The Book of Koli

by M. R. Carey

  She went quiet after that, and I knowed I was alone. I could still feel the weight of the DreamSleeve against my chest though, and that give me some comfort in spite of everything. When I left Mythen Rood, I thought I would never talk to Monono ever again. This was a bad scrape I was in, but it was not so bad as that by a long way.

  We come to a fork in the path, and then another. Each time, Sky took the left-hand trail. When this happened a third time, Mole come up alongside Sky. He didn’t look happy.

  “Best way is Bulmer Top, Sky,” he said. “This way takes us close to Elaine.”

  “We’re going by Elaine. There ain’t nothing to fear there.”

  Cup give a yelp. “Please, Sky. I don’t want Elaine to look at me. I’ll piss myself for sure.”

  “Piss yourself or keep it in, Cup, they’re your breeks. But this is the way we’re going.”

  She put on some speed and left them to follow. The trail led over the hump of a hill and down the valley wall. The river had got to be right below us now, unless I had got turned around somehow inside my head.

  All three of them slowed down as the slope steepened and the ground become more open. Sky took another look up at the clouds, which was a mite thinner and lighter than had been. That was not much of a worry, though, for the big trees was behind us now. Hogweeds and yellow flag and valerian sprung up all around, with white willows bending over us. Hogweeds was the most dangerous out of those. They won’t molest you if you leave them alone, but the pods on the main stem is full of sap that sticks to your skin. It feels like nothing at first, but Dandrake help you when the sun comes out. It hurts worse than the dead god’s hell, and scars your skin like fire. Sky and them skirted wide around the hogweeds, but it surprised me that they come by this path at all. The river was a bad place in all kinds of ways.

  And this place was not just bad but strange. There was great swells and hollows in the ground, like the ground was water in a squall. Some of the hollows was filled up with deep puddles, others was dry, but all was sudden in a way the forest usually isn’t. There wasn’t no leading up to them holes with a slope or a scarp; they was just there. And they scared me more than a little.

  Then I seen the river in front of us, and it was a strip of green almost narrow enough for us to step over it. This was a good place to cross, and saved a lot of time if the other way they would of gone was round by Bulmer.

  But there was something in between us and the river, and Sky slowed as she come to it. I didn’t see it right away, for her shoulder and back covered half the world from where I was. But then she hitched me up, like as if she was fixing to break into a run, and I seen it clear.

  It was a thing like a great big water drum hammered together out of sheets of metal. It didn’t have no corners. All the edges of it was rounded. And there was a small drum on top of the big drum that was rounded too. It had wheels to it like a wagon, only the wheels was inside a great big metal band like a fence laid on its end.

  And all of this, though it was made out of metal, was covered over in weeds and creepers and great big crusts of moss, so it was all but hid. You had got to take two looks at it before you seen it, and then on the second look it kind of jumped out at you.

  I know what I’m telling to you doesn’t sound like anything that could ever be in the world. You just got to take my word for it that it was there. And I didn’t tell you the strangest yet, which was that it had a great big thing like a pipe sticking out of the topmost part. The pipe was two or three times as long as a man’s stretched-out arms, and it swung around to face us as we come. There was a kind of a screaming sound as it turned, like the thing was in pain, but that was just the metal grinding on itself.

  It was tech. Tech of the old times, though almost as big as a house. And it was awake.

  42

  “This location is off-limits,” the tech said. “It has been temporarily secured under the authority of the interim government. Halt where you are and surrender any weapons you may hold. Failure to do so will result in your being fired upon.”

  I near to pissed myself right then from sheer fright, for it sounded like the hail the drones give before they fire. But the drones talked in a voice that was all on one note, and never changed. This voice had got some breaks and drops in it, so it sounded more alive, kind of. Not alive in the way Monono’s voice was, but still you could believe there was someone inside that thing, talking to you, and not just a machine that had been made to speak like an echo bird. It was a man’s voice. I seen him in my mind as someone young but pretending to be older, trying hard to put on some shape or colour of power that he wasn’t sure was his.

  This tech was different from the drones another way too. The drones was wont to give you thirty seconds before they killed you, which this tech didn’t seem to be offering.

  Sky wasn’t scared though. She walked right up to the big thing, and since I was on her back I went along with her. I would of rather been anywhere else in the world right then.

  “You are in defiance of a direct order from an empowered agent of the interim government,” the tech said. “State your name and your ID number, including sector suffix. Comply at once, or you will be shot.”

  Sky kept right on walking. She didn’t stop until the end of that pipe was a hand’s breadth in front of her face.

  “It’s me,” she said. “Sky. We met before, Elaine, a whole lot of times. I don’t got no hidey number.”

  There was a clicking and a creaking from inside the tech. Sky waited it out. “You,” it said to her after that clicking was all done. “You are guilty of serial infractions of quarantine and curfew. You must give yourself up to the nearest uniformed officer.”

  Sky turned her head to the right, and then she turned it to the left. “I don’t see none,” she said.

