James Bond and Moonraker (18 page)

Hardly had he appeared than she moved forward and disappeared between two enormous stones. Bond felt uneasy but at the same time fascinated. He looked about him again, but there was no sign of human life. Birds called from the tops of trees and there was the swift liquid jabber of a monkey. He waited a few seconds and then crossed to the foot of the pyramid.

Q had spoken of the Mayan civilization in the Yucatan. This was what the pyramid reminded him of. And the clothing worn by the girl. Was it possible that some offshoot of the Mayas had been forced to emigrate south because of famine or internal strife? Surely he was not following the survivor of a supposedly extinct race which had somehow managed to propagate itself in the unexplored wastes of the South American rain forests? He started to climb the giant steps and marvelled that stones of this size could have been quarried by hand-held implements. Some of the blocks were upwards of five feet in height and twelve feet long. Bond reached the spot where the girl had disappeared and found himself at the mouth of a narrow passageway leading down into the heart of the pyramid. On the two stones at the entrance were superimposed paintings of warriors with spears. Bond looked behind him to see the jungle stretching away in all directions and then stepped down into the interior. Below him was a glow of light and half-way down the staircase the beautiful girl. This time she turned to face him, and her face split in a welcoming smile. As if confident that no other invitation was necessary, she turned and continued down the steps. Bond followed. To left and right, the walls were adorned with faded frescoes showing lines of marching men in short tunics and caps like the one worn by the girl whom Bond now considered his guide. The girl did not look round but continued down the steps towards the source of light. Bond was keyed up in the knowledge that a great secret was about to be revealed to him. The heart of the enigma must reside in the centre of the pyramid. With quickening pace he came to the end of the tunnel and looked about him in amazement.

His first impression was that he was in a cathedral. Great walls of coloured glass rose into the air and formed the back of the pyramid. Against them pressed the jungle, and the effect of integration was increased by the plants and creepers that climbed to meet the glass from the inside. Crystal rocks glowed as if illuminated internally and there was a serpentine pool traversed by a silver bridge. Nature had been harnessed as if in a Japanese garden, but here everything was on a giant scale and less formalized. Beside the arched bridge the girl waited for Bond like a refugee from a willow-pattern plate, and he had the strange feeling that he was in a world of make-believe. For a chilling moment he wondered. if he had perished in the falls and been wafted straight into a purgatory that obliterated memory. He advanced to the girl and suddenly realized that he had seen her before. At the Venini Glass shop. Now the feeling of being in a dream. took on nightmare proportions. The girl started to cross the bridge, then paused to see if he was following. Something about her look further agitated Bond’s disturbed mind. The girl was looking, not to see if he was following, but to make sure that he was following. Bond started to skirt the pool. The water was clear, the surface merely disturbed by the gentle trickle of a waterfall at its far end. Only an alarmist would have been suspicious. But Bond was an alarmist when it came to the question of life expectancy. He traced the pattern of the paving stones around the pool and spun round as two more figures materialized through the foliage — girls dressed like the first. Again he recognized them. Astronaut trainees from California. They looked at him with smiling, expectant faces as if waiting for hiM to do something. He turned to the first girl. She was still on the bridge. She too was smiling. Waiting.

Bond put his foot down and immediately realized that something was wrong. The stone beneath his feet was not anchored but balanced over a void. Before he could move forward, it sprang into the air and hurled him into the pool. Bond hit the water and straight away struck out for the side. Subsequently it seemed to him that he had started swimming while still in mid-air. Whoever wanted him in that pool was not thinking of his cholesterol level.

His hands had just thudded against rock when a force like a steel whiplash wound itself round his chest. Bond was plucked backwards and received a terrifying glimpse of what had happened to him. Rearing before his eyes was the hideous open mouth of a giant anaconda. Its coils tightened round his chest and he started to shout before being dashed beneath the surface. The pressure on his chest might have been exerted by an enormous pair of nutcrackers. It seemed that at any moment his rib cage must break and crush his lungs in a jagged fist of broken bone.

