Ryker snorted derisively. ‘Do you seriously believe that, Lieutenant? “The spirit of exploration!” My God! What a fantastic idea. Pereira doesn’t believe that, do you, Captain?’
Before Connolly could reply Pereira took his arm. ‘Come on, Lieutenant. This is no time for a metaphysical discussion.’ To Ryker he added: ‘It doesn’t much matter what you and I believe, Ryker. A man went to the Moon and came back. He needs our help.’
Ryker frowned ruefully. ‘Poor chap. He must be feeling pretty unhappy by now. Though anyone who gets as far as the Moon and is fool enough to come back deserves what he gets.’
There was a scuffle of feet on the veranda, and as they stepped out into the sunlight a couple of Indians darted away along the jetty, watching Connolly with undiminished interest.
Ryker remained in the doorway, staring listlessly at the clock, but as they were about to climb into the launch he came after them. Now and then glancing over his shoulder at the encroaching semi-circle of Indians, he gazed down at Connolly with sardonic contempt. ‘Lieutenant,’ he called out before they went below. ‘Has it occurred to you that if he had landed, Spender might have wanted to stay on here?’
‘I doubt it, Ryker,’ Connolly said calmly. ‘Anyway, there’s little chance that Colonel Spender is still alive. What we’re interested in finding is the capsule.’
Ryker was about to reply when a faint metallic buzz sounded from the direction of his hut. He looked around sharply, waiting for it to end, and for a moment the whole tableau, composed of the men on the launch, the gaunt outcast on the edge of the jetty and the Indians behind him, was frozen in an absurdly motionless posture. The mechanism of the old alarm clock had obviously been fully wound, and the buzz sounded for thirty seconds, finally ending with a high-pitched ping.
Pereira grinned. He glanced at his watch. ‘It keeps good time, Ryker.’ But Ryker had stalked off back to the hut, scattering the Indians before him.
Connolly watched the group dissolve, then suddenly snapped his fingers. ‘You’re right, Captain. It certainly does keep good time,’ he repeated as they entered the cabin.
Evidently tired by the encounter with Ryker, Pereira slumped down among Connolly’s equipment and unbuttoned his tunic. ‘Sorry about
Ryker, but I warned you. Frankly, Lieutenant, we might as well leave now. There’s nothing here. Ryker knows that. However, he’s no fool, and he’s quite capable of faking all sorts of evidence just to get a retainer out of you. He wouldn’t mind if the bulldozers came.’
‘I’m not so sure.’ Connolly glanced briefly through the porthole. ‘Captain, has Ryker got a radio?’
‘Of course not. Why?’
‘Are you certain?’
‘Absolutely. It’s the last thing the man would have. Anyway, there’s no electrical supply here, and he has no batteries.’ He noticed Connolly’s intent expression. ‘What’s on your mind, Lieutenant?’
‘You’re his only contact? There are no other traders in the area?’
‘None. The Indians are too dangerous, and there’s nothing to trade. Why do you think Ryker has a radio?’
‘He must have. Or something very similar. Captain, just now you remarked on the fact that his old alarm clock kept good time. Does it occur to you to ask how?’
Pereira sat up slowly. ‘Lieutenant, you have a valid point.’
‘Exactly. I knew there was something odd about those two clocks when they were standing side by side. That type of alarm clock is the cheapest obtainable, notoriously inaccurate. Often they lose two or three minutes in 24 hours. But that clock was telling the right time to within ten seconds. No optical instrument would give him that degree of accuracy.’
Pereira shrugged sceptically. ‘But I haven’t been here for over four months. And even then he didn’t check the time with me.’
‘Of course not. He didn’t need to. The only possible explanation for such a degree of accuracy is that he’s getting a daily time fix, either on a radio or some long-range beacon.’
‘Wait a moment, Lieutenant.’ Pereira watched the dusk light fall across the jungle. ‘It’s a remarkable coincidence, but there must be an innocent explanation. Don’t jump straight to the conclusion that Ryker has some instrument taken from the missing Moon capsule. Other aircraft have crashed in the forest. And what would be the point? He’s not running an airline or railway system. Why should he need to know the time, the exact time, to within ten seconds?’
