Arslan (11 page)

Arslan glanced up appreciatively. “Not to kill, no. To immobilize. It is often desirable to question those who break rules.”

“I wasn't even immobilized,” Hunt said tightly.

“Yes. The sentry will be reprimanded.” The guards were reappearing with water, bandages, medicines. There was a well-rehearsed air about the whole thing. “For your information, Hunt,” Arslan was saying, “I have given standing orders not to fire on you unless you should actually attack me. Otherwise you would have been shot as soon as you left your parents’ house. But the man who fired was unable to recognize you in the darkness. I consider him justified.”

“How about a doctor?” I said.

“Unnecessary. It is a very simple wound.”

Maybe it hadn't quite been rehearsed. Conceivably—just conceivably—the shot had been accidental. But, to whatever extent he had manipulated for it, I didn't doubt that this was exactly the scene Arslan had planned. But Hunt had come to my house for shelter, and I'd given it, without conditions. That was what mattered.

I went to see Arnold Morgan first thing the next morning. He looked half relieved to see me and half belligerent. “Did Hunt get back to your place all right?” he demanded.

“Well, he got there, and by good luck he's only got a bullet hole in his leg. Didn't you people ever hear of the curfew?”

He went as white as if he'd been bleached. “We tried to keep him, Franklin. I did everything I could. How is he?”

“He's all right. What I'd like to know is, if he started off intending to stay with you, and you did everything you could to keep him, what made him come back?”

He firmed up at that, and flushed angrily. “When Hunt comes home, it's going to be the real thing, Franklin. Nobody's going to use
my
house as a ... a...”

“In other words, you sent your son out to be shot at because he couldn't promise he wouldn't be assaulted.”

“No, sir—and you ought to know me better than to say that to me. I didn't send him anywhere. The only thing I asked for was that he wouldn't
volunteer
himself to that greasy devil. For God's sake, Franklin, what do you expect me to do—encourage him?”

“I did expect a little Christian charity and a little understanding for your own child. But it looks like that was too much to ask for.” We weren't quite shouting yet, but we were getting close.

“You're not in a very good position to—”

“—So how about a little common sense instead? The only things you've accomplished are convincing Hunt he
can't
get back to a normal life—not that anything's normal these days—and pushing him right into Arslan's corner. His own father drives him out, and who takes him in? Arslan! Arslan! Just putting it bluntly, Arnold, anytime Arslan wants his body he can have it, and neither you nor I nor Hunt can stop him; and it doesn't matter whose house he's living in, either. What you've done is help Arslan get hold of his soul.”

“That's a hell of a thing to say to me.” His voice shook. “That's exactly what I'm trying to stop. He wouldn't even agree—” He broke off, waving his open hand spasmodically, as if he was looking for something to hit with it. “As far as I'm concerned, it's not too late even now. My door's open whenever he's ready to come home.”

“On your terms.”

“Now, listen, Franklin. If you've got anything practical to tell me, go ahead and say it. But if you're just here to pass insults, let's call a halt right now. Jean's upstairs trying to get some rest, and I've got better things to do.”

“Yes, I've got one thing very practical—”

But he was so worked up now that he couldn't let me go on till he got in his counterattack. “And I'll tell you something, Franklin, there's a lot of people who don't think much of the way you've toadied up to that stinking Turk. Collaborator's a dirty word, but that's exactly—”

“I didn't come to discuss myself.”

“No, you came to pull that holier-than-thou act because I've insisted on a little basic morality and loyalty—and coming from you it doesn't look very good. Ever since they came shooting their way in here—”

“Nobody shot their way in.”

“—you've been preaching. ‘Cooperate! Cooperate!’ Well, I say that's just the coward's way to pronounce ‘collaborate.'”

If you think so, why haven't you done something about it?”

“If we'd had a chance, we would have! You were so damn quick to inform on anybody who had a gun.”

“Do you have any idea what this town would look like now if we'd tried to fight?”

“We'd be able to hold our heads up, anyway.”

