Steampunk World

Promised Nisi Shawl

Kamina, January 1904

“Bury him.” A true Christian would not have pronounced that sentence so easily. The Reverend Lieutenant Thomas Jefferson Wilson pressed his forehead with the heel of one hand, leaned back in the throne they had made him assume, and closed his eyes.

He couldn’t close his ears, though. There was no escape from the prisoner’s pleading as the ushers dragged him to the pit they’d previously dug. Blessedly, Yoka refrained from further translation, but the captive’s wailing cries were obvious in their meaning. As was the hiss and slap of gravel being poured over his legs, body, and arms.

He comforted himself with knowledge born of earlier trials: the prisoner’s head would remain aboveground.

One of Wilson’s new African congregants helped him rise so the folding throne could be moved to a better vantage point. He had to open his eyes again to walk to the fast filling pit. Shadows cloaked the cavern’s walls. Currents of damp air bent the smallest lamp’s naked flame, and made the tiny golden points cast by the larger, shielded lamps shiver.

How had his noble-hearted intentions come to this? His and those of the other Negro missionaries.

Behind him, muffled clucking announced the coming of a speckled hen. Its handler gave it to him to hold while priests—other priests—his colleagues—traced symbols in the packed earth now spread round about the prisoner’s neck and head. Over this the youngest of them, a mere boy, threw kernels of dried corn.

Wilson resumed his seat. Best for all to begin and end this as quickly as possible. Afterwards he would pray for God’s forgiveness. Again. Perhaps someday he would receive an answer.

Surely he was yet deserving of one, despite the priests’ entreaties to commit himself to their heathenish cult.

He returned the hen to its handler, rolled back the cuffs of his sleeves and removed a clinging feather from the red sash they had insisted he wear.

“What were you doing on the slopes above Mwilambwe?” he asked. Yoka rendered the question into Bah-Sangah and then Lingala. Then the prisoner’s response into Bah-Sangah and English. The young man was good at his task.

The buried captive claimed he had been doing nothing, nothing, he had simply become lost and was wandering innocently when King Mwenda’s men found him near their camp. With a nod Wilson signaled that the hen should be allowed to peck. The captive regarded it with dread, his words failing. It freely chose the corn nearest the character for “big lie.”

The buried man began to shout, repeating the same phrase over and over.

“‘Don’t kill me! Don’t kill me!’ he is saying,” Yoka told Wilson. “Some peoples do similar ceremonies to accuse a person of practicing magic. Then they execute him. Shall I tell the prisoner he’s safe?”

“No.” For, in fact, he was in danger. Perhaps even a Christian court would have treated him no better. King Mwenda was an important ally of Everfair. Much of the land the colony had settled had originally belonged to him.

The handler picked up the bird. No witch could keep such an animal as a familiar—all history, all church tradition ran counter to the idea. Cats, dogs, toads, rats, lizards, yes. But not roosters. Not hens. They were too cleanly, too righteous, too irretrievably associated with the Lord.

“Who do you work for?”

Checking with Wilson, the handler set the bird back down. According to Yoka, the captive said he worked for no one, no one, unless they would hire him, of course, in which case—but Wilson stopped attending to the man’s words, for the hen had resumed its feeding. With three precise movements of its head it indicated that the prisoner was in the Belgian tyrant Leopold’s employ.

As they had naturally suspected when he was found creeping through the army’s perimeter guard. Validation, the first step, had taken place. The Urim and Thummim, so to speak.

Now for the difficult part. Wilson preferred a white cock for the latter portion of these interrogations. The handler took the hen away and relief filled the buried man’s face.

“What services do you offer us? What will you do?”

A torrent of eager words poured out of him. “He will work hard for us in any way we require,” Yoka told Wilson and the Bah-Sangah priests. “Digging in the mines, gathering rubber, paddling a boat, even cooking like a woman.”

As the response and Yoka’s translations continued, the handler returned with a rooster. It was the right color. The buried man talked faster, seeming eager to say everything at once. As it was set down the rooster flapped its wings, disarranging the careful, even distribution of dried corn.

