White Death

by Robert Sheckley

  We continued to march, although we were stumbling with fatigue. By dawn we were out of the high mountains and safe from any surprise attack. But Norotai forced us to keep moving until we were within sight of Imam Baba, on a high point of hillside where we could see for a mile on any side. Then finally we made camp, treated the wounded, and wept for our dead.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Turkomans do not like to think about defeat; it depresses them. For that reason, our disastrous ambush in the mountains was soon transformed into a strategic victory, and our final desperate breakthrough was seen as a glorious culmination of the Dushak Turkomans’ native cunning and courage. This was what Chitai told me a day later as we rode into Imam Baba, and it was what all the Dushaks believed. The fact that they had lost more than a third of their force was simply shrugged off in the glorious light of their accomplishments. After all, Chitai pointed out, they had utterly demolished the factory which was the Altai’s source of wealth; and they were now safe in Imam Baba ahead of the Altais, thereby preventing them from delivering the White Powder.

  But sadly, we found that the last was not true. Townsmen told us that a party of ten Altai Turkomans had passed through Imam Baba the previous day, stopping only to hire horses. They had departed in a southwesterly direction, toward Turbat-i-Shaikk Jam.

  Dain questioned the horsedealer closely, rewarding him for prompt answers. We learned that they were part of the same group that came out of the mountains every month or so. As usual, they had been armed, and had carried small, plump leather bags.

  From this and other information, we deduced that they were an advance party of the Altais, sent out ahead of the main group and entrusted with the heroin. Evidently they hadn’t even known about the battle in the mountains, and had proceeded to go about their business as usual. They were a full day ahead of us, and they had horses. Nevertheless, Dain was determined to overtake them.

  In a frantic hurry we tried to hire transportation. No horses were available, since the Turkomans had taken all the worthwhile mounts. We were reduced finally to bargaining for the use of an ancient Mercedes motorcar, the property of a local landowner. The car looked as unreliable as its owner, a shriveled-up, narrow-eyed little man. We bargained for an hour with this avaricious monster, and he steadfastly refused to rent his car at any price. Instead, he wanted to sell it. Judging correctly our urgent need and our lack of time, he pitched his price high and brought it down slowly. Given another two hours, I could have reduced it by half; but Dain told me to buy, and buy I did, at a price sufficient to ship a new Mercedes to the North Pole and back. But we had the last laugh, for Dain gave him a note on the government instead of cash, and the old miser knew he could wait until doomsday if he expected Teheran to honor it.

  Now we were ready to start, and we asked the Dushaks to accompany us. But Norotai said that their business with the Altais was finished, and that the small group ahead was no concern of theirs. He and his people were in a hurry to cross the border into Afghanistan and sell their machine guns; and also, I suspect, to put distance between them and the thirty or so Altais still in the mountains.

  Not even Chitai would go with us. However, he said that he would keep a watch for any valuable information, and if he discovered anything, he would join us. So Dain paid off the Turkomans—in money, not promissory notes—and we started off alone, just as we had begun.

  Soon we were outside Imam Baba, moving at a good speed through the Khurasan foothills. I was driving, and I soon found that our Mercedes had one or two minor defects, such as no brakes. I was able to overcome this difficulty by shifting down at the proper time, cleverly meshing the gears with the skill of a racing-car driver. There was also something wrong with the steering. It required a tremendous amount of twisting before the steering wheel took hold; and when it did, the entire front end of the car shook and trembled. In spite of this, the car had excellent acceleration, which I used to the utmost.

  Once or twice Dain asked me to slow down; but I explained that the car’s defects could only be overcome by acceleration and rapid shifting. Dain told me to stop explaining and to keep my eyes on the road. He suggested that he drive, but I refused, explaining that I wanted to accustom myself to this type of automobile. Thereafter, Dain was silent. I thought he would complain when a horse-drawn wagon lurched stupidly into my path, forcing me to veer like a madman, shift upward, and apply acceleration to the utmost. But he didn’t say a word. He sat beside me with his eyes closed and a look of fatalistic resignation on his face, which is quite unusual with Americans.