Connolly tapped the lid of his monitoring case, controlling his growing exasperation at Pereira’s reluctance to treat the matter seriously, at his whole permissive attitude of lazy tolerance towards Ryker, the Indians and the forest. Obviously he unconsciously resented Connolly’s sharp-eyed penetration of this private world.
‘Clocks have become his idée fixe,’ Pereira continued. ‘Perhaps he’s developed an amazing sensitivity to its mechanism. Knowing exactly the right time could be a substitute for the civilization on which he turned his back.’ Thoughtfully, Pereira moistened the end of his cheroot. ‘But I agree that it’s strange. Perhaps a little investigation would be worthwhile after all.’
After a cool jungle night in the air-conditioned cabin, the next day Connolly began discreetly to reconnoitre the area. Pereira took ashore two bottles of whisky and a soda syphon, and was able to keep Ryker distracted while Connolly roved about the campong with his monitoring equipment. Once or twice he heard Ryker bellow jocularly at him from his window as he lolled back over the whisky. At intervals, as Ryker slept, Pereira would come out into the sun, sweating like a drowsy pig in his stained uniform, and try to drive back the Indians.
‘As long as you stay within earshot of Ryker you’re safe,’ he told Connolly. Chopped-out pathways criss-crossed the bush at all angles, a new one added whenever one of the bands returned to the campong, irrespective of those already established. This maze extended for miles around them. ‘If you get lost, don’t panic but stay where you are. Sooner or later we’ll come out and find you.’
Eventually giving up his attempt to monitor any of the signal beacons built into the lost capsule – both the sonar and radio meters remained at zero – Connolly tried to communicate with the Indians by sign language, but with the exception of one, the youth with the moist limpid eyes who had been hanging about on Ryker’s veranda, they merely stared at him stonily. This youth Pereira identified as the son of the former witch-doctor (‘Ryker’s more or less usurped his role, for some reason the old boy lost the confidence of the tribe’). While the other Indians gazed at Connolly as if seeing some invisible numinous shadow, some extra-corporeal nimbus which pervaded his body, the youth was obviously aware that Connolly possessed some special talent, perhaps not dissimilar from that which his father had once practised. However, Connolly’s attempts to talk to the youth were handicapped by the fact that he was suffering from a purulent ophthalmia, gonococchic in origin and extremely contagious, which made his eyes water continuously. Many of the Indians suffered from this complaint, threatened by permanent blindness, and Connolly had seen them treating their eyes with water in which a certain type of fragrant bark had been dissolved.
Ryker’s casual, off-hand authority over the Indians puzzled Connolly. Slumped back in his chair against the mahogany dresser, one hand touching the ormolu clock, most of the time he and Pereira indulged in a lachrymose back-chat. Then, oblivious of any danger, Ryker would amble out into the dusty campong, push his way blurrily through the Indians and drum up a party to collect fire wood for the water still, jerking them bodily to their feet as they squatted about their huts. What interested Connolly was the Indians’ reaction to this type of treatment. They seemed to be restrained, not by any belief in his strength of personality or primitive kingship, but by a grudging acceptance that for the time being at any rate, Ryker possessed the whip hand over them all. Obviously Ryker served certain useful roles for them as an intermediary with the Mission, but this alone would not explain the sources of his power. Beyond certain more or less defined limits –
the perimeter of the campong – his authority was minimal.
A hint of explanation came on the second morning of their visit, when Connolly accidentally lost himself in the forest.
After breakfast Connolly sat under the awning on the deck of the patrol launch, gazing out over the brown, jelly-like surface of the river. The campong was silent. During the night the Indians had disappeared into the bush. Like lemmings they were apparently prone to these sudden irresistible urges. Occasionally the nomadic call would be strong enough to carry them 200 miles away; at other times they would set off in high spirits and then lose interest after a few miles, returning dispiritedly to the campong in small groups.
Deciding to make the most of their absence, Connolly shouldered the monitoring equipment and climbed onto the pier. A few dying fires smoked plaintively among the huts, and abandoned utensils and smashed pottery lay about in the red dust. In the distance the morning haze over the forest had lifted, and Connolly could see what appeared to be a low hill – a shallow rise no more than a hundred feet in height – which rose off the flat floor of the jungle a quarter of a mile away.
