Thunder over the Grass

by Steve Turnbull

  He took her hand. She was tense and resisted him.

  “Don’t,” she said quietly as he moved closer.

  He turned his head away in annoyance; she was always telling him what to do and what was appropriate.

  “Remember where we are.”

  He sighed, lifted her hand and kissed it instead. She squeezed his fingers. Standing back he released her hand. “I’ll see you later then.”

  “Later? Yes.”

  He touched his fingers to his hat brim in salute then, with the greatest force of will, turned his back on her, and strode along the road towards the air-crew building. He felt empty. When she had driven him away after the incident with the guru he had been able to console himself with the fact that it had been what she wanted, even if he did not agree with it.

  This was not the same. He wanted to run back to her and take her back aboard the Sky-Liner—carrying her if necessary—and escape from this damned place. But he could not, of course, she would cut him to pieces with the lash of her tongue. And she was right; she could not leave children to this terrible fate and he could not abandon the opportunity to get inside the operations of the devious Terence Timmons.

  He signed in to the air-crew hostel under his assumed name then went into the lounge. Nobody would be on the roof in this weather. He looked around, peering through the cigarette and cigar smoke. He spotted Keighley in a corner nursing a pint.

  Valentine went to the bar and paid for two. He carried them to Keighley’s table and placed the spare in front of the old and battered man.

  “I got the captain’s message,” said Valentine as he sat down.

  “The captain is happy with your qualifications and told me to tell you the meeting place.” The old man downed the dregs from his original pint pot and pushed it aside. He pulled the new one closer.

  “All right,” said Valentine and took a sip of his drink. “So where do I meet him?”

  “Where is easy enough but the time has been changed.” Keighley glanced up at the clock behind the bar. “Twenty-two hundred, tonight.”

  “It was going to be midnight.”

  “Something’s come up,” he said. “They’re lifting early.”

  “Where do I have to go?”

  Keighley supped from his pint pot. “Place called Delmas.”

  “Where the hell is Delmas?”

  “About forty-five miles due east.”

  Valentine jumped to his feet. “How in God’s name am I supposed to get there in an hour, in this weather?”

  Keighley leaned back in his chair. “Not my problem, Dyer.”

  Valentine jumped to his feet, his mind spinning. A taxicab could never get him there in time; it would be impossible to make the necessary speed over what would be little more than a track in the rain and dark.

  He needed a plane. He could use his position with the British government to commandeer a vessel. It might reveal his true nature to Keighley but he had no way of communicating with Timmons’ ship. Unless he had a radio. It would work over short ranges. Too risky.

  There was nothing for it; he would have to steal something with enough speed.

  “How will I know when I find the place?”

  “Fires around the ship,” said Keighley with a smile. “Think you can do it, sailor?”

  Valentine downed the rest of his pint and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “Oh, I’ll get there.”

  * * *

  He strode out into the rain and headed at a fast pace towards the hangars for the small independent aircraft. He passed the first hangar because it was completely closed up. The second had light filtering around the doors. Without hesitation he stepped through the door into a wide, dimly lit space. The air was filled with constant thrumming of rain on the curved, corrugated iron roof.

  The deck was packed with planes. The owners and small companies shared the hangar to reduce costs. He glanced around rejecting most of the planes immediately as too slow or too far back inside the hangar, though his eyes lingered on a big ornithopter. That too he rejected: they were a nightmare to fly and he had no idea how to do it.

  A voice echoed through the man-made cavern. “Hey!”

  Valentine kept moving and pulled out his gun from the inner pocket.

  “Hey! You can’t be in here.”

  One ship attracted his attention: it was like a miniature version of the Sky-Liners or the massive Royal Navy assault carriers. It had two rotors for lift which would also rotate forwards, short wings for lift in flight and a rear prop for main thrust. It looked like it would take a dozen passengers or a decent cargo. And there was no smoke stack so it was a diesel which meant it was ready to fly and didn’t need a stoker.

  “Stop right there, mister!” The voice was very close to him now. Valentine turned and pointed his gun.

  “You can help me, or not. The first way is healthier for you,” said Valentine. “Either way I’m taking this ship.”

  iii

  The driver spent time insisting he had to take her to a hotel since the curfew was still in force. It had taken a considerable bribe to make him drop her off at the junction she requested in the rundown northern quarter of the city.

  The rain had not let up and the gaslights in the streets were not lit—why waste money on the poor?

  “You really shouldn’t, miss; this area is not safe for a young woman even in daylight.”

  She handed him the promised coin, more than double what was displayed on the taximeter, and climbed out. “You don’t need to worry, I’m meeting someone.”

  He took the money and with an uncertain glance in her direction, turned the vehicle around and disappeared into the mist and rain. Maliha withdrew from the edge of the street into the shadows, her clothes blending in to the darkness.

  She stared around into the wet and the dark. What am I doing here? The thought surprised her; she seldom questioned her own actions. Was it a sign of maturity? Or just responsibility. She had acquired so many people that were now dependent on her. But she had dealt with that. Amita was perfectly capable of continuing in her stead. That could not be considered the reason. Though she knew in her heart it was part of it.

