The River of Diamonds

14

The diver's red flag with diagonal white stripes fluttered from the dinghy's tiny mast. I made final adjustments to my hood and mask, Rhennin helping. There was only a slight swell and the air was muggy — not sharp as on Mercury the previous night — which I attributed to the late withdrawal of the fog seaward.

I was diving alone. Pieterse's stand-in refused point-blank to accompany me. He was as near mutiny as the rest of the Mazy Zed's crew. The dead diver's body aboard and the proximity of the grim island, the chevrons of coffins showing white on the graveyard slope like the teeth of a crocodile basking in the sun, they got them down. Some said also that it was the presence of a woman aboard which had brought all our misfortunes. The sight of Shelborne, black-clad, grim, with Rhennin, myself and Koeltas, all in a dishevelled state, had done nothing to improve their mood. Although he had hidden it at hand under a strip of canvas as we neared the barge, Shelborne's Schmeisser may have been seen when a lead from a sheet winch slackened off and snatched aside the covering.

Shelborne had lain a cable's length from the Mazy Zed while I gave a shout for Mary to come over in the rubber dinghy — alone — and join us. Shelborne did the talking. With her, his grimness disappeared. He was gentle, but his voice became hard when he told her of his ultimatum. The large green eyes in the gaunt face rested on her unwaveringly as he described how he had found us in the graveyard. He made it clear that the choice was hers and simply swept aside our protests. Underneath his words lay a peculiar implication — Mary did not miss it any more than I did, although I was not to know its meaning until later — that between himself and Mary lay bigger things than the shooting of Rhennin, Koeltas and myself, or the Mazy Zed. Mary had looked appealingly at me, but she seemed drawn to Shelborne's suggestion in some inexplicable way which, I felt, both included and excluded me. The terms of the ultimatum seemed of academic importance, almost, compared to the purport of the subtler interchange. She agreed without any serious demur, although I could tell from the way she looked at me that there were a lot of unanswered,questions in her mind, and went back alone in the dinghy to fetch her things.

When she returned, he had stood off the Mazy Zed a little farther before putting Rhennin, Koeltas and myself into the dinghy. Mary's preoccupation and almost unquestioning acceptance of Shelborne left me moody and depressed. Johaar alone on board the Mazy Zed seemed cheerful — the Bells were silent. He had wanted to be my diver-buddy, but I couldn't risk taking a greenhorn. Mary's departure and the uneasy bargain — and our proposed double-cross — left me mentally unprepared for the dive, and fear isn't a good thing to take below the sea. I had waited until the Gquma had disappeared into a fogdog on the horizon, a luminous spot low down in the north-west, before I began my preparations.

'Handsomely, now,' said Rhennin as I slid into the water.

The words at Strandloper's Water were on my lips before I could check them. '"Good luck to you, Shelley, perhaps my luck will change now!"'

Rhennin's eyes widened, the black muzzles of the Glory Hole gaped at me, and I slid into the depths.

Using my favourite dolphin kick, I planed down to the first air station. Pausing, I rolled on my back and readjusted my mouthpiece. If it was torn away — I suspected that Pieterse's might have been — I wanted to be ready to cope quickly with an emergency. Above, I could see the dinghy's bottom and below the water was as green as a treesnake. I swung carefully through 360 degrees, alert, expectant. There was nothing. The absence of marine life of any sort again surprised me. My plan was to dive a couple more fathoms — it was nine at the mouth itself — and then turn away seawards. If, I reasoned, Pieterse had been killed by something at the Glory Hole, I would not give it the chance to spot me descending, but I would come in at ground level and reconnoitre.

Seven fathoms. I glided out to sea, steering by my wrist compass. The water was green, turgid almost, and as lonely as the Namib. Nothing stirred except myself. This absence of life made me apprehensive; I had never known it before.

Eight fathoms. The safety rope to Rhennin was free in my hands.

Eight and a half fathoms. My mind was on the ghastly weals on Pieterse's neck. I continued seawards, parallel with the bottom. In a moment I would give a kick on my flippers and touch it. Would it be diamond-bearing?

