Elephant Song - Smith Wilbur (книги бесплатно без онлайн txt) 📗
This shot was good cinema. The excavators were on long gantries.
Like the necks of a herd of steel giraffe drinking at a water-hole, they moved independently, rising and falling. The excavator blades rotated ferociously, slicing out the earth and throwing it back on to the conveyor belts. These excavators can reach down thirty yards below the surface. They are cutting a trench sixty yards wide and digging out over ten thousand tons of ore an hour. They never stop.
Day and night they keep on burrowing away. Daniel looked down into the cavernous trench that the MOMU was opening into the red earth. It would be a good place to dispose of a corpse, his corpse. He glanced up without warning; both Ning Cheng Gong and Chetti Singh were watching him intently. They were still standing on the command platform seventy feet above him. Their heads were close together, almost touching, and they were talking, their voices wiped out by the roar of the great spinning excavator heads and the thunder of the conveyor belts. From their expressions Daniel was left with no doubt about the subject of their discussion. For an instant he caught their eyes and then they both looked away and moved back from the rail. After that it was difficult for Daniel to concentrate on the work in hand, yet he had to take advantage of every minute that Ephrem Taffari was available to him.
Once again the camera crew climbed the steel ladder up to the central platform of the MOMU. Chetti Singh and Ning Cheng Gong had disappeared, and that made Daniel even more uneasy. From the height of the platform they could look down on to the tube mills. These were four massive steel drums, lying horizontally on the deck of the MOMU, and revolving like the spin-dryer in a domestic washing-machine. However, these drums were forty yards long, and each one was loaded with one hundred tons of cast-iron cannonballs. The red earth coming up from the excavated trench on the conveyor belts was
continually being dumped into the open mouths of the drums.
As the earth passed down the length of the drum, the clods and rocks were pounded to fine talcum by the tumbling iron balls.
The red powder that poured from the far end of the tube mills went directly into the separator tanks.
The film team moved down the steel catwalks until they were above the separators, and here Taffari continued his explanation for the benefit of Bonny's camera. The two valuable minerals that we are after are either very heavy or magnetic. The rare earth monazite is collected by powerful electromagnets. His voice was almost drowned by the roar of the machinery. That didn't worry Daniel. Later he would have Taffari make another clear recording of his speech and in the studio be would dub the tape to give it good sound. Once we have taken out the monazite, the remainder goes into the separator tanks in which we float out the light material and capture the heavy ore of platinum. Taffari went on, This is a very sensitive part of the operation. If we were to use chemical catalysts and reagents in the separator tanks we would be able to recover over ninety percent of the platinum. However, the chemical effluent from the tanks would be poisonous.
It would be absorbed into the earth and washed by rain into the rivers to kill everything that came in contact with it animals, birds, insects, fish and plant life. As president of the Democratic People's Republic of Ubomo, I have given an inviolable instruction that no chemical reagents of any kind are to be used during platinum mining operations in this country. Taffari paused and stared into the camera levelly. You have my absolute assurance on that point. Without using reagents, our recovery of ore drops to sixty-five percent. That means tens of millions of dollars are lost from the process. However, my government and I are determined to accept that loss, rather than to run any risk of chemical pollution of our environment.
We are determined to do all in our power to make this a safe and happy world for our children, and your children, to enjoy. He was utterly convincing. When you listened to that deep reassuring voice and looked at that noble face, you could not possibly doubt his sincerity. Even Daniel was moved, and his critical faculties were suspended for the moment. This bastard could sell pork pies in a synagogue. He tried to get his cynical professional judgement functioning again. Cut, he snapped. That's a wrap. That was marvelous, Mr. President. Thank you very much. If you'd like to go back to the mess for lunch, we'll finish up here. Then this afternoon we'll film the final sequences with the maps and models. Chetti Singh reappeared, like a turbaned genie from a lamp, to usher Taffari down from the MOMU and to drive him back to the base camp where Daniel knew a sumptuous buffet lunch was awaiting him.
The food and liquor had been flown up from Kahali in the Puma helicopter.
Once the others had left, Daniel and Bonny captured the last sequences on the MOMU which didn't require Taffari to be present. They filmed the heavy platinum concentrates pouring into the ore bins in a fine dark stream. Each bin had a capacity of a hundred tons and when it was full it dropped automatically on to the bed of a waiting trailer and was towed away.
It was three o'clock before they had wrapped up all the shots that Daniel wanted on the MOMU and by the time they got back to the base camp at Sengi-Sengi, the presidential lunch was just ending.
In the centre of the conference room of the headquarters hut was an elaborate scale model of a typical mining scenario, employing the MOMU unit. It was designed to illustrate the entire procedure. The model had been built by BOSS technicians in London. It was an impressive piece of work, complete in detail, authentic in scale.
Daniel planned to alternate between shots of the model and helicopter shots from the Puma of the actual forest terrain with the real MOMU in action. He believed that on the screen it would be difficult to tell the difference between them.
The scale model showed the mining track, sixty yards wide, cut and cleared through the forest by the team of loggers and bulldozers working ahead of the MOMU. Daniel planned to devote a few days filming to the logging operation itself. The felling of the tall trees would yield riveting footage. The ponderous arabesques of the yellow bulldozers dragging the logs out of the jungle, the gangs loading them on to the logging trucks, would all be good cinema.
In the meantime Daniel must take full advantage of the day's filming in which Taffari had agreed to participate. He watched Bonny fussing over him, whispering and giggling as she powdered his face. She was making it very obvious to anyone watching that they were lovers.
Taffari had drunk enough to lower his inhibitions and he caressed her openly, staring at the big breasts that she thrust only inches from his nose.
She really sees herself as First Lady of Ubomo, Daniel marveled.
She hasn't the least idea how the Hita treat their wives.
I'd love it to happen. She deserves anything that comes her way.
He stood up and interrupted the flagrant display. If you're ready, Mr.
President, I'd like you standing here, beside the table. Bonny, I want the shot from this side. Try to get both General Taffari and the model in focus.
Taffari moved to his mark and they rehearsed the shot. He got it right at the first attempt. Very good, sir. We'll go for it now. Are you ready, Bonny? Taffari's military swagger-stick was of polished ivory and rhino horn, the shaft topped by a miniature carving of an elephant. It looked more like a field marshal's baton than that of a general officer.
