For a moment a faint qualm of apprehension struck her. The thin, dark Frenchman rose, yawned, stretched his arms and looked out and said something in French which she did not catch. But Ericsson leant across the aisle and said,
"We are coming down here, it seems - but why?"
Mrs. Calvin Baker, leaning out of her seat, turned her head and nodded brightly as Hilary said,
"We seem to be landing."
The plane swooped round in ever lower circles. The country beneath them seemed to be practically desert. There were no signs of houses or villages. The wheels touched with a decided bump, bouncing along and taxiing until they finally stopped. It had been a somewhat rough landing, but it was a landing in the middle of nowhere.
Had something gone wrong with the engine, Hilary wondered, or had they run out of petrol? The pilot, a dark-skinned, handsome young man, came through the forward door and along the plane.
"If you please," he said, "you will all get out."
He opened the rear door, let down a short ladder and stood there waiting for them all to pass out. They stood in a little group on the ground, shivering a little. It was chilly here, with the wind blowing sharply from the mountains in the distance. The mountains, Hilary noticed, were covered with snow and singularly beautiful. The air was crisply cold and intoxicating. The pilot descended too, and addressed them, speaking French:
"You are all here? Yes? Excuse, please, you will have to wait a little minute, perhaps. Ah, no, I see it is arriving."
He pointed to where a small dot on the horizon was gradually growing nearer. Hilary said in a slightly bewildered voice:
"But why have we come down here? What is the matter? How long shall we have to be here?"
The French traveller said,
"There is, I understand, a station wagon arriving. We shall go on in that."
"Did the engine fail?" asked Hilary.
Andy Peters smiled cheerfully.
"Why no, I shouldn't say so." he said, "the engine sounded all right to me. However, they'll fix up something of that kind, no doubt."
She stared, puzzled. Mrs. Calvin Baker murmured,
"My, but it's chilly, standing about here. That's the worst of this climate. It seems so sunny but it's cold the moment you get near sunset."
The pilot was murmuring under his breath, swearing, Hilary thought. He was saying something like:
"Toujours des retards insupportables."
The station wagon came towards them at a break-neck pace. The Berber driver drew up with a grinding of brakes. He sprang down and was immediately engaged by the pilot in angry conversation. Rather to Hilary's surprise, Mrs. Baker intervened in the dispute - speaking in French.
"Don't waste time," she said peremptorily. "What's the good of arguing? We want to get out of here."
The driver shrugged his shoulders, and going to the station wagon, he unhitched the back part of it which let down. Inside was a large packing case. Together with the pilot and with help from Ericsson and Peters, they got it down on to the ground. From the effort it took, it seemed to be heavy. Mrs. Calvin Baker put her hand on Hilary's arm and said, as the man began to raise the lid of the case,
"I shouldn't watch, my dear. It's never a pretty sight."
She led Hilary a little way away, on the other side of the wagon. The Frenchman and Peters came with them. The Frenchman said in his own language,
"What is it then, this manoeuvre there that they do?"
Mrs. Baker said,
"You are Dr. Barron?"
The Frenchman bowed.
"Pleased to meet you," said Mrs. Baker. She stretched out her hand, rather like a hostess welcoming him to a party. Hilary said in a bewildered tone,
"But I don't understand. What is in that case? Why is it better not to look?"
Andy Peters looked down on her consideringly. He had a nice face, Hilary thought. Something square and dependable about it. He said,
"I know what it is. The pilot told me. It's not very pretty perhaps, but I guess it's necessary." He added quietly, "There are bodies in there."
"Bodies!" She stared at him.
"Oh, they haven't been murdered or anything," he grinned reassuringly. "They were obtained in a perfectly legitimate way for research - medical research, you know."
But Hilary still stared.
"I don't understand."
"Ah. You see, Mrs. Betterton, this is where the journey ends. One journey, that is."
"Ends?"
"Yes. They'll arrange the bodies in that plane and then the pilot will fix things and presently, as we're driving away from here, we shall see in the distance the flames going up in the air. Another plane that has crashed and come down in flames, and no survivors!"
"But why? How fantastic!"
"But surely -" It was Dr. Barron now who spoke to her. "But surely you know where we are going?"
Mrs. Baker, drawing near, said cheerfully,
"Of course she knows. But maybe she didn't expect it quite so soon."
Hilary said, after a short bewildered pause,
"But you mean - all of us?" She looked round.
"We're fellow travellers," said Peters gently.
The young Norwegian, nodding his head, said with an almost fanatical enthusiasm,
"Yes, we are all fellow travellers."
Chapter 9
The pilot came up to them.
"You will start now, please," he said. "As soon as possible. There is much to be done, and we are late on schedule."
Hilary recoiled for a moment. She put her hand nervously to her throat. The pearl choker she was wearing broke under the strain of her fingers. She picked up the loose pearls and crammed them into her pocket.
