The Abrupt Physics of Dying

by Paul E. Hardisty

  Clay was jolted awake by the sound of voices. At first the muffled pulses of sound were woven into the tapestry of a nightmare, an accompaniment to doubt. But slowly the thread frayed out through the cinder-block filter of walls and doors, and he sat up, knowing that it was her voice, and hers alone, a hushed monologue from the far bedroom. Hussein was asleep in the chair, his head hung to one side. The stranger, too, was asleep, slumped against the wall, breathing deeply. Clay looked out into the dark void of the kitchen.

  A faint light showed under Rania’s bedroom door. He stepped across the tile. Her voice rose again, subsided. He could not make out words, just tones, changing pitch and cadence, now urgency, then silence. Was she dreaming like he had been, talking in her sleep? For a long time he stood outside her door, listening for a reprise, unsure of what to do. Ever since the confrontation with Hussein, he had wanted to talk to her, to explain his actions, but she had rebuffed his attempts at conversation and had retired early, claiming fatigue. He put his ear to the door. Still nothing. He was about to go back to his room when he heard it again, the soft murmur of her voice. He knocked on the door.

  ‘Rania,’ he whispered. He tried the door but it was locked from the inside. The sound must have woken her because she abruptly stopped talking. There was a scrape, like a chair being pushed over tile, the light went out, then silence. And that was all.

  They left before dawn under a cloudless star-lit sky and struck north. They crossed broad gravel washes devoid of vegetation, emerging occasionally onto higher ground where low scrub thorn acacia grew thick in the brown silt, dropping again into wide sunburned swales, the rounded boulders blushing in the low-angle morning light. The vehicle rattled and lurched over the cobble, suspension groaning, the seatbelt strap digging into his clavicle, the car shuddering so that it felt as if his teeth would shake free of their sockets.

  Hussein was in the back seat, hands bound, hobbled about the ankles, the stranger beside him, looking distinctly unconcerned, as if they were on a sightseeing trip. Rania was in the front passenger seat, fully covered, black and silent, brooding.

  By the time they reached the remains of the Queen’s Highway, the sun was directly overhead. Frayed and covered over with drifts of sand, the hand-laid flint and cobble track had been built centuries ago for the spice caravans that once trudged this relic line along the base of the escarpment bound for Oman.

  The stranger tapped Clay on the shoulder. ‘Stop, please.’

  Clay brought the vehicle to a halt under the sparse shade of a lone acacia rooted into the bank of a gravel wash just beyond the track. The escarpment shimmered white in the distance, floating on a river of haze.

  The stranger opened his door and stepped down to the ground. From a green polyethylene bag he produced a woven prayer mat. He looked at Clay.

  ‘Five minutes,’ he said, stepping down from the vehicle and clambering up the bank and out of sight.

  Clay turned off the engine, opened the car door and stepped out onto the baking ground. He took a long swig from his water bottle and looked out across the mirage. Abdulkader was out there, somewhere amongst those cliffs and gorges.

  The stranger returned, climbed into the car next to Hussein. ‘You do not pray to Allah,’ he said.

  ‘I probably should,’ said Clay.

  ‘You will burn.’

  He looked over at Rania, veiled beside him. ‘I expect so, yes.’

  By dusk they were travelling east, skirting the base of the bluffs, bumping along a single-lane gravel track. They had not seen a soul since leaving the main road. Soon it would be dark. After a while the stranger directed Clay to turn north. They followed a small wadi that narrowed down into a steep canyon cut into the cliffs. The Pajero lurched and scraped over the cobbles. The track ascended and then vanished altogether. Soon they were entirely in shadow, the cliffs looming above. Clay stopped the car.

  ‘Wait here tonight,’ said the stranger, slinging his Kalashnikov.

  ‘Where are you going?’ asked Clay.

  ‘Wait here.’

  They watched the stranger move off down the wadi. Within a few minutes he had vanished into the landscape.

  They set up a makeshift camp in a small clutch of acacia at the base of a spur in the bluff. Clay made a fire. They ate a meal of bread and boiled eggs, untying Hussein’s hands briefly so he could eat. They rolled out blankets in a loose semi-circle around the fire. Clay found a patch of sand near the gnarled roots of the largest tree and lay on his back. Orange firelight trembled through the branches and then died away into glowing coals. The first stars appeared. Darkness enveloped them and it was as if they were alone in the universe, and even the planets they could not see were barren of life.

