III
The hospital ceiling was white, like the walls and the sheets. Outside, on the surface of the berg, all was white as well. Today was a whiteout; a bright scour of dry crystals wheeling past the hospital windows. The last four days had been the same while the storm-wind blew, and the weather people said they expected no break for another two or three days. He thought of the troops, hunkered down in trenches and ice caves, afraid to curse the howling storm, because it meant there would probably be no fighting. The pilots would be glad too, but pretend they were not, and would loudly curse the storm that prevented them flying; having looked at the forecast, most would now be getting profoundly drunk.
He watched the white windows. Seeing the blue sky was supposed to be good for you. That was why they built hospitals on the surface; everything else was under the surface of the ice. The outer walls of the hospital were painted bright red, so that they would not be attacked by enemy aircraft. He had seen enemy hospitals from the air, strung out across the white glare of the berg's snow hills like bright drops of blood fallen frozen from some wounded soldier.
A whorl of whiteness appeared briefly at one window as the snow flurry circled on some vortex in the gale, then disappeared. He stared at the falling chaos beyond the layers of glass, eyes narrowing, as though by sheer concentration he might find some pattern in the inchoate blizzard. He put one hand up, touching the white bandage which circled his head.
His eyes closed, as he tried - again - to remember. His hand fell to the sheets over his chest.
'How are we today?' said the young nurse. She appeared at the bedside, holding a small chair. She placed the chair between his bed and the empty one to his right. All the other beds were empty; he was the only person in the ward. There hadn't been a big attack for a month or so.
She sat down. He smiled, glad to see her, and glad that she had the time to stop and talk. 'Okay,' he nodded. 'Still trying to remember what happened.'
She smoothed her white uniform over her lap. 'How are your fingers today?'
He held up both hands, waggled the fingers on his right hand, then looked at his left; the fingers moved a little. He frowned. 'About the same,' he said, as though apologising.
'You're seeing the doc this afternoon; he'll probably get the physics to take a look at you.'
'What I need is a physio for my memory,' he said, closing his eyes briefly. 'I know there was something important I had to remember...' His voice trailed off. He realised he'd forgotten the nurse's name.
'I don't think we have such things,' she smiled. 'Did they have them where you came from?'
'This had happened before; yesterday, hadn't it? Hadn't he forgotten her name yesterday too? He smiled. 'I ought to say I don't remember,' he said, grinning. 'But no, I don't think they did.'
He'd forgotten her name yesterday, and the day before, but he'd come up with a plan; he'd done something about it...
'Perhaps they didn't need them there, with that thick skull of yours.'
She was still smiling. He laughed, trying to remember what the plan was he'd come up with. Something to do with blowing, with breath, and paper...
'Perhaps not,' he agreed. His thick skull; that was why he was here. A thick skull, a skull thicker or at least more hardy than they were used to; a thick skull that had not quite shattered when somebody had shot him in in the head. (But why, when he had not been fighting at the time, when he'd been amongst his own side, his fellow pilots?)
Fractured, instead; fractured, broken, but not smashed irretrievably... He looked to one side, where there was a little cabinet. A fold of paper lay on its surface.
'Don't tire yourself out trying to remember things,' the nurse said. 'Maybe you won't remember things; it doesn't matter very much. Your mind has to heal too, you know.'
He heard her talk, took in what she was saying... but he was trying to remember what it was he'd told himself the day before; that little slip of paper; he had to do something to it. He blew at it; the top of the folded paper slip hinged up, so that he could see what was written underneath; TALIBE. The paper sank back again. He'd angled it - he remembered now - so that she couldn't see.
Her name was Talibe. Of course; it sounded familiar.
'I am healing,' he said. 'But there was something I had to remember, Talibe. It was important; I know it was.'
She stood up, patted him on one shoulder. 'Forget it. You mustn't worry yourself. Why not take a nap; shall I draw the curtains?'
