Chaga

by Ian McDonald

  Ute exchanged glances with Gaby. Peter Werther saw the raised eyebrows.

  ‘Ah, you are thinking, another idiot with a mad theory about the Chaga. It has fried his brains, all that hot sun and thin air and years of solitude: he has gone quietly insane, I can understand that. There are so many people with messages about the Chaga: mine is by no means the maddest. Or the sanest. It was anticipated that I would not be believed—you may even be doubting that I was lost for the five years since the Kilimanjaro Event, that I am Peter Werther at all. Well, I have something you should see.’

  He held out his left hand, palm up. With his right hand he removed the leather biker’s glove.

  ‘Look closely,’ Peter Werther said.

  At first Gaby thought it was an intricate tattoo covering all the upper surfaces of his left hand from fingertips to wrist. Fractal pattern tattoos had been briefly fashionable among her fellow students in London. Then she thought that it was a strange and terrible birthmark, a complex meander of skin pigments. There was something familiar in the very alienness, like those photographs you see of parts of things in close up.

  ‘Oh dear Jesus,’ Gaby McAslan whispered, seeing.

  It was Chaga. The legacy of the alien rainforest was a piece of itself imprinted in the palm of Peter Werther’s left hand. Trees, pseudo-corals, mosaic-cover: complete, perfect, a million times miniaturized.

  Peter Werther slipped off his linen jacket.

  Amongst Gaby’s father’s library of home-videoed old movies was a tape of The Illustrated Man. Five hours a day, it had taken to make Rod Steiger up for the role. The most complex skin-job in cinema history, but the effect had been breathtaking.

  Behold the man, Gaby McAslan. Peter Werther’s left arm up to the sleeve of his T-shirt was covered in Chaga. He pulled the white T-shirt off over his head. The mottled infestation stopped at a clearly defined circle halfway across his pectoral—he was in good shape for a late thirtysomething, Gaby noted in that trivia-gathering way of those who do not want to believe the evidence of their eyes. The Chaga closed across his shoulder, down his scapulars and looped under his arm at the third rib.

  ‘It’s growing,’ he said. Ute Bonhorst mapped the geography of his body minutely with the video camera.

  ‘Doesn’t it, ah?’ Gaby wallowed for questions.

  ‘Hurt? No. There is no pain at all. That’s the marvellous thing about it, it’s quite painless. And you need not worry, it is not infectious. Let us say, no one in What the Sun Said has caught it off me. It is personal to me, my sign, my stigmata.’

  ‘How fast?’ It repelled Gaby, yet was morbidly attractive. She wanted to touch it, but did not know if she could bear the feel of it beneath her fingertips.

  ‘Oh, very, very slow. A few millimetres a day. But it moves in time with its mother, if you understand? To scale. And, like it, this cannot be stopped.’

  ‘You’ve tried?’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘How long have you got?’

  ‘It is about nine months since I woke in a flower pod at the very edge of the Chaga. Then it was just a spot in the middle of my palm. So, you can work it out. What do you think? About another year or so? Maybe two? It seems to be avoiding my face: that, I think, will be last to go. It knows how important the face is to us.’

  ‘What then?’

  Peter Werther smiled.

  ‘Something wonderful, I think. I know that I require less food and water and sleep than before. Even now, I sometimes forget to breathe for several seconds, and have not yet come to any lasting harm.’

  Ute spoke in German.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Peter Werther said. ‘She is asking me if maybe I am becoming, ah?’

  ‘Photosynthetic.’

  ‘Ja. And recycling my own water. Becoming a self-sufficient, sealed unit. Perhaps. I do not know. Perhaps I will live forever; whatever, I am not afraid of it. There is nothing to be afraid of; it is not death, it is not disfigurement. It is being changed into a better thing, a fitter thing. I am not the future, but I may be a future.’

  Gaby shook her head in disbelief. Not at what Peter Werther had told her, and whether he could be believed or not, but that she had been given such a gift as this. This was syndication to every on-line newsnet on the planet. This was the centre spread of every lumbering folding paper Gutenberg dinosaur. This was prime-time broad- and narrowcast news: this was half the industrialized world choking on their microwave TV Chow. This was Time and Le Monde and Stern. This was lead-lines on magazine covers from stands on Times Square to the Gare du Nord.

