Far Horizons: Tales of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Issue #21 December 2015 | Page 10

Around us move masses of local men, tall
and black, singing as they work. There are troops
of silent eastern coolies, and swaggering stevedores
from our own coats, already half drunk on the dark
porter they insist they cannot not work without.

retirement, back to work in the warehouse; mother
is well; the austerity measures are harsh; the new
couple at number eleven have a boy, and so on. Suzi
is outraged at her news: compulsory education has
been reduced to age fourteen, her young brother has
been sent to work in munitions factories with the
rest of his class.

We had all been looking forward to a few
days exploration, but it is not to be. The frontline
has leaped forward, now days away, across the
lake and far beyond the sweltering bamboo and
teak forests of the opposite shore. We are not even
to spend a single night in this churning maelstrom
of military activity. Instead we join a column of
infantry marching along the edge of the road to the
lakeside port, ordered to embark on the paddlesteamer Tireless by twilight.

“Then they’ll get paid,” Mitchell says.
His young sister is pregnant by some cavalryman.
Scandalous! He joins our laughter, but he’s upset,
returning to his weights and press-ups until lights
out.
Day 135
Two days across Lake Uganyika and we
have docked at a sprawling, ramshackle mass of
floating pontoons and walkways along a flat reedy
shore. We are crowding along the rail as the steamer
manoeuvres into dock when one of the sailors
wonders at our enthusiasm to land. I explain that it’s
our desire to catch the mail packet so we can post
our own letters back home.

Supply trucks roll past non-stop, coating us
in gritty ochre dust. Despatch bikes weave back and
forth between them, horns beeping, engines revving.
Occasionally we come across a broken-down
vehicle, pushed off the road. All these wrecks are
empty, looted or unloaded; packing cases splintered
and smashed open.
And once, in the road, a dead soldier,
desiccated, mummified, folded down into the ruts by
ten thousand wheels rolling across the corpse.

The sailor, a short, muscular man with
pale eyes, cropped hair, dressed in uniform black
bellbottoms and a pale blue sweater, stares at me.
“Where are you from?”

Then the lake itself, and the stink of diesel
and coal dust. More chaos, milling masses of
infantry, sappers, engineers, all in olive drab. Foulmouthed longshoremen in dirty brown dungarees
shove along the floating pontoons, creaking derricks
swing bale nets overhead, while high above them,
the vast solar airships of the Merchant Air Arm
drone across the lake, hauling bulk cargo towards
the far, invisible shore.

It turns out not only are we from the same
city, but the same canton too. Amazing. The rest of
my squad crowd round and introductions are made.
I can tell the sailor, Bron, is taken with Suzi.
“Give me your letters,” Bron says, “We’re
heading straight back.”
Bron’s eyes widen at the size of the parcel
Rolf hands him, “How many letters are here? This is
like a book.”

Night falls like a dark curtain and finally,
starving and filthy beneath the light of a low, sallow
moon, we found our berths. Food, water and rest.
And most welcome of all, letters. Letters from
home!

“It is a book.” Rolf says, self-consciously. “I
have written it.”

We open them eagerly, reading quickly, then
again more slowly. My father has been called out of

During the lake crossing we soldiers had
orders not to fraternise with crew; in the past there

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