'No,' he said. 'Can't you stay longer, Talibe?'
'You need your rest, Cheradenine,' she said, putting one hand to his brow. 'I'll be back soon, to take your temperature and change your dressings. Ring the bell if you need anything else.' She patted his hand, and went away, taking the small white chair with her; she stopped at the doors, looked back. 'Oh, yes; did I leave a pair of scissors here, last time I changed your dressing?'
He looked around him, and shook his head. 'Don't think so.'
Talibe shrugged. 'Oh well.' She went out of the ward; he heard her put the chair down on the corridor floor as the doors swung closed.
He looked at the window again.
Talibe took the chair away each time because he'd gone crazy when he'd first seen it, when he woke up for the first time. Even after that, when his mental state seemed more stable, he would shiver, wide-eyed with fear when he woke each morning, just because the white chair was sitting there at the side of his bed. So they had stacked the ward's few chairs out of his sight, in one corner, and Talibe, or the doctors, brought the chair in from the corridor with them when they came to see him.
He wished he could forget that; forget about the chair, and the Chairmaker, forget about the Staberinde. Why did that stay sharp and fresh, after so many years and so long a journey? And yet whatever had happened just a few days ago - when somebody had shot him, left him for dead in the hangar - that was dim and vague as something seen through the storm of snow.
He stared at the frozen clouds beyond the window, the amorphous frenzy of the snow. Its meaningless mocked him.
He slumped down in the bed, letting the piled bedclothes submerge him, like some drift, and slept, his right hand under the pillow, curled round one leg of the scissors he'd taken from Talibe's tray the day before.
'How's the head, old buddy-pal?' Saaz Insile tossed him a fruit which he failed to catch. He picked it up off his lap, where it had landed after hitting his chest.
'Getting better,' he told the other man.
Insile sat on the nearest bed, threw his cap on the pillow, unfastened the top button of his uniform. His short, spiky black hair made his pale face look white as the blankness still filling the world beyond the ward windows. 'How they treating you?'
'Fine.'
'Damn good-looking nurse you've got out there.'
'Talibe.' He smiled. 'Yes; she's okay.'
Insile laughed and set back on the bed, supporting himself with his arms splayed out behind. 'Only "okay"? Zakalwe, she's gorgeous. You get bed-baths?'
'No; I'm able to walk to the bathroom.'
'Want me to break your legs?'
'Perhaps later.' He laughed.
Insile laughed a little too, then looked at the storm beyond the windows. 'How about your memory? Getting any better?' He picked at the doubled-over white sheet near where his cap lay.
'No,' he said. In fact he thought it might be, but somehow he didn't want to tell people; maybe he thought it would be bad luck. 'I remember being in the mess, and that card game... then...' Then he remembered seeing the white chair at his bedside and filling his lungs with all the air in the world and screaming like a hurricane until the end of time, or at least until Talibe came and calmed him (Livueta? he'd whispered; Dar... Livueta?). He shrugged.'... then I was here.'
'Well,' Saaz said, straightening the crease on his uniform trousers, 'the good news is, we managed to get the blood off the hangar floor.'
'I expect it to be returned.'
'Deal, but we're not cleaning it.'<
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'How are the others?'
Saaz sighed, shook his head, smoothed the hair at the back of his neck. 'Oh, just the same dear lovable fine bunch of lads they ever were.' He shrugged. 'The rest of the squadron... said to send their best wishes for a rapid recovery. But you pissed them off that night.' He looked sadly at the man in the bed. 'Cheri, old pal, nobody likes the war, but there are ways of saying so... You just did it wrong. I mean, we all appreciate what you've done; we know this isn't really your battle, but I think... I think some of the guys... even feel bad about that. I hear them sometimes; you must have; at night, having nightmares. You can see that look in their eyes sometimes, like they know how bad the odds are, and they just aren't going to come through all this. They're scared; they might try to put a bullet through my head if I said so to their face, but scared is what they are. They'd love a way out of this war. They're brave men, and they want to fight for their country, but they want out, and nobody who knew the odds would blame them. Any honourable excuse. They wouldn't shoot themselves in the foot, and nowadays they won't go for a walk outside in ordinary shoes and come back with frostbite because too many did that early on; but they'd love a way out of this. You don't have to be here, but you are; you choose to fight, and a lot of them resent you for it; it makes them feel like cowards, because they know that if they were in your boots they'd be on land, telling the girls what a brave pilot they have the chance to dance with.'
