Alternate Americas

by Gregory Benford

  Like you I never had a taste for the dry magisterial prose of diplomacy and the bitter punctuations of war that is history. What did it matter to me that five centuries ago, during the beginning of our modern era in the Sung Dynasty, the Buddhists, persecuted for adhering to a faith of foreign origin, set sail from the Middle Kingdom and, instead of being devoured by seven hundred dragons or plunging into the Maelstrom of the Great Inane, crossed nine thousand li of ocean and discovered a chain of sparsely populated tropical islands? Of what consequence was it to me that these islands, rich in palm, hardwoods, and the fragrant sandalwood beloved of the furniture makers, soon attracted merchants and the Emperor’s soldiers? And that, once again, the Buddhists felt compelled to flee, swearing their famous Palm Grove Vow to sail east until they either faced death together or found a land of their own? And that after crossing another seven thousand li of ocean they arrived at the vast Land of Dawn, from whose easternmost extreme I am writing to you?

  Surely you are pursing your lips now with impatience, wondering why I burden you with so much bothersome history, you, a musician’s daughter, who always preferred the beauty of song to the tedium of facts. But stay with me yet, Heart Wing. My discovery, the hard-won clarity gained through my poison cure, will mean less to you without some sharing of what I have learned of this land’s history.

  We know from our school days that the merchants eventually followed the Buddhists to the Land of Dawn, where the gentle monks had already converted many of the aboriginal tribes. Typical of the Buddhists, they did not war with the merchants but retreated farther east, spreading their doctrine among the tribes and gradually opening the frontier to other settlers. Over time, as the Imperialists established cities and trade routes, the monks began preaching the foolishness of obeisance to a Kingdom far across the World Sea. “Here and now!” the monks chanted, the land of our ancestors being too far away and too entrenched in the veil of illusion to be taken seriously anymore. Though the Buddhists themselves never raised a weapon against the Emperor, the merchants and farmers eagerly fought for them, revolting against Imperial taxation. And out of the Sandalwood Territories of the Dawn, the settlers founded their own country: the Unified Sandalwood Autocracies.

  There are numerous kingdoms here in the USA, each governed by an autocrat elected by the landowners of that kingdom. These separate kingdoms in turn are loosely governed by an overlord whom the autocrats and the landowners elect from among themselves to serve for an interval of no more than fifty moons. It is an alien system that the denizens here call Power of the People, and it is fraught with strife, as the conservative Confucians, liberal Buddhists, and radical Taoist-aboriginals continually struggle for dominance. Here, the Mandate of Heaven is not so much granted celestially as taken by wiles, wealth, or force, grasped and clawed for.

  I will not trouble you with this nation’s paradoxical politics: its abhorrence of monarchs, yet its glorification of leaders; its insistence on separation of government and religion, yet its reliance on oaths, prayers, and moralizing; its passionate patriotism, yet fervent espousal of individual endeavor. There are no slaves here as at home, and so there is no dignity for the upper classes, nor even for the lower classes, for all are slaves to money. The commonest street sweeper can invest his meager earnings to form his own road-maintenance company and after years of slavery to his enterprise become as wealthy as nobility. And, likewise, the rich can squander their resources and, without the protection of servants or class privilege, become street beggars. Amitabha! This land has lost entirely the sequence of divine order that regulates our serene sovereignty. And though there are those who profit by this increase of social and economic mobility, it is by and large a country mad with, and subverted by, its own countless ambitions. In many ways it is, I think, the Middle Kingdom turned upside down.

  The rocky west coast, rife with numerous large cities, is the industrial spine of this nation, as the east coast is in our land. On the coast, as in our kingdom, refineries, paper mills, textile factories, and shipbuilding yards abound. Inland are the lush agricultural valleys—and then the mountains and beyond them the desert—just as in our country. Where to the north in our homeland the Great Wall marches across the mountains for over four thousand li, shutting out the Mongol hoards, here an equally immense wall crosses the desert to the south, fending off ferocious tribes of Aztecatl.

