Ink

by Hal Duncan

  “Take a look at the Turkish uniforms over there,” he says. “And there. And over there. That should be of more concern to us than a few petty thieves.”

  He takes the boy's shoulder, leads him toward a cart of oranges.

  “Especially since the captain over there seems to be unduly interested in us. This way.”

  “This one?” says Tamuz. “No, I do not think I ever—”

  “Give it up, lad. If your story were any more fishy I could sell it in the market. What did von Strann tell you? Say nothing, do nothing, just keep me busy till he gets back?”

  Carter ignores the boy's protests, moving up the street with pleasantries and polite inquiries, shop by shop, heading for the antiquities place with the old blind madman. Most of the owners know little of use, but there's a few snippets here and there, recent visits from someone else asking the same sort of questions— about Samuel and the two strangers … and about Carter himself. A Russian? Carter asks them.

  He's about ten yards from the corner of the road the antiquities shop is on, Tamuz scuffing his feet behind him, leafing through scraps of parchment, fiddling with inscribed clay curios and knickknacks, while Carter tries to pry a description out of a merchant, when the bomb goes off.

  Then he's standing in front of the ruined shop, looking at the fire, the wreckage, the carnage, hearing the sobs of pain and panic, Tamuz arriving breathless behind him, pulling at his sleeve—come on, we have to leave.

  “Bastards,” says Carter.

  “Papers, Captain, please.”

  Carter lays the bread down on the plate and sits back, hands his papers to the Turkish captain, who makes a damn good show of flipping through them, asking why he's here, how long he's staying, all the usual questions.

  “How long have you been here? Here, I mean, today?”

  “Since noon,” the restaurant owner cuts in. “This gentleman has been here many hours with his friend. Many hours.”

  French Lebanese, a crucifix dangling round his neck, the man is casual but not exactly amiable to the Turks—no surprise. A few more suspicious looks, and a few shrugs and easy half truths in return, then eventually there's nothing more for the captain to do except hand Carter his papers back and warn him to be careful of the local whores, filthy as they are. His men follow him out like a flourish of robe.

  Once he's gone, Carter sits in silence for a while.

  “You are right,” says Tamuz.

  His voice is tentative, confessional.

  “You are right before. The Eyn, he tell me to lead you… in circle. To keep you out of…”

  “Out of trouble? The bloody nerve.”

  “Out of danger,” says Tamuz.

  “Why? What's he involved with? What did he get Samuel into?”

  “I don't know, I swear, Carter Bey. Jack. From my heart to yours, I do not know why. All I know is he tell me… He tell me it dangerous. He tell me death follows behind you.”

  Tamuz reaches across the table, lays his palm flat on Carter's chest.

  “Trust me.”

  Carter lets the hand rest there for a second before he peels it off.

  JUS DE JACK

  Fast Puck, the young buck, my keen fuck, unzips my fly and slyly slips his hand through flap of cotton shorts, into the nook between the balls and cock, to nestle the shaft in crook of hand. I smooth a touch of fingers round the nape of his silken neck where skin meets softly shaven down—the golden brown of skin, the dark-brown fuzz of undyed hair—and pull him into a mash of lips, a mesh of bodies, as my other arm winds round his side and down to fondle the butt beneath his baggy combats, round flesh of buns snug in their CKs. Lips locked with tongues entangling, we press, chest against chest, his body braced in awkward posture so that, in between the squeeze of us, he can guddle in my shorts, fondling balls and feeling the heft of the hardening shaft. His grip settles into a steady grasp, a sliding tug of foreskin up over the glans and down again. I break for air and for a glance into his green eyes, pupils wide and black, black lashes flicking in a drowse of dreamy bliss.

  “We have a week of this ahead of us, you know,” he says. “It's serious juice we're talking for a full astral projection.”

  “Seventh-level tantra, at least,” I say.

  I look up at the nibblesome nub of his little earlobe.

  “Peachy.”

  “Sit still,” says Anaesthesia.

  I settle in my seat as her hypodermic vacuum gizmo carries on its needlepoint on my chest. Her hand darts here and there across my bitmite battle scars, from line to dot, along a curve and round a circle, buzzing for a second at this junction or that. Feels like she's soldering my circuitry, the operator of my switchboard soul, making a connection here, breaking another there, but she's not rewiring my graving. No, the little vial at the back of her tattoo gun isn't squirting ink under my skin, it's gathering it up.

