Stamping Butterflies

by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

  Sweet, sour and sometimes both, there were tastes and consistencies that worked perfectly while seeming to contradict each other. Cayenne ice cream, battered snails.

  Endless food. New clothes.

  It ended one morning when Tris trotted through to the kitchen to get some grapes and found instead the man standing at their small table, wrapping bread in the kind of foil that heated itself on demand. You just said the words and left it for thirty seconds. All explorers used it, he said. At least all explorers like him.

  “You’re going home…” Tris said.

  Opalescent eyes looked at her, almost puzzled.

  “How old are you?”

  “Five.”

  “And how do you know I’m going?”

  “Because I do,” said Tris. She was still called Tristesse then. A name he’d casually attached to the sad-eyed brat after the first few days of living with her mother.

  “Why don’t you take me with you?” Tristesse suggested.

  The man smiled. “You know what? I’m going to miss you.” Putting his hands under Tris’s arms, he lifted the child with one easy motion and stood her on the table next to the bread, so she could stare into eyes which were almost white and flecked with a thousand colours. “I really am.”

  “Why did you come here anyway?” It seemed an obvious question. Although from the look on the man’s face you’d have thought it was the last thing he expected to be asked.

  “I’m an artist,” he said.

  “Not an explorer?”

  “Both,” he said with a smile.

  Tris thought about that. “What’s an artist?”

  “Someone who…” The man hesitated, as if debating the question with himself. “I collect objects,” he said, “then wrap them up in memories and knot each one into a web.”

  “Did you find what you wanted?”

  “Oh yes,” he said, “you’re one knot on the spider’s web. A very special knot.” Lifting her down, he picked up his bag. It was really a tube, almost as tall as she was, sealed at the bottom and sticky around the top. Tris had never seen another like it.

  “You can keep the knife you stole,” he said. “I’ve got this.” And he produced the pistol, an intricate fusion of crystal and metal, so delicate that it could have been made by a spider itself.

  Tris looked embarrassed.

  “See you,” he said.

  “Will you?” Tris asked.

  The man shook his head. “Probably not.”

  One step became another as Tris had walked her way through half a dozen daydreams and a fistful of memories, most of them making about as much sense in replay as they did the first time round.

  The light, meanwhile, remained in the distance and with morning it vanished altogether. Tris wasn’t too sure she could maintain her direction without the light to guide her. Equally, staying put meant losing a whole day’s walking. So in the end Tris compromised. She walked all morning across grassland that climbed towards distant hills and then, come midday, she stopped, mostly because that way if she’d got the direction wrong she wouldn’t have too far to walk back.

  As compromises went it was barely adequate.

  Making camp took Tris less time than it might have done if she’d been sensible enough to rescue anything useful from the yacht. “Get over it,” Tris told herself. She’d had this discussion already and been forced to admit that rescuing more than herself would have been impossible. So she walked slowly around a huge boulder that protruded from the grass like weathered bone until she was sure which way the wind blew and then settled herself on the opposite side.

  The third nightfall was less impressive than the second, which mirrored a rule Tris had already identified; new emotions devalued, going from intense through familiar to reach a kind of ghost state where one no longer really noticed them at all.

  With darkness came the light and Tris was grateful, because it meant she’d been walking in the right direction after all. And the light might appear to be in the same place but Tris wasn’t, because she was closer and that made her happy too.

  Straightening her top and hitching up her frayed trousers, Tris set off uphill and walked until her foot hurt and then walked some more. The grass beneath her toes, having become soft, became rough again and began to alternate with heather and thorn. Tris had seen neither in real life. Heliconid lacked soil or open places where unnecessary plants could grow and had no ambassador to the Celestial Throne who could request help from the Library. All of the food in Heliconid came from the boxes or was raised on the levels under strip light.

  And just when Tris had got used to tripping over clumps of heather in the dark and feeling wet thorn lash against her hips, the surface over which she walked changed again, becoming hard and warm with the heat it had retained from the recent day.

  It was the remains of an ancient road, fifteen paces wide and so long that Tris reached five thousand, five hundred and fifty before she stopped counting, having lost her place enough times to know this figure might not be entirely accurate.

  To break the monotony of the road, Tris began to count her paces again and then took a break from that to sing to herself, having become certain she was being followed. When the fifth peek over her shoulder revealed nothing but silvery darkness and a short stretch of black that faded swiftly from her sight, Tris decided not to look round again, though she sang a little louder and stamped her feet that much harder as she walked.

  Shoulders loose, arms loose, stay alert. Tris knew how to walk the walk and she’d won more fights on Rip than she’d lost, the last of them against a grown man with a knife.

  One thousand, two thousand…Her heels hurt so much the blisters must have burst and then burst again. Hunger ate at her stomach and she was dizzy with exhaustion. As if this wasn’t enough, sweat was gathering beneath her latex top and running down the crack in her bottom.

  “You’re no bowl of rose petals either,” said a voice.

  Tris stopped. Looking round, she saw nothing but darkness and somewhere ahead the distant light.

  “Flames,” said the voice. “They’re flames.”

  She looked again, seeing nothing.

  “She heard you,” a different voice said.

