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GEORGE OLIVER groaned and mumbled and tossed uneasily in his sleep. Gerda sat up in bed and looked across at him in the half-light. He was lying on his back, one hand under his head, the other extended and plucking spasmodically at the covers. His lean face was still unrested, and his naked breast rose and fell in the gasping, unsteady rhythm of the nightmare.
Pity and love and desire welled up in her and she longed to go to him, settle him to calm again and lie beside him in the narrow bed until the first sunburst broke over the ridge and flowed down into the valley.
Yet she dared not touch him.
Once, in the old time together, she had awakened him out of such a nightmare and he had sat up instantly, eyes staring, his mouth full of wild curses, while his hands throttled the first scream of terror in her throat. Then he had warned her—tenderly, regretfully.
“Never do it, sweetheart! Never waken me like that. Just call me. If you must touch me, stand at the head of the cot out of reach of my hands.”
“But why? In heaven’s name, why?”
She was hurt and frightened and more than a little angry. He was gravely apologetic.
“Because, my dear, when you live the life I do, you sleep like Damocles under the hanging sword—only in my case it’s a stone ax or a twelve-pound club. You wake at the slightest movement and your instinctive reaction is to defend yourself. It’s a good reaction. It’s saved my life more than once; but”—he grinned ironically—“I understand it’s damned uncomfortable to live with.”
She lay there now with the memory of that other night and watched him with love and loneliness.
She understood now what this country did to men like George Oliver. It gave them fungoid ulcers and infective tinea and swollen spleens and scrub typhus. It thinned their blood and honed the youth out of their bodies and gave them nightmares, peopled with plumed monsters, haunted with savage drums, nightmares whose end was death and a grave without an epitaph.
And yet they loved the Territory and its peoples—loved it with the shamefaced passion of a lover for a fickle mistress, of a husband for a thankless, contrary wife.
They had no part or possession in the land, as Kurt had, or the settlers along the Highland road, or the shrewd businessmen from the south, with their sawmills and their pulping factories and their holdings in gold and transport and the big earth-moving enterprises.
These were the rootless ones, the unrewarded and the unremembered, the first to come, the last to go, despised by the hucksters, resented by the exploiters, unthanked by the tribes whose women they kept clean, whose taro patch they held inviolate. These were the officials in exile, wards of the outer march, poorest yet proudest of all the proconsuls.
George Oliver stirred again, wrestling with his pillow, tugging the white sheet up around his shoulders. Then, quite suddenly, the nightmare left him and he relaxed, breathing as regularly as a sleeping child, while the comers of his mouth twitched upwards into a smile.
Her heart warmed to him and her body, too, and she smiled at him across the narrow gap that separated them. She remembered all the other nights—and asked herself whether this was not the sweetest of all, passionless and celibate though it was.
For the short, wild moments after the revelation they had clung to each other; then, when they drew apart, George Oliver had grinned at her boyishly.
“Time for bed, sweetheart. I’ll take a shower and turn in.”
“I’ll get the bed ready.”
“Oh—er—Gerda?”
“Darling?”
He tilted up her chin and kissed her lightly.
“I couldn’t make love to the Queen of Sheba tonight. Besides, I’ll be wearing your husband’s pajamas.”
She was instantly serious. She caught at his shirt and drew him to her and laid her head on his breast, so that he could not see the shame in her eyes or the fear that he might reject her in this final moment.
“George, let me say something.”
“Make it short, my dear. I’m dead on my feet.”
“It will be short. I love you, darling, I need you, desire you, but I don’t want you until I can come to you as your wife, without concealment, without all the shame of the old years. From a woman like me, perhaps, that is too much a folly to be borne. But at this moment I feel it is what I wish.”
“Good. I feel the same way. Now, please—” He disengaged himself gently. “Please, let’s get some sleep.”
She led him to the bedroom and helped him to undress and fussed about him with soap and towels and clean pajamas—and was happier than she had been in her whole life.
Now, in the dull darkness that comes before the false dawn, when life is at its lowest ebb and happiness is a small unsteady candle, she sat watching her sleeping lover and seeing, as if for the first time, all the things that must be done, all the wild miracles that must come to pass, before their joy was halfway complete.
