Deserts of Fire

by Douglas Lain

  We walked to a lake further up the plateau. The stream we’d seen falling off the cliff flowed out of it, sort of sauntered past us like a kid the moment before he takes off running. The lake was blue and clear and stacked with boats. There was a crowd with blankets and wooden lawn chairs on the rocky beach, and a half-dozen of them came over to meet us. They shook my hand and spoke to Innes in Pellucidarean, and she followed them to a pier that most of the boats were gathered near.

  I tried to ask Innes what was happening, but the welcoming committee didn’t stop talking the entire time, so I just followed the whole parade out to the end of the pier. There was a little podium there, and a bullhorn, and a rifle with a wooden stock. Innes stood at the podium, picked up the bullhorn, and pointed it at the people on the beach. Whatever she was saying, a lot of people liked it. They clapped for her, and then she put her hand on my arm and said something else, and they clapped for me. Then she turned around and pointed the bullhorn at the boats and said a few words, and then she picked up the rifle and fired it out over the water, and then everybody went nuts.

  The people on the beach waded into the shallows, and the boats started fighting each other. On the one side there were these little canoes, and on the other were these big ugly sailing-ships with cannons. The first time they fired the cannons I had a real fight-or-flight moment—my hands balled up into fists, my legs shaking—but I could see they weren’t actually loaded. The sailors would fire them and then throw these heavy sacks at the canoes, and the canoes threw blunt spears back at the ship. The whole time this was going on the people on the beach cheered and hooted and grunted at the top of their lungs.

  Innes was holding tight to my arm. She was smiling and crying. Right then I didn’t care if she was a princess and I was a cripple, or what the hell was going on, or where I was and how I’d gotten there. I’d never been in love before, and I’m not sure I was then. But it was something close.

  Eventually the men on the ship capsized all the canoes, and they fished out their opponents or jumped in to help them drag the canoes back to the beach. People started dancing, and they brought us food, these huge kebabs smothered in the spiciest sauce I’ve ever had in my life. At some point I managed to get from Innes that this was a re-enactment of the first battle of the Pellucidarean Navy. She’d been asked to make a speech to open the festival.

  After we ate people started asking Innes to dance, and I told her to go ahead. There was no way I was going to try it, on my leg. I was already sort of drunk on this drink they kept passing around. It tasted kind of like Amarula, but I guess you’ve probably never had that. It’s sort of sweet and fruity.

  I don’t even know if you eat fruit. Mostly meat, I guess. What do humans taste like, anyway? Do they taste sweet? I’ve heard they smell like pork when you burn them. But you never cooked them, did you? You ate them raw.

  I promised Kilgore I wouldn’t hurt you, so I won’t.

  Where was I?

  The festival. Yeah. Innes danced. I sat and listened to this guy who didn’t know nearly as much English as he thought he did. I’ve forgotten his name. He kept on saying “World Wide Web.” That’s about all I caught from him, but he seemed pretty enthusiastic about it. He’d been one of the guys in the canoes, I think. He talked at me until Innes came back, and then he got shy and left.

  It felt like it should be dark and cool and all of us sitting around a bonfire or something, but it was more like a Sunday afternoon cookout, where after a while people start to drift off complaining that they have to work the next day. Most of them walked back to the city, but some of them just took their blankets into the shade and went to sleep. Eventually Innes told the old men who were still up talking that we had to leave too, and they stood up and bowed while I nodded and waved and tried to keep from swaying.

  On the way back to the general’s house I asked Innes how she had known when the festival was supposed to start. She didn’t have a watch, and I had yet to see a clock. She said once she’d had word that I was going to be on the next zeppelin she’d scheduled it for after my first sleep.

  I thought she was joking at first. I told her no one had ever thrown a holiday for me before. She laughed and said there was going to be a holiday anyway. She said those sorts of things were more flexible here.

