Worthless

Chapter 18 of Microcosmia

Microcosmia

Chapter Eighteen

Worthless

To the Afar, daybreak had become a near-religious event; they saw sunrise without Strauss as Mamuset’s death knell. Still they’d shown as a unit, their faces and bodies smudged, their eyes roughened by want of sleep. But there was no functioning equipment left to meet the dawn; everything was fried and mangled under stinking drifts of slag. The crater’s floor was a deep dish of ash and carbonized locust carcasses, peppered with chunks of charred wood and blackened foliage. A burnt stench clung to everything. So much smoke remained in the air that the pocked hulls of Domos stood indistinctly amid the scarred trunks of birches and elms. It was thick enough to make dawn a miserable twilight. Still, the Afar had shown, and, when that first feeble ray cut to the Stage, they watched dumbfounded, standing elbow-to-elbow as their logy leader threw back his head and spread his singed robes wide. “I,” he cried to no one in particular, “am a freaking genius!”

* * *

Throughout the morning, Afar men ran their wheelbarrows up and down the Streets, halting to accept shoveled piles of locusts and running on. Stationed teenagers did the shoveling. Women raked the bodies into piles. Tots with wet rags tied below their eyes used sticks to knock carcasses from the remains of trellises and shrubs. The men would hurry their full wheelbarrows back to Utility Squares, where drivers shoveled pound after pound of roasted vermin into truck beds. The dead locusts were then dispersed around the Rim and raked down Outer Slopes into a narrow encircling ditch. For miles beyond this ditch, the desert was carpeted with burned insects and crawling with scavengers.

The noxious shroud rose as the day heated up. Noses and mouths were covered less frequently, animals got underfoot with new vigor. After a good soaking, boys and girls climbed into trees. Once secured, they were handed up long poles. Hundreds of thousands of dead locusts were beaten from the leaves.

Vane’s sense of triumph over nature was short-lived--his victory-ride around the Rim turned his stomach. Everything that could be burned had been burned. Thatch roofs were now peaked piles of ash, Shade Halls fire-eaten rags. Warehouse was a collapsed, reeking mess of dark hanging threads. Black rivulets, produced by the constant hosing down of charred material, were everywhere. Overall it was a gray and dismal world, but here and there flashes of color showed in devastated gardens.

What depressed Vane most was his Rim view of the yellow, sickly-looking treetops. It was difficult to objectively assess damage to the great saving Canopy, central as it was to the wonderful home he’d built. Even as he was staring, a couple of long poles pierced the ruined crown of a nearby higan cherry. The poles banged about crazily, accompanied by squeals of delight. Fried grasshoppers rained all around. And then Worthless, hypnotized by her own plodding rhythm, was almost clipped by a sooty truck tearing along Rim Road, its bed full of grinning teenagers wielding shovels and rakes. It struck Vane then: the place would heal! Mamuset’s only real casualties had been Kid and the Post Guards. The Afar were strong, experienced, and eager to rebuild. And even now, outside his command, that eagerness was running through the Streets, up the Ramps and over the Rims. Children, their little black heads bobbing and racing in the Fields, were scooping locusts into sandbags with competitive zeal. Oxen were dragging lakes and ponds. Burned patches of grass were being uprooted, tainted soil replaced with fresh. All at once Vane hated his memoirs. He’d been behaving like a retiree. He poked Worthless into a half-assed trot, his mind shifting gears.

First off, he’d have to prepare for another swarm. They’d been lucky; now it was time to be smart. He’d been a self-absorbed, arrogant peacock. But how to have known? Guns and grasshoppers…Vane thereupon determined to be equally tutor and student, to ready Mamuset for anything. It was time to get dirty. It would be old days again.

The ditch accepted its last locust and was covered over. Trees were pruned by adventurous teenagers, leaf by leaf, until the Canopy achieved its former luster. New thatch was laid on roofs, new equipment purchased for the Stage. The Afar patched and puttered, as focused as ever, determined to build a community more exotic and splendid than before. The weeks passed. Fields were revitalized, gardens restored with daily imports from the Honey Oases. But the new Warehouse, Big Tarp, and Shade Halls had to be erected out of salvaged patches, for, in the process of ordering fresh canvas through Army Surplus in Addis Ababa, Vane learned that supplies were being sewn up by the government. A very real war was taking place outside his little fantasy world.

Vane’s failure to take his surroundings seriously perfectly illuminated his irresponsible nature. Anywhere you put him, he’d be out of sync with reality. Practically on the borderline of warring nations, and he’d been too busy studying insects and weather patterns to heed the approaching front--though he was warned almost daily by his capitol connections. Then one day, while ringing Tibor to be put through to Honey, he was shocked to learn he was on his own. A bomb-laden locomotive had taken out a terminal in Addis Ababa, expanding Tibor’s State Department duties considerably. Now non-critical use of airwaves was flat-out denied; only a bona fide emergency would get Vane’s voice across the Atlantic.

