Reincarnation Blues

by Michael Poore

  Demon Rum came skipping back and handed Milo a spear. He tried, without success, to mask a smile.

  What weren’t they telling him? What didn’t he know?

  “Go on one!” yelled Jale. “Three…two…one!”

  The teens all swallowed one final, great breath and dove over the gunwale. Milo was the first one in the water.

  Surrounded by cool, surrounded by blue, he kicked with his legs, pushed with his arms, and aimed straight down, where the water was a deeper, dusky blue. Like a sky in reverse.

  Islander kids knifed past him. In a second, they were twenty feet below. Thirty.

  What the hell? What were they doing?

  They were using their legs and feet, their bodies undulating, the way a dolphin swims.

  Milo did the same. He went down faster, deeper, and it got darker all around.

  The others were out of sight, below. His lungs began to burn, but he didn’t want to turn back yet. The fish couldn’t be far.

  Something in his head warned him: What goes down must come up and needs time to come up.

  Shit.

  Milo turned and pulled his way back toward the surface.

  You have a lot to learn, he told himself. Take time to learn it.

  Goddamn, the daylight and the mottled sun up above were awfully far away.

  But he made it.

  He broke the surface in a universe of shooting pain. Pain like explosions in his lungs. He opened his throat and screamed in reverse, sucking up air like an anaconda; he got water, too, but didn’t care. Coughed it up.

  Suzie grabbed him and dragged him into the boat.

  He was bleeding. He could feel it. His eyes and ears.

  “You are one simple fucker, you know that?” Suzie bellowed at him. Was she hitting him? Hard to tell. Parts of him felt sharp and broken; other parts felt dead. “If that’s all the smarter you can be, like a two-year-old, I don’t care if it breaks my heart, you asshole, I’ll—”

  “Leave him alone,” said a young voice. Very young. Demon Rum. “Let him come around. He was brave.”

  “He was stupid,” spat Suzie.

  “He was learning. Still, Jale’s gonna be pissed.” By the time Milo was able to move, able to sit up, the rest of the divers were breaching, breaking the waves like fish, gulping air. Some of them, including Jale, had thrashing fish on their spears. Redfish the size of small children, with long red whiskers and narrow fins.

  The young kids cheered and helped them aboard.

  —

  Celebration! There were extra food and water rations when false night came around and Jupiter eclipsed the sun. And they sang some songs.

  Milo sat down beside Jale, who was snuggling with Chili Pepper, and said, “I’ll be able to do it right next time.”

  He didn’t know how he would do this, exactly, but he felt that it was true.

  But Jale said, “No.”

  “Listen,” he said, “back on the crawler—”

  “Forget the crawler,” she said. “You wait ’til Chili has had time to teach you right. You and Suzie can both learn, and then next time—”

  But Milo was already standing, already heading back toward his place by the mast.

  Dammit, he thought. I was just being courteous, anyway. Whose permission—

  “Milo,” said Chili Pepper, calling after him. “Jale’s captain. Her own father does what she says, when we’re on the water.”

  Milo tuned him out by playing some music inside his head.

  —

  A day later, when Frodo sighted minnies, Milo grabbed a spear and went over the side right after the others, before anyone could stop him.

  “Shit, Milo!” both Suzie and Demon Rum cried.

  But Milo had been conferencing with the voices in his head, and they had given him some helpful memories from other lives (so the voices said).

  You could imagine your brain was a house, with a toolroom inside. You could open that toolroom and find ways to make your brain work better. He recalled floating in space, at peace, stark naked.

  He recalled meditating with the Buddha (yeah, right!). In, out. Breathing was much more than taking in air. Breathing was where your rhythms interfaced with the rhythms of the world.

  Even when you were holding your breath.

  He passed Jale, who gave him a brief, surprised look. The water darkened around him.

  Pressure and movement. Balance.

  Glowing dots wriggled through the dark…Milo struck with his spear (that was breathing, too, the death struggle and the spear trying to wrestle free).

