Unconquered Countries-Four Novellas

by Geoff Ryman

  Chiu will give us no food, not now, Third thought. I have to go to the market. If I go now, while it’s early, I may miss the worst of it.

  “Stay inside,” she warned the Crow. “Today is not a good day. Today will not at all be like last night.” She took her squeaking wagon, and crept down the heap, on the side away from Mr. Chiu.

  There was an old market that opened early for wholesalers. It had once been well outside the city. The heaps had encroached upon it, shifting. Each day they surrounded it in a different shape. Third came upon it unexpectedly, up and over the roof of a house. She saw the two long sheds in the middle of the square and a mass of black, people in black, rebels, a rebel encampment, and she tried to dart back. Instead, she slipped, and slithered down the side of the house. She landed on the market pavement, with a great clatter, just next to a rebel boy and an old truck.

  The boy howled, and spun around. There was a ripple of laughter from the other rebels. Third made a show of laughing too. The rebel boy did not offer to help her up. He stared at her as if she were a ghost. He had a tattooed face and several wristwatches along one arm and wires trailing out of his ears. Third stood up, smiling. “Peace of God,” she wished him. “Grateful praise to long-awaited victors.” The boy’s rough country face did not light up with a courteous smile. It stared back at Third, and then shook with a scornful chuckle. He turned back to the truck. It shrank from him, great folds of flesh blinking over the twin lenses of its windshield. He climbed into its cab and shouted an order, a wrong order. The truck whined miserably, and twisted in place, refusing to obey. The boy shouted again. This time, the truck did what it was told, and backed up at high speed, into the wall of houses, breaking through the mushroom flesh.

  There was desultory applause from the rebels; this boy was not held in high regard. Third saw them, slumped on the stone, sprawled against each other, exhausted, with leaden, unmoving faces. There were girls among them, and they were young, almost children.

  The boy jumped out of the truck, slamming shut the metal door that was hung like an earring through its flesh, and it yelped in pain. Inside the broken wall, a woman and two children crouched amid the smells of cold soup and beds. The boy stepped back, his face contorted with rage, and he howled, and he suddenly seemed to fill with light. His eyes glowed with it; it shone orange through the flesh of his cheeks, and lit up the roof of his mouth. It blazed, blinding out of his eyes, and the truck was suddenly engulfed in fire.

  “Get out! Get away!” shouted the woman in the house. The truck obeyed; it jumped forward on its wheels and stood still, juddering and coughing in pain and panic. Third ducked away from the heat. Suddenly the truck roared forward across the market square directly at the rebels. They jumped up, or somersaulted backward out of its way, and it crashed into a wooden support, pulling down a corner of the shed, taking part of the tin roof with it, tipping up and rolling over onto the unliving container that was bolted to the shell of its back. It could not turn over. Its rows of knuckled legs pedaling helplessly, its burning wheels whirring in the air as it steamed and crackled and spat, shivering, whinnying like a horse.

  Third began to walk toward a gap between the houses; it was full of hanging laundry; she could hide behind it. She had to leave her wagon behind; it would squeak and draw attention. She began to think she might escape, when she heard the sound of sandals flapping behind her. She went very still and waited. “City Woman!” a voice said, triumphant.

  She turned as they crowded around, craning their necks to see her, with dead, blunted faces. Shadows of smoke wafted across them. Third could smell their sour clothes. They had encrusted teeth and lumps just above the eyelid where parasites dwelt. “Peace of God,” she said, warily.

  “God, pah!” said one of the boys, spitting at her feet, to a murmur of laughter. Even the spittle was tinged with black.

  “I came back to the market, and saw that it was empty, so I am leaving,” Third explained.

  “Market!” exclaimed a girl, indignant, and began to strut, hands on hips. “We have had no market, City Woman, in five years. We had to eat worms. Would you like worms to eat, City Woman?” Then Third understood; this was a brave, naughty girl. She saw again, under the bandanas and weapons and salt-stained black, how young they were, rude children, and she lost her fear. She became outraged.

