Arslan (15 page)

Yes, we would last the winter, and every spring was a new start. Kraft County wasn't crowded—the population had been declining for years—and by the grace of God, or maybe the exercise of common sense, people just weren't having babies these days. There were the troops, of course; but, if anything, they were an economic asset now. On the average, they not only took care of themselves, but produced a little surplus that found its way by various means into the hands of Kraft County citizens.

Even if we couldn't do much farming, we could live. A few chickens for eggs, a few cattle for milk, a few hogs to keep up the breed; fish and game would be our staple meat sources. Every field abandoned meant that much more game-cover. And the game, like the bugs, thrived. The soldiers were permitted only very limited hunting privileges, but that didn't apply to us.

“Franklin, how the hell are you going to shoot anything without guns?”

“Who said shoot?” We weren't even allowed to have bows and arrows, but we did have traps and nets. It was a new style of hunting for us, but we learned it. The Indians had done all right in this territory, and maybe there was even more game now than there had been back then, when it was all deep woods. We held drives for the small game, rotating them around the district and learning as we worked. With good dogs, it wasn't hard to walk quail and rabbits and even doves into a fine-mesh seine. Getting it closed on them was a little harder. We used the seines for what they were made for, too, and got all the fish we could use, not to mention cleaning out a lot of mud turtles while we were at it. We hunted coons and possums with the dogs, trapped muskrats, snared rabbits—snared deer, too, when we'd learned the trick. We had long enough to learn it.

Chapter 9

It must have been very near the fourth anniversary of Arslan's departure when a boy I didn't know came galloping into town with the news that a mechanized force was coming east on 460. His horse was still blowing when we heard their motors—a chilling sound these days, now that Nizam only used his vehicles for emergencies.

Starting home from the square, I saw a procession of jeeps and one truck draw up in front of my house. By the time I got there, the street and yard were swarming. Soldiers were prodding their way through the garden as if it were a minefield. The Russians were cheering from the school windows and popping out of the doors. My front door stood open, and a flock of women were trotting in and out helter-skelter, some of them carrying bundles and all of them chattering. One in a scarlet headscarf and a swinging blue skirt was directing operations, running from jeep to jeep, then halfway up the walk, then back to the street. Only one stood by silently, with a child in her arms. Arslan was leaning against the side of the truck, smoking.

I stopped beside him, and we eyed each other. He looked thriving. He might have put on a little flesh; otherwise he was the identical brash welterweight who had stridden out of my kitchen four years ago.

“Good morning, sir.”

“How's Plan One going, General?”

He grinned. “Very well.”

“Then things could be worse.”

Luella stepped out on the porch. “Franklin, come here!” She sounded excited and glad.

“But first, sir,” Arslan put in smoothly, “you will meet my son.”

He dropped his cigarette and beckoned the quiet woman. I took a quick look at her face (she was on the far edge of middle age, and homely—definitely not the mother of Arslan's son), and he took the baby from her.

The nape of my neck prickled. There he stood beside me—Arslan Khan, and Genghiz's pyramid of skulls was no more than a steppingstone to him—there he stood, smiling, with a baby in his arms. “This is Sanjar,” he said.

I focused on the child. “Sander?”

“San-
jar!
” He rolled the name joyously, all but singing it.

Arslan's son. He was either small for his age or advanced for it. From a distance I had taken him for no more than a babe in arms, but he had the bright boy-face of a three-year-old. Now he put his hand commandingly on Arslan's mouth and said something that sounded very clear, though it certainly wasn't English. Arslan chuckled, shaking his head away from the little brown fingers. He might have been any proud young soldier-father.

Then Hunt Morgan walked out onto the porch beside Luella. He'd been gone four years at the fastest-changing time of a boy's life, but I knew him at once. I hurried up the walk to shake his hand, and Arslan followed.

He was taller than Arslan; almost as tall as I. He had grown a soft little fringe of beard, as dark as his hair, and with his big dark eyes and soft mouth he looked like a Persian prince out of the Arabian Nights.