As time passed, it grew harder and harder to squeeze anything out of the capitol. Worse, the Vane Depot was being shut down due to a dynamiting of the tracks on the Ethiopian side of Djibouti’s border. Goods ordinarily transported from Port Djibouti to Addis Ababa via rail were being trucked overland by a complicated system of roads and passes. Aksum and Mekele, small but commercially important centers northwest of Danakil, had fallen to Eritrea without protest. According to Tibor, the Depression was all but surrounded.

Vane’s final conversation with Honey’s liaison came on the eve of the project’s penultimate threat, but it had nothing to do with broadcasts and borders. It was all about drugs and savages. Tibor told Vane that communication outside Ethiopia was no longer possible. He warned the American to pack up and seek refuge in the Republic of Djibouti, coolly explaining that Ethiopia was way too busy to support Mamuset once it came under attack. And he stressed the inevitability of that attack.

Fighting to the north and south was described as far more intense than Vane’s peripatetic sources would have him believe. But what really got his attention was Tibor’s description of the Eritrean vanguard. The man drew a nasty verbal picture of a particularly bloody brand of guerrilla warfare, practiced by rogue Somali and Kenyan mercenaries who attack without warning, and with a frenzied behavior reminiscent of the Berserkers during their European assaults. These mercenaries are a loose company without discipline, and although they are provided the uniform of Eritrea’s elite Port Guard, they swear allegiance to nothing higher than an ancient form of Kenyan demonism. Their only weapon is the machete.

They come at night, soundlessly and without preamble, assaulting their victims regardless of age or gender, spontaneously and collectively morphing into adrenaline-blinded dervishes of whirling steel. By way of response, their deeply superstitious victims become frozen slabs of mute terror. This reaction, according to Tibor, only further excites the assailants, who will not be freed of their murderous mania until felled by exhaustion. Even then they will continue to hack and dismember the dead, howling all the while. These savages, Tibor explained, are fueled in their attacks by megadose injections of heroin and amphetamine, distributed through Port Massawa. It is these drugs, taken singularly in encampments and in combination just before an actual assault, that are responsible for initiating and maintaining their demonic religion’s ages-old practice of seek-and-mutilate.

The addiction is sponsored by the Eritrean Army, which organization also provides this bizarre company, its most feared and effective weapon, with syringes and strike points. It is the job of these maniacs to soften up a target before the actual military strike. They proceed well ahead of traditional ground forces, but not because their superiors think they’re such clever scouts. It’s because they scare the hell out of the regular troops. And once they’re up they will not take orders, or in any manner be put off their game. They are utterly merciless and entirely without remorse.

Vane was bugged enough by this conversation to renew drills in Mamuset, complete with target practice, mobile distribution fans, and that family-oriented, run-and-load maneuver, the Ripple. New Bulwarks and Posts were erected. The Piper Cub, sent on a Mekele reconnaissance flyover, returned with two bullet holes in a wing and one in the fuselage. Vane set up sentry shifts all around the Rim, fortified the Onramp, and hired wandering tribes of goatherds to sniff out the expanding Eritrean front.

But when the assailants showed they breached all defenses, and virtually without warning--only a single, quickly truncated siren’s wail spoke for the dozens of throats slit in complete silence. The hopped-up savages, singly and in clusters, came rolling down the Inner Slopes like water. Relying on surprise and terror, they burst into Domos whirling steel.

They were obviously ignorant of the project, for these wildmen, some two hundred in all, were quickly lost in the unfamiliar crisscrossing jungle of Mamuset. Without leadership, and without anything tighter than mayhem for a battle plan, the savages, in their official Port Guard uniforms, red and gold berets, and Nike knockoffs, found themselves wasting precious wrath chasing individuals through the strange obstacle course of Yards, gardens, and Shade Halls. When an invader did halt, from exhaustion or disorientation, he was likely as not to find himself standing amid three or more Mamusetans with M16s leveled.

The Afar were not stingy with ammunition--some of the spot carnage taking place in secret garden pockets that night put to shame all the damage done by the savages’ blades. Those who came in over West Rim found themselves nonplussed by a maze of open Fields, with nothing to take their bloodlust out on other than an occasional tethered camel or snoozing Field hand. Disastrously conspicuous in their frustration, they were picked off by treetop snipers one by one as they approached the community.

Vane could find no pattern in the muffled popping of rifle fire. Fearing a diversion, he called for a defense of the Onramp, and in less than five minutes was heading a force of over a hundred armed men and boys making for the Arch. But by the time he reached that goal he was practically on his own. Only he, Mudhead, and half a dozen excited children remained to defend the Arch--the men had deserted en route to join the fighting in the trees. Vane raged mightily at this treachery, storming back and forth with his black robes swirling impressively, but it really didn’t matter. Generally speaking, surprise attacks don’t use the front door. The Onramp was deserted.

