wanted?'
'No,' admitted the Prince reluctantly. 'I had hoped that you might
convince me,' and they both laughed.
'And did you check my record also? 'Jake asked.
'No,' admitted the Prince. 'The first time I ever heard of you was in
Dares Salaam. You and your strange machines were a bonus a surprise
packet.' The Prince paused again, and then spoke so softly that Jake
barely caught the words, 'and perhaps the best end of the bargain.
'Then he lifted his chin and looked steadily into Jake's eyes.'
The anger is still with you,' he said. '
'I can see how strong it is.' With surprise, Jake realized that the
Prince was correct.
The anger was in him. No longer the leaping flames that had kindled at
the first shock of the atrocity. Those had burned down into a thick
glowing bed in the pit of his guts, but the memory of men and women
caught by the guns and the mortars would sustain that glow for a long
time ahead.
'I think now you are committed to us,' the Lij went on softly, and Jake
was amazed at the man's perception. He had not yet recognized that
commitment himself; for the first time since he had landed in Africa,
he was motivated by something outside himself. He knew that he would
stay now, and that he would fight with the Lij and these people as long
as they needed him. In an intuitive flash he realized that if these
simple people were enslaved, then all of mankind including Jake Barton
were themselves deprived of a measure of freedom. A line, almost
forgotten, imperfectly learned long ago and not then understood
surfaced in his memory.
'No man is an island,' - ' he said, and the Lij nodded and continued
the quotation.
'entire of itself. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am
involved in mankind'.' The Lifs dark eyes glowed. 'Yes, Mr. Barton,
John Donne. I think that in you I have been lucky. You are fire, and
Gareth Swales is ice. It will work for me. Already there is a bond
between you.'
'A bond?' and Jake laughed, a brief harsh bark of laughter, but then
stopped and thought about the Prince's words. The man had even greater
perception than Jake had at first realized. He had a knack of turning
over unrecognized truths.
'Yes. A bond,' said the Lij. 'Fire and ice. You will see.' They
were silent for a while, standing high on the steel turret of the car,
bare-headed in the sun, each man thinking his own thoughts.
Then the Lij roused himself and turned to point into the west.
'There is the heart of Ethiopia,'he said. 'The mountains.' They both
lifted their heads to the soaring peaks, and the great flat-topped
Ambas that characterized the Ethiopian highlands.
Each table land was divided from the next by sheer walls of riven rock,
blue with distance and remote as the clouds into which they seemed to
rise, and by the deep dark gorges that looked to split the earth like
the axe-stroke of a giant, plunging thousands upon thousands of feet to
