The Valley of the Flame

CHAPTER II. DRUMBEAT OF DEATH

LUIZ WAS staring at Raft in surprise.

"S'nhor?" Luiz said.

"What?" Raft answered.

"Did you speak?"

"No." Raft let the lens fall back on da Fonseca's bare chest.

Merriday was at his side. "The other man won't let me look at him," he said worriedly. "He's stubborn."

"I'll talk to him," Raft said. He went out, trying not to think about that lens, that lovely, impossible face. Subjective, of course, not objective. Hallucination—or self-hypnosis, with the light reflecting in the mirror as a focal point. But he didn't believe that really.

The bearded man was in Raft's office, examining a row of bottles on a shelf—fetal specimens. He turned and bowed, a faint mockery in his eyes. Raft was impressed; this was no ordinary backwoods wanderer. There was a courtliness about him, and a smooth-knit, muscular grace that gave the impression of fine breeding in both manners and lineage. He had also an air of hardly concealed excitement and a certain hauteur in his poise which Raft did not like.

"Saludades, s'nhor," he said, his too-bright eyes dazzling in the light. Fever, perhaps, behind that brilliant stare. His voice was deep, and he spoke with an odd, plaintive undertone that held a distant familiarity. "I am in your debt."

His Portuguese was faulty, but one didn't notice that. Raft had a feeling of gaucherie, entirely new to him.

"You can pay it right now," he said brusquely. "We don't want the station contaminated, and you may have caught something up-river. Take off your shirt and let's have a look at you."

"I am not ill, doutor."

"You recover fast, then. You were ready to pass out when you came into the hospital."

The black eyes flashed wickedly. Then the man shrugged and slipped out of the ragged shirt. Raft was a little startled at the smooth power in his sleek body, the muscles rippling under a skin like brown satin, but rippling very smoothly, so that until he moved you hardly realized they were there.

"I am Paulo da Costa Pereira," said the man. He seemed faintly amused. "I am a garimpeiro."

"A diamond-hunter, eh?" Raft slipped a thermometer between Pereira's lips. "Didn't know they had diamonds around here. I should think you'd be in the Rio Francisco country."

There was no response. Raft used his stethoscope, shook his head and tried again. He checked his findings by Pereira's pulse, but that didn't help much. The man's heart wasn't beating, nor did he apparently have a pulse.

"What the devil!" Raft said, staring. He took out the thermometer and licked dry lips. Da Fonseca's temperature had been below normal but Pereira's was so far above normal that the mercury pushed the glass above 108В°, the highest the glass tube could register.

Pereira was wiping his mouth delicately. "I am hungry, s'nhor" he said. "Could you give me some food?"

"I'll give you a glucose injection," Raft said, hesitating a little. "Or—I'm not sure. Your metabolism's haywire. At the rate you're burning up body-fuel, you'll be ill."

"I have always been this way. I am healthy enough."

"Not if your heart isn't beating," Raft said grimly. "I suppose you know that you're—you're impossible? I mean, by rights you shouldn't be alive."

Pereira smiled.

"Perhaps you don't hear my heartbeat. I assure you that it's beating."

"If it's that faint, it can't be pumping any blood down your aorta," Raft said. "Something's plenty wrong with you. Lie down on that couch. We'll need ice-packs to bring your temperature down."

Pereira shrugged and obeyed. "I am hungry."

"We'll take care of that. I'll need some of your blood, too."

"No."

Raft swore, his temper and nerves flaring, "You're sick. Or don't you know it?"

"Very well," Pereira murmured. "But be quick. I dislike being—handled."

With an effort, Raft restrained an angry retort. He drew the necessary blood into a test-tube and capped it.

"Dan!" he called. There was no answer.

Where the devil was Craddock?

He summoned Luiz and handed him the test-tube. "Give this to Doutor Craddock. I want a stat C.B.C." He turned back to Pereira. "What's the matter with you? Lie back."

But the diamond-hunter was sitting up, his face alive and alight with a wild, excited elation. The jet eyes were enormous. For a second Raft watched that stare. Then the glow went out of Pereira's eyes and he lay back, smiling to himself.

Raft busied himself with ice-bags. "What happened up-river?"

"I don't know," Pereira said, still smiling. "Da Fonseca blundered into my camp one night. I suppose his plane crashed. He couldn't talk much."

"Were you alone?"

"Yes, I was alone."

That was odd, but Raft let it pass. He had other things on his mind—the insane impossibility of a living man whose heart did not beat. Ice-cubes clinked.

"You a Brazilian? You don't talk the lingo too well."

The feverishly brilliant eyes narrowed.

"I have been in the jungle a long time," the man said. "Speaking other tongues. When you do not use a language, you lose it." He nodded toward the bottles on the wall. "Yours, doctor?"

"Yes. Fetal specimens. Embryonic studies. Interested?"

"I know too little to be interested. The jungle is my—my province. Though the sources of life—"

He paused.

