New Model Army

by Adam Roberts

  ‘Hello,’ I said, in my croaky voice. ‘Is English OK?’

  He was wired in, of course; aural feed and text on the inner face of his glasses. But it was polite to, at least, ask.

  ‘English fine, fuck,’ he replied, enunciation crusted with accent. German, I figured. My heart was still thrumming.

  He angled the tube at me as he stepped over to Martin’s body slumped over the easy chair. With his free hand, and bending his knees a little to stoop to the right height, he frisked the body. He pulled out one silver pistol, which he tucked into his bag.

  Then he took several steps back, almost all the way back into the bathroom. Standing in under the doorframe, he said my surname, inflecting it as a question. In his mouth it sounded like Black.

  I nodded. ‘Schäferhund?’ I asked.

  ‘Fucking A,’ he replied. From this I could tell that his English was not very good. People who rely on their wires to prompt them in a foreign language are easy to distinguish from actual speakers. Those web programs that exist to help you sound like a native - I don’t mean the ones for businessmen and pilgrim tourists; I mean the ones for young men and women - are predicated upon two distinctive ideas: that fluency is a matter, firstly, of idiom; and, secondly, of swearing. So it was my Schäferhund soldier followed his AI-concocted script and told me: ‘Not very fucking difficult. You are poacher turned gamekeeper, you. Go, walk it, you walk and I walk here, it is behind you. A word in your shell-like, do not try fuck me.’

  ‘I saw your friend downstairs,’ I said, getting tremblingly to my feet.

  ‘You have come to fuck with Schäferhund, I think.’

  ‘I wouldn’t put it that way.’

  ‘You were Pantegral?’

  ‘I was.’

  He lowered the shaft of his weapon. ‘That is - some NMA,’ he said, in simple admiration, like the scene in Charlotte’s Web.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, genuinely. This was a surprise. To be precise, I was surprised to so as touched as I was.

  ‘Some fighter,’ he said. Then: ‘You fought in German NMA before that I think?’

  ‘You know a lot about me.’

  He angled his head. ‘Which German NMA you fight in?’

  ‘This was a long time ago. And I was only there for a short time. In those days a lot of the NMAs didn’t have individual names,’ I said. ‘But it was formed out of a kernel from Bonn.’

  ‘Maybe some of Schäferhund fought in that one. Maybe you know them?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘So why are you coming to fuck up Schäferhund? Let me run that up the pole see you salute?’

  I moved my arm very slowly, not wanting to startle him. With an almost tai-chi control my fist went left to right, gesturing at the whole vista visible through the window. ‘Isn’t Strasbourg a lovely city? Aren’t the people good people? Don’t they deserve to be able to live their lives without being burned and mutilated and shot?’ My lungs burned mildly. ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if that cathedral spire were still standing in a year’s time?’

  He didn’t scoff. He didn’t look angry. Instead he nodded, thoughtfully. ‘If Strasbourg was kosher fucking democracy,’ he said, ‘I would,’ a pause whilst software provided the right word, ‘sympathize. If it was kosher democracy, I would more sympathize. Let’s go. And hey,’ he added, tucking the loaded tube into his bag in such a way that I could see it was still going to be aimed at me, ‘hey, let’s be careful out there.’

  The voice is a needle. The needle is a tower.

  The trigger wasn’t entirely under my control, I suspect, although it was supposed to be. Live away from combat and return to it, and it is much more of a shock than you could ever think. It is a shock, and remains a shock despite the fact that you re-lived and re-lived those combat situations, over and over. But, see, that is precisely part of the problem. I don’t just mean problem in the sense of waking up screaming, or night-sweats, or throwing yourself to the floor at every champagne cork and every knock on the door. I mean problem in the sense that re-living is not the same as living. I mean in the sense that the essence of combat is the continual, adrenalized encounter with the unexpected; and that the essence of memory is the obsessive revisiting of events until they acquire the rounded, carved and sanded contours of inevitability. You see the distinction I am drawing. You see why it is a problem.

  In that hotel room I found myself in a situation I had been in a hundred times, as a youngling: death leaping from its hidey-hole with a roar. But although I remembered what that was like, after the fashion of memory, I had forgotten the way that feeling actually primped in the bloodstream. Adrenaline, the tagged neural networks, the rush. The splinter of metal in my forebrain.

  I felt shivery almost at once.

  We came out of the lift into the lobby and started across the soft soft carpet towards the street exit. On his sofa Schäferhund 1’s pal twitched to see us, dropped his book to the table, jumped up and fell into step, moving on a parallel path towards the door. Pretty Leah, behind the desk, didn’t so much as look up. Not that she could have done anything. But the thought that these people could walk into a public hotel, murder a serving US officer, kidnap me, and just walk out without anybody even noticing struck me as very wrong. Would nobody take notice?

  I could yell something, I thought. But then the lobby would become a firefight, and ordinary people would die.

  The second Schäferhund stepped over to us and pressed himself against my side. His English was clearly better than his comrade’s. ‘You are the giantkiller fellow, so? I saw you go up with the American man.’

