The Snow Tiger / Night of Error Page 20

  Scott did not go away. Instead he said, ‘There must be something wrong, Harry. Why haven’t you been working for the past couple of days?’

  ‘My business,’ mumbled Dobbs. He picked up the glass and drank.

  ‘Not entirely. The company is entitled to some sort of explanation. After all, you are the mine manager. You can’t just abdicate without saying anything.’

  Dobbs eyed him sullenly. ‘What do you want me to say?’

  Scott used shock tactics. ‘I want you to tell me why you’re swinging the bloody lead, and why you’re trying to climb into that gin bottle. How many of those have you gone through, anyway?’ Dobbs was obstinately silent, and Scott persisted, ‘You know what’s going on out there, don’t you?’

  ‘Let Ian Bloody Ballard handle it,’ snarled Dobbs. ‘It’s what he’s paid for.’

  ‘I think that’s unreasonable. He’s paid to do his own job, not yours as well.’ Scott nodded towards the window. ‘You should be out there helping Ballard and Joe Cameron. They’ve got their hands full right now.’

  Venom jetted from Dobbs. ‘He took my job, didn’t he?’

  Scott was puzzled. ‘I don’t know what you mean. He took nothing. What happened was that you stayed at home and cuddled up to a bottle.’

  Dobbs flapped his hand; it wobbled loosely at the wrist as though he had no proper control over it. ‘I don’t mean that – I don’t mean manager. The chairman promised me the job. Crowell said I’d go on the board and be managing director when Fisher went. But oh no! Along comes this young Pommy sprout and gets the job because he’s called Ballard. As though the Ballards don’t have enough money – they’ve got to take mine.’

  Scott opened his mouth and then closed it again as Dobbs continued to speak. He looked pityingly at the older man as he ranted on. The floodgates of resentment had burst open and Dobbs was in full spate. Spittle drooled from the corner of his mouth. ‘I’m getting no younger, you know. I’ve not saved as much as I hoped – those thieves on the stock exchange took a lot of my money. Rogues, the lot of them. I was going to be managing director – Crowell said so. I liked that because I’d have enough to retire on in a few years. Then the Ballard family decided otherwise. They not only took my job but they expect me to serve under a Ballard. Well, they can damn well think again.’

  Scott said gently, ‘Even so, that’s no excuse for pulling out now without a word. Not when there’s trouble. You won’t be thanked for that.’

  ‘Trouble!’ Dobbs ground out the word. ‘What does that whippersnapper know about trouble? I was running a mine when he was having his nappies changed!’

  ‘It’s not the mine,’ said Scott. ‘It’s the town.’

  ‘A lot of bloody nonsense. The man’s an idiot. He’s talking of spending millions to stop a few flakes of snow falling off a hillside. Where’s the money to come from – I ask you that? And now he’s got everyone running in circles like chickens with their heads cut off. And they tell me he’s closed down the mine. Wait until they hear about that in Auckland – to say nothing of London.’

  ‘You seem well informed for one who hasn’t been out of the house for a couple of days.’

  Dobbs grunted. ‘I have my friends. Quentin came in to see what we could do to stop this fool.’ He picked up the glass and drank again, then shook his head. ‘Quentin knows the score all right but there’s nothing he can do. There’s nothing any of us can do. It’s all cut and dried, I tell you.’

  Scott’s eyes narrowed. It had not taken him long to come to the conclusion that Dobbs was definitely unbalanced. Resentment had been festering within him and something had happened to cause it to burst out, and he had a good idea of what it was. Deliberately he said, ‘Do you think you could have handled the job of managing director?’

  Rage burst from Dobbs. ‘Of course I could,’ he yelled. ‘Of course I could have done it.’

  Scott stood up. ‘Well, it doesn’t matter now. I think we’d better get you to a safer place than this. If anything happens out there this house will be one of the first hit.’

  ‘Poppycock!’ jeered Dobbs. ‘A lot of flaming poppycock! I’m not moving and no one can make me.’ He grinned, his lips drawn back ferally over his teeth. ‘I might move if young Ballard comes here and apologizes for taking my job,’ he said sarcastically.

