The Hidden World by Paul Park – A SCI FI Essential Book

EXCERPT

Peter squatted down and slid his hook into Adira's neck just above his breastbone. Delicately, with the point of his prosthesis, he unbuttoned the front of Adira's tunic. "I felt this before. I wonder what it is."

In the afternoon, Peter's company would return to the front line, and there were rumors of a push. He had no time to waste here, but he was curious about the envelope over Adira's heart — was it the same as his? A memento, a talisman, a good-luck charm? Peter didn't think so. With his left hand he unfolded it, opened it up. Underneath, tucked into Adira's undershirt was a wad of reichmarks. This was what the man had meant when he had talked about paying him.

The paper on the inside of the envelope was sky-blue with threads of silk. There were pages of hieroglyphs drawn in gold. Andromeda might have been able to read them, Peter thought.

So: an African carrying messages from Africa. Under the bare trees in the dead, long grass, the world was calm. Corporal Adira, if that was really his name, was sniveling because of his broken leg. But even that was a hopeless little noise.

There were birds in the branches above Peter's head. And in the dawn light, on the hill south of the town he could see the battery come to life, the men pulling the howitzers out of their pens. It was quiet in that wood behind the line, the day-long hush before the evening thunder.

"Tell me what this says," he said.

"I…I don't know. It is from Abyssinia."

"I can see that. You don't know what it says?" Peter removed the wad of currency. "Where are you taking this?"

"To Brasov, sir. Dispatches. The money is for my sister and my mother. Not for myself — I swear it."

Peter wrinkled up his nose. "And you're from Abyssinia?"

"Yes. No. My father—"

"And you think this will help?"

"Yes. Yes I do. Yes, sir. Something must be done."

"I wonder."

Around them the day was gathering. The men on the hill were unwrapping the long muzzles of the 75 millimeter cannons.

Peter Gross looked up. "Twenty-five years ago, we marched through this country carrying rifled muskets with percussion caps. Now we have machine guns and grenades — from Africa, but they supply both sides. It's for the money, don't you think?"

"I don't know."

"That's what I think. It's too much money to resist."

They spoke in murmurs behind the ruined wall. The trees above them were full of little birds that suddenly took flight, turning all at once. Now a single long shaft of sunlight broke through the clouds.

Deep in the east, the light came slipping toward them over the broken fields and the remains of last year's harvest. "I'm going back," said Captain Gross. "I'll turn this over to my colonel. He'll send someone to pick you up."

"Please, sir, no. For the love of God. It's…it's about Chiselet. The accident at Chiselet. This is an investigation by the government in Addis Ababa — that's all. I swear to God."

Peter turned the papers over, examined the backs of them. "What do you know about Chiselet?"

"Nothing, sir. I'm just a messenger."

Peter laughed. "And not a good one. You're not the right man for this."

He dropped the wad of money in the dirt. The little man, still weeping, lying on his side, clutched at it feebly. "No, sir."

Peter got to his feet. He brushed off the knees of his trousers, stood for a moment squinting into the wide sun, sniffing at the air. From here, looking north toward the great river, you almost wouldn't know there was a war.

He turned and walked away through the orchard toward the communication trench. He would inform the military police after he'd returned to Theta Company. In the meantime he was being followed.

He recognized the scent first of all, an animal and human mixture. In cheap hotels across North Africa and the Levant, he'd gotten used to it. Now he sniffed it with an odd sense of nostalgia. Rank and appealing, heavy and light, there had been a time when it had disgusted him. Those also had been difficult days.

But difficult or not, now they seemed touched with gold, with the warm morning light that caressed every pre-war memory, everything that had happened before the Turks had crossed the line. He turned and lifted up his nose, waiting for her to take shape somewhere in the dead weeds — dog, woman, or man. Standing over the idiotic spy, her name had occurred to him. Was that when he had first caught the scent? Maybe not, because he thought about her often, her and Miranda Popescu. Every hour, maybe more.

"Where are you?" he whispered.

"Behind you." Her harsh, queer voice. Maybe she crouched on the other side of the stone wall. But he heard her clearly. "Don't turn around," she said.

They spoke in English. "What do you want?"

"Just to see you, first of all. You're a hard man to find alone."

"I must go back," he said.

Then after a moment: "How is Miranda? Is she safe?"

She didn't answer him. "I have a favor to ask. For old times' sake. Past times in the Ninth Hussars."

They had served together under General Schenck von Schenck. Miranda's father. That's where they'd known each other first. So long ago, it seemed like the beginning of the world.

"Yes?"

"I know you're having trouble with conscriptions, all the Transylvanian battalions. I want to know if I could volunteer, and you could bring me in."

Now suddenly he remembered that old campaign, the sights and sounds conjured to life as if by a few harsh, toneless words. The smell of leather and horses when they were camping in the birch trees above Nova Zagora. Brandy around the fire. The view from the ridge when on horseback he had taken his men down. Not like now, cowering in a hole.

"You're crazy," he said.

Then, because she didn't answer, he went on. "We're not soldiers anymore. We're up against machines. Machines stuck in the mud. You know, like those Terminator movies."

It was too tempting not to make a little joke, to bring back something from the other past they shared, when they had been kids together in Berkshire County. And she laughed.

"No," he said again. "You're crazy."

She was laughing. "Please. Don't make this hard. I beg you. Think of that: I'm begging you. Take me as a private soldier under your command."

He understood it must be true — this must be hard for her to say. She had not loved him then, nor did she love him now. She'd been a lieutenant in the old days, Sasha Prochenko on a big white stallion, so dashing and romantic in his forest-green uniform, high boots, fawn-colored pants, so popular with the ladies, his blue eyes flecked with silver. And later at Mamaia Castle on the beach….

