Authors: Ken Kalfus
Within days certain twittered, rumored threats fledge into actual trouble at mile 94 on Side BC, a segment of which is being paved by a squad of about two hundred men. The fellahin put down their spades and sit alongside them in the unremitting glare of the day, refusing to stir until their grievances are met. Two men are selected to present the demands, which are inchoate and unrealistic—more likely to be answered by Allah than by representatives of the Concession. The foreman has the delegates flogged in full view of the company. He empties the contents of the water cart into the sand.
News of the revolt spreads faster than the speed by which the fleetest runner can possibly communicate it to the other work sites. Strikes are called by companies on Side AC and at mile 180 on Side BC. Scuffles among workers break out farther down the side, too distant to be seen by their colleagues, who seem to know of them anyway. Thayer doesn’t learn of the strikes until he’s summoned by Ballard. The engineer has just returned from the pitch factory, where he was investigating the latest production delays.
Thayer hurries to Ballard’s offices. The engineer is already
in conference with the commander of the Nubians, accompanied by the segment managers in camp, most of them Europeans or Greeks and Turks. Thayer was probably notified as an afterthought, and not for his expertise in dealing with insurrectionists. Ballard wants only to remind him of what the project is up against.
The Nubian detachment is hardly adequate, with too few men and too few guns. When the Khedive, distrusting a new foreign military presence beyond those guarding the Canal and his ports, insisted on a small national guard for the project, the Powers chose not to contest the point. They had won agreement in favor of the Concession on nearly every other issue. The Nubians’ only strength is their contempt for the fellahin, who in turn hate them for their khakis and their marginally higher pay.
The soldiers’ captain, a florid Welshman, served Her Majesty in India for three decades, but Thayer knows Ballard finds him dodgy. The man listens to the report of the strike without asking questions or acknowledging the rebellion’s severity. When the meeting disbands, several of the engineers exchange grimaces of concern. The Nubians ride off into the desert, kicking up plumes of sand before they vanish.
Δ
That evening rumors dire and persuasive ripple through the European quarters. The whites extinguish their lamps and turn in early. They hear the following: foremen have been killed; Point B has been overrun; the fellahin have joined with Mahdist dervishes and are marching on Point A. Although a detachment
patrols Point A’s perimeter, the Europeans are reminded that without the consolations of civilization, specifically loyal rifles, they’re essentially alone in an indifferent desert. Dervishes were seeded among the fellahin months earlier. The whites listen for unusual sounds, yet the desert’s every sound is unusual, manufactured by small animals beyond their acquaintance.
Given these circumstances, ordinary gallantry minimally demands that Thayer offer the secretary his company as night falls. He says, “Dee, I believe we have a game of chess left unfinished.”
“Your total annihilation is what’s left unfinished. I’ll put up the tea.”
They have plenty to discuss over tea, especially the shortfall in pitch production, which has been delayed at the satellite factories located throughout the Equilateral. Point B’s plant is hardly operating at all. The entire enterprise seems to be slowing down. Miss Keaton has seen reports of prodigal water consumption. Excavators at mile 165 of Side AB have encountered previously unmapped marshes. In Europe an influential German philosopher has spoken out against an exchange of ideas and technology with Mars, speculating that its inhabitants will be so far advanced that they will make irrelevant our every endeavor in the sciences, industry, the arts, and ethics—circumventing millennia of future accomplishment and history. Man’s inquisitiveness will be extinguished; his character will be degraded. Some newspapers have taken up the argument.
Thayer and Miss Keaton occupy plush upholstered armchairs, facing each other across a tea table. Floor rugs and a walnut armoire furnish the tent much like Thayer’s Cambridge study.
As in Cambridge, the walls are emblazoned with maps of Mars, Egypt, and the night sky.
Yet the astronomer and his secretary exhaust their conversation once the reports have been discussed. They’re aware again of the quiet beyond the tent, where the regular hum of Point A’s thousands has been stilled. Thayer and Miss Keaton may well have been abandoned. They have yet to address their chess pieces, which remain where they left them weeks ago, ranged across the board, each fixed within the plane of its allowable motion.
