The Transmigration of Souls (41 page)

Telling him a dirty joke? Getting each other aroused, the way men always do? Maybe a little while more and then they’ll...

And you could see uneasiness on the men’s faces too. Our men. Our useless, helpless little men. The ones who had women, fearing for their... private stash at first, waiting for it to be... spoiled. Profaned. You knew that was what they were thinking, the bastards.

But then? Further uneasiness. Counting horse barbarians, then counting naked women. Will they wait patiently, patiently take turns with us, or...

You could see Inbar thinking it first. Imagining himself trussed like a lamb, some bulky fellow upending him, defenseless rear end pointing at the sky, some leather-clad monstrosity opening his leather, exposing a disgustingly dirty prick and...

She’d flinched then, imagining Inbar’s scream.

And we walked and walked and walked and walked. Walked, unsullied, walked unraped, unbeaten, untortured, un-anything but exhausted, until we came to Solonikì.

Solonikì, where a big, fat Greek, blubbery limp-wristed fellow sweating right through a fine, embroidered silk tunic, had given this Shoz Dijiji, this mighty Black Bear, ten heavy round yellow metal disks, given him his coins and led them away.

Ling had whispered, “A golden
tálanton
apiece. I wonder how much that is?”

Kincaid muttered, “Probably about ten bucks.”

The tone had been scornful. Rahman smiled to herself, and thought, She doesn’t realize the rest of us don’t know how much ten dollars American
is
in UAR dinars or Chinese yüan... The slavemaster called to them, lisp recognizable right through the language barrier. Called them forth to be sold.

o0o

As they were marched out onto the stage before the raucous agora crowd, Kincaid realized she was getting used to the chains. Not so very different from getting used to being in the Corps, I guess... you do what you’re told. And they do what they will. A little surprising the Comancheros hadn’t raped at least the women, she supposed, but, when you saw them laughing together, playing touch football sometimes after dinner, when you saw what close friends they all seemed to be, real comrades in arms...

Or maybe just not damaging the merchandise. Rueful thought. How the Hell would anyone know how many times we’d been fucked? It’s not like we’re virgins or anything. Then, steeling herself for the supposed worst, even though it never came.

Memories of it happening before. Only twice, of course. But even once had been more than enough. Sixteen years old. Jogging along my favorite path in the woods one evening. Not so far from the high school, all alone, the sky full of indigo, stars coming out, jogging along, mind caught up in the music, the soft words crooning in my headphones...

I almost outran them. Almost. Tried to cut through the underbrush and get away, heart pounding.

That boy on the fucking motorbike was better than he should have been.

Then, trying to fight.

I think they might have gone easier on me if I hadn’t broken that skinny kid’s nose...

But, fucking Hell, I’m glad I did.

He didn’t even take a turn. Laying there crying and moaning until his friends led him away. Led him away and left me lying there.

Me, limping home, trying to stop the bleeding with my torn underwear. Hiding things from my mother and father. Going to school the next day and seeing, first one, then another. Jimmy back after a week with a metal thing on his nose, telling people how he crashed his bike into a tree, taking a lot of ribbing over that...

A lot more ribbing from his little Band of Brothers, because he hadn’t...

I wanted to kill them all.

What would it have been like, had I been able to... live out those old fantasies? Mark. It was Mark I hated the most. Images of him tied to a chair, back in some secret place only I knew about. Images of him begging me. Begging me all night long not to hurt him. Begging me just the way I begged him, while I laughed, just the way he had laughed. Then I’d hurt him anyway.

Just the way he hurt me.

I used to wish he’d get drunk and drown in the creek or something. But they all lived. They all got away...

Except for that damned Jimmy, who went out on his motorbike graduation night and somehow fell under a truck...

That was the one that mattered.

The other one?

Hardly worth remembering. Captured. Tortured. Hell, they even raped some of the men, God-damned gooks. Gave me a damn medal for my trouble, after the prisoner exchange.

Standing now on the platform, waiting to be sold. Waiting to be separated, taken away, chained to some fat asshole’s bed, maybe, and fucked forever. Stupid, useless image. More likely, chained to a shovel, which is just another way of being fucked forever.

