The woman in the glittering, once-beautiful sari was still shuffling ahead of me. Beckoning me on, and talking all the while in this cracked voice—saying words that made no sense, but also sounded familiar. Something about the rags of time, and love knowing no season—nonsense really, but pretty, bookish nonsense of a kind I knew only too well. I understood what she was by now, and I saw as we entered some kind of courtyard filled with the dead remains of furniture and rusting suits of armor that there were many others of her kind. They looked like crows—roosting there, and cackling as well. Repository girls, Johnny had called them. What a strange and desolate place to live, I thought—but I let the woman pull me to her, even though she stank as sourly as the city itself.
She was fumbling beneath my trews with black crow fingers. And I could see the rotting spines of the books amid the mushroom shelves behind. Could even read the same names that Johnny had once said to me. Shakes-something. And Chancer—Chaucer? Donne—Dun, Donny, is that how you'd say it? Somebody called Marlow. All the old Johnny bullshit. At least, that was how it seemed to me. And beyond that, leaning against a mossy wall with dead bits of vine growing over it and half the paint peeled and blistered off, there was this huge old painting of some lost great English estate. You could tell that it no longer existed. You could tell that it came from an England that had been plundered and destroyed long ago. I pulled away from the woman and threw the scraps of gold I'd picked up outside that looted shop as I fled to stop her following—although, like everything else in this city, it was worthless. She was shouting after me about how she had a son, a nice boy, for sale as well.
London had stirred itself while I was in the English Repository's darkness. The streets were suddenly rivered with people. They were smashing what hadn't already been destroyed. They were chanting and wailing and pulling at their clothes. Guns were firing into the air—a waste of precious shot. I feared that the Indians had already breached our walls. But I know what a battle feels like, and I realized that this wasn't one, although there was so much noise and confusion that it took me some time to find out what had really happened. Even then, I still didn't believe it. Johnny Sponson, Lord Protector of all of England, had been out walking this very morning, keeping up morale, touching the ill and the wounded who clamored to be cured, showing his face to the adoring crowds. I'm sure he thought he was well-protected, but the Indians must have positioned snipers close enough for one of them to pick him out. After all, he'd have made an obvious target, dressed as he now dressed. I grabbed arms and shouted into faces. Was he alive? Was he dead? No one seemed to know for sure.
I pushed on toward Saint James's Palace. Just like everyone else. Try to go any other way, and I'd have been trampled for sure. You've never seen such sights—heard such sounds. And then, of all things, I heard my own name being shouted by the guards who were protecting the palace gates, and hands were all over me and I found myself being lifted up. Yes. Here's the one. Yes, this is Private Sepoy Davey Whittings. No, no, back, back you fucking idiots. This is him. I feared for my life, although death and I had long since reached an understanding. But there I was, being hauled over the crowds and shoved through the gates of Saint James's Palace by Johnny Sponson's liveried guards, then led through ruined logfalls of gilded furniture that weren't so very different to those in the English Repository. Then a final door banged behind me, and I was standing alone in the great hall of Johnny's throne room.
The place seemed huge and oddly still, emptied of all the usual so-called generals, and fawning and laughing fools. But something big had been set in the middle of it—a tall thing of red curtains and lotus-carved pillars more than large enough to make a room of its own. When I peered inside it, I saw Johnny, and I realized it was some kind of bed. He was half-lying, half sitting, against these cushions, and he was smiling—almost chuckling—and he was wearing his usual cloak and a jewel-studded turban and many chains of office, and his right arm was hooked in a sling. It took me a moment to take in what I was seeing.
“So you're not dead?”
“Is that what they're saying?”
“No one knows for sure.”
“And they're all crying, howling out my name?”
“What would you expect?”
He chuckled louder. “Glory,” he muttered, “is like a circle of water, which never ceases to enlarge, till by broad spreading it disperses to nothing—haven't you found that to be the truth, Davey?”
“You know I don't understand that kind of fucking bollocks. I never did.”
