She begged to know where they might be found and after days of pleading and haranguing, they had left her in a place where the tribe were sometimes seen. She was afraid at first, being left alone in such a desolate spot, but even more afraid when after three days she emerged from her tent in the early light of dawn to find a small group of men sitting silently outside, waiting for her to emerge.
She’d had an incredibly brief twelve days in their company, before they disappeared in the night, their tracks indicating they had moved off in a direction that was too obviously a route to the jungle for her taste. Everything she’d learned from them during their time together was from a peculiarly intense and very beautiful seventeen-year-boy in their midst who could speak a little halting Spanish. She had spent time cultivating him, flirting even, to make him sit with her and talk into her Dictaphone in very broken and difficult Spanish. But then Esther had a talent for making men want her without ever giving them what they expected might be theirs after time. He was no different. Just younger. He’d started haltingly, shyly, glancing at the older men who regarded him and Esther impassively as they sat together by her tent. But as the days progressed he began to take a great, almost obsessive interest in her, talking more animatedly and rapidly, leaving her confused and ignorant of the majority of what he was trying to tell her. He’d been so intense, sweating profusely as he spoke, even though they were camped on the freezing plateau. But at least she’d confirmed what the frightened shepherds had told her. The boy had been to Lima, an incredible journey from here. But his eyes shone when he spoke of it, even though the elders lowered their eyes when they heard the name of the city. Teenagers the world over, thought Esther. Here she was wanting him to tell her about the traditions and rituals of his tribe, and probably all he wanted to talk about would be discos and girls. He certainly became even more flushed and excited when she made him understand she was heading for Lima on the way back, and indeed after that, he rarely left her alone. But his Spanish was too rapid for her. No matter. She checked the tapes each time he finished, and whatever he said was all there.
All she would have to do was to take the time later to decipher and translate, no doubt kicking herself for not asking the right things when she had the chance.
She had also written everything down that the elders had said, in exactly the words they’d used, unfamiliar or not. It was not for her to interpret it until she could think straight later.
The diagrams she had were of the makeshift altar they would build and destroy each morning and she sat examining it, looking forward to comparing it with the ancient lay-outs of the temples she had visited endlessly throughout the rest of the trip. When she awoke one morning to find they had gone in the night, there had been a particularly intricate pattern scratched in the hardened dust directly outside her tent, and what interested her when she’d made a careful sketch of it, was that unlike the altars they built, there was nothing even remotely familiar about its twisting lines. She treasured that one above all.
Esther blessed the dull English professor with the beard. Through a routine academic exercise to try and discuss the effects of democracy on civilization, she might, quite incredibly, have run into what she firmly believed was an almost completely unknown tribe of people.
She had no one yet to share the thrill with, particularly on this ship of fools, but even if it was laughed out of college when she got back, right now she was as excited as if she’d struck gold.
She lay back, and with some difficulty started the long task of deciphering her own appalling handwriting.
Sohn was trying not to laugh. Lloyd Skinner was a big, powerful man, and from the engine room, the only hatch into the cofferdams between the cargo holds and the outer hull was one that was considerably smaller than him. The fourth engineer and a cadet had unscrewed it laboriously to give him access, but he was struggling to get in, especially with the big industrial torch and ridiculously formal flightcase he was carrying. ‘You need that in there?’ Sohn asked, pointing to the aluminium case.
Skinner looked back. ‘The only way to keep this damned paperwork together.’
The chief engineer grinned and shrugged. Skinner was a strange man. Anyone would have accompanied him if he’d ordered it, would have held the papers for him and offered their back as a makeshift table for any documents that needed ticked or filled in at site.
Indeed, Sohn would have been pleased to do it himself. He hadn’t been inside the cofferdams on this ship before, and he was always delighted to acquaint himself with the concealed architecture of any vessel he powered through the water. But Skinner was a loner, a perfectionist, an utter stickler for duty, and if any inspection needed to be done, he always wanted to do it by himself.
The curious thing was not only why the company would want this done now, while at sea, but why they wanted it done at all.
There was nothing in there. Just a long dark space, at least eight feet wide and as tall as the entire hull, running the length of the ship, both to port and starboard. They were supposed to be checked and flushed regularly at port, so that any problem would become rapidly obvious on the loadicator. But that took time and manpower, and Sonstar were not a company to waste either if it got in the way of making money. Skinner was to be admired for pursuing the official line when his bosses would almost certainly have turned a blind eye to its omission. And if he wanted to go wandering in the dark, fumbling with plans and treading on rats, then that was his business. It was Lloyd Skinner’s ship to command and he could do what he wanted.
The captain had already pushed through and was standing upright on the other side by the time Sohn formulated his last offer.
‘You want to take walkie-talkie? In case you fall or something?’
Skinner shook his head, but smiled weakly. ‘Thank you, Chief Engineer. No. I only need to check and see there’s no leakage from the holds. The bosun reported there might be a small lesion near the bow. It’ll only take half an hour at most. If I’m not back by Friday you can send in the dogs.’
He turned and walked away, his boots making a lonely echo on the virgin metal floor. As the circle of his torchlight retreated into the long dark tunnel of dripping metal, three heads peered after him, glad to be on the side of the hatch where the striplights burned bright and Radio Lima played Mariah Carey.
‘Shit fuck bastard and double fuck!’
Leonardo Becko looked round quickly and tutted with exasperation. The galley boy was hopping from foot to foot, his hand tucked protectively under his arm, his face contorted with pain. One glance down at the deep fat frier he’d been feeding told the cook all he needed to know.
‘You stupid fucking idiot. You drop the potatoes from a height, ooh, surprise surprise, they’re going to make a splash.’
The boy was hissing through bared teeth, immune for the moment to his boss’s taunts. Leonardo wiped his flour-covered hands on a filthy apron and walked across the galley floor.
‘Here. Let’s see it, you moron.’
Salvo Acambra took his hand from his armpit and looked at it. It was burned only very superficially, a thin red weal rising from the wrist to the thumb. Leonardo tutted again, this time with heavy sarcasm, shaking his head like a vaudeville doctor making a fatal diagnosis. ‘Have to come off, I think.’
Salvo scowled.
Leonardo gave him a harmless swipe over the head and turned away to get on with his pastry. ‘Take ten minutes, and make sure it’s only ten. You bloody moron.’
‘Yes, Chef,’ said the boy,