Somewhere East of Life

by Brian W Aldiss

  The Turkmeni were seeking a political stability which so far eluded them and their neighbors. No models of stable government existed in their past from which they might gain strength: there were instead memories of oppression, massive abuses of morality (and agriculture), and, more distantly, the legend of that Golden Horde which had once laid waste all the cities of Asia in its path. In fact, the Friendship Bridge represented an aborted hope, a hand stretched toward the outside world, but not far enough.

  He sensed something of the complexity of emotions Dr. Haydar felt, whose wife’s sister must remain on the other side of the torrent. That was part of an historical necessity.

  And how had he, Roy Burnell, come here? Certainly, he had managed to obtain no introduction to President Diyanizov from the authorities in Frankfurt or London. Fearful of the paid assassin, Diyanizov saw no visitors. Had Burnell ever really hoped that he might retrieve that vital missing part of his memory? Or had he already come across a fragment of it in Mr. Khan’s emporium, and found it inconclusive?

  Burnell had drifted because he was, essentially, a drifter. Despite the best of educations, he had refused to join the family’s various business enterprises. He had dedicated himself to… Well, dedication was hardly a word he cared to apply to himself.

  Tarquin Burnell, his father, was now confined to a motorized chair. An old embittered man who trundled slowly about his estate, bullying gardeners, harassing his second wife. Soon he would inevitably pass away. The estate would be broken up. And the avenue of lime trees planted by his grandfather…? Already Burnell could feel latent regret, awaiting the release of his father’s death.

  His father had liked, had loved, Stephanie. Of course Burnell had no more chance of getting her back than there was of standing and demanding, successfully, that the sandstorm cease.

  Those vital scenes remained to be retrieved, to be reinstated in his memory. He needed better evidence than a cupboard full of shirts he failed to recognize. Oh, Stephanie, how did our relationship go so badly wrong? You were the most precious thing in my life. Had there been someone more precious to you than I? If only I knew, if only I could remember…

  But would things then be different? Could he rectify a past fault? Could that broken bridge ever be reconstructed to cross the chilly river of separation?

  Tears filled his eyes, to be instantly dried by the heat.

  He felt his own identity fading into the abrasive world about him. Never was it more clear to him why, and how fatally, he clung to the memorials of the past. And the time would come, not today, perhaps not tomorrow, when he would join the dead, and the broken estates, when he would succumb to the same processes of mutability which had transformed the bridge from design to ruin. Yes, the time would come.

  Well, it was no great matter…

  The sand was gathering about the two figures, who crouched as if imploring Allah for his mercy. It lay thickly drifted under the parapet.

  Roy Burnell yielded up his thoughts to let the sand take over. He heard it howling through Turkmenistan, through the universe, covering everything, the living and the dead.

  19

  A Toe and a Tow

  “The headlights work well,” Dr. Haydar called.

  Burnell made no reply. He sat on a block of stone by the unfinished bridge, deliberately not watching Haydar’s ineffectual attempts to start his brother-in-law’s car. Though Haydar and the recalcitrant vehicle were only a few meters away, he could scarcely see them through the advancing gloom.

  The sandstorm had died. It left behind disgruntled noises of thunder muttering in the Iranian range. The vast bleak theology of landscape about them was working up to a sermon on the Ultimate Darkness. It suited Burnell’s mood that grains of sand had penetrated the carburetor, or jammed the fanbelt, or clogged up the air intake, or whichever of a line of explanations Haydar offered up to the desert to explain why the car had—definitively, it seemed—broken down. Had he now started the engine, disappointment would have been Burnell’s main response. He nursed a perverse wish that things would become worse.

  So he sat or crouched uncomfortably, awaiting fresh admissions of incompetence and humiliation.

  Haydar stopped struggling. He had the bonnet of the Chaika propped up, and leaned exhaustedly over the engine, gasping. His carnation had wilted in his buttonhole and he tossed it away. He had already ripped off his tie and stuffed it in his jacket pocket.

  At last, in a mild voice, he said, “Speak, please, my friend.”