“After you'd scraped them out of the mud, maybe. I'm not hanging mine. Now, just shut up and listen to me for five seconds. For God's sake—for Jean's sake, Arnold—get word to Hunt that you want him back, no strings attached. Don't do it through me if you don't want to. You're welcome to think whatever you want to about me, but it's more important what you do about your son.”

I left that little scene with a feeling of satisfaction, all in all. Collaborator. Well, in a sense I certainly was. I'd gone all out to get people to do what Arslan and his henchmen demanded, and I'd been working hand-in-glove with Nizam on the economic plan. What Arnold Morgan didn't know about—what nobody knew much about, I hoped, except a few people like Sam Tuller's family and Leland Kitchener the junk man—was a little nonexistent organization that we called the Kraft County Resistance.

Arslan's pistol and its eight cartridges were hidden in nine separate spots. They might as well be separate, for now. There was no possible way for that gun to do us any good tangibly, except the way I'd failed to use it in the Land Rover; but the fact that it existed was a solid rock to build a faith on. Sam Tuller and two of his boys had crawled in that oat field night after night, till they found every last cartridge. It had to be careful crawling, too. Aside from the matter of getting out of the house and back in again without disturbing their billeted soldier, it was likelier than not that Arslan would have the field watched. But we got them all, and got them safely squirreled away, without rousing the least suspicion. Or so we had to tell ourselves.

I had thought long and hard before I told Sam about the gun in his field. But he was a reliable man, the kind who could shoulder a risk like that, and I felt justified in giving it to him. If there was going to be any real Resistance at all, quite a few people would have to take quite a few risks. And, by God, there was going to be a Resistance.

That was why I had planted some rumors within a week of Arslan's banquet. People needed something to hang onto, if it was only a name or an idea, and they needed it right from the start. It didn't hurt that there was nothing to back it up at first—you couldn't arrest a name without a body. The real organization developed very slowly. It had to be solid. It had to be built man by man.

Naturally, there was a lot of resistance, with a small “r,” to Arslan, and not everybody had the patience to wait for a solid organization. There were other names besides ours going the rumor rounds, names with “Freedom” and “America” in them. It was partly by talking to people who seemed to be getting themselves involved with those things that I had gotten my reputation, in certain circles, as a collaborator. Some of those people were the gun-owners I had informed on, as Arnold chose to call it. But I'd managed to discourage others before it was too late—good people who didn't need to throw away their lives for nothing.

The would-be patriots hadn't found much to do but talk—except, of course, that some of them were responsible for the deaths of Howard and Mattie Benson back at the beginning of spring. There hadn't been any noticeable investigation of that incident. Arslan—or Nizam—apparently felt the deterrent effect of promptly enforcing the billet rule was enough, and apparently he'd been right. But one night at the end of August somebody tried to set fire simultaneously to the stable, Nizam's headquarters, and my house. Nizam's men were not only waiting for them with open arms; before the night was over, they had also arrested not just the entire membership of the particular organization that had undertaken the arsons, but every other resistance movement in the district. Except, of course, the Kraft County Resistance.

Chapter 7

It was mid-October when I came upstairs one evening to find my door open and Hunt sitting listlessly on the windowsill.

“Take a chair, Hunt.” He stood up hastily—remembering his manners—and I closed the door and waved him towards my armchair.

“Thanks.” He sat down awkwardly and gave me a smile as an afterthought. One thing Arslan had done for him was destroy his gracefulness. He had been one of those easy-moving boys that take to bikes and horses and skis as if they'd been born in motion. Now he acted like somebody who'd been bedridden and hadn't quite got his muscles under control yet. It made me wonder sometimes how much sheer physical abuse he had to put up with.

I turned my desk chair around to face him, sat down, and stretched out my legs. Hunt had never visited me in my room before, and it obviously meant something to him, but he wasn't going to open up without some priming. So I began to talk, about what I'd done that day, about the weather prospects, about the dogs and the cats and the monkey.

“I hate the damned monkey,” he said suddenly. He hated something, all right. His voice shook and his cheeks flamed. I nodded. He dropped his eyes. “I'm going to kill him.”

“Well, you know, a monkey can't really help itself.”

He sank back in the chair, turning his face half away—wondering, I realized, whether it was worth the trouble to disabuse me. “I didn't mean the monkey,” he said. “I meant
him
.”