  Heart Wing, there is even a village on the eastern prairie, beyond the mountains and the red sandstone arches of the desert, that looks very much like the village on the Yellow River where we had our ruinous farm. There, in a bee-filled orchard just like the cherry grove where we buried our daughter, my memory fetched back to when I held her bird-light body in my arms for the last time. I wept. I wanted to write you then, but there were irrigation networks to catalog and, on the horizons of amber wheat and millet, highways to map hundreds of li long, where land boats fly faster than horses, their colorful sails fat with wind.

  Beyond the plains lies the Evil East, which is what the Dawn-Settlers call their frontier, because said hinterland is dense with ancient forests no ax has ever touched. Dawn legends claim that the hungry souls of the unhappy dead wander those dense woods. Also, tribes of hostile aboriginals who have fled the settled autocracies of the west shun the Doctrine of the Buddha and the Ethics of Confucius and reign there, as anarchic and wild as any Taoist could imagine.

  When our delegation leader sought volunteers to continue the survey into that wilderness, I was among those who offered to go. I’m sorry, Heart Wing, that my love for you was not enough to overcome my shame at the failures that led to our child’s death and that took me from you. Wild in my grief, I sought likeness in that primeval forest. I had hoped it would kill me and end my suffering.

  It did not. I had somehow imagined or hoped that there might well be ghosts in the Evil East, or at least cannibalistic savages to whom I would be prey, but there were neither. So I survived despite myself, saddened to think that all our chances bleed from us, like wounds that never heal.

  The vast expanse of forest was poignantly beautiful even in its darkest vales and fog-hung fens, haunted only with the natural dangers of serpents, bears, and wolves. As for the tribes, when they realized that we had come merely to observe and not to cut their trees or encroach on their land, they greeted us cordially enough, for barbarians. For their hospitality we traded them toys—bamboo dragonflies, kites, and firecrackers. I knew a simple joy with them, forgetting briefly the handful of chances that had already bled from me with my hope of fading from this world.

  On the east coast are Buddhist missions and trading posts overlooking the Storm Sea. By the time we emerged from the wildwoods, a message for me from the west had already arrived at one of the posts by the river routes that the fur traders use. I recognized your father’s calligraphy and knew before I read it—that you had left us to join the ancestors.

  When the news came, I tried to throw myself from the monastery wall into the sea, but my companions stopped me. I could not hear beyond my heart. We who had once lived as one doubled being had become mysteries again to each other. I shall know no greater enigma.

  For days I despaired. My failures had lost all my cherished chances, as a writer and a farmer, as a father and, now, as your mate. With that letter I became older than the slowest river.

  It is likely I would have stayed at the monastery and accepted monkhood had not news come one day announcing the arrival of strangers from across the Storm Sea. Numb, indifferent, I sailed south with the delegation’s other volunteers. Autumn had come to the forest. Disheveled oaks and maples mottled the undulant shores. But gradually the hoarfrost thinned from the air, and colossal domes of cumulus rose from the horizon. Shaggy cypress and palm trees tilted above the dunes.

  Like a roving, masterless dog, I followed the others from one mission to the next among lovely, verdant islands. Hunger abandoned me, and I ate only when food was pressed on me, not tasting it. In the silence and fire of night, while the
others slept, my life seemed an endless web of lies I had spun and you a bird I had caught and crippled. In the mirrors of the sea I saw faces. Mostly they were your face. And always when I saw you, you smiled at me with an untellable love. I grieved that I had ever left you.

  The morning we found the boats that had crossed the Storm Sea, I greeted the strangers morosely. They were stout men with florid faces, thick beards, and big noses. Their ships were clumsy, worm-riddled boxes without watertight compartments and with ludicrous cloth sails set squarely, leaving them at the mercy of the winds. At first they attempted to impress us with their cheap merchandise, mostly painted tinware and clay pots filled with sour wine. I do not blame them, for, not wishing to slight the aboriginals, we had approached in a local raft with the tribal leaders of that island.

  Soon, however, beckoned by a blue smoke flare, our own ship rounded the headland. The sight of her sleek hull and orange sails with bamboo battens trimmed precisely for maximum speed rocked loose the foreigners’ arrogant jaws—for our ship, with her thwartwise staggered masts fore-and-aft, approached into the wind. The Big Noses had never seen the likes of it.

