A few minutes later, a caravan of people burst into view from the woods. There were about thirty of them. Some had chains on their necks linking them to each other. Others were walking unchained, bearing impossibly large bundles. Guarding this caravan were a few young black men—Barbadians, by the look of it. A Spaniard in white trousers and a panama hat was obviously in charge.
A twig cracked under Lee’s foot.
And just as suddenly, three Winchester rifles were pointed their way.
“We are Ocainas, not Huitotos,” Hagar called, coming out of the bushes, with Lee close behind.
Jimenez, the overseer, scowled suspiciously. He demanded to know if anyone had seen those two before. No one had. And indeed, they were not on his roster. “They will collect rubber,” he eventually growled. “Have them join the others.” Jimenez studied the girls. “You are in the employ of the Civilizing Company from this point on.”
They dragged the two and tied them with chains to the long line of downcast people.
Lee trusted Hagar. She doubted the alien woman would have allowed herself to be put in chains if she could not set the two of them free.
“Mayai,” barked one of the black guards and the column of enslaved people jolted into marching again. The chains swayed and clinked.
“What is this?” said Lee under her breath.
“Rubber boom,” said Hagar from behind. She transmitted, A few decades ago, word got around that the western fringes of the Amazon basin are lousy with rubber trees. She continued in a low voice, “Entrepreneurs and fortune-seekers set off into the steamy jungle, determined to cash in. Each of them laid claim to a particular sector, and the Indians residing there were to be an exclusive property of one claimant or another. In short order, a vast region of the rainforest along with its natives was divvied up.”
Hagar went on, “Armed with machetes, many thousands of indigenous Indians have been roaming the rainforest, gashing every rubber tree they sight. In their frenzied effort to extract all the rubber milk they can, they frequently cut the trunks so deeply that a vast number of the trees die annually. It is up to the Indians to feed themselves. If they meet the rubber quota, they may be given beads or a handkerchief. If they don’t, they get flogged until their bones are visible. Then as often as not, within a few days, the wounds putrefy, maggots burrow, and they die. Disease, mistreatment—by now well over half of the local population has died off.”
“Christ. They are decimating their own workforce.”
“And they are also decimating the wild rubber trees. So it balances itself out. When the boom was over in the twenties, the money went elsewhere.” The future belonged to plantations like the one we went through in Vietnam, Hagar transmitted.
Half an hour later, the column came to a halt. Members of a rival tribe confided with the Spaniard overseer that two children in his caravan were the sons of a local tuchaua, a clan chief. If they were to capture the leader, it amounted to augmenting the workforce by another hundred or two hundred people.
One of the Barbadian underlings confronted the children, demanding they reveal the whereabouts of their father. As they vehemently refused, a few of the guards grabbed them and suspended them in the air by their hands and feet. The kids screamed but to no avail. The Barbadians poured kerosene on the ground and started a small fire.
Blisters began to appear on the children’s skin. Lee looked away and tried to shut out the screams that tore her on the inside. Through the cries and sobs, the two children told their tormentors the location of the hideout. They were subsequently untied and ordered to lead the way.
Hagar and Lee learned that their father was Tiracahuaca, the head of the Aifugas clan.
After about half a mile of march, they reached a clearing. The armed black men rushed into a hut and took out the struggling clan chief along with his wife. Per the command of the Spaniard, two of the young guards held the woman by the hair, and, flinging her down, hacked at her head with machetes. It took them four blows to severe her head. The man with the panama hat grabbed one of the chief’s children by his feet and bashed his head against a tree. There was a sickening sound and Lee screwed her eyes shut, fighting vomit and nausea.
The slavers let the bereaving father hold onto the last surviving son, no doubt keeping the child alive to assure the chief’s cooperation.
Soon thereafter, the wind whipped up, and rain came pouring down. The guards yelled at the captives to keep walking. And so they did, slogging through the torrential rain and mud. One man who struggled and repeatedly fell was shot. Hagar was unchained and ordered to carry his bundle. She suppressed a sigh of relief that it was not Lee who was asked to cope with the heavy load.