Slavemaster calling out his yodel. Wonder how a Southern tobacco auctioneer’s call came to be used at a Greek slave market? Crowd of people in bright tunics and togas looking up at them, laughing and talking, pointing. Wonder if they’ll be allowed to come up here and finger us, inspect the goods?

Beyond them, the city. Greek city, all right, limestone buildings blinding white in the sun, as paintless as any neoclassical American monstrosity. Columns and colonnades. Pyramids made of rough-hewn stairs. All right, so it isn’t a Greek city. It’s a mish-mash. Dead souls falling out of the sky and coming back to life, going, Hey, what the Hell? Taking right up where they left off.

Beyond all of it, beyond the voices and the bustle, she could hear a faraway whisper of sound, almost impossible to detect over the crowd. Odd sound. Like a... motor.

Well. No reason they shouldn’t have motors in Heaven, is there?

Heaven
. Jesus Christ.

Whose probably around here somewhere too...

“Sergeant.” Squire Edgar’s voice, raised above a whisper, drawing the slavemaster’s immediate attention. “What the Hell is that?” Gesturing with his chin. The slavemaster came over and hit him lightly on the head with one fat fist. Snarled at him in Greek.

Inbar said, “He’s telling you to shut the fuck up.”

Kincaid turned and looked, squinting into the haze low over the buildings. You couldn’t see flat landscape, all of it hidden by the two- and three-story buildings of Solonikì, but...

“I don’t know.” Something. A distant bit of glitter in the sky, a silver fleck of something, soft mechanical growl louder now, rising over the massed human voice of the crowd. 

Silver dot slowly growing larger, catching the rays that fell out of the sky, reflecting them, making the whatever it was seem to sparkle. Ling said, “I know that sound. Airship. We use them a lot in Siberia and around the Pacific Basin.” Where Green China owned many little islands.

Now, the slavemaster turned to see what they were looking at, stood stockstill for a while, staring at the approaching airship, watching it grow from a silver freckle to a bright sliver, to a substantial cigar hanging against the otherwise featureless backdrop of the sky. The crowd down in the agora was growing silent as well, people turning and looking, conversations quieting until all the disparate voices were no more than a faraway murmur.

Finally, the slavemaster, hands on hips, said, “
Shit
.” Shit? How interesting. Not exactly the, um,
greekest
word I ever heard...

He turned and looked at his charges, sizing them up again, eying them one by one. “Well. I suppose some of you will turn out to be Americans.” English very crisp, with a recognizably Midwestern accent. Suburbs of Chicago, maybe, early Twenty-First Century.

Kincaid stepped forward, chains clattering, absurdly loud under the growing rumble of the airship’s engines. She smiled and said, “You got it, Bub. Every fuckin’ one of us.”

Slavemaster’s penciled-in eyebrows going up. “Even the three Chinks?” Gesturing at Genda, Ling and Amatersu.

She said, “Even the fat guy.”

The slavemaster looked at Inbar. “Well. I’m not surprised at that. Plenty of
them
up in High America.” Brows knitting now, eyes heating right up. “God damn that Shoz Dijiji. Told me you were some Arabs and Chinamen and a couple of Russians he caught down by the River.” Looked at her again, “I guess he figured you looked Russian enough,
gospozhá
.”

The engines above suddenly grew louder, going into reverse as the airship slid over the city, slid to a graceful stop, huge now, like an ocean liner in the sky. The slavemaster said, “Well. There goes my profit. God
damn
!” Meaty fist slapping into a fleshy palm. “When I get my hands on that lying Comanchero son of a bitch...”

o0o

Ling Erhshan stood with his friends in the middle of a rapidly emptying agora, while the slavemaster spoke to Kincaid. He said, “Now, when they get down here, you be sure to tell them, right off, that you were treated well. You got that?” There was a bit of
or else
in his voice, but...

Kincaid only grinned. “Were we?”

Slavemaster, a bit impatient: “Oh, come now, ah, Sergeant, is it? You weren’t
whipped
or anything. And I understand Shoz Dijiji’s boys didn’t even rape you.”

Ling smiled to himself. Right. What more could a girl ask for, eh? Like being delivered
virginis intactae
...

Up above, the dirigible had grown rather quiet, hanging up there, motionless, maybe four kilometers above the city. How are they keeping it still? Propeller blades on the six ducted-fan engines visibly motionless and... The two rearmost engines started up just then, turning over slowly, putt-putt-putt... All right, so there’s just not that much wind up there.

