Page 13 (2/2)

In another few moments Moore was alone in the Square except for a couple of thin dogs searching for scraps And above their low, growling challenges Moore thought he heard so, very distant and difficult to define It was a distant buzzing sound, like a fly circling his head; slowly the noise beca of a bee Moore lifted his face into the sun, shielding his eyes with a hand, and searched the sky He found it, and the large winged shadow passed close over the village roofs, sending whorls of sand dancing past hioat-track of a road through the greenish-black jungles; the studded tires bounced and crashed over stones and the remnants of uprooted trees Kip braked the jeep when he cas as to which way to drive He had been at this point on Coquina only twice before, and one of those times he had become hopelessly lost for hours on a road that wound around and around before dropping off into the sea He lifted his arm and wiped sweat from his forehead The air was thick and wet here, and the da to his skin in beads Light streaolden, liquid columns, but in places the darkness was like the bottom of the ocean Birds screeched and fluttered in the liher altitudes

Kip chose the right-hand pathway and turned onto it, driving through a large circular puddle of standing rainwater that sucked at the tires Strands ofthe into the high grasses Kip had driven for perhaps ten ain, when he saw a tree lying directly across the road He stopped the jeep just in front of it; the tree had been living when felled He could see the marks on the shattered trunk where the axes had been used This was the right road after all

Kip clian to walk In the absence of engine noise the cries of the birds seeant, others sadly sweet A little farther on Kip saw a face drawn in ashes on a tree trunk; the eyes ide and staring, the ht It was a sign to keep the curious out, and perhaps e of cannibalis in the jungle, bare feet crushing leaves The sound quickly faded away, and Kip knew he&039;d been seen

The jungle had been cleared less than a hundred yards ahead; he could see the Carib village, which consisted of a score of shantylike, unpainted clapboard dwellings, battered from years of hard weather and sun A rundown store with tin placards advertising COCA-COLA and PRINCE ALBERT TOBACCO stood at the center of the village, its shingled roof half-collapsed and in soe, on Carib Point overlooking the blue sheen of the Caribbean, was a useless squat tower, now decayed; green vines covered its base and all the glass on its la between the houses were lines of drying, tattered clothes, and here and there were sly corn and beans

A naked child sat on the ground sailing a piece of hittled into a boat in a brackish-looking puddle, and he looked up with surprised eyes as Kip entered Caribville A group of other children had already seen hi, who stopped to snarl and bark at the constable Soathered in front of the store, their eyes sharp and bright, their features appearing ers, their co black hair who had been carrying a basket balanced on her head stopped in her tracks when she saw Kip; when she had regained her co away toward one of the houses People peered at him from screened doors and s as he walked deeper into Caribville He sensed their hostility They had never accepted him as the authority, as law on the island, and they disliked anyone whose ancestry was tied with the British

The an to separate as Kip reached theone before he could speak to the across the village A single road headed downhill to a semicircle of beach below At the Carib harbor, there was a wharf where a few rusty old trawlers layon their boats Farther along the beach stood a huge concrete hulk, just the steel fra At one time, a British firm had tried to build a hotel and h Now it stood as a silent sentinel of progress thwarted: the jungle had grown back around it, and spiders and lizards had clai as a shelter from the heat

"What do you want?" solish and Spanish

Kip looked around A heavyset man in a T-shirt stood behind the screen door, his hands on his hips His hair was cropped very short, but his glossy, black sideburns had been allowed to groild and full His eyes were sarded the constable with a mixture of curiosity and disdain

"I want to see the Chief Father," Kip told hi the other man up "And why?" he asked

"Official police business"

"Is that so? Well, then, you can talk to me; I&039;m Cheyne&039;s brother-in-law"

Kip shook his head "That won&039;t do Is Cheyne here or not?"

"He ain&039;t," the "

Kip didn&039;t believe the man When he looked to one side he sao other Carib ainst the re him One pretended to pare his nails with a knife blade "It&039;s Cheyne I want to see," Kip said, gazing at the e A man&039;s dead, and I want to know"

"We heard about that," the man said "All about it So you coto do with it? Go away, constable You ain&039;t welcome here"

"Thanks for your help," Kip told hi the other two out of the corner of his eye "I knohere Cheyne lives; I&039;ll find him myself" As he walked away, he heard the man call out, "Better watch your step around here, constable! This ain&039;t no fuckin&039; pastel pink Coquina village you in now!" There was laughter, and someone cursed and spat, but Kip paid them no attention He reached a house farther down the row of decrepit shacks, and knocked on the door fraain The door opened a few inches and a smooth-skinned, pretty wo for him," Kip said

She shook her head, spoke a feords in the brisk native dialect "Gone," she said "He gone" She pointed toward the ocean

"When is he co In the di, and Kip heard an aged voice call out The wo, and then closed the door in the constable&039;s face

Darily Cheyne was the only one who&039;d talk to him, and he was a hard man to track down; the other Caribs would just as soon spit as look at hi back past the store to his jeep, ignoring the stares of theat his back Deep within hi to do with Turk&039;sto convince hi he could put his finger on, but the more he brooded over it the more the answer seemed to elude hiehim inexorably toward a closed iron hatch

THAT WAS NOT REAL! he told hiht convincing That was not, could never be, real! Of course, it was his job to be concerned He was responsible for the Coquina villagers and the Caribs as well, even though those people looked to their Chief Father as the ultimate authority

As he reached the jeep Kip realized the birds were silent; the ly absent The breeze swept in, rattling foliage and sending the ers Silence swelled in the sun-ribbed shadows, louder than the screeching of the birds It was an oppressive quiet, and Kip wondered what had caused it

He started the engine and began to thread his way along the road, away froering