View from Another Shore : European Science Fiction
Page 16
could smell it through our filters, and black clouds rose in the air.
There weren’t any open fires, though; they just smouldered. The wind
kept blowing ash in our faces, and the air was hot. Nearby we found
strange fleshy plants growing in the pools of water, broad green leaves
tinged with pink. Ed climbed out to gather a couple. Suddenly there
was a splash—this big greyish animal had his leg between its jaws, and
he tripped . . . more animals moved in, from all directions . . . We were completely helpless.’
The biologist cleared his throat. ‘Govin submitted photos. It’s
related to the crocodile, but larger.’
‘Go on’, Vertain commanded. ‘What happened next?’
‘There were five of us left. I don’t think I have to tell you we turned
around on the spot. As we were trying to move a pile of beams that
blocked our path, Anthony heard this sound from a cellar, like
somebody crying. He and I crept down a short flight of stairs and
saw a man in rags, filthy, with matted hair. He was beating the child.’
As if on command, they all looked at the little girl on the screen.
She had fallen asleep in an armchair, but tossed her body from side to
side restlessly.
‘The moment he saw us, he slipped away down some dark hole,
and we let him go. The child was crying. Anthony tried to pick her up,
but she scratched him, and I had to give him a hand. She fought us off
like a wildcat—she even tore my respiratory mask off my face. Then I
noticed that she—well, she stank. With all that filth around - what
else could you expect? But Anthony lost his head. He took her along,
gave her a shower and something to eat. After about an hour, she let
Anthony hold her. Nobody else, just Anthony. We had to take her
along; he wouldn’t let up until we did. Then they started to attack us
openly, and we got a look at them: men in rags, freaks and cripples
with ugly faces. The gleam in their eyes was pure hate.’
‘Maybe their reaction was normal enough. Maybe they were just
trying to defend their property.’
‘Maybe’, said Govin edgily. He went on. ‘We tried to find a way out
of the rubble, but they must have realized we were about to escape
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forever. There was only one narrow pass left to get through, but they
tried once more to stop us. They built up a barricade and started
throwing stones. Then they started to shoot. There couldn’t have been
more than three or four shots, but one of them broke through the
dome and got Anthony.’
Again there was a brief pause. Govin stared dully at the sleeping
child. No one spoke. He ended his report: ‘Up until that moment we
hadn’t made any real attempt to defend ourselves, but now—we
might not have been equipped with weapons, but we did have the
flamethrower that we used once in a while to level the path. So we
used it this time to break through the barricades. Four hours later, we
were picked up. That’s about it.’
Vertain tore the dictation reel out of the output slot, smoothed out
the paper and folded it. The official part of the agenda was over, but
the men remained seated where they were.
‘What now?’, Petrovski asked. ‘Those are human beings out there,
and we were never even aware of their existence. They must be the
descendants of the ones who didn’t emigrate - the ones who chose
smog, filth and pollution over the purity of suboceanic life. They
clung to their world, to their lives in the cities; but they couldn’t keep that world from decaying. No one ever dreamed that any of them
would survive.’
Vertain expressed the question that burned in every mind. ‘Is it our
duty to help them? There can’t be many of them. Should we take
them in, open our safe, hygienic world to them—to others like that
little girl?’ He nodded toward the screen. The child shielded her eyes
with her hand, as if to make herself invisible.
Govin was as perplexed as the rest. The child—would she be happy
down here? His eyes wandered back to the window. The water
outside was murky; clumps of bacteria and plankton drifted by,
sludge from the sewage system.
Where did their responsibility lie? Out there? Or with those inside?
Vaguely, Govin recalled an old legend about the sea—something
about turquoise waters, turquoise and crystal clear.
translated by CHRIS HERRIMAN
GERMANY
The Land of Osiris
WOLFGANG JESCHKE
1
Master Jack
He came down the Shari River from the south out of the country of
the Lagones and Bagirmi. He had three horses with him, two of which
he used as pack animals. He rode the third himself, a small brown
mare with a white blaze and dark brown eyes, a beautiful horse.
It was on the day of the feast of Id El Kebir, the Bairam. I remember
it as if it were yesterday—a hot morning—there was the smell of
warm blood and entrails, of freshly baked bread. That morning rams
had been slaughtered in front of all the houses—even before the huts
of the poor. The king, Allah be praised, had animals distributed to
them for slaughter, so that no one in the town would be without his
roast for the Easter celebration. The men had already begun to drink
Laqbi early in the morning. They were lighthearted and merry and
some of them were even slightly inebriated. Then news came that a
stranger had ridden through the southern gate of the town.
