Figures in a Landscape

by Barry England

  ‘What the hell’s that stuff?’

  ‘Which?’

  ‘In the fields, dead ahead. Looks like corn.’

  ‘Bloody big corn. Higher than the chap beside it.’

  ‘Um . . .’

  To this could be added the animation of life—pigs, water-buffalo, chickens, ducks, people, all with the soaring mountains beyond—and the picture was complete.

  Or nearly.

  For it was MacConnachie’s method, when time allowed, to assimilate first the territory itself, with its natural accretions of indigenous habitation, and then to place within this framework the more recently acquired dispositions of his enemies. This was based on his unquestioned and instinctive knowledge that Nature is on a man’s side, if he knows how to woo her. It is only when a man is caught without knowledge of his surroundings, or with indifference to them, or with an active enmity to them, that he is defeated: Nature is waiting and willing to be loved. Properly cared for, she makes the ideal woman: permissive, protective, productive, and helpful. A man is a fool not to take hands with her.

  He placed his enemy in his mind. From the Goon station on the delta, there flowed a steady trickle of three-man patrols, which set out along the valley floor to throw a thin, perpetually shifting barrier across their front.

  There was also a larger fighting patrol, forty strong, moving freely in the area they were about to cross, between the hillside and the tall fields. But they were well to the left and, given luck, he and Ansell should bypass them altogether.

  Of course, the chopper was still in the sky behind them, and the net of infantry was drawing closer, but there was nothing he could do about that. The essence of a successful valley crossing was to be seen by no one, uniformed or otherwise. Once com­mitted to a fire fight, they would not survive; the potential build-up of Goon manpower was too great.

  Given a choice, he would have crossed by night. But there was no choice.

  ‘Kid, when we hit that valley, nothing stops us. Nothing! We shoot, we kill, but we must get across! We stop when we’re dead, not before. Okay?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘We’ll worry about replenishing stores from the other side. Once we’re on the valley floor, we walk upright. Till then, we take our chances. One more thing. Local militia. If you see a bloke who looks like a farmer out for a day’s sport—we’re the sport.’

  ‘No uniform?’

  ‘Goon clobber, just like ours. And maybe an old elephant gun. Watch those things, they serve you up diced for lunch.’

  ‘Well, one of us would have a decent meal.’

  ‘Let’s get what we can hidden under our coats.’

  MacConnachie loosened the sling of the gun and draped it round his neck so that the weapon hung down through the full opening of the coat, making a bulge under the material. He then seized the whole arrangement and gave it a thorough shaking—like a monk with a cold crucifix against his skin—until it had fallen into natural folds and a comfortable disposition. Ansell did the same with the canteen. There was nothing they could do about the suitcase. Picking it up, MacConnachie grinned.

  ‘If anyone asks, I’ll say we’re commercial travellers.’

  ‘In ladies’ underwear?’

  ‘Let’s go.’

  For the next hour they fell into a routine which, by virtue of its sheer professionalism, carried them safely through a most delicate manoeuvre. MacConnachie would select their next hide and indicate it to Ansell. Then, while MacConnachie examined every inch of visible terrain for movement, Ansell would calculate the helicopter’s flight. As soon as MacConnachie said the ground was clear, they both waited for Ansell’s word of com­mand, which Ansell based on the estimated visibility from the helicopter at a given moment. When he shouted ‘Now!’ they fled from each cover to the next without stopping.

  To this they had added a safety factor. They always crouched back to back, MacConnachie between Ansell and the next target feature. Thus, if anything obtruded into MacConnachie’s field of vision between his all clear and Ansell’s ‘Now!’ he was able to hold Ansell back to the very last moment.

  This mechanism never had to be engaged. The combination of Ansell’s perception and MacConnachie’s instinct proved sufficient.

  As they worked their way down the hillside, two factors became increasingly significant, both brought about by a steady thickening in the vegetation through which they moved: on the one hand, they became harder to spot; on the other, their own field of vision diminished all the time.

