White Death

by Robert Sheckley

  There were more sounds of steel on steel; I saw that we were surrounded. Men were above the trail, sheltered in the rocks, their rifles pointed downward. I looked around hastily for a place where I could take shelter, and I found nothing at all. We had been ambushed very neatly, at a spot in the mountains where no defense was possible.

  The silence seemed to stretch on for an impossibly long time. Neither Dain nor Chitai moved, and I stood equally still, waiting for a bullet to snuff out my life. The ambushers began moving cautiously toward us. I remembered old tales of Turkoman tortures. Then the silence was broken.

  The foremost ambusher said, in Turki: “It’s about time you got here.”

  “I had to go slowly,” Chitai said, “in order that these foreigners could keep their legs under them.”

  Very gravely, Chitai walked up to the ambushers. Then he turned, his rifle carelessly pointed at me. I stiffened and prepared to seize my own rifle, even though it was slung uselessly across my back.

  Then Chitai broke into raucous laughter. “These are my clansmen!” he shouted. “These are Dushaks who have come to aid us! Did they frighten you, my poor Achmed? By God, if you could see the look on your face!”

  Chitai fell to the ground and kicked his legs in the air, laughing as though he would burst. I contented myself with telling Dain that these assassins were apparently our friends, and that we had been the butt of a typical Turkoman joke. Obviously Chitai had gotten word to his kinsmen; and they, instead of coming forward and greeting us like any other group of men would have done, had preferred to have their ridiculous joke.

  By now the Dushak Turkomans had put away their rifles and were building a fire. Soon the smell of roast mutton began to rise, and goatskin and camelskin robes were flung down near the fire. The Turkomans were in an excellent humor, as they always are when they think they have made someone look ridiculous. I sat down near the fire and ate their greasy mutton stew. For the next two hours Chitai poked fun at me, and told, with endless repetitions, how my face had looked when I saw the first rifle, and how my hands had shaken, and how I had soiled my clothes, and other gross untruths. He was merely trying to get back at me for the discomfort he had felt in Meshed, so I paid no attention to him.

  At last he stopped, the campfire burned low, and we settled down for the night. Above me was the great arch of star-glittering sky, and the air was as clear as it can only be in High Asia. In spite of Chitai’s insults, my aching legs, and my knowledge of the perils ahead, I was content. I realized that I had stayed too long indoors, too long in the confinement of a city. I thought back to the war, and to my expeditions across the perilous length of Tartary. Those had been the happiest days of my life, and I was as happy now as then.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The next day we were under way again, and the Dushak Turkomans led us, by the most circuitous possible route, toward the hills beyond which lay Imam Baba. My happiness of the previous night vanished. I was sick to death of scrambling up and down sheer granite walls and negotiating rocky trails unfit for a goat. To be frank about it, I longed for Isfahan, a city of the plain. And I was extremely weary of the vain and swaggering Turkomans, who struck me as little more than overgrown and dressed-up children playing at being bandits. I know that it is all the custom now to speak of the virtues of these and other nomads, at the same time forcing them to give up their nomadic life and settle in villages; but to my way of thinking, enough good has already been said about them. God knows I have read and heard enough praise of these peoples, usually written by Englishmen, giving indiscriminate admiration to Turkomans, Kurds, Bedouin, Pathans, and a dozen other tribes who haven’t the wit to learn farming, whose idea of warfare is the ambush, whose concept of trade is theft, and whose sole culture consists in mispronouncing the Koran. To be sure, they may be brave and independent men; but so are the beggars of Isfahan, who refuse to give up their ancient and hereditary calling, no matter what the inducement.

  We came at last to a place high in the mountains from which we could overlook Imam Baba and the country to the northeast. We could hide securely in this place, Chitai told me, and wait for the Altai Tekkes to come northward for their monthly shipment of White Powder. When this happened, we would follow them to the source.

  I repeated this glib scheme to Dain, adding that the idea was suicidal.

  “How so?” Dain asked me.

  “The Altais must have considered such an elementary matter as being followed,” I said. “Past a doubt, they will have an ambush in preparation for us, and it will probably be successful.”