  The fast ascent, into light again, flying up through rolling waves, into warm sun and light.

  And climbing aboard by himself, because, oddly, no one held out a hand, no one helped him over the side or complimented him on his fish.

  No one even looked at him.

  “Oh, I see,” he said, but he said it almost silently, because he finally got it.

  They had their ways and their captains and rules because those things kept them alive. He had made a successful dive, but he was an asshole for disobeying Jale.

  He didn’t make eye contact with any of them as they went about the business of storing fish and steering for home.

  Suzie sat down beside him.

  “That time was fucking awesome,” she said. “Way better than before. Smarter, you know? You’re not as simple as I thought. But Jale’s going to rain on you, I think.”

  “Suzie—” warned Chili Pepper.

  “Let it go, Chili,” she said sharply. “You turn your back on him, you turn your back on me.”

  Milo’s brow furrowed. He loved her.

  —

  A day later, when the island came in sight, they still weren’t speaking to him.

  Fine. He and Suzie and Mom and the twins would make their own village on the other side of the island. He knew about catching redfish, and they could grow some crops, maybe.

  “Hey,” said Suzie, waking him up, nudging him with a big toe.

  It was the supernatural time of day, eclipse time. The great planet was a hole in the sky, surrounded by misty light and stars.

  “Hey,” said Suzie, lying down beside him, facing him. “Do you remember me, from before?”

  “Sure,” he whispered. “From the day the riot started.”

  “Not that,” she said. “Before then. Before…”

  “I never met you before then. I’m sure we must’ve passed on the concourse or on the rec level or something, but we must’ve gone to different classes and sims—”

  She pressed her whole hand against his mouth.

  “Listen: You know when we talked about the voices?”

  “The voices got me in trouble,” he muttered.

  “I think those are, like, memories from when we’ve lived…before.”

  Milo considered what had happened when he dove. The things he knew about the breathing, which were things he had never been taught.

  “I think,” she said, “there’s a reason you feel familiar to me,” and Milo realized that she had his penis in her hand.

  —

  An hour later, there was a general stirring in the boat, and sounds of alarm.

  “Shit,” said Jale, up in the prow.

  Milo followed her eyes and saw that they were home. There sat the island, green and jagged, with its hills and grass and the village behind the long white beach.

  And up on top of it all, over the tallest hill, hovered a cartel tanker ship.

  It looked like a coffee kettle welded to a toilet, bigger than an ancient football stadium, steaming and hissing.

  “What…” began Milo.

  “Trouble,” said Jale, helping to pull the outrigger ashore, forgetting to ignore him.

  She assigned High Voltage and Demon Rum to unload the fish from all three boats, then ran into the trees without another word.

  They all followed. Everyone seemed to have an idea what was going on. Everyone but Milo and Suzie.

  They
weren’t in shape the way the islanders were, and the island kids left them behind without hesitation. Suzie kept her eye on what little trail there was to follow, and they hopped over fallen trees and around tangled vines, eventually stumbling out of the forest.

  There was a factory on top of the hill. Looked like one, anyway. Looked as if giants had stood an old-fashioned submarine on its end and driven it into the ground. A towering, rusty, patched-up engine, clanking and steaming, full of hoses and oil stains. Over that, the tanker loomed.

  “What in the name of…” Suzie began.

  “It’s a well,” said Milo, who had been shadowing his dad around machinery for at least a decade. “A gigantic well, with a huge, piece-of-shit water pump.”

  Not far away, Jale and Boone and a whole lot of islanders were arguing with two armored Monitors. One commander, with a red helmet, and a deputy with a burp gun.

  Milo and Suzie jogged over to listen.

  “This machinery is your responsibility,” crackled the deputy, through his speaker. “Either you keep it running your way or we will assist you.”

  “Is that what you call it?” sneered Boone. “Sending a fifty-year-old grandmother down to fix a valve with a nine-pound wrench?”

