The Adventures Of Indiana Jones (29 page)

“Na!” the shaman denied. “Gos Kolan maha polawa . . .”

And again, Indiana translated the Hindi: “
Our crops were swallowed by the earth, and the animals lay down and turned to dust. One night there was a fire in the fields. The men went out to fight it. When they came back they heard the women crying in the darkness. Lamai.
”

“Lamai,” echoed Willie, intently following the words on Indy’s lips in the light of the torches.

“The children,” whispered Indy. “He said they stole their children.”

The shaman walked to the edge of the torchlight and stared out into the darkness. Willie wanted to cry. Short Round felt a chill creep into his breast; he moved closer to Indy. Indy had no words.

The shaman gave a weighted sigh, returned to the circle of light, faced Indy. “You will find our children when you find Sivalinga.”

Indy had to clear his throat before he could speak. “I’m sorry. But I don’t know how I can help you.” He didn’t want to know. There was something deathly about all this. It felt like the edge of a maelstrom.

The shaman and the Chieftain stared keenly into Indiana’s eyes, refusing to accept his denial. Theirs were the eyes of the village, the soul of a crumbling people.

Indy continued to protest. “The English authorities who control this area are the only ones who can help you.”

“They do not listen,” droned the Chieftain.

“I have friends in Delhi, and I will make sure they investigate this.”

“No, you
will
go to Pankot,” the shaman charged him. The old man repeated this over several times in his own tongue; with each monotone repetition, Indy felt his resistance dissolving, felt his will reforming in the way the banks of a river will change inexorably under the torrent of the monsoon and be the same river yet altered in its course.

The shaman continued speaking, still in the language of his people.

“What’s he saying now?” Willie prompted.

Indy spoke hoarsely. “He says it was destined that I come here. He says I will know evil; evil already sees me here and knows I am coming. This is my destiny, and the future cannot be changed. He says he cannot see this future. It is my journey alone.”

Short Round and Willie stared at Indy, in the thrall of the story.

Indy gazed, disturbed, at the shaman, each man dancing in the other man’s eyes.

The three companions lay in their hut, trying to sleep, but could not sleep. Images haunted them: disappearing children, animals turning to dust, emptiness incarnate; red flames, black souls.

Indy had explored enough dark regions of the globe to know that every belief system had its own sphere of influence; every magic held sway in the provinces that spawned it. And magic was afoot here, exerting a power over him he could as yet ill define. Still, neither could he put it from his mind. He could only wrestle with it, in the shadows of his half-sleep.

Willie just wanted to leave. She hated this place—the dirt, the hungry farmers, the tense air. It was like just before a tornado, back home. Just before the roof fell in. She wished she could hail a taxi out of here.

Short Round had a bad feeling, a very bad feeling. These people were putting Indy under a spell, binding his spirit so his body would have to follow. Short Round had heard such stories from sailors who’d been to the Philippines or to Haiti; such stories rarely ended well. He would have to be constantly vigilant now, to protect Indy from inner threats as well as outer. He’d have to be more than a bodyguard now; he’d have to be a soul-guard.

Nor was the lady safe, he sensed. Ghosts nibbled her shadow. He could see them from the corner of his eyes; they vanished only if he turned his head to view them straight on. So Short Round would have to watch out for her, too. Otherwise, who would be Indy’s wife in America, after they escaped this spooky, barren place?

He invoked Huan-t’ien, the Supreme Lord of the Dark Heaven, who lived in the northern sky and drove away evil spirits. Only after he’d done so could he finally go to sleep.

At last, Indiana, too, slept. In a dream, something came to him.

It came out of darkness, rushing headlong. Terror was at its core; branches tore at its face. Its breathing was heavy under the full moon. The wind moaned it along, it flew through the night out of the night’s black nothing into Indy’s sweating, sleeping brain . . .

His eyes opened. What was it? He heard something; he was certain of it. Something running; crashing through the underbrush. Slowly, he sat up, listening.

Short Round and Willie slept near at hand. Something strange was happening, though. Indy sensed it. He stood, went to the door of the hut, walked outside.

