December 21, 2072:
Last night seems so long ago. I wonder if I am the same creature or if I am hallucinating. It was terrible! We descended the mountain for fifteen hours following Arthur through all the canyons and gullies. There was no light and he kept insisting that we keep our lanterns in our packs. The island boys were too scared to even whistle or clap their hands as they had done on the walk up from the coast. For all our fortitude and desperation, I did not think I would ever feel so miserable and near death. In the end I asked Arthur if I could ride on his back, and he let me. I guess he still has some feelings for me. He was never that sentimental. I remember how he wanted to kill us all that night at home, the last time I saw Mama and Papa. He has always carried a special torment, and now I don’t even know what he thinks or even where he is. He used to say he wanted to sacrifice himself for mankind. That’s how he would phrase it, like some kind of martyr. What is this mania for eternity? I would be very happy myself with a normal existence, a little house and some goats to give milk, a couple of hens and a few children to raise in the manner my sisters and I were always led to believe was God's intention for us.
Now we are with people who say they are with the Saint. They are very poor, living in shacks along the road. They have arrived from all over the Americas, they say. It must be the largest concentration of refugees in this part of the country, and none of them knows what to expect. They are very generous though, giving us food and space to lie down. They say the Saint is coming soon today to inspect the camp with his men. Some believe he will choose among the refugees and take some of them back to his tower. I don’t believe any of that. There is a little dog with a sharp, cold nose like a fox. I have named him Horizon, for the place where time goes down. I believe in him and maybe a heaven for him. I shared a piece of bread and he has stayed with me, my dear little Horizon. When he is not looking for food he always comes back to me in my little space and the thin poncho that has lasted me all this time of walking. It is nice to not be alone.
We had to leave Arthur. He was out of his mind.
December 22, 2072:
Much to tell. I am not free any longer and I suspect that if they see me writing in you, my journal, they will take you away, Everything now is for him, the Saint, my husband. Of course he is the leader of mankind and our only hope of salvation, but it would still be nice to have a friend with whom to talk.
Now I am in the tower, top floor suite, the Saint’s room. It is all glass, looking out at the world. I can see what is left, the ruins of Torreon at the very edge, towards the west. There are the mountains all around, including the canyon of the Nazas where the Yavapais have their villages. Anyone would wonder: how did it happen? How did I, simple girl from the highlands of Nayarit, make it here? Why me? What can I do that would help the Saint in his preparations? They say he is getting ready for his final battle. With the enemy, of course, although nobody claims to know who or what that is or where they are.
But I will tell you first about the Saint’s visit. He arrived in a truck with his general, the large black man, Montiel, wearing the scarf around his face so you could see only his eyes and the fact that the head was unusually small. Then the Saint was also dressed quite differently. In just a blouse, like a woman’s thing, and very clean jeans with his thin legs, like a man who has always walked and never carried or gathered or cleared, and now he is getting old and his bones are shrinking. That’s what I thought when I saw him. His eyes were the color of amber, and he smiled at everyone he saw and let the general do the talking. The general was giving everyone an encouraging word or two, nothing specific. The general stopped where I was sitting on my cot and asked me about my dog. I said it wasn’t my dog, but it had found me and it had chosen to stay with me because I didn’t mind that it had a sharp, cold nose like a fox, when most people shooed it on and wanted nothing to do with it. The general asked me what I called it and I told him: Horizon. He called the Saint over and showed him. Then the Saint asked me to stand and walked around me without touching, but I could feel his eyes softly probing. Not my body so much as the traits that the physical displayed, if you can understand that. The Saint is not really a physical creature so much as a man who wants something different that the rest of us do not see. Anyway, the general asked me if I was willing to help. The Saint had gone back and gotten back inside the truck. It all happened very quickly after that. I got in the back of the truck, in the long seat reserved for his bodyguards. They rode on the outside, hanging on and smiling in the windows as we rode.
The ceremony was very simple. There was a woman with long robes who put some flowers out on the table in a vase and then stood in front of us and asked us if we accepted what she was saying. I said I understood. The Saint said he understood. Then he kissed me very gently on the top of the head and led me up to his rooms at the top of the tower. We rode on the escalator, and the people cheered. It was like a dream.
I miss Horizon. It is very cold up here.