There was no need. The slimy green belly of the sea reached up at me. The flatulent, unhealthy thing heaved a full half-fathom. I saw its tissue of mud blended with myriads of fine shells, stippled with green-white bones of seals and fish, as if I had been looking through a low-powered microscope. I shouted in fear behind my mask as it surged at me and I kicked wildly upwards. I shot up twenty feet before I got a hold of my nerves and forced my trembling limbs to be still. Another spurt to the surface like that and I would kill myself. I rested on the rope. There was a soft murmur below me. I sweated with fear.- What malignant creature…? I put these Koeltas-like imaginings out of my mind. I must look in order to know. I took the long-bladed knife from my belt with shaking fingers. I had deliberately not brought a speargun to leave me as mobile as possible.

Repeat the measured count: seven fathoms, eight fathoms, eight and a half. Murk. The discoloured water was green with thousands of particles. Mud, I told myself rationally, nothing but the mud of the ocean-bed. From the Glory Hole direction came the murmur I had heard previously, a sigh almost. I forced myself to within three feet of the sea-bed. Then two. One foot. I reached out. My fingers touched cold, slimy green mud. I recoiled and jerked up a few feet. I forced myself down again. I closed my fingers on it. There was no tissue, no skin, no life — nothing but slimy green mud. There was no second heaving-reach. Bubbles from my Scuba poppled surfacewards. I dug the knife to its hilt in the green film. It neither rose nor reacted. I glanced at my compass and turned due east — for the mouth of the Glory Hole.

I inched along the sea-bed. It remained smooth, like skin. Light filtered from above, muted as by a blind drawn against the sun. The floor sloped slightly upwards. There was no rip or, surge as I had expected near the mouth. I glanced left and right. Nothing.

I faced ahead. My limbs seized. A cupola had risen swiftly on the ocean floor, bulging, apparently sensate. It undulated, igloo-high, towards me. My limbs wouldn't kick me clear. My right hip banged against it. Soundlessly it vanished. Floating free, the size of a radio-sonde balloon, a bubble rose slowly past me.

Gas!

I pulled up my legs and sat down, shaking with reaction. There was, as Rhennin had asserted, a simple and rational explanation for the whole thing: here now before my eyes. The blood-red sunsets, the lavish displays of phosphorescence, the warm mugginess of the day, the lack of marine life, the green mud, the Bells — all fell into place. What a fool I had been! I was in the presence of that rarest of sea phenomena, what scientists call an azoic area — a sea without oxygen and therefore without fish. The sea is robbed of its life-giving oxygen by a sulphate-reducing type of bacteria which changes harmless sulphates normally present in sea water into an evil-smelling gas. Millions of decaying organisms are the primary cause of the gas: the sea round Mercury must be filled with untold numbers of them. Relief sharpened my mind as I was able to explain it in rational terms: the green mud was, in fact, a layer of billions of these dead daitoms, or common microscopic sea plants. The textured mud I had fled from was composed of countless skeletons of these invisible creatures." When cold currents swept the sea-bottom, bacteria-producing pockets of gas accumulated in the green mud. When a warm counter-current flowed — brought about by the north-west wind instead of the prevailing south-wester — the pockets of sea-bed gas burst, bubbling up and destroying all fish life.

It seemed to explain the Bells: simply a low heavy rumbling as the pockets of sea-bed gas escaped. It also explained why the Bells occurred only at irregular and intermittent intervals. As for the gas itself — my mind raced in relief at the natural explanation which robbed Mercury of its terror — it was sulphuretted hydrogen which, although smelling repulsive, was quite harmless to humans, although fatal to fish…

I stared in surprise, at the thin extra signal line which dangled overhead. Odd, that Rhennin should have sent down another. Odder still, it was floating loose, with no weight attached. My own rope was still fast to my wrist. My decompression meter told me I had another quarter of an hour below. I decided to ignore the drifting white nylon cord and concentrate on making a quick prospect of the sea-bed. If there were diamond gravel it would lie under the layer of mud, which I hoped was not more than a few inches thick. I scooped and scratched a patch about three feet square. It was soft and easy to work. In a few minutes I felt the rough thrill of gravel beneath. Diamond gravel! I used my knife and filled a small canvas bag at my belt. As assay of so small an area was not a fair assessment but the fact that within minutes I had found diamond-bearing gravel was encouraging. The Mazy Zed's pumps would make light work of the mud.

