Use of Weapons (47 page)

His
eyes closed, as he tried - again - to remember. His hand fell to the sheets
over his chest.

'How
are we today?' said the young nurse. She appeared at the bedside, holding a
small chair. She placed the chair between his bed and the empty one to his
right. All the other beds were empty; he was the only person in the ward. There
hadn't been a big attack for a month or so.

She
sat down. He smiled, glad to see her, and glad that she had the time to stop
and talk. 'Okay,' he nodded. 'Still trying to remember what happened.'

She
smoothed her white uniform over her lap. 'How are your fingers today?'

He
held up both hands, waggled the fingers on his right hand, then looked at his
left; the fingers moved a little. He frowned. 'About the same,' he said, as
though apologising.

'You're
seeing the doc this afternoon; he'll probably get the physics to take a look at
you.'

'What
I need is a physio for my memory,' he said, closing his eyes briefly. 'I know
there was something important I had to remember...' His voice trailed off. He
realised he'd forgotten the nurse's name.

'I
don't think we have such things,' she smiled. 'Did they have them where you
came from?'

'This
had happened before; yesterday, hadn't it? Hadn't he forgotten her name
yesterday too? He smiled. 'I ought to say I don't remember,' he said, grinning.
'But no, I don't think they did.'

He'd
forgotten her name yesterday, and the day before, but he'd come up with a plan;
he'd done something about it...

'Perhaps
they didn't need them there, with that thick skull of yours.'

She
was still smiling. He laughed, trying to remember what the plan was he'd come
up with. Something to do with blowing, with breath, and paper...

'Perhaps
not,' he agreed. His thick skull; that was why he was here. A thick skull, a
skull thicker or at least more hardy than they were used to; a thick skull that
had not quite shattered when somebody had shot him in in the head. (But
why
, when he had not been fighting at
the time, when he'd been amongst his own side, his fellow pilots?)

Fractured,
instead; fractured, broken, but not smashed irretrievably... He looked to one
side, where there was a little cabinet. A fold of paper lay on its surface.

'Don't
tire yourself out trying to remember things,' the nurse said. 'Maybe you won't
remember things; it doesn't matter very much. Your mind has to heal too, you
know.'

He
heard her talk, took in what she was saying... but he was trying to remember
what it was he'd told himself the day before; that little slip of paper; he had
to do something to it. He blew at it; the top of the folded paper slip hinged
up, so that he could see what was written underneath; TALIBE. The paper sank
back again. He'd angled it - he remembered now - so that she couldn't see.

Her
name was Talibe. Of course; it sounded familiar.

'I
am healing,' he said. 'But there was something I had to remember, Talibe. It
was important; I know it was.'

She
stood up, patted him on one shoulder. 'Forget it. You mustn't worry yourself.
Why not take a nap; shall I draw the curtains?'

'No,'
he said. 'Can't you stay longer, Talibe?'

'You
need your rest, Cheradenine,' she said, putting one hand to his brow. 'I'll be
back soon, to take your temperature and change your dressings. Ring the bell if
you need anything else.' She patted his hand, and went away, taking the small
white chair with her; she stopped at the doors, looked back. 'Oh, yes; did I
leave a pair of scissors here, last time I changed your dressing?'

He
looked around him, and shook his head. 'Don't think so.'

Talibe
shrugged. 'Oh well.' She went out of the ward; he heard her put the chair down
on the corridor floor as the doors swung closed.

He
looked at the window again.

Talibe
took the chair away each time because he'd gone crazy when he'd first seen it,
when he woke up for the first time. Even after that, when his mental state
seemed more stable, he would shiver, wide-eyed with fear when he woke each
morning, just because the white chair was sitting there at the side of his bed.
So they had stacked the ward's few chairs out of his sight, in one corner, and
Talibe, or the doctors, brought the chair in from the corridor with them when
they came to see him.

He
wished he could forget that; forget about the chair, and the Chairmaker, forget
about the Staberinde. Why did that stay sharp and fresh, after so many years
and so long a journey? And yet whatever had happened just a few days ago - when
somebody had shot him, left him for dead in the hangar - that was dim and vague
as something seen through the storm of snow.

He
stared at the frozen clouds beyond the window, the amorphous frenzy of the
snow. Its meaningless mocked him.

He
slumped down in the bed, letting the piled bedclothes submerge him, like some
drift, and slept, his right hand under the pillow, curled round one leg of the
scissors he'd taken from Talibe's tray the day before.

'How's
the head, old buddy-pal?' Saaz Insile tossed him a fruit which he failed to
catch. He picked it up off his lap, where it had landed after hitting his
chest.

'Getting
better,' he told the other man.

Insile
sat on the nearest bed, threw his cap on the pillow, unfastened the top button
of his uniform. His short, spiky black hair made his pale face look white as
the blankness still filling the world beyond the ward windows. 'How they
treating you?'

'Fine.'

'Damn
good-looking nurse you've got out there.'

'Talibe.'
He smiled. 'Yes; she's okay.'

Insile
laughed and set back on the bed, supporting himself with his arms splayed out
behind. 'Only "okay"? Zakalwe, she's gorgeous. You get bed-baths?'

'No;
I'm able to walk to the bathroom.'

'Want
me to break your legs?'

'Perhaps
later.' He laughed.

Insile
laughed a little too, then looked at the storm beyond the windows. 'How about
your memory? Getting any better?' He picked at the doubled-over white sheet
near where his cap lay.

'No,'
he said. In fact he thought it might be, but somehow he didn't want to tell
people; maybe he thought it would be bad luck. 'I remember being in the mess,
and that card game... then...' Then he remembered seeing the white chair at his
bedside and filling his lungs with all the air in the world and screaming like
a hurricane until the end of time, or at least until Talibe came and calmed him
(Livueta? he'd whispered; Dar... Livueta?). He shrugged.'... then I was here.'