Well, there it was. I heaved a sigh. No, under the circumstances, I didn't think he was going to kill anybody. Hunt had been building up steam for nearly a year now, and with a little bit more, maybe he
would
have killed Arslan, or tried; but now he had let it out in words. And, after all, he was only fourteen. He was breathing deeply now, and his face was exhausted and calm.

“Why tell me about it?” I asked gently.

“I thought you might want to make preparations.”

“Thank you.” He looked at me at last, rolling his head against the chair back, and smiled wanly. I took a deep breath and leaned forwards. “Hunt. Just what preparations do you think I could make that would save Kraftsville from absolute destruction? I'm not God.”

“Neither is Arslan,” he offered mildly.

And on that cue the door opened, quietly but not stealthily, and Arslan stood leaning against the doorframe. He had a bottle under his arm and a roll of papers in one hand. He looked as if he might have been there a while.

We were as still as mice. Gently Arslan lifted his hand and tossed the papers, and they splayed out across the bed and onto the floor at Hunt's feet. He took the bottle by the neck, hefting it thoughtfully for a minute as if he was considering it as a weapon. Then he tossed it after the papers. It bounced softly on the bed. “I am tired, sir,” he said matter-of-factly.

I looked hard at his face and the set of his body. Was it possible for Arslan to be tired? His eyes were bloodshot and a little puffy, and there were lines around them, but the rest of his face was smooth and fresh-looking, neither drawn nor drooping, a very youthful face. There wasn't a trace of slump in his leaning. He was relaxed like a coiled copperhead or a dozing cat—comfortable, but ready to kill on a split second's notice. Still, he would probably look like that if he was about to drop from exhaustion. It was no wonder Arslan ate so much; he must have used up a lot of energy just standing around.

He lit a cigarette, took one drag, looked at it, and pinched it out, dropping it back into his shirt pocket. “Africa and South America may be the most difficult problems in the end,” he said conversationally, “but Asia is of course the most massive problem.” He turned his steady, humorous gaze on me. Yes, I thought he looked tired. “It is probable that I shall fail in Asia.”

Probable
. It would be silly to forget that everything he said had a purpose. But all the same, that one word
probable
lit a little blaze of hope. If he failed anywhere, he failed everywhere; unless every wall stood, his house of cards would come tumbling down.

He came on into the room, shouldering the door shut behind him, leaned back against it, and surveyed us. “I give myself six years. Six years. Then, if I have not succeeded, I will apply my second plan.”

I nodded involuntarily. I'd seen too much of Arslan to be sure his grand scheme would fail, but on the other hand, I couldn't really imagine it succeeding; and when it failed, Arslan wasn't the man to go home to Bukhara and raise sheep.

There figured to be a second plan, and I had a kind of an idea what it would be.

“Plan Two is also difficult,” he went on, “but it is more practicable, and also more permanent.” He straightened himself, and smiled coolly at me as he crossed over to the bed. “You have refused to drink with me in your kitchen and in your living room, sir. Will you drink with me in your bedroom?”

“I don't drink,” I told him for the twentieth time. “Anywhere.”

He stepped over my feet, swept the scattered papers to one side, and settled himself on the bed, with my pillow tucked behind his shoulders and his shoes on Luella's clean bedspread. “Strong drink is raging,” he said, carefully opening his vodka. “You have promised to explain Christianity to me, sir. I am ready to listen.” He tilted the bottle with loving care and took a long, slow swallow.

“I don't think so.”

He lowered the bottle long enough to shrug, and drank again, drew a deep breath, and prodded his papers with the butt of the bottle. “These are the messengers that tell me my failure is probable,” he said. “Hunt, pick up those.” Hunt stooped and gathered up the papers from the floor; he looked blankly across Arslan as he laid them on the bed, and met my eyes. “The current demographic analyses. Always they insist upon this message. I cannot make them change their story.” He smiled to himself. You could literally see the liquor hitting him. Something like a shudder went down the length of him, as if he were settling more comfortably into his skin; the lines around his eyes smoothed out, and his face flushed.