He rested on a stone bench under the mango and tamarind trees edging the lighthouse square. Shipping brokers, all of them Caucasian, stood about conversing among themselves while black and brown roustabouts manhandled casks and hogsheads onto lighter barges and yelled to one another in their mutant-French creole. Unmindful of hazards, children chased one another among the barrels. The scene was surreal: sweating workers, tropical trees, blistering pseudo-snowflakes swirling in the air. The concentration of rum, sugar, fruit-tree, and waterfront aromas almost masked the stench of sulphur.
Garrick, too, was on the heavy air. She fluctuated between the almost-there and the almost-not-there. Now she was just beyond touch, just out of sight and hearing, and now she was across the world, on the moon, passing the orbit of Neptune. She was an object removed from its proper matrix, like Medlin, anomalous, leaving, wherever she went, a trail of disturbance like gossamer, like insects’ breathing, like prickles of sensation in a long-amputated limb. Medlin could sense the achronicity but could not follow the trail. His forte was exploiting weak spots in time. Garrick was an itch he could not locate.
He was very hungry as well. His empty stomach seemed to be devouring itself. He sucked the last few drops of distilled water from his canteen and patted the pockets of his coat in the silly hope that he had somehow overlooked a second foodstick until now. There were only the revolver and fake identity papers. If currency had been issued, Ranke had it. Probably it had not been issued at all. No one had thought or, rather, Thomas, the agency chief, had not figured, that Medlin would have to stay long enough to need money. Thomas’ credo was “Get in, get it done, get out.”
He fantasized about using the revolver to hold up women carrying trays of fruits and vegetables on their heads, then reminded himself he had gone without food or water for two days in Trincomalee that time. Ranke will show up any second now, he thought. We’ll grab Garrick and get the hell out of here before sundown.
He waited. The longshoremen went on loading cargo onto lighters, and the children kept playing among the barrels and hogsheads. A cool breeze blew across the square, bringing some relief from heat and bad smells. No one paid any attention to Medlin. He was just a lover of magnificent sunsets, or a drunk. By sundown, the shipping brokers and the laborers and most of the children had gone. The sky stayed red over the volcano, and the streets neither cleared nor quietened. The day’s commerce was simply replaced by the evening’s.
Medlin ground his fist into his palm and stood up. He did not want to move, but the last place he wanted to stay, besides here in general, was here in particular, on the waterfront at night on a Saturday. No burning mountain or ashfall was going to discourage people in a place like this from getting themselves roughed up, possibly robbed, possibly rubbed out.
He took a step away from the bench and started to fall. The ground was not where his foot expected it. He went down hard on one knee and thought for a second that he had stepped into an unseen hole. But the ground itself was moving. The bench collapsed behind him—it was a simple stone slab set on uprights—and from the direction of the landing came a sound like the grinding of millstones. He heard a child’s shrill, brief scream.
Casks and hogsheads were rolling down the slope and piling up at the water’s edge. In the dim light, two or three children ran past him, flat-out, in terror. Their short, harsh breaths were like sobs.
He saw what had happened: a toppling barrel had crushed a small boy. The child was so skinny, so shabbily dressed, that he looked like a small pile of sticks and rags on the paving stones. Amazingly, he hadn’t been instantly killed—Medlin, as he started to kneel, heard a wheeze and a bubbling exhalation above the slosh of waves and the human commotion all along the waterfront. He thought better of kneeling and looked around anxiously. It was against regulations to call undue attention to oneself or to become involved with denizens any more than was essential to the completion of a mission. During the past week, subjective time, he had seen enough in Belgium to think himself inured to the sight of the dead. He knew that everyone in this town was going to die. But no one had told him there would be mashed children beforehand.
Human figures were running back and forth on the square above the jumble at the water’s edge. Voices filled the night. He heard shrieks of fright, shrieks of laughter, as if, he thought, suddenly enraged, everybody in town were saying, To think that such a little shake really frightened us! A uniformed white man ran toward him. Medlin could not tell by the flickering light of the man’s torch whether he was a policeman or a military officer, but then he turned and bawled out an order, and five or six colonial soldiers appeared. One of them carried a stretcher fashioned from poles and canvas sacking.
