Part #276: A Betrayal
“Coming to you from C-WNB’s Factcentre... With Wragg Roberts and Ultima Jaxon...”
(A brassy jingle plays in the background, almost overwhelming the words)
“Here is the news, coming to you every hour, on the hour...”
(An audible switch from pre-recorded lines to live commentary)
“Those headlines again.
“The backblast from yesterday’s Global Games Investigative Board decision continues to build. The Board’s inquiry ruled against Sangita Sharma’s appeal against the controversial original finding that stripped the young Panchali gymnast of her silver laurels won in the Global Games held recently in London, England. Miss Sharma has always maintained that her positive doping test result was caused by sabotage by a competitor.
“The GGID’s decision has been met with mass protests on the streets of Lucknow and other Panchali cities. Now Consul Satya Upadhyay, leader of the Panchali government, has weighed in with a hinted warning that unless the case is reopened, Lucknow’s hosting and funding of next year’s Multinational Athletics Championships may be withdrawn.
“Is Consul Upadhyay justified in his response, or, as some defenders of the GGID have warned, is this a return to the geopolitical blackmail of the bad old days of the Ram Kumar regime in Panchala? In the studio we have Colonel Xavier Sparks, an expert on the region, and he’s written a book all about it...”
– Transcription of a C-WNB News Motoscope broadcast,
recorded in Waccamaw Strand, Kingdom of Carolina, 19/03/2020
*
Dr Lombardi’s note: The following extract is taken from a rather battered copy of a romance novel I found in a second-hand bookshop just outside Charleston. The book has a yellow label on its cover, clearly affixed long after it was published, marked with the letters IP. The same symbol was indicated on the bookshop’s sign alongside a green symbol with the letters CA, and we have collected many more, newer books which have that symbol (usually part of the cover rather than a sticker). This appears to be some sort of certificate classification system, but we have not worked out all the details yet. Also, Dr Pylos wishes me to point out that the region in which the novel takes place does not really qualify as ‘the steppes’.
From: “Passion on the Steppes” by Marjoria Kartera (1978)—
“Trooper Ferrier!” Sergeant Beauville called once again. “Less of the daydreaming, the Russian bastards could be on us any moment!”
“Yes, sarge,” Lucien said, barely holding back a sigh. A month ago, he would have known never to risk antagonising the belligerent noncom—no, a month ago he would have instinctively understood that Beauville was right, that negligence would put him and his comrades at risk. He wouldn’t need to have been told.
But then, he had met
her.
He looked down at his wristwatch, now scuffed and scratched after four months of knocks and sandstorms and bitter conflict. His uncle had told him that a bright American had had the idea of strapping his fob watch to his wrist during the last war, and had made millions from his notion. Other men in the Volunteer Brigade instead insisted it had been a German, or someone from the vanished Meridians. To Lucien, it did not matter who had invented the device and where; he only cared what it told him.
Yes, the hands hadn’t stopped. He ignored the expensive day and date readouts, betraying that this watch was far more expensive than he could afford—he’d appropriated it from the body of a lieutenant who hadn’t been quite lucky enough. SAT JUN 17. Nobody had yet thought it necessary to add a year indicator, though for Lucien this year might as well have been 1822 or 2022 as 1922. No, all he cared about were the hands, showing a time of 10:32. Less than half an hour till the rendezvous, till the time when
she would be there.
Part of him, the cynical part that had helped keep him alive and guard his own life as his naive comrades had charged to their deaths in certainty of the righteousness of their cause, gave him a warning. Why did he assume she would be there? Aynabat, his sweet moon, as she had told him her name meant. All the exotic mystery and province of the East wrapped up in a very real lady of dignity and culture, with a Persian university education that meant she could hold her own with any Cytherean grand dame of the salons of Paris. It was almost, he thought uneasily for a moment, as though his childish notions of the backward Orient were founded in nothing more than falsehoods, as if all men were brothers, all women were sisters...
But his mind was not ready to accept this truth. To Lucien, Aynabat was something special, a moon shining in the darkness, a diamond in the rough. Yet her parents still had too much of the village to them, suspicious of this foreign, Christian interloper. He was sure that Aynabat’s brother was convinced Lucien saw her as nothing but an easy conquest, to be used and abandoned. Maybe his past experience of Europeans could partly excuse such an assumption. But in Lucien’s mind, it was absurd. She was his moon, and he wanted only to worship her forever.
