by Owen Stanley
Fletcher had gone back to the dock, where he sat watching the proceedings with grim amusement. Robinson stumbled down from his seat, and tried ineffectually to rouse the victim by fanning his face. Prout joined him and wanted to apply artificial respiration, but was restrained by Smith.
“In such cases, the only hope is for the man who places the spell to make more magic to take it away, and then the victim will recover. Roger, you have your demonstration, do you want this man to die? Please, I beg of you, do not kill him!”
“Sorry, Smithy, the bastard’s gotta die. I have to prove I can kill by sorcery, like I killed those three at Niovoro.”
“I agree with the Doctor, Mr Fletcher,” said Robinson, “The man is plainly dying.”
“Yes,” Prout added his own fervent appeal. “You can’t kill this wretched man in cold blood. I implore you, release him before he dies!”
“But unless he does die, I haven’t proved me point, and yer can still get me for murder.”
“But this is murder,” cried Prout.
“Blood oath, it ain’t. As Mike there said, if you can find anything in the Statutes of Elephant Island to say that a bloke can kill another by magic, sorcery, or any other means than violence or poison, I’m a dead dingo’s donger. The old timers wanted to teach the natives that magic and suchlike was all bullshit, kanaka superstition, so the Statutes say it’s impossible to kill anyone by it. O’course, there’s Section 38, dealin’ with those who pretend to be able to cast spells, causing great fear thereby among the native people, carries a thirty-bob fine, or four months’ hard labour, or both, but I’m not bloody well pretendin’, as yer can see, so yer can’t even get me under Section 38.”
Snail Slime was now in a coma, breathing stertorously.
“You intellectuals think yer know all the answers, with yer books and yer long words. Well, yer know bugger-all. I tried to tell Prout when he first came that there was more to runnin’ this place than met the eye, but he wouldn’t listen. Charlie Bryanston, the RM before me, tried to do everythin’ legal and proper. Used to chase some murderin’ bastards round the mountains for a few weeks, bring ’em back to the nick, and then tell ’em they didn’t have to answer any questions they didn’t want to, and had a right to plead Not Guilty. The kanakas thought he was off his flamin’ rocker. Dead right. When yer dealing with these jokers yer got to use the methods they understand. So when I found they thought I was one of their old gods come back to earth, I had it made. Used the police to bash ’em if they got stroppy, and the real hard cases I knocked off meself. O’course, I could’ve shot ’em, or slung ’em over a cliff, but in this day and age I couldn’t take the chance of some legal bastard comin’ snufflin’ around, like Prout when he first showed up. Didn’t take him long to figure out there must’ve been killin’s, and ask why there was nothin’ in the station books. But I knew I was clear as long as I used magic. The police bumped off a few, but that was self-defence, under attack. You can’t get anyone for that. Allowed under the Statutes.”
The Chief Justice returned slowly to the bench, a very sober man. The eyes of the Mission were still riveted on the dying Snail Slime, and the sight removed any temptation to snigger. Smith had him placed on a stretcher and carried over to the dispensary. When the stretcher party had left, the Chief Justice addressed the court.
“This is the most astonishing case I have ever known. I’m sickened and shocked by what has happened today. But Mr. Fletcher is legally correct. If the laws of Elephant Island deem it impossible to kill by witchcraft or similar means, and I have now verified that they do, then a man cannot be charged with so doing. And in the case of the deaths of the three men at Niovoro, it has not been proved beyond reasonable doubt that they died as the result of the injuries inflicted upon them. A charge of assault clearly lies against the accused for subjecting them to the ordeal in the first place, but since the men are long dead it is no longer possible to establish how grave those injuries were, and to what extent they were produced by an exercise of Mr Fletcher’s powers which are deemed not to exist, for legal purposes. I have no alternative, therefore, but to direct the jury to acquit the accused.”