But not the symbols incised in the packed soil. Calming down, it pecked this area, that area, another, another, watched carefully by the Bah-Sangah priests. Two made notes on lengths of bark. Apparently finished with its meal, the cock left the corn to climb the little pile of stones left from the pit’s excavation.

Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live, Wilson remembered. Exodus 22:18. But what of Endor? Hadn’t she, though of course cursed, revealed Jehovah’s will? What if his association with the Bah-Sangah religion was foreordained?

“What does the oracle teach us?”

The recording priests consulted with their apprentice, Yoka, who said, “The most likely outcome is for him to betray us to Leopold.”

Executing the prisoner would be a mercy, then. Would save innocent lives. Yet Wilson couldn’t bring himself to condone killing him in cold blood.

He thought a moment more. Doubtless Leopold had threatened the spy with a family member’s death in order to get him to act in the tyrant’s interests. To turn that monster’s tool against him—that was what would hurt him most; not to let him sacrifice his pawn.

“The final question.” Which according to the instructions he followed was never directed at the prisoner. Wilson lifted his eyes and held out his hands, palms up, to receive the righteous knowledge of heaven. Though he wasn’t sure it would come.

All other eyes, he noticed, were lowered.

The handler retrieved the rooster and tucked it under one arm. A knife glinted in the opposite hand. Yoka faced him, holding a large gourd.

“How can we further the highest good of all involved?”

The cock died swiftly, silently. Only the knife’s flash and the hiss of life pouring into the bowl told what had happened. A few kicks contained by the handler’s hold and the bird was meat.

A different gourd, covered, was carried forward by a different young apprentice. Wilson had seen its contents before: rounded stones, brass implements, figures of wood and glass and gems. Yoka spilled into it a measure of the hot liquid—the blood—within his own gourd. Then he approached Wilson.

He had twice already drunk such offerings. On the first occasion Wilson had—much to his shame—done so out of fear of death at his congregants’ hands. On the second he’d feared to offend them. A third instance would, he thought, impel him that much closer to his fate. If this trend continued he’d soon be a full-blown heathen—worse, an apostate.

Wanting to rescue these brands from the burning, Wilson had caught fire himself.

He took the gourd from Yoka. Guiltily, he sipped. Salt ran over his tongue, down his throat, like a thin gravy. As he passed the bowl to the eldest of the Bah-Sangah priests the remembered vertigo assailed him.

He meant to stay seated, but the world whirled and he was on his feet, dancing. Glimpses of his surroundings penetrated the glowing fog of his ecstasy: swirling stars—or were those the myriad little lights the lamps cast through their shades? Wise faces—his friends, his brothers—went and came, bobbed up before him and twisted away. Out of an opening leading deeper into the caves poured music, waves of horns and harps and bells and drums. Stamping down! Down! He gloried in the strength of metal, the knife and the hammer he’d been given spinning in his nimble grip. Round and round and round and round and then he reached the place just right.

The center. A vision. He could see….

See them sweeping over the forests like a scythe, blazing above the river surface, fire reflected in the waters’ steel, going there! There! In chains, iron’s perversion, children stooped to tend rubber plants, the vines-that-weep. Whipped and starved—they must not die. Attack! Attack!

Then he was back on the folding stool Yoka called his throne. No music. He couldn’t remember when it had stopped. Now he heard only the soft murmurs of the priests discussing what he had told them in Bah-Sangah. What he had told them using a language he didn’t in the least understand.

Sickness filled his stomach and threatened to overflow it. Yoka gave him a cup of water. Four women entered. They often arrived after such ceremonies, though how they knew the proper time he had no idea.

Two of the women squatted before him and patted his feet with a white powder like talcum. The first time this happened he had balked. Then he’d remembered how, initially, Peter had refused to let the Lord perform a like service. Jesus had rebuked Peter Simon, and the disciple had come to accept the Christ’s anointing.

It was obvious by now, though, that that was not what he, Wilson, had accepted.

