The road was unmarked, but its path bore hundreds. Men, women, and several children were walking it. There were some Chinese among them, and a few local labourers that had come from Baringo and the Elgeyo-Marakwet County; the majority of the indentured workers were of Indian origin. They staggered up the steep bank from the river and then down to the processing facility and back up and back down into the dark. The mine was a gaping black mouth into the mountain. The trucks ground up at the facility and away, heading out of it all and the miners plodded along with them in the ankle deep dust.
"Keep her to the side, Leigh." Mary told the young man behind the wheel. Excitement shone behind his eyes. "Watch the precipice."
Leigh hummed. They were crawling forward at a mind-numbing pace. Mary Graves leant deeper into the give of the passenger chair and looked at the whirling mass.
One of the younger labourers had sat down on the side of the road without moving. A distant look in his eyes. He must have been no older than twenty. Two of his brothers— friends, strangers? — were urging him to stand. The three others of their little band stood staring, something sad and resigned beneath the exhausted line of their shoulders. The young man on the ground said something to them. Mary looked at the kid's black dusty clothes and his gray dusty face and his steel rimmed spectacles, and thought: now they ought to get going. And she looked aside to the foreman and saw he had not yet spotted them. The foreman wasn't a local. Which was good. The local foremen were far crueler: scared to be demoted back to more menial work and desperate to prove their effectiveness.
"I will wait awhile," Mary now heard the young man say in broken french, "and then I will go. Where will you go?"
His friend pointed at the facility.
"You'll be back?" The young man then asked. He spoke with the informal '𝘵𝘶'.
His friend nodded.
"Good." He said, and he smiled up at his friend. His friend spoke in on him insistently, and pointed at the gravel he'd dropped. The young man on the ground shook his head. His friend spoke in on him again— even more insistent. And he looked at where the rest of their group had continued down the road, throwing singular looks over their shoulders at the duo still beside the road. Others had begun passing them, and Mary looked at the foreman again.
The foreman was still looking away. Plainly. With conviction.
Then Mary turned in her seat to look back, but Leigh had steadily kept going, and the duo had disappeared behind the strutting work mass.
❧
Even with the rains, the colours on site were dry and burnt, like the colours in pottery. The trees had a light delicate foliage, the structure of which was different from that of the trees at home; it did not grow in bows or cupolas, but in horizontal layers, and the formation gave to the tall solitary trees a likeness to sea enhalus; although, here, on the barren plateau, one could go no further from the sea floor.
Henderson and Mary Graves were sat close by the communal tent, about fifty meters from the dig site and a hundred meters from the trucks. As was their wont.
Sitting in the driver seat of one of the heavier trucks was Silva, working on what Mary suspected was a charcoal. She saw Anne van 't Sand and McByrne reclined somewhat further off on the stretch of sand before the boulder filled stream that had been dubbed 'the Beach', together with Peter Canmore. They were talking, and resting in the sand, and arguing, but she could not hear what they were saying.
The surrounding mountains showed stark against the skyline. Closer still, jagged, dusty cliffs enclosed the wadis. Mary Graves watched the labourers as they strutted in the shadow of the humongous dam. A watchtower had been constructed East of the structure, with the unfinished control room at the down curve. And there, on top of the cliffs, Mary thought once more to see a figure with a rifle standing. She wiped her face and shielded her eyes with her hand. The sun glinted off the barrel.
"Have there been any more?" Mary asked Henderson.
"Yes." The man followed her gaze and then bend back over the board, studying his bishop. "And they dare to stay longer past sunrise."
"What's Gerbrandy saying?"
"He's in denial."
"You aren't."
"You know how I feel."
"And you also promised to talk once it became a problem."
"And I haven't." Henderson dismissed her, but when he locked eyes with Mary he gave a nod. "Check." Henderson spoke. "Yeah— but I will, Mary. You know me."
Sinking further into the give of the chair, Mary watched the low clouds hanging overhead and sighed. "You know, Jacky, it's surprising how fast you can go downhill when you begin feeling sorry for yourself."
"Are we still talking about me?"
Mary didn't answer and moved her tower.
"It'll heal ugly, won't it?" Mary eyed Bates as he limped from his tent to the kitchens.
"It may." Henderson said. He moved his bishop. Her pawn fell.
"Does he care for it?"
Henderson looked at her, looked at Bates, and back at her. He shrugged. "Sure. But he knows it wouldn't matter either way."
Mary hummed, and took his bishop.
The air was heavy with damp and humidity, and the sand blew and sticked to whatever moisture it could find on the body. It got everywhere. Mary tugged at her shirt. One side was pulled adroit, and the fabric hung awkwardly around her shoulders. On site, Wilson and Cools were working close to the surface, Jackson bumping into Cools as he let himself sink to his haunches.
Robert Leigh was on his way up. His lips were pressed thin, and the skin around his eyes tense. "Pardon, Ma'am." The kid said as he passed them into the communal tent. Mary frowned. Henderson straightened from where he sat hunched over the board and called Leigh back.