The new signal line drifted down almost into my prospecting hole, wandering and waving. I reached out to give Rhennin a reassuring tug; I stopped short. If it were not weighted, how did it stay down? Rope does not have negative buoyancy! The weals on Pieterse's neck! It was wavering tentatively towards my shoulder. Irrationally, blindly, I kicked out of reach. I had gone only a few yards when I pulled myself together. My nerves would be shot to hell if I accelerated like a ramjet at anything unusual… the white line drifted upwards. It was too thin for an octopus tentacle, and seemed to be uniformly so for its whole length. I followed the undulating thing. I glanced at my compass. My first suspicion hardened when I saw the line did not reach towards the surface higher than the seven-fathom mark. It turned eastwards, almost horizontal. Eastwards — to the mouth of the Glory Hole!

I switched off my powerful waterproof torch so as not to reveal my position to whatever lay ahead. It was difficult to pick out the line by the water-filtered light, so I turned over on my back, following its course. Then the light brightened from refractions inside the cavern, as in the Blue Grotto at Capri. I edged a little deeper. If there was anything there, I wanted to see it first, before it saw me. The white line was below me. I had left it above! I glanced upwards. There wasn't one, there were half a dozen lines, all floating parallel, quartering the sea. They seemed without life, without function.

I planed eastwards.

Then I saw: the lines ended. They came from an opaque, gelatinous screen through which the light, reflected from the cavern, shone with pearl-like iridescence tinged with translucent blue. I edged closer, my heart racing. The white lines trailed and twisted.

I knew what had killed Pieterse.

The curtain in the water ahead was a living creature.

It was a composite of thousands of jelly-fish. The white trailers were not rope but deadly thread-cells or cnidocils, loaded with a fatal chemico-toxic sting allied to a stunning electrical discharge. It was a rarity any marine scientist would have given his left hand to see.

I edged still closer: it looked like a screen in a pub made of empty bottles fused together. A huge colony of the individual jelly-fish or Portuguese men-o'war which float by the acre off the Sperrgebiet. They are known as siphonophora. Being such a lowly form of life, they would not be affected by the gas as fish were. Each jellyfish is a perfect individual, complete with mouth, stomach, sexual organs, propulsion apparatus and a sting powerful enough to kill small hard-shelled creatures and produce intense burns in humans. The Sperrgebiet jellyfish has the unique capacity of being able to undergo what scientists call symbiosis: by this process individuals link together into a colony and in doing so they surrender individual functions to the composite creature. One group of thousands forms a complicated apparatus for propelling the new body; another forms its sexual organs; another the stomach and digestive tract; another the liver; and yet another the killer-sting. In pooling themselves, the individuals lose all but the function they dedicate themselves to in the new animal. It becomes a complete new organism. And in the gross example before my eyes the sting had developed rope-like proportions whose touch was immediate death. Pieterse had brushed one. Sensitized, it had found a tiny crack where the hood joins the suit, hence the weals on his neck. I knew now why Shelborne had never been able to dive into the Glory Hole. It must have taken years for the colony to grow and develop to such bizarre proportions.

I glanced at my decompression meter. Only eight more minutes! I dived deep, away from the screen, down to the green mud. I peered through the shimmering, distorting, filtered light at shapes I could see vaguely looming there. There was no mistaking the outline of the lean hulls — Gruppe Eisbar,' Three were moored alongside one another and farther inwards a blur could have been the other two. The screws and hydroplanes of the nearer boats were fuzzy but distinguishable. Goering's cache was as safe as in Fort Knox. I checked again on my meter: I should already have been on my way to the surface. I swam away from the stings and gave four signal tugs — pull me up!

