Acid Rock

CHAPTER SEVEN

A water buffalo is stronger than a steer, but that is not what makes him more dangerous. A water buffalo will attack while dying, but that is not what makes him more dangerous. A water buffalo will attack when neither endangered nor hungry, but that is not what makes him more dangerous.

What makes a water buffalo more dangerous is that he likes to kill. And in that respect, he is like many men.

The African marsh ate at his clothes, but Lhasa Nilsson did not mind. His two bearers were huddled high in the crook of a tree, holding the only two guns of his expedition, but Lhasa Nilsson did not mind. His left foot tingled with the beginning of jungle rot, but Lhasa Nilsson did not mind. He had seen his water buffalo, dripping flowers from its mouth, chomping on the rich flora of the African equatorial marsh. His massive black shoulders and horns combined with a thick skull to make a physique that was mockery to all but the most powerful rifle, and then the rifle would have to shoot to perfection just to injure this creature.

Nilsson drew the arrow back to his cheek. The buffalo was forty yards upwind. If Nilsson had given this animal the advantage of smell, he would have been a dead man. But it was his genius, the genius of his family, that made advantage appear to be disadvantage. Why shoot for the skull when there was the whole body?

The buffalo lifted its head, listening. Nilsson released the arrow with a spitting swish of a sound. Thwack, the arrow drove into the flank of the buffalo. It snorted its anger, enraged but apparently uninjured.

A mere sting. The buffalo bellowed. To the horror of the gunbearers in the tree, the white man with the yellow hair lowered his bow and shouted:

«Buffalo, hah, hah, hah. Here I am.»

The big black body, in almost arrogant joy, trotted the first few steps through the marsh, crushing plants and saplings. Then the hooves got steady footing and it lumbered into a charge, shaking the very tree in which the two gun bearers were cringing. The horns lowered and hooked but Lhasa Nilsson stood laughing, his hands on his hips. He looked up at the gun bearers in the tree and made a motion as if to shake it. One of the bearers shut his eyes and cried.

The buffalo was within fifteen paces when gray froth appeared at its mouth. It bellowed as its front legs stiffened, even while the body kept moving. The rear legs kicked as the beast boomed into the marshland, then fell and was still.

Lhasa Nilsson went to the dying buffalo. He took its head in his hands, while straddling its sweaty black neck, and kissed the beast.

«Beautiful, beautiful animal. In you I see me, except I would know better than to charge when wounded by a poison arrow. It is the circulation that kills you when you are poisoned. I am sorry I never had the opportunity to teach you that. Good night, sweet beast, until we all meet in the sunrise fires.»

Lhasa Nilsson clapped his hands, calling for the bearers. But they would not leave the tree. Did he not know that the water buffalo could spring to its feet with its last flicker of life and kill them all? Did he not understand the water buffalo?

Nilsson clapped his hands again. But the bearers would not come so he went back to his bow and strung it. Looking up at the tree, he aimed at a loincloth, which he saw was stained wet by fear.

«Do you know I can hit a target as small as a testicle with this?» he asked, and the bearers, clinging to the guns, scrambled down the tree. Nilsson gave the first bearer the bow and took the rifle.

«Now,» he said, «where is the village that has the problem with a panther?»

It was another day's trek to the village. In the hot summer it was reduced to a collection of huts in a bowl of dust. They had too much water where they didn't need it, and too little where they did. But that was a mark of civilization, making over the environment to suit man. Funny how travelers would come to these places looking for wisdom. Here, wisdom was only being able to endure the consequences of one's own sloth, ignorance, and superstition.

Lhasa Nilsson ceremoniously greeted the head man.

«And how is your beloved brother, friend?» asked the head man, who stood as high as Nilsson's chest.

«As usual,» said Nilsson glumly, and then, as an afterthought, «doing good works.»

«He is a very good man. A blessed man,» said the head man.

«Where is the panther?»

«That, we do not know. He is a giant among beasts, this panther. As big as the tigers. But where he is we do not know. He has killed a goat north of the village and attacked a man south of it and west his tracks have been spotted, but east is where he has killed a young woman and been seen many times.»

