'We thought you'd never come in, Captain,' said someone from behind him, just in time. 'You didn't have to skulk about there in the rain, old chap — didn't Miss Seng make that clear to you? You must be frozen stiff.'
Gadaffi ben Barka: second Colonel or executive of the People's Army of Morocco — originally a chip off the old UNFP — and thus the nearest thing to General Gaw's opposite number in the UASR(N). He was tall and slimly built, with a back like a board and a neatly clipped mustache. He tapped Truck's hands with the tip of his little swagger cane. 'You could put them down now, I think.'
He affected the precise, slightly decayed English of original Arab stock unused to handling it since the cultural revolution of 2184 with its concomitant stress on the speaking of only Arab languages among the bureaucrats of the inner party. His name, which can be spelled some 400-odd ways in the English (from Quathafi to Khedaphey), was an illustrious one. His hair, shaved to within an inch of its life, had a tinge of gray to match his beautiful military suit. When he smiled he showed a lot of white teeth and one black one. He was a lot more engaging than the General, but that rotten enamel counted for a lot.
'You seem to have got caught up in my security operation. Sorry about that.' Quite the part, walking with his hands clasped behind his back, he knew exactly what had happened. 'But if you'd just come through the front entrance' — ushering Truck through that same door — 'as we expected, you'd have been quite safe. No harm done. These mix-ups happen.'
Angina Seng ignored him and stared out of the window. He hoped it was because she felt guilty. He limped ostentatiously past her and sat down on the bed. In fact, his foot did hurt like hell, and his queasy gut was generating long gray waves of nausea to break cold and sweaty over his bald scalp. He looked accusingly at the fridge. His cloak fell open. 'You've bloody poisoned me,' he told Angina's shoulders. She shrugged.
Like the commander of some desert terrain poring over his maps, ben Barka sat behind the camp table, scraping idly at its curious reliefs of dried cosmetic; planning, perhaps, fantastic miniature campaigns among its arid wadis and exposed ridges — the wind like emery on the eyeballs at sunset; the camels sore-footed and refractory; the Maxim-gun bogged to its hubs in sand again, or jamming just as the train arrived, never quite fulfilling the promises of the Austro-Greek munitions dealer (with his soft fat hands and celluloid collar) who'd smuggled it by motorized dhow from Constantinople: some grim expedition to redeem a heartland lost for centuries under the dust, its cisterns poisoned, its women under a punishment, ash interring its surviving sons. His eyes were full of some violent past — not his own in any sense of the personal, but having greater individual meaning than a mere heritage.
The hashishin, meanwhile, had disposed themselves by the door, where they seemed to fall into a state of feral languor, giving Truck insolent grins and winks, picking their noses with fanatical concentration. Ben Barka brought his last dawn sortie to its desperate conclusion under the cold desert rimwall and said, 'I see you've been on Stomach lately, Captain. Intellectually, I can hardly credit you as an Opener — it's an unsatisfying notion. Still, faith is a peculiar thing: in the past, we Arabs have had creed enough for a Galaxy, and energy too; but, until now, no — '
He stared past Truck at something on the wall, shrugged. 'I presume the girl has told you why I asked you here?'
Truck sneered sideways at Angina Seng. ''What would I know about it? I thought she'd found her level in the IWG embassy on Sad al Bari.' He hardly knew what he was saying. He got a quick sight of his stomach, heaved; drew the sodden cloak about him, blushing miserably and thinking of Grishkin's victorious smile.
'I see. Make us some mint tea please, Angina. The Captain looks cold.'
Off by the window, a sudden, impatient movement 'Oh, for Christ's sake Gadaffi tell him why he's here and then get out. He hasn't got a clue what he's got bold of. The old cow obviously never told him, and half the time he's so drugged that he doesn't even know where he is. Why should I have told him? He's never listened to a word I've said.' She watched the rain, lacing her fingers, rubbing one thumb with the other. 'I'm sick of both of you.'
'Make us some mint tea, please, Angina.'
'Oh, come on — '
'Make us some mint tea, please, Angina.'
There was a greasy sink in one corner. She began to smash things about in it.
Truck swallowed. 'Shell sell you out, too, ben Barka. She'll do it for practice.'
The colonel smiled wanly to himself. 'There's no need to feel injured, Captain. This is an informal sort of meeting, there was no coercion intended.' The hashishin rubbed their tanned noses. 'An exploratory meeting, really.'
'I wasn't thinking of myself.'
'There will be no betrayal,' ben Barka insisted, rapping his stick briskly on the table and looking irritated for a moment or two.
'I told you he was a bloody moron,' said Angina. 'He doesn't even know what year it is.'
'Our arrangement has certain safeguards built in, Captain, You, of all people, should be familiar with the kind of thing I'm thinking of. The General herself was good enough to institute them a long time ago. And, of course, Angina is hardly welcome in that sector any more. Now let's — Ah, thank you, Angina.'
She had slopped two small plastic cups on the table between them, full of something green and steaming. Truck looked dismally into his. A slight glutinous scum had already formed at its rim, like algae at the high-water mark of an abandoned canal. Something was floating in there. Something was floating.
Truck staggered to his feet, eyes filling with tears, and headed blindly for the door, thinking solely of relief. The hashishin stepped thoughtfully forward to intercept him, beaming and swinging hands like edged slabs of sandstone. Simultaneously, ben Barka shouted something, kicked his chair out of the way, and came up aiming a Chambers gun in fashionable military style — feet well apart, arms out straight, left hand gripping right wrist. That he could prevent himself from firing after all that, was a minor miracle; but Truck didn't care.
He hardly saw any of it. Somewhere in a limpid personal twilight, he was groaning with fear and revulsion and heaving up the whole contents of the universe. After a while, he felt the Arabs bending over him. Somebody called his name a couple of times. The last thing he properly understood for a while was Angina Seng saying: 'He's always doing that. Well, you can damn well clean it up before you go.'
They dragged him through the drenching rain, dashing along like a night retreat from some El Bira or Ein Keren of the mind. Sudden vicious squalls of wind groaned between the black violent buildings, flushing up the losers of Avernus (to drive them, mere bundles of rag, feeble impersonations of life, from one cold corner to another, all the long night through). Every time his foot went down, pain lighted him up like a dancing man in a neon sign.
They came to a halt, panting and staring about, some three hundred yards down the street from Angina's shack; pushed him into some sort of ground vehicle; took off into the dark on a wave of mud and transmission noise. Egerton's Port receded but not far. Ben Barka drove nervously, craning forward to peer through the water pouring down the windshield. In the back seat, the fellaheen wiped condensation from the windows then shoved their faces so close to the glass that it misted up again immediately.
Later, they left the road. Distant thunder smoked from the sky with a smell of cold-drawn steel wire and manganese slag; the car veered and bucked and smashed its underparts repeatedly down against the ruts and cinders of a ruined landscape; flares of white light bleached the faces of the hashishin. For a moment, hung between sky and waste by a particularly brutal spasm, Truck imagined Earth's war reaching out for Avernus like a bleeding hand. But when he looked for the telltale violet ionization trails of descending MIEV warheads, he could see nothing.