Vane’s ego was the attack’s most dismissible casualty; once their blood was up, the Afar had absolutely no use for him. Ditching the children with difficulty, he stormed back to the Stage, attached his night-imaging binoculars, and hunkered down to his tripod. Not a trace of activity on the Slopes; no sign of a continuing assault, no sign of a retreat. But there were cries of exultation leaking out of the trees, punctuated by volleys of rifle fire. The place was out of control.

Vane jumped in Isis, roared up a Ramp, and screeched to a halt at a Guard Post. He climbed out with dignity and panache, adjusted his turban, fluffed his robes, and strode purposefully to the Post’s quarters. Inside he found the Guard and his family decapitated, dismembered, and mutilated in ways suggestive of great passion. Vane staggered back to the Land Rover and sat with the door open wide, his head between his knees. After a while, when he’d found his breath, he rolled down a Ramp to Bisecting Way, motored along to Stage Street, and so on up to his front gate. For some time he sat idling in a fog, sick to the quick. At last he killed the engine.

Mamuset was as still as a cemetery. Vane gently opened the gate, tiptoed over to Worthless’s pad and quietly hauled out her saddle. Solomon, seeing the camel move, shot from concealment and nipped her rear a good one. Worthless roared to her feet. Vane kicked back the dog and heaved on the saddle, walked her out the gate and mounted. The three moved uneventfully through the dark community until Vane noticed, perhaps a quarter-mile away, a rectangle of light spilling from a Domo’s doorway. A few wraithlike figures could be seen scooting in and out of that slat of light, their arms encumbered by white bundles. When the Square was still again he steered Worthless into the front Yard, careful to guide her around hard surfaces that would herald his coming. He brought her right up to the side of the doorway, just beyond the spill of light. Both brute and rider craned their necks to peer inside.

Right there, in the room’s very center, lay a mortally injured man on a thatch bed, attended by four smeared and bespattered women. Blood all over the place. The women, two kneeling on either side of the bed like nuns at prayer, were holding fresh rags against the bleeding man’s wounds. Soaked rags were piled in a corner. Vane was painfully moved by their silent efficiency, but the preoccupied women were unaware of his bloodless suffering presence until Worthless, her nostrils quivering, snorted quizzically.

The women looked up as a unit, and as a unit glared. The scene froze like that, and threatened to remain frozen if someone didn’t do something soon. Finally one woman rose and stormed around the bed to the doorway. Her eyes screamed at the startled man in black as she slammed the door in his silly pink face. Worthless stuttered and spat, shied, rocked up and down. With Vane holding on for dear life, she went running backward through the Yard, Solomon nipping her bottom excitedly. Once in the Street, Worthless turned face-forward, threw back her head and galloped wildly, Vane hammering the back of her neck frantically, his feet slipping in and out of the stirrups. He clung giddily for half a mile, and was positively relieved when a small crowd of men with flashlights ran out of the dark to intercept him. Although he couldn’t understand a word they were saying, he felt the war excitement leaping man to man. Aiming their flashlights south, they hauled him off and hustled him down the dark Street. In a minute he made out a Streetlamp’s glow on a functioning Utility Square, and heard a kind of chanting from what must have been several dozen voices. A little boy ran out of the Square to greet them, squealed with delight, and ran back in. Soon a knot of grinning men appeared. When they saw Vane they grabbed his arms and dragged him along joyously; children urging a parent to their big Christmas surprise.

Gently shining in an eerie halogenous frost, a huge mound of cadavers and body parts spilled out into a wide ring of ecstatic Afar, each man brandishing an M16 in one hand and a machete in the other. The corpses had literally been shot to pieces; heads and limbs blasted off torsos, uniforms blown off bodies. Faces and guts were black gaping holes. Now the ring of men, for Vane’s savage delectation, went ballistic on the pile with their enemy’s machetes. Pieces of the dead flew in all directions.

That same little boy scampered flapping to the pile. He bent down, reached in, and ran up to Vane giggling deliriously. In his tiny fist was three fifths of an oozing black hand. Vane turned to stagger back and forth along the Street, at last stumbling into a Square’s side Yard. He dropped to his knees in a bed of violets and was violently ill.

* * *

That morning Mamuset held its first communal funeral.

Forty-one Afar had died at the hands of the Eritrean vanguard, every one on the spot.

Two hundred and nine savages--the entire offensive force--had been killed outright, or by means as slow and agonizing as the Afar could devise.

Having learned, through Mudhead, of the victors’ intrinsic need for further mutilation, Vane ordered all enemy body parts trucked to East Rim and hurled over the side. The lazy vees of carrion birds were making for the perimeter before the last head rolled to a halt.