He wished he could be alone and think about what he was doing. He wished he could lie down and sleep. But Yoka reminded him there was no time. The Mote, he said, was scheduled that very evening. It was the Socialist colony’s central government, accepted by all Everfair’s diverse settlers.

He let Yoka guide him to the Mote’s tall-ceilinged cave, let the apprentice “light” the already-burning wick with their shared lamp’s flame. As always, they were among the earliest arrivals. Only Alfred, Tink, and Winthrop preceded them, though Mrs. Albin’s stool awaited her. Beyond it stood another, higher and more elaborate.

Lately Wilson had been leaving the space on Mrs. Albin’s right for Old Kanna to take. And the space on her left—with the better stool—was filled these days by beautiful Queen Josina, who had replaced her cousin Alonzo as Yoka had replaced Loyiki. These substitutions were for the same reason: the work Alonzo and Loyiki did away from Everfair. The work of war, which he was to join in again on the morrow. Wilson had fought in the American Civil War, though far too young at the time. Age made him less certain of his skills, more sure of the need to use them.

Yoka sank onto the central mat, out of the way of the entrance, and Wilson knelt beside him. His attempt to pray silently was interrupted by plump Mrs. Albin’s bustling advent; her too-young husband accompanied her, and though Wilson tried to ignore the man’s solicitous stare he felt it even with his eyes reverently closed.

Queen Josina came in next, with Old Kanna and Nenzima in her wake. The new chair was, of course, hers. As usual the poet, Daisy Albin—George’s mother—was last.

Winthrop had lists of weapons they’d made, and in what quantities. He’d designed new knivers, the clockwork guns that shot knives based on this land’s “shongos.” They’d copied conventional guns and ammunition as well.

Queen Josina had one list—a short one—of African allies’ promises. Daisy was able to supplement that with news from Europe courtesy of Mademoiselle Toutournier. She also gave totals of funds available from white supporters to be spent on necessary supplies, “not squandered on useless religious paraphernalia—”

“Bibles? Hymnals? Those are hardly useless!” Mrs. Albin’s indignance was plain in her raised voice, her narrowed eyes. Poor George Albin had no hope of reconciling his mother with his wife. Their quarreling drowned out his attempts.

Mrs. Albin turned to Wilson for his agreement, as he had expected she would. But despite her effectiveness in hushing up the scandal associated with his frequent episodes of—possession—by demons? gods? spirits of some sort—despite her help, he didn’t think he ought to side with her any longer. Eventually she’d be contaminated by his reputation.

“I defer my vote,” Wilson said. “We haven’t yet heard all the reports, have we?” Including his own.

Tink’s only concern since the death of Daisy’s eldest daughter Lily was the invention and refining of artificial limbs. As if one of his automated prosthetic legs could somehow retroactively replace the fatally wounded one. Wilson scarcely listened to him. Alfred was marginally more interesting to a military mind: he discoursed first on improvements to the engines powering their dirigibles and the resultant higher carrying capacities, but then he switched to the much duller topic of making Kamina’s caverns more habitable.

At last it was Nenzima’s turn. Queen Josina had remained silent for all sixteen of the fortnightly Motes she’d attended—after all, she was not technically a citizen of Everfair but the favorite spouse of its closest ally. But Wilson thought Nenzima said what the queen would have said if not quite so discreet.

“King Mwenda is within sight of victory. He has lured Leopold’s soldiers high, high up the Lualaba. Soon they will be trapped in the swamplands and ripe for defeat.”

Wilson cast his mind back to Nenzima’s last speech, during the last Mote. “In Kibombo?”

Nenzima nodded assent. “Our friends from Oo-Gandah are gathered in the mountains nearby, ready for transport.”

“How many?”

“The fighters of a hundred villages. All they could spare.”

Roughly 3000 “men”—many of the Oo-Gandah warriors were female—would be waiting for dirigibles to carry them into battle. Combined with King Mwenda’s force, which at last report was double that number….“What is our latest and most reliable estimate of Leopold’s army?”

“As many as the fighters of two hundred villages are left to them.”

