What Lot's Wife Saw (44 page)

“Siccouane, you brought us here to witness its lifeblood being slowly drained away and now you expect us to live on with this on our consciences?” Regina demanded.

“That’s right,” Siccouane responded curtly.

The Lady nodded her head in reluctant agreement. I caught the Judge looking hungrily at my pistol but I told him to forget it, he had no right to a swift way out. He visibly shrank.

“Why was it only the six of us that saw it crossing the bay?” wondered the Judge.

“Because it was our victim and ours alone. Don’t pretend that you don’t understand, you can’t be that drunk.”

We sat in silence, in our mortally injured victim, while dreading the speed at which it would rot from within. We smelled the slightly weakened scent of iodine arising from the scuppers but also had begun to hear the insatiable gnawing of the violet curse working its evil on the wood, sailcloth and metal. It brought home the magnitude of my crime. No stifling Colony would be able to hide me anymore, no bottle of rare Napoleon would attenuate my guilt and no uniform could protect me. I’d been fooled, just as I had in the desert when I thought that the plateau had been covered in snow, but had discovered the unwelcome truth as soon as I’d got close enough. Now I was too close. I should have harkened to the warning in the desert that finding the explanation is often anything but a relief.

“Where do we go from here?” asked the Judge.

“To Hell,” Regina barked in answer.

We got up and slid down the rope with care. We patted the hull of IEREMOI in farewell and we felt the first blistering of the paintwork under our fingertips. The deterioration would be complete by dawn. We didn’t bother to retrieve our discarded lanterns, as we wouldn’t need them. We stumbled back in the dark. By now, darkness was more afraid of us than we were of it.

I reached the Guardhouse looking down on my middle-aged hands, which could only produce pain, tears and blood, and only when I looked up did I see the commotion around me. I saw lights in the western windows of the tower armoury. A red alarm signal was flying on the flagpole.

I heard the pounding of boots running down the circular stairs accompanied by strangled commands and the snapping of ammunition magazines into position. I stopped a guard and asked him who’d unlocked the armoury.

“The Officer of the Watch, Captain. There is rioting in Happy Worker Square,” he said, panting.

I ran up the steps and went into the armoury. The Officer in Charge was handing out magazines of real bullets and the Officer of the Watch, Navalle, was standing over a map. He gave me a hurried salute and continued barking out orders and assigning groups of men to the regions of the map where they’d deploy. I asked him to describe the danger they were responding to.

“The southern quarters are restless, Captain. I am sending out two platoons.”

“Suez Mamelukes!”

Navalle looked condescending. “Nothing like that, sir. Salt miners, they’ve gone crazy.”

“And you’re issuing live ammunition for the salt miners?”

“These salt miners are very different from the ones that you remember, sir.”

“I’ll go with one of the platoons,” I said, “and get that damn alarm signal down. Anyone would think we’re being invaded!”

I gathered the platoon around me and ordered them to use tranquillising darts instead of bullets. I reminded them of the regulations which forbade shooting colonists since they are the lifeblood of the Consortium and we weren’t allowed to destroy it. Today we were just going to send some miners to sleep.

We quickly ran out of the parade ground and I asked the guard running next to me to tell me if he knew why Navalle had ordered live ammunition. Between breaths, he answered that the miners had gone mad because they thought that the Suez Mamelukes had fled the desert because a massive catastrophe was imminent. We were just waiting for it to strike and bury us like idiots. I realised that the guard was more terrified than the miners he was being sent to subdue, so I sought to cross-check his information.

I spotted Batourim, whose outspokenness and lack of diplomacy I could always depend on. His body still bore evidence of the beating he had received in the desert, so I asked him why he wasn’t in bed. He told me that when he’d heard the red alert, he’d volunteered to finally see some real Mamelukes. And now he was being sent to sedate miners who thought the end of the world was coming because, working in a shaft in the depths of the crater, they’d found some old bones and an oar with archaic symbols on it. And, if that hadn’t been enough, a big berlinga nearly overturned when its wheels got caught up in a fisherman’s net that’d appeared out of the ground. Ancient Sodom was rising from its resting place, complete with its sea. Before the Biblical punishment, there’d been blue waters with fishermen and shells in this area, at least according to Scripture and definitely according to the miners.

