Jerusalem Fire

by R. M. Meluch

  She didn’t address the marlqai directly. She didn’t even face them. She was angry.

  No one had ever been asked to leave Iry.

  It was not an unreasonable thing to demand. The marlqai owned a ship. They were able to leave at any time. They simply hadn’t cared to go. They still did not want to go. They wanted the Itiri to kill Alihahd instead.

  Through the warrior-priest who was translating the alien clacks and mutters to Roniva, the marlqai insisted that Alihahd must have started the fight. Marlqai never attacked unprovoked, while humans, in contrast, had a history of wanton aggression against the marlqai.

  But all witnesses had reported that the marlq in question had made the first hostile move.

  The marlqai whuffled and chittered insinuatingly that all the witnesses were humanoid.

  Roniva whirled on them before her interpreter could translate. She understood their language after all. Her teeth flashed white, and she spoke to the outsized rabbits directly. “Get out!”

  The creatures hopped back in concert. Then they apologized for their blanket slander against humankind.

  Roniva answered coldly through her intermediary, “Tell them I accept their apology. Tell them also to leave.”

  The scene left Alihahd shaken rather than vindicated. The marlqai shot baleful glances at him across the rift as they prepared to go. What they saw in their turn, if they could read human faces, was madness in the staring blue eyes with white all around. Alihahd’s facial muscles stiffened until they trembled.

  An old specter loomed. Another break in Utopia. Sanctuary was cracking, and he couldn’t hold it together.

  Someone came to his side. He didn’t look, didn’t need to. He knew the pony-trot step. He couldn’t face her.

  You are not safe anywhere. No matter how far you go, how fast you run. Your furies will find you. There is nowhere to hide.

  “They should have made me go. I do not belong here.”

  Amerika’s voice was all hurt disappointment. “You still hate it here.”

  Alihahd wrapped his hand in her hair and rested it at the nape of her neck in a fist, with great restraint and care, as if the alternative were to strangle her. “No,” he said softly, more to the mountain than to the girl. “I should like nothing better than to stay here forever.”

  • • •

  Harrison White Fox Hall changed. As the dusk deepened into night, something that started as a gnawing suspicion grew inside and transformed him. Serra watched in alarm. Something boiled up to a level just short of open violence. She saw it through his eyes. Tiger’s eyes. He terrified her.

  But the dangerous eyes were not seeing her. They had turned to some inward vision and he paced, prowling in some place other than here.

  When he brushed past her and his attention flickered momentarily to recognize her, he beheld her with startled impatience that seemed to demand, What are you doing here?

  Finally, he stalked out and went to the isolated cave where he stayed when Serra bled.

  A little while later, Serra ventured up to bring him some tea before she went to bed, but she turned back at the door.

  He was just sitting there polishing his gun.

  Hall hummed snatches of a battle tune. He rubbed a soft mhoswool cloth once more over his gun, checked the sight, and holstered it. He felt a vigor he’d almost forgotten in the months of tranquillity. The exhilaration of hatred.

  The same puzzles had been running through his head over and over all day.

  Marlqai do not attack unprovoked.

  Marlqai have long memories.

  Hall could read people well and had trouble admitting when he was wrong. His reluctance to back down had blinded him for too long. It was time to make amends.

  At first, he’d had Alihahd figured as a onetime coward. He knew Alihahd was a man with a past to be made up for—so moral and self-effacing, with the righteousness of a reformed sinner. It was the kind of self-hatred borne by one who had been in battle and run.

  But no. There had been something wrong with that idea from the beginning.

  Alihahd had been someone before he was Alihahd. He was not just one of thousands of small cowards who ran at the moment of truth. There was fear in him, true enough. But there was also a streak of sturdier, cruder stuff. And there was blood on his hands, Hall knew that now despite the denial. The mistake had been in assuming that the man had either run or made war. Hall had forgotten that one could do both.

  Alihahd had not run—not until after it was over.

  That was his sin.

  He had stayed and fought. And won.

  • • •

  Dawn’s longest rays slanted through the door and cast a warm yellow patch on the cave wall by Alihahd’s bed.