  Scott shrugged and picked up his bag. ‘Suit yourself.’

  ‘And close the door when you leave,’ Dobbs shouted at Scott’s back. He wrapped his arms about his thin body. ‘I could have done the job,’ he said aloud. ‘I could have.’

  When he heard Scott’s car start up he picked up his drink and went to the window. His eyes followed the car until it went out of sight and then he shifted his gaze to the mine buildings. It was difficult to see very far because of the mist, but he could just make out the outline of the office block. He shook his head sorrowfully. ‘Closed down!’ he whispered. ‘All closed down!’

  Suddenly the mist cleared as though by magic and he felt a strange vibration through the soles of his feet. The office block, now clearly to be seen, lifted off its foundations and floated through the air towards him. He looked at it, mouth gaping, as it soared right over his house. He actually saw his own desk tumbling out of it before it went out of sight overhead.

  Then the window smashed before his eyes and a sliver of glass drove through his throat. He was hurled across the room before the house exploded around him, but of course he did not know that the house was destroyed.

  Harry Dobbs was the first man to be killed in Hukahoronui.

  As Dr Scott left Dobbs’s house he reflected on the strengths and weaknesses of the mind, particularly the weaknesses. Fundamentally a weak man, Dobbs had wanted the managing directorship and had deliberately suppressed the knowledge that he could not really handle it, and that knowledge was a canker inside him like a worm at the core of an apple.

  The poor devil, thought Scott as he started his car. A retreat from reality.

  He drove to the corner and turned, heading into town. He had gone about three hundred yards when he found there seemed to be something wrong with the steering – the car would not answer to the wheel and he had an eerie sensation of floating.

  Then he saw, to his astonishment, that the car really was floating and that the wheels were a good three feet from the ground. He had not time even to blink before the car was flipped over on its back and he struck his head against the window plinth and was knocked unconscious.

  When he came round he found he was still behind the wheel of the car, and the car was upright and on its four wheels. He lifted his hand and winced as his fingers explored the bump on his head. He looked about him and saw nothing; there was a heavy coating of snow on all the windows and they were opaque.

  He got out of the car and stared blankly at what he saw. At first he could not recognize where he was, and when he did recognize his position his mind refused to believe it. A sudden spasm took him and he leaned against the car and vomited.

  When he had recovered he looked again at the impossible. The mist was nearly gone and he could see as far as the Gap on the other side of the river. The other side. He moistened his lips. ‘Right across!’ he whispered. ‘I’ve been carried right across the bloody river!’

  He looked across the river to where the township of Hukahoronui should have been. There was nothing but a jumble of snow.

  Afterwards, quite understandably, he measured the distance he had been taken by the avalanche. His car had been carried nearly three-quarters of a mile horizontally, across the river, and lifted nearly three hundred feet vertically to be deposited on its four wheels a fair distance up the east slope. The engine had stopped but when he turned on the ignition it purred away as sweetly as ever.

  Dr Robert Scott was caught in the avalanche and freakishly survived. He was lucky.

  II

  Ralph W. Newman was an American tourist. The ‘W’ in his name stood for Wilberforce, a fact he did not advertise. He had come to Hukahoronui for t
he skiing, having been led to believe by a man he had met in Christchurch that the slopes were exceptionally good. They may well have been but it takes more than snow on slopes to make a ski resort, and the essentials in Hukahoronui were lacking. There was no chair-lift, no organization and precious little après-ski conviviality. The two-bit dance they held Saturday nights at the hotel was not much of a substitute.

  The man he had met in Christchurch who had told him of the charms of Hukahoronui was Charlie Peterson. Newman judged him to be a con man.

  He had come to Hukahoronui for the skiing. He had certainly never expected to find himself in the middle of a line of twenty men, holding a long aluminium pole botched up out of a television antenna, and methodically driving it into the snow at the toe of each boot to the rasped commands of a Canadian scientist. It was all very improbable.

  The man next to him nudged him and nodded at McGill. ‘That joker would make a bloody good sergeant-major.’

  ‘You’re right about that,’ said Newman. He felt the probe hit bottom and hauled it out.

