"It's not about you,” Bob said. “Who the hell put you in charge of the sick and dying?"
Every day, at 3:12 pm, the queasiness returned. I don't have time for you, Karen told it and tried to push it away. One afternoon, just after she'd given Eleanora some juice, the sick feeling hit her so hard she had to sit down on the metal chair at the foot of the bed. Looking through the jumble in her purse for Tums, she came across the wooden boat. She held it in her hand, stared at it, then closed her fist around it so hard she could feel it cutting her palm.
"It's okay,” Eleanora said. “I'm all right."
"No. You're not. You can't die. There's no point if you die.” El didn't answer. Karen kissed her cheek, her forehead, her lips. “Take my body,” she said. “I never wanted it. It's all a mistake.” She had no idea what she was talking about.
El smiled. “Aren't I the one who's supposed to get delirious?"
The next morning, Dr. Connell emailed her. She'd stopped seeing him when he started talking about acceptance, and stages of grief, and almost didn't read his message. But no, he told her how he'd been cleaning out old magazines from his waiting room when he came across an article about a Healing Tree. There was a sick girl, and she went to a place where three rivers meet, and there people prayed for her, and instead of dying she'd turned into a tree. Now sick people went there to touch the trunk or the branches, and sometimes they were healed. Not always, of course, probably most people went away disappointed, but still....
Karen had to stop reading. It was the first sign of hope, and yet, just the thought of it somehow made her sick, she wanted to trash the email, get El from the nursing home, and just go—somewhere. Instead, she called Bob and told him they needed to arrange for nurses so they could take Eleanora on a trip.
They flew to a newly constructed airport some fifteen miles from the Tree. There they hired a white limousine converted to a hospital room on wheels and traveled straight to the site. Crutches and other aids lined the road, many of them, the driver said, left by people who had not yet been healed, but who wanted to show their commitment. There were long lines of people standing (or sitting in wheelchairs) behind ropes with guards, but the limousines were allowed to pull to the front, for its passengers to mingle with the people who came off the private yachts in the river. No one seemed to mind. Almost everyone had come from far away, and there were performers to tell the Tale of the Tree, and food, and spiritual healers to pray over people and promise them health ("No connection to Tree,” their leaflets read, apparently a legal requirement). Everyone seemed to believe they'd come to a place of safety, where sickness just stopped, as if it had given up and now just waited to be destroyed. They believed this even though they could see people faint on line, or cough blood, or worst of all, leave the Tree still covered in sores. Those people, they told themselves, didn't believe. They didn't want to be healed. It wasn't the Tree's fault.
When Eleanora and her family reached the front of the line, men in white nurses’ uniforms offered to carry El to the trunk. No, Karen said, she would do it, she didn't need any help. But she just stood and stared at the Tree. It was so much bigger than she had thought it would be. The lilacs were in full bloom even though it was way after the season. The smell nauseated her.
When Bob suggested they let the nurses do it, Karen lifted El into a tight embrace against her body and walked forward. Karen was wearing a long gray dress, with big pockets for medicine, and something in one of them pressed sharply against her thigh. The boat, she realized. She didn't remember taking it. I have to get rid of it, she thought. She and Eleanora would be safe if she could bury it some place, or just throw it away. But Eleanora felt so empty, if Karen set her down for just a moment a breeze might lift her right out of her body, to drop her in the river.
The river. There was something out there, among the crowded boats, something big, and gray, and patient. Don't look, Karen thought, look only at the Tree.
The branches waved, and a voice seemed to come from the rustling leaves. It spoke softly, only for Karen. “So,” it said. “You've come."
Karen didn't know where the sound came from, or if others could hear it, but she didn't care. “Please,” she said. “You have to help her. She is my life, my heart."
"You who are called Heartless in every tongue?"
"I don't understand what you mean.” But as she spoke the words—or thought them, she wasn't sure—a fear swept through her that she was lying, that she knew exactly what the voice meant. Images came to her, endless mounds of colorless dirt, black stones, crowds and crowds of people with downcast eyes. And boats. Squat ferryboats on a dark river.
