“It is built on the backs of the nameless, and ‘great men’ take the credit. That will be a thing of the past. All shall be great. All shall be humble. All shall be equal.”
“Some more equal than others, I notice. Your vegetarianism leaked to the others, but I bet you don’t have any sudden desire to tuck into roast beef.”
The thuds against the door were getting louder and more rhythmic. The corridor beyond was deliberately designed to be too narrow to allow a battering ram, but it was still only a matter of time, and Fairburne was running out of it. He regarded the revolver in his hand; he would have to bring matters to a head soon, but first, there was something that he needed to know.
“The creatures... those obscene little twelve-legged things. Where did they come from?”
“You would not understand.”
“A wise man once told me that I’m very perspicacious. Try me.”
“Colonel Aspern wished to divert the river to supply the garrison, did you know that?” Hearing Aspern spoken of in his own voice was disconcerting, but Fairburne ignored the unpleasantness of it and listened. “The village would have to move, but that did not concern him. The villagers were just dirty peasants. Why should an English colonel worry about their welfare in their own country? They came to me, but I had no wisdom to impart, no advice that might turn aside men with guns and explosives. Perhaps I allowed hatred into my heart. I do not know. I meditated at length and then, one night, my mind went somewhere it never had before. A space between moments. There are no words to describe the truth of it, in English or Hindi. The creatures live there, along with many other things far less pleasant or friendly.”
“Friendly?” Fairburne couldn’t keep the contempt from his voice.
“They are”—his voice became Cole’s, the garrison’s medical officer—“symbiotic creatures. Beneficent parasites. We give them warmth, security, and nutrients, and they give us unity. Every mind joined. Why cannot you see the glorious future they offer?”
“Perhaps I don’t want a crab in my head.”
“And yet the British never tire of speaking of how they are beneficent parasites in the lands they claim for Empire. The difference is that we are not lying.”
Fairburne started to answer, but something prevented him. The banging at the door, perhaps; too little time to think of an answer.
“You’re the core of all this.” He levelled his pistol at the sadhu. “I dislike killing an unarmed man, but in a sense”—he glanced at the cell block door, where the men were becoming frantic—“you’re not, are you?”
The sadhu only smiled. “You don’t even know my name.”
“Whatever it was, I don’t think you deserve it anymore.”
“Then perhaps I need a new one.” When he spoke again, it was as a chorus of voices, Aspern, Oswald, Beddoes, Dickens and every other man in the fort. It roared, dark and crackling, so filled with humanity as to be inhuman: “I am Legion.”
Fairburne fired. He was an excellent shot, the light was good enough, and the range was short. The bullet took the sadhu in the forehead, aimed to kill the creature in his skull along with the human brain behind it. The man rocked back on the bunk, his legs splaying out, his head hitting the wall, his mouth falling open. After a moment, he smiled. Fairburne could only stare as he started to laugh in the voice of dozens. Beyond the cell block door, the laughter was taken up, echoing insanely.
Fairburne took a sharp breath to pull himself together. His options had suddenly become very limited. He had trusted the gun to do what was necessary and now... Four bullets. These were his options. Three for the sadhu, and the last... Well, no creature would ever nestle inside his skull while he still had a live round in is gun.
He fired again, this time to the left of the sadhu’s brow. Another solid hit that seemed to break the man’s skull. His face distorted, planes shifting erratically beneath the skin, but the smile only grew more sinister.
Fairburne fired a third time, and the sadhu’s face collapsed, like crockery in a cloth bag. Fairburne stepped up the cell bars, and fired his fourth bullet. The sadhu’s head split open.
The pale, silvery shells of the creatures glistened slickly in the yellow light of the lantern as they tumbled from the man’s destroyed flesh. There were dozens of them, hundreds, spilling across his torso as the split extended and widened across his jaw, tearing down the side of his neck and across his chest. The man ceased to be a man, reduced to a paper mannequin stuffed with the loathsome alien life that now poured from him in a torrent. They fell to the floor in an abhorrent flood, scrambling to their thousands of feet, and swept in a tide across the concrete floor towards him.
