Geoff Ryman - The King’s Last Song

The strange things you think when you are in trouble. Luc finds he is worried about the duct tape pulling off his eyebrows and jerking out his hair. He thinks of Mr Yeo and wants to tell him, see how brave I’m being? He thinks of his mother. See Maman ? I don’t feel any fear at all. This is bad, this is very bad, but I’m not panicking. He wants someone to be proud of him, to sit up and take notice.

He remembers Tintin. Tintin always remembered how many turns, left or right, and the kind of terrain, and the kind of noises.

So he pretends he is in a Tintin comic book. As they whine along the airport highway he counts to sixty five times. Then they shudder over open ground to the count of sixty times twelve. After a couple of almost vengeful crashes over humps he loses count.

They slow to a stop. He smells dust and something else, metallic and sour, which he realizes is probably blood, his own or the General’s.

The back of the truck thumps down. ‘Out, out,’ someone says, ‘let’s go!’ Luc shifts, feeling his way out of the pick-up. He is seized, hauled out, and thrust forward. Stumbling blindly over the ground he thinks: I will have to learn Braille in case I ever go blind. Why did I wear my good shoes, they’ll be all dusty.

Well, mon cher , they will look very branchée at your funeral. OUCH the stones are like teeth jabbing through the thin soles. Scrub crackles, prickling ankles.

Luc hears the pick-up rattle back onto the road behind him.

Then his feet go out from under him and he slides down a dirt slope onto rocks. A wrench and a folding-under and he knows that his ankle is twisted. Someone crouches down on top of him. He hears sirens wail past on the road above them. We’re down a ditch, he thinks. A ditch or a channel for floods in the dry season. You’d need to know it was here. These are local people.

The sack is thrown over him again. Some tiny insect nips him. Daylight mosquitoes, they carry dengue fever. He tries to slap it, and realizes that he can’t – his hands are tied. He tries experimentally to talk through the tape.

‘You say nothing!’ The voice is so close to his face that he feels breath on his nose. An insect bites him again.

He tries to count how long they wait, but then Tintin loses his nerve. Very suddenly Tintin wants to go home.

You are local people. I’ve probably seen your faces. All smiles. Well Cambodia is smiling now, isn’t it? I can see it grinning at me.

See, Cambodia is saying, you thought you could love us out of ourselves. Well here it is. This is what everyone else in Cambodia went through. Do you love it now? See how powerful love is? How long did you think you could be in Cambodia and avoid this? How long did you think you could avoid the strong men, the gangs, and the armed ex-soldiers? This is Siem Reap on Highway 6, one of the most dangerous parts of Cambodia for most of the thirty years of conflict.

Your turn, Luc, to be in a war.

The teacher could not grow a beard.

This was a great sadness for him and probably an embarrassment for his students. The teacher was a Brahmin, originally from India, Kalinga. His people could grow beards. It was a mark of their holiness. This Brahmin wondered if he had sinned in a previous life. Or perhaps his beard refused to come because of his lack of courage. He was too lax with challenging the boys especially the one who called himself Prince Slave.

For the sake of my beard, the Brahmin promised himself, the next time Nia questions authority, I will put him in his place.

In the class they were discussing the ordering of castes, and Nia sighed and said, ‘There are no castes of people in Kambujadesa. In Kalinga, I’m sure these things hold firm, but here everyone is either a noble or some kind of slave.’

Now, the Brahmin thought, I must act now. ‘Do you deny the ordering of categories?’

The Slave Prince said with a sideways smile, ‘I am sure the categories are orderly in a country where everyone can grow a beard.’

The silence in the room was clenched.

Prince Nia continued. ‘Here everyone keeps telling us to support the ordering of categories and professions, but I can never tell if they are talking about Varna or Jakti . I don’t think they can either.’

‘Your problem, Prince,’ said the Brahmin, ‘is that you think words have no power. You use them too freely.’

‘I think truth has power. Words have power when they are pushed out of you by truth.’

‘You have no humility.’

The young prince paused. ‘Not enough, it is true.’

‘You should learn humility, Prince.’

‘That’s true too. From whom should I learn it, guru?’

‘From the King!’

‘There is no possibility of learning anything other than humility when confronted by a king. I find it more instructive to learn it from slaves.’

Like a clam, the jaw of the Brahmin slammed shut. Too, too clever, this Slave Prince. The Brahmin tried to humiliate him. ‘You speak of your little friend.’

‘She is my friend. She sweeps and scrubs and fans and whisks. But she has a loyal heart.’

Just lately, the Brahmin had noticed, the children were not laughing at Nia. The other princes hung their heads and looked sullen, hiding something. The Brahmin had a terrible thought. This Nia is recruiting them. Recruiting them to what? The Brahmin had no words, but he felt this overturning prince was an enemy of religion.

‘I think you learn pride from her,’ said the Brahmin.

The cursed boy just looked thoughtful. ‘There is pride there, for I find her an exceptional person and so I am proud that she has condescended to be my friend.’

‘Upside-down boy! She is the slave, you are the Prince.’

‘So I should learn pride, not humility?’

He was a treacherous lake that made the boats unsteady.

‘You … you take pride and turn it into humility and then turn it into pride!’ The Brahmin knew that he sounded weak and shaken.

A danger, this one. This one is a danger.

Who knows what this danger to the Gods will bring? War? Famine? Drought? Severe lack of observance always brought the wrath of gods.

Even at twelve, this overturning Slave Prince must be brought down.

Shivering with the importance of what he was about to do, the teacher visited Steu Rau, the Master of the King’s Fly Whisk.

The Master’s family had whisked kings in public for generations. Family members had also been the Guardian of the Royal Sword and the Superintendent of the Pages. They were not Brahmin but they were definitely Varna. The Fly Whisks understood loyalty and the meaning of the categories.

Steu Rau agreed. ‘Yes, yes, you are right. You have no idea how this friendship unsteadies the palace girls. They keep looking for similar favours. Why, some of them have even offered themselves to me.’

‘Shameful!’

‘In the house of the King!’

The King was supposed to sleep with them, not the officers.

‘It is the singling out that is the problem,’ the teacher said. ‘The lower categories have to understand that they lack distinction, that they are as alike as cattle. That they earn distinction slowly, life after life, through obedience.’

‘This girl shoots up like a star!’

‘Through the attention of a capsizing prince. So. I think we must remove this attention by separating them. Permanently.’

‘Yes! Yes! Kill her!’

The Brahmin admired Fly Whisk’s energy. But he also thought that perhaps the girl might have offended Fly Whisk. ‘I do not think the killing of a female nia would earn merit. It might have the reverse effect.’

‘Humph! Well. You are the expert in these matters, guru.’