Another useless bit of speculation

I just got through another bout of one of my daughters (Jessie again this time) being in oestrus and Nero going berserk in his attempts to rape her. Three weeks of bleeding, pulling, and frustrated howling put me in a mind to decide that while dogs might well be the highest form of evolution, as I usually believe, their reproductive arrangements leave something to be desired.

Now, just imagine if humans had cycles of oestrus like dogs.

I can just imagine women racing through the streets (assuming there were any streets, of course, because all adult males would be running after any woman in heat in sight all the time and wouldn’t take time off to build any) with a howling mob of semi- to completely-naked males in pursuit. Now you can see that – what with our superb senses of smell, you know, so much keener than those of a dog for instance – the woman would be stinking to high heaven of her sexual secretions, so she’d probably drench herself in perfume...no, strike that, sewage water might be more effective...in an attempt at disguising the smell. Yes, nose plugs might be what the well-dressed man will be wearing.

(Or maybe women would have bright red crests in mating season...like fowl? How about that for an idea?)

So now imagine the practical applicability of reproducing the scent of a woman in heat. Actresses, models, and perfume makers are obviously going to benefit, but so will ordinary housewives. Spray a little Heat Scent on yourself before hubby gets home, and you know he’ll never wander, ladies!

And you see the military application of such technology? Take a woman in heat and parachute her on top of (not behind – on top of) the enemy lines. Then, when the enemy soldiers have all gone on parade behind her through the trenches, send in your troops. You’ll win in a walkover.

Just make sure your men wear noseplugs, if nothing else. Or use woman soldiers.

But then better ensure none of them are in oestrus, either.

The Fee

The warlock chalked out the last lines of the pentagram on the floor. Stepping back, he threw a pinch of the green powder from the little box in his hand into the middle of the design and carefully added a drop of blood. A puff of red flame arose, followed by a wisp of smoke.

“What are you doing?” the demon asked. It still squatted, spiky and skeletal, on the other side of the pentagram and leered at the warlock. Its needle-like teeth clicked and grinned. “What was the point of that exercise?”

“It’s to protect me from you,” said the warlock. He opened the ancient grimoire and rustled the parchment pages. The front and back covers were bound in leather made from the hide of beasts that dwelt on the rocky plains of Hell.

“Then you shouldn’t have summoned me,” said the demon, laughing. It casually broke off one of the spikes growing on its body and tossed it across the pentagram. The spike vanished with a flash and left a smouldering patch on the floor, breaking the design. “See?”

The warlock carefully chalked the pentagram back in. “It’s not that I doubt you,” he said. “It’s just that one has to take precautions.”

“I know,” said the demon. “We demons are so notoriously tricky, aren’t we?” It spread its wings wide enough to shadow the room for an instant, and its eyes flashed fire. The warlock took an involuntary step back. “It’s one of those stories that are so pervasive everyone believes it without question.”

“You aren’t tricky, then?” The warlock composed himself and opened his grimoire again.

“Think about it,” said the demon. “If we were always so tricky, would you magicians and witches always have been summoning us through the ages? Surely you’ve discovered we can serve you well?”

“Let’s get to work, shall we?” For the next hour the warlock read out the correct incantations and the demon replied at the appropriate places. Finally the warlock burned a twist of dried herbs in the brazier and shut the grimoire. “That does it,” he said.

“Not quite,” said the demon. “We haven’t settled the question of my fee.”

“I have already pledged my soul,” said the warlock, quietly.

“Souls aren’t worth anything,” the demon said. “Souls abide in the billions on the blasted plains of Hell. For the work you require me to do, I need a more tangible fee.”

“You mean,” said the warlock, “that your master requires a more tangible fee?”

“No – I do. I am independent in these things. My master has other needs than mine.”

“What would you have me pay, then?”

“The essence of human pain,” said the demon, leaning forward. “I want the distilled essence of the agony your race has inflicted on itself since the beginning of time. I want the screams of the human sacrifices as obsidian knives tore out their beating hearts. I need the pleas of the widow burned on her husband’s funeral pyre. I want the despair of the thousands of naked humans stuffed into the gas chambers of Auschwitz. I require the agony of the thousands incinerated in the firestorm that destroyed Dresden. I want the horror of the Iraqi father whose child was killed before his eyes as collateral damage. All this and more, bring to me. That, warlock, is my fee.”

“It will be difficult,” said the warlock.

“It shouldn’t be,” said the demon. “Pain is what your race specialises in. After all,” it said, grinning with its needle teeth, “you’ve created pain yourself, and will do more. Think of what you ask of me, warlock, of what I have to give; and then think if what I ask is excessive.”

The warlock shut his eyes and breathed deeply. “It can’t be done,” he said. “How can I harness pain?”

“You don’t have to,” said the demon, laughing. With one leap it cleared the pentagram and stalked out into the night.

The warlock leaned his head against the wall as the screaming began.

Coming Home

In the last light of the evening, the woman goes down to the lake shore. Every evening, she takes this route down to the shore and looks out over the darkling water.

She is elderly now, her frame squat and heavy, her small eyes heavy-lidded and her speech and movements slow. She worries in autumn about the pains in her joints the cold will bring, and in the summer she worries about the food she must lay in for the winter. And most of all she worries about being alone. That is her one great fear – loneliness.

“Each day,” she murmurs, “there are fewer of us.” Once the lake was full of life, but that is too long ago to think about. “Soon,” she says, “I will be the only one.”

She sees a man come along the path, dragging a large branch along for firewood. She knows him vaguely, and nods. He glances at her out of the corner of his eye, contemptuously. The tips of the twigs of the branch he’s dragging scrape across her toes.

“Tomorrow,” she thinks, staring at his back, “he, too, will be gone.” She can’t say how she knows this, but she knows it. Tomorrow this man will have gone as well, and the lake will be emptier than ever, and in her heart she can’t find it to blame him for his rudeness.

“I really must go across the lake,” the woman thinks, looking at the far shore and trying not to remember her younger days. “I must go, and meet for one last time those on that side who will be going soon, and whom I shall never meet again.” She thinks of the young couple she had seen, the couple who had been laughing and kissing on the grassy bank of the lake, just a month or two ago now. Maybe that couple has gone already. If not, they will go, and not together, either. They have all gone separately, after all, including her children. Nobody is left.

It is dark now, and the first stars come out, pricking the black sky with points of light. The stars shine on the lake too, as the lights of houses used to shine once. The stars in the lake shift and ripple as the water rises and falls.

“One day perhaps,” thinks the old woman suddenly, “I shall go too.” This has not occurred to her before. It is a strange and frightening thought, and she wants to push it away to the back of her mind, and at the same time catch hold of it and examine it and dissect its implications. “Perhaps tomorrow I shall go, and the man there with the branch will be here, and then he will go as well.”

She turns away from the lake, which is suddenly an alien place, frightening and heaving in the starlight, like an unquiet sleeper. She stops just for one moment, for one last look over her shoulder at the water.

Something splashes far out towards the middle of the lake, and there comes a noise, a gasp and a splash. The woman turns quickly, trying to see, but whatever it is, it’s gone. The stars rise and fall on distant expanding ripples on the water.

“Something...” and there comes an echo from the hidden caverns of her memory. “Something there,” she says, looking.

And then it comes again, closer, nearer to her now, the starlight catching the breaking water and the smooth bulge of forehead and the long toothed beak. The animal gasps in the night air, and is gone again, only a puff of dissipating vapour to mark its passing.

The woman scrambles down to the water and kneels by its edge, heedless of the ooze of mud on her knees. “Baiji?,” she asks. “Baiji, is that you?”

The evening breeze ruffles the water, and the night is getting darker, and still the woman kneels in the mud, desperate, waiting. “Baiji,” she says. “River princess, is that you? Have you come back, after all these decades? Are you then home again?”

As if in answer, the dolphin rises again, so close that she might almost have reached out and touched it. It lingers a moment on the water surface, its long beak and small head moving, and then it breathes and its smooth humped back slides under the water and it is gone.

“Baiji,” murmurs the woman. She climbs stiffly to her feet. “River princess,” she says. “I don’t know where you have been all these years, but you have chosen to return. If going away is the price I have to pay for your return, then I will pay it gladly, River princess. When the old seasons turn new, if you are here, that is all I need to be here again – wherever I may go.”

The wind ruffles the leaves of the trees, and the banks of the lake lie deserted, and the stars wheel by overhead on their inscrutable courses.

Out on the water, the dolphin broaches again.



(Note: the Baiji, the Yangtze river dolphin, has been functionally extinct since 2006, which means that if it still exists, there are too few individuals left to form a reproducing population.)

The Marshal

The Marshal stood at his window, high above the streets, and looked out over the old city.

The rain slashed down outside, the drops glinting momentarily in the light the lamp behind the Marshal threw on the window. The Marshal’s shadow also fell on the rain, and through that dark patch in the centre of the window he looked out across the old city, with its narrow steep roofs and its old churches and mosques. The old city had been badly damaged in the Marshal’s various wars, but rebuilt each time. He had not visited it for years, although he saw it every day from his office window.

“Yes,” he murmured to himself, “it has been a long time.”

Slowly, he came closer to the panes until his breath began to cloud the pane. Absently, he wiped away the moisture with his hand and laid his forehead on the pane, looking down at the street far below. It felt to him as though he was looking down a vertical cliff. Cars drove along, their pale yellow headlights glittering on the wet streets. As they drove past the crossing, their headlights shone sometimes on the Marshal’s statue in the centre of the little grassy island. He hated that statue now, hated the pigeons that muted on it, and hated the tourists who photographed it religiously. He was glad he couldn’t see it. The rain came down harder than ever, dashing itself against the window.

