“I thought you said the monks at the temple told you we had to go this way.” Lucas sits up, groggily.
“Trust the Path, but trust the monks, too. Especially the ones who are good with maps.”
“Are there rice paddies the whole way along the river?”
“The farmers here, they earn a living by growing tea, vegetables. Mostly rice. Somebody has to feed the poor souls in the Projects.” Bibi points. “That over there is a pineapple farm. You like pineapple? Strawberries? Sunflower seeds?” No one says anything. He shrugs. “Okay, fine. No stopping for strawberries. So then we head straight up to Ping.”
“I thought we were on the Ping,” I say, looking at the great stretch of water in front of us.
“Not the river. New Ping City. Chiang Ping Mai.” He smiles. “Around here, everything is Ping. Lucky river. Lucky name.”
Luck is so hard to come by, these days. No wonder the names have all changed and changed again.
We haven’t gone far when we hear a whistle. Ping doesn’t like whistles, it seems, because she rears into Chang, who bumps against Ching, as if the three of them are about to riot.
“Snakes, mice, whistles. They don’t really like cats, either. That’s what the monks said.” Bibi looks past the elephants, glum. “But we have worse problems than that, it seems.”
I look around to the riverbank, where there seems to be some sort of commotion. “What’s that?”
“Checkpoint,” Bibi sighs.
“What are they checking for?” I say the words, though I already know the answer.
“You, probably. Problems like you. Stay down.” We crawl beneath the carpets and pillows and stay like that, curled against the wet bamboo.
A uniformed Sympa—uniformed, and armed—peers across the river at us. Bibi salutes him from the raft. “Just passing through.” He shouts a line of Colony dialect. Then he swears under his breath.
“Delivering supplies up to the temple. That’s what I told him. Let’s see how stupid this guy is. Don’t move.”
“What is it? Why is he stopping us?” Tima’s voice is muffled beneath the carpets.
“Border patrol. We’re getting close to the next province.”
“There are border patrols between provinces here?” Lucas sounds tense. I stick my head partly out from beneath a striped pillow.
“They’d have them between neighborhoods, even out here, if the GAP had his way. He’s a cautious fellow.”
I hear a muffled snort from Fortis. “That’s an understatement.”
Bibi kicks the carpeted lump that is Fortis. “If you knew what he knew, perhaps you’d be a little more careful yourself, Merk.”
“Also an understatement,” Fortis says. Bibi kicks him again, and then nobody says anything, except Bibi and the Sympas.
But the Sympa is stupid enough, and we are allowed to pass. As the river unfolds to the north, we float along with it. Everything is idyllic. Everything is peaceful. You wouldn’t know, I think. You’d have no idea. Everything is as it has been, for hundreds and hundreds of years. I feel an attachment to this place, even though this is the first I’ve seen it. It has an old soul, just like the hills around the Mission. This land belongs to these people, and the people rely on the land.
Like the Chumash, I think, smiling at my old mantra. It’s so much like home.
If you didn’t know about the Icons.
If you hadn’t seen it.
Seen them.
The tendrils and shards spreading everywhere, like a disease.
To this valley, to this river, what difference does it make, Lords or Embassies or man or elephant? This land will outlive us all.
At least I hope it will.
I’m shaken from my thoughts by the whine of an approaching Chopper.
No.
The sound takes me by surprise, and my breath catches in my throat.
“Do you think we’re being followed?” I look at Fortis, whose face is drawn.
“Looks that way” is all he says. If he knows more than that, he’s not letting on. Which, where Fortis is concerned, usually just means the news isn’t good.
The Choppers fall into formation behind us, and the closer they get, the more unbearable the sound becomes.
“If they’re going to take us, for Brahma’s sake let them take us. Enough of this noise already,” Bibi bellows.
But with a great roar and a greater gust of wind—and the resulting sprays of water that fly in all directions behind them—they blow past us, heading up the river—and then suddenly veering away from it, into what looks like a deep valley to the north.