  On the outskirts of Turbat, our Mercedes suddenly blew off its radiator cap, and then, like a coquettish maiden, divested itself of the fan belt. I managed to halt the automobile by first shifting to the lowest gear, then scraping along the side of a farmer’s shed. We examined the car, and found that aside from the other damage, the gears had become mostly stripped and the front wheels had nearly shaken themselves free of the body.

  This ended our association with the car. Since it was capable of repair, Dain deeded it back to its original owner, and left money with the police for the car’s use. This was pure generosity on his part, as we had bought the car with a legal government note.

  We questioned the inhabitants of Turbat, and found that we had gained nearly half a day on the Turkomans. They had departed less than six hours before, heading due west toward Sultanabad. We were very close; but once again we had no means of transportation.

  We lost valuable time in Turbat-i-Shaikh Jam aruging with the Chief of Police. This man was as obstructive as his colleague in Imam Baba had been helpful. He gave us no cooperation, looked at our papers with suspicion, and finally decided that we were Russian spies. We begged this ridiculous man to telephone Teheran or Meshed, but he refused, saying that his superiors expected him to make his own decisions. Then he grew angry and abusive, and we told him what the high officials of Teheran would do to him when they heard how he had treated us. Some notion of fear must have penetrated the layers of bone and fat that surrounded his tiny brain, for at last he consented to call Teheran.

  And now another hour passed while the Chief of Police clicked and joggled his telephone, bellowed requests and orders into it, was connected with the wrong government office, got the right office but lost the connection, and at last regained the right office.

  The instructions from Teheran must have been emphatic, for the Chief of Police grew extremely anxious to help us. He offered his own car, but one look told us that it would last no better than the Mercedes. This was an impasse, for nowhere in Turbat was there any other transport, except for a few tiny donkeys. I began to lose hope; then suddenly our problem was solved for us.

  From the east there appeared a large, very new diesel truck. The Chief of Police ordered it to stop, and we found that it belonged to a Swedish construction company working on a dam across the Kashaf River.

  “What is the matter?” the driver asked. He was a tall, bony, light-haired Swede, and he addressed us in German.

  “A beautiful vehicle!” the Chief of Police cried. “Gentlemen, will this vehicle suit you?”

  “What the hell is up?” the Swede cried in French.

  “This will suit us fine,” Dain said.

  “Then take it with my compliments,” the Police Chief said, bowing deeply.

  “What is it?” the Swede roared in Spanish. “What do you want?”

  Dain explained the situation to him in French. The Swede pounded his freckled fist against his truck’s gleaming red fender and said that he was a civilian employee working on a government project under the instructions of a neutral country, and he could not allow us to commandeer his truck. When this was translated, the Police Chief drew a huge machine pistol from his belt and waved it in a menacing manner. The Swede frowned and took a large wrench from the floorboards. The Police Chief backed away, screaming orders and fumbling with the safety catch of his gun.

  I calmed him down while Dain talked to the Swede. Dain’s ex
planations must have been satisfactory, for the Swede thrust his wrench back onto the floorboards, thought for a moment with his lower lip jutting out, and then declared that he didn’t really mind being commandeered. As a matter of fact, he told us, it might be fun. He asked Dain to explain everything to his company, and this Dain promised to do. So we climbed into the cab, waved good-bye to the Chief of Police, and turned down the road to Sultanabad.

  The bony Swede turned out to be master of his huge machine, which was necessary on the dubious highway to Sultanabad. The road twisted and writhed like an agonized snake, coiling around steep rock pinnacles, straightening along the edges of deep-cut wadis, then plunging precipitously into shallow gorges and dried-up river beds. A few miserable weeds struggled for existence along the edge of the road, and once we saw a farm, planted with more optimism than sense, slowly dying in the fiery sun. We were on the edge of the Dasht-i-Kavir, the great northern salt desert. Nothing but weeds and lizards could flourish here, and for another hundred miles nothing at all would grow.

