But when she was gone . . . after dark when the hospital quieted to its nightly routine, there was nothing left in the world but me and the little finger on my left hand.
Rog, the foreman of my crew, came
in to see me, once they took the sign off my door. I felt funny about asking him the question I'd saved for him, but I finally got up the nerve.
"Rog, that house. The one that fell in on me. Is it all the way down, yet?"
He looked at me sort of funny. "Not yet. They got the contractor out there and some engineers. It's a funny deal — if we'd had any idea of problems, we'd have gone that route first and waited to start demolition. Maybe we'd have used a wrecking ball.
"That entire house is so unstable it stinks. And it looked solid as Gibraltar, too. It's still sitting there, only that one wall down so far. They can't figure why that one fell or why the rest didn't come down, too. All you did was to chip out an anchor-point for a towline, and whammo! Down she came, right on top of you. I was never so scared in my life ... we thought you'd had it. No joke!"
Hmm. That brought up my second question. "Did anybody ever look around for my finger? Could it be spotted in all that mess?"
He shook his head. "They won't let us near the thing, now. Once you were out, they put up a fence with padlocks and all the trimmings. Why?"
That was a question I didn't want to answer. "I just wondered. After all, it isn't every day you lose a piece of yourself." I laughed, but it hurt.
After he left, I thought of that loose bit of flesh and bone, lying in all that rubble. By God, mice were probably stripping it down to the bone. And I could, somehow, feel it happening. The thought preyed on my mind.
Then I remembered the motion I had seen, back in the corner when I went in to do my job. Something a lot bigger than a mouse — or even a rat — had been in that old house. I had thought it might be a cat, nosing around, and never thought of it again. But now I recalled the ghost of a growl. Sharp teeth, glinting in the dimness . . .
"Hamp Carstairs," I said aloud, "you will drive yourself completely round the bend, if you lie here making up stories. Go to sleep!"
With the help of a nurse and another shot, I did just that. But the next day I was all nerves. Sedatives just made me worse, until it seemed as if my skin would crawl right out from under the casts and bandages and make off down the hall.
Lola was beside herself. She tried to talk, to read, but I just lay there in a cold sweat, trying to keep from screaming. She could see it in my eyes, which was just about all of my face she could see.
"Hamp!"
I'd closed my eyes, so she could get some rest. I opened them to see her bending over me.
"Hamp, it's that damn finger, isn't it? I'm going down there and dig around until I find it. I'm going to bring it right back here and put it in a jar of formaldehyde on that table, so you can see that nothing's at it. It may not help the nerves, but it just might help the mental strain a bit."
It was hard to talk through the bandages, but I managed. "Lo, listen! That place is a deathtrap. Rog says they locked it up, it's so dangerous. It's not going to help either of us if you get all smashed up, too. I want all of your parts in working order, when I get out of this cast."
She smiled, and I recognized that look. I should have kept that problem to myself. She left, determination in the set of her back.
She didn't come back that afternoon at her usual time. There was no call at bedtime. I began to sweat. I had the nurse call Rog at home, just to see if there had been any sort of commotion out at the work site. But no. The next house was down, and they'd begun working on the one on the other side. There had been no problem at the unstable one.
Lola had early morning class, before her shift at the lab. There was no hope of seeing her before noon, and she hadn't a phone. I kept on sweating.
At ten o'clock, I was surprised when the door opened to let her into my room. She should have been at work. Then I saw a flash of white and stared at her left hand. At the bandage wrapped neatly around it.
In her right hand, she carried a small jar, which she set on the table with a thump. I could see something bobbing around in the liquid it contained. I cut my gaze around and stared. It had been a finger. That was clear, if you used imagination. All the flesh was gone, and the bone was scored with long marks.
I couldn't even raise my eyebrows when I looked up at her.
"Have you felt that finger this morning?" she asked.
I thought hard. I had been so worried that I hadn't even remembered the finger. Now I felt for it, but there was no twinge. Not even the faintest tickle.
"No." I sounded puzzled, even to me.
"Something had it, back in that half-wrecked room. Something furry and bright-eyed and mean. I beat it off with my purse and got your fingerbone away from it. But it. . . got even." She held out her hand. "It took mine, in exchange."
