Андрей Демидов - Natotevaal. War Chronicle

– Ronny, I'm so glad to see you safe and sound.

-So am I, Al.

-Can you imagine how lucky we are! So damn lucky! May all of us be that fortunate in the future – The navigator hit three times with his knuckle on the crown of his sombrero, spat over his left shoulder and grinned at the Indian boy, who was puzzled by these gestures:

-This is Magdalena, a village of Kichai Indians. There are two clans. Seven miles away is the Thierry village. Three small tribes live there. This is all that is left of the Kichai tribe: harsh climate change, the war with the Matilones tribe because of living space; the jungle that spreads from the Sintar Pass to the Canyon of Aborning Rocks.

There is one old man – Aguilar, a sort of an elder. We had a long conversation with him while you were resting. You know, many strange things are happening here. Some ghosts are flying in the sky, transparent and silent. Alien tracks in the jungle. They do not belong to Indians or Buenaventura soldiers. On the whole, they have their ears pricked up. Hunter Saurno had noticed our capsule before the disclosure of parachutes. What good eyesight, can you imagine? Hawk eyesight doubled by an eightfold magnification of Zeiss binoculars.

This shaggy boy, by the way, is one of the sons of Saurno. He also has three daughters. And what beauties! Oh, I almost forgot. Ponce! Ponce, bring me that thing, which you were boasting about yesterday.

The boy hesitated for a while, first glancing at his calloused fingers, then at the huge Whitehouse, and getting up, ran to the last hut.

Looking at the construction on the roof of the hut, Whitehouse was surprised to see a saucer of a home satellite dish.

Melodious female voices competing in a kindly squabble could be heard nearby. Two young girls carrying water in toxic-orange buckets came from behind the granite block plastered with moss. Having suddenly remembered that he was completely naked, Whitehouse started to dress frantically. Subtle gurgling of a spring somewhere behind the block, coolness of stones, twitter and trills of hooting birds in the jungle, short slender girls, merrily grinning Al – all this in addition to burning sighs of the Great Desert seemed surreal, almost fairy-tale. Girls, continuing to descend quickly, crossing over the scattered stones sonorously laughed, seeing Whitehouse get entangled in his pants and blush in embarrassment. The echo responded to them. Dybal waved to them, and making a conspiratorial face, whispered:

-Field notes: the higher girl is Saurno's second daughter, that hunter that drove us in the storm, and whose mother nursed us. Unfortunately, I do not know the Guajiro dialect, but they somehow connect you to her in their conversations. So…

Tying the shoelaces, Whitehouse with interest stared at the elastic hips of the girl, covered by embroidered with bright beads blue jeans:

-She is cute…

-Jesus, Ronald! Did you forget how you whined in the capsule: the wife, the children are the dearest for me, will I ever see them and all that stuff. What a Casanova. – Acidly said someone right above his ear. Only Mackliff could speak like that!

John Makliff, hands on his hips, stood there as if nothing had happened, dressed in overalls with metallic shimmer as if he had just got them from the McClellan indent depot. A rapid M16A1 fire rifle and a grenade launcher, stuffed with forest litter hung on his neck; two colored jays and a small animal, looking like a rabbit were fastened to his belt. He wore a uniform NASA cap, and scratched sunglasses on his nose.

Whitehouse tightly hugged the flight engineer. He showed displeasure but then laughed happily:

– Well, well, be careful, old chap, or you will break my bones again. I should have told Unsule not to finish your treatment totally, because you're too dangerous for other people – he nodded to the two Indians that folowed him out of the jungle, and they silently marched to the huts, carrying away a shot mountain goat on the pole.

We will have meat for dinner, with cassava juice and pepper topping; Dybal licked his lips. Everything is good. I am sorry for the guys though. Nice fellows they were. Dick, Colonel Eichberger… Salvation was so close and real: – sighed Whitehouse, suddenly stern.

All were silent for a while. The navigator was intently smoking a cigar, puffing sweet tobacco and scattering a few mosquitoes in the sun; Makliff was rummaging with a sprig in the rifle sight slot, which was plugged with brown clay. Somewhere the fire was kindled and a blue-gray wisp of smoke drifted above them. A dog barked. The other one responded. On the roof of the hut decorated with satellite, climbed an old Indian and began tying fresh guava leaves to the rafters instead of those that were torn by the wind.

Finally Makliff cleared the sight slot and said quietly:

– Yeah, I feel sorry for the guys, Ronni. But as for Aydem and Colonel, you were mistaken.

– Strike me dead! Are they alive? Where are they, I want to hug them!

– They are not here at the moment. The irony is, they got better before us and rushed into action.

A week ago the colonel left with the hunters to the Santar Pass to banish matilones soldiers who seized the pass. By their mercy the Kichak have been sitting in isolation for three months already. No mail, no whiskey, no fuel, no batteries for radios. And the generator, which powers their TV's does not work without fuel. We still have no idea whether a new war with the Islamists broke out or not.

As for Aydem, he has been rushing about in the sands with Saurno Santo for three days now. He wants to collect those belongings that we have thrown away on our way to the mountains: first of all, the logbook, the transmitter and cadmium absorber. But there has been a snowstorm twice since then.