He remembered when he had first come to these lands, mere months ago, been startled by the landscape of the Khanate of Khiva. He had thought that his own home town, south of the Loire in the province of Maine, was home to a flat and featureless landscape; but it could not compare to the staggering, bleak beauty of the arid steppe. Here to the north and east of Khiva city, the great river Oxus[1] cut through the landscape and lent it a little greenery; farmers scratched out a living and cities had grown up. Back then, when he had seen it, he had almost wished he had his sister’s talent with the paintbrush.
Now, everything had changed. Not because houses and farms had been reduced to burnt-out wrecks, because craters pocked roads and fleeing refugees had left towns emptied. If nothing had changed, the world would still seem pale and dim to him, his entire being consumed by the thought of Aynabat. Selfishly, in his heart, none of that human suffering mattered. He had long learned that his dreams of glory in battle were nothing more than lies told by recruiters, that Russians, Persians and Frenchmen alike were doing nothing but perpetuating endless misery for no cause amid these debated lands. Yet he had found something precious amid all the ennui, and he clung tightly to it.
His pack bumped treacherously against his shoulders and back, reminding him of when Aynabat had bound his wound, tittering coquettishly and remarking on the muscles that hard living and fighting had built up. From what she had said in her near-fluent French, these Khivan villagers regarded Frenchmen as all soppy dilettantes living in debauchery in Paris. Lucien had already seen, on the ship in which his company had travelled in secret here, that so many foreigners had such negative views of the French, still blaming them for sitting out the last war.
Well, now we are here at the beginning of the next one, he thought bitterly.
We can hold our heads high to these folk in days to come—those of us who actually survive.
Sergeant Beauville was ignoring his own advice and, as the plain-clothes company of ‘unofficial volunteers’ formed up, glanced at a battered newspaper. Displaying hidden depths, the seemingly crude sergeant had clearly learned enough written Russian to make slow, painstaking sense of the Cyrillic characters. “Hah!” he pronounced, waving at his men. “I knew they’d have to give the game away eventually!” He slapped the paper importantly. “Friend Ivan has been trying to downplay all those amarts that our brave allies blew up near Azrat, just before Rumyantsev got himself shot. But he’s had to release the death notices eventually, shoved ’em near the back so nobody would spot ’em!”
He stabbed a finger at a list of Cyrillic names in very, very small characters. “Look at that butcher’s bill. Tsar Pauly will think twice about sending his boys in again!”
The men cheered, but a little uncertainly. Lucien knew that Beauville was just putting a brave face on it; there had already been rumours that, contrary to what the sarge had said, the Russians were mobilising to send in their frontline troops. There was talk of the whole Fergana Valley in revolt. Whether Paul cared about his soldiers’ lives or not, no world leader could dare walk away from such a challenge.
Which meant war. As if what he’d been living through for the past four months didn’t already qualify for that. But this would be worse.
He needed to see her.
Daydreamer though he might be, Lucien was still the first to see it. His eyes suddenly focused on the dull spots growing on the horizon. “Aerodromes!” He pointed.
Beauville snapped out of his propagandising with almost disconcerting ease. He shaded his eyes and swore viciously. “Dammit!
Attends! Galtier and Chambord, you for the Lectel shack, let Khiva know! Everyone else, take cover!”
Lucien heard the words, an order which he had obeyed many times over the past few months, and had saved his life by doing so. This time, he ignored them as casually as he would have his mother’s instruction not to get his hands dirty when he had been a little boy. Those Russian aerodromes were heading this way. If they were anything like the two previous bombing raids he’d seen—they had stepped up in tempo considerably since Rumyantsev had been killed—they would carry both rockets and bombs, and would use them indiscriminately against civilians as a weapon of terror. Some might even carry death-luft, and Lucien nervously remembered that while he had a mask in his pack, his protective rubber suit was now too damaged to protect him against Petrograd’s new burning brimstone luft. Clearly the Tsar had no interest in winning the hearts and minds of the peoples of the steppes, only crushing them beneath his bootheel. Including the people of Khiva, who had formerly rested in the sphere of influence of Persia.
Including his sweet moon Aynabat.
She had liked it when he had worn his rubber suit, for some reason.
Lucien took a direction that might have charitably implied that he was just seeking cover a little more distantly than his comrades. He turned a corner and went into an alleyway. The village was tiny compared to Khiva, and he had learned many of its byways on his previous visit. He heard a call from the minaret of the mosque that was quite different to the usual call to prayer; evidently the imam had spotted the dromes as well. He wondered if, one day before too long, his own village would be ringing its churchbells to warn of a Russian or Belgian air attack. Truly men were not so different, and yet it seemed they must slay one another...
