From the Heart of Darkness (14 page)

A Chinook swept over the firebase from the south, momentarily stifling conversation with the syncopated whopping of its twin rotors. It hovered just beyond the perimeter, then slowly settled in a circular dust cloud while its turbines whined enormously. Men ran to unload it.

“Chow pretty quick,” Murray commented. It was nearing four o'clock. Ginelli looked away from the bird. “Don't seem right,” he said. The other men looked blank. He tried to explain, “I mean, the Shithook there, jet engines and all, and that tree there being so old.”

The driver snorted. “Hell, that's not old. Now back in California where they make those things”—his broad thumb indicated the banana-shaped helicopter—“they got redwoods that're really old. You don't think anything funny about that, do you?”

Ginelli gestured helplessly with his hands. Surprisingly it was Crozier, half-seated on the laterite wall, who came to his aid. “What makes you think this god tree is less old than a redwood, Joe?” he asked mildly.

Murray blinked. “Hell, redwoods're the oldest things there are. Alive, I mean.”

The Frenchman laughed and repeated his deprecating shrug. “But trees are my business, you know? Now there is a pine tree in Arizona older than your California sequoias; but nobody knew it for a long time because there are not many of them and … nobody noticed. And here is a tree, an old one—but who knows? Maybe there are only two in the whole world left—and the other one, the one in the north, that perhaps is dead with my plantation.”

“You never counted the rings or anything?” Herrold asked curiously. He had locked the barrel into the co-ax while the others were talking.

“No…,” Crozier admitted. His tongue touched his lips as he glanced up at the god tree, wondering how much he should say. “No,” he repeated, “but I only saw the tree once while I was at Plantation Seven. It stood in the jungle, more than a mile from the rubber, and the laborers did not care that anyone should go near it. There were Mengs there, too, I was told; but only a few and they hid in the woods. Bad blood between them and my laborers, no doubt.”

“Well, hell, Jacques,” Murray prompted. “When
did
you see it?” Crozier still hesitated. Suddenly realizing what the problem might be, the driver said, “Hell, don't worry about
our
stomachs, fer god's sake. Unless you're squeamish, turtle?” Ginelli blushed and shook his head. Laughing, Murray went on, “Anyhow, you grow up pretty quick after you get in the field—those that live to. Tell the story, Jacques.”

Crozier sighed. The glade behind him was empty. Hieu had disappeared somewhere without being noticed. “Well,” he began, “it has no importance, I am sure—all this happened a hundred miles away, as you know. But.…

“It was not long after Michelin sent me to Indochina, in 1953 that would be. I was told of the god tree as soon as I arrived at Plantation Seven, but that was all. One of my foremen had warned me not to wander that way and I assumed, because of the Viet Minh.

“Near midnight—this was before Dien Bien Phu, you will remember—there was heavy firing not far from the plantation. I called the district garrison since for a marvel the radio was working. But of course, no one came until it was light.”

Herrold and Murray nodded together in agreement. Charging into a night ambush was no way to help your buddies, not in this country. Crozier cleared his throat and went on, “It was two companies of colonial paras that came, and the colonel from the fort himself. Nothing would help but that I should guide them to where the shooting had been. A platoon had set up an ambush, so they said, but it did not call in—even for fire support. When I radioed they assumed.…” He shrugged expressively.

“And that is what we found. All the men, all of them dead—unforgetably. They were in the grove of that god tree, on both sides of the trail to it. Perhaps the lieutenant had thought the Viets were rallying there. The paras were well armed and did much shooting from the shells we found. But of enemies, there was no sign; and the paras had not been shot. They were torn, you know? Mutilated beyond what I could believe. But none had been shot, and their weapons lay with the bodies.”

“That's crazy,” Ginelli said, voicing everyone's thought. “Dinks would'a taken the guns.”

Crozier shrugged. “The colonel said at last his men had been killed by some wild tribe, so savage they did not understand guns or would not use them. The Mengs, he meant. They were … wilder, perhaps, than the ones here but still.… I would not have thought there were enough of them to wipe out the platoon, waiting as it must have been.”

“How
were
the men killed?” Herrold asked at last.

