by Oisín Curran
No, said Iris smiling back, We never will.
They contemplated the view and sipped their coffees, which, together with my sundae, were the only items they could afford in a joint like this.
The Xerox building, said Myles, pointing to another highrise. We’d never have gotten the Center off the ground without Carlson’s Xerox money.
There’s the hospital where you were born, Iris said to me, And Highland Park. Too bad it’s winter. In the spring it’s full of gorgeous lilacs. I remember when we brought you home from the hospital, it felt like we were driving through a lilac ocean. And the scent!
What’s that river? I asked, pointing to a wide body of water winding through the city.
The Genessee, said Myles, pointing to a mist rising from a cataract. See the High Falls?
At a nearby table in the restaurant, a small crowd of men dressed in business suits was growing increasingly clamorous and unhappy, until all but three of them suddenly rose and strode out. One of the remaining three, a stout, dark-haired man with an air of authority and a very red face, jumped up and berated the passing waitress, asking if she knew that those men were from the federal government, asking if she understood that they’d been waiting for their meal for one and a half hours…one and a half hours! He was never, he said as he pulled on his jacket, Ever coming back to this dive again. And with that he marched out, followed by the remaining two men.
Who was that? Myles asked the waitress, who was now removing my empty sundae dish with shaking hands and swelling eyes.
The mayor, she said, voice trembling. It’s not my fault! There’s only one cook and I’m the only server. It’s not my fault.
Of course not, said Iris soothingly, as she fished in her purse for cash to pay the bill. Don’t worry about him.
As we put on our coats and began to leave, Iris glanced down out the windows and said, Look, you can even see the Americana Hotel where they arrested Bowie for pot. She sighed and added, Even his mugshot was beautiful.
He looked like an alien, snorted Myles.
A lovely alien, she replied gravely.
The police are gone. They were everywhere before, but now they’re gone. Everybody’s gone. All that’s left are prisoners and soldiers. We’re stumbling downhill with guns at our backs. We fall, get up, walk, fall, walk. The soldiers shout, they jab us with their guns. Quill goes to her knees. A soldier yanks her up by her hair. Quill screams. Her knees are bloody. Rook tries to help, but the soldiers whack him away. George swears non-stop. The soldiers don’t care. The soldiers don’t look angry. They don’t even look mean. They look like nothing. Their faces show nothing. Even when they yell and whack and jab.
Things are quieter. Fewer jets, fewer bombs. But more yelling. We tromp, fall, tromp, tromp, cough, cough, cough, cough. Smoke everywhere. Thick smell of things that shouldn’t burn. Thick poison smell. Finally, we stop. Then we go through a big metal gate. The gate closes behind us and I see where we are. It’s the park where we came ashore. I see the plaque with the picture of Chisolm and Lutra. We’re crowded in with others. Many others. There’s not much room to move. The guards line the gates. To keep us from climbing over, I guess. It’s getting harder and harder to breathe. Must be because we’re packed in so tightly. Everybody’s using up the air. The air! We’re underground—where’s the air coming from? There can’t be enough for so many people. I can’t catch my breath. I’ve been numb since the bombs started dropping. Numbed by noise and movement. We’ve kept moving, until now. We must start moving again! We have to get out of here!
The stench is horrible. People pee their pants where they stand because there aren’t any bathrooms. Everybody is wet with sweat. Through the sweating bodies I see a military truck parked near the gate. I slide between sweaty, pee-wet bodies. Rook follows, holding my hand, and Quill comes too with George. They see where I’m going. Rook tries to pull me back. I hear him saying, Useless, through the crowd noises. But I keep going. Not useless if it works. It must work. My pictures are all gone. Nothing left but the faraway idea of lilac. Waterfall sounds fading. I can’t stay here in the wrong place. Not just wrong—fake. Anywhere else is better.
