One of the elephants trumpeted. The sound ricocheted around the dome and blasted Martine’s eardrums. The ailing elephant had collapsed again, only this time she wasn’t getting up. Gift’s father was cradling her head. All around the dome, elephants were straining at their shackles and flapping their ears or tossing their tusks, desperate to go to the aid of their fallen friend.
“Ben, we have to do something,” said Martine, forgetting to keep her voice down. Patience was not one of her virtues.
“Martine, if we run back down the tunnel, we might still be able to get out of here, expose this whole operation, and save all the elephants. If we stay here, we might not save any. We might not even—”
Martine hopped out of the trolley, staggering a little on her cramped, bloodless limbs. “Save ourselves? Is that what you were going to say? Well, right now all I care about is saving her. What’s going on here is like something out of the Dark Ages. We can’t just walk away.”
Ben glanced in the direction of the fallen elephant. The bald man and two other pod workers were preoccupied with the unfolding crisis. Another man had retreated to the safety of the laboratory. However, Nipper was staring at the intruders with intense interest. He took a cell phone from his pocket.
“Ben, go without me,” urged Martine. “Find Gift or call the police and come back for me.”
“Not a chance. We came into this together and we’re going to stay together. But I think one of the workers has just called security. We’ll have to move fast.”
Martine had the advantage of surprise. By the time Nipper had alerted the other pod workers that a thin, pale girl with flying brown hair and green eyes was racing across the dome, she was almost upon them.
She slowed to a walk. She didn’t underestimate what she was about to do. Her gift was her most precious secret. She’d first discovered she could heal animals purely by accident, on a class trip. Afterward, the children who’d witnessed her revival of an Egyptian goose had chased her through a forest, screaming, “Witch! Witch! Witch!”
Since then she’d been very careful to hide her gift from everyone but Grace and Ben, and even with them she played it down. Now she was about to attempt a healing in front of an audience. Nipper tried to grab her but the bald man stopped him.
“Wait. Let’s see what she’s going to do.”
Nipper folded his muscled arms across his chest and a smug smile came over his swarthy face. Ben, who was hovering anxiously nearby, noticed that his gaze kept shifting to the door.
Gift’s father was still cradling the elephant’s head. He lifted weary, hurt-filled eyes when Martine knelt down.
“Do you mind if I try to help her, Joseph?” Martine asked. He started when she said his name, but nodded dumbly. The elephant’s thick lashes lay flat against her rough gray-brown cheek. Her whole body trembled. When Martine touched her tenderly, a tear rolled down her face.
Unzipping her survival kit, Martine took out the bottle labeled “Love Potion No. 9.” Grace had explained to her that it was the plant equivalent of Adrenalin, only to be given in extreme emergencies when the heart was failing. But some sixth sense told Martine that the elephant’s heart was failing not because she was having a cardiac arrest, but because it had been broken. Her freedom and family had been stolen from her. She had nothing left to live for.
Martine returned the bottle to the pouch without opening it. She would have to trust in her gift alone. She laid her hands on the elephant’s heart. “What do you call her?” she asked Joseph.
“Ruby,” the elephant whisperer told her. “I call her Ruby.”
Martine barely heard him. Already the gawking faces were swirling away from her and her hands were so hot her blood was virtually boiling in her veins. Most times when she healed an animal Martine had dreamlike visions of warriors with spears and great herds of animals and men in animal masks. Today she saw Sawubona.
She was standing by the water hole in front of her grandmother’s house. Jemmy was at her right shoulder and Angel at her left, and the savannah was surface-lit with a golden light, the way it was when a storm threatened. Martine had a strong feeling the animals were trying to tell her something. She put a hand on Angel’s trunk and the elephant’s unspoken words came to her as clearly as if they’d been written on her soul with indelible ink: “Bring me my sister. Bring me my sister.”
“Where is your sister? Where do I find her?” asked Martine, but Angel’s words were lost in the wind.