Robinson rose and left the Bench by the Judge’s door behind, head bowed, without another word. His departure went unnoticed, as the jury let out a great yell of triumph, in which they were joined by the police, who had packed the court as Fletcher’s trial began. Fletcher was carried out shoulder-high, to the accompaniment of showers of ribald insults directed at the Mission. That night there was a mighty celebration piss-up at the Cosmopolitan, and Snail Slime died in the early hours of the morning without regaining consciousness.
Chapter XIV
In the week before Bastille Day on Elephant Island, various well-wishers flew in and out of Ungabunga, a sprinkling of academics, administrators, politicians, and those hoping to sell some of the necessities of life to the soon-to-be independent Republic. The staff of the Mission had been toiling through the mountains to spread the news of the Independence celebrations on Bastille Day; the native people received the invitation with polite interest, said they would be very pleased to come, and went on with the work in their new gardens.
A full programme was arranged for the visitors, and tours of the Gas Works, the Palace of Justice, and the House of Assembly were fully booked. Some hardy souls even ventured into the mountains, where Schultz was supervising the construction of prefabricated village halls in a few selected villages, to which women as well as men would be admitted. This was the inspiration of Phyllis Prout, who had been determined to abolish the sexist privileges of the men’s houses as soon as she learnt of their existence, in which she was strongly supported by Rebeccah Bloom. By the judicious sale of soft drinks it was intended to lure the men into the company of their womenfolk for evenings of harmless mutual conviviality, thus rendering the men’s houses obsolete within a short period of time.
The Moroks had been delighted by these new buildings, since the walls had large areas of glass-louvred windows; at first, misled by their hardness, they had thought that the windows were as tough as metal, but a few careless incidents revealed that they were eminently breakable, and they discovered that they quite liked the sound of smashing glass. But the large area of window made the new village halls much colder than the traditional men’s houses, so gas fires as well as stoves had been installed, fed from cylinders of propane filled at the Ungabunga Gas Works. All the prefabricated sections of the new halls, like the cylinders, were airlifted into the villages by helicopters, which were also available to spare the visitors the unaccustomed rigours of walking. After an exhilarating hour’s tour of their selected village, where they were greatly impressed by the cleanness and enthusiasm for sanitation demonstrated by the villagers, they were treated to stale buns and lukewarm orangeade in the village hall, and sent on their way by a delegation of notables dressed in their new garments from Erny’s store.
The Mission had also gone ahead to install microwave repeater stations on the main peaks to ensure that the people were brought fully into the family of nations by finally being able to receive television and make international phone calls. The visitors were vastly impressed by these and all the other revolutionary improvements in the Moroks’ way of life, and it was generally agreed that the whole project was a triumph of enlightened aid, so much so that Prout became almost weary of modestly fending off the showers of congratulations.
Lord Southall’s Learjet arrived a few days before the 14th. The great man had been a trifle put out on the journey by his travelling companions, since he had given a free passage from Port Moresby to the delegate from New Patagonia who, it turned out, thought he was God and refused to speak to anyone, and also to an American representative of Justice Inc., Wayne T. Ruger, who had a large square face, artificially greyed hair, and cultivated the air of a judge, with spectacles, silver tie and dark suit. In offering him a lift, Southall had supposed that he represented a firm of legal publishers, or some such. It was only w
hen the aircraft was passing over the Huon Gulf that Ruger clarified his job:
“No sir, my firm is more concerned with the practical aspects of the judicial process.”
“Really? You mean Amnesty International, that sort of thing?”
“I can’t say we’ve had any dealings with them. We’re really interested in supplying the needs of the developing nations which have problems maintaining law and order.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, we have a number of specialised departments: surveillance consultation, security equipment installation, supply of training teams for guard-dog patrols, and so on, and so on. Put it this way, if it’s good for the rule of law, it’s good for Justice Incorporated.”
“And which department do you represent?”
“I have the good fortune to head up the Department of Community Protection.”
“Protection against what, if I may ask?”
“Saboteurs, traitors, skyjackers, perverts, anti-social forces of the most dangerous sort.”
“Do you mean that you build prisons?” asked Southall, with a hint of distaste.