“Hello, Mr. Bond.” His handshake was solid. He wore Turkistani fatigues, with a sheath knife at his belt.

“Franklin,” I corrected.

Arslan set down the child, who promptly trotted over to the porch rail and started trying to climb it. With a clatter of heels, the red-scarfed woman flashed up the steps, swooped him up in her arms, and whirled on Arslan. I stood back comfortably against the house wall and watched. Arslan as a family man was a spectacle I'd never thought to see.

Whatever you could say for her temper, there was nothing wrong with her looks. Halfway through her tirade, she jerked off the red scarf, underlining her argument with a long loop of auburn hair. Her crackling eyes were blue, though her skin was the color of buckwheat honey. Arslan stood rocking on his feet, laughing at her. The child struggled down from her arms and went back to his rail-climbing unnoticed. With a final burst, the woman spun away and stalked into the house. Arslan lit a fresh cigarette and turned to Hunt and me. He was obviously charmed with the whole affair.

“I am taking the same room for myself, sir,” he announced. “And the same room for Hunt. Sanjar and Rusudan will use the southwest room.”

“Nice of you to leave me my bedroom.”

I didn't realize at the moment how nice it was. The southwest room wasn't big to start with, and Arslan's orders crowded into it not only the mother and child, but four of the attendant women. The others—there were three or four more of them—disappeared in the course of the afternoon, touching off a general flutter of protest from the rest and a storm from Rusudan (if she had any more name or title than that, I never heard it). This time Arslan was roused to shout back at her, and she retreated up the stairs, spitting defiance with every step.
Rusudan
—her harsh name matched the metallic timbre of her voice and her harridan temper, but her features were clear and sweet. Arslan stood with hands on hips and grinned after her.

Not one of the women seemed to speak anything that could pass as English, though Rusudan made one or two stabs at it. Luella had her hands full, getting them settled in. I walked out of the confusion early, and into what would be Hunt's room again.

Hunt stood in the middle of the floor, gazing mildly around. “Welcome home,” I said.

He gave me a sharp look—not sure if that was meant kindly. “How have things been?”

“Not too good, Hunt, but we're surviving. Your folks are well.”

His mouth quirked with humor. “Which of us invites the other to sit down?”

“It's your room.”

“It's your house. Let's sit down, shall we?”

We did, he on the bed and I on the one chair. “Well, there's a lot to fill in,” I said. “Where have you been, and what's happened?”

He spread his hand, palm down, a foreign kind of gesture. “Bukhara.” That seemed to be the end of the sentence. He hunched forward confidentially, but he was looking at his hands, not at me. “I tried to kill him once.” He shot me a glance, smiled faintly, and lowered his eyes again. “Like old times, isn't it? Except that this time I can say I really tried to do it.” Now he drew the knife from his sheath and laid it across his knees, stroking his fingertips along the steel. It was a very practical-looking blade. “Not with this one,” he said. “This one was his own; he gave it to me, afterwards.”

No doubt there was a very interesting story there, as well as a very romantic one, but I didn't want to hear it—not right now. Hunt wasn't talking to me, he was playing a role, and, from the sound of it, one he'd acted out in his head till he knew it by heart. “What did you see of Turkistan?” I asked him.

He raised his eyes to me. “The Black Sands are gray. The Red Sands are pink.” He made the motion of a smile.

“Were you disappointed?”

He shrugged, eyes drifting downward again. “It's a question of viewpoint. You can walk up and down hill all day and think you've gotten somewhere; but if you fly over the same area at ten thousand feet, you see that it's really only—”

“No, I don't!” He looked up, startled. “If it
is
a question of viewpoint,” I said, “then you can forget about that ‘really.’ I don't think much of the objectivity of anybody who spends his life on the ground, and then the first time he goes up in a plane he hollers, ‘Oh, that's what the world
really
looks like!’ If he'd spent his life in the plane, then the first time he got down on the ground he'd say, ‘Oh,
this
is how the world
really
is!’ That's all hogwash. Reality is whatever you've got to deal with.”

