Leopard Hunts in Darkness - Smith Wilbur - Страница 154

"Even the smallest is bigAr than the top joint of my finger." She compared them.

"The old Matabele labourers picked only those large enough to show up in the first wash of gravel," Craig explained. "And remember that they will lose sixty per cent or more of their mass in the cutting and polishing.

That one will probably end up no bigger than a green pea."

"The colours," Tungata murmured, "so many different colours." Some were translucent lemon-coloured, others dark r amber or cognac, with all shades in between, while again there were those that were un tinted clear as snow-melt in a mountain stream, with frosted facets that reflected the flames of the smoky little fire.

"Just look at this one." The stone Sally-Anne held up was the deep purplish blue of the Mozambique current when the tropic midday sun probes its depths.

"And this." Another as bright as the blood from a spurting artery.

"And this." Limpid green, impossibly beautiful, changing with each flicker of the light.

Sally-Anne laid out a row of the coloured stones on the cavern floor in front of her.

"So pretty," she said. She was grading them, the yellows and golds and ambers in one row, the pinks and reds in another.

"The diamond can take any of the primary colours. It seems to take pleasure in imitating the colours proper to other gems. John Mandeville, the fourteenth-century tray eller, wrote that." Craig spread his hands to the blaze. "And jj it can crystallize to any shape from a perfect square to octahedron or dodecahedron."

"Blimey, mate," Sally-Anne mocked him, "what's an octahedron, pray?"

"Two pyramids with triangular sides and a common base."

"Wow! And a dodecahedron?" she challenged.

"Two rhombs of lozenge shape with common facets."

"How come you know so much?" 41 wrote a book remember?" Craig smiled back. "Half the book was about Rhodes and Kimberley and diamonds."

"Enough already, "she capitulated.

"Not nearly enough," Craig shook his head. "I can go on.

The diamond is the most perfect reflector of light, only IL chromate of lead refracts more light, only chrysolite disperses it more. But the diamond's combined powers of reflection, refraction and dispersion are unmatched."

"Stop!" ordered Sally-Anne, but her expression was still interested, and he went on.

"It's brilliance is un decaying though the ancients did not have the trick of cutting it to reveal its true splendour.

For that reason, the Romans treasured pearls more highly and even the first Hindu artisans only rubbed up the natural facets of the Kohinoor. They would have been appalled to know that modern cutters reduced the bulk of that stone from over seven hundred carats to a hundred and six."

"How big is seven hundred carats?" Sarah wanted to know.

Craig selected a stone from the ranks that Sally-Anne had set out.

It was the size of a golf ball.

"That is probably three hundred carats it might cut to a paragon, that is a first, water diamond over a hundred carats. Then men will give it a name, like the Great Mogul or the Orloff or the Shah, and legends will be woven around it." Tobengula's Fire, Sarah hazarded.

"Good!" Craig nodded. "A good name for it. Lobengula's Fire!" "How much?" Tungata wanted to know. "What is the value of this pile of pretty stones?"

"God knows," Craig "khrugged. "Some of them are rubbish-" He picked out a huge amorphous lump of dark grey colour, in which the black specks and fleckings of its imperfections were obvious to the naked eye and the flaws and fracture lines cut ffirough its interior like soft silver leaves. "This is industrial quality, it will be used for machine tools and the cutting edges in the head of an oil drill, but some of the others the only answer is that they are worth as much as a rich man will pay. It wou impossible to sell them all at one time, the market could not absorb them. Each stone would require a special buyer and involve a major financial transaction."

"How much, Pupho?" Tungata insisted. "What is the least or the most?"

"I truly don't know, I could not even hazard." Craig picked out another large stone, its imperfect facets frosted and stippled to hide the true fire in its depths. "Highly skilled technicians will work on this for weeks, perhaps months, charting its grain and discovering its flaws. They will polish a window on it, so they can microscopically examine its interior. Then, when they had decided how to make" the stone, a master cutter with nerves of steel will cleave it along the flaw line with a tool likea butcher's cleaver. A false hammer stroke and the stone could explode into worthless chips. They say the master cutter who cleaved the Cullinan diamond fainted with relief when he hit a clean stroke and the diamond split perfectly." Craig juggled the big diamond thoughtfully. "If this stone "makes" perfectly, and if its colour is graded "D", it could be worth, say, a million dollars."

"A

million dollars! For one stone!" Sarah exclaimed.

"Perhaps more," Craig nodded. "Perhaps much more."

"If one stone is worth that, Sally -Anne lifted a cupped double handful of diamonds and let them trickle slowly through her fingers, "how much will this hoard be worth?"