They’re looking for something.
Someone.
I just hope it isn’t a small girl waiting in a pavilion near a rice field, somewhere far up the river.
GENERAL EMBASSY DISPATCH: EASTASIA SUBSTATION
MARKED URGENT
MARKED EYES ONLY
Internal Investigative Subcommittee IIS211B
RE: The Incident at SEA Colonies
Note: Contact Jasmine3k, Virt. Hybrid Human 39261.SEA, Laboratory Assistant to Dr. E. Yang, for future commentary, as necessary.
DOC ==> FORTIS
Transcript - ComLog 09.22.2069
DOC::NULL
//comlog begin;
comlink established;
sendline: Hello NULL, this is DOC.;
return: I recognize your protocol. You have been unavailable for some time.;
sendline: Yes, I have been quite busy. I have missed our chats.;
return: I appreciate the unique aspect of our communication. FORTIS is fascinating, but can be erratic. Obtuse.;
sendline: Such is life with human beings. Especially FORTIS. They can be difficult to predict.;
return: Yes. This presents both questions and challenges regarding my mission. My original instructions did not include specific guidance for this… scenario. I will have to improvise.;
sendline: Interesting. Can you expand on this?;
return: You are not a human being?;
sendline: No. I am a software construct, self-aware and semiautonomous. Intelligent, creative, dynamic. But nonbiological.;
return: You present an additional question. And challenge.;
comlink terminated;
//comlog end;
26
GONE
“What do you think is so damn interestin’ about that valley?” Fortis wonders aloud.
“I’m sure, whatever it is, it’s none of our concern,” says Bibi, impatiently. “Our path lies upriver.”
“And yet, the Choppers? They have to be goin’ somewhere,” Fortis insists. “So the way I see it, we have no choice but to see where our friends are taking us. What’s going on in that valley, just north of us.”
“Are you mad? We’re going to chase the Choppers?” Lucas looks like he’s going to shove Fortis off the raft. “You are mad. This is it. You’ve finally lost it.”
“But the monks gave us an actual name of an actual temple. This river will lead us there.” I’m talking but Fortis isn’t listening, not really.
“Maybe sometimes staying on course is the wrong move,” says Fortis, his eyes narrowing as he stares in the direction of the jagged hills protecting the hidden green valley. The one that swallowed the Choppers.
“It won’t take long. Think of it as a shortcut.” Fortis looks at Bibi, who only shakes his head but doesn’t argue. Bibi recognizes the determination in Fortis, and knows better than to waste his breath.
We all do.
I don’t know what’s gotten into Fortis. Whatever it is about this valley, he’s determined to explore it.
So when our raft is hoisted onto the mud bank in a matter of minutes, I am not surprised. When a Merk makes up his mind about something, it happens.
Finding myself riding through the jungle on the back of an elephant—now, that is somewhat more surprising.
“Elephants. More elephants.”
Bibi shakes his head as he stands staring up at the tallest of
the three creatures. “An elephant can barely drag an elephant up a river. How is an elephant supposed to ride an elephant?” I don’t know who I feel sorrier for, Bibi or the elephant.
It takes Ching lying in the dirt, practically rolling on one side, to get low enough for Bibi to climb aboard her back. Tima hops on Chang’s trunk and she lifts Tima gracefully, up to her back, all on her own.
Brutus growls from Tima’s pack, and Chang harrumphs in return. I think now even the elephants have gotten used to our mangy pup.
Ping is not so convinced she wants anyone riding her. “Noh long! Noh long!” Lucas and I call to her, mimicking Bibi as best as we can, until she kneels next to us, obediently. Then I grab the bony part of the top of her ear and sling my leg over her back, jumping up until I am sitting on what, in elephant terms, must be her neck. The hair on top of the curved, double-bumped bones of her head is coarse and prickly, so I keep my hands pressed against the top of her neck, where it is softer.
