When Binh opened his eyes a dim light shone through the overhead dome. Smoke filled the passenger compartment. A warning buzzer shattered his ears. The ship had held together, but it was now on fire. Binh unbuckled the belt and rushed for the door, which had been twisted open by the crash.
Seeing open sky, Binh jumped. He fell to the rocky sand, bruising his hip. A loud hissing erupted behind him; he thought of a fuel line spewing out on hot metal.
His knee throbbed as he crawled away from the air car. The dry desert air seared his lungs as he pulled his body over the rocks. He turned around and looked at the air car. The pilot’s head was scarlet against the cockpit windshield.
A concussion threw him against the side of an outcropping. He felt a scorching heat against his back. The air car was an orange ball of flame.
Binh walked. There was nothing else to do. He gauged the direction by the position of Caesar in the sky. His body trembled violently, but his mind was beginning to clear.
Sobrino had mentioned Camp Isolation. Binh had read about the place in some Council factsheet. It was an experimental bio-engineering station.
Binh shook his head; confusion clouded his mind again. What did Hussein and his cult have to do with Camp Isolation? Perhaps Hussein’s control of the Council was now absolute, and the camp was being readied for a changeover to human experimentation.
If so, Binh thought, I would make an unlikely candidate. He kept walking. Whatever went on there, Camp Isolation was his only chance. By his estimation, he was walking south. The Isolation Mountains were visible on the horizon. The camp was in the foothills.
Binh’s legs gave out as evening approached. His stomach was aflame. Sitting against a rock, he chewed on a piece of cactusspur. Its bitter moisture stung his throat.
Binh slept. In the morning, the chittering of fabers awoke him. A broad-chested saurian stood ten meters away, tearing flesh from a fresh carcass. The horizon was an orange glow. Stuffing a piece of meat in his mouth, the faber stared at Binh with golden eyes.
The carcass was a king gator. The skull was bashed in. Binh could not understand how the solitary faber had managed that. He staggered to his feet and leaned against a rock. Dizziness seized him. He would let the desert take him now. Above and behind him, he heard more chittering, and the sounds of pebbles falling. Three fabers stood widely apart, watching the hunter feast upon the kill. After he was bloated, they would go down one by one and take what they needed.
Binh stared at the mountains. Floating just above the desert sand, he saw buildings shimmering. He blinked his eyes, and the mirage disappeared.
He pushed his body away from the rock, staggering toward the faber and his carcass. The waiting fabers chattered loudly while the hunter squatted and watched him for a moment before slowly moving away.
Camp Isolation shimmered in the distance. He saw a line of fabers in khaki battle fatigues marching toward the mountains. A black-uniformed guard trotted beside them; his hup, hup, hup was loud in the stillness of the desert.
Binh followed them, walking toward the peaks.
2553 A.D.
The emerging nations drifted apart in their outlooks. There were small wars and large wars…
A small nation, Casca (peopled by descendents of Asiatic Earth colonists), drags the mercantile democracy of Dardania into support of its corrupt government.
Pindaria goes to the aid of the opposition shadow government…
War fabers, which by now have seen action in the earliest brushfire wars, increase their numbers into the millions…
—Hela Fenn, Psycho-Soc
Colonial Survey, 3300 A.D.
AMONG THE MOUNTAINS
by Jack Dann
1
The men sit on their woven mats in front of the village dinh and pray loudly as they wait for ghostly visitations and true signs from their holy ancestors. The silvery dinh is the oldest structure in the village, and is now used as a longhouse and meeting place for the various clans. Just as their ancestors have done, the men shiver in the night air, gabble, pray, inhale the dark effluviums, and watch the sky.
Like a rainbow, the ring arches across a sky afire with stars and meteors.
“And I will tell you the story again,” Vo Kim Lan says to the children who are playing on the mossy lawn that extends from the dinh to the pebble garden. The children giggle, smirk, laugh, make terrible faces, and wave their arms at him.