The funeral was not arranged or conducted by Mamuset’s founder and guiding hand; indeed, he didn’t have a clue until Mudhead pointed out certain Squares where men and women were dismantling Domos while their children carefully dug up gardens. He watched through his Stage Eyes, fascinated, as the personal Square of each slain defender was systematically reduced to a blank patch of dirt. Even the Squares’ trees were uprooted and dragged, along with every scrap of material, to Warehouse. There gills were neatly stacked, flowers potted, thatch rolled and tied, foundation concrete shattered, pulverized, and bagged.

The dead Afar were wrapped in hides and buried at the centers of these glaringly bare dirt lots. Their Squares were retired, the numbered tools placed neatly in corresponding Utility Square shed slots. The slots were adorned with personal items. Family members of the deceased were smoothly adopted by neighbors.

The entire operation, with all hands involved, took less than two hours.

Vane, again struck by his total uselessness, spent the morning in Warehouse dabbling with Inventory and trying to rethink his place in affairs. He didn’t like being left out, didn’t like being taken for granted. Not that he needed praise or gratitude or anything, of course; he was light years beyond that kind of stuff…but, alone there in that hot dusty cavern, he began indulging in retributive fantasies, imagining the Afar worshiping him as a great white god capable of wrath as well as wisdom. The oppressive atmosphere of Warehouse stifled him, the passion of these dreams wore him out. He shook off a large draping cloth and laid it on a pile of bagged potting soil, carefully smoothed his robes and got comfortable. Vane tilted down his turban to block the light, and was just drifting off when the compound wail of a dozen sirens snapped him out of it. He squared his turban and swept back his robes, unholstered his walkie-talkie and called Mudhead to the Stage radio. Mudhead reported the advance of Army vehicles from the northeast, still at a considerable distance. Now wide awake and dead-serious, Vane made straight for Isis. When he reached East Rim he marched to the nearest Post and stood shoulder to shoulder with the new Guard, whose personal items were still being ported up the Ramp by his donkey, camel, and family. The Guard made a sweeping gesture while nodding with grudging admiration. Vane squinted and looked concerned. The desert was absolutely vacant. He placed a comforting hand on the Guard’s shoulder and squeezed, nodding in return, then slunk around a Bulwark and peered through his spyglass.

Now he could make out a dark crescent in the waves of heat--a crescent that soon became endless ranks of troop transports approaching from north to east. Vane hopped back in the Land Rover and raced around to South Rim with only one thought in mind: the Onramp! The damned Onramp was a red carpet. The wild sound of his horn drew a scrambling crowd of M16-toting men and boys. Vane shot under the Arch, over Ridge Bridge and into Warehouse. There he transferred to a dirty white Nissan pickup while the crowd poured in behind him. He repetitively and emphatically lowered his arms, until the Afar obediently put down their weapons. But they were reading his broad hand gestures through the eyes of an eager fighting unit, and commenced cheerfully tossing cases of dynamite into the truck’s bed. Vane sat on eggshells while they wrestled for spots. He drove back to the Arch like an old woman.

It broke his heart to blow the Onramp, but he knew the Afar would repair it, rock by rock. The blasts took a huge bite out of the ridge just where it became one with the Rim; nothing short of a company of hang gliders would span it. By the time the demolition work was done the enemy’s trucks were fanning out to surround the crater, forming ripple-like rings, maybe a hundred feet apart. The nearest ring halted half a mile away. Soon a number of jeeps and trucks split ranks to drive up the Onramp the long way, parking crosswise at the gap. Vane stood watching defiantly from the Mamuset side, until a call from Mudhead got him back in the Land Rover and jamming to East Rim. Tiny in the desert, a single jeep had broken from the pack and was slowly rolling their way. East Rim was already lined with Mamusetan sharpshooters, atop Bulwarks and on the ground, their rifles dead on the approaching vehicle. Vane climbed a Bulwark, stepped around the prone bodies, and stood silhouetted against the sky, peering through his glass.

In the jeep were only the driver and a man sitting on the passenger seat’s back, rocking all over the place as he fought for balance. This man, noticing Vane, slapped his palm on the driver’s shoulder repeatedly while pointing with his free hand. The driver veered and made for Vane, stopping the jeep a few hundred yards away. The passenger stood on his seat and studied the billowy black figure through binoculars. He swatted the driver impatiently. The driver handed him what looked like a telephone receiver. The passenger disentangled its cord and waved the receiver over his head.

Still watching, Vane fumbled out his walkie-talkie and called Mudhead, who transmitted back as soon as he picked up the caller on the Stage radio. Vane demanded an English-speaking officer. Half a minute later he saw the man in the jeep nodding emphatically. “On my way,” Vane said.

Mudhead was waiting under the Big Tarp, his expression closed. He handed Vane the receiver. “For you.”

Vane caught his breath. “Cristian Vane here.”

“And here, field commander Haile Muhammed Sai-erin. Sir, you are presently entrenched in territory occupied by the nation of Eritrea.”