Thayer says at last, “I don’t think there are any dervishes.”
“No, probably not.”
“Ballard believes in them,” Thayer observes.
“He needs to. He thinks they must lurk there beyond the glare of our fires, beyond our mortal ken, watching us—either for good or for ill.”
“For ill, he’s confirmed it.”
Miss Keaton says, “That’s because he’s never built anything without opposition from the native population. He believes he’s excavating against the forces of backwardness, paganism, and unreason as much as he’s countering …”
“The weight of loosely packed sand.”
“Exactly,” Miss Keaton says, followed by a brief, arid laugh.
The gaslight has infused itself into her hair, incandescing the dried, inflexible filaments. Miss Keaton’s eyes seem to be lit as well, though this must be an illusion, for the lamp stands behind her. The pleasure Thayer took in completing her thought lasts for only a moment, for then he recalls grievous instances of backwardness, paganism, and unreason from each end of the Equilateral to the other two.
“Yes, it’s always difficult to make the locals comprehend what you’ve come for,” he murmurs. Unsettled by the rebellion, wearied, and perhaps overcome by his familiar weaknesses, he permits himself another long look at her. She’s surrounded by a nimbus of gold, like the icons in the Coptic monastery a few miles from the triangle’s northern apex. “Dee,” he says lazily, “don’t you remember the porters in the Atacama? They were resolute in their noncomprehension.”
Thayer realizes at once that he’s trespassed. She freezes. The Chilean porters: they were red Indians and half-breeds, either impassive or sullen, draped in gaudy wool ponchos. They were convinced the visitors were prospectors, in a region well known to be worthless in minerals. They would bring Thayer rock samples every few hours, claiming they were of surpassing value. Once Thayer erected his telescope in the direction of the heavens, they refused to look through it, knowing there were no rocks there. Thayer and Miss Keaton have not spoken of the porters before, nor of anything that happened during the weeks of the expedition, save for its most important result: the paper in
Astronomische Nachrichten
, confirming that star formation can be witnessed in the Southern Hemisphere nebulae. Now he damns himself for his tactlessness.
She tentatively relaxes her expression. She looks at him carefully, wondering for what purpose he has directed her thoughts back to Chile. The time of night has affected her too. She says, “Chile.” The beginning of a smile is raised at the vertices of her mouth.
But now something’s changed in the night air. A new sound, muffled and slithering, has been introduced. For a moment
Thayer and Miss Keaton have been keenly, almost predatorily, aware of each other; now their vigilance turns outward. Miss Keaton’s smile deliquesces. Before their alarm can resolve itself, a rustle at the entrance turns into a form and the form becomes real, small, girlish, and familiar. It’s Bint, who may come at all hours of the day and night but usually makes her presence known only in stages.
She’s visibly frightened. The rumors have reached the dormitory somewhat heightened, accompanied by stories of abduction and rape. The whites assume that they themselves are the targets of the insurrection, but in a lawless place a female of whatever race or nation is just as vulnerable as her Christian sisters. Bint sees safety here. She stands in expectation, her eyes wide, begging to be protected.
For want of anything to say in a language that she may comprehend, Thayer motions that she should pour the tea.
They’re relieved. A question was posed, but it no longer has to be answered. Thayer realizes that his heart is pumping unusually fast, as if the fever has returned. The heart will slow. The heat that coursed through him was probably the fever all along. Miss Keaton removes one of his pawns from the board.
They expect that Bint will now disappear into the shadows, but she remains at the side of the table, waiting to pour another cup of tea. She’s afraid to leave. She shows no surprise that Thayer and Miss Keaton are alone in Thayer’s quarters so late. She wouldn’t be able to imagine what the Europeans do when she’s not attending them. In any event, she may suppose that Miss Keaton is one of Thayer’s wives.
Miss Keaton declares check and observes, after Thayer blocks
her queen, that he’s left his surviving bishop unprotected. She takes it and after a few further desultory maneuvers his king is trapped. The board’s geometry is unforgiving.
Annoyed, she studies the man, who has become inattentive. He barely looks at his pieces. He fidgets. The girl’s still here.
