Saul of Sodom: The Last Prophet (15 page)

  
Duke sighed again and shook his head.   “Yeh cannae be comin’ round th’ mess
nae more,” he said. “No ava lad.”

  
“I know.”

  
“Ah don’ know yeh n’more,” said the ex-patriot severely.  “Not after this.”

  
“I understand.”  

  
Duke fell silent.  His eyes were wide and his breath was heavy.  “Aye… aye,” he
said, nodding his head.  He then turned his attention back to the girl, who
meanwhile appeared to have fallen into a slumber.  He came closer and gawped as
one would at some incomparably precious object.  “Where the ‘ell d’yeh find
‘er?” he gasped.

  
“I do not remember.”

  
Duke looked back into the truck.  The open crate was about the size of a small
refrigerator, with very little discernible cracks or seams for light or air to
seep through.  “Ne’r seen a crate li’ tha’ before.”

  
“It is a body box,” said Saul.  “They use them to transport corpses and body
parts from the warzones for strip-down.  It was the only way to get her through
the scans in customs.”

  
“How lang she bin in tha’ thing?”

  
“Two days.”

  
“Shiite…”

  
The girl coughed and shivered, holding the blanket close to her chin.  Her
eyelids were heavy, but the cold denied her sleep.

  
“Puir lass must be sair hungert … Hold a minute, I mightae ‘ave summat.”

 
 Duke hobbled to the front of the truck and disappeared for about a minute.  In
the meantime, Saul crammed one of the brown bundles into his only vacant
pocket.  When Duke returned, he was holding half a large bar of dark
chocolate.  He held the chocolate bar out in the air and when the little head
rose, the big, pearlescent eyes widened ravenously.

  
“Take it.”

  
As soon as he gave the word, the girl snatched the bar, tore off the wrapping
and assailed the contents, gasping and munching intermittently. He stretched
his right hand to reach into his left pocket and drew a small pile of banknotes
and held the money out to Duke.

 
 “You have done more than I deserve,” he said.  “I may not see you again.”

  
“Yeh got a mouth teh feed yerself now, lad,” said Duke.  “Dinnae ye worry ‘bout
us n’ more.”

  
The old soldier was set in his ways.  Saul tucked the money back into his
pockets and the two men stood staring at one another.  When he raised an open
hand, Duke caught it immediately and held tight.

  
“I never told you my name.”

  
Old Duke chuckled.  “Dinnae ask, dinnae tell,” he replied, and let go of his hand. 
“Fare thee well, Martial…  Guid luck.”

 
He turned, punched the switch on the side of the truck and limped away as the
shutter came down.   The driver’s door screeched shut, the engine griped to a
start and gurgled. He pulled out of the alley and trundled on into the hoary
night.  The girl fell asleep in his arms.

  
“…Wake up.”

  
Little Naomi’s eyelids prized open as he lowered her gently to the floor.

  
They stood before a large double-door at the tower’s peak and he brought the right
side of his face up to the circular recess on the door’s side.  There was a
bright flash and the door unlocked and opened.

 
Confronted with a wall of darkness, he instinctively held the girl back and
edged through the doorway.  The moment he crossed the threshold, lights
occurred from the deep, one after the other.  The light illuminated a palatial
foyer ending at a towering wall of crystal-clear glass, and the space between
was decked with mosaics of parquetry, walled with stone as radiant as alabaster
and furnished with velvet, and a spiral staircase joined two floors.

 
 At the far end of the foyer, a big screen switched on by itself and began
broadcasting the latest news from the global media.  A blue flame swayed and
danced in a crystal firebox.  The clouds passed and the rim of a waxing
crescent moon glimpsed through the skylight. 

  
Daunted by the opulence of the place, he stood back from the threshold. 
Meanwhile, little Naomi, beckoned by the warmth, drifted in and leaned her
forehead sleepily against his leg.  She could barely stand   

  
“Can I sleep now?” she yawned.

  
“Not yet,” he said.

  
She was covered in filth from the journey, her wounds were discoloured and the
bindings were loose.

  
“I have to clean you,” he said.

  
“Clean… you,” the girl parroted him with a yawn.

  
He lifted her up and cradled her.

  
As he walked about the house, he noticed a full ashtray on the table-top in
front of the big holoscreen and a crystal glass with a dribble of scotch at the
bottom.  The satin of the drapery and upholstery radiated the smell of tobacco
and the carpet was ruffled and folded over. Similar signs of habitation were
scattered all around.  And whilst he had no memory of the place, his legs
seemed to know where to take him:   The adjoining corridor, second door on the
left.

   He
opened the bathroom door and turned on the light, swept away a piece of
walker’s lingerie and a bloody towel and sat the girl down gently on the basin
counter.  The cold surface sent a waking shiver through her.  He unravelled the
gauze from the pauper-like hands and assessed her wounds with a single glance.

  
The deep cut on her upper arm would surely leave a scar.  The abrasion on her
face had browned, as did the scalding on her hands.  The rest was mild
bruising.  He laid one of Duke’s brown packages on the counter, opened it, and
inside, he found a box of saline, cotton swabs, wound-sealer, gauze,
antiseptic, dermal repair and antibiotics.  After looking over each item, he
took the antiseptic and regarded her with some diffidence.

  
“This may hurt a little,” he said, excusing himself in advance.

   
Little Naomi was quiet with submission and looked away with a cringe, braced
for pain.  Her tiny fingers juddered as he swabbed away at the deep cut with
saline, dabbing off the dried blood and dirt.  He shook with her every wince
and sudden breath, her pain seeming to amplify in vicariousness.  

 
“You must wash before I can treat them,” he said, then paused, as though
waiting for her approval.

  
When the girl remained silent, he looked away uneasily and lifted her off the
counter.

