The Year of Rice and Salt

Well after midnight the officers convened in their little cave and got the stove burning and started cooking rice, each trapped in his own ears' roaring; they could barely hear each other talk. It would be like that for a day or two. Kuo was still fizzing with irritation, one did not have to be able to hear what he was saying to see that. He seemed to be trying to decide whether he should revise the Five Great Errors of the Gansu campaign by dropping the least of the previous great errors, or by turning it into the Six Great Errors. Assemblage of talent indeed, he shouted as he held their rice pot over the burning coals of their little stove, his bare blackened hands shaking. A bunch of fucking idiots. Up the hole the sounds of the hospital trains chugged and clanked. Their cars rang. Too much had happened for them to be able to speak anyway. They ate in the silence of a great roaring. Unfortunately Bai began vomiting, and then could not catch his breath. He had to submit to being carried up and back to one of the hospital trains. Put on with the host of wounded, gassed and dying men. It took all the next day to move twenty li to the east, and then another day waiting to be processed by the overwhelmed medical crews. Bai almost died of thirst, but was saved by a girl in a mask, given sips of water while a doctor diagnosed gasburned lungs, and stuck him with acupuncture needles in the neck and face, after which he could breathe much easier. This gave him the strength to drink more, then eat some rice, then talk his way out of the hospital before he died there of hunger or someone else's infection. He walked back to the front, hitching a ride at the end on a mule drawn cart. It was night when he passed one of the immense batteries of artillery, and the garish sight of the huge black mortars and cannons pointed at the night sky, the tiny figures scurrying about under the arc lamps servicing them, holding hands to their cars (Bai did too) before they went off, made it clear to him yet again that they must all have been dragged into the next realm and got caught in a war of asuras, a titanic conflict in which humans were as ants, crushed under the wheels of the asuras' superhuman machines.

Back in their cave Kuo laughed at him for returning so quickly, You're like a pet monkey, can't get rid of you, but Bai in his relief only said it's safer here than in the hospital, which made Kuo laugh again. Iwa came back from the comm cave full of news: apparently their assault had been a diversion after all, just as Kuo had said. The Gansu plug had been pushed at in order to tie up Muslim armies, while a Japanese force had finally honoured their agreement to help the cause, given in exchange for their liberty which was already accomplished anyway but which could have been challenged, and the Japanese, being fresh, had made a hard push in the far north, and broken through the line there and started a big breakout, rolling west and south like a bunch of crazed ronin out on a murderous lark. Hopefully they would fold down the back side of the Muslim line and force a retreat from Gansu, leaving the shattered Chinese alone and at peace in the field.

Iwa said, 'I guess the Japanese hatred for us was superseded by a disinclination to have Islam conquer the world.'

'They'll pick off Korea and Manchuria,' Kuo predicted. 'They'll never give those back. A few port cities too. Now that we're bled white they can take whatever they please.'

'Fine,' Bai said. 'Give them Beijing if they want it, if it only ends this war.'

Kuo glanced at him. 'I'm not sure which would be a worse master, Muslims or Japanese. Those Japanese are tough, and they don't like us. And after the earthquake demolished Edo they think they've got the gods on their side. They already killed every Chinese in Japan.'

'In the end we won't serve either side,' Bai said. 'The Chinese are indestructible, remember?'

The previous two days had not proved the proverb very well. 'Except by the Chinese,' Kuo said. 'By Chinese talent.'

'They may have turned the north flank this time,' Iwa noted. 'That would be something.'

'It could be the end game,' Bai said, and coughed.

Kuo laughed at him. 'Caught between mortar and pestle,' he said. He went to their locked cabinet, inserted into the mud wall of the cave, and unlocked it and brought out a jug of rakshi and took a drink. He drank a jug of these strong spirits every day, when he could get a supply, starting with his first waking moment and ending with his last. 'Here's to the Tenth Great Success! Or is it the Eleventh? And we've survived all of them.' For the moment he had passed beyond the ordinary precaution of not speaking of these matters. 'Survived them, and the Six Great Errors, and the Three Incredible Fuck ups, and the Nine Greatest incidents of Bad Luck. A miracle! There must be hungry ghosts holding big umbrellas over us, brothers.'