The Transmigration of Souls

by William Barton

  Trying to blot out the sounds, suppress the inevitable rise of his own damning erection. Suppress the thinking of: Maybe if I just lie here on my back with this damned thing sticking up in the wind, some nice woman will see and take pity and... Who? Stiff, angry, formal Rahman? Kincaid, the forever-distant soldiergirl? And everyone else is taken. All in their disparate ways.

  Walking along now, still alone, drenched with the hard, palpable light of an invisible sun, wishing, painfully wishing, that the bitches had their britches, so he wouldn’t have to watch their buttocks wriggling.

  Or watch their men, touching them and touching them again. Mate-guarding it’s called, said the scientist’s mind. Keep your claim current and proof against interlopers. And is that what little Smoking Mirror’s doing? No. Walking with Kincaid, talking to her, Laing, sullen as ever, walking along behind, watching them walk and talk together. Too bad about Jensen, I guess, not to mention poor Ardry Bright-Sky. Does that one still live? Still live in the clutches of the Devil?

  A sudden sound, a distant hiss, suddenly growing closer, a shadow, like the shadow of a swiftly flying bird low overhead. Smoking Mirror of the cinnamon skin staggering, screaming, trying to reach around both sides of his back at once, trying to scratch an itch that grew a long, feathered stick, stick of light brown wood fletched with red and black feathers. Smoking Mirror falling to his knees, yodeling with pain, Astrid Kincaid whirling in her tracks, reaching for her bare shoulder.

  No gun.

  Nothing brought to Heaven but our own bare asses.

  All of them turning now, dark horsemen on the horizon.

  Men clad in buckskins, sitting astride blotchy brown and white horses. Men holding a mixture of bows, Asian recurved bows like a Mongol might bear, things like English longbows. Lances, with feathers tied to some, boldly-colored silks to others.

  And a tall, dark red man in the lead, man with long, straight black hair and brilliant, horrid black eyes. Man shouting out in English with a harsh, buzzsaw whine of an accent: “Smoking Mirror! Where is the ant woman?”

  Horseman riding down from the low rise that had, Ling supposed, hidden them before. Smoking Mirror still on his knees, gasping for breath, bright blood rivuletting down his sides, soaking into his white loincloth, soaking through, starting down his thighs. Smoking Mirror whispering something incomprehensible.

  From somewhere behind him, Ling heard Inbar whisper, “New Testament Greek, koinë contaminated with Aramaic and Hebrew words, I think...”

  The rider poked him in the side with the butt of his lance, Smoking Mirror falling to the ground and squalling, a hollow cry, more like an animal than a man. “Don’t talk that City gabble to me, you bastard!” Very hard Rs, nasal, raspy vowels, hardly the soft and refined BritEnglish of Twenty-Second Century Science.

  Smoking Mirror said, “The River... gone down the River...”

  The man jumped off his horse, dropped his lance, pulled a long, broad-bladed knife from his belt. I know what that is, thought Ling. That’s a Bowie knife. “Down the River, you little bastard?”

  Kicked Smoking Mirror hard in the side, though his feet were shod with soft moccasins rather than boots, hit him on the top of the head with the hard horn pommel of the knife. “Shoulda lied to me, asshole...” Kicking him onto his back, putting one knee in the middle of his chest.

  Smoking Mirror said, “Please, Shoz Dijiji, I didn’t...”

  The rider grabbed the waistband of Smoking Mirror’s loincloth and split it with his knife, ripping it open, exposing the little man’s shriveled red genitals. Very tiny now, said a dry, clinical voice in Ling’s head. Very tiny indeed.

  “You stupid bastard! You know how much that bitch would’ve been worth? You know how seldom it is a nonhuman turns up here? A nonhuman female, with a functional cunt and everything!?”

  The rider had his left hand on Smoking Mirror’s cock and balls now, stretching the whole assemblage away from his body. Ling thought, Why doesn’t somebody do something? Why are we just letting this happen?

  Then the dry voice, the calculated voice: Who?

  All the others, like me, frozen in time and space, motionless, helpless, just watching. Kincaid standing there as well, tension in her every line, one foot forward, as if she’d taken a step, as if she were about to leap, but... Up on the crest of the little hill, one of the silent riders had his bow drawn, arrow nocked, pointing right at her.