The wind was rising; the moon, an ocherous coin. There: a crunch in the bushes over to the left. Indy turned. The branches rustled. Suddenly, out of the undergrowth, a child appeared, running straight toward him.

Indy squatted down; the child fell into his arms, unconscious. It was a boy of seven or eight, emaciated to the point of starvation, dressed in a few shredded rags. His back was marked by the lash.

Indiana called for help, carried the child into his hut, lay him down on the blanket. A few minutes later the elders were all crouched around. Yes, they said, this was a child of their village.

The shaman dripped a wet rag over the boy’s forehead and into his mouth, then said a few words of healing. The child’s eyes fluttered open. He looked around the room dazedly at all the strange and familiar faces that peered down at him—looked around the room until his gaze fell on Indiana.

The boy’s arm moved weakly, lifted up, reached out to Indy and to no one else. Indy took the small hand in his own. He could see that the dark, delicate fingers were cut and bruised; they held something tightly. Gradually the child’s fist relaxed; the fingers dropped something into Indy’s hand.

The boy tried to whisper. Indiana leaned close to hear as the child’s lips moved, almost inaudibly: “Sankara,” he said.

His mother ran in; word had quickly reached her that it was her child. She kneeled down, took the boy in her arms, hugged him hard, choked back her sobs. Willie and Short Round looked on, wide-eyed and speechless.

Indy stood, staring at what the little boy had given him. It was a small, tattered piece of cloth, an old fragment of a miniature painting.

And Indiana recognized it.

“Sankara,” he murmured.

D
AWN CAME EARLY
.

Indy walked briskly across the village, getting last-minute instructions and pleas from the peasants who trotted alongside him to keep up with his pace. At the outskirts of town, two large elephants stood waiting.

Sajnu, the guide, was politely trying to drag Willie toward one of them. She was politely refusing.

“Damn it, Wllie, get on! We’ve got to move out!”

Okay, okay, he’s right; this is stupid,
she thought.
We’ve got to go, and this is just a domestic animal. A large, unpredictable, occasionally ferocious, domestic animal. Besides, it’s the only ride in town. Okay.
She hadn’t gotten to where she’d gotten in life by being a shrinking violet. Then she wondered just where
had
she gotten. Mayapore, India. She didn’t want to think about that too long, so she took a deep breath and let Sajnu help her up onto the back of the beast.

“Whoa! Easy, now. Nice elephant,” she soothed, sitting rock-still on its shoulders, a cross between absolute self-control and impending terror on her face, her golden dress still in her hands.

Standing by the second elephant, Short Round watched Indy approach. He ran up to the doctor with a scrutable smile all over. “I ride with you, Indy?”

“Nope, you got a little surprise over there, Shorty.”

Short Round ran behind the large lead elephant, to see a baby pachyderm being brought in. Just his size! He couldn’t believe his incredible luck! What an adventure! What a nifty trunk! What a great pet!

“Oh, boy!” he shouted, and jumped up with a hand from the second guide. He knew just how to do it: he’d learned it all watching
Tarzan.
The elephants in that movie were great friends to Tarzan; so they would be to Short Round.

Jane was also a great friend to Tarzan. Short Round reflected on the ways in which Willie compared to Jane, with respect to men. He hoped Willie did better with Indy than she did with elephants.

Sajnu goaded Willie’s animal over toward Short Round. She’d gotten over her initial fears, but was now twisting and shifting all over in a vain effort to find a satisfactory position on the animal’s back. When her mount was even with Shorty’s, the two guides began leading them out of town.

Willie relaxed enough for a moment to notice the grief-stricken look on many of the villagers’ faces. Some even wept. It caught Willie short.

“This is the first time anybody ever cried when I left,” she confided to Short Round.

“They don’t cry about you,” he assured her. “They cry about the elephants leaving.” That must be it: they were such great elephants!

“Figures,” Willie admitted sullenly.

“They got no food to feed them. So they taking the elephants away to sell them. Indy said so.”

Willie heard the third elephant behind her just then, and swiveled completely around on her own creature’s back to see Indy lumbering over on his long-tusked bull.

“Willie, stop monkeying around on that thing,” he scolded her.

Short Round giggled. “Lady, your brain is backwards. “That way China; this way Pankot.”

