What was surprising was how ferociously the elders had argued. Some of them were in favor of the Builders staying in our village to do what they came here to do. Maybe, the elders thought it was all up to them to decide whether or not to welcome the outsiders. Or maybe, it was the desire to still have some control that led them to discuss things as though they still had a choice. I did not think we could make the Builders leave even if we wanted to. If it came to that, the Builders had ways and possessed things they could use to defend themselves if we tried to forcibly drive them away
So, the Builders ended up staying. Most of the terms were fair and were made transparent to us. What remained unspoken that night was the fact that we just could not make them leave, diplomatically or otherwise.
The next day, one of the Builders had an accident while climbing the hand-and-foot trail on the rockface. The belay mechanism failed, and there was nothing else to break her fall.
The Builders took a day off after the tragedy. I spied on them, pretended to look at their blueprints and what they called tomographic readings, pretended to understand their need for taking measurements and recording data. What I was really curious about was how they grieved. I had been taught to believe that one could only truly grasp what binds a group of people by observing how they mourned their dead. And the Builders—oh, they were beautiful in their desolation in this alien territory, in their shared grief.
I noticed one man crying silently outside the air-conditioned tent where the Builders housed their electronic equipment. I was told he was the dead woman’s brother, and he worked as the group’s computer technician.
In retrospect, I realize how arousing pity can be wielded as a weapon. But at the time, observing the dead woman’s brother agonizing over his profound sense of loss made me want to help the Builders in their mission. I remember snapshots of world history while I was schooled by outsiders many years ago. I remember how the swarthy Catherine de’ Medici, even through the atrocities that followed her reign, charmed her people because they somehow felt sorry for her. They imagined their Queen looking into that hole on the floor to the bedchamber her husband shared with Diane de Poitiers. They imagined their Queen in her desperation when she resorted to drinking copious amounts of mule’s urine because she thought it would help her conceive an heir to the throne. Yes, the ability to incite pity could be compelling in so many ways.
On the third day, the Builders resumed their work. And when they did, the Doctor generously explained to us, with me doing all the translating, the spectacular location of our village. He had slides projected on the wall of the darkened tent. He described, one by one, what they knew of my people, why they came here, and how their research here could simultaneously change paleontology and anthropology. Some of the elders were impressed. Some were scared and intimidated. Only two of them protested violently, lashing out and whisking aside what looked to be telecommunications equipment.
Tiago, one of the elders who adamantly refused to give the Builders access to his home, looked at me and said in our language, Flesh is dry. Flesh is parched. Flesh is forever flawed and unwilling to hide telltale marks of abuse. Join me. There is only so much that we can carry. These Builders don’t belong here. The boils will appear behind their necks. The boils will grow right under their skin. Their descendants will carry the mark…
It was the Curse of Ridika, god of pestilence. My people knew what it could do when recited in full by an enraged elder. To prevent him from finishing, one of the elders approached him from the back and tackled him to the ground. It took the whole night for the rest of the elders to calm Tiago down.
Three days later, two children had succumbed to the sickness exuded by the Builders. They just did not wake up. There were small boils along the length of their arms. There was also the telltale odor of putrescence on the young bodies that had only died a few hours before. My people and I washed and wrapped the bodies of our dead children, prayed, and carried them to be buried beyond the valley. The rough beasts of summer looked on as we buried our dead.
It was only the beginning. Around sixteen more of my people fell ill and died. Tiago was the first of the dissenting elders to die. Only the ones who had nothing against the Builders were immune to the sickness. We survived. We assimilated.
It did not take long for us to cease looking disheveled, to look buffed and polished and well-mannered. Slowly, my people learned the language of the outsiders. Next would come learning their arts, their sciences, their ways of looking at the world. When we met each others’ eyes, we no longer considered it an act of aggression. And when the Builders walked ahead of us, we no longer considered it to be belittling.
Time passed, and the valley was now a bustling metropolis. An atrium enclosed by a glass dome filtering UV rays served as the Builders’ command center. I worked with them now, on their payroll, as a sort of emissary, a token intermediary. I was well compensated for performing easy tasks.
At the entrance to the Builders’ command center was a translation of the first of our nine sacred stones. The Builders must have found it quite important to commemorate what was written on the first sacred stone, the one that chronicled our beginnings. Now written in the language of the Builders, the story of my people was etched in a large metal plate. It said,
Do you see now what has become of us? When you first found us, we were swarthy and inelegantly intact—our horns and hides bristling in place, our hooves not yet scored and bloodied by a hundred different splinters, our quiet manifold darkness tucked away from sight. That was before an iron-laden rock roughly a mile in diameter decimated the area of the tropical forest we called home.
The blast razed the trees, turned them into supplicants that brooded as they circled the periphery of the crash site, now a dumb and faceless crater lake cupping algae-ridden water. What once were trees became stunted wooden figures bending toward the direction of the crater, as if they ended up worshipping whatever it was that had killed most of them. And if you look at the not-quite-trees closely enough, you might notice how they twitch and flinch and rustle their phantom branches bearing phantom leaves—all these subtle motions taking place even in the absence of wind.
