The New Weird (13 page)

"It's a good idea," I said. I sought out a hut, evicted the occupants, and went almost immediately to sleep.

In the morning I was awakened by a trooper who brought me a metal mug full of the most delicately scented tea. I was astonished and accepted it with some amusement. "There's loads of it here," he said. "It's all they've got!"

I sipped the tea. I was still in my uniform, with the burka on the ground beneath me and my leather jacket folded for a pillow. The hut was completely bare. I was used to noticing a few personal possessions and began to wonder if they had hidden their stuff when they had seen us coming. Then I remembered that they were from the towns and had been brought here forcibly. Perhaps now, I thought, the war would pass them by and they would know peace, even happiness, for a bit. I was scratching my ear and stretching when Savitsky came in, looking grim. "We've found a damned burial ground," he said. "Hundreds of bodies in a pit. I think they must be the original inhabitants. And one or two soldiers ― at least, they were in uniform."

"You want me to ask what they are?"

"No! I just want to get away. God knows what they've been doing to one another. They're a filthy race. All grovelling and secret killing. They've no guts."

"No soldiers, either," I said. "Not really. They've been preyed on by bandits for centuries. Bandits are pretty nearly the only sort of soldiers they've ever known. So the ones who want to be soldiers emulate them. Those who don't want to be soldiers treat the ones who do as they've always treated bandits. They are conciliatory until they get a chance to turn the tables."

He was impressed by this. He rubbed at a freshly shaven chin. He looked years younger, though he still had the monumental appearance of a god. "Thieves, you mean. They have the mentality of thieves, their soldiers?"

"Aren't the Cossacks thieves?"

"That's foraging." He was not angry. Very little I said could ever anger him because he had no respect for my opinions. I was the necessary political officer, his only link with the higher, distant authority of the Kremlin, but he did not have to respect my ideas any more than he respected those which came to him from Moscow. What he respected there was the power and the fact that in some way Russia was mystically represented in our leaders. "We leave in ten minutes," he said.

I noticed that Pavlichenko had polished his boots for him.

By that afternoon, after we had crossed the entire valley on an excellent dirt road through the jungle and had reached the top of the next range of hills, I had a pain in my stomach. Savitsky noticed me holding my hands against my groin and said laconically, "I wish the doctor hadn't been killed. Do you think it's typhus?" Naturally, it was what I had suspected.

"I think it's just the tea and the rice and the other stuff. Maybe mixing with all the dust we've swallowed."

He looked paler than usual. "I've got it, too. So have half the others. Oh, shit!"

It was hard to tell, in that jungle at that time of day, if you had a fever. I decided to put the problem out of my mind as much as possible until sunset when it would become cooler.

The road began to show signs of damage and by the time we were over the hill and looking down on the other side we were confronting scenery if anything more desolate than that which we had passed through on the previous three days. It was a grey desert, scarred by the broken road and bomb-craters. Beyond this and coming towards us was a wall of dark dust; unmistakably an army on the move. Savitsky automatically relaxed in his saddle and turned back to see our men moving slowly up the wooded hill. "I think they must be heading this way." Savitsky cocked his head to one side. "What's that?"

It was a distant shriek. Then a whole squadron of planes was coming in low. We could see their crudely painted Khmer Rouge markings, their battered fuselages. The men began to scatter off the road, but the planes ignored us. They went zooming by, seeming to be fleeing rather than attacking. I looked at the sky, but nothing followed them.

We took our field-glasses from their cases and adjusted them. In the dust I saw a mass of barefoot infantry bearing rifles with fixed bayonets. There were also trucks, a few tanks, some private cars, bicycles, motorbikes, ox-carts, hand-carts, civilians with bundles. It was an orgy of defeated soldiers and refugees.

"I think we've missed the action." Savitsky was furious. "We were beaten to it, eh? And by Australians, probably!"

My impulse to shrug was checked. "Damn!" I said a little weakly.

This caused Savitsky to laugh at me. "You're relieved. Admit it!"

I knew that I dare not share his laughter, lest it become hysterical and turn to tears, so I missed a moment of possible comradeship. "What shall we do?" I asked. "Go round them?"

