There was also the most complete set of topographical maps of the Front imaginable. He looked up this sector; saw the plan of Ninieslando’s tunnels and corridors, saw that even the British listening post had the designation “fake plaster horse.” He could follow the routes of Ninieslando from the Swiss border to the English Channel (except in those places where the front-line trenches were only yards apart; there was hardly room for excavation there without calling the attention of both sides to your presence). Here, Ninieslando was down to a single tunnel no wider than a communications trench up on the surface to allow exchanges between sectors.
Either side up above would give a thousand men in return for any map of the set.
That meant that the work of Ninieslando went on day and night, listening and mapping out the smallest changes in the topography. The map atop each pile in the drawer was the latest, dated most recently. You could go through the pile and watch the War backwards to—in some cases—late 1914, when the Germans had determined where the Front would be by pulling back to the higher ground, even if only a foot or two more in elevation. Ninieslando had been founded then, as the War became a stalemate.
In most cases, the lines had not changed since then, except to become more churned up, muddier, nastier. Occasionally, they would shift a few feet, or a hundred yards, due to some small advance by one side or the other. Meanwhile, Ninieslando became more complex and healthier as more and more men joined.
As the ex-captain had said:—The War made us the best engineers, machinists, and soldiers ever known. A shame to waste all that training. So we used it to build a better world, underground.
Tommy looked around the bright shiny library. He could spend his life here, building a better world indeed.
For three nights, each side had sent out raiding parties to the other’s line. There had been fierce fighting as men all through the sector stomped or clubbed each other to death.
It had been a bonanza for Ninieslando’s scavenging teams. They had looted bodies and the wounded of everything usable: books, food, equipment, clothing. They had done their work efficiently and thoroughly, leaving naked bodies all through No Man’s Land. The moans of the dying followed them as they made their way back down through the hidden entrances to Ninieslando.
Tommy, whose shoulder wound had healed nicely, lay in his clean bunk after dropping off his spoils from the scavenging at the sector depot. The pile of goods had grown higher than ever—more for Ninieslando. He had a copy of The Oxford Book of English Verse open on his chest. The language was becoming lost to him, he had not spoken it in so long. He was now thinking, and even dreaming, in Esperanto. As well it should be. National languages were a drag and a stumbling block to the human race. He read a few poems, then closed the book. For another day, he thought, when we look back with a sort of nostalgia on a time when national languages kept men separated. He imagined the pastoral poems of the future, written in Esperanto, with shepherds and nymphs recalling lines of English each to each, as if it were a lost tongue like Greek or Latin. He yearned for a world where such things could be.
The field phones had been strangely silent for a day or so. But it was noticed that couriers went backwards and forwards from trench to observation post to headquarters. On both sides. Obviously, something was up. A courier was waylaid in the daylight, a dangerous undertaking, but there were no paper orders on him. The kidnapping team drew the line at torture, so reported that the orders must be verbal. Perhaps, by coincidence, both sides were planning assaults at the same time to break the stalemate. It would be a conflagration devoutly to be desired by Ninieslando.
Of course, the War had made it so both sides would lose the element of surprise when the batteries of both sides opened in barrages at the same time, or nearly so. Ninieslando waited—whatever happened, No Man’s Land would be littered with the dead and dying, ripe for the picking.
—Too quiet—said someone in the corridor.
—They’ve never gone this long off the telephones—said another.
Tommy walked the clean corridor. He marveled that only a few feet overhead was a world of ekskremento and malpurajo fought over by men for three years. Here was a shinier, cleaner world than anything man had achieved on the surface.
It was just about then that the first shells of the expected barrage began to fall above his head. Dust drifted down from the ceiling. Parts of the wall buckled and shook.
Tommy realized that he was under the middle of No Man’s Land. Unless their aim was very bad indeed, the artillerymen of neither side should be making their shells land here. They should be aiming for the front trench of the other side.
Ninieslando shook and reeled from the barrage. The lights went out as shells cut a line somewhere.
Tommy struck a match, found the electric torch in its niche at the corridor crossing. He turned it on and made his way to the library.
Then it got ominously quiet. The barrage ceased after a very short while. Who was firing a five-minute barrage in the wrong place? Had they all gone crazy up there?
He entered the library, shined his torch around. A few books had fallen from the shelves; mostly it was untouched.
He sat at a table. There was some noise in the corridor at the far end. A bloodied man ran in, his eyes wild, screaming.—Tri rugo bendos!—Three red bands!—Was he speaking metaphorically? Three Marxist gangs? Or like Sherlock Holmes, literally, as in “The Speckled Band”? What did he mean? Tommy went to grab him, but he was gone, out of the library, still yelling.
Tommy went down the hall and up a series of steps to an observation post with two viewing slits, one looking northeast, the other southwest.
What he saw looking northeast was astounding. In broad daylight, German soldiers, rifles up, bayonets fixed, were advancing. They probed the ground and debris as they came on. On the left sleeve of every soldier were three red stripes on a white background.
Tommy turned to the other slit, wondering why there was no rifle or machine-gun fire mowing down the line of Germans.