Raft waited, but he did not go on. The strange eyes closed.

Raft found that his fingers were shaking as he screwed the tops on the ice-bags.

"That thing da Fonseca wears around his neck," he said, quite softly. "What is it?"

"I had not noticed," Pereira murmured. "I have had a difficult day. If I might rest, it would be nice."

Raft grimaced. He stared down at that cryptic, inhuman figure, remembering the odd malformation of the clavicle he had felt during his examination, remembering other things. Some impulse made him say, "One last question. What's your race? Your ancestors weren't Portuguese?"

Pereira opened his eyes and showed his teeth in an impatient smile that was near to a snarl.

"Ancestors!" he said irritably. "Forget my ancestors for tonight, doutor. I have come a long way through the jungle, if you must know it. A long, long way, past many interesting sights. Wild beasts, and ruins, and wild men, and the drums were beating all the way." His voice lowered. "I passed your ancestors chattering and scratching themselves in the trees," he said in a purring murmur. "And I passed my ancestors, too." The voice trailed off in an indescribably complacent sound. After a moment of deep silence, he said, "I would like to sleep. May I be alone?"

Raft set his teeth. Delirium, of course. That accounted for the senseless rambling. But that imperious dismissal was intrinsic in the man himself. Now he gathered his rags about him as if they had been ermine. He seemed to fall asleep almost instantly. From his recumbent form there breathed out a tremendous vitality that set Raft's nerves jangling.

He turned away. A heartbeat so faint that it was imperceptible? Ridiculous. Some new disease, more likely, though its symptoms were contradictory. Pereira seemed in perfect health, and yet he obviously couldn't be.

There might be another answer. A mutation? One of those curious, specialized human beings that appear occasionally in the race? Raft moved his mouth impatiently. He went back to check on the aviator, conscious of a queer, rustling alertness permeating the hospital, as though the coming of the two men had roused the place from sleep to wakefulness.

There was no change in da Fonseca, and Merriday was busy with stimulants. Raft grunted approval and went in search of Craddock.

Halfway down the hall he stopped at the sound of a familiar voice. The diamond-hunter's low, smooth tones, urgent now, and commanding.

"I return this to you. I have come very far to do it, s'nhor."

And Dan Craddock replying in a stumbling whisper that held amazement and fear.

"But you weren't there! There was nothing there, except—"

"We came later," Pereira said. "By the sun and the waters we guessed. Then at last we had the answer."

Raft let out his breath. A board creaked under him. Simultaneously he heard a—a sound, a susurrus of faint wind, and felt a sense of inexplicable motion.

Startled, he hurried forward. The passage lay blankly empty before him. Nothing could have left the laboratory without his knowledge. But when he stood on the threshold he faced Craddock, and Craddock alone, staring in blank, astounded paralysis at nothing.

Quickly Raft searched the room with his eyes. It was empty. The window screens were still in place, and, moreover, were so rusted that they could not be removed without considerable noise.

"Where's Pereira?" he asked curtly.

Craddock turned to face him, jaw slack. "Who?"

"The man you were just talking to."

"I—I—there was nobody here."

"Yeah," Raft said. "So I'm crazy. That wouldn't surprise me, after what's happened already tonight." He noticed a booklet in Craddock's hand, a ring-bound notebook with its leather cover moulded and discolored by age. The Welshman hastily stuffed it into his pocket. Avoiding Raft's probing eyes, he nodded toward the microscope.

"There's the blood. I must have bungled it somehow. It's all wrong." Yet he didn't seem unduly surprised.

Raft put his eye to the lens. His lips tightened.

"So I am crazy," he said.

"It is funny, isn't it?" Craddock said, inadequately.

It was more than funny. It was appalling. The vascular system has certain types of blood cells floating free, of course; they have a definite form and purpose, and intruding organisms may affect them in various ways.

But this specimen on the slide showed something Raft had never seen before. The red cells were oval instead of disc-shaped, and in place of the whites there were ciliated organisms that moved with a writhing, erratic motion.

And moving fast—too fast!

"They've slowed down a lot since I first looked," Craddock said. "In the beginning they were spinning so quickly I couldn't even see them."

"But what sort of bug would do that? It's destroyed the phagocytes. Pereira ought to be dead, if he hasn't a white blood cell in his body. No, there's a mistake somewhere. We'd better run some reagent tests."

They did, going through the routine, but found nothing. Te every test they could devise, the reaction was that of apparently normal blood. Furthermore, the writhing ciliate things seemed not to be malignant. When toxic matter was introduced the ciliates formed a barrier of their own hairy bodies, just as phagocytes should have done, but three times as effective.

A specimen slide glittered and trembled in Craddock's mutilated hand.

"It's an improvement," he said. "Those bugs are better than whites."

"But where are the whites?"

"Deus, how should I know?" Craddock's fingers slid into the pocket where he had placed that discolored notebook. "I'm not in charge here—you are. This is your problem."