“Quickly, quickly,” the officer gasped. The injured boy wheezed and exhaled wetly. He did not inhale again. The officer pushed aside the soldier with the stretcher and knelt, checked for a pulse, rose shaking his head. He told two of his men to take the body away and the rest to search for other possible victims in the wreckage at the water’s edge. The soldiers scattered across the landing.
“It is really too bad,” the officer said to Medlin, “but these little black wharf children are as thick as rats. I wonder that more of them are not hurt or killed every day.” He had a roman nose of fabulous dimension. Its shadow hid his mouth as he spoke. “Did you see the accident, Monsieur?”
“No. I only heard a scream.”
“You are—”
“An American.”
“You are from the embassy, or one of the ships in the harbor?”
Medlin said, “Yes,” as though he were actually answering the question.
“Then I must advise you to return. That tremor has caused more than the death of this child tonight.”
“Just one damned thing after another.”
“Quite so, Monsieur. It is terrible.” The officer touched the bill of his cap with a forefinger and went to rejoin his men.
Medlin turned and lost himself in the crowd. He let it carry him where it would. Some portion of it carried him straight onto a street filled with raucousness and ripe smells. There were many sailors. They walked in small groups in the middle of the street—there was no horse or wheel traffic here, and the sidewalks, barely wide enough to deserve that name, had accordingly been reserved as seating or standing space for those too google-eyed to walk. Every doorway on both sides of the street was an illumined hole that spewed human noises, inarticulate cries and shouts, eruptions of laughter and singing, and a continuous rumbling thunder of conversation. Moving remoralike in the wake or on the flank of this or that group of men, trying to look as though he belonged, Medlin heard snatches of French, the local creole, English, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, other languages he could not begin to identify. On second-floor balconies above the doorways more or less dark-skinned women stood leaning on iron railings or sat on cane chairs. A few gazed down upon the promenade with grave humor in their expressions. One woman gave Medlin an especially unnerving look, not of cool, professional invitation but of contemptuous expectation, not daring him to come up to see her sometime but merely holding him to the low standard of male behavior of her experience. She gripped the railing as if she could tear it apart with her hands. Her expression became doubly contemptuous when she realized that he was not going to oblige her. It gave him the creeps. Then she shifted her attention to someone else in the street. It struck Medlin first that her presentation could not net her very many customers, and next that she might only be waiting for one more. She was a knife waiting to fly out of its sheath at somebody.
Most of the women were exuberant and lascivious. They called down to the sailors, issued impossible ribald challenges, and the least-inhibited among them pantomimed fellatio or parted their robes to expose their breasts. There were breasts of every size, shape, and shade. The sailors roared approval and roared answers to the challenges and trooped indoors, roaring still.
Not all propositions were made from balconies. Medlin suddenly foun
d his path blocked by an ancient, gnomish woman whose head barely came to his breastbone. She had a face as rough as a coconut and a grip like a blacksmith’s. With her bony hand tight on his elbow, she began tugging him in the direction of one of the buildings. As she tugged, she spoke to him so fast that he did not think he caught as much as one word in three.
Still, her meaning was clear. He saw now that he was being drawn toward not a doorway but the narrow alley between two buildings. Just around the corner, the woman seemed to be saying, and up the stairs, I have the most beautiful young girl for you. Medlin planted his feet on the cobblestones and tried to jerk his elbow free. The woman weighed nothing. He lifted her off the ground when he moved his arm, but he could not shake her loose. Even as he swung her around she continued to babble at him. A girl for you, Monsieur, just this way, come, see, you will like her very much. He felt a little stir of panic, cursed aloud, and broke away with a blow to the woman’s wrist. She gave a cry and skipped away shaking her hand in the air as though it had caught fire. She did no more, however, than glare at him for a few seconds while she rubbed her wrist; then she was looking around for the next customer.