Annur, the barber, brought the news. In spite of the heat, he had
his melefa slung tightly around his shoulders. His toothless smile froze
into a grimace. He rubbed his long nose and his small eyes—lively
from curiosity and Laqbi—sparkled in his brown wrinkled face under
his bleached barbusch that had once been red. ‘So, so, one of light
skin’, my father said slowly, laying his knife and the bloody liver
beside the head of the ram on the bench in front of our hut. He
cleaned his hands on the blood spattered apron, which he had put on
over his burnouse, wiping the sweat off his brow with his arm. ‘A
travelling doctor?’
‘Not a Tabib’, Annur said and looked with the eye of an expert at
out ram. ‘He says that he is a man of learning, a sort of stargazer.’
‘Stargazer?’
The barber shrugged and snorted. ‘At any rate, he comes from
somewhere way down south, somewhere where there are not only
blacks. In former times, whites are said to have lived there.’ Annur
sniffed in disgust and spat on the freshly swept clay floor in front of
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our hut. My father looked at him sternly. ‘One thing is certain, he’s
an unbeliever’, he continued scornfully, without even noticing our
disapproval. ‘Were Hassan in power—pah—such so-called scholars
would have been forbidden entry into our town or would have had
their heads chopped off and nailed to the city gate as a warning to all.’
‘That is not the way to talk during our Easter celebration’, my
father reprimanded. ‘The
times of Hassan in which every light-
skinned man was stoned or hanged, whether he was a mutant or
not, are past—Allah be thanked. King Ahmed ben Brahim is a good
ruler. He gave me this fat ram as a present.‘
‘Truly a fine animal’, the barber had to admit with a touch of envy,
as he belonged to those who had enough money to buy their own
ram.
‘Where is the stranger, Annur?’, I asked curiously as I had never
seen a white adult before.
‘He’s staying in the caravansary and has been brought to the king’s
palace by the guards of the city.’ Then he turned to my father and
said, ‘According to a discreet, preliminary examination, he doesn’t
seem to be a mutant. When he comes out of the palace we will know
more.’ Then with a touch of doubt in his voice, he said, ‘Maybe, he is
really telling the truth—perhaps he does come from the south and not
from the countries of the dead in the north. We’ll know in time. One
thing is certain, he’s an unbeliever.’ This time my father caught him
with a reproachful look before he could spit on the floor. The barber
pressed his lips to a thin line and made do with repeating sharply,
‘One thing is certain!’
I ran in the direction of the caravansary in order to see the
mysterious stranger. The sun was bright in the yard. The first things
I saw were the saddles and packs near the stalls. Hazaz sat on a mat
made of palm leaves in the shade and was mending a camel saddle.
One would never have thought that such powerful hands could make
such adept and quick movements. He stuck holes in the worn leather
with an awl. He waved to me and rubbed his crocheted cotton Taqija
which he always kept on his shaven head.
Abarshi and Sliman, the most famous vagabonds in town, crouched
behind the packs of the stranger, pulled as if unintentionally on the
straps and buckles and blinked to emphasize their boredom into the
sun.
‘Hands off!’, Hazaz snarled without taking the tarred string from
between his teeth.
‘He’s a white devil’, Abarshi said as an excuse. ‘Who knows what
The Land of Osiris
89
kind of diseases he’s brought with him!’ One eye clouded with a
cataract stared accusingly at the dusty leather cases of the stranger as
if it hoped to divine their contents with some hidden power, while the
other eye glanced covetously around.
‘All the more reason to keep your hands off!’, Hazaz replied, pulling
the string through the holes and hammering it into place with the
wooden handle of the awl.
‘Beware of the beast that arrives from the north, says the prophet.
He is ill and carries with him slow invisible death’, Sliman proclaimed
with a dark frown, stroking his white beard which hung like plucked
cotton around his chin. He looked so wise that he seemed about to
turn into a marabout.
‘The prophet never said anything of the sort, you cunning bastard’,
Hazaz replied. ‘It was one of those drivelling preachers, who visit us
year after year, poisoning the souls of our people while draining the
last penny out of their pockets. Besides, the stranger doesn’t come
from the north, but from the south.’
‘The devil has many dwellings, says the prophet’, Sliman replied,
uneasily balancing the weight of his bleached blue turban on his
head. ‘Allah’s wrath will crush those who disobey his laws just as the
crocodile whip crushes the scorpion who raises its sting.’
‘Then take care, Sliman; if you don’t keep your poisonous tongue
still, you’ll be mistaken for a scorpion.’ Sliman fumed with rage and
crouched down beside Abarshi in the shade. The noise of the crickets
in the palm trees of the caravansary was like a persistent metallic
shriek. Somewhere, under the roof of the stalls, pigeons cooed and we
could hear the breathing of the stranger’s horses.
