TRUTH
Andy West
Copyright Andy West 2012
Excepting real quotes, all material copyright Andy West.
Excepting attributable real-world quotes, all characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental
TRUTH
Now: in hospital.
I recall vividly the few years before it happened. When recession and riots blazed from the headlines, when white winter returned to remind us that her cruel breath still counted. I thought I knew something way back then, as the cherry tree in my front garden blossomed like never before, with it the vociferous Arab Spring, both pledging rich fruit. I amassed fashionable truths for my album of knowledge, my bible of behaviour, eagerly seeking the missing sets, the latest editions. Until completion, whispered my frustration, I would not perceive social reality, I could not take full control. Noble cause would illuminate my title page, to which end I pawned headlines and frosts for a place at a foreign game, pitching war against terror.
The scents and spirits of those remembered times wreathed around me, but couldn’t erase sharp disinfectant and the sharper pains in my chest.
A nurse appeared, bending over me. Doughy features and tea-stained skin above exotic bone structure. Eyes extra dark beneath a glistening sheen, reminding me of soft life-forms in a rock-pool. Heavy breasts plumping downward. Her name-badge displayed ‘Dora’. She beamed sympathetically, revealing beautiful teeth. In what part of long-past empire had her line originated? I tried to reflect her smile, but she was already turning away.
I drifted back, back. Out there where I served, the climate seared. Out there, the memory of winter scourge was the dream of a soothing goddess. And dreaming was dangerous when padding through hours of uneventful patrol.
Recall: abroad.
The staccato punching of shots had us suddenly leaping for cover. Despite peril a bizarre notion flashed through my head, of puppets jerked by a huge and petulant child.
Two o’clock, from the tumbled remains of walls. But was there a line of crossfire? Would be strange if not. I signalled Lewis and Lissaman to flank right, Fitzgerald and Boden to probe left, swiftly adding over the encrypted headset that the latter be very cautious until we established patterning and enemy dispositions. I wriggled forward to the grudging cover of a sizeable block of stone. Carved, I noted. Once part of an impressive portal, most likely. Greatness had been housed here, centuries ago at least, maybe further back still.
I peeked over fallen grandeur and first noticed the woman, hunched up behind a thin veil of bleached dead stalks. Why hadn’t I seen her before? Dun rags partly covered a soiled dress of dark burgundy. Wisps of lead-grey hair escaped a frayed ochre headscarf. Clear turquoise eyes gazed out from nests of nut-brown wrinkles. I beckoned to her. She was only metres away though might as well be on the moon.
A row of tiny eruptions leapt from the hard-baked mud near her sandaled feet and ended at my position. The block sang as though struck by a chisel. A burning line stung my cheek. Probably a sliver of stone. A drop of my blood stained the ancient handiwork.
The old woman seemed oblivious to the battle around her. An expression of permanent surprise was painted across her weather-worn features, but not, apparently, because of the gunfire. She didn’t flinch at the shots or take evasive action, she didn’t look directly at me or the enemy. Perhaps a simpleton. Those eyes though. Those eyes were startling.
“Tamin, get up here.” An affirmative came back over the headset. Blinding lights flickered from the enemy position; they were reflecting sunlight from mirrors, trying to confuse our vision and targeting devices, a technique I’d come across before.
An overwhelming thunderclap was followed by a shower of dirt and small stones. Rocket-propelled grenade. Close.
“We’ll ’ave im next time, Cap,” reported Boden. “It’s always bravado with these tribals. He’ll pose with the launcher when he breaks cover to fire again.”
No casualties reported. And we knew the cross-pattern now. I called in the engagement to Camp Delta and brought up the local terrain on my thigh terminal. Shots opened up from our own side: efficient, probing.
Tamin came out of an energetic roll to fetch up right next to me. His eager brown face popped above the protective block and swiftly assessed the situation. The strange woman hadn’t moved, though now she was covered by a thin patina of blasted earth.
“She’s a madwoman!”
“Talk to her. Get her to crawl back here, into cover.”