  
The bathtub was a deep depression in an altar of white stone large enough for
two adults, and he laid her down in the middle.  He took the shower nozzle from
the wall and when she tried to handle it, her burned hands recoiled in pain and
the nozzle fell and rattled in the tub.

  
“S-sorry,” she stuttered

  
He picked the nozzle up from the tub with a sigh.

 
 “I will do it…”

  
With strange discomfort he removed the soiled, baggy shirt from the little
frame, and he could see the large, moonstone eyes seeming to judge him the
whole time and as he did his utmost to avert his own eyes. He noticed, for the
first time, a silver necklace and a large gold pendant hanging by the girl’s
neck. 

  
His hand rose to remove it and as soon as she detected his intention, the girl
snatched the pendant in both of her hands and held it away from him. 

  
He stopped and gazed at her silently.

 
 “It is alright,” he assured.  “… I will give it back.”

  
The little hands shook around the pendant as she looked, for a moment, as
though she were about to cry again.  She slowly and reluctantly let go.

 
 He undid the clasp and the necklace dropped into his hands with the pendant.
He set the water temperature to 70 degrees and lowered the pressure, and when
he looked up at the girl again, he froze.

  
An odd hesitancy came over him as to what he was about to do, and he felt
suddenly… unfit -- overcome by a deep, distraught sense of contemptibility
unlike anything he had ever felt before. 

  
“Saul.”

  
He was finally drawn in to her eyes.  The dread arrested him and his pulse
escalated.  He shook off his trance.

  
“Saul…”

  
“Hold out your arms.”

  
His voice rose to a sudden pitch of hostility and the girl raised her arms out
in the air at once.  He waited for the rush of passion to pass, then slowly
poured the water over her head.

 
 The grime slipped off her in streams of brown.  He lathered up the sponge to
apply the soap carefully around the wounds: daubing, rinsing, daubing.

 
 “Turn.”  

  
And she turned, puffin-like, still holding her little arms in the air.  

  
After she was cleaned, her wounds covered and her hand bound with fresh gauze,
he put a cotton sweater over her head, the only suitable item of clothing he
could find.  The oversized sweater hung over her left shoulder and draped down
to her ankles.  He carried a bundled blanket in one hand and led her by the
other.  The big screen switched off just as the latest announcements from the
First Region Senior Commission began.

  
“You can sleep here,” he said.

  
The girl looked down at the sofa, then all around the towering space
surrounding her, settling on the blue flame dancing in the glass box beside
them, the long sleeves swaying at her sides.  Finally, her large and troubled
eyes turned on Saul.

  
“Where will
you
sleep?” she asked.

  
“In the room at the end.”

  
She turned to look at where he indicated, and then turned back again.

 
 “OK,” she said.

  
She looked to be concealing a kernel of angst behind the shell of innocence.

  
“Is something wrong?” he asked.

  
The little head shook.

  
“I’m OK,” she said.

  
“… OK.”

  
She remained with her head tilted all the way back, gazing up at him, seeming
to deliberate something.  Then, next moment, the girl zipped forward and put
her arms around him.

 
 “Thank you,” she whispered, and let go of her embrace a moment later, leaving
him fixed to the spot as though shot through the core. 

  
She tried to hop over the edge of the long settee with little snorts of
struggle: one hop, two hop, three.  When she botched her third attempt, he gave
her bottom a little nudge and she rolled deep into the couch, curling up like a
woodlouse and shivering relief.   He laid the blanket over her and, almost
instantly, she fell asleep.  The little snuffles got lower and lower the
further he receded to the other side of the house, keeping his eyes fixed on
her until she was out of sight.  

  
His knees gave way under him and he collapsed into a chair at the kitchen
table, breathing deep breaths and cringing with agony.  His sinews were sandpaper,
grating his bones.  His heartbeats were little bombs exploding in his head, but
it did not matter.  He had done it.  He had saved a life – the ultimate act of
rebellion.  But, in the twilight of that brief reprieve, all the quandaries he
had suppressed up until that point began to surface.  What now?  A civilian –
in martial boarders.  A civilian
child
…  Possibly the only child in the
martial world.

  
He took out all the contents of his coat pockets -- first, the second brown
bundle Duke had given him, then the second stack of notes and then his cell. 
He laid them all on the table.  Finally, he took one last item out of his inner
pockets and removed his coat.

  
He held the last item between his thumb and index finger, and set it down on
the table directly in front of him.  He kept his eyes fixed on the empty, black
neural canister as he unwrapped the brown package and opened a fresh pack of
cigarettes, lit a cigarette, puffed, pulled the ash tray toward him and leaned
back in his seat, eyes glaring like an interrogator’s.

 
 He tipped the canister over and the little silver tablets rolled out over the
table.  An eel of anxiety squirmed in his gut…

  
He was disturbed momentarily by the girl, coughing from across the room:
croaky, hoarse coughs.  She would need medicine.  She was bound to need many
things unprocurable in a martial city.  He stood up and checked all of the
kitchen cupboards and the pantry.  After probing every nook and cranny and
disposing of what was rotten, he had come upon enough food for maybe four days
at the most.  She would need clothes too.  And that raised the fresh question
as to where he was going to find clothes for a child.  As the list of
necessities continued to lengthen, it immediately became apparent that he would
need Duke’s help again at some point in spite of his earlier promise.  He took
the last draw of his cigarette and sat back down, picked up his cell, scrolled
through the short list of IDs in his contacts and, rather un-optimistically,
typed the message:

“
I know you have done me enough favours.  I know
you do not want to see me.  I need something. You are the only one who can help.
I will pay any price.  “The Grove”, 4
^th
Street, Orion Avenue, Haven
District.  Penthouse floor.  I will wait for you.
”