The Steel Tsar (8 page)

“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s just—well, you seem to have a lot on your mind. I thought a sympathetic ear...”

There was a very strange look in his eyes now. “Sympathetic? I wonder how sympathetic you would stay if I told you what was really on my mind. There’s a war taking place, Bastable. I heard you speculating yesterday about how it started. I know how the war started. I know who started it, too. It was a bloody accident.”

I restrained my exclamation of astonishment and waited to hear more, but Dempsey leaned back in the wicker chair and closed his eyes, his lips moving as he spoke to himself.

I went to get him another drink, but he was already asleep when I returned. I let him sleep and joined Olmeijer at the bar.

Shortly afterwards Nye came in. He looked tired, as if he had not been to bed since I had seen him.

“Give me a triple gin, Olmeijer, quick. Morning, Bastable. I don’t advise you to go back through the town alone. There’s a lot of trouble. Big gangs of Malays and Chinese fighting each other. Arson, rape and bloody murder all over the place.”

“Has Begg found out about...?”

“Not yet, but pretty well everyone else knows. He’ll hear soon. The Chinese managed to steal a Malay boat last night and buggered off with it—probably poor Underwood’s murderers making their getaway. The Malays roughed up some Chinese families. The Chinese retaliated. I think we’re in very hot water this time.”

I told him about the wireless message to Darwin and the probability of a ship coming. He looked more than relieved. “You’d better send one of your chaps into New Brum, Olmeijer. Tell him to let everyone know—to get up here as fast as possible.”

Grumbling, Olmeijer rolled off to find a servant.

Nye walked round to the other side of the bar. “I think another drink is called for—on the house. Bastable?” I nodded. “Dempsey?”

I saw that Dempsey had woken up and was making for the door. He shook his head and said with a tight, crooked smile, “I’ve some business in town. Cheerio.”

“It’s dangerous,” I said.

“I’ll be all right. Hope to see you later, Bastable.”

We watched him leave.

“Poor bastard,” said Nye. He shuddered and downed his gin.

B
egg came up to the hotel in the afternoon and asked suspiciously after Underwood. We said that we had heard he’d had some sort of accident. He didn’t believe us, of course, but he had his hands full in the town and couldn’t wait to question us further. He’d escorted some clergymen to the hotel and some Chinese nuns from the Catholic mission. They sat huddled in the far corner of the bar and didn’t talk much to us. Nesbit’s secretary, a round-faced, anxious Bengali, had come with Begg and he remained almost constantly by the window, looking out as if he expected the airship to arrive at any minute. I asked Begg about Dempsey and the soldier glowered at me, muttering that Dempsey had been seen with some of the Chinese “rebels” and might find himself in real trouble with the authorities if he wasn’t careful. I also learned that Hira had decided to stay on at the hospital along with most of his nuns.

By that evening a few more people had drifted up, including two Irish priests who joined the others in the corner. Olmeijer seemed delighted to have so many new guests and rushed around seeing that rooms were prepared for them. Even I received a room on the second floor.

Begg returned looking tired and angry. His normally neat uniform was dusty and he had a bruise over his right eye. He seemed to be blaming Nye and me for his problems and wouldn’t speak to us at all on this second visit. He had brought us three of his twelve-man army for protection. The rest were remaining in the town to “keep order”, though from the noise below there was precious little of that, and to protect the Official Representative’s residence, for Brigadier Nesbit, it emerged, had elected to stay, along with his valet.

Begg returned a little later. He was alone and as stiff-backed as ever as he guided his horse down the hill and disappeared into the darkness and the cacophony below. I don’t believe he was seen alive again.

By midnight the ladies and gentlemen of the cloth had all gone to bed and Nye, Olmeijer and myself were in our usual places at the bar while the little Bengali paced back and forth beside the windows.

Even Nye seemed a trifle nervous and once he expressed the belief that we “might not quite last out”. Then he, too, went to bed and the Bengali followed him. Olmeijer had his big account book open on the bar and for a while seemed cheerfully engrossed in his arithmetic before closing the book with a crash, nodding goodnight to me, and heaving his huge bulk away to his own quarters.

Now, save for the Ghoorkas on guard outside, I was the only one up. I felt exhausted but not particularly sleepy. I decided to go outside and see if I could detect any activity in the town.

