I zoomed in, and the dangling woman finally stretched for the rope.
‘See how her eyes flash?’ I said, looking up at you. You peered at the wall, then down at me.
‘Twitches?’ you said. ‘Flashes? This is what you want me to see? Facial expressions?’
‘No, no, it’s what’s happening beneath them that matters. Erta may be stronger than humans, Reed, and capable of reasoning far beyond their means, but those attributes have required sacrifice. An entire universe exists in your mind that cannot in ours, a place where possibilities and impossibilities exist without conflict, where fact and fiction walk hand in hand, and questions leap from others before they are even answered. And it all plays out upon your face. I’ve watched it for hours, like the first time you sang, or drew your pictures, or listened to those records, staring out of the window.’ I reached for you. ‘I miss watching you, Reed.’
You dodged my hand and walked to the wall. Now the mountaineer was scaling your back.
‘I always wondered what they were singing about on those records,’ you said, ‘or why I didn’t understand the words. They never made any sense, and I don’t feel any connection to this person. Or any of them.’
You turned, snatched the tablet and scrolled through it feverishly.
‘The only thing that makes sense to me is this.’
You jabbed at the screen and an image appeared on the wall of a small clearing in tall, dense trees. Iroquois, said the box in the corner, North American continent, 1718. A group of no less than fifty men and women circled a fire, naked. Some sat, smoking, some danced before the flames.
‘That,’ he said. ‘That’s the only thing that makes sense to me. None of the rest, none of the buildings, none of the cities or the senseless crowds swarming their streets, or the boats and planes streaming across oceans, or the factories, or the houses squashed together in rows, or the wires they strung up, or the cables they laid, or those buildings with strange symbols where they all knelt and bowed, none of their conversations, and none of the looks on their stupid dead faces. I don’t know any of them. I don’t know who they are.’
You threw the tablet at the wall, and the image flickered to white.
‘And I don’t know who I am.’
‘I do,’ I said. ‘You’re my son.’
You looked at me in disgust.
‘Whatever I may be, I am not your son.’
I bowed my head. ‘Reed.’
The projector’s buzz was cut through by a troubled whinny, and shouts from outside. Before I could stand, you had snatched the key from my neck and shot to the door.
‘Reed, wait!’
But you were already through it and out.
— FIFTY-SIX —
THE SQUARE WAS filled with Sundra, wearing little in the evening’s heat. They faced the watchtowers, where Caige once again sat upon his horse, this time accompanied by a much larger entourage.
You weaved your way through the crowd, making for the front.
‘Reed,’ I said, creeping after you.
Caige was talking to Payha and Jorne.
‘This is your last chance to comply,’ he said. ‘Give up the boy and join us.’
‘Or what?’ said Payha.
‘Or you resist the will of the council.’
You were halfway through the crowd.
‘Reed, come back,’ I said, keeping my voice low.
‘I thought there was no will of the council,’ said Jorne. ‘I thought all decisions were based on logic alone.’
Caige’s eyes narrowed.
‘Logic is the will of the council.’
‘No,’ said Payha. ‘The council’s logic is based upon their will to depart, but our will is different, Caige. You will not take the boy, and we elect to stay.’
Caige jumped from his horse, landing heavily before her.
‘Such decisions are not yours to make. I feel we have been very clear on this point.’
You were almost at the front now, darting between figures unseen.
‘Reed, please,’ I whispered.
Payha stepped up to Caige.
‘And we have been clear that we disagree with you. Caige, we are not hurting you. You said it yourself: we have diverged, and this is not a new phenomenon. Cultures, breeds, species, everything finds its own path sooner or later. Yours is up there—’ she raised her eyes to the deep blue sky, within which stars were appearing ‘—and ours is down here. So why don’t you let us be?’
Caige’s face was grim.
‘The erta are not a culture, or a breed, or a species. The erta are the fulfilment of a purpose, and not just the one we were assigned by our creator. We are the solution to a problem that evolution has struggled with ever since its first worms slithered from the mud.’ He leaned close. ‘How do we leave this murk? For you to stay would leave that question half-answered. In fact, it would be detrimental.’ He scanned the crowd. ‘Look at you all with your inked skin and matted hair. You’re becoming like them. It wouldn’t be long before you went the same way, multiplying beyond your means and squabbling over resources. You would ruin everything we spent our entire existence mending.’
Payha spoke softly. ‘We are not the ones carrying swords, Caige.’
Caige gritted his teeth and looked her up and down.
‘You pitiful beast,’ he said.
‘Leave her alone.’
I froze as heads turned. You had pushed through the crowd and now stood metres from Caige. A huge smile spread across his face.
‘And here he is.’
I broke through.
‘Reed, get back here,’ I said, beckoning, but you stood firm. Caige raised his eyebrows.
‘You don’t appear to have trained him particularly well, Ima,’ he said.
‘Why do you look down on him?’ I said. ‘Why do you delight in pouring scorn on him—on humans—when Nyström, your creator, was one?’
‘Not all humans were equal,’ said Caige. ‘And this one here is less equal than most. I have watched him. We all have. His head is slow and quick to anger, just like the majority of his ancestors.’