  Our driver, whose name was Hansen, was a serious-minded person with a habitual frown and the stern air of a man engaged in important business. His somber blue eyes and jutting lip showed that he would stand for no nonsense; he was on the side of common sense, and strongly opposed to any sort of romantic foolishness. Yet here he was, thousands of miles from his native land, driving a truck in the Dasht-i-Kavir. He was a European type I have often seen in Asia: an embarrassed romantic.

  I believe that men like Hansen are driven by some unaccountable impulse to leave their good gray homelands and live under bluer skies and a hotter sun, among brown- or black-skinned people, And this would be all very well; but many of these men, having been raised in an atmosphere of bourgeois morality, strict utilitarianism, and common sense, cannot accept the terrible simplicity of their desires. Therefore they hide their naked dreams from the world, and from themselves. They speak matter-of-factly about the excellent pay, which furnishes them with an unassailable motive; and they complain of the filth of Asiatic cities, the bad food, and the boredom. They tell you how good it will be when they can go Home. But of course, embarrassed romantics like Hansen never go Home. They continue to drift, for one excellent reason or another, through the sun-blasted scenery of their fantasies.

  This, in any case, was my theory. Hansen’s behavior seemed to bear it out, for he had been eager at first to join us, and now he was having second thoughts about the propriety of the whole thing.

  He asked about our work, but Dain would only tell him that we were conducting a criminal investigation in cooperation with the Iranian government. Further questions drew nothing more enlightening, and Hansen was obviously unsatisfied. Having been commandeered, he also wished to be enlightened. And since Dain’s answers were too vague, he proceeded to invent his own explanations.

  “Well, well,” he said, “it’s obvious enough. You are of the Central Intelligence Agency. Correct?”

  “No,” Dain said. “I have no connection with them.”

  “Of course you would say that,” Hansen said. “Secrecy is of the essence, correct? But secrecy also reveals what it hides.”

  “Does it?” Dain asked.

  “Of course it does! I suppose your business has something to do with Russia, of course. You CIA men are always concerned with Russia. Perhaps you want to find out about missile sites in Central Asia, or start a revolt in the Turkmen Republic. Am I getting close?”

  “No,” Dain said.

  “I believe I am,” Hansen said. “Perhaps you don’t know it, but a large part of the world deplores such provocative activities. The U-2, the invasion of Cuba … When are you going to stop such things? You will involve all of us in a thermonuclear war yet. And who will be the winner then? Who, please tell me?”

  Dain sighed heavily. The Swede said, “Please don’t misunderstand me. Although neutral, I am oriented toward the West, but I have no quarrel with the Russians. That is understandable, is it not?”

  “Yes,” Dain said.

  “Then why do you insist upon continuing with these dangerous tactics?”

  Dain closed his eyes, then opened them and said, “Policy.”

  “Policy?”

  “Certainly,” Dain said, his voice suspiciously mild. “Given the current international situation, I don’t see how we can do anything else. We can only hope that the results will justify the risks.”

  “Then you are of the Central Intelligence Agency!” Hansen cried in triumph. “And you are here to spy and to stir dissent!”

  “Not in Iran,” Dain said firmly.

  “Of course not. But in the Turkmen Republic …”

  “The place is ripe for a revolution,” Dain said.

  “Indeed?”

  “Any well-informed man knows that. I won’t be revealing any secrets by reminding you of the revolt last month in the Tadzhik Republic. You’ve probably read about it in the papers. Less well known but noted in reliable international journals, is the recent uprising in Sinkiang, and the crop failures in the Kirgiz Republic. Remember also the recent upsurge of the Mongol People’s Autonomy Movement in the Western Gobi, as well as the increase in Turkic pastoral nomadism on either side of the Tien Shan Mountains. Put it all together and what have you got?”

