The Curious Quests of Brigadier Ffellowes (38 page)

             
"Having just shot a cross-bred specimen and captured another, I had no doubts on the matter. The male I had shot had more of the early strain in him, call it
Gigantopithecus
, Pithecanthropus
or whatever. My
catgirl
had far less. Probably a caste system existed, with those who had more of the ancient genes of Atlantis running things on an hereditary basis. Logical isn't
it? We Britons have had an absurd passion for logic, always.

             
"So there's the key, Chaps. Lost Atlanteans, mostly fair
-
skinned, on one side. On the other, primitive apemen, not lost but frightened and in hiding. Because, like our cousins the anthropoid apes I named above, they got killed mercilessly whenever Modern Man, be his skin red, yellow, black or white, in short, our nice ancestors, found them around. And that was true on any part of the planet from the Himalayas and Alaska up north, to Capes Horn and Good Hope in the southern reaches." He sighed and looked weary before going on.

             
"A lovely example is modern Germany. Hitler and his fellow crooks were warped fanatics in the bargain. And they were reverting to a very old and horrible idea. The Past is unsleeping. It never dies.

             
"What was the greatest crime a German could then commit? Male or female, sleeping with and/or breeding with a Jew of the opposite sex. To our remote forbears it must have been quite similar. Sleeping with, and/or breeding with intelligent hominids, who still lived in the wilder places and, mark you, had enough of the same genes to produce fertile offspring!" He sighed again and was silent
.
His eyes saw nothing as he mused on human cruelty and racism. Then
he shook himself out of it and resumed.

             
"One gets hints in the Old Testament of all places. I was given one earlier that same day. 'For Esau was an hairy man.' How about, 'There were giants on the earth in those days?' To me, that's just another one.

             
"But those lost A
tl
anteans had another idea. Their isolated, cut-off group needed men. Here were strange folk, also in hiding, who knew the rain forest and how to live in it better than anyone. Why not use logic and do some crossbreeding? Those leaders of the abandoned survivors were eminently practical and must have been real leaders and damn persuasive as well, to get those two sets of isolated aliens to do it
.
But they had. And I was at this point, along with another modern man, looking at the result of that ancient decision. Its last and only army, officers and NCOs, rulers and ruled, was parading in front of me, having emerged from their place of refuge and ancient retreat to do so.

             
"And who knew where this very dangerous force was going next? Or why and what they would do, or had plans to do when they got there? I was back in our time and place and taking a deep series of gulps of air as I recalled who I myself was and the fact that I could hardly die now and here, not because of any scientific discoveries of fabled realms which had become real. I was an officer of the British Army, sent on a scout, and I had found an unknown and wickedly
-
effective looking foreign army on British territory and totally unknown to any branch of His Majesty's Government!

             
"I tapped Lucas's shoulder and his head turned. 'Crawl back to the curve,' I murmured in his ear, and then run like Hell back to George and the girl. I'll be doing the same, but do not wait for me, understand? You can run quicker. Wait with George and the other for three minutes by your watch. Not a second longer. If I haven't come, get out and head for the coast and that Hooper boat fast! The Government has to know about this! That's all that's important
.
Understand? Let's go!'

             
"We crawled back, going backward, always a slow job, but it wasn't far. All the time our eyes never left that incredible army that was still issuing from the gate and forming up in the little valley below us. At last we reached the trail at the last curve, went around it, stood up and began to run.

             
"As I knew he would, Lucas took an instant lead and within a minute was out of sight, though I was doing my best and the trail, for a jungle trail, was good and firm with no obstacles. God, how I ran! All the time I was listening intently for any sound from behind me, checking my watch as my left arm flailed up and down and burning every ounce of energy I possessed in the process. Despite tobacco and alcohol, I was in pretty good shape, though nothing like that of my vanished woodsman whom I'm sure could have done anything he was trained to do in the Olympics for an equally sure gold medal.

             
"I was racing through the trail junction and fifty feet into the small trail, the one down which my
catgirl
had come and up which we two had retraced her steps, when I heard the first noise that was not that of a bird or insect
.
Ahead of me and not too far away there came the sound of a rifle shot
.
Just the one shot and no more, but that was enough to make me race even faster, faster than I'd known that I could. I burst out on the little savannah and tore through the grass, ignoring the cover of the stream up which Lucas and I had come. I was at the big pool in seconds and saw just what I'd feared I'd find.

             
"My two stalwart friends were standing together, looking sadly down at a long, still shape on the water's edge. George kept looking down and away from me but Lucas, who wasn't even breathing hard, by the way, met my eyes directly and stood erect as he did so. '
Jawj
had to do it Captain,' he said quietly. 'She tried to run the minute I come in sight
.
She move quick too, maybe quicker than me even an' much too quick
foh
Jawj
. But it was me, too,
Suh
. I yelled to him to shoot an' he done it
.
It was the orders an' what I
knew you wanted, after what you said an' what we seen back there.'

             
"Well, I'd got some breath back and I stepped over and put my arm around George's big shoulder. He was crying, poor lad. 'Lucas was right, Son,' I said. 'War is sometimes Hell, like this, but we're alone in enemy country. If they've heard that shot, they'll be coming fast on our tracks, I think. We'll leave her right here. Her own folk can bury her. We three have to move and move fast or they'll get us too, so let's go. Lucas, take the lead again!

             
"That splendid young man straightened up. He wiped his eyes once with the back of his arm and we moved out and over the cliff edge, doing a dog trot whenever possible. I had looked just once at the shape in the grass and never again. If I had, I don't think I could have left at all, except manacled and under restraint
.
Frankly, in a rather full life, never before had my sworn duty seemed so hard, so ugly and so meaningless."

             
He stopped talking and the silence in that big room was such that the sound of one cockroach crawling would have seemed like a train coming by five feet away.

             
At least two minutes of the utter quiet went by while the Brigadier stared at the floor. No
one could have spoken, I think, even had they tried.

             
Then, he lifted his head again, and the even, level tones resumed. "Since I'm here in this room,
Gentlemen, you can see we got away. All three got away and back to George's father's boat
.

             
"What came next? That's locked in Her Majesty's most thoroughly guarded files. Certain picked units of paratroops, allegedly training for jungle warfare in one of our quieter possessions, found a hilltop in one of the remoter areas, quite by accident, of course, where there had been a recent minor earthquake. This in turn seemed to have been followed by a subsidence of soil and rock over a wide area, as much as five square miles. Fortunately no one lived
anywhere near the place. Simply a lot of ruined jungle and twisted rock was absolutely all there was to be seen. Wouldn't have made a line in the papers if it had been reported, but since the troop training was secret, only the War Office ever heard about it" He smiled a little. "I do hear the Mayan Indians still don't like that area, or ever go there. They must have much knowledge of seismic forces and the danger of earthquakes, eh?

             
"Well, I've got to go now and can't say when I'll be back. I need a vacation and I'm thinking of the Caribbean shores. Probably why I recalled this tale just now."

             
I went to the club's front door with him and we two were alone. He shook my hand very hard indeed and something hard hurt my unready fingers. It was a massive ring, a huge gold thing with a great green stone set in the top. There was odd carving on the stone, but I could hardly study it then, could I?

The End