  ‘Think he’s right about this avalanche?’

  ‘He seems to know what he’s doing. I ran across him up on the slope and he had some scientific gear with him. Said it was for testing snow.’

  The other man leaned on his probe. ‘He seems to know what he’s doing down here, too. I’d never have thought of this way of searching. Come to think of it, the subject never entered my mind until half an hour ago.’

  The line of men advanced one foot and Newman set his toes against the tautened string. The string slackened and he drove the probe into the snow again. ‘My name’s Jack Haslam,’ said the man. ‘I work at the mine. I’m a stoper.’

  Newman didn’t know what a stoper was. He said, ‘I’m Newman.’

  ‘Where’s your friend?’

  ‘Miller? I don’t know. He went out early this morning.

  ‘What’s a stoper?’

  Haslam grinned. ‘The chap at the sharp end of a mine. One of the elite. I get the gold out.’

  In went the probes again. Newman grunted. ‘If we have to do this for long it’s going to be tiring.’

  ‘Listen!’ said Haslam. ‘I think I hear a plane.’

  They stopped and listened to the drone overhead. Soon the whole line of men had stopped and were staring at the greyness above. ‘Come on!’ called the team leader. ‘Haven’t you heard a plane before?’

  The line moved ahead one foot and twenty probes were raised for driving downwards.

  Newman worked methodically. Drive down left … haul out … drive down right … haul out … advance one foot … drive down left … haul out … drive down …

  A sudden yell from McGill stopped him. There was something in the quality of McGill’s shout that made the hair prickle at the nape of his neck and caused a sudden hollowness in his belly.

  ‘Take cover!’ shouted McGill. ‘Take cover right now! You’ve got less than thirty seconds.’

  Newman ran towards the place that had been allotted to him in case of emergency. His boots crunched crisply on the snow as he ran to the cluster of rocks, and he was aware of Haslam at his elbow. McGill was still shouting hoarsely as they reached the rocks.

  Haslam grabbed Newman by the arm. ‘This way.’ He led Newman to a cranny not more than two feet wide and three feet high. ‘In here.’

  Newman crawled inside and found himself in a small cave. Haslam was breathing heavily when he hauled himself in. Between gasps he said, ‘Used to play in here when I was a kid.’

  Newman grunted. ‘Thought you miners all came from outside.’ He felt apprehensive. This was a silly time and place for inconsequential conversation.

  More men came through the narrow hole until seven of them were jammed in the small cave. It was a tight fit. One of them was Brewer, the team leader, who said, ‘Quiet, everyone!’

  They heard a distant shouting which suddenly cut off, and then a faint faraway thread of noise difficult to interpret because it was like nothing any of them had heard before. Newman checked his watch. It was dark in the cave but he peered at the luminous second hand as it marched steadily around the dial. ‘Must be more than thirty seconds.’

  The air quivered imperceptibly and the noise grew a little louder. Suddenly there was a violent howl and air was sucked out of the cave. Newman choked and fought for breath and was thankful that the suction ceased as suddenly as it had begun.

  The live rock underneath him quivered and there was a thunderous drumming noise overhead, deafening in its intensity. The air in the cave filled with fine particles of snow which settled everywhere. More and more snow came in and began to build up thickly about the tangle of huddled bodies.

  The noise grew louder and Newman thought his eardrums would split.

  Someone was shouting. He could not make out the words but, as the sound eased, he knew it was Brewer. ‘Keep it out! Keep the bloody snow out!’

  The men nearest the entrance scrabbled with their hands but the snow came swirling in faster and faster, much more quickly than they could cope with. ‘Cover your mouths,’ shouted Brewer, and Newman brought his arm across his face with difficulty because of the restricted space.

  He felt the snow build up about him, cold but dry. Finally, what space in the cave not occupied by bodies was filled completely with snow.

  The noise stopped.

  Newman kept still, breathing deeply and evenly. He wondered how long he could go on breathing like that – he did not know if air could penetrate the snow mass. Presently he sensed someone stirring and he made a tentative movement himself.