  Right. Who?

  Too new to being dead. Don’t want to die again right now, thank you...

  Smoking Mirror wheezed, “Please, please Shoz Dijiji...” Then the knife flashed, blood splashed, and Smoking Mirror screamed.

  The rider stood, throwing bloody meat away into the grass, shaking his shiny wet knife in Smoking Mirror’s pain-twisted face. “I oughta make you fucking eat yourself! I coulda sold her to the Americans for millions! Maybe taken her all the way up to Emperor Bootsie in Novyrom and gotten who knows how much.”

  Scientist mind marveling. Just imagine: somewhere, here in the land of the dead, Caligula’s still a big cheese...

  “Well...” He turned and shouted something up to his companions, something in an odd, grunting language that hardly sounded like human speech at all, and Ling watched with a growing chill as they got off their horses, started opening their saddlebags, pulling out complex assemblages of chain and flat metal rings.

  Inbar muttered, “Great. A fucking coffle.”

  The rider kicked Smoking Mirror in the side, and said, “Can I still get the bitch? How long ago did she leave?” Kicked him again. “Tell me, you bastard! Maybe I can ride down to the big bend at Lakadaemon and intercept her boat...”

  Through clenched teeth, Smoking Mirror whispered, “You cut off my dick, you piece of shit. It’ll take me fucking years to grow a new one...” Tried to spit at his tormentor, but his mouth was obviously too dry.

  Why is he acting like this? Didn’t seem brave to the point of foolhardiness before...

  Driven mad by the pain?

  The rider stood still, frowning down at Smoking Mirror, eyes as empty as the blue sky. Finally, he grunted to one of his comrades, waited while the man rummaged in a saddlebag and brought over what looked like a plastic literjon full of some pale green fluid. “You know what this is, asshole?”

  Silence, Smoking Mirror’s eyes mere unreadable slits.

  “OK.” He uncorked the bottle and upended it over the man on the ground. When the smell hit him, Ling felt classic, atavistic dread. Gasoline.

  And Smoking Mirror screamed, screamed and rolled as the stuff went in his open, bleeding wound.

  “Nice, huh?” Behind the rider, the other men, Horse Barbarians was the term the Mayan had used, men with dark, weathered faces, men of diverse ethnic backgrounds. All of them obviously looking forward to...

  The rider took a silvery square out of his pocket. “Hey, Smokey, you know what this is? Americans call it a zippo...” Leaning down, wordless, angry shout from Kincaid then, one of the other riders smacking her in the head with the butt of his lance, knocking her to her knees. Clink. A snap of sparks and flame...

  Thump.

  Quiet little sound, wash of pale, transparent fire...

  Suddenly, Smoking Mirror was on his feet, dancing, bawling wordless phrases, falling, rolling, then on his feet again, running some more...

  Ling heard Rahman whisper, “Dear God...”

  The rider looking at her. “Ain’t no damn God around here, bitch.”

  A short distance away, Smoking Mirror fell again, laying on the ground, crackling with fire, blubbering something in an unknown language, trying to roll, seeming to get stuck to the ground, flesh blackening, melting perhaps, bits of dry grass around him starting to catch fire now...

  The rider grunted to his men and a couple of them went over to where Smoking Mirror now burned motionlessly, started stamping out the burning grass, keeping the fire contained.

  And the rider said, “Hell. No sense letting the whole plain go up over one di
ckless little thief...” He stood, hands on his hips, watching the man burn for another little while, seeming to breath in the strong, roast-meat smell that now filled the air, then turned and looked around at his captives. “Well, you band of heroes.” A nasty grin. “Heroines too, of course. They call me Black Bear. And, just now, you belong to me.”

  Watching the greasy smoke rise from the burning body, Ling looked around and cataloged the fear on the faces of his companions. Something else on the faces of the women. Expecting to be raped, one and all. Even mighty Kincaid looking like she’s... suppressed.

