Use of Weapons (35 page)

The
one other person he ever saw regularly was a man who flew a kite on the high
hills. They only saw each other from a distance. At first it just happened that
their paths never crossed, but later he made sure that they didn't meet; he
would change direction if he saw the gaunt figure of the man walking towards
him, climb up a different hill if he saw the little red kite flying above the
summit he'd intended to head for. It had become a sort of tradition, a little
private custom.

The
days went on. He sat on a hill once, and saw a slave running through the fields
beneath, through the strange slow patterns that the currents in the wind pushed
through the golden-red pelt of the land. The slave's path left a trail like the
wake behind a ship. She got as far as the river, where the landlord's mounted
overseer ran her down. He watched the overseer beat the woman - saw the long
stick rise and fall, tiny in the distance - but he couldn't hear anything
because the wind was in the wrong direction. When the woman finally lay still
on the river bank, the overseer got down off his mount and knelt near her head;
he saw something flash, but could not tell exactly what was going on. The
overseer rode off; hobbled slaves came and took the woman away, later.

He
made a note.

That
evening, after dinner in the house of the old couple, once the wife had gone to
bed, he told the old man what he had seen. The man nodded slowly, chewing on a
mildly narcotic root, and spat juice into the fire. The overseer was known to
be strict, the old man said; he took the tongue of any slave who tried to
escape. He kept the tongues drying on a string stretched over the entrance to
the slaves' compound at the lordship's farm.

He
and the old man drank some fierce grain spirit from little cups, and then the
old man told him a folk tale.

In
the tale, a man walking through the wild wood was tempted from the path by some
beautiful flowers, and then saw a handsome young woman lying asleep in a
clearing. He went to the maiden, and she woke. He sat down beside her and as
they talked he realised that she smelled of flowers, a perfume more wonderful than
anything he had ever experienced before, and so intense that he was made dizzy
by the heady strength of it. After a while, surrounded by her flowery scent,
enchanted by her softly lilting voice and shy demeanour, he asked to kiss her,
and finally was allowed, and their kisses grew passionate, and they coupled.

But
as they did so, even from the first moment that joined them, whenever the man
looked out of one eye he saw the woman change. From one eye she looked as she
had from the first, but looking through the other eye she was older, no longer
just past her childhood. With each beat of their love she grew older (though
only seen through one eye), through her maturity and late glow and the matron
look, to spry then frail old age.

All
the time the man could see her in all her youth by just closing one eye - and
certainly could not stop himself from the act they had embarked upon - but
always he was tempted to sneak a look through the other eye, and be shocked and
amazed at the terrible transformation taking place beneath him.

In
the last few movements of his knowledge, he closed his eyes, only opening both
at the moment of fulfilment, when he saw - with both eyes, now - that he had
taken to him a rotting corpse, already known by worms and grubs; the smell of flowers
changed in that instant to an overpowering stench of corruption, but in such a
way that he knew that it had always smelled like that, and as his loins gave
themselves to the corpse, his belly threw out his last meal at the same time.

The
wood spirit had his life by two strands, therefore, and with both hands took a
firm grip of him, unravelled him from the weave of life, and dragged him away
to the shadow world.

His
soul was shattered into a million pieces there, and thrown over the world, to
make up the souls of all pollen-flies, which bring new life and old death to
flowers, at the same time.

He
thanked the old man for telling him the story, and told him some tales he
remembered from his own upbringing.

A
few days later he was running after one of the small animals on the moor; it
skidded on some dew-wet grass and tumbled end-over-end, finally falling, limbs
spread, on some stones, winding itself. He gave a victorious, whooping cry and
threw himself forward down the slope towards the animal as it wobbled to its
feet; he jumped the last couple of metres, landing with both feet, just beside
where the animal had fallen; it collected itself and sped off again, unharmed,
and vanished down a hole. He laughed, breathing hard, sweating. He stood there,
put his hands on his knees and bent at the waist, trying to get his breath
back.

Something
moved under his feet. He saw it, felt it.

There
was a nest under him. He had landed right on it. The eggs, their speckled
shells shattered, spread their fluids over his boot heels and into the twigs
and moss.

He
moved his foot, already sick in his heart. Something black wriggled underneath.
It moved into the sunlight; a black head and neck; a black eye staring up at
him, bright and hard as a jet pebble at the bottom of a brook. The bird
struggled, making him jump back a little, as though he had landed with naked
feet on something that stung; the bird flapped hopelessly out onto the moor
grass, hopping on one foot, dragging one limp wing after it. It stopped, a
little way off, sideways to him, and tipped its head, seeming to regard him.

He
wiped his boots on the moss. All the eggs were smashed. The bird made a small
keening noise. He turned away and began to walk off, then stopped, cursed,
retraced his steps and stamped after the bird, catching it easily in a storm of
squawks and feathers.

He
twisted its neck and dropped the limp remains into the grass.

That
evening he stopped writing his journal and never returned to it. The weather
grew humid and oppressive and no rains fell. The man with the kite waved and
called out to him one day, from the top of a hill; he hurried away, sweating.

It
was ten or so days after the incident with the bird that he admitted to himself
he would never be a poet.