“Batourim, all these things you describe about shells and nets could be chance events.”

“Tell that to the miners, Captain,” he answered impatiently.

I knew that sooner or later we would have to face the consequences of the silent Palace. Salt miners were afraid of their own shadow, especially when they didn’t feel the stabilising presence of the Governor’s guiding hand. I looked upwards, hoping to see Allah’s Spirit sending me some sign to reassure me but only the Colony’s black foreboding gloom mocked me from above.

We reached Happy Worker Square only to find it plunged into darkness. The miners had broken all the fish-oil lamps on the posts in the square and in the surrounding blocks as well. No window had even a token light shining and the stars, as usual, weren’t visible. Damn! I should’ve thought of bringing lanterns with us, there was no excuse. I should’ve foreseen these tactics since the miners, like earthworms, had the advantage of seeing in the dark! I couldn’t seem to plan ahead any longer, I was destined to lead my battalions to their doom.

I set my platoon in a line abreast to sweep the square. I told them to continually touch the next man down the line, and to make sure that it was guard, not miner, they were touching. They should avoid speaking and making loud noises with their boots. We couldn’t see the miners but at least we could try to listen for them.

The guards followed my orders, their ears straining to locate the rebellious miners. In total darkness we could quickly lose our sense of orientation and become too afraid to move. Miners were cowards and wouldn’t be stupid enough to attack a formation of troops, but they could see us and we couldn’t see them. We felt totally exposed.

Suddenly, we heard a shot being fired and turned in its direction with pistols raised. I asked what’d happened and who’d fired. It transpired that someone had just tried to illuminate the scene. I shouted at them not to use live ammunition; these were miners, damn it, not Mamelukes. Anyone shooting a live bullet from now on would be expelled! That idiot Navalle had armed them as if they’d been going on a foray in the desert. If I could’ve just used my brain for once, I would have collected the bullets before setting out into the unlit square, since it was quite possible the guards would panic in the dark and let loose. But I hadn’t thought ahead; I never do these days.

We continued our uncertain advance over the square. We couldn’t estimate how far along we were but we were expecting to fetch up against the statue in the middle. Too often, one of us jerked in alarm and let fly a pointless dart. We heard them ricochet off the stones. At some point, a muffled cry was heard that meant that a dart had found a target. The miners were here. We fired a salvo in the direction of the cry and were rewarded with more cries and the sound of bodies falling. We’d found them. But the cries seemed to encircle us. They were everywhere. We started to stumble over the prostrate bodies and became disorganised. A number of guards were felled by stray darts in the confusion. I ordered the others to keep to their line and shoot low to avoid hitting anyone in the eyes (which was a punishable offence) but to be careful not to shoot at anyone who was already down since a double dose was dangerous.

We had become an amorphous mass, the quick and the tranquillised. The lines had been disrupted. We were blindly shooting away without knowing who the person next to us was. Guard or miner, friend or target? I should’ve notified the ambulance berlingas to be standing by before we’d entered the square. I should’ve held back and sent someone for lanterns before precipitating this mess. I should’ve resigned since I’m only capable of causing disaster, not averting it.

A shot rang out and the one that caught the bullet grunted in pain as he fell wounded, not asleep. I felt my way towards the sound, bellowing not to use bullets, for God’s sake, no bullets! There was a second shot from the weapon, a face was lit up from the discharge. It was a stony-faced Batourim.

I tackled him, and wrestled for his gun but he hit me like a maniac. I finally pinned him down. I brought out my fish-oil lighter and held it near his face. His eyes were crazed.

“Batourim, are you out of your mind? Do you want us all to be exiled? Didn’t I scream ‘no bullets’?”

He blew out the flame and hugged me.

“I’m scared, Captain,” was all he said.