  To the munchkins a graving is the story of your life all wrapped up in a perfect sigil; what they forget is every life has others in it, little lost loverboys and their twisted sisters, old enemies and old mates, grizzled soldiers and foxy rogues. And I'm the avatar of chaos, baby. You can make all sorts of pretty pictures joining up the dots of my graving.

  Anaesthesia finishes up and steps back, unclipping the vial from the needle-gun. The ink inside it swirls in complex patterns, order in chaos.

  “Papers,” she says.

  Puck chucks a pack of Rizla over to her and she snatches it out of the air, starts flipping papers out of it, one, two, three, four, five little ciggies went to market.

  As one hand slowly pumps, his other pushes up under my tee, to flick a fondling thumb across my nipple, smooth his hand down ripple of ribs, and down into the crook of hip, there where the waistband of my pants hangs low. I tease two hands into his shorts, cupping the peachy butt, pulling him into me, so I can feel his pecker solid against my belly, and my own, encircled in his grasp, pushed close into his body, cock to cock beneath the layers of clothes.

  I stretch his combats and CKs wide and loose of his smooth, creamy ass and pry them slowly down, to halfway down his butt, and farther down, to bare it fully. And slide my hands around inside to front, to free his tenting cock. Butt naked in the breeze, his solid cock comes out into my hand, and combats and shorts fall.

  “A week,” he says.

  A solid week, I think. Tantra can be such a bastard. But we want juice, not jizz.

  Anaesthesia drips my black blood onto the papers, one by one, and the bitmites seep into them, rise into thickening globules, gradually taking form. When they're done she loads the bitmite cigarettes into my silver case. Five of them, all looking just like your normal Russian black but each of them loaded with a little extra buzz: a whiff of Fox; a pinch of Puck; a dash of Don; a smidgeon of Joey; and a hint of herself.

  There's a little bit of Jack Flash in everyone, they say. And there's a little bit of everyone in Jack Flash.

  Snapping the case shut and sliding it across the green baize of the poker table to me, she draws the rest of the iridescent ink, the jus de Jack, up into a syringe. I tend to leave an impression on folks—an impression, a few dents and the odd chip—but I feel sorry for Fox's alter ego, even if he is a monkey-robot for Moloch and Mammon. Poor fucker won't know what hit him.

  Anaesthesia hands me the syringe and I gaze at the swirly soul-juice.

  “Try not to shoot it up,” says Joey, who knows me far too well.

  No Secrets

  The callous brutality of a bomb in a marketplace, the bloody fields of the Caucasus, and a war that's not about territory but plain extermination—he's tired of it all. Sometimes he thinks the Futurists are seeking, through their ruthlessness, to drive the rest of the world into the same desperate and dishonorable state, to do anything that is required to win an unholy war. Sometimes he thinks this will be their victory, no matter what the outcome.

  “I'm sorry for my outburst,” he says.

  Tamuz meets his gaze, for the first time in the sullen sil
ence of the last ten minutes, Carter sitting on the bed staring at the curtained-off area of dark room, Tamuz seated at the table, playing with an olive from the bowl.

  It was cruel, the way he'd lashed out; Carter knows that. He can't really blame the lad for being loyal to his people, and to von Strann. The wild accusations that he made were hardly fair—a barbarous people—quite capable of murder—heathens and huns—but he's always had a short fuse. And it sounds like Samuel, if he's not already dead, has gone into hiding for fear of his life. Maybe not from the Enakites, maybe not, but Carter can't bloody know that.

  “I want to tell you,” says Tamuz. “I wanted to tell you, I mean. You are right to be angry.”

  “No,” says Carter.

  The boy had only done what he was told, what was impressed upon him with the utmost urgency.

  “I tell the Eyn I do not like this. It is not our way. We—”

  “It wasn't that,” says Carter. “I just took it out on you.”

  He stands in front of the ruined shop, looking at the fire, the wreckage, the carnage, hearing the sobs of pain and panic. There's more smoke than fire visible, thick black whorls, dust in the air settling so slowly, so calmly, in contrast to the traders running this way and that for water and blankets, tearing awnings away from danger, batting at licks of flame.

