by Desmond Cory
Johnny nodded. The warm water cut into his palate as though it were acid, some magnificently cleansing acid. He allowed a few drops to trickle down his throat; then coughed as though to throw his lungs up.
“I wouldn’t go through that again,” said O’Brien defiantly, “not for ten thousand pounds. Not even if you threw the old Beechcraft in.”
“Ugh, ugh,” said Johnny.
“Take it easy. Give it time.” O’Brien took a deep breath to prove how easy it was, and promptly began to cough himself. “That ruddy sand was moving about a million miles an hour.”
“More,” said Johnny, “more. The van …”
“What about the van?”
“… Lucky thing we had it.”
“God, yes. Or we’d have been cooked geese by now. It was a pretty near thing as it was.”
Johnny, with a great effort, sat upright. Sand fell down from the openings of his shirt in a rustling, glistening stream. “I once saw a fellow who got caught in one of those things; caught without shelter, I mean. I kept thinking about it. All the time.”
“Hardly pretty, one supposes.”
“Not pretty at all. Takes the flesh right off your bones, in places. How are you feeling - all right?”
“No. Lousy. But no real damage done. And you?”
“About the same, I suppose.”
“We ought to get up,” said O’Brien, without very much conviction.
… They got up. They got up, in due course. They clung to the hot sides of the van for support, sides that had been stripped of their last vestiges of paint as cleanly as though by an acetylene flame, and from their new and giddy eminence, they surveyed what lay around them. It was not a very heartening sight.
“We’ll know better than to camp down in a valley next time,” said O’Brien. “It looks as if the higher ground got away much more lightly. Odd, that, when you come to think of it.”
“Don’t talk about next time. There isn’t going to be one.”
“Well, we didn’t really have much choice.”
They stood there forlornly, a khaki figure and an olive-green figure, and the derelict body of the van, alone in the midst of immensity. The desert, golden and shining, extended itself illimitably; broken only by the great curving backbones of rock formations that disturbed the surface like leaping dolphins. The sun beat down and down and down with an awful fervour.
“What the hell’s that?” asked Johnny eventually.
“What the hell’s what?”
“Don’t you hear a noise?”
O’Brien raised his head and listened. “No. What sort of a noise? … You’re imagining it.”
“Am I? … No, I don’t think so. It’s coming from …” Johnny scrutinised the sky, his hand pressed to his forehead. “I think it’s an aeroplane.”
They scanned the blue wastes above them expectantly, eyes crinkled against the glare of the sun, veins throbbing painfully within. Then:
“You’re right,” said O’Brien slowly. “It’s a helicopter.”
The pilot came slowly towards them; treading gingerly on the sand, as though he found it a curious and unfamiliar element. He wore khaki shorts and tunic, with blue R.A.F. shoulder-flashes. (“Squadron-Leader, by gum,” said O’Brien, as the other approached.) And closer inspection soon revealed him to be a fair-haired, sun-tanned man of about thirty-four; clean-shaven, mild-eyed, with a hint of nervous tension about his movements. “Name’s Revie,” he said, succinctly enough. “Having a spot of trouble?”
“Could put it that way if you liked,” said O’Brien.
“Um. Have an accident?”
“More or less.”
“And then the haboob?”
“Precisely.”
“Um,” said Squadron-Leader Revie. “Nasty,” he added, as an afterthought.
O’Brien made no comment. Nor did Johnny.
“Well, what’s the damage? Van’s written off, I see. But personal damage, I mean?”
“Johnny here’s broken his arm. Me, nothing to signify. Twisted my foot a bit, though; it’d be awkward if it came to a walk.”
“Well, it won’t come to that,” said Revie cheerfully. “Stow you both aboard and take you back to civilisation in two flips of a lamb’s tail. No problem there. All the same - how did you come to wrap your van up like that, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Damnedest thing. Something hit us.”
“Hit you?
“Yes. Some freak … meteorite or something. I don’t know. You can see the mark where it lit, right up there behind you.”
