The Sunbird Read online

  ‘Why do they call you Sunbird?’ she asked later, and I repeated her question to. Xhai.

  He jumped up and did his celebrated imitation of a sun-bird, darting his head and fluttering his hands. It was convincingly done, for bushmen are wonderful observers of nature.

  ‘They say that’s how I act when I get excited,’ I explained.

  ‘Yes!’ Sally exclaimed, clapping her hands with delight as she recognized me, and then they were all laughing.

  In the morning we went to the cave together, all four of us, and in that setting the little men were completely at home. I photographed them, and Sally sketched them as they sat on the rocks by the pool. She was fascinated by their delicate little hands and feet, and their enlarged buttocks, a recognized anatomical peculiarity named steatopygia, which enabled them to store food like a camel stores water, against the contingencies of the wilderness. Ghal remarked to Xhai on the activity in which Sally and I had been engaged beside the pool when he discovered us the previous day, and this led to much earthy comment and laughter. Sally wanted to know the source of it, and when I told her she blushed like a sunset, which was a pleasant change, for I am usually the blusher.

  The bushmen were enthusiastic over Sally’s sketches, and this enabled me to lead them naturally to the rock paintings.

  ‘They are the paintings of our people,’ Xhai boasted. ‘This has been our place from the beginning.’

  I pointed out the portrait of the white king and Xhai explained frankly, without any of the reserve or secrecy I had expected.

  ‘He is the king of the white ghosts.’

  ‘Where did he live?’

  ‘He lives with his army of ghosts on the moon,’ Xhai explained - and my critics accuse me of being a romantic!

  We discussed this at some length, and I learned how the ghosts fly between moon and earth, how they are well disposed towards the bushmen, but care should be taken as the common forest devils will sometimes masquerade as white ghosts. Ghal had mistaken me for one of these.

  ‘Have the white ghosts ever been men?’ I asked.

  ‘No, certainly not.’ Xhai was a little put out by the question. ‘They were always ghosts, and they have always lived on the moon and these hills.’

  ‘Have you ever seen them, Xhai?’

  ‘My grandfather saw the ghost king.’ Xhai avoided the question with dignity.

  ‘And this, Xhai,’ I pointed out the drawings of the stone wall with its chevrons and towers, ‘what is this?’

  ‘That is the Moon City,’ Xhai answered readily.

  ‘Where is it - on the moon?’

  ‘No. It is here.’

  ‘Here?’ I demanded, my blood starting to race. ‘You mean on these hills?’

  ‘Yes.’ Xhai nodded, and took another bite of his five-dollar cigar.

  ‘Where, Xhai? Where? Can you show it to me?’

  ‘No.’ Xhai shook his head regretfully.

  ‘Why not, Xhai? I am your brother. I am of your clan,’ I pleaded. ‘Your secrets are my secrets.’

  ‘You are my brother,’ Xhai agreed, ‘but I cannot show you the City of the Moon. It is a ghost city. Only when the moon is full and the white ghosts come down, then the city stands upon the plain below the hills - but in the morning it is gone.’

  My blood no longer raced, and my excitement cooled.

  ‘Have you seen the Moon City, Xhai?’

  ‘My grandfather saw it, once long ago.’

  ‘Grandpa was a big mover,’ I remarked bitterly in English.

  ‘What is it?’ Sally wanted to know.

  ‘I’ll explain later, Sal,’ I said, and turned back to the old bushman. ‘Xhai, in all your life have you ever seen such a city as this? A place of tall stone walls, of round stone towers? I don’t mean here at these hills, but anywhere. In the north, by the great river, in the desert of the west - anywhere?’

  ‘No,’ said Xhai, ‘I have never seen such a place.’ And I knew that there was no lost city north of the great Pan or south of the Zambezi, for if there were, Xhai would have come across it in seventy years of ceaseless wandering.

  ‘It was probably some old bushman who wandered 270 miles east of here and saw the temple at Zimbabwe,’ I suggested to Sally that night as we sat around the fire and discussed the old bushman’s story. ‘He was so impressed that on his return he painted it.’

  ‘Then how do you explain your white king?’

  ‘I don’t know, Sal,’ I told her honestly. ‘Perhaps it is a white lady with a bouquet of flowers.’

