HARM (6 page)

On this occasion, the contestants were both black, by name Chankey and Gragge. They fought naked to the death. Each might hurl stones only of their own designated color, blue or red. They might hurl the stones or punch each other. This was Kontesting.

And Fremant was the referee. His main duty was to see that Chankey and Gragge kept within the rectangle, and to announce when one contestant was truly dead.

Dunk!
went the flung stones on flesh.
Dunk! Dunk!
The crowd cheered every stone that found its target. Gragge went down on one knee after a red struck his shin. Before he was up again, another red hit his shoulder. He was swift to recover. He flung a blue that missed and then a second that caught Chankey in the ribs.
Chunk!
Soon both men were reduced to crawling on the ground, both suffering serious injury. Snarling like wild beasts, they took ahold of each other. Each tried to throttle his opponent or to tear his throat out. Chankey managed to heave Gragge’s upper body onto one of the stones. Grabbing another stone, a red, he began to bash his opponent’s skull in.
Crack! Craaack!

The audience cheered and laughed.

Gragge lay dead and broken, his brains spilling on the ground. Fremant waved his flag.

He helped Chankey to his feet. Blood poured down Chankey’s torso. He collapsed, unconscious. A day or two later, Fremant happened to hear that Chankey had not died of his wounds and was making a slow recovery.

As Fremant left the field, Astaroth clapped him on his shoulder.

“You made a good showing, lad. I am keeping my eye on you!”

High praise, Fremant thought. Or was it a warning? He hated Astaroth for encouraging the brutal entertainment of the Kontest.

A
S
A
STAROTH RODE OFF AHEAD
in his chariot, Aster came up to Fremant. She pulled her hood aside, looking up at him from under her eyelashes. “I have decided to forgive you for what you did, you brute.”

“Oh, why’s that?” he asked coldly.

“Because I love you.” She ceased to hold the hood in order to demonstrate with a flutter of hands how like a flame that love was. “Burning, burning love!”

He struggled with his emotions. Stygia City was so full of suspicion and secrets that he wondered if this woman might not be the one who would sink the Clandestine dagger into his heart.

“I’ll buy you a glass of wine, Aster. Then we can talk it over.”

She fell in beside him. He thought, as they walked, that wherever they went, people would see them. Word would get back to Astaroth. Better to take Aster to Bellamia’s house; the old girl would not mind and could, he believed, be trusted to keep her mouth shut.

Dusk was coming on when he knocked at Bellamia’s door. He was feeling resentful, yet wondering why he should be. The stout lady opened her door with caution, then stood back to let the two of them in.

“This is Aster, Bellamia,” he said, as the girl drew aside her hood.

“I know who it is, right enough,” the woman said, casting an ill look at Aster. He smelled salack on her breath.

They seated themselves at the table as Bellamia poured them each a glass of her buskade. The insect-parrot gave out its stridulous cry, unfolding a kind of watery score which faded as it unwound. Darkness was already gathering in the crowded little room; Fremant and Aster could scarcely see each other’s faces across the table until Bellamia brought a lighted candle to set between them.

Aster stretched out her hand to Fremant. As he took it, he burst into complaint. “This backwater of a planet! No art forms here, no cinema, no discs, no personal computers. Not even paintings to hang on the walls.”

Aster was defensive. “There were those pretty red and blue stones in the Kontest…”

“Not quite Picasso or Rembrandt, though, were they, eh?”

“Who were they?” Bellamia asked.

Could it be that he was the only person on this whole world who knew the name Rembrandt? Of course, all these people had been for countless years mere elements in the ship’s LPR. He was a being apart. He could not think how he had come here. He had not been born on Stygia. He floundered in a morass of uncertainties, insecurities.

“But we don’t need such things, dear,” said Aster, ignoring Bellamia. “Life is better without them. Simpler! Art forms suggest too much, don’t they? At least we live on a solid surface with the sky overhead. Isn’t that enough?”

“No, it’s not enough. We didn’t create the sky overhead, did we?”

“But I thought art forms were responsible for—oh, I don’t know what. People being—what do you call it? You know, stuck up on crosses, and like that.”

“And music,” said Bellamia, laughing. The room was heavy with the scent of her salack. “Was there music on Earth? It must be deliberate that we remember so little about that place.” She turned and busied herself about her little stove.

