Desolation Road dru-1

by Ian McDonald

  54

  His name was jean-Michel Gastineau, “also known as the Amazing Scorn, Mutant Master of Scintillating Sarcasm and Rapid Repartee, one-time Most Sarcastic Man in the World,” and he loved to talk. The three exiles were content for him to do so as he busied himself with frying eggs and mushrooms in his small lean-to amid the root buttresses.

  “Used to be something of a celebrity, years back, when the world was younger, was in a travelling show; you know, ‘Wonders of Earth and Heaven,’ ‘The Greatest Show on Earth,’ all that; there was me (The Amazing Scorn), Leopold Lenz, the dwarf sword-swallower, one metre ten tall, given to swallowing one metre fifty swords; Tanqueray Bob the werewolf, a couple of others whose names I can’t remember, the usual stuff anyway. Used to demonstrate how my sarcasm could kill cockroaches and peel paint off walls, pretty trivial stuff, till one day this poet fellow, big big guy, big as a beer tun, with a red beard, he comes and says he is the Greatest Satirist the World’s Ever Known, and I says, no way son, I was born with the gift of sarcasm; you ever hear of some folks are born with the power of command in their voices so no one can resist them? Well, I had like the power of sarcasm and satire; why, did you know that at age two, the age kids say things to make each other blub, when I said things they made little cuts on them? Thought not. Anyway; there was to be this big duel of sarcasm in a fine and fancy hotel… half the district turned out and well, to cut a long story short, which has always been my problem, I got a teeny bit carried away. Soon as I started on this poet guy these big long rips opened up all over his skin and the blood came pouring out, I shoulda stopped then, I shoulda, but I couldn’t, the sarcasm had hold of me, I kept going and everyone in the audience starts bleeding and crying and tearing their hair out and the big guy, well, he just had one big coronary and dropped dead, right there. Well, that was the end of that, but what I didn’t know was that this guy was some kind of local hero, a pretty big man in more than the obvious sense, and shoot, they came after me with guns and dogs and hawks and hunting pumas and, well, I was pretty shook up, I just ran and ran and ended up here.

  “I said to myself, jean-Michel Gastineau, you’re too dangerous to live among folks, if that tongue of yours ever gets out of control again folks are going to die, so I vowed there would be no more Amazing Scorn, Mutant Master of Scintillating Sarcasm and Rapid Repartee; I would see out my days as a lonely hermit, harming no one, shunning the company of my fellow humans. You see, the trees here they can’t feel sarcasm. Their perceptions is too deep to be hurt by mere words. Anyhows, like youse I was drawn here to the heartwood, the Tree of World’s Beginning. Those days the Ladywood was a friendly place, there was birds and wallabies and butterflies and all, not like now, not since the soldiers come: who’da thought it, pitched battles in Chryse Wood? Not Jean-Michel Gastineau: tell you this, since theyse come the place has got dark. You know what I mean, youse seen it closer than I; the forest has this kind of like… mind, all those roots and branches intertwining and all that, connections and connectivity, so I was told, each tree is like an element in the network; that big scrap over Bellweather way last month ripped up a lot of higher cognitive levels: things is back to the deep dreamtime again. Anyhows, I’m getting off the subject.”

  The little man served mushroom omelette and mate.

  “Make the tea myself from herbs and roots. Gets you going like a goat, it does. Anyhows… now, you eat, I’ll talk… . I was brought here to the Tree of World’s Beginning and the Blessed Lady came to me… word of honour, St. Catherine herself, beautiful she was, shimmering white and her face… like I don’t know what it was. Better than an angel. Anyhows, she says to me, ‘Jean-Michel Gastineau, I’ve a job for you. You mind my forest for me and I’ll forgive you what happened in that town. The forest needs someone to be looking after it, mind it, tend it, care for it, love it even. You’ll have the power of knowing everything that happens in Chryse, (that’s how I knew you guys were coming; shame about that ’lighter) and you’ll have command of all the Genesis zones, the hatcheries; that’s where the angels are born from, under the roots of the trees; and the machines too… there are still a lot of them left about from the manforming days; until such a time as you’re called to a higher mission, which you will be someday.’ So, here jean-Michel Gastineau is and here jean-Michel Gastineau stays. It’s a good life if you like fresh air and the like; I haven’t breathed a word of sarcasm in five years. Imagine that. But these days, well, the place is going dark. I’ll explain that now.”

