Текст книги "Leopard Hunts in Darkness"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

Соавторы: Wilbur Smith
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"Yes.) "Did you see the soldiers unloading ivory and furs from the truck?" 11 did."

"What was your reaction?"

"I believed that these would somehow, I was not certain how but I believed they would incriminate me, and be used as an excuse to kill me."

"I object, your lordship," Abet Khori called out.

"I will not warn the accused again," Mr. Justice Domashawa promised threateningly.

"What happened then?"

"Miss Jay left the vehicle in which she was travelling and she came near me. The soldiers were distracted. I believed that this would be my last chance. I took hold of Miss Jay to prevent the soldiers firing and attempted to escape in the Land-Rover." "Thank you, Mr. Minister." Mr. Joseph Petal turned to the judge. "My lord, my witness has had a tiring examination.

May I suggest that the court rise until tomorrow morning to allow him a chance to recover?" Abel Khori was instantly up on his feet, lusting for blood.

"It is barely noon yet, and the accused has been on the stand for less than thirty minutes, and his counsel has dealt with him recte et suaviter. For a trained and hardened soldier, that is a mere bagatelle per se." Abel Khori, in his agitation, lapsed into Latin.

"We will continue, Mr. Petal," said the judge, and Joseph Petalshrugged.

"Your witness, Mr. Khori." Abel Khori was in his element, becoming lyrical and poetic. "You testified that you were in fear of your life but I put it to you that you were attacked by guilt, that you were in deadly fear of retribution, that you were terrified by the prospect of facing the exemplary process of this very people's court, of facing the wrath of that learned and just scarlet, clad figure you now see before you."

"No." That it was nothing more than craven guilty conscience that made you embark on a series of heinous and callous criminal actions-" "No. That is not so."

"When you seized the lovely Miss Jay, did you not use E excessive physical force to twist her young and tender limbs?

Did you not rain brutal blows upon her?"

"I struck her once to prevent her hurling herself from the speeding vehicle and injuring herself seriously."

"Did you not aim a deadly weapon to wit, a military assault rifle which you knew to be loaded, at the person of General Peter Fungabera?"

"I threatened him with the rifle yes, that is true."

"And then you fired deliberately at his nether regions to wit, his abdomen?"

"I did not fire at Fungabera. I aimed to miss him."

"I

put it to you that you tried to murder the general, and only his marvelous reflexes saved him from your attack."

"If I had tried to kill him," said Tungata softly, "he would be dead."

"When you stole the Land-Rover, did you realize that it was state property?

"Did you aim the rifle at Mr. Craig Mellow? And were you only prevented from murdering him by Miss Jay's brave intervention?" For almost another hour Abel Khori flew at the impassive figure in the dock, extracting from him a series of damning admissions, so that when at last Abel Khori sat down, preening likea victorious game cock, Craig judged that Mr. Joseph Petal had paid in heavy coin for any small advantage he might have gained by placing his client on the witness stand.

However, Mr. Petal's closing address was finely pitched to incite sympathy, and to explain and justify Tungata Zebiwe's actions on that night, without flouting the judge's patriotic or tribal instincts in the process.

"I will reserve my judgment until tomorrow," Mr. Justice Domashawa announced, and the court rose, the spectators humming with excited comment as they streamed out into the passage.

Over dinner Sally-Anne admitted, "For the first time in this whole business, I felt so try when Sarah went on the stand she is such a sweet*hild."

"Child? I guess she ois a year or two older than you," Craig chuckled, that' makes you a babe in arms." She ignored his levity and went on seriously, "She so obviously believes in him that for a moment or two even I began to doubt what I knew then, Of course, Abel Khori brought me back to earth." r Justice Domashawa read out his judgment in his precise, old-maidish voice that somehow did not suit the gravity of the subject. Firstly, he covered the events that were common cause between prosecution and defence, and then went on, "The defence has based its case on two main pillars. The first of these is the testimony of Miss Sarah Nyoni that the accused was on his way to what, for want of a better word, we are led to believe was a love-tryst, and that his meeting with the truck was a coincidence or contrived in some unexplained manner by persons unknown.

"Now Miss Nyoni impressed this court as being a naive and unworldly young lady, and by her admission is completely under the influence of the accused. The court has had, perforce, to consider the prosecution's postulation that Miss Nyoni might even have been, in fact, so influenced by the accused as to consent to act as an accomplice in arranging the consignment of contraband.

