The Poison Oracle

by Peter Dickinson

  “There is no ghost in the box,” he said, using the same grammatical contortion that he had before his witch-trial.

  Gaur smiled.

  “In seven days I have changed seven age-sets,” he said.

  “Will thy people also change age-sets?”

  “Perhaps. What do we do now?”

  “We go to the Council; hide throwing-sticks in thy robes. I take thee among men who perhaps wish to kill thee.”

  “So thou camest to the marshes for me.”

  Morris shrugged, unable to explain his real motives for undertaking that unpleasant adventure. Peggy, he thought, would sleep for several hours. Dinah he must take with him. He sorted carefully through his wallet of chips to check that it contained all the symbols he might need; then he nestled the tape-recorder into the bottom of a canvas grip and covered it with fruit. Dinah watched both processes shining-eyed, and took his hand eagerly when he clicked to her; but inwardly he was deeply reluctant to involve her in this quarrel, a thing no more concerned with her species than the question whether he was a witch had mattered to the duck on Gal-Gal. Only it had mattered. It was the answer that hadn’t—the duck would have died either way.

  2

  The Council began with extreme casualness. The coffee-pestle was already busy when Morris and Gaur reached the anteroom; they could hear the slightly syncopated thud whose rhythm, to the true Arab connoisseur, becomes somehow incorporated into the taste. Besides the two regular guards in the anteroom there were two heavily-armed strangers, one of whom Morris thought he recognised as having been in the palace entrance earlier that morning. He slouched over and barred the way.

  “I am called by Akuli bin Zair to the Council,” said Morris mildly. “This man is a witness whom the Council have asked to hear.”

  “And the ape? Is she also a witness?” snarled one of the strangers.

  “A better one than you, bin Duwailah,” shouted one of the regular guards, more truly than he knew. It sounded as though there was a certain amount of needle here, but the two strangers refused to give way until the young sheikh with the cleft chin appeared from the hail and cursed them for fools.

  “But the slave must leave his weapons,” he said.

  Morris translated, and smilingly Gaur handed his belt, with its sheathed dagger and holstered revolver, to one of the regular guards.

  Deliberately Morris allowed Dinah loose as they entered the hall itself; she had been restless with curiosity ever since she heard the noise of the coffee-pestle, and now she raced across the mosaic floor to investigate, to try the taste of a coffee-bean and spit it out, and then to pout at the dozen sheikhs already assembled. The diversion allowed Morris to settle on an unoccupied patch of cushions, to check the position of the recorder-switch while he pretended to be sorting Dinah’s fruit, and finally to run a vague eye round the Council Chamber and see that a dark wisp of veil dangled through the tracery of the women’s gallery.

  He sighed with relief and snapped his fingers at Dinah, who ran over to see whether he was going to pay proper attention to her.

  “Sirs,” he said as he took her on his lap, “I ask your pardon for bringing this ape to the council, but she has been much frightened on our journey in the marshes and I cannot leave her alone. She is more valuable than many hawks. The Sultan paid ten thousand dollars a month to keep her in Q’Kut.”

  After a mutter of astonishment the conversation shifted to the subject of animals and their prices, famous mares and camels, and a long account of how someone’s uncle had traded into Somaliland on a rumour of a strain of superb horses and had come back with nothing but a shipload of mules. Where he could, Morris brought in references to their own Sultan’s wealth and generosity.

  In about ten minutes Hadiq arrived, escorted by bin Zair and the new secretary, a dark-skinned little man who bore a vague resemblance to bin Zair himself, and turned out to be his nephew. Hadiq, looking strained, made a little speech of welcome and thanks for the advice they were about to give him. His eye fell on Morris.

  “Hi, Batman, welcome back to the Batcave,” he said.

  “Hi, wonderboy,” said Morris. “Let’s go.”

