by David Drake
"Hey Hieu," the TC called. "Why the hell'd the colonel stick us here, d'ya know? We get in a firefight and these damn trees'll hide a division a VC."
Hieu looked around slowly. His features had neither the fragility of the pure Vietnamese nor the moonlike fullness of those with Chinese blood. He was a blocky face, set as ever in hard lines, mahogany in color. Hieu stepped up to the wall before answering, letting his hands run over the rough stone like two dried oak leaves.
"No time to make berm," he said at last, pointing to the bellowing Caterpillar climbing out of a trench near the TOC. The D-7A was digging in sleeping trailers for the brass rather than starting to throw up an earthen wall around the perimeter. "The wall here makes us need ti-ti berm, I show colonel."
Herrold nodded. The stone enclosure was square, about a hundred yards to a side. Though only four feet high, the ancient wall was nearly as thick and would stop anything short of an eight inch shell. But even with the work the wall would save the engineers on the west side, those trees sure played hell with the zones of fire. Seven of them looked to Herrold to be Phillipine mahoganies; God knew what the monster in the middle was; a banyan, maybe, from the creviced trunk, but the bark didn't look like the banyans he'd seen before.
"Never saw trees that big before," the TC said aloud.
Hieu looked at him again, this time with a hint of expression on his face. "Yes," he stated. "Ti-ti left when French come, now only one." His fingers toyed with the faded duck of the ammo pouch clipped to his belt. Both soldiers thought the dark man was through speaking, but Hieu's tongue flicked between his thin lips again and he continued, "Maybe three, maybe two years only, there was other. Now only this." The interpreter's voice became a hiss. "But beaucoup years before, everywhere was tree, everywhere was Meng!"
Boots scuffled in powdery dirt; Murray and the Frenchman were coming back from the TOC. Hieu lost interest in Herrold and vaulted the laterite wall gracefully. The driver and Crozier watched him stepping purposefully toward the center of the widely spaced grove as they halted beside the others.
"But who is that?" Crozier questioned sharply.
"Uh? That's Hieu, he's our interpreter," Murray grunted in surprise. "How come?"
The Frenchman frowned . . . "But he is Meng, surely? I did not know that any served in the army, even that the government tried to induct them any more."
"Hell, I always heard he was from Saigon," Herrold answered. "He'd'a said if he was from here, wouldn't he?"
"What the hell's Hieu up to, anyhow?" Ginelli asked. He pointed toward the grove where the interpreter stood, facing the scarred trunk of the central tree. He couldn't see Hieu's hands from that angle, but the interpreter twitched in ritual motion beneath the fluid stripes of his fatigues.
Nobody spoke. Ginelli set one foot on the tread and lifted himself onto the flame track. Red and yellow smoke grenades hung by their safety rings inside the dome. Still lower swung a dusty pair of binoculars. Ginelli blew on the lenses before setting the glasses to his eyes and rotating the separate focus knobs. Hieu had knelt on the ground, but the trooper still could not tell what he was doing. Something else caught his eye.
"God damn," the plump newbie blurted. He leaned over the side of the track and thrust the glasses toward Herrold, busy putting the machine gun back together. "Hey Red, take a look at the tree trunk."
Murray, Crozier, and Ginelli himself waited expectantly while the TC refocused the binoculars. Magnified, the tree increased geometrically in hideousness. Its bark was pinkish and paper thin, smoother than that of a birch over most of the bole's surface. The gouged, wrinkled appearance of the trunk was due to the underlying wood, not any irregularity in the bark that covered it.
The tall catface in front of Hieu was the trunk's only true blemish. Where the tear had puckered together in a creased, blackened seam, ragged edges of bark fluttered in the breeze. The flaps were an unhealthy color, like skin peeling away from a bad burn. Hieu's squat body hid only a third of the scar; the upper portion towered gloomily above him.
"Well, it's not much to look at," Herrold said at last. "What's the deal?"
"Where's the bullet holes?" Ginelli demanded in triumph. "You put twenty, thirty shots in it, right? Where'd they go to?"
"Son of a bitch," the TC agreed, taking another look. The co-ax should have left a tight pattern of shattered wood above the ancient scar. Except for some brownish dimples in the bark, the tree was unmarked.
"I saw splinters fly," Murray remarked.
"Goddam wood must'a swelled right over'em," Herrold suggested. "That's where I hit, all right."
"That is a very strange tree," Crozier said, speaking for the first time since his return. "There was another like it near Plantation Seven. It had almond trees around it too, though there was no wall. They call them god trees—the Viets do. The Mengs have their own word, but I do not know its meaning."
A Chinook swept over the firebase from the south, momentarily stifling conversation with the syncopated whopping of its twin rotors. It hovered just beyond the perimeter, then slowly settled in a circular dust cloud while its turbines whined enormously. Men ran to unload it.
"Chow pretty quick," Murray commented. It was nearing four o'clock. Ginelli looked away from the bird. "Don't seem right," he said. The other men looked blank. He tried to explain, "I mean, the Shithook there, jet engines and all, and that tree there being so old."