“Art in general was once a major human concern,” he said, scowling across at Aster in the candlelight. “Paintings, sculptures, books, music…back on Earth.”

“Earth!” she said contemptuously. “That’s long lost. Astaroth says we were all sent away for safety reasons. You have too much Earthblood in you. Are you forgetting how you were tortured there?”

“Oh, that!” he exclaimed, disconcerted. He had forgotten he had confided in Aster about the torture. A shadow crossed his psyche.

“Yes,
that
! You don’t claim you have forgotten being tortured, do you? Oh, how you lie! I am surrounded—surrounded—by lies and deception. How can I bear it? I don’t know…”

He shook his head. “Calm down, will you? The nightmares I was suffering—”

“You suffer nightmares! What do you think I suffer? Bringing me here to this low hovel—”

“What’s the matter? Are you mad?”

She banged the palm of her hand on the table. “You were insane! Admit it!”

He stood up. “If you’re going to insult me, why don’t you just disappear—out of my life! You tricked me with the Clandestines, and I won’t forget it.”

With a quick movement Aster produced a knife. Baring her teeth, she pointed it at him. “What’s so insulting about being insane in a mad world? If you attack me again, I swear I shall kill you this time!”

He seated himself, trying to out-stare her.

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“You raped me once and that’s more than enough, you bluggerate.”

“You can talk—it’s certainly more than enough for me, let me tell you.” He gripped the edge of the table, ready to overturn it if she made a move.

“Oh, I’d kill you gladly, gladly! What of your promise to kill Astaroth? Or have you forgotten that already, too?”

“I’ve not forgotten,” he said sullenly.

“You’ve not acted.”

Bellamia came up to the table, saucepan in hand. She
tut-tutt
ed. “Now, stop this silliness. Love one another, damn you, if you must! But why all this quarreling? I’m getting you a nice stew of portleg tail to eat, so be quiet. Be quiet!”

“You be quiet,” Aster told her, indignantly turning on her. “You’re forgetting yourself. I am the mistress of the All-Powerful, so behave yourself.”

With lowered brow, Bellamia said, “I know well enough who you are. And what you are.”

The remark seemed to quell the younger woman. She put away her knife. Fremant sat down. They stared at each other, full of hatred and confusion. Then she stared down at the grain of the tabletop.

“This place stinks,” Aster said quietly. “Why did you bring me here?”

Slowly their mood lightened and they began to behave more like friends, despite themselves, as if, in spite of everything, there was a bond between them. When the older woman served up her food, she, too, sat down at the table and ate with them. Aster made no protest. Nor did she complain about the food, flavored as it was with salack. The herb, at once bitter and sweet, was reputed to have a sedative effect on nerves.

“What did you do in your reconstituted years on the ship?” she asked Bellamia.

“Miss, when I was reconstituted out of the LPR, I was put in command of one shift of the laundry section. A hard job it was. Of course I was a younger woman then.” Her eyes were half-closed, enfolded in flesh. “Much younger.”

“Had you no man as partner?”

“He’s long dead,” said Bellamia, in a tone that defied further inquiry. She repeated, “Long dead…”

When Aster took her leave, she and Fremant kissed briefly outside the door. He took some breaths of fresh air before reentering the stuffy room.

B
ELLAMIA SAID TO
F
REMANT,
“Mayhap I should not tell you this, but that young lady is the mistress of Astaroth, as she tells you. What she does not boast about is that she is his daughter as well.”

“It can’t be!” He was aghast.

With contempt, the old woman replied, “What you mean, ‘It can’t be’? You’re soft in the head, my man. Many things as should not be
can
be. It’s one of that kind I’m telling you about—one of that kind!”

D
AWN, TWO DAYS LATER.
High in the southern sky, casting pale shadows, sailed Stygia’s six little broken moons, product of the cosmic collision of which the Shawl was also a result.

Fremant was on his way to report for duty at the Center. As he passed through the echoing empty squares, he began to suspect that someone was following him.

When he turned the next corner, he stopped there, shoulders to the wall, waiting. Sure enough, in a moment, another man turned the corner, a tall, thin man with a stoop. Fremant struck him hard on the side of his skull with his right fist. The man’s jaw fell open. He sank to his knees and collapsed.

Fremant dragged the man into a side alley and sat astride him.

“Okay, you funker, whose side are you on?”

