It was about to disappear among the stars in the south-east when a faint shuffling sound distracted Connolly. He looked down to find the moist-eyed youth, the son of the witch doctor, standing only a few feet away from him, regarding him dolefully.
‘Hello, boy,’ Connolly greeted him. He pointed at the vanishing satellite. ‘See the star?’
The youth made a barely perceptible nod. He hesitated for a moment, his running eyes glowing like drowned moons, then stepped forward and touched Connolly’s wristwatch, tapping the dial with his horny fingernail.
Puzzled, Connolly held it up for him to inspect. The youth watched the second hand sweep around the dial, an expression of rapt and ecstatic concentration on his face. Nodding vigorously, he pointed to the sky.
Connolly grinned. ‘So you understand? You’ve rumbled old man Ryker, have you?’ He nodded encouragingly to the youth, who was tapping the watch eagerly, apparently in an effort to conjure up a second satellite. Connolly began to laugh. ‘Sorry, boy.’ He slapped the manual. ‘What you really need is this pack of jokers.’
Connolly began to walk back to the bungalow, when the youth darted forward impulsively and blocked his way, thin legs spread in an aggressive stance. Then, with immense ceremony, he drew from behind his back a round painted object with a glass face that Connolly remembered he had seen him carrying before.
‘That looks interesting.’ Connolly bent down to examine the object, caught a glimpse in the thin light of a luminous instrument before the youth snatched it away.
‘Wait a minute, boy. Let’s have another look at that.’
After a pause the pantomime was repeated, but the youth was reluctant to allow Connolly more than the briefest inspection. Again Connolly saw a calibrated dial and a wavering indicator. Then the youth stepped forward and touched Connolly’s wrist.
Quickly Connolly unstrapped the metal chain. He tossed the watch to the youth, who instantly dropped the instrument, his barter achieved, and after a delighted yodel turned and darted off among the trees.
Bending down, careful not to touch the instrument with his hands, Connolly examined the dial. The metal housing around it was badly torn and scratched, as if the instrument had been prised from some control panel with a crude implement. But the glass face and the dial beneath it were still intact. Across the centre was the legend: LUNAR ALTIMETER Miles: 100 GOLIATH 7 General Electric Corporation, Schenectedy Picking up the instrument, Connolly cradled it in his hands. The pressure seals were broken, and the gyro bath floated freely on its air cushion. Like a graceful bird the indicator needle glided up and down the scale.
The pier creaked under approaching footsteps. Connolly looked up at the perspiring figure of Captain Pereira, cap in one hand, monitor dangling from the other.
‘My dear Lieutenant!’ he panted. ‘Wait till I tell you, what a farce, it’s fantastic! Do you know what Ryker’s doing? it’s so simple it seems unbelievable that no one’s thought of it before. It’s nothing short of the most magnificent practical joke!’ Gasping, he sat down on the bale of skins leaning against the gangway. ‘I’ll give you a clue: Narcissus.’
‘Echo,’ Connolly replied flatly, still staring at the instrument in his hands.
‘You spotted it? Clever boy!’ Pereira wiped his cap-band. ‘How did you guess? It wasn’t that obvious.’ He took the manual Connolly handed him. ‘What the—? Ah, I see, this makes it even more clear. Of course.’ He slapped his knee with the manual. ‘You found this in his room? I take my hat off to Ryker,’ he continued as Connolly set the altimeter down on the pier and steadied it carefully. ‘Let’s face it, it’s something of a pretty clever trick. Can you imagine it, he comes here, finds a tribe with a strong cargo cult, opens his little manual and says "Presto, the great white bird will be arriving: NOW!’
Connolly nodded, then stood up, wiping his hands on a strip of rattan. When Pereira’s laughter had subsided he pointed down to the glowing face of the altimeter at their feet. ‘Captain, something else arrived,’ he said quietly. ‘Never mind Ryker and the satellite. This cargo actually landed.’
As Pereira knelt down and inspected the altimeter, whistling sharply to himself, Connolly walked over to the edge of the pier and looked out across the great back of the silent river at the giant trees which hung over the water, like forlorn mutes at some cataclysmic funeral, their thin silver voices carried away on the dead tide.
Half an hour before they set off the next morning, Connolly waited on the deck for Captain Pereira to conclude his interrogation of Ryker. The empty campong, deserted again by the Indians, basked in the heat, a single plume of smoke curling into the sky. The old witch doctor and his son had disappeared, perhaps to try their skill with a neighbouring tribe, but the loss of his watch was unregretted by Connolly. Down below, safely stowed away among his baggage, was the altimeter, carefully sterilized and sealed. On the table in front of him, no more than two feet from the pistol in his belt, lay Ryker’s manual.
For some reason he did not want to see Ryker, despite his contempt for him, and when Pereira emerged from the bungalow he was relieved to see that he was alone. Connolly had decided that he would not return with the search parties when they came to find the capsule; Pereira would serve adequately as a guide.
‘Well?’
The Captain smiled wanly. ‘Oh, he admitted it, of course.’ He sat down on the rail, and pointed to the manual. ‘After all, he had no choice. Without that his existence here would be untenable.’
‘He admitted that Colonel Spender landed here?’
Pereira nodded. ‘Not in so many words, but effectively. The capsule is buried somewhere here — under the tumulus, I would guess. The Indians got hold of Colonel Spender, Ryker claims he could do nothing to help him.’
‘That’s a lie. He saved me in the bush when the Indians thought I had landed.’
With a shrug Pereira said: ‘Your positions were slightly different. Besides, my impression is that Spender was dying anyway, Ryker says the parachute was badly burnt. He probably accepted a fait accompli, simply decided to do nothing and hush the whole thing up, incorporating the landing into the cargo cult. Very useful too. He’d been tricking the Indians with the Echo satellite, but sooner or later they would have become impatient. After the Goliath crashed, of course, they were prepared to go on watching the Echo and waiting for the next landing forever.’ A faint smile touched his lips. ‘It goes without saying that he regards the episode as something of a macabre joke. On you and the whole civilized world.’
A door slammed on the veranda, and Ryker stepped out into the sunlight. Bare-chested and hatless, he strode towards the launch.
‘Connolly,’ he called down, ‘you’ve got my box of tricks there!’
Connolly reached forward and fingered the manual, the butt of his pistol tapping the table edge. He looked up at Ryker, at his big golden frame bathed in the morning light. Despite his still belligerent tone, a subtle change had come over Ryker. The ironic gleam in his eye had gone, and the inner core of wariness and suspicion which had warped the man and exiled him from the world was now visible. Connolly realized that, curiously, their respective roles had been reversed. He remembered Pereira reminding him that the Indians were at equilibrium with their environment, accepting its constraints and never seeking to dominate the towering arbors of the forest, in a sense of externalization of their own unconscious psyches. Ryker had upset that equilibrium, and by using the Echo satellite had brought the 20th century and its psychopathic projections into the heart of the Amazonian deep, transforming the Indians into a community of superstitious and materialistic sightseers, their whole culture oriented around the mythical god of the puppet star. It was Connolly who now accepted the jungle for what it was, seeing himself and the abortive space-flight in this fresh perspective.