Geoffrey Jenkins - The River of Diamonds

It was scantier in the morning.

I was aroused by an urgent, hysterical note in Johaar's voice.

The half-gallon jar was cracked, frozen from the bitter night. There were chunks of ice left, but most of it had been lost. We gathered the precious pieces together and thawed them in empty cans, carefully pouring the food-tainted liquid into my two canteens. Koeltas had one bottle left. During our wretched, silent breakfast the Bells sounded softly. Koeltas's eyes were staring. A day lying around under the scourge of the sun would send them both round the bend.

'Kulunga!' muttered Johaar. 'Kulunga comes!'

'Pull yourself together!' I said sharply. 'Who the hell is Kulunga anyway?'

'He walks among us, but you don't see him,' he replied, as if glad to get it off his chest. 'Man-god. He has two baskets. One has the good things, the other death. Kulunga comes here.'

'Rubbish!'I replied.

'No,' he went on seriously. 'Kulunga kills, or I kill Kulunga.' He took out his big knife and looked round 'Maybe Shelborne is Kulunga.'

There was no use trying to rationalize his primitive fear. 'Listen,' I told him and Koeltas. 'We can make out for two days more with the water we have. It will take us every bit of that to reach the sea. We trek — now!'

The bolt snapped shut and he pointed the Remington at me from where he sat, cross-legged, not six feet away. 'We go on,' he snarled. 'If we go back, the Bells will kill us. Maybe ahead we find water. Maybe not. We die anyway. But better die away from the Bells.'

I looked at the hard, closed slits of eyes and at the rifle. Two days! That would take us, going hard, to Uri-Hauchab. Or almost. If I was right about the ancient river and the lift of the land, its underlying bedrock might have been cupped at the mountains into a lake or a dam… Shelborne had lived for a year in the desert — among the wild peaks of Uri-Hauchab he might have found water and game…

I replied, 'It suits me to go on. But I don't like doing things at gunpoint, see. I don't want a couple of lily-livered yellow bastards hanging like a stone round my neck in a tough spot like this.'

Koeltas was dispassionate. 'Mister, if I shoot you, Johaar and I have more water. No one will know. No one will find you. No one come to look for you.' Shelborne might have used the same logic about Caldwell.

'Rhennin will send a helicopter to bring me out,' I bluffed. Shoot me, and they'll take you back and hang you.'

He didn't smile, but the muscles jerked along the line of his cruel lips and high cheekbones. He went on grudgingly, 'I'd like to shoot you for the water, mister. But you're as tough and as slim as a Richtersveld goat and maybe you bring us alive out of this, huh?

'I haven't any intention of dying,' I said tersely. 'Right, let's trek then. Beyond Strandloper's Water we'll pick up the course of the river…'

Johaar was on his feet. 'Kulunga!' he mouthed. 'Kulunga!' He pointed to the dunes high above.

I swung round in time to catch the helio flash. It was gone in a split second. The dunes were empty.

'Kulunga comes!' he raved. 'I go and kill Kulunga!'

I grabbed him by the shoulder, but he brushed me aside. Knife in hand, he started across the river-bed.

'Johaar!' I yelled, following him. 'Come back, you bloody fool! There's nothing there! A bit of bright quartz, that's all…'

I stumbled and fell. Koeltas was beside me. Johaar was on his way to the nearest defile.

'He sees spooks,' said Koeltas casually. 'Let him go — more water for us.'

'He's crazy! He'll die in a couple of hours out there…'

'Look how the spook gives him strength,' said Koeltas nonchalantly. Johaar moved at speed across the last patches of river-bed before entering the wadi. 'First it burns him up and then it kills him! Let him go!'

'I won't leave a man to die,' I replied. 'Fair enough, let him chase things in his own mind. He'll drop soon — I'll go and bring him in.'

He looked at me with a curious sadness, as if I were a child. Then he shrugged. 'We wait today, drink no water. Tonight we follow his tracks.'