Karen turned her head, she couldn't stop herself. There it was, among the yachts and cruise ships, something only she could see, a gray ferryboat, heavy in the water, filled with more people than you would think it could hold yet none of them touching each other. Karen looked away but the image stayed. She could still see the one figure that stood out, a young man with slick black hair and ruby cufflinks.
"Please,” Karen said to the Tree. El felt weightless against her now, an origami doll. “Heal her and we'll go away and never bother you again."
"You have a choice,” the Tree said.
Hope lifted Karen's heart. “Tell me what to do."
"Either you go on the boat or she does."
"What do you mean?"
"You know what I mean. It's time to return."
The memories came clearer now. The hills, the shadows, the lines and lines of dead shuffling off the boats. She said, “I won't go back."
"Then she goes. I will heal her but only if you return. So you see, it is you who is killing her."
"Why are you doing this to me?"
"You wanted to be human. To escape. Why shouldn't you suffer what all humans suffer?"
Karen looked away. She could feel her body shift, become longer, freer in some terrible way. She remembered it all now, her sisters, the contest. “It wasn't my idea, I just lost a contest. That's all. And then I forgot."
The Tree said, “If you hadn't wanted to run away you would have remembered. You had the reminder, every day.” Still holding El against her, Karen took the boat from her pocket, stared at it. The Tree said, “And now you have a choice."
Karen threw the boat at the Tree. It disappeared among the branches. “Choose,” the Tree said.
"Why?"
"There is always a price. Choose."
For an instant she could see her life as Karen, everything that would come if she chose herself over Eleanora. El would die, and Karen would create a memorial. She would live a long time—a flicker of a moment, really, but it would feel like forever. She and Bob would entwine together, the memory of Eleanora kept warm between them. And then?
She set El down against the trunk. Immediately the branches bent down to form a cage around her. When Karen—Forever—tried to reach in and touch El one last time the branches stung her, like nettles. “Good-bye, my darling,” she said. “You will live a good life and then I will see you again. I will wait for you. I promise."
But she knew it was a lie. As she stepped onto the ferryboat that waited in the river, as she accepted the white hand with its ruby cufflink, she knew that even if she might one day recognize an aged Eleanora she would feel nothing. How could she, for just one among so very many? As the boat slid away from the shore to take her home, she looked back one more time. She saw the cage of branches fill with light, and then it was gone. And everything was shadow.
—For Jillen Lowe
[Back to Table of Contents]
Short Story: THE ATCHISON, TOPEKA, & SANTA FE by Robert Onopa
Bob Onopa retired from teaching at the University of Hawaii in January, an experience, he reports, that brought back those euphoric moments at the beginning of summer when he was a kid. Childhood has its darker moments too, as this new story suggests.
After a fitful sleep he lay awake in the darkness listening to the house creak, to the furnace cycling.
Outside, a heavy snow held the world in silence.
Then a faint spreading gray at the window and something else—down the hall in the living room, where the tree's lights had glowed dimly all night—a movement. When he heard quiet voices for a while, his mother's laugh, he eased himself out of bed—he did not want to be disappointed—and padded into the living room.
And there it was, under the tree, silver track winding through the gifts, the headlight of the streamliner punching out from behind the mountainous tree skirt, its dome car catching red and orange and green lights in frosted windows. He could see from a glance at the open pods among the wrapping paper that his parents had given him the big hybrid set, the one with the state-of-the-art monorail rig and, more to the point, well, his point, all that retro stuff, starting with the steel streamliner coming his way again. From down at the level of the rug the detail was amazing—you could see little pipes and bolts, springs and couplings on the cars. On the third pass he took in the Santa Fe diesel, a double-ender, like strong jaws back to back, and, in its forward cab—he could see a little guy!
