by R. R. Irvine
Outside his tenth-story window, the light changed. The sun had disappeared behind a cloud; its diffused light cast no shadows.
Kobayashi took it as a sign and picked up the phone.
Reed Farrington, his counterpart at Langley, answered quickly.
Ten minutes later, they both agreed that Walt Duncan was probably harmless, but worth watching just the same.
As Kobayashi hung up the sun reappeared, causing a soft glow in the knowing eyes of the ancient Tang horse.
CHAPTER 6
Henry Yali stood at the base of Mount Nomenuk, staring up at the sacred mountain with the same sense of awe he’d felt as a child. Since the day Yali had met his God, he’d made a daily pilgrimage to the mountain to renew himself. Here was where John Frum had left his people; here was where he would return. When that time came he would lead his chosen people, Yali’s people, to salvation and riches.
But today Yali felt uneasy. He’d been feeling that way since the day last week when the two scientists had come poking around. Oh, their promises had sounded sincere enough. We want only to study your ways, they’d told him. We want to record Balesin’s lifestyle before it changes forever.
Yali shook his head at the thought. Only John Frum had the power to change Balesin. He would do that when the time was right, and then Balesin would be as rich and powerful as America. In the meantime, Frum must be honored, his secrets protected, his shrine cared for. That was Yali’s job as Frum’s priest.
He knelt in prayer, hoping to shake off his uneasiness. But his mind kept wandering. Finally, Yali shook his head in frustration and rose to his feet. He’d pray at John Frum’s shrine.
Nodding to himself, he strode along the path that wound its way up Mount Nomenuk. The path had been worn smooth over the years by Yali’s pilgrimages. Once a month, all of Balesin made the trip, though that would have to stop once the scientists arrived. Secrecy demanded it.
Always before, Yali had felt himself growing closer to John Frum with each step. But today, there was no comfort in the climb. Today, the jungle seemed to close in ominously on both sides of the trail, and he felt as if he wasn’t alone.
He paused, tilting his head to listen, but heard nothing but the jungle’s hum.
“Relax, old man,” he murmured softly. Everyone on the island knew this was his time with John Frum. They wouldn’t dare intrude.
By the time he reached the halfway point, his breath was coming in ragged gasps. Sweat poured from him, though the day was no hotter than always. He paused to rest. Only last week, his resting point had been a good hundred yards farther up the mountain. Old age was upon him, no doubt about it. Soon he would have to train an acolyte to take his place.
He started climbing again, more slowly than before as the path grew steeper. When finally it leveled out, he sighed with relief. John Frum’s tabernacle was near at hand.
He paused one last time, preparing himself, and that’s when he heard the nasty clicking sound. He recognized it immediately, coconut crabs at work. But on what? he wondered. This part of the mountain had been cleared of coconut palms and leveled by hand. Here, there was nothing for the crabs to eat.
He shuddered. Here, the clicking could mean only one thing. Something had died to bring out the scavenger crabs, something large judging by the intensity of sound. And the only animal on Balesin large enough to provide such a feast was man.
“Sacrilege,” Yali muttered angrily and hurried forward to find out who had dared such a thing.
Beside the shrine, in the deep shade cast by the trees left in place as shelter, he saw the body. No wonder the usually nocturnal crabs were out in force.
Yali moved to get a closer look. The feet told him enough. The dead man was an outsider who had angered John Frum and paid the price.
Yali backed away, fearing Frum’s further vengeance. In that moment, he heard the airplane. John Frum had come in a plane and would so again. Perhaps now was the time. Yali hurried down the mountain to meet him.
Farrington cradled the phone, swung his feet up on the desk, and smiled at the picture of the president hanging on the wall. It was nice to know the Japanese were on the job, albeit a little late.
Farrington had known about the extra outsider on Balesin for the past twenty-four hours. Of course, there was always the chance that Kobayashi wasn’t late at all, but merely late reporting the situation. Which would be typical of the man. God, how the Japanese loved thinking of themselves as inscrutable.
