Deserts of Fire

by Douglas Lain

  The crew came in to fetch us. They wore blue dress uniforms and carried flight suits for all of us: heavy coats and pants, big enough for us to put on over our own clothes. I hadn’t heard a plane come in, so I didn’t know what to think. I put on the flight clothes and I got up and limped around while the rest of them chatted and the crew loaded freight and hauled luggage. Drak talked enough for the entire group, and I couldn’t tell which of the passengers he already knew and which he had just made into his friends by force of will and volume. Once he got going his voice made the leaves flicker under the sunlamps.

  We lined up by the boarding tunnel, and I wanted to ask Drak where we were going, but I was distracted. I don’t know if it was the heat, or something in the air. There were things living in the terminal, and not just bugs. Every time the ferns started to sway I forgot where I was.

  When the crew took us outside it was so dark I was near blind, but there was a rounded haze of light near the hangar. After a few steps I realized it was a blimp. Zeppelin, they called it. The Imperial Dragonfly. I’d never ridden in a zeppelin before, but that didn’t make me all that nervous. I was thinking Goodyear; I didn’t remember the Hindenburg until we were in the air.

  It was cramped. There was a stenciled sign in the passenger cabin that said it would hold ten, but even with seven we were all touching knees. Drak made sure I got a window seat. I could have asked him then, but with everyone right there it felt stupid to admit that I’d come all this way without knowing where I was going.

  Drak got quiet as we got aloft and then flew north. You could hear everyone holding their breath. My leg was hurting, too, the one that wasn’t there.

  The frozen sea was just another shade of black underneath us. The flight suits kept most of the cold away, but I could see my breath by the glow of the safety lights. One of the other passengers took out a bottle of vodka and passed it around. I took a swig; it burned going down. After a while the bottle came around again. I started measuring time by the swigs. Two swigs, and I was aware of the crew’s voices coming muffled from the cockpit, metal creaking in that keeping-you-safe kind of way, the breath whistling through somebody’s nose. And underneath all that, the engine throbbing and pushing us up and forward. Three swigs and I was picturing Innes lying naked on top of me, the two of us warming each other with our skin while packs of hyaenodons lazed in the sun outside. Four swigs, and my inner ear told me we were listing to the left, then the right, then tipping forward. I held on to my good leg and took deep breaths.

  The bottle was gone when I saw a light through the cockpit window. It was distant and bright, like we were going through a tunnel, and I realized that was exactly what we were doing. It must have been half a mile around. I could make out the outlines of it, ice and snow sparkling from rocky crevices. As it got brighter I saw little streams of water flowing in the direction we were traveling—even the streams on the ceiling of the tunnel were flowing forward, not down. I thought the vodka was going to do the same thing until we climbed out of the tunnel and the gondola filled with sunlight.

  Sunlight and applause. We straightened out above a glacier-blue body of water and crossed its shores into ripples of green. Green like grass bleeding on your clothes, or the corona that white light creates around a Christmas tree. It looked like we were passing over a rainforest, but from the blue sky outside every window I found it hard to believe that it ever rained here.

  All the tension had gone. Drak slapped me on the chest and welcomed me to Pellucidar.

  That was the first time I’d ever heard that word, Pellucidar, and I told him so. He said that wasn’t unusual. A surface man named Edgar Rice Burroughs had written about the place some years ago, but no one had taken him very seriously. I asked Drak why not. I still remember exactly what he said.

  “Your science,” he said, “would have it that the center of the earth is a core of molten rock, that creatures such as dinosaurs and ground sloths and saber-toothed tigers are all extinct. As you can see”—he motioned out the window—“your scientists are wrong about all of those things. The inside of the planet, five hundred miles beneath the crust you live upon, is hollow. At its center hangs a warm and ever-shining sun, much smaller than the one which travels your sky, but not less life-sustaining. More so, in fact, for it illuminates not only massive amounts of vegetation but also millions of species of animal, from the insect hordes to megafauna of sorts which your world knows only as scratches in the fossil record.”