“In the mountains,” he said to himself, “it will have stopped raining by now.”

He remembered the nights of his youth, in the old house with the thick stone walls and the thatched roof. When it rained exceptionally heavily the water came through the sodden thatch and his parents would put out buckets under the heaviest leaks. The inside of the house would grow muggy and humid and the world outside grey and dull, and it seemed the dreariest place in the world.

“But it was different in the spring,” said the old Marshal, going back to his chair. In the spring the grass grew and the fluffy cirrus painted the blue sky in faint white brush-strokes, and the white butterflies darted around the yellow wildflowers. In the spring the air was like wine.

“I should go back to the mountains again,” said the Marshal, closing his eyes. “It’s time. I’m tired of this city and of the grey pavements and of the salutes. I shall retire and go back to the mountains, and sit beside the stream and watch the red and blue and yellow dragonflies hover over the water. I shall listen to the sheep bleating and watch for the hawk on the wing. I should do this.”

Outside the window the rain came down, and over on the other side of the city, the river rose with swollen floodwaters, and people thanked the Marshal in their minds for having provided them with the means to find shelter. And in dungeons far below the old fort the Marshal’s enemies sat in their cells and cried out aloud in the torture chambers; and in his office the Marshal dreamt of spring and butterflies and bluebells and daffodils.

When the Marshal’s aides arrived to inform him of the next meeting, they could not rouse him. He had been dead for some time.

Serial Killers and Spree Killers

A friend's daughter - a student of psychology who wants to specialise in criminal psychology - is interested in the phenomenon of mentally disturbed killers (the "psycho" of popular culture and fiction); psychopathic, sociopathic, or whatever.

In order to try and help her understand the differences between serial killers and spree killers, I've written the following points. Since I'm a complete amateur in this field, I'd appreciate any help or modification of the points before I give them to her:



1. Serial killers kill over a period of time (months to years to decades) with intervals of various lengths between killings, during which they resume a normal life.

Spree/Binge killers kill over a very brief period of time (minutes to days) with no or very brief intervals during killings, and during these intervals they continue to plan and seek victims.

2. Serial killers typically continue their killings till killed or arrested or rendered unable to kill further by reason of age or incapacity. If released or successful in escaping from custody, they usually resume killing. Seldom or never do they commit suicide.

Spree killers seldom survive their killing binges, frequently committing suicide at the end. However, if they do survive and escape arrest, they rarely or never repeat their killing spree.

3. Serial killers typically display no clues to friends and neighbours of their activities, and individual killings aren’t preceded by warnings.

Spree killers often will announce their intention of massacring people, frequently on the internet, days in advance.

4. In the case of serial killers, there isn’t usually any factor that can be pointed out as precipitating the murders.

Spree killers often go killing after some traumatic episode in their personal lives, such as a relationship break-up.

5. Serial killers are usually loners and secretive; most often they live alone and have difficulty making friends or close personal relationships.

Spree killers can be of any type, and often have friends and steady partners.

6. Serial killers almost always (there are very few exceptions, such as Myra Hindley and Ian Brady) operate alone.

Spree killers not infrequently have partners, such as the Columbine School killers and the “Beltway Sniper.”

7. Serial killers often, but not always, taunt the police or media with messages in between killings.

Spree killers usually do all their killings within a brief span of time and so do not have the opportunity to taunt anyone; but the “Beltway Sniper” (American John Allen Muhammad) whose killing spree stretched over several weeks, did taunt the police.

8. Serial killers do not depend on the availability of lethal weaponry to do their killings. They can strangle or starve or bludgeon their victims to death if a gun or knife isn’t available; however, they tend to use the same or similar technique for all their killings. For example, an Indian serial killer (still uncaught), the Stoneman, murders homeless people by smashing their heads with a rock while they sleep.

Spree killers need weaponry for their murders, almost always firearms. This is why spree killings are almost unknown in societies with strict firearm control.

9. Serial killers usually come from broken homes and/or have a history of childhood sexual or non-sexual abuse. They also very often begin by torturing or killing small animals in childhood and may bully smaller children.

Spree killers have no such history. Many spree killers are from relatively affluent backgrounds.

10. For a serial killer, the killing is part of the working out of a private fantasy and is one part of a more complex ritual, much of which is obscure to the killer himself.

For the spree killer, the killing is usually part of a programme of revenge for a real or imagined grievance, which the killer can go to great lengths to vent in public (like Cho Seung-Hui of Virginia Tech). Therefore the killing is an end in itself. It’s an expression of rage or frustration or whatever else motivates the killer but has no ritualistic significance.

11. Serial killers normally specialise in a particular type of victim, such as young men with feminine features (Jeffrey Dahmer) or prostitutes (Jack the Ripper).

Spree killers have no such criteria in victim selection. They kill whoever comes into the target area.

12. Serial killers have a ritualistic approach to their killings, repeating certain actions that come to be “markers” of the individual killer. This may include mutilating and/or cannibalising the victim before or after the killing, removing body parts as trophies, etc. Jack the Ripper, for instance, disembowelled his victims and “decorated” them with their own entrails.


Spree killers never show this behaviour.

The Demon and the Sun

The Sun rose over the horizon. He was full of his health and strength, vital with energy, and he looked forward to making his way across the blue vault of the heavens before putting himself to bed in the evening.

Unknown to him, though, a terrible danger awaited his coming.

Suddenly, the Sun shivered. A strange fear gripped him. Glancing over his shoulder, he beheld a strange and terrible tide of darkness advancing on him. It was the Demon come round again, and with a scream of silent terror the Sun plunged forward, but he was too late. A moment more, and he felt the icy tide of the Demon’s darkness stealing over him, reaching out to swallow him whole.

The whole of the Universe was perturbed and disturbed.

Set in their eternal orbits, the Stars shivered in their turn, with fear and anger, sending their malign influences flashing through the Cosmos in waves of evil energy that bounced and curled and lashed out like whips. A tide of this black energy swept over the Universe in a flood.

And down in the world of Men, the sky went dark, and food turned into poison in the mouths of those who, in defiance of the sages, wished to eat it. And the women who were born in the Astrological House most affected by the energies the Demon had unleashed as it continued swallowing the Sun suffered, too; their babies died in their wombs and their breasts fell dry as they tried to suckle. And worse was to befall, because, as the sages had foretold, their offspring and their parents began to die; for was it not written in the Scriptures that the children and parents of these women would die if they did not propitiate the gods?

A sad and terrible generation it was, the one that inhabited the world of Men, a generation that had ceased to venerate all their forefathers had held sacred. It was a generation that would suffer, and suffer indeed, for who knew when the Demon would release the Sun again from its iron grip?

And then the sages arose, and rang the temple bells; and all along the length of the holy river the terrified people stopped their accursed work and listened to the temple bells. And then they came, running, walking or limping, in their cars and carts, to the temples where the bells rang.

And then spake the Priests to the sinful people; “Go ye, and make yourselves worthy of salvation; fast and pray, and bathe in the holy River, and blow conches, that the Demon may be affrighted and let the Sun go; for surely otherwise he will swallow the Sun whole. And then Darkness will come down on the world, and surely everything will wither and die.” And the people were frightened indeed at their words.

Then spake the Priests to the women of mankind; “Behold, ye are sinful, and neglect your duties as mothers and wives, and think only of yourselves, and a blight is come upon you, and surely your children and your parents shall die for your sins. Go ye then, and set coconuts on pots of water, and place flowers, and fast, and pray. Pray, and do not step out of doors until the Demon has disgorged the Sun, or else you are lost for Eternity, and whatever befall your children and parents shall be your fault.”

And the men and women bathed in the holy River, and blew conches, and fasted and prayed, desperate in the face of the Demon, even as darkness fell upon the land. And yet, as they prayed and bathed and fasted, the Demon was forced back, and lo, the Sun emerged from his maw, little by little, until he was shining in the Sky once more.

Then the people prostrated themselves to the Priests and said, “We were unworthy and You have saved and succoured us. Pray accept our humble obeisance.” And the Priests tolled the temple bells to let the world know the danger was past, and the Sun shone again on the bright and wondrous land of India.

And far above, the moon sailed serenely on her lonely path, and the sun on his, so she no longer hid him from view, and her shadow did not besmirch by its touch the ancient world of Men.

The eclipse was over.



(Most of this – including fasting, ritual bathing and praying for the lives of one’s parents and children – will actually happen today in India, which claims to be the oldest home of science, when the annular solar eclipse due for this early afternoon takes place.)

The Tiananmen Square "Massacre": A New Look

(Before I begin: I suspect I may be about to upset a great many applecarts with this article; if I do so, you may not agree with my conclusions, but at least I will have made you think. And for that I do not apologise. All sources have been cited at the end of the article and are available on the internet.)

I belong to a school of thought – probably there aren’t very many of us – which holds that so-called “iconic” individuals and occurrences in history, things that are so taken for granted that to question them is tantamount to sacrilege, need revisionist historical analysis. If, after that revisionist historical analysis, the original version, or some semblance thereof, holds up, fine. But if one finds that the revered original version is critically flawed, one usually has clear indications from the flaws of just why it’s allowed to survive at the expense of the truth.

I intend, therefore, to submit to critical examination one of the “defining” occurrences of our time, the so-called Tiananmen Square “massacre” that is said to have occurred on the night of 4 June 1989, just twenty years and six months ago. I intend to prove my hypothesis that the actual course of events was deliberately misreported and propagandised in the Western media. I intend to attempt to prove my hypothesis that the Chinese government of the time acted correctly and in the best interests of the Chinese people and the Chinese nation by cracking down, in whatever form, on the demonstrations. And I intend to try and prove my contention that destroying the protests was of immense positive significance to the world at large, today, almost a generation later.