Rhennin didn't ask questions when he saw my face. 'Let's get back to the Mazy Zed,' was all he said.

In his cabin, boiling hot coffee laced with brandy brought some feeling back into my frozen, lethargic limbs. I felt good inside a fisherman's heavy sweater and thick corduroy trousers. My gravel sample was being rushed for a snap assay.

Rhennin confessed that he'd done the waiting by steeling himself as he had during those war-time vigils in a U-boat operations headquarters, sitting gnawing the nail of worry…

'Symbiosis!' he repeated. 'It's just a bunch of Portuguese men-o'-war which have linked up, isn't it?'

I took a big mouthful of coffee. 'No, Felix. They actually surrender functions to become a new creature. It is, in fact, a new animal — and in this extreme case, a highly dangerous one.'

'You say it's like a curtain across the entrance?'

'Yes. It has attached itself to both sides and completely blocks it.'

That would account for Pieterse.'

'Yes.'

'Then how the hell did Dieter break his way in? The hulls — was there any sign of damage?'

I was surprised. 'No, of course not. The screen couldn't harm a U-boat, Felix.'

'But the deadly electrical discharges…?'

'They're fatal to a man, but a U-boat would carve through them and not notice.'

'Then what the devil are you blethering about?' he rapped out.

'Listen,' I said, trying to soothe him, 'for a person to break into the Glory Hole is impossible. On the surface there's the wind, the sea and the blasts of compressed air. Underneath is the jelly-fish curtain. It certainly doesn't account for Gruppe Eisbar… even if it was there over twenty years ago. Nor does it account for the fact that Dieter and the others were apparently unharmed at the graveyard — if we are to believe Shelborne.'

He thumped his fists on the table. 'In God's name, John, what did Shelborne kill them all with? You've accounted for the Bells…'

'It must be the Bells, Felix. It's a bloody clever bit of showmanship taken from nature, but although it's uncanny and noisy, it's harmless. That gas is plain sulphuretted hydrogen — rotten cabbage. It stinks, but it couldn't harm a fly.'

I brushed aside my underwater nightmare. 'Anyway, our Glory Hole monster is easy to dispose of — a load of Koeltas's dynamite drums would destroy it. It's another remarkable thing about the composite jelly-fish that if you rip it apart by force, it reverts to individuals again. All the normal functions reappear in the individual, as if he had never surrendered them at all.'

'We'll do that, then.'

I shook my head. 'Felix, those U-boat crews died of something horrible. They and Dieter died because Shelborne meant them to die. He knows, Felix, he knows!' I looked out at the grim, guano-splashed island. 'The Glory Hole is the diamond fountainhead; it is the parent rock of the Sperrgebiet. Caldwell discovered it. Shelborne killed him for it. He also found out what guards it — that is why he could afford to go away for those ten years, knowing it was safe.'

'Why waste his time becoming a master mariner?'

'It was a long-term plan. The islands are run as sailing ships. To be headman, he had to be a sailing skipper. He came back…'

The telephone rang. Rhennin answered, but his eyes stayed on my face. 'Yes,' he said evenly. 'Yes. I expected it might be, from something I have just heard. Send them to me at once,'will you?'

'The assay?' I asked.

'Yes.'

'How much…'

'Rate of one carat to four tons of gravel.'

'Five times as rich as Oranjemund.'

'Gem quality. Pure blue-whites.'

'From close to the fountainhead.'

'It will be better inside.'

He watched me, silent, while I rummaged around and found what I was looking for, the only stripmap of the Sperrgebiet from Angras Juntas to Hollam's Bird Island. Mercury was marked Merkur, in German fashion. For 100 miles inland, 70 to the south and 130 to the north, the sheet was blank. It was, 'unsurveyed, shifting sand dunes'. Thirty miles to the north-east of Mercury was outlined a mountain with a complex of hills.

I said, 'I'm also going to use Caldwell's strategy — outflank the Glory Hole.'

