Red Shift Read online

  “The distance is gone between us!

  “Silver cloud lost!

  “Blue sky away!

  “Stars turn!”

  Logan held on. The strength in Macey he had never known, and the words were not his.

  “The wind blows—through sharp—thorns, for we are brothers, through the sharp hawthorn Tom’s a cold angler in the lake of darkness, blow the winds, blow, blew, blow, silver go! Go!”

  Macey broke from the tree, straight for the camp. Logan staggered after him. Magoo, Face, Buzzard fell aside and Macey ran by, across the thorn spikes, and vaulted the stockade.

  “He’s flipped like all get out! He’s going wide open! He ain’t selective!”

  They pulled the tent over the ditch. Four guards had attacked Macey and lay dead. He was in the roundhut, killing startled men as they moved from sleep.

  “How many?” said Logan.

  “Nineteen,” said Buzzard.

  “Escapes?”

  “Negative. We zapped them good.”

  “Where’s Macey?”

  “Usual.”

  “Stopped?”

  “Yep. Turned right off. Crashed out. I left him spewing by the hut. He’ll sleep now.”

  “Right,” said Logan. “Magoo, you go round up what’s left. Check them out, Face.”

  “Yessir.”

  Logan went to Macey, who was curled around his sword, blank-eyed, face clawed white with tears.

  “Boy,” said Logan. “Was that some. He ain’t never gone like that before.”

  The women and children were being gathered into the open space before the hut.

  “I don’t read you here, sir,” said Buzzard.

  “Grow up, soldier. You’ve seen this before.”

  “That was punitive.”

  “And I keep telling you this is a different war, and we follow it through.”

  “You call this following through?”

  “You tell me,” said Logan, “for once. Aw, go find some hardware, if you don’t like it.”

  “I’ll do just that,” said Buzzard.

  There was no reaction from the people, no pleading or sounds, as they died.

  Buzzard collected weapons while the killing began. “You following through, soldier?” said Logan. “You going to wear that cloak you picked up? Who made it? If you won’t have those people die, they don’t exist, so how come you wear a cloak that no one made? It’s cold on Mow Cop, soldier, and wind blows right through cloaks that ain’t real.”

  Buzzard flung everything to the ground and ran towards the open space: but the others had finished for him.

  “Decapitate,” said Logan. “Then find yourselves clothing and equipment.”

  “What the hell you at?” shouted Buzzard. “Ain’t this enough?”

  “Tribal raid, soldier. Decapitate. They’re all right. They’re dead.”

  “Go stuff yourself,” said Buzzard. “You ain’t real any more, Logan: you ain’t the Ninth. You’re screwed.”

  Logan struck him under the ribs with a spear. Buzzard looked at Logan and at the spear they both held. “You Mother,” said Buzzard.

  “Can we afford that, sir?” said Face.

  Logan drew out the spear.

  “He was the best scout we ever had, that’s all,” said Face. “We ain’t overstrength.”

  “You arguing?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Decapitate, search and equip,” said Logan. “I’ll stand to.”

  “Come on, Face,” said Magoo. “This must look for real. I’ll show you.”

  Logan brought the pack mule in and began to load it. “Would Mothers take rye?” he called to Face.

  “Yessir. They can’t grow enough.”

  “We need it for winter,” said Magoo, “and a crop. We need to keep the heads, too.”

  “We stay till dawn,” said Logan, “then bury army gear. And Buzzard.”

  “Better load him, sir,” said Face, “while he’ll drape.”

  “Liquid refreshments are now being served.” Magoo was braced in the opening of a hut, a grey jar in each hand. “Those Cats, they sure make beer.”

  Logan and Face took the jars and drank. “Man,” said Face, “I needed that.”

  “Go see what else.”

  Face went into the hut. “I thought we got all,” he said.

  “Glad we didn’t,” said Magoo. “Is she one hot trot!”

  “What is it?” said Logan.

  “I hold the army record,” said Magoo.

  “We missed a girl, sir,” said Face.