Fairburne had his solitary last bullet, which clearly wasn’t going to be nearly enough. But—somehow—he still had his wits, and he had a lantern. Without hesitation, he dashed it to the ground, leaping back as the liberated paraffin slicked across the floor to meet the oncoming horde, a pale flame travelling along its back. The creatures paused at the first touch of the liquid, and scurried back as the fire arrived in its wake. Behind them, the flesh casing of their colony unravelled and slumped across the bunk.
Fairburne ran to gather more lanterns—three of them, four—and found the can of spirit with which they were charged. He threw it all into the spreading fire at the end of the corridor, feeding it with sticks of furniture from the guard post and bedding from the other cells until the paint blistered and the cell bars glowed. He bore it as long as he could, the heat and the smoke, before unbarring the main door and stumbling out into a corridor full of unconscious soldiers.
JANDA HAD GONE to the bungalow to speak to Fairburne, and there found an unconscious Beddoes. After making him comfortable, Janda made his way to the fort to seek medical assistance, only to find the sentries also comatose. No fool he, Janda helped himself to one of the sentries’ rifles and made his way inside, discovering what seemed to be the whole of the garrison in a stupor as he went. Scenting smoke, he followed his nose and finally happened upon Captain Fairburne trying to waken Lieutenant Oswald.
“What has happened here, Captain Fairburne?” he said as he rushed to help.
Fairburne glanced warily at him. “If I told you, you’d have me thrown into the madhouse.”
Janda snorted, unimpressed. “‘There are more things in heaven and earth,’ captain, ‘than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ An Englishman wrote that, yet was there ever such a race as the English for ignoring that truth?”
He helped Fairburne carry Oswald to the sick bay, where they put him on a bed.
“The sadhu’s dead,” said Fairburne. “To be frank, I think he’s been dead a while.”
With great reluctance, but because he felt he ought, he told Janda of his experiences. His tale was helped by Janda plainly already knowing many elements of it, including—vitally—the captured creatures in the jars. This eased Fairburne greatly; it was good to be of one accord. As he finished, Oswald stirred and sat up abruptly.
“Oh, my giddy aunt. Oh, what—?” He lay back down and groaned. “They’ve gone.”
“You’re free now, Oswald,” said Fairburne. “I destroyed the colony.”
“Free.” Oswald sighed. “I’d never felt freer in my life. More part of something greater than myself in every respect.” He closed his eyes. “Oh, God. You haven’t freed any of us, sir. You’ve put us back into lifetime solitary, confined to our own skulls. Would it have been so awful to let it continue? All of Earth, every human soul sympathetic to every other one. No hatred, no war, no cruelty. Just think on it.”
“At the cost of individuality.”
“No. We were still ourselves. Just... better.” He looked up. “How can I make you understand? Tell me this, why do you do what you do? Why do you defend the Empire?”
Fairburne frowned, not liking the question at all. “Because I’m a patriot.”
“My country, right or wrong?”
“If you like.”
Oswald laughed, a small, bitter
sound, full of ash and longing. “And yet you speak of individuality.”
ALL THE MEN recovered—physically, at least. In the ensuing weeks, six of them committed suicide. Fairburne preferred to think it was because of what the sadhu had given them. The unpalatable alternative was that it was because of what Fairburne had taken from them. Post mortems showed nothing attached, nor any damage to the pre-frontal lobes, but for twelve tiny, inconsequential scars.
Fairburne’s assignment to DA-01 became permanent; he learned the code referred to a department with the wilfully anodyne name of the “Department of Antiquities.” He also learned that the civil service mandarins that knew of it referred to it smirkingly as “The Strange Brigade.” He could understand why.
On his return to London, Fairburne asked to see the captured creatures. He was shown the jars. All unopened, all sealed. All empty. It seemed the creatures had returned to “the space between moments.” He wondered if they would stay there. After all, now they knew the way.