"In view of the foregoing, the court has rejected the testimony of Miss Nyoni as potentially biased and unreliable "The second pillar of the defence's case rests on the premise that the life of the accused was threatened, or that he believed it to be threatened, by the arresting officers, and in this belief embarked on a series of unreasoned and unreasoning acts of self-protection.

"General Peter Fungabera is an officer of impeccable reputation, a high official of the state. "Me Third Brigade is an elite unit of the state's regular army, its members, although battle-hardened veterans, are disciplined and trained soldiers.

"The court, therefore, categorically rejects the accused's contention that either General Fungabera or his men could have, even in the remotest possibility, constituted a threat to his safety, let alone his life. The court also rejects the contention that the accused believed this to be the case.

"Accordingly, I come to the first charge. Namely, that of trading or dealing in the products of scheduled wild animals. I find the accused guilty as charged and I sentence him to the maximum penalty under the law. Twelve years at hard labour.

"On the second charge of abducting and holding a hostage, I find the accused guilty as charged and I sentence him to ten years at hard labour.

"On the third charge of assault with a deadly weapon, I find the accused guilty and sentence him to six years at hard labour Assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm six years at hard labour.

Attempted murder six years at hard labour I order that these sentences run consecutively and that no part of them be suspended-" Even Abel Khori's head jerked up at that. The sentences totalled forty years. With full remission for good behaviour, Tungata could still expect to serve over thirty years, the rest of his useful life.

At the back of the -court a black woman shrieked in Sindebele, "Babo! The father! They are taking our father from us!" Others took up the cry. "Father of the people!

Our father is dead to us." A man began to sing in a soaring baritone voice.

"Why do you weep, widows of Shangani... Why do you weep, little sons of the Moles, When your' fathers did the king's bidding?" It was one of the ancient fighting songs of the imp is of King Lobengula, and the singer was a man in his prime with a strong intelligent face and a short-cropped, spade shaped beard barely speckled with grey. As he sang, the tears ran down his cheeks into his beard. In another time he might have been an induna of one of the royal imp is

His song was taken up by the men around him, and Mr. justice Domashawa came to his feet in a fury.

"If there is not silence this instant, I will have the court cleared and the offenders charged with contempt," he shouted over the singing, but it was five minutes more of pandemonium before the ushers could restore order.

Through it all, Tungata Zebiwe stood quietly in the dock, with just the barest hint of a mocking smile on his lips. When at last it was over, but before his guards led him away, he gazed across the courtroom at Craig Mellow and he made a last hand-signal. They had only used it playfully before, perhaps after a hard-contested bout of wrestling or some other friendly competition. Now Tungata used it in deadly earnest. The sign meant: "We are equal the score is levelled," and Craig understood completely. Craig had lost his leg and Tungata had lost his freedom. They were equal.

He wanted to call out to the man who had once been his friend that it was a sorry bargain, not of his choosing, but Tungata had turned away. His warders were trying to lead him out of the dock, but Tungata pulled back, his head turning as he searched for someone else in the crowded court.

Sarah Nyoni climbed up onto her bench, and over the heads of the crowd she reached out both hands towards him. Now Tungata made his last hand signal to her. Craig read it clearly. "Take cover! Tungata ordered her. "Hide your se If. You are in danger." By the altered expression on her face, Craig saw that the girl had understood the command, and then the warders were dragging Tungata Zebiwe down the stairs that led to the prison cells below ground.

raig Mellow shoved his way through the singing, lamenting crowds of Matabele who overflowed the buildings of the Supreme Court and disrupted the lunch-hour traffic in the broad causeway that it fronted.

He dragged Sally-Anne by her wrist and brusquely shouldered aside the press photographers who tried to block his way.

In the car park he boosted Sally-Anne into the front seat of the Land-Rover, and ran around to the driver's side, threatening with a raised fist the last and most persistent photographer in his path. He drove directly to her apartment and halted at the front door. He did not turn off the engine.

"And now?" Sally' Anne asked.

"I don't understand the question, "he snapped.

"Hey!" she said. "I'm your friend remember me?"

"I'm sorry." He slumped over the wheel. J feel rotten plain bloody rotten." She did not reply, but her eyes were full of compassion for him.