  He gave his little speech with an expression that said he knew I wouldn’t believe it. I pretended not to. I raised my eyebrows at him and I frowned. The truth is, I was excited by what he’d told me, but I didn’t want to be taken in by some elaborate joke. So I didn’t ask questions, and Drak didn’t say any more about it.

  I was thinking about dinosaurs. Man, when I was a kid, that was all I ever thought about. I used to sleep with a plastic stegosaurus. I’d wake up with the plates imprinted on my stomach. I had a pterodactyl that looked kind of like you, too. That’s what we called them back then.

  Everyone in the Dragonfly was talking now, some of them in English but some in a language I didn’t know. I mostly stared out the window, even thought it was pretty much just huge trees on rolling hills. There was a river running through the rainforest, but it was hardly visible through the canopy. It was … well, you’ve seen it, I guess. Before, I mean.

  We were over the rainforest for a long time. When we turned away from the river’s course towards some mountains, the trees started to clear, and I caught a glimpse of something moving through the brush—something big and green with a scaly tail.

  One of the crewmen came back and started collecting the flight suits, hanging them in a closet at the back of the cabin. It was tricky, pulling off those pants in close quarters, but it was a relief, too; it was starting to get warm in the cabin. Drak was down to shorts again in a flash, and none of the others were wearing much more, even the woman. I was sort of distracted by that, and by trying to get my own suit off over my artificial leg. By the time I had it all sorted out we were a lot closer to the mountains. The peaks were sort of grainy and distant, but on a plateau ahead there was a city. Stone buildings that looked like cakes: some were layered like sheet cakes, others were round and stacked like wedding cakes, painted in greens and yellows and reds.

  We flew right over the city. Most of the buildings had courtyards at their center, and the roofs surrounding them were dense with gardens with gardeners wearing what looked like fur coats. We landed in an airfield just beyond the city. A half-dozen men came out of a hangar to secure the lines, the crew extended the staircase, and we climbed out.

  The sun here isn’t that different. It’s a lot closer, so it looks about three times as big, but it’s just as warm. It’s everything else that’s different: the plants, the animals, the people. The days. I mean, there are no days, just sleeps and storms. How do you count the hours in a day that never ends? Sometimes I feel like I’ve been here for a year, and then sometimes it’s like a couple of weeks. I think it’s making me a little bit crazy. Yesterday—before my last sleep—I had a bad episode. Like a panic attack. When Innes left I was glad at first, because I thought we needed a break from each other. I wanted some time to take everything in. But after she left I went back to the cabin and I started to feel like I needed to hide. I wanted night to come, but I knew it wouldn’t. So I shut the curtains and I crawled into the bed like it was a torpedo tube, like it could launch me into someplace dark and quiet. I pulled the sheets up over my head and wound them around me tight and eventually I stopped hyperventilating and my heart slowed down to normal and I fell asleep. As soon as I woke up I came over here.

  It wasn’t bad right away, being in Pellucidar. I mean, it was good, then. Innes met me at the airfield wearing a white skirt and a sleeveless shirt and she was so beautiful. I hate to admit it, but I’d been a little afraid she wouldn’t show up. We hugged and she kissed my chin and said the weather was nice and maybe we sh
ould walk to the house. The sun felt so good that I said yes. I shook hands with Drak, and he invited me to visit his ranch. His voice had gotten sort of quiet—quiet for him, at least—when he saw Innes, and at one point he sort of bowed to her, but I figured he was just one of those guys who overdid it around pretty girls.

  Innes offered to get a porter for my luggage, but I just strapped the duffel bag over my shoulder and we started walking. It was kind of a stupid macho thing to do, because I was sweaty before we’d left the airfield, but I’d done it and I wasn’t going to back off it already. Innes didn’t tell me I shouldn’t.