  He was able to push with his arm and found that by pushing he could compress the snow into a smaller volume and thus make a bigger air space. From what seemed a hundred miles away he heard a faint voice and he stopped moving so that he could listen. ‘Can anyone hear me?’

  ‘Yes,’ he shouted. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Brewer.’

  It seemed pretty silly that you had to shout at the top of your voice to a man not many feet away. ‘Newman here,’ he yelled. He remembered that Brewer had been nearest to the cave entrance. ‘Can you get out?’

  There was a pause and presently he heard another voice.

  ‘Anderson here.’

  Brewer called, ‘Not a chance. There’s a lot of snow outside.’

  Newman was busy clearing a space. He pushed the powdery snow away, plastering it on the rock wall of the cave. He shouted to tell Brewer what he was doing, and Brewer told everybody else to get busy and do the same. He also asked them to call out their names.

  Newman was aware of the dead weight of Haslam next to him. Haslam had not moved or made a sound. He put his hand out and groped for Haslam’s face and found his cheek. Still Haslam did not move, so Newman pinched the flesh between thumb and forefinger very sharply. Haslam remained inert.

  ‘There’s a guy called Haslam here,’ he said. ‘He’s unconscious.’

  Now that there was increased air space there was no need to shout. Brewer said, ‘Wait a minute. I’m trying to get my torch from my pocket.’ There were gasping sounds in the darkness and the wriggling of contorted bodies, then suddenly a beam of light shot out.

  Newman blinked, then turned to Haslam. He moved his hand and pointed. ‘Shine that light here.’ He bent over Haslam, and Brewer crawled forward with the light. Newman felt for Haslam’s wrist pulse but could detect no movement so he leaned down and pressed his ear against Haslam’s chest. When he lifted his head he turned towards the light. ‘I think the guy’s dead.’

  ‘How can he be dead?’ demanded Brewer.

  ‘Give me the light.’ Newman shone it on Haslam’s face which was leaden grey. ‘He didn’t die of asphyxiation, that’s for sure. I’ve seen that and he’s the wrong colour. He’d be purple.’

  ‘There’s snow in his mouth,’ said Brewer.

  ‘Yeah.’ Newman passed back the light and put his finger in Haslam’s mouth. ‘But not much. Not enough to stop him breathing. Can you guys
give me some room? I’m going to try the kiss of life.’

  Room was made with difficulty. ‘Maybe he died of shock,’ someone suggested.

  Newman breathed air into Haslam’s lungs and then pumped his chest. He kept it up for a long time but Haslam did not react. All that happened was that his body became colder. After fifteen minutes Newman stopped. ‘No good. He’s gone.’ He turned his head to Brewer. ‘Better switch off that light. It won’t last forever.’

  Brewer snapped off the light and there was darkness and silence, each man occupied with his own thoughts. At last Newman said, ‘Brewer.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Nobody is going to find us with probes – not in this cave. How much snow do you reckon is out there?’

  ‘Hard to tell.’

  ‘We’d better find out. It looks as though we’ll have to save ourselves.’ Newman groped about and found Haslam’s hat which he placed over the dead man’s face. It was a futile but human gesture there in the darkness. He remembered Haslam’s last words – Used to play in here when I was a kid. It was too goddamn ironic to be true.

  There were six men jammed in that narrow cleft in the rock: Newman, Brewer, Anderson, Jenkins, Fowler and Castle.

  And the dead man – Haslam.

  III

  Turi Buck was coping remarkably well with the influx of children. The house under the great rock of Kamakamaru was large – too large now that his family had grown up and gone out into the world – and he welcomed the bustle and clamour. He relished less the glacial eye of Miss Frobisher, the schoolteacher who accompanied the children. There is something about schoolteaching in isolated communities which tends to acidulate the feminine temperament and Miss Frobisher had a high acid content. Turi listened to her comments which tended to a criticism of the civil authorities, the stupidity of men, and other cognate matters. He took her measure and thereafter ignored her.

  His daughter-in-law, who was his housekeeper, and his granddaughter were occupied in laying out bedding and allocating quarters for the horde of noisy small fry. This was woman’s work and they would brook no interference, so Turi went to the back of the house to see how the emergency generator was to be installed.