Rites of Passage (9 page)

I said, “What do we do when we get to the trench?”

Danny chewed on a mouthful of tough meat. “We stop.”

“But we don’t set up the rig, right?”

“Of course not. I don’t want her knowing anything about the rig. We stop the night and in the morning feign a mechanical fault. And if she doesn’t go on without us, then we know she wants something.”

“Skull?” Kat said.

“And maybe the rest of us,” Danny said in a low voice.

Five minutes later Skull emerged from his berth. I was waiting for his reaction when he saw the hovercraft, but evidently he was already aware of its presence. He said, “You see, she’s following us. She knows I’m here. Tonight, they’ll come across...” He seemed resigned to his fate, no longer angry.

Danny said, “You don’t know that. Anyway, the truck’s secure.”

Skull considered a reply, but merely nodded his acknowledgement of Danny’s words, grabbed his bowl of food and returned to his berth.

We finished the meal in uneasy silence.

~

L
ater I took my rifle outside, broke up the surface crust, and scooped myself a hollow in the sand beneath.

The hovercraft squatted a hundred metres away, an ugly beetle armoured in a patchwork of solar arrays. Evidently the crew had exited and were having a party on the far side of the vehicle. I heard the sound of drunken voices, raised in revelry.

I undressed and rubbed myself with sand, ridding myself of the day’s sweat and grime. I lay back and closed my eyes.

Minutes later a sound startled me. I opened my eyes. Someone had cracked a hatch on the flank of the hovercraft and was crossing the sand towards the truck. I judged I had no time to get dressed before they arrived, so instead reached out and grabbed the rifle.

Then I paddled a heap of sand onto my groin, covering myself.

I stared into the darkness, making out the figure as it emerged into the light falling from the lounge behind me, and I set aside the rifle.

Samara halted about three metres away, smiling down at me. She had discarded her shorts and blouse of earlier. Now she wore a thin white dress which hugged her chest, flanks and belly and flowed around her bare legs.

And there was something else about her, something I had not noticed on our first meeting. She smelled of flowers.

My heart banged like a faulty engine.

She moved closer and knelt, tossing a strand of dark hair from her face. Her scent almost overwhelmed me. “I saw someone out here. I thought it was you.”

I opened my mouth. I wanted to ask what she wanted, but no words came. I was very aware of how ridiculous I looked, torso and legs emerging from the hollow I’d dug in the sand.

She sat before me, cross-legged. “So I thought I’d come over, say hello.”

It struck me then that, unless she was a consummate actress, she was as nervous as I was. A catch in her voice, a hesitation in her gaze as it flicked from the sand to my upper torso.

The dress was low-cut, and I could not keep my eyes from the swelling of her breasts.

“You know, I get lonely, surrounded by...” she gestured over her shoulder with a long-fingered hand, “those animals.”

I said, “It must be...” I shrugged, “difficult to control them.”

She smiled. “Oh, I have my ways.” She wasn’t beautiful, nor really pretty, but when she smiled her face changed, became suddenly attractive. She shrugged, and the way her breasts moved...

I responded. The sand at my groin stirred, disturbed.

She saw it, reached out and took me.

I surged upright with a moan, and she lifted her dress, pushed me back onto the sand and straddled me. I closed my eyes as she eased herself around me, impossibly warm and fluid. I reached out, dug my fingers into her bottom as she rocked, leaning forward and pressing her breasts into my face.

Then it was over. I spasmed in ecstasy and cried aloud, then lay back in the cool sand as she gripped me and shook, her teeth biting the flesh of my shoulder.

I was near to tears. I thought back over the long, lonely years, the years of thwarted desire, of wondering if I would ever experience such intimacy.

She whispered something to me, then rolled off and pulled her dress down over her nakedness. Before I could protest, she stood and padded back to the hovercraft.

I stared into the storm ripped night sky. Beyond the hovercraft, her crew was still partying. A hot wind blew. It was like a hundred other nights, a thousand, I had experienced in the hell that was my world, and yet tonight I felt an elation beyond description.