(In order to be strictly fair, I should lay on record that I’m not an unbiased commentator. I’m a Sinophile in many respects. While my ideology isn’t equivalent to any “-ism”, it most closely parallels Marxism. I admire the Chinese Revolution, the Long March, and Mao Zedong. I view with deep suspicion any and all Western media pronouncements about the non-Western world; and I believe that after the invasion of Afghanistan on false pretences and of Iraq on pretences that weren’t just false but deliberately and cynically cooked up, my suspicions are more than justified.)

We all know, or we have been reminded in great detail over the years, of the occurrences of 1989 that culminated in the (alleged) “Tiananmen Square Massacre”. In brief, they were these: that 1989 was the year when so-called “peoples’ revolutions” were clearing away (never very enthusiastic) Communist regimes across Europe. It was the year when the world seemed suddenly about to become free for the triumph of Western style capitalism. The Eastern European regimes were crashing. The Soviet Union, where Mikhail Gorbachev had begun a programme of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring), was, mostly as a consequence, tottering on the verge of implosion. Only the great monolith of China still held out, refusing to be blown away by the winds of change.

The Background.

Actually, at the time, China was already into its twelfth year of its own version of perestroika; the then leader, Deng Xiaoping, had begun a programme of economic reform since 1978. China wasn’t the equivalent of the state-driven economies of Eastern Europe. It was already moving towards a mix of socialism (for most American readers: to the non-American world, believe it or not, socialism is not a dirty word) and market-driven capitalism. This kind of transit has characteristic features, including a sharp rise in prices, a widening rich-poor divide, and rising levels of corruption and social unrest. It’s been seen so often worldwide that it should be included as one of the defining characteristics of a privatising society.

I mentioned that there was social unrest. There were those who hoped and expected that the Communist Party would evaporate like the artificial parties of Eastern Europe and usher in unbridled capitalism. There were those old Maoists who felt the Communist Party was betraying the Revolution. There was opposition, too, from quite ordinary people from a non-ideological viewpoint; people against the negative aspects of the privatisation, against the price rise and the corruption; people who were, in effect, opposed to the first, free-marketeer, lot. All these diverse protesting groups were themselves divided in just what they wanted and were united in just one thing – opposition to the Chinese government. They had absolutely nothing else in common, and it’s important to remember that.

The so-called Tiananmen Square protests began in this atmosphere. They began on a relatively small scale on 15 April 1989 after the death of deposed and “pro-reform” Communist party General Secretary Hu Yaobang; they comprised mourning for Hu on college campuses across China and calls for reform. At this stage the protestors comprised almost entirely students who wanted change. They weren’t sure what kind of change they wanted, reform of the system or its overthrow. All they wanted was change.

By 17 April, groups of students had begun holding protests outside the Great Hall of the People in Tiananmen Square, issuing a list of demands, and the next day they had begun blocking access to and affecting the functioning of the seat of the Chinese government at the Zhongnanhai Building. Police with linked arms formed a human cordon that prevented these students from physically forcing their way into the Zhongnanhai complex. It was only on 20 April that the police finally broke up the student demonstrations outside Zhongnanhai, using force – said force being the limited use of batons. Not even tear gas was employed at this stage.

The next day, some 100,000 students occupied Tiananmen Square while others boycotted classes. On 27 April, after the government had made an official pronouncement accusing small groups of plotters of fomenting unrest (more on that later) 50,000 students gathered in Beijing’s streets. By now other demonstrations were taking place in many other Chinese cities, including Shanghai, Urumqi and Chongqing. It’s important to remember that these protests occurred, and it will be important to see how they turned out.

In the first days of May, there were renewed student protests, including marches on Beijing’s streets and by 13 May there was a hunger strike by students in Tiananmen Square, with the demand that the government negotiate. However, the government only agreed to talk to the approved student’s organisations, which these students had abandoned in favour of their own, unrecognised organisations. The hunger strike went on, drawing increasing national concern, and early on the morning of 19 May Zhao Ziyang, General Secretary of the Communist party, and Li Peng, Prime Minister of China, went personally to the hunger strikers on Tiananmen Square to persuade them to abandon their hunger strike. It had no effect, but it’s important to remember that they did go.

At this time – to all appearances – the Communist party hierarchy was itself divided about its attitude to the students. It is clear that at least a good section were sympathetic to the students’ concerns about corruption, and so far the government had refrained from violence despite the virtual paralysis of the capital for weeks. Parts of the government, including Zhao Ziyang, were willing to negotiate – but negotiate with whom? The protestors had many and often mutually exclusive agendas. With whom should the government have negotiated? On 20 May, faced with an apparently insoluble dilemma, the government declared martial law.

Martial Law and Thereafter

The army tried to enter Beijing, but the streets were blocked with throngs of protestors. The army made no attempt to force its way through them, but withdrew on 24 May. The students made no attempt to meet the government halfway – the hunger strike was approaching its fourth week and with public discontent rising, the government either had to cave in completely to a disunited and disorganised mass of conflicting interest groups – an invitation to utter chaos – or take action. It decided to take action. Zhao Ziyang, who had consistently supported the students, was ousted. The “hardliners” took over. The students had sown the wind, and they were about to reap the whirlwind.

Not that this seems to have occurred to the students in the square. By 30 May, they had set up a plaster statue of the “Goddess of Democracy” in the square. The next day, the government sent in soldiers again; reportedly the 27th and either the 28th or 38th Armies of the People’s Liberation Army (accounts differ). They were supposed to take control of the city and restore normalcy.

It is at this point that the accounts from the “sources” which are usually quoted by the Western media and the other sources begin to differ. According to the Western media’s “sources” (I have deep and abiding suspicion of any “source” whose account is accepted uncritically by Western media – remember the Iraq “sources”? – hence the quotes) the two armies sent in were armed and ready to shoot. According to the Chinese government, and, crucially, according to the US embassy in Beijing, the soldiers were sent in unarmed (see link below for documentation on this point).

As rumours spread of thousands of troops converging on the square, a large part of the people of Beijing came out on the streets, burned buses – government property – and set up barricades. The unarmed troops could not penetrate through these barricades. Soldiers were attacked with stones and Molotov cocktails; some were beaten or burned to death and their bodies strung up. Finally, armed troops were sent in, and they were met with the same reception. Officers were pulled from tanks and killed. After an armoured personnel carrier was incinerated and its crew killed, the soldiers fired at the people throwing Molotov cocktails. That there were barricades and people throwing firebombs isn’t something that any Western media “source” has even attempted to refute. This was not a massacre; it was somewhere between a riot and an insurrection.

I wonder what the reaction would have been if American occupation troops in Kabul or Baghdad were similarly barricaded and attacked with petrol bombs? Actually, I don’t need to wonder; the actions of the occupation forces in Iraq and Afghanistan speak for themselves in such situations.

To get back...

The Tiananmen Square “Massacre”

Finally, at 1am on 4 June, the army cleared the streets and reached Tiananmen Square. What did the soldiers do then? Go in shooting? No – according to even the “sources” which are quoted by the Western media, they waited for governmental orders. By then – again, this is not doubted – a large majority of the students had left the square. Only a few thousand remained. The army offered these students amnesty to leave. At 4 am, the students put the matter to vote – whether to go or to remain and face the consequences. Again, this is a matter that is not at dispute. The army did not go in, shooting blindly, and killing everyone in the square. First, according to everyone, they gave the students a chance to save themselves.

Now things get rather interesting. According to the standard Western media account of this episode, the tanks went in about 4 or 5am, shooting and crushing the students. This is the famous “massacre”, which is so inscribed in the modern consciousness. The bloodthirsty Chinese government had let loose a rain of terror on the poor peace-loving democracy-craving people of their own capital city. You know the stuff.

However, Spain's ambassador to Beijing at the time, Eugenio Bregolat, notes that Spain's TVE channel had a television crew in the square at the time, and if there had been a massacre, they would have been the first to see it and record it. Did they? No. If they had, wouldn’t there have been videos all over the internet, not to mention TV, of the massacre itself? But there are none. Bregolat also claims that most of the journalists who filed “eyewitness” accounts of the massacre were – at the time when they were allegedly witnessing the massacre – away from the Square, in the Beijing Hotel.

Similarly, Graham Earnshaw, a journalist in the square who was interviewing student leaders and was present during the night of June 3-4, claims (link below) that all the few hundred remaining students were persuaded to leave by the army, and when the tanks entered from one side of the Square, the last remaining students were withdrawing peacefully from the other side. Earnshaw agrees that the students’ “tent city” was crushed under the tanks’ treads as they came in, but he says there was nobody sleeping in the tents at the time to be crushed by the armour. Anyone who has ever been anywhere near a tank with its engine running will agree with his contention that nobody (except, I assume, the profoundly deaf) could have remained sleeping through the episode to be crushed, even without the earlier drama of the amnesty offer and the vote.

Then again, Xiaoping Li, a former China dissident, now resident in Canada, writing in the Asia Sentinel and quoting Taiwan-born Hou Dejian who had been on a hunger strike on the square to show solidarity with the students, said: "Some people said 200 died in the square and others claimed that as many as 2,000 died. There were also stories of tanks running over students who were trying to leave. I have to say I did not see any of that. I was in the square until 6:30 in the morning."

And these are the words of a dissident, and more, of a dissident who now lives abroad and presumably has nothing to fear.