The man muttered something incomprehensible.

“Speak clearly or I’ll poke your eyes out. Who are you?”

“Name’s Webshider. Let me up, dammit!”

“Who’s paying you to tail me?” As he was asking, he was searching in Webshider’s pockets. He found some stigs and pocketed them. From an inner concealment he fished out a bone-handled knife with a curved blade. He flung it far down the alley.

“Come on, who’s paying you?”

“No one. It’s voluntary. Let me up. Please.”

“You were going to kill me, you scum! For the last time, who are you working for?” He shook the man’s throat until his skull rattled against the paving stone.

“The Clandestines. The Clandestines, all right?”

Fremant smacked him across the chops. “Those useless wretches? Look, if I spare your life, you’ll go slinking back to them and their nameless god. Tell them from me they are crap. Tell them they should mingle with the ordinary population to foment discontent, get it? Not just hide out across the lake, get it? Foment discontent, get people to understand they can demonstrate in force, get it? One big demonstration and we can kick Astaroth out, get it?”

Each “get it?” was accompanied by a fist in Webshider’s ribs.

“You’ll never manage to kick Astaroth out, you bully,” the man gasped.

“Try it!”

“You’ll never manage it because the people here are—I dunno—sort of sick after the long journey and Reconstitution.”

He propped the thin man up and rested his back against the wall. “You’re saying there was something the matter with the LPR, the Life Process Reservoir?”

“How do I know?” the other responded. “It’s possible, ain’t it? Or else this planet don’t agree with us. Maybe there’s some sort of germ in the air that—”

“You scum! You’re sick.” He gave the shuddering face another slap.

“We’re all sick, you bluggerate—because we are dumped here to live among aliens and insects.”

The notion struck a chord in Fremant’s mind. “It’s a rule of life—we all have to live among strangers…Get yourself back to that Habander feller and tell him what I’ve said, okay?”

He stood up and watched alertly as Webshider struggled slowly to his feet, gasping and groaning. He was not a fighting man. Fremant gave him a kick in his rear as he slouched off.

He then hurried in the direction of the Center, afraid of reporting in late.

THREE

T
HE ROSY-FACED STABLE MAID,
Breeth, made Fremant and Tunderkin bowls of sweet otz, which she cooked over a little fire in the tack room. After that, they brought out the horses and brushed them down under the pale sky. High above their heads rode one of the six moons.

“How do you call that moon?” Fremant asked. His mood was still bad from the fight in the alley, and his knuckles hurt.

“Why, ’tis Brother, of course,” said Breeth with a smile. “How come you don’t know that?”

“So you know the names of all the moons?”

“Indeed I do, as do everyone, ’cos they’re all named the same.” She laughed. “It’s Brother the lot of them, ain’t it?”

“But they’re all different.”

“No, you silly, they’re all moons.”

Pulling Hengriss from the stable to make the beast piss in the yard, Tunderkin said, “Got to be extra care with this one. This one is Essanits’s steed.”

“What difference does that make?” Fremant asked.

“My old gran knew the types of folks she met with. You, Fremant, you’re always asking questions, you’d be the Eternal Stranger.”

He thought the observation was acute. He was eternally a stranger, even to himself.

“And how would your old gran typecast Astaroth?”

“Mad stallion…”

They began to brush down the horses. The animals stood still, their sides heaving in and out as they breathed through them, unaware their lives were passing, unaware even that they were alive in the full sense of the word.

“You ask too many questions. You’ll get in trouble.” Tunderkin ducked his head below the flank of Hengriss, to say in a low tone, “My old gran was one who saw into men’s minds. She’d say them as are tortured are the torturers. Now, shut your face and let’s get these beasts saddled up for morning inspection.”

The day was still chilly and the breath of the horses hung about them as they tacked up the patient beasts.

D
AYS WORE BY
and once more the Shawl covered the sky, darkening Stygia City, cooling the planet. Astaroth retreated into his private quarters, taking Aster with him. The so-called World Council, nominally under WAA supervision, was left in charge. Headless, it did nothing. Only Essanits was prepared to make decisions.

Although the appearance of the Shawl in its orbit was completely predictable, appearing over Stygia City as it did every ten days, the populace, according to its own slow-moving destiny, was so wrapped in inertia that no one ever made preparations for its arrival. A number of people died on every occasion that the Shawl passed overhead.