Delta were unhelpful. No meaningful intelligence for the area. And they’d lost track of the local warlord, One Eye. I requested air support; they needed to check for nearby available assets.
A knot tightened in my stomach. Not uncommon in battle, yet I felt something abnormal hanging in the air. Perhaps it was the woman’s bizarre behaviour; maybe an unidentified threat. I opened myself to every possible signal.
Tamin was having no luck.
“She is saying crazy things,” he reported. “Will the grinding ever cease? And such terrible grandeur! Other phrases like that. She won’t listen.”
“Ask her if One Eye is in the area,” I shouted back. A very long shot, but worth a try.
Then an astounding thing happened. In a wavering reedy voice I could just pick out, the woman replied directly to me. Not only in English, but in my own accent.
“One Eye has been here for centuries. So have you.”
Confusion swamped me.
The aged female pressed her palms together and loosely interlinked her fingers as though to pray, raising her arms directly into the intense golden glare from multiple mirrors. A cruel deity soon answered; her hands sprayed crimson.
A fountain of life; sunlight and blood; a ruddy dazzle. I was transfixed. Tamin yelled at me. Still the woman seemed intent on something outside this battle, perhaps outside this world. Her hands parted. Must be heavy calibre fire; bright rays streamed right through holes in her palms, red ribbons rippled down skinny arms. Another mechanical coughing; a spent shell knocked hard against my helmet. Then those turquoise eyes stared straight at me, so intent her gaze seemed to enter me, or maybe I entered the woman. For a split second I thought I saw myself as she saw me, a strip of pale brow and hint of eyes beneath the shadow of outsized headgear; this through rubicund light and fiery flecks, as though a rift full of molten lava lay spitting in-between us. The connection snapped. The woman shrieked. I fought a sudden wave of shock; what had happened?
“Cap, Cap! They got reinforcements coming in. We gotta get out!”
“No! This is no ambush, it’s accidental contact. One Eye’s flinging a makeshift screen at us while he slips away. Air support is coming; only nine minutes south. We can grab one of the bastards, a high-up, squeeze some intel out of him. Keep low and snipe back; they aren’t going to advance.”
It suddenly occurred to me that I’d no idea how I knew all those things.
The real world was blotched by patterns of something else; the bright gold and red must have dazzled me.
Now: in hospital.
Red haze became stark white as I opened my eyes; the lights above bed 4 of the ICU.
The radiance was what I always remembered most vividly about that odd event. Intense light could overwhelm or confuse the sensors of our laser targeting, but at that range who needed lasers anyhow? The fighters’ tactic had been more symbolic than practical, scouring the land of pale foreign foes using the territory’s naturally fierce sun, and a talisman too after a chance victory a few months earlier. They’d used plastic mirrors made for Western suburban gardens.
The nurse had returned, accompanied by a pale sylph of a girl in a junior’s outfit.
“Just checking you over. One of your
wires is playing up.” This as the junior swept the curtains around. Dora pulled my blanket aside and swiftly peeled one of the pads from my chest. The assistant checked my feet, which on account of poor circulation were looking distinctly unhealthy. I peered down at the pale wrinkled bag I’d become, ending at blue and black toes. The excess skin was an unkind reminder of past bulk and strength. I’d looked impressive back in the day, back when I courted Joanna.
The new pad was plugged in. “All finished!”
I tried to recall when I’d first met Joanna. An even earlier era of my life. The carefree mood from a line of hot summers wafted through my thought. Richly lit evenings in scented pub gardens. My tongue remembered malty dark ales. My love and my libido, the latter even now not quite dead, remembered a jet bob and alabaster complexion; a simple shift that barely concealed outlines. Back when – interrupted my never silenced and well-armed cynicism – back when finance ministers played medieval quaestores, when presidents and false philosophers feared that there was nothing left to fear. Before great monsters of debt slipped harness and turned around to rip chunks out of nations, revealing cabalistic veins of corruption that would eat the West down to autumn husks. Before thaws in Arab domains, yet chrysalis China already rent open. In truth, back then I was blind to all this, blind to almost all the workings of reality, intent on outlines below a simple shift. Intent