“No sir, I specialise in elimination equipment. Gas chambers, guillotines, electric chairs, humane killers, you name it, we sell it, and if we don’t sell it, we custom build it to the client’s personal order.”
“Good God!”
“Yeah, just got in from Amnesia this morning. These guys may be only just out of the Stone Age, but when it comes to modern technology they’re front runners all the way. Showed their new President a film clip of our latest electric chair—disposes of the body by microwave incineration, all solid-state circuitry, very important in tropical climates—and he slapped an order for twenty right there in my hand. Not like those Catatonian crumbs. Goddam stick-in-the-mud traditionalists. Been having some problems of civil insurrection, and called me in. All I got was an order for ten lousy hydraulic garrotting chairs. That’s a blacksmith’s job if ever I saw one. I warned ’em we’d had trouble with the neck-snapping linkage where it passes through the post, and would they listen? No, of course not. It’s that olde worlde Spanish tradition.”
“If you don’t mind, I think I feel rather ill.” Lord Southall rose and went into his private state room, where his valet gave him a large brandy and put him to bed for the rest of the flight.
While Southall was being fêted by an obsequious Mission, Fletcher was on a lone patrol in the mountains. He had felt for some time that since cleanliness was as foreign to the Morok character as godliness, their sudden enthusiasm for latrines could not be taken at its face value. But all his questions, hints, and insinuations had been deftly turned aside; the Houses of Filth were “nothing,” “the commands of the Father of Nyikang,” “they hide our filth in the fashion of the red men,” and so on. In fact, the Moroks were afraid that Fletcher, in his strictness, would take away their riches when they finally blossomed, and the word had gone out that the two Revelations were to be hidden from him.
He intended staying the night at Lavalava, and had gone out for a stroll down to the gardens in the evening, after the women had left them for the day. The sunset that evening was reflected from banks of cloud to the east, and lit up the landscape in a brilliant purple glow that revealed every leaf and stone with unearthly clarity. Leaning over a fence that surrounded a mature yam garden, his eye was caught by a glint of orange in the soil. He climbed over and picked his way to the spot through the sticks supporting the vines of the yams. Scraping away the soil, he uncovered a fire-engine from the Chicago Fire Department, clogged with earth, and its paint soft and peeling with damp. His interest thoroughly aroused, he cast about, and soon discovered a whole crop of similar toys. He took a sheet of newspaper from his pocket and rolled himself a cigarette, and walked back from the garden deep in thought.
On the way he fell in with young Dayim, an amiable fellow by Morok standards, who was carrying a bunch of bananas home from his trees down by the river. Fletcher examined them appreciatively.
“The men of Lavalava are powerful gardeners.”
“Aye, Tikame, thou speakest truth; our hands give life to every living thing.”
“’Tis not your hands alone, man. ’Tis the words of power that ye above all men know.”
“Aye, Tikame, in all the Tolava valley there are none to compare with the men of Lavalava, for sowing, or for blighting.”
“’Tis a fair crop of the red men’s playthings that ye raise in this season.” Dayim looked startled, and Fletcher continued. “If this crop ripeneth, ye will have more of these good things than the red men themselves.”
He was still not sure exactly what the Moroks expected to happen, but Dayim was by now persuaded that Fletcher knew all, and that for him the two revelations were casual knowledge.
As they rested under an evergreen oak, relaxing on the crisp dry carpet of dead leaves, Fletcher gave him tobacco and paper, and in half an hour had elicited the whole story, of the dream of Abuk, and the triumph which it had brought to Lavalava and the whole of the Tolava valley by frustrating the braggarts of Laripa and the Loma. However, even accustomed as he was to the tortuous reasoning of the Moroks, Fletcher was staggered by the theory behind the Houses of Filth, and was hard-pressed not to burst out laughing. But in the deepening twilight his facial struggles passed unnoticed, and at length, their cigarettes finished, they parted company.