“More things in heaven and earth,” Janda had said, and such things were the meat and drink of the Brigade, such as it was. So be it, thought Fairburne.
A new set of orders arrived at his desk. He opened them with neither enthusiasm nor trepidation.
Iraq.
The Professor’s Dilemma
Tauriq Moosa
PROFESSOR DE QUINCEY rarely allowed others to use his first name, but here was a man who had a right to. A man he begrudgingly respected and hated, loved and loathed, standing here in De Quincey’s office in Queen’s College as if it belonged not to De Quincey but to the old man himself. The towering figure sniffed at De Quincey’s drafts for the professor’s newest book on the reigns of Khentkawes I, Nefertiti and Cleopatra.
“Archimedes—you really believe Khentkawes was a pharaoh in her own right?” The old man spun so his back was to De Quincey, and from some invisible pocket withdrew a pipe De Quincey had hated since childhood. Immediately, De Quincey opened his desk drawer, retrieving a clean ashtray, then opened a window.
Clearing his throat, De Quincey said: “Please.”
The old man squinted his eyes at the book spines, biting down hard on the pipe stem, muttering to himself. He jumped, after a few moments, and turned. “What? It’s a controversial position. We debated this with Cambridge…”
“No, the ashtray. Please use the ashtray.” De Quincey twisted his mouth and nodded at the ashtray he’d placed on a table beside the visitor’s couch. He stood, waiting for the other man to respond.
“Hm, well. I’ve barely started, you know.” The old man began fishing for his matches.
De Quincey extended his arms. “Well, I’m not going to be interrogated on the book, when the publishers…”
“No, I mean, I’ve not begun smoking.” The old man smiled without looking up. His perfectly round glasses enlarged his grey eyes, and his receding hair enlarged his forehead, while wisps of a beard poked out from his thick coat collar.
“Yes, well…” De Quincey cleared his throat. “Do you want to sit, or do you plan on staring down the spine of my entire library?”
“This?” barked the old man. “This is your entire library?”
“No, of course not.” De Quincey breathed out slowly. “Now, to what do I owe this… visit? I have a class in ten minutes.”
“Ah, the students never cared if I was late. They found it charming.” The elder professor smiled, still not meeting the younger man’s eyes. Without looking, he struck a match with one hand. The flame went to the pipe and seemed to disappear at once. Smoke and the sour smell of Southern Leaf filled the tiny office, as De Quincey tried not to breathe.
De Quincey’s orderly office held only two seats: one behind his desk and one larger couch for visitors. Both were custom made from leather De Quincey had chosen years before. Small lanterns burned in the corners, as winter chill stirred the leaves of his one arrowhead vine. Snows, some said, would come early this year.
De Quincey sat behind his desk, scratched his chin and tapped the armrest with one finger. The other man could not be rushed for explanation.
“I hear you’re taking another trip.” The old man finally looked at De Quincey, smoke clouding his face. “Who will you be digging up this time?”
De Quincey pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Iddin-Dagan.”
“Dagan!” squawked the older man, followed by a cough. The smoke briefly cleared. “You’re going after Sumeria, again? Are you chasing Langdon’s delusions, or your own?”
“I am chasing no delusions!” De Quincey stood and shot to nearby smaller cabinet, ripping it open, grabbing fistfuls of paper and slamming them down on his main desk. “I have funding, support, approval.” He nearly added all the things you never gave me. “I am going.”
The old man leaned back, nodding.
De Quincey’s flat hand trembled slightly on the completely blank pages he had withdrawn from the desk.
“To class? I wasn’t finished—”
“On the trip. I’m going on the trip.”
“Very well.” The old man rose and the smoke trailed after him, as if he were a dragon prowling through his lair. His teeth clenched tightly around the pipe, until he pulled it out and pointed it at De Quincey. “I know about your fool’s errand and your refusal to see the world as I do. You think this”—he spread his arms and gestured at the room—“is it.” His leathery, callused hands knocked De Quincey’s table. “You think what you can see and touch is all there is to the world.”