  It seems that whenever I receive a serious disappointment -Sally’s rejection of my proposal, and the story of the Moon City were both serious - my brain ceases to function for a period. I missed the clue completely, and the link-up was so obvious. I mean, for God’s sake, I have a tested IQ of 156 - I’m a goddamned genius!

  In the morning the two bushmen went back to the families they had left by the Pan. They took with them the treasures we lavished upon them. A hatchet, Sally’s make-up mirror, two knives and half a box of Romeo and Juliette cigars. They trotted away into the vastness of the Kalahari, without a backward glance, and left us the poorer for their going.

  The helicopter came the following week, bringing in a full load of supplies and the special equipment I had asked Louren to send us.

  Sally and I carried the rubber dinghy up to the cavern and inflated it beside the pool, taking it in turns to blow until we felt dizzy.

  Sally launched it and paddled happily around the pool while I assembled the rest of the equipment. There was a short glass-fibre fishing-rod, a heavy one, twenty-five ounces, and in the case which held a 12/0 Penn Senator fishing-reel was a note from Louren: ‘What are you after, for crying out loud? Sand fish, or desert trout? “L”’

  I fitted the reel to rod, threaded the line through the runners, and attached the five-pound lead weight to the end of it. Sally paddled us out into the centre of the pool. I dropped the lead weight over the side, disengaged the clutch on the reel, and let the line start running out.

  As I had requested, the plaited Dacron line was marked at intervals of fifty feet, and as each marker of coloured cotton disappeared into the luminous green water, we counted aloud.

  ‘Five, six, seven - my God, Ben. It’s bottomless.’

  ‘These limestone sink-holes can go down to tremendous depths.’

  ‘Eleven, twelve, thirteen.’

  ‘I hope we’ve got enough line.’ Sally eyed what remained on the spool dubiously.

  ‘We have got 800 yards here,’ I told her. ‘It will be more than enough.’

  ‘Sixteen, seventeen.’ Even I was impressed, I had guessed at a depth of around 400 feet, the same as the Sleeping Pool at Sinoia, but still the line unwound steadily from the big-game fishing-reel.

  At last I felt the weight bump on the bottom, and the line went slack. We looked at each other with awe.

  ‘A little over 850 feet,’ I said.

  ‘It makes me feel scary, hanging over a hole in the earth that deep.’

  ‘Well,’ I said with finality, ‘I had plans to explore the bottom with a Scuba, but that’s out now. Whatever is down there will stay there for ever. Nobody can dive that deep.’

  Sally looked down into the green depths, and the dappled, moving, reflected light illuminated her face weirdly. There were shadows in her eyes, and her expression was dazed. Suddenly she shook herself violently, a shudder that went through her whole body, and she tore her eyes away from the green surface.

  ‘Oh! I felt funny then. A really creepy sensation, as though something walked over my grave.’

  I began to wind in the fishing-line, and Sally lay back flat on the floor of the dinghy staring up at the rock roof high above. It was a laborious task to recover all that line, but I worked away steadily.

  ‘Ben.’ Sally spoke suddenly. ‘Look up there.’ I stopped winding and looked up. We had never looked up at the opening in the roof from this angle. The shape of the opening was different.
/>   ‘There, Ben. On the side,’ Sally pointed. ‘That piece of rock sticking out. It’s square, too regular to be natural, surely?’

  I studied it for a while.

  ‘Perhaps.’ I was dubious.

  ‘You know we have never tried to find where the cavern opens out onto the top of the hills, Ben.’ Sally sat up excitedly. ‘Can’t we do that. Let’s go up and look at that piece of square stone. Can we, Ben?’

  ‘Of course.’ I agreed readily.

  ‘Today. Now! Can we go now?’

  ‘Hell, Sal. It’s after two o’clock already. We will be out after dark.’

  ‘Oh, come on! We can take torches with us.’

  The growth of vegetation at the crest of the hills was dense and spiny. I was glad of the machete I had with me, and I hacked a path for us through it. We had marked the approximate position of the hole from the plain below, but even then we blundered about in the undergrowth for two hours before I nearly walked into it.

