White Death

by Robert Sheckley

  That, I felt, more than made up for my earlier error.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Anticlimax is the one stable human condition. Action begets reaction, enthusiasm breeds boredom, tension is a prelude to flaccidity, and heroics are only possible to one with a poor memory. … With these maudlin aphorisms and ill-fitting oppositions, I tried to weave a soft philosophical frame around a hard new fact.

  It happened at midday, when we left the mountains and came onto a wide gravel plain. The driver of the jeep, seeing his opportunity, swung off the road. Keeping out of rifle range, he drove parallel to us, then passed far in front and returned to the road. For a few minutes we saw the bouncing rear of the jeep; then we saw only exhaust fumes and dust; and finally we saw nothing.

  It was insupportable. We had overtaken those Arabs several hundred miles back, had survived their murderous ambush and fought them to a standstill during a desert storm. And the result? Not fifty miles outside of Yezd they passed us, as easily as one would pass a donkey cart on a highway. Despite all our efforts, we had lost them. Bad philosophy comes easily in such a moment.

  Dain accepted this crushing event with his usual air of indifference. When I questioned him, he said that he had expected to lose the jeep, and would have been very surprised if something like this hadn’t happened. When I said that the Arabs might be lost to us forever, Dain told me that there would still be plenty of criminals left in the world. This was probably a joke, but I believed it came close to Dain’s real attitude.

  Hansen possessed neither Dain’s perspective nor my sense of the ridiculous. He was very angry, and he cursed the Arabs for five minutes in four languages. Then, turning from the present to the past, he berated Dain for forcing him to come on a risky and hopeless adventure. He was extremely vehement about this, and it took me a minute to realize that he was thinking about the possible damage to his truck rather than to his person. When I understood this, I am afraid that I burst into rude laughter.

  “And you!” Hansen roared at me. “You worthless leech, you chicken-hearted bastard, you bird-brained imbecile! You call yourself a guide? Well, you know this desert about as well as you know your ass, and quite obviously you’ve never had a good look at either.”

  My hand went to my knife, and Dain was forced to restrain me. I contented myself with telling Hansen certain undeniable truths about his complaisant mother and his anonymous father, his diseased sister and his pandering brother. For good measure, I threw in a dozen barbed witticisms concerning his nationality, his occupation, his intelligence, and his masculinity. A faint smile from Dain told me how well I had scored; but Hansen, with his maddening obtuseness, hadn’t even listened. He was still chuckling at his pathetic joke about me as a guide.

  Dain made peace between us, pointing out that I was here as an interpreter, and had never pretended to be a guide. Hansen said he was sorry; but he couldn’t stop chuckling at his joke. I apologized also, saying that I had been wrong in judging the family by the man. This subtlety, of course, went completely over Hansen’s head. So we drove on in silence, our nerves badly frayed and our tempers barely in check.

  By the time we reached the outskirts of Yezd, fatigue and a sense of letdown had brought me to the point of apathy. I no longer cared about the heroin-smuggling Arabs, and not even the thought of my wages could cheer me up. Hansen seemed to have similar feelings, and we found ourselves in a dubious sort of comradeship. Dain, as might be expected, kept up his irritating pretense of stoicism. But when we were in Yezd, he urgently requested me to find him a clean rest-room.

  The thought of the grim, tough, stony-faced Mr. Dain with a full and aching bladder made me giggle. Dain didn’t see anything to laugh at, and he told me I had a primitive sense of humor, of the sort possessed by bushmen and anthropoid apes. He was annoyed for a while; but after I found him a restroom his good humor was somewhat restored.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  At Yezd, the desert road splits north and south, one section going north by way of Isfahan and the other south through Kerman. Neither can be said to be the road to Abadan; between the Persian Gulf coast and the interior desert stand the Zagros Mountains. Both roads take full recognition of this fact, and reach the sea by devious approaches. The northern road makes its turn at Daulatabad and crosses the lower Zargros range at Burujird. The southern road pivots on Shiraz, then proceeds up the coastal plateau. In the dry season, the shorter southern route is preferred. This, we learned, was how the Arabs had gone.