  This was the trap her Buddhist studies warned against. If you cared about material things, if you attached yourself to the so-called real world it became a trap. You could only be free by detaching yourself.

  Except she did not want to be alone. She liked having people around her. She had experienced a life of utter loneliness when she was at boarding school. But now she had Barbara, Amita, the baby and even Ulrika.

  And Valentine.

  She longed for him. The memory of holding him, and being held by him in the cabin. Of lying with him. Of touching her skin. Even just holding hands. She closed her eyes. She never wanted it to end; she wanted him by her forever.

  But they were apart. Perhaps forever.

  “Goddess?”

  “Hello, Izak.”

  The boy emerged from the rain, just a dark shadow, with a small dark shadow beside him.

  “You shouldn’t have brought Lilith.”

  “He didn’t bring me,” said Lilith in her little piping voice. “I brought myself.”

  Maliha was not going to argue. She wondered what the time was; it was too dark to see her watch. She wondered briefly where Valentine was. There were too many imponderables to be able to guess. He might even be lying on his bed in the hotel. Or lying dead in the rain. She shook her head to clear that image from her mind. Whatever he was doing he was on his own path. Hers led in a different direction.

  “Goddess?” Izak’s voice seemed concerned.

  “Yes,” she said quickly, she needed to stop being maudlin. There were children to save. “You have checked the location?”

  “This way,” said Izak and heading north across the junction.

  They travelled along a road with single storey buildings on either side, each one with considerable space between them. Most of them had light showing in the windows with the occasi
onal figure moving about inside.

  The three of them moved like shadows. The light from the windows reflected on the wet road highlighting the splashes from the rain that continued to pour down. Some of it had begun to seep through her defences and a cold trickle had found its way down her neck.

  The buildings thinned out and disappeared behind them. The road turned into a ridged trail. There were wide tracks made by large vehicles criss-crossing each other. Rain had collected in the furrows.

  From her memory of the map Maliha knew they were outside the city and heading into one of the disused diamond mines. Eventually the ground fell away beneath them, the track turned to the left and descended into the deep opencast mine. They stopped. Their eyes had adjusted to the dark but even so there was almost nothing to see despite the rain reduced to spitting and the cloud thinning out a little.

  “You wait for Mama Kosi and the others,” said Maliha.

  “What will you do?” asked Izak.

  “Will you kill them with lightning?” asked Lilith.

  Maliha sighed; she had stopped arguing with them calling her a goddess but that did have complications.

  “No, I want to talk to them. I want to know why they’re doing it.”

  “Then you’ll kill them?” asked Izak with more enthusiasm than seemed healthy.

  “They will be brought to justice.”

  She decided further discussion was pointless and headed down the track.

  It took five minutes to reach the bottom while the perspective of the place changed around her. The floor of the mine rose up to meet her as she descended. The top of the huge crane that had been at her eye level now towered above her.

  An administration hut stood at the bottom of the ramp but there were no lights on. In the rock wall opposite a faint gleam emerged from deep inside a tunnel. For a moment she stared at the entrance, a faint mist drifted from it and mingled with the rain.

  She heard the squeak of a rat and a rustle of movement beneath the administration block. She did not like rats. She walked towards the tunnel opening ahead of her. Her pace quickened even while she berated herself for acting like a scared child. But around her was the damp dark and ahead was the warmth of light.

  iv

  With his arm resting on the window ledge Valentine held the gun steady on his reluctant assistant. The poor fellow was terrified but it was not in Valentine’s interests to ease his mind. The hangar doors rose with excruciating slowness as the man pulled the raising mechanism. The light from the interior flooded out, illuminating the pounding rain.

  Valentine had the rotors powered up but the Faraday still disengaged so there was insufficient lift. He adjusted the power to the propeller and the machine crept forwards across the smooth concrete floor. As soon as there was space for the rotors he gunned the engine and the vessel lurched forward into the rain. He pulled in his hand and dropped the gun on to the passenger seat.

  The chronometer in the dashboard gave him forty minutes. It had to be enough. The airspeed of this machine must be at least one hundred miles per hour. Rain struck the canopy as it bumped out into the dark. He glanced behind; the man had disappeared, no doubt wanting to warn the authorities. It didn’t matter. With rotors and propeller at full power he engaged the Faraday.

  The plane leapt into the air and accelerated fast. It reached a hundred feet in no time at all and kept rising. He reduced the power to the rotors in stages but had reached a thousand feet before he managed to bring it under control. He reached up to the rotor attitude control and wound it. The rotors turned from horizontal and providing lift, to vertical and adding to his speed.

  A side effect was that he lost altitude steadily. He checked the compass and adjusted his course. At five hundred feet he used the rotor control to wind the rotor back a little more to provide a little lift. He was sure that wasn’t the best method but it was all he had.

  He was flying blind at night, using only dead reckoning to find his destination. The airspeed indicator suggested he was travelling at a little over two hundred kilometres per hour. He did the sum in his head and concluded it was something over a hundred and twenty miles per hour which meant he could do forty miles in twenty minutes.