  He opened his eyes. Stars, the dark-bladed phyllodes of an acacia. Yemen. Voices. Clay jumped to his feet, handgun drawn. From the darkness beyond, a voice called out in Arabic. Clay stood in the darkness, the Beretta clutched in his hand. Rania was awake, back in the shadows with Hussein.

  Three men emerged into the dim orange glow of the coals, tribesmen, all armed. Clay slid the Beretta into his waistband, raised his hand in greeting, signalled them come closer, sit. He threw a handful of twigs on the fire. Flames leapt up into the night, illuminating the faces of the men who now squatted on their haunches before him, the leader, older, flanked by two heavily armed, fierce-looking mountain tribesmen.

  The leader glared at Clay, his left eye socket a blind weeping distress, the result of some botched local surgery, his hennaed beard thin and grey in the roots. It was the old guy from the roadside, the one who’d hijacked them. For a long moment he said nothing, just stood staring intently at Clay, his half-gaze fixed on Clay’s right eye as if by force of will he could pluck out what he had lost and graft it to himself, right the wrong.

  ‘You have the truth, nazrani?’ he said finally. A nazrani, a follower of Jesus of Nazareth – a prophet yes, but not the Son of God – conspicuously destined for hell.

  Clay blinked slowly for yes. ‘And something else.’

  Clay offered them bread and water. The men spoke for a long time amongst themselves, Hussein clearly the focus of the discussion. Occasionally one of the tribesmen would glance over at Clay. He could make out enough of the clipped dialect to sense the direction of the conversation.

  Then the old guy looked at Clay and said: ‘Your company takes the oil, nazrani, but we get nothing.’ The old man shifted his feet and put his Kalashnikov across his knees.

  ‘I am not with Petro-Tex now.’

  ‘You give money to the mashayikh.’

  ‘A lot of bloody good it’ll do him now,’ Clay said under his breath, in Afrikaans.

  Rania had moved to his side, her blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She was unveiled.

  ‘You give money,’ said one of the younger men in English, holding out his hand. He was tall and lanky with a ravaged gravel-pit complexion.

  Clay looked over at Rania and back at the men. ‘No money,’ he said opening his arms palms-up.

  The tall one with the ravaged skin pointed his rifle at Clay’s chest. The muzzle was only inches from his solar plexus. ‘Money,’ he shouted again.

  ‘Stand,’ barked the old guy in Arabic.

  Clay stood, opened his hands out at his sides.

  ‘Gun,’ said the old man, pointing to Clay’s midsection.

  Clay pulled the Beretta from his waistband and dropped it to the ground. ‘We’re trying to help,’ said Clay

  ‘We do not need your help, molhed khawga,’ said the man with the scar. Godless foreigner. True on both accounts, thought Clay.

  Another surge of Arabic, rapid, angry syllables. The old man raised his hand. For a moment it looked as if he was about to turn away and melt back into the night. But then he levelled his weapon at Clay. The other two men did the same. Three high-powered assault rifles aimed at his torso, point blank.

  Hussein spoke an oath to the Prophet and God.

  The old man looked towards Hussein,
sitting hobbled and tied at the edge of the firelight. ‘Who is this, nazrani?’

  ‘He is PSO,’ said Clay. ‘We bring him for Al Shams.’

  The men murmured amongst themselves. The tall one grew increasingly agitated. He pointed at Hussein, talking rapidly in Arabic, his voice rising.

  ‘No,’ said Rania in Arabic. La. She spoke quickly. Clay could not keep up. The men stopped, looked at this woman who dared speak.

  ‘What is it, Rania?’

  ‘This man’s son was murdered by the PSO six months ago. He wants to take Hussein.’

  The old man spat on the ground.

  ‘No,’ said Clay. ‘He could be valuable to Al Shams.’ He spoke quickly, knowing that Rania would have to translate. He needed time to think.

  The old man barked a command. The younger tribesman grabbed Hussein by the arm and hauled him forward. Hussein said nothing.

  ‘Please,’ said Clay, moving towards Hussein. There had been enough killing.