“Knives I think,” the Frenchman replied, “short ones. Teeth I might have said; but there were really no signs that anything had fed on the bodies. Not the killers, that is. One man—”

He paused to swallow, continued, “One man I thought wore a long shirt of black. When I came closer, the flies left him. The skin was gone from his arms and chest. God alone knows what had killed him; but his face was the worst to see, and that was unmarked.”

No one spoke for some time after that. Finally Murray said, “They oughta have chow on. Coming?”

Crozier spread his hands. “You are sure it is all right? I have no utensils.”

“No sweat, there's paper plates. Rest'a you guys?”

“I'll be along,” Herrold said. “Lemme remount the co-ax first.”

“I'll do that,” Ginelli offered. His face was saffron, bloodless beneath his tan. “Don't feel hungry tonight anyhow.”

The track commander smiled. “You can give me a hand.”

When the gun was bolted solidly back on its mount, Herrold laid a belt of ammunition on the loading tray and clicked the cover shut on it. “Ah,” Ginelli mumbled, “ah, Red, don't you think it'd be a good idea to keep pressure up in the napalm tanks? I mean, there's a lotta Mengs around here and what Murray's buddy says.…”

“We'll make do with the co-ax,” the TC replied, grinning. “You know how the couplings leak napalm with the pumps on.”

“But if there's an attack?” Ginelli pleaded.

“Look, turtle,” Herrold explained more sharply than before, “we're sitting on two hundred gallons a napalm. One spark in this track with the pressure up and we won't need no attack. OK?” Ginelli shrugged. “Well, come on to chow then,” the TC suggested.

“Guess I'll stay.”

“S'OK.” Herrold slipped off the track and began walking toward the mess tent. He was singing softly, “We gotta get outta this place.…”

*   *   *

Crozier left just before the storm broke. The rain that had held off most of the day sheeted down at dusk. Lightning when it flared jumped from cloud-top to invisible cloud top. It back-lighted the sky.

The crewmen huddled under the inadequate tarpaulin, listening to the ragged static that was all Murray's transistor radio could pick up. Eventually he shut it off. Ginelli swore miserably. Slanting rain had started a worm of water at the head of his cot. It had finally squirmed all the way to the other end where he sat hunched against the chill wind. “Shouldn't somebody be on the track?” he asked. Regular guard shifts started at ten o'clock, but usually everybody was more or less alert until then.

“Go ahead, turtle, it's your bright idea,” Murray said. Herrold frowned more seriously. “Yeah, if you're worried you might as well … Look, you get up in the dome now and Murray'll trade his first shift for your second. Right?”

“Sure,” the driver agreed. “Maybe this damn rain'll stop by then.”

Wearing his poncho over his flak jacket, Ginelli clambered up the bow slope of the zippo. The metal sides were too slimy with rain to mount that way. Except during lightning strokes, the darkness was opaque. When it flashed, the trees stabbed into the suddenbright skies and made Ginelli think about the napalm beneath from a different aspect. Christ, those trees were the tallest things for miles, and God knew the track wasn't very far away if lightning did hit one. God, they were tall.

And they were old. Ginelli recognized the feeling he'd had ever since the flame track had nosed up to the wall to face the grove: an aura of age. The same thing he'd sensed when he was a kid and saw the Grand Canyon. There was something so old it didn't give a damn about man or anything else.

Christ! No tree was as old as that; it must be their size that made him so jumpy. Dark as it was, the dinks could be crawling closer between lightning flashes too. At least the rain was slowing down.

The hatch cover was folded back into a clamshell seat for the man on the dome. There was a fiber pillow to put over the steel, but it was soaked and Ginelli had set it on the back deck. For the first time he could remember, the thickness of his flak jacket felt good because the air was so cold. Water that slicked off the poncho or dripped from the useless flat muzzle of the flamethrower joined the drops spattering directly onto the zippo's deck. It pooled and flowed sluggishly toward the lowest point, the open driver's hatch.

The sky was starting to clear. An occasional spray fell, but the storm was over and a quarter moon shone when the broken clouds allowed it. Herrold stuck his head out from under the tarp. “How's going, man?”

