by P. J. Fox
He could barely stand the guilt when, at Aros’ urging, he accepted rations fit only for himself. Asif needed the food more than he did. He was still, after all, strong enough to fend for himself. Perhaps he’d share a portion of his meat, he thought, or use some of their newfound wealth to purchase a bowl of soup from someone else. He’d even heard a rumor that one of the guards had been bribed to supply their local toughs with vegetables. Buoyed by these optimistic thoughts, he hurried back to Asif.
Where he discovered that it didn’t matter what he did, because Asif was dead.
TWENTY-ONE
Kisten shivered. He paused, resting on his shovel, and surveyed the world around him. He needed to pause, now and again, in his work; they all did. After a few minutes of digging, his head swam. The guards allowed them their little rests; the alternative was for them to dig the graves.
That the rebels were so indifferent to their plight had proved to be both a blessing and a curse.
He breathed in deeply, coughing, and tasted the sharp, metallic tang of oncoming winter. This wasn’t the first time, either. The leaves were piling up in drifts at the edges of the clearing and the nights were growing colder. One or two had been bitter indeed, presaging the horrors to come. During the day it was better, but the warm patches of sun were growing steadily less warm. Kisten flexed his fingers inside his makeshift mittens, ragged strips of cotton that he’d wrapped around his hands. He’d torn so much fabric off his shirt that it was beginning to resemble one of the brief halter tops that courtesans wore under their sattika.
His fingers were numb. The cloth didn’t help much but the handle of the shovel had splinters and at least it protected him from those. He pushed himself upright and set to work.
The same personnel shortage that had necessitated Kisten’s early graduation from the academy had also occasioned a number of other poor decisions; not the least of which was the offering of an enlistment bounty. Kisten, a career officer, took tremendous pride in serving the Alliance and regarded the military as a brave and worthwhile institution. He’d been shocked, therefore, to see it corrupted with the kind of chaff that answered the call. Shocked, and disgusted. To a man who could have done anything with his life but had chosen, for love, a life of service, this new program of we don’t care how disgusting or morally bankrupt you are, if you can hold a gun you’re hired was heartbreaking.
It was his uncle’s brainchild, of course; Karan had always regarded the military as the lowest of the low, so he hardly saw the difference. What was one hard-headed brute compared to another? What Karan hadn’t understood, having no military experience—and what some well-meaning officers had attempted to explain, to the detriment of their own careers—was that these desperate characters had enlisted for the money.
They planned to desert at the first opportunity, and many did. The less ambitious among them, however, were captured before they could do so. Being inside of prison was, to them, not terribly different from being out. Indeed, many of them had been in prison before—if in slightly more commodious surroundings. So naturally, they’d found their friends and formed up gangs. When they weren’t selling bread at exorbitant prices, they were roaming around robbing and murdering their fellows.
Kisten was too big to bother, especially given the wealth of easy pickings spread about. That he couldn’t help them rankled, and he cursed his lack of strength and, worse, his lack of power. Still, he kept a close eye on the thugs and their doings.
His shovel bit into the dirt. He rested again. He went back to digging. He’d been lucky to pull burial detail again. Amazing, really, how the most minor things could grow to have such importance. He flexed his hands, trying to restore circulation. He wondered if he’d really been the man who’d played ecarté with feather dancers—nude or otherwise. He felt, for lack of a better description, like he’d been implanted with memories from some other man’s life. He felt as little personal connection to those disjointed images as if he’d read about them in a book. And not a particularly interesting book, either.
The hole was almost big enough. He stepped back, and motioned to the guard. A minute later, some unknown man was tumbled unceremoniously inside. He remembered what Aros had told him, about the wisdom of not marking a man’s grave. Clung to it. It’s just a body, he told himself. The man was naked, of course. His glazed eyes stared at nothing.
Kisten blinked. Regardless of who he buried, the face he saw never changed.