'Well,'
Saaz said, straightening the crease on his uniform trousers, 'the good news is,
we managed to get the blood off the hangar floor.'

'I
expect it to be returned.'

'Deal,
but we're not cleaning it.'

'How
are the others?'

Saaz
sighed, shook his head, smoothed the hair at the back of his neck. 'Oh, just
the same dear lovable fine bunch of lads they ever were.' He shrugged. 'The
rest of the squadron... said to send their best wishes for a rapid recovery.
But you pissed them off that night.' He looked sadly at the man in the bed.
'Cheri, old pal, nobody likes the war, but there are ways of saying so... You
just did it wrong. I mean, we all appreciate what you've done; we know this
isn't really your battle, but I think... I think some of the guys... even feel
bad about that. I hear them sometimes; you must have; at night, having
nightmares. You can see that look in their eyes sometimes, like they know how
bad the odds are, and they just aren't going to come through all this. They're
scared; they might try to put a bullet through
my
head if I said so to their face, but scared is what they are.
They'd love a way out of this war. They're brave men, and they want to fight
for their country, but they want out, and nobody who knew the odds would blame
them. Any honourable excuse. They wouldn't shoot themselves in the foot, and
nowadays they won't go for a walk outside in ordinary shoes and come back with
frostbite because too many did that early on; but they'd love a way out of
this. You don't have to be here, but you are; you choose to fight, and a lot of
them resent you for it; it makes them feel like cowards, because they know that
if they were in your boots they'd be on land, telling the girls what a brave
pilot they have the chance to dance with.'

'I'm
sorry I upset them.' He touched the bandages on his head. 'I'd no idea they
felt
this
strongly though.'

'They
don't.' Insile frowned. 'That's what's weird.' He got up and walked over to the
nearest window, looking out at the blizzard.

'Shit,
Cheri, half those guys would've gladly invited you into the hangar and done
their best to lose you a couple of teeth, but a
gun
?' He shook his head. 'There's not one of those guys I'd trust
behind me with a bread roll or a handful of ice-cubes, but if it was a gun...'
He shook his head again. 'I wouldn't think twice. They just aren't like that.'

'Maybe
I imagined it all, Saaz,' he said.

Saaz
looked round, a worried expression on his face. It melted a little when he saw
his friend was smiling. 'Cheri; I admit I don't want to
imagine
I'm wrong about one of them, but the alternative is... just
somebody else. I don't know who. The military police don't know either.'

'I
don't think I was much help to them,' he confessed.

Saaz
came back, sat down on the other bed again. 'You really have no idea who you
talked to afterwards? Where you went?'

'None.'

'You
told me you were going to the briefing room, to check out the latest targets.'

'Yes,
so I've heard.'

'But
when Jine went there - to invite you to step into the hangar for saying such
terrible things about our high command and our low tactics - you weren't
there.'

'I
don't know what happened, Saaz; I'm sorry, but I just...' He felt tears prick
behind his eyes. The suddenness surprised him. He put the fruit back down in
his lap. He made a very large sniffing noise, rubbed his nose, and coughed,
patted his chest. 'I'm sorry,' he repeated.

Insile
watched the other man for a moment as he reached for a handkerchief from the
bedside table.

Saaz
shrugged, grinned broadly. 'Hey; never mind. It'll come back to you. Maybe it
was just some loony ground-crewman pissed off because you'd stepped on his
fingers once too often. If you want to remember, don't try too hard.'

'Yeah;
"Get some rest", I've heard that before, Saaz.' He picked the fruit
from his lap, placed it on the bedside cabinet.

'Can
I get you anything, for next time?' Insile asked. 'Apart from Talibe, on whom I
may have designs myself if you refuse to rise to the occasion.'

'No,
thanks.'

'Booze?'

'No,
I'm saving myself for the mess-room bar.'

'Books?'

'Really,
Saaz; nothing.'

'Zakalwe,'
Saaz laughed. 'There isn't even anybody else here for you to talk to; what do
you
do
all day?'

He
looked at the window, then back at Saaz. 'I think, quite a lot,' he said. 'I
try to remember.'

Saaz
came over to the bed. He looked very young. He hesitated, then punched him
gently in the chest. He glanced at the bandages. 'Don't get lost in there, old
buddy-pal.'

He
was expressionless for a moment. 'Yeah; don't worry. But anyway, I'm a good
navigator.'

There
was something he'd meant to tell Saaz Insile, but he couldn't remember what
that was either. Something that would warn him, because there was something
that he knew about that he hadn't known about before, and something that
required... warning.

The
frustration of it made him want to scream sometimes; to tear the white plump
pillows in half and pick up the white chair and smash it through the windows to
let the mad white fury out there inside.

He
wondered how quickly he'd freeze if the windows were open.

Well,
at least it would be appropriate; he'd arrived here frozen, so why not leave
the same way? He entertained the thought that some cell-memory, some
bone-remembered affinity had drawn him here, of all places, where the great
battles were fought on the titanic crashing tabular bergs, calved from their
vast glaciers and swirling like ice-cubes in some planet-sized cocktail glass,
a scatter of ever-shifting frozen islands, some of them hundreds of kilometres
long, circling the world between pole and tropic, their broad backs a white
wasteland spattered with blood and bodies, and the wrecks of tanks and planes.

To
fight for what would inevitably melt and could never provide food or minerals
or a permanent place to live, seemed an almost deliberate caricature of the
conventional folly of war. He enjoyed the fight, but even the way the war was
fought disturbed him, and he had made enemies amongst the other pilots, and his
superiors, by speaking his mind.