  At length the slope levelled off, and they knew they were approaching the first fields. So far they had seen few people, none of them Goon soldiers. But each person represented a pair of eyes, and while few civilians would have the courage to apprehend them, none would lack the courage to report them.

  They crouched side by side, and peered through the scrub. Immediately ahead was the edge of the first field, running across their front and presenting a solid wall of close-packed stalks to their gaze. The intervening space was alive with flying insects, hovering in the air, darting about, coming to drink at their streaked faces, swarming maddeningly. The heat of the day was building up, the familiar burden of the sun lay heavy upon them, and within the muffling folds of their garments they sweated without pause.

  So far as they could see, the field stretched for about a hundred and fifty yards to their left. To the right, it ended abruptly at a narrow track some thirty feet distant, on the far side of which were the corner and walls of another exactly similar field, which twisted and wound away to disappear from view behind the scrub.

  It was reasonable to assume that other tracks led down into the valley somewhere to their left, but at this distance they received the impression of a continuing wall of stalks, as though one field ran into the next without demarcation. MacConnachie muttered,

  ‘I don’t fancy that lot. It’ll show from above. Let’s try the track.’

  They wriggled through the clutching undergrowth until they came to the corner of the field. MacConnachie raised his hand and Ansell stopped. With extreme caution, MacConnachie edged forward, face against the earth, until he could see round the intervening stalks.

  One of the three-man patrols was wandering idly up the track towards them, guns at the trail, its members chatting in a desul­tory way with a group of armed farmers. They were two minutes distant.

  As cautiously as he had extended his head—to make a sudden movement is to draw the searching eye—MacConnachie withdrew it.

  It wasn’t until he turned that Ansell knew anything was amiss. MacConnachie whispered,

  ‘We’ve had it. They’re coming up the track.’ He nodded towards the dangerous, towering stalks. ‘We’ll have to take to the long grass.’

  Ansell knew at once that this was the moment of greatest danger. Inside that jungle they would be blind. He glanced fearfully to his left.

  ‘Haven’t we time to get down there?’

  ‘No. Now do exactly as I do.’

  MacConnachie rose, looked to his rear, then extended his arms straight ahead, passing them between two of the boundary stalks and as deeply into the growth as he could. Then he extended them outwards, bending the stalks apart from the base, and opening a passage into which it was possible for him to step. He looked back over his shoulder.

  ‘Toss in the case.’

  Ansell took the suitcase, squeezed in front of MacConnachie’s arched body, and threw it gently down among the bowed stalks. MacConnachie said,

  ‘Once I’m in, do the same beside me.’

  Lifting his feet high, MacConnachie stepped in after the suit­case and, by drawing his arms behind him and letting them fall, allowed the stalks to come together at his back. He had vanished completely. The stalks might never have been disturbed. The effect was of a stunning theatrical illusion.

  Astonished, Ansell did the same, parting the stalks and stepping among them. The two men had disappeared.

  Inside the field, they were in a different world. Ansell had
had no idea the stalks grew so close together. It was just possible to find room for his feet between them, but his body was caged like a vessel in wickerwork, and every time he moved, as he did now to look about for MacConnachie, the crisp susurration of friction was set up between his shoulders and the dried-out stalks.

  So close to his face, these had the appearance of rigid, soured bananas, immensely long and straight, with many brownish scars deeply ingrained in their cracked yellow surfaces, up and down which there hurried hundreds of minute creatures in dis­ordered files. The sense of confinement, of oppression, was in­tense. He looked to the sky in an attempt to draw clear breath, but only a small patch of that colourless expanse was visible, directly above, between the reaching fingers of the stalks.

  He needed desperately to have some contact with MacCon­nachie, even though he knew him to be close. He whispered: ‘Mac? Mac?’

  There was no reply. His whole body began to prickle. He stared fascinated at the little creatures so close to his face, so busy, and the conviction grew suddenly in him that they were swarm­ing up his legs, crawling over his stomach, working their way into his armpits and his crutch. When a tickle crept down his cheek, he nearly screamed; but it was a bubble of oily sweat, nothing more.

