Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers

by Wilbur Smith

  In the middle of the afternoon it began to rain, one of those solid downpours that were a daily occurrence. The heavy drops falling thick and heavy as stones upon the upper galleries of the forest roared like a distant river in spare. Had it fallen on bare earth with such force, it would have ripped away the topsoil and raked deep scars, washed out plains and scoured the hillsides, flooding the rivers and wreaking untold harm.

  In the forest the top galleries of the trees broke the force of the storm, cushioning the gouts of water, gathering them up and redirecting them down the trunks of the great trees, scattering them benevolently across the thick carpet of dead leaves and mould, so that the earth was able to absorb and restrain the rain’s malevolent power. The rivers and streams, instead of becoming muddied by the torn earth and choked by uprooted trees, still ran sweet and crystal clear.

  As the rain sifted down softly upon her, Kelly slipped off her cotton shirt and placed it in one of the waterproof pockets of her pack. The straps would cut into her bare shoulders so she rigged the headband around her forehead and kept her arms clear as the pygmy women do. She went on, not bothering to take shelter from the blood-warm rain.

  Now she was bare-chested, wearing only a brief pair of cotton shorts and her canvas running shoes. Minimal dress was the natural forest way. The Bambuti wore only a loincloth of beaten bark.

  When the first Belgian missionaries had discovered the Bambuti, they had been outraged by their nakedness and sent to Brussels for dresses and jackets and calico breeches, all in children’s sizes, which they forced them to wear. In the humidity of the forest these clothes were always damp and unhealthy and the pygmies for the first time had suffered from pneumonia and other respiratory complaints.

  After the constraints of city life, it felt good to be half-naked and free. Kelly delighted in the rain upon her body. Her skin was clear and creamy white, almost luminous in the soft green light and her small taut breasts joggled elastically to her stride.

  She moved swiftly, foraging as she went, hardly pausing as she gathered up a scattering of mushrooms with glossy domed heads and brilliant orange gills. These were the most delicious of the thirty-odd edible varieties. On the other hand there were fifty or more inedible varieties, a few of which were virulently toxic, dealing certain death within hours of a single mouthful.

  The rain ceased but the trees still dripped.

  Once she stopped and traced a slim vine down the trunk of a mahogany tree. She dug its pure white roots out of the rainsoaked leaf mould with a few strokes of her digging-stick. The roots were sweet as sugar cane and crunched scrumptiously as she chewed them. They were nutritious and filled her with energy.

  The green shadows crowded closer as the day died away and the light faded. She looked for a place to camp. She did not want to be bothered with having to build a waterproof hut for herself, the hollow at the base of one of the giant tree-trunks would do admirably as a hearth for a single night. Her feet still rustled through the dead leaves, even though they were now dampened. Suddenly there was an explosive sound, a rush of air under pressure like a burst motor-car tyre, only ten feet or so ahead of her. It was one of the most terrifying sounds in the forest, worse than the bellow of an angry buffalo or the roaring grunt of one of the huge black boars. Kelly leaped involuntarily backwards, from a steady run she rose two feet in the air and landed as far as that back in her own tracks.

  Her hand was shaking as she flicked the headband off her forehead and dropped the backpack to the leafy floor. In the same movement she dipped into one of the pockets and brought out her slingshot. Because of her slingshot the Bambuti had given her the name Baby Archer.

  Though they mocked her merrily, they were really impressed by her skill with the weapon. Even old Sepoo had never been able to master it, though Kelly had tutored him repeatedly. In the end he had abandoned the effort with a haughty declaration that the bow and arrow were the only real weapons for a hunter, and that this silly little thing was only suitable for children and babies. So she had become Baby Archer, KaraKi.

  With one quick motion she slipped the brace over her wrist and drew the heavy surgical elastic bands to her right ear. The missile was a steel ball-bearing.

