Arslan (20 page)

Quite a few people found reasons to pass by the school that morning. None of the soldiers paid any attention. It was Arslan himself, on his way across the graves to the school, who nudged the two Mason jars over with his toe, shattered them with his heel, and carefully ground flowers and glass into the bare, packed earth under his boots. I watched from the living-room window, and I felt a beat of hope. We had our slogan!

Chapter 12

Decorating the graves
... It was ticklish. The graves were in full view of my house and yard. I let the word get around that the KCR would take care of the decoration, if interested parties would supply the bouquets. That way we could keep it a popular movement without jeopardizing too many people too much. I put Leland Kitchener in charge of collecting the flowers. After a little experimenting, we settled on the three Munsey boys to do the decorating. From the corner of their yard they could see my bedroom window, which made it easy to let them know the best time to move. I would stand at that window for hours sometimes, watching the shrubbery and the shadows and the open places in the moonlight, the wind stirring the close-packed branches of a juniper beside the school steps. It always made me think of muscles moving under an animal's skin.

Every morning the flowers were there. Not in jars any more—there weren't that many jars to spare—but just laid in bunches, big or small, neat or sloppy, beautiful or scraggly. Usually every grave was decorated, and always at least one.

It was a little war that went on in silence. Every morning Arslan walked across the schoolyard, and every morning he paused at the graves and methodically trampled the flowers. He was careful to crush every blossom. After a few weeks the graves were covered with a mulch of broken, withered flowers. I never saw or heard of his exchanging a word with anybody about the decoration—or, for that matter, about anything connected with Rusudan. Sometimes I saw a couple of soldiers nudge each other and nod towards the latest decorations, but that was all. It could be they were under orders to pay no attention to the flowers, or to the thin parade of Kraft County people who passed along the streets by the school every morning. It could be they were under orders not to bother Leland in his rounds or the Munsey brothers on their nightly strolls. Arslan was capable of that.

Day by day the mulch deepened. Marigolds and zinnias gave way to chrysanthemums. The last roses bled under Arslan's heels. Night after night I listened for the shot that would mean the end of the Munseys. Morning after morning the graves were decorated. And every morning Kraftsville was a little stronger.

The first light frost came the first week in October. Then we had a warm spell—Luella always said we had our nicest weather in October—and then it began to get steadily more chilly. We had our hands full, citizens and troops alike, getting in crops and laying in meat for the winter. Along towards the last of the month, we had frost four nights running, hard enough to finish off the tomatoes and all the tender flowers. Sprays of bittersweet started to turn up in the bouquets. A lot of the ladies had been drying cornflowers and everlastings and pampas grass and all the other things Kraftsville ladies did dry. If Arslan was counting on the weather to win his battle for him, he was going to be disappointed.

Sanjar had started to venture out a little more. The horsemen were giving him riding lessons—something Arslan had insisted on doing himself, in the old days. Hunt had taken to horseback, too. On the bad mornings he would wash down his breakfast with a swig of vodka, saddle up the chestnut colt that Arslan had reserved for him, and flash down the road at a frantic gallop. Arslan himself rode everywhere now—rode, to give him his due, as well as he'd ever driven. Once I saw him, cantering past the school, suddenly dig his heels into the horse's sides and circle the long block at full gallop, dragging the horse's head sharp around the corners, and then canter quietly on down Market Street, straight-shouldered and blank-faced.

The flowers were getting to him. For once—maybe—he had started a fight he couldn't win.

He chose the fight. He could have stopped the decorations any time by guarding the graves, if not by more dramatic means. Instead, he chose this long, quiet struggle. He had taken me down the Morrisville road once to show me he could do things for himself. The evidence of something he had done for himself lay under the trampled flowers. Apparently he meant to win this fight the same way, by raw force of his own will and muscle. He was telling us he could trample all the flowers Kraftsville could grow. I thought not.

“You going trick-or-treat, Franklin?” It seemed like nobody's idea; it seemed like everybody's. By the middle of October, enough people had said it to me, with the right kind of grin, to make me decide this was it. Instead of a midsummer D-Day, we were going to have a bang-up Hallowe'en.

