“Dear South African Public” The words skittered across the huge screen, chasing each other in a stream of pixels. The next line jumped and flickered, almost unreadable. The government blimps needed servicing.
“Please do not alarm yourselves”
Below, the populace- decidedly un-alarmed- continued their homeward migration out of the city proper, trading the grimy skyscrapers and leafless Northern suburbs for the quiet civilization of the South.
Surresh breathed smoke rings out of the window of the jeep, watching them.
In a few hours the city centre would be dead, save for the prostitutes and the night-watchmen and the occasional adventurous Taxi-Lord.
He wiped his brow and stretched out a long fingered hand to snap on the aircon. It was scorching today. Far too hot for this time of year. Almost four in the afternoon, middle of July and he was still sweating. The 2050’s would be remembered as a hot decade.
Suddenly he was bathed in shadow as a Propaganda blimp passed overhead. Surresh glanced up briefly.
On the screen was a greyscale photograph – archive footage- familiar to anyone who spent much time in Central Joburg these days. Below the poster “To Hell with Afrikaans” resting on a pair of school shoes, ran the usual red text: “Understanding that, in your country,”
The image changed now to something else subtly reminiscent of the past.
“you have a hatred of violence”
The toes of a police boot and the shadow of a gun faded in. The text crawled on:
“and heavy handed policing,”
Surresh snorted, sending the smoke in crazy spirals. It was almost too ironic. He wondered how this ‘Government’ could hope to understand anything at all.
The blimp and its flashing screen passed and sunlight returned. Baking sunlight. Surresh groaned and turned the aircon up.
The retreating airship now flashed the message: “But please do remember that THINGS HAVE CHANGED. ‘Well, at least they’d got one thing right. Since they’d pushed the Americans into nuclear war, showered Europe with fallout in a bigger fuckup then Chernobyl and chosen South Africa as a home away from home things had changed. Now that the Chinese ‘Government’ had arrived and taken over, everything was different.
Then he looked out at the abandoned high-rises across the way, and down at his watch. He ground the remains of his cigarette between his teeth in annoyance. The girl was late again. He hated pick up duty.
The glass shattered, catching the sunset in a spectacular show of light. Callie flung up an arm to protect her eyes, stumbling for a moment. Then the soldier was through the window and she was running.
The soldier hit the ground heavily, landing on his knees, allowing his armour to absorb the impact. After a moment he rose, glass falling from him like rain. He paused; banging his mask a couple of times until the filter stopped rasping and then, with deliberate slowness continued the hunt.
Behind an abandoned bath tub, fallen on its side, Callie crouched. There was blood in her mouth and her ankle throbbed. She cursed her luck.
Towering over the pitted floor, her pursuer began scanning the room, skirting its perimeter, Glass crunched under each heavy stride. Callie willed her spent muscles quiet; she couldn’t afford to shake now. The footfalls of the searching soldier echoed harshly from the concrete walls, closing in.
She froze, holding her breath and listening.
He stepped nearer, so close that she could hear the hum from his kit. Steady.
Her fingers brushed the signal pack at her hip. The twin buttons were cool and smooth under her fingers. Waiting.
The soldier tramped closer, his gaze intent on the tub in front of him. For the first time in the mission, Callie hesitated. This timing had to be perfect.
Another piece of glass snapped under his boot.
Closing her eyes and risking one tiny breath, she hit the first button.
The soldier deliberated. He’d definitely heard something up ahead, like a small gasp, but the sudden beeping from the doorway demanded his attention too. He was just turning to investigate the door when the final warning sounded. Callie braced her body and slammed down on the second button detonating the contact bomb she’d stuck to the doorway when she ran in.
Suddenly it was like there were two suns blazing at the soldier, one sinking beyond the barred windows and the other exploding into being in front of him. The first seconds of flame seemed to consume everything. The shockwave shattered the door and ripped chunks from the ceiling. Shards of rubble rained down on Callie, cracking the tub with savage force. For a time there was just sound and blackness. Then just blackness.
After a while she let the tension flow from her muscles. Slowly she pulled herself from the remains of the bath tub, bleeding from a dozen places but somehow, improbably, alive.
Gingerly she found her feet, deciding that today’s strategy had definitely worked better on paper.
She shook the dust from her ears and listened. The room was still. She smiled bleakly, lucky this time.
It wasn’t enough though, not in the long run. The rebellion wouldn’t survive on poor strategies and luck. She’d have to crap out her Tactics department when she got back to base. Sighing suddenly she rubbed her aching shoulders. Her Tactics department was two people and a dartboard. The two best monopoly players in the team, and a dartboard for when they got stuck for ideas. This country hadn’t been ready for a war. Not even close. Callie shrugged, and headed back to the centre of the room to strip the body.
The bloody helmet slid off easily, letting the softly deepening sunset wash gold the remains of Asian features. He was so still and so mangled that it was only when Callie bent close, checking his breast pockets for ammo, that she realised that the soldier was alive.
Beneath the heavy uniform she felt his chest shudder, rising and falling spasmodically. Startled she jerked away, looking for the first time at his face. His one eye was a mess, blood and tissue tumbling from a lid sunken in its socket. The other was a deep brown.