  Suddenly the earth opened at my feet in that frightening black shaft, and I threw myself backwards, nearly knocking Sally down.

  ‘That was a near one.’ I was shaken, and I kept a respectful distance from the edge as we worked our way around to where a slab of stone jutted squarely out into the void.

  I knelt on the lip to examine the stone. Far below, the surface of the emerald pool glowed in the gloomy depths. I do not like exposed heights, and I felt distinctly queasy as I leaned out to touch the flat surface of the stone.

  ‘It is certainly regular. Sal.’ I ran my hands over it. ‘But I can’t feel any chisel marks. It’s been badly weathered though, perhaps—’

  I looked up and froze with horror. Sally had walked out onto the stone platform as though it were a diving-board. She stood now with her toes over the edge, and as I watched in horror she lifted her hands above her head. She pointed them straight at the sky with all her fingers and both thumbs extended stiffly in that same gesture she had used when first she saw the emerald pool.

  ‘Sally!’ I screamed, and her head jerked. She swayed slightly. I scrambled to my knees.

  ‘Don’t. Sally, don’t!’ I screamed again, for I knew she was about to plunge into the hungry stone mouth. Slowly she leaned out over the gap. I ran out onto the stone platform and as she went forward beyond the point of balance my hand closed on her upper arm. For brief unholy seconds we teetered and struggled together on the lip of stone, then I dragged her back, and pulled her to safety.

  Suddenly she was shaking and weeping hysterically, and I clung to her, for I also was badly scared. Something had happened that was beyond my understanding, something mystical and deeply disturbing.

  When Sally’s sobs had abated, I asked her gently, ‘What happened, Sal? Why did you do it?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just felt dizzy, and there was a black roaring in my head, and - oh, I don’t know, Ben. I just don’t know.’

  It was another twenty minutes before Sally seemed sufficiently recovered to begin the journey back to camp, and by then the sun was setting. Before we reached the path down the cliff face it was completely dark.

  ‘The moon will be up in a few minutes. Sal. I don’t fancy going down the cliff in the dark. Let’s wait for it.’

  We sat on the edge of the cliff huddled together, not for warmth, for the air was still hot and the rocks were sunbaked, but because both of us were still a little shaken from the experience we had just come through. The moon was a big silver glow beneath the horizon, then it pushed up fat and yellow and round above the trees, and washed the land with a soft pale light.

  I looked at Sally. Her face was silver-grey in the moonlight with dark bruised eyes, and her expression was remote and infinitely sad.

  ‘Shall we go, Sal?’ I hugged her lightly.

  ‘In a minute. It’s so beautiful.’ I turned to stare out over the moon-silver plain. Africa has many moods, many faces, and I love them all. Here, before us. she put on one of her more enchanting displays. We were silent and engrossed for a long time.

  Suddenly I felt Sally stir, against me, half rising.

  ‘Ready?’ I asked her, rising with her.

  ‘Ben!’ Her hand closed on my wrist with surprising strength, she was shaking my arm.

  ‘Ben! Ben!’

  ‘What is it, Sal?’ I was seized with dread that her earlier mood had returned.

  ‘Look, Ben. Look!’ Her voice was choked with emotion.

  ‘What is it, Sal? Are you all right?’

  With one hand she was shaking my arm, with the other she was pointing down at the plain below us.

  ‘Look, Ben, there it is!’

  ‘Sally!’ I put both arms around her to restrain her. ‘Easy, my dear. Just sit down quietly.’

  ‘Don’t be a fool, Ben. I’m perfectly all right. Just look down there.’

  Still holding her securely. I did as she asked. I stared and saw nothing.

  ‘Do you see it, Ben?’

  ‘No.’ And then, like the face in the picture-puzzle, it was there. It was there, as it should have been from the beginning.

  ‘Can you see it?’ Sally was trembling. ‘Tell me you can see it too, Ben. Tell me I’m not imagining it.’

  ‘Yes,’ I mumbled, still not certain, ‘yes, I think—’

  ‘It’s the City of the Moon, Ben. The ghost city of the bush-men - it’s our lost city, Ben. It is. It is - it must be!’

  It was vague, hazy. I shut my eyes tightly and opened them again. It was still there.