On his right, among the huts, someone moved. An old man sat alone among the refuse of pottery shards and raffia baskets, cross-legged under a small make-shift awning. Barely distinguishable from the dust, his moribund figure seemed to contain the whole futility of the Amazon forest.
Still musing on Ryker’s motives for isolating himself in the jungle, Connolly made his way towards the distant rise.
Ryker’s behaviour the previous evening had been curious. Shortly after dusk, when the sunset sank into the western forest, bathing the jungle in an immense ultramarine and golden light, the day-long chatter and movement of the Indians ceased abruptly. Connolly had been glad of the silence – the endless thwacks of the rattan canes and grating of the stone mills in which they mixed the Government-issue meal had become tiresome. Pereira made several cautious visits to the edge of the campong, and each time reported that the Indians were sitting in a huge circle outside their huts, watching Ryker’s bungalow. The latter was lounging on his veranda in the moonlight, chin in hand, one boot up on the rail, morosely surveying the assembled tribe.
‘They’ve got their spears and ceremonial feathers,’ Pereira whispered. ‘For a moment I almost believed they were preparing an attack.’
After waiting half an hour, Connolly climbed up on to the pier, found the Indians squatting in their dark silent circle, Ryker glaring down at them. Only the witch-doctor’s son made any attempt to approach Connolly, sidling tentatively through the shadows, a piece of what appeared to be blue obsidian in his hand, some talisman of his father’s that had lost its potency.
Uneasily, Connolly returned to the launch. Shortly after 3 a.m. they were wakened in their bunks by a tremendous whoop, reached the deck to hear the stampede of feet through the dust, the hissing of overturned fires and cooking pots. Apparently leading the pack, Ryker, emitting a series of re-echoed ‘Harooh’s! disappeared into the bush. Within a minute the campong was empty.
‘What game is Ryker playing?’ Pereira muttered as they stood on the creaking jetty in the dusty moonlight. ‘This must be the focus of his authority over the Nambas.’ Baffled, they went back to their bunks.
Reaching the margins of the rise, Connolly strolled through a small orchard which had returned to nature, hearing in his mind the exultant roar of Ryker’s voice as it had cleaved the midnight jungle. Idly he picked a few of the barely ripe guavas and vividly coloured cajus with their astringent delicately flavoured juice. After spitting away the pith, he searched for a way out of the orchard, but within a few minutes realized that he was lost.
A continuous mound when seen from the distance, the rise was in fact a nexus of small hillocks that formed the residue of a one-time system of ox-bow lakes, and the basins between the slopes were still treacherous with deep mire. Connolly rested his equipment at the foot of a tree. Withdrawing his pistol, he fired two shots into the air in the hope of attracting Ryker and Pereira. He sat down to await his rescue, taking the opportunity to unlatch his monitors and wipe the dials.
After ten minutes no one had appeared. Feeling slightly demoralized, and frightened that the Indians might return and find him, Connolly shouldered his equipment and set off towards the north-west, in the approximate direction of the campong. The ground rose before him. Suddenly, as he turned behind a palisade of wild magnolia trees, he stepped into an open clearing on the crest of the hill.
Squatting on their heels against the tree-trunks and among the tall grass was what seemed to be the entire tribe of the Nambikwaras. They were facing him, their expressions immobile and watchful, eyes like white beads among the sheaves. Presumably they had been sitting in the clearing, only fifty yards away, when he fired his shots, and Connolly had the uncanny feeling that they had been waiting for him to make his entrance exactly at the point he had chosen.
Hesitating, Connolly tightened his grip on the radio monitor. The Indians’ faces were like burnished teak, their shoulders painted with a delicate mosaic of earth colours. Noticing the spears held among the grass, Connolly started to walk on across the clearing towards a breach in the palisade of trees.
For a dozen steps the Indians remained motionless. Then, with a chorus of yells, they leapt forward from the grass and surrounded Connolly in a jabbering pack. None of them were more than five feet tall, but their plump agile bodies buffeted him about, almost knocking him off his feet. Eventually the tumult steadied itself, and two or three of the leaders stepped from the cordon and began to scrutinize Connolly more closely, pinching and fingering him with curious positional movements of the thumb and forefinger, like connoisseurs examining some interesting taxidermic object.