Jesus. What a can of worms this was turning out to be. Farrington turned to his computer and called up the Balesin file and reread the biographies of those involved. Under normal circumstances, the presence of scientists wouldn’t have caused more than a ripple. Except for a few esoteric journals, no one paid any attention to anthropologists and archaeologists. But an expert on airplanes, that was another matter.
Groaning, Farrington studied the electronic image of Nicolette Scott. She didn’t look like anyone to worry about. With a little bit of makeup and a decent hairdo she’d be a knockout, and in Farrington’s experience good-looking women were good for only one thing.
But the data in her file said otherwise. One word popped out that made Farrington clench his teeth. Tenacious. The subject appears extraordinarily tenacious regarding airplanes. The report went on to discuss an incident in New Mexico that was well documented and a less well documented affair in Arizona that had sent ripples through a shadowy intelligence organization known to Farrington for its effective and ruthless competition.
Farrington clenched his teeth. Tenacity could get a lot of people killed.
On top of everything else, her father had an international reputation. And his daughter’s reputation as an historical archaeologist wasn’t far behind. Christ! He hadn’t known what a historical archaeologist was until he looked it up. An expert in the near past, that was her.
And Balesin had one hell of a recent past. He ground his teeth. Complications like that had to be taken into account should contingency plans become necessary. If a nobody went missing on a remote Pacific island, who’d care? But the Scotts?
Farrington took a deep breath and let it out like a man blowing smoke rings. Maybe the cover would hold. After all, they were under constant observation, their every move being carefully guided. If nothing went wrong, they’d see only what they were supposed to. And that ought to satisfy any scientist.
The trouble was, the man Duncan had been moving around unobserved. Well, thank God he was a nobody.
CHAPTER 7
Nick jerked awake. She realized that she had fallen asleep again.
“There she is, Doc,” Coltrane said. “Straight ahead. Balesin Island.”
From two thousand feet up and a mile away, the island looked as unreal as one of those lush tropical paradises pictured on the front of travel brochures. The beaches were white and dazzling, fringed by a dark green that was probably coconut palms. Beyond the palms, there appeared to be cultivated areas that Nick guessed to be breadfruit trees. After the breadfruit came a vibrant green canopy of exotic plants, jungle-thick and formidable. At the island’s center rose a two-thousand-foot peak. Since all land in the area was volcanic in origin, she hoped this particular mountain was dormant.
As for the surrounding ocean, it was emerald blue and clear enough to see the coral reefs lurking not far below the surface.
“Deceptive, isn’t it?” Coltrane said.
“It’s beautiful whatever you say.”
“Women are beautiful too, Doc, but a man’s got to be leery of them.” He tapped the fuel gauge, then spoke over his shoulder. “Should we give her the grand tour?”
“Absolutely,” Elliot said. “While you do that, we’ll get the cargo ready.”
Nick scrunched around to see Buettner and her father positioning the two yellow plastic cases near the door at the rear of the fuselage.
“Offerings to the gods,” Elliot shouted at her.
“Cargo,” Buettner added.
“Bri
bes,” Coltrane clarified.
She must have looked skeptical because her father grinned and said, “Now, Nick. It’s not like we’re trading beads for Manhattan.”
“What, then?”
“Flashlights, canned food and goodies, things like that, and all we get in return is knowledge and cooperation.”
“Out here you’ve got to keep everything dry,” Coltrane said. “Otherwise, flashlights and batteries don’t last long. Hell, nothing does.”
“How much rain does Balesin get?” Nick said.
“Two hundred inches a year, minimum. Of course it was less during El Nino.”
At the moment, they were flying in bright sunlight, though they were surrounded by distant clouds.
“It looks like we’re in the eye of a storm,” Nick said.
Coltrane snorted. “This isn’t a real storm. If we were in a real eye out here, we’d be looking the devil in the face.”
Wherever Nick looked there were squall lines.