“Don't you?” He seemed surprised—almost pained. “Perhaps not.”
“Why did you ask for me, Johnny? Why the fuck did you bring me here?”
Part of me wondered if he really had feared that he was dying, and had wanted to see his old pal Davey Whittings for one last time. But then, he didn't look so bad, and so many others were closer to him now—hangers on, women who dressed like princesses and acted like whores, men who smelled like butchers because of the reek of death on their clothes. Old mates of mine, some of them, although you wouldn't have recognized them now. But I was still plain old Davey Whittings, Sir, Sahib, Sepoy Second Class. With all of London wailing his name outside, I wondered if Johnny Sponson hadn't simply wanted to see me just to remind himself of how very far he'd come.
He didn't give a straight answer to my question, of course. He never could. He just gave another one of those Johnny chuckles. He just grinned a Johnny grin. And then he started talking about how England had needed someone. Not Johnny Sponson necessarily, but he'd been the one more than anyone else who had felt that need, and had known how to fill it. Said he was like the soil of England, this sceptered Isle, this seat of majesty ... all the usual bollocks. It really was like he was giving me his deathbed speech, even though he plainly wasn't dying. Or, more likely, he was doing the same thing that he'd done when he sat beside me in that filthy hospital, and was rehearsing what he planned to say later to a much bigger audience when he climbed the Great Temple of Ganesh, or perhaps, seeing as he was wounded, got himself hoisted up there on a wooden cross.
I could imagine his words ringing out across the adoring crowds. And I knew that they'd love him all the more now that he'd cheated death itself. And he was right, as well—when he said he gave them the spirit they needed to fight. That they needed him as much as he needed them. Without him, they'd be a rabble of looters and cutthroats—soldiers without orders. And without them ... he'd just be plain old Johnny Sponson. The man who'd saved my life. The man I'd once grown to love.
But this different Johnny Sponson seemed pleased, excited, by his brush with a sniper's bullet. He was full of new wildness and strange hope, and odd new theories to add to all of those he already had. How, for example, the reason that the Indians had spread this Empire so far was because of their simple need to survive those dreadful few summers and freezing winters of two hundred and more years ago. How it all would have been different if something strange hadn't fallen out of the skies to darken our world. As ever, he was full of it. Nothing had changed. Part of him was just being more and more of what he already was.
Despite London being surrounded by a far larger and better-equipped army, Johnny was convinced that this wasn't the end of the English Mutiny. And, as he talked of how the Scots had seized the moment to attack beyond Hadrian's Wall and were marching south even now, and how the Lowland Hollanders would soon be breaking the Indian blockade and sailing up the Thames with fresh ships and supplies, he even began to convince me. I could feel it happening—I could see the colors returning to English green on his beloved maps, and I knew that others would believe him even more than I did. But the difference was, I hated the very thought of yet another battle, even if victory was the result. Nor could I understand why I was suddenly on the same side as the fucking Scots seeing as I'd nearly lost my life fighting them. All that would happen if we sepoys were able to break this siege and the Hollanders arrived and the Scots came to our aid was that there would be more
destruction, and another year's harvest fallen to neglect as a result. Above all, there would be more deaths. Killing was the only thing that we sepoys were good for, when all was said and done. Try to get us to do anything else and we fucked it up.
I looked around me at this great and empty throne room. Johnny was going on even more now about duty, and about flags, and the need for loyalty, the need to stand up straight before what mattered, and fight for your nation and obey orders and do the right thing, even if the right thing was death. Perhaps the wound in his arm was worse than I'd thought, or perhaps he'd already taken something to help with the pain, or maybe he was simply a little drunk, but he was ranting now—and all of it was stuff I'd heard before. On parade grounds and from the mouths of officers, and back when I was a kid in the hovel we used to call home.
I reached my hand into my pocket, and felt for the loop of wire I still carried there, just like the good soldier I still was. And I opened it out and held it there while Johnny was still talking. I think it took him a moment to realize what I was about to do. And even then he didn't exactly seem surprised. After all, part of him was still like me, still a sepoy. He knew death was always waiting around the next corner, especially at the moment when you thought you'd finally left it behind.
