Sunbird (18 page)

For the last three days of my visit I spent every minute at the Institute. With relief I found that not much had suffered in my absence, and my multitudinous staff had kept things running smoothly.

The bushman exhibition in the Kalahari Room was completed, and open to the public. It was magnificently executed, and the central figure of the main group reminded me sharply of my little friend Xhai. The model was depicted in the act of painting on the stone wall of a cave abode. With his stoppered buck-horn paint pots, and reed pipes and brushes, I imagined that this was how the artist who had painted my white king had worked. It gave me an odd sensation, as though two millennia had rolled away, as though I could send my mind back along the years. I spoke of it to Timothy Mageba.

'Yes, Machane. I have told you before that you and I are marked. We have the sign of the spirits on us, and we have the sight.'

I smiled and shook my head. 'I don't know about you, Timothy, but I've never been able to pick a winner--'

'I am serious, Doctor,' Timothy rebuked me. You have the gift. It is merely that you have not been taught to develop it.'

I will accept hypnotism, but talk of clairvoyance, necromancy, mantology and the like leaves me feeling embarrassed. To divert the conversation from me and my gifts, I asked, 'You have told me before that you are also marked by the spirits...'

Timothy looked at me steadily from out of those disturbing black eyes. At first I thought I had insulted him by my thinly disguised question, but suddenly he nodded that cannon-ball head. He stood up, closed and locked the door of his office before returning to his seat. Quickly he stripped shoe and sock from his right foot, and showed it to me.

The deformity was shocking, although I had seen photographs of it before. It was of fairly common occurrence among the Batonga tribe of the Zambezi Valley. There had been a paper on it published in the British Medical Journal during 1969. The condition was known as 'ostrich-foot', and consisted of a massive division between the metatarsus of the big toe and the second toe. The effect was to make the foot resemble the claw of an ostrich or predatory bird. Timothy was obviously very sensitive about this deformity, and almost immediately replaced his sock and shoe. I realized later that he had shown it to me in a deliberate attempt to enlist my sympathy, to create a bond between us.

'Both feet?' I asked, and he nodded. 'There are many people in the Zambezi Valley with feet like that,' I told him.

'My mother was a Batonga woman,' he answered. 'It was this mark that qualified me for training in the mysteries.'

'Does it hinder you at all?' I asked.

'No,' he answered brusquely, and then went on almost defiantly in Batonga, 'We men of the cloven feet outrun the fleetest antelope.'

It was a beneficial mutation then, and I would have enjoyed discussing it further but I was warned by Timothy's expression. I realized the effort it had taken him to show me.

'Will you have some tea. Doctor?' He reverted to English, closing the subject. When one of his young African assistants had poured cups of strong black tea for us, Timothy asked, 'Please tell me how the work at the City of the Moon is progressing, Doctor.'

We chatted for another half hour, then I left him.

'You must excuse me now, Timothy. I am flying back tomorrow morning early and there is still much to do.'

I was awakened by a soft but insistent knocking on the door of my suite in the Institute. I switched on the bedside light and saw that the time was three o'clock in the morning.

'Who is there?' I called and the knocking stopped. I slipped out of bed, shrugged into a dressing-gown and slippers, and started for the front door, when I realized the risk I was taking. I went back to my bedroom and took the big ugly automatic .45 from the drawer. Feeling a little melodramatic, I pumped a round into the chamber and went back to the front door.

'Who is it?' I repeated.

'It's me. Doctor. Timothy!'

I hesitated a moment longer - anybody could call themselves Timothy.

'Are you alone?' I asked in Kalahari bushman.

'I am alone, Sunbird,' he answered in the same language, and I slipped the pistol into my pocket and opened the door.

Timothy was dressed in dark blue slacks and a white shirt with a windcheater thrown over his shoulders and I noticed immediately that there were spots of fresh blood on the shirt and that there was a rather grubby cloth wrapped around his left forearm. He was clearly much agitated, his eyes wide and staring in the light, and his movements jerky and nervous.

'Good God, Timothy, are you all right?'

'I've had a terrible night, Doctor. I had to see you right away.'

'What have you done to your arm?'

'I cut it on the window pane of my front door, I fell in the dark,' he explained.

'You'd better let me have a look at it.' I went towards him.

'No, Doctor. It's only a scratch What I have come to tell you is more important.'

'Sit down at least,' I told him. 'Can I get you a drink?'

'A drink, thank you, Machane, as you can see I am upset and nervous. That is how I came to injure my arm.'

I poured both of us whisky, and he took his glass in his right hand and continued moving nervously around my sitting-room while I sat in one of the big leather armchairs.

'What is it, Timothy?' I prompted him.

'It is difficult to begin, Machane, for you are not a believer. But I must convince you.'

He broke off and drank whisky, before turning to face me.

'Yesterday evening we spoke at length about the City of the Moon. Doctor, you told me how there are mysteries there that still baffle you.'

'Yes.' I nodded encouragement.

'The burial grounds of the ancients,' Timothy went on 'You cannot find them.'