Revie turned, and surveyed the slopes behind him without any great show of interest. “Yes,” he said vaguely, shading his eyes with his hand. “Some kind of subsistence, all right. Something came down, you mean?”
“It certainly did.”
“Um.” Revie wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Rum do altogether, if you ask me. Well, I suppose we’d better get back to base, and let the doc have a look at your various cuts and bruises. Anything you want to pick up from your bus? Not that there seems to be much left.”
“There wasn’t much to start with,” said O’Brien. “No, we’re all set. Let’s go.”
“Want a hand?”
“Hell, no. I’ll manage.
… It made a tight fit, the three of them in the little bulbous cabin of the helicopter; nevertheless, they managed it. O’Brien sat bent almost double in the rear, his best leg thrust half out of the open window, while Johnny seated himself beside the pilot. The helicopter rose smoothly from the hard-packed sand, Revie controlling its angle of ascent casually with one hand while writing with the other in his log-book. Johnny glanced at the entry before the book was flipped shut.
Took off again 0907 having picked up two passengers stranded by dust storm. Conditions clear. Course set for base.
The helicopter began to thrust its way forward while still ascending steadily. The abandoned van was a sliver of light in the sun, diminishing in size but not in intensity; from the new perspective of the air, the hills that had been clearly defined masses merged together and lost all contour. The horizon rolled itself gradually backwards, its ragged browns turning to pellucid and intangible greys. Johnny settled himself more comfortably in the passenger seat.
“It was a bit of luck you came this way,” he said.
Revie, at first, did not seem to hear. He seemed to be concentrating on something else, and on something apart from the navigation of his machine; his cloudy blue eyes were focused upon no obvious material object. “What?” he said, turning to Johnny; the relaxing muscles of his forehead left thin red wrinkle-lines across the reddish-brown tan.
“It was lucky you showed up when you did.”
“Yes? Oh yes - I suppose it was, from your point of view. Just a routine met. flight, though; keeping tabs on the old disturbance. Come far?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Granted. I said, have you come a long way?”
“… Up from Nairobi.”
“Really? Really? Well, my goodness. That is quite a trip. Where were you hoping to get to?”
“The coast,” said Johnny guardedly. He was not sure that O’Brien would wish him to be too precise. “We’re heading back to Europe, you see, in a general sort of way.”
“I see. Well, I’m taking you in the right direction, anyway. I’m based at Bir Azahara.”
“Where’s that?” asked O’Brien, entering the conversation.
“Poky little hole east of El Agheila. I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of it - I never had until I found myself there.”
“And we’ve got an air base there?”
“Yes. Fair-sized detachment. Also the main training depot for the reme crowd. Lively as hell, you might mistake it for Paris,” said Revie gloomily.
Johnny glanced downwards again. The van had now disappeared for ever, as had the track that the van had been following. Below them was nothing but rocks and sand; sand and rocks, in never-ending permutation; a l
andscape without trees, without water, without shadow - only the shadow of the helicopter itself, flitting over the tracts beneath it with surprising swiftness. In the cupola, with its wide perspex hood, it was bakingly hot; yet the heat seemed to come from the radiant wastes beneath them and not from the sun above.
Directly before them, a fern-frond of dust was rising slowly into the air. “What’s going on over there?” asked Johnny, pointing.
Revie emerged from his contemplation more swiftly this time. “Where?” he said, with something like alertness. And then, “Oh yes. Something coming along. A lorry of some kind, I should say.”
He was wrong. It turned out to be three jeeps, travelling south at a very considerable speed. “The Army boys,” said Revie disgustedly, “tearing up the desert again. Always on manoeuvres; damned if I know why. Utter waste of petrol, I call it.” His fingers toyed thoughtfully with the wires of the inter-communication system, finally released them. He raised his wrist and studied his wrist-watch intently.
“How long before we reach this place?”
“Where? Bir Azahara?”
“Yes.”
“Oh - round about forty minutes, I should think. How’s the old arm-bearing up?”
“Doing fine,” said Johnny.
“Good. It’s rather a boring trip, though, I’m afraid.”
… It was. Very.
