Mara and Dann (45 page)

She was ready when the guard came to take her to the General. He was in the large building she had seen yesterday: walls of mud and grass mix, roof of reeds, floor of stamped mud. Around a long table sat twenty or so Hennes, each in their uniform, similar to the army she had come from, of dull brown cloth. Each had exactly the same face, staring at her. She was sitting immediately opposite the General, distinguished from the others by a red tab on his shoulder. Each Hennes wore a coloured tab, or button or a badge. The large, flattish, yellowish face – it had a greasy look; the pale eyes; the large mat or bush of hair that looked greasy too. Did they put oil on their hair? Fat of some kind? All the exposed flesh and hair seemed wet, but it was grease or oil.

She had armed herself to tell her tale yet again, making it as short as possible, but this man, the General, said, ‘When do you expect your child?'

This was so much what she did not expect! – and she sat silent, collecting herself, and then said, ‘I'm not having a child.'

At this, the large, flat faces turned towards each other, then back, and the General said, ‘You are having General Shabis's child.'

‘No, I am not.'

‘You are General Shabis's woman.'

‘No, I am not. I never have been.'

And again the faces turned towards each other to share – presumably – astonishment.

‘You never have been.'

This was not a question, but a statement; their statements were questions in a context, but their voices did not change – were flat, toneless, heavy.

‘You have been misinformed,' said Mara.

‘We have been misinformed. You are not General Shabis's woman. You are not pregnant by him. You are not pregnant.'

This last was a question, and Mara said, ‘No.' Then, but realising as she spoke that to joke with these creatures was a waste of time, said, ‘If
you have captured me because of wrong information, then why not just send me back again?'

‘We shall not send you back. You will be of use. We will have work for you.'

At least, she thought, it had not occurred to them to use her as a sex woman. ‘May I ask a question?'

They looked at each other – the slow turn of the faces, then back at her.

‘You may ask a question.'

‘If I had been pregnant by General Shabis, what use would that have been to you?'

‘He is a good general. He is very successful. We would rear the child to be a general. We plan to capture the children of the other three generals.'

‘What are you going to use me for?'

‘That is a question. You had not asked for permission.'

‘I am sorry.'

‘But I shall answer it. You have learned to speak Charad, and you know Mahondi.'

Here she expected him to ask for her history, but he was not curious. Nor had any of them leaned forward to look at the tunic she wore, of that astonishing indestructible material. Yet none of them could have seen it before.

‘I would like to ask another question.'

‘You may ask another question.'

‘General Shabis wants a truce with you. He thinks a truce will benefit all of Charad.'

‘But I have not yet come to that part of the examination,' reproved the General. ‘Before that I must tell you that you will be informed of the tasks that will be given you. It is possible you will be put in the army. Knowing Mahondi will be of use.'

‘In the meanwhile I have no clothes, not even a comb or a toothbrush. Perhaps you could arrange for another raid so you could fetch me my things?' As if she had not learned that to make jokes would only upset them.

‘We would not be prepared to make a raid solely for the purpose of getting your possessions. It is very foolish of you to think that.'

Mara now knew that whatever else she might suffer with the Hennes, boredom was likely to be the worst.

‘What is the real reason behind General Shabis's demand for a truce?'

‘He believes it would benefit the whole country.'

‘I am asking you for the real reason.'

‘That is the reason. He would like the war to end. He says you have been at war for twenty years and neither side has gained anything.'

‘But we often win our battles with them.'

‘But the Four Generals administer the territory of the Agres, as they have done for years, and you hold this territory – nothing changes.'

‘It is not correct to say that,' said General Izrak, apparently agitated, for his eyes seemed to twitch a little in their sockets. ‘We won a considerable tract of their territory a month ago. It was in the trenches that mark the division between our armies, on our western front and their eastern front. A year ago they won about as much territory as is occupied by this camp. A month ago we won it back. We lost only five hundred soldiers and they lost four hundred.'

