A Time to Die - Smith Wilbur - Страница 171

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They marched hard. that night. Sean forged on as though he were trying to outrun his grief. Claudia did not try to slow him.

Although she was now lean and fit as a coursing greyhound, she had to put out all her strength to stay with him, but she did not complain.

By sunrise they had covered almost forty miles from where they had buried Job. Ahead of them lay a wide alluvial plain.

Sean found a grove of4a trees to give them a little shade. While Claudia and Matatuprepared their meal, he slung his binoculars across his back, stuffed the field map into his back pocket, and went to the base of the tallest tree.

Claudia watched him anxiously as he began to climb, but he was as nimble as a squirrel and as powerful as a bull baboon, using the brute strength of his arms to haul himself up the smooth stretches of the hole where there were no footholds.

When he neared the top of the tree, a white-backed vulture launched herself from her shaggy nest of dried branches and circled anxiously overhead while Sean settled into the fork of a branch only a few feet from the nest.

The vulture's nest contained two large chalk-white eggs and Sean murmured soothingly to the bird cruising high above, "Don't worry, old girl. I'm not going to steal them." Sean did not share the popular distaste for these birds. They performed a vital function in cleansing the veld of carrion and disease, and while grot hey were models of elegance and beauty in the tesque in repose, sky and of natural flight, revered as gods by the air, masters of the ancient Egyptians and other peoples with a close affinity to nature.

Sean smiled up at the bird, the first smile that had bent his lips since Job had gone. Then he gave his full attention to the terrain spread out below him. The alluvial plain ahead had been intensively cultivated; only scattered groves of trees still stood between the open fields. Sean knew these would mark the sites of the small family villages shown on his map. He turned his binoculars upon them.

He saw at once that the fields had not been tilled or planted for seasons. They were thick with the rank secondary growth many on in Africa. He recognized the that invades abandoned cultivate tall harsh stems of Hibiscus irritans, named for the sharp fine hairs that cover the leaves and that brush off on anyone that touches them. He saw castor-oil bush and cotton gone wild. There were also the orange-colored blossoms of wild cannabis, whose narcotic properties had so delighted Jack Kennedy's Peace Corps boys and girls and which over the years since then had given solace to the hordes of other European and American youngsters who had followed them out to Africa equipped only with backpacks, dirty blue jeans, good intentions, and a hazy belief in beauty, peace, and the brotherhood of man. Recently fear of AIDS had slowed their arrival to a trickle, for which Sean was grateful. He realized his thoughts were wandering, and he pulled himself up and panned his binoculars slowly across the scene of desolation ahead.

He could just make out the roofless ruins of the villages. On some of the huts the roof timbers were still intact but skeletal and ugh he scrutiblackened by flames, the thatch burned away. Though he scrutinized the area meticulously, he could make out no sign of recent human presence. The paths between the fields were all overgrown, and there was no sign of domestic stock, no chickens or goats, and no telltale tendrils of smoke rising from a cooking fire.

"Somebody, Frelimo or Renamo, has worked this area over pretty thoroughly," he thought, and looked away to the east to the distant blue hills of the interior. This early in the morning the air was still clear and bright, and he was able to recognize some of the features and cross-reference them to the topography of his field map. Within fifteen minutes he was able to mark in their position with reasonable accuracy and confidence.

They had made a little better progress than he had estimated.

Those mountains out on the right-hand side were the Chimanimani; they formed the border between Mozambique and Zimbabwe, but their nearest peaks were almost forty kilometers distant. His map was marked in kilometers, and Sean still liked to work in miles rather than the metric scale.

The larger village of Dombe should be a few kilometers out on his left flank, but he could pick out no indication of its exact whereabouts. He guessed that like the other family villages ahead, it had long since been abandoned and allowed to return to bush and forest, in which case there would be little prospect of finding food there. With so many feeding from it, the small quantity of maize meal they had been able to bring with them was a most expended. By tomorrow they would need to begin foraging, and that would slow them up. On the other hand, if Dombe were still inhabited, it would certainly be either a Frelimo or Renamo stronghold. Prudently he resolved to avoid any contact with all other humans. Nobody, not even Alphonso, could say which territory was held by the opposing forces and which was a destruction area devastated equally by both sides. Even those boundaries would be fluid and would alter on a daily if not hourly basis, like the amorphous body of an amoeba.

He looked directly southward along their intended route. In that direction there were no features rising above the plain. This was a part of the littoral that stretched down to the shores of the Indian Ocean, and no mountain or deep valley ruffled it. The only natural obstacles ahead were the dense hardwood forests, the rivers, and the swamps that guarded the approaches to them.

The largest river was the Sabi, or the Rio Save as the Portuguese had named it. It flowed in across their border with the land that was to become Zimbabwe and down toward the ocean. It was broad and deep, an4 they would probably need some sort of craft to make the crossing'.

The last river, Rudyard Kipling's great gray-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever trees, was the final obstacle they would face. It was still three hundred kilometers further south. Three national borders converged and met upon its banks: Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and the Republic of South Africa. If they were able to reach that point, they would have reached the northern boundary of the celebrated Kruger National Park, heavily guarded and patrolled by the South African military. Sean studied the map longingly-South Africa and safety, South Africa and home, where the rule of law held sway and men did not walk every moment in the shadow of death.

A soft whistle brought him out of his reverie, and he looked down.

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