What he saw made his blood freeze. From the other direction, British and French soldiers also advanced in the open. On their right arms were pinned three red stripes on a white background. As he watched, several soldiers disappeared down an embankment. There was the sound of firing. A Ninieslandoja, with no stripes on his sleeve, staggered out and died in the dirt. The firing continued, getting fainter.
The sound of firing began again, far off down the corridor below.
Tommy took off for the infirmary.
There were many kinds of paint down at the carpentry shop, but very little approached red, the last color you’d want on a battlefield.
When Tommy ran into the infirmary, he found the ex-captain there before him. The man was tearing bandages into foot-long pieces.
Tommy went to the medicine chest and forced his way into it. Bottles flew and broke.
—They’ve finally done it!-—said the ex-captain.—They’ve gotten together just long enough to get rid of us. Our scavenging last week must have finally pushed them over into reason.
Tommy took a foot-long section of bandages and quickly painted three red stripes on it with the dauber on a bottle of mercurochrome. He took one, gave it to the ex-captain, did one for himself.
—First they’ll do for us—he said.—Next, they’ll be back to killing each other. This is going on up and down the whole Western Front. I never thought they could keep such a plan quiet for so long.
The ex-captain headed him a British helmet and a New Model Army web-belt.—Got your rifle? Good, try to blend in. Speak English. Good luck.—He was gone out the door.
Tommy took off the opposite way. He ran toward where he thought the Germans might be.
The sound of firing grew louder. He realized he might now be a target for Ninieslanders, too. He stepped around a corridor junction and directly in front of a German soldier. The man raised his rifle barrel towards the ceiling.
“Anglander?” the German asked
“More just behind me,” Tommy added. “Very few of the undergrounders in our way.” The German looked at him in incomprehension. He looked farther back down the corridor Tommy had come from.
There was the noise of more Germans coming up the other hall. They lifted their rifles, saw his red stripes, lowered them.
Tommy moved with them as they advanced farther down the corridors, marveling at the construction. There was some excitement as a Ninieslander bolted from a room down the hallway and was killed in a volley from the Germans.
“Good shooting,” said Tommy.
Eventually, they heard the sound of English.
“My people,” said Tommy. He waved to the Germans and walked toward the voices.
A British captain with drawn pistol stood in front of a group of soldiers. The bodies of two Ninieslanders lay on the floor beside them.
—And what rat have we forced from his hole?—asked the captain in Esperanto.
Tommy kept his eyes blank.
“Is that Hungarian you’re speaking, sir?” he asked, the words strange on his tongue.
“Your unit?” asked the captain.
“1st King’s Own Rifles,” said Tommy. “I was separated and with some Germans.”
“Much action?”
“A little, most of the corridors are empty. They’re off somewheres, sir.”
“Fall in with my men ’til we can get you back to your company, when this is over. What kind of stripes you call those? Is that iodine?”
“Mercurochrome, I believe,” said Tommy. “Supply ran out of the issue. Our stretcher-bearers used field expedients.” He had a hard time searching for the right words.
Esperanto phrases kept leaping to mind. He would have to be careful, especially around this officer.
They searched out a few more rooms and hallways, found nothing. From far away, whistles blew.
“That’s recall,” said the captain. “Let’s go.”
Other deeper whistles sounded from far away, where the Germans were. It must be over.
They followed the officer ’til they came to boardings that led outside to No Man’s Land.
The captain left for a hurried consultation with a group of field-grade officers. He returned in a few minutes.
“More work to do,” he said. A detail brought cans of petrol and set them down nearby.
“We’re to burn the first two corridors down. You, you, you,” he said, indicating Tommy last. “Take these cans, spread the petrol around. The signal is three whistle blasts. Get out as soon as you light it off. Everyone got matches? Good.”
They went back inside, the can heavy in Tommy’s hands. He went up to the corridor turning, began to empty petrol on the duckboard floor.
He saved a little in the bottom of the can. He idly sloshed it around and around.
Time enough to build the better world tomorrow. Many, like him, must have made it out, to rejoin their side or get clean away in this chaos.
After this War is over, we’ll get together, find each other, start building that new humanity on the ashes of this old world.
The three whistles came. Tommy struck a match, threw it onto the duckboard flooring, and watched the petrol catch with a whooshing sound.
He threw the can after it, and walked out into the bright day of the new world waiting to be born.
Afterword Ninieslando
This was, up until last year, the major work I did after the hospitalization.
Once again, for George and Gardner’s Warriors, an anthology of warriors throughout all times and places.
I’d done research for this before May 2008 (and forgot most of it by the time I wrote this).
Fresh from the triumph of finishing ANYTHING for Songs of the Dying Earth, and finally back in Austin, I sat at Martha Grenon’s kitchen table in January of 2009 and wrote “Ninieslando” and sent it off to Gardner (“the muscle of the operation”). Once again, they’d been holding the anthology (not for me, this time, but for some mainstream high-tone hotshots).
I’d first come across the central idea in Paul Fussell’s The Great War and Modern Memory. (His book first appeared in 1975 and has been in print since. It’s the only book you’ll ever need to read about WWI, because it isn’t about the war, per se, but about all the cultural baggage the combatants brought to it.)