7000 against 9000. Better than equal odds, then—though the tyrant’s army would have more and more accurate rifles. “Their ammunition? Supply lines?” So much depended on the latter—food, medicine, and thus morale.

But the poet assured the Mote once again that their secret European supporters had let nothing get through since March two years ago. Spoiled and poisoned rations, diluted medicine and malaria, had greatly reduced Leopold’s army.

Wilson had Yoka give his report for him. Mrs. Albin no doubt thought this a tactic to avoid disasters such as the barking fits that had overcome him so many times in the past.

The truth? Often enough he simply could not recall what it was he was supposed to say.

“The Reverend Wilson has learned of a camp of child slaves nearby to Lukolela. He will take an airship there on a detour when we leave for the battlefield tomorrow.”

Wilson understood that while in the chicken blood-induced trance he had said something of the sort. He, or the spirit temporarily inhabiting him. Lukolela. That would probably be found to be the holding place of the captive spy’s hostage. The statements he’d made earlier under a similar influence had all proved helpful and correct.

Mrs. Albin was intrigued. “Is Lukolela a large camp? How many of these poor creatures can we rescue?”

“We’re not sure,” said Yoka. “Perhaps twenty-five. Perhaps more. But they will need food, bandages, replacement hands—you understand.”

“But first, Bibles! Yes! I insist! We must procure more, one for each—and picture books, too, telling the story of creation—”

“They can share those belonging to others,” Daisy said firmly.

The vote went predictably except for his own choice. Not that that would have changed the outcome: only her godson and her husband sided with Mrs. Albin. Wilson ought also to have favored buying religious texts over more grossly physical supplies. That he’d chosen otherwise would be viewed as treachery on his part. Mrs. Albin awarded him a sour look. But by morning he was able to forget it.

Alfred and Chester and their construction crew had been busy. Four new craft were ready to fly north to join Mbuza, the first vessel of Everfair’s ever-expanding fleet. Zi Ru and Fu Hao were unavailable, attached to occupying garrisons at Mbandaka and Kikwit. But Boadicea and Brigid were just as big, and the untested new dirigibles, Kalala and aMileng, were supposed to be much lighter, much faster. New materials, Alfred explained. One more of similar design, the Phillis Wheatley, was scheduled for production later this year. At the moment too many colonists lodged inside, but during the dry season the space of the largest cavern would be free for the necessary work.

Rain hazed the relatively cool air. Dawn had always been his favorite time of day. Wilson walked out along the wooden dock to Kalala with no worry that he might slip and fall dozens of feet to the steep, rocky mountainside below. There were no handrails to hold, but the bark had been left on the logs out of which the docks were built. That kept them from becoming too slick.

The prisoner was already aboard. He’d spent the night beneath one of the airship’s storage shelves, safely sedated by juice extracted from the roots of an herb known to the Bah-Sangah. Yoka showed Wilson the supply he carried in a horn in case another dose was needed before they arrived.

Kalala’s capacity was about 80 adults. Wilson had 30 fighters board, bringing their jumpsheets with them. Typically, slave camps were guarded by no more than six or seven soldiers. So it was when they arrived at Lukolela after a journey of a little over twelve hours.

Night was about to fall. Bare red dirt passed beneath Kalala’s gondola, darkened to the color of an old wound by the sun’s absence. A hut hove into view—that would be the overseer’s quarters. Just past it a smoldering fire fought against the rain. By its fitful light, more than by that of the failing day, Wilson saw a huddled group of children. He counted thirty. Two guards with guns stood over them. There’d been two more by the hut. That left another two or three out of sight, most likely patrolling the clearing’s perimeter.

Bombs could provide a distraction, but Leopold’s thugs had become more wary as Everfair and King Mwenda’s warriors increased their raids. At Bwasa, according to Loyiki, the soldiers had for the first time shot and killed their slaves before fleeing the attack. That was almost two years ago. Since then, he had been developing different tactics.

They circled back around and all but ten fighters jumped, their falls slowed by their rubber-coated barkcloth jumpsheets. Of course the guards hit some with their rifles. Venting gas, Kalala came lower. The ten fighters remaining aboard had a harder time aiming than those thugs on the ground, but only four targets. No, five: the overseer had come out of his hut. He was armed, too, but Yoka downed him neatly. The way he worked his shotgun’s action with the fake hand, you’d never know the man ever had a real one.

