Beyond the Dar al-Harb, page 16
part #2.50 of Thieves' World Series
Dave’s gaze fell away, back to the fire.
“Fair enough —” he began and broke off, turning his head to the right to look off into darkness. From the direction in which he stared came plainly now the noise of two pairs of feet, two breathing bodies, heavily approaching. After a moment a pair of people loomed into the illumination of the fire and halted, staring down at the seated men.
They were male and female — both young. The man was only slightly taller than Ranald, and slighter of build. Like Ranald, he was bearded; but the dark-brown hair on his face was sparse and fine, so that with the wind blowing it this way and that it seemed as if he were only bearded in patches. Above the beard and narrow cheekbones his brown eyes had the dark openness of a suffering, newborn animal. Below the beard, his narrow body was thickened by layers of clothing. He walked unsurely. Beside him, the girl also was swollen with clothes. She was smaller than he, with long, straight-hanging blond hair, and a mere nub of a nose in a plate-round face that would not have looked old on a girl of twelve. But her arm was tightly around his waist. It was she who was holding him up — and she was the one who spoke.
“We’ve got to get warm,” she said; and her tone of voice left no choice in the matter. “We’ve got to sit down by your fire.”
Ranald glanced across at Dave. In the flickering firelight Dave’s features were like a face carved in bas-relief on some ancient panel of dark wood. He hesitated, but only for a moment.
“Sit,” he said. He reached behind himself once more and came back this time with two more plastic cups and an unopened can of vegetable beef soup.
The girl and the young man dropped clumsily down before the fire. Seated now, and clearly shown in the red light, the man was shivering. The girl kneeled beside him in her baggy, several layers of slacks; and placed the palm of her small, plump hand flat on his forehead. Her nails were top-edged in black; and to Ranald’s nose she, like the young man, reeked of old dirt and sweat.
“He’s got a fever,” she said.
They were both wearing packs of a sort, his hardly more than a knapsack, hers sagging, heavy and large, with a blanket roll below the sack. She helped him off with his, then shrugged out of the straps that bound her, and opened up the blanket roll. A moment later she had him wrapped with a number of thin, dark-blue blankets, most of them ragged along their edges, as if something had chewed them.
Dave had opened the can of soup and emptied it into a pan on the fire. He rinsed out the can with water from a white plastic jug, then filled the can and the three cups with tea from the coffeepot. He handed the cups to Ranald and the other two, keeping the can for himself.
The girl’s eyes had gone to Ranald as the cups were passed out. She had put her own cup down; and it was cooling beside her as she continued to urge tea into the young man. Ranald gazed back at her without particular expression, all the time Dave had been in constant activity.
“He’s sick,” the girl said to Ranald.
Ranald only continued to watch her, without moving.
Behind him, there was a sudden rush. The hiking boots that had followed him here, and which had been fidgeting in the background since, came forward with a rush, carrying a man in his mid-to-late thirties into the firelight. The light of the flames played on the boots, which were new-looking, with speed lacings, fastened tight to the tops of the thick corduroy pants above them with leather straps around the pant cuffs. He was zipped up in a plaid jacket, with a large backpack of yellow plastic strapped to an aluminum pack frame that glinted brilliantly in the firelight.
He smiled eagerly at them, turning his head to include everybody. His face was softened and his waist thick with perhaps thirty pounds of unnecessary fat. His hair was receding, but what was left was black and curly. Only his long sideburns were touched with gray. He ended his smile upon the girl and squatted down beside her, getting out of his pack.
“I’ve got some antibiotics here…” he chattered, digging into the pack. “I couldn’t help hearing you say your friend was sick. Here… oh, yes…”
He brought his fist out with a tube of bicolored capsules, red and black in the firelight. The eyes of both the young man and the girl jumped for a moment at the sight of the capsule-shapes, then settled back to quiet watching again.
“What’s that?” asked the girl sharply.
“Ampicillin.” The man in boots tilted one of the capsules out of the tube into the palm of his left hand, offering it to the girl. “Very good…”
She took the capsule and pushed it between the lips of the young man.