  He sat up, sick to his stomach. He brushed the sleep from his eyes.

  He checked his wound. It had scabbed over quickly and cleanly and hardly swelled. Amerika had brought him a newly made fur-lined boot. He gingerly pulled it on and tried to stand.

  If he didn’t flex his right ankle and foot at all, and if he kept his weight on his heel, he could manage to move around. He went outside, limped up the mountainside, and found a place to pass water. Steam rose from it in the frigid morning air.

  He took a limping walk over the now familiar mountain, even though it was painful. He had a sense that this would be the last time.

  Around him, spring was unfolding in earnest. Winter-born mhos cubs mewed in their burrows under budding thickets. A triller tried out its notes as the rising sun softened the brittle air. Underfoot, green shoots thrust up from the hard winter ground and peeked through the dead tatter of last year’s brown grasses.

  Alihahd sensed the gun at his back before he saw it. A voice sounded behind him. Hall’s.

  “Alihahd.”

  • • •

  Alihahd stopped, rooted to the spot. Never had Hall called him by his false name, and the voice was ironic and deadly. Slowly Alihahd turned. There was the gun, and it was Hall’s. Tiger eyes glared behind the barrel. Alihahd returned the gaze with no emotion at all, only weariness. He turned his back again and limped without haste at his same painful, stumbling pace up the grassy scarp and walked away.

  Hall lowered the gun. He’d kept his sights on Alihahd, his finger taut on the trigger, until Alihahd disappeared over the rise. Now Hall stared in disbelief at the empty space where Alihahd had been. Did Alihahd think Hall was calling a bluff? Harrison White Fox Hall was not bluffing. He was about to march over the rise after the awkward figure and have it finished, but something was holding him back.

  Instinct.

  There was something confusing here. Hall could swear Alihahd comprehended the danger he was in. Hall had sensed some fear, seen tension in his shoulders and in his back, braced and waiting for the shot. Alihahd didn’t disbelieve the death threat.

  Yet he offered no defense. Was that strategy? Did he imagine passivity would earn him pardon? No. Hall thought not. Alihahd was not so deluded. And then Hall realized the answer was right there.

  The man wanted him to shoot.

  • • •

  The rains came, freezing at night into icy sheets. Alihahd didn’t come back to his cave.

  He’d wandered far from the Aerie, slowly, lame and aimless. He didn’t take shelter. He slept in the rain. Then the ceiling of the world lowered as the sun began to set. What was left of the clouds sank with the cooling air and settled around the mountain peaks, wrapping everything in damp, blinding whiteness. Alihahd couldn’t see past his hands, so he sat in a wet grotto and waited, chill seeping into his bones.

  By nightfall, the mountain peaks surfaced, and the sky was revealed cold and icy clear. All below him, the sinking blanket of clouds looked like an arctic wasteland faintly sparkling in the starshine.

  The wet ground began to freeze. Alihahd took a few s
teps into the open and slid a little on the slippery surface. He recognized no landmarks in the jagged black crags. He was alone but for a pair of moving lights—the eyes of a starving meeger aprowl at night.

  The wind had stilled. The air was keen. Alihahd’s breath drew in, sharp and cutting. It was too cold to stop moving, and dangerous to sleep, but that didn’t sound like a good enough reason not to.

  Morning came gray. Another cloud layer had formed far above, and the mountaintops were isolated between the two, cut off from both ground and sky in some elsewhere place, a limbo.

  The black-hooded warrior came upon the Earthman facedown on the frozen ground.

  Alihahd unstuck his eyelids, opened them a crack, and focused on the broad, scarred yellow feet next to his head. Painfully, he lifted his head and looked up.

  Ben’s black-shrouded figure stood mapped against a bleak sky, at one with the mountains’ stark gray solitude. Broad shoulders were slightly forward, his powerfully thewed arms crossed, his shadowed head bowed under the hood. It was said his mind was gone. Ben regarded the half-frozen Earthman curiously. A bird cried in the raw air.

  Ben uncrossed his arms and lowered his hood. “Should I summon a healer?” he asked.

  “Absolutely not,” Alihahd said. He sat up on the ice and touched his numb fingers to his forehead gingerly, as if it might split.