"Hey— hey. Leigh. Leigh— come here. Listen to me. It's natural for Wilson to be nervous, alright? She's trying to be polite."
"I know it," Leigh said, bitten off. "I know it. She's good. I know she'll get it out cleanly. I just felt bad she could think that."
"Lots of people are irritable when things aren't going their way. This is the first Wilson ever did on her own. She wants it to be good. She thinks that if the first one is bad, all the ones after it will be bad as well. But this one'll be the worst."
"You're always polite, and Dr Bates and Dr Graves are always polite."
Henderson smiled. "We didn't use to be. When we were learning together we used to be excited and rude and sarcastic." Henderson shook his head. "We all used to be terrible."
"Truly?"
"Sure. Truly. We used to suffer and act as though everybody was against us. And that's natural. Discipline or good sense are things you learn. We only started to be polite because we found we couldn't secure our findings being rude and excited. And if we were, it wasn't what we were there for. Mary and me especially were really awful though; excited and sore and misunderstood. So now we always stay polite. We talked it over and decided we'd be polite no matter what."
Not that we always succeed, Mary thought as she drank from her bottle. But it's the effort that counts. Or at least that's what I'll tell myself.
Then she realised Henderson had her in three moves if she didn't move her tower.
"I'll be polite," she heard Leigh say. "But it's hard coming from Jenny. I'm not used to it."
"Good man. Go and see what McByrne's got for today. Come back and tell me."
Mary turned to look at the pit, and she couldn't see the look in Jennifer Wilson's eyes, but she saw the tense line of her shoulders and the straining tremor in her arm and legs and Mary knew it well— the girl was trying to be strong and professional, but she was excited and anxious and above all else desperate to prove herself. Mary remembered seeing that same look in Jackson's eyes not too long ago, and Mary had a sneaking suspicion that she herself had been guilty of that look as well, during her time with Gould and Hanford.
❧
It was during the afternoon that Mary was forced to take a decision regarding Bates, which played out as follows:
"Bates?" Mary called, standing, with one feet on the ground and one on the upper step of the ladder. She held a carton against her hip, which she set down as she eyed the older man up and down.
"What?" Bates barked.
"Alright?"
"Flying," the bitter answer came. She strode towards him.
"Pain?"
"Tolerable."
"Bed?"
"Please." He gasped. And Mary caught him before he hit the ground. She took his arm over her shoulders and wrapped her arm round his back. Bates's grip was tight in the fabric of her shirt.
"At least I'll piss off a lot of people." Bates grunted. Jackson had come running, but Mary waved him off. The old man's pride would not allow it. She pushed Bates upright.
"Born for it."
"The institute'll be happy. Absolutely wrapped," Bates was panting. The sweat stood stark against his brow and he was pale but for two distinct blotches of red. The man took another breath. "Tell them one of the Big Stories. Slow down— for damn— slow down, Graves."
"Fought a rhino." Mary strained under his arm.
"Fell of a pyramid."
"No pyramid's around."
"At home, they don't know that."
"Fifty years ago, maybe."
"I think another thing is that better people do it," Joseph Bates said, as Mary eased him down on the closest chair. There Bates seemed to sink inwardly, curling in on himself, in the shadow and safety of the canvas spanned before the entrance of the communal tent. "If I were a good enough man maybe I could have been a good treasure hunter. Maybe I'm just enough of a son of a bitch to be a good grave robber." He was still white-knuckling Mary's shirt. She studied his face.
"That's the worst oversimplification I've ever heard."
"I always oversimplify," Bates maintained. "That's one reason I'm no damn good."
"Quit the self-pity. It's ugly. You ready to get up and make it another ten?"
Bates smiled, still breathing heavily through the yellow teeth in his mouth. "I'm Venus herself."
❧
McBryne was out washing the iron-cast grill. The stank of the metal in the heat smarted sharp in the nostrils, and the cook's red whiskers showed copper in the evening sun. He nodded at her as she employed herself by the water receptacle.
"Gerbrandy cam by," he told her. "Man didnae say anythin'. Juist keeked aroond fur a bawherr. Ah tellt him: 'Dr Graves's putting th' auld man tae bed' bit he wouldn't gimme anythin," and here he looked fugitively at the dam, "Ah cannae staun worrying aboot they weans. Ruins mah damned digestion. Ill enough th' wey it's noo."
"Me and Henderson stay up and watch them."
"Th' weans lik' neep salad, dinnae thay? th' wey we fix it?"
"Sure. Henderson too. Put in plenty of hard-boiled egg and onion."
"Ah will keep thaim guid 'n' firm. Yi'll waant me tae tak' some tae Bates, Ma'am?"
"Sure. But leave the talipa. He doesn't care for it."
"A'richt. Dae yi'll waant th' fish?"
"I'll have. Get it to the kids first."
"A'richt."
"How long ago did he come by?"