  This was Gaby McAslan in front of a camera lens.

  ‘They’ll never leave you alone once this gets out,’ she said.

  ‘We can always move. What the Sun Said has been good to me. There is a lot of country for us to disappear into.’

  ‘They’ll find you. They won’t give you space like we have. They won’t let you say what you want to say, they won’t respect your message, or your story, or where you’ve been, or what you’ve seen. They’ll be asking you how you think the world has changed in the five years you’ve been away and what you think of the latest fashions and the latest music and the latest supermodel and what the three things are you missed most while you were in the Chaga. They’ll do articles on your sex life, they’ll run features on the contents of your bloody refrigerator. They’ll ask you a million things, but they won’t listen to you. They’ll make you into a celebrity.’

  ‘I know this. But people must be prepared. People must understand. Even one word of mine may be enough. Prophets are never honoured in their own countries. Even if they do not listen to what I have to say, it may be enough to see that a man can go into the Chaga and return.’

  But as what? Gaby thought.

  The voices of the children grew louder. They came running along the shore and out onto the wooden jetty, shouting for their Brother Peter. Peter Werther hastily pulled on his protecting garments.

  ‘They are my family, my friends. Even if no one else will, they believe me.’

  The children spilled into the wooden gazebo. The weaver birds fled from their clamouring voices and restless bodies. The children tugged at Peter Werther’s sleeves and hands, implored him to come and look at what they were doing.

  ‘Their future too,’ he said. ‘Ja?’

  A great cloud, dark, flat-bottomed, rising to a peak of curdled cumulus ten miles high, edged over the eastern escarpment and cast its reflection into the lake.

  11

  Gabygram 8

  April 24

  from: GMcA@136657NAI:EAFTP.

  Hi Reb. A million thanks for the tapestry. It got here relatively unplundered by Customs and Excise, except for the inevitable wee hole they snip off the corner so they can stick an endoscope in to sniff for cocaine. It’s a beautiful thing; too precious for this place. When I find a more permanent bunk, I’ll accord it its due honour. Which, as I’ve said, may be sooner rather than later. Mrs K. says this is not really the place for me, though she’s loved having me—she has a soft spot for Irish girls: apparently I am not the first, which makes me rather suspicious, but I can’t go into that here. But she has a friend in the cathedral choir who works in the Global Aids Policy Unit who has a lodger who may be moving out—I don’t care, just get my feet under the table.

  So, I’m Auntie Gab again? A wee girl. Hannah’ll probably stop at two, she’s a real two is enough, three is social irresponsibility person. I’m happy, of course, but I warn you, this is what happens when you steal your sister’s boyfriend. Actually, Marky and her were made for each other, so they should be thankful to me for having introduced them. Some people like living in a Laura Ashley catalogue. Me, when, if, I have kids, I want dozens. All over the place. Noisy and dirty and rude and lively.

  Very pleased to hear Dad’s gall bladder operation was a success. Doctors, what do they know? There’s more rest and healing out on the Point than fretting indoors listening to the birds and the wind and wanting to be out there, except t
hat some eejit of a doctor says you’re not allowed to. It’s good this time of year, the Point; the gorse will just be past its best, the leaves budding. You miss seasons here; whatever changes there are as the planet spins around the sun are too subtle for a white girl like me to notice.

  I’m keeping up with United’s progress’ through the Net—we have an office league going, those of us who appreciate the finer points of the Beautiful Game, as opposed to the ethnic cleansing Americans call football. Our very own SkyNet United has, ahem, been doing rather well recently. We stuffed the BBC last week: four nil, four nil, four nil, four nil! One of them from the size five of your own dear sister. Tembo would have made a hat-trick but for a decidedly dodgy tackle on the edge of the box; the ref was obviously blind, bribed or both, it was a clear-cut penalty. Faraway managed to stop everything that was fired at him for once, in between showing off his natty new sports gear to his multitude of goal-line groupies. Next fixture is against UNECTA itself that is, when there are enough of our peoples in town to make teams.

  So, I’m a celebrity. Local girl makes good. If they’re talking about me in the Groomsport Drugstore, I really have arrived. Wish I felt so good about it. Jesus Reb, SkyNet… I get the animations back from the Manga Twins—whom I’ve never met—I e-mail the thing to T.P.’s PDU so it’s the first thing he sees when he gets out of the bed in the morning. He creams himself, Reb.