  ‘I saw you seeing us,’ I said.

  ‘You should have told your American, then, that you saw me, and were suspicious. But it is too late for your suspicion now.’

  ‘A pleasure to meet you too, I’m sure,’ I replied, a little tartly.

  We all three stepped through the main entrance, on to the street. Outside. Crowds. Pale though bright light. We shuffled onwards and I was of course scanning the pavements, but there was no hope there. I put my mind back to the EU military checkpoints. Presumably Schäferhund was going to put me in a car and drive me straight out of town. Would a checkpoint stop them? Could I make some gesture, or draw attention to my predicament? Without, obviously, getting myself killed? I recalled the dull, resentful expression on the faces of the soldier-sentries. I looked around me at the plump and satisfied faces of the tourists and locals. I did not have hopes.

  ‘You are come to kill our giant,’ said Schäferhund 2, in my ear. ‘I am really most extremely curious to discover how you will do that.’

  ‘Curious,’ I said, a little breathless. I was starting to feel unwell.

  ‘One man against one giant. You’re David, yes, and we are Goliath.’ He emphasized this last name on the o. ‘I am curious of the how, to discover what you are capable of doing. But I am curious, also, of the why. To turn against your own?’

  ‘I was explaining the why to your colleague here.’

  ‘The US captured you, yes? They interrogate? They turn you?’

  ‘To everything,’ I muttered, ‘there is a season.’

  I looked back, with a twist of pain in my neck, at the outside of the hotel. I scanned the crowd, quickly. No help there. The backdrop of Strasbourg buildings looked frail to the point, almost, of trembling; or I was trembling, perhaps.

  Cars were passing slowly, on account of the crowded and overspilling pavements.

  Then I spotted, on the far side of the road, a US military uniform in amongst all the greys and blues and tartans. I focused on him, because of course he might be my salvation. He was alone. It wasn’t so good that he was alone. Could I signal him? He was standing on the far side of the road, ready to cross, and was carrying a little cardboard tray, and in the eggbox indentations of the tray were two tall, lidded cardboard cups of coffee with Starbucks logos on their sides. He looked left, and looked right, and then looked straight ahead. It was when he looked straight ahead that his eyes met mi
ne, and his gaze loitered for just a moment, as if seeing me distantly reminded him of something. I willed the thought: your comrade told me about you, but now he’s dead. I’m the reason you’re here. Help me. But then his gaze went left again, and I could almost see the mental process at work by which the recognition didn’t happen; the visual data was filed away, and so he stepped on to the road.

  The moment passed.

  Of course you know that sinking sensation, the tug of hope departing.

  ‘Is it virus?’ asked Schäferhund 1. ‘Is this how you kill the giants?’

  ‘What virus could work on such an entity?’

  ‘It is made of people,’ said Schäferhund 1. We had almost crossed the road now and were about to step on to the pavement on the far side.

  ‘The rumour is,’ said Schäferhund 1, ‘virus, like swine virus.’

  ‘You’re having a fucking laugh,’ I said, wearily.

  A little whistle of brakes behind us; a car stopping abruptly. Somebody shouted ‘Hoy!’

  Why had the car stopped?

  We turned. The US officer was standing in the middle of the road, such that the car had been forced to stop to avoid striking him. The car’s wide snout was a foot or so from the soldier’s hip. The driver was gesticulating from behind the safety of his windscreen. But the soldier just stood there, smack in his way, like a lump. He was looking at us.

  The tray and its cups of coffee tumbled from his grip. Having gone to all the bother of queuing at the Starbucks counter, in his immaculate uniform, and paying for two cardboard cups of coffee; and having ported them almost to the door of the hotel without mishap, to drop them at this stage was - what? A shame? It was certainly a shame. It was at the very least a shame. A few more steps and he’d have been inside the hotel; and then in the lift; and up to the room, and his friend, the two cups still hot. Of course, his friend was dead. But he didn’t know that.

  He let the tray go. It fell away. As the cups hit the tarmac the lids came off and coffee, one liquorish, one mud, splooshed and sprayed.

  Suddenly it was all happening.

  The US officer was reaching round to his hip, underneath the flap of his jacket.

  Schäferhund 1, to my left, was swinging his bag round, still dangling from his shoulder, angling his body to bring it to bear.

  The US soldier was quick, though. He had his sidearm out, glinty in the daylight, and was levelling it. Schäferhund 1 was compelled to discharge his weapon earlier than he intended. There was a popping noise of decompression and the fabric of the side of the bag tore. Shreds of cloth puffed and flew.

  A flash.

  The windscreen of the stopped car shattered. There was a hole in it, and from the hole a spider had woven an instant pattern into the fabric of the glass. The driver of this car was no longer leaning forward in his seat, gesticulating, angry at the uniformed man standing in his way. He had instead sat back, lolling his head over the top of his seat. His anger had been wholly purged.

  The US soldier’s firearm spoke its angry word: once, twice. Da! Da!