  But Hadiq rose from his throne and crossed to where Gaur stood, massive and withdrawn, outside the circle of councillors. He took both his hands and greeted him in Arabic. Gaur stumbled through his reply. Several of the Arabs looked furious, and one leaped to his feet, shouting that he owed no allegiance to a Sultan who befriended the murderers of his own father. Three of the younger men jumped up with their hands on their daggers. Morris got ready to clap, long before he had planned to, but bin Zair came scuttling off his stool by the throne, tugging at their arms, squeaking for calm. They settled. Hadiq went back to his throne. Coffee was served, tiny cups offered to each man in strict order of precedence. Morris was delighted to see how high he came on the list, but all the same he watched the process carefully; there is a well-known Arab technique whereby the coffee-man secretes poison under his thumbnail and by pouring coffee over it is able to eliminate any selected guest. Morris got his three tiny helpings unthumbed, but even so he was very nervous. This was not his sort of scene at all—it had to go just right, with no opportunities for re-runs and erasures.

  Dinah seemed to sense his nerves, but luckily didn’t respond by fidgeting around, badgering the coffee-man and mocking the grave sheikhs. Instead she nestled into his lap, still as a sick child, and fingered at his shirt-buttons.

  As the junior councillor at last shook the coffee-cup to show he had had enough, bin Zair rose.

  “Friends of two Sultans,” he said, “you are very welcome once more. And we have good news. Lord Morris is returned safe from the marshes, so we do not have his death to avenge. But we also have bad news. As you know, we have bought aeroplanes and bombs and napalm, but the pilots whom we hired—both good men who have fought in many little wars—say they cannot fly these planes across the marshes. The changes in the air, they say, would break an old aeroplane in pieces. Moreover they say it will be very difficult to find any targets in the haze.”

  “They simply want more money,” said someone. “All mercenaries are the same. Offer them double. The Sultan is very rich.”

  “They have refused double,” said bin Zair. “I think perhaps some fool has told them how the marshmen would treat them if they were forced to land among the reeds.”

  “Cannot men be found who are not cowards?” shouted Fuad, the hysteric camel-raider, just as if he had maintained the same pitch of frenzy all the time Morris had been away.

  Bin Zair smiled and pulled his beard.

  “Now,” he said, “we who live by the marshes know this. When the floods are fully gone, the reed-beds become very dry, and it is then the custom of the marshmen to burn certain patches. Now, at that time, if we buy hovercraft and mount flame-throwers on them, we could safely burn . . .”

  Hadiq was rising to his feet, pale and nervous. But Fuad spoke first.

  “How long?” he shouted. “Hovercraft? They will take many weeks to come.”

  “The reeds will not be fully dry for four months,” said bin Zair.

  Fuad started to shout again, sensed somehow that the feeling of the meeting was against him and sat down; his Adam’s apple jerked about in his throat as though he were actually swallowing bile.

  “We cannot wait here for four months,” said the young man with the cleft chin.

  “In my time I have waited twenty years to take vengeance,” said Umburak, placid as ever. While he told the well-known details of two ancient murders, Morris managed to catch Hadiq’s eye and make a tiny signal that he wanted to speak. The reminiscent mutterings were still dying away when Hadiq stood up.

  “Four days ago I buried my father, whom I loved,” he said. “Still I do not know how he was killed. Have you news, Morris?”

 
It didn’t sound as though the Council was prepared to devote more than a few seconds to this academic point, but Morris cleared his throat and answered loudly.

  “Yes, I have news about that, and also about the oil.”

  At the marvellous word the whole tone of the meeting changed. There was a brief outburst of muttering and whispering. Morris clapped his hands, as if for silence, and though he didn’t dare look he thought he heard a faint rattle of metal on stone, somewhere up in the gallery. In the following hush he fished a tangerine out of his basket and gave it to Dinah to keep her quiet; but she must have sensed his nervousness, for she insisted on huddling into his lap to eat it.

  “Yes,” he said, “I have spoken with many marshmen, both about the oil and the death of their lord. It was clear to me that they did not know that the oil even existed. It follows from this that bin Zair killed the Sultan.”