He raced down the streets, pushing his way through the bazaar as merchants and patrons alike threatened to kill more of one another in the panicked crush to escape than the Tsar could ever hope to. He puzzled out the street signs in their twisting Persian script, looking for the one he knew. There! One of the better-off areas, with larger and more palatial houses whose exotic architecture would have been received with approval in much of fashionable Paris. But perhaps it was just that they were designed for different weather, and the apparent differences were superficial.
There! Aynabat’s father might dislike Lucien, but he had worked hard for his family, as his daughter had told him. He had risen from a peasant farmer to an important man in this small region, a gentleman who had the ear of the regional governor and considerable investments in the Persian stock market in Shiraz. A man who had been able to send his academically brilliant daughter to university in that city.
And now it all came crashing down, because some men who had never heard of Aynabat and her family had decided it was time to move some lines on a map.
Lucien had lived as long as he had because he had rapidly adapted to the hell of life in this miserable quasi-war. Even as his muscular chest filled with damp pain and fear, his mind consumed by thoughts of Aynabat, something deep within him automatically halted his run and threw his body behind a group of odiferous rubbish bins.
That reflex, whatever it was...it had heard the keening sound of a Russian drome. The big Polzunov Po-19 bomber thundered over the defenceless Khivan city.[2] Maybe it was just a terror attack, maybe the pilot or navigator had blundered and was meant to be attacking a military target. Or at least a civilian one that might make headlines. No-one would care about this attack but ordinary folk like Aynabat’s family.
An instant after the smell of the rubbish in the summer heat bored its way into Lucien’s nose like some particularly unpleasant smelling salts, he found himself flung back and upside-down against a collapsing wall. The bins partly shielded him from the blast as the bomb detonated, but he was still briefly knocked unconscious.
When he came to, he scrambled unsteadily to his feet. Miraculously, he had escaped with nothing more than a few more bruises and scratches to add to the scars Aynabat cooed over when she massaged the tension from his sinewy back. Right now, he cared not for such things. Smoke filled his vision and made his eyes hurt, overpowering even the strench from the bomb-shattered bins. He blinked furiously to clear his vision...
And he saw it.
There was Aynabat’s house, the great mansion her father had built with its flat roof and its fine carpets hanging from the walls. No more. Flames curled from its windows, the craft of generations of Persian carpet weavers going up in smoke.
Lucien cared not for such trifles. “
Ma douce petite lune!” he cried, and without a second thought, flung himself through the burning door.
...
(Dr Lombardi’s note: Pages missing here, probably just through neglect and wear rather than deliberate censorship. I suppose that’s why it only cost one Carolinian royal...
When he awoke, a bright light was above his head. He stared at his blurry surroundings for a moment. Then his eyes came to rest, and long before his vision resolved her form, he knew it was his sweet little moon. “Are...” His throat was thick, and he coughed up smoke. “Are you an angel...?”
Aynabat laughed and kissed him passionately on the forehead, her beautiful dark hair sliding sensuously across his cheeks. He raised an eyebrow at the chaste kiss, then noticed she was being watched by her sour-looking brother. Her parents were also there, but her usually severe, powerful father was staring blankly into space, being comforted by his wife (and if she was a forecast for what Aynabat would look like in years to come, Lucien had nothing to complain about). “What...happen...”
“Save your strength, my brave Frenchman,” Aynabat whispered, kissing him again despite her brother’s look, her hand softly stroking his chest. She wore her traditional
koynek skirt and headdress, quite different from the westernised university student’s clothes he had first seen her in. Part of Lucien wondered if it wouldn’t be so much better if everyone in the world dressed the same. “Do you remember what you did? We were trapped, and you—but there will be time for that later.”
Lucien belatedly realised that if every part of his body still hurt, it probably meant he wasn’t in heaven. No matter how much it felt like it, right now. “Dear heart, we...” He tensed. “We have to get out of here! The Russians...”
Aynabat put one of her delicate fingers over his lips. “Be at peace, sun of my heart. Do you not hear those engines you told me of?”
Lucien concentrated. What was his vision of loveliness talking about? He heard the keening roars of the Po-19s as before, and...
Not the raspy
thutter of the old Laporte Mercure-2 dromes that Rouillard had sold to the Persians before Cazeneuve got in at the election. He’d heard those a fair few times, and they had provided some defence to the Khivan people when they owned the skies against Russian armarts, but they could never stand up to the more modern frontline Russian craft. No, these had a different tone, one he’d only heard once, a year ago at a chest-thumping patriotic airshow... “Those are the new Laporte Vulturs!” A name that had been chosen in mocking defiance of those who dismissed France’s foreign policy as that of a vulture.