Only the older kids remembered going trick-or-treat, but they were all enthusiastic when the KCR spread the word it would be safe to go out again this year. I wanted Arslan and Nizam to be expecting a little innocent activity. Hallowe'en fell on a Sunday, and quite a dispute developed over whether it was right to allow trick-or-treating on the Sabbath. It was the nicest little smokescreen we could have asked for.

We had set the Saturday night for the Trick; but for insurance we would be ready to go the night before. There would be a few kids out on Friday night—closely followed by nervous parents—and a few more little ones on Saturday afternoon. At sundown the KCR would pass the word at top speed, and an immediate curfew would go into effect. At seven o'clock most of the troops would be eating supper; those on duty would be expecting to see people on the streets; Nizam would be in his lair; Arslan, if he followed his recent pattern, would already be in his room with a girl. At seven o'clock we would hit.

All our hope was to strike fast enough to secure the two necessary prizes: Nizam's headquarters, and Arslan. With Arslan and Nizam neutralized (dead, or preferably alive under lock and key) there would be nobody competent to command the whole body of troops. More important, we would have control of communications in the district, and contact with Arslan's headquarters all over the world. And we would have a little language problem.

We had—maybe—our traitor, if that was the right word, among the Russian officers, ready to declare himself commander of the troops and broadcast our message. But all our contacts had been very circumspect, and I wasn't counting on him too much. We would tell him what was going on when it was under way. I counted more on Hunt Morgan. Hunt could make himself understood by the Turkistanis, and one way or another—either to save the world or to save Arslan's life—I was sure he would act as interpreter for us.

If we got that far, we were just coming to the hard part. What we were betting was that nobody, not even the Turkistanis, really gave a damn about Arslan's Plans. Either they were serving Arslan personally, or they were serving under duress. In the first case, they'd be our men as long as we held Arslan hostage (and if he had to be killed, they wouldn't have to know it); in the second, we could tell them about Plan Two and offer them the freedom to go home. But we had to face the possibility of hostile units. That meant raising the local population against them, or turning other units against them, or both. Whether Kraftsville turned out to be the Concord of the new American Revolution or just the first skirmish of Armageddon would depend very much on what kind of contact we made with Arslan's armies and with the American people during the first few days.

And if we failed at any point, I would have let loose the hell on earth that I had sold my soul to prevent, seven years ago on the Morrisville road. But it was Arslan who had broken the contract.

Friday night, as it happened, we all ate together. Arslan swung into the house early, shouting for Hunt and his supper. Hunt was in the living room, pouring himself a drink. Luella was just sitting down with me to eat before the rush. She had been deep in making applesauce and apple butter all day. The stove was covered with steaming pots, and the whole house was full of the rich, spicy smell. “I'm using up the last of the cinnamon,” she said. “It loses its flavor, anyway; you can't keep it forever.” Supper was about as simple as it could be—baked ham, baked beans, and fresh hot applesauce. “That's one nice thing about a wood stove,” Luella said; “if you're cooking anything on top, you might as well put something in the oven, too.” She smiled at me tiredly.

“It's delicious.” I smiled back at her. This was probably the last supper I'd be eating with her here for a while. It might very well be the last of all. And the smell of the apple butter was very good.

But Arslan and Hunt came in, Hunt carrying glass and bottle. “Coffee,” Arslan ordered. He was on the make tonight; the fury was avid, and everything in sight was fair game. He took Hunt's bottle and poured vodka into his coffee till it brimmed the cup; his teeth showed as he lifted it and drank. “You are very trusting, sir,” he said to me. His eyes flashed. He dug into the beans with vengeance.

“That depends on who you ask me to trust.”

“I ask you to trust no one, least of all my soldiers. But you have approved that your people's children should go out alone in the night. Would it not have been wiser to consult with me before you approved this?”

“We'll be watching them.”

He smiled cruelly. “As you watched, the day I came to Kraftsville?”

I shoved back my plate. “If anything happens to any of those kids, General, you've got a revolution on your hands.” It was the literal truth. My pistol shot—or any other—would be the signal to start things rolling.

Light leaped in his eyes. He turned his square hands above his plate, half-smiling. “No, sir,” he said softly. “But perhaps a revolt. There will be more important revolts.”

I got up. “You'd better see that they're left alone. Be careful if you don't want to lose me, General.”