  Keighley had said he would be able to spot it by numerous fires. At five hundred feet he should have enough of a view. He had to allow five to ten minutes to get down. Landing this crate would be far more difficult than getting it into the air but still, at worst, he could switch off the Faraday and come down hard.

  If he could find the place. And if they did not decide he was a threat and shoot him down. He would have to cross that bridge if he came to it.

  He shivered. He was soaking wet and it was cold in the cockpit.

  How long had he been in flight? Only five minutes according to the clock. He had travelled a quarter of the distance. He tried to force himself to relax, to accept that he had plenty of time and would make it in time.

  There was nothing to suggest he wouldn’t.

  Every so often he passed a light glowing beneath him. Farmhouses like the one belonging to Ouderkirk, and the one with the dead bodies. To distract himself he thought it through. Ouderkirk had not really responded about the hyenas but both his and Maliha’s reaction told him that a pack of hyenas did not attack a human settlement no matter how hungry they were. And when some of them had been shot the rest kept on coming like troops ordered to attack despite the odds.

  And children with their brains removed. Maliha had said it was must be an experiment. What sort of experiment did you carry out on children? Were they madmen? Eugenicists? Something else? He had trouble thinking past the point of murdering children. How could anyone do that?

  What if the two items were connected? How could they be connected? What if the experiments being carried out on children had been carried out on the hyenas first?

  But the hyenas were running free. Perhaps they escaped; hyenas were strong and dangerous.

  While children were weak.

  Had Maliha already worked this out? Had she not told him the truth because if she had he would not have left her? Would not have let her go alone, if at all?

  He was on the verge of changing direction and returning to the city when he caught sight of lights up ahead. Far more numerous and brighter than any he had seen. He had found it.

  He circled overhead, steadily reducing the power to the rotors while adjusting them back to the horizontal position. He cut the power to the driving propeller so it provided just enough to give him steerage.

  In the clearing below, the huge bulk of one of Timmons’ secret vessels lay in the lee of a large kopje as the locals called hills. There were camp fires and people moving from them to a huge ramp that led up into the side of the vessel. A trip to “Australia” no doubt.

  He stopped circling and commenced a run parallel to the ship on the side away from the loading. There were too many people there and he was likely to hit someone. But on this side he could barely see anything. He could only guess the position of the ground by the bulk of the ship.

  He brought the air-plane over the space at the lowest possible speed he could manage. He cut power to the thrusting propeller. And reduced power to the rotors. The altitude indicator was not accurate enough to show his height and indicated he was on the ground.

  The air-plane lurched and there was a violent cracking coming from beneath him. He had hit a tree. There was a long drawn out scraping that set his teeth on edge. Then his forward motion ceased completely. He was hooked. He judged his options; none of them seemed good.

  He cut the power to the rotors and the ship began to lean to the right as it descended. The left side must be hooked on a branch. As it leaned the less of the vehicle’s mass was within the Faraday field. Valentine could feel himself getting heavier.

  So he cut the Faraday completely. The entirety of the weight ripped the branch from the tree and the plane crashed to the ground. Valentine was thrown against the controls. Rhythmic thuds announced the rotors
were ploughing into the ground with the remainder of their power then ended in a metallic screech.

  Everything went silent.

  v

  Back in England, when Maliha had gone into the caves along the beaches of the south coast, even in the height of summer, it had always become colder. This confirmed everything she had read about tunnels and cave systems.

  This tunnel did not; it grew warmer and the moisture in the air was very noticeable. It was like the monsoon but underground. She pressed on and picked her way along the double tracks for mine carts laid into the floor. The wall and ceiling were supported by sturdy timbers. Electric bulbs at twenty foot intervals illuminated the way but still created deep shadows in the uneven walls.

  As she pressed on slowly and carefully she became aware of a throb in the air. At first it was a simple pressure against her skin but then the sound of it pressed against her. A machine of some sort perhaps driving the generator for the electric lights.

  She came alongside a side tunnel. It too was lit. She heard the whimper of a child float gently from the passage. She froze with the heart-stopping horror of it. It was not her imagination; she had seen what had been done to the child dumped in the sewer, but she had read Poe and his nightmarish visions flooded through her mind.

  It was nothing but the fear of the unknown. On the one hand she could rationalise her fear and understand it. On the other she was desperate not to know but a lack of knowledge could be fatal. There was another whimper and she turned to follow it down the side passage.

  The walls, floor and ceiling glistened with moisture from the humid air. The passage opened up into an ellipsoid space about thirty feet in length and twenty wide. The ceiling was twice the height of the passage but lit by the same electric bulbs so the overall effect was that the cavern was darker.

  The whimper came again. Along one wall were five cribs made of iron—more like cages—on the other was a long bench that had food containers at one end and empty tool racks on the wall behind it. At the other end of the bench were empty bell jars, some upright others lying on their side. One was broken on the floor. An adult-sized examination chair, discarded on its side, lay in the half-light furthest from her at the end of the room.