The Poison Oracle (15 page)

“It is not possible,” said Hadiq, speaking full-voice for the first time. “It is not possible that Dyal should slay my father. Nor is it possible that Gaur should slay either of them.”

Bin Zair nodded, sucking his cheeks in and out, while the rest of the Council disputed this point. When silence settled he spoke.

“Yes,” he said, “your tale might be true, Lord Morris, though I do not think any man here would wager on it. In the same way it might be true that you or I did the killings.”

“You
and
I,” said Morris. “If we had been in league, we could have done it, though to what profit I do not know.”

“This is all politicians’ talk,” shouted Fuad. “Everyone knows that the old marshman killed the Sultan so that the marshmen should take the profit from the oil which belongs to us Arabs. I say . . .”

Somebody was tugging at his sleeve, but he went on shouting, lashing himself into fresh fervours of rage. Morris was glad, in a way, to have this motive for the Arab interest in the case out into the open. He was even more glad not to have Fuad on his side in the discussion. Once again it was bin Zair who brought the meeting to order, though Morris didn’t notice him doing it. All that happened was that while Fuad was still bellowing away four slaves appeared, carrying a cine projector and a collapsible screen, which they proceeded to erect regardless of the storm of words. By the time they had finished even Fuad was seated again, and waiting in polite silence.

The Council Chamber having no outside windows, it was a simple matter to dim the factitious sun behind the stained glass, though it then felt strange to sit in the expectant dark knowing that a few yards further off a real sun still beat downright upon the dunes.

“Lord Morris has forgotten,” squeaked bin Zair, “that he kept a camera trained upon the apes. Now we may see something. Allah, it is badly developed!”

Certainly there was something wrong, but it was never easy in Q’Kut to trace a technological fault to its origin. This film looked as though it had been over-exposed, so that the tree-trunks and the loafing chimps were all dark silhouettes against the background glare from the windows. For several minutes the chimps had the show to themselves and made nothing of it, lying around in undramatic heaps, reaching with lazy limbs for odd bits of left-over orange peel or vacantly fondling each other. Dinah must have been in one of the corners where the lens didn’t reach. Morris saw Sparrow lurch over to Starkie and give her a random buffet. One of the Arabs commented in the dark that he was just like some other Arab. Everyone laughed. Then, very suddenly, two figures strolled into view on the far side of the cage and stood talking. The small one, by his beard, was unmistakably bin Zair, and the large one, by his robes and figure, the Sultan. For a while they stood silhouetted against the glaring windows. The Sultan held one of the spring-guns cradled on his arm. Bin Zair talked to him with rising energy, hoicking at his beard, gesticulating like an actor. The Sultan seemed to answer once or twice, but suddenly he took a pace forward and struck bin Zair with his free hand, so that the old man almost fell; instead he turned his staggering into a sort of bow and backed slowly out of the picture. The Sultan, with the gun dangling now from his left hand, turned his back on the camera and gazed across the desert. All at once he staggered, as though struck; he swung round, aimed his gun almost at the camera and fired, and in the next instant collapsed against the bars. A chimpanzee (Rowse?) was ambling over to look at him when with a whirr and a click the film ended. The slaves turned the lights on and cleared the projector and screen away.

“Thus was the Sultan shot,” said an old Arab. “Shot in the back. Just so does a man stagger as the bullet strikes. I have seen it over my own sights.”

A general murmur of agreement rose. Those who had not personally shot enemies in the back, presumably ashamed to make their innocence public, joined in the grunts of assent. But something in Rowse’s gawky movements in the last few frames had caused Morris’s mind to make a forgotten connection. His suggestions so far had been not exactly frivolous, but at least academic, an attempt to sow enough doubt in these stony minds to divert them from immediate war. Now he saw a perfectly serious possibility—something which (if you knew the people concerned) was actually more probable than bin Zair’s hypothesis.