  “She is your chief mechanic,” said the commander.

  “Was,” said Boone.

  Jale slapped angry tears from her face and turned away.

  “You may have five minutes to select another volunteer,” said the commander. “Or we will choose for you.”

  “There is no one!” roared Boone. “Why won’t you understand? The mechanics can’t dive that far! Even if a diver could get down there, they wouldn’t know what to look for—”

  The commander lifted Boone by the throat and held him in the air.

  “Four minutes,” he crackled, letting Boone slump to the ground.

  The islanders stood there without breathing or speaking.

  “I’ll go,” said Milo.

  Suzie smacked him—hard—across the back. “You don’t even know what it is!” she hissed.

  “They need someone to dive down and fix something,” said Milo. “I can do both of those things.”

  Jale shook her head.

  “You’re on punishment,” she said.

  Everyone stared at her in disbelief.

  “Jale?” said Boone, picking himself up, rubbing at his throat. “You wanna bring me up to speed?”

  —

  Four minutes later, Boone and a team of mechanics led Milo into the rusty submarine—the water pump—and showed him what to do.

  The pump was a cave of pipes and hoses and greasy turning things, stinking of scorched oil and exhaust.

  “This is what we do,” the mechanics explained. “Everyone on the island—everyone on all the islands—runs these goddamn pumps for the water cartel. It’s a lot of digging and a lot of fixing and a lot of broken bones and skulls.”

  At the submarine’s core, something like an anaconda snaked down into a pool of groundwater. The pool was the well itself.

  “It goes down a thousand feet,” the mechanics told him. “You have to go down that far to get below the toxins in the water table.”

  “Holy shit,” said Milo.

  “He can’t dive that far,” said Suzie quietly. “No one can.”

  The lead mechanic (new lead mechanic), Big Bird, shook her head.

  “The stuck valve is four hundred feet down.”

  “Christ on a stick,” said Milo, “they don’t have scuba gear for shit like that?”

  “The well is too narrow for gear,” said Big Bird, “with the drill head in place.”

  “Can’t you raise the drill head?” asked Milo.

  “Not with the valve stuck. It’s a safety feature.”

  Big Bird handed him a crescent wrench so heavy he had to hold it with both hands.

  “The valve chuck is a bright-orange nut,” she said, “but you won’t be able to see it in the dark. It sticks out a ways; you’ll probably just hit it as you go down. It’s the only thing down there that fits this wrench.”

  They stood silently looking at each other.

  “Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey,” she said.

  “I know,” said Milo.

  “Let him get ready,” said Suzie.

  The mechanics backed away. So did Suzie.

  —

  He stood there for a time.

  From some distance away, he probably looked to Suzie and the mechanics as if he was meditating.

  I have a big mouth, he was thinking.

  In fact, the sight of the hole and the dark water and the greasy machinery scared the crap out of him. A lot of bad had happened lately. It seemed a matter of destiny that it would come to an end here, with his drowning or getting smashed, just when all he wanted was to go off someplace and have sex with Suzie.

  “Milo?” said Suzie, tapping him on the shoulder.

  Shit! She could read his—

  “You don’t have to. You know that, right?”

  “Just another minute,” he said. “I’m oxygenating.”

  As Suzie re-joined the mechanics, he felt more focused.

  After a minute or so, he jumped in.

  Splash!

  Sick! The water was what you might expect from swimming inside a machine. Oozy and thick. Too late, he thought to close his eyes, but they already stung.

  Gripping the big wrench, he sank like a firebrick, scraping against the anaconda hose, then bouncing against the earthen wall of the well itself.

  The water squeezed him. Pressure mounting.

  He tried to feel the balance and harmony he’d felt in the open sea, but it just wasn’t there.

  He tried to open the toolroom in his brain and get the light to shine out, but he couldn’t find it.