Martine pressed her face to Jemmy’s silver muzzle. She could feel its silky softness against her cheek. “I love you. Come home soon,” he told her in his wordless, musical way.
She was in the midst of saying “I love you too,” when applause cut short her trance. She came around in a daze to find that Ruby was on her feet. She was swaying, but the light had returned to her mournful brown eyes. With the tip of her trunk she caressed Martine’s cheek in an elephant kiss. Moved beyond words, Martine kissed her back.
She stood up, suddenly self-conscious. She was afraid to look behind her; afraid to think what might happen next.
Joseph was speaking, his voice was barely audible. “Not much surprises me these days, miss, but you have truly amazed me. I wonder if I am dreaming, but I fear I will wake soon enough in this nightmare without end. How did you know my name?”
“Hey, how did you do that?” interrupted the bald man. “We need some of that medicine you gave her. That’s some kind of a miracle cure. Who are you, anyway? Reuben’s niece?”
A heavy hand slammed down on Martine’s shoulder and Nipper wrenched her around, almost knocking the bald man over.
Before her, looking rather more tired than the last time she’d seen him but wearing the same sardonic, confident smile, was Reuben James.
“So Martine,” he said, “we meet again.”
27
Without waiting for her to reply, he went on: “I must say these are not quite the circumstances in which I imagined our paths next crossing, but it’s always a pleasure to meet a worthy adversary.”
Martine wriggled out of Nipper’s grasp and glared at her archenemy. “The feeling’s not mutual.”
He laughed at that. Incensed, Martine said, “I suppose you think it’s funny that an elephant almost died just then because she’s so traumatized by your experiments. It’s one thing stealing Sawubona out from under us, but I didn’t think even you could stoop so low as to masquerade as a caring conservationist when you’re nothing but an animal torturer.”
That brought another smile to his lips. “Torture? Is that what you think we’re doing here? Martine, you have me all wrong. We’re doing the complete opposite. These elephants undergo the occasional blood test and go the odd day without food or water so we can study their endurance levels, but their sacrifice is nothing compared to the rewards that will be reaped by future generations of elephants. And though they may not understand it, many of these particular elephants owe their lives to me. Out in the desert, they might already have been killed by poachers, or have died of hunger and thirst.”
He paused as one of the pod workers came up with Ben, his arm twisted behind his back. Reuben James frowned at the man. “Matheus, what are you thinking? Release him at once. He’s only a boy.”
Ben rushed to Martine’s side, rubbing his arm to get the blood flowing. Martine put a protective hand on his shoulder and glared at Reuben James. “Ruby doesn’t owe her life to you,” she snapped. “She almost lost it because of you. And I suppose Angel was caged and experimented on until she was broken and bleeding too. That’s why you sent her to Sawubona. That’s why you lied about her coming from a zoo that had shut down.”
Reuben James looked mystified until she said the last part. “You’re talking about the elephant I sent to Sawubona? Angel? Is that what you call her? Yes, well, that was very unfortunate. It happened in the early stages of our development, when we were still learning the ropes, as it were. She was our test case and we didn’t yet have this custom-built facili
ty. I’d hired Lurk—you remember my chauffeur?—to supervise the early experiments. Let’s just say he was overzealous and that particular elephant, Angel, was impossible to handle. But regardless of what you might think of me, I can’t abide cruelty to animals. Lurk was severely reprimanded and transferred to another position. We ceased all experiments until about a year ago, when the dome was completed and the Moon Valley oasis was well on its way.”
He jerked his chin in Joseph’s direction. “That’s when we brought in the elephant whisperer.”
“Brought him in?” scoffed Martine. “Kidnapped him, you mean?”
“Martine, why do you persist in seeing me as a villain? Do you see handcuffs? He can leave at any time. He chooses to be here with his beloved elephants, don’t you, Joseph?”
Joseph nodded quickly and busied himself giving a bucket of food to Ruby.