Full night now. Gunfire came from the woods, but it was sporadic. Wilson ordered Kalala lower, but kept the bonfire in the distance. Fighters shepherded the pitifully thin children toward the dirigible’s rope-and-wood ladders. Still in partial shackles—the chains linking them had been struck off—no time for more—they had difficulty climbing up. Wilson leaned forward to help and felt a sudden heat under his arm.

He’d been hit. He knew the sensation; it had happened before. Always a surprise—he fell to the side, against the gondola’s slanting bulwark. In the dark and with the confusion of the starving children coming aboard, Wilson managed to conceal what had happened. But once they’d cast off their ballast and set course for an overnight berth above the Lomami, Yoka hunted him down. Wilson was staunching the bleeding as best he could with his coat balled up and held tight against his armpit. The lamp Yoka carried showed it soaked in red.

The apprentice touched Wilson’s arm carefully, with his flesh hand. “Does it hurt?” he asked.

“No. Worse. It’s numb. But I think the bullet’s in there. Still.”

Yoka replaced Wilson’s coat with his own and made him lie flat. He used something—a belt?—to hold the pad in place. “There are healers on Mbuza.”

Wilson knew that. “I will go to them when we reach Kibombo.” If he didn’t die before then.

“Perhaps.” Yoka’s face disappeared from Wilson’s narrowing field of vision for a moment. “I must prop you up to help you swallow.”

“Swallow what?” It was a hollowed out horn Yoka lifted to his lips—though he wasn’t sure this was the same one containing the soporific drug they’d given the prisoner. The taste of what he drank from it was both bitter and sweet, like licorice and quinine.

“Now you will sleep. And dream. And very likely, you will live,” Yoka seemed to be saying. His meaning floated free of the words. “If you do, you should promise yourself.”

Promise himself. Wilson wanted to open his mouth. He had questions. Or at least one. Promise himself. Promise himself what?

Then he was walking up an endless mountain. Or down? Sometimes he thought one, sometimes the other. Whichever, it was hard work. Why shouldn’t he stop? But he smelled—something. The scent of fire—he wanted to find who it belonged to. It wasn’t out of control, a forest burning up. How did he know that?

Rough stones gave way to soft soil, plants clinging to the ground, mounting up the walls of a rude shelter, an open-sided shed. Here was the fire. A forge. The smith working it wore a mask like a dog’s head. He was making—Wilson couldn’t see exactly what. Shining shapes stood upright in pails to the forge’s right side. They resembled giant versions of the symbols used by Bah-Sangah priests. On the left loomed a pile too dark to discern more than vaguely. Hoping to see better, Wilson went just a little nearer, but not near enough to get caught.

The mask’s muzzle turned sharply toward him. A powerful arm reached too far and a huge hand wrapped itself around his neck. It pulled him closer, choking him.

From behind the mask came a man’s voice. “What are you doing here? Stealing secrets? Or are you dying and you come to me for your life?”

Of course he was dying. Loss of gravy. Loss of blood. He said nothing, but the smith seemed to hear his thoughts.

“If I give you your life back you will owe it to me. Acceptable?”

The big hand loosened and Wilson nodded. Yes. Its grip tightened again and drew him in next to the fire. It draped him over the anvil. He shrank, or the anvil grew until it held all of him.

Turning his head, Wilson saw the smith take a shining symbol from one of the buckets and bring it toward the anvil. He rolled his eyes up to follow its progress, then lost sight of it. Then cried out as it burnt his scalp.

“Silence!” commanded the smith. Two hard blows on his skull stunned him into compliance. Another scalding hot symbol was slipped under his neck. The smith’s hammer smashed into Wilson’s throat, driving his tender skin down against the letter of fire. Scarcely had he recovered, breathing somehow, when a large new letter was laid on his chest, and hammered home with three mighty swings. Smaller symbols were burned and bashed into the palms of his hands. Radiating pain and heat, Wilson wondered if this was how Christ felt when he was being crucified. Then he scolded himself for his blasphemy—but without speaking, for the smith had bade him to make no noise.