Because of his wrinkled face, the children call him Giay—the paper-man who can read and make up stories. He knows all the stories, and every year he makes up more. Every year he invents the world. He renames the gods and mountains and ghosts and demons and has a name for every star. He has renamed the evening star and claims that he can change the heavens with only words. He says that the mirrorlike glitterwings are holy because they are made of the same silvery stuff as the village dinh.
“It was on a night just like this that Tan Ming Hoang, the ruler of the world, called in his sorcerer and ordered him to construct a bridge to the stars,” Giay says. He pauses, shifts his gaze from child to child. “And do you know why he wanted such a bridge?”
“I do,” says a skinny twelve-year-old named Du. “Tan Ming Hoang was not happy with his world. It was not enough. He wanted Heaven too.”
“That’s right,” says Giay. “So the sorcerer destroyed the ruler’s finest palace and threw the broken pieces into the sky to make the ring you see in the sky tonight. Then he made a beautiful rainbow and told the ruler that it was the road to Heaven. The ruler left for Heaven immediately, but when he reached the sky, he found that he still couldn’t touch the stars. He had been tricked.”
“What then?” asks a young woman kneeling behind Du. She knows all the right questions. The ceremony is the same every year.
“When Tan Ming Hoang recognized his ruined palace, he let out a shriek and swore that he would kill the sorcerer.” Giay pauses, waiting for a proper question.
“But why didn’t Tan Ming Hoang kill his sorcerer?” asks Du.
“Because he could not return to the world, for the sorcerer had removed the rainbow which was the bridge to the sky. That is the reason you never see rainbows at night, only the ring. Without a rainbow, Tan Ming Hoang was stranded.”
“But he could have just waited for another rainbow,” Du says.
“Then he would have had to wait for daylight,” says Giay. “But have you ever seen the ring in the day? It is in the sky only at night. You see, the ruler could not return.”
“So what did he do?” asks Du.
“He waited, just as he waits now,” Giay says. “He’s still up there, looking down at us. He hates the world because he cannot have it. And he hates us. That is why he throws his stones of fire.” Giay points to a meteor shower. “Yet the world doesn’t burn.”
All the children sigh and make tssing noises, as they have been instructed to do, and Giay leaves them to the women who have prepared, a special feast for the solstice festival. The children will snack on banh tet and dua hau, delicious small cakes which are wrapped in mirror bush leaves and cooked over an open fire.
Giay has joined the men in prayer. They pray for the wandering souls of the dead. They pray to their ancestors and the beings who make the winds and rain. They ask for dispensation and then they recount the lives of the cross, all this to exorcise the ma quy—the evil souls responsible for bad crops, death, and sorrow.
It is altogether a supernatural night for both adults and children. It is a holiday of the fantastic where all thoughts and prayers and conversations are directed toward the holy ancestors and the invisible beings that crowd the air.
Bao Lam, a boy of fourteen who is now approaching his manhood, sits beside Giay and prays. He has left the place of his family to study and learn. For almost two months he has not touched the soil with his hands, has not done an errand for anyone but Giay, and—until tonight—has not even talked with his family. If he is to become a sorcerer, this will be the most important year of his l
ife.
So he watches and listens and prays. He tries to remember the names of all the ghosts, spirits, and demons that inhabit the days and nights. Although he has learned Giay’s stories and followed some of his magiks, Bao still feels like a baby and a know-nothing. But he understands that he must one day replace Giay as sorcerer, or the village will be taken by ma quy, all the crops will die, and his townspeople will be turned into the smoke dreams of demons and forest-ghosts.
Bao thinks it is only natural that he should become a sorcerer and follow Giay, for he was born during the equinox, on a clear night when the sky took a bite out of the ring and Charmian and Iras turned coppery red. Ever since he was old enough to understand, he has been told that his birth date was astrologically significant, for just as the ring had been broken, so would he be forced to undergo an uncertain trial.
As the men pray and wave their arms to the invisible spirits, Bao dreams of the outside world. He imagines that “everywhere” is just like the village, only inhabited by different peoples and spirits. But perhaps different magiks work in different places, he tells himself. Although he would like to venture outside the environs of his village, he is afraid, especially now that he knows Giay’s prayers and stories.
