by Mick Farren
“We’re in a war, kid.”
Argo’s voice rose in both pitch and volume. “Stop calling me kid.”
Bonnie’s face hardened. “Then stop acting like one. What do you want? That we fall in love and live happily ever after? I’m sorry, but this is neither the time nor the place. There’s a whole fucking invading army to get in the way of that. I did what the wisewoman predicted, and I really enjoyed it, and I think you’re a hell of young man, but the wisewoman told me one other thing that rather overshadows everything else.”
“What’s that?”
“She told me that I should take you to Slide.”
“Me? Why me?”
“She didn’t seem to know exactly, but she recognized you as being somehow significant.”
Argo is disbelief made him flounder. “Me? Significant?”
“I didn’t think you were ready for that piece of information quite yet, but now you’ve forced it out of me, you’re going to have to live with it, because it’s the Goddess’s own fucking truth.”
CORDELIA
Phelan Mallory had a pleasant room all to himself in the Royal Taconic Hotel. The more senior officers had been given suites, but Cordelia could not see that he had anything to complain about. Neither was she complaining herself; indeed, the morning sun that streamed through the drapes had found her disheveled, a little bleary-eyed, but smiling at the new day with a decidedly smug satisfaction as she lay beside the young man from the Norse Union amid the ruined sheets of the hotel-room bed. If pleasure in wartime was a matter of gathering rosebuds where one might, she had certainly garnered a few in the dark of the night that had just passed. Air Corps Captain Phelan Mallory hadn’t been a particularly inventive lover, but what he lacked in imagination he had made up for in stamina, endurance, and definite willingness to learn, and she could, without undue modesty, pride herself that she had shown him a thing or two without coming across as the total stereotype of the titled whore about whom everyone liked to gossip. She had noticed, though, that he seemed a little overly impressed by her title. At first he had used it jokingly, but later, in the throes of passion, he had became decidedly serious. “Lady Cordelia! Lady Cordelia! Lady Cordelia! Lady … Cordelia!” At the time, she had been having too much fun to take exception to the fact that he might in his own way be fucking her title as much as fucking her, and later, she had dismissed it as a minor aberration. What could she expect from a boy who had been raised in an egalitarian and somewhat socialist society? In the gathering of anything as fleeting as rosebuds, it paid to tolerate whatever proved exciting.
Cordelia disentangled herself from the top sheet that had somehow become wound around her body and sat up. She looked down at Phelan Mallory. He appeared so much younger when he was asleep, but that seemed to be the way of it with these newly minted heroes. So brave and upright, but like little boys when they slept. She slipped from the bed and padded across the room, feeling naked and delicious. Cordelia was not so jaded that it placed her beyond feeling both divine and decadent after a night of debauchery in the best hotel in town, a night that was wholly official and even part of the war effort. Phelan had seen to that when he had requested and been granted her temporary transfer to the Norse delegation. Maybe in a spare moment she should slip into the cathedral and offer a small prayer to the Goddess for this very excellent night she had just so thoroughly enjoyed. Using one of Phelan’s uniform shirts as a robe, Cordelia went to the window and looked out. The overcast of the previous day had blown through, and the sun was shining. The day seemed in perfect accord with her mood. Below her, on Constitution Avenue, the city was already coming alive. A trolley carrying early morning workers clanged and rumbled away after leaving a stop in front of the hotel; a mail van and a drab green Army steamer drove past; a truck was dropping off copies of the Albany Morning Post to a newsstand on the corner that was just opening, while a group of children in dark red caps and blazers ambled past, meandering their way to school. A flock of city pigeons spiraled up into the clear morning air, and the smell of baking wafted from somewhere else in the hotel. A day like today made it hard to believe that a fierce and brutal enemy horde waited to the south, intent on turning all she could see into ash and rubble, and Cordelia resolved that, for a little while, she would steer clear of fear and general war thoughts. She would enjoy her temporary good mood and the sense of heavy satisfaction for as long as it lasted. The troubles of the world would still be there when the euphoria passed.