  He spoke the accusation directly at the old man, peering for some sign of guilt or shock, but saw only a slight jerk of the head and widening of the yellow-oozing eyes. The result was that he didn’t notice the nephew until he saw a revolver being brandished under his nose. He shrank back. Dinah clutched too tightly for him to free an arm. The nephew was prodding at the safety-catch but his spittle was already reaching its target on the wings of his curses. Then suddenly he reeled back. The revolver rattled to the floor and he lay supine with blood streaming from his temple where Gaur’s throwing-stick had struck.

  Everybody shouted. Morris pushed Dinah clear and leaped to his feet, shouting too, and pointing to the gallery. A few yelling heads turned, then more. The ensuing silence was ridiculously dramatic.

  “Let no man move,” panted Morris. He turned from where the six dark muzzles poked through the frivolous white tracery of the screen and knelt by the fallen man. The pulse seemed reasonably strong, and the gash in the forehead not deep, though very productive of blood.

  “Let Salim tend to the wound,” said Umburak in an arid voice. “We would hear your accusation, Morris. We have known bin Zair many years.”

  Morris went back to his cushions pulling at his lip. Dinah scuttled out from behind the throne, crept into his lap and pulled her lip also.

  “Let us begin with the film bin Zair showed us,” said Morris. “Now, the Frankish woman left my office and passed in front of the cages very shortly before bin Zair and the Sultan also came that way. She says she was still in the gallery when they came, and she turned and waved to them. Yet we watched the film for several minutes before the Sultan and bin Zair appeared, and we did not see the Frankish woman. Nor did Dinah appear in the cage. Moreover you all said that the Sultan staggered like a man shot in the back—would he have staggered so if he had been struck with a sharp dart in the neck?”

  There was some disagreement on this point, with evidence adduced from personal experience of shooting men in the back, and (given equal weight) from the elderly westerns nowadays available to any Arab who didn’t mind doing two hundred miles across the desert to the nearest drive-in cinema.

  “Furthermore,” said Morris, “I have taken many films with that camera, but none so bad. What does all this mean? It means that the film was taken in the early morning, when the sun shines from the east. This was done for two reasons—first because nobody would come to the zoo at that hour, and second in order that the bad light would help to hide the fact that the larger figure was not the Sultan but one of the slaves bin Zair had found for the zoo, a man called Maj.”

  “I am an old man and unused to machines,” said bin Zair. “What do I know of films?”

  “You told me that you had made a film of a male prostitute who dances among the Hadahm,” said Morris.

  “True, I have seen it,” said somebody.

  At this piece of corroborative evidence, however peripheral to the real case, a new note entered the coughs and whispers of the men. One of them, and not this dubious Frank, had now cast his tiny stone at old bin Zair.

  “There are other matters,” said Morris, “which bin Zair both understands and is ignorant of. At the flood-going feast he questioned me about my tape-recorder, and yet I am told he uses such things in his work. And you yourselves will remember that at some moments he cannot understand the marshmen’s language, and at others he understands it clearly enough. However, let us return to the film. The big man in the picture may have been Maj, but the little man was undoubtedly bin Zair. Therefore the film must have been made with his help.”

  “The points are not very strong,” said Umburak. “The ape might have been hiding, the light might have been bad, who knows how a man will act when a bullet or dart strikes? And a woman’s evidence—a woman who then ran from the palace—it is all frayed rope.”

  “There is more,” said Morris. “Let me continue about these slaves. At the flood-going feast I asked bin Zair for better help in the zoo, and within two days he found me these two men. Now one of these men was a good mechanic and the other was large and stout, like the Sultan. They were Sulubba, and they told me that they were hereditary slaves . . .”

  A few grunts of disbelief filled the pause which Morris deliberately left.

  “On the morning of the murders,” he went on, “they were cleaning the cages and had brought a pile of fresh reeds to make bedding for the animals. They had brought more than was necessary, so when they had finished they left a pile of reeds in the passage near the chimpanzee cage . . .”

  “Enough to hide a man?” asked Umburak.