He knows that if he should have the misfortune to die outside of his village, his spirit would become ma guy. By leaving the sacred grounds of his ancestors, he would sever all ties to the world of men. He would deny his ancestors a future—and that, he thinks, would be a terrible responsibility to bear.
But he is curious about the great war—a concept which he does not completely understand. He also wants to know more about moi, those boys and girls who sometimes came into the village to preach about freedom and unity, the greater family, and the holy trinity of men and soil and state. Although moi always spoke in Bao’s language, their words were only words. He could understand the meanings of the words, but could not make sense of the general concepts.
‘Wake up,” says Giay, who is already standing. Iras has lifted into the sky. Our prayers are finished for now. Stand up. Were you sleeping with the spirits?”
His vision still blurred with sleep, Bao stands up and smiles at Giay. They embrace and then walk around, nodding and shouting with the people, as they wait for the women to stoke the fires and prepare the food. Bao tries to bide his excitement under a mask of indifference, for tonight men, women, and children will remain together. The feasting and talking and praying will continue until dawn banishes Tan Ming Hoang’s ring from the heavens. Tonight is a night for magiks and spirits. Bao can almost hear ghosts whispering in the wind and chattering in the fires.
“Dunk, dunk, dunk,” sing the children as they wave fish-shaped lanterns to ward off noxious spirits. They dance around a khanh, a small gong mounted on a thirty foot pole. Clay bells and colored glass tinkle, and the village becomes the center of the world. The ring and stars and meteors are merely the gaudy lights of the village reflected in the sky.
Bao follows Giay to the edge of the pebble garden where woven mats have been laid out for them. A pregnant girl with short cropped hair brings their food: rice covered with golden flowers, sour meats, porkplant, shed yolk, mooncakes, sugarseeds, chao gruel, bo-bread still hot and soggy, and candies that seem to bite the tongue. As tired as Bao is, he laughs and chokes down all his food. The ghosts and spirits. and demons are thick in the air tonight, he thinks, and they will be watching how he performs.
After the feast the men talk, then pray, then they retire to the pebble garden to commune with their ancestors. Bao follows like a dog on a leash. He feels awkward and unsure of himself, especially now that the men look to him to help lead the prayers.
“Don’t be afraid,” Giay whispers to him. “You are praying to the spirits and your ancestors. Don’t pay attention to the stares of old men.”
After glimpsing a ghost out of the corner of his eye, Bao leads the prayers with conviction. He shouts, waves his hands just like Giay, smiles, nods to the spirits, and recites all the prayers and proper singsongs. The night goes quickly. By the time Charmian is in the sky, the children are asleep with aunts, sisters, mothers, and grandmothers. They are all safely inside the dinh where washing bowls and morning wine have been set out on mats for the men.
The men are still praying and talking, although some of the oldest are nodding. But tonight the men must remain conscious to ward off the spirits and ma quy that would enter their mouths to take their souls. Bao fights sleep by staring at a bat quai, an intricate design painted on a piece of turned wood. His studies with Giay have been rigorous; there has been little time for sleep. As he plays with the wood, turning it over and over in his hand, he wonders when Giay ever finds time to sleep. Giay is an old man, Bao tells himself. Yet buried inside that old husk is a playful little boy. Bao looks into the concentric lines of the bat quai. He draws himself into the design. Imagines that his old age is buried inside him. And with his eyes wide open, he dreams of dragons and numbers…
The blaring of horns wakes the village.
Although the rest of the men entered the dinh at dawn, Bao and Giay are still outside singing the last prayers for ancestors and village spirits. It is early morning and Caesar is driving the purple shadows from the mountains. A few clouds scud overhead, as if trying to escape from the sun.