  Tamuz arrives breathless behind him, pulls at his sleeve.

  “Come, Jack. We have to leave.”

  “Bastards,” says Carter.

  He wrenches his arm away, snarls at the youth.

  “Who did this?”

  His Webley is drawn, an automatic reaction even as he sprinted toward the blast, but around him there's only the chaos of mundane horror, no glimpse of billowing robes, no assassins disappearing round a corner, no blackshirt in the shadow of a doorway with a gun. Just choking smoke and weeping, dazed men and women with streaming wounds.

  “The militia will come. We must go.”

  Carter grabs the boy by his shirt. If he has to tear the city to the ground, he'll get to the bloody root of this.

  “What do you know?”

  “I know the militia will ask why you are here. Come now.”

  Carter glowers at him.

  “I will tell you everything I know.”

  “And that's all you know?”

  “I saw little of your friend,” says Tamuz. “I stay here. I live in the city now. I cook for the Eyn, I watch his house while he is gone. I was here all the time your friend was with my people.”

  Learning their heresies, thinks Carter. And being drugged with God-knows-what if his notes are anything to go by, until… until a few weeks ago some argument arose between Samuel and the Enakite leader that had them arguing late into the night. The boy had only heard of it from MacChuill, out at the camp to drive both Samuel and von Strann back into Tell el-Kharnain.

  In the morning, MacChuill had awoken to an uproar in the Enakite camp. Samuel was gone, von Strann talking quietly with the chieftain, trying to calm her. Then von Strann and the leader had mounted steeds, rode off into the desert.

  Carter speaks with barely restrained fury.

  “What was the argument about?”

  “MacChuill, he does not know our tongue, only this word, that word, just a little. He understand only a little.”

  “And just what little did he understand?”

  “He tell me my sister call your friend a thief.”

  “What did he steal?” says Carter. “Some bloody relic? Tribal secrets?”

  “We have no secrets.”

  And Carter's words might as well be punches then, the way he lays into the lying little cunt.

  “So you fucking told me.”

  “We have no secrets, Jack,” says Tamuz. “We are taught, as children…”

  Tamuz shakes his head as if searching for an explanation, flicks a fly away from his ear. He lays his hand on Carter's thigh for a second and then stands up from the bed, walks to a string of von Strann's prints—Tamuz as Dionysus with wine jar and laurel wreath, Tamuz as Apollo, a plucked hyacinth in his hand. He unpegs one, carries it carefully back to the bed to place it in Carter's lap. Carter picks it up, looks between the youth and the image of him. A picture of sordid, gorgeous beauty that he can't—but does—desire so bloody much.

  “The Eyn,” says Tamuz, “he say that he make pictures of what is inside. That his camera does not steal the soul but show it, yes? Like a mirror. If you can see my soul in your hand, how can I have secrets from you?”

  Carter hands the print back to Tamuz, swings his legs off the bed and reaches for the pile of abandoned clothes on the fold-down bed, plucks his undershorts out of them. The salt-sweet scent of another's body, another's sweat and semen, is rich on him, a strange sensation that makes him feel not quite himself, as if maybe just for this half hour after waking he's not Jack Carter but some other self, someone that exists inside him, but isn't him. He'd tried to explain it to Tamuz, how it seemed so easy, with someone else's scent on him, to lie there, shameless in their sin.

  Carter steps into his undershorts, pulls them on. Over at the sink, his shaving gear sits in a tin mug. A small mirror hangs from a hook in the wall. He leans toward it as he lathers his face, watching Tamuz, sly Tamuz with his innocent shrug and suspiciously poor knowledge of the local antiquities trade, pegging the picture back up on the line.

  No secrets, my eye.

  THE PILLAR OF HER SORROW

  As Ab Irim said to his servant Eliezer, only one man in all of Sodom was righteous in the eyes of the Lord, worthy of being saved, his nephew Lot. How do we know Lot was a righteous man? Is it that the angels sent down into Sodom to destroy the city were met by him at the gate, and taken to his home to receive his hospitality; that Lot, alone in Sodom, gave welcome to the angels sent to slaughter? Is it this that shows he was a righteous man? Is it that when the men of Sodom saw the angels in the streets, they followed them and stood outside Lot's door, calling to him, demanding their surrender, that Lot, alone in Sodom, gave haven to the angels sent to slaughter? Is it this that shows he was a righteous man?