“Why...?”
He struggled, but he was wounded—hampered by that sling and his ridiculous clothes—and my movements were quick, and by then I'd had more than enough of Johnny's bullshit talk. Still, it's not a swift death, or an easy one. You need strong hands, a strong will, to use a garrote. His loosened hands batted against me. His legs spasmed. His face reddened, then blued. His tongue went out. He leaked piss and blood. His eyes rolled. But I didn't let go. I was a soldier, a sepoy. Death was my job. But in truth, it wasn't the thought of all the fresh battles he'd urge us sepoys to fight that kept me pulling the wire. It wasn't even all the dead bodies and sobbing women and smoking skies and ruined towns that another season's fighting would bring. If the bastard had sounded like anyone toward the end in what he'd been saying, it was like my dad when he was in his cups. So it wasn't for the glory or for the sake of saving anyone or rescuing London or preserving the Empire that I killed Johnny Sponson. I simply wanted to shut the fucker up.
Someone must have decided that I'd been alone with my supposed best mate in that throne room for a little too long. Perhaps, seeing as they knew what Johnny was like, it had gone a bit quiet, as well. Whatever it was, the guards burst in yelling, and they saw instantly what I had done. Word went out from there quicker than you could ever have imagined—beyond the palace gates and across London, right out over the city walls to the waiting Indian armies with their huge siege engines and repeating guns. Johnny Sponson, Lord of whatever he was lord of, our Prince and our King—private sepoy second class, expert bullshitter, brilliant dancer, and secret son of some English Repository whore—was dead. The grief and the chaos was incredible. London burned that night. It was wrecked even before the Indians moved in to occupy it the next morning. Or so I think I've been told.
I'd imagined Johnny's guards would simply kill me. I hadn't counted on the fact that they were sepoys just like I was, and understood that death wasn't something I'd care that much about—that it was like the face of someone you're given up trying to love. They knew, as well, that their own chances of survival and the success of this whole mutiny had vanished with Johnny Sponson's death. They'd probably even seen the bodies of their captured comrades—or, once the Indians had finished, what was left of them.
You can see what Johnny's sepoys did to me yourself. They had a whole night to work at it before the Indians breached the city walls. And work they did. Then they left me there, destroyed as I was, right there in Johnny's throne room, laid beside the body of the man I had killed as flames took hold of the rugs and tapestries and licked up the walls. Perhaps they wanted me to be a signal, a sign, although I doubt if they ever imagined I'd have survived for as long as I have.
As you will long ago have noticed, they left me my mouth and tongue after they'd cut away my legs and retwisted my arms. I miss my vanished sight the more, though, because I'd love to have seen what has been made of this newly rebuilt city on the cold northerly fringes of this great Empire. I'd like to believe it's as beautiful as sometimes, in the right fall of hope or light or darkness, I thought it might become. I can't hear you, either, kind Sir, Sahib, Brahmin, Begum, Fakir, Lord, Lady, but I do not ask for words, or alms. Just touch here on my chest where the white ash is smeared. Tell me it's true that this city has been remade into something beautiful—that I'm propped on the marble steps of a fine new temple, filled with light and mosaic and the very breath of Christ, Mohammed, Brahma—that the skies above teem with kites and flags and spires and muezzin towers and the cries of mullahs and the clamor of bells. Touch me here, where the flesh isn't so burned. Then I'll know. Then I'll understand.
And don't worry about the ash, Sir, Sahib, if your hands are clean or your clothes are smart. It'll wash off easily enough.
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* * *
Poetry: GOODBYE BILLY GOAT GRUFF
by Jane Yolen
How many bridges had we traveled
always looking ahead,
constantly moving, never still.
You would have stayed awhile more
if you could, but there was that final bridge,
that toll, that green—and you were gone.