  Voices came to him, faintly, and he realized for the first time how quiet their new world was; he hadn’t been aware of noise before, but now he was conscious of a filtering blanket of hush. And of a terrible smell that worked against his throat, creating an acrid, acidulous irritation that he was unable to swallow down. It seemed to weep from the stalks in a pungent, invisible vapour, pervasive and nauseating. He called again, louder, ‘Mac?’

  ‘Shut up!’

  It was a harsh whisper, loaded with urgency. Ansell knew at once that something was wrong, and the next moment realized that, however distant the Goon voices might sound, they were in reality close, and MacConnachie was listening to what they said. Suddenly MacConnachie’s face burst through the barrier of stalks.

  ‘We’ve got to go farther in. We were seen. Swim!’

  Ansell understood what he meant. By operating their arms as before, in the manner of the breast stroke, they could cleave a way through the forest of stalks, and close their tracks behind them.

  At once he moved across, spreading the stalks and stepping through to join MacConnachie, who had turned his back and was trying, with as little noise and disturbance as possible, to open a way ahead. Ansell closed right up behind him so that, as MacConnachie stepped through, he could take over the strain of the bending stalks, follow MacConnachie, and then close the gap to their rear.

  Three times they executed this manoeuvre, then the gun fired. MacConnachie fell at once. For an instant Ansell thought he had been hit, then saw that he was taking cover and dropped beside him.

  The gun discharged an entire magazine in one long burst. At once it was joined by other guns, and the air became livid with the sounds of singing bullets, shattering stalks, and the dull thwacks of misdirected rounds. The flying metal sped about over their heads, spinning from stalk to stalk, pattering down, littering them and the area for many yards about with spent ammunition. An occasional piece of hot metal scorched them, but otherwise they remained unhurt. MacConnachie took advantage of the racket to shout,

  ‘Soon as they stop, we go again. Some bloody farmer saw us up the hill!’

  As abruptly as it had started, the shooting stopped. Voices came to them raised in consternation, and then they heard an entirely new sort of crackling: the force of the bullets had set that corner of the field ablaze.

  It was apparent at once that the stuff would burn like petrol; this late in the hot season, it was fiercely combustible. The roar of spreading fire built up with astonishing speed, and the first low smoke seeped through to them. MacConnachie shouted,

  ‘We’ll have to go like the clappers! Move!’

  He was up and away, bullocking through the recalcitrant stalks, smashing down anything that stood in his path. To leave his hands free, he had taken the handle of the case between his teeth. Ansell thought he had never seen him more determined or more savagely angry. He followed in his furiously created wake.

  MacConnachie knew that everything now depended on speed. If they failed to beat either the fire or the Goons to the far peri­meter, they were done. The Goons would throw a cordon round the field as quickly as they could, and soon the chopper would come to pin-point them.

  But it takes time to set a trap, and in that time, however long or short, lay their survival.

  They blundered, pitching and stumbling through the stalks, like animals in terror. They seemed to have set a thousand insects free, and, every time they gulped in air, they swallowed a fur of pulped bodies. The black specks built up like paste round their eyes, mouths and nostrils, and the sharp, tangy taste tormented Ansell, filling him with revulsion.

  Again and again their boots, plunging forward, struck not earth but the tilted edge of a stalk, skidding off, throwing them sideways or back into the surrounding sticks. Progress was in­tolerably difficult, the press of heat within the jungle fiercely oppressive. And all the time the dancing sky teased them with glimpses of a freedom beyond their reach.

  Ansell had no idea where they were; he followed MacConna­chie blindly.

  By now the destructiveness of their passage had turned against them, for the stalks, as they broke, presented dozens of jagged edges that lacerated their arms and shoulders, leaving slivers of shredded cane embedded in the flesh. They bled freely.