Some of us died. The ones that survived were those that could mimic what passed for dead. The ones that flourished were those that resembled the rough beasts of summer—the restless and the languorous, the reckless and the selfish, those with tough hides allowing for elevated thresholds of pain. They entered the cities and mingled with the two-legged ones, the ones that learned long ago to stop walking on all fours, to covet ever so strongly what others have, to always take more than what was needed.
The remaining elders were made comfortable, of course. The Builders made sure of that while they razed the valley and relentlessly carved the first layer of an open-pit mine at the edge of what was once the forest sheltering the rough beasts of summer. With butlers, chefs, and health-care professionals at their beck and call, the elders were each provided with well-furnished, temperature-regulated quarters in the residential skyrise. They occupied the ones on the west side, the ones sporting the widest balconies and walls laden with a dizzying ladder array of hydroponics-grown vegetables—an addition I suggested because I knew it would please my people.
The balcony railings were gilded and glared harshly under the sun. I made a mental note to have those replaced with wrought iron railing as soon as possible.
I read yesterday how the Builders wrote about us in the history books. The books were lavishly illustrated, complete with systematically labeled interior plates. The different areas of the valley were assigned as Grid 1, Grid 2, and so on. They even gave new names to my people’s magic charms. The Builders called them many such names, the likes of archeocyathids, trypanites, edrioasteroids, and petroxestes—all under the chapter entitled Fossils.
The Quarantine Tank
In the chemical plant right across your grandfather’s fields of lavender, there is a gleaming containment vessel that serves as a
quarantine tank. The tank is angular when viewed from the outside. But your elders claim that the tank is perfectly spherical because designing strong vessels entails the removal of corners and edges. According to your elders, corners and edges present the weakest points, and weak points have no place in containers whose sole purpose is to isolate. They also say that the spherical quarantine tank is propped on a giant tripod supported by tungsten struts and that it comes with a calibrated pressure valve, eleven downstream sampling points, and a pair of fouling-resistant heat exchangers.
The quarantine tank’s drain pipe is said to lead to an inverted cone chamber housing the Great Beast.
Outside the gated and fenced chemical plant, there is a red sign with white lettering. The sign indicates that the fence is electrified and that no plant operator should be held responsible for deaths resulting from failure to heed the warning. But you know better. Once upon a time, you ventured close to the electrified fence, carelessly touched it with the tip of your finger, touched the precious chain-link lure, all the while expecting a powerful surge coursing through your body but alas, the high-voltage warning was a sham.
If you listen closely and if you position yourself downwind, you can hear a robotic voice announcing a countdown every fourteenth of the month. Then a clink, a metallic ping, sometimes a loud bang. Last year, a blaring alarm brought out a large group of plant operators in green hazmat suits. They disappeared quickly as they rounded the fake hedges lining the north side of the gray windowless building.
As you help tend to your grandfather’s fields of lavender, your elders waste no time and take it upon themselves to lecture you. The elders tell of the uncoiling Great Beast made more robust by its noontime trashing while immersed in the temperature-controlled growth medium. The elders tell of what can happen in case the quarantine tank fails. They tell of the inevitability of mechanical wear and tear, of tensile stress limits, of an inattentive plant operator, of a redundant backup system malfunctioning at the most inopportune time.
You tell your elders not to worry. You tell them what you have discovered regarding the electrified fence. The plant operators could be lying about a lot of other things, too, you say. I’ve been thinking a lot about the chemical plant these days. There may be no quarantine tank, no Great Beast. Nothing in there but a bunch of guys protecting their interests by making it appear that they were keeping the world safe from the unkillable Great Beast. Maybe, we’ve been conned. Don’t you think it is better that way? Generations of men living safely right across the chemical plant designed to restrain and control the fabled millennial scourge—it sounds like a decent bargain, doesn’t it? There is nothing to fear. I also believe that it is best to act as if we are still afraid, to act as if we do not know the truth yet about the fence. Maybe, there is a bigger secret, a bigger lie.
Do you remember what happened to the plant operators who orchestrated the Age of Semiconductors? Do you remember how callously they squandered resources in a futile attempt to produce wider sheets of graphene, because graphene is at its most usable when hammered into sheets, sheets with depth equal to the size of a carbon atom? Do you remember what happened when those plant operators tried to grow graphene in silver? They instructed us to prioritize the mining of silver ores and to leave our lavender fields to wilt. Now, there isn’t any silver left in the world. With the last of it, the plant operators synthesized twenty-eight sheets of graphene. Twenty-eight! I know I am not making any sense, and this business with the fence may not have anything to do with the past failures of the plant operators. But I believe that we should not take what they have to offer at face value. Has it ever occurred to you that maybe, maybe it is us those plant operators are afraid of? But it really does not matter at this point. I don’t care. The plant operators can run their chemical plant the way they see fit. We have our lavender fields, and they are beautiful, pristine. Nothing matters after that.