He
left a couple of days later and was never heard of again, even though the
lord's marshal sent word to every town in the land, because the stranger was
suspected of being involved in what happened the night he left, when the
overseer at the lord's farm was found trussed in his bed, his face fixed in an
expression of darkest horror, and his mouth and throat stuffed with dried human
tongues and pieces of blank paper, on which he had choked to death.

Nine

He
slept until after dawn, then went for a walk to think. He left via the service
tunnel from the main hotel to the annexe, and left the dark glasses in his
pocket. The hotel had cleaned the old raincoat; he put it on and some thick
gloves and wound a scarf round his neck.

He
walked carefully along warmed streets and dripping pavements, and held his head
up to gaze at the sky. His breath went before him. Little snow-falls slumped
off buildings and wires as the weak sunlight and a mild breeze raised the
temperature. The gutters ran with clear water and soggy bergs of bumping
slush; pipes from buildings ran or dripped with the melt and, when a vehicle
passed, it did so with a wet hiss. He crossed the road to the other side, where
the sun was.

He
climbed steps and crossed bridges; he walked gingerly over icy parts where
there was no heating, or it had failed. He wished he'd put on better boots;
these looked fine but they didn't have enough grip. To avoid falling you had to
walk like an old man, hands splayed as though trying to grasp a stick, bending
at the waist when you wanted to walk straight-backed. This annoyed him, but
walking on without acknowledging the changed conditions, and slipping on his
backside, appealed to him even less.

When
he did slip, it was in front of some young people. He was walking carefully
down some icy steps leading onto a broad suspension bridge over a railway
junction. The youngsters were walking towards him, laughing and joking with
each other. He divided his attention between the treacherous steps and the
group. They looked very young, and their actions, gestures and pealing voices
all seemed to bubble with energy, suddenly making him feel his age. There were
four of them; the two young men trying to impress the girls, talking loudly.
One of the girls in particular was tall and dark, and elegant in that unselfconscious
manner of the recently matured. He kept

his
eyes on her, straightening his back, and just before his feet went out from
under him, felt a slight swagger return to his walk.

He
crashed down on the last step, and sat for a moment, then smiled thinly and got
up just before the four young people drew level with him. (One of the young men
was guffawing, making a show of covering his mufflered mouth with a gloved
hand.)

He
brushed some snow from the tails of the raincoat, and flicked some of it at the
young man. They went by and on up the steps, laughing. He walked halfway across
the bridge - grimacing at the pain seeping up from his backside - and heard a
voice call; he turned around and took a snowball full in the face.

He
caught a glimpse of them laughing as they sprinted away from the top of the
steps, but he was too busy clearing the snow from his nostrils and stinging
eyes to see properly. His nose throbbed fiercely, but hadn't re-broken. He
walked on, passing an older couple walking arm in arm, who shook their heads
and tutted and said something about damned students. He just nodded to them and
wiped his face with a handkerchief.

He
smiled as he left the bridge, up more steps to an esplanade cut under old
office buildings. Once, he knew, he would have been embarrassed at what had
happened, embarrassed at slipping, at being seen to slip, at being hit by the
snowball after so gullibly turning round on cue, and at the elderly couple
witnessing his embarrassment. Once he might have chased after the youngsters,
to give them a fright at least, but not now.

He
stopped at a small hot drinks stall set up on the esplanade and ordered a mug
of soup. He leant against the stall and pulled off one glove with his teeth; he
held the steaming mug in his hand, feeling the warmth. He went to the railings,
sat down on a bench and drank the soup slowly, in careful sips. The man in the
soup stall wiped the counter and listened to the radio, smoking a ceramic
cigarette on a chain round his neck.

His
backside still ached dully from the slip. He smiled at the city through the
steam rising from the mug. Served him right, he told himself.

When
he got back to the hotel they'd left a message. Mr Beychae would like to meet
him. They would send a car after lunch, unless he objected.

'This
is wonderful news, Cheradenine.'

'Well,
I suppose.'

'You're
not still being pessimistic, are you?'

'All
I'm saying is, don't get your hopes up.' He lay back on the bed looking at the
ceiling paintings, talking to Sma via the earring transceiver. 'I might just
get to meet him, but I doubt I'll have any chance to get him out. Probably find
he's gone senile and says, "Hey, Zakalwe; still working for the Culture
against these gas-heads?" In which case I want my ass hauled out, all
right?'

'We'll
get you out, don't worry about that.'

'If
and when I do get the guy, you still want me to head for the Impren Habitats?'

'Yes.
You'll have to use the module; we can't risk bringing the
Xenophobe
in. If you do spring Beychae they'll be on maximum alert;
we'd never get in and out without being noticed, and that could swing the whole
Cluster against us for interfering.'

'So
how far's Impren by module?'

'Two
days.'

He
sighed. 'I suppose we can handle that.'

'You
all ready, in case you can do anything today?'

'Yeah.
Capsule's buried in the desert and primed; module's hiding in the nearest
gas-giant, waiting for the same signal. If they take the transceiver from me,
how do I get in touch?'

'Well,'
Sma said. 'Much as I'd like to say "I told you so", and displace you
a scout or knife missile, we can't; their surveillance might just be good
enough to spot it. Best we can do is put a microsat in orbit and just
passive-scan; watch, in other words. If it sees you in trouble, we'll signal
the capsule and the module for you. The alternative is to use the phone, would
you believe. There's the unlisted Vanguard numbers you already have...
Zakalwe?' 'Hmm?'