December 23, 2072:
The Saint is a man like other men. He explained to me before sleep that we needed to pray together. We kneeled at the side of the bed, and the Saint prayed. I watched his cheeks as they puffed and the whiskers in his ears and the skin that sagged at the elbows like an old chicken’s. But somehow his soft fingers and his caresses were very gentle, and the effect of the prayers that he insisted I repeat were enough to lull me into a physical Union. But I do not love him like a wife does a husband. He doesn’t know me. He tries. He asks me questions. And then afterwards he went out to smoke a cigarette and left the porch door open. At night, at this elevation, it is deathly cold. I went and found my poncho where I had left it on a bench of the main entrance hall. I want a dog. I told him I wanted Horizon. I wish I hadn’t left him behind in the camp. He asked me why. I said it would make me feel like home, like my village, to have a small dog that I could cuddle with at night when he is smoking on the porch. I don’t care if I never leave the tower. He said it might be a long wait, while we stave off the enemy advances. I asked him to explain the situation. I said I wanted to help him prepare for his battle. “You don’t know what the dangers are,” he said. Got angry at that point and told him he reminded me of Arthur. He asked me about Arthur, so I described him, the way he was not like the other boys I had known from my village. How his anger and twisted soul were still beautiful, and how he had wanted to kill us all in his confusion and self-loathing, and how I was the only person with whom he could speak at any length, but also how he had gone and hybridized himself and had disappeared, presumably to join the Defense Corps on the front lines. The Saint agreed that he sounded interesting. When he got quiet again, I burst out. “For God’s sake,” I said. “You are all alike. You think I am stupid. I insist on some decent conversation in here from you.” He smiled at me then and took my hand. I remember the cigarette was still glowing a little red in the ashtray. He lifted it and took a drag. He waved the hand with the lit cigarette glowing fully out in the blackness. “All of that is mine,” he said. “How did you do it?” I asked, because I wanted to know the secrets of a man who has raised up the fight in the people to the point of a place in the world, a city of our own. It was a beautiful sight, the lights spread out below like a large stain, a spreading growth like the crystals of ice that form invisibly on an old window in the deepest cold of January, and when you breathe on them they melt. He said: “One step at a time.” Then he said: “You can never have an aim for glory or prestige. You must channel your ambitions to the needs of others and start off small. I wanted to have a bookstore that would cater to the marginal, the peripheral. All those people who were fed up with the social media, with dating, with prestige, with music and politics and race and wealth and all the measures that mark how deep in the gunas one has fallen.” I said I thought most stories were like that, about illusion, creating a reflection of reality that somehow pleased you when you read it or heard it and you couldn’t even understand why. Was it the words, or the plight of th
e characters or the way the author described their hopes and dreams? He asked me what books I had read as a child, and I told him I didn’t remember. We didn’t have many books, but I had had a teacher that read to us from a book of ghosts and princesses. Which did I like better, he wanted to know, the ghosts or the princesses? That made me think. I yawned as I considered my answer. “No, don’t think,” he said. “You will only lie.” “The ghosts,” I said. Maybe I was lying. I think not, though, because now my life is full of ghosts, so I could possibly always have had an attraction in that direction. It’s possible, anyway.
December 24, 2072:
It is the day before Christmas. The Saint told me a secret. He believes he is the Christ, but that he has lost contact with the Father. I wasn’t surprised. He is not a man of the world. He has no father. His sainthood is pure, without any reek of patriarchy or the incense the priests use to cover up the rotting beams of the churches. They are all crumbling, but sometimes I have a dream of a woman I have never known, and I think it is the Virgin who can disguise herself. The Saint says Christmas is always fun because the earth is at the turning point, poised halfway between Heaven and Hell for a mere instant, and all is well between the two sides. He tells me that the Panzon Azueto regime is probably not strong enough on its own to attack us and that the people from the North, the false humans known as the Republican Augment, are making overtures for peace. The Saint is to attend the peace talks tomorrow with many, many precautions. He does not trust that there will not be foul play involved. I said he should pray, but he said that was not realistic. He will have General Montiel with him and several bodyguards, including, amazingly, Arthur! He's an agent of the Saint’s personal guard! And he will be along tomorrow at the meeting between the Saint and the Repho emissaries.
"Pray for me,” he said. We were in bed. It was late. Suddenly the breeze came from the porch smelling of rain, the cold rain of high altitudes. Outside, the first hint of light was showing in the south over the ruins of Torreon. “You can’t sleep,” I said. I prayed for him. My prayer started out as usual with an Our Father and then at the words “Deliver us from evil,” I stopped, and my mind wandered. The Saint pushed me and told me to hurry and get dressed and make him some coffee. I finished the prayer anyway, as I was making the coffee the way he likes it, black. And I brought it to him in the bed. He thanked me and took the cup with both of his hands. They are bony, like a bird’s claws. Afterwards he didn’t even dress. He went out naked on the porch and sat in the rain. “Do you want more coffee?” I asked him. I felt bad for him. The rain had wet down the few remaining hairs on his head. His skull was bare and the back of it reminded me of a monk. “No thank you,” he said. “It's pure nature I want right now. She will whisper something to me.” “That is like a prayer,” I said. “You’re right,” he said.
He agreed with me. I was so happy for an instant. It was the first time a thought of mine had concurred with his and had possibly encouraged him in some way. I could believe for a second that he was not an impossible person to live with. His first two wives did not last long. About a year each, is what Sheila out at the escalator told me. She has a job in lighting. The hours are three in the afternoon until ten at night. She said she could get me in there part-time to start. I’m sure the Saint wouldn’t mind. He has no children. Sheila asked me if he’d mentioned anything about wanting any. He doesn’t talk about those kinds of things, I told her. His concerns are existential and large, not the kinds of things most of us worry about.