'I'm sorry I upset them.' He touched the bandages on his head. 'I'd no idea they felt this strongly though.'
'They don't.' Insile frowned. 'That's what's weird.' He got up and walked over to the nearest window, looking out at the blizzard.
'Shit, Cheri, half those guys would've gladly invited you into the hangar and done their best to lose you a couple of teeth, but a gun?' He shook his head. 'There's not one of those guys I'd trust behind me with a bread roll or a handful of ice-cubes, but if it was a gun...' He shook his head again. 'I wouldn't think twice. They just aren't like that.'
'Maybe I imagined it all, Saaz,' he said.
Saaz looked round, a worried expression on his face. It melted a little when he saw his friend was smiling. 'Cheri; I admit I don't want to imagine I'm wrong about one of them, but the alternative is... just somebody else. I don't know who. The military police don't know either.'
'I don't think I was much help to them,' he confessed.
Saaz came back, sat down on the other bed again. 'You really have no idea who you talked to afterwards? Where you went?'
'None.'
'You told me you were going to the briefing room, to check out the latest targets.'
'Yes, so I've heard.'
'But when Jine went there - to invite you to step into the hangar for saying such terrible things about our high command and our low tactics - you weren't there.'
'I don't know what happened, Saaz; I'm sorry, but I just...' He felt tears prick behind his eyes. The suddenness surprised him. He put the fruit back down in his lap. He made a very large sniffing noise, rubbed his nose, and coughed, patted his chest. 'I'm sorry,' he repeated.
Insile watched the other man for a moment as he reached for a handkerchief from the bedside table.
Saaz shrugged, grinned broadly. 'Hey; never mind. It'll come back to you. Maybe it was just some loony ground-crewman pissed off because you'd stepped on his fingers once too often. If you want to remember, don't try too hard.'
'Yeah; "Get some rest", I've heard that before, Saaz.' He picked the fruit from his lap, placed it on the bedside cabinet.
'Can I get you anything, for next time?' Insile asked. 'Apart from Talibe, on whom I may have designs myself if you refuse to rise to the occasion.'
'No, thanks.'
'Booze?'
'No, I'm saving myself for the mess-room bar.'
'Books?'
'Really, Saaz; nothing.'
'Zakalwe,' Saaz laughed. 'There isn't even anybody else here for you to talk to; what do you do all day?'
He looked at the window, then back at Saaz. 'I think, quite a lot,' he said. 'I try to remember.'
Saaz came over to the bed. He looked very young. He hesitated, then punched him gently in the chest. He glanced at the bandages. 'Don't get lost in there, old buddy-pal.'
He was expressionless for a moment. 'Yeah; don't worry. But anyway, I'm a good navigator.'
There was something he'd meant to tell Saaz Insile, but he couldn't remember what that was either. Something that would warn him, because there was something that he knew about that he hadn't known about before, and something that required... warning.
The frustration of it made him want to scream sometimes; to tear the white plump pillows in half and pick up the white chair and smash it through the windows to let the mad white fury out there inside.
He wondered how quickly he'd freeze if the windows were open.
Well, at least it would be appropriate; he'd arrived here frozen, so why not leave the same way? He entertained the thought that some cell-memory, some bone-remembered affinity had drawn him here, of all places, where the great battles were fought on the titanic crashing tabular bergs, calved from their vast glaciers and swirling like ice-cubes in some planet-sized cocktail glass, a scatter of ever-shifting frozen islands, some of them hundreds of kilometres long, circling the world between pole and tropic, their broad backs a white wasteland spattered with blood and bodies, and the wrecks of tanks and planes.