As I entered the lobby I heard voices by the main entrance. I peered out, but the oil lamp wasn’t bright enough to show me anything. I opened the door. One of the Ghoorka guards was shouting at a man I could dimly see in the moonlight. The Ghoorka gestured with his bayoneted rifle and the man turned away. For a moment I saw his face in the faint glow from the lamp in the lobby. I pushed past the soldier and hurried outside.

“Dempsey? Is that you?”

He looked back. His shoulders were bowed and his jacket had been ripped. His face was deathly pale, his eyelids almost closed. “Hello, Bastable.” The speech was slurred. “Thought this was my hotel.”

“It is.” I went towards him and took a limp arm. “Come inside.”

The Ghoorkas made no attempt to stop us as I led Dempsey into Olmeijer’s. The man was staggering and shivering. A dry retching noise came from his throat. He was gripping something tightly in his right hand. There was no point in questioning him and I did my best to get him up the stairs and along the passage to his room.

The door was unlocked. I half-carried Dempsey in, let him sit on the bed while I lit the oil lamp.

The light revealed a room which was surprisingly neat. The bed was made up and there was no litter. In fact, the room was completely impersonal. I got Dempsey onto the bed and he stretched out with a sigh. The shivering came in brief spasms now. He blinked and looked up at me as I took his pulse. “Thank you very much, Bastable,” he said. “I thought I might have a word with you.”

“You’re in bad shape,” I said. “Better sleep if you can.” “They’re looting down there,” he said. “Killing each other. Perhaps it’s something in the air...” He coughed and then started to choke. I got him upright and tried to prise the packet he held from his fingers, but he reacted angrily, with surprising strength. He pulled his hand away. “I can look after myself now, old man.” There were tears in his eyes as he sank back onto the pillow. “I’m just tired. Sick and tired.”

“Dempsey, you’re killing yourself. Let me—”

“I hope you’re right, Bastable. It’s taking too bloody long, though. I wish I’d had the guts to do it properly.”

I stood up, telling him that I would call back later to see how he was. He closed his eyes and seemed to fall asleep.

I experienced that feeling of impotence common to many who have themselves experienced the relief of drug addiction. I knew only too well that there was little I could do for the poor, tormented wretch. He could only help himself. And Dempsey seemed genuinely haunted, perhaps by a special insight into things as they really were, perhaps by something in himself, some aspect of his own character which he could not reconcile with his moral outlook. For it was becoming increasingly clear that Dempsey, in spite of his denials, had a very moral outlook and that he didn’t think much of himself.

I went to my own room along the passage and took off my jacket and trousers. I lay down on the bed in the darkness, listening to the insects hurling themselves against the woven wire of the window screens. Moonlight flooded the room. Soon I fell into a light sleep.

* * *

I
woke up suddenly.

My door was creaking as it slowly opened and I looked around for a weapon, thinking that the coolies had attacked the hotel while I slept.

Then, with a sigh of relief, I saw that it was Dempsey. He was leaning almost nonchalantly on the door handle. His face was as pale as ever but he seemed to have recovered his strength.

“Sorry to disturb you, Bastable.”

“Do you need help?” I got up and pulled on my trousers.

“Perhaps I do. There isn’t a lot of time now.” He smiled. “Not ‘practical’ help, though.” His eyes were glazed and dreamy and I realized that he had taken some kind of stimulant to offset the effects of the opium. I hated to think what was happening both to his mind and his body. He sat down heavily on my bed.

“I’m fine.” He spoke as if to reassure himself. “I just thought I’d drop in for a chat. You wanted a chat, eh? Earlier.”

I sat down in the wicker armchair beside the bed. “Why not?” I said as cheerfully as I could.

“I told you there’s no need to patronize me. I’ve come to make a sort of confession. I don’t know why it should be you, Bastable. Possibly it’s just because, well, you’re one of the victims. Singapore, and everything...”

“It’s over,” I said. “And it certainly couldn’t have been anything to do with you. ‘The war is ceaseless. The most we can hope for are occasional moments of tranquility in the midst of the conflict.’ I quote Lobkowitz.”