Next victim is more like it, Medlin thought as he moved on. No light fell in the alley toward which she had pulled him. It was a perfect place to get one’s skull bashed in.
The crowd on what he was starting to think of as the Rue Syphilis sometimes flowed smoothly and swiftly, sometimes lurched along as though pulled by the ambulatory drunks in its ranks. It expanded and contracted, broke apart, reformed, spun off men through the beckoning doorways, drew them out when they had been depleted. Then, abruptly, the saloons and brothels were behind him, and, no less abruptly, the character of the crowd changed. The sailors and other commerce-minded individuals blew away like chaff. In their place were disoriented-looking townspeople.
Medlin’s knee hurt. He found a place where he could sit, rest, watch, and not get tripped over by people as they ran about. After a while, he realized that many of them seemed to be moving with a purpose now. Thinking that perhaps they knew something he didn’t, he went with them. They quietened as they moved farther from the waterfront. With their footfalls muffled by ash, they walked, Medlin among them, like phantoms through the chaos of winding, unlevel streets, until they reached the gate of a cemetery. Beyond the graveyard was the twin-towered cathedral he had noticed that afternoon, and, surrounding this, a great, dense, milling mob of men, women, and children. They were very quiet—extraordinarily, eerily quiet, he thought. Uniformed men, again, either policeman or soldiers, tried to clear the area. Probably they had been at it for some time, but the crowd ignored them. Abruptly, the uniformed men gave up on persuasion and began to shove. The crowd answered with a surly collective complaint as it was prodded and pushed. For all of the commotion, nobody seemed to go anywhere. The crowd resisted efforts to get it to move through the expedient of pretending to move, withdrawing at right angles to the direction of any concerted drive made by its would-be herders, closing in behind them. Medlin had seen—only on the real-time news, of course—crowds and crowd-managers lose patience with each other, and he thought, Just what I need, to get caught in a riot. But there was no riot. Some faces were petulant. That was all. No one seemed angry or even frightened, and this, Medlin reflected, amazed, with the big spark-spitter itself just to the north, looking very much indeed like God’s chimney or the Devil’s whirlpool bath. Perhaps the big statue of the Virgin that stood before the cathedral was exerting its pacifistic effect on everyone.
Whatever she was doing and however good she was, he did not believe that she could keep it up indefinitely. He had a sudden sense of tectonic activity kilometers below. He could feel it through the soles of his shoes. Again he saw, or imagined, cold, heavy Atlantic Ocean bottom being subducted by Caribbean Sea bottom, becoming less cold, less heavy, rising under pressure and full of gas through weak spots in overlying rock, up into the back of the island’s throat. Some bubble broke there, like a god’s belch. Shutters rattled nearby. An invisible hand gave him a shove. He waited for something more, and all around him the people stirred, nervous as antelope. He began to walk, with a deliberation dictated by his knee. He found an arched doorway where he would not get caught in a stampede if there was going to be one. He sagged against the wall and waited.
Some minutes later, as he catalogued his personal miseries, a thick, black cloud settled. It got everyone’s attention immediately, like an eyeful of pepper. Blinded and choking, Medlin staggered and collided with a wall. People blundered by, tripping, screaming. Animals bleated their anguish. Somebody stepped all over him. He tried to get out of the way, was engulfed in bodies, found himself barely able to breathe or keep his feet on the ground. The mob came to a shuddering, uncoordinated halt as it piled around him. The doorway was a cul-de-sac. The human mass encasing Medlin collapsed onto itself as first somebody went down and then everybody else fell. Medlin kicked free of arms and legs, found himself trapped in a corner. He curled into a ball, screwed his eyes tightly shut, and pressed his handkerchief hard against his face. The fumes still reached him. I’m going to die here.
But he didn’t die there. Ten minutes later, or an hour—he couldn’t guess how long—he heard bells toll midnight and looked up with smarting eyes. The terrible cloud was dissipating. He made out indistinct moving figures, then, blurrily, the walls of the surrounding buildings. By the time his vision cleared, the mob had evaporated like the cloud, leaving the ground covered with debris. Not far from him lay a woman. Everything about her was gray with ash, her skin and clothing, her open eyes.
