Withûr We

by Matthew Bruce Alexander

  “On behalf of Ashley Security & Arbitration, I would like to say that we hope no such action will be required in the future,” said Taribo, breathless, as he rubbed at his sore knuckles. His chest heaved from the exertion and sweat drenched his body and soaked his clothing, but he was nonetheless exhilarated. “Furthermore, we must warn you against any reprisal against Mr. Yusuf, on whose behalf we have acted with justice today.” Taribo paused to gulp in some more air. “We’d like to offer you our services which, you must agree, are quick and effective. We aim to make any violation of our customers’ property rights an unthinkable proposition, and we encourage you to take advantage of our protection. Your score with Mr. Hassan is well on its way to being settled and, that being the case, we can accept you as a client with the full right of property like anyone else. Your fee for service will be higher than others, of course, due to this precedent and the increased likelihood of intervention it entails.” Bernhard could only moan in response. Surveying him for a moment more, Taribo at last added, “Alistair will be by momentarily to settle the property debt owed to Mr. Hassan.” The speech delivered, Taribo left Bernhard, the radiance of an irrepressible smile emanating from him.

  “That was barbaric,” said a voice at the inner edge of the crowd. Alistair, his arms folded as he impassively watched the proceedings, turned to see Gregory.

  “Was it?” he asked. “I’ll bet barbarians had low crimes rates.”

  “How can you can stomach it? It makes me sick. I don’t know that I want to be a part of this anymore.”

  “Gregory, why don’t you shed a few tears for the victim? Was it any less barbaric when Bernhard decided to kick the hell out of Yusuf? Why should he get to do that and not have to experience it himself?”

  Gregory only shook his head and walked away.

  Chapter 63

  In her left hand Giselle held a sheaf of brownish papers, and in her right a pencil. In truth the papers were hardly worthy of the name, but someone had managed to grind up some wood into a soupy mulch and beat it down into some brittle sheets that, when dry, were given to crumbling. The pencil was similarly crude, consisting of a carved wooden holder into which a lump of something Giselle suspected was clay mixed with charcoal could be secured. They were rudimentary writing supplies, but they were far preferable to the notches she had been carving on wooden tablets. She could record faster now, and store the recordings in a far smaller space. Working assiduously, she transferred their entire archive from tablet to parchment.

  Alistair’s hands were free and he had them placed now on his hips as he stood with an open stance, staring down into the recently discovered shaft. Five other men also stood around the hole, staring into it as if waiting for it to reveal a secret. Absentmindedly, one kicked a stone into the shaft and it plummeted, ringing off the sides of the shaft before leaving earshot.

  “We wanna claim it,” one of the men finally said. “We found it, we explored it. We stake the claim to it right now.”

  Alistair nodded. “What does it lead to?”

  The men shifted uncomfortably. One of them finally answered, “We don’t know. Tashiro went farther than anybody else. Didn’t see nothin’.” The man said this with a toss of his head in the direction of the smallest man among them, a slender and short Japanese man of perhaps forty years. Tashiro picked up the story in accented English.

  “I went down… very far. I must be below the level of the sea. Much farther. It got cool where I was. But nothing change except temperature. The tunnel is always like this in wideness… always with a smooth side and always with the ladder. It was too dark to see if anything was written, but from the touch I could feel no change. And smell too. Nothing changes but temperature.”

  “What’s down there?” asked a man of no one in particular.

  “Can we own it?” asked one.

  “Provisionally, yes,” Alistair replied. “Whoever built this is the owner, or whoever paid the builders.”

  “But this thing is hundreds of years old,” one pointed out.

  “And abandoned,” added Tashiro.

  “That is why I am, provisionally, going to record and recognize your claim.”

  The men broke into satisfied grins.

  “But remember, this is essentially a gamble. We don’t know if the title to this property is yours or not. Someone may come one day and demonstrate they are the proper owner.”

  “Well hell,” began one, a bit frustrated. “I mean… doesn’t property become abandoned… you know… centuries later.”

  “Every case must be decided on its own merits, but the principles remain the same. Once something is yours, it remains yours until you transfer it, abandon the title, or you can lose the title in payment of a debt. If the original owner passed it on to his heirs, and they to theirs… I just want you to be aware. Someone may come with a good claim to the property. Claiming this is a gamble, as is any property claim. We will recognize it as yours until someone demonstrates it is not.”

  The men looked thoughtfully at the opening in the ground, and one of them, tapping his finger to his lips while he considered what Alistair said, spoke up. His voice and measured speech carried hints of a greater intelligence than the others. “What if someone comes claiming it was their great-great-grandfather’s and that it has passed down to them?”

  “If they can show the proper documentation proving it was transferred to them, it is theirs.”

  The man nodded at this and tapped his lips once or twice more. “What if the title was never officially transferred, but they claim by custom property passes down from parent to child, and their great-great-grandfather never renounced the property, so it would have to have become theirs?”

