Greybeard

It was a gruesome exodus. Among the genuine travellers were bandits who set upon their fellows, cut their throats, and took their belongings. Another robber went that way; it crept through the blood, burst out on the brow, was interested only in taking life. It stole up on Ruth in the first night and on Rachel in the third, and left them face upwards in the mounds of humus over which Charley raised crosses made with sticks from the dusty hedgerows.

When he limped into the doubtful shelter of Sparcot (helping a woman called Iris whom he would find strength to marry eighteen months later), Charley was a man turned in on himself. He had no wish to interest himself in the world again. In his wounded heart, the sudden dread had found a permanent billet.

Both he and Timberlane had changed so much that it was not surprising recognition was only gradual. In that first Sparcot year of 2029, they had not seen each other for over a quarter of a century — since 2001, when the war still engulfed the world and they were both in the Infantop Corps. Then they had been operating overseas, combing the shattered valleys of Assam…

Of their patrol, only two survived. Those two, as from old habit, walked in single file. The man in the rear, Corporal Samuels, carried a natterjack, the light nuclear gun, various packs filled with provisions, and a can of water. He moved somnambulistically, stumbling as they walked down the wooded hillside.

Before him, a child’s head jogged, hanging upside down and regarding him with a sightless eye. The child’s left arm swung against the thigh of the man over whose broad back it lay. This was a boy child, a child of the Naga tribe, delicately built, shaven of head, and perhaps nine years old. He was unconscious; the flies that buzzed incessantly about his eyes and about the wound on his thigh did not trouble him.

He was carried by Sergeant Timberlane, a bronzed young man of twenty-six. Timberlane wore a revolver, had various pieces of equipment strapped about him, and carried a tall stick with which he helped himself along as he followed the path leading down to the valley bottom.

The dry season ruled Assam. The trees, which were no more than nine feet high, stood as if dead, their leaves limp. The river in the valley bottom had dried out, leaving a sandy chaung along which wheeled vehicles and GEM’s could move. The dust the vehicles had disturbed had settled on the trees on either side of the chaung, whitening them until they bore the appearance of a disused indoor television lot. The chaung itself dazzled in the bright sun.

Where the trees ceased to grow, Timberlane stopped, hoisting the wounded child more firmly on to his shoulder. Charley bumped into him.

“What’s the matter, Algy?”, he asked, coming back into weary wakefulness. As he spoke, he stared at the child’s head. Because it had been shaved, the hair showed only as fine bristles; little flies crawled like lice among the bristles. The boy’s eyes were as expressionless as jelly. Upside down, a human face is robbed of much of its meaning.

“We’ve got visitors.” The tone of Timberlane’s voice brought Charley instantly back on to the alert. Before they went over the mountain, they had left their sectional hovercraft below a small cliff, hidden from the air under a camouflage net. Now a tracked ambulance of American design was parked below the cliff. Two figures stood beside it, while a third investigated the hovercraft.

This tiny tableau, embalmed in sunlight, was broken by the sudden chatter of a machine-gun. Without thinking, Timberlane and Charley went flat on their stomachs. The Naga boy groaned as Timberlane rolled him aside and swept binoculars up to his eyes. He ranged his vision along the shabby hillside to their left, where the shots had come from. Crouching figures sprang into view, their khaki dark against dusty white shrubs, their outlines hardening as Timberlane got them in focus.

“There they are!” Timberlane said. “Probably the same bastards we ran into on the other side of the hill. Get the natterjack up, Charley, and let’s settle them.”

Beside him, Charley was already assembling their weapon. Down in the chaung, one of the three Americans had been hit by the first burst of machine-gun fire. He sprawled in the sand. Moving painfully, he pulled himself along into the shadow of the ambulance. His two companions were concealed behind bushes. Of a sudden, one of them burst from cover and ran towards the ambulance. The enemy gun opened up again. Dust flicked round the running figure. He swerved, tumbled head over heels, and pitched out of sight among the dusty foliage.

“Here goes!” Charley muttered. The dust on his face, most of it turned into mud by sweat, crinkled as he slapped the barrel of the natterjack into place. He gritted his teeth and pulled the firing lever. A little nuclear shell went whistling over the scrubby hillside.