Soldiers Out of Time

by Steve White

  “Hit the dirt!” Mondrago’s dry-throated rasp held a tone that caused Jason and the others to instantly fall prone to the ground. As Jason did so, getting a mouthful of dust, he looked to his right. Three figures wearing khaki uniforms and pith helmets topped a ridge, and one of them opened fire with some kind of shoulder arm. He heard a cry to his left and, turning his head, saw the Transhumanist clutch his midriff and fall over backwards off the cliff.

  For a moment, Jason could only lie there and cough dust out of his desiccated mouth. Then he heard a scrape of sandaled feet and looked up.

  It was a small, scrawny man of indeterminate age, clad only in a dirty-white breechclout and a kind of turban. His leathery skin was a darker-than-average brown compared to most predominantly Indian-descended people of Jason’s acquaintance. Over his shoulder was slung a goatskin sack which looked to be partially full of liquid and seemed much too heavy for him. He squatted beside Jason, propped up his head, and put the sack’s unstopped opening to his mouth.

  The water was lukewarm and none too fresh. Jason had never tasted anything so exquisitely delightful.

  The man smiled, his teeth white against his dark face, and spoke in an odd singsong version of nineteenth-century English.

  “I hope you liked your drink, sahib.”

  The entire party had been watered by the time the three men in khaki had scrambled down the slope and joined them. At closer range, Jason saw that all three had what he recognized as early bolt-action repeating rifles slung over their shoulders, and wore sergeant’s chevrons. The one who had shot the Transhumanist also had a tiny crown in the chevrons’ angle. He had the build of a heavyweight boxer—a good one—and a ruddy face that could have been cited as evidence for the still-contentious theory of Neanderthaloid ancestry in modern Homo sapiens. He took off his pith helmet and wiped the sweat from his dark reddish-brown hair.

  “Thanks,” Jason told him, and gestured at the nearly naked Indian. “You and that man, between you, saved our lives.”

  The massive sergeant gave a dismissive gesture in the direction of the Indian and spoke in a kind of deep, clipped rasp in which th shaded slightly toward d. “Ah, he’s just the regimental bhisti.” Jason assumed that meant “water carrier.” Then the sergeant gave him a surprisingly shrewd look, and stroked his narrow mustache. “Yank, eh?”

  “Actually, my friend and I are Canadians.” Jason had already decided on this dodge to account for his and Mondrago’s North American accents while at the same time establishing them as loyal subjects of Her Majesty the Queen. He introduced the two of them, using their own names, which he hoped would sound French to this bruiser. “We’re with a company exploring for minerals in these mountains. Our employees, here, are Americans.” He pointed to Rojas and Bermudez. “Those two are Mexican-Americans, and the others are recent immigrants. So their English is limited . . . sounds pretty strange, in fact.”

  “Ah,” nodded the sergeant. If he found anything odd about the presence of two women in the party, he kept it to himself. “I’d say you picked a bloody awful place for prospecting, especially these days with the niggers running wild up here.” He gazed at the men’s three-week beards and general filthiness. “And I can tell you’ve been out here a while. But what . . .?” He gestured in the direction of the cliff over which the Transhumanist had toppled.

  “Uh . . . he worked for another company that’s in competition with ours, you see. They attacked—took all our equipment. We’ve been running from them.”

  “Ah.” The sergeant gave another sage nod. “That explains those buggers. We’ve had trouble with them ourselves. And we didn’t know what to make of them. They’re not local tribesmen, that’s for certain. And they’re dressed peculiarly . . . rather like . . .” He gave Jason’s own garb a narrow regard.

  “Well, as you say, that explains it,” said Jason hurriedly, anxious to change the subject. “But to whom do we owe our lives?”

  “McCready, Royal West Kent Regiment.” He gestured at the other two sergeants, both younger than he. “This is Carver, and this is Hazeltine.”

  “Top o’ the afternoon, mate,” said Carver in an accent that was pure cockney. He was a roguishly handsome, black-haired man whose clean-shaven face featured a deeply cleft chin and an infectiously raffish grin. Jason instantly summed him up: engaging rascal.