The central idea of the story is in his chapter “Myth, Ritual and Romance”—that there was a lost group of men (from both sides) living in No Man’s Land off the equipment, food, and bodies of the dead and wounded—like super ghouls. Where the enemy was no longer the enemy, but the War.
Well, I tried to imagine that, and added my own (not so far-fetched) idea—that they would be speaking Esperanto.
Esperanto was an artificial invented language, perfectly regular once you knew the rules, made by a guy named Zamenhof in the late 1890s. It (and Volapük) had quite a fad and following in the nineties and early Edwardian Age. It was promoted as a unifying language (if people all spoke the same, how could they fight and have national differences? The story about the delegates all leaving the International Esperanto Conference to run home and join up in August 1914 is true).
As late as the 1950s, I’m told, Forrest J. Ackerman and the actor Leo G. Carroll talked the night away in Esperanto—they’d learned as children—when Carroll saw Ackerman’s Esperanto bumper sticker on the car parked outside.
Once I had the situation and the language, I was on my way, trying to imagine what life would be like in the Ninieslando.
When this was published, somebody criticized my Esperanto, which I’d mostly forgotten by the time I wrote the story.
Malmolo faboj.
Publication History
“Old Guys With Busted Gaskets” © 2013 Howard Waldrop.
“Why Then Ile Fit You” © 2003 Howard Waldrop. First published in The Silver Gryphon, Gary Turner & Marty Halpern, eds.
“The Wolf-man of Alcatraz” © 2004 Howard Waldrop and SCIFI.COM. First published in SCIFICTION.
“The Horse of a Different Color (That You Rode in On)” © 2005 by Howard Waldrop and SCIFI.COM. First published in SCIFICTION.
“‘The King of Where-I-Go’” © 2005 by Howard Waldrop and SCIFI.COM. First published in SCIFICTION.
“The Bravest Girl I Ever Knew . . .” © 2005 by Howard Waldrop. First published in Kong Unbound, Karen Haber, ed.
“Thin, On the Ground” © 2006 by Howard Waldrop. First published in Cross Plains Universe, Scott Cupp and Joe Lansdale, eds.
“Kindermarchen” © 2007 by Howard Waldrop. First published in Sentinel Science Fiction.
“Avast, Abaft!” © 2008 by Howard Waldrop. First published in Fast Ships, Black Sails, Jeff & Ann VanderMeer, eds.
“Frogskin Cap” © 2009 by Howard Waldrop. First published in Songs of the Dying Earth, Gardner Dozois & George R. R. Martin, eds.
“Ninieslando” © 2010 by Howard Waldrop. First published in Warriors, Gardner Dozois & George R. R. Martin, eds.
Afterwords © 2013 Howard Waldrop.
About the Author
Howard Waldrop, born in Mississippi and now living in Austin, Texas, is an American iconoclast. His books include Them Bones and A Dozen Tough Jobs, and the collections Howard Who?, All About Strange Monsters of the Recent Past, Night of the Cooters (Locus Award winner), Other Worlds, Better Lives, and Things Will Never Be the Same. He won the Nebula and World Fantasy Awards for his novelette “The Ugly Chickens.”
Howard Waldrop titles available from Small Beer Press
HOWARD WHO?
First paperback and ebook editions.
Introduction by George R. R. Martin (A Song of Ice and Fire): “If this is your first taste of Howard, I envy you. Bet you can’t read just one.”
“Back in print after so many years, Howard Who? remains a terrific collection of short stories. There is nobody else alive writing stories as magnificently strange, deliriously inventive, and utte
rly wonderful as Howard Waldrop.”—Metrobeat
THINGS WILL NEVER BE THE SAME: Selected Short Fiction, 1980 - 2005
April 2014: First ebook edition.
Paperbacks available from Old Earth Books.
“The only problem with Things Will Never Be The Same is that it’s not nearly long enough. Sure, sure, it’s chock full of great stories by the best short fiction writer of his generation, modern classics like “The Ugly Chickens” and “Flying Saucer Rock n Roll” and “Heart of Whitenesse” and many more . . . but there are two or three times as many terrific Waldrop stories, equally good and sometimes even better, that have been left out for want of space. There’s only one solution. Read this book . . . and then go out and track down all of Waldrop’s other collections and read them too.”
—George R. R. Martin
OTHER WORLDS, BETTER LIVES
Selected Long Fiction, 1989 - 2003
April 2014: First ebook edition.
Paperbacks available from Old Earth Books.
“In 2007, Old Earth Books, an independent press located in Baltimore, brought out Things Will Never Be the Same: A Howard Waldrop Reader, a comprehensive volume that features selected short fiction from 1980-2005 by the Nebula Award-winning and often anthologized writer. This is a book that belongs on the shelf of anyone interested in science-fictional and fantastic short fiction at its best. Old Earth has now followed that earlier and welcome volume with an equally fine companion, Other Worlds, Better Lives, which features longer stories written between 1989 and 2003, and it displays Waldrop’s mastery of the novella form.”
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