The Birth of People's Republic of Antartica, стр. 63
Lazarus said, “I didn’t know it would be like that. I can’t make it out. That madman, Saint Stephen, I’m sure he’s the enemy. Them and their cant, empty words in cathedrals built with blood, doing ‘God’s work,’ collecting money, while the colonels and the death merchants rob children of any chance—I thought getting them was right. That’s what that madman was doing, Grim, I swear it, blessing them while they were tortured! Luanda! Do you know what they’ve done in Luanda? I don’t know. What were those things last night? Were those people? How could it have gotten this bad? They really were beasts.”
“They were men, like us,” I said. Otter Ransom asked me to explain what Lazarus was saying. I did so, watching Lazarus stir the fire, his eyes glazed, as if the massacre was still there to see.
“They were not men, you are wrong, Grim Fiddle,” said Otter Ransom to me. “I have seen killing, more than either of you. My mother’s people disappeared in 1941. They never were like that.”
Recalling Lamba Time-Thief’s portent, I sat forward, said to the fire, “They were half-men, weren’t they?” I forbade the thought with a smile that was not humor. I banished the portent, hoping the while my resistance to prophecy would last. I knew I needed Grandfather.
Port Stanley was a smoldering fortress. The town was heaped together on the south shore of a ten-mile-long inlet that was shaped like open scissor blades between cliffs that led up to the second highest peak on East Falkland. The remains of the naval station were scattered at the southeastern tip of the inlet; the port was marked for miles by pillars of black smoke. Pattie gunboats were running in every night to lob incendiary shells, running out again before the shore batteries on the cliff shelves north and south of the inlet could locate and reply. West and north of the loyalist wire were camps of beasties, too desperate for food for the loyalists to keep away with threats.
Ours was not the only hospital column that arrived that afternoon, three days after I was supposed to have returned to Angel of Death with food, news, hope. Longfaeroe herded us together as we waited to be passed through the first wire into the wet fields outside the loyalist redoubts, where there was a field hospital. The most modern form of medicine I saw was amputation. We delivered our wounded, fell into a mess line for hot gruel with whale fat. We made our beds at the edge of the field kitchen and a corral of sheep, slept in the afternoon sun. When I awoke, it was twilight and Longfaeroe was gone. We three conferred, agreed we should try to get into the loyalist fortifications to hunt for Black Crane, perhaps grab a boat and escape. There was no optimism in our conspiracy. The sentries passed me and Otter Ransom readily, barred Lazarus because of his copper skin. I jumped at this; a sentry clubbed me back, cocked his rifle at Otter Ransom. Lazarus screamed, “Murdering bastards no better than the Argentines!” They forced us to our knees, called an officer. He took a look, said, “Do your duty.” One must understand how exhausted we were; it explains our carelessness, and our change of luck. I used Germanicus’s name, I invoked his name, yelling at them how we three had rescued Germanicus and his brother, Samson, from execution at 2 de Diciembre. I also said we had rescued Reverend Longfaeroe from the wheel and beasties. It did not convince them, did confuse them. We were bound and dragged by our feet through the gate, dumped in a wire-covered pit they must have used for burning sheep remains. We lay there in fetid, maggoty mud through a long night of fireballs on the cliffsides above us. The screams were distant. Port Stanley was an outpost of the kingdom of fire; we had grown accustomed, just lay there and listened to the wind rushing into the vacuum of fire, smelled that gasoline miasma. When they came for us at dawn, we were resigned. I took my last comfort in that Iceberg had guarded our pit nightlong. We were blindfolded, dragged up steps, thrown down steps, pushed against a stone wall. I thought it my end and was not ready; nor was I prepared for the surprise when they removed the blindfolds and we found ourselves in a lamplit cave in the cliff face overlooking the harbor, the headquarters of the combined commands of the Falkland Dependencies. It smelled of whale oil and defeat—crackling radios, maps like grave plots. There was a long pause when we seemed forgotten, then a short gray man, thick arms and legs, a huge hairy head, old and very tired but unbent in a great sealskin coat, turned to me, asking, “Ye them that rescued Frazer boys from Patties?”
He looked into my eyes and saw my half-truth. That face, it tightened to stone. “What know ye of my sons?” continued Elephant Frazer. I replied the full truth, fast and certain, then I started to beg forgiveness. He turned away, told the sergeant to get us out.
“No!” I kicked at the sergeant, shouting at Elephant Frazer. “I lost my friends and boat in that raid. I was wrong to lie, and I’m sorry for it. It kept us alive. We did help Germanicus, and might have saved a boy’s life. Germanicus said if my friends were alive, they’d come here. I have to find them. I need a boat, to get back to my family on Mead’s Kiss.”
“Yerr family?” said Elephant Frazer, spinning back to me. “Don’t we each have families? What’s yerrs to me? What’s mine to ye? A thousand families out there I can name, three times that I never knew. What help, what boat, when the Patties come?”
“It’s all