It is unlikely that they will find anything. All has been long covered with sand. – Sighed Mackliff. Whitehouse just shook his head in shock:

– Gee.

Dybal, throwing away his cigar and making a gulp of orange juice from a pumpkin jar continued Mackliff's story:

– Now it is very important for us to find out whether the war had started. And whose side took the SAU and if we could go to Buenoventura. Kichak know nothing. There is no contact with the outer world. We cannot find out anything from indirect observations as this area is completely cut off, isolated.

It lies at the center of a vast area that remains uncontrolled after the approach of the Desert and the destruction of Ecuador and Colombia. They have no government here. Those who did not want to evacuate, are now on their own: hunting, fishing in Braziliera that flows over this ridge, some kind of craft – figurines of black wood, woven tapestries, beads of rock crystal – all of this is changed for cartridges, alcohol and gasoline in Buenoventura, the SAU Naval Base which lies in two hundred miles from here.

The matiliones warriors boss the show here along with something that kills the Kichak hunters who come too close to the Canyon of Aborning Rocks. And it is killing them in a weird way, as if pouring napalm over them. As for the SAU fighters who shot down Eichberger’s container, they mainly patrol the coastline from Barranquilla to Cayenne, without delving into this wilderness for more than twenty miles.

Ponce returned, holding something heavy under his arm.

He nodded to Mackliff with the importance of an adult and handed to Dybal his burden, wrapped in a piece of advertising poster "Panasonic" – the real world in your home".

– Rodriguez brought this thing and gave it to Santo for adjusting the sound head. Rodriguez says that he took that stone from the Canyon of Aborning Rocks. But no one believes him. – Navigator held in his palm a strange oblong stone: smooth, shiny, as if polished, studded with many thin streaks, forming a dense network:

– So, what do you think about this?

Whitehouse cautiously took the stone, turned it over in his hands, scratched it with his fingernail and even smelled it:

-It’s confusing…

-Okay, let's go to Aguilar, drink a sip of maize and have a bite, I have had nothing more than Malaga in my mouth since morning. There we will talk. We won’t be able to make it out without booze – said Mackliff, rising.

They went past the corral, where in piles of half-baked eggplants pigs were languid with the heat; past wicker baskets with fading in the sun tobacco leaves, which two children were hanging out to dry; passed the canopy under which three very old men knocked the dominoes, bypassed the adobe building that resembled a miniature fort with loopholes facing the jungle, where sat a thin bored young man in a mangy sombrero, with an aged Brazilian IMBEL rifle in his hands.

Astronauts walked round a pile of empty boxes from sardines, instant coffee, cigarettes, and stew, and plunged into the narrow entrance of one of the huts, screened by a mosquito net.

The host was not home.

Without much ado Mackliff opened the doors of a coarse buffet and pulled out a bowl of guava, a bottle with a worn label "Amoretti" and sat down on the floor:

– I think old Aguilar will not mind if I leave him a fat rabbit instead of this sour stuff.

Dybal and Whitehouse also sat on the mud floor, legs folded, and Ponce settled near a small window and started snapping the rifle trigger, out of which Mackliff has prudently taken the magazine.

Having made a sip from a bottle of corn vodka, Dybal perched on a hammock, causing it to sag almost to the floor and said dreamily:

-It’s nice here. Maybe I should stay… Marry some fawn with brown eyes and a passionate spirit. I would shoot parrots in the forest and write memoirs.

-Look at him. Do not relax. You will come with us.

-Where to, John?

-We’ll find a way. – Mackliff, wincing had half a cup of vodka with sweet guava and took the stone from Whitehouse:

Let us return to our muttons. I would say it's a piece of basalt, exposed to extremely high temperatures, combined with some chemical catalyst. Look, it is porous like a sponge, as if it boiled.

– Maybe it is a result of volcano activity. – The navigator asked uncertainly.

– Well, if we consider that the nearest Rouse volcano is a hundred miles to the south. No. It is too far. And the magma does not have such texture. Hey, Al, do you have more of these stones?

-As much as you like. The canyon is full of them.

– I think that this is the work of a man. I'm sure of it. It is some kind of experiment. This must be a proving ground for testing new weapons. It’s either that or the SAU’s or Islamists, or all of them together. The place is suitable. Whitehouse moved the jaw muscles and shook his fist at blank space:

– So, it is the base. Now I understand why they kill hunters at the canyon. Once I had to deal with an Islamist base in the Turkish Eskshihone. We must do away with them. I'm going. What about you? John, Al?

Mackliff frowned:

– If the war is on, then it is logical. And what if there’s no war? Imagine what hell the BIG’s will raise: a terrorist group of Americans, a German and a Russian attacked their military object. What if they're producing a fertilizer instead of guns? So do not get excited. We should wait for Aydem and the Colonel to talk things over. I think we should gather more information about the Canyon, try to communicate with Central Office get the instructions and find out the situation in the world.

Whitehouse angrily waved:

– When did you become such a formalist? -

Flight engineer scowled and with one gulp drank a second helping of maize.

Swaying in a hammock and driving away the flies from perspiring face, Dybal quietly talked to Ponce about something.