The guerrilla camp was indeed deserted, save for Fraden, Sophia, Vanderling sleeping across the clearing in his hut near the herogyn-head barracks where a hundred ’heads, who would be the so-called honor guard were sleeping off their last big herogyn-binge, and twenty trucks, gassed up and ready to go, sitting dark and silent near the margin of the jungle, where a roadway had been hacked from the camp to the nearest spur-road.
Bart Fraden, looking out over the empty camp, over the jungle base which had been his home for months that now seemed like years, saw the empty armory huts, the deserted barracks, and realized that no matter what happened when the sun rose, he would never see it set on this place again. This place was done with, a hand of cards that had already been played out It was a hand that he had played well. Less than a year ago, this place had been emptier than it was tonight, and he had built it into the center of an army, a revolution, that tomorrow would either place him in Sade, the President of the Free Republic of Sangre secure in his capital, or…
Or I’ll simply be dead, Fraden told himself bluntly. All or nothing, that was the name of the game, the game of Pain Day, the game of revolution, the game of his life. Idly, he looked up at the stars, cold white fires in the deepening blackness of the Sangran sky…
Suddenly, he found his eyes drawn to something that shone wanly in the starlight a dozen yards to his left, a smooth, grayish rock jutting up out of the earth, whitened by the pale starlight.
Fraden shuddered, without, for a moment, knowing why. He felt his guts suddenly contract, felt something rising in the back of his throat, felt a soul-deep twinge of… horror? Dread? Remorse? Fear?
Even as the pang went through him, he realized its source. For that instant before his eyes had shown him the rock shining in the starlight for what it was, he had seen something else, a wraith, a vision caused by the trick of light—something else white and naked in the starlight of another night: a ruined human skull in the street in Sade, shining obscenely as he puked his gorge upon it The illusion passed like a ghost in the night, but the pang within him called into being by the deja vu refused to pass.
Fraden laughed aloud, trying to exorcise the demon. Guilt, at this late date? he thought. Ridiculous! What do you have to feel guilty about? You did what you had to do, you’re no Moro, no Willem.
The nameless feeling stayed, mocked him. Again Fraden forced a laugh. Okay, okay, he told himself. Shades of Father Freud! So you’re up tight about killing that baby, that’s where it’s at, Bart, isn’t it? He forced himself to relive that dreadful moment… the scream, the feel of flesh yielding under his ax, the thrill shooting up his arm as the blade buried itself in the wood beneath the flesh…
“Lord…” he whispered hoarsely, for what he felt was… nothing. He felt no guilt at all; he was blameless, he had done what he had been forced by circumstance to do, and now, looking back past months of war, past tens of thousands of deaths, calculated deaths, deaths he had knowingly, willingly caused and just as knowingly used, at a moment which had been the most horrible of his life, he felt nothing at all.
And then he knew that cold pang for what it was, not a pang of guilt, but one of fear. He knew that it was not fear of the future, of the danger he would face in the morning, but fear of the past. Something had been done to him.
All his life, Fraden had been in control, had bent situations, conditions, people, to his own will, used them, shaped them, maneuvered them to his own purposes. He was constant, and the universe around him was malleable. Events swirled around him, but like a rock in the sea, he had stood hard, untouched and immobile in the heart of the maelstrom, reaching out to move men and events into line with his needs, but never changed by them, the unmoved mover. He had been booted out of Greater New York, and it had not changed him, he had taken and lost the Belt, and he was still the same Bart Fraden.
But on Sangre… something had been done to him. He had been moved, deeply moved, by that one personal act of murder. He had been moved enough to seek more than merely another fief to replace the lost Belt Free State—he had wanted revenge. He had felt guilt for the first time, and the guilt had bred hate, hate for himself instantly transmuted into hate for the Brotherhood. Somehow, he had made the mistake of becoming involved in the Revolution, of subtly being seduced, raped, into seeing it as more than a means to a rational, sanely selfish end. Guilt had led to hate, hate had led to the lust for revenge, revenge was not a rational end, it was an emotion. It had led to more emotion, it had made the Sangrans themselves more than pawns in a cold game, it had made him care about becoming a hero, it had made the sound of his own name being chanted by his people something more than merely a sign that his techniques were working. And now… now the one moment of horror that had triggered the sequence meant… nothing!