  “I ate worse, girl,” she replied. “I had to sell my blood. My mother starved to death. I am nearly blind from working in their factories. So don’t you spit at me when I give you holy greeting, and call me City Woman, because I am one of the People. And the People show manners and respect!”

  Some of them giggled at this old-fashioned display of authority. “And who is your husband?” challenged the girl, coming closer.

  “My husband was a fighter for the People and the foreigners killed him!” The words came out of her without thought; she was bursting with rage, stretched so tight with it that tears oozed out of her, because she finally understood, looking at the foreign weapons, why it was true. “I am a Country Woman!” she shouted. “I had to flee here for my life! From the Neighbors!”

  This was not what the rebels expected. They looked at each other, scowling and bemused, and scuffed their feet on the stone. “From what village?” demanded the girl.

  Third told her, proudly, fiercely. And for good measure, she cuffed her about the head. The girl did not strike back.

  “It’s one of ours,” said an older boy, grimly. “Mata!” he said, which meant “We have made a mistake.” It was a swear word. He bowed, suddenly, hands held high, and said in another voice, the voice he would have had if there had been no troubles, “We are sorry, Mother. We have offended without cause.”

  “Yes you have!” snarled Third, water shaking itself out of her eyes. The other bowed, murmuring.

  “We will escort you back,” the older boy said. “The streets are not safe. There are too many bad elements. We must deal with them. But we mean no harm to any of the People.” He was some kind of leader among them, with a weary face, his hair tied up in a bun at the back. “We are fighters for the People too.” He tried to smile.

  Ten of them went with her, pulling her wagon as she stalked on ahead of them, still angry.

  “We put out sheets to welcome you,” Third said, flinging a hand up in the direction of the white hangings.

  “We thought people would meet us. We thought there would be parades,” said the youngest, and was nudged into silence.

  “You came too late. We sat all night at fires, singing because you had won,” she told them bitterly.

  She pointed to the fires as they passed them. They skirted mounds of garbage. People lived there too, in shacks made out of garbage. They passed a quagmire of sewage called the Slump. The rebels craned their necks in wonder at how high the heaps had risen, swaying slightly in even this faint morning wind, pinkened slightly by the dawn.

  “There are so many!” one of them said. “It can’t be done! What they tell us, eh? We won’t be able to.”

  “All the real People will leave,” repeated the leader. “They will leave because they want to leave. The others will not be real People.”

  Third was thinking furiously. Leave? All of us? Is that what they mean to do?

  Then, against a blue sky, between the Scarecrow and the Fist Raised Toward Heaven, she saw the Crow That Warbled, flying toward them. She gave a little cry and covered her mouth. She knew what was going to happen.

  The Crow was singing as it came, a clear morning song, one that praised wifely duties and domestic content. He was greeting their guests.

  “Go back!” Third shouted at it. “Crow, go back! Get away!”

  The rebels saw it, too, the omen of death. The older boy lurched forward, his face curling with disgust, choking with it. He had seen so much of death that images of it were clear to him. The youngest boy hissed, and picked up a smoldering blade of bone from a fire, and threw it at the Crow. The bird landed in the narrow passageway and hopped toward them, t
wittering, cocking its head in a sideways question, bouncing toward Third, with whom it was always safe.

  “Crow, go back,” she pleaded.

  “Go back!” the rebels repeated. The Crow hopped up on Third’s shoulder and the rebels drew back, and the Crow said hello to them in a cheerful, hobbling note. Then it hopped onto the head of the youngest child. He squealed and went still. The Crow leaned over, upside down, its claws clenched onto his hair, to peer into his face. The boy screamed and could not move. One of the others swiped the bird from his head, and it fluttered to the ground. The rebels kicked it, and suddenly it let out an ugly squawk of fear, the sound of a real crow.

  “He is not Death,” Third was saying, but she could not make the words loud enough. “Crow! Sing!”