Then there is the circumstantial evidence. Most of the “Tiananmen Square Massacre” crowd repeat, ad nauseam, lists of student leaders arrested in the aftermath of the “massacre”. Many of these student “eyewitnesses” also claim to have seen tanks shooting and crushing people in the Square. Well, in that case, there’s an obvious question: how come all these leaders and/or eyewitnesses who were present in the Square all survived the “massacre” unscathed? How come not one of them can state the name of anyone who was killed in the Square itself, given that they had all been protesting together there for weeks? Wasn’t a single person of those hundreds or thousands killed a friend or comrade or classmate of these students? Why isn’t there one single, miserable photo showing the massacre in the Square itself?

I’m not saying there weren’t killings in Beijing that night. I’m saying that said killings were restricted to the fighting in the streets leading to the square, essentially between barricaders and soldiers trying to get through the barricades. I cannot find one single bit of incontrovertible proof that there was a single killing in the Square itself, let alone a massacre.

If you – therefore – try and maintain an impartial attitude to the sources, there is at least reasonable grounds for doubt about whether there was a single episode of firing, a single death, in Tiananmen Square on the night of 3/4 June 1989; let alone the famous “massacre”.

Deconstructing a famous photograph.



It’s called one of the “100 most famous photographs of all time”; actually, there are several versions of the photo, and there’s a video of the episode as well, which has its own peculiar significance. Taken on the morning of 5th June 1989, it shows a lone man, in white shirt and dark trousers, with what seems to be shopping bags in his hands. He stands in front of a line of tanks. In the most well-known version, that taken by Jeff Widener of the Associated Press, there are four tanks. In other photos, taken from further away, there are more tanks behind those four. They are Chinese Type 59 tanks, with the crew “buttoned up” inside; i.e. the hatches shut.

As seen in the video, the man gestures angrily to the tank with his bags. The tank swerves to one side in order to drive around him. The man steps again in front of the tank, and the heavy vehicle again tries to steer around him. Finally, it stops, and the man clambers on it, has a brief exchange with the crew, and descends. As the tank tries to drive on, he again steps in front of it and again it stops. People from the crowd then pull the man to safety and the tanks drive on (this last bit is typically excised from videos of this episode posted on such sites as YouTube).

According to the standard mythology of the event, one so standard that it’s practically sacrilege not to believe it, the man displayed almost unbelievable courage in the face of overwhelming Chinese military aggression. This “lone hero” became an instant icon, known as the “Tank man” and a symbol of courage worldwide.

Now let’s take a close look at the photograph, one from a strictly neutral viewpoint, and there are several extremely interesting features, which go well beyond the particular episode itself and reveal a lot about the entire Tiananmen Square affair.

First, and most obviously, the crew of the tanks have sealed themselves inside. This is extremely significant because as far as possible tank crews avoid doing this. Even in combat, whenever they can get away with it, they try to keep the hatches open. There are several reasons for this; one is that vision from inside a “buttoned down” tank is very limited and it’s almost impossible to hear sounds from outside; for a fairly primitive tank like the Type 59 (of which surviving examples are now relegated to training and second-line duties), this is even truer. All the driver can see when his hatch is shut, through two “vision blocks,” is to the front and slightly to the right. The commander in the turret can do little better (for details on the capabilities of the Type 59 tank, see link below). And a sealed up tank, especially an early model one like the Type 59, is extremely hot and cramped and difficult for the crew to operate in for prolonged periods.

So why did the crew seal themselves inside? There can be only one reason: to protect themselves against Molotov cocktails and attacks from mobs.

Secondly: take a close look at the photo. The first, third and fourth tanks can clearly be seen to have caps covering the muzzles of their main guns. The second may have a black muzzle cap or the muzzle may be open, but the rest certainly have capped muzzles. Muzzle caps, which are meant to protect the interiors of the guns from dirt and dust, are never taken into a situation where the main guns may need to be fired. This is proof positive that the tanks were sent in without any intention of firing the main guns, come what may.

Similarly, the tanks being sealed up means the crews cannot use the machine guns on the turret roofs (the blocky objects on the right of each tank turret, sticking out to the side). The Type 59, admittedly, has two other machine guns; of them more anon.

Then, there are the shopping bags carried by the “tank man” himself. Obviously, if you go shopping – and nobody has ever suggested the shopping bags meant anything else – there must be shops open. Take it from one who has been in riot situations: shops never open when there is a possibility of serious violence. The shop owners have too much to lose from riots and looting. If there are shops open, the quantum of violence must be much lower than usually thought.

Now, if we look at the video, we see the tank shifting to the right and back again in an effort to avoid the man. If the Chinese troops had already shot and crushed down hundreds to thousands of unarmed civilians, and according to standard mythology they were, even on this 5th of June, shooting students trying to re-enter the Square, why would the tank have gone to such trouble to save the life of one miserable counter-revolutionary? There can be no reasonable explanation but the fact that the tankers were exercising the maximum restraint in the face of provocation. (Again, suppose an Iraqi or an Afghan were to do this to an American armoured column, or a Palestinian to an “Israeli” Merkava, as many in fact have done; what do you think would he have been called even as he was being blown away? A terrorist!)

Incidentally, this is the photo that first made me doubt the entire story of the massacre. The action of the crew of those tanks was so completely opposed to the conventional tale of the “massacre” that it merited a closer look. So, in all, I am thankful to the photographer and the “tank man” – for reasons directly contrary to the usual Western media accounts.

Also, Widener’s own account of the prelude to the photo is interesting. He was confined to his hotel – he says – because he had flu and was injured by a protestor who threw a brick at him, smashing one of his other cameras and giving him a concussion. Nice nonviolent protestors, eh?

Deconstructing an ancillary photo.



Before we reach a final conclusion on the Tank Man, though, let’s take a look at another photo, taken from ground level and published only in June 2009. Taken shortly before the “iconic” images, it shows the distant tanks coming towards the camera, and, in the middle left distance, what is alleged (there is no direct proof of this) to be the “tank man” himself, waiting beside a bulldozer, all ready to step in the way of the armoured column, shopping bags and all. In the right distance a bicyclist pedals unhurriedly on, and in the left foreground a man (also carrying a shopping bag) seems about to flash a thumbs-up sign at the camera. In the right foreground is the only sign of hurry or panic; a young man who appears to be sprinting or trying to duck.

Terrill Jones of the Associated Press, who took this photo, claims that – in order to avoid firing – he and others took shelter and could no longer see what happened afterwards. This is one of those stories that need to be examined carefully. First: If there indeed was firing, why is the cyclist so unconcernedly pedalling on? Even if it is true that the man in the left distance is the “tank man” himself, and even if he is willing to sacrifice his life in order to stop the tanks and so is unconcerned, why is the shopping bag man in the foreground obviously not in any panic or fear? Why is he apparently about to break into a huge grin? Why is the only man in a hurry the one in the right front, dashing towards the photographer?

Then, if there was indeed firing, where was it coming from? Certainly not from the tanks; as I said, the main guns were capped and the anti-aircraft machine guns unattended by the buttoned-up crew. The Type 59 has two other machine guns, both of 7.62 mm calibre. One is a coaxial gun, which fires along the line of the main gun, in whichever direction the main gun is pointing. In this case all the tanks had their main guns elevated at normal position, so the firing wasn’t coming from the coaxial guns – the bullets would have gone into the sky. The third gun is one fixed in the front of the tank and firing straight ahead through a very small aperture in the glacis plate (the tank’s front armour) and operated by the driver. It’s a nearly useless weapon, since it can only be aimed by turning the entire tank to point it directly at the target. If the hull gun was firing, only the lead tank could have been firing it, as the fire from others in the line would have struck the tanks in front of them. And in that case, what was the hull gun firing at? And again – why on earth did the tank save “tank man’s” life? It doesn’t make any sense.

Similarly, if “tank man” was spirited away by the crowd to safety, then there was enough of a crowd to take him away to safety, and that in turn means that there wasn’t any firing. Whoever the man was, there’s no evidence as to what happened to him; accounts of his execution are balanced by accounts that he is living in Taiwan (link below). If he’s dead, why aren’t any acquaintances coming forward to say who he was? If he is alive, why isn’t he coming out of the shadows, if necessary after smuggling himself out of China? Absolutely nobody seems to be sure who he is. Or is he, as some have suggested, mentally ill? A madman wouldn’t be the best expression of defiance of a tyrannical regime, would he?

All in all, the conclusion is clear: far from being a symbol of courage, “tank man” was in no real danger from military units exercising restraint in the face of provocation. In fact, what the photos and video clearly demonstrate is the reverse of what the official iconography, if I can put it that way, of this episode claims.

The Death Toll

How many people died in the entire Tiananmen Square affair? The Chinese Red Cross was alleged to have said 2600 died, but denied having ever given any such figure. “Unbiased” Western media alleges that the Red Cross backed down after pressure from the Chinese government, but fails to either provide any evidence of either this pressure or just who were these 2600 who died. At least some hundreds of their relatives could have been cited? The official Chinese government figure is 241 dead, including the soldiers who were burned and battered to death when they tried to make an unarmed approach to the Square. There are various other estimates. And, according to the Tiananmen Mothers, only 186 names of the alleged thousands dead have been confirmed as of June 2006, and that includes people whose deaths weren’t necessarily due to army action, including one who committed suicide.

Does it matter how many died? Yes, it does; it marks the difference between a unilateral massacre and fighting on both sides. For such an allegedly enormous death toll, the evidence seems to be scanty indeed.