To fight for what would inevitably melt and could never provide food or minerals or a permanent place to live, seemed an almost deliberate caricature of the conventional folly of war. He enjoyed the fight, but even the way the war was fought disturbed him, and he had made enemies amongst the other pilots, and his superiors, by speaking his mind.
But somehow he knew that Saaz was right; it had not been what he'd said in the mess that had led to somebody trying to kill him. At least (said something in him), not directly...
Thone, the squadron's CO, came to see him; no flunkies, for a change.
'Thank you, Nurse,' he said at the door, then closed it, smiled, and came over to the bed; he had the white chair. He sat in it and drew himself up, so that his girth was made to look less. 'Well, Captain Zakalwe, how are we coming along?'
A flowery smell, Thone's preferred scent, drifted over from the man. 'I hope to be flying within a couple of weeks, sir,' he said. He'd never liked the CO, but made the effort of smiling bravely.
'Do you?' Thone said. 'Do you now. That's not what the doctors say, Captain Zakalwe. Unless they're saying different things to me than they are to you.'
He frowned. 'Well, it might be a... few weeks, sir...'
'It might be we have to send you home, I think, Captain Zakalwe,' Thone said, with an insincere smiled. '... or at least to the mainland, as I'm told your home is further afield, eh?'
'I'm sure I'll be able to return to my duties, sir. Of course, I realise there will be a medical, but...'
'Yes, yes, yes,' Thone said. 'Well, we'll just have to see, won't we. Hmm. Very good.' He stood up. 'Is there anyth -'
'There's nothing you can get -' He began, then saw the look on Thone's face. 'I beg your pardon, sir.'
'As I was saying, Captain; is there anything I can get you?'
He looked down at the white sheets. 'No, sir. Thank you, sir.'
'A speedy recovery, Captain Zakalwe,' Thone said frostily.
He saluted Thone, who nodded, turned and left.
He was left looking at the white chair.
Nurse Talibe came in after a few moments, arms crossed, her round, pale face very calm and kind. 'Try to sleep,' she told him, and took the chair away.
He woke in the night and saw the lights shining through the snow outside; silhouetted against the floodlights, the falling flakes became translucent shadows, massing soft against the harsh, downward light. The whiteness beyond, in the black night, came compromised as grey.
He woke with the smell of flowers in his nostrils.
He clu
tched beneath the pillow, felt the single leg of the sharp, long-nosed scissor.
He remembered Thone's face.
He remembered the briefing room, and the four COs; they'd invited him for a drink, said they wanted a word.
In the room of one of them - he couldn't remember their names, but he would remember soon, and already he would recognise them - they asked him about what they'd heard he'd said in the mess.
And, a little drunk, and thinking he was very clever, thinking he might find out something interesting, he'd told them what he suspected they wanted to hear, not what he'd said to the other pilots.
And had discovered a plot. He wanted the new government to be true to its populist promises, and end the war. They wanted to stage a coup, and they needed good pilots.
High on the drink and his nerves, he'd left them thinking he was for them, and gone straight to Thone. Thone the hard but fair; Thone the dislikeable and petty, Thone the vain, the perfumed, but Thone the man known to be pro-government. (Though Saaz Insile had once said the man was pro-government with the pilots, and anti-government with their superiors.)
And the look on Thone's face...
Not then; later. After Thone had told him to say nothing to anybody else, because he thought there might be traitors amongst the pilots too, and told him to go to bed as though nothing had happened, and he'd gone, and because he'd still been drunk, maybe, woken up that second too late as they came for him, shoved some impregnated rag over his face and held it there while he struggled, but eventually had to breathe, and the choking fumes took him.
Use of Weapons Page 31