  “Good day,” said Hazeltine in educated tones. His unconsciously languid posture didn’t disguise the athleticism of his slim body. His hair and neat mustache were blond, his features clean-cut, his eyes blue and alert. From somewhere, Jason recalled the old British army term gentleman ranker.

  “All right, let’s move our bloody arses,” McCready rumbled. “There are a few of the 24th Sikhs over the ridge,” he explained to Jason. “Our battalion is brigaded with them, and with the 24th and 31st Punjab Infantry, and the three of us got seconded to their regiment.” Jason recalled Mondrago mentioning something about such arrangements. “We were up here on the flank of our main column, and got separated. Then we got into a bit of a dust-up with these business competitors of yours. Lost a couple of the Sikhs before we got away. By the way . . . what kind of rifles are those they’re using? They don’t seem to do anything, but—”

  “New American models,” Jason cut in. “Don’t know much about them. But that reminds me, Sergeant. It seems you and we both want to get back at these people, and I wonder if your unit would help us to—”

  “Sorry. Our duty is to rejoin our brigade.” McCready turned to his fellow sergeants. “Right. Let’s go.” Then he noticed the bhisti, still doling out sips of water. “Get moving, you lazarushian bugger, before I help you along with the toe of me boot!”

  “Come on, Mac,” Carver remonstrated as they started trudging up the ridge. “Go easy on him. He means well. And he has a hard enough time in life, what with bein’ an untouchable and all.”

  “Not an insuperable hindrance with the Sikhs of the 24th,” Hazeltine reminded him. “They don’t believe in caste. They’ll drink water from him even though he’s touched the bag. But you’re right about him meaning well. He’s so proud of the little bit of English he’s learned.”

  “And he’s given me a new tip!” Carver’s dark eyes lit up. “Yes, all right, I own that the last one didn’t exactly work out so well—”

  “Not exactly,” Hazeltine interjected drily. “It landed the three of us in close tack, as I recall. We’re lucky we still have our stripes.”

  “But this time he swears by Rama and Vishnu and all them heathen idols that he knows the location of a buried treasure of the old Mughal emperors, in these very hills! Enough to make us all richer than bloomin’ dukes! If only we could’ve just taken a slight diversion . . . You know, a bit of tactical flexibility, like.”

  McCready drew a deep breath of long-suffering exasperation into his barrel of a chest. “So help me, Carver,” he growled slowly, “if I hear you mention treasure one more time . . .!”

  “Ignore them,” said Hazeltine to Jason with a wink. “I do so habitually.”

  Jason decided to risk exposing their ignorance, for he badly needed information. “I was wondering if you could bring me up to date on the state of affairs here in the Swat Valley. We haven’t been in this country long, you see, and we don’t know anything about the background of this campaign.”

  “Well,” Hazeltine began, “you must understand that this entire area—the Bajaur-Dir-Swat-Buner region—is an explosively hostile Pathan stronghold, British in name only. After all, it’s outside the Administrative Boundary.” Realizing that a colonial like Jason wouldn’t understand what that meant, he elucidated. “You see, the official boundary between India and Afghanistan—the Durand Line, it’s called, after the chap who marked it out—has a belt on this side of it where we don’t even try to keep the Pathan tribes from robbing and murdering each other to their black little hearts’ content as long as they don’t molest our forts at points where we have to keep control, like the Khyber Pass. The Administrative
Boundary is the inner border of that belt. “

  “Ain’t he something?” declared Carver, beaming with pride at Hazeltine’s education. “Would you believe, he’s even learned Urdu, like a proper officer?”

  “I say, let the heathen sods learn English,” muttered McCready.

  “But the present problem,” continued Hazeltine, demonstrating his expertise at ignoring the other two members of this comedy team, “began last month, when our fort at Malakand Pass, at the southern end of the Swat Valley—one of those crucial posts I mentioned—was attacked by the followers of Sadullah the Mad Mullah.”

  Jason made surreptitious eye contact with Mondrago. The Corsican gave a nod that said, Yes. Seriously.