"Forty years," he whispered. "I never expected that. If only I'd known-"

"There was nothing you could do then, or now." He balled his fist and hammered it on the steering wheel "The poor bastard forty years!"

"Are you coming up?" she asked softly, but he shook his head.

"I have to get back to King's Lynn. I've neglected everything while this awful bloody business has been going on."

"You're going right now?" She was startled.

"Yes."

"Alone?" she asked, and he nodded.

"I want to be alone."

"So you can torture yourself." Her voice firmed. "And I'll be damned if I'll allow that. I'm coming with you. Wait! I am going to throw some things in a bag you needn't even kill the engine, I'll be that quick." She was five minutes, and then ran back down the stairs lugging her rucksack and her camera bag. She slung them into the back of the Land-Rover.

"Okay, let's go." They spoke very little on the long journey, but soon Craig was thankful to have her beside him, grateful for her smile when he glanced at her, for the touch of her hand on his when she sensed the black mood too strong upon him, and for her undemanding silence.

They drove up the hills of King's Lynn in the dusk.

Joseph had seen them from afar, and was waiting on the front veranda.

"I see you, Nkosazana." From their first meeting Joseph had taken an instant liking to Sally-Anne. Already she was his "little mistress" and his welcoming grin kept breaking through his solemn dignity as he ordered his servants to unload her meagre luggage.

"I run bath for you very hot."

"That will be marvelous, Joseph." After her bath she came back to the veranda and Craig went to the drinks table and mixed a whisky for her the way she liked it, and another one for himself that was mainly Scotch and very little soda.

"Here's to judge Domashawa," he lifted his glass ironically, "and to Mashona justice. All forty years of it." Sally-Anne refused wine at dinner despite his protest.

"Baron Rothschild would be frightfully affronted. His very best stuff. My last bottle, smuggled in personally." Craig's In gaiety was forced.

After dinner he lifted the brandy decanter and as he was about to pour, she said, "Craig, please don't get drunk." He paused with the decanter over the snifter and studied her face.

"No," she shook her head. "I'm not being bossy I'm being entirely selfish. Tonight I want you sober." He set down the decanter, pushed back his chair and came around the table to her. She stood up to meet him.

He paused in front of her. "Oh, my darling, I've waited so "I know, "she whispered. "Me too." He took her carefully into his arms, something precious and fragile, and felt her changing slowly. She seemed to soften, and her body became malleable, shaping itself to his own, so he could feel her against him from knees to firm young bosom, the heat of her soaking quickly through their thin clothing.

He bowed his head as she lifted her chin and their mouths came together. Her lips were cool and dry, but almost immediately he felt the heat rising in them and they parted, moist and sweet as a sun-warmed fig freshly plucked and splitting open with its ripe juices.

He looked into her eyes as he kissed her, and marvelled at the colours and the patterns that formed a nimbus around her pupils, green shot through wid-i golden arrowheads, and then her eyelids fluttered down over them, and her long crisp lashes interlocked. He closed his own eyes, and the earth seemed to tilt and swing under him, he rode it easily, holding her to him, but not trying yet to explore her body, content with t4b wonder of her mouth, and the velvet feel of her tongge against his.

Joseph opened the door from the kitchen, and stood for a moment with the coffee tray in his hands, and then he smiled smugly and drew back, closing the door behind him.

Neither of them had heard him come or go. When she took her mouth away, Craig felt deprived and cheated, and reached for it again. She laid her fingers across his lips, restraining him for a moment, and her whisper was so husky that she had to clear her throat and start again. "Vt

"Let's go to your bedroom, darling," she said.

There was one awkward moment when he sat naked on the edge of the bed to remove his leg, but she knelt quickly in front of him, naked also, pushing his hands away and undid the straps herself. Then she bowed her head and kissed the neat hard pad of flesh at the extremity of his leg.

"Thank you," he said. "I'm glad you could do that."

"It's you," she said, "and part of you," and she kissed it again, and then ran her lips gently up to his knee and beyond.

He woke before she did, and lay with his eyes closed, surprised at the sense of wonder that possessed him, not knowing why, until suddenly he remembered and joy came upon him, and he opened his eyes and rolled his head, for an instant terrified that she would not be there but she was.

She had thrown her pillow off the bed, and kicked the sheet aside.