Ginelli stretched some of the stiffness out of his back and began stripping off the poncho. “OK, I guess. I could use some coffee.”

“Yeah. Well, hang in there till midnight and get Murray up. We're gonna rack out now.”

Shadows from the treetops pooled massively about the boles. Although there was enough breeze to make the branches tremble, the trunks themselves were solid as cliffs, as solid as Time. The scar at the base of the god tree was perversely moonlit. The whole grove looked sinister in the darkness, but the scar itself was something more.

Only the half-hour routine of perimeter check kept Ginelli awake. Voices crackled around Headquarters Troop's sector until Ginelli could repeat, “Seven zero, report negative,” for the last time and thankfully take off the commo helmet. His boots squelched as he dropped beside the cot where Murray snored softly, wrapped in the mottled green-brown nylon of his poncho liner. Ginelli shook him.

“Uh!” the driver grunted as he snapped awake. “Oh, right; lemme get my boots on.”

One of the few clouds remaining drifted over the moon. As Murray stood upright, Ginelli thought movement flickered on the dark stone of the wall. “Hey!” the driver whispered. “What's Hieu doing out there?”

Ginelli peered into the grove without being able to see anything but the trees. “That was him goin' over the wall,” Murray insisted. He held his M16 with the bolt back, ready to chamber a round if the receiver was jarred. “Look, I'm gonna check where he's going.”

“Jeez, somebody'll see you and cut loose,” Ginelli protested. “You can't go out there!”

Murray shook his head decisively. “Naw, it'll be OK,” he said as he slipped over the wall. “Crazy,” Ginelli muttered. And it suddenly struck him that a man who volunteered for three extra years of combat probably
wasn't
quite normal in the back-home sense. Licking his lips, he waited tensely in the darkness. The air had grown warmer since the rain stopped, but the plump newbie found himself shivering.

A bird fluttered among the branches of the nearest mahogany. You didn't seem to see many birds in country, not like you did back in the World. Ginelli craned his neck to get a better view, but the irregular moonlight passed only the impression of wings an drab color.

Nothing else moved within the grove. Ginelli swore miserably and shook Herrold awake. The track commander slept with his flak jacket for a pillow and, despite his attitude of nonchalance, the clumsy greasegun lay beside him on the cot. His fingers curled around its pistolgrip as he awakened.

“Oh, for god's sake,” he muttered when Ginelli blurted out the story. Herrold had kept his boots on, only the tops unlaced, and he quickly whipped the ties tight around his shins. “Christ, ten minutes ago?”

“Well, should I call in?” Ginelli suggested uncertainly.

“Hell,” Herrold muttered, “no, I better go tell the ole man. You get back in the dome and wait for me.” He hefted his submachinegun by the receiver.

Ginelli started to climb onto the track. Turning, he said, “Hey, man.” Herrold paused. “Don't be too long, huh?”

“Yeah.” The track commander trudged off toward the unlighted HQ tent. A bird, maybe a large bat from its erratic flight, passed over Ginelli's head at treetop level. He raised the loading cover of the co-ax to recheck the position of the linked belt of ammunition.

There was a light in the grove.

It was neither man-made nor the moon's reflection, and at first it was almost too faint to have a source at all. Ginelli gaped frozen at the huge god tree. The glow resolved into a viridescent line down the center of the scar, a strip of brightness that widened perceptably as the edges of the cicatrix drew back. The interior of the tree seemed hollow, lined with self-shining greeness to which forms clung. As Ginelli watched, a handful of the creatures lurched from the inner wall and fluttered out through the dilated scar.

Someone screamed within the laager. Ginelli whirled around. The tactical operations center was green and two-dimensional where the chill glare licked it. A man tore through the canvas passage linking the vehicles, howling and clutching at the back of his neck until he fell. A dark shape flapped away from him. The remaining blotches clinging to the green of the tree flickered outward and the scar began to close.

The cal fifty in the assault vehicle to the right suddenly began blasting tracers point blank into the shrinking green blaze. Heavy bullets that could smash through half an inch of steel ripped across the tree. It was like stabbing a sponge with ice picks. Something dropped into the ACAV's cupola from above. The shots stopped and the gunner began to bellow hoarsely.