  Ostensibly to salute us, though I’m sure with the intent of displaying their might, the Big Noses fired their bulky cannon. The three awkward ships, entirely lacking leeboards, keeled drastically. Our vessel replied with a volley of Bees’ Nest rockets that splashed overhead in a fiery display while our ship sailed figure-eights among the foreigners’ box-boats.

  At that the Big Noses became effusively deferential. The captain, a tall, beardless man with red hair and ghostly pale flesh, removed his hat, bowed, and presented us with one of his treasures, a pathetically crude book printed on coarse paper with a gold-leaf cross pressed into the animal-hide binding. Our leader accepted it graciously.

  Fortunately the Big Noses had on board a man who spoke Chaldean and some Arabic, and two of the linguists in our delegation could understand him slightly. He told us that his captain’s name was Christ-bearer the Colonizer and that they had come seeking the Emperor of the Middle Kingdom in the hope of opening trade with him. They actually believed that they were twenty-five thousand li to the west, in the spice islands south of the Middle Kingdom! Their ignorance fairly astounded us.

  Upon learning their precise location, the Colonizer appeared dismayed and retreated to his cabin. From his second in command we eventually learned that the Colonizer had expected honor and wealth from his enterprise. Both would be greatly diminished now that it was evident he had discovered neither a route to the world’s wealthiest kingdom nor a new world to be colonized by the Big Noses.

  Among our delegation was much debate about the implications of the Colonizer’s first name—Christ-bearer. For some centuries Christ-bearers have straggled into the Middle Kingdom, though always they were confined to select districts of coastal cities. Their gruesome religion, in which the flesh and blood of their maimed and tortured god is symbolically consumed, disgusted our Emperor, and their proselytizing zeal rightly concerned him. But here, in the USA, with the Dawn-Settlers’ tolerance of diverse views, what will be the consequences when the Christ-bearers establish their missions?

  I did not care. Let fat-hearted men scheme and plot in faraway temples and kingdoms. Heart Wing! I will never see the jewel of your face again. That thought—that truth—lies before me now, an unexplored wilderness I will spend the rest of my life crossing. But on that day when I first saw the Big Noses I had not yet grasped this truth. I still believed death was a doorway. I thought perhaps your ghost would cross back and succor my mourning. I had seen your face in the mirrors of the sea, a distraught girl both filled and exhausted with love. I had seen that, and I thought I could cross the threshold of this life and find you again, join with you again, united among the ancestors. I thought that.

  For several more days I walked about in a daze, looking for your ghost, contemplating ways to die. I even prepared a sturdy noose from a silk sash and, one moon-long evening, wandered into the forest to hang myself. As I meandered through the dark avenues of a cypress dell seeking the appropriate bough from which to stretch my shameless neck, I heard voices. Three paces away, on the far side of a bracken screen, the Big Noses were whispering hotly. I dared to peek and spied them hurrying among the trees, crouched over, sabers and guns in hand and awkwardly hauling a longboat among them.

  The evil I had wished upon myself had led me to a greater evil, and, without forethought, I followed the Big Noses. They swiftly made their way to the cove where the Imperial ship was moored. I knew then their intent. The entire delegation, along with most of the crew, were ashore at the mission interviewing the aboriginals who had first encountered the Big Noses and drafting a report for the Emperor and the local authorities about the arrival of the Christ-bearer in the USA. The Big Noses would meet little resistance in pirating our ship.

  Clouds walked casually away from the moon, and the mission with its serpent pillars and curved roof shone gem-bright high on the bluff—too far away for me to race there in time or even for my cries to reach. Instead I ducked among the dunes and scurried through the switching salt grass to the water’s edge even as the Big Noses pushed their longboat into the slick water and piled in. With a few hardy oar-strokes they reached the Imperial ship and began clambering aboard unseen by the watch, who was probably in the hold sampling the rice wine.

  I stood staring at the ship perched atop the watery moon, knowing what I had to do but hardly believing I had such strength. I, who had iron enough in my blood to strangle my own life, wavered at the thought of defying other men, even the primitive Big Noses. Truly, what a coward I am! I would have stood rooted as a pine and watched the pirates sail our ship into the dark like a happy cloud scudding under the moon—but a scream and a splash jolted me.