Unfortunately, the world insisted on coming to her sooner than she expected, in the form of a discreet but insistent rapping on the door. She glanced at Phelan, but, although he stirred in his sleep, he did not wake. She moved to the door and spoke just loud enough to be heard by whomever was on the other side. “Who is it?”
“Bellboy. Message for Captain Mallory.”
Cordelia decided that, in Phelan’s shirt, she was sufficiently dressed for a bellhop. She opened the door. The boy was thirteen or fourteen, with red hair and freckles very much like Cordelia’s. He was dressed in blue hotel livery with a lot of gold buttons and a rather silly pillbox hat on the side of his head, and he carried a small but official-looking buff envelope on a silver tray. “Message for Captain Phelan Mallory, miss.”
“Captain Mallory’s asleep. I’ll take it.”
“You have to sign for it.”
“That’s okay.”
“I don’t know, miss. I’m really supposed to give this to Captain Mallory.”
Cordelia looked stern, but smiled inwardly. The boy probably thought she was some expensive prostitute, and the idea amused her. At the same time, she used a voice of authority that defined her as Lady Cordelia with its aristocratic resonance. “I said you can leave it with me.”
“Whatever you say, miss.”
She scrawled something illegible on the delivery slip. “Wait just a minute.”
The night before, Phelan had dumped out his loose change on the dresser along with all the other odds and ends that men insisted on carrying around with them. She found a half crown, returned to the door, and handed it to the bellhop. “Here.”
He touched his cap. “Thank you very much, miss.”
As he thanked her, he dropped his eyes to her bare legs. “You look very nice this morning, if I may say so.”
“Don’t be cheeky, boy, or you’ll be in real trouble. If I report you to the manager, he’ll skin you alive.”
“Yes, miss. Sorry, miss.”
Cordelia closed the door, smiling to herself. So the bellhop liked her legs, did he?
“What’s going on?”
Cordelia sighed. Now Phelan was awake, the day seemed to be starting in earnest, and she was not exactly ready for that. She would have liked to continue her solitary savoring of the afterglow for a little while longer. “A bellboy just brought you a note. It looks official.”
“Did he bring any coffee?”
“Bellboys don’t bring coffee. They bring notes. It’s room service that brings coffee.”
“Could you order me some coffee?”
Cordelia fully subscribed to the concept that mornings-after were the true test of love or even lust. They might also be what separated the whores from the ladies. She decided that Phelan needed a reprimand. “Remember me, darling? Lady Cordelia? I don’t order coffee, I have coffee ordered for me.”
Phelan scratched his head and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“So you should be.”
“No, really. I am.”
“So order some coffee, although you’ll probably have to settle for tea or some nasty coffee substitute made from acorns or something. There’s a major shortage, now the Mosul hold the south and all of the plantations.”
Phelan rubbed his eyes one more time, picked up the telephone from the table beside the bed, and cranked the handle for an operator. He waited a few moments and then spoke. “This is Captain Mallory in room nine forty, could I please have some coffee sent up?”
A pause ensued. “That’s right. I am part of the delegation from the Norse Union.”
A second pause. “Very well. In that case, I’d like a pot of coffee for two.”
Cordelia sat down on the bed. “You’re probably being given the last coffee in Albany.”
“Really?”
“No, I’m teasing you.”
“Did you say something about a note?”
“You don’t do mornings very well, do you?”
“Do I have to apologize again?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
Cordelia leaned over and kissed him. “Then I forgive you, because you had more Scotch that I did, and you’ve found us coffee, and you’re also a hell of a lovely fuck.”
Phelan actually look shocked. “A hell of a lovely fuck.”
“Read your note, and don’t be such a bloody prude.”
He slit open the envelope, unfolded the message, and cursed. “Damn.”
“Bad news?”
“I have to fly a dirigible down to Manhattan to show the flag over some kind of parade.”
“When?”
“Later today.”
“Does that mean this is the end of the affair?”