  Gaby McAslan is the toast of the Thorn Tree. Even that bitch Abigail Santini shouted me lunch at the Norfolk and managed to do a passable impersonation of being gracious. Pats on the back from Cap’n Bill at head office, even. I tell T.P. the Werther story was worth its weight in cocaine so when is he going to pull me off on-line and put me out in the field as a correspondent?

  Fuckpig Nazi bastard asshole. He sits there behind his desk and says to my face, ‘Well, I don’t know, you’re doing so well in On-line it would be a mistake to move you just as you’re carving out a niche for yourself,’ and then gives me some shit about wanting me in On-line to cover the Tolkien probe when it rendezvouses with Iapetus at the beginning of next week, because I’m the only one he can trust to do it right. Jesus, Reb, Ute Bonhorst’s name is on the copyline, but I made the Werther story, every last bit of it. They don’t need a journalist for the Tolkien thing. Bastard Dubliner. Never trust a Southerner.

  On the up side, though, I’m going out on the town with Oksana Telyanina. The Siberian shamaness? She left a message for me on the Thorn Tree. Used to be a regular jungle telegraph back in the Great White Hunter days, now it’s mostly wankers on TransAfrica Jeep Safaris with names like Jerome or Letitia telling Rudy and Charlotte they’ll meet them in Alex, OK? And one addressed to me. Gaby McAslan. Spelled wrong. Here it is, see? ‘Big cocks and vodka, Gaby! Come with me and meet men!’ She writes like a six-year-old. We’re going to this place called the Elephant Bar up at Wilson Airfield—she calls it Weelson, which is going to remain stuck in my head forever—where the Siberian pilots all hang out, drink vodka, smash glasses and male bond. They have a strict dress code. Very strict. They won’t let you in unless you’re wearing shorts. Shades are optional, but if your knees don’t show, you’re bounced. So, what do you think? T-shirt not too much? Hannah may have got the man, but I kept the T-shirt. At least T-shirts can’t get you pregnant.

  Gotta dash, Reb. Keep an eye out for my reports on the Tolkien-Iapetus fly-by. Love to Dad and Paddy and the cats, and Hannah, I suppose, and the sprogs. I’ll just close this file and mail it. Love you. Bye now.

  12

  While Gaby grubbed around in the smoggy streets of Nairobi, Oksana Telyanina had been half-way around the planet on UNECTA’s business. She had also collected a new tattoo; a tiny tree about the size of a thumbnail on the ball of her right shoulder. It symbolized the soul’s search for transcendence and union with the spirit world: the mystical ascent of the apprentice sha-person into a tree to be possessed by the spirit of a totemic animal.

  The Elephant Bar’s totemic animal was self-evident. There were tusks behind the bar; plastic replicas, not out of ecological sensitivity, but because the ivory ones had been sold on the black market during a financial crisis six years ago, before Siberians came and turned the Elephant Bar into little Irkutsk. So now there were not only photographs of elephants, paintings of elephants, posters of elephants, batiks and wall-hangings and bamboo screens of elephants, elephant foot stools and tables supported by carved wooden elephants, like Hindu cosmology; there were also icons on the walls, bottles of Stolichnaya on the back bar and little silver pots of caviar all along the counter. At one end a volcanic samovar simmered.

  ‘Story is: elephant walks out of National Park, which in those days did not have fence round, like now,’ Oksana had explained. ‘Right on to main runway and straight into pissy little Cessna trying to take off. Boom! Shredded jumbo for half kilometre every direction. That is why called Elephant Bar.’

  The Siberians in shorts and shades and fur hats with the ear-flaps folded down decided that the women at the table needed their company and sat down with them. Oksana convinced Gaby that it would be a good time to go out on to the airfield and look at the aeroplanes. Time spent looking at aeroplanes is time exceedingly well spent.

  The air was warm out on the strip. Little night winged things swooped through the soft gloaming. Runway lights were a glowing path to the main tower a mile distant. Fuel trucks nosed among the parked aircraft like hungry piglets. The night smelled of dust and aviation kerosene.

  ‘I thought you were taking me to meet men, not jugfuls of vodka and hormones,’ Gaby said.