  He kicked his fire of redwood cones. Sparks fled up the chimney into the gathering darkness.

  “This here tree” (he patted the root ridge on which he sat) “he’s called Sequoia Senipervirens-means ‘Everliving’ in old old language, and that’s what he is… he was planted here first day of the manforming by St. Catherine herself and the forest grew up around him. But great Father Tree, he’s the oldest and the wisest. Oh, yes, wise and with a very long memory. Trees are alive, and aware, they know, you know, they feel, they think. You have any non-dreams out there? Sure you did; that’s the forest learning about you, absorbing your memories to add to the great memory of Father Tree here. But they’ve also been absorbing all the fear and hate and shit and spunk that’s been going on out there and it’s made the forest dark and scary and not a little dangerous. What worries me is that it’s poisoning the trees-not like slopping weedkiller on the roots, anything like that, but poisoning the soul of the place. Me and the machines can do only so much and there’s whole areas of woodland dying and new growth coming up stunted and deformed. That’s bad. That scares me, because if it keeps happening, the world’s soul’s gone.

  “Sorry to go on so long. Don’t get the chance to talk much. So, old JeanMichel Gastineau make your head spin? Too much philosophy? Sure you’d like some sleep now; usually turn in about this time myself. By the by, you might have some funny dreams tonight, don’t worry, it’s only the Big Tree up there feeling you out, trying to communicate with you.”

  They slept around a charcoal brazier that night. The red glow pushed back the night and the exiles’ eyes rolled and flickered with the rapid movements of human dreaming. Rael Mandella Jr. dreamed he woke and the waking dream carried him out of the little wooden house among the roots into the night. A sense of holiness overcame him and he stood for a long time with his face lifted to the sky, turning round and round and round. When he grew dizzy with his turningturningturning so that the stars spun and the boles of the redwoods seemed to tumble upon him like matchsticks, Rael Mandella Jr. sank to the ground and pressed his cheek to the cold damp soil. For a long time he remained thus and then he dreamed he heard a voice humming a tune. He raised his head and saw Santa Ekatrina standing in a shaft of skylight.

  “Are you a ghost?” he asked, and in his dream his mother replied, “A ghost, yes, but not dead. There are living ghosts as well as dead ones.” Then his father stepped out of the darkness.

  “What do you think you’re doing here?” Limaal Mandella asked irritably.

  Rael Mandella Jr. opened his mouth to speak but his words had been stolen by night birds.

  “Answer your father,” said Santa Ekatrina.

  “You’re running away, aren’t you?” accused Limaal Mandella. “Don’t try and bluff me, son. I know what it’s all about. You can’t face up to failure and you’re running away.”

  Rael Jr. readied to shout back that hadn’t he, Limaal Mandella, the Greatest Snooker Player the Universe Had Ever Known, acted no better when he fled to Desolation Road, when one by one familiar figures emerged from the moonring shadows and joined his parents. They wore the faces of his life: his workmates from Shift C at the foundry, the girls he had danced with at the Saturday night socials, friends from school, faces of Belladonna; sharks, hustlers, whores, agents, Glenn Miller with his trombone under his arm; they looked down at him kneeling on the soft brown needle duff with infinite pity.

  “What are you going to do,” they said. “What are you going to do?”
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  “You brought it all down on yourself,” said his own brother, covered in blue bruises. “Are you Mandella enough to hold it?”

  “You were responsible,” said his mother.

  “You still are responsible,” said his father, failure, exile, coward.

  “If only I hadn’t run out of tricks!” said Ed Gallacelli, resurrected from ashes, his tongue glowing like embers.

  “Stop stop stop stop!” cried Rael Mandella Jr. “Stop the dream! I want to wake up!”

  And he did wake up and found himself alone in the holy place among the trees. The moonring twinkled on high, wind whispered in the branches, and the air was still, sweet and godly. In a shaft of starshine the light curdled, thickened, and took on solid human form. A tall, moustachioed man in a long grey coat sat himself down on the tree root next to Rael Jr.