  Shoz Dijiji walked over to the now-smoldering corpse of Smoking Mirror and gave it a sharp kick, driving off sparks. “Smart little bastard. He’ll reify in a day or so and be good as new.” A short laugh, rider looking right at Ling. “Hell, I’m tempted to wait around and do him again. That’d fix his slick little ass...”

  o0o

  The place turned out to be called Solonikì, and Subaïda Rahman stood naked before the eyes of strangers in the middle of its Agora, up on a little platform by the back of the stage, where new slaves waited to be auctioned off by that man with the strange, yodeling voice.

  It was a bizarre city Black Bear had taken them to, a hard five-hundred-kilometer’s march across increasingly parched brown plains, their feet quickly hardening to brown horn as they were cut and cut again by the bitten off stalks of the dry brown grass.

  Something eating the grass. What? Ling, irrepressible Chinese academic crying out one day as he saw them in the distance. Bison! He’d shouted. Huge black bison. Fallen to his knees then, bleeding from torn lips after one of the riders struck him down, struggling to his feet rather than be dragged, walking on.

  These people are Comancheros, I think, Ling had whispered, one blue-skied night, huddled by her side in chains. This Shoz Dijiji thinks he’s an Apache, Shis Indae, People of the Forest. The others... A nod this way, a gesture that. A Mongol, maybe. Some kind of Turk over there. That blackish fellow maybe a Coastal Arab from down around old Zanzibar...

  Shut up only when one of the riders came over and kicked him.

  Kicked him while we waited to be raped.

  I can still feel my vagina clench, clench, almost in spasm, as I waited for them to... do it. Leering men. Leering at... me.

  I raped myself a thousand times, in imagination, waiting for it to happen. Imagined them throwing me on my back, not even clothing to be ripped off. Felt them force my legs apart, smelled their bodies, smelled them...

  Other imaginings. Older imaginings.

  I’ve never been raped. Not really. Not even come close. Not really.

  But you imagine.

  Sometimes, you imagine stupidly. Sometimes you even yearn...

  Because, women, like men, like all people, in all places, in every time, can be fools...

  Sometimes, you imagine pleasure.

  Stupid.

  Other times, you try to imagine the pain.

  What would it be like, some man pushing your legs apart, stuffing his swollen organ right in there?

  Shiver.

  Unpleasant thrill at the thought.

  Why am I being so stupid, imagining this...

  Why, when it’s about to...

  Maybe, you remember imagining, it would be like that little bit of pain you feel at the beginning or near the end of a period, putting in a tampon too quickly, when you’re maybe just a little bit dry...

  Then awakening to heartpounding terror, burly, hairy, leering, horridly filthy man walking right toward you, right toward where you lay naked and defenseless on the ground, just one more helpless little piece of fresh meat, ready for him to...

  And you knew, right then, that it was going to be ever so much worse than anything you could possibly imagine.

  Horse barbarian walking right on by, going up to some other burly, smelly man, slapping him on his leather-clad shoulder, raising dust. Grunting like a pig, making him laugh, gesturing at the naked slaves.

  Telling him a dirty joke? Getting each other aroused, the way men always do? Maybe a little while more and then they’ll...

  And you could see uneasiness on the men’s faces too. Our men. Our useless, helpless little men. The ones who had women, fearing for their... private stash at first, waiting for it to be... spoiled. Profaned. You knew that was what they were thinking, the bastards.

  But then? Further uneasiness. Counting horse barbarians, then counting naked women. Will they wait patiently, patiently take turns with us, or...

  You could see Inbar thinking it first. Imagining himself trussed like a lamb, some bulky fellow upending him, defenseless rear end pointing at the sky, some leather-clad monstrosity opening his leather, exposing a disgustingly dirty prick and...

  She’d flinched then, imagining Inbar’s scream.

  And we walked and walked and walked and walked. Walked, unsullied, walked unraped, unbeaten, untortured, un-anything but exhausted, until we came to Solonikì.

  Solonikì, where a big, fat Greek, blubbery limp-wristed fellow sweating right through a fine, embroidered silk tunic, had given this Shoz Dijiji, this mighty Black Bear, ten heavy round yellow metal disks, given him his coins and led them away.

  Ling had whispered, “A golden tálanton apiece. I wonder how much that is?”

