Brian Aldiss - Greybeard

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.

“And another, fast as you can,” Timberlane muttered, kneeling over the natterjack and feeding in a magazine. Charley switched over to automatic, and kept the lever squeezed for a burst. The shells squeaked like bats as they headed for the target. On the hillside, little brown figures scampered for safety. Timberlane brought up his revolver and aimed at them, but the range was too great for accuracy.

They lay and watched the pall of smoke settle across the slope. Someone out there was screaming. It looked as if only two of the enemy had escaped, beating a retreat over the brow of the hill.

“Can we chance going down?” Charley asked.

“I don’t think they’ll bother us. They’ll have had enough.”

They dismantled the gun, shouldered up the child, and continued warily down the slope. As they approached the waiting vehicles, the surviving member of the ambush came to meet them. He was a willowy man of no more than thirty, with dark eyebrows that almost met in the middle and fair hair cropped close. He came forward with a pack of cigarettes extended towards them.

“You boys came along in very good time. I’m obliged for the neat way you received my reception committee.”

“It’s a pleasure,” Timberlane said, shaking the man’s hand and taking a cigarette. “We first got acquainted with that little section over the other side of the hill, at Mokachandpur, where they shot up the rest of our fellows. They’re very personal enemies. We were only too glad to have the chance of another pot at them.”

“You’re English, I guess. I’m American, name Jack Pilbeam, Special Detachment attached to Fifth Corps. I was on my way through when we saw your craft and stopped to see if everything was okay.”

They introduced themselves all round, and Timberlane laid the unconscious boy in the shade. Pilbeam beat the dust out of his uniform and went with Charley to look to his companions.

For a moment Timberlane squatted by the boy, laying a leaf over his thigh wound, wiping the dust and tears from his face, brushing the flies away. He looked at the thin brown body, felt its pulse. The fold of his mouth grew ugly, and he seemed to stare through the fluttering rib cage, through the earth, into the bitter heart of life. He found no truth there, only what he recognized as an egotistical lie, born of his own heart: “I alone loved children dearly enough!”

Aloud, he said — speaking mainly to himself — “There were three of them over the hill. The other two were a pair of girls, sisters. Pretty kids, wild as mountain goats, no abnormalities. Girls got killed when the shells were slinging about, blown to bits before our eyes.”

“More are getting killed than saved,” Pilbeam said. He was kneeling by the crumpled figure in the shadow of the ambulance. “My two buddies are both done for — well, they weren’t really buddies. I’d only met the driver today, and Bill was just out from the States, like me. Guess that doesn’t make it hurt any less. This bastard war, why the hell do we fight when the world’s way down on its reservoir of human life already? Help me get ’em into the agony wagon, will you?”

“We’ll do more than that,” Timberlane promised. “If you’re going back to Wokha, as I presume you must be, we’ll act as escort to each other, just in case there are any more of these happy fellows perched up on the ridges.”

“Done. You’ve gotten yourself company, and don’t think I don’t need it. I’m still trembling like a leaf. Tonight you must come on over to the PX and we’ll drink to life together. Suit you, Sergeant?”

As they loaded the two bodies, still warm, into the ambulance, Pilbeam lit himself another cigarette. He looked Timberlane in the eyes.