Kindling (Flame of Evil)

by Mick Farren

  When Cordelia had first seen the NU98 in all its ribbed and silver splendor, a giant cigar-shaped creation with its code number and the North Star symbol of the Norse Air Corps emblazoned on the side of the rigid fuselage that protected the helium-filled gasbags, it had been moored with ground crew in attendance, and all ready for boarding. As she had climbed the steps that led to the gondola, a single thought had leapt into her mind. It looks so exceedingly phallic. At the time, she had thought of whispering this to Mallory as some airheaded sexy aside, but she had immediately thought better of it and kept quiet. Now, having seen more clearly his love for both flying and his flying machine, she was glad that she had restrained herself. She was also glad she had not played the idiot slut, because something a little strange had happened when she stepped aboard the dirigible. A very curious feeling had come over her, a sudden thrill of shock and fear. Obviously a girl might be expected to experience such emotions when confronting her first voyage through empty space, except the shock had seemed somehow external. She was not afraid for herself, more for the entire fate of the supposedly extremely safe and simple mission. She was too much of a snob to think in terms of prescience or visionary foresight. Lady Cordelia had always considered hints of things to come, channeled from the other side, to be the province of aborigines, Goddess fanatics, and the superstitious lower orders in general, even though, since the outbreak of war, the aristocracy were no longer supposed to think so condescendingly. She could not help but consider such things, however, particularly when the oddness of the fleeting experience was confirmed by the twinge of very normal anxiety she had felt when the two great engines, on either side of the gondola, were started up while the NU98 was still on the ground. For a few moments, the noise had been deafening, and the vibration had threatened to shake the fragile gondola to pieces, but then the dirigible had started to rise, and the noise had been washed behind them by the slipstream, and the vibration cushioned by the very act of flight.

  As they headed south, the forests below looked more and more green, confirming how the onset of winter was a matter of latitude as well as the calendar, and Cordelia was reminded that, even farther south, down at the front, it was probably still late summer. Even Manhattan would be warmer than Albany, and she started to consider the prospects of a balmy night spent in the bustling, cosmopolitan, and altogether wide-open city. Phelan better damn well leave his Norse prudery along with his silver airship when they reached the island city, because Cordelia intended to sample the maximum possible fun. She wished she had brought some civilian clothes with her. In anticipation of her original tryst with Phelan, she had prepared a small overnight bag with a clean shirt and knickers, makeup and contraception, but nothing like the evening dress with which she would dearly have liked to show off. She would simply have to make do with her uniform and an attitude. In Albany, of course, uniforms had become high fashion, but she was not sure how war-obsessed they were in the more sophisticated port.

  After about an hour and a half, the truth began to dawn on Cordelia that perhaps air travel was a little boring. Once one had moved past the novelty of looking down on the world from a few thousand feet in the sky and imagining the mere mortals on the ground staring up in amazement while domestic animals panicked as the shadow crossed their fields, there was really very little to do. Cordelia wished that she had anticipated the onset of boredom and brought a book, a magazine, or even a flask. A drink would certainly have helped, but how could she have known? The promoted impression was that to fly would be a headlong experience of breathless excitement. The crew did not share her problem, because they were fully occupied. The steersman watched the gauges and meters in front of him, all inexplicable to Cordelia, and made small but continuous adjustments to the trim levers and the big aluminum wheel. The engineer monitored his own gauges and advanced or retarded the running of the twin engines. The navigator sat at a small table with his maps spread in front of him, glancing down at regular intervals, checking the lay of the land and the physical features that passed beneath him and calling out regular course corrections. The wireless operator sat hunched over his set with headphones clamped to his ears, while Phelan seemed to be totally in his element coordinating the whole operation. For the passengers, though, aviation was little more than a dull spectator sport, with a pleasant view of the slowly passing landscape.

  All this suddenly changed at about two hours into the flight, when the wireless operator sat up straight and the long and short pulses of the Standard Hamilton Wireless Code leaked from his headphones. He immediately began scribbling a translation onto a notepad, and, when the transmission was finished, he ripped off the top sheet and handed it to Phelan, who read it and then moved up beside the navigator. New maps were pulled out and spread on the table, and what looked to Cordelia like a new course was plotted with dividers, pencil, straightedge, and protractor. After a short discussion, Phelan made some notes and gave them to the steersman, who straightaway began spinning the wheel that controlled their horizontal direction. Cordelia did not like the look of this one bit and made that abundantly clear in the tone of her question. “Is something wrong?”

  Phelan glanced back with a look of irritation. “Nothing for you to worry about, my dear.”

  This was definitely not the answer that Cordelia wanted. She stood up and walked the length of the gondola so she was standing beside Phelan and the steersman. “Then why are you changing course?”

  This time Phelan did not even bother to look round. He stared intently at the steersman’s instruments. “I’m afraid the trip to Manhattan has been aborted.”

  Cordelia really did not like the sound of this. “What? Why?”

  “We have new orders. We are to fly directly to Baltimore.”

  “Isn’t that a little close to the front?”

  “Nothing to worry about. We’ll still be a long way from enemy-held territory.”