  “ ‘Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit

  There is not even silence in the mountains

  But dry sterile thunder without rain…’ ”

  “Yes, yes, I hear it. But what shall we do, my friend? I cannot make my brother’s car to go.”

  “Brother-in-law, you said. Then we stay here or we walk back to the city. I cannot think of a third alternative. I don’t imagine we can swim back.”

  Closing down the bonnet, Haydar went and sat in the car, turning off its lights. Burnell crouched where he was, listening to the thunder and the repetitive noise of the river.

  Many minutes passed. Haydar came over and stood by Burnell. “I am sorry for this difficulty, my friend. Perhaps you are annoyed. If you will push the car, I will throw in the gear and then she may start up.”

  “Where can we push it? I can’t push it through the sand.”

  “No, no. We push her downhill toward the river bank.”

  Burnell wearily agreed to give it a try. Between them, they managed to turn the car in the right direction. Between them, they persuaded it to roll. When Haydar jumped into the driving-seat, Burnell, with an effort, heels digging into the sand, kept it moving.

  As it met the incline, the black Chaika gathered momentum. Burnell shouted, Haydar threw the car into third gear. The engine spluttered and caught.

  “Look out!” yelled Burnell as the car surged forward. It had suddenly remembered the excitements of power. Haydar shouted too. But the car rushed down the bank, bounced, and plunged its nose into the River Garakhs. The engine died with scarcely a bubble of protest.

  The phrase “Now you’ve done it” sprang to Burnell’s mind; he wondered if he had ever used it, perhaps in those stolen years. Conquering the impulse to use it now, he said coldly, “We shall have difficulty in pushing your brother-in-law’s car out of there.”

  Climbing from the driving-seat, Haydar had to wade up to his knees to get ashore.

  “The brake failed.”

  This was said rather as an aside, an excuse he knew would never work. Standing looking helplessly at Burnell, he said, “My brother will be distressed.” He then smote his forehead with moderate force.

  “Brother-in-law.”

  It seemed best to Burnell to show his anger by saying nothing more; he husbanded his resources in case Haydar said something like, You pushed too hard. Haydar, however, was perfectly resigned to the situation. He declared they must wait by the bridge for the night. Someone would be by in the morning to help him, undoubtedly. And he had in the back of the car a picnic, which meant they could eat. Also rugs, under which they could sleep. “No ‘flight powder’?” asked Burnell, using the term Haydar had used for the drug which had proved so effective a day or two earlier. “Now? In our hour of need?”

  “I have some. But it is better not to take it. We must stay alert in case robbers chance to come on us during the night.”

  “Is that at all likely?”

  “Iranians may be only a hundred meters away.”

  There was nothing for it but to accept the inevitable. Since the picnic and the rugs were above the waterline, they were easily retrieved from the back seat of the car. The men sat with their spines against the blocks of the Friendship Bridge and ate. Haydar unwrapped cold kebabs, pita bread, and a peppery sausage, together with apricots and persimmons. He also produced a flask of hot Russian tea. They ate by torchlight, in silence, engulfed by the warm dark.

  “If the wind blew underground, the de
ad would refuse to be buried,” said Burnell.

  They both laughed.

  Thunder still rumbled across the river. Phantasmal sheet lightning occasionally revealed a distant hump of mountain. A night bird called, with a cry that seemed to say, “Everyone’s gone. Everyone’s gone.” The thought of the sparrow that used to call “Richard” came to Burnell’s mind, making him feel sad on its behalf.

  When they settled down to sleep in the sand and gravel in the shelter of the bridge, Haydar said, “I feel much to blame for your discomfort.”

  “It’s pleasant to sleep outside occasionally.”

  He lay under his rug, looking up at the stars, thinking of Blanche, lovely Blanche, under the Spanish stars. Close to her, according to her letter, had been the two pre-human skeletons. Perhaps that was safer than sleeping near Dr. Haydar: Burnell was beginning to regret he had not heeded a phone call from Murray-Roberts early in the day, announcing that the British Ambassador had returned to Ashkhabad, and it was time Burnell stopped associating with Haydar, who was heavily into an unspecified crime.