Pankot
? she thought.

Indiana called down to Willie’s guide: “Sajnu, imanadu.”

And Sajnu yelled up at Willie, “Aiyo nona, oya pata nemei!” Then he yelled at her elephant.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute, I’m not comfortable yet,” she shouted back. “Indiana, I can’t go all the way to Delhi like this.”

“We’re not going to Delhi,” Indiana said more quietly.

“Not going to Delhi!” she shrieked. Panic seized her. “Hey, wait a minute!” She looked down at the villagers in supplication. “Can’t somebody take me to Delhi? I don’t want to go to Pankot.”

“All right, let’s go,” Indy called down to the guides. “I want to get there before tomorrow night.”

Sajnu guided Willie’s elephant; the beast lurched forward. The villagers waved at her fondly, and wished her great success, and blessed her for her courage.

“Indiana!” she hollered at the mastermind of this plot. “Damn it, why’d you change your mind? What did that kid tell you last night?”

For the time being, he disregarded her. The elephants moved off through the hordes of pitiful townspeople. In their midst, Indy saw the Chieftain and the old shaman, who brought his hands up to his forehead as the entourage rode past.

The going was slow but steady, bringing the distant hills closer with each passing hour. The countryside remained sparse here, though not nearly so desolate as it had been in the areas immediately surrounding the village. Tall grass became prevalent, along with short, scrubby trees. An occasional small mammal could be seen skittering out of harm’s way.

Short Round was constantly discovering new things about his elephant. The fine, fuzzy hair that stuck straight up all over the top of its head was bristly as a blowfish; its skin was coarse everywhere but the underside of its trunk, which was smooth as a cow’s udder; and if he scratched the bony knobs above its eyebrow, it would honk the most pleased and funny sound. It told him its name was, coincidentally, Big Short Round.

Willie had come to terms with her brute, in a manner of speaking, although the manner of speaking was too down and dirty to be called exactly the King’s English. Nonetheless, they’d reached an uneasy truce, in which the elephant moved the way it wanted to and Willie enumerated all the uses she could think of for elephant glue.

By early afternoon the sun was enormous. They trekked through areas that were increasingly verdant, replete with banyan trees, climbing fig, leafy ground cover, tepid streams. Increasingly muggy, as well.

Willie looked down at herself in disgust. She still wore Indy’s baggy formal shirt, now all sticky with heat, filthy with leaves and trail dust; his tuxedo pants, nearly rubbed bare on the seat, it felt like; and his white coat, tied around her waist. How could she have sunk to this level? What had she ever done to hurt anyone? She looked at her sequinned gown, all bunched up in her hands. Just yesterday she’d been a real lady.

She pulled herself together all of a sudden.
Stop it, Willie, stop it, stop it. Being a lady is all a state of mind, and there’s no reason on earth why I can’t be one right here on this Godforsaken lump of animal.

She removed a small bottle of expensive French perfume from an inner pocket of her once-beautiful dress. And with great aplomb began to dab it behind her ears.

It soon became evident, however, that she wasn’t the only one suffering from this heat. She looked down at the beast between her legs and muttered, “I think you need this more than me.” So she leaned forward and, with a sense of her own largesse, dabbed some of the cologne behind the elephant’s ears. She had to lean close to reach down there, though; the animal’s smell was so overpowering, Willie grimaced, swung around, and dumped half the contents of her bottle over its back.

The elephant was outraged. It brought its trunk back over its head, sniffed the foreign fragrance perfunctorily, and trumpeted in disgust.

Willie looked irked. “What are you complaining about? This is ritzy stuff.”

The elephant only moaned, and kept on trudging.

Indy dozed recurrently throughout the day, while Short Round carried on an endless conversation with Big Short Round. By late afternoon, the terrain changed again; they passed into the lower jungles.

The surroundings here were lush, steamy. The canopy hung a hundred feet overhead, so thick that the sun barely sparkled through, making the air itself seem to take on a deep gold-green hue. Huge rubber trees abounded, draped with hanging moss and dangling lianas. Interspersed everywhere were exotic fruit trees, fern trees, palm, and willow.