It blinked at her. Thin lips began to move slowly in soundless speech. Callie stood, transfixed by something in his tired gaze. The sudden horror of the thing she had done swelled within her. Her eyes prickled involuntarily. She shook her head, dropping his gaze and answering her shame with anger. It wasn’t like he was an innocent. You lost that when you signed up for the Government army. The Chinese Government Army. Since South Africa signed that damn treaty, the Chinese was the only government that mattered here anymore. They didn’t let you hold onto anything. Especially not innocence.
She could almost understand it, the treaty and everything. They’d all been so scared when war broke out. Oil war between America and China, two of the world’s leaders shooting each other to shit over the last dregs of fuel. They’d been scared badly in the beginning and worse when with the first nuclear strike. The President had been scared enough to sign away his power for the promise of security.
Now the only people not scared were the rebels and the Army. The soldier coughed, racking and wet. She balled up her fists. She hadn’t invited the fucking Chinese.
There was more blood on his face now, leaking from between his gently moving lips. No tears for invaders. No shame in defence. The blood was thick and dark. No one was forced to join. There were always choices, some were just harder. There were always choices, no matter how young you were. He coughed up again. Something inside his body must be very, very broken.
Her stomach churned and she quelled it with rage. Narrowing her eyes she glared down at him and spat, in the banned language, the forbidden, rebel tongue of the struggle “Moenie met my praat nie, jou fokken jakkals.”1
His good eye swivelled back to her. He rasped a hollow breath and, “Ek praat nie met u.”2
Callie stopped, stunned.
The brown eye turned away as he continued to whisper. On his lips the blood began to dry, splitting into sharp black flakes. Gradually, his words slowed. She could hear how his lungs bubbled now. After a while he stopped speaking entirely.
Numbly she sank to her knees, staring at the body. It was a long time before she could move again.
Eventually the last of the sun slipped out of the little room, sinking below the empty Parktown High-rises and leaving the smog cloud glowing.
The chip-reader’s screen winked once, bright as a fallen star, as Callie slid the soldier’s Identity implant in. He’d earned a name now. And maybe more than that. She thought for a while and got out her paint.
She’d nearly finished her spray can when her ‘corn buzzed. Slipping it into her ear and slapping on the throat patch she winced at Surresh’s hysterical yelling.
“Callie! Where the hell are you?! You’re 45 overdue!”
“I’m coming Surresh. Just finishing up the usual.”
“Are you alive?”
She almost managed a smile. “No shit.”
In the jeep outside, Surresh exhaled. She was fine. He could hear from her voice that she was rattled, but you could survive being rattled. He put his hand on his own pounding heart, and lit another smoke.
She slipped into the car minutes later, badly roughed up. Calmly he checked her over for major damage.
“I’m all right Surresh” she muttered, her eyes telling another story.
Understanding, he pulled off – first thing you learned on pick up duty was when not to ask.
Callie watched the city through the window, lifeless and shut up for the night (night that should have been buzzing with Jozi vibe). But she didn’t want to think about how things used to be. It brought up other memories.
In the distance she could see a propaganda blimp, running news footage of the March. People died in the street, gunned down by soldiers every time they ran this video. It was part of the Government’s desensitisation plan: hit us with those images enough so we get used to them, until they’re not real. Until we don’t care.
All of a sudden Callie missed her dad.
It had been simple after the March, the lines drawn clean and absolute. Us and Them, Justice and Tyranny.
Now she was wary of capital letters. If the Government was recruiting South Africans… Tricking us, into fighting our own…
She shook her head. There’d been no betrayal in the soldier’s brown gaze, no surprise. Just sadness. She sighed. How did she justify that? She’d been shocked when she’d realised she was fighting a South African„ He’d known from the start. She didn’t believe that anyone could be forced to join the army. He’d joined.
Maybe he’d just picked the wrong side. Maybe she couldn’t make it that simple anymore.
He didn’t look like he even realised he’d chosen badly, but Callie was bad at reading Chinese faces. She wondered if she could use that excuse here, with him.
What does a South African face look like anyway?
Maybe she’d lost his expression in the blood and missing eye. “Stupid fucking blimp,” She muttered to herself. Surresh looked up but she shook her head at him, pointing at the blimp.
“Yes, that one’s the worst. ‘We can build a stronger loving nation’ Makes me sick, that line.”
She looked at him curiously.
“You don’t ‘build’ a nation. You grow it, with and backward steps and compromises and small acts of grace.”
Callie thought a bit. Small acts of grace.
She wished it could have been better, but she’d never spoken Afrikaans before the revolution.
When the government cleanup crew finally arrived at the Parktown High-rise, they sighed and shrugged. It was a standard scene: light damage, walls covered in the usual terrorist propaganda, (Nkosi Sikele and such). It was only one worker who found the other message, sprayed small and neat beside the body.
“Mag die Here jou seen, en nog baie jare spaar, Kuan Lee Gouws.”
“May God bless you and spare you many more years, Kuan Lee Gouws.”
Taal first appeared in PROBE, the magazine of SFFSA (South African Science Fiction and Fantasy club) after winning first place in the Nova contest, 2011.