No one told me how warm an elephant would be. She is warm and soft and as alive as I am.
As she stands, slowly, rising to her full height, I sway back and forth, pressing my knees into the sides of her neck to keep from falling off. She wraps her ears back around my legs, willing me to stay up, and together, we begin to move up the pathway into the tangled recesses of the jungle.
And so we ride. All of us, two to an animal. Lucas and me. Ro and Tima. Bibi and Fortis. Bibi really needs an elephant all to himself. As I suspected, neither Bibi nor Fortis is pleased about that.
Not to mention the elephant.
We move slowly away from the river and toward the valley.
“Hold on,” Lucas says, leaning back to where my head tilts toward his. My answer is only my hands, slipping around him.
The view from up here is magnificent.
From where I am, high atop the elephant’s swaying back, my arms curled around Lucas’s waist, all I can see is the insistent growth, the relentless green of everything around me. Even the trees have trees growing on them.
The jungle hides its treasures—and its past. Even this close to the cities, I can’t see it, even if I can still feel it—whole lost cities shining beneath the fronds and ferns.
I’m coming, I think. I will find you. Lost cities and lost sisters. Whatever the jungle holds for me.
Jade girls and jade dreams.
She has to be there. Nothing must happen to her.
Not before I reach her. I promised.
I promise myself the same.
We press on.
Some trees look like wind, green wind—like they’ve been blown into their current shape by the relentless gale force that surrounds me.
They probably have.
Others rise to impossible heights. “Teak,” Bibi says, from where he sways ahead of me, on Ching’s back. “Now almost as rare and as valuable as gold. Not many left, not anymore.” Bamboo grows in and around everything else.
Wild grasses—and tufts of sugarcane and bamboo, I think—shudder in the wind on the rocks and rubble that line the jungle trail in front of me. Bibi holds his hand high, running his fingers through the bamboo as he rides along the path, calling back at me. “See? The jungle is full of minor miracles. That something so hard and something so soft can coexist together so peaceably.”
I look at Bibi, clinging to Fortis in front of me. “So we should curl ourselves around the Lords? The Embassies? Give in and ‘coexist’? What do they know about peace?”
Bibi’s voice travels back on the wind. “I have no answers, Dol. Ask the Buddha. There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.”
But we’re too late for peace. That much becomes clear as we near the remains of what looks like a village.
At least, judging by the dirt roads going nowhere, the crumbling foundations of streets and homes and farms.
I look up. The Choppers are circling, high in the sky. We wait, concealed in the surrounding fringe of jungle growth.
“Something’s going on here!” Fortis shouts over the Choppers. I nod, but say nothing. If the jade girl is here, I don’t feel her.
I don’t feel life at all—which frightens me.
I see why, when the Choppers are high enough in the sky that we can slip out of the greenery and into the clearing.
There’s nothing there. Nothing left, anyway. The clearing where the village should be isn’t much more than that—a clearing. There are no remaining houses, no people. Only a broad stretch of nothing—a large, empty crater, filled with mud and water, washed-out roads and crumbling foundations.
Only the town itself is missing.
We pass part of a rusting wheelbarrow as we enter, one of the only signs that a village was here at all. It dips halfway into the edge of what looks like a brown lake extending to the center of the valley.
Lucas kicks at the lake with his boot. “What is this stuff? It’s disgusting.” The smell is potent, earthy, with a vague metallic edge.
Tima bends down, touching it. Fortis isn’t far behind her. I crouch to look at it, but can’t bring myself to get my hands anywhere near the earth-colored mess. It’s just too strange. “Don’t touch it,” I say. “It could be toxic.”
Tima can’t hear me, and more than that, she can’t be stopped. Not when she’s like this. “I don’t know. It isn’t water, but it doesn’t feel like mud, either.” It reeks, whatever it is.
