Sunbird Read Free

the carpet towards my desk that would put her in position to check what was going on. She can read documents upside-down, as I have proved to my cost.
    'Great,' I answered, deliberately covering the photograph with the envelope. 'Cold turkey, lobster salad, smoked trout, and a very good duck and truffles in aspic.'
    'You bastard,' she whispered softly. She loves good food, and she had noticed my play with the envelope. I don't allow her to talk to me like that, but then I can't stop her either.
    Five feet from me she sniffed, 'And peppermint-flavoured malt whisky! Yummy!'
    I blushed, I can't help it. It's like my stutter - and she burst out laughing and came to perch on the edge of my desk.
    'Come on, Ben.' She eyed the envelope frankly. 'I've been bursting since it arrived. I would have steamed it open - but the electric kettle is broken.'
    Dr Sally Senator has been my assistant for two years, which is coincidently the exact period of time that I have been in love with her.
    I moved aside making room for her behind the desk and uncovered the photograph. 'All right,' I agreed, 'let's see what you make of it.'
    She squeezed in beside me, her upper arm touching my shoulder - a contact that shivered electrically through my whole body. In two years she had become like the children, she didn't seem to notice the hump. She was easy and natural, and I had a timetable worked out - in another two years our relationship would have ripened. I had to go slowly, very slowly, so as not to alarm her, but in that time I would have accustomed her to the thought of me as a lover and husband. If the last two years had been long - I hated to think about the next two.
    She leaned over the desk peering into the magnifying lens, and she was still and silent for a long time. Reflected light was thrown up into her face, and when she at last looked up her expression was rapt, the green eyes sparkled.
    'Ben,' she said. 'Oh Ben - I'm so glad for you!' Somehow her easy acceptance and presumption annoyed me.
    'You are jumping the gun,' I snapped. 'There could be a dozen natural explanations.'
    'No.' She shook her head, smiling still. 'Don't try and knock it. It's true, Ben, at last. You've worked so long and believed so long, don't be afraid now. Accept it.'
    She slipped out from behind the desk and crossed quickly to the shelf of books under the label 'K'. There are twelve volumes there that bear the author's name 'Benjamin Kazin'. She selected one, and opened it at the fly-leaf.
    'Ophir,' she read, 'by Dr Benjamin Kazin. A personal investigation of the prehistoric gold-working civilization of Central Africa, with special reference to the city of Zimbabwe and to the legend of the ancients and the lost city of the Kalahari.'
    She came to me smiling. 'Have you read it?' she asked. 'It's quite entertaining.'
    'There's a chance, Sal. I agree. Just a chance, but--'
    'Where does it lie?' she cut in. 'In the mineralized series, as you predicted?'
    I nodded. 'Yes, it's in the gold belt. But it could, it just could, produce so much more than Langebeh and Ruwane.'
    She grinned triumphantly, and bent over the lens again. With her finger she touched the indian ink arrow in the corner of the photo that gave the northerly bearing.
    'The whole city--'
    'If it is a city,' I cut in.
    'The whole city,' she repeated with emphasis, 'faces north. Into the sun. With the acropolis behind it - sun and moon, the two gods. The phallic towers - there are four, five - six. Perhaps seven of them.'
    'Sal, those aren't towers, they are just dark patches on a photograph taken from 36,000 feet.'
    'Thirty-six thousand!' Sal's head jerked up. 'Then it's huge! You could fit Zimbabwe into the main enclosure half a dozen times.'
    'Easy, girl. For God's sake.'
    'And the lower city outside the walls. It stretches for miles. It's enormous, Ben - but I wonder why it's crescent-shaped like that?' She straightened up, and for the first time - the very first wonderful time - she spontaneously threw