'Take it from the rear, you mean?'

I nodded. 'See those mountains? It's my bet, just as it was Caldwell's mission, that the ancient river rises there. He got only as far as Strandloper's Water, Maybe the blocked-up mouth is at Strandloper's Water — I don't know. I may have to go only a few miles…'

'It's thirty to the mountains,' he replied sombrely. 'Not far on a map, but eternity in the Namib. Shall I come?'

'No. This is my party, Felix. Besides, you'll have to keep an eye on the crew in the state they are in.'

'We'll start the diamond pumps within the hour,' he said decisively. 'It'll snap those miseries out of them if they're busy. Once the buzz gets round that the assay was rich, it may also help. This Glory Hole creature of yours…'

I laughed. I felt easy now that I was going — to the Namib, to Shelborne's Strandloper's Water. 'Finish him off by sucking him up the Mazy Zed's pumps!'

'Won't it foul them…?'

'No,' I grinned. 'They're soft. Put the main hoses down right outside the mouth, Felix. It should be richer the farther we go inside.'

He didn't catch my mood. 'You remember Shelborne's threat, John? — if we started mining, he would kill the crew?'

I shrugged. 'We've called his bluff over the Bells. We've called it with the guardian of the cavern. I'm still cautious, though — that's why the journey.'

As if in reply to me, the reverberation of the Bells rang against the steel sounding-board of the Mazy Zed.

Rhennin looked uneasy. 'It gives you the bloody creeps.'

'No wonder we couldn't pinpoint it,' I said confidently. 'It originates anywhere round the island on the sea-bed.' I went on, 'Look, before I go off, let's search Shelborne's quarters, you and I, this afternoon. We may find the key to the whole mystery. It mayn't even be necessary for me to go.'

'Excellent,' he said, more cheerfully. 'But you don't intend going alone…?'

'I'll take Koeltas and Johaar,' I replied. Neither will mind leaving the Bells behind.'

'You couldn't have a better bodyguard than those two toughs.'

'I wish Koeltas hadn't had to leave the FN automatic in the Malgas.'

'You can have my Remington repeater. Are our pistols still in the graveyard. I don't remember Shelborne picking them up.'

'He didn't. I'll recover them.'

'Bob Sheriff's boat has weapons…'

'No, Felix. I'm keeping clear. I'll start from the Sudhuk side, which I know is safe.'

He grinned slightly. 'Like the wind — always from the south-west.'

He telephoned a quickfire of orders to bring the Mazy Zed nearer to the Glory Hole by winching her on her anchor cables. Using the run of the sea, the diamond hoses would be dropped to float inside the cavern itself. Two hours later the Mazy Zed was secured as Rhennin, Koeltas, Johaar and I rounded the seal platform in the dinghy and the strong pulse of the pumps began to vie with the Bells.

There was no clue in Shelborne's hut, which we ransacked thoroughly, although we put everything back in place again. Rhennin gave Koeltas the Remington to keep up his morale as the island trembled. Neither he nor Johaar would go for the pistols.

It was already half-dark when there was an oath from Shelborne's quarterdeck and a metallic rattle as Koeltas fed shells into the Remington's magazine.

'He comes!' he exclaimed in patois.

Rhennin and I craned into the darkness. I couldn't see anything, but I could hear the motor.

'Shelborne hasn't got an outboard,' I said.

Koeltas's fear infected us. 'It's someone from the Mazy Zed,' snapped Rhennin. 'I expressly gave orders that no one was to come…'

The red ball of a Very light rose above the jetty.

'Let's get down there!' I didn't care for searching Shelborne's papers, although there was an almost complete lack of anything personal, not a letter even, to associate the man with the place he had occupied for more than twenty years. Once the trommel's handle swung during a severe tremor. In the twilight I thought fancifully of Caldwell's ghost.

At the landing-stage I cupped my hands: 'Ahoy, there! Who is it?'

The flaming danger-signal burned out in the cold sea. The boat was too far away for me to catch the answer. Instead, another Very light flared, tattooing Johaar's skin with blood and birthmarks.