  After no more than a minute or two, they were so torn and winded they had to stop. MacConnachie sagged against the stalks, unlocking his jaw to let the case fall, and sucked in great gasps of insect-packed air, his entire face, especially round the nostrils, clogged with the press of tiny bodies. Ansell did the same, his brain setting up a sort of high-pitched scream of interference, to prevent the full realization of what he swallowed from getting through.

  As soon as the edge of their immediate exhaustion diminished a little, the sounds of the fire came through to them again. They were shocked to hear how close it sounded, as though they hadn’t moved at all, or the fire was travelling faster than they were. Chests still heaving, they looked up and saw the thin stain of smoke sweep past overhead, rushing towards the same destina­tion as themselves. Faster or no, the fire was travelling in the same direction, and must be spreading sideways as well.

  MacConnachie snatched up the suitcase, thrust the handle between his teeth, and they crashed forward once more.

  A few minutes later, the helicopter found them. The veering disturbance of their progress must have been unmistakable from above.

  The first they knew of its arrival was a swirling wind that clamped the nearest stalks about their bodies, and whipped the flecked air into a churning vortex. They glared up and just caught sight of the dull-painted machine as it waddled forward, blades flashing, to disappear from view beyond the straining tips of the stalks.

  As the wind passed, the stalks jostled and fretted against one another in the stress of returning equilibrium. MacConnachie looked back a moment, but there was nothing to be said.

  Perhaps MacConnachie was growing tired, but it became apparent to Ansell that he was trying to give their floundering progress the appearance of a more measured passage. He had started to time his thrusts, executing them boldly and cleanly, exuding an aura of powerful, professional competence. Imitating him, Ansell found that fear diminished and, against all reason, confidence returned.

  The helicopter came back to settle over their heads, blanketing all other sound with the roar of its engine, following sluggishly in their wake. At once the stalks were lashed into activity again, threshing furiously about as they were torn this way and that by the fluctuating down-draught. Progress became teeteringly slow and painful, the maelstrom threatening constantly to suck them off balance, to pitch them forward, or to hold them back and—by suddenly releasing its grip—cause them to be thrown down against the earth. And al
l the time the stalks lashed them, cracking down across their shoulders, breaking fiercely against their knuckles, beating them in the face, bruising their eyes, and, when they lowered their heads for protection, buffeting their crowns repeatedly. But they staggered on, MacConnachie obviously exerting every ounce of muscle and self-control to maintain his persistent, measured action.

  And then Ansell understood suddenly what he was doing. Since the pilot could see them, MacConnachie was waging a psychological war, blatantly advertising the fact that he did not accept the dominance of the pilot’s position, insisting with his body that the initiative lay with them. It was an act of such arrogant insolence that Ansell felt uplifted with joy. The man was indestructible.

  All at once the helicopter began to step up its harassing tactics, dropping lower, pulling out and sweeping back, trying to exert pressure on them; and MacConnachie was puzzled as to why. The pilot was too good to start that nonsense without reason—certainly he hadn’t been goaded into it; and yet, although he disguised his intention well, managing to give the impression that each jink and turn was caused by some natural phenomenon such as gusting wind, it was clear to MacConnachie that the pilot was perturbed. Why? They couldn’t be near the edge of the field yet; it simply didn’t feel like it.

  And then, just like that, without warning, they fell out of the constricting stalks on to cropped field, with shoots no more than three inches high. It was so unexpected that they literally fell, shocked and blinking, blinded by the sudden piercing brightness of the sunlight.

  As their eyes adjusted to the glare, they heard the chopper roar into a turn and bear down on them again. Ansell tried to make out the nature of the ground on which they crouched, while MacConnachie, he noticed, slipped the gun from under his tunic.

  The cropping extended for about five feet, then there was a shallow irrigation canal of some kind, eight to ten feet across, with a further five feet of cropping on its far side, and beyond that the stalks rising up again across their front. They seemed to have come out into the side of a corridor that ran right across the field, down which they could look to left and right for a con­siderable distance before it turned on to a new path and cut off their view.