crawling cripple!”
“Shut your whining mouth!”
And Lorens did. Closed it with a snap as he felt the warm tide of shamed blood rising up throat and jaw. But beneath the shame was a spark of anger. All very well for Piet, Piet with an uncracked back and two strong legs, to give such an order.
“You think that I have no right to say that,” the older van Norreys observed quietly, his eyes not upon Lorens’ set face, but on the thread of smoke rising from his cigarette. “But I think that it is time for a little straight talking. You say that you are a lopsided, crawling cripple. All right, suppose you are. That’s a fact, and in these days we accept facts, we don’t try to dodge them. Face it squarely and go on from there.
“You’ll never be a pilot now, probably never a soldier. But you still have your hands, your eyes, your ears, your feet, and your brain. It’s up to you to use them. It isn’t only the man with the gun in his hand or the bomb control at his finger-tips who is going to win this war. It’s a world’s war, and the men, women, and children of the world are fighting it together. We are fighting to see whether one way of life will take the place of another, whether civilization is to go forward or to slip back into the blackness of another dark age.
“In this fight there is a place for you — find it! Perhaps your paper work at the field may not be important when the first organization is done. Very well, then, find something which is. There may be some resource of the House which can be turned to our account — ”
“What is the date?” Lorens was leaning forward in his chair and there was the whip crack of an order in his demand. “What date is today?”
“The third of April, 1942,” Piet answered automatically. “But what — “
“The third of April, 1942 — the fifteenth of May, 1942,” Lorens repeated slowly. “And then there is Smits, surely there is Wim Smits.”
“What — ?” Piet felt that in those seconds something had happened.
But Lorens knew that it had. For he had glimpsed a half promise of things to come. For the first time in months he felt the stir of emotion which approached happiness. This must have been what the Jonkheer knew when he sat unstirring in his chair and gave orders which changed the course of men’s lives half the world away. But he, Lorens, would be more a part of events to come than had the Jonkheer. For, as Piet had pointed out, he still had his feet and could keep to them, even if they stumbled now and then.
Let Piet have his planes and his pilots to train. He would have the Flowers of Orange and the power they would bring their owner! May, 1942 — next month — he would act to obtain that power!
“You are planning something!” Piet accused him. “What?”
“Plenty!” Lorens savored his small triumph greedily. In all these past weeks Piet had looked after him, waited upon him, seen him as a cripple, a bit of war wastage which must be provided for. But Piet, with all his cleverness, all his strength, could not reach that safe, turn the dial, and bring out the hidden fortune which, laid upon the scales of war, might turn the whole course of the future in favor of the Netherlands. Piet could do much, but he could not do that!
“I am going home,” he said slowly, “home to Norreys — ”
“What!” He had Piet’s full attention now, in fact his cousin was staring at him as if he had been confronted by a raving lunatic.
“You mentioned resources of the House, it was your idea, remember,” Lorens laughed. “Well, there is one, and I am the only man in the world who can lay hand on it. So I’ll go and get it.” And in a few sentences he told of the Flowers of Orange and its present hiding place.
“I wish it could be done — ”
“You wish!” Lorens stared at his cousin. “But did I not just tell you that it will be? No, I am not sun-crazed or delirious. There are ways of getting into the Netherlands — just as I got out. I do not know them now, but I shall. If Wim Smits still lives, I will have no trouble. There is a place in London where I can leave a message for him. And then — well” — he shrugged — “it will follow the pattern of such affairs. Once I reach Norreys and get the Flowers, it will be easy enough to bring them out of the country. Think what their price will mean to us!”
“Nothing can be done as easily as you seem to think. And the Nazis are always on the watch to catch anyone playing such games. Do you suppose that they haven’t already marked down the Flowers and are simply waiting for us to try some trick? The whole idea is preposterous. The authorities wouldn’t even let you go to England, let alone leave there for Holland — ”
“No? Then you must persuade them, Piet. Because, if you don’t, I shall have to make a dangerous and uncomfortable trip as a stowaway or something equally unpleasant. You see, whether you approve or not, means very little to me. The Jonkheer once advised you to stick to your planes and leave the affairs of the House in my hands. And he had the reputation of always picking the right man for the job. So, I am going after the Flowers on the fifteenth of May, 1942!”
“You’re mad!” Piet soun
ded as if he believed that statement. “And I won’t argue with you.” He tossed the book into Lorens’ lap and got to his feet. “I’ll leave you to come to your senses again.”
But Lorens noted from beneath drooping eyelids that Piet’s step was not quite confident as he turned away. The germ had been planted in his cousin’s close-cropped head. And he knew that in some way he would reach London, then travel beyond to what remained of that old house he had last seen etched in fire against the evening sky. It would be his game, and he would play it with the best of his skill.
With his hands clasped about der Beg’s fat book, he leaned back in the long chair. There was a gull overhead indulging in dive-bomber tactics, and over the gray channel were other gulls he would see again. Now there were plans to make, and they must be so exact that even Piet could not question them.
Lorens noted, with inward amusement and some surprise at this sign of quick victory, that Piet was actually avoiding him during the next few days. At least he was always very busy over some matter or other whenever there seemed to be a chance of their talking privately. Though Lorens had to admit that there was much to be done after they reached the American port.
Shepherded through all sorts of red tape by officials, transported by bus and train, they spent long hours. His first days in the United States, Lorens thought, would remain only a confused jumble of travel in his mind. So much was new, so much intruded upon eyes and ears. In spite of the blackouts and the many uniforms in evidence, the war was not close here.
As the train rolled on out into the heart of the great continent, he found himself wondering which was real and which was the dream; this easy comfortable swing across an untroubled countryside or that tortuous march through the sodden Sumatran jungles. Here was a land where Ganesha certainly stood firm on his broad base and did not have to fear inversion.
Then they were swept beyond the range of black-outs. And here they saw again what had become only a dim memory, towns ablaze with lights, unfearingly plain to see under a threatless sky. That was to Lorens the most wonderful sight of all. And all the rest of his life he was to remember the land of the west as the Land of Lights Ablaze.