"Lo!" I felt my heart thud soggily. "I told you not to go in there . . . you might have been killed! The thing might even be rabid."
She looked down at me, and I saw deep into her eyes. There was a pain there that I recognized. Oh, did I recognize it!
"You now? It's got yours in place of mine?"
She nodded. "It leaped, when I took the bone away from it, and just snapped off my little finger like a bread stick. But I'm in better shape to cope with it than you are. I can move around, stay busy. I'm not trapped in that cast, wrapped up in ninety yards of gauze. It's . . . it's not such a bad swap, really." She smiled.
I could see the little lines at the corners of her mouth. I knew exactly what she felt. What a girl!
She couldn't stay long, for she was due at the lab. She'd swapped out with another girl so she could come in and relieve my mind.
Once she was gone, I was alone again, thinking about whatever it was living in that abandoned brownstone. Thinking about what Lola was enduring.
It isn't the pain, you see. That's bearable. It's wondering precisely what's
causing it. V
MEMORIES
Shall we remember, friend of the morning, Dusk of the twilight and rose of the dawn? — Laughing we fared in our youthfulness, scorning — Mornings as golden shall lift when we're gone.
Oceans are eld and the mountains are hoary, Ancient forgetfulness leaves them apart, We shall remember our youth and the glory We breathed when our race was just at its start.
Soon shall we fade as the twilight's red splendor Fades to the misting of magical dusk, Soon to the eons our souls shall surrender — Ghosts dim at twilight, a faint breath of musk.
We shall remember, our ghosts shall remember Sunsets of glory and pale rose of dawn; We shall remember, our ghosts shall remember Ages and ages long after we're gone.
KINDRED OF THE CRESCENT MOON
by Gerald Pearce
.tJ
We had heard that the city called Ras al-Wadi was protected by a tribe of witches. But when we finally came to the edge of the plateau and looked down and saw it off to the right, beyond the dense forest of date palms crowding the valley floor, we found it protected by a defensive wall more than twice a man's height like any small oasis town, as unremarkable as mud.
Behind me on the lead ropes the pack camel and Mujahid's mare stirred briefly.
Mujahid turned in his camel saddle. The effect of his sudden smile was startling. He hadn't smiled since before his father died, weeks ago. Now suddenly he was his old self again, his broad muscular face alight, confident as a child's.
"Now all we have to do is go down there and find him. When we do —"
Slowly, almost lovingly, he drew a hard brown forefinger across his throat just above the collar of his thaub, and his smile took on the sometimes irritating assurance of a man who knows he is lucky. He was. Bedouin life was a gamble that Mujahid always won. Before his beard was more than a wisp and a shadow, he had been leading successful raids, bringing back booty in livestock and nubile women. His daring in battle was
unmatched; only his luck kept his skin whole. His herds thrived. He had a persuasive tongue and was gifted at poetry and love songs, and his endless success with young women delighted him. Utter confidence could give his smile the arrogant edge I saw now. I had never expected to be glad to see that again, but any sign of the old Mujahid was preferable to the grim, obsessed, silent stranger I had been riding with all these weeks.
"You can't know he's here," I told him. "He didn't have to stop. He could be well on his way to the Red Sea."
Mujahid shook his head, faced the valley, drew in a deep breath.
"What do you smell?" he asked.
"Rain in the air. Oasis smells — moisture, green things growing."
"I smell my luck. It's been hiding from me. Thank you for your patience; I've been a stranger to myself as well as to you. Come on, let's find a way down."
Neither of us would have come to Ras al-Wadi if Kadhim bin Ja'far hadn't fallen in love with old Hasan's young wife. Hasan was Mujahid's father. The young wife's name was Filwa, and she was the prettiest, gentlest girl I had ever seen, with wide eyes as deep as night and lips always on the verge of a smile that was partly humorous but mostly shy. She was hardly any older than I was, and she haunted my dreams. But I was only a servant, with neither ancestors nor tribe, and I probably owed my life to Hasan: so it was loyalty as much as self-protection that made me keep those dreams in check.