  “Fine night,” he said, searching through his multitudinous pockets for his pipe. “Fine night.” He located the pipe, charged it, lit it, and took a few meditative puffs.

  “You’ve got to go back, you know.”

  “No more dreams,” whispered Rael Jr. “No more ghosts.”

  “Dreams? The Xanthic mystagogues believe that existence ended on the third day and that our world is only the dream of the second night,” said the grey stranger. “Ghosts? Pah. We are the most substantial things in the world, the foundations of the present. We are memories.” His pipe made a little red glow-worm dot on the night. “Mnemologues. We are the things that make up a life; only here, in this one place, do we have body and substance. We are he dreams of the trees. Do you know what this tree is? Of course you do, it’s the Tree of World’s Beginning. But it is also the Tree of World’s End, for every beginning must have an end. You’ve unfinished business in my town, Rael, and until you make an end of what you have begun, your memories won’t give you peace.”

  “Who are you?”

  “You know me but you’ve never met me. Your father knew me when he was a boy, your grandfather, too, and you’ve been carrying me around on your back these past days. I’m Desolation Road’s oldest memory. I’m Dr. Alimantando.”

  “But they say you’re travelling in time, chasing some kind of legendary creature.”

  “And so I am, but the memories remain. Listen; though it pains me, a gentleman of science, to have to say this; you have the magic in you. If the land here is strong enough to give body to your memories and fears, might it not also be strong enough to give body to your hopes and desires? And if that is the case, maybe then that strength is within you, as I was, and not tied to any one place, no matter how special. Think about that.” Dr. Alimantando rose and placed his pipe in his mouth. He took a long look at the sky, the stars, the trees. “Fine night,” he said. “Fine fine night. Well, so long, Rael. It was nice meeting you. You are a Mandella, no mistake. You’ll get by.” Then he folded his arms and walked into the starlight shadows.

  The sound of jean-Michel Gastineau’s radio woke Rael Mandella Jr. Like it, he was poorly tuned, somewhere between a programme about the edge of the universe and a popular early morning music show. Light streamed through the ill-fitting planks that made up the wall. There was a smell and chuckle of eggs frying on the brazier.

  “Good morning good morning good morning,” said jean-Michel Gastineau. “Up and at it, we’ve a long way to go today and you can’t be going anywhere without a decent breakfast.”

  Rael Jr. knuckled sleep from his eyes, not quite comprehending.

  “Going. Today. Got the call. Last night. While you were busy with your mnemologue, I was busy with mine, the Blessed Lady, well, at least her memory; anyhows, she told me this was the time, that I was to go with you. Apparently you’ll have need of my special talents. Might even be why you were brought here in the first place. These things have hidden connections.”

  “Aren’t…”

  “Aren’t I the least little bit upset to be leaving all this? Well… only a little. It’s temporary, soon as I’ve finished the Holy Will I can have my old job back. Anyhows, she told me if I didn’t go, there wouldn’t be no forest to mind. What they call an Event Cusp; there’s a lot of futures hanging on a few individuals, and that includes the future of the Forest of Chryse.”

  “But…”

  “But who’s going to look after the Ladywood while I’m away saving it? Shouldn’t be telling you this, but a whole new order of angels is being constructed right now, right under your feet in the hatcheries: the Mark Six, the Amschastrias, specially designed for environmental maintenance. The old place’ll be all right for a while without me. Old Father Tree’ll keep an eye on them. Well, come on. Get up, wash up, eat up! We’ve a long way to go before we get to the forest wall and I’ve to pack and say good-bye to the chickens. Don’t look so surprised! Where do you think those eggs came from? Air?”

  55

  One of Arnie Tenebrae’s Jaguar patrols captured the four men on the inside of Passive Defence Zone 6. Standing orders called for all prisoners to be terminated immediately but Sub-lieutenant Sergio Estramadura’s curiosity had been piqued by their ability to traverse ten kilometres of booby traps, pitfalls, noose wires, and shit-tipped pungi stakes without injury. Despite Parliamentarian air patrols he broke radio silence to ask advice of his commander.

  “Who are they?” Arnie Tenebrae asked.

  “Four men. One of them’s the Old Man of the Woods guy, the sarcastic one, the others look normal. No identity, but some B.A.C. gear on them.”