I considered what Skull had said about her, and contrasted his words with what I had experienced. How could she be the evil woman that he claimed she was, when she gave herself like that, and parted with such words? It was her farewell which convinced me.

“Thank you,” she had whispered.

~

I
was woken in the early hours by a shout.

I sat up, listening. I heard the sound of a scuffle in the lounge, loud footsteps and something crashing to the floor. I pulled on my clothes and pushed open the door. I made out movement along the narrow corridor to the lounge.

In the dim light I saw half a dozen figures, and someone struggling in their midst.

I hurried along the corridor, regretting having stowed away my rifle in the locker.

I stopped dead when I came to the lounge.

Three individuals had Skull bound and gagged, and another three stood guard, armed with rifles. They faced Danny and Kat, who had just emerged from their room. Seconds later Edvard appeared.

One of the men saw me and gestured with his rifle. “Move. Join the others.”

The point of his weapon tracked me as I rounded the group and joined my friends. From this angle I could see more of Skull. He was on his knees, arms tied behind his back. A gag obscured the lower half of his face, but above it his eyes blazed with the anger of betrayal.

Kat clutched Danny’s arm, and I understood her fear. Too late, I knew we should have listened to Skull.

Calmly, Danny said, “What do you want?”

I looked around the faces of the men. Many I did not recognise from our meeting the day before; so evidently Samara had been lying when she claimed a crew of half a dozen.

One of the men, bigger and meaner looking than the others, nodded down to Skull. “We’ve got what we came for.”

I felt an almost incredulous relief – then checked myself. He must be lying, surely? They could kill us and ransack the truck, taking our water and provisions and laying claim to the vehicle itself.

A scrawny African looked around the lounge with evident disgust. “We’d as soon kill you all.” There were mutters of assent from those around him. “But
she
doesn’t want that. She said just take the bastard.” He grinned. “It’s your lucky day.”

Skull struggled, tried to say something. Someone cuffed him around the head. Their leader grunted in their language and they kicked open the hatch and left the lounge, dragging Skull with them.

As soon as they were gone, Kat hurried across the room and closed the door. The lock was smashed. “Don’t worry about it, Kat,” Edvard said. “I’ll fix it.”

We sat down around the table in silence. I think each of us felt pretty much the same mix of emotions: relief that we were still alive, a kind of retrospective dread of what
might
have become of us, and guilt as we thought back to the reassurances we had given Skull.

Eventually, Kat said, “So... what do we do?”

“We leave right now,” Danny said. “Head for the trench as first planned. Lose them. We were lucky, just now. Let’s not push that luck. Yes?”

He looked around at each of us. Edvard and Kat nodded their agreement.

“Pierre?”

I thought of Samara, the ecstasy I had experienced with her just hours ago. At last I nodded. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” I said.

Danny drove, Kat in the cab beside him. Edvard retired to his bunk in an attempt to catch some sleep. I tried to sleep, but visions of Samara’s body, and the look of terror in Skull’s eyes as he was dragged away, kept me awake.

I moved to the rear of the truck and looked out through the observation screen. The sun was coming up ahead of us, casting our long shadow far behind. As I stared, I made out the glinting, glimmering shape of Samara’s hovercraft, following steadily in our wake.

My stomach lurched with a sensation that was not wholly dread.

~

W
e made steady progress during the day, south-west towards the trench. The hovercraft tracked us all the way, a constant presence. I moved to the cab in the early afternoon. Danny glanced at me. “Still there?”

I nodded.

He eased the throttle forward gently and we accelerated. Kat slipped from the passenger seat and moved to the lounge. I sat beside Danny as we crawled over the sea-bed. Ahead, the sun was a blinding white explosion high above the horizon. All around us the sea-bed was barren, utterly lifeless.

Kat returned. “They’re still there, keeping pace.”

“What the hell do they want?” Danny muttered. “I mean, they could have taken everything we had back there.”

“Perhaps Samara was being truthful,” I said. “She wants us to travel together, for safety. And she just wanted Skull back, for her own reasons.” It sounded lame, even as I spoke the words.

Danny shook his head. “I don’t buy it. They want something.”