I want to talk to somebody. Maybe I’ll ride the escalator down and go out into the street today. There is nothing holding me back. I have the security clearances. The Saint left some time ago. Dressed in nothing special, a leather jacket and jeans and those little loafers that make him look like a salesman, maybe a bookseller. I asked him when I could expect him home. Felt like a proper little housewife. Maybe I’ll cook him something. I feel like ordering up some tortillas. There’s a stove in the kitchen that works. A little home cooking would do him wonders. He is so skinny. It’s hard to get inspired so high up in the clouds, as we are. But I intend to be dutiful and have him love me someday. Some of these religious types could be harboring a hidden passion that could burst out like a gas from wells hidden deep inside their hearts.
December 25, 2072:
This is not what I had wanted. They have kidnapped the Saint. The General Montiel was at the apartment early this morning. I was in bed. He asked me to get dressed, and they took me to the operations room and had me stand behind the desk and watch. Montiel and his assistant worked the drone feed and carried on a conversation with their officers of the Defense Corps. They wouldn’t inform me about anything. I had to put it together piece by piece until I had an idea about what had happened. It was a crazy time, as if they were too frightened to sit down and think. There were windows left open, and the wind swept in, and papers flew all around the room. Finally, Montiel looked me in the face and saw that I needed to talk. I was crying. Everyone was. Montiel had a difficult time. He was trying to calm himself down enough to deal with me. There was no time left for anything; all judgement had gone. They had kidnapped the Saint. It was the worst thing that could have happened. Montiel said: “There were trap doors we hadn’t sensed. We could only turn and fight towards the rear of the buildings. The Saint was in the middle of the phalanx. The floor dropped and the trap doors came down. There was chlorine gas in the ventilation. They even sacrificed the highest commander of their intelligence service. He was with me and was just as surprised as I was. We fought our way out despite the gas and the hydrogen shot that swept the building. Many of our finest were lost. I’m sorry to report that Arthur was one of the casualties. Awful, awful night. Was he your brother?” “Yes,” I said. “He was my brother. I have lost my brother and my husband. And what now, General? Is everything gone?” His face became very somber. His eyes dimmed and focused elsewhere, full of a strange color I don’t remember ever seeing. It may have been a premonition of what was to come. “They have chosen war,” he said.
The Saint’s tower is now empty. We have taken new rooms across town in the barracks of the Naval Services. The war will be fought in the deeps, after everything is destroyed on land. We know that, and we must now prepare ourselves for the retreat from the city. Most of the population is totally unaware. It was the first time I’d seen the city. We drove from the tower in the convoy of porters in which rode the families and staff of the Command, the officers of the Intelligence and Defense Corps.
Then there is Mrs. Cholnochez. She is the wife of Montiel’s aide de camp and has travelled widely in Europe and Asia. She said she will show me how to play Trivial Pursuit, and I will learn also needlepoint and how to play the recorder. These are the beginnings of an education, she said, and she assures me I will be happy despite our confinement. We cannot leave because the population must remain unaware of the dangers, in the bliss of everyday existence and the hope of a victorious future.
January 3, 2073:
The boredom of my life is painfully thoroughgoing. I must have sinned in a previous existence to deserve this. Mrs. Cholnochez leaves me very little rest from her constant good-natured, meaningless and bothersome babbling. It is as if she was built for this sort of emergency and considers herself a conduit of all refinement and elegance that must be won again every hour in the face of the evils of sloth and unchanneled imagination. Is this why we fight the Augment? I believe I would rather have the lobotomy and implant now and be spared another second of her reminiscing about her idealized childhood in Silver Spring and the online schooling at the University of Southern New Carolina. She keeps apologizing for her lack of the Augment, as if it was us that needed to change, to keep up with the times. How such a false consciousness become the wife of an officer of the army of the Saint, I’ll never know. As if the Augment were like having the latest in porterbot supervans or Zeitgeist nanofiber coats. I don’t understand. But I’m not brave enough to tell her to her face how silly she str
ikes me. It’s just an annoyance to be stuck inside the Naval Service HQ alone with her following me around like a maniac for hours at a time and on top of that having the uncertainty of conditions in the city.
I watch out the window of my bedroom on the second floor overlooking the side street between Avenida Pedrada and Avenida Sepulveda. There is constant foot traffic. I see myself down there and am torn. Do I wish I were one of the people wandering lost on the well-worn tracks? Would I rather have contentment or knowledge of our dire plight? Those men and women with their faces burnt by the sun and wind and lined by hunger and the miles of their journeying. I can see my brothers and sisters and long to be with them, smell their worn clothes and the bitter aroma of the crushed mountain ferns they have put under their pack straps to lighten their load on the just completed descent. It is hard to accustom myself to the idea that our refuge, our safehouse, the stronghold of human freedom, is in danger of being overrun. Life goes on as if we were guaranteed an infinity in which to discover the secrets of the stars, when in fact our time may end at any point. This very second could be my last. All of this, the work of cultivating a planet in the image of brotherhood, could be for nothing if the Augment succeeds in enslaving our city. We were not meant to be the sacrificial lambs of efficient thought production, the information flow that powers their world. We will preserve the freedom of our minds, the link between our souls and the eternal.
The Saints of David (The Jonah Trilogy Book 3) Page 25