  On the forest floor ahead of her something moved. It looked like a pile of dead leaves or an Afghan rug patterned in the colours. of the forest, golds and ochres and soft mauves, striped and starred with diamonds and arrowheads of black that tricked the eye. Kelly knew that what seemed to be an amorphous mass was in reality a serpentine body, coiled upon itself, each coil as thick as her calf, but laced and camouflaged with cunning and seductive colour. The gaboon adder is, except for the mamba, Africa’s most venomous snake.

  In the centre of this coiled pyramid of body, the head was drawn back like a nocked arrow upon the bend of the neck. The head was pig-snouted, flattened and scaled, the eyes were raised on horny protuberances, the colour and lucidity of precious topaz. The pupils were bright as jet and focused upon her. The whole head was bigger than both her fists held together. The feathery black tongue flicked from between the thin grinning lips.

  Kelly held her aim for only a fraction of a second and then let fly. The silver ball-bearing hummed as it flew, glinting like a drop of mercury in the soft green light. It struck the gaboon adder on the point of its snout and split its skull with such force that jets of blood spurted from the nostrils and the grotesque head was whipped over backwards. With one last explosive hiss the adder writhed into its death throes, the great coils of its body sliding and twisting over themselves, convulsing and contorting, exposing the pale belly latticed with diagonal scales.

  Kelly circled the adder cautiously, holding the pointed digging-stick at the ready. As the shattered head flopped clear she darted forward and pinned it to the earth. Holding it down with all her weight while the adder wound itself around the shaft, Kelly opened the blade of her claspknife with her small white teeth and with a single slash lopped off the snake’s head.

  She left the headless body to finish its last reflexive throes and looked around her for a campsite. There was a natural cave in the base of one of the tree-trunks nearby, a perfect night shelter.

  The Bambuti had never fathomed the art of making fire and the women carried a live coal with them when they moved from hunting-camp to hunting-camp, but Kelly flicked her plastic Bic lighter and within minutes she had a cheerful little fire burning at the base of the tree.

  She opened her pack and set up her camp. Then, armed with the digging-stick and claspknife, she returned to the carcass of the gaboon adder. It weighed almost ten kilos, far too much for her own needs. Already the red serowe ants had found it. Nothing lay long on the forest floor before the scavengers arrived.

  Kelly cut a thick section from the centre of the carcass, scraped the ants away, and skinned the portion with a few expert strokes. The meat was clean and white. She lifted two thick fillets from the bone and placed them over the coals of her fire on a skillet of green twigs.

  She scattered a few leaves from one of the herby bushes over the fire and the smoke flavoured and perfumed the flesh. While it grilled, she strung the, orange-gilled mushrooms on another green twig. Like a kebab she placed it on the fire, turning it regularly.

  The mushrooms had a richer fungus flavour than black truffles and the flesh of the adder tasted like a mixture of lobster and milk-fed chicken. The exertions of the day had sharpened her appetite and Kelly could not remember a more delicious meal. She washed it down with sweet water from the stream nearby.

  During the night she was awakened by a loud snuffling and gulping close to where she lay in her tree-trunk shelter. She did not need to see to know what had disturbed her. The giant forest hog can weigh as much as 650 pounds and stand three feet high at the shoulder. These pigs, the largest and rarest in the world, are as dangerous as a lion when aroused.

  But Kelly felt no fear as she listened to it gobbling the remains of the adder’s carcass. When it was finished the pig came snuffling aro
und her camp, but she tossed a few twigs on the coals and when they flared up the pig grunted hoarsely and shambled away into the forest.

  In the morning she bathed in the stream and combed out her hair and replaited it while it was still wet into a thick dark glistening braid that hung down her naked back. She ate the rest of last night’s adder steak and mushrooms cold and was on her way again as soon as it was light enough.

  Although she had a compass in her pack, she navigated chiefly by the fungus plates and the serowe ant nests, which were attached only to the southern side of the tree-trunks, and by the flow and direction of the streams she crossed.

  In the middle of the afternoon she-cut the well-defined trail she was searching for, and turned to follow it in a southwesterly direction. Within the hour she recognized a landmark, a natural bridge across one of the streams formed by the massive trunk of an ancient tree that had fallen across the water-course.