So much time had passed since his first experiment with soup, and he’d gotten no closer to an answer. Asif had been getting better. Aros, of course, discounted Kisten’s assertion as the product of an overheated imagination. And guilt, of course; he ascribed nobler motives to Kisten than Kisten deserved. He’d been so sure that Asif was getting better, that if he could only eat something he’d be fine. Had Asif just given up? Was that it?
Or was it, as Aros claimed, the far more likely explanation that the human body could only take so much? Fighting spirit could conquer a great deal, but it couldn’t stave off death indefinitely nor animate a corpse. Asif, Aros had told him, more gently, had just died.
But if people just died, and there was no explanation, then how could he prevent it from happening again?
He began to dig the next hole. He was still dwelling on Asif when he noticed that his tooth was loose. He’d been absent-mindedly tonguing it, when he felt it move in its socket. He tasted, too, the unmistakable tang of blood. He turned to the nearest guard, a bored-looking teenager with a poorly corrected harelip. They’d been on details together before, and while Tomas wasn’t exactly nice he was too bored with the proceedings to be cruel. He couldn’t summon up the energy. Instead, he spent his time chewing betel nut and fiddling with his gun. Almost on principle, Kisten wished someone would show him how to strip and clean it properly.
“Tomas,” he called. Tomas was sitting a few feet away, pointing the barrel of the old carbine at his face.
He looked up. “Yeah?”
“If you’d be so kind,” Kisten said, his courtly manners all the more ingrained for being under stress, “I’d like to borrow your mirror for a moment.”
“Don’t need to.” Tomas shrugged. “You’re ugly.”
“Of that,” Kisten replied honestly and without rancor, “I’m well aware.”
“What are you going to do for me?” Tomas challenged.
Kisten suppressed a sigh. “What would you like?”
“Will you suck my cock?”
“No,” said Kisten politely.
“Good.” Tomas glared. “Because I don’t like men.”
“Indeed.”
“What?”
Kisten arched an eyebrow. “I was only thinking,” he said smoothly, “that as your gun is loaded and the safety disengaged, moving it might raise your chances of fathering children.”
Tomas looked down. He’d put the gun down, still facing him, in his lap and the barrel was now pointed directly at his crotch. The trigger, too, hovered dangerously close to the rock strewn ground. Hastily, he picked it up and pointed it the other direction. Then, getting up and slinging it over his back hill, tribal style, he ambled over to Kisten and presented him with the small round shaving mirror that he kept secreted around his person.
Kisten examined himself. His gums were cherry red and spongy to the touch. He probed them with a finger, and winced.
“See?” said Tomas, feeling vindicated. “Told you that you were ugly.”
But Kisten didn’t respond. In places, his gums had turned a deep, bruised purple. Schooling himself to meditative calm, he reviewed how he’d been feeling. Much, if not all of his discomfort he’d attributed to his near-starving condition. But now he saw that a second agent was at work. Certain old wounds had always bothered him at times: when the pressure dropped suddenly, for instance, or during monsoon season. These aches and pains were the price of professional soldiering, and he mostly put them out of his mind. Lately, though, they’d been bothering him more….
> He straightened abruptly and, handing the compact back to Tomas, picked up his shovel and resumed digging. He needed time to think. Tomas, however, wasn’t so easily put off. He’d seen something in Kisten’s eyes, when he’d examined himself, and now he was worried.
“What is it?” he demanded.
“I’ve just diagnosed myself,” he told Tomas, “with that classic disease of pirates.”
“Is it catching?”
“No,” said Kisten.
Tomas frowned suspiciously. “Well what is it then? How do I know I don’t have it? Are you sure it isn’t catching?”
Kisten straightened. Perversely enough, he felt bad for the boy. “The proper term is Capri’s disease or, as you might know it, scurvy. The initial symptoms are malaise and lethargy—common enough occurrences in our domestic paradise. Next, the unlucky patient develops light-colored spots on his skin, swollen gums and bleeding from the mucus membranes. As the disease advances, these spots break into open, suppurating wounds. The final stages are jaundice, fever, neuropathy and, of course, loss of teeth.”