  Kincaid muttered, “Probably about ten bucks.”

  The tone had been scornful. Rahman smiled to herself, and thought, She doesn’t realize the rest of us don’t know how much ten dollars American is in UAR dinars or Chinese yüan... The slavemaster called to them, lisp recognizable right through the language barrier. Called them forth to be sold.

  o0o

  As they were marched out onto the stage before the raucous agora crowd, Kincaid realized she was getting used to the chains. Not so very different from getting used to being in the Corps, I guess... you do what you’re told. And they do what they will. A little surprising the Comancheros hadn’t raped at least the women, she supposed, but, when you saw them laughing together, playing touch football sometimes after dinner, when you saw what close friends they all seemed to be, real comrades in arms...

  Or maybe just not damaging the merchandise. Rueful thought. How the Hell would anyone know how many times we’d been fucked? It’s not like we’re virgins or anything. Then, steeling herself for the supposed worst, even though it never came.

  Memories of it happening before. Only twice, of course. But even once had been more than enough. Sixteen years old. Jogging along my favorite path in the woods one evening. Not so far from the high school, all alone, the sky full of indigo, stars coming out, jogging along, mind caught up in the music, the soft words crooning in my headphones...

  I almost outran them. Almost. Tried to cut through the underbrush and get away, heart pounding.

  That boy on the fucking motorbike was better than he should have been.

  Then, trying to fight.

  I think they might have gone easier on me if I hadn’t broken that skinny kid’s nose...

  But, fucking Hell, I’m glad I did.

  He didn’t even take a turn. Laying there crying and moaning until his friends led him away. Led him away and left me lying there.

  Me, limping home, trying to stop the bleeding with my torn underwear. Hiding things from my mother and father. Going to school the next day and seeing, first one, then another. Jimmy back after a week with a metal thing on his nose, telling people how he crashed his bike into a tree, taking a lot of ribbing over that...

  A lot more ribbing from his little Band of Brothers, because he hadn’t...

  I wanted to kill them all.

  What would it have been like, had I been able to... live out those old fantasies? Mark. It was Mark I hated the most. Images of him tied to a chair, back in some secret place only I knew about. Images of him begging me. Begging me all night long not to hurt him. Begging me just the way I begged him, while I laughed, just the way he had laughed. Then I’d hurt him anyway.

  Just the way he hurt me.r />
  I used to wish he’d get drunk and drown in the creek or something. But they all lived. They all got away...

  Except for that damned Jimmy, who went out on his motorbike graduation night and somehow fell under a truck...

  That was the one that mattered.

  The other one?

  Hardly worth remembering. Captured. Tortured. Hell, they even raped some of the men, God-damned gooks. Gave me a damn medal for my trouble, after the prisoner exchange.

  Standing now on the platform, waiting to be sold. Waiting to be separated, taken away, chained to some fat asshole’s bed, maybe, and fucked forever. Stupid, useless image. More likely, chained to a shovel, which is just another way of being fucked forever.

  Slavemaster calling out his yodel. Wonder how a Southern tobacco auctioneer’s call came to be used at a Greek slave market? Crowd of people in bright tunics and togas looking up at them, laughing and talking, pointing. Wonder if they’ll be allowed to come up here and finger us, inspect the goods?

  Beyond them, the city. Greek city, all right, limestone buildings blinding white in the sun, as paintless as any neoclassical American monstrosity. Columns and colonnades. Pyramids made of rough-hewn stairs. All right, so it isn’t a Greek city. It’s a mish-mash. Dead souls falling out of the sky and coming back to life, going, Hey, what the Hell? Taking right up where they left off.

  Beyond all of it, beyond the voices and the bustle, she could hear a faraway whisper of sound, almost impossible to detect over the crowd. Odd sound. Like a... motor.

  Well. No reason they shouldn’t have motors in Heaven, is there?

  Heaven. Jesus Christ.

  Whose probably around here somewhere too...

  “Sergeant.” Squire Edgar’s voice, raised above a whisper, drawing the slavemaster’s immediate attention. “What the Hell is that?” Gesturing with his chin. The slavemaster came over and hit him lightly on the head with one fat fist. Snarled at him in Greek.