  Sepoo had told her once that the tree bridge had been there since the beginning of time, which meant in his living memory. Time and numbers were not concrete concepts in the pygmy mind. They counted one, two, three, many. In the forest where the seasons made no difference to the rainfall or temperature, they regulated their lives on the phases of the moon, and moved from one camp to the next every full moon. Thus they never stayed long enough at one site to deplete the game or the fruits in the area, or to pollute the streams and sour the earth with their wastes.

  The tree bridge was polished by generations of their tiny feet and Kelly inspected it minutely for fresh muddy tracks to judge how recently it had been used. She was disappointed and hurried on to the campsite nearby where she had hoped to find them. They were gone, but judging by the sign, this had been their last camp, they would have moved weeks previously at the full moon.

  There were three or four other localities where they might be at this moment, the furthest almost a hundred miles away towards the heartland of the vast area which Sepoo’s tribe looked upon as their own. However, there was no telling which direction they had chosen. Like all tribal decisions, it would have been made at the last moment by a heated and lively debate in which all joined with equal voice.

  Kelly smiled as she guessed how the argument had probably been resolved. She had seen it so often. One of the women, not necessarily the eldest or most senior, fed up with the silliness and obstinacy of the men, not least that of her own husband, would suddenly have picked up her bundle, adjusted her headband, bowed forward to balance the weight, and trotted off down the trail. The others, many of them still grumbling, would have followed her in a straggling line.

  In the Bambuti community there were no chiefs or leaders. Every adult male or female of whatever age had equal voice and weight. Only in a few matters such as when and where to spread the hunting-nets, the younger members would probably defer to the experience of one of the famous older hunters, but only after suitable face-saving argument and discussion.

  Kelly looked around the deserted campsite and was amused to see what the tribe had abandoned. There were a wooden pestle and mortar used for pounding manioc, a fine steel mattock, a disembowelled transistor radio and various other items obviously purloined from the villages along the road. She was certain that the Bambuti were the least material people on earth. Possessions meant almost nothing to them, and after the fun of stealing them faded, they swiftly lost interest in them. Too heavy to carry, they explained to Kelly when she asked. We can always borrow another one from the wazungu, if we need one. Their eyes danced at the prospect, and they screamed with laughter and slapped each other on the back.

  The only possessions they treasured enough to keep and hand down to their children were the hunting-nets of woven bark. Each family had a hundredfoot length which they strung together with all the others to make the long communal net.

  The game was shared, with all the usual vehement debate, according to a time-honoured system amongst all those who had participated in the hunt.

  Living within the bounty of the forest they had no need to accumulate wealth. Their clothing of bark-cloth could be renewed with a few hours work, stripping and beating out the pith with a wooden mallet. Their weapons were disposable and renewable. The spear and the bow were whittled from hardwood and strung with bark fibre. The arrow and the spear were not even tipped with iron, but the points were simply hardened in the fire. The broad mongongo leaves roofed over their buts of arched saplings and a small fire gave them warmth and comfort in the night.

  The forest god gave them food in abundance, what need had they of other possessions? They were the only people Kelly had ever known who were completely satisfied with their lot, and this accounted for a great deal of their appeal.

  Kelly had been looking forward to being reunited with them and she was downcast at having missed them. Sitting on a log in the deserted camp that was so swiftly reverting to jungle, she considered her next move. It would be futile to try and guess in which direction they had gone, and foolhardy to try and follow them. Their tracks would long ago have been obliterated by rain and the passage of other forest creatures, and she knew only this relatively small area of the forest with any certainty.

  There were twenty thousand square. miles out there that she had never seen and where she might lose herself for ever. She must give up trying to find them, and go on to her own base camp at Gondola, the place of the happy elephant. In time the Bambuti would find her there and she must be patient.

  She sat a little longer and listened to the forest. It seemed at first to be a silent lonely place. Only when the ear had learned to hear beyond the quiet did one realise that the forest was always filled with living sound. The orchestra of the insects played an eternal background music, the hum and reverberation like softly stroked violins, the click and clatter like tiny castanets, the wails and whine and buzz like the wind instruments.

