A Twist of Sand

"That's right," I sneered. "Lieu tenant-Commander Geoffrey Peace, D.S.O. and two Bars, Royal Navy, cashiered. Now a fisherman. At present engaged in dubious unspecified activities off the Skeleton Coast."

"I just want you to get it quite clear what my position is in all this," she went on decisively. "Let's get the record straight before we start. The first thing that springs to your mind when you see me is that I'm Stein's woman. Those were your own words."

"What else was I to think?" I rejoined lamely. "An attractive young woman ..." My words petered out.

"Exactly," she snapped, grinding the cigarette savagely. "To you a woman means only one thing -- and you had the impertinence to say it to a complete stranger. Get this clear; I don't like Stein any more than I like you on first acquaintance."

"Then there's nothing more to be said," I snapped back.

"There's a great deal more," she said. "I know the sort of man Stein is, and I know the sort of people he hires to work for him."

We stared across the table in open hostility.

"If you know all about slumming, why come along?" I sneered back. "Why dirty your lily-white hands with all this human offal ?"

She lit another cigarette angrily.

"Don't you know what a living Onymacris means to science?"

"No," I replied, "and I don't give a damn either.. Stein is no more hunting an extinct beetle than I am. I don't see him as the scientist in his ivory -- or is it uranium -- tower devoting his life and fortune to restoring one little beetle to the sum of human knowledge."

"I was absolutely right in my assessment of you," she said. "Tough, ruthless, self-centred, no gain but my gain. You wouldn't know what it felt like to have a leading ideal about a thing like this."

I was more curious than angry now.

"And you have -- of course."

"Look," she said, "I was born during the civil war in China . . ."

"Is this autobiography really necessary?" I asked.

The barb went home. She flushed. She turned away to the porthole.

"It only is because it illustrates why I am here," she said. "I haven't got any illusions about Stein -- or about you, for that matter. Or this expedition. But Onymacris matters --  matters, oh, so much."

I wasn't going to let her get away with all that.

"There must be something darkly Freudian about conceiving a passion for a beetle," I said.

"Damn your cheap flippancy," she snapped. "When did you last speak decently to a woman?"

"I never do. It was one of the charges when they cashiered me."

She ignored this. "My father was one of the world's leading authorities on beetles," she said. "Without boring you with tales of hardship and being only one jump ahead of death for months on end, ahead of one opposing army or the next, he and I eventually got to the edge of the Gobi Desert. Mother, who was English, died long before that. He rediscovered Onymacris there. When at last we escaped from China, he died one night suddenly of a heart attack aboard a sampan near the Yangtse mouth. I didn't know about it till morning. The body was robbed by the coolies. His precious three beetles, which we'd kept alive when we thought we'd die of starvation ourselves, had been stamped flat. Just a couple of squashed things at the bottom of an old shoebox. A lifetime's work for science crushed out by some careless foot. I'm going to find Onymacris again -- for science. I've got to. That's why I'm here."

"It must sound a pretty obvious question," I said. "But why not go back to the Gobi and get some more, if you're so keen?"

"First," she said a little didactically, and I could see now that she was a little older than her looks and figure would seem to indicate, "it's behind the Iron Curtain. Second, the place where we found them is now a prohibited area, anyway. Probably a sputnik launching site. An Iron Curtain behind an Iron Curtain. I know. I've tried."

"It seems a tough proposition." I agreed.

She came back shortly: "Onymacris is a tough proposition, Captain Peace. And I expect to find only tough circumstances where it is. That's what makes it so precious to science. It's not one of the things you find by chance on a Sunday afternoon walk. You've got to work for it. It's a tough proposition."

"Like this outfit," I said ironically.

She looked at me levelly. "Like this outfit, Captain Peace. Like yourself, Captain Peace. Like this coast, Captain Peace, which I am told you know so well. I'm after something tough, just like you, that's why I accepted Stein's invitation without hesitation. You can forget about the woman-comfort side of things. I thought I'd explain this clearly to you before you start showering your protective instincts on a helpless female."

"I don't see how you could be a doctor of science at Stockholm ..." I began.