Дэймон Найт - Orbit 12

He stood up and dusted himself off, then looked back at the ring. It was beginning to shrink. Good riddance, he thought. He made as if to walk away and fell flat on his face.

For a second he lay in a daze before he sat up and hugged his right foot that was suddenly throbbing. A second more and pain ripped through him like a hundred hot needle pricks. He gingerly slipped off his shoe, then gulped when he saw his sock. It was soaked with blood.

He stripped off the sock and nearly fainted when he saw the hole where his little toe had been. Blood was pumping out in little spurts. It looked as if the toe had been torn out by the roots, as if something or someone had yanked it out or bitten . . .

He sucked in his breath. Retroaction. What the hell did it mean? It meant that things that were now affected things that were before. Or did it mean that now went backward and started all over again? Some of the stuff must still be in his body, it had a strong affinity to the bottle’s contents, and the deadly element in each was about to defy the laws of sanity.

The ring was the size of a quarter, so small he could scarcely see it. He took the bottle from his pocket, hobbled across the intervening space and rammed the cap into the closing circle. He shoved and pushed while the circle grew smaller.

Someone tapped him on the shoulder.

He cursed. His thigh began to rip, just a tiny bit, and blood dripped down his leg. He doubled up his fist and beat on the end of the bottle, tried to force it through the narrowing hole.

A hand closed upon his shoulder and attempted to pull him away. He raised his good leg and kicked backward. He felt his shoe connect with something soft.

His thigh oozed at a faster rate and he raised his fist and smashed the bottle with all his strength. There was a loud popping noise as the bottle disappeared.

The pain in his foot and the tearing sensation in his thigh ceased at once. A roaring wind filled his brain and he collapsed to the ground with his head in his hands.

When at last the roaring subsided he opened one eye and peered between his fingers. He saw a purple meadow.

He couldn’t believe his eyes. This wasn’t Turner Street. This wasn’t anywhere.

A sniffling sound made him turn his head. Six feet away sat a little brown naked man with blood on his mouth and fury in his eyes. Perched on top of his fuzzy head was a gold crown. Behind him Tom saw several other brown men dragging something across the purple grass. He squinted in order to make out what it was they were carrying toward him. It looked like a pot.

He took off running. There was really nothing else to do. And there was really no reason for too much despair. He had saved one king’s life and almost gotten killed; now he had kicked another king in the teeth. He was bound to come out of this smelling like a rose.

CONTINUING westward until nearly sundown we came to a village of stone huts. Earlier it had been very hot, even with the wind from the airscrew in our faces. The upper wing had provided a certain amount of shade for me, but Sanderson, my observer, had nothing but his leather flying helmet between his head and the sun, and I believe that by the time we halted he was near delirium. Every few miles he would lean forward, tap me on the shoulder, and ask, “Suppose the landing gear goes too, eh? What then? What shall we do then?” and I would try to shout something reassuring over my shoulder as we jolted along, or swear at him.

Both the upper and lower wings had broken about midway on the left. The ends of them and what remained of the bamboo struts and silk trailed on the ground, the focal point of the long plume of dust we raised. I was afraid the dust might be seen by Turkish horse and wanted to get out and cut the wreckage away; but Sanderson argued against it, saying that when we halted it might be possible to effect some repairs. Every few miles one or the other of us would get out and try to tie it up onto the good sections, but it always worked loose again. By the time we reached the village there wasn’t much left but rags and wires.

The sound of our engine had frightened the people away. We stopped in front of the largest of the huts and I drew my Webley and went up and down the village street looking into doors while Sanderson covered me with the swivel-mounted Lewis gun, but no one was there. A hundred yards off, camels tethered in the scrub watched us with haughty eyes while we found the village well and drank from big, unglazed jars. It was wonderful and we slopped it, letting the water run down our faces and soak our tunics. Then we sat on the coping and smoked until the people, in timorous twos and threes, began to come back.

The children came first, dirty, very unappealing children with sad silent faces and thin or bow-bellied bodies; the smaller children naked, the larger in garments like short nightshirts, grey with perspiration and dust

Then the women. They wore black camels-hair gowns that reached their ankles, yashmaks, and black head shawls. Between shawl and veil their eyes looked huge and very dark, but I noticed that many were blind, or blind in one eye. They didn’t touch us as the children had, or try to talk to us. They pulled the children back, whispering; and when they spoke among themselves, standing in small groups twenty yards away and gesticulating with flashing brown arms, the sound was precisely that of sparrows quarreling in the street, heard from a window several stories high.

The men came last, all of them bearded, wearing grey or white or blue-dyed robes. They had daggers in their sashes, and although they never touched them we kept our hands on our revolvers. These men said nothing to us or to each other or the women, but stood around us in a half circle watching and, I thought, waiting. Only the children seemed really interested by our aircraft, and they were too much in awe to do more than stroke the hot cowling with the tips of their fingers. It came to me then that the scene was Old Testament biblical, and I suppose it was; people like this not changing much.

Eventually a man older than the rest came forward and began to talk to us. His beard was almost white, and he had a deep, solemn voice like an ambassador on a state occasion. I looked at Sanderson, who claims to parley-voo wog, but he was as out of it as I. We waited until the old boy had finished, then pointed to our mouths and rubbed our bellies to show that we wanted something to eat

It was mutton stewed in rice when we got it, everything flavored strongly with saffron and herbs. Not a dish that would have appealed under normal circumstances, but these were far from that, and for a time I dug in as heartily as Sanderson, sitting cross-legged and dipping the stuff up with my fingers.

The chief and two of his men sat across from us, trying to pretend that this was a normal social dinner. More of the men had tried to crowd in at the beginning, but Sanderson and I had discouraged that, cocking our revolvers and shouting at them until all but these had left. It had resulted, as they say, in a strained atmosphere; but there had been no help for it. At close quarters in the hut we couldn’t have managed more than the three of them if they had decided to rush us with their knives.

When we had eaten all we could, a sweet was brought out, a sticky pink paste neither of us wanted. Then strong unsweetened coffee in brass cups, and the chiefs daughter.

Or perhaps his granddaughter or the daughter of one of the other men. We had no way of really knowing; at any rate a young girl in linen trousers and vest, with her fingers and toes hennaed red-pink and her eyes heavily outlined by some black cosmetic. Her hair was braided and coiled high on her head, bound and twined with copper wire and little black disks like coins, and she wore more tinkling junk, hundreds of glass things like jelly beans, around her neck and wrists and on her fingers. She danced for us, jingling and swaying, while an older woman played the flute.