It was Essanits who set up a store where a slender ration of food could be obtained by any who needed it. Those who claimed food in this way had their forefinger dipped in a purple dye so that they could not make a repeat visit. This forethought on Essanits’s part saved many malnourished lives.

On the second day after its appearance overhead, the Shawl sank toward the western horizon. Normal life was resumed. A day later, Astaroth came roaring from his den, all boots and flowing robes. The food store was being shuttered when Astaroth came on it. Fremant and Cavertal, another guard, had to accompany him. Astaroth raged at the wastage. Yet he said not a word of reproof to Essanits, such was the aura of immunity which seemed to envelop the younger man.

Instead, Astaroth attacked one of Essanits’s stallholders.

“Why give away food? Men must earn their living, their very bread. That is a basic law of life.”

“Without food they might have died, sir, and had no law.” The man hung his head, in fear at any attempt to contradict the leader.

“Then they should have died. Those who would die are the ones who have no sense, who would not store food.”

Essanits, standing by, arms akimbo, said mildly, “Some of the poor are unable to afford to buy anything ahead of time, sir. They have to live from hand to mouth, if I may remind you.”

“You may, Soldier Essanits,” replied Astaroth, controlling his anger, “and I will remind you that such men are worth nothing to our community. The days of the egalitarian society we had on the ship after LPR in its final years are long over. Here we must fight for our living.”

Fremant could not resist speaking out. “Then those who have been saved from starvation are now able to fight for that living. Our community is too small for us not to value every single body on Stygia.”

Astaroth turned to survey his guard. “Our need is for real men, not for weaklings or impertinent dogs like you. Guard”—he pointed at Cavertal—“arrest this man! Relieve him of his weapons at once. Three days in the cells.”

“That’s unjust! I merely wished to point out—”

“Silence! You do wrong to speak at all!”

Essanits said, “He did no harm, sir. What he said is true. We are underpopulated. Would you arrest a man for speaking truth?” He stood rigidly upright, handsome, grim, prepared to confront the All-Powerful.

“A guard must hold his tongue in my presence.” Astaroth drew himself up as if he were a guard himself. Then he looked away with a dismissive shake of his head.

Cavertal reluctantly did as he was bid. With a length of leather, he lashed Fremant’s hands behind his back and marched him off.

Beneath the Center were cellars and prison cells. In no time, Fremant found himself thrust into one such cell.

“Sorry, pal,” said Cavertal in a low voice. “But you was asking for trouble, crossing him like that.” He slammed the door on his friend.

Astaroth, meanwhile, retired to his quarters, still vexed that he had been contradicted. Aster had retired to her room, saying she was unwell. Astaroth fumed but did nothing. Instead, he put his booted feet up on a chair and summoned his old wife, Ameethira, to keep him company.

“It’s funny,” she said, “but I keep getting headaches. I take a walk every day, except when the Shawl is overhead, of course, but still I have a headache.”

Speaking mildly but in his usual tone of contempt, he told her she was always complaining.

Paper-white, she asked in a quiet voice, “Do you wish to know where I walk?”

“Why should I care where you walk?” He glared at her shriveled form with contempt, at her old, torn clothes, which seemed to mark her out as a prisoner.

“I walk to the edge of the cliffs and I stand there and stare at the sea. It never rests. The waves never cease. And what do you imagine I think about?”

“How should I know what you think about, woman?”

“I think about throwing myself off the cliffs into the sea. That’s what I think about.”

She gave a sort of laugh and peered shortsightedly at her husband to judge his response.

“Go away,” he said. “Get out of my sight!”

She seemed to weaken. She held out a supplicatory hand. “Do you ever recall, Astaroth, the days when I was first reconstituted and was young and beautiful and you loved me?”

“Those days are gone,” he said, and scowled down at the floor. “No personal relationships anymore…”

After some while, when she felt like it, Aster appeared. “Mother Ameethira is not happy,” she said.

“What do you expect?” He told Aster to fetch him a glass of buskade.

“That young big mouth, Fremant—I am tired of his voice, tired of his face. He’s rotting in the cells at present. I’ll get rid of the little snot.”

“Fremant?” She was startled to hear his name. “Why, he’s a good guardsman, isn’t he? Punctual, loyal…”

“What do you know about it?” he asked.