  With such uncomfortable thoughts, he fell asleep.

  He slept for two hours when a pain in his right foot roused him. One moment he was asleep, the next in mortal straits. He sat up suddenly and began to shriek with agony. When settling himself down under the blanket, he had kicked off his shoes and socks for comfort. His immediate thought was that a snake had bitten him. His cries roused Haydar, who lumbered over and shone his torch. An angry red spot had formed on Burnell’s big toe.

  Exclaiming, Haydar dropped the torch on the ground. He whipped his tie from his jacket pocket and bound it tightly round Burnell’s foot, clamping it still with two massive hands round the ankle. Throwing himself down full-length, he began to suck lustily at Burnell’s toe.

  Crazed with pain, Burnell writhed and threw back his head, arching his spine as if under tetanus attack. So forceful were Haydar’s powers of suction, he felt the blood being drawn out through his whole body, from throat to toe. Every so often, Haydar spat into the sand and took a deep breath, before sucking again with renewed vigor.

  “What is it? What is happening?”

  “Allah have mercy on you. It’s a scorpion bite.” He resumed his powerful suction. Loosening the tourniquet, he sucked again.

  The fire of the poison mounted to Burnell’s brain, shooting up the right side of his body and burning its way down his left. In a delirium, he broke from Haydar’s hold and flung himself against the bridge, banging his head as if determined to split it open and end everything.

  He was scarcely aware when he was seized by powerful arms and pinioned. With a tow-rope taken from the half-drowned car, Haydar proceeded to bind him to the ladder set in the concrete. The knots went tight: he could do himself no further damage. He crammed a handkerchief into Burnell’s mouth, so as to stifle his cries, in case ill-intentioned persons were attracted to the spot. With a tender palm, he soothed Burnell’s forehead.

  “My friend, you may survive. The scorpions hereabouts are known for the potency of their venom. I have done all that I can for you. The rest is in the hands of chance. It is my blame that I forget and permit us to sleep so near to a piece of building, where these little animals live… By the dawn, you will be recovered or you will be beyond further harm.”

  “Mmmmmmgh,” Burnell replied. His eyes rolled deliriously.

  With Haydar sitting by his feet, he remained in a fainting condition for hours. His body convulsed as the fires of the remaining poison circulated. Sweat stood hot on his forehead and rolled down cold inside his shirt. He shivered and blazed. For a while he was unconscious.

  When he roused, he tilted his head about, looking for Nastiklof s Devil. The Devil remained out of sight. He gazed sickly up at the stars. Possibly there was a lightening in the sky behind him. Or it was the torch still burning. Or it was a false dawn. Or he imagined it. Carried along with the grand revolution of the sky, the Pleiades were moving toward the West. Ah, the West, he thought… How he longed to be back in the West, under the tender care of Dr. Kepepwe for preference. When he attempted to pray, the words would not come. When he tried to think of death, which he was sure was imminent, he could recall only a Road Safety jingle, “Poor Overtakers Make Rich Undertakers,” which played endlessly through his tormented brain. Sleep swooped in like a kitehawk on its prey.

  Nightmarish dreams culminated in the vision of a group of Arabs praying and chanting. Opening his eyelids was like heaving up gravestones. Dawn had arrived, sick and haggard. A group of dark-faced men were praying and chanting.

  Haydar came from the river with a dripping cloth and applied it to Burnell’s forehead.

  “Haydar, I saw the eyes of God,” gasped Burnell, and straight away fainted again.

  God was still about, a burly decent enough fellow, with a cordial nod of the head to Burnell. He was accompanied by all the other gods humanity had ever dreamed up—a swarthy and malodorous lot, and no mistake. Beards and horns in plenty, robes, loincloths, jewels in forehead, belching smoke, flaming swords, turbans, haloes, armor, multiple arms, multiple skulls, elephant heads, purple skins, immense phalluses—all that and more, as they swarmed toward Burnell, but hardly a one that a man in his right mind might think of praying to.

