‘The devil! And now we have to climb up again,’ Rafael complained. ‘Antón, I thought it was all to be automatic and would go up while we were at breakfast.’
‘I don’t like it. Ten minutes is not enough. And all this of chemistry—who knows?’
‘He said there was no risk and he is not a man to lie.’
‘But he might wish to kill us all.’
‘What for, Antón?’
‘Well, if you are satisfied, let’s go! But I cannot climb up the pipe line after that night and an empty belly, Rafael.’
‘I am tired, too. We will go round by the road. The thing is done and an hour more or less does not matter.’
At the Sentinels Rafael explained the procedure and asked for a volunteer to open the door of 98A. He himself would do 98, the middle Sentinel, and Antón 97. Both were to keep their eyes on him and open the doors when he raised his hand. All three would then run down the slope and take cover in dead ground below the ridge.
He did his best to reassure them, but himself was the only one who was confident. He had talked enough with El Vicario to be sure of just two qualities which he was capable of judging: the man’s honesty and his conscientious work. The rest of him was a puzzle. He seemed to be an idealist of a sort, at war with all industrial society. Rafael did not agree that it was invariably to be condemned. Up to the murder of Catalina he had been, he remembered, happy.
As he walked up to 98 he was not afraid of the explosion or the unknown energy it would release, only of action that was irrevocable. The dawn was oppressive under the mountain shadow which shut off the coast and held it between mercy of night and clarity of day. Across the golf course, now perceptibly dark green, were the skeletons and rectangles of the old field, black against the colourless Andes. To the west Cabo Desierto was closed by the desolate silver plain of the Pacific. There was no way out.
The other two, to right and left, kept pace with him. Raising his hand he flung open the door of 98. Instinctively and in spite of his confidence he started to run, but stopped himself half way down the slope and looked round. He was overcome by fury and disgust to see that Antón had only opened the door of 97 about as far as the crack by which El Vicario had let himself out. And this was the man who had killed with no necessity for it. A bravo without courage!
Well, but there were still most of the ten minutes left. The Company should not be presented with one well, good enough in itself to exploit all the oil in that reservoir four kilometres below. He pounded back up the slope, going straight for the even, metalled road between 97 and 98 along which he could run much faster. He had no watch but was sure he could reach 97 in three minutes.
When he got there he found that Antón had tentatively opened the door rather wider than El Vicario and had then lost his nerve. That was like him—to fight and to threaten but to be so afraid of the abnormal that he had neither obeyed nor quite disobeyed. Rafael could not be sure whether that tube of acid was broken or not, and even if he had known what to look for there was no time. He threw the door wide open to make certain and cleared off as fast as he could manage on legs which were failing and stumbling. 97 was farthest of all from the dead ground.
He heard the blast and fell flat, with a second in which to be consciously thankful that he was not hurt. Then there was a roaring in his ears and an instant of agony.
The roaring, far away, was still in his ears. He felt very light as if he could fly if he wanted to, but he could move only his head and his arms a little. He opened his eyes and saw the ceiling of the hospital and the face of Dr. Solano moving across it.
‘Then I am alive, doctor?’
‘For a little while, Rafael.’
‘This is it?’
‘This is it.’
‘And Chepe?’
‘On the way. When he heard the explosions he went out to find you.’
‘And Catalina? But I remember. Of course.’
‘Do you want a priest, Rafael?’
‘No. Would Don Mateo speak to me?’
‘He is here.’
Mat had been startled from sleep by the first explosion. Before he was on his feet there were two more, close together. He assumed that El Vicario had double-crossed them all and blown the Charca. From his bedroom window he could see the east corner of the pool. The water was still and no fumes hung over it. He ran up to the roof of his house. A distant screaming roar, like the sound of a giant rocket except that it was level and continuous, left no doubt what had happened. The huts of the Three Sentinels had gone from the ridge; and again there were no fumes to be seen, only a curious dancing haze over the wells.