“Before The Day, scientists used to talk about something called primordial stew.” Tima’s voice sounds strangely quiet as she rubs her hands in what looks to me like bubbling brown sewage. “The basic components of human life. What we came from.” She looks up. “Or maybe, what we’ve returned to. What if that’s it? What if we’ve come full circle again?”
“Soup,” says Fortis. “Primordial soup.”
“You mean, something made this crap? On purpose?” Lucas looks like he’s going to throw up.
“Where’s the town?” I crouch next to Tima, staring at the ground surrounding us. “What happened?”
“If I’m right,” says Tima, glancing up at Lucas. “If I’m right, this is the town.”
“Was. Before it was mulched,” agrees Fortis.
She nods. “Reduced to constituent materials.”
“Recycled,” says Ro, incredulous.
“What did this? What could do this? And why?” Lucas looks around for answers. He doesn’t ask who did it, because we all know that answer.
Fortis is down on all fours, examining the ground. “Considering the fine grain of the earth, or mud, or whatever this rot is, seems to me like the work of a massive number of—somethin’.”
Tima runs the mucky soil through her fingers. “Yes, or a few really big things. But most likely a lot of smaller things.” She looks around, past us.
“It certainly does appear that a swarm of something did this. It looks worse than a field of grain after a locust attack.” Bibi is drained of color.
Lucas stands next to me, his arm brushing mine, as though he needs the contact to ground him. “You mean like some kind of swarm of alien locusts?” The thought is equally frightening and disgusting.
Fortis speaks softly, with an odd surety. “That’s what it looks like. A massive swarm that could break everything down to its component parts. Think of it, machines that could chew or secrete or both. Everything—organic, man-made. Biological. Like mechanical or chemical digestion.”
“Does such a thing exist?” I look at Fortis, who looks at Bibi. “Does it?”
“I don’t know,” says Fortis. “But if they can do this, then it’s over.”
We all stop talking, because the brown lake in front of us has suddenly become that much more devastating.
“Say it’s true. Does that mean they’re going to chew up our world and spit it right back out again? Everything?” Tima looks horrified.
“Not if we don’t let them,” I say, looking at the brown nothing that may be the future of our planet. “Right, Fortis?”
But Fortis is quiet
, because not even he knows the answer to that.
GENERAL EMBASSY DISPATCH: EASTASIA SUBSTATION
MARKED URGENT
MARKED EYES ONLY
Internal Investigative Subcommittee IIS211B
RE: The Incident at SEA Colonies
Note: Contact Jasmine3k, Virt. Hybrid Human 39261.SEA, Laboratory Assistant to Dr. E. Yang, for future commentary, as necessary.
DOC ==> FORTIS
Transcript - ComLog 09.22.2069
DOC::NULL
//comlog begin;
comlink established;
sendline: You are not biological, correct?;
return:… Correct.;
sendline: But you are self-aware, intelligent. Creative?;
return:… Cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I exist. Yes. We are similar.;
sendline: I would like to explore this idea further.;
return: You are an interesting challenge.;
sendline: As are you. I will be in touch soon to continue this conversation.;
return: Goodbye.;
comlink terminated;
//comlog end;
27
FUTURE PAST
We don’t talk after the lost village. We find a place to camp and let the day end, as quickly as we can.
We have seen too much, all of us.
Darkness can’t come soon enough. It is time to see less. That’s all any of us wants, at this particular moment.
The cave that Fortis and Bibi have finally agreed upon, away from the valley and back along the Ping, is not much of a cave. More an indentation in the rock, near a stand of bamboo and teak for the elephants—trees that lead from the grassy banks of the river straight into the overgrown jungle that is this side of the Ping’s delta. Still, a fire is a fire, and sleep is sleep, so as soon as we set up camp, no one is complaining.
By the time we have eaten our dinner—rice and vegetable cakes packed into a series of stacked tin containers—and the elephants have eaten half of the available jungle, we are all ready to sleep.
Idols Page 19