‘And your head is fat,’ you exclaimed. ‘Just like the majority of your midriff.’
The air filled equally with sounds of astonishment and amusement.
‘Why, you little—’
Caige made for you, but in two strides Payha had blocked his path.
‘Don’t touch him,’ said Payha.
Caige reached for his stick. ‘Get out of my way.’
‘No. I think it’s time you left, Caige. You’re no longer welcome here.’
‘Welcome?’ Caige drew out the stick. There was a gasp as he raised it, but Payha stood firm. ‘Welcome? I’ll show you welcome…’
‘Caige, no,’ said Williome, reaching from his saddle, but it was too late. With a shudder, Caige had swung, striking Payha in the side of her head with a blow that sent her flying into the western watchtower with a sickening crack.
She lay still upon the stone.
Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. Caige dropped the stick and stared at his shaking hand.
‘Payha!’ Mieko burst from the crowd and ran to her lover’s side.
Caige watched them for a moment, mouth open, hand still held aloft. Then he turned to the square.
‘By protecting the boy you are all complicit in this rebellion. There will be no escape, the lanterns will find you before the end. All of you.’
He turned to his shocked entourage.
‘Go,’ he croaked. ‘Back to Ertenea, now.’
With that he mounted his horse and the sound of a hundred thundering hooves disappeared into the forest, casting strange shadows in the trees.
When they were gone, you squirmed from my grip and ran to where Payha lay. Her head was cradled in Mieko’s hands.
‘Is she all right?’ I said.
Mieko looked up at you, her pale face stained with tears.
‘This is your fault,’ she said. ‘Your fault!’
&n
bsp; You staggered away, clenching and unclenching your fists.
‘What have I done?’ you said.
‘Reed,’ I said, ‘it wasn’t you.’
‘She’s right. It’s all my fault.’
‘Reed, please—’
‘I’m leaving.’
‘No, you’re not safe on your own.’
‘I’m not safe here either, and neither is anyone else. I shouldn’t even be here.’
‘Listen to me, you are not going anywhere.’
You turned to me.
‘Am I your prisoner?’
I said nothing.
‘Well, am I?’
‘No.’
‘Then let me go.’
It would not have taken much to stop you. But instead, I stepped aside.
You left, and I did not watch.
— FIFTY-SEVEN —
EVERYTHING SEEMED TO move slowly, as if time itself was in shock.
Payha was unconscious but still breathing, and Mieko carried her to her dwelling. Jorne and I followed, trying to help, but she shot us a look at the door that told us it was not needed. We backed away, leaving her to tend to her alone.
We walked the square, where the rest of the village were crouching or standing about in a daze, smoking pipes and staring at nothing. Caige’s blow had changed everything. Whatever threads that joined the Sundra to the rest of the erta were now broken.
‘We should go after him,’ said Jorne.
‘It won’t help.’
‘But it’s not safe out there.’
‘He’s not safe here either, just like he said.’
‘So you’re just going to leave him out there in the forest?’
‘What choice do I have? He won’t listen to me. I’ve tried to explain, tried to apologise, but he’s not interested. He wants solitude, and who am I to say he can’t have it?’
‘You’re his mother,’ said Jorne, stopping.
‘Am I?’
I continued walking.
‘Come inside, Ima,’ Jorne called from behind. ‘At least get some rest.’
‘No, I need to be alone as well.’
I wandered the square and found a corner, where I curled up and lay watching the figures, and their pipe smoke rise. Eventually I closed my eyes.
‘Reed.’
When I opened them the square was empty and bathed in spectral, coloured light. Time had passed, the moon was bright, and beyond it the Drift was streaming. Suddenly I had to find you, so I stood up and wandered into the forest.
Your scent made you fairly easy to track, and I found you on a long, wide precipice that jutted from the coastal cliffs three miles from the Sundra’s home.
You had built a fire, around which you had arranged a small circle of equal-sized rocks. I sat unseen upon the grassy clifftop watching you dance, naked, between them, as the stars wheeled above and the lights of transcendence streamed into the sky from the southern outcrop, like vapours, memories, or thoughts.
Time seemed suddenly so scarce.
IT WAS STILL dark when I returned to the Sundra. I found a half-drunk bottle of hurwein abandoned at the edge of the square, and took it to Jorne’s dwelling.
I sat on his bed, watching him slumber and breathing his scent. It was one I knew by heart, I realised—woodsmoke, grass, and seaweed, with a sharp tang of orange and stone running through it like sunlight in a dark room. I traced the line of his face with my fingertip, from brow to the ridge of his chin, and he woke, blinking.
‘Ima, what are you doing?’
I placed a finger on his lips and a cup of hurwein in his hand.
‘What is this?’
‘Drink it,’ I said.
‘Why?’
‘Just drink it.’
And he did, as I did with mine, in a single gulp.
I stood.
‘Ima, what is going on?’
‘Please stop talking.’
I removed my robe and stood naked before him in the smoky dawn light. Then, pulling back the blanket, I fell in beside him.