If life was suffering, it belonged to him yet. Under the next letter his left knee smoked. The dog mask spit on it. The hammer hit. It must surely have broken his bones, Wilson thought. But after the final symbol was affixed and the smith told him to stand up, he found he could.

“Do you have a weapon?”

“I can get one,” Wilson said.

“Remember whose you are now.”

“But I don’t know your—”

“Ask Yoka my name.”

He awoke. He presumed he did; he must have been sleeping. Dawn again, and the airship was moving, clouds and the pale curve of last night’s moon passing behind Kalala’s red-and-purple envelope and coming swiftly back into sight. He could feel both arms. He clenched his fingers and released them. That hurt. Cautiously he sat up. His senses swam, but not unbearably. He shrugged his shoulders. Some pain, and an annoying restriction—Yoka’s makeshift bandage. He eased off the sash and the pad it had held in place tumbled to the deck. It was stained and dry.

Dry.

It ought to have been wet. It ought to have stuck to his skin.

Slowly, Wilson lifted his arm and examined the wound. The healing wound. Where the bullet must have entered, his flesh had started to pucker into a raw, raised scar a little darker than the rest of his armpit. With the hand of his unhurt arm he probed his shoulder and as much of his back as he could reach.

Nothing marked an exit.

Yoka approached, carrying a clean shirt, seeming unsurprised by Wilson’s convalescence.

He took the shirt. “What happened?” he asked, then almost gagged coughing; his throat was tight, rough, swollen.

“That’s not to be talked about. Not here. Besides, the drums say we’ll soon be busy. You won’t have time to wonder about all that.”

Wilson was stiff; he needed Yoka’s help putting on the shirt. Its warmth was good. His head ached. His arms and legs throbbed and trembled. He leaned against the nearest woven panel and forced himself to his feet.

They’d brought few provisions. Wilson’s chief want was water, but he knew he’d need more than that to get through the coming battle. As they passed over Malela en route to Lutshi, he was eating his second plantain. The thirty fighters had been deposited at Ombwe an hour earlier, as planned. King Mwenda had split his troops, leading and chasing Leopold’s men into the swamp. The majority of the king’s fighters were to the north of the invader’s army; in order to reinforce the southern contingent. Mbuza, Boadicea, Brigid, and aMileng had been ferrying Oo-Gandahns all morning. Kalala was to join them for this final trip of four.

The small airships could only transport 50 adult fighters. The rescued children had proved unwilling to leave Kalala with the fighters from Kamina. The countryside was strange to them. They had endured enough. Strategically speaking, Wilson admitted to himself, it had probably been a poor choice to add their rescue to the day’s mission. But the spy had cried with joy when reunited with his newly-freed son.

In the end, only space for thirty-three fighters was needed. Most Oo-Gandahns had already been taken to their battle positions, and many of those left seemed to prefer flying in the other dirigibles. Perhaps it was the dispirited attitude of Kalala’s passengers, which was of course due to the children’s exhaustion, malnourishment, and sores. It was nearly an hour after Brigid’s departure that they, the last to leave, finally took to the air.

Ignoring his own weakness, Wilson did his best to help tend to the unfortunates. He’d learned a little Swahili, but only a few of them understood it; he had a hard time remembering which and telling them apart.

The bonds restraining Leopold’s spy had been removed. He still wept with his son in his arms. Then he rose and ran for the lit lantern hanging by the prow. He opened its top and dashed palm oil liberally over the airship’s wood decking and bulwarks and touched the wick to them. They blazed up like torches.

Shrieks filled the bright air. Panicked, stampeding fighters ran to Kalala’s stern, tilting the deck. The stability vane levers must no longer be working. Or else they’d been abandoned.

Wilson clung to the bulwark’s head-high gunwale, hauling himself forward, hand over hand. He encountered a living obstacle: Yoka, who apparently had the same thought. His metal hand took more effort to operate but gave him a surer hold.