‘Beschir’, Hazaz asked, ‘have you done your good deed for the day
on this holiest of all days?’
I looked at him sceptically as I had no idea just what he was trying
to get at. ‘No’, I said hesitantly.
‘Then feed the horses. I have given them water.’
‘What’s his name?’, I asked.
‘Jack Freyman. He’s called Master Jack.’
I went into the kitchen and put on the tea. Then I gave the horses
millet and hay and brushed them down. Ticks had nested in their hide
and their legs were covered with leech wounds, like all the animals
coming from the humid hot south.
A clatter of hooves was heard and we rushed out to the yard. A
royal escort, the vizier himself, was accompanying the stranger. The
vizier rode at the stranger’s side under a canopy held by four slaves
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flanked by six cavalrymen of the king’s guard in full armour riding
horses with blue quilted armour, the slit toes of their curly pointed-
toed shoes hooked into the stirrups. The visors of their helmets
glittered in rivalry with the silver harnesses and the polished brass
plates at the heads and necks of the horses. They made a magnificent
sight.
I was disappointed by the stranger’s appearance. I had seen light-
skinned ones before, young eunuch slaves such as the barbarians
make of the healthy children of the refugees. But this man’s skin was
almost as dark as that of a Tuareg. He was of medium height and
strongly built. He looked more like a merchant from the west, with his
black turban which hid his hair and his black beard. However, when
he rode nearer and got down from his saddle I noticed that his eyes
were as blue as the waters of an oasis reflecting the midday sun.
The cavalrymen loosened their shoes from the stirrups, sprang
down from their horses and thrust their spears into the dust of the
caravansary. I recognized one of them called Chalilu. He lived not far
from us, but didn’t seem to recognize me and stared straight ahead.
Perspiration ran down his face from under his helmet, down on to the
thick cotton armour. His round face, instead of registering the
worthiness of his station, bore the expression of an imbecile.
Hazaz bowed before the Vizier, who took out an official document
and began to read it aloud.
‘By order of his majesty, the King, our Master, Jack Freyman
Effendi, travelling scholar from the far off country of Zimbabwe and
guest of our King is to receive a Bishari riding camel from his
Majesty’s herd as well as three pack animals of our best breed.
Further, to accompany him to Darfur to protect and to serve him,
he is to receive a guide familiar with the route and a camel herder.
These men will also receive the appropriate riding animals from the
King’s herd. Further, he shall receive the following provisions for
forty days from the stock of the caravansary: dates 40 pounds, millet
30 pounds, sugar 6 pounds, tea 5 pounds and salt 2 pounds. . .’
I looked the stranger over. He was wearing a white tunic such as is
worn in the south and unusually cut t
rousers of light grey cloth, held
up by a belt in which two knives were fastened, and falling over low
boots of shiny leather. On a shoulder strap, he carried a quiver of
short metal arrows. As he dismounted, he took a weapon from his
saddle horn. It looked like a cross between a short-barrelled gun and a
bow. I found out later that it was called a crossbow and that one could
shoot more accurately with it than with many a gun.
The Land of Osiris
91
As he turned his face towards me, I saw that his black beard was
greying on the cheeks and at the corners of his mouth. His face
seemed young. How old could he be? Forty or even older?
‘Master Jack Effendi?’, I said.
He hesitated and looked at me with a critical glance. ‘Yes?’, he
asked.
‘Give me your horse. I’ll look after it.’
He handed me the reins.
And so it happened that Hazaz was chosen by the King himself to
show Master Jack the way to the east and I, as I had often
accompanied Hazaz as his camel herder, was allowed to follow him
this time too. What a journey this would be! It would lead us through
the land of the dead to the very edge of the world—and Master Jack
beyond it.
Extracts from the Journal of Master Jack
March 29th, 2036
We have just reached Kotoko on Lake Chad. The brothers of Fort Sibut were right. It is mortal danger for a white man to let himself be seen north of the Niger River. However, it’s no different south of the Zambezi. But how one could hold it against the people? The white race has destroyed its own world—
brought itself to a spectacular end. The fact that they took countless other races to their deaths in the process and brought them unspeakable misery doesn’t interest these people in the least. Should I expect gratitude?
In spite of this, I meet people everywhere with whom one can talk quite
reasonably—chiefs, tribal princes, rulers—more sensible and wiser perhaps than the politicians and rulers of our race who were only capable of
presenting one another with an expensive cremation.
King Ahmed ben Brahim is about my age. He has a natural dignity—a sense
of humour—and is quick to understand. He asked me about my itinerary and
I showed him the way on my map from Mt Darwin to the north into the
former Zambia, down the Lualaba and the Congo, up the Ubangi and the
Tomi past the ruins of Dekoa and Fort Lamy and down the Shari—the great