“Not the last time I looked. Mamuset is a tract legally purchased from Ethiopia state.”

“I suggest you look again, sir. Your situation is entirely untenable. You are surrounded by regiments of the Eritrean Army, under orders to take this desert. You and your subjects will be allowed safe passage. It is our wish there be no casualties here.”

“I think we got a taste of your intentions last night.”

Long pause.

“Sir, if you are referring to this moat of gore…those men were not Eritrean soldiers. They were Kenyan nationals, hired to precede our forces as scouts against possible ambush. Their behavior in no manner represents the official policies of Eritrea, regardless of what you may have heard. If they were prey to a savage call outside our purview…well, it would appear they were unequal to that call. At any rate, they were little better than animals, and blasphemous ones at that. You have done both the Eritrean Army and the vultures a great favor.”

“Don’t make us do those vultures any more favors, commander. Way too much has gone on here to just passively pack up and march out. I don’t expect you to understand that.”

“Of course I understand, sir, of course. Your project has become quite famous in East Africa. She is known as The Desert Rose, and to storytellers everywhere Cristian Vane is pure Hollywood legend: the great celluloid adventurer. He is Charles Allnut, he is Captain Blood, he is Indiana Jones. You did not know this? Sir! Your exploits are followed with much envy and admiration. And your pirating of a major cargo vessel beneath the very nose of Massawa--cracking good! Ah, Mr. Vane, it would crush we lambs of Muhammad, may peace be upon him, to see harm befall such an original and creative man. Ours is a great tradition of honoring the independent and innovative. Having such a man perish at his peak would be a sinful thing, sir, a sinful thing. I will not countenance it! No! I will not have your blood on my hands. In fact, I will guard your life as though it were my own. To this end I give you my word. Accept my escort. Come parley with me and I guarantee you, Allah be praised, that no harm will come upon your fair head this day.”

Vane ground his teeth. “But it’s so very hot in the desert, commander. How much better to discuss the situation here, under these lofty green trees.”

An uncertain laugh. “My word, Mr. Vane! But how would that appear to my command? You are trifling with me, sir. Let us speak no more of this. Let us, instead, speak intelligently; as men more accustomed to grace than thunder.”

A thin wail began on North Rim. Seconds later, three others joined in from East Rim. In half a minute sirens were crying from all directions.

“It would appear,” Vane said coldly, “that the first man has already spoken.” He handed the phone to Mudhead and jumped back in Isis. He was really putting on miles. As he neared East Rim he made out the sound of gunfire, but the reports were far too clear to be coming from outside the crater. The Afar were firing! Vane floored Isis and tore up a Ramp recklessly, his heart in his throat. His people were defending Mamuset!

By the time he reached Post E17 the Ripple was already in full motion. East Inner Slope was a steady flow of women hurrying up to Exchange Stations with fresh rifles, then running back down with discharged guns to Load Stations for new magazines. The boys at Exchanges scrambled up ladders to the prone riflemen, often as not their fathers, with replenished rifles, grabbed the spent guns and scrambled back down. This operation was done with such ingrained precision that riflemen could exchange arms almost without a break in what seemed relentless triple-bursts of gunfire. Kid’s swaggering leadership had been taken seriously: the Afar were hard-wired to fire.

And fire they did.

Vane, as he viewed East Rim’s Outer Slope leaping with billygoats in fatigues, cursed mightily the enemy commander and all his forebears; while he’d been distracted on the horn, the inner ring of troop transports had been pulling right up to the Outer Slopes. These vehicles now shielded snipers, who occasionally hopped out to fire in volleys while their storming partners scurried for whatever shelter they could find. From his vantage in front of the Post, Vane saw over a hundred trying to make their way up the Slope in spurts as the second ring of transports roared forward.

But the Afar were only invigorated. Like drunken cowboys, they fired without hesitation, without fear, sometimes without aim. Fresh M16s appeared in their hands before the children could scoop up the hot spent rifles. The rattle of gunfire became a sonic blur; one long rolling wave of nerve-wracking detonations. Vane crept along a Bulwark’s side wall like a man on a ledge, peeped over the edge and got a good look at East Outer Slope.

Soldiers on the way up were now soldiers on the way down, the earth erupting around them. They were dancing as if their shoes were on fire, all adrenaline and prayer. Bullets, whizzing about in an unbroken swarm, pulverized rocks into clouds of dust. The retreating men were being shot off their feet, shot in the air, shot as they tumbled. At the bottom, body parts from the previous night’s butchering popped like corn. Trucks, their windows and tires already shot to pieces, were jerking and rocking from the constant metal hail while soldiers scrambled to burrow beneath them.