  I don’t know if you’ve been to Sari. For all I know that’s where you dropped that bomb. It’s a beautiful city; it feels like it’s been there for centuries. The stone is … I mean, it’s all stone. Where I come from most of the houses, at least, are made out of wood or brick. Sari feels more permanent than that. It would feel heavy if it weren’t for all the green. Vines on the buildings and trees along the streets. Flowers on the roofs and in the squares. Plants anywhere the sun is shining, which is just about everywhere. It’s always high noon down here, and you can tell by looking at the people—not a white one in the bunch. Hardly any clothes. That was a little strange. None of the other women were as good-looking as Innes, but she was right next to me, so I couldn’t stare at her.

  I was trying to look at the buildings, and then I saw one of the gardeners. He was shuffling along the curb, carrying a big potted fern from a wagon to the doorway of a four-story building the size of a city block. He wasn’t a man in a coat; he was like a gray gorilla, but with a sheep’s snout, and walking on two legs as easily as you or me. Better than me, nowadays.

  Innes told me this was one of the Gr-gr tribe. She said that they were useless as soldiers, and most of them had been drafted as farmers or gardeners. I asked her why there was a draft, and she said “Because of the war.” I asked her who they were at war with, and she said “Everyone.”

  She said the Empire of Pellucidar had been at war since its foundation by David Innes, first with the Mahars, and then with various human tribes and kingdoms. She didn’t tell me who the Mahars were. I was distracted by the fact that she was named after the emperor, anyway.

  So far the Empire held dominion—that’s how Innes said it—over about a third of the inner earth. I asked her how long the war had been going on, but all she could tell me was that it had started before her grandparents were born.

  She took me to this huge house at the edge of the plateau, with red brick detailing over the doors and windows, and guards armed with sabers and shotguns outside. They nodded at Innes and gave me a look that meant they’d be keeping their eyes and ears open. I guessed that this was the General’s house.

  Innes led me through to the courtyard, where the sun still hung hot overhead. It looked a lot like the inside of the Interior Air terminal, except that the sun wasn’t a bunch of lamps. Another one of the Gr-grs was working inside the courtyard, watering the flowerbeds. He didn’t look at us, and Innes didn’t look at him.

  She led me up a staircase to one of the wings—I thought of it as the east wing, even though compass directions don’t mean much down here—and into a suite of rooms. We parked my luggage in a small bedroom overlooking the courtyard and Innes interlaced her fingers with mine and kissed me hard.

  I was sweaty and tired from the walk, but she didn’t seem to care and I wasn’t going to argue. I remember, that first time, after we had my pants off, she insisted on taking off the leg. It was strange. She sort of caressed it, and when she’d undone the straps she picked it up and kissed it before she put it aside. I can’t deny it turned me on, but it was weird.

  The sex was great. It still is, even with everything else messed up. Innes isn’t kinky, really, but she’s not shy about her needs. I’d been sweaty when we started; after we’d done it twice the sheets were soaked. I was kind of hurting, actually. In a good way.

  We took a hot shower, and between the kissing Innes told me that the water and everything else were solar-powered. She’d installed the new panels herself. She’d had a hand in designing them, too, but they were made in China.

  Pretty much the whole Empire runs on solar power, it turns out. I told Innes I guessed that her job must be pretty important, and she smiled and said I was just saying that because we were fucking.

  I hadn’t gotten my head around her yet. Not that I have now. When I was talking to her on email, she was just words on a screen, you know? I guess you don’t. I’m just saying, I got to know her a little that way; but now we were together, and in some ways we were still strangers. There was a time in my life when that was how I preferred it, but I’d come a long ways. I wanted this to be different. I wanted to talk some before we fucked again.

  What happened next, though, was dinner with the General. He sat at the head of a long table in the courtyard when we came down; his uniform was a blue vest and brown Bermuda shorts. There was a kind of dog with him too, like a wolf the size of a Great Dane. It ran to Innes’s side, and she scratched him on the head and hugged him. This was the hyaenodon Innes had mentioned; his name was MacArthur.

  The General stood up and shook my hand and told me not to call him Sir. We stood just about eye-to-eye, and he was as broad-shouldered as me, but he had a big gut. He slapped it and told me he’d been off the front lines for a long time. He blamed politics and said something about a War Council, but nobody’s really bothered to explain that to me.