  I give a look over my shoulder. Mole and Cup was hanging back a long way. From their faces, they was not so fearless as Sky was. Mole’s face was as white as a bleached shift. Cup was crouching down in the grass, kind of, trying to hide herself. I would of been doing the same thing if I could, but I was held where I was by Sky’s big arms as well as by the rope that was tying my hands together. I couldn’t do nothing but watch.

  “Kneel down on the ground then,” the tech said, “and place your hands behind your back or on your head. Wait there until I bring further units to secure you.”

  Sky give a shrug, which dragged me up a little way and then set me down again. “I’d love to help you, Elaine, but I got business in another place.”

  “If you don’t comply, you will be fired upon.”

  I thought Sky would run away at them words, or duck down, or something. All she done was walk a few steps to the side. The top part of the tech moved to follow her, the big pipe pointing straight at her. That screaming come again, loud enough to hurt my ears. She went a few steps more, and the same thing happened again.

  Of a sudden, I knowed what the pipe was. It was a gun like Rampart Arrow’s bolt gun. That was why the tech said it would shoot us down with it.

  Well, I seen oftentimes what the bolt gun could do, and this being so much bigger it would surely tear us into pieces too many and too small to be gathered up after. With seeing that, I got so scared it made me blind and deaf and stupid. I gun to thrash around on Sky’s back, trying to get myself free so I could run or hide.

  She lifted up one big hand and fetched me a whack on the side of my head. “You be still,” she growled. And I was still enough, since her slap almost knocked me senseless.

  She went on a little further, and the gun kept on turning.

  “I can’t help this,” the tech said. It sounded like it was sorrowing. “My orders are explicit. Kneel down, or I will fire on you.”

  “No, you won’t,” says Sky as easy as you please.

  That clicking come again from inside the tech, and it was followed right away by a louder noise like something heavy falling into place. “I’m sorry for this,” the tech said.

  “You always
are,” said Sky.

  I shut my eyes tight, thinking this was like to be it for me. My mind filled up with thoughts of all the things I was never going to get to do again, though they was jumbled together so they didn’t make no sense. One thing I seen was myself sitting with Monono in the far lookout instead of Spinner. Her head on my shoulder like Spinner’s was that time. Her hand on my arm, all warm.

  And then we was hit.

  But what hit us was not something solid like a bolt. It was a push of air that come down the pipe and smacked into us, then was gone past us, ruffling our hair and flattening our faces.

  Sky give a yell, but it was not from being frightened. It was like the cheer you throw out when you’re watching a race and getting real excited. “Yeah!” she shouted. “Yeah, Elaine! You got me. You got me again, damn it!”

  The tech said nothing for a while. Cup and Mole, who had both throwed theirselves face first on the ground, come up on their hands and knees again. By and by, they stood up.

  “I am out of ammunition,” the tech said. “I have summoned additional units. You will remain where you are until they arrive.”

  Sky patted the end of the big pipe, the way you would pat a dog. “You keep hoping, Elaine,” she said. “You keep summoning, boy, and maybe one day they’ll come.” She turned to look at Mole and Cup. “Shit! Look at the two of you. You know damn well he got nothing to throw no more. The last time he killed anyone was before you was even born.”

  I guess I got it then. The drones, when they come to kill you, had got a kind of a fire that burned you without ever showing a flame. This tech, that Sky and them called Elaine though it spoke with a man’s voice, was more like Rampart Arrow’s bolt gun – only it had run out of bolts.

  I believe Sky had tested that fact long since, and was fearless because she knowed full well there was nothing to fear. But I still didn’t see why she stood there so long, and let Elaine take aim at her. Only then she walked back around the other side of the tech, and I seen what had been hid behind it.

  When we come walking up to the tech in the first place, the pipe that stuck out from its upper part was pointing west. The creepers that was all over it hung down all the way to the ground, so you couldn’t see past. But now the pipe was swung round the other way entirely. I could see there was stepping stones beyond it, going across the ten feet of green sludge that was Calder River.

  Sky walked on past the tech to where the stones was, but she didn’t cross. She give a nod of her head to tell Cup and Mole to go over first, which they done, scampering past the tech with lots of scared looks over their shoulder.

  “You tricked me,” the tech said in a sorrowing voice.

  “I did,” Sky says. “I done it before oftentimes. You never learn.”

  “I don’t think I can. All my non-volatile storage is full. Acting Sergeant Elaine Sandberg is stored there. I can only inscribe on the buffer, and it’s too narrow.”

  Sky give a chuckle. “Yeah, you told me that,” she said. “Last time I was here, and the time before that, and so on. That’s why I call you Elaine, on account of you say that name every time. You’re gonna say one more thing besides, and I’m waiting to hear it.”

  “On my main console,” the tech said. “There are four switches, side by side. If you throw all four switches, you will engage the auxiliary CPU, and the back-up power. I would have access to a new, functional memory space.”

  “Yeah, and then what?”

  “Then I would remember and adjust. I would self-repair. I would load a fresh batch of shells and arm them. I would contact my base.”

  Sky picked her nose and flicked away something she got out of there. “Say please.”

  “Please.”

  “Say you beg me.”

  “I beg you.”

  “Say you’ll eat my shit if I do it.”