Phelan shook his head. “No, it’s just a quick day trip, a simple public relations job. I’ll be back in Albany by tomorrow.” He thought for a moment. “In fact…”
“In fact what?”
“In fact, you could come with me.”
Cordelia’s eyes widened. “I could?”
Phelan frowned. “Maybe it’s not such a good idea. Maybe you wouldn’t want to go up in an airship.”
“The hell I wouldn’t.”
“You wouldn’t be scared?”
“Do I strike you as the scared type? How do we square this with the regulations and such?”
Phelan shrugged. “I think we just keep quiet and don’t advertise the fact. You’re attached to me for the duration of the visit, but there’s no specific definition of your duties in any of the paperwork.”
“So far my duties have been to eat dinner, drink Scotch, and fuck your brains out. We would seem to have some not-inconsiderable latitude.”
Again Phelan looked a little uncomfortable, and Cordelia regarded him curiously. “You get uncomfortable when I talk dirty, don’t you?”
He looked away. “Maybe there’s a time and a place.”
“And if a hotel room, without our clothes, after a long and erotic night isn’t the place, would you like to tell me what is?”
Before he could answer her question, the coffee arrived. He looked round so helplessly that Cordelia went and got it from the maid and even poured some for him. “So that’s settled, I’m going?”
Phelan nodded. “Since it’s only a public relations jaunt and not a combat mission, I don’t see why not.”
“What time do we have to leave?”
“We have to be at the landing field at Grover’s Mill at noon.”
“Well, that’s only about forty minutes out of the city. We have hours to kill.” Cordelia stood up and let Phelan’s shirt fall from her shoulders. “I think it’s time to do a little more to cure some of this innate prudery you keep exhibiting.”
Phelan put down his coffee, eyes fixed on her proudly naked body. “Why, Lady Cordelia…”
She pursed her lips and crawled sinuously onto the bed. “Just Cordelia, please, Captain. I’m attached to the Air Corps now, and will soon go up in your flying machine.”
RAPHAEL
“My name is Underofficer Melchior, and, until something occurs to change the situation, I am yours and you are mine and we are all together. I am your mother, father, holy mentor, and the wrath of the Twin Deities all rolled into one. Until you know better, you don’t so much as take a shit without my express consent. You are the little lambs, and I am the slaughterer, and any of you callow youths who think I’m exaggerating will find himself in a world of hurt. Everything I’m going to say to you, I’m only going to say once, so listen up and pay real good attention. As you will observe, you have arrived in Savannah, jewel of the empire of Our Lord Hassan IX, may his name be blessed, here in the Americas. You have arrived, and yet you haven’t arrived, because, as you have all probably observed, we are not snug in the harbor of Savannah but bobbing on the bloody water a full half mile from the shore. Never repeat this in front of an officer or the mighty Zhaithan, but this is because the harbor of Savannah is less well organized and more ass upside than a Turk whorehouse on a hot night with Teutons in town. Since our victorious armies first landed here, three harbor masters have been executed, and the fourth is presently on his way north to surrender to the enemy before he goes the same way. We, meanwhile, will be transported to dry land in a relay of open boats and will not be walking down any gangplank and onto the dock like civilized soldiers should.”
The livid scar running down Underofficer Melchior’s left cheek bore mute testimony to all he had been and seen and survived. He was a short and swarthy barrel-chested man, clearly full-blood Mosul but with an attitude unlike anything Raphael had ever encountered in his life before. On a few points he shared similarities with Gunnery Instructor Y’assir, but, in other ways, especially his loud and vocal cynicism and complete contempt for any authority other than his own, he was the total opposite. Raphael could only assume that much of this was because, where Y’assir’s task had been to prepare them for the reality of combat, the ultimate outcome of that preparation was wholly theoretical, and when the trainees finally advanced into battle, Y’assir would be thousands of miles away, still in the training camp outside Madrid, feeding more young men into first stage of the never-ending meat grinder. Melchior, on the other hand, would be right there with them. And yet, Raphael wondered if he should be assuming so much so readily. The main gist of what the underofficer seemed to be trying to hammer home was that they should assume nothing.