The driver snorted. "Hell, that's not old. Now back in California where they make those things"—his broad thumb indicated the banana-shaped helicopter—"they got redwoods that're really old. You don't think anything funny about that, do you?"
Ginelli gestured helplessly with his hands. Surprisingly it was Crozier, half-seated on the laterite wall, who came to his aid. "What makes you think this god tree is less old than a redwood, Joe?" he asked mildly.
Murray blinked. "Hell, redwoods're the oldest things there are. Alive, I mean."
The Frenchman laughed and repeated his deprecating shrug. "But trees are my business, you know? Now there is a pine tree in Arizona older than your California sequoias; but nobody knew it for a long time because there are not many of them and . . . nobody noticed. And here is a tree, an old one—but who knows? Maybe there are only two in the whole world left—and the other one, the one in the north, that perhaps is dead with my plantation."
"You never counted the rings or anything?" Herrold asked curiously. He had locked the barrel into the co-ax while the others were talking.
"No . . . ," Crozier admitted. His tongue touched his lips as he glanced up at the god tree, wondering how much he should say. "No," he repeated, "but I only saw the tree once while I was at Plantation Seven. It stood in the jungle, more than a mile from the rubber, and the laborers did not care that anyone should go near it. There were Mengs there, too, I was told; but only a few and they hid in the woods. Bad blood between them and my laborers, no doubt."
"Well, hell, Jacques," Murray prompted. "When did you see it?" Crozier still hesitated. Suddenly realizing what the problem might be, the driver said, "Hell, don't worry about our stomachs, fer god's sake. Unless you're squeamish, turtle?" Ginelli blushed and shook his head. Laughing, Murray went on, "Anyhow, you grow up pretty quick after you get in the field—those that live to. Tell the story, Jacques."
Crozier sighed. The glade behind him was empty. Hieu had disappeared somewhere without being noticed. "Well," he began, "it has no importance, I am sure—all this happened a hundred miles away, as you know. But . . . .
"It was not long after Michelin sent me to Indochina, in 1953 that would be. I was told of the god tree as soon as I arrived at Plantation Seven, but that was all. One of my foremen had warned me not to wander that way and I assumed, because of the Viet Minh.
"Near midnight—this was before Dien Bien Phu, you will remember—there was heavy firing not far from the plantation. I called the district garrison since for a marvel the radio was working. But of course, no one came until it was light."
"And that is what we found. All the men, all of them dead—unforgettably. They were in the grove of that god tree, on both sides of the trail to it. Perhaps the lieutenant had thought the Viets were rallying there. The paras were well armed and did much shooting from the shells we found. But of enemies, there was no sign; and the paras had not been shot. They were torn, you know? Mutilated beyond what I could believe. But none had been shot, and their weapons lay with the bodies."
"That's crazy," Ginelli said, voicing everyone's thought. "Dinks would'a taken the guns."
Crozier shrugged. "The colonel said at last his men had been killed by some wild tribe, so savage they did not understand guns or would not use them. The Mengs, he meant. They were . . . wilder, perhaps, than the ones here but still . . . . I would not have thought there were enough of them to wipe out the platoon, waiting as it must have been."
"How were the men killed?" Herrold asked at last.
"Knives I think," the Frenchman replied, "short ones. Teeth I might have said; but there were really no signs that anything had fed on the bodies. Not the killers, that is. One man—"
He paused to swallow, continued. "One man I thought wore a long shirt of black. When I came closer, the flies left him. The skin was gone from his arms and chest. God alone knows what had killed him; but his face was the worst to see, and that was unmarked."
No one spoke for some time after that. Finally Murray said, "They oughta have chow on. Coming?"
Crozier spread his hands. "You are sure it is all right? I have no utensils."
"No sweat, there's paper plates. Rest'a you guys?"
"I'll be along," Herrold said. "Lemme remount the co-ax first."
"I'll do that," Ginelli offered. His face was saffron, bloodless beneath his tan. "Don't feel hungry tonight anyhow."
The track commander smiled. "You can give me a hand."
When the gun was bolted solidly back on its mount, Herrold laid a belt of ammunition on the loading tray and clicked the cover shut on it. "Ah," Ginelli mumbled, "ah, Red, don't you think it'd be a good idea to keep pressure up in the napalm tanks? I mean, there's a lotta Mengs around here and what Murray's buddy says . . . ."
"We'll make do with the co-ax," the TC replied, grinning. "You know how the couplings leak napalm with the pumps on."
"But if there's an attack?" Ginelli pleaded.
"Look, turtle," Herrold explained more sharply than before, "we're sitting on two hundred gallons 'a napalm. One spark in this track with the pressure up and we won't need no attack. OK?" Ginelli shrugged. "Well, come on to chow then," the TC suggested.
"Guess I'll stay."
"S'OK." Herrold slipped off the track and began walking toward the mess tent. He was singing softly, "We gotta get outta this place . . . ."