  The other man, the one who had not spoken, motioned to Clay with the muzzle of his weapon, jerking it up and down. His eyes were lambent and cold. Clay backed away. The Beretta was there on the ground, useless.

  Clay planted his feet. ‘This man is my responsibility,’ he shouted, parade ground. ‘I have an agreement with Al Shams. Take us to him, verify what I have said.’

  The tribesmen stopped for a moment, surprised by his outburst. Clay’s voice echoed from the canyon walls and died away. Then the old man signalled with a tilt of his head and Hussein was shuffled into the darkness at gunpoint.

  ‘Yallah,’ said the old man. Let’s go.

  Clay and Rania started down a darkened footpath into the wadi.

  A few minutes later a single gunshot pierced the night.

  Killer Hypothesis

  They walked through the night, trudging over the rocky, barren ground. By the stars, they were heading north, up-wadi, into the buried heart of the uplands. After some hours they reached a place in the wadi where the canyon narrowed and scaled near vertical above them. A chaos of smashed and broken rock choked the wadi floor. Here, within this settled avalanche, they were separated.

  It happened suddenly, quietly. One moment they were walking along in starlight, Rania ahead with the old tribesman behind, Clay a way back, the young gunman behind him, and next she was moving off through the rock, almost invisible in the flowing black burqa, the old tribesman shunting her off onto a different track. As soon as he realised what was happening, Clay stopped and turned, tried to move back to the place where Rania and her minder had peeled off. He called her name, but she kept going. The muzzle of an AK47 stabbed him in the abdomen. In that silver-blue light that comes just before the moon sets, he saw the young tribesman narrow his eyes, tighten his grip on the weapon. Clay was much bigger, could easily have overpowered him. But there was no margin. Too slow and the bullet would rip through his lower intestines at the speed of sound, keep going for another three hundred metres. Clay stood, watching Rania disappear.

  ‘Yallah,’ the young tribesman said, pushing the weapon’s muzzle harder into him.

  Clay raised his hands, backed away, looked the man in the eyes and said in Afrikaans: ‘You touch her, any part of her, my brother, and you and your friends will be in paradise sooner than planned.’

  The gunman muttered something in Arabic that Clay could not make out, pointed along the track with his weapon. Clay walked. A few minutes later they reached a low stone hut built into the rocks. A door was opened and he was flung inside. The door slammed shut. He heard the sound of grating metal, a steel bar sliding across the planking. He stood in the darkness and listened for a while to the men talking outside, and then he sat on the floor and closed his eyes. Ten years ago he would have continued clawing at the walls, trying to find a way out. But now he would be patient. Al Shams needed him, needed Rania. He would wait.

  He must be getting old.

  The morning broke clear and hot after a night of broken sleep. Clay rolled over on the dirt floor, shoulders stiff and aching, sat up back against the wall. He stood, walked to the hut’s wood-plank door and peered out the gap between mud brick and door frame. The hamlet was set into a clough in the canyon wall where the overlying marls and siltstones sloughed onto the limestone beneath. A dozen buildings were set amongst the boulders as if they had grown from the rock itself. Except for the occasional wisp of smoke from a cooking fire threading up into the blue sky, the place was almost invisible, indistinguishable from its surroundings.

  The door opened and the old man with the hennaed beard, the one who had ordered Hussein to his death, who’d led Rania away, motioned Clay to come out into the glare of day. A small boy stood at his side. He could have been no older than Mohamed. ‘My grandson,’ said the old man in Arabic.

  Clay glared at the old man. Hussein may have been PSO, but he had not deserved such an end, walked off into the night bound hand and foot and brutally shot. And Rania. Jesus Christ Almighty. His stomach felt like bruised cartilage. ‘Where is the woman?’ he said.

  ‘Safe.’

  She had better be. He said nothing.

  The old man led them along a narrow footpath that wound its way around massive limestone boulders and past low-slung stone dwellings, the ancient log roof joists sagging under sheets of black tiled slate and blocks of grey mudstone. With each step, puffs of white powder rose from the path until his boots and trousers were covered. As they moved through the village, a small crowd gathered, boys and young men, most armed, following them silently. After a few minutes, the old man stopped and motioned him come forward. Clay stood in a small clearing in the base of the wadi, surrounded by ancient twisted cedar and scrub camelthorn. In the centre of the clearing was a low stone well.