The Significance

It was – I think – Mao Zedong who, when asked about the significance of the French Revolution, said “It’s too early to tell.” At the time, the Chinese government was probably not looking to the long term; in a year when fellow Communist governments were being toppled by mass street protests and governmental paralysis, it was looking to its own survival when it decided to use force, in whatever form, against the students. However, in deciding to use force, it put a permanent full stop to a chain of events which – going by what happened in other nations at the time – would have led to unravelling of Central governmental authority, collapse of the state, disintegration of the economy and more than likely of the nation, and anarchy leading to mass impoverishment and mafia rule.

For comparison, we should look to the Soviet Union and the so-called putsch of 19 August 1991, which temporarily overthrew Mikhail Gorbachev and tried to maintain the unity of the nation, something the Soviet people had themselves largely approved of in a referendum. The coup collapsed in three days almost entirely because the new junta refused to use overwhelming force against the protestors, led by Boris Yeltsin, later to preside, marinated in alcohol, over the descent of Russia into a corrupt oligarchy with the collapse of social services, skyrocketing corruption, and plummeting life expectancy. Almost exactly the same thing would likely have happened to China if the Tiananmen Square protestors hadn’t been neutralised.

In fact, it’s likely that the entire crackdown could have been avoided if the Beijing authorities had acted early and severely, incarcerating ringleaders and shutting down their media outlets, as Jiang Zemin, then the mayor of Shanghai, had done. This had nipped in the bud developing disturbances in China’s second city. Allowing the students weeks of a free hand was in itself an error, and China has taken care not to repeat that error in later years.

One look at China today, with its roaring economy and its people – who are far more prosperous than they were two decades ago – and a comparison with where Russia is even now, when it’s finally beginning to get to its feet again, and it should be clear that the Chinese government acted in the best long-term interests of its own people when it ended the protests.

But – what about freedom? Aren’t the Chinese people deprived of freedom? That is an oft-heard argument, a rich argument indeed when one thinks of the status of the “freed” citizens of such nations as Iraq or Afghanistan; or indeed of Russia, whose starving and impoverished people were called “free” but now that they are, at last, slightly better off are no longer called “free”. Strange are the definitions of freedom, and bizarre are the uses of the word.

For the record, I believe democracy, as practiced today, is an eyewash and does not equal freedom. I believe that the right to live with dignity is more important than the right to vote, and I believe that a nation which provides the necessities for the maximum number of its people is freer than one which allows them to vote but takes no steps to ensure they have a roof over their heads and clothes on their backs.

There is also the question of the significance of the crackdown to the world at large, two decades later. As we all know (or should know), China is one of the most significant nations in the world today, and certainly the fastest-rising one. It’s also the only country which serves as a counterweight to the global hegemon and self-declared world policeman, the United States of America. The US is a power in decline, but is still the only nation which believes in war as a policy of first resort and seeks to impose its will – by force – on the rest of the world. But even the US has to tread warily on Chinese economic might.

Can one imagine how much more arrogant and lethal the USA’s war against the world would have been without China providing some kind of balance?

The Media Lies

As should be obvious by now, I believe the mass of the Western media lied, cynically and repeatedly, and continues to lie about the Tiananmen Square incident. Much of the lying is due to a phenomenon called “pack journalism” (see link below) where media fall in line, quite unthinkingly, and without checking facts, on a particular “plausible” story. One only has to remember the tales of Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Distraction, sorry, Destruction, for a recent example.

Also, the Western media have never hidden their anti-China bias, even in these days when they have to treat China with respect. So the 2001 incident when an American spy plane collided with a Chinese fighter and was compelled to land in China was an “intolerable act of aggression”, without regard to the facts. Actually, the facts never really mattered, as we saw in 2008 when the Lhasa rioting was deliberately and cynically misreported with propaganda from Tibetan exile groups (speedily exposed through the Chinese blogosphere) of how the PLA soldiers were responsible for dressing up as monks and rioting, and so on.

But media sources have to take their inspiration from somewhere. That inspiration is almost always from the people who actually control these media, people who have the most to gain from the lies the media disseminate. In Iraq, we know who benefitted the most from the invasion, which firms saw their stock prices jump through the ceiling. Similarly, a collapsed and disintegrating China would have freed a lot of space for certain business interests and allowed certain nations a free hand in East Asia. So it was entirely predictable that they would react violently to firm action that made it less likely that any such collapse would occur, besides painting all Communists with the same genocidal brush.

The conventional truth about Tiananmen Square - in summary – is not the truth. But the truth is out there for those who care to know, the evidence visible for those who wish to see.

Statutory Disclaimer: The opinions stated herein are mine. I am in no way responsible for any fights, quarrels, or breaks in relations caused by the contents of this article. Be warned.


Further reading:

If the links below don't work, please copy and paste to your browser

(I wish to express my gratitude to blogger “Bobby Fletcher” - http://tiananmenmyth.blogspot.com/ - for bringing some of the links below to my attention)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989 (The wikipedia entry on the Tiananmen Square protests)

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB16/documents/09-02.htm (US Embassy note stating that the Chinese troops had initially been unarmed.)

http://www.earnshaw.com/memoirs/content.php?id=5 (Graham Earnshaw’s account of Tiananmen Square, where he states unambiguously that “most of the deaths did not happen on or near the Square.”)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man#cite_note-NYTNewPhoto-1 (About the Tank Man, with a description of the original video)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_59 (All about the Type 59 tank)

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/03/behind-the-scenes-tank-man-of-tiananmen/ (Jeff Widener’s account of how he was hit in the face by a rock and also claims how the photographers of the “iconic” image saw armoured personnel carriers firing at the crowds. Where are the photos of that episode?)

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/behind-the-scenes-a-new-angle-on-history/?hp (Terrill Jones’ account claiming the tanks were firing at the time of the “tank man” incident)

http://www.yachtingnet.com/time/time100/leaders/profile/rebel2.html (A Time Magazine article on the “tank man,” typical of Western media reportage of the incident. Note the unattributed and unsubstantiated allegations that the Chinese shot “hundreds of workers and students and doctors and children, many later found shot in the back.”)

http://dajiyuan.com/b5/6/6/1/n1336133.htm (Chinese language article claiming “tank man” still lives. I don’t speak Chinese so have to take it at its word)

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo20080721gc.html (An article by the former Canadian ambassador to Japan, Gregory Clark, examining the myth of the “massacre”)

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=CLA20060410&articleId=2245 (By the same author; an examination of the phenomenon of pack journalism)

http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2510/stories/20080523251000400.htm (A discussion of other anti-Chinese western media propaganda)

In Which The Future Done Come

Today, while rubber-stamping the date on a prescription, I had one of those moments of weird dissociation which most of us have experienced at one time or another. I looked down at the date 12 JAN 2010 and it was as though a voice was muttering in my brain, “Why, that’s a science fiction date! That’s a date straight out of science fiction!”

You see, I was one of the people who grew up reading the products of the “golden age” of science fiction, the sixties and seventies, when Edmund Crispin was compiling anthologies and Asimov, Bradbury, and Clarke were writing at their best. Those were the days when the awful pulp science fiction of the fifties was a fading memory (try and read some of that stuff today, with its tales of blue-skinned Neptunian Xth smugglers and thinly disguised Cold War polemics; it makes one cringe). And science fiction hadn’t yet become what so much of it is today, hard to read and harder to comprehend and hardest of all to accept as science fiction and not some completely different genre altogether (take a look at one of Gardner Dozois’ recent compilations for an idea of what passes for science fiction these days).

Yes, science-fiction wise, I’m a child of the sixties and seventies, though I was actually reading the stuff in the eighties. Anyway, in those tales of robots, time travel, and exploring Jupiter’s moons, and so on, leavened with Bradbury’s thundering adjectives (Ray Bradbury is my favourite science fiction writer by some distance) – which was the most common era those stories were set in? When did those mysterious green lights shine out of the sky? When did our intrepid explorers wade through the primordial seas of Europa? When did the tideless (because moonless) seas of Venus (it was still an ocean world to the writers of that age) part before the hulls of expeditionary ships? You’ve got it – the first few years of the 21st century. That was the Golden Age when everything would happen; the world would set aside poverty and war and would unite under a benign government (albeit one where everyone usually had American names) and would, in John Jakes’ words

Where no man has gone before
Venture boldly now
To the blazing sea of stars
Point the shining prow.
Range the neverending dark
Seeking life’s undying spark
Out beyond all nature’s end
Bear the race that comes as friend.
Light years beyond the last red sun
Leave the mark of men
Then turn homewards, towards the day
You go forth again.

One look around us today – sharply rising poverty, the rapid disintegration of any idea of a world state, Endless War as an ideology, the retreat of logic before the forces of religious obscurantism – and one feels only helpless pity for the hopes of those writers, looking at the future and imagining it to be better. It’s difficult to see how humanity can survive in the long run, let alone tread the soil of another world circling a strange green sun.

Still, I looked at that date, and a strange shiver played down my spine. And I looked out of the window, and for a moment, just for a moment, I seemed to see a spaceship, like a multi-faceted dome all decked out in copper and green, hovering outside on columns of fire, about to launch itself into the unknown.

Just a moment, and it was gone, and I went back to filling in the prescription.

But a part of me went with it.

Child marraige in India today

Many years ago, when a student in Lucknow, I came across a small but bizarre procession making its way through the college campus. First came a boy, about ten or eleven years old, with a red turban in his head and carrying a long, curved, sheathed, and probably fake sword. He was followed by a woman who carried a very young girl in her arms. I can’t say how old this girl was because I couldn’t see her face (it was pressed to the woman’s shoulder), but she certainly wasn’t more than four or five at the most, and an undersized four or five at that. She was dressed in something bright pink and gold, and if memory serves, one end of her pink and gold outfit was tied to the tip of the boy’s sword. Sundry other rustic-looking characters followed this trio, most of them grinning proudly.

