Then there was a roar from the edge of the clearing, and a huge wild-faced man in a straw hat, a shot-gun held like a crow-bar in his hands, stormed in among the Indians, driving them back. Dragging the monitor from his neck, Connolly felt the steadying hand of Captain Pereira take his elbow.
‘Lieutenant, Lieutenant,’ Pereira murmured reprovingly as they recovered the pistol and made their way back to the campong, the uproar behind them fading among the undergrowth, ‘we were nearly in time to say grace.’
Later that afternoon Connolly sat back in a canvas chair on the deck of the launch. About half the Indians had returned, and were wandering about the huts in a desultory manner, kicking at the fires. Ryker, his authority reasserted, had returned to his bungalow.
‘I thought you said they weren’t cannibal,’ Connolly reminded Pereira.
The Captain snapped his fingers, as if thinking about something more important. ‘No, they’re not. Stop worrying, Lieutenant, you’re not going to end up in a pot.’ When Connolly demurred he swung crisply on his heel. He had sharpened up his uniform, and wore his pistol belt and Sam Browne at their regulation position, his peaked cap jutting low over his eyes. Evidently Connolly’s close escape had confirmed some private suspicion. ‘Look, they’re not cannibal in the dietary sense of the term, as used by the Food & Agriculture Organization in its classification of aboriginal peoples. They won’t stalk and hunt human game in preference for any other. But—’ here the Captain stared fixedly at Connolly ‘- in certain circumstances, after a fertility ceremonial, for example, they will eat human flesh. Like all members of primitive communities which are small numerically, the Nambikwara never bury their dead. Instead, they eat them, as a means of conserving the loss and to perpetuate the corporeal identity of the departed. Now do you understand?’
Connolly grimaced. ‘I’m glad to know now that I was about to be perpetuated.’
Pereira looked out at the campong. ‘Actually they would never eat a white man, to avoid defiling the tribe.’ He paused. ‘At least, so I’ve always believed. It’s strange, something seems to have… Listen, Lieutenant,’ he explained, ‘I can’t quite piece it together, but I’m convinced we should stay here for a few days longer. Various elements make me suspicious, I’m sure Ryker is hiding something. That mound where you were lost is a sort of sacred tumulus, the way the Indians were looking at your instrument made me certain that they’d seen something like it before perhaps a panel with many flickering dials…?’
‘The Goliath 7?’ Connolly shook his head sceptically. He listened to the undertow of the river drumming dimly against the keel of the launch. ‘I doubt it, Captain. I’d like to believe you, but for some reason it doesn’t seem very likely.’
‘I agree. Some other explanation is preferable. But what? The Indians were squatting on that hill, waiting for someone to arrive. What else could your monitor have reminded them of?’
‘Ryker’s clock?’ Connolly suggested. ‘They may regard it as a sort of ju-ju object, like a magical toy.’
‘No,’ Pereira said categorically. ‘These Indians are highly pragmatic, they’re not impressed by useless toys. For them to be deterred from killing you means that the equipment you carried possessed some very real, down-to-earth power. Look, suppose the capsule did land here and was secretly buried by Ryker, and that in some way the clocks help him to identify its whereabouts—’ here Pereira shrugged hopefully ‘- it’s just possible.’
‘Hardly,’ Connolly said. ‘Besides, Ryker couldn’t have buried the capsule himself, and if Colonel Spender had lived through re-entry Ryker would have helped him.’
‘I’m not so sure,’ Pereira said pensively. ‘It would probably strike our friend Mr Ryker as very funny for a man to travel all the way to the Moon and back just to be killed by savages. Much too good a joke to pass over.’
‘What religious beliefs do the Indians have?’ Connolly asked.
‘No religion in the formalized sense of a creed and dogma. They eat their dead so they don’t need to invent an after-life in an attempt to re-animate them. In general they subscribe to one of the so-called cargo cults. As I said, they’re very material. That’s why they’re so lazy. Some time in the future they expect a magic galleon or giant bird to arrive carrying an everlasting cornucopia of worldly goods, so they just sit about waiting for the great day. Ryker encourages them in this idea. It’s very dangerous in some Melanesian islands the tribes with cargo cults have degenerated completely. They lie around all day on the beaches, waiting for the WHO flying boat, or…’ His voice trailed off.
Connolly nodded and supplied the unspoken thought. ‘Or — a space capsule?’