  From the high upper galleries the birds called and sang and the monkeys crashed from branch to branch or [owed mournfully to the open sky, while on the leaf-strewn floor the dwarf antelope scuttled and scampered furtively. Now when Kelly listened more intently still, she thought she heard far away and very faintly the clear whistle from high in the trees that old Sepoo solemnly swore was the crested chameleon announcing that the hives were overflowing and the honey season had begun.

  Kelly smiled and stood up. She knew as a biologist that chameleons could not whistle. And yet … She smiled again, settled her pack and stepped back on to the dim trail and went on towards Gondola. More and more frequently there were landmarks and signposts she recognized along the trail, the shape of certain tree-trunks and the juncture of trails, a sandbank at a river crossing and blazes on the tree-trunks which she had cut long ago with her machete. She was getting closer and closer to home.

  At a turning in the trail she came suddenly upon a steaming pile of yellow dung, as high as her knee. She looked about eagerly for the elephant that had dropped it, but already it had, disappeared like a grey shadow into the trees. She wondered if it might be the Old Man with One Ear, a heavily tusked bull elephant that was often in the forest around Gondola.

  Once the elephant. herds had roamed the open savannah, along the shores of the lake and in the Lada Enclave to the north of the forest. However, a century of ruthless persecution, first by the old Arab slavers and their minions armed with muzzle-loading black powder guns and then by the European sportsmen and ivory-hunters with their deadly rifled weapons had decimated the herds and driven the survivors into the fastness of the forest.

  It gave Kelly a deep sense of satisfaction to know that, although she seldom saw them, she shared the forest with those great sagacious beasts, and that her home was named after one of them.

  At the next stream she paused to bathe and comb her hair and don her Tshirt. She would be home in a few hours. She had just tied the thong in her braid and put away her comb when she chilled to a new sound, fierce and menacing. She came to her feet and seized her digging-stick. The sound came again, the hoarse
sawing that roughened her nerves like sandpaper, and she felt her pulse accelerate and her breath come short.

  It was unusual to hear a leopard call in daylight. The spotted cat was a creature of the night, but anything unusual in the forest was to be treated with caution. The leopard called again, a little closer, almost directly upstream on the bank of the river, and Kelly cocked her head to listen. There was something odd about this leopard. A suspicion flitted across her mind, and she waited, crouching, holding the sharpened digging-stick ready. There was a long silence.

  All the forest was listening to the leopard, and then it called again, that terrible ripping sound. it was on the riverbank above her, not more than fifty feet from where she crouched. This time, listening to the call, Kelly’s suspicion became certainty.

  With a blood-curdling scream of her own, she launched herself at the creature’s hiding-place brandishing her pointed stick. There was a sudden commotion amongst the lotus leaves on the bank and a small figure darted out and scampered away. Kelly took a full round-armed swing with her stick and caught it a resounding crack on bare brown buttocks.

  There was an anguished bowl. “You wicked old man!” Kelly yelled, and swung again. “You tried to frighten me.” She missed as the pixie figure leaped over a bush ahead of her and took refuge behind it. “You cruel little devil.” She hounded him out of the bush, and he darted around the side, shrieking with mock terror and laughter. “I’ll beat your backside blue as a baboon’s,” Kelly threatened, her stick swishing, and they went twice round the bush, the small figure dancing and ducking just out of range.

  They were both laughing now. “Sepoo, you little monster, I shall never forgive you!” Kelly choked on her laughter.

  “I am not Sepoo. I am a leopard.” He staggered with mirth and she nearly caught him. He made a spurt to keep just out of range and squealed merrily. In the end she had to give up and lean, exhausted with laughter, on her stick. Sepoo fell down in the leaves and beat his own belly and hiccuped and rolled over and hugged his knees and laughed until the tears poured down his cheeks and ran into the wrinkles and were channelled back behind his ears.