We jostle up against the truck and climb in. I’m in the driver’s seat and my hands reach under the steering wheel by themselves and find the right wires and yank them free and cross the bare strands and the engine starts. I don’t know why I can do this. I press the accelerator down and we start moving. People jump out of our way. A guard yells. More guards yell. They start coming for us and I press harder on the pedal until we’re knocking people out of the way with our bumper. People are spinning away when we hit them, falling in the rear-view mirror. Two guards jump in our path and point their guns. I duck and floor the pedal. The guards jump out of the way and we crash through the gate behind them into the open street.
Turn left! cries George.
Gunfire. A bullet blows out the windshield. I yank the wheel, we skid left into an alley. The guns follow. More turns. Right, right, left. An unpaved side road stops at a waterfall. I hit the brakes.
Go! shouts George. Straight!
I don’t. I don’t want to slam headfirst into the wall of rock behind the falls. But bullets close in.
Now!
There’s nothing to lose. I gun the jeep and we crash into the waterfall. Or through it. Soaked on the other side, we see nothing. I flick on the headlights and there’s a big tunnel in front of us. Big enough to drive through? Bullets zurp zurp through the waterfall. I hit the gas. Truck sides scrape rock, but we fit. We drive through stone. We drive into nothing. Shouts behind us. I look in the rear-view mirror. In the middle of blackness the waterfall is bright. Dark bodies move against it. Soldiers are coming through the waterfall. They fire after us. Soon they’ll bring a truck. Soon they’ll track us down.
Faster! says George.
I speed up.
Somewhere behind us a truck roars. The soldiers are coming.
The tunnel turns into a giant cave. There are stalactites as big as big trees hanging from the ceiling. It’s dark. So dark I can barely see anything. Can’t see the ceiling. Only a shaky red glow lights the place. A crack runs from one end of the cave to the other. The crack is as wide as our truck. The red glow comes up from down inside the crack. Our headlights hit the biggest rock I’ve ever seen. It sits above the crack. We’re ants to it. It sits on tall rocks. A stony giant standing on three stony legs. I can’t see the top of it because of the darkness. Maybe there is no top.
My ship! shouts George. He yells directions. Our truck races toward one of the stone legs. Strange and wild shadows everywhere. Little light. Where light, it’s dark red. Where dark, it’s jittering, flaring.
I brake hard at the foot of the stone leg.
Up! shouts George, and I see stairs carved into the rock leg. They circle around it as they rise.
I jump out. Quill and Rook follow. But the soldiers are on us. George is up the steps, disappearing around the side of the stone leg. I run after him. A soldier grabs my ankle, then screams. Rook is biting his other hand. He’s ripping his hair out. The soldier lets go of me to bash Rook in the eye. Rook falls, but pulls the soldier down with him, twisting to land on top of him. Rook hits the soldier and hits him, but then there’s a shot and he slumps and rolls off. The soldier shoots him again. He doesn’t move. The soldier gets up. He points the gun at me.
He falls over. Quill’s on top of him. Hitting.
Go! shouts Quill.
I go.
A few steps up, I hear more shots. I look back. Three soldiers stand over Quill, shooting.
They look up and see me. Bullets come. I run.
Myles was a deadly shot and a dirty player. That’s why our team nearly always won. Our team consisted of Myles, me, Apollo, and Willard. Yes, Willard, despite nearly coming to blows with him, Myles was always quick to let bygones be bygones (unlike Iris, who nursed grievances for d
ecades, possibly lifetimes). Anyway, Willard had come and he wanted to play and seemed oblivious to the likelihood of an awkward atmosphere. Certainly Bill wasn’t happy to see him.
Myles and Bill, former high school basketball stars, always faced off. To have them both on the same team wouldn’t have been fair. Thus, arrayed against us were Bill, Artemis, Buddy Johnson, and his giant of an uncle, Clyde. Where Myles was quick, Bill was methodical. The games were always close. But Myles had a singular advantage in this venue. The Town Hall had impediments: a pot-bellied woodstove in the corner and half a dozen steel cables running the breadth of the space at a height of twelve feet, their purpose to prevent the aging walls from groaning apart. Myles learned his basketball on a low-ceilinged court and was able to gun the ball into the net with virtually no arc. He’d also played a great deal of street hockey and knew how to throw artful elbows in ways that were painful, persuasive, and so surreptitious it was difficult for witnesses to corroborate the fouls.