  “Kill her.”

  “Not this,” said Magoo. “Not yet. Rest and Recreation, sir.”

  “No.”

  “She won’t be trouble. And if we’re setting up on that mountain, we need a woman.”

  “No.”

  “I can’t cook, sir.”

  “She’s yours tonight,” said Logan, “but that’s it.”

  “You next, sir?”

  “No.”

  “OK.” Magoo went back into the hut.

  “We ought to have a woman, sir,” said Face. “Even if we’re temporary up there.”

  “Risk,” said Logan.

  “Not if we hamstring her. And we can’t spare anyone for fatigues, even Macey.”

  “Point noted,” said Logan, drinking.

  Magoo reappeared. “Face?”

  “Goddam animals,” said Logan.

  “Have a drink,” said Magoo. “We’re all you’ve got.”

  “Yeh.”

  “Can you go tribal, sir?”

  “A soldier can do anything.”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “And still stay the Ninth.”

  “The Ninth bit don’t bother me. It’s if you can’t stake out heads, or fight dirty: you won’t be tribal, you won’t be no Mother, and you won’t be no man.”

  “We speak tribal as soon as we leave this stockade,” said Logan.

  “But you gotta think tribal,” said Magoo. “Like us. You gotta feel it. That’s why Buzzard’s dead. You break him when he enlists, so he’ll be well motivated, and then you expect him to drop it and be himself. He couldn’t. He made you kill him. You’re harder than Buzzard, but right now I think you should be a goddam animal.”

  Logan drank.

  Face came out of the hut. “Feel free,” he said.

  “After you, sir,” said Magoo.

  “To hell with them,” said Logan, and went into the hut.

  “What do you reckon?” said Face.

  “I’ll tell you when he comes out,” said Magoo. “If he don’t give—I’ve seen Romans break. If he don’t do it to her he’s only got himself, and he don’t dare look right now.”

  “You like Logan?”

  “He’s shit gone wrong. I like surviving.”

  “Buzzard?”

  “Playing Roman. It gets you, if you let it: then you ain’t nothing. Congratulations, sir.”

  Logan had come out.

  “Yeh.”

  “Have a beer.”

  “No. The games are over. Stand to till dawn.”

  Logan picked Macey up. The sword hung on his palm. Face pulled it away.

  “Here, kid,” said Logan. He pushed Macey through the door opening. “Go do yourself some good.”

  “You know, sir?” said Magoo. “That chick was half stoned when I found her. That’s why she was missed the first time.”

  “Search for others,” said Logan. “We can’t afford mistakes.”

  “There won’t be any more,” said Face. “I know these Cats.”

  Macey shivered in the hut. His clothes were drying on him and stiffening. His skin flaked, encrusted. He blinked in the dark hut. A girl, about fifteen years old, lay like a doll on the floor. The lamp was reflected in her eyes. There had been paint on her brow, but it was smudged to shapelessness. Macey slumped on his hands and knees. The stink of him was in his own nostrils. He touched the paint on her forehead. “Don’t,” he said, “be afraid,” and she reached out he
r hand, “of me.” The hand touched the hard weight slung by his shoulder, and her eyes moved to him. He fell beside her, his fingers reached gently for the lobe of her ear and held it. She smoothed his clogged hair.

  Jan held Tom’s wrists. He let her. She turned on the crooked tap, shook his hands free of the glass and pushed them into the water. There were no deep cuts, and she directed the jet to sluice fragments away from the skin.

  “Bloody Norah!”

  Tom’s father had come into the kitchen.

  “Let your hands dry, don’t rub them,” said Jan. Tom did so, his body quiet, his face red and swollen.

  “Has he hurt himself?”

  “He’s done no hurting,” said Jan.

  She dabbed his hands with paper tissue. They seemed to be free of glass. His father went to the taps and the window.

  “It wasn’t my idea,” he said.

  “So much was obvious,” said Jan.

  “He did this.”

  “Yes.”

  “That wasn’t the idea.”