JUDGE BATEAU

… The Colony seemed to be burning up from an inner fever. Fear spread from quarter to quarter like an epidemic. Everyone started to find broken shells, dried-out starfish, goat bones, human teeth and so on, in the galleries of the mines, under paving stones and under the floorboards of their homes.

The most worrying aspect was that deathly silence had taken the place of all the talk and speculation. Streets were deserted and no one could be seen on the squares after dusk. Almost every evening we had incidents, while on one day a huge brawl broke out between the loaders and the transporters, which quickly spiralled out of control. Countless dock workers waded into the fray and cheerfully laid about. Half-dressed colonists coming out of their houses and passengers of berlingas jumped at the chance of a free-for-all. Port officials tried to break it up but on being attacked by both sides they quickly withdrew. Bags packed with salt were thrown into the sea where they floated awkwardly. The guard was called in and it fired a barrage of hypnotic darts at the combatants. The battle raged until the hill of tranquillised bodies turned into a mountain. The enforced calm allowed a desperate stream of ambulance berlingas to start transporting the casualties and the sedated to the Infirmary. The absence of the Governor’s shadow on proceedings had unnerved the colonists and filled them with a sense of foreboding as the anniversary celebrations drew nearer. The pent-up stress was like a volcano ready to erupt at the slightest provocation and manifested itself in daily vandalism and violence. Employees wouldn’t show up for work, fines went unpaid and managers were ignored.

I continually postponed trials because the courthouse began to be surrounded by bands of suspicious-looking people who seemed to be waiting for any excuse to attack and leave nothing standing in their wake. I could even hear those proverbial blind, deaf and dumb cyclists grinding their teeth under their wide hats and I no longer felt safe in their vehicles. Only a scant week had passed since the death of Bera, and the Colony was falling into anarchic chaos like a neglected child who becomes wilder and wilder in the hope of, in the end, gaining the attention of his indifferent parents. Unfortunately, the Palace remained impassive, sealed and silent.

So it was that we came to Thursday the 27th of August. Like every Thursday, I had to transport the Green Box to the Palace but I considered that it had become too dangerous to parade through the Colony carrying something so valuable and provocative. With the colonists at such a fever pitch, I doubted that it’d survive intact. I had repeatedly attempted to inform the Governor but each time he’d interrupted me, pointing to the Purple Star on my chest. “Live up to the demands of your position,” he’d say, and then he’d renew our rendezvous for the next lunch. Either he was blind to the pandemonium outside or he just pretended not to care.

I’d met with Captain Drake the previous evening and had begged him to send guards to the port to escort the Box’s procession. Drake complained that he was using all the available forces to quell the unrest and that for each caravan he was also forced to allot a company, which would then go on three days’ enforced leave to recover, so that depleted the fighting strength of the Guardhouse. Street patrols were woefully inadequate as a result but, grudgingly, he would do the best he could.

I wasn’t reassured. Drake had changed and was quite lackadaisical about his duties lately. All he cared about was tending to his caravans and it consumed all his energy. Ever since he spent time in the desert without spotting a single Mameluke, his mental screws had been dangerously loosened. He was so relieved to have been excused from the luncheon meetings that the middle of the desert seemed a downright paradise. He took naps on the bags of salt as he was wheeled through the desert and then stacked them in neat “B” and “L” shapes at the destination. Meanwhile, the Colony was stewing in its own juice. The three officers that were delegated to command in his place, Navalle, Gomez and Smailovitz, could never agree on any issue so they constantly bickered. The men who were sent on crowd control were given only vague orders on tactics. The disorganisation permeated headquarters and the whole compound and Drake was never there to solve anything. The colonists sensed the reduced capabilities of the guards and had grown even wilder.

In my villa I’d waited in vain for Drake’s promised guards till eight in the evening. Thus, I went down alone, hoping that I might find a contingent at the port. There were a number of colonists gathered around the phosphorescent white line which delineates the route that the Green Box takes and that increased my worry that they’d attack it. I’m not paid enough to expose myself to that kind of danger, damn it. My contract didn’t stipulate that I lay my life on the line every Thursday.