Bond struggled and tore with his hands but the strength of the snake was too great for him. The breath was being systematically choked from his body. Bond took in half a mouthful of water and began to panic. His fingers clawed at the bottom of the pool and closed about a rock. He snatched it up and lashed at the swaying shape before his face. A blow connected solidly with the anaconda’s head and its grip relaxed. Given new hope, Bond began to fight his way free of the coils. His fingers brushed against the side of the pool. Then the coils snatched tight again like a contracting spring. The huge weight of the snake bore him down. Beyond the knot of its coils Bond glimpsed ten feet of tail lashing the water like a hose. Twisting desperately, he pushed his fingers into the breast pocket of his tunic. Like a subliminal image he saw a picture of the retractable pen he had taken from Holly’s room in Venice. His fingers closed about the tip and he drew it out folding it in his hand. As his tortured ribs seemed to meet beneath the pressure, he forced the point of the pen against the straining flesh of the snake and pressed the tip. Seconds passed and nothing happened. The grip did not weaken and the snake was still trying to force his mouth open so that he would drown. Then suddenly the coiled body was a weight that had no strength. Bond wriggled free and felt his rib cage expand. The snake hung in the water as if in suspension. It gave three convulsive twists and then lay still.

Bond swam to the side of the pool and hung on, breathing painfully. Then he hauled himself out and closed his eyes as he cleared his lungs. When he opened them it was to see a small mountain of wet leather against his face. The leather which gleamed dully belonged to the toecap of a shoe. Above the shoe was a tree trunk of sodden material that formed a trouser leg. Above the trouser leg was Jaws. His mouth was open and his teeth parted in a grin that shone down like a naughty deed in a naughty world. Bond rested his head on his hands and regularized his breathing. Something told him that he was going to need every ounce of breath that he could find.

‘Mr Bond —’ the voice echoed down from above, and conveyed a note of genuine regret ‘— you defy all my attempts to plan an amusing death for you.’

Jaws’s hand reached down and picked up Bond as if he was a floating toy being retrieved from a bath. With disdainful ease he dumped him down before the owner of the voice.

Drax appeared down a flight of steps from what had presumably been a vantage point on a high rock. ‘Why did you break off the encounter so summarily?’

‘I discovered he had a crush on me,’ said Bond.

Drax brushed the front of his black silk tunic as if picking off Bond’s remark like a speck of dust. ‘Always jokes, Mr Bond. A concomitant of the stiff upper lip, I suppose. The Englishman always laughs in the face of adversity. Well, I can promise you plenty to laugh at. It will be interesting to see if your sense of humour can keep pace with it.’ He nodded to Jaws and turned on his heel. Jaws thrust out a hand and Bond staggered forward. The familiar faces of two more girls had appeared and he noticed that they shared a common expression with the first three: disappointment.

‘I’m sorry about your pet,’ said Bond.

The girls looked at him coldly and followed on like bridesmaids at a wedding.

Drax led the way towards heavy metal doors that slid open at his approach and revealed a scene totally in contrast to the conservatory calm of the glass chamber. Tiers of technicians sat before ascending screens of overprinted monitors and the sounds of disembodied voices calling out technical information rang out like those of brokers in a stock market. Bond quickly saw that all the monitor screens had one thing in common. They revealed different stages of rockets being prepared for take-off. Rockets that were clearly intended to propel something into space. Bond watched giant claws swing slowly back from the winged spacecraft and saw the familiar lettering on the hull: MOONRAKER. Fresh words and symbols continuously flooded on to the flickering screens and Bond realized that he was watching the pre-launch procedure not for one but for several space shuttles. He turned to Drax, who was looking about him like a bishop in a newly consecrated cathedral.

‘What the hell are you up to here, Drax?’

Drax did not deign to look at him. One of his brutish hands rose and plucked reflectively at the red fur on his face. ‘It is a convention of the fiction beloved by parlour maids that the villain explains all before disposing of his victims. I do not intend to follow that precedent.’

‘Not even the briefest elucidation, Drax?’

Drax turned away from the hustle and bustle of the control chamber and looked towards a domed glass case resting in an alcove. In Victorian days it would have contained an arrangement of small, brightly coloured stuffed birds. Now it held a beautiful black orchid, its flowers tipped with scarlet as if they had been dipped in blood. Bond recognized the slide he had been shown in Q’s workshop:
Orchidaceae negra
.