“Moi have returned,” Bao says to Giay, but the old man’s face retains its fixed expression. Bao watches as the noisy parade makes its way through the village. First come the boys and girls dressed in costumes of black and red. They wave flags and swing incense tapers back and forth. They are followed by other moi dressed in festival costume: a black dragon with green paper teeth and orange claws, a great fish with faces peeping out of its gill-slits, silvery sectos hung on the branches of walking trees, a king gator which cannot quite coordinate its movements, a hoplite wearing slippers, a hipposaur, and a big polypus with red paper tentacles. Then come young men and women who shout and smile and drop papers which bear the bat quai symbol. And then come the trumpeteers who are followed by fabers. The fabers dance and mimic the moi. With their short arms and strangely jointed legs, their iridescent scales reflecting the morning sun, and their great golden eyes, they look like human grotesques.
Bao imagines that the fabers are inhabited by demons, and he remembers what Giay had once told him: “Every man—and animal, too—might be driven by ghosts and demons. A demon can enter your mouth as you breathe. Once inside you, it will take your thoughts and force you to live in its dreams. So you must be careful, lest you yawn and find that ma quy has stolen your thoughts.”
“Why do moi parade for us?” Bao asks Giay who is tweaking his thin gauzy whiskers.
“The outsiders come to teach us their ways,” Giay says, picking up a piece of the moi’s yellow paper which a breeze has carried along the ground. “They think they can show us a new world by dancing about and dropping bat quay and singing the variations of the alphabet. But they think that their world is the real one. They think only their world produces correct dreams. Have you talked with mot’?”
Bao nods his head.
“Then you know that they have different dreams. We have no such need for dreams to guide our every action—the demons could do that well enough, if we let them. Their words and dreams are without meaning, just as they are empty. They are phantoms, shadows that can speak and withstand light.”
“Then what do they want with us?” Bao asks.
“They think they can change us and pull us into their dreams, Giay says. “But we will not take new things—new magiks—or we tear away our roots. And our roots are in this ground, not in the neverlands or shadows of the caves. Those other worlds cannot have meaning for us and, if you are to become a sorcerer; you must learn to make moi disappear. You must see through them, as if they were demons or ma quy.”
“But I can see them,” Bao says, watching a young woman dance about. She looks at Bao and smiles, then skips away.
“What do you see?” Giay asks.
“And you know that moi are only shadows. What do you hear?”
“I hear songs and shouts and horns and the clanging of bells,” Bao says.
“Tell me again what you really see,” Giay says as he doses his eyes, and Bao remembers what he has been told about the snakes of time and all the difficult paths to sight. So Bao counts and dreams of dragons and tries to find his own snake of time. He travels in circles, as if following the lines of a bat quay. Then he is outside of his seconds and minutes—he has found his snake and is peering into its dreams. The snake dreams of Bao. And, time crawls along very slowly.
“Now open your eyes,” Giay says. “What do you see?”
Bao laughs and says, “I see shadows.”
“And what do you hear?”
“I hear the tinkling of bellflowers and the buzzbuzz and tssings of sectos,” Bao says as he watches his neighbors leave the safety of the dinh and join the parade. Old men and women dance about, as if to the beating rhythms of their strong hearts. Children rush into the melée. They laugh and wave their arms. Although Bao can no longer see moi, he senses them as a directing force, a force which will quickly pass through the village and into some impossible world of dreams. Meanwhile, Bao sits and watches and smiles and yawns noisily for his ancestors who might seek passage into his soul.
“Now you can see clearly,” Giay says. “What you see with your eyes is not always real. Your mind can see much more clearly.” Then Giay stands and walks briskly toward the crowd of dancers. Villagers move out of his way, for he walks like Duc, the blind beggar who brings luck to any farmer who feeds him. Giay turns, both arms outstretched, and shouts for Bao to follow.
Reluctantly, Bao joins his teacher and prays that his eyes will not fail him by admitting false visions and shadows. “Why do we do this?” Bao asks Giay as they weave through the crowd. Bao tries to ignore the phantoms that dance beside him and disappear when he turns to look directly at them. He prays to exorcise the unseen monsters that jabjabb and chitter and sound like stormwinds soughing through windertrees.
A World Named Cleopatra Page 10