“What about your son?” Martine burst out before she could stop herself. “Don’t you care about him?” The elephant whisperer flinched as if she’d hit him, but he didn’t look around.
Reuben James’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know about his son?”
Martine said quickly, “One of the guides at the Stone Age etchings told us that the elephant whisperer had gone missing. He mentioned a son.”
Reuben James wasn’t convinced, though he didn’t argue. “There is a boy, but he’s in his late teens now. I’ve been like a second father to him. That’s the agreement we have, Joseph and I. Joseph takes care of the elephants and I take care of his son. I doubt Gift has a bad word to say about me.”
He fixed Martine with a brooding look. “Lurk said he saw you in the hotel shop. I didn’t believe him.”
“Why Sawubona?” asked Ben. “Why not have Angel sent to a sanctuary in Namibia? Why go to the trouble and expense of sending her to another country?”
Reuben James returned his gaze coolly. “To leave her here would have been to risk derailing the Ark Project . . .” He swept an arm across the dome.
“This, by the way, is the Ark Project. We didn’t want it shut down when it had hardly begun. As you’ve rightly pointed out, I have a reputation as a conservationist. If a heavily pregnant elephant with the extensive injuries of Angel had turned up at a sanctuary in Namibia, people would have started asking questions. I’d met your grandfather at a wildlife conference and was impressed by his dedication to animals. I thought that if anyone could save her, it was Henry. Logistically it was a bit of a challenge to get her to South Africa, but we managed in the end.”
“Hasn’t that worked out well for you?” Martine said sarcastically. “Now you have Angel and our game reserve. What a coincidence.”
“Not a coincidence, just smart business, Martine. I did your grandfather a good turn and, by passing away without repaying the debt, he unintentionally returned the favor. As it turns out, Sawubona is the perfect location for the South African branch of the Ark Project.”
“But why?” cried Martine. “Why our home? There a million game reserves where you could perform your awful experiments. Are there diamonds in ours or something?”
Reuben James sighed. “Martine, you disappoint me. I thought you’d have it figured out by now. The Ark Project has nothing to do with diamonds or gold, or platinum for that matter. It’s about something much bigger than that.”
“Global warming,” Ben put in quietly. “It’s about global warming.”
“Not bad,” drawled Reuben James. “Not bad at all.”
“You’ve lost me,” said Martine.
“All right, forget about Sawubona for a moment . . .” Ben said.
As if, thought Martine.
“Remember the Bushman legend the rock seller told us about? The one where God granted their dream of great wealth by turning all of Namibia’s lakes and rivers into diamonds?”
“But that’s just a fable.”
“Yes, but think about it. In a desert country, what could be more valuable than diamonds, gold, and platinum put together?”
“Water?” cried Martine. “That’s what this is all about—water?”
She stared around her and a lightbulb finally went off in her head. “That’s what you’re doing at Moon Valley, isn’t it? You’re planning to divert the spring that’s provided the people and animals of Damaraland with one of their only sources of water for thousands of years, so that you alone can control it. And you’ve built it in an extinct volcano that local people believe is haunted and stay well away from, in order to do it undetected.
“I suppose the oasis provides extra insurance. It’s so beautiful that it would never occur to anyone that, behind the scenes, a devious plot is unfolding.”
Reuben James’s eyes gleamed with excitement. He seemed to have forgotten their bizarre circumstances or the fact that Martine and Ben were, in effect, trespassers, and was talking to them as if they were interested in buying a stake in his company.
“In the future, as pollution spreads, global warming kicks in, and the heating of the earth’s surface leads to an increase in droughts and other extreme weather, more wars will be fought over water than have been fought over oil or religion throughout history. The people who control the water supplies will control the earth.”
“So at the end of the day it’s about money and power and not about conserving animals or water at all,” Martine said.
Reuben James’s mouth twitched. “It is possible to do both.”
“Is water the reason you want Sawubona so much?” asked Ben. “Because there’s a lake in the game reserve?”
