J.G. Ballard - The Wind From Nowhere

Luigi nodded to the interpreter, gestured them all across the storeroom to the door. Slowly they made their way out, avoiding the body of the gunman lying on the floor in a widening pool of blood. Luigi picked up the Mauser, rammed it into his belt next to Lanyon's.45. They entered the corridor, then turned off through a small doorway into a narrow low-ceilinged room where a single light burned low over a bare wooden table. Inset into the Walls were four bunks, the bedding rumpled and filthy.

One of the men snapped off the corridor lights and closed the door behind them, but Lanyon noticed a small printing press on the trolley outside.

Luigi pulled up a chair by the table and Lanyon lowered himself siowiy into it, Patricia sitting down on the edge of the bed behind him. Luigi barked at the two men; one slipped outside and returned a moment later with a jug full of water, and the little interpreter rooted along the shelf over the fireplace and produced a grimy glass. Luigi took it, pulled the cork out of a bottle of chianti, poured some into the glass and passed it across to Patricia, then pushed the bottle over to Lanyon.

Lanyon swabbed down his face and neck, then tore one pocket off his shirt and pasted it over the wound on his forehead. Slightly refreshed, he sat back and put his hand reassuringly on Patricia's knee, squeezed her thigh.

First tipping the neck of the bottle toward Luigi, he filled his mouth with the harsh bitter wine, then passed it back across the table.

Luigi pulled up a chair and sat down. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "Ship? You?" He spoke to the interpreter, who was clearing the jug of water.

"Luigi asks if you go back for your ship?"

Lanyon nodded. "Trying to. How can we get there-the submarine base? You know any covered roads?"

The interpreter translated this for Luigi, and the two men looked at each other silently for a moment. Then Luigi frowned and muttered something.

"Very strong wind," the interpreter explained. "Can't move on the streets now. Big hotels, houses-" he snapped his fingers "-all going bang!

Lanyon glanced at his watch. It was 2:35. Soon it would be dark; movement would be impossible until the next morning.

"What about everything in the storeroom?" he asked curtly. "How did you get it up here? You were carrying something big in just now."

There was a lengthy consultation, during which the interpreter shrugged repeatedly and Luigi appeared to be trying to make up his mind.

Lanyon spoke to Patricia over his shoulder. "They must be looting the warehouses and stores around here. Presumably looting is now punishable by death. I suppose he's afraid we'll report him to the military governor."

The other man, older, with a dry wizened face and a cropped skull, joined in the conversation, throwing sharp reminders across the table at Luigi, who was fingering his gun belt uneasily. Finally he appeared to come to a decision. He rapped something out and they all fell silent.

Luigi smiled slowly at Lanyon, relaxing perceptibly, then leaned forward and pulled a crumpled bundle of paper out of his hip pocket. Carefully his big workman's fingers pried the pages open, and he spread out a battered map of the city, streets ringed crudely with penciled circles, marked into a series of zones.

The interpreter pulled up a chair and pointed to the map. "We take you," he said to Lanyon after he and Luigi had muttered softly to each other. "But, er, you know-" he made a gesture around the eyes, placing the tips of his fingers together over the bridge of his nose.

"Blindfold?" Lanyon suggested.

"Si, blindfold." The interpreter smiled, then elaborated slowly. "And blindfold afterward, you understand? All blindfold."

Lanyon nodded. Luigi was watching narrowly, sizing him up.

"Looks as if they're happy," Lanyon said to Patricia.

"How can they take us, though?" she asked.

Lanyon shrugged. "Cellars, basements, underground tunnels. An old city like Genoa must be honeycombed with secret passageways. I suppose this monastery had one down to the city for the benefit of the monks on Saturday night in the bad old days. They've been moving some pretty big stuff in so I should think we're in luck. The only problem is how to get into the base itself once we reach the downtown section of the city. We'll just have to pray we'll be able to pick up transport somewhere. There isn't a hope of our covering even five yards out in the open on our own."

He watched the big Italian tracing a route on the map, then spoke to the interpreter.

"Tell me, is his wife O.K.? She was in the church."

When the interpreter nodded, he added: "Tell Luigi I'm sorry about the shooting in here."

The interpreter grinned, began to chuckle to himself.

"That's O.K.," he said. "More for us, eh?"

Single file, Luigi leading with the interpreter, followed by Lanyon and Patricia, the third man in the rear, they entered the passageway running down from the monastery.

This had been cut straight through the soft chalk of the cliff, and ran for about a mile, linking together three churches with the monastery. Six feet high and about a yard across, it was just wide enough for the trolley, but the effort of moving it uphill must have been enormous. How far below the surface they were Lanyon found it difficult to estimate. They emerged into the crypt of the nearest church and for the first time could hear the wind drumming past overhead, its deep all-pervading whine singing through the angles in the shattered ruins. Then the tunnel sank belowground again and the sounds were lost.

Gradually Lanyon noticed that the air had begun to come to life in the passageway. Odd shifts of wind edged past, periodically sudden gusts of grit billowed into their faces, and Luigi would stop and switch off his torch. However, it was obvious he was more afraid of the military authorities than of the wind.

"What speed is it now?" Lanyon asked the interpreter as they crouched down during one of the pauses, waiting for Luigi to return from reconnoitering ahead.

"Three hundred kilometers," the man replied. "Maybe more."

Lanyon jerked a finger upward. "What about Genoa? People all right?"

The interpreter laughed shortly. He spread his hands out sideways in a quick movement. "All phht," he said. "Gone with the wind. Everything blown down. Luigi save things-radios, jukeboxes, you know, TV's. All for tomorrow."

Lanyon smiled to himself at the man's naïveté and superoptimism in assuming that when the wind subsided their stock of TV sets and washing machines would make easily negotiable currency. About the only thing that would be of any immediate use was the printing press. After this holocaust the reassembling bureaucracies of the world would have their presses working night and day churning out paper to fill the vacuum left by the wind.

The second church had collapsed into its crypt and a detour supported by small girders had been driven through the piles of masonry. Now the wind filled the tunnel, blowing straight through at a steady 10 or 15 miles per hour. They had reached the midtown section of the city and the passageway took advantage of the old city wall, running along beside it for half a mile as it curved down into the center of modern Genoa toward the harbor. The floor was slick with moisture and twice he and Patricia slipped onto their hands.

The passageway opened out into the middle of a maze of tomblike vaults, abandoned wine cellars somewhere off the main square. Ancient stairways, deep dips worn down their centers, spiraled away to upper galleries. Luigi pulled out his map and he and the interpreter began to confer, pointing in various directions around them.

Lanyon went over to them. He indicated the vaulted ceiling, and said: "Why don't we get up to the street, see if we can spot a military transport?"