Crozier left just before the storm broke. The rain that had held off most of the day sheeted down at dusk. Lightning when it flared jumped from cloud-top to invisible cloud top. It back-lighted the sky.
The crewmen huddled under the inadequate tarpaulin, listening to the ragged static that was all Murray's transistor radio could pick up. Eventually he shut it off. Ginelli swore miserably. Slanting rain had started a worm of water at the head of his cot. It had finally squirmed all the way to the other end where he sat hunched against the chill wind. "Shouldn't somebody be on the track?" he asked. Regular guard shifts started at ten o'clock, but usually everybody was more or less alert until then.
"Go ahead, turtle, it's your bright idea," Murray said. Herrold frowned more seriously. "Yeah, if you're worried you might as well . . . . Look, you get up in the dome now and Murray'll trade his first shift for your second. Right?"
"Sure," the driver agreed. "Maybe this damn rain'll stop by then."
Wearing his poncho over his flak jacket, Ginelli clambered up the bow slope of the zippo. The metal sides were too slimy with rain to mount that way. Except during lightning strokes, the darkness was opaque. When it flashed, the trees stabbed into the sudden bright skies and made Ginelli think about the napalm beneath from a different aspect. Christ, those trees were the tallest things for miles, and God knew the track wasn't very far away if lightning did hit one. God, they were tall.
And they were old. Ginelli recognized the feeling he'd had ever since the flame track had nosed up to the wall to face the grove: an aura of age. The same thing he'd sensed when he was a kid and saw the Grand Canyon. There was something so old it didn't give a damn about man or anything else.
Christ! No tree was as old as that; it must be their size that made him so jumpy. Dark as it was, the dinks could be crawling closer between lightning flashes too. At least the rain was slowing down.
The hatch cover was folded back into a clamshell seat for the man on the dome. There was a fiber pillow to put over the steel, but it was soaked and Ginelli had set it on the back deck. For the first time he could remember, the thickness of his flak jacket felt good because the air was so cold. Water that slicked off the poncho or dripped from the useless flat muzzle of the flamethrower joined the drops spattering directly onto the zippo's deck. It pooled and flowed sluggishly toward the lowest point, the open driver's hatch.
The sky was starting to clear. An occasional spray fell, but the storm was over and a quarter moon shone when the broken clouds allowed it. Herrold stuck his head out from under the tarp. "How's going, man?"
Ginelli stretched some of the stiffness out of his back and began stripping off the poncho. "OK, I guess. I could use some coffee."
"Yeah. Well, hang in there till midnight and get Murray up. We're gonna rack out now."
Shadows from the treetops pooled massively about the holes. Although there was enough breeze to make the branches tremble, the trunks themselves were solid as cliffs, as solid as Time. The scar at the base of the god tree was perversely moonlit. The whole grove looked sinister in the darkness, but the scar itself was something more.
Only the half-hour routine of perimeter check kept Ginelli awake. Voices crackled around Headquarters Troop's sector until Ginelli could repeat, "Seven zero, report negative," for the last time and thankfully take off the commo helmet. His boots squelched as he dropped beside the cot where Murray snored softly, wrapped in the mottled green-brown nylon of his poncho liner. Ginelli shook him.
"Uh!" the driver grunted as he snapped awake. "Oh, right; lemme get my boots on."
One of the few clouds remaining drifted over the moon. As Murray stood upright, Ginelli thought movement flickered on the dark stone of the wall. "Hey!" the driver whispered. "What's Hieu doing out there?"
Ginelli peered into the grove without being able to see anything but the trees. "That was him goin' over the wall," Murray insisted. He held his M16 with the bolt back, ready to chamber a round if the receiver was jarred. "Look, I'm gonna check where he's going."
"Jeez, somebody'll see you and cut loose," Ginelli protested. "You can't go out there!"
Murray shook his head decisively. "Naw, it'll be OK," he said as he slipped over the wall. "Crazy," Ginelli muttered. And it suddenly struck him that a man who volunteered for three extra years of combat probably wasn't quite normal in the back-home sense. Licking his lips, he waited tensely in the darkness. The air had grown warmer since the rain stopped, but the plump newbie found himself shivering.
A bird fluttered among the branches of the nearest mahogany. You didn't seem to see many birds in country, not like you did back in the World. Ginelli craned his neck to get a better view, but the irregular moonlight passed only the impression of wings and drab color.
"Oh, for God's sake," he muttered when Ginelli blurted out the story. Herrold had kept his boots on, only the tops unlaced, and he quickly whipped the ties tight around his shins. "Christ, ten minutes ago?"
"Well, should I call in?" Ginelli suggested uncertainly.
"Hell," Herrold muttered, "no, I better go tell the ole man. You get back in the dome and wait for me." He hefted his submachine gun by the receiver.
Ginelli started to climb onto the track. Turning, he said, "Hey, man." Herrold paused. "Don't be too long, huh?"