Nevertheless, it ended with a surprise - with Bir Azahara. Johnny had not expected it to be so large. Bounded on one side by the long straight line of a railroad and on the other by a stream whose banks made a wavering line of shadow across the red earth, it sprawled unevenly over some three square miles of ground; long, grey, shapeless huts connected by a spider’s web of tracks, larger white houses with bright red roofs, a small forest of the inevitable Nissen huts, patches of dirty concrete … To the east the landing-strip, with its bold white control-tower and with three or four twin-engined Dakotas distributed over the tarmac before it. Nearby was a cluster of palm-trees, and the familiar rattletrap shacks of the native village that had existed there alone before Western Culture had arrived. Taken as a whole, Bir Azahara was appallingly ugly.
Still, so was the desert.
The helicopter began to bank to the left; and Revie, adjusting the intercom with fingers that were no longer tentative, began to call the control tower in a terse, clipped voice quite unlike his usual casual drawl. Johnny could hear dearly enough the faint replies emanating from the crackling disc.
“… Hullo, Flanagan. Hullo, Flanagan. We are receiving you. Over.”
“Right. Listen, Tommy. I’ve picked up a couple of bods who got left out in the big wind. They look in pretty bad shape to me. Over.”
“Yes, I understand. How bad are they? Over.”
“Walking cases. Won’t need the blood wagon. Just get a medic on the spot, will you? And we could all of us do with a drink. Over.”
“All right. Don’t give it a thought. Now you may land on the number two runway. I say again, number two runway. Tuck her in beside the hangar. Over.”
“Okay, Tommy. Number two. Over and out.”
Revie leaned forward over the control-stick and swayed the helicopter in towards the landing-strip. It seemed to be nosing forward under its own impetus, until he changed the rotor angle; then the helicopter sank swiftly to earth as though through a waveless sea. It hovered for a few seconds with its undercart brushing the ground, then touched down with the faintest discernible lurch. O’Brien, cooped up in the back, gave a long, loud sigh of satisfaction.
“Wouldn’t be surprised,” he said, “if I don’t stay all jammed together like this for the rest of my natural. They’ll have to prise me apart with a tyre-lever.”
When it came to the point, however, he lowered himself to the ground athletically enough and without any assistance at all. A jeep came tearing over the tarmac towards them; and thereupon the forty-five minutes’ boredom of their flight was immediately replaced by fifteen minutes’ frantic activity. For the jeep took them directly to an untidy office where a harassed corporal jerked incoherent questions at them … Name? Nationality? Religion? Sex? Next of kin to be informed? … and from there they were conducted to a hygienic rest-chamber where, after they had imbibed enormous mugs of boiling tea, they were separated; O’Brien disappearing down a lengthy corridor, Johnny arriving at a small office where an R.A.M.C. doctor with two lugubrious assistants stripped him, examined him, bathed him, whipped his arm into a gigantic plaster-cast, made hasty and illegible notes on writing-pads, and finally placed him in bed … all with a swift impersonality that suited Johnny - who was not in a communicative mood - admirably.
The ward in which they had put him was fairly pleasant and held no other inhabitants. It contained four beds, and had large french windows, curtained with thick white muslin. The walls were painted white, the floor brown. Johnny bounced experimentally on the mattress once or twice, pushed his head deep into the pillow and promptly went to sleep.
He slept for some time; for quite a long time. He had really been quite exhausted. When the doctor woke him, he felt better; not much, but a little-better.
“Hullo. Did you have a good sleep?”
“Fine, thanks,” said Johnny politely.
“And how is the arm behaving?”
“It seems to be all right, thank you.”
“Good. You shouldn’t have much more trouble with it now. What’s happened to your friend, though - any idea?”
“What friend?” asked Johnny hazily.
“Why, your friend.” The doctor consulted his notebook. “Mr. William Cody.”
“Mr. Wi - Oh, him. He’s somewhere about, I suppose. Having his wounds licked somewhere.”
“Well, but … I say, Parsons.” The doctor beckoned to the medical orderly, who stepped forward - rather nervously, Johnny thought. “Didn’t you say he was here?”
“Who, sir?”