  “In addition to all the usual tosh about Allah,” Hazeltine continued, “Sadullah has been carrying around a thirteen-year-old boy he claims is the legitimate heir to the Mughal dynasty. So the local Pathan tribes—Yusafazis, Swatis, Bunerwals and the like; treacherous brutes—were ready to carry fire and sword to Delhi and restore Muslim rule so they could get back to the enthralling fun of massacring Hindus, from which we British have been cruelly restraining them. But even though the entire Frontier has been simmering, the sirkar—that’s our bloody government—didn’t take it seriously until July 26th. Then ten thousand ghazis—fanatics—attacked the Malakand fort and the even smaller one at Chakdara. The garrisons—24th Punjab Infantry and 45th Sikhs, mostly—only amounted to a thousand men, but they managed to hold out until reinforced. At this point, even the politicians realized this wasn’t just a few tribesmen out for an evening’s amusement, and early this month the Malakand Field Force was formed under Brigadier General Blood.”

  Jason gave Mondrago the same look, and got the same nod.

  “We’ve been advancing into the Swat Valley ever since, in three brigades. Ours is the first, under Brigadier General Meiklejohn. The tribesmen fought us their usual way, with ambush after ambush, but our mountain artillery cleared the way for us repeatedly, and our brigade flanked them out of position when they tried to stand. Yesterday, the 18th, we reached Barikot. Unfortunately, rumor has it that Sadullah has gotten away and is now spreading his poison among the Afridis—they’re the most powerful of the Pathan tribes on the Frontier—to the south, around the Khyber Pass. But nothing’s expected to come of it.” (Mondrago shot Jason a famous last words look.) “And now we’re on the way to Mingaora, where we’re to halt a few days for the Swat Valley tribes to come in and tender their submission.”

  “They’ll be lying in their teeth as usual,” McCready grimly foretold. “But, as I said, our flanking party got cut off, and . . . Ah, here we are. And here comes the naik.”

  They had topped a rise and entered a hollow, where a number of bearded, khaki-clad, turban-wearing Indian infantrymen (Sikhs, Jason assumed) were starting a fire—it was now early evening, and the mountain air’s temperature was dropping even at this season. One of them, wearing two chevrons—Jason deduced that naik meant corporal—approached and spoke to Hazeltine in what Jason assumed was Urdu. Off to the side was a tethered horse.

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you,” said McCready to Jason. “We’ve picked up another straggler—a newspaper reporter, in fact. Young subaltern of the 4th Hussars who went on leave and got himself a job covering this campaign. He’s been attached to Brigadier General Jeffreys’ Second Brigade, but he went off looking for adventure, I suppose, and got separated. Cocky young feller, but likeable. Ah, here he is now.”

  A young man in dusty khaki tunic and jodhpurs approached. He was about five feet eight—average height in this era—and looked to be in his early twenties. Despite his youthful slenderness, a certain quality of roundness in his face suggested that he was the type to grow stout in later life if he wasn’t careful. And the face itself could easily grow to be decidedly bulldoglike. But it was a not unattractive face, with a fair number of freckles, topped by reddish sandy hair and dominated by bright blue eyes and a charming smile.

  “Ah, North Americans,” he said when Jason and Mondrago had been introduced. He had a pleasing voice and a decidedly upper-class accent. “I’m half-American, you know, on my mother’s side. Name’s Churchill. Winston Churchill.”

  He gave the half-circle of newcomers a puzzled look, as though wondering why they were staring at him openmouthed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “My regiment, the 4th Hussars, is stationed here in India but wasn’t ordered to Malakand for this little jaunt,” Churchill explained as they sat around a fire that night after appeasing their hunger with the Sikhs’ chapattis and chilis. “So I took leave and got myself an assignment to cover this campaign for the London Daily Telegraph. Well, all right,” he admitted a little sheepishly, “I admit my mother’s influence helped a bit—she’s Lady Randolph Churchill, you know. But I do have some experience as a correspondent—in Cuba, year before last, with the Spanish troops operating against the Cuban guerillas. Lovely island, and wonderful cigars. That was the first time I was ever under fire,” he added casually. Then he grew thoughtful.“It happened again just the other day, you know. We were passing a native village we thought to be deserted, and an ambush burst on us. Bullets were flying past me. The officer in charge caught one. The men tried to bear him away, but they were driven off. A Pathan swordsman slashed the wounded officer to death with his tulwar before our eyes. At that point, I formed a resolve to kill the brute.”

