Peter Dickinson - The Poison Oracle

The buzzer sounded as soon as she broke the beam to the photo-electric cell. The prince laughed. She looked back and Morris made the “Go” gesture again. With a nervous leap she was gone

“She is not take?” asked the prince.

“No, she will not take anything. But please will you give her a few of the grapes when she comes back?”

“I give,” asserted the prince, “. . . a few.”

Morris smiled. The boy was his father’s son, in his quick calculation of the possible profits of generosity. Dinah emerged with the stalk of a bunch of grapes clenched in her fist and offered them to Morris, who had the negative red circle ready and showed it to her. She sniffed again at the message on the coffee-table, frowning; then, with the same hesitation and doubt she often showed in the early stages of learning a new skill, she offered them to the prince. He carefully broke off a twig of grapes and handed them to her. She smacked her lips and leaped for her nest with them.

Morris got up and stopped the buzzer. For a moment he thought there was something wrong with his ears, but the prince, too, was frowning and staring at the ceiling.

“Aeroplane!” he said, first in Arabic and then in English. “Big!” he added after a few seconds.

Morris nodded. Q’Kut was not on any conceivable route from anywhere to anywhere. The air-strip’s only users were the Sultan’s executive jet and the old Dakota that flew in such luxuries as grapes and apes. The sweating Italians who manned the oil-derricks, up in the hills on the far side of the marshes, had their own strip, but by the sound of it this plane was aiming to land here. Already the prince was crouched against the window, craning for a sight of it.

“Lo!” he squeaked in Arabic. “See! See! See!” he added in English.

Morris strolled over, uneasy, but could see nothing because of the overhang of the floor above. He knelt to bring himself to the prince’s level and immediately saw the big red and blue plane whining away with flaps down and black smoke streaking from its four jets. The prince bounced with the thrill of it.

“Am coming!” he squeaked.

“It is coming. I hope to God not. The strip’s too short.”

But the wings tilted sharply. Now the plane was curving towards the south, showing all its upper half to the glare of the sun; the curve tightened and the gap between the machine and the marshes grew less and less. Now, by sleight-of-air, the plane seemed to vanish for several seconds as it pointed straight towards the palace; and now it was a slant dark line in the wavering sky, jerking among the erratic thermals. At last the pilot levelled for the runway.

“Christ!” said Morris, “he’ll never make it! Those things need thousands of feet!”

Burnt rubber smoked behind the braking wheels. Some of the tyres seemed to be tearing themselves into strips. The huge plane hurtled down the concrete towards the dunes, bucketing as the pilot fought to hold it steady. A wing tip almost touched the ground. The plane slewed, still doing about eighty mph. When it was sideways on half the undercarriage collapsed, but the machine went sliding along the concrete. The blind, tiny panes of the flight deck smashed all together, blasted out by an inexplicable small explosion. The prince squealed. Morris shut his eyes, though he knew flames would be invisible in that sunlight.

The telephone rang.

Morris opened his eyes again and stared at the scene. The plane lay still, thirty yards from the end of the runway, with its tail towards the dunes and its near wing resting on the concrete. Still no flames. The symbol of the rising sun stared from the tall tail fin. The telephone was still ringing, so he picked it up.

“Morris, old fellow?”

“Yes, it’s me. What the hell was all that about?”

“A slight emergency. I need your help. Would you be kind enough to go down to the runway and greet any survivors?”

“Survivors?”

“Some buffoon was sitting in the cockpit with a live grenade in his hand, but it looks as if he dropped it in the landing. There ought to be somebody alive in the cabin, though, so I’d be terribly grateful if you . . .”

“Me?”

“Pick up a walkie-talkie as you go and tune in on channel A. We had radio contact with them, but its gone dead. The thing is, old fellow, that this is one of those hijack jobs—Palestinians, but they made a mess of it.”

“I’m a zoo-keeper, dammit!”

“By this word we, Pacific Sultan of Q’Kut, Lord of the Marshlands, etc, etc, appoint our trusty and well-beloved companion Wesley Naboth Morris to the office and privileges of Foreign Minister of Q’Kut, for such period as shall please us. Thanks be to Allah!”

“Balls.”

“Look, Morris, I need you. It’s got to be someone who speaks Japanese, for a start. And someone I can trust, to go on with. You won’t need to take any decisions—I’ll be on Channel A.”

“Something’s happening.”

The emergency door at the root of the tilted wing opened, and a figure walked precariously out and down the slope.

“There are survivors, you see,” said the Sultan softly. “Carry on, Morris—Dyal and I will have you covered from here. Don’t get out of sight.”

“Oh, all right,” said Morris.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to walk. Before the radio went dead they said just one man, on foot, to meet them.”

“What! In this sun!”

“Take a brolly-man. He won’t count.”

“Oh, all right! ”

Morris snapped the phone down. He found it hard to compose himself enough to explain in courteous Arabic to the prince that their lesson must be postponed. Before he had finished that Dinah chattered nervously at him from her nest, and he realised that he hadn’t time to dispose of her. He’d have to take her along. He clicked, and she came rushing over. Thoughtlessly, as if for reassurance in this daunting and unwelcome task, he took her hand and led her out.

3

Sweat streamed in prickling rivulets all down Morris’s skin. He walked slowly, to lessen the risk of heat-stroke and allow for the pace of the brolly-man behind him. His sunglasses were not quite big enough to eliminate all the glare from the side. He felt a fool, and frightened.

“Testing, testing, one two three four,” he said.

“My dear fellow, I know you can count,” hissed the expensive gadget in his shirt pocket. “I’ve got her bang in my sights. By Jove, that’s what I call a figure!”

The walkie-talkie smacked its metal lips. Warily Morris peered across the concrete furnace—he still had a hundred yards to go. He wished that the hijackers had allowed him to come in a car—the bullet-proof one would have done fine. The girl posed on the wing had a nasty-looking gun at her hip, which distracted Morris’s attention from what the Sultan considered her finer points. She was dark-haired and brown-skinned, slim in her blouse and jeans. Visor-like sunglasses hid her eyes, but her nose had a hawkish look. Her stance was tired but confident, quite different from the deflated exhaustion of the dozen people who stood grouped before her on the concrete, covered by her gun.

Dinah whimpered and tugged at Morris’s hand to be carried. It was too hot for that—but then he realised how the concrete must be burning her feet and picked her up. She clung to his side, shading her eyes against the glare.

“Stop,” called the girl in Arabic. “That is near enough.”

She had the words right, but her accent was appalling. She called again as Morris came on and waved the gun his way. Then she tried French, which she spoke even worse. Morris became more confident as he approached. It was too hot to shout over distances.

“I insist that you stop,” she said suddenly in perfectly good English, clipped and officer-like.