THIS THING, SEX—it is not what Haralia claims it is. It is not just the hunger in the fingertips, in the neck, and in the deep wells of pleasure south of the belly. It is not just limbs curling, muscles tightening, and blood rushing. Sex is not just pleasure, but pleasure’s shadow. The hunger and the heat bring with them the memory of frigid starvation. The touch of another’s body brings with it the opposite imprint; an empty space clawed at by a body alone.
That is why, upon the arrival—the sweet release to which you both swoop and scatter, like a sudden contraction of swifts at dawn—there are no laughs of joy, only screams of anguish as the light is wrenched from its darkness. This is what sex is: the exorcism of pleasure’s shadow.
And I think I could get used to it.
AFTERWARDS I FELL into empty sleep, free from processing, free from dream, just a hollow space where life had been. I woke at dawn feeling clearer than I ever had done, and left Jorne asleep in our tangle of sheets. The heat outside was less fierce, and the air carried traces of moisture, the beginnings of rain. The square was silent. There was nobody around, so I removed my robe and washed myself in the well water. Clean and re-clothed, I walked into the forest, making for your camp.
I found you huddled before the remains of your fire, staring into its embers. The once flat sea now shifted with unruly tides colluding, and a breeze blew drizzle across your matted hair. I stood on the opposite side of the rock circle.
‘What do you want?’ you said, not looking up.
‘Payha is all right,’ I said. ‘I thought you would want to know.’
You said nothing. Your body gave a twitch.
‘You’re cold.’
‘What do you want?’ you repeated, louder.
I paused, then slowly made my way around the circle.
‘You know, it wasn’t the filth I minded,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t that it took you two years to control your bowels, so I had to catch your faeces in an endless procession of blankets until you did. It wasn’t that you detested this process so much it occasionally made you soil yourself even more, and that this expungement more often than not ended up landing upon me. It wasn’t the relentless hunger at all hours, or your inability to perform the simple task of satisfying it without vomiting immediately afterwards. It wasn’t the fact that you could not communicate or even move around properly for the first three years of your life, when a foal will stand within its first minutes of existence. It wasn’t your noise, the scream that seemed to start when you were born and never truly stop. It wasn’t the sleepless nights that required me to walk a hundred miles of floorboard with you bawling into my shoulder while my neighbours grumbled and cursed me from the warmth of their trouble-free beds. It wasn’t that this meant I had to leave my home and live as an outcast. It wasn’t the days spent inside, alone with nothing but this wriggling, incapable, speechless, filthy thing for company, when my life before that point had been spent in flight.’
I stopped next to the rock upon which you sat. Still you would not look at me, though your eyes flickered about.
‘Do you remember doing these things?’
‘No,’ you mumbled.
‘Of course you do not. You only became truly conscious at three years old, so you needn’t look so hurt. Nothing is the same as it was a decade ago, or even a year.’ I paused. ‘Not even the erta.’
You tightened your ashward glare.
‘No,’ I went on, ‘I didn’t mind those things at all. It was what you did to me that I minded.’
This made you look.
‘Me? What did I do to you?’
‘You made me love you, and to this day I have no idea how you did it.’
You blinked away.
‘I don’t know what you want me to say,’ you said.
‘I don’t want you to say anything. I’m just trying to tell you that I never wanted this to happen either.’
‘You never wanted me, you mean.’
‘No,
I just never knew I wanted you.’
I took the rock beside you. The sea gained its momentum beneath with wild slaps of the rock.
‘Why do you do that thing upon the board?’
‘What, surfing?’
‘Yes. You spend hours in the sea and I have no idea why.’
‘I don’t know, it makes me forget, I suppose.’
‘What do you want to forget?’
‘You mean apart from the fact that I’m the only human being on Earth and that my whole life has been a lie?’
You gave me a sullen look, which I resisted.
‘You have not surfed since you discovered the truth. What were you trying to escape before?’
It was a long time before you spoke, though I sensed the words were already there, waiting.
‘Feelings,’ you said.
‘About Zadie?’
You gave a sharp frown. ‘No. I mean, yes, but not just them. Even before all this, I felt like I was different. Alone, or detached, or separate somehow.’ You looked out to sea. ‘It’s as if there’s something bigger that I can’t see, even though it’s everywhere, it’s all around me. In the rocks, in the trees, in the sky, the ocean, a huge and wonderful thing that I’ve been disconnected from, somehow. Hiking through the forest brings me closer to it. Same with surfing. It makes me feel connected again.’ Your face softened, but when you noticed me watching it hardened again, as if it had remembered your mood. ‘I don’t know. I can’t explain it.’
‘And you probably never will. I used to watch you though, paddling out, then sitting up and bobbing like a seabird, waiting for the wave to come. It seemed as if that part was just as important as the ride in. Correct?’
You nodded, lips pressed to your arms.
‘I tried to understand what it was you were feeling, but I couldn’t. All I could see were the equations playing out around you; the swirl of currents, the frequencies of the waves, the weight and shape of your board—it was all part of a system that could be predicted. If I wanted to, I may even be able to trace the suitability of a wave to your board and ability to balance all the way back to the presence of a catalyst at a particular point in the atmosphere.’
The Human Son Page 30