  And so we continued after them, in a haze of heat and monotony. Our truck was visibly deteriorating with every mile, and so were we. Unending headaches were our common lot, caused by the glare of the summer sun, the heat of the engine, and the continual vibration of the cab. Aside from that, Dain and Hansen suffered from a mild dysentery, while I had a racking cough brought on by diesel fumes. Our miseries didn’t bring us closer together; on the contrary, each of us retired into his own solitude of pain, from which he emerged only to mutter some insult at the man beside him. We began to bicker, and our arguments were so petty that I would not care to repeat them. And still we drove on, taking turns at the wheel and suffering our way through Kerman, Mashiz, Saidabad, and Niriz.

  At each stop, we learned that the Arabs had gained more precious miles on us. But I doubt if any of us cared. It had become a way of life for us, this endless driving across the expanse of Iran. Our morale was too low for us to question our fate; we simply went on, like enslaved men, chained forever to our mechanical master.

  I began to take a perverse pleasure in each sign of the truck’s deterioration. I noticed with glee that the shock-absorbers were no longer functioning, the steering wheel had become sluggish, and the entire frame swayed around curves like a stricken beast. I listened to the knocks in the engine, and I told myself that soon the pistons would punch a hole through the block. I listed every automotive disaster I could think of, and calculated its probability. Incapable of action, I knew that my release would come only with the death of the truck. And yet, I worked as well as Dain or Hansen in trying to repair what I could.

  By the time we reached Shiraz, our quarrels had ended. We detested each other too thoroughly for mere words to express. God knows what the others thought of me; I only know a single glance at Hansen’s pale, stubbly face and limp hair gave me acute discomfort, and an urge to take him by the nose and twist. As for Dain, his thin features and hooded, bloodshot eyes looked scarcely human. The others reciprocated in their feelings for me.

  We came into Shiraz like three blood-enemies. Our truck stalled near Omar’s mosque and refused to start again. Hansen swore a little for the sake of appearances, but I know he had wished for this as dearly as Dain and I had. We took the collapse of the truck with great calmness, and proceeded on foot to the police station. There we learned that the Arabs’ jeep had gone through the city two days ago, and had not been reported since.

  So we had lost them after all. They probably had continued to Abadan; but this was not certain. They might have gone to any other port on the Persian Gulf. They might have crossed the Euphrates into Iraq, and they might even have doubled back and gone to Hormuz. I told this to Dain.

  Dain said, with remarkable calm, “Don’t worry about it, Achmed.”

  “ ‘Don’t worry about it,’ ” I repeated. “No, of course not. We have crossed deserts, survived ambushes and avalanches, suffered agonies beyond belief; and now, as the grand result of our work, we have lost the game and the prize. Our thousand-mile race was for nothing! And you tell me—”

  “Achmed,” said Hansen, “will you kindly shut your big, stupid goddamned bellyaching bloody goddamned mouth?”

  “Take it easy, Hansen,” Dain said.

  I stared at the two men and I realized that the only adequate response was to shoot them both dead, and then to kill myself. But killing myself would be difficult with a rifle; I would have to pull the trigger with my big toe. This would call for a monkey-like agility, which would look absurd. But
if, on the other hand, I could borrow Dain’s revolver …

  To request the loan of Mr. Dain’s revolver, shoot him dead with it, then shoot Hansen, then myself—suddenly this seemed too silly for words. I began laughing at the ludicrous sense of importance with which men are cursed. The laughter cleared my head; I nodded pleasantly to Dain and Hansen, turned on my heel, and walked away.

  “Where are you going?” Dain asked.

  “To a bath!” I replied. “As far as I am concerned, the Arabs can sell their heroin in every port on the Persian Gulf, from Hormuz to Sharja and back again. I’m not going to think about it until I’ve soaked a week’s crust from my skin.”