She was curled up likea baby, with her knees almost under her chin. The dawn light, filtered by the curtains, cast pearly highlights on her skin, and shaded the dips and hollows of her body. Her hair was loose, covering her face and undulating to each long slow breath she drew.

He lay very still so as not to disturb her and gloated over her, wanting to reach out, but denying himself, so as ake the ache of wanting more poignant, waiting for it to In to become unbearable. She must have sensed his attention, for she stirred and straightened out her legs, rolled over onto her back and arched in a slow voluptuous cat-like stretch.

He leaned across and with one finger lifted the shiny dark hair off her face. Her eyes swivelled towards him, came into focus, and she stared at him in cosmic astonishment. Then she crinkled her nose in a roguish grin.

"Hey, mister," she whispered, "you are something pretty damned special. Now I'm sorry I waited so long." And she reached out both brown arms towards him.

PP

Craig, however, did not share her regrets. He knew it had been perfectly timed even a day earlier would have been too soon. Later, he told her so as they lay clinging to each other, glued lightly together with their own perspiration.

"We learned to like each other first, that was the way I wanted it to be."

"You're right," she said, and drew back a little to look at his face so that her breasts made a delightfully obscene little sucking sound as they came unstuck from his chest. "I do like you, I really do."

"And I-" he started, but hastily she covered his lips with her fingertips.

"Not yet, Craig darling," she pleaded. "I don't want to hear that not yet."

"When?"he demanded.

"Soon, I think-" And then with more certainty. "Yes," she said, 'soon, and then I'll be able to say it back to you." he great estate -of King's Lynn seemed to have "waited as they had waited for this to happen again.

Long ago it had been hewn from the wilderness.

"The love of another man and woman had been the main inspiration in the building of it, and over the decades since then it had taken the love of the men and women who followed that first pair to4sustain and cherish it. They and the generations who ad followed them lay now in the walled cemetery on" the kopje behind the homestead, but while they had lived, King's Lynn had flourished. Just as it had sickened when it fell into the hands of uncaring foreigners in a far land, had been stripped and desecrated and deprived of the vital ingredient of love.

Even when Craig rebuilt the house and restocked the pastures, that vital element had been lacking still. Now at last love burgeoned on King's Lynn, and their joy in each other seemed to radiate out from the homestead on th e hill and permeate the entire estate, breathing life and the fecund promise of more life into the land.

The Matabele recognized it immediately. When Craig and Sally-Anne in the battered Land-Rover rode the red dust tracks that linked the huge paddocks, the Matabele women straightened up from the wooden mortars in which they were pounding maize, or turned stiffnecked under the enormous burden of firewood balanced upon their heads to call a greeting and watch them with a fond and knowing gaze. Old Joseph said nothing, but made up the bed in Craig's room with four pillows, put flowers on the table at the side of the bed that Sally-Anne had chosen, and placed four of his special biscuits on the early morning tea-tray when he brought it in to them each dawn.

For three days Sally-Anne restrained herself, and then one morning sitting up in bed, sipping tea, she told Craig, "As curtains, those make fine dish rags." She pointed a half eaten biscuit at the cheap unbleached calico that he had tacked over the windows.

"Can you do better?" Craig asked with concealed cunning, and she walked straight into the trap. Once she was involved in choosing curtains, she was immediately involved in everything else. From designing furniture for Joseph's relative, the celebrated carpenter, to build, to laying out the new vegetable garden and replanting the rose bushes and shrubs that had died of neglect.

Then Joseph entered the conspiracy by bringing her the proposed dinner menu for the evening. "Should it be roast tonight, Nkosazana, or chicken curry?"

"Nkosi Craig likes tripe," Sally-Anne had made this discovery during casual discussion. "Can you do tripe and onions?" Joseph beamed. "The old governor-general before the war, whenever he come to Kingi Lingi I make him tripe and onions, Nkosazana. He tell me "Very good, Joseph, best in world!""

"Okay, Joseph, tonight we'll have your "best-in-world tripe and onions"," she laughed, and only when Joseph formally handed over to her the pantry keys did she realize what a serious pronouncement that had been.

She was there at midnight when the first new calf was born on King's Lynn, a difficult birthing with the calf's head twisted back so that Craig had to soap his arm and thrust it up into the mother to free it while Shadrach and Hans Groenewald held the head and Sally-Anne held the lantern high to light the work.