"No. This is not a place for you. It's not what we need. How could you pass the physical?"

When she said nothing, he continued. "Can you see yourself in a latrine with twenty men?"

That made her pause. " I had not thought you were so cruel."

He looked around. Her voice had changed, and she was closer. "What about your own physical exam?" she asked. "Or were you always Captain Hook?"

Then again: "I am begging you."

"No!" he cried, angry now. Morning had come. There was no time. "Wasn't it your job to stay with Miranda and protect her? Isn't that what we decided, what we agreed on in Cismigiu Park? I wish that was my job, not to die here in this place. This cesspit."

Now he could see her in the morning sunlight. She stood up on the other side of the wall. She climbed over between the tumbled stones. Always the dandy. Civilian clothes — her pants perfectly creased. She carried a silver-headed cane.

She had a way that both attracted and repulsed him. But he had seen no women for many months, and his heart lifted when he saw her. She was too exotic for mere beauty — her yellow hair under the slouch hat, the soft body hair that made her exposed skin seem to glow, the proud expression and strong features in which her animal nature, now, seemed to predominate. But the sharp, musky smell had disappeared. He was used to it already.

Though she was dressed as a man, and in spite of the dog or wolf that lurked inside of her, she looked more girlish or womanly than she ever had in Berkshire County. Her hair was longer now, curling down below her ears. "It doesn't seem so bad," she said, looking around at the quiet orchard, the guns on the hillside raising their muzzles to the sky.

"It's a beautiful sight," she persisted. "You'd better go. A girl can dream."

But now Peter wanted to stay a moment longer. "Promise me you'll go back to her. This is not the place for you. The Condesa de Rougemont — in Bucharest we had no choice except for her to take Miranda in. But do you remember her on the Hoosick riverbank? Young woman then, old lady now — the place stank of magic."

Andromeda gave him a blank look. She didn't remember. How could she remember? "I don't trust her," he went on. "No matter what Madame de Graz says. I wish I could — no…leave a message at the hospital. Will you do that? There's a corporal of the 53rd light infantry over in those trees. He's got a broken leg. And tell me," he continued. "What does this say?"

He thrust the envelope of hieroglyphs into her gloved hand. She didn't need to squint to read it. "This is a shopping list. Small arms."

"Sure," said Peter. "Is that all?"

"No, it's not all. Chiselet — do you remember Chiselet?"

She smiled, then went on. "You weren't yourself. Neither was I. But I saw those lead canisters in the baggage car. That's what they're talking about here."

Peter shrugged. Andromeda raised the paper to her nose and sniffed it. "They must have been blown up in the explosion," she said, "except for one. An Abyssinian in a gray suit. He crawled out to die south of the tracks. I took the suit, his money, and his watch. But I left the canister two hundred meters in the marsh — a dead oak tree. You could see from the embankment. Everything else was to the north."

Peter scratched his right forearm where the leather cuff chafed. He had his own memories of that day and the wreck of the Hephaestion. From there he'd gone to Mogosoaia, where he'd found Miranda Popescu. "Tell me," he said, though by now it was too late to listen, "how is everyone in Stanesti-Jui? How is she?"

He spoke the name of the village like a charm. It was impossible to send a letter, though he had written many, or else the same one over and over. "Tell me, is she safe?"

Andromeda smiled, cruel in her turn, he thought. Her teeth were sharp and numerous. "You'd better go." And then after a moment: "In any case, I've been in Bucharest."

"Don't tell me you haven't seen her!" Peter said. "Promise me you'll watch over her — is that too much to ask, while I am here? Inez de Rougemont — I saw her on the Hoosick River, dressed in Gypsy clothes. Since then I've told myself that was not real. Madame de Graz had vouched for her, her oldest friend. She talks about her in her letters, but how can I be sure? Promise me you'll go there now."

For a moment there was no irony or slyness in her face. But she was as he remembered her — his old comrade in arms.

"Give her this," he said. He unbuttoned the first buttons of his tunic, then took from an inside pocket the letter he rewrote every fourth day or so, whenever they pulled his platoon from the front line. He kept it over his heart, a piece of superstition. "'I have a rendez-vous with death,'" he quoted fiercely. "It's lucky I learned that one, isn't it?"

It had been a favorite poem of his mother's in Berkshire County, a battle poem from the First World War. Now he said it for effect, something Sasha Prochenko might be expected to understand.

Jealous, he supposed, she smiled at him. "It's true — you are the lucky one. I often think about what happened in Chiselet."

Standing in front of him, she took hold of his collar, brushed her fingers against his silver captain's bars. She held his letter in her other hand, along with the hieroglyphic message, which she'd refolded carefully, replaced in its envelope. "No, give it back," Peter said. "I changed my mind — it is not good for me to write to her. That's not what I promised to her father. I said I would protect her, not…"

His voice dribbled away. Andromeda supplied the rest. "…Care for her? It's not the worst thing."

Was she teasing him? Peter turned his head. He stood looking out over the field. "Madame de Graz told me not to write to her. She told me it was dangerous, because I was a wanted man. She told me the police were looking for me. I haven't seen any proof."

"I'll take your letter," said Andromeda.

"No — I don't want that," Peter said. He reached out for the two envelopes and she came to him. She tucked them into the inside pocket of his uniform. She patted him over his heart, buttoned him up.

Though he was uncomfortable to feel her so close, he did not step away or knock her hands away. He had refused her, after all, rejected her. Her animal scent came back to him, and he could smell the liquor on her breath.

He turned back toward the trench. It was only a couple of minutes later, after she was gone, that he realized she had picked his pocket, taken both envelopes — the letter to Miranda and the pages of hieroglyphs. She'd left him with nothing.

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