Page 1 of Kiwi Gold
1
STING AND A MISS
Lachlan
Being uncomfortable was part of my life. Being shot at, though? Not so much. And then there was the angry wildlife.
Not many discoveries made by exploration geologists occur in spots with WiFi and good cafés, so that bit wasn’t a surprise. Papua New Guinea, for example, which I was exploring the uncomfortable way just now, isn’t on many tourist destination lists, and not just because the airport isn’t too flash. The dehumidifiers running nonstop at the mining camp might as well have not been installed, and I was going to have to chuck half my clothes before I arrived back in New Zealand, lest I end up on the wrong side of Biosecurity for trying to import dangerous mildew colonies. And that was the least of it.
Some of the rest of it was that the mining camp was an armed fortification, and I’d been ferried from the airport in Port Moresby by helicopter in order to avoid ambush on the road everybody knew led only to the camp. Being locked down beat being ambushed, but the atmosphere in camp was definitely a bit thick.
I could fight well enough. I didn’t know how to shoot, though, and the idea that shooting might be required had been growing on me.
And then there was the jungle itself. Not nearly as picturesque to experience in person as you imagine, jungles. More being slapped in the face by hairy vines, tripped by hidden roots, and devoured by hungry insects, in my experience.
The whole thing, in other words, wasn’t the rugged highlands of Patagonia, with their views of the snow-capped Andes. Although it wasn’t Canada’s Northwest Territory, either, and I was unlikely to freeze to death or be charged by an enraged bull moose, as had happened on one never-to-be-forgotten trip. That’s what bear spray’s for, though, and anyway, that’s the job.
Gold calls, you could say. I answer.
Just now, I wasn’t thinking about my working conditions. I wasn’t even thinking about gold. I was thinking about copper. I hadn’t found the spot yet, but my nose had been twitching since I’d checked out my drone footage, and I trusted my nose.
Now, we’d gone as far as the ute could take us, and it wasn’t much farther to the final spot I wanted to check out today. If I could get there. Fifteen minutes before we’d have to chuck the whole idea, because there wouldn’t be time to get to the site and back to the car. Night would be falling within four hours, and it wasn’t safe to be outside the gates after dark. You could only see so much from the air, though, and there was nothing like studying that mineralization and those fracture patterns up close. Once I had my hand on the rock, I’d know.
Ten minutes, now. I was pushing my luck and the safety boundaries here, and I knew it. But I was on Day Sixteen of a planned three-week journey of exploration, I hadn’t found enough ore yet to satisfy either myself or the mining company, and I’d somehow scored this contract out from under the nose of my fiercest competitor, fellow Kiwi Torsten Drake. An independent exploration geologist is only as good as his last major find, and mine had been a fair few months ago. I needed to score here.
Five minutes left. I’d been crammed into this ute with a driver and two guides for over an hour, and the air stank of mildew and body odor, but that wasn’t new, and it wasn’t what was worrying me. I wasn’t fussed by many things. Crying babies, maybe. Murder hornets, quite possibly. Failing to find minerals, absolutely. Heat, humidity, and the monsoon rain we were currently waiting out, though? No worries. I breathed in a calming, if mildew-laden, breath and thought,There’s tomorrow. You’ll come back and look until you’ve found it, that’s all.
My satellite phone rang, and I looked at the number and answered with resignation, “Hughes here.”
“The boss wants a briefing,” Tim O’Malley, head of exploration for the mining company funding this current jaunt, told me.
“Tell him it’s raining,” I said.
“Mate.” O’Malley, an Aussie with whom I’d worked before and who’d probably been the reason I got this job, sighed. “He wants me to go out with you tomorrow. Two heads are better than one, and all that.”
“Not how I work,” I said.
“You’re tying up our best driver, not to mention the guides. Sixteen days gone. Proof of concept, mate.”
“Bugger proof of concept. Tell him that’s why it’s called exploration. I’m exploring, and I’m not bad at it. If everybody could tell where the ore was, we’d all just dig there and be done with it, wouldn’t we?”
“You’re an arrogant bastard,” O’Malley said.
“Probably,” I said. “But I’m the arrogant bastard you need.”
“Sure you’re not dragging this out, mate?” O’Malley asked. “That’s what he’s saying. Every day you’re out costs us more, and you’ve come up dry. Just telling you what he’s saying.”
“Yeh,” I said. “You’ve caught me. It’s not just the rain and the heat that delights me so much, it’s the promise of jungle rot. And then there are the cassowaries. I’m hoping to get a video for my followers. Bonus points if I get a shot of the giant claw on its toe. Of course, it may eviscerate me before I finish filming, so there’s that.”
“Team player,” O’Malley said. “That’s the idea.”
“Yeh,” I said. “Not so much. Wait. We’re clearing up. Got to go.” And rang off. As long as I found copper, all would be forgiven.
The rain had stopped like somebody’d turned off the tap, and we needed to seize the moment. I said, “Let’s go, fellas,” and climbed out of the ute, and the guides exchanged a glance and followed after, their rifles slung across their backs and machetes in their hands. They took up their spots and began hacking a path through the jungle and toward the higher ground, where we’d find the outcrop.
We were about halfway there when the guides started moving more slowly, even though we’d gained some elevation and the vegetation looked like it was thinking about opening up around us. John, who was in the lead, finally put up a hand and stopped.
I said, “Problem?”