“Take it with the tea,” she told him. He swallowed.
“That’s right. And keep him warm —” the man in boots started to hand the tube of capsules to the girl, whose back was turned. He hesitated, then put the tube back in his pack. “Every six hours. We’ll give him one…”
He looked across at Dave and ducked his gaze away as Dave looked back. He glanced at Ranald, and looked away from Ranald back to Dave, almost immediately.
“My name’s Strauben,” he said. “Walt Strauben.”
“Dave Wilober,” said Dave.
“Ranald,” said Ranald from the other side of the fire. Walt Strauben turned his face to the young man and the girl, expectantly.
“Letty,” said the girl, shortly. “He’s Rob.”
“Rob, Letty, Dave… Ranald. Myself…” said Walt, busily digging into his pack. He came up with a heavy black thermos bottle and held it up. “Anyone care for some coffee —”
“Thanks,” said Dave. “We’ve got tea.”
“Of course. That’s right. Well, I’ll have some myself.” Walt unscrewed the cap of the thermos and poured the cap half full of cream-brown liquid, closed the bottle again and put it away in his pack. He dug into his pack and came out with a folded newspaper. “Did you see today’s paper? They’re camping out all over the world just like us, waiting. Listen — ‘The promise of a Sign from some supernatural power on the day of the vernal equinox has already, today, sent literally millions of people out into the fields all over the world to await the evidence of faith that rumor has promised for tomorrow. Expectation of some sort of miracle to celebrate the Christian year 2000, or simply to reward those who’ve been steadfast in their beliefs in any faith, continued to mount through the morning. All over the globe ordinary business is effectively at a standstill…’”
“That’s all right,” said Dave.
Walt stopped reading, lowered the paper and stared at Dave. The paper trembled a little in his hand. His heavy lower lip trembled a little as well.
“No need to read,” said Dave. “You’re welcome — for now.”
“Oh all right. I just thought…” Walt cleared his throat and refolded the newspaper. Its pages crackled in the stillness as he thrust it back into his pack.
“Thank you,” he said, speaking more into the packsack than in any other direction. “I appreciate…”
The girl, Letty, had been staring at him. Now, nostrils spread, she turned sharply to Dave as if to say something. Dave’s eyes met her, still and steady. She turned back to Rob without speaking.
“Is that soup ready yet?” asked Rob. He had a sharp, high-pitched voice, with a ring to it that sounded just on the edge of excitement or anger.
“Soon, baby,” said Letty to him, in a different voice. “Soon.”
Dave sat drinking his tea from the soup can. Walt worked with his pack, unfolding an air mattress, blowing it up and unrolling a sleeping bag upon it. After a little while Dave took the pot holding the soup off the coals. Letty passed over the cup from which Rob had been drinking tea and Dave emptied the last of the liquid in it on the fire. It hissed and disappeared. Dave filled the cup with soup and handed it back to Letty.
“Thanks,” she said, briefly, and held the cup for Rob. He sucked at it, not shivering visibly anymore.
“… All the same,” said Walt, now lying on his sleeping bag and beginning to talk so quietly that his voice came at the rest of them unexpectedly, “it’s an amazing thing, all the same. Even if no miracle happens, even if no Sign is shown, everybody coming out to watch for it, like this, all over the world, has to count for something more than just hysteria…”
Neither Dave nor Letty nor Rob answered him. Ranald watched him unmovingly, listening; but Walt, as he talked, avoided Ranald’s eyes.
“… So many people of different religions and cultures, getting together like this everywhere, has to be a Sign in itself,” said Walt. “Spiritual values are beside the point. Personal weakness hasn’t anything to do with it. We’ve all been called here when you think about it, in a sense…”
Ranald’s head lifted and his head turned. He listened and sniffed at the darkness behind him. After a second he got up and moved off away from the firelight so quietly that not even Dave’s head turned to see him go.