He glanced at the packing pod again. Almost everybody else was getting the Mars Habitat thing, you could sit with a holo of astronauts in a Rover, whatever. This one had a Virtualizer AI chip too, but that wasn't what he'd wanted. He couldn't take his eyes off that train, from its bright headlight through the intertwined fists of the couplers—you could hear the running gear rumble—car by car back to the vista dome. When it passed, the track looked like it had been laid over weathered brown ties on tamped tiny gravel. Green tufts grew wheel high in a living miniature world.
He looked up. His dad was beaming. His mom, her hair loose and pretty, had that great smile. “What do you think, kiddo?” she asked.
"It's perfect,” Matt said. “Thank you.” He looked at his dad with new respect. “It's just what I wanted, exactly what I wanted.” So he wasn't going to be punished after all, not for reprogramming the house lights, not for hacking his sister's page. He took in the other pods in the set, the other bright wrappings. “Mom!” he remembered. “I have a present for you."
His dad was already reaching for the box. In it lay, beautifully folded, the silk nightgown his dad had helped him pick out, all blue and smooth, like water.
He was on the rug again, watching the locomotive coming at him, headlight at eye level. He took in the high cab.
Matt blinked. You could see a little guy in there! An engineer! With an engineer's cap and a mustache! You could see his brown eyes! As the train passed by, the little guy waved!
* * * *
The house smelled like bacon substitute and coffee and hot chocolate. They'd unpacked a mid-sized passenger station, some mining trestles along a spur, a group of houses, and one of those old-fashioned black water tanks. His dad explained about the two-part expanded set, which he already knew, by pulling out a block of suburban-looking townhouses for the monorail section. Its golden cars matched the futuristic city's curved glass terminal. Time and again as his father unpacked, his attention would drift back to the retro train. It was so cool.
The train looped through his sister's Virtual Field Hockey Tournament, passed his mom, and drove his way again.
"Hey, Dad,” Matt observed. “The engineer only waves when he passes by me. Just me."
His dad thought for a bit—he was a professor, ran a busy lab, usually had the answer to anything. “The train set's AI locates you through your GPS bracelet,” his dad said. Then he grinned. “Part of the upgrade package. You're the registered owner. President of the railroad. He's paying his respects."
His dad knelt to shift a hardware store into position near the old-fashioned passenger station. Power cells kicked in, windows glowed. “When I was a kid,” his dad said, “we lived in Grandma Jean's old apartment. I had the planet's dinkiest train.” He laughed. “Half-HO, all nano. Still, I used to dream about the people in the little houses. I used to dream about a set like this, three engines...."
His mom came in, very pretty in blue silk, carrying mugs for each of them.
"Anyway, this railroad's for you,” his dad said. “I'll help you build a layout downstairs. Then you're on your own. It's going to be your responsibility, Matt. The license agreement is in your name. You're going to run a railroad."
* * * *
After a long day visiting Grandma Jean, his dad was watching the vidwall news in bed. Matt crept out to the tree in his pajamas.
What his dad had said was true. No matter where he lay, the little guy waved at him each time the Santa Fe passed by. The way you could see his expression, his cheeks bunched cheerfully, was amazing.
It occurred to him to stop the train the next time it came by.
When he did so, the little guy waved and shouted, “Hi, Matt."
He'd said his name! “Wait'll I tell my dad,” Matt said breathlessly.
"Hang on there, Matthew Pike,” the engineer said. “The advanced features of this unit's AI are available only to a single licensed user."
"Oh, right. Only one account.” Matt chewed his lip, disappointed he couldn't share the experience with his dad, but thrilled to have the engineer launch into a welcome speech that seemed written especially for him. “And, Matthew Pike?” the engineer concluded, “thanks for initializing us. I'm ready to run this EMC-E1 diesel through its paces."
"Uh, anything I'm supposed to do?” Matt asked. That was the question his friend Chris had used to start the setup on his Rover.
