"We'll be fine," Solae said. But he did not believe that, for the Germans were ruthless. He had seen too much to believe they would let Paris go so easily.
His thoughts made him restless. He stood, unable to stay in the darkness much longer.
"It's still daylight above," he said. "I'll see if I can find us anything else before night falls."
He did not wait for his mother's answer. Instead, he fled through the tunnels and went up to the light.
* * *
He heard the sound before he even left the stairway— gunfire. The heat had grown worse, a physical presence that made the gunfire seem even more ominous. As he stepped through the doorway, this one leading to a different part of the city, he saw German tanks in the street.
Four of them, large as houses. The tanks made Solae shudder. He pressed himself against the wall, uncertain what to do. He did not know if he had been seen, if his presence would lead others to the catacombs.
The gunfire came from the Hôtel de Ville, the city hall. Men —boys, really— leaned out of windows and shot at the tanks with revolvers.
The tanks swiveled, aiming their guns at the Hôtel de Ville. The building itself seemed to shudder from their might. Solae winced, feeling helpless.
He had heard that the Germans would destroy the city before they allowed the French to retake it, but he had not believed it. Paris was, according the BBC, the only intact city left in Europe. It had artifacts and treasures that everyone —not just the French— could enjoy.
It was his home.
A young woman, standing near his hiding place, screamed at the Boche. Solae couldn't make out the words —something about leaving her city in peace— then she grabbed a bottle from the ground beside her and ran for the street.
His heart pounded. He stepped forward to stop her —there was nothing she could do against tanks— but she kept screaming, "Filthy Boche! You do not belong here! Filthy Boche!"
Solae could not reach her.
She got to the side of the tank, smashed her bottle against its open turret, and somehow flames exploded along the metal. Solae had heard about such weapons— simple combinations of chemicals that he did not understand.
He heard a scream from inside, saw a German soldier rise, slapping himself, trying to put out the fire his clothing had become.
The girl grinned and ran back toward Solae, her steps almost a dance. For a moment, he remembered the beauty his father conferred upon the nonbeautiful— a touch of glamour, given by a little bit of magic.
The girl had that magic, without Solae's father's help. She was not faerie, and yet she glowed with her victory.
Her gaze met Solae's, and he thought he had never seen anything so lovely in his entire life.
And then a shot rang out.
A single shot, even though he knew it could not have been the only one, even though he knew others were firing.
But it was as if he were with the girl, as if he were linked to her by her moment of victory. He saw the surprise fill her eyes, the blood spatter out of her mouth, her look of triumph turn to horror—
And then to nothing.
She stumbled, collapsed, and fell forward, like his father had done. Like so many others had done.
Solae did not stop to think. He ran into the street, to the girl, as people around him shouted, demanding that he take cover. The tanks kept shelling the Hôtel de Ville and, in one heart-stopping moment, he feared the building would tumble around him.
He reached her and crouched, knowing from her open and glazed eyes that she was gone. But he could not leave her there. Even if the stone would not absorb her soul the way it had absorbed his father's, Solae could not abandon her on the street, to be run over by the Boche, to be treated as one more rag in a city littered with them.
He slipped his hands under her arms and lifted her. Bullets pinged off the cobblestones as someone shot at him— maybe even the freedom fighters above, missing their German targets.
His heart was pounding, the girl's blood warm on his skin. She had had her moment against the Boche, her victory, and the Boche had stolen it from her, as they had stolen everything else— her home, her life, her world.
Solae's world.
He carried her to the sidewalk, where one of the old women wailed in grief. Then he set the girl's body, and knew what he had to do.
The Boche were the most superstitious creatures in Europe.
Solae turned to face them.
The boys still fired from the windows above. Three of the tanks still fired at the Hôtel de Ville. The fourth, its crew disabled or dead thanks to the girl, huddled like a wounded animal in the middle of the street.
Solae formed a fist and held it high, in mockery of the German salute.
" Achtung !" he shouted, his German flawless from years of listening to the vile tongue.
No one looked at him. No one seemed to see him.
He used his own glamour, his ability to brighten a room.
" Achtung !" he shouted again, and this time, every German within hearing range looked.
Solae squinted slightly, concentrating. He imagined his entire fist engulfed in flame— and suddenly it was. Cool flame which did not consume, but which burned beautifully in the bright August sunlight.
The shooting from the windows stopped.
He let the fire slide down his arm and engulf his entire body. The street looked wavy through the flame, as if he were viewing everything from a heat mirage.
" Vive la France !" he shouted.
Then he made the fire wink out.
The Germans stared at him for the longest time. The moment seemed to stretch forever.
Solae smiled at them.
" Vive la France !" he repeated, and put his hands on his hips, obviously unharmed by the fire that had surrounded him a moment before.