  There was a scattering of feathers. The Crow hopped twice, away from them, and into the air, and its wings made a hearty flapping noise, and it rose up, veering between the rows of hanging sheets, and all the windows were full of the faces of the People, and it was like the Ceremony. The Crow rose up above the sheets, higher than all the towers, to where it always hovered and sang, to where Third thought it would be safe, when the older rebel made a horrible noise, his head full of suppurating memory, “Uhhhhh!,” as if he were vomiting, he pointed his finger at the sky, steel clamped around it. Third could follow the tongue of light through the air, see it curve with the nightmare slowness of foreshortened perspective, and her mouth gaped slowly open because she couldn’t breathe, and she saw the light flick at the bird, and disappear.

  The Crow That Warbled burst into flame. It flew, on fire, orange and red and white, higher than ever before, deeper into the sky. It rose, then dipped, swerving, then found its course again, straining toward heaven. It hung in the sky, still for a moment, and then fell.

  It fell, the speed of the air extinguishing its flame. It struck a heap and rolled off it into the air again, thumping into another house, sliding down its side into the box of herbs in Third’s window. It flared up again, setting the rosemary alight, scenting the air. There were screams from the People.

  Third was still. Third was silent. She wondered very calmly what would happen now that the Crow was destroyed. She was not at all surprised when out of the portal of a house, rocking back and forth down the steps, came a tiger. It sat on the roof of the house below, tamely, and licked its muzzle, and waited.

  Everything was muffled, except for the sound of flies. Third’s cousin lay at her feet, still in his plaid shirt. The blood was black and congealed now, old. He held up the yarrow stalks toward her.

  “But you know how they work,” he said as he had once before, long ago. Third shook her head. She didn’t know, not any longer.

  Where the rebels had stood, the murderous little Neighbor grinned. His pockmarked face was close to hers, his teeth edged in gold, his eyes gleaming. “You see? You see?” he seemed to be saying over and over like a bad joke that needs no explanation. “Go away,” murmured Third. She felt an arm go around her shoulder.

  The arm was pale yellow and withered. Third turned and saw her elder, trusted sister. She was bald, and her face was like an old fruit that had exploded. The eyes had expanded from the sudden heat and burst, the lips had burnt back from the teeth.

  “Take off your spectacles, Third,” her sister told her. “Not now. Slip them off while no one is looking and let them fall. Only City People wear glasses. They will kill you for them. That’s right. Slowly. Casually.” Her sister cradled Third toward her, pressing her against the gingham dress. She was still taller than Third, on long stilt legs. “Oh, I have missed you so much, sister. I have wanted someone to talk to so much. Now we will talk all the time. I will go with you now, and take care of you. We all will. All the Dead.”

  “Ah, yes, so that’s it,” thought Third. “I see. I see.” Crow was like a gate that had broken open. The Dead could come through it. She let her glasses, a scant presence in her hand, drop. Everything was blurred, as if seen through tears. She saw a blurred woman wave her arms, shouting at the rebels.

  “It is no good, everyone must leave now,” the rebel was saying.

  “But where will we go? How can we leave?” the woman demanded. Quiet, fool, thought Third. They have weapons. And they are crazy.

  “Back to the country. Go back to the country so you can be People again, not this City Filth, where you are all whores of the foreigners, with their trash. You go now!”

  “But I have to pack my things!”

  “You will need nothing. Everything will be provided.”

  “My children!”

  “Your children belong to all the People. The People will care for them.”

  “Madness! Madness!” shouted the woman, realizing, staring at them.

  “You will all leave before midday,” the older rebel announced. He was a mere wavering of black to Third. “All leave the city. It is diseased and we are going to bum it!” He threw up his hand, and blasted the sky, and there was a noise like thunder back and forth across it. The People fell silent. They began to be afraid.

  Enough, thought Third, and turned, and began to walk.

  “Where are you going, Mother?” the oldest rebel asked.

  “I am going home, to my village,” she replied, and she thought of her advertisements on the wall, and the drawing of Crow. She had made it look like the Prince.

  The rebel grabbed her arm, and turned her around. “You see?” he challenged the People. “This woman does what is right. You can too. She is a real Person. Show that you are.”