  For a moment, Dain looked like a man betrayed; but then he regained his sense of proportion, passed a hand over his grimy face, and said, “You’re right, Achmed. An extremely long bath, a decent meal, and then some sleep. Wait a minute, I’m coming with you.”

  Hansen stared at us disapprovingly. To take a bath at this moment of high tragedy clearly offended his sense of propriety. But perhaps he remembered that Dain was the detective, not he, for he joined us, wearing a little frown which proclaimed that he was engaging in frivolities against his better judgment. There was surely no doubt in Hansen’s mind as to which should be the detective and which the truck driver. His air of moral superiority might have grown unendurable; but it passed with the first delicious splash of cool water on his blistcred skin.

  Like other good things, the world-famous baths of Shiraz have suffered a deterioration since the war. But they are still the best in Iran, which means the best in the world. Whenever you hear a man speak of the glories of the Turkish bath, you are listening to the voice of popular ignorance. The Turks, previously an excessively unwashed people, stole the concept of the bath from us. And their baths are good enough, in a crude, straightforward sort of way. But to enjoy true rest and languor, to get the ultimate in enjoyment, you must take the baths in Tabriz or Isfahan, or—if humanly possible—in Shiraz.

  We came to the main bathhouse in Shiraz, removed our shoes, and passed into the cool, spacious, twilight interior. After the necessary formalities, we were able to wash, scrape, soak, and steam, to rinse ourselves with rose water and wash again, until the oils and soaps of Shiraz had taken the desert crust from our hides. But that was only a prelude, for now we were pummeled and twisted by clever-handed masseurs, and our muscles were kneaded and our joints loosened. This went on until Dain groaned and said he would be disabled for a month. But he only betrayed his ignorance of the art, for when the masseurs were done, Dain and the rest of us felt as supple as boys.

  Now we washed again, took the steam until we were purple in the face, and then plunged into icy water. This cleansed the pores of their last residue of grime. Dain said that it was a good way to bring on a heart attack, but he was only making a joke.

  So at last, as clean as humans ever become in this world, we swam at our leisure in the huge central pool. Fountains of colored water played over us, as in my dream; and we were able, at last, to look back on our desert journey with fondness, and at each other with a sensation of comradeship. All our pettiness was washed away in the healing waters of Shiraz, which purify souls as well as bodies.

  We swam and laughed and reminisced, and found relief from the hard road behind us and the harder road ahead.

  Presently, close to the edge of the pool, we heard a rough voice say: “By God! That I should live to see this day! Arab magic has changed Mr. Dain into a fish—a very pale fish, and not good eating. And his companions have become mud-turtles.”

  Once I heard the voice, there was no need to look; but look I did, and beheld Chitai, his yellow face grinning nastily, his thin mustache more insolent than ever. He still wore his tattered linen gown and high sheepskin hat, his cartridge belt, knife, and rifle, and his soft leather boots. All he lacked was his horse, which doubtless was in an adjoining room. He carried his usual odors of stale mutton and sweat. As usual, he seemed excessively pleased with himself.

  “What are you doing here in Shiraz?” I asked him.

  “You didn’t expect to see me again, did you?” Chitai said. “Yet here I am, a thousand miles from the border country. We Turkomans go where we please and God help the man who tries to stop us.”

  “I realize that you are brave and adventurous past human understanding,” I said. “But aside from that, what are you doing here?”

  “I’ve come on business,” Chitai said. “That is, if your swimming allows you any time to think about smuggling.”

  Spoken like an unwashed Turkoman! Unfortunately, I could think of no adequate retort; a naked man is always at a disadvantage in front of a clothed man. We got out of the pool hastily, dried ourselves, and dressed, and went to a café to discuss business with Chitai.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Over sweetened rice cakes and many cups of tea, Chitai told us why he had crossed Iran to seek us out. His story was typically Turkoman—dubious, contradictory, complicated, and unbearably lengthy. Reduced to fundamentals, it was simple enough: the Dushaks needed more money with which to buy arms, and they had thought of their wealthy friend, Mr. Dain.

