“You gave me an automatic, remember?” he said.
He made a shooting motion with his right hand.
“All right—just thought I’d give it another try.”
“That’s a goat standing on the lower limb of that tree, isn’t it?”
“Yeah; they like to eat those little green shoots that come up off the branches.”
“I want a picture of that too. Olive tree, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I wanted to know what to call the picture. ‘Goat eating green shoots in olive tree,’” he dictated; “that will be the caption.”
“Great. Shoot while you have the chance.”
If only he weren’t so uncommunicative, so alien, so unconcerned about his welfare! I hated him. I couldn’t understand him. He wouldn’t speak, unless it was to request information or to answer a question. Whenever he did answer questions, he was terse, elusive, insulting, or all three at once. He was smug, conceited, blue, and overbearing. It really made me wonder about the Shtigo-gens’ tradition of philosophy, philanthropy and enlightened journalism. I just didn’t like him.
But I spoke to Hasan that evening, after having kept an eye (the blue one) on him all day.
He was sitting beside the fire, looking like a sketch by Delacroix. Ellen and Dos Santos sat nearby, drinking coffee, so I dusted off my Arabic and approached.
“Greetings.”
“Greetings.”
“You did not try to kill him today.”
“No.”
“Tomorrow, perhaps?”
He shrugged.
“Hasan—look at me.”
He did.
“You were hired to kill the blue one.”
He shrugged again.
“You needn’t deny it, or admit it I already know. I cannot allow you to do this thing. Give back the money Dos Santos has paid you and go your way. I can get you a Skimmer by morning. It will take you anywhere in the world you wish to go.”
“But I am happy here, Karagee.”
“You will quickly cease being happy if any harm comes to the blue one.”
“I am a bodyguard, Karagee.”
“No, Hasan. You are the son of a dyspeptic camel.”
“What is ‘dyspeptic,’ Karagee?”
“I do not know the Arabic word, and you would not know the Greek one. Wait, I’ll find another insult. —You are a coward and a carrion-eater and a skulker up alleyways, because you are half jackal and half ape.”
“This may be true, Karagee, because my father told me that I was born to be flayed alive and tom into quarters.”
“Why was that?”
“I was disrespectful to the Devil.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. —Were those devils that you played music for yesterday? They had the horns, the hooves . . .”
“No, they were not devils. They were the Hot-born children of unfortunate parents who left them to die in the wilderness. They lived, though, because the wilderness is their real home.”
“Ah! And I had hoped that they were devils. I still think they were, because one smiled at me as I prayed to them for forgiveness.”
“Forgiveness? For what?”
A faraway look came into his eyes.
“My father was a very good and land and religious man,” he said. “He worshipped Malak Tawûs, whom the benighted Shi’ites” (he spat here) “call Iblis—or Shaitan, or Satan—and he always paid his respects to Hallâj and the others of the Sandjaq. He was well-known for his piety, his many kindnesses.
“I loved him, but as a boy I had an imp within me. I was an atheist. I did not believe in the Devil. And I was an evil child, for I took me a dead chicken and mounted it on a stick and called it the Peacock Angel, and I mocked it with stones and pulled its feathers. One of the other boys grew frightened and told my father of this. My father flogged me then, in the streets, and he told me I was born to be flayed alive and tom into quarters for my blasphemies. He made me go to Mount Sindjar and pray for forgiveness, and I went there—but the imp was still within me, despite the flogging, and I did not really believe as I prayed.
“Now that I am older the imp has fled, but my father too, is gone—these many years—and I cannot tell him: I am sorry that I mocked the Peacock Angel. As I grow older I feel the need for religion. I hope that the Devil, in his great wisdom and mercy, understands this and forgives me.”
“Hasan, it is difficult to insult you properly,” I said. “But I warn you—the blue one must not be harmed.”
“I am but a humble bodyguard.”
“Ha! Yours is the cunning and the venom of the serpent. You are deceitful and treacherous. Vicious, too.”
“No, Karagee. Thank you, but it is not true. I take pride in always meeting my commitments. That is all. This is the law I live by. Also, you cannot insult me so that I will challenge you to a duel, permitting you to choose bare hands or daggers or sabers. No. I take no offense.”
“Then beware,” I told him. “Your first move toward the Vegan will be your last.”
“If it is so written, Karagee . . .”
“And call me Conrad!”
I stalked away, thinking bad thoughts.
The following day, all of us still being alive, we broke camp and pushed on, making about eight kilometers before the next interruption occurred.
“That sounded like a child crying,” said Phil.
“You’re right.”
“Where is it coming from?”
“Off to the left, down there.”
We moved through some shrubbery, came upon a dry stream bed, and followed it around a bend.
The baby lay among the rocks, partly wrapped in a dirty blanket. Its face and hands were already burnt red from the sun, so it must have been there much of the day before, also. The bite-marks of many insects were upon its tiny, wet face.
I knelt, adjusting the blanket to cover it better.
Ellen cried a little cry as the blanket fell open in front and she saw the baby.
There was a natural fistula in the child’s chest, and something was moving inside.