"Always keep water in the tank,” the engineer said, waving at the old-fashioned high black tank. “We actually use it. We're a wetware AI, Matthew Pike, totally organic."
"We?” Matt said. “There are more of you guys?"
"Welcome aboard.” The engineer grinned.
"This is great,” Matt said. He could hear his mom putting dishes away. The pictures on the pods merged into a vision of his future layout. When his mom called, he pulled the power cable and started repacking the rolling stock so they could move it downstairs. The little window in the front cab slid closed.
* * * *
True to his word, Matt's dad got a couple of big pieces of plywood, painted one side green, and set them up on sawhorses in a corner of the basement, under the winter light of the garden window. For a couple of days, his dad worked with his laser saw and driver, framing hills, installing prefab cliffs and tunnels, laying out roads and farms and blocks of buildings from the pods, connecting them by yellow-lined streets with little autos and trucks that were another miracle of realism. The spray-on landscape was organic, only needed periodic misting, you could already see minuscule tendrils of bushes uncurling.
The two boards overlapped to form a wide V. On his left side, by the window, a small modern city took shape beneath the loop of its sleek golden monorail. On his right, toward the furnace, the Santa Fe's passenger and freight terminal anchored a storefront-and-bungalow town. Outbound for the Santa Fe was a country village with a covered platform and a church and a square. A stubby steam engine shuttled from the terminal to a mine along the furnace.
Where the boards overlapped, his dad terraformed a mountain range that divided the lines. From the far side, an excursion spur of monorail pylons swooped up to a flat spot below the far peaks, a meadow, a kind of high-altitude lookout, before it disappeared into a tunnel and back down. The retro railroad's track ran up long switchbacks over trestles and waterfalls to its side of the meadow before a long rocky grade took it down to pastures along the back wall.
What with all the prefab building and landscape units, they were finished in a week. His dad helped him verify the cable runs, power up, and bring each section carefully on line, using the little steam engine as their test vehicle. It was funny—for a while, as he worked, his dad was like a kid, too, you could see it in his face, what he probably looked like when he was a kid.
But just after New Year's, things got really busy at the university again and his dad disappeared. “In his lab, like every spring,” his mom shrugged, le
aving him to run the railroad.
* * * *
He hadn't logged on to the Mars site Chris had put up in days, even though Chris had loaned him the special headset. There were a lot of little adjustments to make, crossing gates to calibrate, track to align, so much to admire.
When he finally had all the signals installed and picket fences set, he upended the red and silver Santa Fe diesel, pushed the toggle from “demo” to “auto,” set its wheels back on the track, coupled it to three passenger cars, then fired it up from his remote. As he did so the golden monorail slipped by on its pylons against the cliffs in the far background and disappeared into the tunnel.
It was a beautiful dance, the trains moving by and around their curves. There was still something of Christmas in it, a strand of leftover tinsel among the colored lights, evergreen above the meadow. He'd programmed the Santa Fe to run on its long route, switchbacking up the mountain and then back down. On cue the stubby steam engine shuttled down from the mine trestle to bustle around in the yard. He parked it under the water tower, and with a little flash of embarrassment realized he had forgotten to fill the tank.
He got a cup of water from the laundry sink. He was watching the Santa Fe on his way back and saw a little movement, the engineer waving at him when the train looped close.
He stopped the Santa Fe on its next pass.
"Hi, Matt!"
He looked carefully at the little guy. He could see lines on his face, his mustache with curls at the end. The instructions said you could set voice commands by using the engineer to name the file. “Um, what's your name?” he asked.
"Great question. As you've probably figured out, I'm your interface, Matt, the way you communicate directly with your layout using the virtualized AI. Call me Chief!"
Matt took in the tiny engineer, the silver train, the town beyond it, the hills rising, it seemed, miles away. “Awesome,” he said. What was the second thing he was supposed to ask? “Chief? Rate this layout?"
"Great question. Needs some people."
Matt squinted and looked at the little figure.
FSF, May-June 2010 Page 23