—Jane Yolen
Copyright (c) 2008 Jane Yolen
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
Short Story: CAT IN THE RAIN
by Jack Skillingstead
Jack Skillingstead recently signed with Golden Gryphon Press to produce his first collection of short stories. The book will appear in the fall of 2009. Concerning the present offering he tells us, “I always wanted to steal a Hemingway title.” ‘The Snows of Kilimanjaro’ didn't quite fit the story, but fortunately ‘Cat in the Rain’ did."
Daniel Porter got drunk in an Irish bar called O'Leary's. He downed two shots of Jameson's, then spent the balance of the night drinking pints of Guinness while he watched the TV mounted on the back bar between a dusty shillelagh and a bodhran. A neon beer advertisement bathed everything in nauseating green light. So much for atmosphere and the olde sod. Anytime it seemed possible somebody other than the bartender might speak to him, Daniel put out his famous repelling vibe. It was Wednesday night and O'Leary's wasn't crowded, anyway. O'Leary's was never crowded, that's why Daniel liked it.
The basketball game was interrupted periodically for special reports on the potential riot situation in Pioneer Square; O'Leary's was up town, but riots tended to wander. Daniel watched the reports with detached interest. He was a police detective, and as far off duty as he could get. Rioting had become pandemic. One city or another igniting almost every week. Protests, anti-protests, Fat Tuesday, Super Bowl victory celebration, May Day, Arbor Day—whateverthehell. The Pioneer Square thing had to do with new city curfew laws scheduled to go into effect at midnight. It was as if the world had gone mad with violence. Or madder, anyway. The center will not hold, all that Yeats crap. The uncertainty factor. The impotence factor. The world seemed to have reached its ultimate crisis point at the same time Daniel Porter reached his ultimate crisis point. In his work Daniel never trusted a coincidence.
Daniel's partner, Jimmy Bair, had a cousin who supposedly worked for the NSA. This cousin told Jimmy that, unknown to the public, alien satellites had appeared in high Earth orbit, and they were, as Bair put it, “Cloaked—you know, just like Star Trek. Sometimes they're there, and sometimes they're not there. For all we know they're shooting us with invisible Hate rays.”
Good old Jimmy. He was Scotch-Irish, big and aggressively chummy, with a nose like a red potato. A stand-up guy no matter what. The one guy Daniel would want watching his back.
“It's a fucking sign,” Bair insisted. “You know, all that crap in the Middle East, AIDS, bird flu, war
s, plagues, fucking terrorists, fucking pestilence. Plus things in the sky. Signs and portraits, right? It all adds up to the big picture. Like the Bible.”
Daniel cultivated detachment as a barrier against idiot theories, not to mention his genuine sense of impending doom. Daniel was hell on barriers. He wasn't too bad on Doom, either. For corroboration one could consult his ex-wife. Daniel had always been an asshole, to hear Nancy tell it. But lately he had become the Emperor of Assholes. Daniel couldn't help it. He reacted against the cesspool the world had become, the cesspool his life in particular had become. And he couldn't listen to any more bullshit—especially his own.
The game was over (and how), the night progressed to the AM side of the clock. Daniel threw back the dregs of his last Guinness, paid and left.
It was a hot August night. He felt sick and dizzy. Hands in his pockets, he stumbled up the street like a badly manipulated marionette. A red Toyota Echo hunkered at the corner. Daniel recognized the creased quarter panel. He stepped around a pile of cardboard and rags, staggered against his car, fumbled the key into the lock, pulled the door open, and bundled himself into the back seat. He'd rest a few minutes, regroup.
Daniel's head expanded and contracted like a balloon nippled in the mouth of an asthmatic. Time passed. Several voices rose up, all male. Something loud and metallic clanged. Daniel, folded and sprawled half conscious across the back seat, opened his eyes. Yellow firelight played on the roof. A rusty sound made him wince, stiff wheels grinding on pavement. Daniel sat up cautiously, his head in deflated mode.
Asimov's SF, October-November 2008 Page 24