From flat on the Rim and from prone on Bulwarks, the Afar rose in unison, firing wildly in their passion, caught up in a sustained howl of blood lust. Their women echoed this passion on the Inner Slopes, punctuated by screams from children. And the bodies on the Outer Slopes bounced and burst with the fury of the barrage, were lost in clouds of dust, reappeared flipping through the air, were blasted to pieces that again were lost in the dust. A hellish choir of sirens cut through the voices and gunfire. More sirens joined in, and then the Rim was a ring of screaming bobcats. The few trucks containing living drivers broke as one, driving on their rims over the dismembered dead in a desperate slow motion flight. These pathetically fleeing targets were shot up until roofs, hoods, doors, and fenders had been blown away.

The sirens and voices faded, the storm of gunfire died, and in less than a minute a profound silence embraced the crater. Vane might have been a cartoon painted on the Bulwark’s side; the only things alive on him were his eyes, intently watching the Afar for the least movement. But all defenders were standing in a pose of complete attentiveness, staring out over the immediate desert like wooden Indians. On the Inner Slopes the women and children were sitting silently, almost reverently. Camels, oxen, and dogs, picking up on this new tension, reclined deeply, without a hiss or a whimper. The stillness, the unreality of the situation, became so protracted that Vane began to experience little panic attacks. Yet he’d been around the Afar long enough to respect their deep-rooted responses. So he remained there, splattered against the Bulwark, while his pink face purpled and his gray matter faded to black. The world was absolutely static.

Finally, on some subtle signal lost to Vane, the surviving soldiers jumped from beneath their trashed trucks and bolted across the desert. The Rim instantly erupted with fire. The sprinting men all dropped in their tracks. But this sloping hail of lead seemed to never end. Vane watched sickened as the scattered corpses flopped about like fish out of water. The butchery ceased abruptly, and the first battle for Mamuset was history.

The Afar strutted back and forth, their blood up and their heads tossed high. When Vane had seen enough he peeled himself from the Bulwark and staggered back toward Isis. Before he could protest, a multitude of men and women had converged on him, lifted him on their shoulders, and carried him to the back seat on a carpet of cheers. He was placed standing on the seat with children clinging to his legs. A howling old man hopped into the driver’s seat and fired the Rover up. Honking the horn insanely, he slowly drove through a crowd soon numbering in the several hundreds. As Isis crept along Bisecting Way it seemed the entire community was turning out for Vane’s elevation to godhead. Men, women, and children ran down the Inner Slopes and across the Fields, burst out of the trees, locked the Land Rover in a roiling sea of heads and shoulders. And for one wild minute there his eyes were misting over. He was Caesar, he was MacArthur--Cristian Honey Vane was the bleeding Pope.

When he was himself again he raised his arms in a gesture for silence.

Those nearest responded with a deafening cheer. Vane shook his head sharply and lowered his arms by degrees.

The crowd went wild.

“Help!” he hollered into the CB’s transmitter. “For Pete’s sake!” Mudhead, watching impassively on the Stage, obediently switched on the Utility Square alerts. It took a few minutes for the triple-beeps to pierce the hubbub, but little by little the crowd drifted off to the Mount to catch Mudhead’s translation of Vane’s exultant transmission. Mamuset, Mudhead announced, had performed splendidly. Khrisa Vahn was proud. The cheer that went up shook the new Big Tarp, shook the leaves on the trees, shook the dumbfounded Army listening without. But, Mudhead went on loudly, what they had endured was only a skirmish. The Army would be back, angrier than ever, and this time with many, many more men.

Ecstasy.

Vane sat hard on Isis’s punished upholstery, fighting back the tears as the cheering went on and on and on. Up on the Bulwarks, the specks of dancing riflemen could be seen shooting into the air.

“Wasting ammo,” Vane sputtered.

Mudhead reported back: these men were shooting the guns of butchered soldiers, salvaged by children on the Outer Slopes. The celebration leaned this way and that, perplexing to Vane in its exotic African ways, and when he finally broke free he found himself drifting home, confused by his emotions. But he was still too excited to sit. So he saddled up Worthless and clopped off to the Rim to watch the enemy buildup. It was far more impressive than he wanted to admit. All day long he rode round and round, and all day long a parade of trucks and caissons buttressed the growing web of troops and artillery. Soldiers set up canopies between the corner posts of their trucks’ sidings, and in this artificial shade cleaned their weapons, took naps, played dominoes. Mortars and small cannons were wheeled through and locked down. And still the trucks rolled in. By twilight it was solid Army as far as the eye could see.

The Afar, entranced, competed for gawking space atop Bulwarks, piggybacking their children. That night they stood in their thousands around the Rim, scattering eerie shadows by the light of hundreds of tiki torches. The troops occasionally responded with lights of their own, idling their trucks with high beams blazing. When they grew bored they played with directional signals and emergency flashers, hoping to unnerve the defenders. Confused, the Afar responded by leaning their torches left and right, lifting them up and setting them down.

It was all very disconcerting for Vane. He slept fitfully that night, under the stars on a canvas mat at Top Step. His dread of the coming day pursued him into his dreams.