He had been changed, tampered with. Unwittingly, he had committed the one sin his personal code allowed: he had blown his cool.
For the first time in his life, Bart Fraden felt himself moved by forces beyond his conscious control, a play-thing of fate. Something had been done to him. He had changed Sangre—or had he? Had he changed the planet… or had the planet changed him? Was he really remolding Sangre in his own image, or was the planet slyly changing him into the only kind of man it would let rule it—a Moro? A man who craved power for its own sake, not for the comfort and security that that power could bring?
Fraden felt an internal uncertainty—the only brand of fear he could ever know. Despite all he had ever done, he had always been able to consider himself as essentially good—a man who caused no unnecessary pain. Was it now a lie? Was Sangre making a monster of him by his own definition? Had he copped out? Was this what Sophia had been trying to tell him?
Soph… Had she seen it all along? Did she know more about him than he knew about himself? It was a strange new thought—that there could be someone who knew more about him than he knew about himself. He had always known himself through and through… he had prided himself on that self-knowledge. Was it merely a cop-out? Did Sophia know that it was a cop-out? She now seemed to know so much…
The real cop-out was lying to a woman like that! Before he had killed that baby, he had never lied to her, he had never felt the need. And now…
Fraden cursed, slammed a fist into a palm. Torn by doubts, one certainly asserted itself. Sophia deserved the truth. If he told her the truth, perhaps… perhaps it would dispel all this nonsense, all this stupid doubt. Don’t just stand here, idiot, he told himself. When in trouble, when in doubt, flap your arms, scream and shout… the old saw went through his mind. And that was just what he needed now—someone to flap his arms at.
He turned sharply, stepped inside the hut.
Sophia stood just inside the doorway. She looked at him, and her eyes went wide, her mouth opened almost imperceptibly, and Fraden found himself wondering what his own face looked like at that moment, how much of what he was feeling he was giving away…
He cursed himself inwardly. Had lying to her become that much of a habit? What had happened to him?
“Soph…?” he said. “Have I changed?”
“Changed?” she said, a sound as devoid of semantic content as the voice of an animal. He studied her smooth face, her big, green, intelligent eyes, and for the first time he wondered what really went on behind that mask of flesh. For the first time, it really seemed to matter to him. He had never really looked at her before.
“Soph…”he stammered. “Do I look like… like a murderer?”
She laughed, looked at him peculiarly. “I’ve never seen anyone who looked less like a murderer,” she said. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost—murderers don’t see ghosts, and I know because I once lived with one. And a murderer would never ask that question. Bullethead’s a murderer—can you picture him asking such a question?”
Fraden looked at her in wonder. She was right; she was dead right. He had to tell her the truth—somehow, from the way she stood, the way she cocked her head at him, the way she almost seemed to be
waiting to hear what he had to say, somehow he simply knew that, for better or worse, she would understand.
“I’ve been lying to you,” he said. “I’ve been lying all along. Know who gave Moro the idea of torturing the Sangrans into madness to bleed ’em for Omnidrene? I told him that fairy story because the Animals weren’t desperate enough for my purposes!” He found himself speaking defiantly, almost daring her to condemn him. “And it was my idea to kill the Brains and starve the villagers. My idea! You think I didn’t really know what Willem was becoming? The hell I didn’t! I needed someone to play monster. I used him!”
“Why are you telling me all this?” she said abruptly. “Why are you telling me all this stuff I already know?”
“You already…?” he stared at her transfixedly.
“Who do you think you’re talking to?” she said. “Do you think I’m utterly blind? Ye gods, Bart, what’ve I been telling you all these months? And I’ll bet I can tell you the next thing you’re going to say. That Initiation Ceremony—you killed a human being, didn’t you? I know men—it was written all over you.”