  Clay looked down into the mouth of the well. He could not see the water. The young boy, the grandson, dropped a goatskin down the shaft. The rope zipped along a groove in the stone edge until the skin landed with a splash and filled. The boy hoisted the skin dripping to the surface with practised over-arm tugs. Thick droplets of water fell into the darkness below.

  The old man called in Arabic and two young men appeared carrying the instrument cases and his backpack. They must have retrieved them from the Pajero last night, after they had all been marched away. ‘Is our water safe, nazrani?’ said the old man.

  Clay spent the next hour testing and retesting the well water, half the village peering over his shoulder. He calibrated and checked the instruments, re-calibrated, asked the boy to haul up more water, tested again. He wanted to be sure.

  After he was finished he was put back in the hut. It was late afternoon before he was summoned. Clay followed the old man to a stone building built into the side of the bluff at the community’s highest point. From here, you could see all the way back down the wadi to the plain and the Indian Ocean sparkling far off in the haze under a crown of billowing white cumulus. They bent low and entered. His escort remained outside.

  Inside, it was much cooler. At first, the darkness was complete. Slowly, Clay’s eyes adjusted. Al Shams was sitting on a carpet thrown over the hard-packed earth floor, dressed in a loose white robe and headscarf. He was alone. He bid Clay sit, then nodded, his face contorting into a half-smile. It was almost hideous. ‘You have brought a friend,’ he said after a moment.

  They looked up. Rania entered, face uncovered, a shawl thrown over her hair and tied under her chin. A gigajoule of energy shot through him. The tips of his fingers were tingling.

  ‘Welcome, Mademoiselle,’ said Al Shams, signalling with his arm for her to sit.

  Rania sat, stared straight ahead.

  ‘Tell me now, please, Mister Claymore. What is so terribly inflicting my people?’

  Rania looked over at him, raised her eyebrows.

  Clay pulled out his yellow fieldbook and placed it on the carpet before him. ‘It’s all in here,’ he said, tapping the hard cover of the book with two fingers. ‘But before I tell you anything, I want to see Abdulkader. And I
want to know why your men murdered the PSO man we brought with us.’

  Al Shams looked surprised. ‘I was not told of any murder.’

  ‘Come on. You know everything that goes on within a hundred miles of this place. Your men marched him away and shot him last night. His name was Hussein.’

  Al Shams called out in Arabic and one of his men appeared in the doorway and approached. Al Shams whispered something in his ear, the man answered briefly the same way and departed. ‘I can assure you, there has been no murder.’

  ‘Your men are lying to you.’

  Al Shams closed his eyes, zen-like, a Bodhisattva sitting upright, palms on knees. ‘Please, Mister Claymore. Tell me about the village, my people.’

  ‘Where is Abdulkader?’

  ‘He is safe and well.’

  ‘And mutilated.’

  Al Shams closed his eyes, waited.

  Clay took a deep breath, looked inside himself, forced his pulse lower. Something Koevoet, his platoon commander in Angola, had taught him. Stay in control, stay calm. Focus. Think. If you don’t, you’re halfway to dead. You can freak after.

  His heart slowed. He looked at Rania. She was OK. He looked at Al Shams, still sitting there, calm, tranced almost. He decided to play, trust that Al Shams would hold to his side of the bargain. He hoped he would. Because the monster was awake now. He could feel it, close to the surface, raging to get out, clawing at the bars, sniffing blood, and it was taking everything he had to keep it there. It wouldn’t take much to break the chains.

  Clay opened the densely scribbled fieldbook, folded out a sketch map: dashed lines pencilled along suspected faults, red triangles for water samples that had tested positive for contamination, electrical conductivity readings and pH levels scratched in pencil, shaded areas of colour – yellow for the Cretaceous sandstone outcrops that would contain groundwater at depth, green for the carbonate caprock that built the towering cliffs and overhangs, brown for the desolate crumbling shales, remnants of an ancient sea bottom, parting easily on ferruginous layers to reveal the plasms of extinct bivalves, whorled nautilus, trilobites, brachiopods, proof of time. With a mechanical pencil Clay traced a solid line that bisected the pages.