Anti-Aircraft Guns
A mistake.
A blatant one. Why had I gone soft again? Company really was better avoided.
I never even noticed when he left.
When Mr. Woo had gone, and where, was none of my concern. The problem was that I hadn't noticed him leaving at all. It meant I had let the tension go. If he had meant to kill me, I would have died without so much as a twitch.
Of course, I had known he wasn't the sort to do me harm. I had shown him openings more than once to confirm it, and if he had wanted me dead, last night had hardly been his only chance. That did not excuse how slack I had let my mind become. The nightmares that started after Gyeongsu, the companion who had walked with me, died—and on top of those, the screws that had worked loose while I traveled with old Mr. Woo. This was the moment I remembered, once again, what kind of person I actually was.
I suit being alone.
That was also why a Postman fit me better than a hunter or a soldier. The surest way never to watch one of your own die was to have no one who was your own.
Just in case, I went through my belongings piece by piece, cloth rustling under my hands. Nothing had been stolen. No harm done, so that was enough for now. The self-reproach ended here. Excessive soul-searching only burned mental strength, and I could not afford to spend calories—after eating expensive rations—on some trite little vow to do better from now on.
I stepped out of the ruined building into a sky so clear there wasn't a cloud in it. I hadn't been able to tell in the dark, but AAA was close enough now to see with the naked eye. It would still take about ten minutes of straight walking to arrive, yet the settlement's landmark was unmistakable: the anti-aircraft guns mounted along the top of the wall. Those guns had decided the settlement's name—an abbreviation of the English for anti-aircraft gun.
Anti-Aircraft A……
AAA, anyway.
What stood on the wall were modified Oerlikon anti-aircraft guns, the kind the national army had used in the previous age. They had been taken from the military along with tens of thousands of purpose-made shells. The people who founded the settlement had been soldiers to begin with.
An armed desertion, the whole unit of them.
Anti-aircraft guns were weapons for shooting down airplanes, relics of the era before. Which was to say they were weapons that had lost their original purpose. A plane was a thing that gulped fuel like a madman and never earned its keep. In the old days, they said you could strike oil just by digging, so people could afford to put contraptions like that in the sky. Dig now and all that came up was bone.
Nothing, though, said a weapon made for planes could not be turned on people. They had modified the guns' traverse until the barrels ringed the settlement on every side, and the effect had been certain. In the end the government itself gave up on putting them down. A war of attrition would have been enough to crush the place, if the government forces had been willing to bleed for it—but the losses would have outweighed the gains. Even so, these were people who could become a suppression target the moment they rubbed the government the wrong way. That was the insurance I was counting on.
Mishandle even a lowly servant, and the master comes running.
A Postman's master, in other words, was the state.
"Halt."
The word boomed out through a loudspeaker. A sentry on the wall had spotted me. All I had to do was what I always did: grip my identification and lift both hands high. In truth it was enough if the Postman's armband and bag were wiped clean enough to show. Those read clearly even from a distance.
"A Postman?"
"As you can see."
Five sentries stood along the top of the wall. Judging by the size of the settlement, there were at least three hundred people inside. Over their heads sat a heavy, thick metal roof meant to stop air raids. There were probably dozens of hatches in the middle of that roof, opened by hand, so that daylight could be let into the settlement. Sunlight, by day.
"Air-raid warning, or mail?"
The sentry in a military uniform spoke in a blunt voice. Years must have passed since they deserted, and they were still wearing the uniform. Did they still think they were soldiers?
"If it were an air-raid warning, you think I'd have come to tell you?"
If an air raid smashed them flat, the government would be grateful. A win they didn't have to lift a finger for.
"Fair point."
"Deliver one letter, and my work is done."
"Is that so. Then allow me to introduce my work."
A dull mechanical whine. The anti-aircraft guns on the wall slowly turned their muzzles toward me. One of them didn't move—broken, maybe. No one was stationed at it.
"We don't accept mail, errand boy. Get lost. Now."
"This one, that one—mail-haters, the whole lot of you."
"Using fancy words doesn't change a thing."
As expected. The reaction of settlements that had chosen to cut themselves off from the outside. They neither sent mail nor received it. Self-sufficient, so they had no interest in exchanges that might bring trouble down on them.
"Errand boy. Last warning. I will fire."
All right. Time to start poking properly.
"Hmm. Be my guest."
"……What is that attitude? Giving up the record would be wiser than giving up your life."
Only the sentry in the middle kept opening his mouth. The rest stood without so much as a twitch, holding their posts. The one talking to me was probably the highest-ranked among them.
"You don't know much, do you. Who said giving up easily was wise? Everyone still scraping by in a world like this is alive because of a will that wouldn't bend."
"A man also has to know when to quit, depending on the situation. You don't know that, which is why you'll be an errand boy your whole life."
"Aha. So that's why you quit the army and deserted, too?"
A shame the distance kept me from reading his face properly. It was surely twisted.
"……Get out. Now. This really is the last warning."
"Really?"
"Really."
They did love a last warning.
"For real?"
"For real."
"Truly?"
"……Truly. Your attitude is thoroughly insolent."
He was never going to fire that easily. Waste shells just to deal with one Postman who wasn't even a threat? Handle business that sloppily and his commander would tear him apart. No one manufactured shells to anti-aircraft specification anymore. Perfectly natural, in an age without airplanes. They still had the enormous stockpile they had made off with when they deserted, but even so they had to hoard every round. In ordinary times, then, the anti-aircraft guns were closer to ornaments for manufacturing fear than to weapons.
If he truly meant a killing threat, he would pick up something smaller.
For instance—
"This is the real last warning."
