Chapter 27 Chapter VII

The discarded robe lay there like the freshly shed skin of some strange reptile.He had wanted to wear those, but changed his mind.He will wear the clothes he was wearing when he came over. Standing in the steam and smell of the bathroom, he stopped the razor again, and slowly and carefully applied it to his head, as if taking a comb through his hair in slow motion.The razor scrapes the foam off the skin, scooping up the last few remaining roots.He swept the razor over the ears, then wiped the shiny skin of his skull with a towel, inspecting the newly exposed, baby-like surface.Long black hair was scattered on the ground like feathers from a fight.

He looked out over the fort's parade ground, where several bunches of fire were going up.The sky above the mountains is just beginning to turn bright. From the window he could see the craggy tiers of the fortress's rimmed walls, and its jutting towers.In the first light, he thought it looked--trying not to feel sentimental--poignant, even noble, because now he knew it was all doomed. He turned away from the scene and walked over to put on his shoes.The air moving over his shaved head felt eerie; he missed the feel and sweep of hair at the nape of his neck.He sat on the bed, pulled out his shoe covers, and then looked for the phone on the cabinet next to the bed.He picked up the device.

He remembered (he seemed to remember) contacting the spaceport last night, after Sma had left with Scarfin-Amtiskau.He felt terrible then, feeling a little alienated and alienated, not so sure that he actually called the technician there, but he thought he might have.He wanted them to get the ancient spaceship ready for the decapitation sometime tomorrow morning.Or he didn't call.Must be one of the two.Maybe he's just dreaming. He heard the bastion switchboard ask who he wanted to call.He said spaceport. He talked to the technician.The chief flight engineer sounded nervous and excited.The spacecraft was ready, fuel loaded, coordinates locked; at his command it could be up in a matter of minutes.

He listened to the man's words and nodded to himself.He heard the Chief Flight Engineer pause.The question was not asked, but it was there. He looked out the window at the sky.From the inside, it was still dark. "Sir?" said the Chief Flight Engineer. "Your Excellency Zarqawi? What are your orders, sir?" He saw the little blue square, and the button; he heard the whisper of the leaking air.Then there was a tremor.He thought it was an involuntary response from his own body, but it wasn't; the tremor traveled through the structure of the fortress, through the walls of the room, down to the bed on which he sat.The glass in the house shakes.The sound of rumbling explosions pierced through the air outside the thick windows, low and lingering.

"Sir?" said the man. "Are you still there?" They might intercept spaceships; civilization itself—perhaps through the Xenophobia—may use electromagnetic controllers... decapitation attacks are doomed to fail... "What shall we do, sir?" But there's always a possibility... "Hello? Hello, sir?" Another explosion shook the fortress.He looked at the phone he was holding. "Sir, do you want us to proceed?" he heard the man say, or remembered someone saying it, long and long ago... and he said yes then, and got a whole load of memories, all the names might bury him...

"Don't move," he said quietly. "We don't need to attack now," he said.He put the phone down and quickly left the room by the back stairs, away from the main entrance to his apartment.He could already hear the commotion rising from there. More explosions shook the fortress, sweeping dust around him, piercing the ring wall over and over again.He wondered what was going on with the regional command headquarters, how they would fall, and whether the raid to capture the High Priest had been as bloodless as Sma had hoped.But as he thought about it, he also realized that he didn't care that much at all.

He left the fort by the back door and stepped into the large square that had once been a parade ground.Small fires were still burning outside the camps of the refugees.In the distance, a great dust plume of smoke drifted slowly into the gray dawn that surrounded the walls.He could see several cracks in the wall.People in tents started waking up and sticking their heads out.Dada gunshots could be heard above the walls of the fortress behind him. A heavier weapon fired from the pierced wall, and a gigantic explosion shook the ground, tearing a hole in the fort's cliff; a mass of stones slammed onto the parade ground, covering dozens of tents.He wondered what kind of ammunition the tank was firing; he suspected they hadn't had one before this morning.

He walked through tent cities, people pouring out, blinking with sleep.Sporadic firefights continued on the fort; huge clouds of dust rolled across the parade ground from disintegrating cracks in the towering walls.Another shell was fired near the ring wall; another seismic explosion tore through a whole side of the fortress, and the stones rushed out of the walls as if relieved, fell and rolled in the dust they raised; they were freed and returned to the earth. The defensive walls of the fortress had fewer shots, the dust was flying, and the sky was slowly getting brighter.Terrified people hugged each other outside their tents.More fire came from the cracked ring wall, then from inside the parade ground, in the camp city.