It was the first time I’d ever seen a child marriage.

You’ll understand that I was aware child marriages existed; as the grandson of a lady who had been married off by her parents at the ripe old age of thirteen (due to which she was known as “oldie” to her sisters-in-law, the more usual age being nine to eleven) I couldn’t be but aware of the existence of the phenomenon, even though hereabouts in the east of the country it isn’t often that it still can be encountered. But in the North, and especially in the state of Rajasthan, child marriages not only still occur; they have social sanction and political protection, and have been repeatedly covered in the media.

This doesn’t take away from the fact that child marriage in today’s India is, theoretically speaking of course, illegal (I’ll be speaking on that in a minute). But merely passing a law does not usually change anything, which is why the nation with the world’s longest constitution is also among the world’s most corrupt. Still, it’s interesting to see how something everyone claims is a social evil is allowed to happen, right in plain sight. If I, for instance, had gone to the police and tried to get that child marriage in Lucknow stopped, it wouldn’t have done the slightest good.

Child marriages – unlike some other “ancient” things in India which aren’t really so ancient at all, like sexual prudery which dates back to relatively recent times – have been around a long, long time. They seem to have started in the late Vedic era (roughly about 500 BCE) when religious ritual became very important and the status of women nosedived sharply. Sexual freedom, which had been something women had taken for granted in earlier times, along with the freedom to write poetry and act as the equals of men, became constrained steadily. As Vatsayyana, the (alleged) writer of the ancient sex manual the Kama Sutra wrote, a man should marry a girl of eleven or thereabouts, just on the verge of puberty. Why? Because, women being – he said – naturally promiscuous and unfaithful, this was the only way he could ensure a virgin bride. And why was a virgin bride important? Presumably because if a man could marry a virgin and thereafter keep her from all form of unsecured contact with other males, he would ensure that the children born to her were his own.

And then, historically, of course, a “child” wasn’t what we call a “child” today. In times when one was lucky to attain the age of thirty, the need was to breed early and breed prolifically, because that was the only way to ensure the continuation of the race.


So, when the supporters of child marriage claim an ancient historical background for it, they aren’t wrong. In this country, it does have an ancient history. But so do a lot of things, like human sacrifice and ritual cannibalism, which don’t usually have any social sanction today. So why does child marriage persist?

The first criterion for the existence of child marriage is the inferior status of women. Women in much of India to this day are despised and neglected. The birth of a girl is often an occasion of heartbroken sorrow, even in relatively affluent and educated families. The fact that in India a woman traditionally leaves her natal family and becomes a formal part of her husband’s family after marriage means that to the traditional Indian family, a girl is a useless burden. Every penny spent in educating and feeding and clothing her is a waste because ultimately she’s going to be given away to another family, which will glean the benefits. Therefore, the faster one can get her married, the less one has to waste on her.

Alongside this is the phenomenon of dowry, which like child marriage is illegal but which, also like child marriage, enjoys social sanction to this day in very large parts of the country. Dowry, which is formally a gift to a daughter being married, is actually more like a bribe to a groom to take one’s daughter off one’s hands; and grooms of different professions have unspoken but well-established “going rates” for dowry. Obviously, since one would in any case have to pay a dowry to get rid of one’s useless female offspring, the earlier one can get them off one’s hands, the better.

Then is the importance of the virgin status – again unspoken – a woman brings to her wedding bed. Indians aren’t Arabs; we don’t display bloodstained wedding sheets on the morning after as a mark of evidence of the bride’s deflowering. But the virginity of the bride is still as much an issue, which is why rape victims find it difficult to get married. As Vatsayyana said a couple of millennia ago, a virgin bride is important, even if people don’t talk about it openly. The younger the bride the likelier she is to be a virgin, and the younger the age one can marry off one’s daughter, the faster the end of one’s responsibility to keep her virgin.

These, basically, are the reasons why child marriage persists. It’s no accident that those parts of the nation where women enjoy higher social status, like the East and South, also have the lowest rates of child marriage. But child marriage is also illegal...or is it?

The Indian law regarding child marriage is a most curious animal. According to law, the lowest legal age at which a woman can marry is 18; and for a man it’s 21. These are the minimum ages at which a marriage can take place and be registered. But – the law does not make registration of marriages compulsory. A marriage is legal whether it’s registered or not. Therefore, the lowest legal age of marriage hasn’t much meaning. And in at least two recent cases, the courts allowed minors aged about 16 to marry, saying the law shouldn’t come in the way of the union of hearts. Precedents of this nature aren’t exactly good news, because once you begin making exceptions, where do you draw the line?

Then again, while the lowest legal age of marriage is 18 and 21, the age of sexual consent is 16 for both sexes. Intercourse with a girl below 16 is statutory rape (only men can commit rape according to the Indian law) – but another law, dating back to British times and still not repealed, says a man who had intercourse with a girl aged 14 or below will be treated as a rapist unless the woman involved is his wife. Therefore, it’s perfectly legal to have sex with your wife of thirteen, even though she isn’t allowed to have sex before she’s sixteen, and she can’t become your wife before she’s eighteen. You see the maze into which anyone trying to oppose child marriage is heading?

Accordingly, the law’s current attitude to child marriage is equally bizarre. Child marriage isn’t legal; but is it illegal? The law says the government shall try and stop child marriage from taking place; but once it takes place, it can’t be annulled. So all a cop has to do is pretend that he hasn’t seen the child marriage taking place right before his eyes (not a difficult thing to do for a member of one of the most corrupt professions of one of the most corrupt nations on earth) and the parents and organisers are home free. In fact, the few individuals and organisations trying to stop child marriages in the parts of the country where they are endemic have faced a torrid time. Some years ago, a woman social worker who campaigned against the practice was assaulted and had her hands hacked off by goons who wanted to teach her a lesson.

It might be asked, then, why doesn’t the government make child marriage out and out illegal, a crime? I believe that the answer lies in the characteristic pusillanimity of the Indian form of “democratic” government when faced with social or religious orthodoxy. The default state of any political party is to take the safe route, and this generally involves pandering to the extreme social and religious right wing. You can’t expect parties who depend on the fundamentalists for backing to oppose the same fundamentalists on any crucial issue.

The government’s response, to a tide of criticism that it was ignoring child marriage, was this: a few years ago it passed a law which said that if either party of a child marriage wished to opt out of the marriage, he or she could, on attaining majority (which is 18 for both sexes) approach the courts, and then the marriage would be deemed annulled.

This, basically, is a law that fails the laugh test.

Consider the situation of the typical child bride (I won’t, for the purpose of this discussion, consider the groom because he’s always older than the bride, very often being older than the legal age of marriage, and in any case he doesn’t have to abandon his natal home or sacrifice his education or suffer in any significant way). She’s probably totally or near-totally illiterate (remember that bit about her being a burden to the parents and so they don’t waste resources on her?), and therefore more than likely unemployable even as a domestic servant. She has been married off, often while still a baby in arms, to someone whom she has never seen before and naturally has never had an opportunity to refuse the alliance, and has been sent to live with her in-laws and husband while far too young to be able to protest. She belongs – more likely than not – to a social stratum which decrees that a married woman can only leave her husband’s family when she dies. Add to that the fact that her parents will certainly refuse to take her back if she goes back to them after leaving her in laws (oh the disgrace! The social humiliation!). In any case, these women have no rights over their own bodies and usually begin having children as soon as they’re physically capable of it, and by the time she turns eighteen, the typical child bride will have three or four kids in tow.

Illiterate, destitute, unemployable, with nowhere to go and probably with several children to fend for, can one seriously imagine any of these women will even consider, for one moment, approaching the courts for an annulment?

Only if, and when, a large scale change in social attitudes towards women takes place in India is there even a real chance that what I saw in Lucknow so many years ago won’t be repeated.

I’m not really hopeful of seeing that kind of change anytime soon.


Further Reading:

http://www.asiantribune.com/index.php?q=node/1763

http://www.stormloader.com/munaypata/India.htm (A discussion of child marriage in ancient India)

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5295SA20090310 (Recent child marriage statistics, dating to 2006)

Speculation

“You really must stop saying such things, you know,” I said.

Dr Rex peered at me short-sightedly across the restaurant table. “Why should I?” he asked mildly.

I shrugged helplessly. Much as I loved him and long as I’d known him, he was so impractical that he could reduce those who knew him to helpless frustration. “Because institutions don’t like hearing such ideas,” I explained. “Because it might get you known as a crank. Universities are chary of hiring cranks, so you might not get that professorship you’re angling for.”

“And a lecturer’s salary only goes so far,” Dr Rex’s wife whined. “Can you imagine how we live? It’s been months since we were even in a restaurant like this one and…”

We both ignored her, which wasn’t easy. She was a great whiner. But we’d had a lot of practice.

“Still,” Dr Rex said, “the truth is the truth.”

“And a hypothesis, which this is, is still only speculation. Even if you think it might be possible, why speak of it? It can’t have the slightest relevance to everyday life, after all.”

“Lots of things have no relevance to everyday life, like neutrinos for instance, but we study them all the same.”

I knew that was aimed at me, because neutrinos were my special field of study. “Neutrinos,” I said, “exist. You are, on the other hand, talking of things that even you admit is merely possible – in an alternate universe. And even alternate universes are pure speculation.”

“You tell him,” Dr Rex’s wife whined. “You tell him to think of the real world for once instead of his awful creatures.” She shuddered. “Just imagine, thinking rats could run the world. Ugh!”

“But I never said anything about rats,” Dr Rex protested.