  “Why do we have to go to Baltimore of all places?”

  “I’m afraid it’s a need-to-know situation, my dear.”

  “And I don’t need to know?”

  “That’s unfortunately how it’s going to have to be.”

  ARGO

  “You should have both continued to be afraid. Now the two of you are quite dead. You know that, don’t you?”

  Argo moved so he was between Bonnie and the stranger. “You’ll have to deal with me first.”

  “And how are you going to deal with anything, boy, now that I’m standing on your clothes and weapons?”

  Then Bonnie spoke, and to Argo’s surprise, she did not sound in the least afraid. “Damn you, Yancey, how the hell do you do that? How do you just appear out of nowhere?”

  “That’s the real secret, isn’t it? Maybe you would have learned it if you’d been paying attention instead of fucking in the water.”

  “Actually, we weren’t fucking in the water, we were just fooling around, and, for your information, we’d already made good and sure that there wasn’t a Mosul for miles.”

  Argo looked at Bonnie in amazement. “You know this character?”

  Bonnie nodded. “Argo Weaver, meet Yancey Slide.”

  She waded quickly out of the stream and bent down to retrieve her shirt. Argo did the same, grabbing quickly for his clothes and struggling into them with all the speed he could muster, feeling profoundly embarrassed to be naked in front of such an impressive and legendary figure, and feeling even more awkward and inept as he tried to pull his pants up his wet legs. “I’ve heard a lot about you from Bonnie.”

  He glanced at Bonnie for some kind of help, but none was forthcoming. He saw she was taking her time, appearing totally unconcerned at being naked in front of Slide. A pang of jealousy added itself to all of Argo’s other confusion. Had Slide and Bonnie been lovers? Perhaps they were still, and, if that was the case, how was Slide going to react to having found the two of them romping naked in the stream? He had hardly erupted into any kind of possessive rage, but, then again, Slide did not seem the
kind to erupt into any kind of extreme emotion; he seemed more likely to take any vengeance he needed quite at his leisure.

  “Do you dream, Argo Weaver?”

  Argo managed to get his pants up and buckled his belt. Before he put on his shirt and boots, or answered Slide’s question, he stuck his pistol in his belt to assert at least a minimal equality with the dangerous-looking stranger. “Yes, I dream. Doesn’t everyone?”

  Slide’s voice was a total contrast to his fierce and formidable dress and appearance. It was soft, like a whisper from a tomb, but it compelled the listener to listen hard. “And how do you dream, Argo Weaver? Are your dreams pleasant, or are they nightmares?”

  Argo slipped into his shirt, and, for the first time, he looked into the face of Yancey Slide. He immediately wished he hadn’t. Beneath the brim of his hat, Slide had the visage of a corpse. His skin was pale like parchment, his cheeks hollow, and his eyes were dark and deep-set in his head, so they peered as if from hiding. Even the laugh lines that surrounded these socket eyes were so deep-etched that they seemed to have a sinister depth. He wore his sideburns long, in the style of gamblers and bunco artists, and his hair hung clear to his shoulders in greasy ringlets. Argo tried to hide his reaction by answering the question as best he could, but he doubted that he concealed anything. “There’s plenty for nightmares to feed on these days.”

  Slide smiled a smile of strange, otherworldly sadness, and nodded. “Now that’s the indisputable truth. Does any single dream recur?”

  Argo glanced at Bonnie. “Do I have to answer these questions?”

  Bonnie was buckling on her gun and knife, otherwise fully dressed apart from her cap and coat. “Oh, yes, kid, you really do. They may not make sense, but you should answer them if you know what’s good for you.”

  “Yeah, there’s one dream that I have a lot. It’s not so much a dream, but a face that kinda floats in front of me.”

  “A face?”

  “The face of a girl.”

  Bonnie laughed. “Yeah, it would have to be a girl.”

  “What does she look like, this girl of your dreams?”

  “She has red hair and that pale skin that goes with it, the kind that freckles in the sun.”

  Slide glanced at Bonnie. “Does that mean anything to you?”

  Bonnie shook her head. “Not a damn thing, but I’m certain he’s the one that Miramichi was talking about. He’s from my home village, and all the rest fits.”

  “He was a virgin?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Argo’s jaw dropped. He flushed pink with embarrassment that Bonnie and Slide should be talking about his sexual experience or lack of it like he wasn’t even there, but then the exchange became even more mortifying when Slide continued. “And did you relieve him of that burden as Miramichi advised?”

  Bonnie nodded. “Yes, indeed. It was practically no trouble. He took to it like a duck to water.”

  Slide emitted something between a laugh and a wheeze. “So I saw.”

  Argo started to protest. “Listen…”

  Bonnie cut him off. “Pipe down, Argo. This is much bigger than your feelings, or you wanting to look like a man.”

  Slide looked at Argo. “What do you know about the other three?”

  “The other three? What other three?”

  “You don’t know what I’m talking about?”

  “I don’t have a clue.”

  Bonnie stepped in. “I don’t think he’s that far evolved yet.”

  “What are you both saying?”