From the verandah of the rest house, Fletcher looked down the Tolava valley to Ungabunga. The station itself was hidden behind a spur of Mount Browning, but the thousands of fairy lights hung up for the celebration of Independence Day radiated a perceptible glow up into the surrounding dusk. Some village women brought him roasted sweet potatoes and pork, and a bamboo tube of water to make tea, and as he ate he brooded on the Mission.
What did they know of his great mountains, their crests smoking with mist and rain, gashed with cataracts and foaming torrents; of the troll-haunted forests whose vast, dim, silences were broken only by the shrieks of birds of paradise, and the crash of hunter and hunted; and of the Moroks, his own wild people, chanting, smashing, lusting in the ancient world of their ancestors? Was all this to be made tidy and safe, a nice place to bring the wife and kiddies on a package tour? All to be choked and constipated with paper, conferences and committees, inspections and minutes and reports and the eternal clack of typewriters and intellectual tongues?
Just below the rest house, the new village hall loomed as a dull white shape. Its interior was already sordid with scraps of food and broken glass from the louvres. If the Mission had its way, this ancient unfathomable land would be tamed to a tropical slum, and its inhabitants rendered as impotent as barnyard fowls, but now, at last, he’d got them where he wanted them. As soon as he proved to the Moroks that they had been deceived, they would fall upon the Mission like dogs on rabbits. He felt like a man on the cliffs above some frivolous holiday resort, packed with mindless revellers, about to lever a great boulder from its bed and send it tossing and crashing down the scree, to stir a grinding avalanche in its wake, that would obliterate his enemies in a roaring chaos of dust and screams.
On Friday afternoon Ungabunga awaited the arrival of the People. For their convenience marquees had been erected on the airstrip in which they could spend the night, and be refreshed and relaxed for the great events of Saturday. The Day itself was to begin with a tableau depicting racial harmony, presented by the expatriate and indigenous children of the station, with much exchanging of garlands and what passed for Greek dancing under the supervision of Noreen Hiscock. After a buffet lunch, and a speech by Lord Southall, the People were to ratify the new Constitution by acclamation, and the Mission, the visitors, and their indigenous hosts would then partake of a traditional supper of roast pork and sweet-potatoes, while for those interested in exploring the rich variety of local cuisine there would be frogs boiled in bamboo tubes, wallabies baked in their skins, and pregnant cane-rats on sticks. Sunday was to be devoted to inter-racial, non-competitive sports, such as b
lind-man’s bluff and grandmother’s footsteps, games which everyone could win, and all could claim prizes.
As Friday afternoon wore on, many eyes scanned the two tracks leading down to the station, looking expectantly for the first glimpse of the Moroks. Just after three, two horsemen were spotted, rounding the last spur of the track from Niovoro, and when they arrived Fletcher and Oakley were eagerly questioned.
“Nuthin’ doin’ that we could see. Just a few maries on the road,” and they rode off to the pub.
At tea-time Southall, who was staying in the Presidential Palace, expressed his misgivings to Prout.
“Are you sure they know what day it is? After all, they don’t have calendars.”
“I rather doubt if it was that. Our staff made it very clear to the chiefs, and they’re highly intelligent men.”
“I see. Well, could you have offended them in some way?”
“Oh no, I don’t think that could be the trouble. You’re probably right. Some ridiculous misunderstanding. Even with the use of Neo-Melanesian, we’ve never beaten the language problem entirely.”
“Neo-Melanesian? What’s that?”
“It’s the correct name for Pidgin English, as the old plantation-owners and those sorts of people called it. Anyway, we can communicate quite well with it, but misunderstandings still occur, mainly with technological words.”
They were interrupted by the sound of a helicopter, and Prout went over to the window in time to see a red Alouette disappearing behind the House of Assembly in a cloud of dust. The United Nations escort ship Dove, on its way to Nouméa for a good will visit, had anchored in Byron Bay that afternoon and radioed its arrival to the Mission. There was to be a dinner in honour of Southall that night, so an invitation had been sent immediately to the captain and his officers, who had presumably now arrived.