"It would be easy enough to go through them. Finish them off. It would stop them destroying this valley, at least." He did not, by his tone, much care.

The men were assembling behind us. Savitsky informed them of the nature of the rabble ahead of us. He put his field-glasses to his eyes again and said to me: "Infantry, too. Quite a lot. Coming on faster."

I looked. The barefoot soldiers were apparently pushing their way through the refugees to get ahead of them.

"Maybe the planes radioed back," said Savitsky. "Well, it's something to fight."

"I think we should go round," I said. "We should save our strength. We don't know what's waiting for us at Angkor."

"It's miles away yet."

"Our instructions were to avoid any conflict we could," I reminded him.

He sighed. "This is Satan's own country." He was about to give the order which would comply with my suggestion when, from the direction of Angkor Wat, the sky burst into white fire. The horses reared and whinnied. Some of our men yelled and flung their arms over their eyes. We were all temporarily blinded. Then the dust below seemed to grow denser and denser. We watched in fascination as the dark wall became taller, rushing upon us and howling like a million dying voices. We were struck by the ash and forced onto our knees, then onto our bellies, yanking our frightened horses down with us as best we could. The stuff stung my face and hands and even those parts of my body protected by heavy clothing. Larger pieces of stone rattled against my goggles.

When the wind had passed and we began to stand erect, the sky was still very bright. I was astonished that my field-glasses were intact. I put them up to my burning eyes and peered through swirling ash at the Cambodians. The army was running along the road towards us, as terrified animals flee a forest fire. I knew now what the planes had been escaping. Our Cossacks were in some confusion, but were already regrouping, shouting amongst themselves. A number of horses were still shying and whickering but by and large we were all calm again.

"Well, comrade," said Savitsky with a sort of mad satisfaction, "what do we do now? Wasn't that Angkor Wat, where we're supposed to meet our allies?"

I was silent. The mushroom cloud on the horizon was growing. It had the hazy outlines of a gigantic, spreading cedar tree, as if all at once that wasteland of ash had become promiscuously fertile. An aura of bloody red seemed to surround it, like a silhouette in the sunset. The strong, artificial wind was still blowing in our direction. I wiped dust from my goggles and lowered them back over my eyes. Savitsky gave the order for our men to mount. "Those bastards down there are in our way," he said. "We're going to charge them."

"What?" I could not believe him.

"When in doubt," he told me, "attack."

"You're not scared of the enemy," I said, "but there's the radiation."

"I don't know anything about radiation." He turned in his saddle to watch his men. When they were ready he drew his sabre. They imitated him. I had no sabre to draw.

I was horrified. I pulled my horse away from the road. "Division Commander Savitsky, we're duty-bound to conserve."

"We're duty-bound to make for Angkor," he said. "And that's what we're doing." His perfect body poised itself in the saddle. He raised his sabre.

"It's not like ordinary dying," I began. But he gave the order to trot forward. There was a rictus of terrifying glee on each mouth. The light from the sky was reflected in every eye.

I moved with them. I had become used to the security of numbers and I could not face their disapproval. But gradually they went ahead of me until I was in the rear. By this time we were almost at the bottom of the hill and cantering towards the mushroom cloud which was now shot through with all kinds of dark, swirling colours. It had become like a threatening hand, while the wind-borne ash stung our bodies and drew blood on the flanks of our mounts.

Yakovlev, just ahead of me, unstrapped his accordion and began to play some familiar Cossack battle-song. Soon they were all singing. Their pace gradually increased. The noise of the accordion died but their song was so loud now it seemed to fill the whole world. They reached full gallop, charging upon that appalling outline, the quintessential symbol of our doom, as their ancestors might have charged the very gates of Hell. They were swift, dark shapes in the dust. The song became a savage, defiant roar.

My first impulse was to charge with them. But then I had turned my horse and was trotting back towards the valley and the border, praying that, if I ever got to safety, I would not be too badly contaminated.

The Braining of Mother Lamprey

SIMON D. INGS

IT WAS A COLD MORNING, two days before Jape Day, and little children were eating the eyeballs of corpses in Blood Park. Ashura the apprentice cycled past the onlookers and the hawkers selling sweetmeats, alive to the wind in his face and the vibration of the bike beneath his body. It was a wonderful day to be alive in this of all cities, and Ashura smiled into the sunlight that dappled the narrow street.

