***
When he heard the chopper approach, Moallim knew what he had to do.
Most of the adult villagers ran to ensure their stashes of weaponry and hemp were hidden. But Moallim had different ideas. He picked up his gear, and ran to the foxhole he had dug weeks ago, in preparation for a day like this.
Within seconds he was lying against the wall of the hole with the RPG tube at his shoulder. The hole had taken hours to dig, before it was deep enough for him to get his body out of the way of the back blast, and to get the elevation he needed with the RPG. But when he was in the hole and had pulled a little dirt and loose vegetation over his body, he was really quite well hidden. The grenade launcher was an antique, actually a relic of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s, but, well maintained and cleaned, it still worked, was still lethal. As long as the chopper came close enough to his position, he would surely succeed.
Moallim was fifteen years old.
He had been just four when he had first encountered the helicopters of the west. They had come at night, a pack of them. They flew very low over your head, black on black, like angry black crows. Their noise hammered at your ears while their wind plucked at you and tore at your clothing. Market stalls were blown over, cattle and goats were terrified, and tin roofs were torn right off the houses. Moallim heard, though he did not see it for himself, that one woman’s infant was torn right out of her arms and sent whirling up into the air, never to come down again.
And then the shooting had started.
Later, more choppers had come, dropping leaflets that explained the “purpose” of the raid: there had been an increase in arms smuggling in the area, there was some suspicion of uranium shipments passing through the village, and so on. The “necessary” strike had been “surgical,” applying “minimum force.” The leaflets had been torn up and used to wipe asses. Everybody hated the helicopters, for their remoteness and arrogance. At four, Moallim did not have a word to describe how he felt.
And still the choppers came. The latest UN helicopters were supposed to be here to enforce peace, but everybody knew that this was somebody else’s peace, and these “surveillance” ships carried plenty of weaponry.
These problems had a single solution, so Moallim had been taught.
The elders had trained Moallim to handle the rocket-propelled grenade launcher. It was always hard to hit a moving target. So the detonators had been replaced with timing devices, so that they would explode in midair. As long as you fired close enough, you didn’t even need a hit to bring down an aircraft—especially a chopper, and especially if you aimed for the tail rotor, which was its most vulnerable element.
RPG launchers were big and bulky and obvious. They were difficult to handle, awkward to lift and aim—and you were finished if you showed yourself aiming one from the open or a rooftop. So you hid away, and let the chopper come to you. If they came this way the chopper crew, trained to avoid buildings for fear of traps, would see nothing more than a bit of pipe sticking out of the ground. Perhaps they would assume it was just a broken drain, from one of the many failed “humanitarian” schemes imposed on the area over the decades. Flying over open ground they would think they were safe. Moallim smiled.
***
The sky ahead looked odd to Bisesa. Clouds, thick and black, were boiling up out of nowhere and gathering into a dense band that striped along the horizon, masking the mountains. Even the sky looked somehow washed-out.
Discreetly she dug her phone out of a pocket of her flight suit. Holding it nestling in her hand, she whispered to it, “I don’t recall storm formations in the weather forecasts.”
“Neither do I,” said the phone. It was tuned to the civilian broadcast nets; now its little screen began to cycle through the hundreds of channels washing invisibly over this bit of the Earth, seeking updated forecasts.
The date was June 8, 2037. Or so Bisesa believed. The chopper flew on.
3. Evil Eye
The first hint Josh White had of the strange events unfolding in the world was a rude awakening: a rough hand on his shoulder, an excitable clamor, a wide face looming over him.
“I say, Josh—wake up, man! You won’t believe it—it’s quite the thing—if it isn’t the Russians, I’ll eat your puttees—”
It was Ruddy, of course. The young journalist’s shirt was unbuttoned and he wore no jacket; he looked as if he had just got out of bed himself. But his broad face, dominated by that great brow, was flecked with sweat, and his eyes, made small by his thick gig-lamp spectacles, danced and gleamed.
Josh, blinking, sat up. Sunlight was streaming into the room through the open window. It was late afternoon; he had been napping for an hour. “Giggers, what on earth can be so vital it deprives me of my shut-eye? Especially after last night … Let me wash my face first!”