“There is yet another way in which the deaths might have come about,” he said. “This young man, Gaur, as the Sultan Hadiq will witness, was in deadly fear of my apes, thinking them demons. Now, we kept three spring-guns, one for use, one for practice and one spare. Only one was necessary, but as you know the Sultan loved guns. Now, is it not possible that the young man, hoping to kill some of the apes, put poison on the darts that were kept for use? And Dyal and the Sultan shot each other half in sport?”

“It is much more possible that he killed for love,” said someone. “A young man will do anything for love. Do you remember, Umburak, how your cousin . . .”

It was a long story of sex and violence and the breaking of sacred obligations to host and kin. Apparently all the Arabs knew it already, for they occasionally corrected the speaker about some detail. But they listened to it right through, without impatience.

“Yes,” said Umburak, when the story was over, “a young man will do anything when he is mad for love.”

“And an old one too,” said a jeering voice.

This must have been an insult too close to home, for at once a dignified old man on the far side of the circle, who had hitherto remained completely silent, was standing up, shouting at the speaker, with his hand on his dagger. Several others joined in. A chain reaction of accusation began, spreading from the old man’s lusts back to a hideous desert feud which had begun a generation ago when the Hadahm had poisoned a well belonging to the Amahra. Most of those present seemed still to owe allegiance to one side or other in the quarrel, and for several minutes it looked as though blood might be shed over it again. But bin Zair and the young man with the cleft chin and one or two others rushed about the riot, pushing angry men apart and coaxing them back on to their cushions. Bin Zair sent for coffee again, and at the sound of the thudding pestle the last of the tumult died.

The silence still bristled. Before the coffee was made a man in Fuad’s party stood up again.

“This Lord Morris,” he said in an angry voice, “talks like a politician. I ask you why? Now he has told us three or four stories of how the Sultan might have died. They are children’s stories, and we are men. But he keeps the guns in his room and he speaks the filthy language of the marshmen. All we men know truly that the marshman shot the Sultan for the oil, but this Lord Morris tries to hide the truth with words and stories. Why? Does it not show that he and the marshmen plotted together to kill the Sultan?”

Morris was astonished, but not afraid because it was impossible for him to take the idea seriously; it took him some time to realise that it was not impossible for others, a point brought strongly home when he looked up from trying to gather his wits amid the uproar and found that the young man with the cleft chin was dancing in front of him but somehow keeping his gun-barrel pointing steadily at Morris’s chest.

How do you rebut a charge like that? Morris looked desperately round, caught Hadiq’s eye and saw him say something to bin Zair, who rose unsteadily to his feet again and with a quavering old hand plucked the gun away from the young man. It was a remarkably deft, accurate movement, in fact. Bin Zair pointed, and the young man went back to his place. Silence fell as the coffee-man began his tedious ministrations.

“Let Lord Morris be served first,” said Hadiq loudly.

“This young marshman and the Frankish woman,” said Umburak, “have they been questioned?”

There was a stir of interest, perhaps because the verb was one which included the possibility of torture.

“Gaur is gone,” said Hadiq, after a pause. “He came to me the day my father died. He had not learnt to speak more than a little Arabic. He said ‘Your father. My father.’ He put his hands to the collar of his robe and tore it from top to bottom. He wept. I have not seen him since. I think he has gone back to the marshes.”

“Let him be sent for,” said someone. Several people with better local knowledge explained the folly of this remark.

“There is still the woman, then,” said Umburak.

“I am told,” squeaked bin Zair, “that in the full heat of that afternoon a naked marshman came to the boathouses, leading a veiled woman. He came from the palace. He took the boat-guard’s gun from him and stunned him with his fist. When the guard woke a canoe had been taken.”

There was a brief murmur of discussion, not very interested, and then Fuad was on his feet again, shouting “What does it matter? The old savage killed the Sultan. The young savage killed the Sultan. Morris helped or he did not. However it be, the killing was done by one of these devils from the marshes. Let them be punished. Let them be driven out. We do not want them in our land!”