They all got into the station wagon. Hilary was on a long bench crowded up with Peters on one side of her and Mrs. Baker the other. Turning her head towards the American woman, Hilary said,
"So you - so you - are what you might call the liaison officer, Mrs. Baker?"
"That hits it off exactly. And though I say it myself, I'm well qualified. Nobody is surprised to find an American woman getting around and travelling a lot."
She was still plump and smiling, but Hilary sensed, or thought she sensed, a difference. The slight fatuity and surface conventionality had gone. This was an efficient, probably ruthless woman.
"It will make a fine sensation in the headlines," said Mrs. Baker. She laughed with some enjoyment. "You, I mean, my dear. Persistently dogged by ill-luck, they'll say. First nearly losing your life in the crash at Casablanca, then being killed in this further disaster."
Hilary realised suddenly the cleverness of the plan.
"These others?" she murmured. "Are they who they say they are?"
"Why yes. Dr. Barron is a bacteriologist, I believe. Mr. Ericsson a very brilliant young physicist, Mr. Peters is a research chemist, Miss Needheim, of course, isn't a nun, she's an endocrinologist. Me, as I say, I'm only the liaison officer. I don't belong in this scientific bunch." She laughed again as she said, "That Hetherington woman never had a chance."
"Miss Hetherington - was she - was she -"
Mrs. Baker nodded emphatically.
"If you ask me, she's been tailing you. Took over in Casablanca from whoever followed you out."
"But she didn't come with us today although I urged her to?"
"That wouldn't have been in character," said Mrs. Baker. "It would have looked a little too obvious to go back again to Marrakesh after having been there already. No, she'll have sent a telegram or a phone message through and there'll be someone waiting at Marrakesh to pick you up when you arrive. When you arrive! That's a good laugh, isn't it? Look! Look there now! Up she goes."
They had been driving rapidly away across the desert, and now as Hilary craned forward to look through the little window, she saw a great glow behind them. A faint sound of an explosion came to her ears. Peters threw his head back and laughed. He said:
"Six people die when plane to Marrakesh crashes!"
/>
Hilary said almost under her breath:
"It's - it's rather frightening."
"Stepping off into the unknown?" It was Peters who spoke. He was serious enough now. "Yes, but it's the only way. We're leaving the Past and stepping out towards the Future." His face lit up with sudden enthusiasm. "We've got to get quit of all the bad, mad old stuff. Corrupt governments and the warmongers. We've got to go into the new world - the world of science, clean away from the scum and the driftwood."
Hilary drew a deep breath.
"That's like the things my husband used to say," she said, deliberately.
"Your husband?" He shot her a quick glance. "Why, was he Tom Betterton?"
Hilary nodded.
"Well that's great. I never knew him out in the States, though I nearly met him more than once. ZE Fission is one of the most brilliant discoveries of this age - yes, I certainly take my hat off to him. Worked with old Mannheim, didn't he?"
"Yes," said Hilary.
"Didn't they tell me he'd married Mannheim's daughter. But surely you're not -"
"I'm his second wife," said Hilary, flushing a little. "He - his - Elsa died in America."
"I remember. Then he went to Britain to work there. Then he riled them by disappearing." He laughed suddenly. "Walked slap out of some Paris Conference into nowhere." He added, as though in further appreciation, "Lord, you can't say they don't organise well."
Hilary agreed with him. The excellence of their organisation was sending a cold pang of apprehension through her. All the plans, codes, signs that had been so elaborately arranged were going to be useless now, for now there would be no trail to pick up. Things had been so arranged that everyone on the fatal plane had been fellow travellers bound for the Unknown Destination where Thomas Betterton had gone before them. There would be no trace left. Nothing. Nothing but a burnt-out plane. Could they - was it possible that Jessop and his organisation could guess that she, Hilary, was not one of those charred bodies? She doubted it. The accident had been so convincing, so clever - there would even be charred bodies in the plane.
Peters spoke again. His voice was boyish with enthusiasm. For him there were no qualms, no looking back, only eagerness to go forward.
"I wonder," he said, "where do we go from here?"
Hilary, too, wondered, because again much depended on that. Sooner or later there must be contacts with humanity. Sooner or later, if investigation was made, the fact that a station wagon with six people in it resembling the description of those who had left that morning by plane, might possibly be noted by someone. She turned to Mrs. Baker, and asked, trying to make her tone the counterpart of the childish eagerness of the young American beside her,
"Where are we going - what happens next?"
"You'll see," said Mrs. Baker, and for all the pleasantness of her voice, there was something somehow ominous in those words.
They drove on. Behind them the flare of the plane still showed in the sky, showed all the more clearly because the sun was now dropping below the horizon. Night fell. Still they drove. The going was bad since they were obviously not on any main road. Sometimes they seemed to be on field tracks, at other times they drove over open country.