Johaar was dead when we found him after moonrise, maybe a mile and a half away. His tracks were clear. He hadn't died of thirst or sunstroke.

His own knife stood out between his shoulder-blades.

Koeltas rolled him over and pointed to the gaping mouth. The lips were ringed with scum. 'He fight — look! They fight here.' The sand was stamped and disturbed. He said something in patois which I didn't understand. It might have been a prayer or an epitaph. But there was fear in his eyes. 'Johaar was very strong. To kill Johaar, a man must be stronger.' He spat. 'That bastard Shelborne!'

His fear was infectious. My recollection of the resonant, educated voice made the killing at my feet more hideous.

'We trek,' I said harshly.

Fatalism was mixed with the little Hottentot's terror. 'He watches us. Maybe we see him.' He lifted the rifle expressively. A man could be behind the next dune and we would not see him.

We saw the helio of light, the sharp flash of reflected sun, from a dune-top next morning after a hard night's march. We must have put nearly ten miles between ourselves and Strandloper's Water. The terrain became more broken. Sand-blasted, wind-eroded hills began to show among the dunes. What was Shelborne — for now I was sure it was Shelborne — carrying which reflected the sun? He wasn't careless or unwise enough to advertize his position.

'Not a gun,' said Koeltas decisively. Too much light.'

There was no sign of water. When we drank sparsely and ate some of our unpalatable food, I realized that we had travelled beyond the point of no return. Our water would never bring us back to Mercury. Our best — and only — hope was to continue. By noon we were unable to stumble on. There was no shade; the banks were too low for it. We pulled the sleeping-bags loose over our heads for protection. Soon, the sand was damp with my sweat and my temples were throbbing. All afternoon the sun sapped our strength, striking through the fabric. When it sank and the first of the night's frightening chill struck, I pulled on my thick sweater, climbed into the bag, and fell into a sleep of utter exhaustion.

I woke after midnight, frozen, hungry, uneasy. I reached out my hand for my water-bottle. It wasn't there. Panic gripped me. I started upright, but Koeltas hadn't made off — his head was jutting out of his bag. Between us lay a battered water-bottle, its rough brown cloth covering almost worn off, the aluminium showing through dully. A trickle of icy fear ran through me. Someone had stolen our water! I reached out for the old bottle. It was heavy, full. A scrap of paper was stuck through the chafed strap. By matchlight I read: John, follow my tracks. I must speak to you alone. Johaar came for me and I had to kill him. So leave Koeltas and the gun when you come. Fred Shelborne.

John! I smiled grimly. A nice familiar approach when you were trying to lure someone away from the protection of a rifle! I weighed the water-bottle in my hand. The most precious bribe added — water. I drew the cork with my teeth. It tasted good, a little sandy. It wasn't Mercury water. I wasn't fool enough to fall for that sort of blandishment. If Shelborne had anything to say, let him come to us. Koeltas and I would stick together, close together, from now on.

Before dawn we trekked.

It was common Gestapo torture to take a man out of boiling water, and plunge him in ice up to his neck. But our next three days were every bit as excruciating. The blaze of the sun was too much for our ebbing strength and our treks were made at night. The nightmare became more substantial as the light waned insubstantial; there were times when I wavered between a detached, somnambulistic stumble through the red-hot grieshoch of sand and an uncaring delirium. I threw away the compass, steering only at the twin spitskoppe peaks of Uri-Hauchab, bullet-shaped, scored like a dumdum bullet. They would fade to invisibility in the blackness before moon-rise, — when they did become visible I was unsure whether their wavering, uncertain outline was not a mirage. On two occasions we jerked from our stunned sleep to find our water-bottles full and a row of tracks running into the dunes, but there were no more notes from Shelborne. Koeltas saw his plan clearly, too, but we had no strength to stand sentry. He fired once at the unaccountable helio of light, but Shelborne was out of range and the clap of the shot fell sick against the sound-absorbing sand.