  I asked her if she was a princess. I didn’t mean to put it quite that way, but I was a little drunk and I said it without thinking. She asked me not to think of her that way. “I’m successful in my own right,” she said. “The women of Pellucidar are all strong—they must be, to survive—but until recently it was rare for them to be independent. Men here still hear their grandfathers talk of their grandmothers as property, and they do not know how to act.

  “This is what we give to the peoples we bring into the Empire, along with peace and prosperity. Of course there is benefit for us, but we give back as much as we take. Those who prosper under the old ways still fight us, but they will lose. Do you understand?”

  I told her I did. How could I say no? She sounded so proud, and I wanted to kiss her smile.

  The next day—well, I don’t know if it was a day or not, but anyway after I’d slept—I woke up before Innes. I put on my leg and some clothes and went down into the courtyard. MacArthur came over to say hi, and I sat down in the sun and pet him for a while. He was a big, scary-looking dog, but really sweet. He acted like a puppy. I didn’t realize that the Gr-gr gardener was there until something moved in the flowerbed across from me. I was so startled that I stood up, and banged my prosthetic against my chair in the process.

  The Gr-gr glanced up and then he bowed. He sort of whined and then said something in Pellucidarean. To tell you the truth, I don’t even know if it was male or female. I tried to tell him everything was OK, he had just startled me, but I guess he didn’t know any English. He stood there avoiding my eyes. His face was so sad, that long muzzle with the thin lips curved down, and his big brown frightened eyes. Finally he pointed at the sky and grunted something. Then he went back to work, stretching a fine net out over the bed of flowers. I thought about offering to help, but I wouldn’t have known what I was doing, and the Gr-gr wouldn’t have been able to tell me.

  I went looking for food, but no one had told me where the kitchen was, and I ended up wandering into the general’s office. It was on the cliff side of the house, with high open windows letting in the sun. He was sitting at a desk behind a computer, speaking into a headset. He looked surprised to see me, but he smiled and motioned for me to wait.

  After a minute he took off his headset, and I asked him how the fight was going. He said his troops were burning out a bunch of tree-dwellers beyond the Sojar Az. They had refused to come to terms, he said. “Some enemies just need the right incentive to become allies, and some will never stop fighting until one of you is dead.”

  I wonder now who he was thinking of when he said that. Might have been you. But then, you’re not fighting anymore, are you? I know who I thought of—the terrorists who made the bomb that took my leg. Except I guess not everyone calls them terrorists. The further I get from the war and the news and everything, the harder it is for me to understand it. First there were bad Iraqis and good Iraqis, and the terrorists were part of this movement that was sort of Iraqi and sort of not. Then the good and bad Iraqis started fighting each other until it was hard to tell them apart. I mean, an insurgent can be a lot of things. I looked it up. You could call Fidel Castro an insurgent, or George Washington, and there’s a lot of difference between them. At least I think there is.

  I didn’t know what to say to the general. I told him I was looking for the kitchens, and before I knew it he was ringing for a cook and ordering a meal for both of us. My last meal with the general hadn’t gone well, but I didn’t see any way of escaping. Luckily he had more calls to make, so I just sat next to the windows while we waited for the food to come. Outside it was just the same. Sun and stone. There were insects everywhere, floating in and out the windows like commuters. Flies
as big as my thumb, and mosquitoes like giant staples twisted up and glued together. Huge dragonflies were patrolling the cliff, hunting the smaller bugs. Innes had pointed out the dragonfly hatchery on the way to the festival, but I hadn’t really understood the need for such a thing then.

  When the food came the general got off his phone, or whatever it was. The food was a kind of salad with berries and nuts. The general asked me what I thought, and I told him I liked it, but he said he didn’t mean the salad. Then I was confused because I didn’t know if he meant his daughter, or the city, or Pellucidar itself.

  “They’re soft,” he said when I didn’t answer. “We’re all soft, here at home. Our boys are fighting six different wars right now, but they’re so far away that no one here pays much attention. We’ve lost a hundred and fourteen men this storm.” He pushed his salad away. “Their families understand a piece of it. But the festivals … my daughter doesn’t understand either, I’m afraid. She’s proud—everybody’s proud—but to them it’s just something that happens, not something that people do. Do you understand?”