  “Do what they say,” advised Third, glumly, and began to walk again. The rebel walked with her.

  “Do not go like that,” he murmured, pressing close. “Go back to your house. Take some food.”

  “There is no food in my house,” replied Third, thinking of the paper flowers.

  The rebel pushed a rice ball with a sliver of dried meat wrapped around it into her hand. “Take this.” He gave her his tin cup. Without looking at him, Third snatched them; without another word, he darted back to the others.

  “You see?” Third’s sister said, not marching, but sauntering beside her. “You are charmed. We protect you.” Only the Dead, thought Third, were clearly visible. The living were fading.

  It was still quiet, still early. Bands of rebels, chatting, quite ordinary, were wiring up loudspeakers while children looked up admiringly. Somewhere in the distance, a scratchy broadcast voice began. Third could not understand what it said.

  Rebels began to go from door to door. Women stood in doorways, listening to them and scowling slightly, holding shut their morning robes, pulling back hair from their faces. Get moving, Third thought, delay will cost you. She heard shouting from inside houses as people disagreed. They took time to pack. Third walked more quickly. There was a crowd in front of a small shop. Third turned sideways through it, and heard the shopkeeper’s fat wife say, “You want it, it costs more today.”

  People began to run. Blankets full of things were being lowered from windows. Excited children ran about on the heaps blowing toy horns. Third looked up and saw a man on the very top of a heap. He was rocking back and forth on his heels for balance, trying to coax his house down, on a leash. “Autumn? Where is Autumn?” a woman called out over and over in panic.

  “You won’t get out this way,” said Third’s sister. Third turned, and began to walk toward the Old City. She cut through stables, where cars slept at night, and climbed up stone steps and out of the treacle-smelling darkness to paved street.

  The Old City was full of people. A woman pushing a baby carriage full of tins rammed into her, and without another word shoved the carriage into her again, until Third got out of the way.

  Third couldn’t see. The living jostled past her. In front of shop windows, clothes dummies lay naked and Third thought, with a lurch, that they were bodies. Third looked at the clouds, to rest her eyes. She could see things that were far away, the broad patterns.

  She was looking at the clouds, stumbling, w
hen she heard a dull, spreading roar, at once crackling and moist, like a spill of watermelons. It started behind her, to her left, and moved around her in the same way the sound of breaking surf moves along a beach. She turned and saw the heaps collapsing.

  She saw a tower pitch forward from its middle, and the houses on top of it separated, scattering, their spider legs kicking as they seemed to almost float down through the air. The main body of the tower nudged another, breaking it in the middle, sending houses somersaulting through the air, spilling furniture, hurtling into other houses, dislodging them, bursting apart. The houses above these, without support, slid helplessly down, other houses still on their backs. It was a contagion, each house linked to another. They collapsed, and broke, and gathered into a massive spreading weight, a roiling wall of flesh. It smashed into the first of the hard stone buildings, rearing up and slapping down on its roof, scraps spilling all over it, and very suddenly came to a stop. Boom, like that. The noise stopped, and there was a mound of flesh held back by the stone, pressed in layers like the kebabs the Arabs cooked. The sun, through mist, seemed to perch on top of it. A sound came from within it, very faintly, like the squealing of seagulls.

  Third turned away, and marched. She walked with her eyes closed as much as possible, humming a song. Opening them, closing them, she saw the dismantlement of Saprang Song in flashes.

  She saw a Chinese family burned. They were cheering the rebels, lined up on the roof of an emporium, waving flags, and the rebels burned them, aunts and nieces and grandfathers. Before Third could look away, they were set alight. They stood rigidly within the fire, still holding up infants, like an old family photograph, blackening.

  Something stick thin, leaning on a gleaming metal pole, lurched in front of Third. “Can I take your arm, dear?” it asked. It was a woman. She was wearing a blue hospital coat, and the pole supported a pumping, artificial heart.

  “Ask someone else,” Third replied. “I can’t see.”