  “It was the result.”

  “Bloody Norah.”

  “Bloody Tom,” said Jan.

  “What’s it come to?”

  “He ran out of words.”

  “Him? He’s a walking dictionary. I don’t understand him half the time. The one thing he can do is express himself.”

  “He’s still here,” said Tom. “He hasn’t died, or anything convenient like that.”

  “I never really thought you two were—you know.”

  “Permission to dismiss, please, sergeant-major.”

  “But it wouldn’t have been right to have left it to your mother.”

  “Left right left right left right left left—”

  “She’s my wife.”

  Tom laughed quietly.

  “It matters.”

  “Does it?” said Tom.

  “Yes, mush: it does.”

  Tom lifted his head. “I usually do see things too late. My father is honest,” he said to Jan. “I’ve never known him not.” He drank some water from the tap. “The powers of recovery of the human organism are remarkable. If you’re admitting error to me, you must, logically, have dissociated yourself from the accusation at source while I was being constructive with the window. You told my mother that she was wrong.”

  “I—did—say—”

  “Something.”

  “Yes.”

  “So it’s my turn to help you.”

  “Not me: your mother.”

  “You differentiate?”

  “It was the swearing—”

  “It didn’t wreck the kitchen,” said Jan.

  “But it wasn’t nice: from a girl. And we’ve always given you a considerable degree of latitude.”

  “About fifty-three degrees fourteen minutes north,” said Tom.

  “Swearing’s not nice.”

  “Inadequate vocabulary would be a better description,” said Tom. He walked towards the lounge.

  “Don’t diminish yourself in there,” said Jan.

  Tom nearly smiled. His father moved with him, but Tom stopped. “No, sergeant-major. This is a solo. Go help Jan.”

  His father wavered. “Sex,” he said.

  “What about it?”

  “It’s a terrible thing.”

  Tom walked endlessly towards the lounge. His mother was hunched before the gas fire. For the first time he saw that she was old. He put his arms around her shoulders. She was light to raise: he held bones. Her face rested on his shoulder. He could not tell whether her crying was real.

  “I’m sorry for that,” he said. “But you were, and are, wrong.” She shook, too, as he had shaken, and through it, within her, he felt his own strength, and was alert.

  “I thought—that you—and she.”

  “There’s no ‘she.’ The name is Jan.”

  “I thought you’d been—intimate.”

  The obscenity, but he held on. Words. Which to use now to end now?

  “You thought we’d had relations.”

  His mother nodded.

  “Only our parents,” said Tom, “and that should be a joke.”

  His mother sobbed again. The strength did not move.

  “You have to face up to the existence of Jan, you know.”

  “Your father and I would prefer it if you waited till you’d finished your studies before you had anything to do with girls.”

  “That could be ten years!” He was laughing now.

  “Soon enough.”

  “Jan’s a help: and their house.”

  “It’s not our fault we can’t do better than this. It’d be worse in Married Quarters. I’ve had some! She should wash her mouth out with carbolic.”

  “Stop before you start,” said Tom. “And listen. What you said to Jan tonight was not only untrue, it was humiliating.”

  “Humiliating!”

  “Will you apologise?”

  “To her? To that kind of language? If you tell me you’ve not been—I’ll believe you.” Generosity, thought Tom, is infinite. “But I’m not apologising to someone who uses foul language in my home.”

  “Wait there,” said Tom. He lifted his hands from his mother’s shoulders. The cotton dress was tacky and clung to him. The prints of his palms and fingers were clear. He went to the kitchen. Jan and his father had cleaned up the glass and were putting hardboard over the window.

  “My mother’s upset by your swearing: so am I. Will you take it back?”

  “Go on, love,” said his father. “Sticks and stones—”

  “Sorry,” said Jan. “I’m not ashamed of what I’ve done.”

  “I needed to know,” said Tom.

  “How are your hands?” said his father.

  “Right as rain,” said Tom. “I’ve remembered: it was Plautus.”

  “Who was?”