After what felt like an hour, the rain tapered off, and moments later it stopped.
It was another half an hour of walk. Then without warning, they were out of the forest, marching in an open grassy area sporting a few small fields of cassava. They had arrived at Abisinia.
The station was comprised of a few buildings with thatched roofs and split bamboo walls. In a wide clearing in the center of the outpost, about two dozen men in white shirts and dark slacks milled about. Somewhere off to the side, some Indians were laying on the ground, their feet held fast in wood stocks, their body covered with weals. Some had bones exposed or had torn muscle tissue quivering jelly-like.
A handsome, lean man with trimmed mustache was studying the newcomers from the veranda of a large thatched house.
Who is this man? transmitted Lee.
This must be Abelardo Aguero, the section chief.
The Spaniard who had led the caravan made a peculiar gesture and pointed at Lee and Hagar. The man on the veranda looked them over and shook his head in reply. Their transformed figures were not attractive enough for the harem.
One of the black Barbadians walked up to them and removed Lee’s chains. “Listen to me,” he told the two. “You are to come back here in ten days. Each of you is to have at least ten kilos of rubber.” He fetched a clipboard and wrote down their names.
This was the moment Hagar was waiting for. They were in Abisinia and free to walk about unmolested. Let’s slink out of sight, and I will open from here the gateway back to the present, to the real Earth, transmitted Hagar and started to walk away, Lee dutifully following her.
“Commence weighing the rubber,” called out the Peruvian chief section to the crowd of Indians and his dozen staff members. As he bounded down the wooden steps, several cadaverous-looking dogs rushed out to greet him.
“Is there no meat for them?”
“No, chief,” said one of the guards.
The head of Abisinia quickly walked down the row of cowed Huitotos and finally saw a child. This was Coyu, the surviving son of Tiracahuaca.
With great force, Aguero wrested the small child away from the arms of his father. He flung the yelling boy on the ground and shot him dead. Three underlings commenced hacking the child’s body to pieces with machetes and tossing them to the dogs.
The father howled in fathomless sorrow and outrage and bolted forward. His screams were cut off when a bullet lodged in his heart. Aguero snapped the revolver smartly back into its holster.
In the distance, Hagar stopped in her tracks, a mask of murderous rage on her face. A few paces away, Lee was lapsing into a state of trauma, her body shutting down, eyes glazing. Hagar took a few quick strides and clapped loudly in front of Lee’s face, yelling her name until the other woman focused. “Take it,” commanded Hagar and thrust a machine pistol along with a few magazines her way. Lee nodded and took them.
The air rippled. And Hagar metamorphosed, regaining her true form. Attired in a dark-gray outfit, she was now holding a ten-gauge shotgun, making her way back and accompanied by Lee. Over her shoulder was slung a submachine gun.
She cocked the shotgun without slowing down.
Aguero swung around at t
he loud, unmistakable pump-action sound, and his eyes widened in disbelief.
A sound like a clap of thunder, and a part of his head exploded.
Before the shotgun hit the ground, Hagar had the submachine gun in her hands, and Lee was at ready.
They poured the fury and anguish of the last few hours in a hail of lead. As they have fired off hundreds of bullets, they looked like avatars of vengeance. A few of the slavers managed to raise up their rifles but were mowed down before they had a chance to take aim. A few survivors turned away and tried to flee only to get shot in the back.
In less than a minute it was over. Every staff member of the Abisinia station lay dead on the ground amid spent shell casings and the acrid smell of gun powder.
Calmly, Hagar walked over to the stocks. A burst of gunfire, and she pulverized wooden boards and hinges, freeing the captives.
Weapons collected and put away in the invisible storage unit, Hagar surveyed the scene with a somber expression. But then she spun around. About twenty yards away, a part of the world disappeared, and a window into another rapidly grew. On the other side of the looking glass, a Ford Model B touring car came to a screeching halt by the side of a narrow country road. Its occupants—a man and two well-dressed women—goggled at the impossible sight of dead people and mangled, flogged slaves in some remote tropical forest.
