Doctor Who_ Combat Rock - Mick Lewis [80]
Tigus swept the hostages with a final warning glare, and made his way back to join the Doctor. ‘You say nothing that help our people,’ he said, gazing out across the river at the moss and vine-strangled shapes of trees lining the bank.
‘Your guerrilla tactics will never have a serious effect on the Indoni dictatorship, Tigus,’ the Doctor said, his eyes narrowed with grave wisdom. ‘Peaceful and diplomatic means are the only way you will secure offworld sympathies for your cause.’
‘Tigus disgust with your pacifism!’ the leader barked, the gun in his hand lifting in his anger. The Doctor looked a little nervous as the barrel wavered towards his face. He put out a finger and moved it gently aside. Tigus continued, face screwed up inside his balaclava. ‘How can we be peaceful and diplomatic in face of torture, rape and plunder of our spiritual environment. Our gods inhabit the trees, the grass, the mountains. The Indoni fell them, dig them up and blow holes in them. Our gods are bloody: they scream for retribution. We must avenge them, and all orphans and widows crying over corpses of brave warriors murdered by Sabit’s beasts!’ His chest was rising and falling with the extremity of his passion.
The Doctor was humbled by his words, and in his heart could only sympathise with the rebels’ plight. Missionaries, greedy businessmen, politicians and prostitution were eating away, with varying degrees of spiritual damage, at the pure heart of a once unsullied Papul. He was at a loss how to respond.
‘Tigus sick of cultural pollution of our land as well as its physical rape.’ This was from Kepennis, who had turned to face them in the canoe, and was listening to the conversation with some interest. ‘And I begin to see what he mean.’
It was a mistake. Tigus’s mounting fury was expended on the Papul guide instead. He advanced on Kepennis, rifle shaking in his hands. ‘You want speak for me?’ Then again, almost shrieking: ‘ You want speak for me? You, who are scum! You almost sound like Papul, but not enough to stop me kill you now.’ He would have done it too, had not a shout from a guerrilla sitting in the prow of the canoe stayed him.
The ‘pilot’ was gesturing at a tiny tributary emptying into the main river on their left. Apparently, this was what they had been looking for, because the vessel began to head towards the small mouth of what was really no more than a stream.
Barely ten yards in width, the tributary was choked with weeds and almost completely enclosed by trees overhead, so that thick gloom squeezed them as they commenced this new stage of their journey. Moist fronds wiped across their heads like dangling wet hair as they passed beneath the branches.
Tree roots blocked their way, and bumped at the canoe from all sides. Intermittent sunlight filtered through, sometimes picking out huge butterflies of gorgous hues that tripped through the air about their heads, but the majority of the long, twisting journey was dark and oppressive indeed, and soon all their spirits began to suffer. At one point, an orange snake as thin as the Doctor’s wrist swam alongside the canoe, and the trepidation with which the guerrillas regarded it signalled its deadliness. Another time, coils of reptile as thick as the Doctor’s body lowered themselves from the branches above them, a momentary streak of sunlight picking out the rainbow markings of their scales, the beauty of which did nothing to alleviate their terror.
The Doctor gazed ahead silently as the canoe continued its progress. Sometimes there would be no way forward at all; the guerrillas were forced to stand up in the canoe and hack a passage through the encroaching foliage. Whether they moved forward or not, it made no real difference to the Doctor, however. He was thinking of Victoria and Jamie, and wondering incessantly about the possibility of their still being alive. The chances were slim indeed, it seemed. And it was all his fault. He’d brought them here.
Insects droned,