Outside there are more sounds, some of them inexplicable. Night has fallen completely, yet most of the camp’s Europeans remain awake with their guns at their sides.
Thayer and Miss Keaton step from his tent when the troops arrive, the Nubians’ horses snorting with pleasure at leaving the loose sand that still lies between the Points of the Equilateral. Eight ringleaders have been brought back, one for each troublesome company. For all the unease that they’ve engendered among the whites, the men are wretched creatures, ragged and bruised, exhausted and dehydrated. One prisoner’s right temple is gashed crimson. He has to be carried from the litter.
A scaffold is being erected, a device of elegant simplicity: an elevated platform; two uprights supporting a horizontal beam braced by crosspieces; a pair of ropes; and a trapdoor cut into the platform. The door is attached to the platform by iron bolts, which will be released by application of a single lever located at the edge of the platform. It’s a universal tool. Any person of any nation, at any time in human history, would understand the machine’s operation.
Ballard joins them. Sensing disapproval in Thayer’s clinical gaze, he says, “A mutiny in the desert is no less dangerous than aboard ship.”
The astronomer responds mildly, “The men can be sent off.”
“Without mounts, that would be crueler than a hanging. And we can’t spare mounts.”
Two workmen clamber over the rough, unpainted structure, stopping to hammer at exposed nail heads in the fresh yellow pine imported from the Levant. A carpenter tests the trapdoor. The hinges squeal above the murmurs of the assembling witnesses.
Thayer privately speculates what his colleagues on Mars will make of this appliance. Their anatomy may not include a vertebral structure connecting their heads to their bodies, but once they’re appraised of the scaffold’s operation and purpose, they’ll likely find it barbaric.
His mind clouds at the prospect. The Equilateral was conceived to benefit the whole of humanity. It’s meant to promote the global commonweal and prefigure the other great projects—waterworks, dams, the outlawing of war, industrialization, universal public education—that will eventually draw on the talents and energies of men regardless of nation. This is how, in the last decade, he has presented his vision to the world’s leaders and bankers, as well as to prominent scientists, philosophers, and religious figures. This is how the enterprise was proposed to the readers of the Sunday newspaper supplements. This is how it’s understood by the children who went from door to door and slid coins into their slotted “Mars tins.” None of them anticipated the scaffold, whose shadow on the sands is as black as ink.
Thayer says, half to himself, “At a time when we’re plagued by the shortage of labor, we’re about to give up eight workers.”
Ballard scowls at Thayer’s unease. “We’ll hang just two, in fact. The others will be spared, allowed to return to their spades invigorated by fear. And edified, having been introduced to the concept of Christian mercy.”
“Fear …” Thayer mutters. “Is that our greatest motivating force? Is there no ideal, no greater purpose, that may appeal to the men?”
“Fear works surprisingly well. That’s been my experience, from Aswan to the Punjab.”
“But the fellahin may not share our dread of pain or death. How else can they live in such miserable conditions? What fear can spur them?”
The chief engineer says darkly, “The fear of being made more miserable. The Arab has no ambition save to prevent further inconvenience to himself. Hanging is a decided inconvenience. In any case, Thayer, the decision’s out of your hands. I’m the one commissioned to dispose of hindrances to the excavations.”
Miss Keaton, who has been involved in nearly every discussion of logistics since their first meeting with Sir Harry, has attended this exchange from a distance. Her face is soft and unfocused. Overnight, while Bint lurked in the shadows, Miss Keaton and Thayer dozed off in their armchairs. When she woke she was confused about how she came to sleep there. For a moment—or for less than a moment, say for the time it would take for a beam of light to traverse the heavily worked line between Point A and Point B—she thought she was in Chile. Then she recalled there was a message that she was meant to receive from Thayer; also one that she wished to return.
Ballard presumes she’s about to object, because her lips have just pursed and her eyes have opened wide, and also because ladies always object when they learn the stern measures that have to be taken to get something accomplished. The engineer credits Miss Keaton with a certain degree of competence, but he’s still wary of her femininity.