When at last it came in a slippery rush, it was a heifer, pale beige and wobbly on its long ungainly legs. As soon as it began to nurse from its mother's udder, they could leave it to Shadrach and go home to bed.

"That was one of the most marvelous experiences of my life, darling. Who taught you to do that?"

"Bawu, my grandfather." He held her close to him in the dark bedroom. "You didn't feel sick?" 11 loved it, birth fascinates me."

"Like Henry the Eighth, I prefer it in the abstract," he chuckled.

"You rude boy," she whispered. "But aren't you too tired?"

"Are you?"

"No," she admitted. "I jint truthfully say that I am." She made one or Va half-hearted attempts to break out and leave.

had a telegram today, the "C. of A." on the Cessna is complete, and I should go down to Johannesburg to collect her."

"If you can wait two or three weeks or so, I'll come down with you. They are having a terrible drought in the south and stock prices are rock bottom. We could fly around the big ranches together and pick up a few bargains." So she let it pass, and the days telescoped into each other, filled for both of them with love and work work on the photographic book, on the new novel, on collating her field research material for the Wildlife Trust, on the final preparations for the opening of Zambezi Waters, and on the daily running and embellishing of King's Lynn.

With each week that passed, her will to resist the spell that Craig and King's Lynn were weaving about her weakened, the exigencies of her previous life faded, until one day she caught herself referring to the house on the hill as "home" and was only slightly shocked at herself.

A week later a registered letter was forwarded from her address in Harare. It was a formal application form for the renewal of her research grant from the Wildlife Trust.

Instead of filling it in and returning it immediately, she slipped it into her camera bag.

"I'll do it tomorrow," she promised herself, but deep in herself realized she had reached a crossroads in her life.

The prospect of flying about Africa alone with her only possessions a change of clothes and a camera, sleeping where she lay down and bathing when she could, was no longer as attractive as it had always been to her.

That night at dinner she looked around the huge almost bare dining-room, the new curtains its only glory, and touched the refectory table of Rhodesian teak that, under her guidance, Joseph's relative had fashioned and she anticipated the patina of use and care it would soon acquire. Then she looked past the burning candles to the man who sat opposite her and she was afraid and strangely elated. She knew she had made the decision.

They took their coffee onto the veranda and listened to the cicadas" whining in the jacaranda trees, and the squeak of the flying bats hunting below a yellow moon.

S he snuggled against his shoulder and said, "Craig, darling, it's time to tell you. I do love you so very dearly."

if raig wanted to rush into Bulawayo and take the magistrate's court by storm, but she restrained him laughingly.

"My God, you crazy man, it isn't like buying a pound of cheese. You can't just up and get married, just like that."

"Why not? Lots of people do."

"I don't," she said firmly. "I want it to be done properly." She did some counting on her fingers and pencilling on the calendar at the back of her notebook, and then decided, "February 16th."

"That's four months away," Craig groaned, but his protests were ridden down ruthlessly.

Joseph, on the other hand, was in full accord with Sally Anne plans for a formal wedding.

"You get married on Kingi Lingi, Nkosikazi." It was a statement rather than a question, and Sally Anne Sindebele was now good enough to recognize that she had been promoted from "little mistress" to 'great lady'.

"How many people?" Joseph demanded. "Two hundred, three hundred?" "I doubt we can raise that many," Sally-Anne demurred.

"When Nkosana Roly get married Kingi Lingi, we have four hundred, even Nkosi Smithy he come! "Joseph," she scolded him, you really are a frightful old snob, you know!" or Craig the pervading unhappiness that he had felt at Tungata's sentence slowly dissipated, swamped by all the excitement and activity at King's Lynn. In a few months he had all but put it from his mind, only at odd and unexpected moments his memory of his one-time friend barbed him. To the rest of the world, Tungata Zebiwe might have never existed. After the extravagant coverage by press and television of his trial, it seemed that a curtain of silence was drawn over him likea shroud.

Then abruptly, once again the name Tungata Zebiwe was blazed from every television screen and bannered on every front page across the entire continent.

Craig and Sally' Anne sat in front of the television set, appalled and disbelieving, as they listened to the first reports. When they ended, and the programme changed to a weather report, Craig stood up and crossed to the set. He switched it off and came back to her side, moving likea man who was still in deep shock from some terrible accident.

