Child of the Journey (46 page)

The man stood up. The hole that had once been his mouth turned upward in a ghoulish imitation of a smile. Placing his hands on his hips, he bowed slightly as if acknowledging his victory. Sol heard Taurus, who was still lightly bound to the stretcher, whimpering softly. Two dogs immobilized and one dead and they had just arrived, he thought.

"Let the dogs go!" Erich commanded. "All of them!"

Snarling, the shepherds leapt forward. Terrified guards and prisoners found their feet and their voices, and from the encircling forest varicolored birds lifted into startled flight. The screams of lemurs joined with the softly insistent shrill of an aye-aye hidden in the trees.

The dogs never reached their victim.

When they were close enough so he could surely feel their heated breath, the Zana-Malata crouched and patted the earth.

Sol watched in disbelief as the animals stopped in their tracks and, in unison and panting heavily, crawled on their bellies to huddle like house-pets around the man's feet.

"Bruqah!" Erich turned and shouted, "What the hell! What
is
that...
thing!"

"Zana-Malata!" Bruqah yelled back, stabbing the ground with his walking stick as he hurried after the others.

"Leper?"
 

"Syphilitic." Bruqah gripped his crotch for emphasis.

Ignoring the ruckus, the Zana-Malata made his way across the clearing toward Hempel, who moved toward him. Misha trailed behind, head down.

Motioning to the major to follow, the Zana-Malata bent down and gathered the wolfhound in his arms. Seemingly without effort, he lifted the dog and carried it to the shack. Hempel started forward, then paused half way there.

At the doorway the Zana-Malata set down the animal, turned and, with the same sense of drama, lifted his arms into the air and held them there. Then he turned and ambled into the shack, pulling the dog in after him, leaving Sol to wonder if the heat had already affected his brain and caused him to imagine the whole thing.

Pistol in hand, Erich burst past Hempel and the dogs. They jumped to their feet. He leapt the shack's steps and slapped past the zebu hide door, only to re-emerge moments later. For a split second he went rigid. His hand shot out as if seeking support, and his head snapped up.

"M-must have gone out a back way."

He waved the gun, and Sol waited for him to order dogs and trainers, perhaps the guards as well, into the surrounding rain forest to search for the black man and the wolfhound. Instead, he stumbled down the steps. "F-forget th-them, f-for now," he stammered.

Sol had not heard Erich stammer in fifteen years. He watched with concern, worried that the lightning seizure--over the moment it occurred--might have had a greater effect on Erich than usual.

"W-we'll deal with that bastard later," Erich told his troops. Confidence was returning to his face and voice, and his stammering was already less pronounced. "We have a camp to build. We must always--
always
--keep that primary mission in mind."

Moving with an easy grace despite the heat and the soggy earth, Erich turned to look at the inhabitants of his empire.

"Though I...I'm a man of action rather than words," he began, "I feel I should remind you why you are here and what our plans are for you. Two hundred years ago, this island was a base for British pirates. Later, it belonged to the French. Now, it is the F-Fatherland's turn. The camp we set up here is only a beginning. Eventually, we will also p-penetrate the mainland. Shiploads of other Jews will follow you here. This is your new homeland." He looked at Solomon. "Your Jerusalem--"

Sol stopped listening. Erich's benign dictatorship was pathetic. Even if he meant what he said, Hempel would never allow it. Their hope for survival lay in his recovering his wits and his strength. He recalled what Emanuel and Margabrook and the woman, Lise, had said to him as he hung from the noose at the camp:

"You must live....You have not yet fulfilled your destiny."

"Survival, Solomon! Therein lies your duty! There are things to be done that only you can do."

"Only God has the right to order the universe."

God and not Hitler!

The madman must be stopped in Madagascar. That was the grand design of the visions. There would be no penning up of Jewish assets and abilities here.

"That awful man...this place! I can't make it," Miriam whispered, clutching her belly and rocking back and forth. "I hurt, Solomon."
 

Stooping beside her, Bruqah put his hand on her stomach and tilted his head as if he were listening to something. "Your baby will come soon, Lady Miri," he said, standing up. "You must rest."

Sol took Miriam's hands in his and placed them on her belly. "We will get out of this somehow," he said. "But we need to learn the terrain first, and gain strength."

"You speak wisely," Bruqah said. "When time comes, I help."

"What will you call the...our...child?" Sol asked.

"Erich, if it's a boy," Miriam told him. "I'll have no choice. A girl? It is a girl, Sol. I know it."

"What name would you choose for our daughter?"

"I would call her--"

"She will be Deborah."

"Yes," Miriam said. "Deborah the prophetess and judge."

Sol gripped her shoulders. "And Deborah the fighter and survivor." A wellspring of hope he had long since thought dry flooded his being. "There will be a next year in Jerusalem," he said.

He would have gone on speaking, but a sound behind the twisted roots that fringed the clearing like the legs of a giant spider commanded his attention. Bruqah moved toward the sound. He parted the brush with his walking stick.

"Lemur, maybe." He stared into the foliage. "Or--"

"Bruqah calls this place 'the island where the dead dream,'" Miriam said. "He thinks it is peopled by ghosts."

"Think?" Bruqah said. "You know the child. Bruqah knows this land." As Sol had done, he looked at Miriam's belly. "Maybe you will chase away the ghosts, you and Solly and the baby. There are surely reasons why you are here."

Because he knew there was a reason for everything, Sol nodded. When he knew what those reasons were, he thought wryly, life would begin to make sense.

Maybe.