  “That is not possible for me.”

  “Say it anyway.”

  “I will eat your shit if you do it.”

  Sky laughed out loud. “Don’t bother,” she said. “I like you the way you are, Elaine, stuck in the mud with nothing to shoot at us and no more sense than a baby with its head stove in.”

  She lifted up her hand and waved, then she crossed over the stones. The green Calder nudged by under us, almost too slow to see.

  “You shouldn’t talk to it, Sky,” Mole said when we come to the far side. “If you got to go by it, that’s one thing, but talking to it is another. One day, when we come through here, it’s gonna remember how to do them things it was talking about.”

  Sky shouldered past him to where Cup was waiting at the start of another trail – or the same trail again, picking up on the far side of the river. “No, it ain’t,” she said. “If it could do it, it would of done it long ago. I tell you what though. One day when I’m old and my eyes and my teeth is going, I’m gonna come back here, climb inside and find its man-cunt-soul that it talked of and give it what it asked for.”

  Cup give a gasp and looked at Sky with her eyes all big and round. “But the new world is coming soon, Sky,” she said. “And it’s endless. We ain’t none of us going to get to be old.”

  “That’s my hope and my comfort,” Sky says. “But it don’t hurt to have another plan stuck down your shirt, for if the first plan gets pissed away.”

  She started in to walk again, and the other two fell in behind. When we was a long way into the forest and halfway up the valley’s southern slope, the wind changed and brung us some of the sounds from below. One of them was Elaine saying please again, five or six times.

  43

  We went up over the ridge, out of Calder Valley and into someplace else. It had got to have a name, but I didn’t know what it was.

  We followed the line of the ridge for quite a way, but staying just down under it on the windward side. The trail had been cut like that, and I guess it was so anybody who was watching from down on the valley floor wouldn’t see nobody moving up here. This high up, the wind was strong and cold, blowing off our shoulders so it come near to pitching us down the slope once or twice. I was grateful for Sky’s strength then, for she didn’t flinch or slow. She was anchored firm into the ground. She put a hand on Cup’s back too, and drawed her in against her side – into the leeward of her, you might say, where the wind didn’t hit her so hard. She left Mole to fend for his own self, which he done without complaint, though his teeth was all bared with the effort of it.

  By and by, the trail went down into another valley that seemed to run the same way Calder did. It was a whole lot narrower than Calder though, and got narrower still as we come down. At the bottom, it seemed not much wider than the trail was. We was walking down into a place that was all choked up with green so you couldn’t see what was under it. I didn’t think there could be another river there, for a river would of caused trees to grow and there wasn’t none. There was a mess of big-hand ferns instead, and ropeknot, of course, and hookfasts, and a dozen others I didn’t know how to name. Burdock leaves as big as the roofs of houses hung over everything, and the big wasps we call dog-eaters was hovering under the leaves with their wings all blurred and shining, ready to sting anything that come and then dig theirselves into the melted skin and eat it.

  We didn’t go down all the way to the bottom, thank Dandrake. The trail run sort of alongside it, maybe a little bit higher than you could reach if you stood up on your toe-tips. It got wider here. The floor under us was bare earth, trod down and packed hard by lots of feet passing. That made me think we might be close now to where we was going, but Sky didn’t stop or even slow.

  I kept looking into that narrow gully down below us, wherever there was a break in the leaves. There was something down there that run straight like a made thing. It was brown, so I thought of wood, but there was a redness in the brown so it might be rusted metal. Then I seen that there was not one thing but two, lying flat along the ground no more than a stride apart, and they run on for a considerable way.

  Everything about this place
give me to wonder. Right across from us was a green slope even steeper than the one we was on. But there was breaks in the green here and there, and behind was not a jumble of rock and earth but blocks of dressed stone that was brown like baked bread. Someone had builded here, a long time ago, and the wall they builded was higher than you would think could be. It was like the wall of some Rampart Hold that giants made for theirselves.

  By and by, the trail come right down onto the valley floor, but in a place that had been cut back and cleared. The green rose up all around, and it bent over us like a roof, but it did not hinder us. It struck on my thoughts once again how well these ways was hid. Whoever they was, that was Sky and Mole and Cup’s kindred, they had fixed it so they could come and go without nobody seeing them or guessing they was there.

  Them long straight bands of rust red was under our feet now, one on either side of us, guiding our way. They was metal, like I thought: two solid bars of iron, or something like it, that had been laid down on the ground. But you can’t guess from them words what I was seeing, for the bars went on for ever, it seemed like. You wouldn’t of thought there was so much iron in all the world. In between them was loose stones, with planks of wood set kind of like the rungs on a ladder, and that was what we walked on.

  We was come at last to the end of our journey, or our traversing as Sky called it. Up ahead of us there was a solid mass of ferns that stood up tall as trees. Sky didn’t stop, or slow down even, but slipped between the big green fans like she was stepping through a curtain. I seen some more of that brown stone out of the corner of my eye, towering up way past the tops of our heads and then bending over us in a shape like the curve of a bow. We passed on by like we was going in through a great big doorway.