“This is what we call a sucker hole,” Coltrane said. “They’re benign enough in this kind of weather.”
As he spoke, he banked east to fly parallel to the coast. The turn allowed Nick to look directly down at the island. At its eastern tip, she noticed a second, smaller island. It couldn’t have been more than a half mile across and reminded her of an exclamation point. It was separated from the main body of land by a narrow channel that couldn’t have been more than a few hundred yards wide. She pointed at it.
“That’s Balabat,” Coltrane said, “though if you ask me it should all be counted as one island.”
Nick checked the map. The exclamation point was indeed named Balabat. As far as she could see, the smaller land mass was nothing but solid jungle.
The pilot turned inland and immediately began gaining altitude as he headed toward the mountain at the island’s center. The map identified the peak as Mount Nomenuk. A few stunted trees were sprouting in the crater at the top.
“Is that mountain active?” Nick said.
“Don’t ask me, Doc. You’re the scientist.”
“The answer to that is no,” Buettner said from right behind her. “At least, there’s no recorded history of eruptions. Of course, we don’t have any real data prior to the eighteenth century.”
“It’s not the crater we want you to see,” Elliot said. “It’s what’s on the other side of the island.”
A moment later, the Widgeon swept over the top of the peak, throttled back, and half-glided down the far slope, following the meandering path of a narrow river on its way to the sea.
Then suddenly she saw it, the village at the mouth of the river, where it ran into the sea. She was surprised by its location on the wet side of the island. But the village was near a river, which gave it drinking water and immediate access to the sea.
Coltrane throttled up, and banked to the southwest. Half a minute later they passed over a clearing that ran as straight as a runway. She blinked. By God, it was a runway. Cut into the jungle the way it was, it looked stark and unreal, like some freak of nature.
Fifty yards from the runway, swallowed by the jungle and invisible except from the air, stood a crumbling watchtower. Near its base was the burnt-out hulk of a World War Two tank, probably one of the lightweight models the Japanese brought ashore on landing craft.
“Can you get us any lower?” she said.
“I thought you might say that, Doc.” Coltrane pushed the yoke forward. The Widgeon dropped like a rock.
Nick swallowed to keep her stomach in check, but never once took her eyes from the runway.
“Don’t circle,” Elliot said. “Don’t make it obvious that we’re snooping.”
Her father was right, of course. Until they knew the local customs, and the local taboos, it paid to be both respectful and careful.
“Slower,” Nick said.
“Anything you say, Doc. Flaps coming down.”
Then she saw the planes, two of them at the head of the runway, as if poised for takeoff. They looked very real.
“Twin-engine jobs,” Coltrane pointed out.
Nick nodded. “The Japanese had bombers about that size and shape.”
“So did we.”
“True, but the Japanese had an airfield here during the war, so they’re the most likely models.”
“Whatever you say, Doc.” Coltrane increased power and adjusted the flaps. “We were getting close to stall speed there for a moment, and I wouldn’t want to try setting you folks down on that runway.”
“It looks perfectly usable enough, though, doesn’t it?” she said.
“That’s the strange part when you think about it, Doc. Why go to so much trouble building a runway to scale when they don’t have any real airplanes?”
“If you want the gods to send real planes, you have to prepare the way. How else can you fool the gods?” She studied her map again. “Besides, that is the old Japanese airstrip.”
Coltrane shrugged. “They’re nothing but Sirens, if you ask me. But I’m just a simple pilot for hire. What do I know?”
Sure, she thought. But it wasn’t a bad comparison, the more she thought about it.
More accurately though, the worshipers of the Cargo Cult built planes and runways for their messiah, John Frum, who one day would send them cargo from the skies. When that day came, they would be as strong as America. At least that is what the Baleseans believed, according to Sam Ohmura. For the moment, however, she decided to forgo making any assumptions. It was better to wait until she’d had the chance to study the Baleseans for herself. “Never trust conventional wisdom,” her father had drummed into his students. “Too often it’s anything but wise.”