But at the crack of dawn he was on his feet and waiting, along with a breathless audience of over five thousand Afar, for Strauss’s theme to peak. And when that first spear of perfectly-cued sun broke the horizon, it was accompanied by a rolling cheer that flowed across the crater and over its walls. Vane pounded Worthless to her feet and paraded around the Stage like a rock star, caught up in the growing blush of dawn. Only the radio’s familiar chiming snapped him out of it. He knelt Worthless with an attitude, dismounted lustily and snatched the receiver.

“Yes?”

“You don’t carry, by any chance, Blue Danube?”

Vane sobered. “Sorry. Wrong Strauss. Besides, we don’t take requests from enemies.”

There was a huge sigh. “Mr. Vane, this whole business is a grave misfortune.”

“You can change your fortune.”

Another sigh. “I will concede that so far we have been mightily embarrassed. And I will share a piece of intelligence with you: there is nothing in our training to prepare us for a ground assault on a natural fortress such as yours. Be that as it may, you will certainly see that, with persistence on our part, your cause must inevitably be lost. Sooner or later your walls will be breached. Sooner or later your ammunition will be depleted, your stores of food and water exhausted.”

“Commander, our supplies, and our heart, are no less imposing than our walls. We are prepared to hold out indefinitely. I like it here, commander. And I’m looking forward to dying of old age.”

“Mr. Vane, nothing could make me happier than to have you die of old age. But that will not happen here. Please command your subjects to remove themselves in an orderly fashion, and to distance themselves as a population from you personally, and from any of your underlings. Your palace will be spared, your retinue permitted to retain whatever privileges they have been accorded. You will be escorted in complete comfort, and with pomp sufficient to maintain your regal image. We understand the necessity of such impressions.” A pause for emphatic effect. “I am empowered to authorize your unmolested transfer to Massawa or Aseb, or to Djibouti by way of the Red Sea, or, in fact, to any amenable port that is non partisan in this affair. You will be generously remunerated for your losses and trouble. This offer is not a bluff. I am prepared to present certified proof of your guaranteed safe passage and compensation for title. The document is signed by President Saille-Halla, who feels your demise would not only be a tragic blow for him personally, but would perhaps not be taken all that well in those States whence you originate. The Afar will be released to return to their old ways. They will not be harmed. Our business is with the state of Ethiopia and with that rapist Negasso, not with you or these innocent people. I beg you to reconsider.”

“Commander, at this point in the game I sincerely doubt anybody in here’s actually paying attention to me. Your little gambit’s stirred up one helluva hornet’s nest.” He thought for a bit. “Goodbye.”

“Mr. Vane! Please do not abandon communications. I urge you to leave this channel o--”

Vane slammed down the receiver and whipped out his walkie-talkie. “Mudhead!”

“Bossman.”

“I want you back up here on the radio, partner. And pronto. My troops need me.”

From his vantage on the Stage Vane saw the door of Mudhead’s Domo open and his friend emerge resignedly. The African stood with his hands clasped behind his back, his robes brilliant white against the variegation of his garden. He looked around as though appreciating it for the last time, lowered his head, and slowly made his way up his new polished stone walk. Vane whooped in acknowledgment, waving his jile high. He mounted Worthless with a vengeance. Solomon got in two good nips before bounding on ahead.

For the very first time Worthless bore him with alacrity, almost with dignity. The confidence and enthusiasm Vane emanated radiated throughout her frame, made beast walk tall and rider sit high. They eagerly negotiated the prickly Mount, trotted regally along Bisecting Way, charged up a Ramp in a streak of black and tan. When they reached the top they found the entire Rim packed solid with Afar, standing shoulder-to-shoulder in silent awe of the vast military sea. Vane, having sufficiently clopped along with his turban held high, paused in his inspection to scan the enemy with his minaret spyglass.

What he saw was a massacre in the making.

Except for a respectable few hundred yards of empty desert surrounding the crater, the world was all trucks, jeeps, and troops. In that one naked instant all Vane’s bravado revealed itself as pure homespun foolishness. He was forced to face his immaturity like a man, to admit that the only sane move would be to order the Afar to lay down their arms, and with the utmost haste.

Vane sagged in the saddle. He was in command of nothing. He didn’t even know these people. Once again he was, if anything, in the way. A crazy, Technicolor idea came to him. His blue eyes blazing, he would majestically ride Worthless down the Outer Slope and across that vacant space to surrender Mamuset to the Eritreans. It would be an act of great character. Commander Sai-erin would be impressed, his men terribly moved. The Afar would drift back to their previous lifestyle, none the worse, to mesmerize their grandchildren with time-embroidered tales of the great white miracle worker.