Side by side they inched upward. The fires grew unstoppably, unreachably. It was hopeless.

Yoka glanced overhead at the envelope of rubber-coated barkcloth. Filled with explosive hydrogen gas. “We must cut the lines.”

“We’ll die,” Wilson objected.

“No.” He reached one of the ropes tethering gondola to envelope and began to climb. “I’ll open the vent first and lower us.”

The way to the deck level vent control was blocked by the fire. “But how will you—”

A penetrating scream rose above the general wailing, then fell further and further away. Wilson pulled himself up to sit astride the gunwale and caught sight of a man pinwheeling to earth sans jumpsheet. The trees below looked no taller than lettuces.

“That was the prisoner,” said Yoka. “The others pushed him out.”

“We’ll never know why he did this, then.” Wilson commenced shinnying along the gunwale like a child sliding up a bannister.

“I believe he had more than the one boy held hostage,” Yoka shouted.

“What?” It was becoming hard to hear Yoka as the distance between them widened. A logistical concern sprang suddenly to mind: he’d have to walk across the burning deck to cut the lines connecting it to the airbag. They were as far from reach as the vent release.

“Just before the spy set us on fire, I overheard his boy ask him where was his twin. Another boy or girl.”

A second hostage. It seemed obvious now. “Do you have a kniver?”

“Here. Catch!” The polished brass of the knife-throwing gun slipped through Wilson’s fingers. Fortunately it landed on the deck instead of following the arsonist to earth. He retrieved it, then scrambled onto the gunwale again with the kniver clenched between his teeth. He heard Yoka yelling something but couldn’t understand what he said.

Sixteen-blade magazines for Winthrop’s latest model, if Wilson remembered rightly. Enough, if he didn’t miss a single shot. If the kniver were fully loaded. Madness.

The heat stopped him. He leaned out to his left. A cool wind blew upwards from rapidly enlarging trees and pools.

It must be time.

Wilson was an excellent shot under normal conditions. Which did not usually include wracking pain and exhaustion, but always, always, the threat of death. He aimed carefully. The first line parted. The second, third, fourth. They’d been damaged by the flames. The fifth seemed at first only to fray. Would he have to waste another blade? Seconds passed till it gave way.

The gondola lurched and Wilson held desperately to the slick gunwale. It looked almost level now. He nodded. Naturally. The lift lost because the fore end no longer hung from the airbag was counteracting the uneven distribution of terrified passengers, and the abandonment of the stabilizer levers.

He was amazed he could consider the matter so calmly.

The sixth line, exactly opposite his present seat, was obscured low down by the advancing flames. Wilson aimed above them. This time he did need two shots. No help for that.

He retreated to the deck and shot away the seventh line. Half done. Almost. He’d never finish soon enough. They were going to crash burning into the swamp. His ship, his crew, his command.

He took aim at the eighth line but an Oo-Gandahn fighter got in the way, smiling and brandishing a spear. Stupid woman! “Go! Mwanamke! Go!” He flourished the kniver, indicating she should move aft, but she only grinned and began sawing away at the line with her weapon.

New shouts died on his lips. She understood! Turning to the line directly behind him, he shot it. Three times, but he had ammunition to spare now. The Oo-Gandahn finished and went on to the next starboard line. This one took her longer. Evidently her spear’s point was dulling. She called out something and took a long machete from the man who answered her. He didn’t seem to favor the idea. Wilson lost sight of the disagreement as he dashed to his next target. One shot only this time.

But now he was in among the crowd of passengers. None of them spoke English. Why should they? Confused and angry babbling greeted him on all sides. What had happened to his men? He caught a brief glimpse of a couple of them stationed roughly where Kalala’s steering wheel ought to be. The twelfth line—thirteenth if his assistant had succeeded—was right there. A clear shot. He raised the kniver. A blow to his back threw off his aim—he barely maintained his hold on the gun. He pushed his way to the bulwark and braced himself, tried again. Bingo!