“I happen to like him, that’s all.” She looked nervous. Her hands twisted about ceaselessly.

He grasped the arms of his chair. His face went red. His eyes bulged. “I had a report…Fool I was to ignore it. That you were seen with some young fellow. It was Fremant, wasn’t it? You dare slip away from me into his arms?’

“No, no, Papa! It wasn’t he! Honestly—”

Astaroth bounded up and seized her by the wrist. He dragged her to his chair, forcing her to kneel abjectly before him.

“Now, then—you’ve been doing it with that little snot, haven’t you? I could smell it on you!”

“Oh no, please—”

He struck her across the face with an open palm. “You did, didn’t you, you little whore? Admit it, or I’ll strangle you here and now!”

She screamed. He struck her again. Her lip was bleeding. Tears burst from her eyes at the pain.

“Oh no, no, please, Papa, please! You hurt me so!”

Astaroth thrust his burning face into hers. “I’ll hurt you more unless you tell me the truth. What did you do with him?” He grasped her throat and squeezed.

Aster gave a faint cry. She opened her mouth to gasp for air.

“He raped me…Just as you did!” The words were gasped out. “Let me go, you brute!”

He let her go, let her crumple to the floor, sobbing, sobbing at both her pain and her confession, knowing what it entailed.

F
REMANT WAS LYING ON THE FLOOR
of his cell, half-alive. The leader had burst into his cell and set about him with a cudgel, beating him here, beating him there. He felt as if every bone in his body were broken.

“You’ll stay here till I kill you,” said Astaroth, out of breath. “I’ll be back to deal with you again tomorrow.”

So, very well, then. It was to be death. He had but one day more to breathe, to exist, to sprawl on the cold stone.

Astaroth, like many lesser men, believed in revenge.

Fremant had heard that there was a religion somewhere which believed not in revenge but in its opposite, forgiveness.

Forgiveness
…the very word had a gentle touch, whereas
revenge
was like a sword dragged over cold stone. And yet forgiveness was so much harder to grant.

What had been said? He could hardly think, but in spasms it came to him. Yes, “turning the other cheek”…That had been a tenet of a great religion, a religion now lost.

In how many countries, how many tribes, were vendettas an abiding source of misery because it was held to be honorable never to forgive…

Well, that meant nothing now, if tomorrow marked the end of all things, all hopes, all mistakes…

“I’
LL DIE,”
he whispered to himself. “I’ll die. For sure I’ll die.” He saw above him a grille of iron bars which served to let in a glimmer of light.

The darkness whirled about him, the sight of light was lost.

“You’ll not die until you have answered our questions,” said another voice. “Doris was your wife. Where were you married? In some fucking mosque?”

“In a registry office in Harrow…I shall surely die…”

“Tell me her name.”

“I told you more than once. Doris.”

“Doris
who,
you bastard?”

“Doris McGinty.” He felt he would crumble from fatigue. They had kept him awake for fifty hours without rest.

“She was a white woman.”

“She was Irish.”

“She was a white woman, you bastard.”

“Yes.”

“How did you manage to marry a white woman?”

“Oh, for God’s sake. I thought this was a free country.”

“So it was, until you bastards started blowing things up, uttering threats, suicide-bombing.”

“That was nothing to do with me. I was a lawful law-abiding citizen.”

“But you were thinking of blowing the place up. You were an ally of this shit from Al-Muhajiroun. You wrote about killing the PM in your sodding book.”

“That was just a—just a joke, really…A bit unfortunate…”

The guard struck him across the nape of his neck with a wooden baton. He heard the small bones crunch.

A deep bespattered darkness fell upon him.

E
SSANITS CAME TO VISIT HIM IN HIS CELL.

“I find you in a bad way, Fremant,” he said. “I’m permitted to be in these cellars because our leader regards me as a hero. Because…” Here his voice faltered. “Because I wiped out the Dogovers.”

Fremant could not raise his voice above a whisper. “He will kill me tomorrow. I know that.”

“Astaroth’s reign of injustice must end, and with it his hateful creed. You have spirit. I cannot let you die. It’s against my”—he pronounced a word Fremant vaguely understood—“religion.”

About his neck Essanits wore a length of scarf. This he removed and went over to the iron bars of the grille. Standing on tiptoe, he tied the scarf to one of the bars.