Fraden felt as if an immense weight had been lifted from his shoulders. And yet, now there, was something else, something inexplicable…
“Just like that?” he said. “You knew I was lying, you knew what I was doing, and… and nothing! All that talk about Willem, and you knew I was a murderer, you saw me being sucked in by this lousy mudball, and you slept with me, said nothing, and…”
“What am I, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm?” Sophia snapped. “Am I some kind of father confessor, say three Hail Marys and drop a Confedollar in the collection plate? One thing is certain and the rest is lies—you can’t tell anyone anything he doesn’t want to hear. And don’t put me on, Bart Fraden! You look ludicrous beating your breast and howling mea culpas. You wouldn’t know guilt from your own rectum with a roadmap! You’re afraid, that’s what you are. Wasn’t it you who told me, ‘Never look behind; something may be gaining on you’? So you’ve finally looked behind you, and you don’t like what you see. Welcome to the club, Peerless Leader! Welcome to the human race!”
“You mean you knew all along, and you still… still…”
“Still what?” she cried. “Don’t go putting words into my mouth! Don’t get sloppy on me. I’ve lived with murderers and thieves, I’ve sold my body for a meal. Who am I to judge you? We’ve got a business arrangement, Bart Fraden! I need you and you need me. We’re trophies on each other’s mantelpieces. We both live in the same jungle—if you’re a monster, what does that make me? You knew what I was when you latched onto me—a chick who needed a man who could stay on top. And I knew what you were—a man who would claw his way to the top of the mountain one way or another, and stay there, one way or another! Just because I knew you had killed and still…” Her voice broke. “Just because I stayed with you even though… Just because we’re the same breed of monster… Just because you’re the only man I ever met who I… Bart …” The last was a tiny, whimpering sound.
“Now who’s lying?” he said. “Sophia O’Hara, tough as nails! You phony bitch, you! I love you, you little liar! God, help me, I’m in love… Who needs it? But I can’t help it, I’m so alone here, so alone… All of a sudden, I don’t know anything any more. Except that I love you, and if I lost you… You can hurt me, Soph. For the first time in my life, someone can hurt me…”
Suddenly, she flung herself at him, threw her arms around him, buried her face in his chest. “Hurt you?” she said. “You idiot! I couldn’t hurt you if you came at me slavering with a knife! I’m such a goddamned cop-out, such a stupid cretin! Here we had such a nice little business arrangement, and I have to get myself hung-up over you! Not over what I need from you like any sensible woman, but over a lot of stupid trivia, like some moonstruck yokum. Your body… and the way you walk… and your goddamned delicate gut… Trivia! Nothing! Nothing! Nothing! A first-class man for a first-class woman! First, shmirst! We could be two monsters, and it wouldn’t be different. You could be a leper, and I wouldn’t be able to leave you. I can’t care what you are or what you’ve done or what you’ll do. I’ve got to stick by you as long as you’ll have me. I hope that’s what you’ll always need, because that’s all I have to give. And I’ll always have to give it.”
“Soph, what’re you trying to—?”
“I’m telling you I love you, you moron!” she sobbed. “What a loathsome word! I hate it! I hate it! But I can’t help it, I love you, I love you, I love you… Hasn’t anyone said it to you before?”
Fraden found himself looking at her through misty eyes. He felt young and alive, he felt old and used up. He lifted her face, looked at it like some strange jewel. She was crying. He had never seen her cry before. No one had ever cried for him before. He felt bound to her and did not want to feel it and knew that what he wanted to feel was totally beside the point.
He carried her to the bed, and as he had a thousand times before, he made love to her. But now, he could not stop himself from, thinking of it in those terms. I’m making love to her, he thought, even as he undressed her, entered, found himself swept away by an act that he had always felt as a moment of pure, selfish pleasure. But it was that no longer and could never be so again.
He found himself shepherding her tenderly toward fulfillment, half against his own will, found himself lost in the world of her body, aquiver from each little shudder of delight he felt beneath him, transported by each small moan of pleasure, his own body and ego something tiny and remote, fading away into another universe, and when the moment of fulfillment came, they reached it together, and for a timeless instant, he felt himself merge with her, drawing unthinkable pleasure from her own ecstasy, drinking up her cresting passion, giving of his own, and the mad, somehow fearful, explosion of feral, uncomplicated joy was a thing apart from him, neither his nor hers but a blinding flash of mortal pleasure as vivid as the most terrible pain that united them as one, and was theirs, theirs together.