He rounded a corner into Grape Street, where the vintners held court, readying themselves for the coming festivities. He dismounted and pushed his bike past the steaming chutes and the open cess-run at the centre of the road, dazzled by the coloured light reflected from shop windows.

It had rained that night, and the cobblestones were slick with a greenish slime, exuded as if from the pores of the rock itself: a characteristic of the streets of GodGate. Ashura slid and slipped and skipped along, lifting the heavy frame of his bike as he crossed the open sewer, and made for the end of the run of shops. In a narrow doorway shadowed by bird-nested eaves he paused and rummaged in his breeches pocket for the rusty key.

In the shadow cast by a casement window high up in the peach-plastered building, half a dozen street urchins were making a pile of their turds. They moved and squatted with cat-like gestures and their sharp, wet teeth flashed when they laughed.

Ashura's fingers found the key. He pushed the door open and entered, pulling his bicycle in after him. He leaned it against a banister-rail and clattered up the rickety staircase. At the top he knocked, then waited respectfully.

"Enter," came a querulous, age-cracked voice. Half-cringing, Ashura opened the door. It squealed on dry hinges. His master stood within, head cocked like some huge carrion-bird to watch the entrant. Beady-eyed and ancient, he stood in robes that were more for protection from the chill than for reasons of tradition. There was a pallor to him today, a strange pastiness to his much-wrinkled flesh. Ashura ascribed it to the warlock's recent diet of chaffinch brains.

"Did you fetch it?" he demanded of Ashura.

Ashura nodded to his master, almost bowing. "I did, sir." He held it in his capacious pocket, a stoneware jar capped by a thick pitch seal; a jar just large enough to hold something disquieting. His hand shook as he held it out at arm's length, proffering it to the master.

The old man whipped out a hand with surprising agility and snatched the jar from him, as if he feared Ashura would drop it. For his part, the apprentice breathed a sigh of relief. He hoped that Master Urkhan would let him leave before he put it to use; to some things he had no wish to be apprenticed.

There was a rattle and a clatter from the yard. Urkhan whirled and tottered to the window. "Look at that!" he screeched, with a voice like an ungreased fiddle bow.

Ashura winced. Dutiful, he approached the window. Someone or something had knocked over Urkhan's capacious rubbish bin. Feathers blew about the yard. Little bird bones lay strewn in a heap over the cobbles. "Babies! Ferals! No-goods!" the warlock shouted. "We should make the Blood Park fence twenty-foot high!"

He turned from the window and twittered. Straight away Ashura felt a vicious itch behind his eyes: Urkhan had placed wards on the room when he first arrived at this city. It was unpleasant; Ashura drew away from his master hastily. Urkhan stopped twittering and the itch subsided. The window at which they stood shook in its frame as a ward passed through it on its way to clear up the mess.

"Ee, it has taken long enough," said the master, rubbing the pot Ashura had given him with a parched hand. He glanced at the boy with sly, squinting eyes. "An' did you tell him as I said?" There was menace in his voice.

"I did," said Ashura, stonily. "He told me it was best raw with lemon."

His master ran a pale tongue over crumpled lips. He walked across the room as if his old bones ached, cradling the small pot. Beneath the stuffed alligator and the bronze orrery that hung, verdigris-stained, from the rafters, he paused and placed the pot at the fulcrum of a strange ideogram inscribed on the floor in wax melted from a red candle. Ashura cleared his throat.

"What is it now?" said Urkhan, tetchily. "Have you not ― "

"If it please you, Master, I have not slept since yesterday night. Might I have leave.?"

"Yes, yes, begone at once. I have work to do." The master brushed him away with a flapping motion of his hands as he concentrated. Ashura, knowing his luck to be in, made for the door as silently as he could and pulled it to behind him. The master would expect him back as soon as his business was concluded.

Ashura broke into a cold sweat at the thought.
Truly Urkhan is puissant,
he thought,
but I want none of it at such a price!
Still, the day was young and the master would be busy for hours yet ― time to do as a young apprentice would.