Once he was well away from the fire, the pastureland between the road and the woods took shadowy form in his eyes. The moon was barely up above the hill, now — a fairly respectable three-quarters moon, but blurred by a high, thin cloud layer. Through this layer it spread enough cold light to show the upright objects in the pastureland as silhouettes, but left the ground surface still deep in obscurity.
Over this obscurity Ranald followed his nose and ears to a scent of perfume like lilacs, and an almost voiceless sound of crying. He came at last to a shape huddled on the ground, away from any fire or tent. Nose and ears filled in what his eyes could not see in the little light there was. Seated alone was another young woman or girl, tall, wearing shoes with heels made for hard cement rather than soft earth, a dress thin and tight for indoors, instead of out, and a coat cut for fashion, not warmth. Besides these things, she had nothing with her — no pack, no blankets, no lantern or shelter materials.
She sat, simply hunched up on the open ground, arms around her legs, face in her knees, crying. The crying was a private, internal thing, like the weeping of a lost child who has given up hope any adult will hear. No ears but Ranald’s could have found her from more than six feet away; no other nose could have located her, huddled there in the darkness of the ground.
Ranald did not touch her. He sank down silently into a cross-legged sitting position, facing and watching her. After a while, the girl stopped crying and lifted her head, staring blindly in his direction.
“Who’s there?” Her whisper was shaky.
“Ranald,” said Ranald, softly.
“Ranald who?” she asked.
He did not answer. She sat staring toward him without seeing him in the darkness, as seconds slipped away. Gradually the tension of fear leaked away and she slumped back into the position in which he had found her.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, to the darkness and to him.
“It always matters,” said Ranald; but not as if he were answering her. He spoke out loud but absently, to himself, as if her words had pressed a button in him. “Every spring it matters fresh. Every fall it begins to matter all over again. Otherwise, I’d have given up a long time ago. But each time, every time, it starts all over again; and I start with it. Now and now.”
“Who are you?” she asked, peering through the darkness without success.
“Ranald,” he said.
He got softly to his feet, turned, and started back toward Dave Wilober’s fire. Behind him, after a few steps, he heard her rise and follow the moon-limned silhouette of his body. He went with deliberate slowness back to Dave’s fire, and all the way he heard her following. But after he had sat down he heard her come only to the edge of the thick shadow his own body cast from the fire flares. Having come that far she sat down, also, still slumped but no longer weeping.
“… What does someone like you know about it?” Rob was saying sharply to Walt. “What do you understand?” Rob had straightened up and even thrown off most of his blankets. His face was damp and pink now above the beard, and the beard itself clung damply to his upper cheeks under the brown, yellow-lit eyes.
“Very little, very little. That’s true…” Walt shook his head.
“You talk about how fine it is, everyone getting together out here, and every place. But what do you really know about it? What makes you think you know anything about why people are here? You don’t know why Letty and I are here!”
“No, that’s true. I don’t deny it,” said Walt. “Who can know? No one knows —”
“Not ‘no one’! You!” said Rob. “You don’t know. You and the rest of the dudes. You don’t know anything and you’re scared to find out; so you go around making it big about nobody at all knowing. But that’s a lie. I know. And Letty knows. Tell him, Letty.”
“I know,” said Letty to Walt.
“I believe you. I really believe you,” said Walt. “But don’t you see, even if you think you’re positive about something, you’ve got a duty to question yourself, anyway. You have to consider the chance you’re wrong. Just to make sure — isn’t that so?”
“Hell it is!” said Rob. “It’s just a lot of junk you pile up to hide the fact you haven’t got guts enough to face life the way it really is. Not other people. You —”
He broke off. Another pair of booted feet that Ranald had already heard coming toward the fire from the nearest fire downslope stepped into the firelight, and the flames showed them.
“No. That’s a mistake, of course,” Walt was saying in a voice that shook a little but was calm. He folded his hands together and closed his teeth gently on the middle knuckle of the first finger. “You don’t —”
He caught sight of the boots and broke off in turn, raising his gaze to the man who had just joined them.
“All right, all of you. Let’s see your permits.”
