Use of Weapons (48 page)

But
somehow he knew that Saaz was right; it had not been what he'd said in the mess
that had led to somebody trying to kill him. At least (said something in him),
not directly...

Thone,
the squadron's CO, came to see him; no flunkies, for a change.

'Thank
you, Nurse,' he said at the door, then closed it, smiled, and came over to the
bed; he had the white chair. He sat in it and drew himself up, so that his
girth was made to look less. 'Well, Captain Zakalwe, how are we coming along?'

A
flowery smell, Thone's preferred scent, drifted over from the man. 'I hope to
be flying within a couple of weeks, sir,' he said. He'd never liked the CO, but
made the effort of smiling bravely.

'Do
you?' Thone said. 'Do you now. That's not what the doctors say, Captain
Zakalwe. Unless they're saying different things to me than they are to you.'

He
frowned. 'Well, it might be a... few weeks, sir...'

'It
might be we have to send you home, I think, Captain Zakalwe,' Thone said, with
an insincere smiled. '... or at least to the mainland, as I'm told your home is
further afield, eh?'

'I'm
sure I'll be able to return to my duties, sir. Of course, I realise there will
be a medical, but...'

'Yes,
yes, yes,' Thone said. 'Well, we'll just have to see, won't we. Hmm. Very
good.' He stood up. 'Is there anyth -'

'There's
nothing you can get -' He began, then saw the look on Thone's face. 'I beg your
pardon, sir.'

'As
I was saying,
Captain;
is there anything I can get
you?'

He
looked down at the white sheets. 'No, sir. Thank you, sir.'

'A
speedy recovery, Captain Zakalwe,' Thone said frostily.

He
saluted Thone, who nodded, turned and left.

He
was left looking at the white chair.

Nurse
Talibe came in after a few moments, arms crossed, her round, pale face very
calm and kind. 'Try to sleep,' she told him, and took the chair away.

He
woke in the night and saw the lights shining through the snow outside;
silhouetted against the floodlights, the falling flakes became translucent
shadows, massing soft against the harsh, downward light. The whiteness beyond,
in the black night, came compromised as grey.

He
woke with the smell of flowers in his nostrils.

He
clutched beneath the pillow, felt the single leg of the sharp, long-nosed
scissor.

He
remembered Thone's face.

He
remembered the briefing room, and the four COs; they'd invited him for a drink,
said they wanted a word.

In
the room of one of them - he couldn't remember their names, but he would
remember soon, and already he would recognise them - they asked him about what
they'd heard he'd said in the mess.

And,
a little drunk, and thinking he was very clever, thinking he might find out
something interesting, he'd told them what he suspected they wanted to hear,
not what he'd said to the other pilots.

And
had discovered a plot. He wanted the new government to be true to its populist
promises, and end the war. They wanted to stage a coup, and they needed good
pilots.

High
on the drink and his nerves, he'd left them thinking he was for them, and gone
straight to Thone. Thone the hard but fair; Thone the dislikeable and petty,
Thone the vain, the perfumed, but Thone the man known to be pro-government.
(Though Saaz Insile had once said the man was pro-government with the pilots,
and anti-government with their superiors.)

And
the look on Thone's face...

Not
then; later. After Thone had told him to say nothing to anybody else, because
he thought there might be traitors amongst the pilots too, and told him to go
to bed as though nothing had happened, and he'd gone, and because he'd still
been drunk, maybe, woken up that second too late as they came for him, shoved
some impregnated rag over his face and held it there while he struggled, but
eventually had to breathe, and the choking fumes took him.

Dragged
through the corridors, socked feet sliding over the tiles; men on either side.
They went to one of the hangars, and somebody went to the lift controls, and he
still could only dimly see the floor in front of him and could not raise his
head. But he could smell flowers, from the man on his right.

The
clamshell doors opened overhead, cracking; he heard the noise of the storm,
shrieking from the darkness. They dragged him over to the lift.

He
tensed, swung round, grabbed at Thone's collar; saw the man's face; appalled,
full of fear. He felt the man on the other side of him grab at his free arm; he
wriggled, got his other arm free from Thone, saw the pistol in the CO's
holster.

He
got the gun; he remembered shouting, getting away but falling; he tried to
shoot but the gun would not work. Lights flickered on at the far side of the
hangar. It's not loaded! It's not loaded! Thone shouted to the others. They
looked over to the far side of the hangar; there were planes in the way, but
there was somebody there, shouting about opening the hangar doors at night with
the lights on.

He
never saw who shot him. A sledgehammer hit the side of his head and the next
thing he saw was the white chair.

The
snow boiled wildly beyond the floodlit windows.

He
watched it until dawn, remembering and remembering.

'Talibe;
will you send a message to Captain Saaz Insile. Tell him I need to see him,
urgently; please send a message to my squadron, will you?'

'Yes,
of course, but first your medication.'

He
took her hand in his. 'No, Talibe; first phone the squadron.' He winked at
her. 'Please, for me.'

She
shook her head. 'Pest.' She walked away through the doors.

'Well,
is he coming?'

'He's
on leave,' she told him, taking up the clipboard to check off the medication he
was receiving.

'Shit!'
Saaz hadn't said anything about leave.

'Captain,
tut tut,' she said, shaking a bottle.

'The
police, Talibe. Call the military police; do it now. This really is urgent.'

'Medication
first, Captain.'

'Well
as soon as I've taken it, you promise?'

'Promise.
Open wide.'

'Aaaah...'

Damn
Saaz for being on leave, and damn him twice for not mentioning it. And Thone;
the nerve of the man! Coming to see him, to check him out, to see if he
remembered.