A metallic click.
Yeah. That.
"Well, well. A service rifle. Got ammunition?"
"Won't need much. One round is plenty for the likes of you."
So a single shot would finish it, and the ammunition wouldn't sting. Now I could feel a sliver of sincerity. The fact remained, though, that he had no particular reason to kill a Postman. He would not shoot over something minor.
Knowing all of that in your head was one thing. Point a muzzle at a person and they still flinched. That was why he made threats like this. In practice, they almost always worked. And people with livers that small lived their lives taking the loss—like Kim-ssi, who had failed to use his Core when it counted.
I was different.
"Now it actually feels like a threat. You could have been this good from the start, you know."
"……What are you so sure of, running your mouth like that?"
I had needled him enough. Time for the next step.
"Well, I don't particularly want to die, so I'll just leave the letter here and go."
"I said we don't take it. You deaf?"
"You're the deaf one. I'm leaving it on the ground. Don't you get what throwing it away and walking off means?"
"Don't pull that crap."
He closed one eye and settled into a proper aim.
"This is outside that precious settlement of yours. What does it matter what I throw away out here?"
"A cheap trick."
"What, afraid the letter's a booby trap? Look at it. It's a genuinely thin letter. There's no room in there for a bomb."
"There might be a virus in it."
"You've been reading too many novels."
"I don't like novels."
"That's harsh."
"……?"
In the brief moment his tension eased, I drew the letter quickly from inside my coat.
"Anyway, I'm leaving it right here."
"Fuck—put it away already."
"Shut up. I'm dumping it, so do what you want."
I tossed the letter any which way. Before it even touched the ground I turned, and—
"You little—"
Finally, a reaction.
"You think I don't see your game? Dump it like that, go back to headquarters, and report that you delivered it properly. That's the plan, isn't it?"
"Who knows."
"It's obvious. Sizing you up from the way you talk is nothing."
I had been needling him all this time in the hope he would think exactly that. A delinquent Postman.
"Errand-boy bastard. You go back without a token that the mail was received, and it won't count as a record. Planning to forge the token, aren't you."
Hooked, nice and clean.
"God, you're noisy. I'm leaving exactly the way you bitched at me to, so what's with the meddling? Whatever I say when I get to headquarters is my business."
For a delivery to be recognized as a completed record, a token was mandatory. Proof the recipient left with the Postman to show the mail had been received. It did not have to be an object. Sometimes a simple signature, sometimes a phrase that served as a code, sometimes even a reply to the mail itself—there were all kinds of ways to leave a token. Whatever it was, it only had to be something the sender would trust.
"Errand-boy bastard……"
"I'll be going, then. Handle it yourselves."
"……Wait."
There it was. He could not let me leave like this.
"The country's in this state because of corrupt civil servants like you. You hear me?"
"Oh, now you're willing to treat me as a civil servant? Look at me. Moving up in the world."
"Pull a stunt like that and get caught, and you'll be fired from the Postman service."
"Then I just won't get caught."
"You think it'll go the way you want?"
"You going to report me? Sir Deserter?"
The sentry bit down hard.
"……Just stay right there for now."
He gave a few hand signals to the other four, then disappeared below the wall. The four under orders immediately trained their muzzles on me, but I wasn't particularly tense. One of those signals had surely been don't fire.
A moment later, a clatter started beyond the small door set into the wall. Getting ready to come out, by the sound of it.
Going smoothly.
He wasn't coming outside because he couldn't stand to watch a corrupt Postman pad a record. It was thoroughly for their own benefit. If I went back to headquarters and falsely reported a successful delivery, things would get messy.
Word would get out that a delivery to AAA had succeeded.
Then Postmen would start showing up all the time. This same hassle, over and over. Quite a few people wanted to send mail to AAA—family and other close relations living somewhere else.
In truth, the people here were probably curious about news of their families too. But once they started receiving word from family one by one, the declaration that they would have no exchange with the outside would lose all meaning. So the AAA lot gritted their teeth and refused every contact.
The families outside thought differently. The moment they heard that delivery to AAA had become possible, they were ready to send letters whenever they liked. And if I went back carrying news that I had succeeded? Mail would come hammering down like rain.
In the end, the key was in the hands of a delinquent Postman who would not hesitate to file a false report.
A thick steel door groaned open, and he came walking out, wary to the bone.
Good. I've got him out this far. Get the body close, and the heart opens.
He was limping on one leg. An injury that hadn't healed, by the look of it.
"Pain-in-the-ass bastard…… I'll accept the mail. There's a condition."
"Let me guess. Report to headquarters that the delivery failed. In exchange, you'll compensate me enough that I won't miss the record. That it?"
A so-called illegal delivery.
"……And shut the mouth of whoever sent the letter. Tight. If you understand, put both hands high over your head and take ten steps back. Get away from the letter."
I raised both hands. Stepping away, though—that I could not do.
"Stepping away is a bit of a problem."
"Don't get clever. You think I came out with no insurance? From here on out, the entrance to the underground bunker we've hidden, and the traps, are packed in everywhere."
"Prepared quite thoroughly, haven't you. Thing is, the condition of delivery is that it be handed directly to the person concerned. You touching the letter is a problem."
"Directly? Who's the recipient?"
I told him the name written on the envelope. A woman's name, to anyone's eye.
And then he let out a heavy sigh and shook his head. At the same time he raised an index finger and wagged it from side to side. A wordless signal: no.
In that same moment my pupils widened. Not because of the refusal. Because of the peculiar way he had moved while shaking his head and working that finger. A distinctive sense of rhythm. Familiar.
Hip-hop? Someone who knows a little of the classical culture?