“Enough. I will not entertain your foolish beliefs.” De Quincey had no need to raise his voice; he’d said it a thousand times before.
“You think I would leave it all behind because of ‘foolish beliefs’!” The pipe’s stem was now jutting at De Quincey’s face. The smell was nauseating. “You think I would toss away my life’s work, what I’d built from nothing…”
He fell into silence, shaking his head and turning.
“I am going,” De Quincey repeated, slowly scooping the papers back into the drawer. “I always go. I simply do not agree with you. I cannot. We are meant to be men of science, yet you enter my office with…”
“My office!” roared the old man. His turned on his heel quickly, his thick cloak billowing out. He stood by the desk. “This was my… office.”
“Was… yes,” De Quincey said, fighting back a smile. “Like Dagan, you’re the past. However, unlike Dagan, I have no interest in your views.” The old man drew away, his face unchanging. “You gave up what you built because of your beliefs in… more.” De Quincey nearly spat the word.
“There is more, son. There is.” The old man sucked on his pipe and turned.
“She’s not coming back.” The words were harsher than De Quincey intended, shocking even him. He couldn’t see the old man’s face. With one more puff of smoke, the old man walked away, disappearing into the gloom.
THE HOUSE GROANED in the night. Mist swirled in the courtyard. A long-unused fountain dripped dead leaves, while a tree creaked and hacked the moonlight with its bare branches. The gate tapped closed, then opened, but not loud enough to disturb anyone—it was located far away from the house itself, and too distant from any street. If you were to walk through the gate, to the front door, your feet would knock stones and twigs, leaves would enter your socks—not that the grounds were unattended, but more that the wind had a particular fondness for dumping its contents around the grounds. With the moon behind it, the house was barely lit, its white walls gleaming dully. All the windows were dark except for one light on the first floor.
The old man wrote furiously, a single oil lamp burning on the corner of the table. He was muttering to himself, occasionally having to steady the inkpot to keep from spilling.
On the floor, other pages were scattered and heaped, filled with writing on both sides—sometimes even in the margins. Some contained symbols and words long forgotten to the world, whether through mere passage of time or deliberate efforts of those who knew their pow
er.
The scratching of the pen filled his ears. He needed to finish his task: the boy must know, must believe, must see what is at stake. Scratching, forever scratching, cutting at the world presented to him because he refused to think this was it. Science was once a map on which the old man would navigate the world, dipping his hands in its waters to know more. Now it had become a shroud, hiding what lay beneath, hiding a greater truth. He needed to scratch through it. There was more.
Science could be a bridge, too. He was too steeped in the discipline to discard it. Had they not extended lives and cured ailments through science? What was death but another ailment deserving scientific scrutiny? And would not the ancient world have found all sorts of ways, with their various forms of genius, to combat the greatest sickness of all? He could not believe that societies that could create pyramids and chart the entire world had not found or stumbled into domains those too narrow-minded would think were “supernatural.” These ancient ones who put divinity alongside physics, gods alongside geography, were not so trapped by conceptual divisions. The problems of the gods were the problems solved by science.
He wanted that to happen again. He needed it to.
He found fear rather than reason from his colleagues. Or so he wanted to believe. Needed to believe.
Scratching. Scratching.
He stopped, hearing a voice. And the voice, new but familiar, began whispering…
DE QUINCEY CLEARED the chalk board. Students were slowly leaving the lecture hall, clutching their books. He scratched his chin, feeling the stubble growing, looking at the problem before him. On it, he had written Nefertiti and drawn a long line to Dagan. He had been trying to convince his class that, contrary to what many of his esteemed colleagues believed, Nefertiti had been a ruler in her own right. Her husband, Akhenaten, had died; but De Quincey firmly believed that she was, in herself, a highly accomplished, capable leader.
The True History of the Strange Brigade Page 7