'That is true, Timothy.'

'Since then I have thought heavily on this matter.' He changed into Venda, a language better suited for the discussion of the occult. 'I went back in my memory over all the legends of our people.' I imagined vividly how he must have thrown himself into hypnotic trance to search. 'And there was something there, like a shadow beyond the firelight, a dark memory that eluded me.' He shook his head and turned away, pacing restlessly, sipping at his drink, muttering softly to himself as though he still searched in the dark archives of his mind.

'It was no use, Doctor. I knew it was there, but I could not grasp it. I despaired of it, and at last I slept. But it was a sleep greatly troubled by the dream demons - until at last...' he hesitated, '... my grandfather came to me.'

I stirred uneasily in my chair. Timothy's grandfather had lain twenty-five years in a murderer's grave.

'All right. Doctor.' Timothy saw my small movement of disbelief, and changed smoothly to English. 'I know you do not believe such things can happen. Let me explain it in terms you can accept. My imagination, heated by my search for a long-forgotten fragment of knowledge, threw up a dream image of my grandfather. The one from whom the knowledge was learned in the first place.'

I smiled to cover my spooky feelings; at this time of night with this half-demented black man talking of dark things, I felt myself falling under his spell.

'Go on, Timothy.' I tried to say it lightly, but my voice croaked a little.

'My grandfather came to me, and he touched my shoulder and he said. "Go with the blessed one, to the Hills of Blood and there I will make the mysteries known to you and open up the secret places."'

I felt my skin prickle. Timothy had said 'The Hills of Blood', and nobody had told him that name.

'The Hills of Blood,' I repeated.

That is the name he used,' Timothy agreed. 'I can only believe he meant your City of the Moon.'

I was silent; reasonable man at war with primitive superstitious man within me.

'You want to come with me tomorrow, Timothy?' I asked.

'I will go with you,' Timothy agreed. 'And perhaps I will be able to show you something for which you search - then again I may not be able to.'

There was certainly nothing to lose. Timothy was obviously sincere, he was still tense and nervously aware.

'I have already invited you to join me, Timothy, and I was very disappointed when you refused. Of course you may come with me - we can certainly see if the sight of the ruins stirs something in your memory.'

'Thank you, Doctor. What time will you leave?'

I glanced at my watch.

'Good Lord, it's four o'clock already. We will leave at six.'

'Then I must hurry home and pack.' Timothy replaced his glass on my cabinet, then he turned to me. 'There is a small snag, Doctor. My travel papers have expired and we will have to cross an international border into Botswana.'

'Oh, damn it,' I muttered, deeply disappointed. 'You will have to get them renewed and come up with me on the next trip.'

'As you wish, Doctor,' he agreed readily. 'Of course, it will take two or three weeks - and by then the whole thing might have faded from my memory.'

'Yes.' I nodded, but I felt a prick of temptation. I am usually a law-abiding person, but now as I thought about it I saw that no harm could come from what I intended. The chance that Timothy might lead me to the burial grounds of the ancients was worth any risk.

'Would you like to take a chance, Timothy?' I asked. Formalities concerned with the coming and going of Sturvesant aircraft had been reduced to a minimum. There were daily arrivals and departures, and a phone call to the airport authorities was all that was necessary before departure. The Sturvesant name carried such weight, that there was never a head count on arrival or departure. At the City of the Moon Louren had arranged special status with the Botswana Government, and we were virtually free from bothersome red tape.

I could have Timothy in and out within three days with nobody the wiser and no damage done. Roger van Deventer would accept my word that Louren had sanctioned the flight. I could see no problems.

'Very well, Doctor, if you think it's safe.' Timothy agreed to my proposal.

'Be at the Sturvesant hangar before six.' I sat down to scribble a note. 'If you are questioned at the airport gate, which I doubt, show them this. It's a note authorizing you to deliver goods to the Sturvesant hangar. Park your car behind the flight office, and wait for me in the office.'

Quickly we made our arrangements, and when I stood at the window of my bedroom and watched Timothy's old blue Chevy pull out of the Institute car park I felt a mixture of elation and apprehension. Idly I wondered what the penalty was for aiding illegal exit and entry, then dismissed the thought and went to make myself some coffee.

Timothy's Chevy was in one of the parking bays when Roger van Deventer and I drove up in the Mercedes. We went through into the hangar. The big sliding doors were open and the ground crew was readying the Dakota for the flight, and through the glass doors of the flight office I saw Timothy sitting hunched at the desk. He looked up and smiled at me.

'I'll get the clearance, Roger,' I suggested smoothly. 'You go and start the engines.'

'Okay, Doctor.' He handed me the flight dossier. We had done this before, and I had banked on the same procedure. Roger climbed up through the door of the fuselage, while I went quickly into the office.

'Hello, Timothy.' I looked at him and felt a twinge of concern. He was huddled into his blue windcheater, and there were lines of pain cut into his forehead and the corners of his nostrils. His skin was grey and his lips pale purplish blue. 'Are you all right?'