  “And so here I am,” Chitai said. “I have the information you need so badly, the information about the Arabs and the White Powder. You have the money which my people require. So if you will give me a few thousand dollars, I will—”

  “Just a minute,” Dain interrupted. “How did you get here so fast?”

  “I took the airplane from Meshed.”

  “And you know where the Arabs are taking the heroin, and who they will give it to?”

  “I know many of the Arabs’ secrets. What I don’t know, I can find out.”

  “If you know so much,” Dain asked, “why didn’t you sell me the information in Meshed or Imam Baba?”

  “Because then I did not know,” Chitai said triumphantly. “I only found out after you had left.”

  I said, “This man is obviously lying.”

  Chitai glared at me and said, “Didn’t I lead you to the place you wanted to find? Didn’t my people fight and die for you, and burn the factory? We were faithful then; why should it be different now?”

  “All right,” I said. “How did you learn where the Arabs take the heroin?”

  “It happened in the following manner,” Chitai said. “First of all, we knew that the Arabs who deliver the White Powder were Sanniya Bedouin from Iraq. You might have noticed that from their headdress. In order to learn more, we seized an old Sanniya from his camp near Kashmar, and we questioned him. He was a very stubborn old man, but after a night of questioning he told us what we wanted to know. He told us just before dawn, when the will is at its weakest, and he died soon after.”

  Chitai saw the expression on Dain’s face, and heard the low disapproving grunt from Hansen. So he hastily added, “This Arab was a very bad man, a murderer many times over, whose life was forfeit whenever his enemies caught up to him. So we did no wrong by killing him. In fact, we did a great deal of good. In any event, what we did should concern nobody but the Dushaks, for now the Sanniya are our enemies. We took that risk in order to learn your secret.”

  “Barbarians!” Hansen said.

  “What if the Arab lied to you?” Dain asked.

  “He didn’t lie.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure,” Chitai said. “He told us everything he knew. But he was not a very important man, so naturally he didn’t know every little detail.”

  “Could he identify the man who receives and pays for the heroin? Or was that one of the little details he didn’t know?”

  “We asked him about that,” Chitai said, “but the man was unable to tell us. As I said, he was an extremely unimportant man. You couldn’t expect him to know everything.”

  Hansen shook his head in annoyance. “To torture a man for any reason is a sin,” he stated in solemn tones. “But to torture a man who can’t even tell what you want to know—that is the act of a s
tupid bungler. Mr. Dain, this man is inept and untrustworthy, as well as being a fiend.”

  I translated this for Chitai’s benefit. He said angrily, “You call it clumsy? By God, it was the cleverest thing we ever did! That old man was practically an outcast among his own people, and the Sanniya will accept blood-money for him. If we had questioned any other man, the feud would never have ended.”

  “But he didn’t have the necessary information,” Dain said.

  “He did, though! He knew most of what we wanted. He told us where the White Powder is taken, and how often, and in what quantities, and how much is paid for it, and what sort of man the buyer is, and many other things. And more important—he told us how we could learn anything else we required.”

  “How?” Dain asked.

  “That is part of what I am selling,” Chitai said coolly.

  He wouldn’t say another word until a price had been settled and an advance paid. So, in an atmosphere of mutual distrust, we settled down to the bargaining.

  I did my best for Dain, but my heart wasn’t in the work. I considered any sum above fifty dollars an exorbitant price to pay, and I told Dain so. Also, it was unnecessary. No one can expect a trade worth millions to remain a secret. Given my own way, I would have gone to the bazaars in Khorramshahr or Basra, and there I would have learned everything worth knowing.

  But Dain said that we didn’t have the time. Aside from wanting to stop the heroin trade, he also wanted to intercept this last shipment before it was sent to the United States. Because he was in a hurry, I lost my chance at a middleman’s profit.

  At last an agreement was reached and an advance was paid. Then Chitai told us, “The White Powder is taken to Abadan. There it is given to a large, red-haired man, an American, who pays for the delivery in dollars. This red-haired American also made the arrangements at the factory we burned.”