“Whatever,” she sniffed. “It’s all horrible.”

“She has a point though,” I informed him. “You claim that it might be possible, in an alternate universe, for mammals to become the dominant life forms.”

“So?” asked Dr Rex, blinking. “What’s wrong with that? Scientifically, there’s nothing wrong with the idea.”

“It’s just that most of us are usually attached to the notion that mammals are unimportant parasites hovering around the fringes of our existence. You might as well claim that insects could rule the world.”

“Insects,” Dr Rex said, “lack brain mass. They lack cognitive behaviour patterns. Mammals, on the other hand…”

“Here he goes again,” his wife wailed.

“There’s nothing – scientifically speaking – to say dinosaurs have to be the ultimate in evolution,” Dr Rex pointed out. “That’s all, really, that I’m saying – no more.”

“In the old days, such a thought would have got you labelled a heretic.”

“It’s the age of enlightenment.” Dr Rex shifted his little arms and blinked at the window. “Look at that,” he said.

I followed his gaze. Resplendent in his green skin and red horn, his crest flattened by the wind, an Ornitholestes went by on roller skates.

“He must be going to the punk music concert that I saw in the papers,” I said.

“Degenerates,” Dr Rex’s wife said. “Our son – if we had one – would never have been like that.” I glanced at her. I never could understand why he’d ever married her. After all, it wasn’t as if they were even the same species. In any case, I never could figure out what would make anyone marry an Acrocanthosaurus. They are known to be the most difficult to get along with of all the sentient species.

“They’re young, dear,” Dr Rex said, shifting on his heavy tail.

“No, they’re an inferior species,” she said. “I know it isn’t right to say so, but it’s true all the same.”

We paused as the little Bambiraptor waitress brought up our plates of Seismosaurus steaks. She was a fast moving little creature, with big eyes and a narrow intelligent head. Her arms and tail were lined with feathers.

“You look at that little creature,” Dr Rex said, “and you can tell what I meant about mammals being able to rule the world, if things had been different. Look how fast and agile and intelligent she is, with her large brain.”

“And with her large brain,” I observed, “she’s still serving dishes at the restaurant, while we are – with out smaller brains – speculating about alternate universes.”

If Dr Rex had ever heard the word “irony” he didn’t show it. “Take this Seismosaurus, for instance,” he said, prodding at his large and undeniably somewhat overdone steak. “If it had the brains, it might have been sitting here eating us for supper, but –“

“They’re vegetarians,” I interjected, but he’d already moved on.

“But, even though it’s a dinosaur like us, it’s a farm animal we slaughter and eat.”

“So?” I felt a bit adrift, as I often did with the old Tyrannosaur and his sudden shifts of logic. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“You see, we’re evolved dinosaurs; now I’m talking about evolved mammals. Not threats my wife is so scared of.”

“Evolved to what?”

“Just what, I can’t tell you. But it would have to be bipedal, of course, like us – so that it could use its front legs as hands to pick up and do things. It would probably lose most of its body hair…you know how the mammals are covered with hair…because, well, it’s really only a theory of mine but I believe that if it lost its hair it would feel the cold and want fire and clothes for warmth. What I’m expecting is something much smaller than us, of course, because the mammals need more food, but bipedal and hairless.”

“It would look horrible,” said his wife. “Imagine, a two-legged, hairless rat.”

“Not horrible to themselves, my dear,” said Dr Rex. “They might speculate about us – and we’d be horrible to them.”

“We can’t be horrible,” said his wife, firmly.

“You know,” I said, “most of the population does think along her lines. They’d think your intelligent mammals to be just large, bipedal naked rats. In any case, what’s the point of your theory, anyway? How does it change anything?”

“It’s supposed to teach us humility,” Dr Rex mumbled through his Seismosaurus steak. “It’s supposed to teach us that nothing is forever, either.”

“You mean the mammals might still take over?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said. “After all, we aren’t here forever, as the Allosaurus fossils teach us.”

“Mammals are rats,” I said firmly.

“Rats,” he said. “And what are we?”

“Dinosaurs,” I said, and bit angrily at my steak to take away the shiver in my spine. “We’re dinosaurs.”

Now why do you suppose the mad old tyrannosaur began laughing like that?

Warm Vanilla

She saw the man when she was still some distance away from her apartment building. He was standing on the patch out front that served as a tiny children’s park in summer, shoulders hunched beneath his leather jacket. The thing that attracted her attention about him was that he was standing there as the snow fell, going nowhere and doing nothing except staring at her building.

By the time she was closer to him she began to have a strange feeling. The set of those shoulders, one slightly higher than the other, the stance with the elbows slightly out-thrust...surely it couldn’t be he.

She almost stopped as the flood of conflicting emotions began rising inside her. For a moment she seriously considered going away, walking off to sit in some cafe and sip espresso until he should have gone, but she was tired and it had been a long day. Besides which, a load of chores was waiting for her behind the windows she could see from where she stood.

Besides, it probably wasn’t he after all. Why should it be – how could it be, when he was halfway round the world? It must be someone else. It had to be someone else. She would go on past to the door, she thought, and not glance at his face, even from the corner of her eye. She would go in and take the stairs to her flat, not waiting for the lift, and once indoors she would not even look at the windows, let alone peer through them to see if he was still outside – whoever he was.

As she got closer to him, she began hunching her shoulders unconsciously, trying to hide her head between them. She found herself wishing that she had a hat or a cap on – any kind of headgear, to hide her hair from his gaze, which was strange, because certainly he couldn’t be he. And she repeated to herself, mouth dry and heart hammering, that she wouldn’t look at his face at all, under any circumstances; so, of course, as she passed him, she turned her head, as if against her own volition, and did.

It was he. She saw him clearly, as though the years in between had never happened. She saw him as he had always been, the round face with the high cheekbones, the slightly sunken eyes, the prominent temples, the tiny crumpled ears. Once she had enjoyed fondling those ears.

She stopped at last, right beside him, and turned, slowly, as though controlled by strings. “Hello,” she said.

He nodded slowly, without surprise. “I’ve been waiting for you,” he said quietly, with his heavy accent. “I didn’t know if you were still living in the same place, or else I’d have gone up and rung the bell.”

“It wouldn’t have done any good,” she said. “I was at work.”

“Yes. I thought you might be. That was another reason I was waiting.”

“You could have phoned me and said you were coming.”

He shook his head just a little. “You’ve changed your number since then, or did you forget?”

“It is you, isn’t it?” she asked, suddenly unsure of herself. She reached out to touch him, and then dropped her hand when her fingers were within brushing distance of his jacket. “But how...”

“There’s an international radiologist’s conference in town,” he said. “I’m a delegate.” He smiled slightly, his large yellow teeth showing. “My colleagues went sightseeing. I told them I’d seen the sights already.”

“Yes...” she was suddenly restless. “I’ve got things to do, so...”

“Can we go in?” he asked. “I don’t know about you, but I’m freezing.”

“I...” she remembered the old times together with him right there inside the flat, sipping wine and laughing at silly TV programmes, and sighing with pleasure as they made love while the moon shone through the window, and she knew she could never take him inside there again. “It’s not fit for visitors,” she said apologetically. “I haven’t had time for chores. Let’s go to a cafe or something.”

He shrugged. “It’s fine by me. I just want to get out of the cold.” They walked together out of the narrow lane that led to the apartment block, turned right, and right again. Darkness was falling fast.

“Do you remember this place?” she asked, leading him up the stairs. The warm yellow light from the cafe spilled through the windows and illuminated the drizzling snow. “We came here once.”

“I remember. It was the first day of my visit to you that time.” He looked around. “Even the decor is the same. Nothing’s changed.”

She said nothing until they had taken off their jackets and sat down at a table. “The prices have changed,” she told him.

“Well, of course. It’s been a long time.”

“You’re looking good,” she said, and almost meant it. There were speckles of white in his beard, and his eyes looked tired.

“So are you. You’ve lost a deal of weight. It makes you look better.”

“How’s your work? The hospital? Are you still working at the same place?”

“It’s OK. The work’s as it always was, and the hospital’s the same one. What are you doing for a living nowadays?”

She told him. “I couldn’t get the old job back,” she finished, “but I found this one. At least it pays more than double what the old job did.”

“I’m glad,” he said. He ordered for both of them, cappuccinos and pastries. “I’m glad you’ve got a good job.”

“So,” she said, when the coffee and pastries had arrived, “how are you, really?”

“I’m fine,” he said. “Overworked, but fine.”

“And how is...” she had forgotten the other woman’s name. She felt it slipping and sliding in the back of her mind, but couldn’t quite grasp it. “How is she?”

“She’s fine.” He smiled. “She’s fine, and happy, maybe happy for the first time in her life.”

“I’m glad she’s all right.” And at that moment she meant it. “She deserves a little happiness in her life.”

“Yes, yes, she does. What about you?”

“I’m all right. I got married again, you know.”

“Yes, of course. And where...”

“We’re divorced,” she said. It came out without inflexion or emotion. He looked back at her. “It didn’t last long.”

He didn’t say he was sorry. “Are you happy that you’re divorced?”

She stared at the wall. A poster shouted WARM VANILLA at her, whatever warm vanilla was. “I don’t really know. I suppose I was looking for happiness and never thought about what it meant. What’s warm vanilla?”

“I have no idea. Where did you find that?”

She pointed at the poster. “Why did you come here, really?” she asked then, when he had turned his head to look.

“Just to talk,” he said. “I wanted to talk to you. After all these years, there should be a lot to talk about.”

She stared at him. “Yes, but all those days together you didn’t want to talk,” she wanted to say. “It’s nice to talk,” she said instead.