Again the hail. Koeltas heard; Rhennin swore while he waited for me to translate.

'It's Captain Longstaff. He says, come quickly, for God's sake, come quickly!'

Rhennin yelled. 'Longstaff! Stop firing those bloody lights! Come close, damn you, come close!'

The outboard circled aimlessly, like a ship with a torpedo in her rudder.

Koeltas clicked off the Remington's safety catch.

Johaar said, 'He asks, is it safe?'

These broken, high-pitched and hysterical incoherencies from the normally staid master of the Mazy Zed sounded unreal.

'Come close, blast you!' roared Rhennin.

'Felix, Koeltas says Longstaff says the 'tween-decks men are all dead — sorters, engineers, galley staff. The deck crew seems all right, but there's been a hell of a panic. Some of them have taken to the boats — one overturned and sank. A couple of men have been drowned. The others are up the rigging, on top of the gantry, on the roof of the living quarters…'

'Longstaff! Longstaff! Come here!'

His reply was another Very light. I spotted the captain at the tiller, staring straight ahead of him, like one of those dead figures in lifeboats during the war. Then he wrenched his arm over, as if he had come to a decision, and the outboard headed out to sea. We never saw Captain Longstaff again.

We held a hurried conference. Nothing would persuade Koeltas and Johaar to return with us to the Mazy Zed. The attempt at sea-bed mining off Mercury was over. Rhennin had shrugged angrily when I had called it Shelborne's victory. He decided to signal the tug and tow the Mazy Zed back to Luderitz — a day or two's run if the south-wester wasn't too strong. He seemed to take it for granted that I would go along too. He was startled when I told him that I had no intention of doing so. I still intended to break Shelborne's secret wide open. I was a freelance and not bound to the Mazy Zed, I went on. If I cared to throw my life away on a wild-goose chase in the Namib, that was my affair. At my vehemence, he smiled and shook me strongly by the hand. He was back on my side. The hell with Shelborne! He'd send the tug back after she had towed the Mazy Zed to Luderitz to pick me up in good time before Shelborne returned. I could have anything I wanted from the Mazy Zed for the journey. Koeltas and Johaar, torn between staying on Mercury and the unknown terror of the Bells, decided to come with me, although they refused to venture near the Mazy Zed. Half her crew dead! And every man of my own crew gone. In our mood, we had no hesitation in agreeing to Koeltas's request to keep the Remington in case Shelborne should return unexpectedly.

Rhennin and I set off for the Mazy Zed, lost in thought. It was clear to me that the deadly guardian of the fountainhead centred on the Glory Hole. The seabed gas I had found and the jellyfish screen — these had served only to mask the darker secret killer. Whatever it was, it was clear that Shelborne did not wield it — he could not, being away now — although he knew what it was. It was also intermittent in its lethal strikes. Did Shelborne know at what intervals it would attack, and is that why he left us so confidently to go to Walvis Bay with Mary, knowing we would be dead when he returned? Outflank — the word burned in my mind. I would outflank the Glory Hole and find the secret where I was now convinced he, too, had discovered it — at Strandloper's Water. I could not wait to set off.

The Mazy Zed's strong pulse was dead when we rounded the seal promontory. A corpse floated past, face upwards. Except for the oil-burning riding lights, the Mazy Zed was in darkness. Rhennin took command and signalled the tug, which was about sixty miles away. We battened down every opening and hatchway with the help of some of the braver members of the crew we enticed away from their positions aloft. Superficially, there was nothing to show that the million-dollar Mazy Zed had become a floating coffin.

I had hoped to stock our march from the Mazy Zed's supplies, but there was woefully little that was not below in the 'tween-decks morgue, where it would have been death to venture.

At first light next day Johaar, Koeltas and I went ashore from Mercury to the mainland, carefully skirting Bob Sheriff's wreck. Unaccountably, there was no fog and the sun was bright as we climbed in single file, myself leading, the low hills which backed the bay.

Ahead lay the Namib, white as the venom of a mamba.