He kept walking.No one stopped him; a few people seemed to actually notice him.He watched a soldier on his right fall from the ring wall and roll into the dust.He saw people running in all directions.He saw Imperial Army soldiers in a chariot in the distance. He walked past clusters of tents, dodging runners, and stepped over several smoldering fires.The huge breach in the ring wall and the fortress itself smoked in the enhanced gray light that was just beginning to turn pink and blue. Sometimes people were pushing and rushing around him, running, holding babies or dragging children, and he thought he saw people he knew and was tempted to turn and talk to them a few times, reaching out to stop the snowball effect that was coming towards him , yelling at them...

Suddenly the plane roared overhead, tearing the air from the ring wall and dropping long metal containers against the tent, which exploded into flames and very, very black smoke.He saw burning men, heard screams, and smelled burning.He shook his head. Panicked people jostled, bumped into him, knocked him down on one occasion, and he had to get himself up to dust himself off, taking hits, yelling, screaming, and cursing.He was the only one standing upright as the plane circled back to strafe at low altitude, walking on while the others lay down; he watched the dust spray and explode in a line all around him, and saw several of the fallen Because the bomb hit the target, the clothes suddenly shook and flapped.

He waited until it was brighter to encounter the first troops.He ducked behind a tent, dodged a soldier's fire, kicked his feet around the back of the tent, and nearly ran into another soldier who tried to turn his carbine around too late.He kicked the gun away.The soldier drew a knife.He let him attack, snatched the knife, and threw the soldier to the ground.He looked at the blade in his hand, then shook his head.He dropped the knife, looked at the soldier—who was lying on the ground looking at him in horror—and walked away with a shrug. People still ran past him, soldiers yelling.He saw someone aiming at him, but couldn't find a place to hide.He held up his hand to explain that it wasn't necessary, but the man shot him anyway. It's not very good for that distance, he thought as he was thrown back and flipped under the force. Hit the chest near the shoulder.No lung damage, probably not even a broken rib, he thought, as shock and pain surged through him, and he fell to the ground. He lay motionless in the dust, near the wide-eyed face of a dead city guard.When he rolled over, he saw a civilized cockpit assembly; a distinct shape floating uselessly above his dwelling atop the crumbling fortress. Someone kicked him, turning him around and breaking a rib.He tried not to react to the sharp pain, but his eyes narrowed from the pain.He waited for the coup de grace, but that didn't happen. The shadow above him, the darkness under the sun, went on. He lay down longer, then got up.Walking wasn't that hard at first, but then the plane came back, and although he wasn't hit by half a bullet, something splintered somewhere nearby, and he happened to pass some tents that were shaken and torn by bullets, thinking about a thigh stab Whether the wearing pain is from wood, stone or even bone, it's from someone in the tent. "No," he murmured to himself, limping away, toward the biggest crack in the wall. "No; that's not funny. Not bones. Not funny." An explosion sent him flying and he fell through a tent.He got up, dizzy.He turned to look at the fort, the top just beginning to glow with the first direct sunlight of the day.He could no longer see the cockpit components.He used a broken tent pole as a crutch; his leg was sore. A cloud of dust surrounded him, piercing him with the shriek of engines, planes, and human voices; suffocating him with dust and exhaust fumes from burning, stones.His wounds spoke to him a language of pain and hurt, and he had to listen, but pay no further attention.Shocked, punched, tripped, staggered, exhausted, he fell to his knees, thinking maybe he had been hit by more bullets, but couldn't be sure. At last he collapsed close to the gap, thinking he might have to lie there for a while.The light was brighter, and he felt tired too.Dust clouds drifted like pale shrouds.He looked up at the sky, pale blue, and thought how beautiful it was, even through the flying dust, and heard the chariots creaking up the hillside of ruined stone, and thought that meant that the chariots were everywhere , so they make more squeaking noises than engine roars. "Guys," (he said to Radical Blue Sky) "I just remembered a sentence that the pious Sma said to me about heroism, and it went like this: 'Zarqawi, in the In all human societies, at all times and in all states, there is hardly ever a shortage of hungry young males, ready to kill and die for the safety, comfort and prejudice of the elders, and this is what you call heroism Descriptions of simple deeds; there are always idiots out there,'" he sighed. "Well, no doubt she didn't say periods and states, because civilization just likes to make exceptions to everything, but... the gist of that sentence... I think..." He rolled over, turned away from the pitifully blue sky, and stared at the gray dust. Finally reluctantly, he turned himself over, then sat up, then knelt down on his knees, grasped the tent pillars and crutches to exert weight, and finally stood up, ignoring the lingering pain and suffering, staggering towards the remains of the city wall, not knowing what to do Dragging and pulling and struggling to climb to the top of the wall.There was a smooth and spacious road there, like a highway in the sky, with the remains of a dozen soldiers scattered in rivers of blood, and the defensive earthen walls around them were full of bullet holes and covered with gray dust. He staggered towards them, as if eager to become one of them.He scanned the sky for signs of the cockpit components. It took them a while to see the word "Sa" made of corpses on the top of the city wall.But the word was so complicated in that language that he kept screwing it up.