‘General Shabis would consider that an unnecessary loss of life of soldiers who could be better occupied.'

‘Occupied doing what?' said the General, getting more and more upset. And all around the table the large, glistening Hennes faces turned this way and that, and their eyes flickered.

‘Building towns. Improving farms. Clearing rivers. Making children. Growing food.'

Down came the General's great fist on the table and then all the Hennes banged their fists, exactly like him, one after the other.

‘We all get all the food we need. We raid them and get food, and besides our civilian populations grow food and we take what we need from them.'

It was clear that Shabis's demand for a truce was not going to succeed. She wished she could tell him so. It occurred to her that he had wanted a spy in the Hennes camp and here she was. But the Hennes had a spy from the other camp – herself, for she could tell them everything she knew. And she was ready to do so. If they knew just how well organised, how satisfactory, how stable, was the rule of the Four Generals, would they then – the Hennes – be prepared to change their ideas? Did they ever change? Could they?

In came two of the tall, beautiful wall-people, carrying trays. Their elegance made these gross, ugly people even more repulsive. Did they know that long, long ago – thousands of years? – their ancestors had lived in a wonderful city that was only a night's walk away, and their civilisation had, probably, influenced all of Ifrik?

Each Hennes had in front of him a plate of food. It was nothing like
as good as the food in the other camp. They began to eat. Then Mara saw that these were not all men: some were female, with flattened bulges in front. There was no other sign of their being women. They all ate slowly and methodically, while the two elegant slaves stood waiting.

‘You will get your food in your own quarters,' said the General.

‘May I ask a question?'

They all appeared to be surprised. ‘We do not talk and eat at the same time. This discussion is at an end. There might be things we want to ask tomorrow.'

And Mara was taken to her prison hut by the guard. She tried to get him to talk to her, but he answered, ‘You will be informed.'

She was brought food. How could she escape? If she were made a soldier, then perhaps…She was taken for the routine run that afternoon, and again saw the General and his staff on the way back. With normal people, their faces could be read as saying they had never seen or heard of her, but with the Hennes, who knew?

In the morning she was brought two uniforms, of the kind they all wore: brownish top and trousers, and a brown woollen cap, with a flap in front that could be buttoned back. Two pairs of light bark shoes, clearly not meant for marching in. Some brushwood sticks for her teeth. Soap. A small bag or pouch to be attached at the shoulders to hang at the back. This was the equipment, evidently, for a female soldier, for as well came a bag of rags and a cord to tie them on with. Also, a message from the General, that when she knew she was not pregnant, she must send him the evidence.

Her guard informed her, ‘You are no longer a prisoner. We shall not be locking this door.'

She thought of joking, ‘If I am not a prisoner, would it be in order for me to walk out of this camp and go back to the Agres?' But she knew this poor man's mental apparatus would be so discommoded he would have to run to the General for instructions.

In four days she would have some blood to show the General, and meanwhile she would use the time to get what information she could by using her eyes. No one took any notice of her as she wandered about – or so it seemed. She was surprised at the apparent confusion of this camp. Then she saw there were blocks of order, unconnected with the others. A block of tents was neatly set out, with tidy paths between, but this was set at an angle to some rows of sheds, equally well arranged, and both were
unrelated to an adjacent little suburb which itself was composed of rows of little boxes. To get from one part to another of this camp – but it was a town, really, since it had been here, clearly, so long – was difficult, for she found herself following the neatest of paths, hoping to achieve the next settlement, but it ended perhaps against the wall of a house, or simply stopped. Storehouses, water tanks, stood here and there, and there was a watchtower in the very centre of the camp, or town, when surely it should have been at its edge?

Finding herself looking westwards, on a well-used road – the one she had been brought on – she simply began walking, thinking she might not be noticed; but she had not reached the camp's outskirts before she heard a soft thudding of feet on dust and turned to see a graceful creature, a Neanthes, flying rather than walking, long delicate hands outstretched. ‘You must come back. You are not allowed.'

