Unconquered Countries: Four Novellas by Ryman Geoff
Author:Ryman, Geoff [Ryman, Geoff]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fantasy
ISBN: 9780312099299
Amazon: 0312099290
Goodreads: 258102
Publisher: St Martins Pr
Published: 1987-01-01T08:00:00+00:00
O HAPPY DAY!
Theyâre fooled by history. They think they wonât be killed until they get into camps. So when we load them onto a different train, they go willingly. They see an old country railroad station with a big red hill behind it, and they think itâs just a stop along the way.
They slip down from the cars and canât keep their feet on the sharp-edged rubble of the track. Theyâre all on testosterone specifics, a really massive dose. Theyâre passive and confused, and their skin has a yellow taint to it, and their eyes stare out of patches of darkness, and they need a shave. They smell. They look like a trainload of derelicts. It must be easier to kill people who look like that, easier to call them Stiffs, as if they were already dead.
Weâre probably on specifics, too, but a very mild dose. We have to work, after all.
We load the Stiffs into cars, the Cars with the special features, and the second train goes off, and ten minutes later it comes back, and we unload them, dead, and that is life under what we call the Grils.
We are the Boys. We get up each morning and we shave. Weâre male, so we shave. Some of us do our make-up then, a bit of lipstick and slap, and an earring maybe. Big Lou always wore an earring and a tight short-sleeved T-shirt that showed off his arms. It was very strange, all those muscles with his pudding basin haircut and hatchet face, all pressed and prim around the lips.
Big Lou thought what was happening was good. I remember him explaining it to me my first day, the day he recruited me. âMen are violent,â he said. âAll through history, you look at violence, and itâs male. That was OK in the jungle, but not now, with the gangs and the bombs and everything else. What is happening here is simple evolutionary necessity. Itâs the most liberating event in human history. And weâre part of it.â Then he kissed me. It was a political kiss, wet and cold. Then he introduced me to the work.
After we unload the trains, we strip the corpses. There are still shortages, so we tie up the clothes in bundles and save everything else of valueâmoney, watches, cigarette lightersâand send them back on the train. It would be a terrible job for anyone, but itâs worse for a faggot. Most of the bodies are young. You feel tender toward them. You want them to wake up again and move, and you think, surely there must be something better to do with this young brown body than kill it? We work very quickly, like ants on a hill.
I donât think weâre mad. I think the work has become normal for us, and so weâre normal within it. We have overwhelming reasons for doing it. As long as we do this work, as long as there is this work to do, we stay alive. Most of the Boys volunteered, but not for this.
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