  The double enclosure around the silent grove, vast symmetrical tracings on the silver plain, dark shadowy lines. There were the dark circles that marked the spots on which the phallic towers had stood, some of them obscured by the trees of the grove. Beyond the walls were the honeycomb cells of the lower city, crescent-shaped and spread around the shores of the ancient, vanished lake.

  ‘The moon,’ I whispered. ‘Low angle. Picking up the outline of the foundations. They must be so flattened that we have walked over them, lived on top of them for a month! The light of the full moon is just the right strength to cast shadows where the remains stand slightly proud.’

  ‘The photograph!’

  ‘Yes. From 36,000 feet, the light low enough and soft enough to give the same effect,’ I agreed.

  ‘We probably wouldn’t have seen it from such a low altitude, the helicopter didn’t go high enough,’ Sally suggested.

  ‘And it was noon,’ I agreed. ‘High-angle sun, no shadows. That is why Louren didn’t see it from the helicopter.’ It was so simple, and I had missed it. Some bloody genius - they must have botched the tests.

  ‘But there are no walls, Ben, no towers, nothing. Only the foundations. What happened to it? What happened to our city?’

  ‘We will find out, Sal,’ I promised. ‘But now let’s mark it, before it disappears again.’

  I handed her the one torch from the knapsack, ‘One flash means “come towards me”; two flashes, “move away from me”; three, “move left”; four, “move right”; and a windmill means “you’re on it”.’ Quickly we agreed a simple code. ‘I’ll go down onto the plain and you signal me. Put me on top of the large tower first, then guide me around the perimeter of the outer walls. We had better work fast, we don’t know how long the effect will last. Give me a flat cut-out sign when it goes.’

  It lasted a little over an hour with me scampering about on the plain in obedience to Sally’s signals, and then the city faded, and slowly vanished as the moon rose towards its zenith. I went up to fetch Sally down from the cliff. I was bare to the waist, having ripped my shirt to shreds and tied strips of it onto clumps of grass and shrubs as markers.

  Back in camp we built a huge fire and I got out the Glen Grant to celebrate. We were so elated, and there was so much to discuss and marvel over, that sleep was long delayed.

  We went over the lighting phenomenon again in greater detail, agreeing how it worked and ruefully remembering how close we had come to the truth when we discussed the low sun
effect on our very first day, the day we discovered the fresh-water mussel shells. We discussed the shells and their new significance.

  ‘I swear here and now, with all the gods as my witness, that I will never again toss a piece of vital scientific evidence over my shoulder.’ I made oath and testament.

  ‘Let’s drink to that,’ suggested Sal.

  ‘What a wonderful idea,’ I agreed, and refilled the glasses. Then we went on to the old bushman’s story.

  ‘It just goes to show you that every piece of legend, every piece of folklore is based on some fact, however garbled.’ Sally becomes all philosophical after one shot of Glen Grant.

  ‘And let’s face facts, my blood brother Xhai is a champion garbler of facts from way back - the City of the Moon, forsooth.’

  ‘It’s a lovely name. Let’s keep it,’ Sally suggested. ‘And what do you think about Xhai’s grandfather actually meeting one of the white ghosts?’

  ‘He probably saw one of the old hunters or prospectors, remember, we nearly had ghost status awarded us.’

  ‘Literally and figuratively,’ Sally reminded me.

  The talk went on and on while the moon made its splendid transit of the sky above us. Every now and then serious discussion degenerated into effusive outbursts of, ‘Oh, Ben. Isn’t it wonderful. We’ve got a whole Phoenician city to excavate. All to ourselves.’ Or, ‘My God, Sal. All my life I’ve dreamed of something like this happening to me.’

  It was long past midnight before we got our feet back on the earth, and Sally brought up the subject of practical procedure.

  ‘What do we do, Ben? Do we tell Louren Sturvesant now?’

  I poured another drink slowly, while I considered this.

  ‘Don’t you think, Sal, we should sink a pothole, a small one, of course, on the foundations. Just to be certain we’re not making fools of ourselves?’

  ‘Ben, you know that’s the first rule. Don’t go scratching around haphazardly. You might destroy something valuable. We should wait until we can go in on an orderly, organized basis.’