“Wow,” she said, after allowing a suitably respectful moment of silence to elapse. “And I thought I was the big mouth on this team.”
She fished a heat-softened Toblerone bar out of her purse and Solanka fell upon it greedily. “He’s losing the men’s confidence,” she told Solanka. “The boy who helped you out tonight? There are plenty more like him, maybe as many as half the total, and for some reason they whisper to me. Kbuss puss, khuss puss. It’s so sad. ‘Madam, we are decent persons.’ Khusspuss. ‘Madam, Commander Sahib is acting strange, isn’t it? ‘Khusspuss. ‘Please, madam, do not mention my thoughts to anyone.’ I’m not the only idealist around here. These kids didn’t think they were going to war to flatten the earth or abolish the hours of darkness. They’re fighting for their families, and all this green-cheese material unnerves them. So they come to me and complain, and that puts me in a very dangerous place. It doesn’t really matter what advice I give being a second focal point, a rival center, is quite dangerous enough. One rat—one mole—is all it would take, and speaking of toads, yes, I do love you, very much. Meanwhile, what I saw on the outside before I brought the team in here was an army that’s pretty sick of being a laughingstock. My information is they’ve been talking to the Americans and the British. The rumor says that the marines and the SAS may already be in Mildendo, in fact, I’ve been feeling pretty foolish for weeks about running out on you like that. There’s a British aircraft carrier just outside territorial waters, and Babur doesn’t control the military airfields on Blefuscu, either. The truth is I’ve been thinking for a while now that it’s time to leave, but I don’t know how Babur will take it. Half of him wants to fuck me on national television and the other half wants to beat me up for making him feel that way. So now you know the real reason why I’ve been wearing the mask: it’s the next best thing to putting my head in a paper bag, and you came all this way for me and walked into the lion’s den. I guess you must really dig me too, huh. I’m working on an out. If I can get the right Fremen in the right places, I think it can be done, and I have contacts in the army that can at least get us out to the British boat or maybe a military plane. In the meanwhile I’ll make sure you get looked after. I still don’t know about Babur, how far gone he is. Maybe he thinks you’re a valuable hostage, even though I keep telling him you’re not worth the trouble, you’re just a civilian who blundered into something he didn’t understand, a little fish he should throw back into the sea. If you don’t kiss me soon, I’ll be forced to kill you with my own bare hands. Okay, that’s good. Now stay put. I’ll be back.”
In Athens the Furies were thought to be Aphrodite’s sisters. Beauty and vengeful wrath, as Homer knew, sprang from the self-same source. That was one story. Hesiod, however, said that the Furies were born of Earth and Air, and that their siblings included Terror, Strife, Lies, Vengeance, Intemperance, Altercation, Fear, and Battle. In those days they avenged blood crimes, pursuing those who harmed (especially) their mothers—Orestes, long pursued by them after he killed bloody-handed Clytemnestra, knew all about that. The leirion, or blue iris, sometimes placated the Furies, but Orestes wore no flowers in his hair. Even the bow of horn that the Pythoness, the Delphic Oracle, gave him to repel their assaults proved to be of little use. “Serpent-haired, dogheaded, bat-winged,” the Erinnyes hounded him for the rest of his life, denying him peace.
These days the goddesses, less regarded, were hungrier, wilder, casting their nets more widely. As the bonds of family weakened, so the Furies began to intervene in all of human life. From New York to Lilliput-Blefuscu there was no escape from the beating of their wings.
She didn’t come back. Young men and women attended to Solanka’s daily needs. These were some of the weary, immured fighters who, fearing their own leader, Babur, as much as the enemy outside the compound walls, had gone to their dark Aphrodite for advice; but when Solanka asked about Neela, they made dumb don’t-know gestures and went away. “Commander Akasz” didn’t show up, either. Professor Solanka, forgotten, washed up on the edge of things, dozed, talked aloud to himself, drifted into unreality, lurching between daydreams and panic attacks. Through the small barred window he heard the noise of battle, growing more frequent, coming closer. Pillars of smoke rose high into the air. Solanka thought of Little Brain. I’d have set his house on fire. I’d have burned his city down.
Violent action is unclear to most of those who get caught up in it. Experience is fragmentary; cause and effect, why and how, are torn apart. Only sequence exists. First this then that. And afterward, for those who survive, a lifetime of trying to understand. The assault came on Solanka’s fourth day in Mildendo. At dawn the door of his cell was opened. There stood the same taciturn young man—now carrying an automatic weapon, and with two knives stuck in his belt—who had so uncomplainingly cleaned up his mess a few days earlier. “Come quickly, please,” he said. Solanka followed him, and then it was into the labyrinth again, the bleak interconnecting rooms with masked fighters guarding the way, approaching each door as if it were booby-trapped, turning each corner as if an ambush lurked just beyond; and in the distance Solanka heard the inarticulate conversation of battle, the chatter of automatic rifles, the grunts of heavy artillery, and, high above it all, the leathery beating of bat-wings and the screeches of the dog-headed Three. Then he was enclosed in the service elevator, manhandled through the ruined kitchens, and pushed into an unmarked, windowless van; after which, for a long time, nothing. High-speed motion, alarming halts, raised voices, the motion renewed. Noise. Where was that shrieking coming from? Who was dying, who was killing? What was the story here? To know so little was to feel insignificant, even a little insane.