He gazed up at me, balancing, daring. “Do you imagine that this is important to me?”

“If it isn't, you've gone to a lot of trouble for nothing.”

He smiled slowly. “Ah,” he whispered, and went back to his beans.

Luella bent her head over her plate, but not before I saw her drawn mouth and look of misery. I hadn't eaten very much. I was sorry. Hunt sat stiffly upright, eyes down, swirling the liquor in his glass. Arslan smiled around the table; he was pleased with his work.

It couldn't have been more than twenty minutes before Arslan was at my bedroom door, bottle in hand. He stood eyeing me a moment before he came all the way in, kicking the door shut behind him, and stretched himself on my bed, propped on his left elbow. “Have you considered the significance of flowers, sir?” he asked softly.

“I've never given it much thought.” Thirty-six hours from now, one of us would be a corpse or a captive. It was easy enough to picture Arslan bound hand and foot, blood and sweat on his face (there'd be no other way), with his black hair lank on his forehead and his black eyes watchful and undefeated; but I couldn't picture him dead, any more than I could myself.

He was a young man—a very young man to have destroyed so much. But his skin was weathered, and his eyes haggard. “What is a flower in itself, sir? It is an organ of reproduction, and like other organs of reproduction, it gives pleasure. No doubt the pleasure of the bee is greater than the pleasure of the gardener. Pleasure, sir"—his face grew fierce, intent and serious—"pleasure is the supreme immediate end; but in the economy of the world it is only instrumental. The flower of the pea is as exquisite as the flower of the rose. The scent of the lilac is a tool with which the lilac constructs its seeds.” He looked down into his bottle with an expression of intense wonderment, and slowly, feelingly, drank.

“And yet there are sterile flowers, sir. The flower of the potato, the Japanese cherry blossom; to what end do they bloom? This is the monstrosity that man has bred: the sterile flower. And yet there were already sterile flowers when man ran on his knuckles with the apes. Who bred the wild yam? Who bred the saxifrage?” He glared at me as if he could compel an answer. Then he drank again, and his face smoothed. “Is this not beautiful, sir?” he asked purringly. “The flower that gives pleasure fruitlessly? Is it not beautiful that nature is so—unnatural?” He showed his teeth in a slow grimace. “Why do your people put flowers upon graves, sir? What is the meaning of this custom?”

“I suppose, like most customs, it means about whatever people put into it.”

He hunched his shoulders forward a little, searching my face. “I tell you a curious thing, sir,” he said confidentially. “I am in pain. You understand that I am accustomed to facts; facts do not trouble me. But there is a pain that does not cease.” He grinned savagely. “Ah, this gives you satisfaction, sir. Good. Good.” A hot look glowed in his taut face. He lifted three cigarettes from the pack in his shirt pocket and plugged the mouth of the bottle with them, and in one powerful, deliberate movement he swung his legs down and his arm in a sideward arc. The bottle smashed against the opposite wall, spewing liquor, and he was sitting upright on the edge of the bed. “Hunt!” he roared.

Vodka dripped down the wall. A piece of flying glass had landed on my knee. I flipped it off with my finger, and it hit his leg and dropped onto his shoe. He picked it up and looked at it searchingly.

Hunt opened the door. “Bring me another bottle,” Arslan said suavely. Hunt nodded, taking it all in with a little scornful smile, and lifted his hand into sight. It held an unopened bottle of vodka. Arslan's laugh exploded. He dropped the glass fragment onto the bed beside him and accepted the new bottle. “Shut the door.” He opened the bottle swiftly, took a long swig, and nestled it between his knees. “Therefore, or in part therefore, I am going.”

Hunt took a step forward from the door. “Where?”

“To Russia. Probably then to India.”

I didn't care where. “When?” I asked harshly.

He gave me a smile of luminous sweetness. “Tonight,” he said. He lifted the bottle by the neck and swung it gently back and forth. “The main transmitter and receiver have been dismantled. The rest of the communications equipment"—he glanced at his watch—"has just left headquarters. Sanjar,” he added smoothly, “is already out of the district.” He set the bottle on the floor and leaned forward confidingly. “You see, sir, that I wish to save Kraftsville.”