  A serving girl brought out a sort of rice dish with stewed vegetables and some meat that tasted a little like steak and a little like rhubarb pie. It was good. The conversation wasn’t. It started out with the General saying that Innes had told him I was a US Army veteran, and I said yes I was. He asked me about the compulsory draft, and why we’d gotten rid of that. I told him I didn’t know a lot about it. Something to do with politics, I said. Then he went off on this rant about American politics, how we try to treat the military like it’s a separate issue, like military spending is something that we get no benefit from. I’d heard officers say stuff like that before, but it kind of bothered me to hear the General saying it. And then Innes jumped in and started talking about how we let politics screw up the Iraq war, not sending in enough troops because we were scared of the voters, and all the justifications that we threw around. I asked her what she thought we should have said to convince people it was the best thing to do. I was starting to get a little defensive.

  Innes didn’t answer me, though; the General did. He said that justifications were a waste of time, that for strong nations invasion and expansion were necessary and good. Nations were cannibalistic by nature, he said. America needed oil and a foothold for stability in the Middle East. If our people couldn’t understand that, they deserved to be lied to.

  I said those weren’t the reasons we went to Iraq, or at least not all of them. We’d gone in to get the Iraqis out from under Saddam, to help them get their own country back. They actually laughed at me. The General stopped when he saw that I was pissed off, and he apologized, but I couldn’t stand looking at Innes’s smile.

  We talked about other things, but I was still steaming, and after dinner I told them I was tired from the trip and needed to rest. I went upstairs to the small bedroom and lay there thinking I’d been really stupid to come so far not even knowing where I was going, to visit someone I barely knew.

  When I woke up Innes was sitting on the bed. She wanted to apologize; of course I had a right to be offended on behalf of my country and my military. I had been there, after all, and she hadn’t. I suspected she was saying all that just to make me feel better, but she was apologizing, so I let it go.

  We went to eat at this little place in the side of the cliff. I mean literally—we took stairs down into the mountain and ate in a chamber that was carved out of the rock, with high windows looking out over a waterfall. The sun hadn’t moved, of course, but with the shade and the mist it was almost cool. We had archaeopteryx omelets and Colomb
ian coffee and Innes talked about her mother.

  She’d died back in Patton’s time, she said. I thought she meant the general, which was confusing and impossible, but she explained that Patton was a storm. She said that since Pellucidar doesn’t have the temperature shifts of day and night, it tends to produce storm systems with a lot of stability. They form near the coasts and circulate until they break apart near the mountains or the polar cavity or the Land of Awful Shadow. The meteorologists—the ones from the Empire—they give the storms names, like hurricanes, and people use their movements and lifespans as a way of measuring time.

  Impressive, isn’t it? From slavery to meteorology in … well, I don’t know, exactly. But you can’t have expected that. You can’t have thought they were capable of it, or you wouldn’t have kept them as slaves. Unless you did know, and you were afraid of what they might do.

  Innes said her mother had been Dian the Beautiful’s cousin. She was the first emperor’s wife, I guess. After that I didn’t hear most of what Innes said, because I was realizing that she must be sort of like royalty. That explained why Drak had acted so oddly around her, but it made it even harder to understand why the hell she was with me.

  After we ate Innes showed me around the city. She held my hand and I forgot to be insecure for a while. I started noticing the people a little more. There were all these black and brown people, and even not-people like the Gr-grs, and they were walking together in pairs and standing around talking in groups. I even saw a guy with a head like a buffalo, with horns and everything, walking with two human men, and they were all laughing. The buffalo guy laughed like he was trying to blow something out his nostrils.

  I wasn’t quite taking in the idea of all these animal people, but at the same time I had this feeling like the gorilla people and the buffalo people and the black people and the brown people were all a part of something, like the fact that they were different didn’t matter. Or it mattered, but it was a strength, something they all valued. And I couldn’t help thinking that maybe my country could be like that, without any white people. I don’t hate white people or anything. Holly, my partner, she’s white. I just couldn’t help thinking.