He took a step forward, and the German closest to him screamed. So did another, and another. They scrambled into their tanks, down the turrets, closing the hatches.
Solae remained on the street, watching them. The Germans drove their tanks away from him, their terror palpable in the thick August heat.
Dust rose around him. He did not feel the girl's sense of victory. All he had done was a trick, nothing monumental, nothing worth a life.
But the boys in the windows above started to cheer. And so did the people on the street. They were looking at him, and cheering, and he could not take it.
He had done nothing. He was nothing. Just a small man with a small talent, and a little bit of luck.
He could not save the girl from death. He could not prevent death. And he had used his one talent the only way he knew how.
The cheering continued, and he looked away. The girl's corpse remained on the sidewalk, the old woman bent over her, rocking, as if the movement would make the girl return.
Nothing would make her return. Nor would Solae's father return, or their life, or his mother's sanity. Nothing would be the same again, no matter when the Allies came.
All these years, he had deluded himself, hiding among the dead, believing that all he had to do was wait, and life would return to normal. The humans would stop their craziness, the war would fade, and everything would return.
But it was not just a human craziness. His father had been right: there were humans to ally with, and humans to fight. His father would have fought— he had fought, in his own turf, over his own command: music.
But Solae had not. He had not used his powers at all.
Until now.
All these years, he could have fought in a slightly larger way, and he had not.
He had not.
While others died.
He had chosen to fade away instead of bringing light. He had chosen to live among the dead instead of fight beside the living.
But he would not make that choice again.
He could bring light to darkness, and vanish seemingly without a trace.
The Resistance was chasing the Boche from Paris, and Solae would help as best he c
ould. And when he was done here, he would help liberate all of France, which was the world he cared about.
He finally knew how to do it, without losing his powers, without betraying his people.
He would haunt the Boche. He would bring light to the darkest corners of their souls, exposing them to all they had done.
He would destroy the Boche, taking all they feared and turning it against them, one by one.
One superstitious mind at a time.
* * *
The Mark of the Beast
Written by Rudyard Kipling
Illustrated by Paul Skinner
Your Gods and my Gods— do you or I know which are the stronger? Native Proverb.
EAST of Suez, some hold, the direct control of Providence ceases; Man being there handed over to the power of the Gods and Devils of Asia, and the Church of England Providence only exercising an occasional and modified supervision in the case of Englishmen.
This theory accounts for some of the more unnecessary horrors of life in India: it may be stretched to explain my story.
My friend Strickland of the Police, who knows as much of natives of India as is good for any man, can bear witness to the facts of the case. Dumoise, our doctor, also saw what Strickland and I saw. The inference which he drew from the evidence was entirely incorrect. He is dead now; he died, in a rather curious manner, which has been elsewhere described.
When Fleete came to India he owned a little money and some land in the Himalayas, near a place called Dharmsala. Both properties had been left him by an uncle, and he came out to finance them. He was a big, heavy, genial, and inoffensive man. His knowledge of natives was, of course, limited, and he complained of the difficulties of the language.
He rode in from his place in the hills to spend New Year in the station, and he stayed with Strickland. On New Year's Eve there was a big dinner at the club, and the night was excusably wet. When men foregather from the uttermost ends of the Empire, they have a right to be riotous. The Frontier had sent down a contingent o' Catch-'em-Alive-O's who had not seen twenty white faces for a year, and were used to ride fifteen miles to dinner at the next Fort at the risk of a Khyberee bullet where their drinks should lie. They profited by their new security, for they tried to play pool with a curled-up hedgehog found in the garden, and one of them carried the marker round the room in his teeth. Half a dozen planters had come in from the south and were talking "horse" to the Biggest Liar in Asia, who was trying to cap all their stories at once. Everybody was there, and there was a general closing up of ranks and taking stock of our losses in dead or disabled that had fallen during the past year. It was a very wet night, and I remember that we sang "Auld Lang Syne" with our feet in the Polo Championship Cup, and our heads among the stars, and swore that we were all dear friends. Then some of us went away and annexed Burma, and some tried to open up the Soudan and were opened up by Fuzzies in that cruel scrub outside Suakim, and some found stars and medals, and some were married, which was bad, and some did other things which were worse, and the others of us stayed in our chains and strove to make money on insufficient experiences.
Fleete began the night with sherry and bitters, drank champagne steadily up to dessert, then raw, rasping Capri with all the strength of whisky, took Benedictine with his coffee, four or five whiskies and sodas to improve his pool strokes, beer and bones at half-past two, winding up with old brandy. Consequently, when he came out, at half-past three in the morning, into fourteen degrees of frost, he was very angry with his horse for coughing, and tried to leapfrog into the saddle. The horse broke away and went to his stables; so Strickland and I formed a Guard of Dishonour to take Fleete home.
