Arslan

which the lilac constructs its seeds.” He looked down into his bottle with an expression of intense wonderment, and slowly, feelingly, drank.

“And yet there are sterile flowers, sir. The flower of the potato, the Japanese cherry blossom; to what end do they bloom? This is the monstrosity that man has bred: the sterile flower. And yet there were already sterile flowers when man ran on his knuckles with the apes. Who bred the wild yam? Who bred the saxifrage?” He glared at me as if he could compel an answer. Then he drank again, and his face smoothed. “Is this not beautiful, sir?” he asked purringly. “The flower that gives pleasure fruitlessly? Is it not beautiful that nature is so—unnatural?” He showed his teeth in a slow grimace. “Why do your people put flowers upon graves, sir? What is the meaning of this custom?”

“I suppose, like most customs, it means about whatever people put into it.”

He hunched his shoulders forward a little, searching my face. “I tell you a curious thing, sir,” he said confidentially. “I am in pain. You understand that I am accustomed to facts; facts do not trouble me. But there is a pain that does not cease.” He grinned savagely. “Ah, this gives you satisfaction, sir. Good. Good.” A hot look glowed in his taut face. He lifted three cigarettes from the pack in his shirt pocket and plugged the mouth of the bottle with them, and in one powerful, deliberate movement he swung his legs down and his arm in a sideward arc. The bottle smashed against the opposite wall, spewing liquor, and he was sitting upright on the edge of the bed. “Hunt!” he roared.

Vodka dripped down the wall. A piece of flying glass had landed on my knee. I flipped it off with my finger, and it hit his leg and dropped onto his shoe. He picked it up and looked at it searchingly.

Hunt opened the door. “Bring me another bottle,” Arslan said suavely. Hunt nodded, taking it all in with a little scornful smile, and lifted his hand into sight. It held an unopened bottle of vodka. Arslan’s laugh exploded. He dropped the glass fragment onto the bed beside him and accepted the new bottle. “Shut the door.” He opened the bottle swiftly, took a long swig, and nestled it between his knees. “Therefore, or in part therefore, I am going.”

Hunt took a step forward from the door. “Where?”

“To Russia. Probably then to India.”

I didn’t care where. “When?” I asked harshly.

He gave me a smile of luminous sweetness. “Tonight,” he said. He lifted the bottle by the neck and swung it gently back and forth. “The main transmitter and receiver have been dismantled. The rest of the communications equipment'—he glanced at his watch—'has just left headquarters. Sanjar,” he added smoothly, “is already out of the district.” He set the bottle on the floor and leaned forward confidingly. “You see, sir, that I wish to save Kraftsville.”

He had spread his hand a little too soon. But I had to be on my feet and out of reach, and I’d better be between Hunt and the door, and my first shot should be by the window, to put the KCR into action.

Hunt brushed past me and confronted Arslan. “This time are you asking me?” he cried huskily.

Arslan’s face went cold. “No. You stay, Hunt.”

Hunt swayed on his feet. “I’m going with you.” His voice was hard and shrill with desperation. Three strides got me to the window; as I turned I had the gun in my hand.

That instant the world stopped turning for me. The whole room seemed illuminated with a terrific clarity. I felt every muscle in my body. I was contented. There would be no more lying now.

Hunt had turned his desolate face towards me. On the far edge of the bed, Arslan had to look almost over his shoulder. He made no move, but his face was afire with excitement. “Ah, there it is,” he said quietly.

I turned the gun a little away from them, to fire the signal shot. But as I turned it, the long moment ended, exploded in a splintering burst, and flying specks of my blood and bone sprinkled my face. Flickeringly I saw Arslan fling himself across the bed, rolling over and up onto his feet in front of me, and stoop and rise and dance back. He stood before me with a pistol in each hand.

I knew two things in the smeared dimness that throbbed through the room: he had fired the signal shot; and with all the guns on his side, I had nothing more to lose. I plunged towards the door. Keep him cut off from his men till the KCR got here—that was the last-ditch idea that moved my legs.

Hunt met me in a rush, and we grappled together. I heard myself remarking, up in some attic of my brain, He’s stronger than I thought. Now the shock of the bullet was wearing off, and one wave after another of hot pain washed up my right arm. I threw Hunt down and slammed against the dresser, driving it in front of the door. Through the drumming in my head I heard feet on the stairs. I gave the dresser a last thrust and caught Hunt as he came up again.

He hadn’t tried to use his knife—the famous knife that had been Arslan’s own. My vision cleared as if a curtain had risen. I hugged him to me with my left arm, catching his right hand between our chests. Arslan’s men were at the door.

Hunt had stopped struggling. He stood trying to control his breath. Arslan was standing a little back from the window. He holstered one of the pistols casually and called out something; the sounds at the door stopped.

“You can let me go now,” Hunt said composedly. “Consider me hors de combat.”

I wasn’t about to let him go. Other things being equal, Arslan would maybe rather not kill me, but he would almost certainly go at least a little out of his way to keep from killing Hunt. And the only thing Hunt had showed me so far was that neither of us could afford to trust him.

Then the first shots sounded from the schoolground. Arslan smiled at me expectantly. A machinegun answered under the window.

“Sir,” he said, “I am leaving Kraftsville to you.” He lifted the lamp from the table. The machinegun spoke again. I heard running footsteps outside; the Land Rover started up; something else—one of the trucks—was coming down the street. My whole right arm to the shoulder felt swollen and half-solid, like a balloon full of blood. I was getting dizzy. He shouted one more order, and then he hurled the lamp in a looping overhead pitch that lifted the shadows and shook them over us. He swept the curtain aside, and struck the screen a sidearm blow. Fire swarmed up the cotton spread, from the shattered lamp at the bed’s foot. The screen clattered on the porch roof. I let go of Hunt and lunged forward, carrying him along with my rush till he pulled away from me. Arslan was already out of the window.

The fire was to keep us busy, maybe, but neither of us was having any. Hunt dived through the window. How I got through I didn’t know.

Arslan was running lightly along the edge of the porch roof, fuzzy in the darkness. At the corner he half turned to us, and his hand came up in a quick gesture of salute or warning. The light of the flames from the bedroom glinted on his face. Hunt had almost reached him when he dropped over the edge. Instantly, it seemed to me, the truck motor roared. There was one more burst of machinegun fire, somebody yelled something, and beyond the roofs edge I saw the truck and the Land Rover scream into Pearl Street, their lights coming on like explosions.

We teetered on the gentle slope of the shingles. I waved my good arm. “Joel!” I bellowed. “Pete Larner! All of you get up here! We’ve got to put out a fire!”

Hunt came back to me with a step, facing me close. He shook with racking laughter. “That’s right, Mr. Bond,” he said. “Your house is burning. You’d better take care of your Goddamn house.”

“A few weeks, a few eons—in other words, presumptively never. That’s when Arslan will come back.”

That was what Hunt said. He had made his movement of self-preservation very promptly. He had attached himself to me the instant Arslan deserted him, but he had also asserted his independence, or at least his aloofness, by doing it with a very scornful air.

And for half an hour on the porch roof, it was Hunt who had taken care of me. He had caught me when I swayed and eased me down away from the roofs edge. He had held me back when I half sat up and raved at the KCR men to leave me alone and get to work on the fire. He had put the tourniquet on my arm, and he had jumped off the roof and gone for Dr. Allard.

Later I found myself lying on a strange bed in a strange room. But it was Arslan’s bed, Arslan’s room. “Is it out?” I demanded.

“Yes, yes, it’s out,” Luella answered.

“Where’s Joel Munsey?”