The Armageddon Blues | Page 2

French army,
retreating methodically and with great haste. Georges' corporal, Henri,
who was nineteen and who, Georges later heard, became a hero Taking
A Hill that nobody gave a damn about anyway, saw that Georges' eyes
were open, and motioned to the soldier holding Georges' right arm to
drag him the rest of the way to his feet. Georges stumbled a few steps
over the ragged, shell-torn ground, before gaining his balance.
Georges could not think clearly; there was a vast pain in his neck that
was only beginning to abate. The terrain about them seemed vaguely
familiar. After nearly a kilometer, the retreat slowed, then stopped; they
began digging in, grimly determined that the Germans would go no
further.

Night descended like a raven. Soldiers were still stringing barbed wire
on grimy, rotting wood posts, and the shattered fragments of shell-torn
trees. They had to pull dead men off some of the trees before they could
use them. Georges and the remains of his company--Henri--sat in the
muddy trenches, trying to nurse a small fire, raised a few inches over
the mud. They were having some success, more than anyone else, but
still the flame was weak.
Georges had not spoken since awakening. When Henri spoke to him, he
found himself unable to answer, having, uh, no vocal cords to speak of.
They knitted as the night wore on; the scar on his neck began to fade.
Near midnight, he whispered, in a voice like ground glass, "Henri?
What happened to me?"
Henri was hunched over the small fire, trying to light a damp cigarette
that was already half smoked. He finally produced a dim glow in the tip
of the cigarette, and sat back against the trenchwall. "Don't know,
Georges. German stuck you..." He hesitated. "It looked like your head
came off. That's just what it looked like." He shrugged indifferently. "I
shot the German. When I looked again your head was in place and
there was a bleeding gash all around your neck."
Georges touched the skin above his collar. There was a thin ridge he
could barely feel. He nodded. "I used to wonder if I could die."
"Georges?"
"This area looks familiar," whispered Georges. "I think this is where
General Dumouriez stopped the Prussians, when they were trying to
help King Louis restore the monarchy. The day after the battle ..." He
shook his head, and winced at the faint ghost of pain. "That was
September 20. In 1792. The next day the National Convention declared
we were a Republic." Henri was staring at him, wide-eyed, across the
fire. "In January," said Georges in a voice distant with memory, "we
cut King Louis' head off."
Henri turned his face away from Georges, and drew his coat about
himself. He clutched his rifle tightly. (In the morning he was gone, and

that was the last time Georges saw him, because three days later, while
Taking a Hill that nobody gave a damn about anyway, he became a
Hero of the French Republic, his last thoughts being of Georges
Mordreaux. Ironically, it was a German boy with a bayonet who got
him too, although the resemblance stops there. The German boy--he
was actually younger than Henri, and his name is unimportant, since
like Henri he did not survive the war--this German boy put his bayonet
in from behind, and the corporal did not resurrect. Ah, well.)
Georges spent the rest of the night trying to whistle. He did quite
creditably.
Georges thought, with some irritation at himself, that there ought to be
some point to be learned from having one's head cut off, and surviving
the experience. He could not think of one, however, aside from the
obvious. He was very glad to be alive.
In some ways, thought Georges Mordreaux, I am a very shallow fellow.
Ah, well.
The author notes that in the year 1917, Georges Mordreaux was two
hundred and five years old.
Perhaps he was a bit shallow, at that.
One of the definitions of the word "entropy," as given by Webster's
Third New International Dictionary, is: "The degradation of the matter
and energy in the universe to an ultimate state of inert uniformity." Put
more simply; "Things run down."
Georges never read dictionaries. He considered them, being as they
were largely artificial attempts to impose order on the anarchistic
languages of man, very much beneath him.
About order-imposers, as dictionary compilers; Georges was better at
it.
Indeed, one might consider Georges Mordreaux "The Enemy of

Entropy."
Georges liked to.
When the Fire came, and the superpowers decided to sterilize the face
of the planet, the freeways survived.
(Vista: A thousand-and-one mushroom clouds dotting the face of a
small planet. Terminal acne. Winding lazily among the mushrooms,
strips of concrete, over-extended roads, observed the going-ons, and