excerpt from forthcoming ebook Tap once if Human

At night the noise doesn't stop, we've been here a week. Lights sweep the bedspace, concrete pins twenty feet thick are being planted into the hillside. The Permanent Battleground is a special place, I'm glad not to have missed it. We took what we had of the Beggar with us, people looked on us with favor since the cases with the dimpled silver sides gave us a technical air. We were crew. Going by bus took us three days, knees up, knees down, anyway you could. Each day dim towns and straggled out villages in a countryside which got darker, flatter, colder at the same pace as the bodies of the people thickened out, faces got squashier. The bus parp! parp! began to hesitate, lorry loads of people pushed against us, refugees, status seekers. We came to emptied, broken sidewalk villages where we picked up officials. Sometimes they had the Mayor handcuffed and blindfolded - a diehard.

On the bus Penny has her hands folded neatly on her lap, Old Tom is a few seats back. On the back of the seat in front of me is a magazine in a net pocket. Flicking thru I find a map of the English trail. Shaded contours behind the village show the ridge with the name we all know from the bulletins. Ridge, hardly a rise in the ground, behind the village of Oistruk. The terrain is stippled to show sandy, has written across it MINED. I looked for the famous river where they were always toing and froing, changing hands they called it. The set piece pontoon crossings under rockets everybody had to do - there it was, a pecked curve at the top of the page where the cliffs hung over the greasy stream.

A shadow, a plane flashes over then another low and heading straight on, their voices growl up my back. I stretch my neck to watch for smoke but there is none I can see. That was yesterday, today we're here in the guest lodge and told we're going to see the Indians over at the History Section. They haven't got everything they asked for, question of mules, but its pretty damn close to what it was. I nudge Penny in the side and she stirs. Old Tom is lying there without any covers, his skinny grey legs turn my stomach and it's my go to make breakfast.

Afterwards we go down to the Stores to draw kit for the Dug Outs. I say no to a telescope. Old Tom has a cap down over his eyes. They tell us about the gas masks so quickly I don't remember a thing. Penny has an Officers slicker with the belt cinched tight. Her eyes are popping and she is wearing her own hair for once. I've got the impression she's excited, off the leash. An old style Renault with narrow tires and a sloped down bonnet trembles and farts. We squeeze in and down we go, we'd no idea that there were trenches dug to take motors. It begins to rain; carelessly I hadn't taken the cape which had been offered me, rubber, officers for the use of - and the motor is an open one. I get wet through; there is every chance I'll be miserable before we're thru with this day.

The driver chunters on. Something to do with his CV, how long he has to do here and so on. He has flashing eyes and a beautiful pair of yellow dogskin gloves. Indian of course - he gives off a delicate smell of perfect chutney.

"These country boys we have down here now, you'll see them directly we arrive, they still have the old tongue and speak in sayings, you know...", he looked anxious, "...proverbs". I nodded and he relaxed again.

Peasant boys from the Doolong Hills at the Front. Never seen anything like it. Not that peasants don't know what mud and hard labor is, but it is the novel mixtures - mud with blood with brass fittings. The biplanes slicing along fifty feet up, their fat banging motors, the black fountains of earth and the blink of pass the point of no return shells. They have an absolutely front seat those Indian peasants, and the Chinese coolies throwing crushed rock all day long to help the thin tires grip on the mud - and what do they say about it? We tuned into the feeds, one by one,

"Winter...the hide fears the iron tongue ...the camel snarls when it sees its load"

" Shuttled off to the Grand Gayre in all khaki kit...ship train lorry dig stop tent chain am-bu-lance horse nurse face moon cloud rain gun-fire thun-der boot, shoe sock band-age blood knee, leg arm tum-my tom-my shit dog eat, stables pig juice chimney stove frenchie"

".All the sailors sang shanty shanty shanty, all the boulders up the hill carry carry carry...the Cypriot mule team gave us no peace, onto us all the time... sit in padded rags and goggles mildly drugged - dense and heavy"

"We humped tents from dawn all day long hundreds and by flambeaux long into the night. This morning I found the trunk of my amie his orifice (hole) was black and bloody"

" Butchery cattle from argentine piled up, brokers came out from Paris in their millionaire fedoras - we hollowed out cold stores, hospitals, rocks bursting with dead, with dying…for the beef, he waved, for the beef"

"Hooves clicking in the rain, the big greys skidding a little on the cobbles HUP! HUP! the squad of English riders bent forward at the waist push on by, hardly rocking in the saddle - we go on working eyes down"

The Renault turned a corner and we found the sturdy beggars stuck in place round a fire of sticks. We got down from the metal box; it stopped its clap trap and the chauffeur smoked. I registered the Indian's clumsy boots, puttees round the thin calves, their way of squatting. Evil smell all around. One of them a big chap, looked like a wrestler, fat face mustache,

"Hi, ciao", he said.

"You been here long"? I said, hands held behind my back and chest out in a way that felt important.

"Actually we're waiting for the relief. We've done our bit"

"What are you?"

"Training battalion, we go through, eighty ten ten they let all hell loose, then they count up and say what to do next, in a few steps they learn to kill us all"

"Yes they folded the scenery for us six times" chirped another, and they all laughed, asking to be loved, bad teeth and all.

They'd spent three weeks in the haunted house getting used to suffering before they even went out. They started with pin pricks like insect bites then a few small bangs like a box of matches and worked up to where one of them had a leg blown off. Then they let them out nice and jumpy. They couldn't keep their eyes off her, Penny. Eventually she sidled off with one of them to do some in and out. I couldn't believe it, just like that as tho they weren't real. She stood there by a hump of bricks with her officers mac wide open. He fiddled around a bit and she pulled her clothes up, he was massaging her breasts in big circles o o o o. He was doing long slow pulls, I could see it sliding backwards and forwards and the edge of her quim pouting with each stroke. The boy's pants were dropping slowly down, his bum clenching with each push. She looked towards me with silly round eyes, I turned away but I could still hear the Indian despite himself, shameless, accelerate and the sticky cough when he came.

I smoked a two rupee cigarette looking out into space. The nicotine hands came down over my eyes. I was so glad we were going back the next day. A Bobbin broke into the scene with provisions, floating over the lake of debris, trailing the yellow and blue flag. It cushioned out and, interrogating the Polish driver, I chose the dishes and set them out,

"Grubs up"

It wasn't like this at home.

But it got weirder - we hadn't been back three days when I got called in. I'd been advised when I took the screen monitor job at CereBose I might be asked to fill in elsewhere for absentees. I knew we pumped stuff to an outfit called Humfall. Their business was partly custodial and partly research. The name was printed in small letters here and there where you least expected it, one of the Giant Corporations. They were going to try me out for a few months I was told.