Under Jaw’s watchful eye, Bond moved to Drax’s side. ‘What about that orchid?’

Drax spoke as if to himself. ‘The curse of a civilization. It was neither pestilence nor war that wiped out the race who built the great city lying around us. It was their reverence for this lovely flower.’

Bond looked again at the bland face of the orchid. Behind its sheen of surface beauty there was an impression of evil conveyed more subtly than through its colour. The very shape of the flower suggested that of a praying mantis. ‘Come too near me and I will dev9ur you’ it seemed to say. Even within the heart of the flower there was a tiny foetal face crushed so tight that it seemed to be crying out in pain and despair, as if bemoaning a life it could never have.

‘The flower is poisonous,’ said Bond.

‘In the long term, yes,’ said Drax. ‘Exposure to its pollen causes sterility. The unfortunate Mayas never realized that. Through every crisis of their dwindling civilization they turned to worship the flower that was responsible for its destruction. Poignant, is it not?’

‘But you’ve improved on sterility haven’t you, Drax?’

Drax smiled. ‘If you choose to employ such quaint phraseology. Yes, I have. As you probably observed in Venice, those same seeds now yield death.’

‘Except to animals.’

‘And plant life as well.’ Drax spread his hands. ‘One must preserve the balance of nature. Let no one say that at heart I am not an ecologist.’ His smile was like a crack on a gravestone.

‘Moonraker launch programme now commencing.’ The voice coming over the public address system temporarily drowned the babble of voices flooding the chamber.

Drax raised his eyes to one of the screens and Bond followed them. ‘You have arrived at a propitious moment, Mr Bond.’ The voice was a contented purr. Bond saw a wide expanse of Arctic ice-cap. There was no sign of a human presence.

Another voice cut in. ‘Moonraker One. Lift off!’ Immediately the ice-cap shattered and the screen flooded with light. Through the light appeared the nose-cone of a rocket and attached to it a Moonraker shuttle. The assembly rose slowly into the air and then roared skywards, leaving a dense trail of smoke and flames. The picture changed instantly to a barren stretch of desert.

‘Moonraker Two. Lift off!’ A chatter of technicians’ voices orchestrated the appearance of a second rocket and shuttle. The final stages of the countdown flashed up on the screen, and monitors around the chamber fed back changing temperatures and pressures. Bond glanced towards Jaws. He was watching the scene, round-eyed and open-mouthed, like a child looking up at an illuminated Christmas tree.

‘Moonraker Three. Lift off!’ Now the picture changed to a range of mountains and a third rocket and Moonraker soared into the air.

Bond’s awe was nearly the equal of Jaws’s, and coupled with it was a growing sense of alarm. Why were these shuttles being put into orbit? What was Drax planning to do? All the time, at the back of Bond’s mind was the image of what he had seen at the glassworks. The two scientists sliding to the floor, their hands clutching at their throats.

The rats squeaking in their cages...

Bond glanced about him and saw that both Jaws and Drax were absorbed by what was happening on the screens. He started to edge sideways and felt something hard press into his ribs.• A guard with a sub-machine gun prodded him back banefully. Drax addressed Bond without turning his head. ‘I can understand your desire to leave us, Mr Bond. In fact, I endorse it. However, you will go when
I
wish it. My genius demands the respect of a little attention.’

Bond read the message on Jaws’s gleaming teeth and turned back to the screens. He was now looking at a Pacific atoll. Palm trees shuddered and then disappeared from view as a dazzling effulgence blazed across the monitors. Bond was reminded uneasily of another Pacific atoll. ‘We have lifted off,’ said a satisfied voice over the public address system, and the blazing tail of the rocket disappeared out of the top of the picture. A dense cloud of smoke began to clear and the agitated palms stopped having hysterics. The screen suddenly went blank.

‘Four shuttles in space?’ queried Bond.

‘Six,’ said Drax shortly. He turned towards a technician sitting before a cathode-ray tube on which circles of light were converging towards a glowing centre which throbbed at one-second intervals. The technician spoke into a chest microphone. ‘Moonraker Five on pre-set launch programme. Minus ten.’