With a sudden reckless abandon, Hagar picked up a huge bundle of rubber. “Compliments of the Peruvian Amazon Company,” she hollered over the hysterical screams of the two passenger women. “Hope you like the tires; it was paid with the families of others.” She threw the bundle in a wide arc. It flew in the air and entered the other ripple and knocked over the driver, sending him sprawling onto the ground.
There was a loud rending sound and an implosion. The view of the other reflection winked out.
All the Indians fled into the forest in terror.
“What happened to being careful with the reflections?” shouted Lee as she ran toward Hagar, clothed once again and manifested in her own body.
“Fuck it,” said Hagar.
“Since when do you care about a mirage and people who died long ago?”
They both shared a quick, grim smile and embraced. “Hopefully our disappearance will be enough to allow the reflection to heal itself and hold on for a while longer, letting the local people of this ripple—whatever they are—know freedom once again.” And resume raids on neighboring clans, kidnapping women and girls, selling some of them to the Spaniards, Hagar thought but chose to keep that last to herself.
She raised her arms, took a deep breath, and concentrated.
After a few seconds, a glowing slash appeared in the air a few feet above the ground. “Here is our ride.” Hagar gestured to the expanding rift, where smoke and soot and heat billowed out of. “Brazil, on the actual Earth, 2013, southeast of our present location. We must hurry.”
The rift widened further, and from the real Earth they could see a pall of thick smoke emanating from dozens of brick domes with dark figures, sneezing and hacking, moving in between the ovens and ashen tree stumps.
Lee stared. “What the hell is this place?”
“What does it look like?” Hagar said, more harshly than she intended. “It’s one of the charcoal-making camps in the Amazon.”
Some of the enslaved Brazilian men became aware of the gaping rift and stopped to stare in wonder at the improbable sight.
Hagar glanced around. The fabric of the reflection they were in was unraveling fast. “Let’s make a dash for it,” she commanded. And the two women sprinted toward the rift opening. Finally, thought Hagar. The idea blazed in her head. Finally, she would do what she had set out to do in Egypt, 1937. The moment her feet hit the ground on the real Earth, she would form a rift out of this planet, notify the three gods, and convene a hearing.
On the real, present-day Earth, all the Brazilian slaves cried out suddenly. Even from a distance, Hagar and Lee could see their eyes glazed over, their facial muscles forming a peculiar, disturbing expression. As one, the Brazilians ran toward the rift opening, screeching, and commenced hurtling at the two women thick branches, big stones, and baskets filled with smoldering charcoals.
Hagar stopped and grabbed Lee on the edge of the narrow chasm of the black void between the two worlds. Shock was painted on her face as she stared wide-eyed at the screeching slaves on the other end of the abyss. She shot a fearful glance at Lee. “Something is very wron—” Her words were cut off as a large branch hit Hagar on the side of her head and knocked her off her feet. She fell into the black chasm between the two realms, dragging Lee with her.
The howling of the men, the rending of the world, smoke and soot—all abruptly vanished. And replaced by a total silence of the black void.
Chapter 12
“Hagar, Hagar!” Lee called, panicked.
From somewhere next to her, Hagar groaned. “We are in the void. Hush.” She was losing consciousness and made a concentrated effort to remain awake. Then she felt the presence of something. She grunted with the exertion but managed to mentally latch on. The tug became more pronounced as they entered the far-off gravity-like well. And just as suddenly, they’ve left the void.
The two women fell and tumbled a few times on a dark ground.
Lee woke with a start. Under the moonlight, at a distance, she caught sight of a hulk of a man, perhaps nine or ten feet tall. He gave a gleeful roar, barreling their way.
“Hagar! We’ve got to go! A Godzilla guy is coming toward us—and awfully fast!”
“What?” Hagar said, groggily. “Where are we? Are we out of the void?”