  “What?”

  “A perfect opportunity to fan a revolt throughout Central Asia,” Dain said portentously.

  Hansen frowned and bit his lip. “A revolt … But this could start a general thermonuclear war.”

  “Oh, we don’t think so,” Dain said carelessly.

  “But you can’t be sure!”

  “Can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs,” Dain said with an insane cackle. “Besides, if an escaladed war seems imminent, we can always make a few concessions to the Russians.”

  “What concessions could you possibly give them?” Hansen asked.

  “Well, I’m not free to reveal that,” Dain said. “Official secrets, you know. But I suppose you’ve read Clausewitz.”

  “No, what does he say?”

  Dain giggled and said, “Clausewitz defines a neutral state as a country you can cede to an enemy without embarrassment.”

  “How monstrous!” Hansen said. “But I think your allies would have something to say about that.”

  “I suppose they would,” Dain said. “If we allowed them.”

  This brought a short silence. Then the Swede said, “I cannot believe that you would be guilty of such cynicism. To silence your own allies—”

  “An ally,” Dain said, “is comparable to a front-line soldier. His value lies in his expendability. Anyhow, in a few years we won’t need our present allies.”

  “Why not?”

  “I can’t tell you,” Dain said. “I can only remind you of the proven fact that the planet Mars is capable of supporting intelligent life”

  Hansen gaped. Then he realized that he had been duped, and he broke into a fury of curses. After his rage subsided, he drove for a while in grim-faced silence. At last a sheepish grin appeared on his face, and he told Dain that it was an “amusing joke. So we were all in good spirits when we rode into Sultanabad and found that we had overtaken the Altai Turkomans at last.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  They were lounging at their ease in the best coffee house in Sultanabad—five yellow-faced Turkomans without a care in the world. Piled high in front of them were platters of spicy oiled beef, an expensive luxury of the town. Their saddlebags were gone, and they jeered when we asked them about the White Powder.

  Luckily, the townspeople came to our aid. They had no love for the swaggering Turkomans, and they told us that the Altais had sold their saddlebags for silver on the edge of town. The purchasers had been Arabs, five tall men armed with rifles and revolvers.

  No one could agree on what kind of Arabs they had been. Some said they were from southern Iran, others insisted that they came from Iraq, and a few thought they were Saudis. But everyone agreed that their jeep had been I eq
uipped with special tires for crossing sand, and with many extra cans of water and gasoline. They had come the previous night in a very fine new jeep, from Turbat-i-Haidari or somewhere else to the north. They had taken the saddle-bags and driven off to the south, toward Tabbas in the Dasht-i-Kavir desert.

  We had uncovered one more section of the long heroin route. It had started beyond the Kopet Mountains and twisted its way through Khurasan. Now we knew that it turned southwest across the Dasht-i-Kavir. This was an important discovery, but I was not pleased about it. I had expected the smugglers to go due south into Baluchistan, or west through the Elburz Mountains. Their choice of the desert road put the affair in a very different perspective.

  Dain wanted to set out at once in pursuit, but Hansen refused to go any further. He was afraid for his truck in the rough country ahead.

  Dain turned to me. “Achmed, what do you say? Can a truck get through?”

  “I suppose there is a slight chance,” I said. “But I don’t think we should risk it.”

  “What else can we do?”

  “Drive to Meshed and take an airplane over the desert to Yezd, where we may hope to intercept the Arabs.”

  “How do we know they’ll even pass through Yezd?” Dain asked.

  “We don’t. They might turn off to the south. But Yezd offers our best chance.”

  “It’s not good enough,” Dain said. “We’re only about six hours behind them, we know what road they’re on, and we have a good vehicle. Our best course is to keep after them.”

  I shook my head. “I am sorry, Mr. Dain, but I am not going with you into the desert. You don’t know the country ahead, but I do; and I have a simple, childish desire to stay alive.”