  “No,” said Morris. “But enough to hide a gun, and some other small object.”

  He fished more fruit out of the basket for Dinah, and in doing so pressed the “Play” button of the recorder.

  “Now before bin Zair came to my room,” he said, “I heard a lot of noise from the chimpanzees, noise enough to drown the sound of a quick scuffle and perhaps a shout of anger. When bin Zair came to my room he said he had been struck by the Sultan, and asked whether I had heard anything. I said I had not. We talked for a short time, and then . . .”

  He didn’t time it quite right. There was a longish pause, during which mutters of doubt and impatience began to gather strength. But suddenly they were drowned by the rushing whoosh of an airgun, a hoarse cry and another whoosh. Morris lifted the recorder out of the basket, ran the tape back to the monkey noises, and played some of them.

  The reaction was that of children watching a conjurer, small cries of amazement and even delight, deliquescing into seriousness as each man explained to his neighbour the significance of the sounds. Head after head turned towards bin Zair, who sat stroking his beard but showing no more emotion than a look of scholarly interest. Morris gave him time to answer, but he was too wary for that.

  “Whence came the tape?” said a providential straight man.

  “I will tell you. It concerns the two slaves of whom I was speaking. When I went at your bidding into the marshes I had travelled less than a mile when I came upon the body of a man floating in the water. He had been killed with a spear-thrust, stripped naked and mutilated. He was Maj.”

  The news brought only a few cries of rage, and many reminders that the man had not been a true bedu, but a Sulubba.

  “Now, later,” said Morris, “I went to a ceremony in the marshes, and there I saw a marshman wearing this tape as an ornament from which hung the penises of two pale-skinned men. I made enquiries and found that this marshman had come upon two men lying in wait in the two channels that led from the landing-stages below the palace. They were armed and hiding, as if to ambush a man coming into the marshes. The marshman came from behind and killed them. In the canoe of the smaller man was this tape.”

  A dour, tall Arab who had not so far spoken coughed for silence.

  “I believe I have heard of this pair, under other names,” he said. “They were skilled assassins. Certainly if they were thus taken by surprise it proves that th
e marshmen would have been difficult to fight in the marshes.”

  The point was argued around for a while, and the true identity of Maj and Jillad discussed, and tales of their earlier, more successful craftsmanship retold.

  “And what is the significance of all this?” asked Umburak at last.

  “I think bin Zair’s whole object was to open up the marshes,” said Morris. “He visited the oil wells from time to time, and I think he probably arranged with them, in exchange for a large sum of money, that he would bring about a situation in which it would eventually become possible for the marshes to be drained and exploratory drilling begin. A war between the Arabs and the marshmen would be one way of achieving this. If an Englishman appeared to have been killed by the marsh-people that would help too, and you will all bear witness that it was bin Zair who persuaded me to go into the marshes. On the other hand, if the marshmen killed Maj and Jillad, that would remove two witnesses who might have been troublesome later. He was right in this—I have no doubt that Jillad took the tape in order to blackmail bin Zair later.”

  “It is a long way round to travel in order to kill a man,” said Umburak.

  “Yes,” said Morris. “But it had to be, because simple killing wasn’t the object. The object was to persuade both the Arabs and the marshmen that the Bond was broken, and to do this by seeming to follow as closely as possible the story in the Testament of Na!ar. The Arabs, he was sure, could be persuaded to fight quite easily; but the marshmen had to hear of the Sultan and a warrior of their people killing each other with poisoned spears. This was a complicated effect to achieve, but I believe he had been thinking about it for more than a year. A year ago, just after the flood-going feast, a man called Kwan died, very suddenly; Dyal told me it had happened as if by magic. Dyal was a marsh-man, and to the marshmen the poison they use on their spears is a magical substance. A poisoned spear is sent to the Sultan at the flood-going feast as part of the tribute, and I think it possible that bin Zair was then testing the poison to see if it worked. It did, but as the poison loses its virtue in two or three weeks he had to wait another year.