Nothing had ever restrained Kadhim bin Ja'far. He had a face like a knife and his eyes were angry. His short black beard was denser than most bedouin beards, and his voice had the edge and cold weight of an enemy's sword. Some said he had the Evil Eye and kept their children from falling under his gaze. Others said he was just a bully that no one had ever stood up to because he was the heir of a rich family of the Numayr clan of the Bani Faris tribe and no one wanted to risk antagonizing him. His approach to Filwa had frightened her into complaining to Hasan.
We were at the tribal center in Hasa oasis at the time. Hasan, the head of a less prominent family of the same kindred, was close to sixty, gray-bearded, calm, with nothing left to prove. He went to Kadhim's tent to warn him away from Filwa and the two were heard arguing. A bit later Kadhim came out carrying his saddlebag. He picked up a waterbag and mounted his riding camel and disappeared south into the Jafura sands.
Toward sunset Kadhim's sister found Hasan in Kadhim's tent with a deep wound under his ribs. Two days later he died.
Grief like a sword bled me of my strength.
When the women had finished their lamentations, the Numayri elders and several shaykhs of the tribal council gathered in Mujahid's tent. They advised, predictably, that he accept Kadhim's permanent banishment and the payment of blood-wit instead of insisting on vengeance, as a blood feud within the clan would weaken it and hurt the tribe. It was sensible advice.
Mujahid only shook his head. No easy flow of words now. His face clenched like a fist, he stepped outside the circle of the impromptu council. He strung his bow, took a single arrow from his quiver, and held it for all to see. The iron tip gleamed dully. The shaft was clean. This would be his arrow of reci-sion, the one thing that could rescind his obligation to avenge a murdered relative. The others, understanding, stood up and followed him outside. I stumbled numbly after them.
Mujahid's tent was pitched not far from Hasan's on the edge of the Hasa oasis. Half-visible through the date palms a huddle of mud-walled houses was the village called Bayt Faris, the tribal center. Beyond the village lay orchards, palm groves, wheatfields, other villages, a marsh where peasants grew rice, even a small walled town. There was a profusion of wells and hot springs. Hasa oasis was an extravagantly watered depression near the shores of the Arabian Gulf, as green and fresh as the surrounding land was desolate.
We went through dwindling palms and a line of tamarisk into the open desert. There, surrounded by witnesses, Mujahid shot the arrow high into the softening empty cloudless sky of late afternoon.
It came hissing back through the dry air, thudding into the sand.
Half its length glistened with fresh blood.
Hasan's spirit, or some God, demanded vengeance.
Unless of course it was magic.
People cried magic the first time I shot a wild dove out of the sky — I was supposed to be a skilled bowman but not that skilled. I tried it again later with no watchers and failed and never found the arrow. So much for magic. Later still I had a few successes and a few failures, enough to prove it was skill, an intuitive sense of where the bird's flight and the arrow's had to meet, perhaps helped occasionally by luck. Mujahid's luck was reliable. Mine wasn't.
But Mujahid had no skill in magic, and trickery was impossible. We had all seen the clean arrow leave the bow, pierce empty air, and now the blood on it was there to be seen and smelled and touched.
Only one man didn't join in the cries of astonishment. His name was Suhayl, and he was Mujahid's mother's eldest brother. He gave his nephew a speculative stare before adjusting the drape of his headcloth away from his neck and gray-bearded face.
"The tribes have been using this ritual time out of mind," he said mildly. He pointed to the arrow, which Mujahid had plucked out of the ground and was holding between fingertips of both hands. "But I never heard trustworthy accounts of its returning this answer."
Suhayl was known for his skeptical appraisal of men. What he seemed to be suggesting was that the ritual had been dreamed up by cunning shaykhs anxious to reduce the number of blood feuds, and surely that was taking skepticism too far. Most of the council seemed to think so. There were troubled murmurings. Umar bin Auda was scandalized.
"Mother of the Gods! Are you asking for a curse on your family, on the Nu-mayr clan, or perhaps on the whole tribe?" Umar's voice was peppery and his eyes flashed. He was a lot older than Hasan had been; his beard and eyebrows were sparkling white. In recent years he had become increasingly devoted to the study of the Gods and their activities, and though some thought he was sliding into his dotage no one knew enough to argue with him. "Next you'll be denying sorcery, the existence of jinns, the powers of the Gods themselves . . ."