For a long time Hilary remained awake, thoughts and apprehensions turning round in her head excitedly. But at last, shaken and tossed from side to side, exhaustion had its way and she fell asleep. It was a broken sleep. Various ruts and jars in the road awoke her. For a moment or two she would wonder confusedly where she was, then reality would come back to her. She would remain awake for a few moments, her thoughts racing round in confused apprehension, then once more her head would drop forward and nod, and once again she would sleep.
She was awakened suddenly by the car coming to an abrupt stop. Very gently Peters shook her by the arm.
"Wake up," he said, "we seem to have arrived somewhere."
Everyone got out of the station wagon. They were all cramped and weary. It was still dark and they seemed to have drawn up outside a house surrounded by palm trees. Some distance away they could see a few dim lights as though there were a village there. Guided by a lantern they were ushered into the house. It was a native house with a couple of giggling Berber women who stared curiously at Hilary and Mrs. Calvin Baker. They took no interest in the nun.
The three women were taken to a small upstairs room. There were three mattresses on the floor and some heaps of coverings, but no other furniture.
"I'll say I'm stiff," said Mrs. Baker. "Gets you kind of cramped, riding along the way we've been doing."
"Discomfort does not matter," said the nun.
She spoke with a harsh, guttural assurance. Her English, Hilary found, was good and fluent, though her accent was bad.
"You're living up to your part, Miss Needheim," said the American woman. "I can just see you in the convent, kneeling on the hard stones at four in the morning."
Miss Needheim smiled contemptuously.
"Christianity has made fools of women," she said. "Such a worship of weakness, such snivelling humiliation! Pagan women had strength. They rejoiced and conquered! And in order to conquer, no discomfort is unbearable. Nothing is too much to suffer."
"Right now," said Mrs. Baker, yawning, "I wish I was in my bed at the Palais Jamail at Fez. What about you, Mrs. Betterton? That shaking hasn't done your concussion any good, I'll bet."
"No, it hasn't," Hilary said.
"They'll bring us something to eat presently, and then I'll fix you up with some aspirin and you'd better get to sleep as fast as you can."
Steps were heard coming up the stairs outside and giggling female voices. Presently the two Berber women came into the room. They carried a tray with a big dish of semolina and meat stew. They put it down on the floor, came back again with a metal basin "with water in it and a towel. One of them felt Hilary's coat, passing the stuff between her fingers and speaking to the other woman who nodded her head in rapid agreement, and did the same to Mrs. Baker. Neither of them paid any attention to the nun.
"Shoo," said Mrs. Baker, waving them away. "Shoo, shoo."
It was exactly like shooing chickens. The women retreated, still laughing, and left the room.
"Silly creatures," said Mrs. Baker, "it's hard to have patience with them. I suppose babies and clothes are their only interest in life."
"It is all they are fit for," said Fraulein Needheim, "they belong to a slave race. They are useful to serve their betters, but no more."
"Aren't you a little harsh?" said Hilary, irritated by the woman's attitude.
"I have no patience with sentimentality. There are those that rule, the few; and there are the many that serve."
"But surely..."
Mrs. Baker broke in in an authoritative manner.
"We've all got our own ideas on these subjects, I guess," she said, "and very interesting they are. But this is hardly the time for them. We'll want to get what rest we can."
Mint tea arrived. Hilary swallowed some aspirin willingly enough, since her headache was quite a genuine one. Then the three women lay down on the mattresses and fell asleep.
They slept late into the following day. They were not to go on again until the evening, so Mrs. Baker informed them. From the room in which they had slept, there was an outside staircase leading onto a flat roof where they had a certain amount of view over the surrounding country. A little distance away was a village, but here where they were, the house was isolated in a large palm garden. On awakening, Mrs. Baker had indicated three heaps of clothing which had been brought and laid down just inside the door.
"We're going native for the next lap," she explained, "we leave our other clothes here."
So the smart little American woman's neat suiting and Hilary's tweed coat and skirt and the nun's habit were all laid aside and three native Moroccan women sat on the roof of the house and chatted together. The whole thing had a curiously unreal feeling.
Hilary studied Miss Needheim more closely now that she had left the a
nonymity of her nun's habit. She was a younger woman than Hilary had thought her, not more, perhaps, than thirty-three or thirty-four. There was a neat spruceness in her appearance. The pale skin, the short stubby fingers, and the cold eyes in which burned from time to time the gleam of the fanatic, repelled rather than attracted. Her speech was brusque and uncompromising. Towards both Mrs. Baker and Hilary she displayed a certain amount of contempt as towards people unworthy to associate with her. This arrogance Hilary found very irritating. Mrs. Baker, on the other hand, seemed hardly to notice it. In a queer way Hilary felt far nearer and more in sympathy with the two giggling Berber women who brought them food, than with her two companions of the Western world. The young German woman was obviously indifferent to the impression she created. There was a certain concealed impatience in her manner, and it was obvious that she was longing to get on with her journey and that she had no interest in her two companions.