Thanks to these combined skills he led our team to victory three out of five times most Sunday mornings. But usually Clyde wasn’t there. He was in prison for drunk driving, illegal clamming, public exposure, or some other felonious activity. Massive, strong, and quick, he was very dangerous on the court, and on the few occasions when he showed up, Myles usually came away limping because Clyde paid my father back for his sly elbows with crushing body blows.
But none of that came to pass that day. The game ended almost as soon as it began.
Bill had just hammered in a bank shot and Willard was offering his ritual opinion that Even a blind hog finds an acorn once in a while, when the door opened and the police stepped in.
Clyde sprinted for the back exit.
We’re not here for you, shouted the sheriff. The sheriff’s name was Jim. He was the father of one of my classmates.
Clyde slowed and stopped, but lingered by the back door in case it was a trick.
Jim strolled calmly up to Willard.
I need you to come down to the station with me.
Why? asked Willard, dribbling the ball in an angry, dismissive way.
Let’s talk it over at the station, said Jim.
Are you arresting me? Willard asked as carelessly as possible, and took a shot that swished.
Nothing but net! he shouted triumphantly.
Jim sighed and gestured to his deputy, a shy young man named Pat.
Pat pulled out a piece of official-looking paper and read that the charge was: Inappropriate sexual contact with a minor.
Willard slumped suddenly.
Athena, I thought, and looked over at Artemis, who was staring at the proceedings with wild, frightened eyes.
As the police took Willard away, his gaze turned on Artemis, oscillating at high frequency between guilt and accusation.
Change is the only constant. How many times had I heard Willard say that? He would boil Zen down to that single truism. It’s a cliché, he would say, but a radical one. Nothing, not the hardest rock, not the brightest sun, not the purest truth, not the holiest god, nothing can dodge metamorphosis. This is the only piety worth its salt.
The defections of Myles, Bill, and half a dozen others damaged the edifice of the New Pond. But what brought it crumbling down in the end wasn’t the endless humiliation Willard visited upon his disciples, it wasn’t the manner in which he’d reached into every corner of their private lives, nor the sexual offenses, nor the emotional manipulation. No, under his spell, or at least under the spell of their collective dream, they had failed to stop him. Within his spiritual fiefdom, he lived with impunity, but the habit of power he exerted there made him careless and he had meddled in the world of children, a world he didn’t own. He had molested a teenage girl, neglecting to account for the complicated jealousies he aroused. But if Willard thought Artemis was responsible for his arrest, he was wrong. Artemis took a dim view of the police, reckoning in her anarchic heart that it was ignoble to rely on officialdom—she still hoped and planned to personally assassinate him loudly, bloodily, publicly. No, a muffled, anonymous call to the police from a pay phone wasn’t Artemis’s style. It was mine.
I am dull and empty. I’m in an empty tunnel, behind three doors. George hauled me up the steps, opened a big metal door in his giant rock, and pushed me through. Then two more doors after. Blood dripped down his sleeve, off his hand. I watched it drop in shiny drops and splats, then he left me and staggered away.
I can’t hear the gunshots against the door anymore. Can’t hear anything. Bright light bulbs light the tunnel. I sit on its floor, dull and empty. I’m thinking. How can I think? My heart ticks. My sight is cold and clear. Too cold, too clear. I’m alone again. As I was before. Or very nearly. George is dying. He’ll be dead soon. Then what? I’ve lost my pictures. I’ve lost my friends. I’ve lost my city. I don’t know where it is. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know who I am and never will. I’m disappearing.
CRACK
Did my skull crack?
Floor shakes. Soldiers bombing us?
I stumble down the tunnel. Musty, old, wet, hard, CRACK
I fall. Shaking tunnel. Lights shudder. Get up, go on.
Opening to my left. A cave with machines. George is there, sweating, bleeding, pop-eyed. Grey metal boxes, screens. He bumps from one box to the other. He cranks levers, twists knobs.