First, the tribes must be brought to discipline, the unrest among them stifled before it broke into a bloody madness, spilling through the network of the high valleys. Easy to say, easy to record in the dry and dusty phrases of a patrol report. But there were ten thousand men in the Lahgi crater—ten thousand warriors, enacting in symbol the ancient battles of their race, coming hourly closer to the high pitch of dramatic passion that would be vented in the ritual slaughter of a thousand pigs, while the tribes ran wild, trampling the spilt entrails, smearing themselves with blood, screaming and shouting to the climactic fury of the drums.
Against the ten thousand were George Oliver, Père Louis, Lee Curtis and a small handful of Motu police boys. In other times, in other valleys, it might have been enough. George Oliver had told her more than once of tribal battles stopped and district rebellions crushed by one man’s courage and dramatic timing. But now behind the ten thousand primitives was a twentieth-century man—mad, perhaps, with the explosion of his own pride, but cunning and ruthless, armed with the dark dominion of the sorcerers. A word from him and the chant would turn to a battle cry and the plumed and painted men would trample down George Oliver and his pitiful army as they trampled the steaming carcasses of the sacrificial swine.
She shivered at the chilling impact of the thought and lay back, drawing the covers about her shoulders. Now she understood the nightmares of George Oliver and her own helplessness against them.
Then another thought came to her. Even at the best, even if George Oliver suppressed the madness, holding it down as a man holds a spring with the flat of his hand and the weight of his bent body, there would still be no triumph in it.
There would still be Kurt. He was her husband in law—and though in law she might free herself from him, she would still be in reach of his malice. Her identity, her new charter of citizenship, was a forgery, at which she herself had connived. The authorities might choose to deport her, not only from the Territory, but from the Commonwealth itself. If they did that, there would be an end of love and of hope, and Kurt Sonderfeld would have the last and the sweetest revenge.
Now it was hers to toss and turn and mutter in her own nightmare, while George Oliver slept peacefully until the dawn was a blaze in the valley and the lizards sunned themselves on the stones and the flaring birds chattered in the casuarina trees.
Theodore Nelson was in a filthy temper. He had drunk too much and slept too little. His vanity was raw from the repeated snubs of Lee Curtis. He resented the lean, sardonic fellow who sat serenely at the breakfast table after a night of love in another man’s bed. While Gerda was in the kitchen, he broached his grievances.
“Oliver, I’ve got a complaint to make.”
“You have?” Oliver’s eyebrows went up in quizzical surprise.
“Yes. I asked Curtis for an escort back to Goroka. He refused it. I pointed out that I had obligations to my company and that the Administration was responsible to the company for my safety. Curtis was quite rude.”
“Was he, indeed?”
“Yes. He called me a coward and a—”
“Well … aren’t you?”
It was as if Oliver had thrown a glass of cold water in his chubby face. He flushed and spluttered and stammered, while Oliver watched him with cold amusement.
“You—you—I don’t have to put up with insults from jacks-in-office. As soon as I get back, I shall make a written report to the company and to the Administration. I’ll see that this business is opened up on—on a ministerial level.”
“By all means do,” said George Oliver blandly. “I’ll make a report, too. I’ll point out that when I came last night you were sleeping behind a locked door while Mrs. Sonderfeld was left alone. I’ll point out that your company is one of three competing for the coffee crops in the Highlands and that your representation does little credit to you or to your directors. I’ll allege obstruction and disobedience to local authority—and I’ll take that one to ministerial level! We’re not always one big happy family in the district services, Nelson, but by the living Harry, we close the ranks when a potbellied pipsqueak like you starts throwing his weight around! Now, for God’s sake, eat your breakfast and stop making a bloody fool of yourself.”
Theodore Nelson mumbled vacuously and buried his nose in his fruit. Wee Georgie made a shamefaced entrance at the top of the steps and stood grinning unhappily, just out of Oliver’s reach.
“Hullo, boss! Got in late last night, eh? Sorry I wasn’t fit to meet you.”
George Oliver surveyed him with amused disgust.
“You’re a drunken bum, Georgie!”