Shoving hard he got through to the last of the port lines. Here were the slave children, huddled together, so tightly packed there was no path between. The only road was up. Wilson climbed the line with cramping arms and legs. He craned his neck to look for Yoka. No luck.

Kalala’s gondola dropped precipitously. The deck lay at a sharp slant. All lines to the envelope but this one and the stern’s were loose. Cries of horror, wordless screeching—bodies tumbled down into the relentless fire or over the gunwales into the green and black swamp.

Wilson pointed and shot anyway. The knife hit. The gondola jerked again and more passengers fell.

Two knives left. Wilson aimed down and pulled the trigger. Its last tie to the gondola severed, Kalala’s envelope rushed skywards, whipping him around furiously around at the end of the cut line. From below came an enormous hissing splash. Wilson dared to look down. The gondola was in a single half-charred piece. People moved on it, swam and waded around it. They sank further and further away. Or rather, he and the envelope rose—and Yoka also, he hoped.

The higher one went, the colder and thinner the air. Without the gondola’s weight he’d—they’d—fly too high to breathe. Wilson attempted for a few moments to slow his twisting and spinning, to steady himself by wrapping the line’s slack around his wrist. He gave up. The envelope was big; how could he miss? Praying not to hit Yoka, he shot his last blade.

Falling, falling—yet the envelope acted like a giant jumpsheet. What went up must come down, but at least at a survivable speed. Dizzy, ill, aghast at the deaths he knew were his responsibility, Wilson still clung to hope something would go right. Something had to.

Something did.

Leopold lost. And Wilson and Yoka, drifting eastward on prevailing winds, were witnesses. From the net around the punctured envelope Yoka tossed Wilson a makeshift sling. Gliding lower and lower they saw soldiers and policemen running in every direction. They saw massive disorder and piles of surrendered rifles. They saw King Mwenda’s fighters herding captive overseers back the way they’d come, uphill, toward the rendezvous at Lutshi. And they saw many dying, many dead. Most wore the Belgian tyrant’s uniform.

At last they landed gently on a hillside on the swamp’s far side. Against all likelihood, they were alive.

So, too, was everyone else who’d been aboard Kalala.

When Yoka told Wilson this he refused to believe it. He sat, at the Bah-Sangah priests’ insistence, underneath a length of undyed cotton. Apparently his dream—which he had unwisely related to Yoka—decreed Wilson’s immediate initiation. So far this had involved fasting and isolation. He wasn’t even sure where the two of them were, since he’d been blindfolded before being led there.

“But they fell!” Wilson objected.

“Not far,” Yoka responded.

“Into the fire!”

“And out again.”

“And the waters of the swamp—”

“All shallow.”

“No one was bitten by poisonous serpents? Eaten by crocodiles?”

“No. We were protected.”

“Protected by whom?” asked Wilson.

A moment of silence. Under the white cloth it seemed long to him.

“Protected by him to whom you have promised yourself.”

“I didn’t—”

“You did. Or else you would be dead. Others, too.”

“But I—” Wilson remembered. If I give you your life back you will owe it to me. “I have dedicated my life to my lord, Jesus Christ.”

“Yes? When was this?”

“What? What does it matter when?”

“If it was before you met your new lord you must take it back.”

Take it back. Be forsworn. He couldn’t do that.

Could he?

“You will remain here overnight. Alone. Considering. In the morning I will come for you, for your final decision.”

“I can say no?”

“You can. So think well. Think what that will mean.

“When I am gone, remove the cloth. You will see you have been provided with water, food, a candle, a pot into which you may relieve yourself, and one more thing: an object to help you make your choice.”

The sound of footsteps leaving.

Wilson lifted the cloth and looked around at a small cave. The food, water, candle, and chamber pot were all present as described.

The only other thing there was a mirror.

Wilson removed his clothing. He looked at himself as long as the candle’s light lasted, using the reflective surface to examine sides he would normally be unable to see. He stared at the healed bullet wound hard and often.

The candle died. He couldn’t use the mirror anymore, so he used his mind.

All he had was his life. It was all that was wanted.

The sound of footsteps coming back.