  “Of course I did,” said Tris.

  “Well,” said the first voice a moment later. “Now there’s a surprise. Maybe she’s from the Tsungli Yamen.”

  “The Bureau of Foreign Affairs? I doubt it. She’s probably a thief. We should deal with her.”

  “I’m not afraid of you,” Tris said.

  “You should be.”

  “Well, I’m not.”

  “She’s beyond being afraid,” said the first voice. “I’m not sure it’s worth my time being here any longer.”

  “I’m not talking to you anymore,” Tris said. She did her thing with one foot in front of the other, and pretty soon she was striding ahead as if nothing had happened. And maybe nothing had because hunger and tiredness can do funny things. Hallucinations were the least of it.

  “We should stop her.” That was the first voice.

  “No,” said the second. “I think it’s too late.”

  Tris stamped one foot in front of the other, ten thousand and one, ten thousand and two, ten thousand and three, ten thousand and four…

  “It’s not your choice,” Tris told the blank air. “I’m leaving now.” She said this with a certainty she didn’t feel.

  “Going where?” The voice seemed to come from far behind her.

  “To the palace.”

  “Palace?” said a voice in front.

  “She thinks he’ll save her. They always do.”

  Tris grinned. It was a hard grin that bared most of her teeth. “No,” she said, “I’m going to kill him.”

  “Interesting,” said the voice in front. “If a little stupid.”

  “Tell me something,” Tris said. “Do you two actually exist?”

  There was a silence.

  “You know,” a voice said fi
nally, “you’re not really meant to be asking us questions.”

  “Well, I am,” Tris said crossly. “So the least you can do is answer them.”

  “Oh, we’re real enough,” said the other voice, sounding amused. And behind her the night moved slightly, coming closer. Only it wasn’t night, merely something that swallowed all light and left an improbable afterburn on the surface of the air.

  “Come back,” said the voice. “We’re not finished yet.”

  CHAPTER 38

  Marrakech, Summer 1977

  The steps down were dark with stains and a water pipe lay snake-like along one edge of the stairs. At the top the door had been old-fashioned, the kind which had panels and a knob that turned, although someone had nailed sound insulation to both sides of the door and painted the surfaces with cheap white paint.

  At the bottom was another door. Only this one had no handle. Merely a fat bolt riveted crudely to the outside. At shoulder height on the wall next to the door someone had wired a bank of switches, each labelled in red plastic strip.

  “Soldering iron,” said one. “Saw,” said another. “Water pump.” None of them was on.

  “You’re in trouble,” Major Abbas said, as if there was any chance Moz had missed this point. “And I’m not sure I can protect you.”

  Moz stared at the Major, seeing a face as dark and crumpled as walnut membrane. It had never occurred to Moz that anyone might protect him or that there could be something from which he might need serious protection.

  “You understand me?”

  Moz shook his head and Major Abbas sighed.

  “There was an explosion,” he began. “Last Wednesday…”

  That, at least, Moz understood.

  The Polisario had bombed an upstairs office on Boulevard Abdussallam. It had been on the radio, first as a denial, then as a qualified maybe and finally, seventy-six hours later, when gas explosions, failed foundations and acts of God had been discounted, as a guaranteed hundred per cent terrorist outrage. Two French lawyers had died and Paris was demanding action.

  “What’s that got to do with me?” Moz demanded.

  “I don’t know yet,” said Major Abbas. “Maybe it’s got nothing to do with you at all. I hope so. That’s what we’re here to find out.” Reaching with a thumb, he wiped a streak of blood from the boy’s bottom lip and flicked it to the floor.

  “I’m sorry,” the Major said. “You must understand that this has to be done.” Moz wanted to ask why and what this was…Although a large part of him really didn’t want to know. Instead he stood silently while Major Abbas unbolted the door. “In you go,” said the Major, pushing the boy ahead of him.

  Sunlight bathed what had once been a gymnasium. Climbing bars made from dark oak lined the far wall, ropes hung from the ceiling, eight of them, fixed to hooks high in the roof with fat knots at the bottom. A pair of rings hung from another part of the ceiling, leather handles worn smooth.

  Afternoon heat clogged the stillness and made Moz feel sick enough to shield his eyes from the brightness that streaked through a huge window.

  “Over there,” said the Major.

  Moz saw her then.

  Straddling a vaulting horse was a naked girl, her wrists and ankles tied below the horse’s belly. She was gagged.

  Someone had shaved Malika’s head.

  “No…”

  “You recognize her then?”

  “Of course I recognize her.” Moz began to move towards the motionless girl, only to be yanked back so hard that the Major almost pulled Moz off his feet.

  “Did I say you could go over there?”

  She’d been tied onto the vaulting horse lengthways, her arms made to hug the leather body and lashed at the wrists underneath. Something more complicated had been done with her legs. This involved tying her ankles, threading a single rope behind one knee, passing it under the horse and threading it behind the other knee, then tying both knees tight so that Malika gripped the length of padded leather as if riding at a gallop.

  “The crow,” Major Abbas said. “One of de Greuze’s specials.”