«I see,» said Nilsson. «You wouldn't know where and when he was seen, I take it.» He stood with his arms crossed in the dusty little village, as men and women chattered away, trying to remember correctly on which day the black panther did what and where.

Nilsson knew he would not get a logical answer. He felt that probably the only creature worth anything in this entire valley was the panther. But Gunner had sent him up here and after all, Gunner was now the leader of the family, even if he didn't act like it. Lhasa was not about to break family tradition. Besides, with that phone call to Switzerland, he might yet convince Gunner that he was a Nilsson, even if the rest of the Swedes had forgotten they were Norsemen who took the Irish as slaves and looted the foul Anglo Saxons at will.

So Lhasa Nilsson who was fifty, but looked thirty, and felt the strength in Ms body of a youth of twenty, listened to the little brown man with disdain, trying not to show his true feelings lest Gunner get word that one of his precious little monkeys had been insulted.

«Thank you very much,» said Lhasa, who received very little useful information. «You have been very helpful.»

The head man offered Nilsson beaters, but Nilsson shook his head. He wanted to hunt leopard. Nilsson did not tell the head man that beaters turned the proud leopard into just another big frightened cat. He was tired of killing big frightened cats. He wanted that black panther on his terms, and on the panther's. Besides. The bearers were going to be a problem. They might tell Gunner about the buffalo, and Lhasa Nilsson would have to make sure they didn't do that.

So with his two bearers, he began his own hunt, by circling the village in ever-wider circles. He searched the way his family had taught him, not by looking at single twigs or branches, but by looking at the whole valley-seeing where the good drinking streams were, where the high ground was, where a black leopard might well seek a good prowl. He noticed that his bearers were nervous, so he made them walk in front of him. He came to the village where the woman had been slain. Her husband wept as he explained how he had gone to look for her and had found her remains.

«How many days ago?» asked Gunner. Lhasa.

But the man did not know. He sniveled that sunshine had been removed from his life.

«That is too bad,» said Lhasa, who fought the urge to retch at this pathetic creature.

On the second day, Lhasa found fresh tracks.

The idiot bearers suggested it was a good place to dumb a tree and wait for the panther.

«This is where he has been, not where he is going,» said Lhasa.

«But panthers often return on their tracks,» the bearers said.

«This is not where he is going. I know where he is going. He is becoming annoyed with us and I know where he is going. In three minutes, we shall see an even fresher track.»

They pushed on and almost within three minutes, one shouted out, pointing in astonishment to a wet track. Water was still oozing up into the paw print.

The bearers refused to proceed.

«Then this is the place you wish to stay?»

They both nodded.

«Then I shall go on alone.» They followed as he knew they would. They who followed were being followed, he knew from that special almost-silence behind them that comes when a predator stalks. Birds sing differently and ground animals disappear.

«Would you like to climb your tree now?» asked Lhasa. The bearers, who had been stumbling over one another, couldn't agree fast enough. Lhasa told them to give him the guns and the long brush-cutting knives so they could climb better.

The first gripped the trunk with his legs and shinnied up a few feet; he was followed closely by the second. Lhasa gripped one of the bearer's guns by the barrel and swung it like an axe handle into the kneecap of the topmost man. Then with deft speed he positioned himself for the second man, as the first tumbled to the grqund, screaming.

Thwack and Lhasa Nilsson got another man, another kneecap.

The first tried to crawl away, but Nilsson got the other kneecap and stomped the left wrist into shattered bone. The second lay on the ground, face forward, unable to move, his breath knocked out of him. With a savage kick, Lhasa shattered the man's left shoulder.

Naturally, if the men were found in this condition, it would be obvious that they had been beaten. But Lhasa knew he had an accomplice. The man with the broken wrist cried and begged Lhasa to spare his life.

«I will not take it,» said Lhasa, «even if you beg me, and you will, you smelly little monkey.»

Lhasa lit a cigarette, a gross foul-smelling local brand, and walked off into the jungle about thirty yards. The panther emitted his characteristic hiss and growl, and Lhasa heard the man scream, begging for quick release.