The two of them sat in silence in the darkened room, until Sally-Anne reached for his hand. She squeezed it hard, but her shudder was involuntary, it racked her whole body.

Those poor little girls they were babies. Can you imagine their terror?"

"I knew the Goodwins. They were fine people. They always treated their black people well, "Craig muttered.

"This proves as nothing else possibly could that they were right to lock him away likea dangerous animal." Her horror was beginning to turn to anger.

"I can't see what they could possibly hope to gain by this–2 Craig was still shaking his head incredulously, and Sally-Anne burst out.

"The whole country, the whole world must see them for what they are. Bloodthirsty, inhuman-'her voice cracked and became a sob. "Those babies oh Christ in heaven, I hate him. I wish him dead." "They used his name that doesn't mean Tungata ordered it, condoned it, or even knew about it." Craig tried to sound convincing.

"I hate him," she whispered. "I hate him for it." t's madness. All they can possibly achieve is to bring

_4 Shana troops sweeping through Matabeleland like the wrath of all the gods."

"The little one was only five years old." In her outrage and sorrow, Sally-Anne was repeating herself.

"Nigel Goodwin was a good man I knew him quite well, we were in the same special police unit during the war, I liked him." Craig went to the drinks table and poured two whiskies. "Please God, don't let it all start again. All the awfulness and cruelty and horror please God, spare us that." Ithough Nigel Goodwin was almost forty years of age, he had one of those beefy pink faces unaffected by the African sun that made him look likea lad.

His wife, Helen, was a thin, dark-haired girl, her plainness alleviated by her patent good nature and her sparkly, toffee-brown eyes.

The two girls were weekly boarders at the convent in Bulawayo. At eight years, Alice Goodwin had ginger hair and gingery freckles and, like her father, she was plump and pink. Stephanie, the baby, was five, really too young for boarding-school. However, because she had an elder sister at the convent, the Reverend Mother made an exception in her case. S4 was the pretty one, small and dark and chirpy as ajittle bird with her mother's bright eyes.

Each Friday morning, Nigel and Helen Goodwin drove in seventy-eight miles from the ranch to town. At one o'clock they picked up the girls from the convent, had lunch at the Selbourne Hotel, sharing a bottle of wine, and then spent the afternoon shopping. Helen restocked her groceries, chose material to make into dresses for herself and the girls, and then, while the girls went to F

watch a matinee at the local cinema, had her hair washed, cut and set, the one extravagance of her simple existence.

Nigel was on the committee of the Matabele Farmers" Union, and spent an hour or two at the Union's offices in leisurely discussion with the secretary and those other members who were in town for the day. Then he strolled down the wide sun-scorched streets, his slouch hat pushed back on his head, hands in pockets, puffing happily on a black briar, greeting friends and acquaintances both white and black, stopping every few yards for a word or a chat.

When he arrived back where he had left the Toyota truck outside the Farmers" Co-operative, his Matabele headman, Josiah, and two labourers were waiting for him.

They loaded the purchases of fencing and tools and spare parts and cattle medicines and other odds and ends into the truck, and as they finished, Helen and the girls arrived for the journey home.

"Excuse me, Miss," Nigel accosted his wife, "have you seen Mrs. Goodwin anywhere?" It was his little weekly joke, and Helen giggled delightedly and preened her new hairdo.

For the girls he had a bag of liquorice all sorts His wife protested, "Sweets are so bad for their teeth, dear," and Nigel winked at the girls and agreed, "I know, but just this once won't kill them." Stephanie, because she was the baby, rode in the truck cab between her parents, while Alice went in the back with Josiah and the other Matabele.

"Wrap up, dear, it will be dark before we get home," Helen cautioned her.

The first sixty-two miles were on the main road, and then they turned off on the farm track, and Josiah jumped down to open the wire gate and let them through.

"Home again," said Nigel contentedly, as he drove onto his own land. He always said that and Helen smiled and reached across to lay her hand on his leg.

"It's nice to be home, dear," she agreed.

The abrupt African night fell over them, and Nigel switched on the headlights. They picked up the eyes of the cattle in little bright points of light, fat contented beasts, the smell of their dung sharp and ammoniac al on the cool night air.

"Getting dry," Nigel grunted. "Need some rain."