  “The Dushaks must have thought of that,” Dain said. “Ask Chitai about it.”

  Chitai said, “The Altais won’t set any ambush. For one thing, their pride is so swollen that they think no one dares follow them beyond Imam Baba. And for another thing, none of them would stay behind to man an ambush. Those who did would be cheated of their fair share of the powder, and the rest would consider it a good joke.”

  Dain nodded, and this ended the discussion. I thought the Dushaks were too hopeful; but I held my peace, since no one seemed likely to change his mind.

  We pitched camp and waited. For two days we waited, eating cold smoked mutton, as we didn’t dare light a fire. Men took turns watching the approaches to Imam Baba through Dain’s field glasses. At night, scouts went down nearly to the outskirts of the town, to make sure the Altais didn’t slip past. This was done with a thoroughness and tenacity quite surprising in Turkomans. Still, I should have realized that only the dream of revenge will make these people steadfast.

  The time dragged by. Dain began to learn a few words of Turki, and we discussed with Chitai what we would do in various eventualities. The days passed, and we lay in the camp eating cold mutton. I was bored nearly to death, my palate sickened by the food, my soul revolted by the incessant boasts of the tribesmen. To pass the time, I engaged in conversation with a Turkoman girl named Lera, the most attractive of the five or six women who accompanied the expedition. I learned that she was engaged to a large, scar-faced braggart named Aziz, but she seemed to consider this quite unimportant.

  We found some privacy on a flat ledge some hundred yards from the camp, and there we increased our knowledge of each other. Lera was young, but extremely willing; unfortunately she was also extremely unwashed, and her giggle began to annoy me. To be perfectly frank, I also feared catching some disease from her. Therefore I decided to maintain my abstinence, and to allow not the slightest intimacy to take place between us. Because of this, we were doing no more than conversing quietly when Aziz came upon us.

  This ugly brute fell into a violent rage upon the conjecture of his own vile imagination, convinced that I had done to Lera what he would have done to any woman, young or old, diseased or healthy, with whom he had been alone for three minutes. As a rule, one simply waits until a Turkoman finishes bellowing his wrath upon the air; but the spirit of mischief was upon me, and I told him that I would sooner take a pig for my sweetheart than touch his diseased darling. Hearing that, Lera burst into tears, and Aziz reached for his rifle.

  I grappled with him to prevent being murdered on the spot, and we rolled back and forth on the ledge trying to get a grip on each other’s throats. To make matters worse, Lera had managed to pick up a stone the size of a man’s head. She tottered back and forth with it like an overloaded mule, her eyes blazing and her hair streaming free, looking for a chance to brain me. Gripping Aziz closely, I rolled like a dervish. He, seeing his beloved with that huge rock clutched so insecurely, bellowed in fear of his own head and assisted me in rolling. At that moment, I came near to liking the man.

  With his gun belts clanking and his scabbard and rifle biting into his back, Aziz rolled with me; and Lera stalked us, her arms trembling, her hands slowly losing their grip on the boulder that seemed destined to crush us both. Still, I didn’t dare release Aziz, for I had left my own rifle in the camp. We might have rolled three times around the mountain peak, with Lera following like fate
itself, if Dain and several others had not heard the commotion and come to my rescue.

  I was pulled to my feet. Lera’s boulder was taken from her, and she burst into tears again. Aziz reached for his rifle again, perhaps by reflex, and was slapped in the face by the Khan of his clan, at which he began to sob. I started to dust off my clothing, when suddenly I was seized and shaken furiously.

  Dain had taken hold of me. His face was white and furious, and in his rage he lifted me clear off the ground—to the amusement of the witnessing Turkomans. Then he proceeded to roar at me in a voice of brass, his eyes slitted like a serpent’s. Without permitting me a chance to explain my side of the matter, he harangued me on my stupidity and uncontrollable lust, commanded me to leave the Turkoman women alone, and threatened to discharge me immediately if I caused any further trouble. And then he called me a number of hard names, some of them in his recently acquired Turki. All of this was accompanied by the loud and unnatural laughter of the Turkomans. Finally he shook me once more for good measure and released me.