Well, he had promised he would not kill him, and he would not break his word. He heard the shrieks of terror, the growls, and then the chomping of bones. He wondered idly why chicken bones were dangerous for house cats but human bones didn't seem dangerous for the larger cats. Lhasa Nilsson finished the cigarette. He did not want to disturb the panther before the job was done. That wouldn't do. He checked the rifle again, quietly moving back the bolt. A copper-tipped beauty rested in the chamber.

Quietly, step by silent step, he made his way back toward the tree. With a sudden roar, the black panther, its open mouth still dripping blood, was launched in its leap at Nilsson. In the split second before he fired, Nilsson marvelled at the size and power of the beast. Surely the biggest panther he had ever seen. Then crack, thud, and the copper-tipped beauty went through the roof of the panther's mouth into the brain. Its charging body hurled Lhasa backward into a tangled vine, but he managed to block the claws with the stock of his rifle.

All in all, he was very relaxed, which was the only way to come out of one of these things alive.

He rolled out from beneath the leopard's heavy, twitching body. Its breath smelled like a sewer. He felt a numbing pain at his left shoulder. Why, the bugger had scored. His finger searched out the gash. Nothing too bad and it would look good for Gunner. Gunner would like that, especially since the bearers were dead. All in the love of his favorite little monkeys.

At the tree base, Lhasa saw the remnants of his bearers. Excellent. There would be no trace of a beating after that mauling. The bugger had been hungry indeed. Good thing. Sometimes, panthers wouldn't attack. Not like the beautiful water buffalo.

By the time Lhasa reached the hospital at what maps indicated as a town, the story had preceded him. It was just as he had told it at the village, just as the villagers had discovered the remains.

The village informed him that they would send the panther skin and two live pigs in thanks. Such was the generosity of Lhasa Nilsson that he announced to the natives that he would donate the skin to the widows of the bearers. «Let them sell it,» he intoned. «I only wish I could have brought back their husbands.»

He kept the pigs for himself. He liked fresh pork.

Dr. Gunner Nilsson was treating a child for colic and lecturing the mother when Lhasa entered the office. Gunner was a half-inch taller and six years older, but he looked at least seventy. The lines were dug deep in his fine, tanned face, the pale blue eyes sad with many years of telling people that there was little he could do for them. His hospital was a hospital in name only. There were no operating rooms and the new antibiotics were for big cities and rich people. Gunner Nilsson could give only advice and some makeshift local remedies that, despite their mythic potency, had more power in the mind than in the bloodstream.

«I'm busy. Come back in a few minutes, please,» said Gunner.

«I'm wounded,» said Lhasa. «Even if I am your brother, I am wounded.»

«Oh, I'm sorry. I'll look at it now.» Gunner asked the woman with her child to come back in a few minutes. He did not wish to offend them, but he had a wounded man here.

Dr. Nilsson cauterized the wound because there was no antiseptic in the hospital powerful enough to cleanse it. He used a knife heated over coals. Lhasa made no sound, but when he was sure the smell of his burning flesh was in his brother's nostrils, he said:

«I understand now how difficult it must be for you to know that if you had the proper medicines, you could cure people instead of just watching them go off to die.»

«What we do here, Lhasa, is better than nothing.»

«It seems an injustice though, to offer less than we can. It seems an injustice that because of money people must die.»

«What brings about this sudden sense of charity in you, Lhasa?» asked Gunner, wrapping the shoulder in a cheap bandage expertly, so that the rough cloth allowed the wound room to breathe, yet prevented dirt from entering.

«Perhaps it is not charity, brother. Perhaps it is pride, I know what you can do, and to see a Nilsson fail day after day just for lack of money offends me.»

«If you are suggesting that we revert to our traditional family work, find another suggestion, at least one that wasn't decided finally twentyfive years ago. How does the wound feel?»

«As well as sixteenth century medicine can make it.»

«I am surprised the panther got that close to you. You never had that trouble before.»

«I am getting old.»

«You should have no trouble like this until you are in your seventies, considering what you know and what I have taught you.»

