The New Weird - Ann VanderMeer [175]
occurred in public while hanging from a kind of bosun's-chair lofted outward from the train, while the train was still in motion. (Fatalities were common.) Facilities for ablutions were non-existent.
Yet his voyage could not have been otherwise. The group of radicals subsidizing his journey to Riarnanth could have easily afforded him private transport, for the terrorists counted among their number many of the most prominent citizens of Dardarbji. But the terrorist's camouflage relied on merging with the masses.
So now, as the terrorist paused a moment beneath the vivid aestival sunlight pouring down through the terminal's glass roof, he relished a moment of stoppage, of assessment of his condition in a small bubble of privacy.
His dhoti, crisp and white at the outset in Dardarbji, was grimed and splattered, and the strap of one sandal had broken when someone trod on his heel as he sought to advance. That sandal flopped loosely with every step, constant impediment. His single-knotted fabric bindle crossed an otherwise bare mahogany chest and back tacky with a crust composed of road grit and sweat, as if he were a breaded lamb chop. His hair was snarled, his teeth and tongue furred, and his nails caulked. He knew he was not thinking as clearly as he needed to, thanks to the general sleeplessness of the past week. He was hungry and irritable and lonely, for this was the farthest he had ever traveled from Dardarbji in his young life. The weight of his mission camped heavily on his shoulders.
And these pilgrims! How their devotions sickened him!
Passing by, two of them now grinned in an overflow of fellow-feeling and made Chuzdt's sign toward the terrorist: both arms bent at the elbow and held vertically close to the torso, with forward- and downward-pointing hands drooping as if their wrists were broken.
The locust's stance.
Worship of earthy Chuzdt was widespread across all districts of the multifarious nation, but not among the pure Dardarbji, who instead paid tribute to lordly and regal Jaggenuth.
But now of course the terrorist was forced by expediency to smile back and imitate the shibboleth until the pilgrims passed.
Best to get out of this hot, enclosed, pilgrim-filled space, he thought.
Although the streets of Riarnanth would be nearly as hot, nearly as tight, and certainly as thronged with pilgrims. But an odd breeze, a chance open vista, and a smattering of non-pious citizens would be a relief.
The terrorist passed the train's massive engine where it rested its nose against a padded wooden bumper. Workers were shoveling bio-mass into its maw and bleeding off wastes through unclamped nipples. The ketonic odor assailed the terrorist's nostrils, and he hurried toward the exit.
He had an address: Number 50 Djudrum Lane, in the Tsongtrik ban-lieue. There he would receive his next instructions. (The exact nature of his righteous assault on the city remained unknown to him, a precaution against unlikely capture and interrogation.)
But surely he could delay the rendezvous with his co-conspirators long enough to visit a public bath, a rice- or noodle- or samosa-shop, and a cobbler. Perhaps he would even grab a night's doss without company or obligations, just to rest up for his arduous and dangerous assignment, whatever it might be.
Thoughts of a woman hired to share his pallet briefly flashed across his imagination, but he sternly put them down. Duty brooked no carnal pleasures.
The exit to the terminal was festooned with long garlands of garish flowers, both real and paper. A banner in the harsh Sengpa script, which all the children of Dardarbji had been forced to learn for the past hundred years, welcomed the "brides and grooms of Chuzdt."
Outside fresh breezes from Bangma Bay