"I wonder if it is," Raft said slowly. "Just what was there about the—sun and the waters?"

Craddock hesitated. Then a wry, crooked smile twisted his mouth.

"They appeared quite normal to me," he said. And, turning on his heel, was gone.

Raft stared after him. What was behind this? Craddock obviously knew Pereira. Though how that interview had been held, Raft did not know. Ventriloquism? He snorted at the thought. No, Pereira had been in the laboratory with Craddock, and then he had, seemingly, walked through solid walls.

Which meant—what?

Raft turned to the microscope again. There was no help there. In the sane, modern world of 1985 there was simply no place for such irrationalities. Incidentally, where was Pereira now?

He wasn't in the office where Raft had left him. And as Raft hesitated on the doorway, he heard a sound that brought blood pumping into his temples. He felt as though the subtle, half-sensed hints of wrongness had suddenly exploded into action.

It was merely the faint pop-popping of exhaust, but there was no reason for the motor launch to be going out at this hour.

Raft headed for the river. He paused to seize a flashlight. There were faint shouts. Others had caught the souhd of the engine too. Merriday's bulky form loomed on the bank.

Raft leveled the light and sent the beam flashing out into that pit of shadows. The smooth surface of the river glinted like a stream of diamonds. He swung the beam. There was the motor launch, ploughing a black furrow in the shining water as it melted away into the gloom where the flashlight's rays could not penetrate.

But just as it vanished the light caught one full gleam upon a face—Pereira's face, laughing back across his shoulder, white teeth glittering in the velvety beard. Triumph was arrogant in his laughter, the elation Raft had sensed before.

There was someone with him; Raft found it impossible to make out who that someone was. The Indies were running along the cleared bank, and a couple of them had put out in a canoa, but that wouldn't help. Raft drew the pistol he always carried in the jungle. The thought of sending a bullet after that arrogant, laughing face was very pleasant.

"No, Brian!" Merriday said, and pulled down his arm.

"But he's getting away with our boat!"

"Dan Craddock's with him," Merriday said. "Didn't you see?"

The pop-popping of the motor was fainter now, dying into the dim murmur of the Jutahy drums. Raft stood motionless, feeling bewildered and helpless.

"Nothing we can do till morning, anyway," he said presently. "Let's go back inside."

Then a voice he did not know jabbered something in Portuguese.

"He has gone back to his own land—and he has taken something with him."

Raft flashed the light up into the face of the aviator, da Fonseca, his flyer's cap gripped in one hand as he fumbled at his throat, groping, searching. The pupils of his eyes were no longer tiny. They were huge.

"Taken what?" Merriday said.

"My soul," da Fonseca said quite simply.

There was a moment of stillness. And in that pause da Fonseca's words fell with nightmare clarity.

"I had it in a little mirror around my neck. He put it there. It gave him the power to—to—" The thin, breathless voice faded.

"To do what?" Raft asked.

"To make men slaves," the aviator whispered. "As he did with the doutor."

Craddock! Raft had a sudden insane relief that the Welshman had not, then, gone off willingly with Pereira, in some mysterious unfathomed partnership. Then he was furious with himself for instantly accepting such a fantastic explanation from a man so obviously mad.

Yet it was an explanation. There seemed to be no other.

"Let me down," da Fonseca said, stirring against the hands that held him upright. "Without my soul I cannot stay here long."

"Carry him inside," Raft said. "Bill, get a hypo. Adrenalin."

Da Fonseca had collapsed completely by the time he was laid gently on a cot. His heart had stopped. Merriday came running with a syringe.

He had put on a long needle, guessing Raft's intention.

Raft made the injection directly into the heart muscle. Then he waited, stethoscope ready. He was conscious of something—different. Something changed.

Abruptly he knew what it was. The drums. They were louder, shouting, triumphant. Their beat was like the throbbing of a monster heart—of the jungle's heart, dark and immense.

Da Fonseca responded. Raft heard the soft pounding through the instrument, and those heart-beats were timed exactly to the rhythm of the Jutahy drums. His lids lifted slowly. His voice was hollow, chanting.

"He goes back now—and the gate of Doirada opens to his coming—He goes back—to the sleeping Flame. By the unseen road, where the devils of Paititi watch at the gate of Doirada…."

Louder roared the drums. Louder beat da Fonseca's heart. His voice grew stronger.

"The sun was wrong. And the river was slow—too slow. There was a devil there, under the ice. It was—was—"

He tore again at his throat, gasping for breath. His eyes held madness.

"Curupuri!" he screamed, and the drums crashed an echo.

And were still.

There was silence, blank and empty. As though at a signal, the Jutahy drums had stopped.

Da Fonseca fell back like a dead man on the cot. Raft, sweat cold on his skin, leaned forward, searching with his stethoscope at the bared chest.

He heard nothing.

Then, far out in the jungle, a drum muttered once and was still.

Da Fonseca's dead heart stirred with it.

And fell silent.