  Alihahd had too much conscience for his position, and too much ability for his will. He didn’t have enough instinct for self-preservation, but had too much for a man who wanted to die. If only he didn’t have a conscience, he would be fine. He would also be the greatest monster the galaxy had ever seen. As it was, he was merely close.

  He sighed in sorrow. He was lost. “I really don’t know what to do.”

  Black bangs fluttered over Ben’s low forehead in the chill breeze and brushed at the red scars on his cheeks. “Thou might try getting off the ice.”

  Alihahd held his blue fingernails out before him, frowned, nodded, all in slow motion. “Very practical,” he said. When the long view was too overwhelming, look to the small and immediate. That much he could cope with.

  With leaden slowness, he brushed off some of the crusty white snow that coated strands of his hair. His tunic was stuck to the ice. He pulled it free and rose stiffly. It was difficult to stand. His joints seemed solidified. He couldn’t feel his toes, nor his ears. He ached, weary from shivering. It would be so easy if he could die.

  Then he realized he could arrange that very simply.

  Sardonic laughter filled his thoughts. This will be quick. He would be too cold to feel the sword stroke. He faced Ben. “Do you know who I am?”

  “Yes.”

  Alihahd was dumbstruck. Yes? Yes? His neat and certain scheme fizzled out. How was this possible? “Since when?”

  “Since first I saw thee,” Ben said.

  Alihahd remembered the murderous fury in the dark eyes. It had been recognition. And yet I live?

  Alihahd shook his head. He stared at the young man. He should not be here. He should not be talking. Last time Alihahd had seen him, he had been beyond retrieval. Yet here he was.

  Ben turned his back to the breezes and was looking at Alihahd over one massive shoulder. There was a mildness to his mood. Black eyes were neutral despite their fierce narrowness and the oblique angle of his brows and three angry red broken lines on his cheekbones. The ring of the carnelian serpent shone like a drop of blood on his finger. There came the thin sound of the kestrel’s cry as it rode the winter air high overhead.

  No longer angry, no longer mad, no longer even human, Ben had become truly alien.

  Alihahd denied what he saw. There was an ancient expression. “Leopards cannot change their spots.”

  Ben considered this. He answered with quiet dogma, “Leopards do.”

  Alihahd echoed softly, “Leopards do.” He gazed up at the sunless sky. “One would think there would be hope for me, then, wouldn’t one?”

  • • •

  The hide cover over the cave mouth lifted aside with a gust of cold air, then dropped shut again. Harrison White Fox Hall, reclining shirtless and barefoot on his bed, looked up, his eyes heavy and narrow as a sated tiger’s.

  Alihahd stood in the entranceway.

  The small cave was hot. The heat was an assault on Alihahd’s eyes, which began to water and kept closing, wanting sleep. His nose thickened and began to run. Coming in from the outside glare, the cave was very dark. Alihahd could hardly see Hall, the faded walls, or anything but the reddish-orange glow from the low hearth. His voice was deep in reluctance, underlaid with embarrassment. “Mr. Hall.”

  “Captain,” Hall said from his bed, low and warm—physically warm if a sound could be so.

  “I am cold,” Alihahd said.

  “Did you come for help or to be shot?”

  “Shoot me.”

  Hall smiled, shook his head. He swung his long legs over the side of the bed and sat up with a grunt. “Come in.” He stood, took a towel from his yellowwood chest, and crossed to Alihahd, who was not moving. Hall brushed some of the snow and water beads off his darkened blond hair. “Whistle.”

  “What?”

  “Do it,” Hall ordered.

  Alihahd tried to round his rubbery purple lips. He puffed out toneless rushes of air, then, barely, a discordant whistle.

  Hall’s languid eyelids raised slightly in surprise. “I am afraid I think you will live.” He pressed the towel to Alihahd’s wet hair without rubbing.

  Alihahd closed his eyes, felt Hall’s hot breath on his face that seemed very fat.

  “Take your clothes off. Get in the bed.” Hall unclasped Alihahd’s belt with a tug and let it fall at his feet.