Ruddy backed off. “All right. But ten minutes, Josh. You won’t forgive yourself if you miss this. Ten minutes!” And he bustled out of the room.
Josh, bowing to the inevitable, pulled himself out of bed and moved sleepily around the room.
Like Ruddy, Josh was a journalist, a special correspondent of the Boston Globe, sent to file color reports from the North—West Frontier, this remote corner of the British Empire—remote, yes, but possibly crucial for Europe’s future, and so of interest even in Massachusetts. The room was just a cramped little hole in the corner of the fort, and he had to share it with Ruddy, thanks to whom it was cluttered with clothes, half-emptied trunks, books, papers, and a little foldaway desk on which Ruddy penned his dispatches for the Civil and Military Gazette and Pioneer, his newspaper in Lahore. At that, though, Josh knew he was lucky to have a room at all; most of the troops stationed here at Jamrud, European and Indian alike, spent their nights in tents.
Unlike the soldiers Josh had a perfect right to an afternoon nap, if he needed it. But now he could hear that something unusual was indeed afoot: raised voices, running feet. Not a military action, surely, not another raid by the rebellious Pashtuns, or he would have heard gunfire by now. What, then?
Josh found a bowl of clean warm water, with his shaving kit set out beside it. He washed his face and neck, peering at a rather bleary face in the scrap of mirror fixed to the wall. He was small-featured, with what he thought of as a pug nose, and this afternoon the bags under his eyes weren’t doing his looks any good at all. Actually Josh’s head hadn’t been too sore this morning, but then to survive the long nights in the Mess he’d learned to stick to beer. Ruddy, on the other hand, had indulged his occasional passion for opium—but the hours Ruddy had spent sucking on the hookah seemed to leave no after-effects on his nineteen-year-old constitution. Josh, feeling like a war veteran at the age of twenty-three, envied him.
The shaving water had been set out unobtrusively by Noor Ali, Ruddy’s bearer. It was a level of service Bostonian Josh found uncomfortable: when Ruddy was sleeping off his worst binges, Noor Ali was expected to shave him in bed, even asleep! And Josh found it hard to stomach the whippings Ruddy found it necessary to administer from time to time. But Ruddy was an “Anglo-Indian,” born in Bombay. This was Ruddy’s country, Josh reminded himself; Josh was here to report, not to judge. And anyhow, he admitted guiltily, it was good to wake up to warm water and a mug or two of hot tea.
He dried himself off and dressed quickly. He took one last glance in the mirror, and finger-combed his mop of unruly black hair. As an afterthought he slipped his revolver into his belt. Then he made for the door.
It was the afternoon of March 24, 1885. Or so Josh still believed.
***
Inside the fort there was a great deal of excitement. Across the deeply shadowed square, soldiers rushed to the gate. Josh joined the cheerful crowd.
Many of the British stationed here at Jamrud were of the 72nd Highlanders, and though some were dressed informally in loose, knee-length native trousers, others wore their khaki jackets and red trews. But white faces were rare; Gurkhas and Sikhs outnumbered British by three to one
. Anyhow, this afternoon Europeans and sepoys alike pushed and bustled to get out of the fort. These men, stationed in this desolate place far from their families for months on end, would give anything for a “do,” a bit of novelty to break up the monotony. But on the way to the gate Josh noticed Captain Grove, the fort’s commander, making his way across the square, with a very worried expression on his face.
As he emerged into the low afternoon sunlight outside the fort Josh was briefly dazzled. The air had a dry chill, and he found himself shivering. The sky was eggshell blue and empty of cloud, but close to the western horizon, he saw, there was a band of darkness, like a storm front. Such turbulent weather was unusual for this time of year.
This was the North—West Frontier, the place where India met Asia. For the imperial British, this great corridor, running from northeast to southwest between the mountain ranges to the north and the Indus to the south, was the natural boundary of their Indian dominion—but it was a raw and bleeding edge, and on its stability depended the security of the most precious province of the British Empire. And the fort of Jamrud was stuck smack in the middle of it.
The fort itself was a sprawling place, with a curtain of heavy stone walls and broad corner watchtowers. Outside the walls, conical tents had been set up in rows, military neat. Jamrud had originally been built by the Sikhs, who had long governed here and mounted their own wars against the Afghans; by now it was thoroughly British.