“What’s neuropathy?”
“Nerve damage.”
“So what does that do?”
“Your hands and feet,” Kisten said calmly, “turn black and rot off.”
“Well,” said Tomas, sounding rather proud of himself, “I’m glad I didn’t let you suck my cock.”
“Much as it grieves me to have been denied the privilege,” agreed Kisten, “so am I.”
He spent the rest of the detail thinking about what to do. He’d called scurvy that classic disease of pirates because, long before the age of space—and well into it—pirates had been its principal victims. Common sailors, too; anyone, really, who’d been pressed into service without the slightest notion of shipboard health or personal hygiene. The food was almost always bad, and excess funds spent on the more exciting pursuits of wine, women and song rather than on something as dull as fruit. Scurvy, as anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of field medicine could attest, was caused by nothing more exotic than a vitamin deficiency and could be cured by eating citrus fruit.
Which, naturally, didn’t appear to be available in this part of the world. However, there were other foods that could cure scurvy: peppers of all kinds, mustard greens, kale, gooseberries, strawberries, and onions. Onions he’d seen in plenty. Withered things, not fit to feed a hog, but onions nevertheless. The question, of course, was how to go about acquiring the onions.
TWENTY-TWO
“Maybe,” ventured Aros, “the camp will be healthier in the colder weather. Heat incubates disease,” he added hopefully.
Kisten didn’t respond. They wouldn’t be able to get at the firewood, either, if the swamp froze. No one in the camp seemed clear on exactly how cold this place got, either; a disturbing discovery on its own. No one knew, because no one had survived the last winter to share the knowledge. But there was no harm in letting Aros dream, and no good to be done by disabusing him of his fantasies.
Which, Kisten supposed, wasn’t a thought he would have had six months ago. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He turned to Aros. “How have you been feeling?”
Aros shrugged. “Fantastic. Never better.”
“Are your teeth loose?”
Aros saw what he was getting at, and sagged. “Oh, that.”
Kisten glanced at the sky. He still had an hour or two of daylight, he guessed. “I have a plan,” he told Aros.
“Oh,” said the lieutenant dryly. “Bully.”
Still, despite his evident lack of enthusiasm, Aros chose to accompany Kisten on the first leg of his trek. Which, as it turned out, was to a clearing on the south side of the swamp. Called, ironically by some and optimistically by others, market square, it was where the more enterprising prisoners came to barter whatever little trinkets they’d made to pass the time. One could also exchange rations and indulge in gossip. But none of this interested Kisten.
The bounty of items on offer stood in shocking contrast to the acres of destitution surrounding them. Here again, Kisten mused, perception ruled. What constituted bounty within the walls of Palawan Prison was a selection of odds and ends that wouldn’t qualify for the average person’s junk drawer. And yet, here, the man capable of purchasing them seemed rich beyond imagining. A single, withered apple seemed a feast, the man able to purchase one per week well fed. How could he complain of hunger?
Kisten, who in a prior life had enjoyed taking his little pets out to thousand daric dinners, smiled slightly. Even if he got out tomorrow, one chapter in his life at least was finished.
Aros, disinterested in Kisten’s personal dramas, was captivated by a homemade compact. The craftsman, who identified himself as a sergeant in the 3rd Foot—what the entire army referred to as the 3rd Foot and Mouth—and a native of Caiphos, had made it by beveling down the edges of a shard of mirror with a file. Aros haggled with him, and ended up trading it for a pair of shoelaces that had belonged to Kareem.
“I knew I should’ve saved these for a rainy day!” Aros said proudly.
“What, you traded them separately from the boots?”
“Of course.”
“What’s a man going to do with boots and no laces?”
“What are you going to do with half a shirt?” Aros shrugged. “Who cares?”