His drugged eyes shone for a second with an ironic light. “You read him, too. I didn’t think you were another Red, Bastable.”

“I’m not. Neither, for that matter, is Lobkowitz.”

“It’s a matter of opinion.”

“Besides, I speak from a great deal of experience.”

“As a soldier?”

“I have been a soldier. But I have come to the conclusion that the human race is constantly in a state of tension, that those tensions make us what we are and that they will often lead to wars. The greater our ingenuity at inventing weapons, the worse the wars become.”

“Oh, indeed, I agree with that last statement.” He sighed. “But don’t you believe it’s possible for people to acknowledge the tensions and yet make harmony from those tensions, just as music is made?”

“My experience would have it otherwise. My hope, of course, is another thing. But I see little point in such a debate when the world is currently in such an appalling state. This frightful Armageddon will probably not be over until the last aerial man-o’-war falls from the skies.”

“You really see it as Armageddon?”

I could not tell him what I knew: that I had already passed through three alternative versions of our world and in each seen the most hideous destruction of civilization; that I myself felt responsibility for at least one of those great wars. I merely shrugged. “Perhaps not. Perhaps there will be peace. The Russians and the Japanese have always been at loggerheads. What I can’t understand is how Britain failed to stop it and why the Japs turned on us with such ferocity.”

“I know why,” he said.

I patted his arm. “Do you know? Or is it the opium telling you? I’ve been fond of opium in my time, Dempsey. My appearance was once not too different from yours. Can you believe that?”

“I thought there was something. But why—?”

“I took part in a crime,” I said. “A very wicked crime. And then...” I paused. “Then I became lost.”

“But you’re not lost now?”

“I’m lost now, but I’ve decided to make the best of things. I’ve become a good airshipman. I love airships. There is nothing like being at the helm of one.”

“I know,” he said. “Of course I know. But I’ll never go aloft again.”

“Something happened? An accident?”

A small, wretched laugh came out of his throat. “You could call it that.” He fumbled in his pocket and took something out, placing it on the bed beside him. It was a syringe. “This stuff makes you want to talk, unlike the opium.” From his other pocket he took a handful of ampoules and placed them neatly beside the syringe.

I got up. “I can’t let you—”

His eyes were full of pain. “Can’t you?” The words had intense significance. They silenced me. I sat down again with a shrug.

He put his hand over the syringe and the ampoules and stared at me grimly. “You’ve no choice. I’ve no choice. Our choices are all gone, Bastable. For my own part, one way or another, I’m going to kill myself. You can take that for granted. And I’d rather you let me do it this way.”

“I know the state of mind you’re in, old man. I was in it once. And, without wishing to make a stupid comparison, I feel I’ve had as much reason as anyone on Earth to want to do it. But you see me alive. I’ve gone beyond suicide.”

“Well, I haven’t.” Yet he hesitated. “I wanted to talk to you, Bastable.”

“Then talk.”

“I can’t without this stuff.”

Once again, I shrugged. But I knew what it was to have an unbearable weight on one’s conscience. “Take a little, then,” I suggested. “Just a little. And talk. But don’t try to kill yourself, at least until you have confided in me.”

He shuddered. “Confided! What a word. You sound like a priest.”

“Just a fellow-sufferer.”

“You’re a bit of a prig, Bastable.”

I smiled. “So I’ve been told by others.”

“Yet you’re a decent sort. And you don’t judge people much. Only yourself. Am I right?”

“I’m afraid you probably are.”

“You don’t hold with socialism, do you? With my brand, at any rate.”

“What’s your brand?”

“Well, Kropotkin called it anarchism. But the word’s come to mean something very different in the public mind.”

“You don’t blow things up, then?”

Again he began to shake. He tried to speak, but no words came. I had, accidentally, struck a nerve. I moved towards him. “I’m sorry, old man. I didn’t mean...”

He drew away from me. “Get out,” he said. “For God’s sake leave me alone.”

I felt very foolish. “Dempsey. Believe me. I meant nothing serious. I was being facetious.”

“Get out!” It was almost a shout, a plea. “Get out, Bastable! The ship’s coming. Save yourself, if you can.”

“I’m not going to let you kill yourself.” I grabbed up some of the ampoules. “I want to listen, Dempsey.”