And he? Detention, interrogation, some tough lectures. Honey would bail him out, as always. Vane glazed over. A minute later he was roused by a dull boom and passing whistle. A mortar shell exploded in the trees, begetting a great growl all around. He sat straight-up--it was that same glottal storm he’d experienced on Dock when surrounded by threatening drivers. Vane looked back to see the bristling Afar shoving one another for better views, every expression twisted by a rage that remained beyond his ken. There came a trio of detonations in the Fields, this time from launches in the desert outside West Rim. The Afars’ common guttural expanded in response, rising steadily as the barrage continued, until the ringed men of Mamuset were a howling, flailing mob.

Worthless was squeezed to the very lip of the Rim. Her toes vainly sought purchase while her eyes rolled crazily at the desert below. Vane pounded and pounded her neck, trying to turn her against the furious press, but as the Afars’ howling rose to a nerve-shredding scream the camel threw back her head and brayed right along. Vane finally yanked her around and they teetered, facing an oncoming wall of wide-eyed shrieking psychopaths. Worthless roared, reared, and spat in their faces.

“Forward, you idiot!” hollered Vane. “Go forward!” He whipped out his jile and poked her in the rump. Worthless bellowed, pounded her throat on the dirt, kicked her rear legs in the air. “Go, damn it!” Vane cried. “I…said…go!” He poked her again, very hard this time, only to find himself clinging to the camel’s neck as she skidded backward down East Outer Slope. Worthless, issuing a resounding plaint of terror and rebellion, was nevertheless able to turn face-forward without spilling. Half-stumbling and half-galloping, she hurtled down the Slope with Vane fighting for balance by holding his free arm overhead like a common rodeo cowboy. His jile caught the sun as it waved back and forth.

The bloodthirsty scream of the men on East Rim ceased, though the compound howl of unwitting defenders continued to rise elsewhere around the Rim--the result was much like a phase-shifted echo. Suddenly Vane was able to hear his and his camel’s grunts and gasps clearly, along with the clatter of her feet and the excited panting of Solomon hurtling in and out beneath them. Overhead, the whistle of a mortar shell flanged with all the clarity of a sound effect triggered in a recording studio.

A great shout erupted behind them and down the Afar came, hot on the heels of their gallant charging master and his faithful charging beasts. Their running battle cry galvanized the entire community, so that men and boys poured out of the crater like ants out of an anthill. Upon hearing that cry, Worthless lifted her head and raced across the flat desert floor as if the Devil were after her. In seconds they were swallowed up by the sprinting mob.

Vane bounced along in the manner of a bobblehead toy, stammering commands and stabbing the air with his jile. He jerkily made out the first row of soldiers, kneeling coolly with their rifles leveled. He heard those rifles popping away, and he saw the first line of racing Afar drop. But he also saw those same soldiers leaping to their feet, one by one and then in unison, as the wave came on without hesitation. The Afar screamed continuously while they ran, shooting without a trace of discipline. Their second line collapsed almost as handily as the first, but now the wave was breaking, and now the soldiers were turning to run for cover.

The Afar hit the first row of trucks as human battering rams. Vane heard isolated rifle shots, a young man’s cry of anguish, and what may have been a Gatling gun. And the Afar went right out of their minds, shrieking and whirling and diving, firing with one weapon and cudgeling with another. Trailing youngsters and seniors, hunched like spiders, tore down the aisles formed by rows of parked vehicles, leaping on occupants with total disregard for their own lives, savaging the trucks and jeeps, smashing their windshields, shooting and pummeling the bodies. As horror took the disintegrating ranks, soldiers howling to Allah began dashing through the maze of vehicles in zigzagging spurts that became all-out runs, crowds of kicking and caterwauling Mamusetans hard on their heels.

Vane yelled and yelled until his throat seized; disoriented by all the action, yet exhilarated beyond his wildest fantasies. There wasn’t a man in uniform who wasn’t running for his life. He croaked out a string of gasping congratulations, poked Worthless jubilantly and continuously. The camel wheeled round and round like a turnstile as the thinning sea hustled by, giving her master an unrequested 360 of the battleground.

Dead and dying Afar lay mingled with butchered Eritreans; bodies were stretched out in the dirt, scrunched one upon the other, sprawled across hoods and seats. But there were still small pockets of violent activity between vehicles, where Mamusetans mercilessly tore into cowering soldiers. In the distance Vane could see the backs of pursuing Afar, and beyond them the backs of screaming Eritreans. The battle was won, the siege wholly blown. It was every man for himself.

The Afar continued to fire as they ran. When their magazines were exhausted they ran swinging their M16s, and didn’t stop until they’d caught their hysterical enemies or collapsed. Even then, on hands and knees, they forced themselves on, coughing and gasping, pounding their fists on the ground.

Vane was flabbergasted. They hadn’t just survived the Eritreans; they had defeated them utterly. He stood high in the stirrups as he spun, giving vent to an oscillating, shredded war whoop. He coughed, he wept, he waved his mighty weapon high.

Cristian Honey Vane went right over his camel’s hindquarters and headfirst into the dirt.