«You saw the wound. You see all the wounds. All the infections, tumors, viruses, broken legs, and all the things you cannot help because you haven't supplies. I wonder what kind of supplies one million American dollars could buy. I wonder what kind of hospital that would build. How many natives could be trained in medicine for that much money.»

«For all that much money, Lhasa, oh, the lives we could save. Drugs, doctors, medical technicians. I could make a million dollars into a hundred million dollars worth of healing.» Dr. Nilsson returned the knife to the flames to cleanse it, because fire was the best antiseptic available in the primitive circumstances.

«How many lives could you save with that, brother?»

Dr. Gunner Nilsson thought a moment, then shook his head. «I don't even want to entertain the thought. It makes me too sad.»

«A hundred? A thousand?»

«Thousands. Tens of thousands,» said Gunner. «Because the money could be used to create systems that would perpetuate themselves.»

«I was wondering,» said Lhasa. «If one person's life is worth thousands of native lives.»

«Of course not.»

«But she's white,»

«You know how I feel about that. Too long has the color of a man's skin determined how long he will live.»

«But she is rich and white.»

«All the more reason,» Gunner said.

Lhasa rose from his seat and tried to stretch the muscle of the cauterized wound. It throbbed as if it had its own heartbeat.

«There is a rich white woman in the United States whose very breath could give you the tools to help this land. But we are not in that business anymore so I must forget it. We are the last of the Nilssons. You settled that a long time ago.»

«What are you talking about?» asked Gunner.

«The one million dollars is real, brother. I was not creating a hypothesis for you. I was giving you a plan of action.»

«We will not use the family knowledge.»

«Of course,» said Lhasa, smiling. «I agree with you. And frankly I must confess I believe one rich white life to be worth much more than all the stinking natives of this stinking jungle.»

«What are you doing to me?»

«I am allowing you, dear brother, to watch your patients die so that a rich white American can live. Of course, even that won't save her life because she will be dead shortly anyhow. But enjoy your ideals as you bury your little black friends.»

«Get out of here,» said Gunner. «Get out of my hospital.»

But Lhasa left only the office. He waited in the ante room along with a woman whose gums were purple from chewing betel nut or from infection. Lhasa could not tell the difference, nor did he care very much.

In two minutes, Gunner strode from his private office,

«I'm here, brother,» said Lhasa, laughing, and they left the hospital for a very long walk through the village.

Was Lhasa sure of the money?

Yes. He had heard of it four days ago when he was upriver. He had checked it out very carefully by telephone from the British staff officer's house. He still had some contacts on the continent. And he had finally talked to the man hi charge of disbursing the money. It was firm. One and a half million dollars. The man had heard of the Nilsson family. He would be pleased if they would take the assignment.

«But when I returned you would not even speak to me but ordered me after this panther,» Lhasa said.

«I have this fear, brother, that you like to kill for the sake of killing,» Gunner said.

«Me, brother?»

«Of course you. Why did you take bow and arrow to hunt panther?»

«Did I do that?»

«You know you did. Were you hunting the buffalo again, an animal these villagers tame for their livelihood?»

«A buffalo likes to kill, brother,» said Lhasa.

«Especially when you hunt it. I will tell you what I fear. I fear there is no money or little money in this thing and you just want to kill for enjoyment.»

«Phone yourself, dear brother.» «I would have to teach you techniques, arid I fear you would use them for your own pleasure.»

«You taught me to hunt panther. Have I used that incorrectly?» Lhasa asked.

Dr. Gunner Nilsson paused near a mudhole on the main thoroughfare of the village. A young boy, his legs gnarled by a vitamin deficiency, hobbled along the dirt road.

«And, brother, why do you fear giving me knowledge which is rightfully mine? You know, it ends with me. I cannot pass it on to a son. And should I get about with this knowledge, practicing our family business, how many can I hurt compared with what poverty and ignorance does here?»

Twelve hours later, Lhasa Nilsson was upriver at the British field agent's telephone. He informed the man in Switzerland that he could deposit the money in an old Nilsson account. He had just learned of the account during an afternoon of intense discussion. Of that account and many things. He told the banker there would be no question of his collecting the money. And please keep other people out of the way. Amateurs only confused things.