“Why the name John Frum?” Nick wondered out loud.
“From where?” Coltrane asked.
“It’s pronounced ƒrom but spelled F-R-U-M. He’s the Cargo Cult’s messiah.”
“Oh, him.”
“Are you familiar with the concept?”
“Just what I’ve read in the National Geographic,” Coltrane replied.
She squinted at him suspiciously, doubtful that he was just the simple bush pilot he pretended to be.
“Remind me not to take things for granted,” she told him. “Or judge by appearances.”
Grinning, Coltrane spoke over his shoulder. “Get ready with your cargo.”
The Widgeon banked full circle until it was following the river again, toward the village.
From the air she could see that the village was laid out surrounding a central square. Radiating out from that square were thatched-roof huts spread over an area the size of what she judged to be four city blocks. The huts numbered fifty at least, maybe seventy-five. To the south, on the inland side of the village, a narrow dirt road ran for about a mile before ending at a clearing that held what looked to be a large shed and a couple of ancillary buildings.
As the distance closed, Nick realized that her initial impression was wrong. Huts was the wrong word for the dwellings. They were far too sturdy for that. True enough, primitive thatched roofs dominated, but the underlying timber structure was obvious. That timbering was even more apparent in the four larger buildings that immediately surrounded the square. Most likely, they were communal meeting places, possibly of religious significance, though Nick reserved judgment for the moment. Whatever they were, they too had thatched roofs. Their walls appeared to be made of mismatched, rusty metal siding.
An American flag flew from a pole in the middle of the square, which was quickly filling with people, all of them staring up at the Widgeon.
Before she could point out the landmark, Coltrane banked sharply and shouted, “Bombs away!”
Out went the two cargo cases. Bright red parachutes blossomed immediately.
As soon as the chutes landed in the village square, Coltrane headed out to sea. After a mile or so, he turned back to line up his landing with the inlet at the mouth of the river.
“Tighten your seat belts,” he said, “and we’ll see if I
can set this thing down without hitting a coral reef.”
Nick felt her stomach lurch again.
CHAPTER 8
Watching the descending plane, the Reverend George Innis felt a growing sense of frustration. Arriving planes made his life harder. Each time was the same. Word would go out that John Frum’s promised flight had finally arrived. The villagers would gather, and Henry Yali, prophet and soothsayer to the Cargo Cult, would declare a miracle.
And this time was even worse. There were parachutes to go with the plane. That would really cause a furor. And worse luck was the color of those parachutes, red. Red was John Frum’s color.
The reverend clenched his teeth in frustration and lowered his binoculars. He could hear Henry Yah now. “It’s a sign!” Yali would shout. “John Frum is at hand.”
Yali, prognosticator, high priest, and old friend, would make the reverend’s life a misery for the next few days. Church attendance would fall off. Little work would get done. And all because John Frum, the Cargo Cult’s long-awaited messiah, was due on the next plane.
Yali had made such predictions before, of course, but it never seemed to matter to his followers that Frum never came, or that the planes carried no cargo for the villagers, only supplies for the island’s single store. Somehow, no blame ever fell Yali’s way. Instead, the Reverend Innis took the brunt. His flock, so carefully nurtured over the years, would grow restless.
Yali’s prediction wasn’t a failure, they’d say, but a precursor. John Frum’s coming was just around the corner.
Only after weeks had passed, or months depending on the strength of the sign seen by Yali, would worshipers begin straggling back to the True Church. And each time they did, he saw his own failure mirrored in their eyes. Their lack of faith mocked him, and forced him to realize that all his years of work on this godforsaken island took a back seat to John Frum. Probably it always would.
The Reverend Innis wiped sweat from the eyepieces and went back to watching the seaplane. At least there were no more parachutes floating down. Still, he had to admire the newcomers’ ingenuity. If he had it all to do over again, he’d do the same thing. He’d announce his arrival by dropping gifts from heaven.