“Yeah...but there doesn’t seem all that much to talk about, after all.”

They finished the coffee and pastries in silence. “Come back to the flat with me,” she said as they were putting on their jackets, suddenly changing her mind. “It’s not true what I said about it being a mess, and anyway, even if it were, it wouldn’t matter.”

He shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’m flying back tomorrow morning, and I have to be getting back to my hotel. But it was nice to meet you again.”

“Do you ever...” she began, but bit back the words. Do you ever regret parting, she wanted to say, but he would answer no, of course, and then she would say something that hurt him, and it would go on like that. “Do you ever go to the old places again?” she compromised.

“Well, naturally. When I need to.” He glanced at his watch. “I’d better be going.” He hugged her briefly, his cheek warm against her forehead. “If you ever come again, don’t forget to contact me. The mobile number is the same.”

“Yes,” she told him, looking at the lights across the street, which glittered on the snow. The lights seemed to waver and shift strangely, as if behind a curtain of water. “I will,” she said. “Of course I will.”

“Good night,” he said, holding out his hand. She looked at it, at the black hairs on the backs of his knuckles, and she was suddenly sorry she hadn’t obeyed her first impulse to turn round and walk away.

“Good night,” she said, her fingers only just touching his. “Good night,” she said, and walked homewards through the snow, thinking of the chores waiting and the night alone to follow.

Assignment

That evening, after we had all eaten, the Leader motioned me to follow him outside with a nod of his head.

“We want you to investigate this matter,” he growled when we were outside.

“Why me?” I howled. “Why pick on me?”

“Because you’re the safest one,” he snapped. “With everyone else there are always complications, all sorts of friendships and alliances and whatnot, so you don’t know what’s going on in the shadows. But that’s not true with you, because you have no friends at all. You’ve always been a lone wolf. Also, you’re lazy. You need something to do.”

“I’m not the cleverest,” I submitted. “Anyone could probably do better than I could at this task, don’t you think?”

“Brains aren’t important,” he sniffed. “You know who’s responsible. I know who’s responsible. Everyone knows who’s responsible. All you have to do is prove it.”

“In that case,” I whined, “why don’t you simply prove it yourself and have done with it? Why saddle me with this job? You’re the leader, so you can do what you want.”

“Stop snivelling.” He glared down his long nose at me. “If I have to retain any authority I have to be seen to be fair. How can I be seen to be fair if I condemn someone without an investigation?”

“All right.” I accepted the inevitable. “Just where do you suggest I get this proof? Where do I begin?”

“What are you, some kind of cub wet behind the ears? You decide for yourself where to begin. Just get the proof, and by tomorrow evening, that’s all I ask.” And, mightily pleased with this solution, he stalked off back to his den, leaving me standing in the snow, alone.


I have this rooted objection to hard work. I mean, earning a living is all very fine, but this isn’t about my next meal, it’s something altogether different and the kind of work for which I do not care. So, as usual in these situations, I looked for an assistant, and as it happens, I found one almost at once. This was rather fortuitous, since someone who helps me once rarely cares to assist me on a second occasion. I don’t exactly know why. Maybe it’s because they think they have to do all the running around and smelling out trails. Well, someone’s got to do the thinking, as I always say, right?

In any case, this time I was lucky that as soon as I put out the news that I needed an assistant, and for what, I got this volunteer to help me. She was all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, as one might say. She came almost wiggling in her delight at being allowed to help out. “What would you like me to do?” she panted.

“Go jump in the snow,” I’d have liked to say. I never could stand all that youthful energy. Instead, I looked sternly at her. “Do you know what we’re supposed to be looking for?”

“I heard it’s something to do with who killed old Timber. Are we looking for the killer?”

“Yes. Do you have any idea who it is?”

“Everyone’s saying it’s –“

“Stop!” I snapped. “Don’t utter any names. I know who you mean, but we have no proof he killed him and besides, it’s only speculation that he killed him. Don’t you have any knowledge about investigations at all, you bitch?”

“How could I?” she whined. “I’ve never done this kind of thing before.”

“Well, all right. You know Timber was the Leader’s second-in-command so everyone thinks that either he was killed by the one we’re both thinking about so he could become the second-in-command in his turn, or...”

“Or the Leader killed Timber himself to remove a threat!” she squealed.

“Shut up,” I snarled. “Do you want us both to get into trouble from your shouting?” She was right of course, it was a possibility; but I dislike independent thinking in my assistants. “Timber was found dead at the northern edge of the ravine, where we’d gone hunting three days ago. He went there alone for unknown reasons.”

“But I heard that he had gone there to...”

“What you heard is irrelevant,” I cut her off. “He might have gone there to meet a friend or to do a little hunting on the side or whatever. That isn’t important. What’s important is who can have known that he’d gone there.”

“Everyone knew that. Even I knew. I’m surprised you didn’t know.”

“You did? How come?”

“Timber used to go out alone every night around the same time and come back in the morning. He said he was going to meditate.”

“Meditate,” I snuffled. “Why, he didn’t have a meditative bone in his body, that one. I wonder...and so everyone knew. Did anyone ever follow him out?”

“Everyone goes out alone at some time or other, doesn’t everyone? I’ll ask around though.”

“You do that.” I stretched. “Go right now and begin asking everyone. Leave nobody out. I’ll go and do some thinking myself, in the meantime.”

“Oh? Where are you going?”

“Out. Just out. I have some ideas to follow up, some thoughts about the killing.”


I went, finally, to the spot where the ravine narrowed and where Timber’s corpse had been found. Snow had filled it almost halfway to the top, and the moonlight just before dawn still gleamed on the snow. Much snow had fallen since Timber had died, but I studied the ground anyway. Hey, I did have to put on a show of activity, didn’t I?

Far away, I could see the place where the ravine began. Timber would have come down from that side, slipping between the trees until he was approximately opposite where I was now. And whoever was waiting for him would have waited right here, where I was, to take him by surprise. Timber was tough as the hills and he wouldn’t have been so easy to kill. From the nature of the wound, however...

Something moved suddenly in the corner of my vision, something that began moving away through the shadows. When I want to exert myself, I am fast, and I was running so quickly that I overtook the running shadow and brought her down in a flurry of snow before she had made it halfway to the top of the slope.

“Let me go,” my assistant whimpered, wriggling under me. “Please let me go.” She raised her head slightly, but I was ready and I had already pulled my head and neck back.

“The same trick won’t work twice,” I informed her. “You succeeded in killing Timber because he wasn’t expecting that trick, but I am.”

“How did you – how did you know I killed him?”

“So you aren’t trying to deny it?” I sat back, but she remained rolled over on her back, watching me. “Many things, little things and big things. They all added up. Do you want to know what they were?”

“What?”

“Well, Timber was a horrible old piece of ordure, really. He wouldn’t think twice of having his way with any female who took his fancy, in or out of season. He’d bang anything which had a vagina. That was one thing, but in itself it wasn’t relevant.

“Then there was your volunteering to help me. I don’t normally get assistants so easily, so I was naturally surprised at the promptness with which you came to me and asked to help. It struck me that possibly you wanted to keep a close personal watch on which way the investigation was going.

“Then, of course, when I mentioned a prime suspect, you fell over yourself to support my entirely spurious suspicions and also for good measure threw in the idea that the Leader himself might be responsible. If you had been for real, you’d just have listened and gone along with whatever I said. Remember, I’ve had assistants before; I know how a raw assistant behaves.

“And then there was the clincher. When I came here, after telling you I was going to follow up ideas, you came after me. You didn’t do what I’d told you to do. You were desperate to find out what I knew. So, you were guilty.

“As for the killing, I admit I didn’t know just how you’d achieved it till a little while ago. After all, Timber was so much larger and stronger than you, but he was found with his throat torn out. Then it struck me that when someone rolls over submissively to us, we usually begin taking things easy. We look away and drop our guard. When someone submits, we don’t expect them to attack.

“Yet, as I said, Timber was found with his throat torn out. So I began to see how you must have met him here, and of course rolled over in submission to him. And when he looked away, he would have just exposed his throat to your teeth...no, it’s no good trying it again. You’ve already failed once.”

“I hate you,” she snarled, showing her teeth. Her yellow eyes gleamed in the moonlight and her ruff of fur bristled. “You’re as bad as all of them. You wouldn’t lift a paw to help when that evil old wolf was doing things...and not just to me, either.”

“So you do admit you killed him?”

“Of course I killed him,” she spat at me. “And I’m not the least ashamed of it.”

“Did you hear all that?” I called.

“I did,” the Leader said, coming out from where he had been waiting. He stood looking at the young wolf who had been my assistant, and his tail swished to and fro. “I think,” he said at last, “that we’ll announce that after investigation we found that Timber was killed by wolves from another pack. That story should satisfy everyone, even if they don’t believe it – and they won’t.”

“I don’t get it,” said the young bitch wolf. “Are you saying that you’re letting me go?”

“Of course,” the Leader said, faintly surprised. “Why should I punish you? Timber was no loss to anyone. You’d better go back now. And stay out of trouble!”

Later, as he and I trotted up toward the den, he stopped and nudged me with his muzzle. “I’m surprised,” he told me. “I gave you till tomorrow, and you got the job done in one night. How did you manage it?”

“I’m lazy,” I admitted. “I saw that there was a way to make the killer do my job for me, so I took it. That’s the way with us lazy ones. If we can make someone else do our work for us, we do.”

“Well,” he said, “You did well enough on this one.”

“It was her guilty conscience,” I told him, my wide black nostrils sniffing the cold air. “She never really had a chance.”