  The Big Noses had thrown the watch overboard. I saw him swimming hard for shore and imagined I saw fear in his face. His craven face galled me! The watch, flailing strenuously to save his own miserable life, would make no effort to stop barbarians from stealing the life of his own people! For I knew that we would lose nothing less if the Big Noses stole our ship and learned to build vessels that could challenge the USA and even the Middle Kingdom.

  I dove into the glossed water and thrashed toward the ship. I am a weak swimmer, as you know, but there was not far to go, and the noise of the watch beating frantically to shore muted my advance. The moorings were cut, and the ship listed under the offshore breeze. The Big Noses, accustomed to climbing along yard-arms to adjust their sails, were unfamiliar with the windlasses and halyards that control from the deck the ribbed sails of our ship, and so there was time for me to clutch onto the hull before the sails unfurled.

  After climbing the bulwark I slipped and fell to the deck right at the feet of the tall, ghost-faced captain! We stared at each other with moonbright eyes for a startled moment, and I swear I saw an avidity in his features as malefic as a temple demon’s. I bolted upright even as he shouted. Blessedly the entire crew was busy trying to control the strange new ship, and I eluded the grasp of the Colonizer and darted across the deck to the gangway.

  Death had been my intent from the first. When I plunged into the hold and collapsed among coils of hempen rope, I had but one thought: to reach the weapons bin and ignite the powder. I blundered in the dark, slammed into a bulkhead, tripped over bales of sorghum, and reached the powder bin in a gasping daze. Shouts boomed from the gangway, and the hulking shapes of the Big Noses filled the narrow corridor.

  Wildly I grasped for the flintstriker I knew was somewhere near the bin. Or was it? Perhaps that was too dangerous to keep near the powder. The Big Noses closed in, and I desperately bounded atop the bin and shoved open the hatch that was there. Moonlight gushed over me, and I saw the horrid faces of the barbarians rushing toward me. And there, at my elbow, was a sheaf of matches.

  I seized the fire-sticks and rattled them at the Big Noses, but they were not thwarted. The oafs had no idea what these were! They dragged me do
wn, barking furiously. I gaped about in the moonglow, spotted a flintstriker hanging from a beam. Kicking like a madman, I twisted free just long enough to snatch the flintstriker. But I had inspired their fury, and heavy blows knocked me to the planks.

  Stunned, I barely had the strength to squeeze the lever of the flintstriker. My feeble effort elicited only the tiniest spark, but that was enough to ignite a match. The sulfurous flare startled my assailants, and they fell back. Immediately I lurched about and held high the burning pine stick while gesturing at the powder bin behind me. The Big Noses pulled away.

  With my free hand I grabbed a bamboo tube I recognized as a Beard-the-Moon rocket. I lit the fuse and pointed it at the open hatch. In a radiant whoosh sparks and flames sprayed into the night. The cries of the Big Noses sounded from the deck, and the men who had seized me fled. A laugh actually tore through me as I fired two more Beard-the-Moon rockets. I was going to die, but now death seemed a fate worthy of laughter.

  Perhaps the longtime company of Buddhists and Taoists had affected me, for I had no desire to kill the Big Noses. I waited long enough for them to throw themselves into the sea before I ignited the fuses on several heaven-shaking Thunderclap bombs. My last thought, while waiting for the explosion to hurl me into the Great Inane, was of you, Heart Wing. Once I had committed myself to using death as a doorway, your ghost had actually come back for me, to lead me to the ancestors in a way that would serve the Kingdom. I thanked you, and the Thunderclap bombs exploded.

  Yet I did not die—at least not in an obvious way. Later, when I could think clearly again, I realized that your ghost had not yet done with me. Who else but you could have placed me just where I was so that my body would be hurtled straight upward through the open hatch and into the lustrous night? I remember none of that, however, but the watch, who had made it to shore and been alerted by the showering of the Beard-the-Moon rockets, claims that when the Imperial ship burst into a fireball, he saw me flying, silhouetted against the moon.