Today it wasn’t the destiny of empires that was on anybody’s mind. The soldiers streamed out over the heavily trampled patch of earth that served as the fort’s parade ground, heading for a spot perhaps a hundred yards from the gate. There, Josh could see what looked like a pawnbroker’s ball hovering in the air. It was silvered, and glinted brightly in the sunlight. A crowd of perhaps fifty troopers, orderlies and noncombatants had gathered under that mysterious sphere, a mob in various states of informal dress.
In the middle of it all, of course, was Ruddy. Even now he was taking command of the situation, stalking back and forth beneath the hovering ball, peering up at it through his gig-lamp spectacles and scratching his chin as if he were as sage as Newton. Ruddy was short, no more than five feet six, and somewhat squat, perhaps a little pudgy. He had a broad face, a defiant mustache and over bristling eyebrows a wide slab of a forehead already exposed by a receding tide of hair. Bristling— yes, thought Josh with a kind of exasperated fondness, bristling was the word for Ruddy. With his stiff, if vigorous, bearing, he looked thirty-nine, not nineteen. He had an unsightly red blemish on his cheek, his “Lahore sore,” that he thought had come from an ant bite, which would respond to no treatment.
The soldiers sometimes mocked Ruddy for his self-importance and pomposity—no fighting man had much time for noncombatants anyhow. But at the same time they were fond of him; in his dispatches to the CMG, and in his barrack-room tales, Ruddy loaned these “Tommies,” far from home, a rough eloquence they lacked themselves.
Josh pushed his way through the crowd to Ruddy. “I can’t see what’s so strange about this floating fellow—a conjuring trick?”
Ruddy grunted. “More likely some trickery by the Tsar. A new type of heliograph, perhaps.”
They were joined by Cecil de Morgan, the factor. “If it’s jadoo ,I’d like to know the secret of the magic. Here—you.” He approached one of the sepoys. “Your cricket bat—may I borrow it? …” He got hold of the bat and waved it through the air. He passed it under and around the floating ball. “You see? There’s really no possibility of anything holding it up, no invisible wire or glass rod, however contorted.”
The sepoys were less amused. “Asli nahin! Fareib!”
Ruddy muttered, “Some are saying this is an Eye, an Evil Eye. Perhaps we need a nuzzoo-watto to avert its baleful gaze.”
Josh placed a hand on his shoulder. “My friend, I think you’ve imbibed more of India than you care to admit. It’s probably a balloon, filled with hot air. Nothing more exciting than that.”
But Ruddy was distracted by a worried-looking junior officer who came shoving through the crowd, evidently searching for somebody. Ruddy hurried over to speak with him.
“A balloon, you say?” de Morgan said to Josh. “Then how does it hold so still in the breeze? And—watch this!” He swung the cricket bat over his head like an axe, and slammed it against the floating sphere. There was a resounding smash, and to Josh’s astonishment the bat just bounced off the sphere, which remained as immovable as if it was set in rock. De Morgan held up the bat, and Josh saw it had splintered. “Hurt my blooming fingers! Now tell me, sir, have you ever seen such a thing?”
“Not I,” Josh admitted. “But if there’s a way to make a profit out of it, Morgan, I’m sure you’re the man.”
“ De Morgan, Joshua.” De Morgan was a factor, who made a handsome living from supplying Jamrud and other forts of the Frontier. Aged about thirty, he was a tall, oleaginous sort of man. Even here, miles from the nearest town, he wore a new khaki suit dyed a delicate olive green, a sky-blue tie, and a pith helmet as white as snow. He was a type, Josh was learning, who was attracted to the fringe of civilization, where there were fat profits to be made and a certain slackness to the enforcement of the law. The officers disapproved of him and his like, but de Morgan kept himself popular enough with his supplies of beer and tobacco for the men, even prostitutes when possible, and occasional bags of hashish for the officers—and for Ruddy too.
Despite de Morgan’s stunt, the show seemed to be over. As the sphere didn’t move or spin, or open up, or fire bullets, the audience appeared to be getting bored. Besides, some of them were shivering in this unseasonably cold afternoon, as that wind from the north continued to blow. One or two drifted back to the fort, and the party began to break up.