  “Interesting. Gastineau’s never formally aligned himself before. He must have brought them through the defence zone. I’d quite like to see them.”

  She watched her guerrillas bring the captives in. The soldiers had them bound and blindfolded and led them on leashes. Three of them stumbled and faltered over the rough ground at the end of the valley; the fourth walked straight and tall, leading, not lead, as if he were seeing with senses other than sight. That would be Gastineau. Though Arnie Tenebrae had met him only twice previously, his name was legend among the veterans of the Chryse campaign, both Whole Earth Army and Parliamentarian.

  —What a guerrilla he’d make. He is part of the forest, animally aware. She looked at her guerrillas, boy-soldiers clumsy in chameleon suits and heavy battle packs, faces scrolled with tattoos or painted like tigers or demons or insects; spotted, striped, paisley-patterned. Silly boys pretending silly boys’ games. Runaways tearaways castaways blowaways tomboys schizoids, homosexuals and visionaries. Actors in the theatre of war. Give her a thousand men like Gastineau and she’d grind Quinsana fine as sand.

  The faces of two of the prisoners looked familiar. She kept trying to place them in her memory as Sub-lieutenant Estramadura stripped them of their packs, clothes and dignity and tied them to the bamboo holding pen. Estramadura’s debriefing was farcical. Had the boy no eyes, no ears? His information amounted to “all of a sudden, there they were.” A man without eyes and ears will not live long in forest fighting. She searched the prisoners’ clothing. Gastineau’s worn whites produced nothing, the others were Company stuff, tough, well made. The pockets were empty of anything save paper tissues, fluff and a small ball of silver paper.

  Before she examined the packs she asked Sub-lieutenant Estramadura, “Their names.”

  “Ah. I forgot to ask.”

  “Go and ask them.”

  He bounded down the hill to the holding pens, face red and humiliated beneath the bold blue and yellow tiger-stripes.

  —He will not live long. He has no intelligence…

  He returned one minute later.

  “Ma’am, their names are…”

  “Mandella.” She pointed to the leather-bound book on the ground beside her. “The youngest is the son of Limaal Mandella.”

  “Rael Jr., ma’am.”

  “So.”

  “The other two are . .

  “Gallacelli. Sevriano and Batisto. I knew their faces were familiar. The last time I saw them they were two years old.”

  “Ma’am.”

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nbsp; “I’d like to speak with the prisoners. Have them brought here. And give them back their clothes. Naked men are pathetic.”

  When Sub-lieutenant Estramadura had left, Arnie Tenebrae stroked her fingers over her short, fur-fine hair; stroke stroke stroke, manic, compulsive stroking. Mandella. Gallacelli. Quinsana. Hidden behind the cover of the book, Alimantando. Was it divinely ordained that she could never-ever never get away from them? Did the whole town of Desolation Road sail around the world like a cloud of pursuit, seeking to drag her back into stagnation and stultification? What crime had she committed that the past must visit its punishment generation upon generation; was it so vile a thing to desire a name written in the sky? She toyed with the idea of having them quickly, quietly, anonymously killed. She dismissed it. It would be impossible to do so. This meeting was Cosmically Ordained. It had happened before, was happening now, would happen again. She studied them as they knelt across the fire from her; blinking and smarting in the smoky hut. So this was her grandnephew. She saw them peering through the smoke for her but she was invisible to them, backlit by strong sunlight streaming through the bamboo. Jean-Michel Gastineau opened his mouth to speak.

  “Peace, venerable one. I know you too well. I know the name Mandella, and I know the name Gallacelli.”

  “Who are you?” asked Rael Jr. He was bold. That was good.

  “You know me. I’m the demon that eats up little babies, the bogeyman that scares children to bed, I’m evil incarnate, so it would seem. I an Arnie Tenebrae. I’m your great-aunt, Rael Jr.” And because it pleased her to do so, she told the tale of stolen babies, the tale that her phantom father had told her and that had brought her to this precise place and moment. The expressions of horror on her grand-nephew’s face pleased her greatly. “But why so horrified, Rael? From what I hear, you’re as great a criminal as I.”

  “That’s not so. I’m fighting for justice for the oppressed against tyrannical regime of Bethlehem Ares Steel.”