Free Catacombs by John Farris Page B

drug. The doctor said quietly, not looking at her, "The pilot had a slight mishap on landing."
    Erika felt a cold flash of fear. "I hope he wasn't hurt."
    "No, it's nothing, really. Flat tire. Of course he hasn't a spare."
    "Couldn't he take off with a flat tire?"
    "Any competent bush pilot could manage that, even in the dark. The problem seems to be in coming down again. Rather than run the risk of crumping a new airplane and having the government sack him, the pilot has decided to remain until a new tire can be dropped to him in the morning."
    "That's . . . sensible."
    "I think so. He prefers, naturally, to stay with his aircraft. I let him know there was rather much risk of contracting the fever if he put up at the mission. He'll be uncomfortable, but we'll send supper and a bottle of wine later."
    Erika stared at Raymond, wondering just what he was trying to tell her. Apparently he'd arrived too late to prevent Bob Connetta from slashing the Bonanza's tire. Was he now letting her know how hopeless it would be to attempt to steal the plane with the pilot, who was undoubtedly armed, watching over it?
    Raymond finished taking Chips' pulse, and made a notation on the chart.
    "By the way, Colonel Ukumtara has requested that you take supper with us this evening, at nine o'clock."
    "Tell him how genuinely delighted I am, but I'm afraid–"
    Raymond glanced up, frowning. "Erika, it isn't a request you can reasonably refuse."
    She was about to protest again but another nurse, one of those assigned to the temporary ward in the school building, had come hurriedly upstairs.
    "Doctor, can you come? There's a woman they've brought in with a snakebite, she bleeds from the nose already."
    Raymond whirled. "Get me antivenin from the storeroom." He hesitated a few moments, looking back at Erika with an unexpected expression: exasperation, helplessness.
    "It's vital that you be there," he said, and was gone; Erika heard him running almost heedlessly down the unsafe stairway outside.
    Around eight o'clock Erika came to a curious standstill, as if her vital machinery had frozen. Her mind was a void; the simplest task required excruciating concentration. She had pains in her chest and her mouth quivered uncontrollably. Her best friend among the nurses, Alice Sinoyi, dropped by and noticed her distress. Alice led her home and drew a precious hot bath for her, laced with aloe juice and some kind of stinging botanical that made Erika's blood race. Alice spent a half hour soaping Erika, rubbing her down with a sponge, crooning the Sonjo songs of her childhood.
    The treatment worked; Erika was revived. After her bath she had an additional mild tonic for the nerves, some Scotch and Fiuggi water, and realized that she could face the coming ordeal with patience if not spirit. She felt clean, lonely, bereft, abstracted. She put on a freshly ironed bush outfit and desert boots, another surgical mask, and went along at a quarter past nine to Colonel Ukumtara's bungalow, still feeling half a step beyond reality.
    A woman who had died of fever was being removed from the school building by silent relatives. The body had been rolled in a straw mat, which was covered with black cloths and baobab leaves. A muganga , splendid in a stifling, vintage military greatcoat which he wore only on important occasions, walked alongside sprinkling herbal medicine on the cloths, an antiseptic barrier between the dead and the living. The faces of the pallbearers, all men, were smeared with clay. They staggered uncertainly with their burden, as if they had drunk a great deal of pombe , the hot thick homemade beer of the bush, to steel themselves for this task. In the distance drums and melancholy, high-pitched improvisational songs signaled another wake in progress. There was an odor of burning in the air, fires of purification everywhere. But against all opposition the fever continued to thrive.
    Colonel Ukumtara was one of a rare breed, a Masai tamed and assimilated into