But now there was shouting from the edge of the group: something else unusual had turned up. De Morgan, his nostrils flaring, once more on the scent of opportunity, ran off that way.
Ruddy plucked at Josh’s shoulder. “Enough of these magic tricks,” he said. “We should get back. We’re soon going to have a lot of work, I fear!”
“What do you mean?”
“I just had a word with Brown, who spoke to Townshend, who overheard something Harley was saying …” Captain Harley was the fort’s Political Officer, reporting to the Political Agency of the Khyber, the arm of the province’s administration intended to deal diplomatically with the chiefs and khans of the Pashtun and Afghan tribes. Not for the first time Josh envied Ruddy his links among Jamrud’s junior officers. “Our communications have gone down,” said Ruddy breathlessly.
Josh frowned. “What do you mean—has the telegraph wire been cut again?” When the link to Peshawar was broken it was tricky to file copy; Josh’s editor in faraway Boston was unsympathetic to the delays caused by horseback delivery to the town.
But Ruddy said, “Not just that. The heliographs too. We haven’t seen so much as a flicker of light from the stations to the north and west since dawn. According to Brown, Captain Grove is sending out patrols. Whatever has happened must be widespread and coordinated.”
The heliographs were simple portable signaling devices, just mirrors on foldaway tripods. A series of heliograph communication posts had been set up all around the hills between Jamrud and the Khyber, as well as back toward Peshawar. So that was why Captain Grove had been looking so concerned, back in the fort.
Ruddy said, “Out there in the field, perhaps a hundred British throats have been slit in the night by Pashtun savages—or the Amir’s assassins—or, worse yet, by the Russian puppet masters themselves!” But even as he described this gruesome possibility, Ruddy’s eyes, behind their thick panes of glass, were alive.
“You relish the coming of war as only a noncombatant would,” Josh said.
Ruddy said defensively, “If the time came I would stand my corner. But in the meantime words are my bullets—as they are for you, Joshua, so don’t you lecture me.” His vital good humor broke through again. “It’s
exciting, eh? You can’t deny that. At least something is happening! Come on, let’s get to work!” And he turned and ran back toward the fort.
Josh made to follow. He thought he heard a flapping sound, like the wings of some great bird. He looked back. But then the wind shifted a little and the strange sound dissipated.
Some of the troopers were still playing with the Eye. One man clambered on the shoulders of another, grabbed onto the Eye with both hands, and hung there, all his weight suspended by the Eye. Laughing, the trooper let himself drop to the ground.
***
Back in their shared room, Ruddy made immediately for his desk, dragged a pile of paper toward him, took the top off a bottle of ink and began to write.
Josh watched him. “What are you going to say?”
“I’ll know in a moment.” He wrote even as he spoke. He was an untidy worker, a Turkish cigarette lodged in his mouth as was his habit, and droplets of ink sprayed around him; Josh had learned where to store his own stuff out of his way. But he couldn’t help but admire Ruddy’s fluency.
Listlessly Josh lay on his bed, his hands locked behind his neck. Unlike Ruddy, he had to get his thoughts in order before he could write a word.
The Frontier was strategically vital for the British, as it had been for previous conquerors. To the north and west of this place lay Afghanistan, centered on the Hindu Kush. Through the passes of the Kush had once marched the armies of Alexander and the hordes of Genghis Khan and Tamburlaine, all drawn by the mystery and wealth of India to the south. Jamrud itself occupied a key position, lying on the line of the Khyber Pass, between Kabul and Peshawar.
But the province itself was more than a mere corridor for foreign soldiery. It had its own people, who regarded this land as their own: the Pashtuns, a warrior race, fierce, proud and cunning. The Pashtuns—whom Ruddy called Pathans—were devout Muslims, and bound by their own code of honor, called the pakhtunwali. The Pashtuns were splintered into tribes and clans, but that very splintering gave them a robust kind of fluidity. No matter how heavy a defeat was inflicted on one tribe or another, still more would melt out of the mountains with their old-fashioned long-barreled rifles, their jezails. Josh had met a few Pashtuns, prisoners taken by the British. Josh had thought them the most alien people he had ever encountered. Among the British soldiers there was a certain wary respect for them, though. Some of the Highlanders even said the pakhtunwali wasn’t so different from their own clannish code of honor.
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