His eyes lightened a moment. Then he closed his hand on the knife hilt and stood up abruptly, sheathing the knife with a practiced motion. “I ought to warn you. In case you're involved in any plots against Arslan, or happen to get involved, or happen to hear of any, don't tell me. Don't even give me a hint. I'm afraid there's nothing I wouldn't do to protect him.”

“If that were true, Hunt, you wouldn't have warned me.” We smiled at each other cordially, without contact.

“Ah,” he said. “Do robots have souls? That's the question, isn't it?”

“You're not a robot,” I told him. “Don't flatter yourself with that idea. You're a human being endowed with free will, and you can't get rid of it.”

“Ah.” He was—what?—eighteen now. “
The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven
.”

“That's not what I mean,” I said. “I'm talking about responsibility. You're still responsible for your actions. And your decisions.”

He tilted his head in polite incredulity. It was one of Arslan's mannerisms. “Aren't free will and responsibility distinct?”

“Not to me.”

He shrugged. “I don't act. I don't decide.”

“You can't help it,” I said. “You're doing both of them all the time. How do you know? You may have changed the course of history right here and now by warning me not to trust you with any plots. There are things you can't control, sure, outside of you and inside of you; but you decide what to do about those things, and you act on that decision—whether you know it or not.” He was listening closely. Hunt had always been a courteous boy. “And not many people are decisive and active enough to try sticking a knife into Arslan.”

He couldn't hold back a pleased little private smile at that. “Think about it, Hunt. And remember I'm always on your side.
Your
side, not Arslan's.” I patted his shoulder once, and I left him.

I wanted information, not bungled assassination attempts. I wanted to know what Arslan had been doing to the world for four years, and what brought him back here now. And what, if anything,
Evergreen
had been.

He had been back three weeks, spending most of his time with Nizam, when the changes started. One morning there was an unobtrusive placard on the notice boards.
Announcement
, it said modestly.
The curfew is abolished, effective immediately. By order of General Arslan
.

There wasn't any rush to take advantage of that order. For one thing, nobody wanted to be the first to test its validity. For another, people were used to the curfew; they stayed in after dark as much from habit now as from necessity. But gradually they began to try it—neighbors visiting in their yards a little later and a little later, people daring to go for the doctor when they got sick, and (because, after all, we were getting squared away for winter, and could make good use of the extra time) farmers and hunters working after dark.

By that time the billet rule was well on the way out. It was never officially suspended, but every week a few more of the billeted soldiers were withdrawn. They went first to the camp. After a few weeks, a company of them marched north out of the district, and later another detachment, a little larger if anything, went south. There was no doubt but what the whole atmosphere of the district was relaxing. Compared to Nizam, Arslan was making himself look pretty good.

At first I hoped we might eat a little better that winter, but Arslan's troops brought no supplies with them. They did bring something that promised to be more useful in the long run—seed corn that Arslan claimed was resistant to the blight. He kept his fleet of trucks and jeeps and armored cars serviced and ready to go, but he didn't use them much. The whole district was geared to horses now. The remaining Turkistanis constituted a cavalry troop, and there was another all-Russian one. Horse-breeding and horse-trading had become important parts of the economy again, and there was constant friction between troops and civilians over horses. The floodlights on the schoolground had been dark for four years, like all the other electric lights outside of Nizam's headquarters. Now Arslan formalized the situation by taking out the floodlights, and installed a windmill to supplement Nizam's oil-burning generators. On the other hand, he imported generous supplies of liquor, coffee, and tobacco for his own use, in fact for the whole household. I didn't mind having the coffee.

Arslan had set up shop in my office at school again, and he worked like any young-middle-aged executive bucking for a heart attack. His home life, to call it that, was something I couldn't fathom. Rusudan's appearance was generally the signal for a fight, which ended inevitably with slamming doors, but I would hear them laughing together in Arslan's room, boisterous and innocent.