Lee felt fear welling inside her. She heaved the other woman onto her feet. Hagar took stock of the situation, her eyes widening in disbelief. “What the bloody hell…” Whatever and whoever the giant was, he didn’t look like the kind of person she could reason with. She was too emotionally spent for a fight and was not going to use a gun on him—but as a last resort. She turned to Lee. “Come. Let’s see if we can lose him!”
The two women sprinted in the dark toward what appeared to be a series of buildings in the distance.
“What is this place?” Lee called out.
“I wish I knew,” hollered Hagar. “Anyway, it’s better than being on Earth.” She had no chance to reflect over what she had seen there in those last few moments before they plunged into the void. But what she had seen shocked her to the core.
Ahead of them, under the moonlight, the dark shapes took on the form of a desolate town with a massive structure looming high. When they neared the gaping arch that undoubtedly functioned as the town’s gateway, the giant was but fifty paces away. They crossed it and without pause raced toward the tall, dim edifice in the center. The large man stopped at the gateway and gave a howl of rage, obviously unwilling to go in and continue the pursuit. He stood still for a long while and at last turned back on his heels and trudged away.
“Lucky us,” observed Lee, out of breath.
“Or not. You’ve got to wonder what the big boy finds so scary in here.”
Lee made a dismissive gesture. “This place is abandoned. Long abandoned.” She gestured for emphasis at the barren alleyways and the structures with mounds of sand piled on all sides.
The sound of their footsteps was drowned by the stir of the wind and the soft whirling sand.
“My God,” said Lee, “this…man made me feel as small as a grasshopper.”
Hagar turned and stared at her.
Lee frowned. “I don’t know where that came from.”
“A stray thought,” Hagar mused. “But not yours.” Finally, she shook her head and resumed walking.
“A ziggurat,” said Hagar and abruptly stopped. “See?” she added, pointing dead ahead at the massive, pyramidal structure with multiple ramps with stairs leading from one story to the next.
Lee
shot an inquiring glance at Hagar. “Have you seen this place before?”
“Seen? No. No, I haven’t.”
“Well, you act like you have.”
“No, that’s not it,” said Hagar, the strain in her voice was evident. But she would say no more.
A beam of light lit the very top of the ziggurat. The two women exchanged a glance and moved forward as one. They both sensed that some answers lay there.
From up close, the ziggurat’s walls resolved themselves to many small bricks framed by a black, tar-like substance.
About fifteen minutes later, they reached the top of the structure. Up high, the wind blew and wailed without letup. In the gloom of the night, a single slab of stone was illuminated under a narrow, silvery beam of light. Hagar walked over and examined the inscription on it. A low moan escaped her lips, and she sank to her knees.
“What is it? What does it say?”
Hagar looked up at her companion, her face bleak and pale under the white light. “It says: ‘Lest others follow in their footsteps and seek to aspire too high, I have scattered the people of Shin’ar who plotted to reach heaven.’ It is signed ‘El Shaddai.’”
“Who is El Shaddai?”
“You probably know him by his other alias, Yahweh.” She got up and for a moment rested a hand on Lee’s shoulder. “This is the City and Tower of Babel.”
Lee’s face drained of color. “You suggest that…that we stumbled onto the Tower of Babel? I thought it is a legend.”
“It is a legend—on Earth.”
“What are you saying?” Lee asked in a low, strained voice. A cold knot formed in her stomach.
Hagar was peering at the dark horizon. “Did you ever read the creation story in Genesis? How, raqi’a, a solid expanse, sectioned off the bodies of water, some above it and some below it? And later, during the Flood, God opened the casement windows of heavens and let out torrents of water?”
Lee fought off the dawning realization and clung to hope, against all odds. We cannot be in— No, this could not be! She faced Hagar. “Did it not also state in the Bible that God has storehouses of snow and hail reserved for days of battle and war? As I see it, either God held erroneous notions about the way the physical world operates, or the very human Bible authors did—which for me was one of the best refutations of the Bible’s inerrancy and divine origin.” Lee’s voice got louder and more urgent. “There was no God, only people, ignorant people at that. These are nothing but legends!”
The Earth Hearing Page 11