  It was in my mind to take him at his word, abandon this ridiculous expedition, and return to Isfahan. But I decided against it. Whether he knew it or not, Dain needed me; ten words of Turki do not suffice to draw up a battle plan. Also, I suspected that he had mistreated me simply as a show for the Turkomans, to transform their wrath into laughter. And finally, much as Dain needed me, I needed his American dollars. But still, I was somewhat ashamed of his undignified behavior.

  This ended the incident. True to Dain’s admonition, I determined to leave Lera and her cowlike sisters alone—something which I found no difficulty in doing. Aziz and I later became something like friends. At the campfire he told me that he had been more frightened of Lera’s boulder than he would have been of a dozen armed men. And late in the night he offered to procure a woman for me at a modest price, an offer I declined with thanks.

  Before dawn, our pickets crept back and said they had spotted a large body of armed men riding toward Imam Baba from the south. And at first light we were able to see them. They were Altais. Even at a distance we could see that prosperity had brought them fine horses and new rifles. Some of them even carried automatic weapons. There were perhaps fifty of them, and twenty Sarts were with them.

  The Sarts turned off into Imam Baba. The Altais continued at a leisurely pace around the town and into the mountains. We saddled up and set out in silent pursuit, keeping a mile or so back. Our guns, cartridge belts, and any other metal objects were covered to avoid reflection, and even the horses’ hooves were muffled.

  The Altais hadn’t bothered with such precautions. We followed them easily by the flashes of light from their weapons. Any noise we made was drowned in the clatter of their horses’ hooves. Today, however, our Dushaks weren’t boasting of the great deeds they would do. We numbered fifteen fighting men against the Altais’ fifty-odd; and our bolt-action rifles seemed very puny against the Altais’ carbines and automatic weapons. And now, as we rode into the mountains on the Afghanistan border, some of us began to worry in earnest about the possibility of ambush.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Despite the roughness of the country, we had no real trouble tracking the Altais. They became overconfident as soon as they entered the mountains beyond Imam Baba; the clash of arms and the faint babel of voices could be heard throughout the silent countryside. As far as secrecy was concerned, they might have been driving a herd of belled camels, with kettledrums as cargo. Nor was their security enhanced by their practice of shooting at whatever game passed their way. Still, this was very natural behavior for a party of Turkoman raiders; they considered themselves hawks, and they never gave a thought to what might be hovering in the eye of the sun waiting to fall on them.

  On the second day, we reached our destination. Far ahead of us, the sounds of the Altais had ceased. Very quietly we crept forward until we could peer between the crags into the next valley. And then we looked down on as strange and incongruous a sight as I have ever witnessed.

  In an area of rough mountain and scrub, of steep-sided ravines and narrow gorges, without roads except for an occasional horse-path, more than a hundred miles from a city of any size, among virgin stands of spruce and pine, situated on a small meadow with a stream flowing nearby, we beheld—a factory.

  We blinked, and rubbed our eyes, but it was no mirage. There it was, a mile ahead and a thousand yards below, a square, ugly, modern little factory with smokestacks. It was as startling as though a mosque had been lifted bodily from Teheran and dropped in the middle of the Salt Desert.

  Through field glasses we could see the last of the Altais disappearing into the factory. Above, on the walls, there were machine-gun emplacements. The place was constructed like a fortress, and was completely hidden until you stumbled upon it.

  After observing for a while, Dain asked me: “What country are we in now?” I didn’t know, and asked the Khan of the Dushaks. He said that the borders were uncertain in this tangle of mountains where three countries met. We might still be in Iran, or perhaps we were far enough east to be in Afghanistan, or far enough north to be in the Turkmen Republic. Strangely enough, Dain seemed to find this answer quite satisfactory.

  “Then there is nothing to show what country owns this factory?” he asked the Khan.

  “Nothing at all,” the Khan replied. His name was Norotai, and he was a very tall old man with the narrowest eyes I have ever seen. “I myself have seen survey maps, and their lines become very uncertain here.”