They walked back together. Mara said that she wished she could have a writing stick and some writing leaves, to learn more Charad, but the girl replied that learning was not encouraged among the soldiers. ‘And particularly not the Neanthes. They are afraid of us, you see.' And having reached Mara's hut, this Neanthes went off, seeming to dance rather than walk, sending Mara a delightful conspiratorial smile.

On the proper day, Mara sent the General a message that there was blood, and therefore no pregnancy; but back came the Neanthes to say she had been instructed to see the blood with her own eyes. ‘But I could have pricked my finger,' Mara whispered, and the whisper came back, ‘You see? they're stupid.' She ran off to the General with the evidence and brought back the message, ‘You have blood. You are therefore not pregnant. You will begin training tomorrow.'

The next day she found the new recruits were not all Hennes. On the drill ground were a hundred recruits, males and females, mostly Hennes, with a few Neanthes, but about a third were people Mara had not seen before. They were small, stocky, strong, yellowish, with the knobbly look that Dann had had when he was underfed – and presumably Mara herself. These were Thores, and they had come voluntarily to the camp to join the army where they would be fed: their home province was impoverished because the Hennes had raided it for food recently. It was immediately evident that the tall, long-legged Neanthes could not drill together with the small, short-legged Thores, since the stride of one was twice that of the other, and the new recruits were sorted out into six platoons of Hennes, ten each, three of Thores, and one of Neanthes.
Mara was with the Neanthes. She was not as tall, as lithe, or as slender, but she was not very different from their shortest.

Marching about on the dusty drill ground, while a Hennes instructor shouted at them, was boring rather than arduous, but he kept them at it, hour after hour, in the hot sun, while the dust rose up in clouds and they grew thirsty and tired. He was trying to bring them to an extreme of physical exhaustion, but again there was the problem of their differences. The platoons of solid, stolid Hennes showed few signs of fatigue, while the Thores, in any case undernourished, were in a bad way, and the Neanthes were falling and fainting. They could not all do the same drill. It appeared that this problem arose every time with the new recruits, but apparently the Hennes always thought that this time things would be different, and were taken by surprise that what was happening was exactly what always happened.

From now on the Hennes would begin two hours before the Thores, and then there would be an hour before the Neanthes joined in. And that set the pattern for the month of drilling that was needed to turn Mara and the others into soldiers. She neither liked it nor disliked it. Soldiers had to be trained, and a soldier was what she was now – though not for long, if she could help it.

Suddenly everything changed. There was a raid to the east one night, and there were prisoners. Mara's hut was needed and she was ousted from it, and watched while four Thores were hustled in to take her place.

She was ordered to march north with a company that was to replace watch-guards on the northern frontier. She was expecting to hear something from General Izrak before she left, but there was nothing: she had only been of interest to them for one reason.

At first they marched through grasslands broken by clumps of thorn trees; but when they camped on the first night they were on the edge of a great plain broken by hills which next day, as they marched down on
to it, they could see was no longer the sandy or reddish soil around the Hennes camp, but a dark earth, fibrous, growing sparse, low plants. A wind blew straight from the north into their faces, carrying showers of this earth with it, and soon all the soldiers had tied cloths around their lower faces to breathe through. All that day they marched through low, lumpy hills with an occasional Thores village, and that night they had come up from the plain and were again on a rise, and ahead was a desolation of rough hills and broken ground. This was the last day's marching. That evening, ahead, stood a line of watchtowers, each on a rise; and around each was a camp, more of a village, since there were huts, not tents, and a great blaze of sunset lit most luridly a flatness between the towers, where earth moved and blew about, seeming to heave, like a creature, and little hills whose tops were briefly lit with a ruddy glow before the sun plunged down and there was an absolute dark; and then into the black overhead the stars came, not glittery and clear, but dim, because of the dusty air.