  “Well that’s a different… case. In that instance… we would…” Alistair faltered, realizing he did not have a ready-made answer. “I honestly can’t give you an answer right now. If such a case were to arise, we would listen to arguments on both sides and try to find the correct answer using logical principles. We would try to establish the correct precedent.” Alistair shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never encountered that question before.”

  “Well,” said the interrogator, “that’s good enough for now. We would like to lay official claim to the tunnel down to as deep as we have explored.”

  “Giselle will record the claim.”

  The business with the five men being concluded, Alistair took his leave with Giselle scurrying after, attempting to write and walk over uneven ground at the same time and accomplishing it surprisingly well. The summit of The Great Hill, as it was becoming known, had an expanse of flat ground the approximate size of a rugby field. It was a short walk back to the hut, where Santiago was waiting. Sweating profusely from a long hike over the island’s terrain, he was reclining on a stool, his back to the table, sipping at some water from a wooden cup. He made no move to acknowledge them when they arrived, but he had laid out a large and heavy tan parchment over the table, its corners weighted down by rocks. In charcoal a map of some sort was traced, with dark smudges and marks over its surface from the charcoal-stained hands that had grasped it.

  Leaning with his hands on the table, Alistair eyed the map. “It’s finished?”

  “It is finished,” confirmed Santiago and downed the rest of his water. He rose from his stool, set the cup on the table and laid his hands on it to lean on, regarding the map which was, to him, upside down. “It is not the most precise map humans have labored to produce, but it is reasonably accurate.”

  There were no political lines on the map, nothing to indicate settlements, population and territory. Any such markings would have doomed the map to become out of date in a short period of time, for the island was undergoing a rapid transformation. The tools brought over from the main continent hacked at tree trunks, dug up hard ground, sliced through plants, peeled away bark, sawed through wood, broke up rocks and fashioned more tools. There was squabbling over ownership of these instruments, but Alistair and Santiago managed to settle the
issues amicably. Most of the population were generally satisfied with the outcomes and, equipped with an increasing stockpile of tools, went to work on the raw resources the island afforded them.

  It was almost miraculous how the inhabitants set about their own tasks with little regard for or information about what anyone else was doing. Despite this, the entire scattered and diversified affair was exceptionally well coordinated. These prisoners, living for so long as savages, quickly remembered their roots and divided their labor. One day people were building homes, preparing fields and piecing together fishing nets on their own, and the next individuals were making surpluses of a small number of goods and trading the excess for whatever they lacked.

  In short, an economy sprouted on Odin’s Island, as it came to be called. It was an uncontrolled and vibrant economy, and with the scraps of knowledge of superior technology Alistair knew existed among them, and with each man free to pursue his ends as he saw fit, he had little doubt they would advance by leaps and bounds, far surpassing in rapidity of development their ancestors of thousands of years ago, at whose level they now lived.

  When he was done admiring the map, he instructed Giselle to store it within easy reach, an action which she carried out with her customary punctiliousness. The life she lived on Srillium had not done more than roughen her edges and harden her shell; she preserved a core of a sharp mind, a perceptive eye, a fabulous memory, and a unique thoughtfulness that sought solutions to minor problems often before Alistair was even aware of them.

  In the mornings, Alistair rose early to exercise. When he returned Giselle was there, preparing them for the day’s business. The next few hours were generally spent traveling, and she packed well for the trip. Occasionally business took them a few miles away and kept them overnight, but he never found himself wanting for something forgotten. Upon returning, they would have a small supper, dispose of business arising in their absence, and then she would retire to the women’s lodge.

  He was at first uncomfortable with his new companion, being naturally reticent to open up to people, and the fact Giselle was an attractive woman a few years his senior doubled his discomfort. When he walked, he felt as if he went on stilts. He found himself clearing his throat before he spoke so his voice did not crack. He stubbed his toes on obstacles more often than he thought appropriate. However, he eventually grew accustomed to her presence and relaxed; his voice grew steadier and his toes were given a reprieve. He could stretch out on the ground without worrying about whether the position of his arms made him look silly. Her conversation ceased to fluster him. In one instance, upon suggesting to Giselle that they make for the west coast the next day to settle a dispute about property boundaries between two groups of loggers, she remarked that they could then hitch a ride on the logs to the southern part of the island to attend to other business down there.

  “A girl needs a good log between her legs now and then,” she said with the hint of a smile and a raised eyebrow.

  Alistair spluttered, nearly asphyxiating on his own saliva, and blushed a deep red even after his airway cleared.

  “I’m sorry,” she said with an air of supreme satisfaction. “At my last job that sort of talk was considered appropriate. It was expected, in fact.”

  He only blushed more, but time and conditioning harden even the most innocent. Her quips and puns, in truth less vulgar than the speech of his fellow marines on Kaldis but which had the distinction of being delivered by a good-looking female, soon produced no more effect in him than a chuckle and shake of his head.