Two hours later, as the sun sank and ignited the horizon as if it were touch-paper, Danny signalled ahead. I made out, perhaps a kilometre before us, a dark irregularity in the sea-bed, a mere line widening as it ran away from us.

We had arrived at the eastern end of the sea-bottom trench. Danny slowed and veered so that we were travelling parallel to the widening rift.

“I reckon Tangiers is around a hundred kays south-west of here,” he said. “I’m going to stop here... and just pray that the bastards keep on going.”

He eased the truck to a halt beside the lip of the ridge. After the drone of the engine, the silence rang with its own eerie volume. We sat quietly as the truck ticked and cracked around us, and minutes later saw what we were secretly fearing.

To our left, the hovercraft moved into view, slowed and settled a couple of hundred metres from us.

Danny said, almost in a whisper, “I just hope Skull didn’t tell them about the rig.”

The idea filled me with dread. I stared out at the hovercraft’s array-encrusted carapace, expecting at any second a hatch to crack and Samara’s men to come pouring out.

After ten minutes, with no discernible movement from the vehicle, I began to breathe a little easier.

We ate the evening meal in silence: potatoes and spinach. As I ate, I wondered if Kat and Edvard had been unable to bring themselves to prepare Skull’s gift of meat. We hardly exchanged a word, and afterwards I moved to the hatch and peered through the window.

The hovercraft was a huge, domed shape in the darkness. Samara’s crew were partying again. They had lit a fire on the far side of the vehicle, and the flickering crimson illumination danced above the uneven crenellation of the solar-arrays.

I made a decision. I turned to where my friends were still seated. “I’m going over there. I want to talk to Samara, find out why they took Skull.”

Kat looked shocked. “I can’t let you go–”

“I... Samara won’t harm me,” I said. “I’ll try to get a promise from her, that her men won’t attack us.”

Kat made to protest further, but Danny laid a quick hand on hers, and nodded at me silently. Something in his gaze told me he was aware of what had passed between me and Samara the night before.

Edvard said, “If you’re going, then for God’s sake take this.” He moved to the weapon’s locker and withdrew a small pistol.

I hesitated, then nodded and tucked it into the band of my shorts.

I nodded and slipped from the truck. I stared across the dark expanse of sand to the hovercraft, my heart pounding. I was about to set off towards the vehicle when a door hinged open in its flank and a figure stepped out.

She stopped when she saw me, a hand still on the door.

I crossed the cooling sea-bed towards her.

I came within range of her heady scent and my senses reeled. She stroked my cheek. “I hoped you’d be out, Pierre. I was going to invite you over... It’ll be more comfortable here, yes?”

“What about...?” I gestured to the far side of the vehicle.

She smiled. “They’re having their fun, Pierre. We won’t be disturbed, okay?”

I could only nod, all thoughts of asking what had become of Skull forgotten.

She took me by the hand and led me into the hovercraft. We moved down a warren of tight corridors, past tiny stinking cubicles where her crew slept, and a rack containing the canisters of water we had traded with her. We ducked through a hatch into a larger chamber – evidently the engine room where the dangling leads of the solar arrays were coupled to banked generators.

Samara’s room was beyond this.

I stopped on the threshold and stared.

The room was twice the size of the lounge back at the truck, and sumptuous. A vast bed occupied the centre of the room. To the left was a small window, looking out onto the sea-bed. Through thin curtains I made out the flare of the fire and the sound of voices, loud and drunk.

Then I saw, in the far corner of the chamber, a clear perspex kiosk. I crossed to it, then turned to Samara with a question.

“A shower,” she said.

I repeated the word.

She smiled. “It’s a water shower,” she said.

I looked at her. “But how can you...?”

“I make sure we’re well supplied, Pierre. And of course it’s recycled after I’ve used it.”

I could hardly conceive of the luxury of having sufficient water to use for bathing.

She took my hand and pulled me towards the bed. We kissed. She reached behind her, unbuttoned her dress and let it fall. I stared like a fool as she rolled onto the bed and smiled up at me.

I pulled off my shirt and dropped my shorts. Samara laughed.

I reddened. “What?”

“I see that you have more than one weapon in there, Pierre.”