Aynabat smiled, showing her lovely teeth. “If you have the strength, my love, come and see...”
“I will always have the strength, with you,” he promised. And, indeed, he somehow not only rose to his feet and came to the window she indicated, but paused to sweep her up into his arms first. She squeaked in surprise and delight, and it was enough to even startle her father out of his funk.
Ignoring her relatives, Lucien came to the window and stared. Yes, the fight was still close enough to make it out; a faint whiff of brimstone in the distance suggested the Russians had indeed unleashed death-luft. But they had been punished for it.
A Po-19 was crashing from the skies, trailing flames, and hot on its tail was the sleek shape of a Vultur. The Po-19 bore the diagonal white-blue-red colour slashes and double-headed black eagle of Russia; up till now, the only symbol Lucien had seen on dromes contesting the skies with the Tsar’s legions was the golden lion and sun of Persia. Some of those dromes might have had French pilots inside them, of course; this undeclared war had been going on for some time. But now the Vultur proudly displayed the new French Aerostatic Force symbol, adapted from the national flag by changing the white-in red rectangle surrounding the fleur-de-lys to be a diamond instead. None had quite publicly explained the reason for the change, particularly considering the Diamantine Party was in opposition. Perhaps so-called democracy and choice meant nothing after all, and it was all a conspiracy to mislead the public.
But those with common sense might suggest that a distinctive diamond shape would be a good choice to avoid confusion between friend and foe when both sides used colours including red, white and blue. Purely on the hypothetical chance that such a war broke out, of course.
But now it wasn’t a hypothetical. Cazeneuve had sent the King’s men openly into battle against the Russian hordes, and now this would no longer be a distant dispute in a far corner of the world. Once again, the globe would be plunged into war.
In that moment, Lucien decided against participating in it.
He kissed Aynabat back. “We can’t stay here, though,” he said, as the Po-19 crashed into an outlying farmhouse and exploded. “Soon the armarts will come.”
“Where can we go?” Aynabat asked, her lovely dark eyes full of fear and concern. “Everything we have is here...”
“Everything we
had, daughter of my heart,” her father spoke up quietly.
Lucien nodded. “But what is gone may be rebuilt, sir, in time of peace.”
Diamonds. Diamonds on the planes...diamonds in...armarts...
He set Aynabat down, startling her, and went to his pack. There it was, hidden in a loaf of bread...not the safest place to hide something in the days of dearth to come, when desperate thieves might steal his pack just for that. Carefully he broke it apart to reveal the cavity inside.
Aynabat squealed with joy and surprise. “Beautiful diamonds! Where did you find them?”
Even her brother perked up. “Those are real diamonds, not glass,” he noted, peering at one. Lucien abruptly remembered he had worked with jewellers in the past. “Yes, where did you find them?”
“I had almost forgotten,” Lucien admitted. “Two weeks ago, we found some burnt-out Russian armarts, destroyed by fighters with German weapons.”
“Brave fighters!” Aynabat’s brother commented.
“Yes. But it seems one of the Russians had these valuables on him. I found them and took them,” Lucien explained. He didn’t pause to dwell on the fact that the Russian had probably stolen them in turn from a sacked mansion in Samarkand or something, continuing an endless cycle of wasteful destruction. But perhaps these could be put to a better use. “I brought them here to be...to be Aynabat’s dowry.” His voice broke.
Aynabat’s father bowed his head. “I misjudged you, young Frenchman. But though it is clear to me your heart belongs to my daughter...” He trailed off, his accented French growing more indistinct. “But wealth alone does not help us. Our land is gone.”
Lucien nodded. “You are right, sir. Father, if you will consent. But not yet.” He wiped sweat from his brow, as the lovely Aynabat nuzzled into his shoulder. “Let us all go to a land which knows nothing but peace. Let us go to South America!”
(Dr Lombardi’s note: The propaganda gets even less subtle from then on and it gets a lot steamier, so I’ll leave it there; David, do you have that history text with the green label to go next?
[1] The old Latin name, commonly used by Europeans until recently; the name now preferred in OTL is Amu Darya.
[2] Polzunov is a Russian manufacturer of land vehicles and aircraft named for the eighteenth-century steam engine pioneer Ivan Polzunov; it has no direct connection with him or his family, the founders just liked using the name for a historical narrative.