Our road lay through the bazaar, close to a little temple of Hanuman, the Monkey-god, who is a leading divinity worthy of respect. All gods have good points, just as have all priests. Personally, I attach much importance to Hanuman, and am kind to his people— the great gray apes of the hills. One never knows when one may want a friend.
There was a light in the temple, and as we passed, we could hear voices of men chanting hymns. In a native temple, the priests rise at all hours of the night to do honour to their god. Before we could stop him, Fleete dashed up the steps, patted two priests on the back, and was gravely grinding the ashes of his cigar-butt into the forehead of the red stone image of Hanuman. Strickland tried to drag him out, but he sat down and said solemnly:
"Shee that? "Mark of the B-beasht! _I_ made it. Ishn't it fine?"
In half a minute the temple was alive and noisy, and Strickland, who knew what came of polluting gods, said that things might occur. He, by virtue of his official position, long residence in the country, and weakness for going among the natives, was known to the priests and he felt unhappy. Fleete sat on the ground and refused to move. He said that "good old Hanuman" made a very soft pillow.
Then, without any warning, a Silver Man came out of a recess behind the image of the god. He was perfectly naked in that bitter, bitter cold, and his body shone like frosted silver, for he was what the Bible calls "a leper as white as snow." Also he had no face, because he was a leper of some years' standing and his disease was heavy upon him. We two stooped to haul Fleete up, and the temple was filling and filling with folk who seemed to spring from the earth, when the Silver Man ran in under our arms, making a noise exactly like the mewing of an otter, caught Fleete round the body and dropped his head on Fleete's breast before we could wrench him away. Then he retired to a corner and sat mewing while the crowd blocked all the doors.
The priests were very angry until the Silver Man touched Fleete. That nuzzling seemed to sober them.
At the end of a few minutes' silence one of the priests came to Strickland and said, in perfect English, "Take your friend away. He has done with Hanuman, but Hanurnan has not done with him." The crowd gave room and we carried Fleete into the road.
Strickland was very angry. He said that we might all three have been knifed, and that Fleete should thank his stars that he had escaped without injury.
Fleete thanked no one. He said that he wanted to go to bed. He was gorgeously drunk.
We moved on, Strickland silent and wrathful, until Fleete was taken with violent shivering fits and sweating. He said that the smells of the bazaar were overpowering, and he wondered why slaughter-houses were permitted so near English residences. "Can't you smell the blood?" said Fleete.
We put him to bed at last, just as the dawn was breaking, and Strickland invited me to have another whisky and soda. While we were drinking he talked of the trouble in the temple, and admitted that it baffled him completely. Strickland hates being mystified by natives, because his business in life is to overmatch them with their own weapons. He has not yet succeeded in doing this, but in fifteen or twenty years he will have made some small progress.
"They should have mauled us," he said, "instead of mewing at us. I wonder what they meant. I don't like it one little bit."
I said that the Managing Committee of the temple would in all probability bring a criminal action against us for insulting their religion. There was a section of the Indian Penal Code which exactly met Fleete's offence. Strickland said he only hoped and prayed that they would do this. Before I left I looked into Fleete's room, and saw him lying on his right side, scratching his left breast. Then. I went to bed cold, depressed, and unhappy, at seven o'clock in the morning.
At one o'clock I rode over to Strickland's house to inquire after Fleete's head. I imagined that it would be a sore one. Fleete was breakfasting and seemed unwell. His temper was gone, for he was abusing the cook for not supplying him with an underdone chop. A man who can eat raw meat after a wet night is a curiosity. I told Fleete this and he laughed.
"You breed queer mosquitoes in these parts," he said. "I've been bitten to pieces, but only in one place."
"Let's have a look at the bite," said Strickland. "It may have gone down since this morning."
While the chops were being cooked, Fleete opened his shirt and showed us,
just over his left breast, a mark, the perfect double of the black rosettes —the five or six irregular blotches arranged in a circle— on a leopard's hide. Strickland looked and said, "It was only pink this morning. It's grown black now."
Fleete ran to a glass.
"By Jove!" he said, "this is nasty. What is it?"
We could not answer. Here the chops came in, all red and juicy, and Fleete bolted three in a most offensive manner. He ate on his right grinders only, and threw his head over his right shoulder as he snapped the meat. When he had finished, it struck him that he had been behaving strangely, for he said apologetically, "I don't think I ever felt so hungry in my life. I've bolted like an ostrich."
After breakfast Strickland said to me, "Don't go. Stay here, and stay for the night."
Jim Baen's Universe-Vol 2 Num 2 Page 25
