Гарднер Дозуа - City Under the Stars

Then he saw the glint of firelight up ahead.

He stopped. Whoever or whatever was before him, it was probably best to avoid them altogether. Only outlaws, bandits, or worse would be out in these unwholesome ruins. Honest men would have no reason to be here.

Thinking this, he could almost have laughed. He had nothing in common with honest men anymore. He was an outlaw himself now, cast out from human company like a manshogger or pariah dog.

In the darkness, somebody coughed.

Hanson stiffened in astonishment. The cough had been quiet and deliberate, a noise he was meant to hear. There was a lookout guarding the path, unseen, and he had just been warned that if he tried to turn away now, he was as good as dead. No help for it, he had to go forward, follow the light to its source, seek common cause with whatever human refuse clustered about its warmth. He belonged there now, after all, didn’t he?

Pushing through a stand of bamboo, he entered a clearing. Dark forms hunkered about the campfire, as stolidly motionless as so many apes. They looked up incuriously at his approach, firelight flickering in their eyes. There were at least a dozen of them, perhaps as many as fifteen or sixteen; the half-light, guttering and then flaring again sporadically, made it hard to tell exactly. The pale, near-human corpse of a thant, spitted on a stick, was roasting over the fire. The peculiar stench of the roasting meat filled the clearing, thick and pungent and strange, hovering uneasily somewhere between appetizing and nauseating.

With a swagger he did not feel, Hanson strode into the light, ostentatiously loosening the gun in his belt, making sure they all got a good look. Paradoxically, the bright fire gathered darkness about itself, blinding him, making him perfectly vulnerable. He cleared his throat. “Who’s boss here?”

For a long moment nobody moved. It was as if he had asked a deeper and more profound question than they were prepared to address, as if he’d challenged them to count the stars in the sky or riddle him the meaning of human pain or draw a street map of the City of God.

He was sweating now; the fire seemed to roar up inside of him. He kept one hand firm on the butt of the revolver, though it was really useless here—easiest thing in the world to come up from behind and brain him with a rock if that’s what they had a mind to do. The gun, the fabulously valuable gun, only made him so much less secure, for it gave them something to gain from his death.

Under the pervasive woodsmoke and the unsettling odor of the roasting thant, he could smell where they went to shit, not bothering even to put a decent distance between themselves and their leavings, and this told him a great deal about the sort of men they were. Careless men. Irresponsible men. He felt a gut-deep disapproval of the lot of them. Even outlaws—no, make that especially outlaws—needed discipline.

But they were dangerous nonetheless, perhaps even more dangerous for that very lack of discipline.

A frighteningly ordinary-looking man stood up. “Name’s Mahoney.” He looked a little to either side, as a man with dogs might, if he were not perfectly secure in his control of his hounds. “Ye’re a far way from home.”

“Ayah.” As nonchalantly as he could, Hanson said, “Looking for someone to hook up with.”

Mahoney considered the gun, looked at the imposing size and bulk of Hanson, and drew the obvious conclusions. “Ever kill a man?”

Hanson nodded slowly. “I guess.” The words hung heavy before him. It was the first time he had admitted his terrible crime aloud.

Mahoney twisted his hand strangely and a knife appeared in it. He walked toward and then past Hanson, to the remains of the thant charring over the fire, and sliced off a slab.

“Go back to your post,” he said to the still-unseen man behind Hanson. Then he thrust the meat into Hanson’s hands. “Eat.”

So it was, with a one-word command and a mouthful of meat so repugnant that he barely managed to force it down, that Hanson joined the band of outlaws. He was ravenous, but after that first bite, he quietly set the meat aside. He had proved his obedience. Maybe tomorrow there’d be something more wholesome to eat. And if not… well, he’d see.

Suddenly, a little man leaped up on top of a log to the smoky side of the campfire. The firelight leaped and jumped on his sunken features, and he worked his loose and toothless mouth for a bit before he spoke. “Praise God!” he cried. Then, lowering his voice so that he was speaking almost confidentially, “We are all of us insane. And yet, it is not our fault!”

With good-natured disdain, the outlaws turned to look at him.

“We can’t help it. It’s the Wall’s fault. Its existence forces us to acknowledge that our reality is out of phase with our desires. But we cannot admit this. We cannot . So, in denying it, we go mad. This is called cognitive dissonance.”

Sitting on the log beside him, Mahoney grinned wolfishly. “The Preacher’s in one of his moods. This oughta be good.”

“Angels used to walk the Earth, indistinguishable among men. They could pass through the Wall at will, because they had subjugated themselves to the will of Heaven. And, if angels could do so, then why not you and I?”

“Tell it, Preach,” one of the men said sardonically.

Encouraged, the little man waved his arms. He spoke feverishly, with a passionate intensity. “Man and Heaven must be reconciled. Once I was a great man, a worldly man, learned in all the things that did not matter. I spent my days among the archives of Harrisburg. Until finally I realized that Reconciliation was my destiny, and began the search for the key.” He looked around to either side. “And I found it!” he said triumphantly. “I found the key to Heaven, and I hold it within me. Right in here!” He slapped his chest enthusiastically. “It’s wrapped around my heart, dearer than life, closer than breath, and it will open the—” He faltered and paused. “Open the—” His voice trailed off, and he looked around vaguely. “What was I about to—?”

One of the men pursed his lips and made a lewd sucking noise. The others laughed uproariously. The light of fanaticism went out of the little man, his face collapsing into pathos and misery, body slumping like a balloon with a slow leak.

Hanson felt sickened. There was only one reason such a group of men would tolerate this broken creature. Worse, to survive here, to gain their acceptance, to be recognized as one of their kind, a man who didn’t set himself above his fellows, he would have to avail himself of the Preacher’s services as well. And he didn’t think he could. There were limits, there had to be limits, to what a man would do to survive. Let it pass, he told himself, nobody’s expecting you to do anything tonight, no sense borrowing trouble.

Not much more was said that evening. A joke or two, the purport of which was beyond Hanson’s comprehension, some lifeless verbal scuffling between two men whose hatred for each other aroused no passion, and some quiet, inconsequential talk about a planned raid on an outlying farmhouse—Hanson got the impression that the ambitions of these men did not extend very far. They were as good as dead already, and most likely knew it. Thinking about things would only make them worse.

Mahoney leaned close and spoke into his ear. “Tomorrow,” he said quietly, “I’ll need you to take care of a little problem for me.” Drawing back, he gave Hanson a sharp look to make sure he understood.

“A’right,” Hanson said. Maintaining an outward calm, though his heart was pounding like a jackhammer. He understood well enough. He had just agreed to kill a man and he didn’t even know who .