“Confound it. Mr. William Cody.”
“Yessir. If that’s the big gentleman, yessir. I brought him here as soon as Mr. Wray had finished with him. There’s his bed, sir.”
“I can see his bed all right,” said the doctor testily. “What I want to know is where he is. And it’s obvious he isn’t here. You’d better go and find him, pretty damned quick.”
“Yessir. Very good, sir.”
“And when you do find him, tell him that while he’s under medical supervision here he ought not to go wandering round the place like a … zombie … Yes, well, put it more politely than that, of course, but make the position clear to him, anyway. Dammit, he’s supposed to have a strained tendon.”
“Very good, sir. I’ll do that, sir.”
“Right,” said the doctor, dismissing the unfortunate Parsons with a nod. He returned his attention to Johnny. “Tell me, Mr. Ah; did the corporal take down all the particulars about you?”
“Yes,” said Johnny. “He did.”
“He did?” said the doctor, as though appalled at this evidence of efficiency in the non-medical branch of the armed Services. “Oh well, I suppose that’s all right, then. Er—I take it that you have people somewhere? I mean, there’s someone you’ll want to get in touch with, to let them know what’s happened?”
“I don’t think there is,” said Johnny. “Thank you very much, all the same.”
“I see.” The doctor gave Johnny rather more thoughtful scrutiny. “May I ask your profession, Mr … Fedora, isn’t it?”
“Fedora, yes. Well, I was a professional hunter. But I’m on my way back to Europe now. Given it up for a while.”
“A professional hunter? Big game, you mean? By golly, that sounds exciting. I dare say a scratch like this one seems all in the day’s work to you.” Here the doctor laughed ingratiatingly. “What did you go after? Lions, and all that?”
“Mosquitoes, mostly.”
“Oh well - we’ve got plenty of those. Yes, indeed. Not so much at this time of the year, of course. But later they become quite a plague. Now … I suppose you’d lik
e something to eat?”
“I would, rather.”
“Right. We’ll see what we can organise.” The doctor, who had been sitting at the side of the bed, rose springily to his feet. “A good meal, and the rest of the day in bed - then you’ll be fighting lions again tomorrow, ha ha. Mainly shock, you know; mainly shock. Nasty things, these haboobs.”
“Yes,” said Johnny. “Very unpleasant.”
The doctor turned to Private Parsons, who had returned and was now standing very erect in the doorway. “See to it, will you, Parsons? A good solid meal for Mr. Fedora here. Where did you find Mr. Cody?”
“Mr. Cody’s not here, sir,” said the orderly.
“Not here? How d’you mean, not here?”
“He’s just nowhere about, sir. Not in the building, that is. I’ve sent Private White to hunt for him. But, if you’ll ’scuse my pointing it out, sir—”
“What?”
“—That there french window, sir, was closed when I left Mr. Cody here. Seems like it’s now open, sir.”
“… It does indeed. Yes, it does indeed. Why in Heaven’s name didn’t you point that out in the first place, Parsons?”
“I don’t know, sir. That is,” said the orderly, wilting, “I couldn’t see why the gentleman should want to go through the french windows, sir.”
“Well, neither can I. Still, I’m not paid to speculate about matters like that. Nor are you, Parsons; nor are you.”
“No, sir.”
“Well, he’d better be found, that’s all. The Colonel’s been phoning through, and … So keep at it until you’ve found him. He can’t be far away, after all.” The doctor passed a worried palm over his forehead and looked down at Fedora again. “I suppose Mr. Cody is quite all right in the head?”
“I think so. I think so, yes. But of course,” Johnny added, “the desert takes people in such peculiar ways.”
“Exactly what I was thinking. Oh dear, oh dear. Well, don’t stand there, Parsons. Go to it.”
“Yessir,” said Parsons, bolting.
“… I must be on my way, too. They keep me pretty busy you know.” The doctor, making for the door, removed his air of perplexity long enough to throw a bravely hard-worked little smile in Johnny’s direction. Johnny returned it courteously. “See you later,” said the doctor, and disappeared, closing the door firmly behind him.