Finally, with a series of high-pitched whines and grunts, the Indians moved off towards the centre of the clearing, propelling Connolly in front of them with sharp slaps on his legs and shoulders, like drovers goading on a large pig. They were all jabbering furiously to each other, some hacking at the grass with their machetes, gathering bundles of leaves in their arms.
Tripping over something in the grass, Connolly stumbled onto his knees. The catch slipped from the lid of the monitor, and as he stood up, fumbling with the heavy cabinet, the revolver slipped from his holster and was lost under his feet in the rush.
Giving way to his panic, he began to shout over the bobbing heads around him, to his surprise heard one of the Indians beside him bellow to the others. Instantly, as the refrain was taken up, the crowd stopped and re-formed its cordon around him. Gasping, Connolly steadied himself, and started to search the trampled grass for his revolver, when he realized that the Indians were now staring, not at himself, but at the exposed counters of the monitor. The six meters were swinging wildly after the stampede across the clearing, and the Indians craned forward, their machetes and spears lowered, gaping at the bobbing needles.
Then there was a roar from the edge of the clearing, and a huge wild-faced man in a straw hat, a shot-gun held like a crow-bar in his hands, stormed in among the Indians, driving them back. Dragging the monitor from his neck, Connolly felt the steadying hand of Captain Pereira take his elbow.
‘Lieutenant, Lieutenant,’ Pereira murmured reprovingly as they recovered the pistol and made their way back to the campong, the uproar behind them fading among the undergrowth, ‘we were nearly in time to say grace.’
Later that afternoon Connolly sat back in a canvas chair on the deck of the launch. About half the Indians had returned, and were wandering about the huts in a desultory manner, kicking at the fires. Ryker, his authority re-asserted, had returned to his bungalow.
‘I thought you said they weren’t cannibal,’ Connolly reminded Pereira.
The Captain snapped his fingers, as if thinking about something more important. ‘No, they’re not. Stop worrying, Lieutenant, you’re not going to end up in a pot.’ When Connolly demurred he swung crisply on his heel. He had sharpened up his uniform, and wore his pistol bel
t and Sam Browne at their regulation position, his peaked cap jutting low over his eyes. Evidently Connolly’s close escape had confirmed some private suspicion. ‘Look, they’re not cannibal in the dietary sense of the term, as used by the Food & Agriculture Organization in its classification of aboriginal peoples. They won’t stalk and hunt human game in preference for any other. But –’ here the Captain stared fixedly at Connolly ‘– in certain circumstances, after a fertility ceremonial, for example, they will eat human flesh. Like all members of primitive communities which are small numerically, the Nambikwara never bury their dead. Instead, they eat them, as a means of conserving the loss and to perpetuate the corporeal identity of the departed. Now do you understand?’
Connolly grimaced. ‘I’m glad to know now that I was about to be perpetuated.’
Pereira looked out at the campong. ‘Actually they would never eat a white man, to avoid defiling the tribe.’ He paused. ‘At least, so I’ve always believed. It’s strange, something seems to have . . . Listen, Lieutenant,’ he explained, ‘I can’t quite piece it together, but I’m convinced we should stay here for a few days longer. Various elements make me suspicious, I’m sure Ryker is hiding something. That mound where you were lost is a sort of sacred tumulus, the way the Indians were looking at your instrument made me certain that they’d seen something like it before – perhaps a panel with many flickering dials . . . ?’
‘The Goliath 7?’ Connolly shook his head sceptically. He listened to the undertow of the river drumming dimly against the keel of the launch. ‘I doubt it, Captain. I’d like to believe you, but for some reason it doesn’t seem very likely.’
‘I agree. Some other explanation is preferable. But what? The Indians were squatting on that hill, waiting for someone to arrive. What else could your monitor have reminded them of?’
‘Ryker’s clock?’ Connolly suggested. ‘They may regard it as a sort of ju-ju object, like a magical toy.’
‘No,’ Pereira said categorically. ‘These Indians are highly pragmatic, they’re not impressed by useless toys. For them to be deterred from killing you means that the equipment you carried possessed some very real, down-to-earth power. Look, suppose the capsule did land here and was secretly buried by Ryker, and that in some way the clocks help him to identify its whereabouts –’ here Pereira shrugged hopefully ‘– it’s just possible.’
The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard Page 66