  In your Torah, Professor, we are told that the men of Sodom did not hate the angels, but desired them, lusted after them for their beauty. What is more beautiful than an angel, after all? The word of God is written on the skin of angels, and it is no wonder, then, that the men of Sodom desired to know them. But Lot offered instead his daughters, virgins both of them, untouched by man. Do what you like with them, he said, but leave these men in peace. Rape my innocent daughters, but leave these men in peace.

  This is what shows him, in your tale, to be a righteous man.

  ——

  We have a different story, my friend.

  The story that is told among our people—we who came out of Ur of the Chaldees with Ab Irim, who followed him into Haran and down into Canaan, we who from the earliest days lived with your people, with the Sons of Shem, as servants in your tents, we who are also strangers, wanderers in the wilderness— the story that we tell is different. You will say that yours is true because it is written in ink, while ours is only ever told in whispers, passed from one generation to the next in words that are gone as soon as they are spoken. And perhaps this is so; sometimes it is the writing of the tale that makes it true.

  Are you writing this down, my friend?

  Good. Perhaps it is time to make our story true.

  As Ab Irim said to his servant Eliezer, my friend, the angels who walked into Sodom on the eve of its destruction were not sent by the Lord to warn Lot but to test him. Lot did not welcome them at the gates of the city but threw himself before their feet in terror of his life. He did not lead them to his home but was led to it as a man condemned. He did not offer up his daughters willingly but because he feared the angels of the Lord more than the mob. This was the test of his righteousness. This is the man of righteousness in the eyes of the Lord, the man who offers up his service, his home, his own daughters, in absolute obedience. And in our tale, my friend, it is
said that having passed this test, by the deal that Ab Irim made with his Lord the city should have been spared, but that the Lord in His wrath and jealousy and vengefulness formed another plan.

  Your God, you say, is a God of wisdom, justice and mercy. Perhaps this is why, when Lot had offered up his daughters and the crowd rejected them, then the angels went out and destroyed all who were gathered there with the swords of fire that came from their mouths. It is wise to offer what you know will not be accepted. It is just to punish the offense of those refusing such gifts. It is merciful to give the peace of death to one's enemies.

  But your Torah does not tell of the reward the angels asked for in exchange, I think. It does not tell of how the wife of Lot poured wine for them, and took their robes from them, to wash away the ashes of humanity, how she washed the angels’ feet and anointed their hair. It does not tell of what the wife of Lot learned from the mouths of angels, and how she knew then that her husband would die, and there would be no good men in the city, and the city would be destroyed. This, we are told, is why Lot gathered together all his household, his wife, his daughters and his servants, and escaped into the hills.

  In your story, my friend, the wife of Lot is a foolish woman turned to salt for looking back upon the destruction of Sodom. In our tale, my friend, she looked back in defiance. If she was foolish it was with bravery. If she was turned to salt it was because she stood against the angels with her tears, her tears for the city that she loved and all who died in it, defying God's angels to pass the pillar of her sorrow.

  But this is only our tale, and how can we say that ours is true while yours is not, we who write nothing down but let our words drift away with the winds as dust, as ashes, as salt? I will ask you this, my friend: In your tale what is the name of Lot's wife? I do not think she has a name in your Torah.

  But we remember her, my friend. We know her name.

  The Sound of Danger

  It's the sound of hooves on cobbled stone that wakes him, then a cry in Arabic and the neighing of a horse that brings Carter upright in the bed, the sound of the gate to the courtyard clanging open that has him rolling out onto the floor and reaching for his holster. Danger has its own sound, the sound of anxiety in a voice, of sudden violence in a mundane act. Or hurried footsteps clattering up a stairwell. Carter unclips the holster, draws the Webley out and places a hand over Tamuz's mouth, hisses a warning at him. The boy stirs, moans at the touch of cold steel, the handgrip of the gun prodding his shoulder; he rouses, tries to sit up and speak, only for Carter's hand to clamp tight, muffle his mumble of confusion. Carter puts the gun barrel to his lips in want of a finger. Hush. He drops his hand at Tamuz's nod, motions the boy onto the floor behind him, clicks the safety off, cocks the trigger, and aims the pistol at a door handle now rattling.