  “That’s fine,” Dain said. “Then no country will complain if we destroy the factory.”

  Norotai blinked twice, pulled at his mustache, and looked down at the little factory. Chitai, standing beside him, said, “Nobody will complain about the destruction of the factory—or the destruction of us.”

  “Are you afraid to attack a single isolated building?” Dain asked.

  “They have machine guns,” the Khan said.

  “You have secrecy, and soon you’ll have the cover of darkness.”

  “We aren’t afraid to fight,” the Khan said. “Not even against machine guns. But our quarrel is with the Altais, not with the factory. We should stay here and prepare an ambush for the Altais.”

  The other Dushaks chorused their agreement, but Dain laughed at the idea.

  “Suppose you kill twenty or thirty Altais?” he asked. “Don’t they have kinsmen in Afghanistan and the Turkmen Republic? Don’t they have more kinsmen than you?”

  “They do,” Norotai said. “That’s why killing twenty or thirty would make a difference.”

  “The greatest difference,” Dain said, “would be if you destroyed the factory.”

  The Khan shrugged and turned away. Dain said, “Listen, the factory is the Altai’s source of wealth. Because of the factory and heroin trade, they are able to buy automatic weapons, to send for more of their tribesmen, and to hire Sarts and Kurds to help them. But without the factory—what have they got?”

  This was a good point, and the Dushaks argued it among themselves. Pride forbade any man from accepting his neighbor’s opinion, and it seemed as if we would never reach any agreement. Then the Khan put into words what many of the others were probably thinking.

  “If we kill enough Altais,” Norotai said, “perhaps we can take over the White Powder trade, and grow rich!”

  This struck a very responsive chord among his followers. The Dushaks were quiet as they thought of the riches to be had from the trade. In a moment, several of them were looking at Dain and me, with obvious intentions. As a preliminary to taking over the trade, quite naturally they had to cut our throats. In that way the secret of the factory would be preserved; then the only step remaining would be a successful ambush of the Altais.

  I stepped back to put granite behind me, and at the same time a few of the Dushaks began to fondle their rifles.

  “Not with guns!” the Khan called out.

  “Not with knives, either,” Dain said after I had translated for him.
“Do you really think it is so simple, Khan?”

  “It may not be simple,” the Khan said, “but it is clear where our advantage lies.”

  Dain laughed, affecting to despise the Khan’s treachery. “The secret of the factory!” he said in a mocking voice. “How secret do you suppose this secret is? Do you think I went into these mountains in search of deer?”

  “You wanted to follow the Altais,” the Khan said.

  “Yes,” Dain said, as patiently as though he were explaining to a child. “But why did I want to follow the Altais? Why didn’t I have the Iranian police arrest them at Imam Baba? Because I wanted to find the source of the White Powder. And, since heroin is a manufactured substance, I expected to find a factory.”

  “You expected it?” the Khan asked.

  “Of course,” Dain said. “The heroin had to be made somewhere. My superiors thought so, too. That’s why they approved my plan of going northeast with the Dushaks, past Imam Baba into the mountains.”

  The Turkomans didn’t need to have matters explained any further. The approximate location of the factory was known, and Dain’s association with the Dushaks was also known. If anything happened to Dain, the Dushaks would find themselves at war with the Iranian police as well as with the Altai. Of course, they suspected that Dain might be lying about his convenient foreknowledge; I myself had my suspicions. But the Dushaks couldn’t be certain, and to make a mistake about this would mean their destruction. Dain added a few more convincing details, reasoning backward from the fact; and the Dushaks decided to be convinced.

  Next, Dain had to give arguments in favor of destroying the factory. But this wasn’t hard to do. The factory was the Altai’s source of wealth; and equally important, it was something the Dushaks couldn’t have and therefore wished to destroy. Dain merely had to tell them how clever and brave they were, and how easy the destruction of the factory would be in spite of the machine guns. They were intoxicated by his words, and we all sat down in the best of spirits to work out a plan of attack.