They made their way deeper into the little bazaar. Instead of hand pies, iced tea, gold bangles, beaten copper vessels and sattika silk, the vendors sold rude knives that had been flint napped from stones and chunks of brick and other ingenious inventions, as well as things brought from home: combs, handkerchiefs, the occasional deck of cards. These things seemed like a singular waste of money to Kisten; what cared a man if his hair stuck out in knots, in a place like this? All he could do was provide a more commodious home for the lice.
One of the newer prisoners was examining a comb avidly. There was great trade in fleecing the new arrivals by offering them things like gold pens and pomade, because they still thought of themselves more or less as human beings. In a few months, if they survived that long, they’d be sitting where that vendor sat now, reselling the same useless trinkets to other gullible fools.
“What does any man want with a handkerchief?” asked Aros.
Kisten shrugged.
“I always wanted to buy Sonam a silk scarf, but I couldn’t afford the nice ones. Maybe after the war,” he joked, “when I receive my glorious promotion.”
“You, of all the men I’ve served with, deserve it.”
Aros put on an expression of mock disbelief. “Why Kit, I do believe that you just paid me a compliment.”
“Are you feeling all warm and fuzzy?”
“Only if you buy me dinner first.”
Kisten stopped. At long last, he’d found what he’d been looking for. “How about some wood?” he asked, distractedly.
“Wood?”
Palawan relied on the vigilance of its guards and the remoteness of its location for security, more than on its actual structure. The stockade was in constant disrepair, and the cook house had recently crumbled into the creek that passed directly underneath. As a result, there was usually some decent quality wood available for purchase. Enterprising guards sold all manner of construction debris to prisoners at extortionate prices. Kisten bent down and studied the selection in front of him, eventually choosing a number of split strips about three inches thick and four inches long.
After parting with too much of their group’s remaining money—Aros had agreed to the purchase, although with reservations—he traded a day’s rations for a board three inches wide and three feet long. A board that back home, ironically, would have sold for far more than the price of a two inch cube of bacon and a two inch cube of bread. Bacon being in not great demand, in a society where its consumption was forbidden. Still, he considered this a good trade.
Aros helped him carry the goods back home.
“So are you going to tell me what this is for, now?” he asked, his face poking o
ut from between the staves.
“I did,” said Kisten. “Buckets. At least three of them.”
“Yes, but how will buckets help us? You can’t eat them.”
“You’re striking another blow for naval intelligence, with that remark.”
“Oh, fuck off.”
Aros went on to point out that, having forgone his rations, Kisten would probably be hungry. Kisten, in turn, pointed out that he’d be hungry anyway and would Aros please shut up. He set himself up under the blanket shanty that Asif had once occupied, laying his materials out about him and asking Aros to pass him the communal chisel that Ali had gotten from somewhere. Ali, himself, was not to be seen. Walid was there, hunched morosely at the edge of the fire pit. He mostly avoided his companions these days, which suited Kisten just fine. Walid’s sour temper was proof against Kisten’s supposition that a man lived longer if he adopted the right attitude. Fighting spirit wasn’t in Walid’s vocabulary.
He set to work. He’d managed to sharpen their communal knife, but the process was still laborious. He’d only managed to cut half a dozen lengths before it grew too dark to work. Since he had nothing to eat, he curled up where he was and went to sleep. At first light, he’d begin again, and he was anxious to do so. Night passed all the more slowly, too, for being longer. With the colder weather had come shorter days, a bad thing for a man in Kisten’s position. He couldn’t afford to miss roll call, either, seeing as how he hadn’t eaten in almost twenty-four hours. His strength, he thought, must come from desperation.
Taking the blanket down off of its frame, he wrapped himself in it. He tucked his hands under his armpits for warmth. The wind was picking up. Moans echoed through the camp.
He worked from first light until just before roll call. First, he split each stave on a curve by driving together several sharp-pointed wedges into the circular grain of the wood and peeling them back. The board, he mortised and used as a jointer. He wasn’t a carpenter, not by a long shot, but there were few problems in life that couldn’t be solved by simple physics.