The proprietor said, “You gave this person five dollars, you say?”
“He asked twenty,” said the editor. “I advanced him five.”
“You throw my dollars about like rice at a wedding, my friend. Yes, you have my leave to print. Let the fellow have five dollars more, if he presses. A Latin title is a drug, sir, a drug. Take a title out of context,” said Mr. Bozman. “Out of context, out of context. And since I am paying for the job and writing it too, sign it Bozman—John Helliwell Bozman. Incidentally, you owe me five dollars.”
So saying, the proprietor of The Baltimore General Press walked sedately out of doors.
VOICES IN THE DUST OF ANNAN
I landed on the northeast coast, with tinned goods and other trade goods such as steel knives, beads, and sweet chocolate, intending to make my way to the ruins of Annan.
A chieftain of the savages of the Central Belt warned me not to go to The Bad Place. That was his name for the ancient ruins of the forgotten city of Annan, a hundred miles to the southeast. Some of the tribesmen called it The Dead Place, or The Dark Place. He called it The Bad Place. He was a grim, but honorable old ruffian, squat and hairy and covered with scars. Over a pot of evil-smelling black beer—they brew it twice a year, with solemn ceremony, and everyone gets hideously drunk—he grew communicative, and, as the liquor took hold of him, boastful. He showed me his tattooing: every mark meant something, so that his history was pricked out on his skin. When a chieftain of the Central Belt dies he is flayed, and his hide is hung up in the hut that is reserved for holy objects: so he lives in human memory. Showing his broken teeth in a snarling smile, he pointed to a skillfully executed fish on his left arm: it proved that he had won a great victory over the Fish-Eaters of the north. A wild pig on his chest celebrated the massacre of the Pig Men of the northwest. He hiccuped a bloody story, caressing a black-and-red dog that lay at his feet and watched me with murderous yellow eyes. . . . Oh, the distances he had travelled, the men he had killed, the women he had ravished, the riches he had plundered! He knew everything. He liked me—had I not given him a fine steel knife? So he would give me some good advice.
“I could keep you here if I liked,” he said, “but you are my friend, and if you want to go you may go. I will even send ten armed men with you. You may need them. If you are traveling southwards you must pass through the country of the Red Men. They eat men when they can catch them, and move fast: they come and go. Have no fear, however, of the Bird Men. For a handful of beads and a little wire—especially wire—they will do anything. My men will not go with you to The Bad Place. Nobody ever goes to The Bad Place. Even I would not go to The Bad Place, and I am the bravest man in the world. Why must you go? Stay. Live under my protection. I will give you a wife. Look. You can have her—” He jerked a spatulate thumb in the direction of a big, swarthy girl with greased hair who squatted, almost naked, a couple of yards away. “—She is one of mine. But you can have her. No man has touched her yet. Marry her. Stay.”
I said: “Tell me, why have you—even you, Chief—stayed away from that place?”
He grew grave. “I fear no man and no beast,” he said.
“But—?”
“But.” He gulped some more black beer. “There are things.”
“What things?”
“Things. Little people.” He meant fairies. “I’ll fight anything I can see. But what of that which man cannot see? Who fights that? Stay away from The Bad Place. Marry her . . . Stay here. Feel her—fat! Don’t go. Nobody goes. . . . Hup! I like you. You are my friend. You must stay here.”
I gave him a can of peaches. He crowed like a baby. “You are my friend,” he said, “and if you want to go, then go. But if you get away, come back.”
“If?” I said.
“If.”
“I don’t believe in fairies,” I said.
His eyebrows knotted, his fists knotted, and he bared his teeth. “Are you saying that what I say is not true?” he shouted.
“King, Great Chief,” I said, “I believe, I believe. What you say is true.”
“If I had not given my word I should have had you killed for that,” he grunted. “But I have gi-given my word. . . . Hup! My-my word is a word. I . . . you . . . go, go!”
Next morning he was ill. I gave him magnesia in a pot of water, for which he expressed gratitude. That day I set out with ten squat, sullen warriors; killers, men without fear.
But when we came in sight of the place that was called The Bad Place, The Dark Place, or The Dead Place, they stopped. For no consideration would they walk another step forward. I offered each man a steel knife. Their terror was stronger than their desire. “Not even for that,” said their leader.
I went on alone.
It was a dead place because there was no life in it; and therefore it was also a dark place. No grass grew there. It had come to nothingness. Not even the coarse, hardy weeds that find a root-hold in the uncooled ashes of burnt-out buildings pushed their leaves out of its desolation. Under the seasonal rain it must have been a quagmire. Now, baked by the August sun, it was a sort of ash-heap, studded with gray excrescences that resembled enormous cinders. A dreary, dark gray, powdery valley went down; a melancholy dust-heap of a hill crept up and away. As I looked I saw something writhe and come up out of the hillside—it came down toward me with a sickening, wriggling run, and it was pale gray like a ghost. I drew my pistol. Then the gray thing pirouetted and danced. It was nothing but dust, picked up by a current of warm air. The cold hand that had got hold of my heart relaxed, and my heart fell back into my stomach, where it had already sunk.
I went down. This place was so dead that I was grateful for the company of the flies that had followed me. The sun struck like a floodlight out of a clean blue sky; every crumb of grit threw a clear-cut black shadow in the dust. A bird passed, down and up, quick as the flick of a whip, on the trail of a desperate dragonfly. Yet here, in a white-hot summer afternoon, I felt that I was going down, step by step, into the black night of the soul. This was a bad place.
The dust clung to me. I moved slowly, between half-buried slabs of shattered granite. Evening was coming. A breeze that felt like a hot breath on my neck stirred the ruins of the ancient city; dust devils twisted and flirted and fell; the sun gray-red. At last I found something that had been a wall, and pitched my tent close to it. Somehow it was good to have a wall behind me. There was nothing to be afraid of—there was absolutely nothing. Yet I was afraid. What is it that makes a comfortable man go out with a pickaxe to poke among the ruins of ancient cities? I was sick with nameless terror. But fear breeds pride. I could not go back. And I was tired, desperately tired. If I did not sleep I would break.
I ate and lay down. Sleep was picking me away, leaf by leaf. Bad place . . . dead place . . . dark place . . . little people. . . .
Before I fell asleep I thought I heard somebody singing a queer, wailing song:—Oh-oooo, oh-oooo, oh-oooo! It rose and descended—it conveyed terror. It might have been an owl, or some other night-bird; or it might have been the wind in the ruins; or a half-dream. It sounded almost human, though. I started awake, clutching my pistol. I could have sworn that the wail was forming words. What words? They sounded like some debased sort of Arabic:—
Ookil’ karabin
Ookil’ karabin