Red Wig screamed, turned away, began to weep.
“What is it?” asked Myshtigo.
“One of the abandoned,” I said. “One of the marked ones.”
“How awful!” said Red Wig.
“Its appearance? Or the fact that it was abandoned?” I asked.
“Both!”
“Give it to me,” said Ellen.
“Don’t touch it,” said George, stooping. “Call for a Skimmer,” he ordered. “We have to get it to a hospital right away. I don’t have the equipment to operate on it here. —Ellen, help me.”
She was at his side then, and they went through his medkit together.
“You write what I do and pin the note onto a clean blanket—so the doctors in Athens will know.”
Dos Santos was phoning Lamia by then, to pick up on one of our Skimmers.
And then Ellen was filling hypos for George and swabbing the cuts and painting the bums with unguents and writing it all down. They shot the baby full of vitamins, antibiotics, general adaptives, and half a dozen other things. I lost count after awhile. They covered its chest with gauze, sprayed it with something, wrapped it in a clean blanket, and pinned the note to it.
“What a dreadful thing!” said Dos Santos. “Abandoning a deformed child, leaving it to die in such a manner!”
“It’s done here all the time,” I told him, “especially about the Hot Places. In Greece there has always been a tradition of infanticide. I myself was exposed on a hilltop on the day I was born. Spent the night there, too.”
He was lighting a cigarette, but he stopped and stared at me.
“You? Why?”
I laughed, glanced down at my foot.
“Complicated story. I wear a special shoe because this leg is shorter than the other. Also, I understand I was a very hairy baby—and then, my eyes don’t match. I suppose I might have gotten by if that had b
een all, but then I went and got born on Christmas and that sort of clinched things.”
“What is wrong with being born on Christmas?”
“The gods, according to local beliefs, deem it a bit presumptuous. For this reason, children born at that time are not of human blood. They are of the brood of destroyers, the creators of havoc, the panickers of man. They are called the kallikanzaroi. Ideally, they look something like those guys with horns and hooves and all, but they don’t have to. They could look like me, my parents decided—if they were my parents. So they left me on a hilltop, to be returned.”
“What happened then?”
“There was an old Orthodox priest in the village. He heard of it and went to them. He told them that it was a mortal sin to do such a thing, and they had better get the baby back, quick, and have it ready for baptism the following day.”
“Ah! And that is how you were saved, and baptised?”
“Well, sort of.” I took one of his cigarettes. “They came back with me, all right, but they insisted I wasn’t the same baby they’d left there. They’d left a dubious mutant and collected an even more doubtful changeling, they said. Uglier too, they claimed, and they got another Christmas child in return. Their baby had been a satyr, they said, and they figured that perhaps some Hot creature had had a sort of human child and had abandoned it in the same way we do them—making a swap, actually. Nobody had seen me before then, so their story couldn’t be checked. The priest would have none of this, though, and he told them they were stuck with me. But they were very kind, once they were reconciled to the fact. I grew fairly large fairly young, and I was strong for my age. They liked that.”
“And you were baptised . . .?”
“Well, sort of half-baptised.”
“Half-baptised?”
“The priest had a stroke at my christening. Died a little while later. He was the only one around, so I don’t know that I got the whole thing done proper.”
“One drop would be sufficient.”
“I suppose so. I don’t really know what happened.”
“Maybe you had better have it done again. Just to be safe.”
“No, if Heaven didn’t want me then, I’m not going to ask a second time.”
We set up a beacon in a nearby clearing and waited for the Skimmer.
We made another dozen or so kilometers that day, which was pretty good, considering the delay. The baby had been picked up and dispatched directly to Athens. When the Skimmer had set down, I’d asked in a large voice whether anyone else wanted a ride back. There’d been no takers, though.
And it was that evening that it happened.
We reclined about a fire. Oh, it was a jolly fire, flapping its bright wing against the night, warming us, smelling woody, pushing a smoke-track into the air. . . . Nice.
Hasan sat there cleaning his aluminum-barreled shotgun. It had a plastic stock and it was real light and handy.
As he worked on it, it tilted forward, moved slowly about, pointed itself right at Myshtigo.
He’d done it quite neatly, I must admit that. It was during a period of over half an hour, and he’d advanced the barrel with almost imperceptible movements.
I snarled, though, when its position registered in my cerebrum, and I was at his side in three steps.
I struck it from his hands.
It clattered on some small stone about eight feet away. My hand was stinging from the slap I’d given it.
Hasan was on his feet, his teeth shuttling around inside his beard, clicking together like flint and steel. I could almost see the sparks.
“Say it!” I said. “Go ahead, say something! Anything! You know damn well what you were just doing!”
His hands twitched.
“Go ahead!” I said. “Hit me! Just touch me, even. Then what I do to you will be self-defense, provoked assault. Even George won’t be able to put you back together again.”
“I was only cleaning my shotgun. You’ve damaged it.”
“You do not point weapons by accident. You were going to kill Myshtigo.”
“You are mistaken.”
“Hit me. Or are you a coward?”