  If her risqué speech affected him less, her physique affected him more. Like anyone would, he recognized at first glance that Giselle was beautiful, but he noticed it with all the attention of a preoccupied man. He noted she was attractive like he noted the height of a tree, or the distance of a road, until he began to spend most of his waking hours with her. There was no moment he could point to as his awakening, the moment when her beauty was among his foremost thoughts. It was as if the realization, buried in his subconscious, came loose and floated to the forefront of his brain, crossing no line and experiencing no defining moment, but by degrees growing in prominence.

  Her skirt of animal skin came down to the middle of her thighs. A single strap over her left shoulder held it up, leaving her arms and a good portion of her chest bare. A pair of sturdy moccasins adorned her feet. The ensemble left much of her body exposed, and Alistair discovered that in quiet moments, when he was planning and she writing, for instance, his eyes were drawn to her. She was not a pampered princess in an affluent society. Her grooming consisted of a swim in the lake and a good scrubbing without soap to be followed by running a makeshift comb through her shoulder length hair. Her hair did not shine like silk, though she managed to keep the tangles out of it. Her leg was well shaped but not entirely smooth, as a sparse but detectable growth of dark hair arose in the absence of razors and a decidedly thick patch of hair grew underneath each arm where it joined the body. But these niceties of a comfortable culture didn’t matter on Srillium, and he grew more and more intoxicated with her, eyeing the outline of her thighs, glancing at the shadows underneath her skirt, studying the shape of her buttocks as it pressed down on a seat, or her solid back and shoulders when the muscles flexed. His admiration for her body joined with his admiration for her ability.

  The same continuing proximity which allowed Giselle’s charms to enchant Alistair eventually swayed Giselle. He was not especially handsome, and his immensely powerful body, his one trait that did impress some women, was far bigger than she usually preferred. But his work and the ideas which had given birth to it, having first confused and unsettled her, now astonished her. His encyclopedic knowledge of abstruse topics impressed her when she grew more accustomed to it. She discovered a gentleness lingering beneath the surface of his impassive and unyielding logic, a clumsy, guileless desire to be tolerant of the symbolism, spiritualism and irrational emotions he did not comprehend. Furthermore, when she remembered the great gap between what she told him of herself and what he told her of him and decided to press him for information, she saw an ache in him, something more than what the ordinary prisoner feels on being exiled to Srillium. There were places in his memory he would not yet take her but still stared at with haunted eyes, and no woman is entirely immune to a man with emotional pain.

  What played the largest role in securing her affection for and attraction to Alistair was her discovery of his feelings for her. Every human is a balance of ego and sympathy that at least responds to the interest of another and often winds up reciprocating. Though Alistair – open, honest, blundering Alistair – thought himself sly and imagined that, when he stole glances at her, she was ignorant of his attentions, she instantly recognized what was going on. Even before he himself fully realized how often he watched her, she was flattered and secretly smiling at his consideration. For all the shaggy, unkempt hair dominating his head and face, she began to return his looks with some appreciative ones of her own, though he never noticed.

  Only one dispute threatened to ruin things, and it involved Layla. She came charging into the hut one morning, Giselle in tow, claiming her finely woven cloth, which served as currency still, had been stolen and insisted that, inasmuch as she had paid for his services despite her declaration of firing him, Alistair find the culprit.

  “But I already know who did it,” he said with utter nonchalance. Too shocked to respond, Layla only stared. “I took it.”

  The former concubine could only utter a couple sounds that, though intended to be words, came out more like strangled coughs.

  “Does this bother you?”

  “You’re a son of a bitch!”

  Alistair only shrugged.

  Layla collected herself and, through clenched teeth and in a low, deadly tone, said, “Give me my cloth back.”

  “No.”

  She hissed like a serpent. “I said give me my cloth back. You’ve got no right to take it.”

  “I’m surprised
to hear you using that argument, Layla. I’m not claiming I had a right to take it, but rights are ethereal things. Just ideas, really. Entirely without physical effect, unlike, say, gravity. Your right to the cloth did not prevent me from taking it. I concede I had no right to take it, but you must concede I did have the ability. Not only that, but you do not have the ability to take it back.”

  She brought her hands up in front of her face and her fingers bent like talons. “I am so fucking furious right now,” she spat, sounding almost shocked at her own anger, and her voice shook as if to confirm it. “I swear I’m going to gouge your eyes out.”

  “I really don’t think you’ll be able to.”

  “Give me my damn cloth back!”

  “I already told you I’m not going to do that.”

  Her enraged screams attracted the attention of onlookers, and a small crowd gathered around the hut, staying at what they considered a safe distance.

  Layla, looking around helplessly, grabbed at her scalp and looked ready to cry.

  “Would you say I should not have done that?” asked Alistair with feigned innocence.

  “You’re a son of a bitch! What the hell do you think?”

  “I’m asking you.”

  “Of course you shouldn’t have taken it. IT’S… MY… CLOTH!”