  Teeth chattering, Alihahd pulled his ice-stiffened tunic over his head and limped to the bed. His fingers wouldn’t flex to unlace his boots, so he just sat, shaking. Hall put a heavy, coarse blanket around him, and took his boots off for him.

  Alihahd’s right leg from heel to knee was a solid bruise, but, protected by the thick fleecy boot, the wound was healing, even though lower down his toenails were blue.

  Hall put more fuel on the hearthfire, then crawled into bed with Alihahd under a heap of blankets. Hall’s hot, dark skin raised in gooseflesh at the touch of Alihahd’s own clammy skin against him. He pulled the covers over Alihahd’s head, which lay at his shoulder. It was like being in bed with a corpse—a very, very, cold corpse—one that would not stop shivering.

  “Ever try to kill yourself before?” Hall asked.

  “Several times,” came the murmur at his chest under the covers. “Have not gotten the hang of it yet.”

  “I guess not.”

  Hall dozed on and off over the hours. Alihahd kept moving, jolting Hall awake.

  After a time Alihahd began to thaw and regain feeling. His toes itched fiercely. Clearing nostrils filled with the scent of straw in the mattress and scent of Hall.

  Alihahd lifted the covers away, moved to the edge of the mattress, and shakily placed first one foot, then the other on the floor, and he stood. Hall seized his wrist. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  Alihahd mumbled—he didn’t know where he was going—“This is not done where I come from.”

  “They eat people where you come from,” Hall said.

  After a dumb pause, the full significance hit Alihahd; he yanked free of Hall’s grip and searched for something to wear. He almost bolted out into the icy night naked, just to get away from Hall—no, not really Hall, from himself, the one person above all he could not bear to face.

  But why else did I come? Alihahd thought with despair, one of those undeniable truths that shrank from the light.

  I knew. I know him. He started to shake again.

  He’d come to be destroyed.

  He heard Hall’s sardonic laughter echo off the close walls
. “Nazi.”

  “You are saying that just to anger me,” Alihahd said.

  “Succeeding, too,” Hall said, and he sat up. “Hey, nazi, you looking for something to cover yourself?”

  He didn’t mean clothes. The tone was much too insinuating. Alihahd turned.

  Hall held up Alihahd’s container of melaninic pills. Alihahd hadn’t seen them since he’d taken them from Omonia Station. He’d assumed that he’d misplaced them, but he should have known that he hadn’t. He valued them much too much. He tried not to let his horror show. Maybe Hall would put them down.

  Hall pitched them one by one into the fire. The precious little pills sizzled with tiny sprays of orange sparks. Tawny eyes slid from the fire to Alihahd’s stone face. “Oh, don’t pretend you don’t care.” Phhht went another pill. “Here, do you want one?” He held one out, then let it drop in the hearth. Phhht. “I’m going to burn them all.” Phhht. “So you may as well fight me for them.”

  Alihahd trembled. Blue eyes were wary, on the brink of their mad aspect, watching his hopes for brownness and normality go up in orange sparks.

  Phhht.

  Then Hall grew bored with his game and made to spill the whole bottle into the flames. Alihahd lunged.

  The pills were in the fire as Alihahd grasped Hall’s wrists. “Too late!” Hall laughed.

  “Damn you,” Alihahd said, quaking. “God damn you.”

  “Ah. Ah,” Hall said tauntingly and opened his fist. There were three pills left. Alihahd snatched for them, and Hall snapped his hand shut. Alihahd tried to pry his fingers open, couldn’t budge them, so brought his mouth down and bit Hall’s hand, hard enough to draw blood.

  Hall roared and pushed his fist into Alihahd’s face. Alihahd reeled back, blood on his lips. “Well, that’s nothing new,” Hall said, rubbing his hand. “Go on and lick it.”

  Alihahd spat in Hall’s face. “Sadist.”

  Hall wiped the blood from his eyelids. “Not half so much as you are.”

  Alihahd’s wan face paled.

  “Yes,” Hall said. “Come on, now. I have three pills left. You’ve killed before, what’s stopping you now? I swear, as I live, I will burn these. Why don’t you come get them, and have some enjoyment of it while you’re at it?”