“I have heard that when men drained the marshes above Basra much good land was exposed,” said the supposedly lecherous elder.

These two speeches brought the meeting to its full fervour. The notion of war, combined with the idea of fertile land (which then would be eroded to desert in a generation by bad husbandry) seemed to stir almost every Arab soul. Even the impassive Umburak was on his feet, shouting, and it took Morris some time to realise that he was dissenting from the motion.

“Fools! Fools! Fools!” he was shouting.

Nobody paid any attention. He looked round, ignored Morris, strode out of the circle, picked up a heavy alabaster spittoon, lifted it, carried it into the middle of the circle and slammed it down upon the mosaic floor. The effect was remarkable; there must have been some flaw or stress in the bowl, for the pedestal shot clean through it and it crashed to the floor and broke, spilling out date stones and tangerine peel and chewing-gum, all mixed with the gub of ancient hawkings. The silence after the crash was beautiful.

“You are fools,” said Umburak. “How will you fight against the marshmen? This is no camel-raid. How will you go among the reeds, where your enemies know every winding and hide in every patch of cover with their poisoned spears? One scratch and a man dies. Lo, the Sultan and the slave died with the prick of a poisoned needle. You have guns, but you have only six hundred fighting men. They have eight thousand, and I, with my own eyes, have seen a marshman spear a small pig at thirty paces. I tell you, it is not a camel-raid.”

This was not a popular speech.

“We will not fight them in the marshes, then,” said the young man with the cleft chin. “The Sultan has two aeroplanes. Let him buy bombs and napalm and thus drive these demons out of the reeds on to the sands, where we can deal with them.”

“I will not do it,” shouted Hadiq. “By God, I tell you I will not do it. I tell you the treaty is not broken. We do not know it to be broken. It may be that Gaur killed for love. It may also be that some other man came to the zoo and tricked him—he did not know our ways. Shall I now hunt like animals the people my father loved and protected? By God I tell you I will not.”

“Had the Sultan no braver sons?” shouted Fuad. A ripple of shock ran round the circle, but Morris sensed that the question was merely premature. In a few days it could be asked openly, and the suggestion made that Hadiq was reluctant to attack the marshmen because by their help he had come to his inheritance. He rose, very pale, but suddenly looking remarkably like his father.

“Hear me,” squeaked bin Zair. “Umburak speaks well. Fuad speaks impertinent folly. You cannot fight the marshmen at once. Thought must be taken. Preparations must be made. Therefore there is time to make further enquiries. Let a man go into the marshes to seek out Gaur and this woman, and bring them here.”

“He will be speared before he has paddled a mile,” said Umburak. “It is their custom.”

“Let him go under the hand of Na’ar,” said bin Zair (who like all Arabs was quite unable to pronounce the !) “They will not harm him then.”

“Who will go?” said someone.

“Let Lord Morris go,” said bin Zair.

“No! For God’s sake!” said Morris.

“He speaks their language and knows some of their customs,” said bin Zair, as though Morris had not spoken.

“But . . . but. . .” said Morris.

Bin Zair rose and with a tiny jerk of his head indicated that he wanted to talk to Morris in private. They moved off together until they could whisper in the corner below the frilly gallery where the women sat for the feasts.

“It is well that you are reluctant,” said bin Zair. “Thus they cannot say that you are running away to your friends.”

“Running away?”

“I know Arabs, Lord Morris. They have come here to fight, and now they must wait. In two days, three days, they will look for other sport. They will remember the words of Kadhil, that it was you who planned the murders . . .”

“Why on earth should I?”

“The oil, Lord, the oil. The smell of it makes Arabs mad, and so they believe it must make other men.”

“I see.”

“You will be safe in the marshes.”

“But what about the zoo? Those two damned slaves have disappeared. What about . . .”

“Oh, that happens always. Slaves hide at the death of their lord. He was killed in the zoo, so the zoo slaves hide, lest they be tortured. I will find you fresh slaves, and by my beard I will see that they do their work. You will go?”