Reuben James regarded him with suspicion, as if it had occurred to him for the first time that he might be telling them too much. “Among other things,” he answered vaguely.
He glanced at his watch and gestured to the stocky man. “Nipper, do me a favor and take Martine and Ben to the hotel. They’re probably not hungry, given that they’ve already partaken of my breakfast in the maze, but if they are, see that they’re given lunch and one of our best rooms for the night.”
“Thanks,” said Martine, “but we need to be getting back. My grandmother will be worried.”
Reuben James chuckled. “I doubt very much that your grandmother knows where you are. Indeed I’m rather keen to know how you got here myself, but we’ll save that story for another day.”
“You’re keeping us prisoner?”
“Don’t be absurd. You’re free to leave Moon Valley anytime. Anytime, that is, after Christmas Eve, three days from now. You see, that’s when Sawubona becomes mine, and I’d hate anything to happen that might interfere with the launch of my new safari park.”
28
“If we’re free to go, why don’t we just walk out of Moon valley and call the wildlife authorities or Grace and Tendai?” asked Martine. “We might even run into Gift. He might have found our white giraffe stone messages and be out in the desert searching for us.”
There was a pause while Ben swallowed a mouthful of steak and fries. To annoy Reuben James, they’d ordered the most expensive items on the room service menu shortly after being shown to a suite on the top floor of the hotel. Their view was spectacular. The front of the room was all glass and they could see right across the oasis to the crystal fountain, sharply cut green maze, and the wildflowers that lay at the foot of the tropical forest. The mountainous walls of volcanic rock that ringed the crater and kept the world at bay were silhouetted against the sky.
Martine’s first action had been to take a steaming hot bubble bath, and now she was lying pink-faced on one of the beds, swaddled in a gown so vast and fluffy it was like wearing a cloud. Their filthy clothes had been whisked away to the laundry.
“Don’t you see that’s exactly what he wants us to do?” said Ben, who was wearing a red and blue striped robe several sizes too large for him. “He can’t kidnap us because that’s a serious offense and could ruin his chances of taking Sawubona. But if we walk out of here on our own, before it suits him, there’s nothing to stop him calling the police and having us charged wi
th breaking and entering, trespassing, and elephant assault . . .”
“Assault?” cried Martine. “I was trying to help Ruby. His pod workers were the ones who assaulted her.”
“I know that and you know that, but it’s our word against his. And frankly I don’t think the police are going to be all that happy to find we’re in Namibia with no passports and no guardians. After they’re done with us, they’ll probably charge Gwyn Thomas and my mum and dad with child neglect. The thing is, I don’t believe Reuben James has any intention of harming us. He only wants us out of the way until Sawubona is safely in his hands.”
Martine sat up. “I’ve just remembered something. When we were in the storage unit this morning I saw an entry on the delivery sheet for twenty vials of medicine. I couldn’t remember what it was for at the time, but now I do. It’s an animal tranquilizer.”
Ben put down his knife and fork. “That bald man, Tony, he said that it was just as well it was only twenty-four hours until the elephants were gone, because they’d been cooped up so long they were ready to go on a rampage. If the hotel is due to open soon, it makes sense that Reuben James would want them gone. I bet you he’s planning to ship them out to Sawubona tomorrow.”
“Sawubona?” Martine pulled the gown more tightly around her. “Ben, we have to stop them. But how?”
“Well, right now what we really need to do is sleep. We’re going to be no use to elephants or anyone else if we’re half-dead with tiredness.”
Martine wanted to disagree, but her brain was foggy with exhaustion and the words wouldn’t come. “Okay,” she said weakly, flopping down.
As the afternoon sun boiled down on Moon Valley, not a single bird sang.
Martine was awakened by a keycard clicking in the lock. Ben stirred at the same time and she heard him reach for the flashlight they’d left on the floor between them. He didn’t turn it on, but Martine could sense him lying there in the darkness, poised to fight or flee.
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