As the firelight painted him standing there against the black frame of the darkness, the lawman now looming over them was shiny with leather. He was agleam with white motorcycle helmet, brown boots, and black jacket, unzipped in front to show the straps of a Sam Browne belt supporting a holstered revolver, glittering handcuffs and the dark, bloodsucker shape of a black leather sap. He had a heavy-boned, middle-twenties face with a short-bristled, full moustache, so light-colored of hair it was almost invisible in spite of its thickness.
“I said, permits,” he repeated. His voice was a flat tenor.
Without saying anything, Dave reached behind himself once more and brought out a piece of printed blue paper. The man took it, looked at it, and handed it back. He took a similar paper from Walt Strauben, read it, and gave it back. His eyes slid along to Ranald, who had not moved, neither to produce a paper nor anything else. Eyes still locked with Ranald, the lawman reached down to take the piece of paper upheld by Letty. With a sudden effort, then, he broke his gaze from Ranald’s and looked down at Letty’s permit.
He handed it back to Letty and looked at Rob.
“All right,” he said to Rob. “Where’s yours?”
“We’re together,” said Rob. His voice had thinned from the note it had held talking to Walt. The yellow glint was out of his brown eyes, leaving them dark and flat.
“He’s my guest,” snapped Letty. “The permit’s good for a space ten feet by ten feet. That’s all we take up, together.”
“One person only to every ten-by-ten plot.” The lawman turned back to her. “This isn’t one of your garbage-heap camping grounds. The place is clean — it’s going to keep clean. If your friend wants to stay, he’ll have to get another permit.”
“Who’re you?” said Rob. His face seemed narrower now. It was pale and damp with sweat; and his voice was still thin. “This is private property.”
“Pig,” said Letty, strongly. She got to her feet. Standing, she looked no more than half the size of the lawman. “It’s nothing to do with you. We’ll talk it over with the owner.”
“Now if you want trouble,” said the lawman, answering her without lifting his voice, “you just keep on. There’s deputies enough of us here on special duty from the county sheriff’s office to keep things orderly. I’m not going to waste time arguing. You can buy another camping permit for twenty-five dollars; or one of you is going to have to clear out.”
He stood, still holding the paper Letty had given him.
“Make your mind up,” he said.
“He’s sick, you bastard!” snarled Letty. “Sick, don’t you understand? He can’t clear out.”
“All right,” said the deputy, in the same tones. “Then we’ll give him a ride into the hospital in Medora. If he’s sick, they’ll take care of him there. But nobody camps here without buying a permit.”
“Do you buy and sell people the chance to know God exists?” asked Walt. But his voice trembled a little and was so low-pitched that what he said went ignored by both Letty and the deputy.
“What about him?” Rob said suddenly, nodding in the direction of Ranald. “Why just us? You aren’t giving him a hard time for his permit!”
Ranald did not move. The deputy’s eyes flicked a little in his direction, but not far enough for their gazes to lock together again.
“Never mind anyone else here,” he said to Rob. “I’m talking to you. Get a permit to stay, or get on your feet and get moving.”
He stepped forward and reached down as if to pull Rob to his feet out of the cone of blankets that swathed him.
“Wait! No, wait…” The words came tumbling out of Walt. “Here, officer. I’ll take care of the permits. Just a minute now… wait…”
He was digging into a side pocket of his corduroy pants. He came up with a wallet and thumbed out bills, which he handed up to the deputy.
“I’ll take two of them,” Walt said. “Fifty dollars — that’s right?”
“Two.” The deputy, still holding the bills, took out a pad of blue papers and a pen, scribbled a date and initials on two of the papers and tore them from the pack. He handed both to Walt, who passed one over to Letty and held out the other to Ranald.
“All right,” said the deputy, putting money and pad of permits away. “Remember to keep the grounds clean. Pick up your own trash. And the comfort stations are across the road. Use them. That permit doesn’t entitle you to make a nuisance of yourself. Any trouble by anyone and you’ll still go out.”