  Schäferhund 1 flinched backwards, and two little red mouths opened right in the middle of his chest. Both of these mouths stuck out a bright red tongue. Schäferhund 1 went backwards, tipped to forty-five degrees, and the tongues came further out, and then they detached altogether, and broke into blobs and drops and fell through the air.

  I was in the process of drawing in a breath.

  Schäferhund 1 fell over backwards and hit the ground.

  Some of the passers-by were screaming.

  And now the US soldier was bringing his weapon round to bear on his second target. He moved queerly slow-mo, or seemed to. Schäferhund 2 was quicker. He had his gun in his hand, and his arm was stretched in the direction of the soldier. His left hand was clasping his right wrist. There was a flash, and a firecracker bang, and a little dagger of light, subliminally, at the muzzle of the gun. Bam!

  Then again. Bam! Neither shot connected with their target.

  The US soldier had his aim in, now; and fired his gun. Da! Da! He did not hit Schäferhund 2.

  They were only a few yards from one another, both shooting, both missing, and all about them the crowd was breaking, streaming and flowing away. Several people were shouting, or wailing: terrified collective vowels. Where are they all going, these hurrying people? They don’t know where they’re going, any more than I do.

  Both men fired simultaneously, and it was bam-Da!—

  The US soldier bowed, flexing forward at his waist. He was the orchestral conductor at the end of his performance acknowledging the applause of the crowd. It was incongruously polite of him. He didn’t straighten up from his bow. He stood like that for a moment. Then his knees wobbled, and gave way and he toppled forward on to the ground. He was down in a heap, his face in a puddle of coffee, his arse in the air. Schäferhund 2 took hold of my arm. ‘Come along,’ he said, picking up his dead comrade’s bag. ‘It is, now, time to go.’ And the collective roar of crowd began to build.

  I was in no state to resist his heave. He was much stronger, and more determined. He had a place to go. I had nothing; except one thing and that thing was served best by having myself carried off. As for fear of dying - what? Apotasis. I was the fever that I experienced.

  But how my heart stuttered!

  The combustion was in my head, now. It burned. Flickers of light in the corner of my eye. Obedience and paranoia are much closer aligned than you might think. I tried to move my feet to keep pace with my abductor; but it was difficult. One of the things that happened to me when I was burnt - I do not remember the actual incident of course - was that the lining of my lungs became scorched. They had sort of healed, up to a point, and I could sort of breathe again, but that did not mean they could oxygenate my bloodstream with the efficiency necessary to enable vigorous exercise. My skin hurt, in several places, when my limbs moved, or my arms swung, or my head turned. I was puffing. I would have been exhausted under the best circumstances, and these were not the best circumstances, because there was a smouldering, feverish intensity inside my brain.

  People were hustling in many directions. Flashes of wide-open eyes passing. ‘Come along,’ said Schäferhund 2.

  ‘I’m trying to make,’ I gasped. ‘But can’t just. You need to.’

  ‘Come on!’

  I had assumed the plan was to take me to a car, but there didn’t seem to be a car anywhere near; or else the unplanned firefight had necessitated a change of plan. I could hear police sirens. It occurred to me (feverish, you see), which had never occurred to me before, that there is something snide, something mocking in the sound of a police siren. As if law enforcement is announcing to the whole world how contemptuously it regards those it pursues. My eyes were hot.

  Sweat glands are amongst the things a person tends to lose when burns heal as new skin. For people with very extensive burns there can be a major difficulty in just keeping cool.

  Schäferhund 2 hauled me into a doorway, and through the door, and I stumbled on the step-up and fell forward. This was hardly compatible with my dignity as a warrior of Pantegral, and so on, and so forth, but at least I could get some of my breath back. On all fours, on the tiled floor of some entrance hall or other. Schäferhund 2 was checking the street outside.

  ‘I daresay,’ I said, in a wheezy voice, ‘they’ll be shutting the checkpoints now.’

  ‘Checkpoints,’ said Schäferhund 2, his back to me.

  ‘I assume that’s not ideal,’ I said. ‘In terms of getting me. Out of Strasbourg. Although why you, want to do that, I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know?’ He was standing over me, now, tucking his gun into the waist of his trousers. ‘You’re the man who kills giants. What giant wouldn’t want to talk to you?’

  ‘Or else just. Execute.’

  ‘Let us hope I do not have to kill you,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t feel very well,’ I said. My tongue was gummy. I was hot.

  ‘Get up,’ sa
id Schäferhund 2, putting hands under each of my armpits. ‘Come upstairs.’

  ‘I’m sorry about your friend,’ I said, whilst the hallway shifted and rotated, and I swayed again upright on two legs.

  ‘You are sorry. You did not kill him.’

  ‘I’m sorry anyway.’

  ‘We must ascend the stairs.’

  The foot of the stairs was straight ahead, at the end of the narrow, chessboard hallway. The stairs were a hundred years old. Or two hundred. Fashioned in wood and carpeted down the middle. ‘There’s no lift?’