Coughing and aching, he left her there.
He was resting on a wooden bench set under a tin awning when the volcano showed that it was not finished for the night. There was a brilliant flash; a split-second later, the sound of a tremendous explosion. Purple lightning strobes defined a vast, airborne pile of soot above the summit, and made the world glow a lurid magenta. Out of the cloud spun and tumbled bits of junk like cut-rate meteors, with masses of sparks at their heads and streamers of smoke out behind. These pyrotechnics were accompanied by a rising, falling, unending roar.
From somewhere behind him came the sound of laughter.
The streets were filling with people again. Still more people were pushing back the shutters from upstairs bedroom windows and leaning out to watch the fireworks. They pointed and waved torches and whooped and oohed.
First Garrick goes crazy, Medlin thought, now everyone in the French West Indies.…
There was a pattering like hail on the awning. Someone in the street let out a howl of surprise and pain. The howl became a chorus, and the crowd vanished. Bedroom shutters slammed closed.
The precipitate was pumice. Most of the particles were very small, no bigger than grains of sand, but there were fragments as big as golf balls in the gritty drizzle. They bounced and smoked on the pavement and clacked deafeningly on the tin awning.
The street was empty when the fall let up about a quarter of an hour later. The town seemed to have lost consciousness. Medlin found more substantial shelter, in another arched doorway, and crouched there feeling sorry for himself, wondering what the hell else he was supposed to do, and waiting for daylight. He would have prayed for it had he known how.
He dozed off in a squatting position. When he awoke, his bruised knee was stiff and throbbing. As he hauled himself up, two men strolled by in the street. They looked like any other two Pierrotins he had seen till now, save for the faint, luminous vapor that clung to them.
Nothing had been said to him about other travelers.
It was useless hiding—the two men noticed Medlin’s nimbus at once; in the shadows beneath the doorway, he must have looked equally spooklike to them—so he gave them a sheepish grin and said, in English, “Feet’ve gone to sleep,” and felt like a complete idiot.
They conferred, standing side by side and not taking their eyes off him, one of them bending slightly at the waist to speak quietly to his co
mpanion. The man on the right was small, flat-faced, with a stub nose and no lips. Whatever half-thought-out request for assistance Medlin had in mind, he stifled. Beyond the fact that it wasn’t done, he was too taken aback by the flat-faced man’s expression of annoyance to ask for help. The flat-faced man shook his head in answer to something his companion said, and they both turned and walked away, deliberately, without haste.
Nothing ventured, Medlin told himself, and called out, “Wait!”
The other man glanced back over his shoulder and gave him a half-apologetic look, a helpless shrug, but kept walking. Soon, even the strangers’ fox-fire was lost to sight.
Swell, Medlin thought, as if my plate wasn’t full enough, there’re strangers in town, and they’re stuck-up! He had no idea who they were, where they came from; just one more goddamn thing wrong. He had been unhappy about this mission to begin with. Now he hated it. If it had been up to him, he would have let go then and there and gone home. He cursed Thomas for sending him. He cursed Ranke for being no good at traveling and making it necessary that Thomas send Medlin. He cursed Garrick for making trouble for everybody.
He must have dozed again against the wall. The next thing he knew, it was dawn, Sunday morning, someone was pulling at his sleeve. He could hear church bells ringing and, closer, a child’s voice saying, “Monsieur! Monsieur!”
He looked down and saw a boy standing next to him. The boy was dressed in shorts and a baggy shirt. By the light of the filmy sunrise, he looked to be about twelve years old and could have been the twin of the boy Medlin had seen lying mangled on the waterfront. Had that really been only last night?
“You are Monsieur Medlin?”
He was too stunned to answer.
“The lady wishes you to have this,” and the boy handed him a folded newspaper.
Medlin took it, asked, “What lady? Who gave you this?”
The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Tenth Annual Collection Page 44