  It was hard to know what the Major saw when he looked at Malika’s splayed thighs and narrow buttocks, but whatever it was, it was not enough to stop the Major reaching for a discarded riding crop and cracking it absent-mindedly against the palm of his hand.

  “So primitive.” Major Abbas sounded almost sad. “So effective.”

  For a hideous moment Moz believed the whip was about to be handed to him, but instead the Major shrugged. Maybe he realized Moz would refuse or perhaps he knew that Moz would take the whip as ordered and this might be one humiliation too far.

  More likely he just knew that the time was not yet right. Major Abbas had been in the police for all of his adult life, beginning his training under the French, and he had seen, done and made others do many things he would rather forget.

  So instead of making the boy take the whip, the Major flicked it through the air a couple of times, like a conductor testing a baton, and then slashed the girl abruptly across the upturned soles of her feet, stepping back to watch as she reared up against the pain, her scream constrained by a leather gag.

  “Stay silent,” he ordered, reaching for its buckle.

  “Tell them,” said Malika before Major Abbas had even got the gag properly undone. “Tell him I was—”

  “I said silent,” the Major said. Another slash of the whip and this time Moz could almost feel the scream that echoed round the dusty gymnasium. “Did anyone tell you that you could speak?”

  The girl shook her head.

  “Then don’t,” said Major Abbas. “Untie her,” he ordered, not bothering to look at the boy.

  Moz scrabbled with the knots. He was on his knees, staring up at the girl who lay trapped and sobbing. The knots were simple but Moz’s fingers were shaking and his eyes kept sliding from the tear-blurred rope in front of him to the sight of a breast squashed against the leather edge of the vaulting horse.

  “Get on with it,” ordered Major Abbas.

  When Moz continued to fumble, the Major swung his riding crop and Moz felt Malika’s body jerk furiously a second before her scream had him curled into a ball on the gymnasium floor with his hands over his ears.

  Major Abbas kicked him. “Cut her free,” he said, dropping his own pocket knife on to the floor beside Moz. “You’ve got five minutes.” The last thing Moz heard before the Major slammed the door and bolted it from outside was a suggestion. “Use it well.”

  “You have to tell them,” Malika said before Moz had even returned to the knots, before he’d had a chance to saw at the rope around her wrists and ankles, lift her off the vaulting horse and lower her as gently as he could manage to the floor. “You have to tell them I was with you.”

  “When?” Moz asked.

  “Last Wednesday. You have to say that I was…”

  Moz thought about it. Working the days back in his head.

  “You were,” he said, “we were—”

  They both knew what and where. On the roof of the dog woman’s old house, with the late afternoon sun in his eyes and Malika sitting in his lap, her bare arms locked round his neck and her legs curled around his hips. It was not something he was likely to forget.

  “You’ll tell them?” Malika said desperately.

  “That we were on the roof?” Moz nodded. “Of course I will.”

  “I told them,” said Malika.

  “What’s going on?” A very inadequate question.

  Her answer came in tears and ragged sobs that echoed round the gymnasium. She didn’t know, she really, really didn’t know. She’d told the old Frenchman this already but he refused to believe her. Malika’s voice was broken, helpless.

  Dark circles surrounded her sunken eyes, her right thumb jutted at an obscene angle and all the fingernails from one hand had been ripped out. Excrement smeared the inside of one thigh. As well as shaving her head, the Frenchman had taken all her body hair and what was left looke
d like bruised meat.

  He was crying too, Moz realized. A knot in his stomach as tight as any that might have bound his own hands.

  “What do they think you’ve done?”

  Malika was sobbing so hard and was so busy clinging to him that she couldn’t answer. And by the time she could, Moz had worked it out for himself. They thought she was Polisario. That was why Major Abbas had asked him what he knew about the bombing in the Nouvelle Ville.

  “I said we were together,” Malika said. “I know I shouldn’t but he wouldn’t stop.” Her words were barely audible, as if whispering could lessen the horror of what had happened. “He just wouldn’t…”

  And as Moz knelt in front of her, he understood that he was a coward, whatever Malika thought.

  “What exactly did they ask?”

  Jagged sobs were his answer.

  “You must tell me,” Moz insisted.

  “The bomb,” Malika said. “They wanted to know where I got the explosives.”

  “You?”

  “Me,” Malika said bleakly. “I made it and planted it.”

  “Who said so?”

  “I did,” said Malika. “When I signed his bit of paper.”

  “That’s what it said?”

  “That’s what the Frenchman said it said,” she replied.

  “But you don’t know?”

  “No.” Her shrug was tiny. “They wouldn’t let me read it.”

  “This man,” said Moz. “He was definitely French?” Moz felt sick to the bottom of his stomach.

  “Yes,” she said. “An advisor.”

  “Why do they say you planted the bomb?”

  “I don’t know,” said Malika. “That’s a secret so they won’t tell me. There was someone else,” she added. “An American or English. Only he left because he didn’t like what the others were about to do.”

  It was a question that had to be asked, until the desolation in Malika’s haunted amber eyes persuaded Moz that it didn’t have to be asked after all.

  “So,” said the Frenchman, “it’s true. You really are an informer.” They faced each other across the cheap linoleum and Claude de Greuze seemed vaguely amused by something.