  “First said ‘right as rain.’ Stay there until I’ve settled my mother.”

  He went through to the lounge.

  “Jan doesn’t feel very accommodating. And I can see her point.”

  “Then she’s not welcome here,” said his mother.

  “Suit yourself. I’m going over to ‘The Limes’ with her now, neither to be intimate nor to have relations, but to work.”

  “Your hands are bleeding.”

  “I’ll survive,” said Tom. “Hey, turn the sound up on the telly: there’s a commercial for removing biological stains.”

  “What we want,” said Tom, “is a communications satellite.” He walked with Jan through the wood. It was a clear moon. The M6 was like a river, and the Milky Way a veil over the birch trees. “I suppose any would do. How’s your astronomy?”

  “Non-existent.”

  “You must know the basic constellations.”

  “They never fitted the pictures in the books. I like that kite, though.”

  “Where? Kite? Kite? That’s not a kite, you goof, that’s part of Orion. Those three stars are his belt.”

  “Well, I’ve always liked them.”

  “OK. We’ll have Delta Orionis: over there on the right. It’ll be with us all winter. We’ll be together at least once every twenty-four hours.”

  “How?”

  “What’s a good time? Ten o’clock? Every night at ten o’clock we’ll both try to look at that star, and be together because we know the other’s watching, and thinking. At the same moment we’ll be looking at the same thing.”

  “If it isn’t cloudy,” said Jan. “I love you: you’re so impossible.”

  “It’s impossible.”

  “It’s not. It’s a marvellous idea. That star and us. Like now.”

  “There’s never ‘now,’ ” said Tom. “Delta Orionis may not exist. It isn’t even where we think it is. It’s so far away, we’re looking at it as it was when the Romans were here.”

  “That’s why I don’t like astronomy.”

  “But shall we have that star?”

  “Yes.”

  “And ten o’clock.”

 
He unlocked the door at “The Limes.”

  “Coffee?” said Jan.

  “Please.”

  He settled down by the fire. The central heating was on, but a fan turned slowly behind the mock coals.

  Tom worked. After three hours he stopped. He packed his briefcase. Jan sat on the hearth, watching him.

  “About today,” she said.

  “I don’t want to talk.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s over.”

  “It’s not. You can’t sit there and plough through those books after what they did.”

  “I can.”

  “Doesn’t it bother you?”

  “It did. It doesn’t. Wasted energy, and a nasty taste. Forget it.”

  “You ought to externalise the tension.”

  “Don’t start that. I’m not a patient yet.”

  “You frighten me.”

  “Me too, so shut up and say good-night to our Celtic grandparent.”

  “Our what?”

  He pointed to the stone of the hearth. There was a fossil in it.

  “I’ve never noticed,” said Jan. “It’s beautiful.”

  “It’s been there for the last six hundred million years, waiting for a fireplace to happen. So meet your ancestor and mine! The one and only! Cambrian! Inarticulate! Brachiopod!”

  “Why didn’t I know?”

  “It can’t talk: on account of being inarticulate. And if it could, it’d be Welsh.”

  “Will it come out?”

  “No.”

  “All that time. Can’t we work it loose?”

  “Your Dad wouldn’t appreciate it, if he’s trying to sell this desirable residence.”

  “I’ve always wanted to hold something that matters.”

  “Try me,” said Tom. “And in case I’m no good, will this do?”

  He opened his hand, and held out a gilt brooch of two linked hearts. “Mizpah” was engraved on one, and on the other, “The Lord watch between me and thee when we are absent one from another.”

  “I’m the free offer that goes with it,” said Tom.

  “For me?”

  “Mizpah’s Hebrew: it means something like ‘look forward well’: the future shared, and good, whatever happens. Soldiers used to give it to their wives and that.”

  “Where’s this from?”

  “It was my grandfather’s. He was killed.”

  “Oh.”

  “I want you to have it.”

  Jan read the words again.

  “Do you believe in God?” she said.

  “I hope he believes in me.”

  “Why is it yours?”