  And a dictatorial lot they were! “Thou shalt not this,” “Thou shalt not that”… what you had to sacrifice to them, how to serve a burnt offering, when and where and what to kill or copulate with, when you should work, who you should torture lingeringly, whether you should wear a veil or a top hat, what to sing, and whether pork was good for you. They had a line on everything. With holy book, thunder, thumbscrews, and instruments of circumcision they pressed forward.

  The goddesses looked to be of rather better class. Most of them wore white gowns, down to the floor, carting their moons and mystic union cards with them. Some were more snazzily dressed, some weren’t dressed at all, one had snakes messing about in her hair. The eccentrics among them had multiple eyes, breasts, or sharp knives, and looked as unappetizing as the male holinesses.

  They were all advancing on Burnell, who was covered for the purposes of delirium with teddy-bear fuzz. Behind Burnell was Nastiklov’s Devil, laughing and saying in a sneering tone, “That’s it, Roy, you tell ’em!”

  Struggling with indecision—uncertain what exactly to tell ’em—Burnell swam back to something like consciousness. The dark faced nomads of the desert were still present at the scene. They had abandoned their prayer routine and were busy harnessing their camels to the Chaika, still half-submerged in the River Garakhs. He was surprised to see what appeared to be whales, sporting in the waters.

  Haydar came to him, full of concern, and asked him why he was crying. Burnell told him how God had spoken to him in his dream, telling Burnell that he (God) and Shakespeare were alike in being no one, and Burnell resembled them both. “Imagine,” he said, as Haydar, now wearing a nun’s habit, took him gently up in his arms, “Imagine having to be Shakespeare—without Shakespeare’s genius…”

  “Don’t fret, dear.” (He had been mistaken: it was his mother, back at last, as he had always hoped.) “Because I have a curious story to tell you about that. At the railway station in Ashkhabad, there’s a nice bookstall which sells the Guardian and a few English books. I found one with your name on. It’s all about your travels. And in the book—isn’t this a coincidence?!—you actually buy something at that very station bookstall. I forget what.”

  “Do I meet you in the book, Mommy?”

  “Yes, dear, you do. On page 000. I thought it was so sweet that I had a little part in it, considering how long I’ve been—you know, um, dead… You’d better wake up.”

  This last remark was uttered in such a deep voice Burnell was startled. Staring hard, he realized Haydar was nearby, still in his bedraggled suit and looking concerned. “I’ll untie you,” he said. “We’ll get you back to the hotel as soon as possible.”

  Limp though Burnell felt, he found he could sta
nd. The Chaika was nearby, dripping, salvaged from the river. The nomads were standing with their camels, the animals looking as expectant as their owners.

  “You’d better pay them with some flight powder,” said Burnell. He treated it all as a joke. The gods and his mother still lingered nearby. Haydar might be massaging life back into his limbs, but that did not mean to say he was not another hallucination.

  “They’ll tow my brother’s car for us.”

  “Brother-in-law.’’

  “Yes. That’s what I meant to say. How you feel now?”

  “Funny.”

  “Good. You will be OK.”

  “Look, I’m grateful. You didn’t see my mother just now, I suppose?”

  “I’ll get you into the car.”

  “Oh, piss off, Haydar. I know you’re just another hallucination.”

  Tenderly as possible the hallucination stowed him away in the back of the car. In a few minutes, they were heading back toward Ashkhabad.

  Slowly.

  20

  PRICC Strikes

  Among the consolations for being stung by a scorpion at the Friendship Bridge was this: that it made one feel like a reasonably demented character in an old Russian novel. Burnell lay propped on thin pillows, listening to the non-tune of his dripping showerhead in the bathroom, wondering if he was sinful enough to have been vouchsafed a glimpse of teeming godheads; that is to say, he knew he had merely been delirious, yet the illusion that he had not been delirious kept returning from outer space, persuading him he must now be delirious.

  And then the visitation from his mother, telling her curious story… He was more reluctant to dismiss that as an hallucination.

  Owing to intellectual shortcomings, he was unable to determine whether it was flagrantly impossible that one might hold a kind of telepathic communication with those near and dead to one.