Suhayl shook his head. "No," he said unemphatically, and Mujahid stepped in front of him and held the arrow up before his uncle's eyes.
He said in a quiet, driven voice, "My father was your brother-in-law. You owed him kinship duties when he was alive, now you owe him the right to be avenged. It's my right to avenge him."
Several eager voices offered to help. Mujahid, holding the arrow like a cult object, slowly shook his head.
"I'll take one trusted servant. Talal."
Talal son of no one. Young man with no ancestors. Me.
Anyone of unknown parentage was said to have no ancestors. Ten years ago, when I was five or six, I had been a half-starved orphan who had deserted or been dumped by a passing caravan and been caught stealing plums from Hasan's small orchard near Bayt Faris village. Hasan had taken me in and raised me as a bedouin and his well-treated servant. Mujahid, who was some ten years older than I, taught me to ride and use a bow and was the closest thing to a big brother I would ever have.
I supposed, with distant astonishment, that he wanted me along for my skill with the bow and my loyalty to Hasan. But I thought his refusing other help was silly. Avenging Hasan should be a matter for the whole family, not an occasion for a hothead's bravado.
Suhayl made an impatient gesture. Clearly he thought so too; but arguing with Mujahid at the best of times brought out only his cheerful impudence and stony obduracy, and this was not the best of times. Shaking his head, Suhayl subsided. Unexpectedly Umar bin Auda spoke up.
"Is that wise, Mujahid?" The peppery old voice was almost quiet. "You're a man of experience and luck, we all know that; and though you have no brothers your four brothers-in-law will be eager to help you, and so will others, not because duty demands it but because of their regard for your father, may the Gods have mercy on him. You could scour the desert like
an army. But Talal. . . he's only a boy."
"He's a man," Mujahid said, "who hasn't had much chance to prove it. If he acquits himself with honor we can adopt him into the tribe and our ancestors will become his too."
Umar turned troubled eyes on me.
"And you, Talal. You want to go with him?"
As though I had a choice. I was a dutiful servant, a grateful friend, an admiring if sometimes irritated little brother. And Hasan had to be avenged.
"Of course," I said. Filwa would have expected it of me.
After a long moment Umar nodded. He sighed, a dry resigned rustle. "The Gods make plans. No doubt this is part of a pattern we can't see." And on that the council broke up.
Mujahid seemed not to have realized that Filwa was now his by inheritance. All he had to do to claim her was throw his cloak around her. Bani Faris law gave him three days to exercise this right; otherwise she was free to return to her own people. . . .
What she actually said when she heard I was going with him was, passionately, "Are you crazy?" I only shrugged and went on loading the pack camel. What mattered was getting Mu-jahid away before he came to his senses and remembered. The disloyalty made me unable to look anyone in the eye.
We left before sunset, riding after Kadhim into the Jafura sands. Filwa and the honored lady Zaynab, Hasan's first wife and Mujahid's mother, threw a couple of potsful of water after us as a charm to assure our finding water on the journey.
Mujahid turned his camel's head away from Ras al-Wadi and urged the beast southward along the rim of the plateau. His smile still lingered. In the weeks of riding I had never once seen him weep for his father. Perhaps the relationship between fathers and sons was more complicated than it seemed. Of course I could only guess.
All day we had been riding west over barren plains and ancient lava beds and rocky hills where the sun glinted off flints and broken pebbles and a thin, hot, bitter wind whipped grit from the desert floor into our eyes. As the shadows lengthened all this had changed. Now, towering black clouds hid the colors of sunset. The wind had shifted, and had an edge, and smelled wet. And as we came to where the drop into the valley became a negotiable slope by way of a well-used camel trail, rain began falling in slow, widely-spaced drops that splashed dust up from the trail and left wet smears as big as a man's hand on the rocks of the valley wall. For a couple of minutes the air smelled of wet dust, and then it began to rain faster.
Weird Tales - Summer 1990 Page 17