  I told him I did.

  He said it wasn’t that long ago that they were all warriors. Before the Empire, humans were low on the food chain: slaves to some, prey to others. Even with the compulsory draft, the younger generation was starting to forget that. Some of them had begun to question the need for war.

  “Even that word, ‘need,’” the General said. “That word is the wrong frame to put it in. War isn’t something people need; it’s something we can’t avoid. It’s what we do. That being the case, it’s imperative to be on the winning side, and not allow enemies—existing or potential—the opportunity to gather strength.”

  Just like at the dinner, earlier, the general wasn’t really saying anything I hadn’t heard before. But the perspective was all skewed. I asked him what they would do once they had conquered all of the interior earth. He smiled and asked me if I was afraid they would invade the surface. Then he laughed and said he had to be on his way—he was headed to the front, to the caves of the Skull-Drinkers, and he had to be off the ground before the storm came. He said I should wake Innes and tell her Sun Tzu would arrive soon.

  Sun Tzu turned out to be the name of a storm. I guess most of them are named after generals and that sort of thing.

  The general hadn’t mentioned that we would have to storm-proof the house before the storm got there. Innes showed me to the room where they kept the storm shutters. They were these massive, lightweight steel sheets that hooked to the outsides of the uncovered windows. The guards helped us hang them, and it didn’t take as long as I’d expected. The courtyard stayed uncovered, but Innes pointed out drains which she said led to the storm sewers. We helped the gardener clear them of leaves. He had already finished covering most of the garden with those fine nets. Innes said they were hail protection for the less hardy plants.

  By the time we finished up and moved inside the sky had begun to get dark for the first time since I’d arrived. The gardener shuffled off to his own room somewhere, and the guards settled in at the front of the house. MacArthur came with us.

  Sitting in Innes’s bedroom with fat, scented candles, the thunder came muffled through the shutters. MacArthur seemed nervous, and Innes wasn’t much better. When I was stationed in Germany I bunked for a while with a guy from California who freaked out every time there was a thunderstorm. Innes was kind of acting like that, so I did what I used to do; I took some playing cards out of my duffel. She didn’t know how to play anything, really, so I tried to teach her Hearts. I don’t really think she got it, but it kept her distracted for a little while, until the storm was right on top of us.

  The rain hit first, like a staticky radio being tapped against the steel. Then hail, a thousand little hammerfalls in a minute, an hour, a second. I kept wishing I had a clock to look at, to keep track of how long the storm lasted. Innes moved closer to me, and I put my arms around her. After a while we lay down together. I took off my leg and kissed her to distract her from the thunder. It felt like my heart pounding out of the sky. She was shaking. I might have spent an hour undressing her; it might have been a day. MacArthur sighed and moved into the closet.

  The storm was still going strong when we finished. I held her against me, hoping she would sleep, but I drifted off and woke up to find her pacing the floor in a robe. The sheets under me were wet with sweat. The rain outside seemed to compress the house, making the inside like a sauna.

  I sat up and asked her how long the storm would last. She just shrugged and said I should ask a meteorologist. I decided she was grouchy because she was afraid, and I didn’t really know what to say to her. I thought I’d just be there, and listen if she wanted to talk.

  I just realized—that’s sort of what Kilgore does for you, isn’t it? He sits and listens to you, or receives you or whatever you call the telepathic thing, and then you feel better … maybe. When they captured you, when they blinded you, did you have anyone like him to talk to then? Were you afraid? Maybe you don’t feel those things. Maybe Mahars don’t, or maybe you in particular don’t. I mean, that bomb … but we drop bombs, too.

  If you are like us, do I have to stop using the word “human” for feelings like that? For being afraid, for needing comfort? For giving it? Kilgore does it. He’s not human.