Since you are the first to touch the chain-link fence long believed by many of your kind to deliver a fatal jolt, you see awe in your people’s eyes. The children, who are not yet allowed to make contact with the fragrant lavender flowers, have been bringing you offerings—their toys, tufts of grass, morsels from their rationed food, their black-and-white drawings of rainbows. You know that they have simply mistaken your recklessness for bravery, but you like the attention. You have dreamed of this moment. You have dreamed of being seen in a different light, to be deemed unique, to be considered a cut above the other generations of farmhands looking after your grandfather’s vibrant fields of lavender. So, you graciously accept all the offerings. You thank the children for their gifts. The inedible gifts you arrange like trophies on the plank that serves as the railing of your bunk bed.
One time, an elder asks you why anyone would do that, why anyone would make up a story about the Great Beast. He points out that the ancestors know of the existence of the Great Beast accessible only through the drain pipe of the quarantine tank. There is no way, he says, no way that the ancestors will lie to us. They must have seen the Great Beast.
They did not lie, you say. They were simply fooled. They were fooled just like all of us. It is easy to assume, for instance, that what looks metallic is made of metal. But what if it’s just a shiny stone bereft of its striations? What if it’s just a trick of light?
Oh, how the elders propose many reasons for the failure of the electrified fence. Some say you touched it at the same time the plant operators cycled the generators, that you were lucky to be alive. Some argue the existence of a conspiracy. Some accuse you of lying, of trying to make a name for yourself. Some say the sham of an electrified fence that doesn’t electrocute does not mean that the Great Beast is not real. Only one resorts to blasphemy: that the ancestors may have been a gullible bunch, that the ancestors may have been easily swayed by the sheen of metal surfaces. But nobody is willing to verify. Nobody wants to touch the chain-link fence. Nobody dares to enter the premises of the chemical plant. Nobody dares to confront a plant operator.
So, for years and years, you still cannot smell whatever comes out of the chemical plant and its rows of squat, windowless buildings. Right across the chemical plant, your world is replete with the scent of lavender. Because you and your people are safely ensconced in your part of the world, you do not care about anything else. And in your part of the world, you can see farmhands and a landscape teeming with purple flowers. You can see the sinewy bodies of working men cultivating the lavender. You can see children being trained to care for your grandfather’s fields of lavender. You can see the dogs taming their feral handlers, and sometimes they stop for a drink from the lagoon. You can see the rough beasts of summer languish among the trees, their horns silvery in the dwindling afternoon sunlight. From afar, the forest looms.
Sometimes, an alarm blares inside one of the buildings in the chemical plant. And just like before, the sound brings out the plant operators in green hazmat suits. They disappear quickly, rounding the fake hedges lining the north side of the gray windowless building.
The First Ocean
Their unblinking eyes urged me on. They had so much faith in me that I found it difficult to disappoint them. It was impossible not to lie. There was nothing quite like it in the history of the planet,” I said. “The waves battered the shores during rough weather. Once the storm was over, the carapaces of giant crabs and sea turtles littered the beach. The tops of corals were washed off, glistening red in the sand. The clam shells were cracked, long emptied of their owners. Their colors—all the beautiful colors you can ever imagine. The smell of saltwater and millions of years of constant rain and lightning hits you. Then you notice it as the sun shines at last. A rainbow. All the visible colors you can conjure arching from east to west.”
Damien was close to tears when I tried to mimic the sound of the dolphins.
“Oh, how they sang!” I said.
“What about the beach sand, Uncle?” Arabella asked. “You promised me that nobody can count the grains of sand on th
e beach.”
“We could not count them, but we siphoned and used them up. The sands had to be melted into glass to construct this dome.” I pointed upwards, to the invisible edge of the city’s glass enclosure. “It was the only way to survive.”
They frowned. I knew they did not want to hear that part of the story. They were young, and their battery panels had just been replaced to last for another three hundred years. They did not yet understand that hiding inside a glass cage still counted as a courageous act.
I produced from my pocket a small gray pebble from the fabled beach. It was made of plastic, but none of them noticed. Enraptured, they passed it around, rolled it in their hands as if it was the most sacred thing in the world. They took turns holding it, closing their eyes as if to imagine the smell of saltwater, a smell that was alien to them. In their minds, they heard the murmur of waves. In their minds, they conjured their own versions of the singing dolphins.
History of the World
Aman dangles from a rock jutting from the bare face of a sheer cliff. He scrambles for a foothold, finds none. There is nothing that he can use to hoist himself to safety. The top of the cliff is twenty feet away. The drop is a dizzying four hundred feet or more.
He could have gotten in that precarious position by accident or by sheer stupidity. But it does not matter at this point. He is going to die.
Age of Blight Page 6
