Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks Page A

light-engineering
caravans set up shop, but even those changed slowly, and all about them was in
constant flux, so that the geography of the parktown was never the same on two
visits. He drew a secret satisfaction from this inchoate permanence, and did
not hate going there as much as he pretended.
    The
track there was rutted and soft, and never got any shorter; he always hoped the
random shiftings of the parktown might slowly draw its bustle and light closer
to him, but it never happened, and he would console himself with the thought
that if the parktown came closer then so would the people, and their bumbling
inquisitiveness.
    There
was a girl in the parktown, the daughter of one of the dealers he traded with,
who seemed to care for him more than the others; she made him drinks and
brought him sweetmeats from her father's caravan, and seldom said anything, but
slipped the food to him, and smiled shyly and walked quickly off again, her pet
seabird - flightless, half of each wing cut off - waddling after her,
squawking.
    He
said nothing to her that he didn't have to say, and always averted his eyes
from her slim brown shape. He did not know what the courting laws were in this
place, and while accepting the drink and food always seemed the easiest course,
he did not want to intrude any more than he had to in the lives of these
people. He told himself she and her family would move away soon, and accepted
the offerings she brought him with a nod but no smile or word, and did not
always finish what he was given. He noticed there was a young man who always
seemed to be around whenever the girl served him, and he caught the boy's eyes
a few times, and knew that the youth wanted the girl, and looked away each
time.
    The
young man came after him one day when he was on his way back to the shack
within the dunes. The youth walked in front of him and tried to make him talk;
hit him on the shoulder, shouting into his face. He feigned incomprehension.
The young man drew lines in the sand in front of him which he duly plodded over
with his cart and stood looking, blinking at the youth, both hands still on the
handles of the cart, while the boy shouted louder and drew another line on the
sand between them.
    Eventually,
he got fed up with the whole performance, and the next time the young man prodded
his shoulder he took his arm and twisted it and forced the youth to the sand
and held him there for a while, twisting the arm in its socket just enough - he
hoped - to avoid breaking anything but with sufficient force to disable the
fellow for a minute or two while he took up his cart again and trundled it
slowly away over the dunes.
    It
seemed to work.
    Two
nights later - the night after the regular woman had come and he'd told her
about the terrible battleship and the two sisters and the man who was not yet
forgiven - the girl came knocking at his door. The pet seabird with the clipped
wings jumped and squawked outside while the cried and told him she loved him
and there'd been an argument with her father, and he tried to push her away,
but she slipped in underneath his arm and lay weeping on his bed.
    He
looked out into the starless night and stared into the eyes of the crippled,
silent bird. Then he went over to the bed, dragged the girl from it and forced
her out of the door, slamming it and bolting it.
    Her
cries, and those of the bird, came through the gaps in the planks for a while,
like the seeping sand. He stuck his fingers in his ears and pulled the grimy
covers over his head.
    Her
family, the sheriff, and perhaps twenty other people from the parktown, came
for him the next night.
    The
girl had been found that evening, battered and raped and dead on the path from
his shack. He stood in the doorway of the hut, looking out into the torch-lit
crowd, met the eyes of the young man who had wanted the girl, and knew.
    There
was nothing he could do, because the guilt in one pair of eyes was outshone by
the vengeance in too many others, and so