“I have no quarrel with you.”
“You are a coward.”
“No, I am not.”
After a few seconds he smiled.
“Are you afraid to challenge me?” he asked.
And there it was. The only way.
The move had to be mine. I had hoped it wouldn’t have to be that way. I had hoped that I could anger him or shame him or provoke him into striking me or challenging me.
I knew then that I couldn’t.
Which was bad, very bad.
I was sure I could take him with anything I cared to name. But if he had it his way, things could be different. Everybody knows that there are some people with an aptitude for music. They can hear a piece once and sit down and play it on the piano or thelinstra. They can pick up a new instrument, and inside a few hours they can sound as if they’ve been playing it for years they’re good, very good at such things, because they have that talent—the ability to coordinate a special insight with a series of new actions.
Hasan was that way with weapons. Maybe some other people could be the same, but they don’t go around doing it—not for decades and decades, anyway, with everything from boomerangs to blowguns. The dueling code would provide Hasan with the choice of means, and he was the most highly skilled killer I’d ever known.
But I had to stop him, and I could see that this was the only way it could be done, short of murder. I had to take him on his terms.
“Amen,” I said. “I challenge you to a duel.”
His smile remained, grew.
“Agreed—before these witnesses. Name your second.”
“Phil Graver. Name yours”
“Mister Dos Santos.”
“Very good. I happen to have a dueling permit and the registration forms in my bag, and I’ve already paid the death-tax for one person. So there needn’t be much of a delay. When, where, and how do you want it?”
“We passed a good clearing about a kilometer back up the road.”
“Yes; I recall it.”
“We shall meet there at dawn tomorrow.”
“Check,” I said. “And as to weapons . . .?”
He fetched his knapcase, opened it. It bristled with interesting sharp things, glistened with ovoid incendiaries, writhed with coils of metal and leather.
He withdrew two items and closed the pack.
My heart sank.
“The sling of David,” he announced.
I inspected them.
“At what distance?”
“Fifty meters,” he said.
“You’ve made a good choice,” I told him, not having used one in over a century myself. “I’d like to borrow one tonight, to practice with. If you don’t want to lend it to me, I can make my own.”
“You may take either, and practice all night with it.”
“Thanks.” I selected one and hung it from my belt. Then I picked up one of our three electric lanterns. “If anybody needs me, I’ll be up the road at the clearing,” I said. “Don’t forget to post guards tonight. This is a rough area.”
“Do you want me to come along?” asked Phil.
“No. Thanks anyway. I’ll go alone. See you.”
“Then good night.”
I hiked back along the way, coming at last to the clearing. I set up the lantern at one end of the place, so that it reflected upon a stand of small trees, and I moved to the other end.
I collected some stones and slung one at a tree. I missed.
I slung a dozen more, hitting with four of them.
I kept at it. After about an hour, I was hitting with a little more regularity. Still, at fifty meters I probably couldn’t match Hasan.
The night wore on, and I kept slinging. After a time, I reached what seemed to be my learning plateau for accuracy. Maybe six out of eleven of my shots were coming through.
&
nbsp; But I had one thing in my favor, I realized, as I twirled the sling and sent another stone smashing into a tree. I delivered my shots with an awful lot of force. Whenever I was on target there was much power behind the strike. I had already shattered several of the smaller trees, and I was sure Hasan couldn’t do that with twice as many hits. If I could reach him, fine; but all the power in the world was worthless if I couldn’t connect with it.
And I was sure he could reach me. I wondered how much of a beating I could take and still operate.
It would depend, of course, on where he hit me.
I dropped the sling and yanked the automatic from my belt when I heard a branch snap, far off to my right. Hasan came into the clearing.
“What do you want?” I asked him.
“I came to see how your practice was going,” he said, regarding the broken trees.
I shrugged, reholstered my automatic and picked up the sling.
“Comes the sunrise and you will learn.”
We walked across the clearing and I retrieved the lantern. Hasan studied a small tree which was now, in part, toothpicks. He did not say anything.
We walked back to the camp. Everyone but Dos Santos had turned in. Don was our guard. He paced about the warning perimeter, carrying an automatic rifle. We waved to him and entered the camp.
Hasan always pitched a Gauzy—a one-molecule-layer tent, opaque, feather-light, and very tough. He never slept in it, though. He just used it to stash his junk.
I seated myself on a log before the fire and Hasan ducked inside his Gauzy. He emerged a moment later with his pipe and a block of hardened, resinous-looking stuff, which he proceeded to scale and grind. He mixed it with a bit of burley and then filled the pipe.
After he got it going with a stick from the fire, he sat smoking it beside me.
“I do not want to kill you, Karagee,” he said.
“I share this feeling. I do not wish to be killed.”
“But we must fight tomorrow.”
“Yes.”
“You could withdraw your challenge.”
“You could leave by Skimmer.”
“I will not.”
“Nor will I withdraw my challenge.”
“It is sad,” he said, after a time. “Sad, that two such as we must fight over the blue one. He is not worth your life, nor mine.”
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