  Anyway, we waited it out. It seemed like a long time, but time can drag when you’re trying to figure out what to do. Eventually the rain started to let up, and the thunder moved off. Then Innes started to relax. She asked me if I wanted to go away with her to their place in the country. School would be in recess until the next storm, and at the cabin we could hunt and swim. MacArthur could come along.

  I looked at the stump of my left leg and thought about telling her I wasn’t sure I could do it. I wasn’t, at all, but I didn’t want to admit it. The streets of Sari were bricked, and uneven in spots, but I hadn’t fallen yet. I didn’t want to fall in front of Innes. But there were no stegosaurus in the city, so I said yes.

  You know, I think that was our best moment. She talked about the cabin and how her ma used to love it, and how she missed her ma, and I talked about my parents, and we both ended up crying. It was kind of embarrassing, but it was good. I felt good.

  We talked until the storm had passed, and then we slept, and when we woke up most of the house was already unsealed. We helped the guards and gardener finish the last of it. The green outside was brighter than before, which I wouldn’t have believed possible. The sun had already lifted most of the rain into the air, where it hung like a rich, blunt perfume.

  There’s a—funicular? I think that’s the word—that runs from Sari down to the train station. It was a nice view of the valley, but MacArthur wouldn’t sit still. He kept trying to get out. Innes said he’d ridden down in it a hundred times, and he did that every time. He just didn’t understand what was happening. I was a little freaked out by the view myself. The storm had left behind nothing but clear blue sky; I couldn’t see where the ground started to curve up, but it was so vast … there were distant mountains on either side, and a huge body of water beyond the gap, and beyond that a stain of darkness. I looked up and saw that there was a sort of a moon hanging there between the sun and that part of the world.

  I think, if I hadn’t been trying to calm MacArthur down, I might have had a panic attack right there. The world hadn’t seemed that real to me since before—maybe it never had. That little glass chamber, it reminded me of the interrogation room in my dreams. I had the feeling that this inside world was looking back at me somehow. Like it was waiting for me to do something, or learn something, that Sari and Innes and the general couldn’t teach me.

  Innes has her own train. Or maybe it’s her father’s, I’m not sure. It runs on solar power just like everything else. Has her own chef, porter, guards, an engineer, a car for lounging and dining, and another one for sleeping. Carved wood paneling, leather seats, climate-control. We settled in and the porter brought drinks for us and
bones for MacArthur. He kept on bowing and stuff.

  Innes talked to the engineer about where we were headed while I stared out the window. There was another train on the next track, eight cars long, and a bunch of young guys were climbing on with duffels and rifles. Soldiers on their way to the front, I guessed. Dark skinned boys, and buffalo men, and others that I couldn’t really classify.

  They were still loading up when we pulled out. Innes said the trains can top 200 miles an hour, but they have to be careful out away from the cities, because of the megafauna. They’ve put up these wilderness overpasses every few miles, so the animals can get around without worrying about the train, but I guess when something big decides it wants to cross the tracks, it just does it. I saw some of them, things called dyryths, sort of a cross between a bear and a ground sloth. A mother and her two cubs. The mother was at least twelve feet high, and she had dragged herself up a tree, then pulled the branches back down so her cubs could reach the leaves.

  I asked Innes how far we were going, and would we be close to the borders of the Empire, to the frontier? She laughed and said we were a long way from the frontier—twelve hundred miles at the nearest. The interior earth held more than twice the land area of the surface, because the seas were only about one-fifth of the surface here. She said most of the interior was still unexplored. So far the Empire had discovered cannibal kingdoms, tribes of men with wings like bats, and mastodons with almost human intelligence. They were all citizens of the Empire now, Innes told me. I couldn’t help thinking about what the general had said about her not understanding.

  We rode along the coast for a while—Innes told me that the bay opened onto the Lural Az, one of their oceans. The chef served us this blackened fish grilled with fruit. I don’t usually like fish all that much, but it was kind of amazing. It didn’t sit very well, though. Innes did some work while I spent the trip limping back and forth between the restroom and the observation deck.