  Bonnie shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about it. It may come to nothing.”

  “But…”

  Slide looked up at the sky. “We have to get out of here. Enough time’s been wasted beside this damned stream. I have to rendezvous with my Rangers, and besides, there’s also a storm coming in from the ocean. It should hit the coast soon after nightfall.”

  He began to walk quickly away, not even bothering to look back, simply assuming that Bonnie and Argo were following in his duster-flapping wake. Argo fell in beside Bonnie, also looking up at the sky. “What did he mean there’s a storm coming? There’s not a cloud in sight.”

  “There’ll be a storm. You can always trust Yancey on the weather.”

  “And all that other stuff?”

  “You’re just going to have to wait on that. It’s definitely not my place to explain.”

  JESAMINE

  “Hey, girl. You girl. Concubine girl.”

  An old African woman with almost blue-black skin was gesturing to her, but Jesamine could not imagine why. The old woman was standing by the goat pen and feeding scraps to the half-dozen animals that were kept there. A few days earlier, when Jesamine had passed by that way before, there had been more goats in the pen, and she could only assume that the flock had been reduced by the Mamalukes’ well-known taste for goat’s head soup. Unaware of their intended fate, the remaining ones wagged their tiny tails and bleated at the old woman who was feeding them. Jesamine sympathized with the goats, but at the same time she envied them. As she saw it, both she and the goats were living on time borrowed from men who meant them ultimate harm. The only difference was that the goats knew nothing of their fate, while she could all too easily imagine hers.

  “Are you talking to me, old woman?”

  “That’s right. I’m talking to you, girl. And the name is T’saya, not ‘old woman.’”

  “And mine’s Jesamine, not ‘concubine girl.’”

  “Okay, Jesamine, now we understand each other, come over here and talk with me.”

  The woman talked and looked as though she was either a slave or a bonded servant who had been brought across the ocean just like Jesamine, but that seemed a lot of effort to expend on someone who only tended goats. Maybe she was also a cook, with a special knowledge and expertise in Mosul and Mamaluke dishes.

  “That’s right, girl. I cook for the bastards. That’s why they keep me around. If you’re going to prepare goat, the first thing is that the goat gotta eat right while it’s still in the pen. If the goat eats crap, it’s going to taste like crap when it’s cooked up and comes to the table. Know what I mean?”

  Jesamine was startled, but she hid it as best she could. The old woman could have been reading her mind. “I think I know what you mean.”

  She walked around the pen until she was standing next to T’saya. The woman handed her the stalk of a plant with broad leaves and an odd, sweet smell that Jesamine did not recognize. “Feed that to the coffee-colored little fella. His fur’s about the same color as your hair.”

  Jesamine did not exactly like to be compared to a goat, but T’saya was right. The colors did match. She held the plant while the goat munched happily on it. T’saya nodded. “I raise them, I feed them, I love them, then I kill and cook them.”

  “That can’t be easy.”

  “Did anyone say it would be easy?”

  Jesamine shook her head. “No, no one ever said that. Not to me.”

  “So, what you doing around the animal pens, Jesamine?”

  “Just taking a walk.”

  “Smelling another kind of animal from the usual ones?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Must be nice to have the time in the day to take a walk. I sure don’t.”

  Jesamine did not take kindly to being judged. “And where are you around midnight, T’saya?”

  “I’m sleeping in my cot.”

  “Well, I’m not, so it all works out.”

  The goat finished the plant that Jesamine was holding, and started bleating. T’saya handed Jesamine another that was different and smelled akin to mint. “You’re the one who sings, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you’re the one who’s been having the dreams, right.”

  “What?”

  Again Jesamine was shocked. Had Kahfla been talking?

  “No, girl, no one’s been telling tales on you. I just know what I know.”

 
“And how do you know what you know?”

  T’saya turned and faced Jesamine full on. “Because I’m a dream-teller, Jesamine, concubine girl. I was once a dream-teller and a dream-weaver, but you can’t weave dreams in a place like this.”

  Jesamine was suddenly very uneasy. “How do I know you’re not a Zhaithan snitch, old woman T’saya?”

  T’saya laughed long and loud, as though it was the funniest thing she had heard in a week. “Do I look like a snitch?”

  “Does a snitch ever look like a snitch?”

  T’saya roared again. “You’ve got a point there, girl. You’ve got a good point there, but what have I got to snitch on you about? All you’ve done is feed the poor little goat. You’ve got more on me than I’ve got on you.” She stopped laughing and suddenly looked serious. “I’m making you uncomfortable, aren’t I?”

  Jesamine concentrated on the goat. “A little.”

  “I mean, that’s how the bastards control us, isn’t it?”

  “Am I supposed to answer that?”

  “You think the Ministry men will appear and drag you away if you agree with me?”

  “I’ve seen it happen.”

  “Then I’ll just tell you what I know. That way you can take your time deciding if you trust me, and maybe you’ll come back and talk some more.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  T’saya held out a bunch of turnip greens to a black-and-white goat. “Because if I don’t read dreams, girl, I ain’t nothing but a slave feeding, killing, and cooking goats.”