  Oksana shrugged. ‘Not many men in this country at all. Plenty of rides. Few men. If you do get man, you must hold him, hard. I tell you how you keep him for ever. Serbski Jeb. That is how. Serbian fucking. You can do it indoors but outside much better. Make sure ground is soft. You get man. You stake him out, yes? So?’ She mimed a spread-eagle. ‘Good and tight. Then you get on top of him and you ride him. Slow. Very slow. When he seems to come, you slow down, stop him. After half-hour, forty minutes, he is out of his head. Afraid he is dying, afraid he is not going to die, and nothing he can do to stop you. Girl on top. Won’t work other way. You always in charge. He’ll want more, but careful with it, yes? Not for every day. Holidays, birthdays, New Year; keep it special so he will not get used to it. He’s yours for ever, I promise.’

  ‘How the hell do you know this?’

  ‘Eight months of snow in Irkutsk. You learn much those long, dark nights by the fire.’

  ‘It’s not just fucking, it’s everything,’ Gaby said. ‘I’ve been here two months and I want something to happen. Something real: not a report of it, or a press release, or even someone who has experienced it himself. The real thing. I want to see the Chaga, Oksana, that’s all. I am going out of my head with frustration. I want something to happen.’

  ‘I think maybe your prayer will be answered, Gaby. Something is happening. They have been fuelling up planes all day. Something is coming, very soon, I feel. I do not know what; they will not tell us until the pre-flight briefing, but because of what I am, I can sense things others cannot.’

  Oksana fingered a leather amulet on a thong around her neck. ‘Change is coming. Will be rain by morning. I can smell it. My grandfather had a famous weather nose. I have inherited it.’

  They walked under the wings of a stubby, barbaric little jet: T-tail, two big turbofans mounted above the wing-roots. It was the same aircraft that was printed on Oksana’s faded sleeveless T-shirt. Two black soldiers came around the aircraft’s nose. They recognised Oksana and nodded without challenging Gaby. They carried their automatic weapons with the brutal ease peculiar to African soldiers, as if they were bags of vegetables. Oksana placed her hand affectionately on the fuselage. ‘This is mine. She is not beautiful, but I love her. Do anything, go anywhere for me. Good as any man. Better, maybe. Does not need Serbski Jeb to keep her true to me.’

  A Cyrillic word was spray-stencilled under the cockpit windshiel
d.

  ‘What does it say?’

  ‘Is her name. Dostoinsuvo. Means “dignity”. Come, I show you something.’ Oksana opened the hatch. Steps unfolded, alerted by her handprint. Gaby followed her up into the cockpit.

  Oksana cleared a mail order catalogue for a Californian New Age store from the vacant co-pilot’s seat. Dostoinsuvo’s flight deck was a shrine to credit card shamanism. Leather sacks like sun-dried scrotums hung from the cockpit window. The hatch glass had been streakily stained with glass paint to portray images of the Ancestral Tree. Thumbnail icons looked down from between the redundant ceiling switches with the beatific indifference peculiar to Orthodox saints. Colour photocopies of mandalas were gunge-tacked to the back of the flight deck door; crystals of various hues and spiritual properties rested in niches in the command board. The bleached skulls of Oksana’s totemic animals were glued along the upper edge of the main console, which had been sprayed with green car paint that was peeling under the partial pressurisation. Tiny chimes glittered and tinkled in the draught from the air-conditioning vents; the virtual reality helmet was adorned with painted reindeer horns.

  ‘Is like explosion in magic shop, but I love her,’ Oksana said. ‘She takes me high, to the places of the spirits, and collects the power of the high places on her wings so I can bring it back to earth. Do not laugh, Gaby. You do not feel it, you do not have the power in your genes.’

  I am not laughing, Gaby thought. It is the most real thing there is. It is the thing that makes you want to do what you want so bad you would die if you could not do it. But you cannot touch it or hold it, for the moment you start to think about what it is, you turn away from the thing that produces it and you kill it. You can only find it when you do not seek it, you can only see it when you look away from it. It is pure being. Dhyana. It dwells in the cockpit of an An72F at twenty thousand feet as comfortably as in the nested fan-folds of information and video in a complex multimedia news overlay, but it will only come as an uninvited guest.