“I know, boss, I know.” He tugged uneasily at his forelock and wished himself a mile away from Oliver’s accusing presence.
“Georgie?”
Oliver’s voice was poor medicine for a guilty hangover.
“Yes, boss?”
“I’ll forgive you last night, because you’re shrewd enough to know nothing would have happened anyway. But tonight and tomorrow night you’ll stay with Mrs. Sonderfeld—and you’ll stay sober! I’ll tell her to cut your ration to half a bottle and keep the key of the cupboard. If you slip this time, I’ll have the hide off your back. Understand?”
Wee Georgie nodded desperately. The A.D.O. was a bad man to cross. He had never been known to break a promise or to make an idle threat.
“I’ll lay off it—strike me dead if l won’t.” He licked his lips fearfully. “You—er—you think there’ll be trouble, boss?”
“I’m damned sure there will be. How big it’ll come, I can’t say. I’m leaving one police boy here, and I’m posting another at the top of the Lahgi ridge, when we go down into the valley. If anything happens to us, he’ll come straight back here and take you and Nelson and Mrs. Sonderfeld south to Goroka.”
“Gawdstrewth!” Wee Georgie swallowed dryly. “So it’s like that, is it?”
“Like what, Georgie?”
Gerda stood in the doorway with the breakfast plates in her hand. Oliver made no attempt to reassure her.
He said crisply, “We could have trouble tonight or tomorrow. If a runner comes from me, you get out, fast. You take food and water and a blanket and walking shoes—and you make the best time you can to Goroka. Report to the Commissioner when you get there. Tell him the whole story. Is that clear?”
“Yes.”
“That’s the girl!” He grinned his approval and pointed to the vacant chair. “Now sit down and let’s enjoy our breakfast. I’ve been a long time in the Territory and the worst things that have happened to me have been nightmares and hangovers.”
She set the plates on the table and sat down. Wee Georgie squatted on the step and picked his teeth. Theodore Nelson kept his eyes on his plate and ate steadily through his breakfast.
Each for his own reasons was glad of the sardonic, reassuring strength of George Oliver.
The cargo boys were waiting on the lawn. Theodore Nelson sat unhappily on the veranda, smoking a tasteless cigarette. Wee Georgie was shuffling in and out, clearing away the breakfast dishes. Gerda Sonderfeld was in the bedroom with George Oliver.
He buckled on his pistol belt, slung the binocular case over his shoulder, put on his hat and cocked it at a jaunty angle over his shrewd eyes. Then he came to her, put his hands on her white shoulders and held her a little away from him. His voice was grave and quiet.
“There’s something I want to say to you, Gerda.”
“Say it, George.”
“I’ve told you that I love you and I want to marry you. Nothing can change that.”
Her eyes filled with tears, but she held them back. She waited while he pieced out his next deliberate words.
“I’m being blunt about it. Nothing would suit me better than to see your husband dead. It would make things easy for both of us.”
“I know that.”
“But it’s my job to bring him back alive, to give him a fair trial and a chance to prove his innocence. I—I propose to do that, if I can.”
She tried to move close to him to tell him with her body what her lips refused to say, but he held her firmly away from him and went on.
“I’ve had a long life in the Service. It hasn’t paid me very well, but I’ve kept my hands clean. I want them clean at the end of this. You understand that?”
“Oh, my dear! Of course.”
His eyes softened and his grim mouth relaxed, but still he held her at arm’s length.
“It’s possible—it’s even probable—that I may not succeed. If I have to come back and tell you that your husband is dead, I want you to know, for truth, that I had no part in his death. If you thought otherwise, if you had even the faintest doubt, there would never be any hope for us. You know that.”
“I know it,” said Gerda softly.
He released her then and saw with a pang of regret that his hands had made red, bruised spots on the white skin of her shoulders. Then she was in his arms, clinging to him, kissing him passionately, and he knew in the instant of wry relief and triumph that she was afraid—not for her husband but for him.
Then he left her and walked out into the sunshine, and as she watched him striding down the path at the head of his tiny troop, she knew that she was seeing the first love and the last hope of all the locust years.
Heedless of Nelson and Wee Georgie and the goggling police boy, she buried her face in her hands and wept.