On a black-and-white screen I see the dead bodies on the cavern floor outside. Soldiers aim something at us from their truck. Bright light. The floor shakes.
George hits a button CRACK
I fall. George falls.
On the screen the soldiers run. Something comes. Something white rolls toward them, grabs them, runs over them. Lava.
CRACK
They’re gone. Screen shivers.
That got rid of them, says George, gasping. His hand is on a big lever, but then he takes it off. No, he says, We can’t launch. It’d bury the city in a giant fucking cave-in. We’ll wait it out for now. We’re safe in here. There’s not a fucking thing they can do to us.
He stands. He looks shaky. This way, he says. I follow him down the tunnel.
Big round cave at the other end. Bookshelves all around, from floor to ceiling high above.
George rips off his sleeve and washes his arm in a fountain in the middle of the room. Round fountain. A green metal fish is jumping out of it. Water from its mouth pours over his skin, the black hole in his skin. I help tie his sleeve around it. He falls back on the carpet and passes out. There are couches everywhere. I grab pillows from them and stuff them under his head, his knees.
Then I go back to the control room. I feel the point of heat in my back, and it spreads, spreads. I’m boiling in my skin. Boiling out my last memories. Boiling out sadness, love, anger. Boiling out all pity. There’s no choice. There’s only one thing to do. I find the big lever and use both hands to shove it down.
CRACK!
Shaking again. This time worse.
I crawl back to the room of books. Can’t stand up anymore. Air presses me down. Roar, roar, non-stop thunder. Chandelier shakes and stutters above. Head for a couch but can’t make it. Invisible thumb crushes me. Black fog sparkles in, fills the room, fills my eyes.
When I wake, everything is quiet. The fountain splashes, thousands of books in their bookshelves still line the room. George is gone. Down the hall I find him in the control room. He hunches over a screen, wearing headphones. Sweat drips off his face. Bloody rag still tied around his arm. He turns when I come in and his eyes glitter.
You launched us, he says.
Yes.
You destroyed the city.
It wasn’t City.
It was a city and you killed it.
I don’t say anything. There’s nothing to say.
Something out there, he says. His voice sounds jagged, wrong.
You’re sick
, I say. You should rest.
I can hear it, he says, And see it.
He points to dots and squiggles on the screen. They make no sense to me.
A being! he shouts. A giant fucking bat or something flying through space with us. I’ve heard of them, legends over drinks at the club, massive feathered bastards swooping along next door like some kind of colossal demon or angel or demon-angel or winged fucking fate itself. Fantastically exciting but also scares me shitless but also there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it, and also I’m getting signals, the thing is fucking talking to us!
What’s it saying? I ask.
I try to be calm. I’m alone inside a rock in space with a dying man. And the thing that’s been following me is outside. What else could it be?
It says it’s time to fucking feast!
George flips his headphones off, jumps up, and runs out the door. I follow. He disappears around a corner. Another tunnel, then stairs cut in the rock, then light, light. Giant wall of sunlight.
Foot-thick crystal, says George. Always facing the nearest star. This is the room of endless day. That’s why we can grow these massive fucking trees.
Green everywhere. Palm trees, vines, trees with red trunks as wide as trucks, purple fruit hanging from them. Silver fruit, ruby, gold apples the size of boulders. Bush berries glimmer underneath. Vegetables below them. Corn, beans, squash, peas, potatoes.
Everything’s a bit pale after weeks underground, of course, but I left a special light on, and you’ll see it all perk back up now that we’re flying again.
He leads me to a stone patio in the middle of the room. A meal waits for us on a round wooden table there.
Sit, he says. I sit.
He uncorks a dusty bottle of wine and pours two glasses.
Drink, he says.
I drink.
He empties his glass and refills it.
Drink! he says again.
I sip some more. I don’t like wine. It smells of cow shit, potatoes rotting in the ground. Where have I ever smelled those smells? Maybe I have a few last memories left inside after all. Memories so far gone there’s nothing left of them but smells.