If you looked closely, you could see tiny figures moving, tiny people going out on the pylons supporting the engines, opening doors and going into the cowlings. Taking this opportunity to make a service call, while it’s quiet in there.

A small gondola up near the nose, all glass, more like a blister than a true blimp-car. Windows set flush in the hull further back. Tiny faces there too. Not waving or anything. An occasional glint from one of the faces. Binoculars?

Design a lot like the
Hindenberg
. Bigger though. Airship close to a thousand meters long. Looks like its right on top of us, it’s so large. Smooth skin. Monocoque hull design? That’d make good sense, if they’ve got the material technology to manage it, airship hull thin as stainless-steel paper, held rigid by the pressure of the gas within.

Helium? Hydrogen?

Visions of the real
Hindenberg
going down.

Aft of the two rows of windows, three big biplanes were hanging under the hull. Hard to tell how big, really. Can’t see the cockpits, but those things might be doors in the side. Maybe as big as Caproni bombers. Or Gothas?

Faint creak of metal on metal from high above, squeak, squeak, squeak... one of the biplanes dropping slowly away from the hull. Being lowered on a big hook, hook attached to a thick, two-armed boom. Very good.
Very
good.

Is it my heart that’s pounding?

Odd, far away groaning sound. Grr-rr-rr... Single prop in the nose of the biplane starting to turn, all by itself. Well. Electric starter. Very nice indeed... The engine suddenly caught with a chattering sound, spinning up, smoothing to a steady hum, dragging the zeppelin forward a little, two of the airship’s engines, the midships pair, starting up in reverse, compensating.

The hook let go and the biplane dropped, banking away, out from under the mother ship, rising above it, circling out over the plain, then banking back toward the city. The slavemaster, hugging himself with fat arms, said, “I wish the Hell they’d never come. Why can’t they have their
own
Heaven to be dead in?”

Ling laughed, softly, to himself. A lot of people felt that way, back when the world was first overrun by the Plastic Men with their Plastic Hamburgers. Then they shut the door on us and we were mad at them for that too. The biplane swooped down over the far end of the now-empty agora, bounced on the cobblestone pavement, engine stuttering noisily, dropped its small tailwheel with a harsh scrape, came rolling toward them, propeller windmilling, engine turning over at idle, going pop-pop-pop...

Slavemaster, turning to Kincaid: “Now you remember, we treated you all right!”

She looked at him, and snarled, “I’ll try to remember that when they’re looking at my snatch. Asshole.” You could see the slavemaster grow pale.

What would they do if we told them otherwise?

Ling took another long look up at the silver airship. Those big squares outlined on the hull. Those would be bomb bay doors, then. Image of American napalm falling on an ancient pseudoGreek city. Does limestone burn? Of course it does. Just ask the Persians. The pillar of smoke would be visible for a long way, on a world like this. Really a long way, if it really is a world without end.

The biplane rumbled to a stop, men with white faces looking out at them through cloudy glass windows. You could see things like crushed bugs and dead birds stuck all over the radiator of this thing’s liquid-cooled in-line engine too. A twelve cylinder job, I think. World War Two vintage. A little disquiet. Why? I wanted a nice, air-cooled radial, what you’d expect to see in a plane like this. Something from the 1920s, perhaps.

A Liberty engine? Was that what I wanted? Don’t remember any more. Too long since I was a boy, hiding in the library, doting on an alien past.

The door popped open, banging against the corrugated hull, metal ladder unfolding dropping to the ground, followed by a husky bald man in flying leathers. Bomber jacket. Brown leather pants. Black boots almost up to his knees. No flying helmet, though. No goggles. Of course not. No open cockpit.

Eying us with evident amusement. Especially the women. Of course the women. This is a man, and they’re all naked. He smiled, and said, “Hello. Are you the new Americans? Our spies weren’t quite...” Big, blunt-fingered hand extended. “Well. We’re here from Search and Rescue. You can call me Edgar.”

Edgar. The man had yet another Midwestern accent, Chicago once again. He sounds like Ernest Hemingway. Like the voice narrating that old film about the Spanish Civil War.