And that night, for the first time in his life, Bart Fraden slept in a lover’s arms.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Quiet… it was too damned quiet! Bart Fraden looked back over the tailgate of the truck at the long truck convoy behind, the last of the trucks, the last of nearly a hundred, now finally passing through the final defile and out onto the broad plain on which Sade stood. Two thousand men in those trucks, men from nearly a hundred different villages, armed only with the knives concealed in their loincloths, the knives that Moro would let them smuggle in, a strange cargo indeed for the People’s Army to be trucking toward Sade on Pain Day—yet all along the route, the road had been empty.
For the last three miles, they had passed hundreds of trucks waiting on the shoulders of the road, the trucks that would begin to bear nearly twenty thousand guerrillas to the city as soon as the convoy entered Sade. The hills on the western rim of the plain were filled with guerrilla bivouacs—yet there were no crowds of curious Sangrans turning out to watch either the People’s Army or the President’s convoy, even though all the Killers were safely buttoned up in the Palace Compound. Fraden didn’t like it It just didn’t smell right. Had the word he had spread in Sade only three days ago leaked out to the countryside? Did all the Animals know that this was to be something more than an ordinary Pain Day? And what would they do about it if they did know?
Fraden turned to face Sophia, who was sitting on the slab bench jutting out from the side of the truck beside him. He reached out, touched her hand—an unfamiliar gesture—and she smiled at him wanly, took his hand in hers.
Willem Vanderling, sitting on the bench across from them, cradling his snipgun in his arms, seemed to notice the byplay as the corners of his mouth turned upward in a minute smirk.
Fraden smirked back, and Vanderling, misreading as a grin of masculine camaraderie, smiled at him insincerely.
Poor Willem, Fraden thought He thinks he’s got it made, and even his goddamned snipgun will punk out on him in the end. Fraden gl
anced forward over the cab of the truck at the five trucks filled with herogyn-heads armed with rifles. That had been a little game of Willem’s too—arming the ’heads with rifles instead of snipguns. Snipguns would look too threatening, Willem had said. It had all been so transparent—with the ’heads carrying rifles instead of snipguns, Willem’s own snipgun would be a badge of authority, making it that much easier for him to order the ’heads to turn on Fraden when the time came. No doubt he was counting on that little extra bit of leverage. But he didn’t know that it would be working against him, that his own snipgun had a dead energy-pack, slipped in while he had been making a final inspection of the ’heads back in camp.
To hell with Willem, and to hell with the Animals! Fraden thought. I’ve thought of everything. He glanced down at the paper-wrapped bundle at his feet—his Brother’s robe. It wasn’t essential to the plan, but if he could pull it off, if the Killers really Would obey orders from a live “Brother Bart” rather than their dead masters when the final hand was played, it would be a nice final touch—a mob hanging on his word and the only disciplined army on the planet obeying his orders. Poor Willem!
Now the lead trucks were approaching Sade. The road entered the city through the Animal section, and as the truck in which they were riding began to roll along one of the main side streets toward the avenue leading to the Palace Compound, past empty hovels grimed with dust and old smoke, Willem Vanderling grimaced, clutched tighter at his snipgun.
“I don’t like this…” he said. “It’s so goddamned quiet. And where are they all?”
Indeed, the streets were all but empty. Fraden could make out men and women staring at the trucks as they rolled by toward the Palace from within the hundreds of shacks. Here and there a man or woman was clearly visible in a doorway, nodding knowingly as the trucks passed by, holding a club or a knife, or a rag-wrapped stick that could become a torch. A small, thin child, his bones visible through the taut skin of his naked chest, darted out from behind a shack, stood on the street watching silently for a moment, picked up a femur that was lying on the ground, ran behind the shack again.
The Men in the Jungle Page 25