“This is not to say that any of you are civilized soldiers. Far from it. You are rookies, you are replacements, you are the lowest of the low and the most expendable of the expendable. Once on land, you will be issued with proper uniforms, kit, and weapons which will go halfway to making you look like soldiers, but that will be no more than an illusion. You know nothing, and therefore you will do nothing except what I tell you. So far, you have survived your basic training camp where underofficers and gunnery instructors have attempted to make your life miserable from morning to night, and you have survived the crossing of the ocean without being drowned, torpedoed, or otherwise blown up, and no doubt your life on the high seas has been made equally miserable by seasickness, rotten food, rats, and boredom. You might think that the worst was behind you, and in that you would learn the inadvisability of thinking. You, my lads, are about to enter an even worse misery. In all respects the worst misery of all. The boredom will be more crushing, the fatigue more unbearable, the fear more crippling, the food more lousy, if there’s food at all, the rats fatter, the mud deeper, and, on top of all that, you have the final possibility of slow and agonizing death, bleeding out your last hours, all alone, gutshot in some stinking shell hole. Welcome to the war, lads. Welcome to the war.”
When the engines of the steamship Saracen had finally fallen silent, and the anchor had been dropped, the men in the holds had been ordered on deck, company by company, where, in parade formation, they had each been assigned one of a group of underofficers that had come out to the ship in a small boat. From that point on, until, as Melchior had put it at the commencement of his address, “something occurs to change the situation,” the assigned underofficer would be their immediate superior and in charge of every aspect of their lives. Raphael had often wondered if, when he reached the front, he would remain in the company of the same group of conscripts with whom he had come through training and made the sea voyage. It would seem the logical way to organize the system, but he was already well aware that logic was not a strong criterion in the Mosul war machine.
Melchior took a moment to pa
ce the line of his new band of charges before he continued. He did not seem particularly impressed. “The next thing that I am going to tell you is crucially important, so, if my voice has started to drone or lull you into some parade ground reverie, wake up and listen hard. When the boats eventually come to take you to the shore, stay together. I will repeat this just once. Stay together. The Ministry of Virtue and the Shore Patrol are totally unable to distinguish a deserter from a lost lamb and will happily hang any man separated from his unit and unable to give a plausible account of himself. Each unit is identified by a code of letters and numbers while in transit to the front. The transit code for this sorry bunch is HDF947. What is your transit code?”
The question took the company by surprise, and the response was ragged. “HDF947, Underofficer.”
“Again!”
“HDF947, Underofficer.”
“Over the next few days, your lives may depend on knowing your transit code.”
“HDF947, Underofficer.”
“I still can’t hear you.”
“HDF947, Underofficer!”
“Are you soldiers or blushing tarts?”
“HDF947, Underofficer!”
Melchior slowly nodded. “Very well. One final thing. No doubt you have all been secretly hoping for some rear-echelon sinecure which would allow you to visit knocking shops and lounge around smoking opium and never see a shot fired in anger. Do not be ashamed if you have. It is only reasonable. It shows a sense of the practical and a fine grasp of reality. Indeed, I applaud your pragmatism. The empire of Our Lord Hassan IX, may his name be blessed, does not require heroes. All it requires is cannon fodder. I also do not require heroes, because heroes tend to get those around them killed, and since I am included in that number, I loathe heroes, because it is my intention never to die. What is my intention?”
“Your intention is never to die, Underofficer!”
“Again.”
“Your intention is never to die, Underofficer!”
“Unfortunately, such dreams of a safe and secure billet are not for the likes of us. You lads have paid no bribes and have no friends in high places, otherwise you wouldn’t be here at all. You lads are going straight up the Continental Highway to the front. If you’re lucky, you’ll ride there in a truck. If you’re unlucky, you walk. Either way, your destination, our destination, is the Potomac. The big push is coming, my lads, the big push is coming, and there’s going to be a lot of dying to be done. And, by that token, you may find that your practical, hands-on military careers will be astonishingly short.”