Where were the pillars of flame? Well, in war he had known enough of explosions and their effect. The air had probably been blown clear away, leaving a vacuum through which the column of oil had blasted, vaporising as if in the jet of a monstrous carburettor. A spark from stone on steel or any friction whatever could light the gas at any moment.
His car would not start. There had been some advantage, after all, in being fetched by a chauffeur. It was the last straw. They could now add to their accusations that the General Manager had reached the scene after everyone else. Pepe and Amelia came out to push. When he told them as coolly as he could what had happened, Amelia burst into tears affecting Pepe in his turn.
His wrists were trembling, so he drove very carefully along the palm-lined avenue which he had had the conceit to call the ghetto. On the road to the Sentinels the company ambulance passed him racing down to the hospital. He parked among a dozen cars at the side of the road a safe distance from 97—if there was a safe distance. When he got out he could feel the ground shuddering under his feet.
Gulls were planing round and round the haze. Mat allowed them to fascinate him for there was nothing else he could face. Was the haze to their eyes some sort of sea with possible food in it, or were they trying to gain height on the up current which they felt must be present though the vapour prevented them from entering it?
Gateson came up—a strange Gateson, full of sympathy as one oilman to another.
‘Who was it?’ Mat asked.
‘Garay, of course.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Thorpe and Solano went out with a stretcher and brought him in. What for? They could have been roasted any minute.’
Garay. Rafael Garay, whom he thought he had persuaded. This was the uttermost end of failure. Without any difference in the scream of the escaping oil, the haze above 98 passed through incandescence as quickly as a flash of sheet lightning. All three Sentinels were instantly turned to candles in the sky: giant Bunsen burners with the blue base of their yellow flames three hundred feet above the ground. The watchers threw up their arms to guard eyes from the heat of 97. The wings of the gulls caught fire. They plummeted to the ground, black, lifeless meteorites.
Without another word to anyone Mat got into his car and drove down to the hospital. There was nothing to be done, nothing ever to be done unless those incredible Texan specialists could cap the wells. One, yes. Two, possibly. But three, with only a space of four hundred yards between one and another? Henry Constantinides and Dave Gunner, for once agreeing, might not consider the attempt worthwhile and so hand over the field to those prospective buyers for anything they liked to offer.
He sat in the waiting room. The matron believed the case to be hopeless, since Solano had given no orders for the operating theatre to be prepared or for the company plane. He was with the patient; he would be told at once that the General Manager was there.
Luis Solano came out of the casualty ward.
‘He wants to see you, Mateo.’
‘Any hope?’
‘None. He knows it. He’s all flat below the waist. We had to push a concrete panel off him.’
‘That was superb, Luis.’
‘Why? We couldn’t leave him there. He must have had helpers but they had all run away.’
‘Chepe?’
‘They found him curled up on the hillsi
de calling for both of you. A car has gone to fetch him. Come!’
The dark face on the pillow was neither afraid nor triumphant. It seemed to hold only acceptance of what it had done in the world and for what it must die. A priest, Mat thought, could not have made a better job of it than Rafael himself.
‘I am sorry, Don Mateo, but there was nothing else.’
‘It may be that there was nothing else, Rafael.’
‘They will send you away?’
‘They will.’
‘You will be very much alone, Don Mateo.’
‘That is nothing new for me.’
‘By God, it is nothing new for any man who is a man!’
‘Quiet, Rafael!’
‘Let me speak while I can! When you go, will you take my son with you?’
‘Willingly, if you wish it. But we shall need a piece of paper.’
‘You are right. A piece of paper. A man cannot be born or die or eat without a piece of paper. Fetch the Mayor quickly, brother! I will not allow myself to die until he comes. But there is a roaring in my ears.’
‘In mine, too. It is nothing, brother, and without importance.’
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1972 by Geoffrey Household
Cover design by Drew Padrutt
978-1-4976-4562-2
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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The Three Sentinels Page 18