  He tried to meditate, but his mind kept thinking about having sex with Suzie and—

  He slammed into something hard and round. It jabbed into his leg and stopped him hard enough (almost) to make him yell out or take a breath. The wrench bobbled loose, but he caught it with his elbow.

  Fuck! Idiot. The valve nut. He’d forgotten.

  His lungs had begun to burn, but he had time to do what he’d promised, he thought.

  He worked the wrench into place. It fit neatly.

  Lefty-loosey…he gave it a yank.

  It didn’t budge.

  Of course not, he thought.

  The pain in his lungs cranked up a notch (I don’t have enough air to get back up, he realized, and tried to ignore the thought).

  He gave the wrench another pull. Nothing.

  At this point, someone put a hand over his face.

  He almost screamed. He did urinate, which warmed the water and felt nice. And he realized almost instantly what was going on. It was the dead chief mechanic, bobbing around.

  It was all Milo could do to convince his body not to panic, but he calmed himself. Even felt the beginnings—way too late—of peace and balance.

  He was also left with at least a gallon of adrenaline pounding through his veins. He was aware of this in the same way he was aware of his respiration.

  Milo put his whole body into one massive tug, and the nut came loose and turned.

  And turned. And Milo heard something clank into place.

  Up! Now! He launched himself toward the surface even as he felt his consciousness beginning to slip. Any second, his body would gulp for air, whether he wanted it to or not—

  A dead hand touched him again. This time it grabbed his wrist.

  Wild horror! He shit himself a little—

  But it wasn’t the dead mechanic. The hand was a living hand, and it pulled him and kicked along with him and took him up…

  (What? Who?)

  Light, at the end of a verrrrr­rrrrr­rrrrr­rrry long tunnel…

  Splashing through!

  Oily, gassy air!

  He sucked it up—delicious!—grasping the edge of the well.

  He was so damn weak. He was going to pass out a
nd sink.

  An arm around his neck. Legs twining around his legs, holding him up.

  “Suzie?”

  “Just shut up and pass out,” she said, and he did.

  —

  The well sucked water up out of the bedrock and pumped it into the cartel tanker. The Monitors climbed back aboard the tanker, and the tanker rode its skyhook up into space.

  Milo and Suzie lay in the hospital hut, sleeping.

  Sometimes people brought them something to drink or a bit of fish to eat.

  One time, Milo woke up and his mom was sitting there, naked, trying to feed him some soup (awkwaaaaa­aaaaa­rd…).

  The twins were there, briefly. They gave him a bored look, said, “Fong!” and scrambled away somewhere.

  “They’re letting me teach in the school,” Mom told him. That was all he remembered from Mom’s visit.

  The next time he woke up, it was Suzie who fed him soup.

  “That other mechanic finally came to the surface,” she told him. “There’s a funeral for her tonight. They have these toxic trees that burn like crazy, so whenever they have a funeral, it usually means a bonfire. Except you’re not supposed to get too close or breathe the smoke, or get the ashes on you, or go near the fire pit after until there’s a good rain. Other than that, though, they say it’s really cool and burns different colors.”

  “What the flying hell were you doing down in the well?” he asked.

  “What did you expect me to do? You think you’re the only one who can do that voice-in-the-head thing? You don’t listen. It’s the past-lives thing I told you about. We knew each other, and I think I used to be a queen or something.”

  “Of that,” said Milo, setting the soup bowl aside, “I have no doubt.”

  “Ooh,” she said. She liked that. She let him kiss her.

  She let him do all kinds of things.

  —

  They left the hospital tent in time for the funeral, which was a simple affair.

  Boone and five other islanders lowered the body into a sandy grave.

  “Midnight Rider,” said Boone, piling sand over her with a hand-carved shovel.

  That was the name the woman had chosen for herself, because it told people something about who she was.

  “Midnight Rider,” everyone repeated, and they lit the bonfire, and stepped back and stayed out of the smoke, and applauded the wonderful colors.

  Then they went about their business and, as far as Milo could tell, never mentioned the woman again.