  “And so you shot him?” Jason prompted.

  “Actually, I thought that under the circumstances my saber would be more appropriate. Well,” he added a little defensively, seeing the looks on his listeners’ faces, “I did win the Public School fencing medal. However, a half-dozen of his fellow sword-swingers came running up, and upon reflection I decided my revolver would be more practical after all. I’m not sure I actually hit any of them,” he admitted, “but we were able to get away to a knoll held by the Sikhs, where we were relieved by the Buffs. D’you know,” he added cheerfully, “nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.”

  He would never know that his listeners were asking themselves if the world they came from could have come into being if one of those Cuban insurgents or Pathan tribesmen—or, in a few years, Sudanese and Boers—had shot with result.

  Jason had more than that on his mind. Indeed, he could barely keep up the façade of polite, composed interest concealing his mental turmoil.

  This tears it. It was easy, back aboard the ship, to talk glibly about what we might have to do if any of the locals helped us and, in the process, saw things they weren’t supposed to. After all, what difference would a few lowlifes in a remote war zone matter?

  But this is different. As long as this cocky youngster on whom so much rides is with us, we can’t take any action with regard to that ship. The Observer Effect won’t let us. Something will prevent us. It’s a current that you cannot swim against . . . and which might just drown you.

  “You certainly seem eager to see action,” said Rojas. Jason was impressed by her linguistic subterfuge. Having heard Churchill mention his Cuban experiences, she was carefully pronouncing the current version of English as she had heard it, and as a speaker of her own native Spanish would have accented it.

  Churchill suddenly looked bleak. “Well, my father Lord Randolph Churchill died two years ago, when he was only forty-five. I’m haunted by the fear that I may also die very young—that I don’t have much time to make my mark in the world. I suppose that’s why I so often seem to people to be in a frightful hurry.” Then, as an afterthought: “I have a fancy I might go into politics eventually.”

  “Well,” said Mondrago, “you certainly ought to have opportunities to bring yourself into notice, serving against Sadullah the Mad Mullah.”

  Churchill’s mood changed again in its mercurial way. “Yes, I suppose we British do have a way of characterizing those who oppose our empire as deranged rather than simply patriotic, don’t we? But having said that, it must also be remarked that some
of Sadullah’s pronouncements are a bit . . . well, peculiar. He’s assured his disciples that our bullets will turn to water, and that they can stopper up the muzzles of our guns by a wave of the hand.”

  “Probably hasn’t worked out too well for them,” Mondrago surmised drily.

  “Hardly—especially with Sir Bindon Blood in command. A most impressive man—and somewhat unconventional. He claims direct descent from Captain Blood, the noted Restoration thief who came within an ace of making off with the crown jewels from the Tower of London.” Churchill chuckled. “I’ve sometimes thought that if the Pathans knew he takes pride in having a distinguished bandit for an ancestor, they’d regard him as a kindred spirit and we could work all this out without so much bother. But,” he added, turning serious, “probably not. We’re dealing with Muslim fanatics engaged in a jihad, or holy war.”

  “We Westerners have had our holy wars,” Jason ventured. “Do we really have any room to talk?”

  Churchill gave a sad smile. “You’re overlooking one thing. Holy war is a perversion of Christianity; it is not a perversion of Islam. The Islamic ideal is the ghazi—the fanatical holy warrior from the desert, sweeping away the corruptions of civilization with fire and sword.”

  “But your average Muslim isn’t a ghazi.”

  “No, but deep in his heart of hearts he thinks he ought to be one. Any Muslim who believes in peace and religious tolerance isn’t a very good Muslim . . . and he knows it. His religion provides him with no basis for a refutation—no philosophical defenses, as it were—when some holy man preaches jihad.”

  Jason fell silent, for he had seen enough history to know Churchill was right. The Moors of Spain had been the most civilized people in Medieval Europe . . . and not once but twice they had offered no real resistance when ignorant Berber fanatics from North Africa has swept over them, because their religion told them they had no right to resist having their multicultural society thus cleansed and purified. And Muslim states of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries had exhibited the same lack of will in the face of the terrorists who had been the high-tech descendants of the blood-mad fundamentalist desert tribesmen of old.