And
what would have happened if he had?

He
felt under the pillow again, for the scissor. It was there, cool and sharp.

'I
told them it was urgent; they say they're on their way,' Talibe said, coming
in, not with the chair this time. She looked at the windows, where the storm
still blew. 'And I've to give you something to keep you awake; they want you
perky.'

'I
am
perky; I
am
awake!'

'Quiet,
and take these.'

He
took them.

He
fell asleep clutching the scissor under the pillow, while the whiteness outside
the windows went on and on and eventually penetrated the glass, layer by
layer, by a process of discrete osmosis, and gravitated naturally to his head,
and spun slowly in orbit round him, and joined with the white torus of bandages
and dissolved them and unwound them and deposited the remains in one corner of
the room where the white chairs gathered, muttering, plotting, and slowly pressed
in against his head, tighter and tighter, whirling in the silly snow-flake
dance, faster and faster as they came closer and closer until eventually they
became the bandage, cold and tight about his fevered head, and - finding the
treated wound - slunk in through his skin and his skull, coldly and crisply and
crystally into his brain.

Talibe
unlocked the ward doors and let the officers in.

'You
sure he's out?'

'I
gave him twice the usual dose. If he isn't out he's dead.'

'Still
got a pulse. You take his arms.'

'Okay...
Hup! Hey: look at this!'

'Huh.'

'My
fault. I wondered where those had got to. Sorry.'

'You
did fine, kid. You better go. Thanks. This won't be forgotten.'

'Okay...'

'What?'

'It...
it will be quick, yes? Before he wakes up?'

'Sure.
Oh, sure; yeah. He won't ever know. Won't feel a thing.'

...
And so he awoke in the cold snow, roused by the freezing blast inside him
coming to the surface, piercing his skin at every pore, shrieking out.

He
woke, and knew he was dying. The blizzard had already numbed one side of his
face. One hand was stuck to the hard-packed snow beneath him. He was still in
the standard-issue hospital pyjamas. The cold was not cold; it was a stunning
sort of pain, eating into him from every direction.

He
raised his head, looking around. A few flat metres of snow, in what might have
been morning light. The blizzard a little quieter than it had been, but still
fierce. The last temperature he'd heard quoted had been ten below, but with
the wind-chill, it was much, much worse than that. His head and hands and feet
and genitals all ached.

The
cold had woken him. It must have. It must have woken him quickly or he would
already be dead. They must just have left him. If he could find which way
they'd gone, follow them...

He
tried to move, but could not. He screamed inside, to produce the most awesome
surge of will he had ever attempted... and succeeded only in rolling over, and
sitting up.

The
effort of it was almost too much; he had to put his hands behind him to steady
himself. He felt them both freeze there. He knew he would never stand up.

Talibe...
he thought, but the blizzard swept that away in an instant.

Forget
Talibe. You're dying. There are more important things.

He
stared into the milky depths of the blizzard as it swept towards and past him,
like tiny soft stars all packed and hurrying. His face felt pierced by a
million tiny hot needles, but then started to go numb.

To
have come all this way, he thought, just to die in somebody else's war. How
silly it all seemed now. Zakalwe, Eleth-iomel, Staberinde; Livueta, Darckense.
The names reeled off, were blown away by the sapping cold of the howling wind.
He felt his face shrivel, felt the cold burrow through skin and eyeballs to his
tongue and teeth and bones.

He
ripped one hand away from the snow behind him; the cold already anaesthetising
the flayed palm. He opened the jacket of the pyjamas, tore off buttons, and
exposed the puckered little mark on his chest over his heart to the cold
blast. He put his hand on the ice behind him, and tipped his head up. The bones
in his neck seemed to grate, clicking as his head moved, as though the cold was
seizing up his joints. 'Darckense...' he whispered to the boiling chill of the
blizzard.

He
saw the woman walking calmly towards him through the storm.

She
walked on the surface of the hard-packed snow, dressed in long black boots and
a long coat with a furry black collar and cuffs, and she wore a small hat.

Her
neck and face were exposed, as were her gloveless hands. She had a long, oval
face, and deep dark eyes. She walked easily up to him, and the storm behind her
seemed to part at her back, and he felt himself in the lee of something more
than just her tall body, and something like warmth seemed to seep through his
skin, wherever it faced her.

He
closed his eyes. He shook his head, which hurt a little, but he did it all the
same. He opened his eyes again.

She
was still there.

She
had half knelt in front of him, her hands folded on one skirted knee, her face
level with his. He peered forward, wrenched one hand free from the snow again
(it was numb, but when he brought the hand round, he saw the raw flesh he'd
torn from the snow). He tried to touch her face, but she took his hand in one
of hers. She was warm. He thought he had never felt such glorious warmth in all
his life.

He
laughed, as she held his hand and the storm parted round her and her breath
clouded the air.

'Goddamn,'
he said. He knew he sounded groggy with the cold and with the drug. 'An atheist
my entire fucking life, and it turns out the credulous assholes were right all
along!' He wheezed, coughed. 'Or do you surprise them too by
not
turning up?'

'You
flatter me, Mr Zakalwe,' the woman said, in a superbly deep and sexy voice. 'I
am not Death, or some imagined Goddess. I am as real as you...' She stroked his
torn, bleeding palm with one long, strong thumb. 'If a little warmer.'

'Oh,
I'm sure you're real,' he said. 'I can feel you're rea...'

His
voice faded; he looked behind the woman. There was a huge shape appearing
inside the whirling snow. Grey-white like the snow, but a single shade darker,
it floated up behind the woman, quiet and huge and steady. The storm seemed to
die, just around them.