by Patty Jansen
I asked our guides about animals on Deyu’s behalf.
“Squirrels,” said the young pilot. “You will probably see some of them later.”
“The damn goats are everywhere,” Junco said.
“Why is there water in the river?” I asked. “Where does it come from?”
“It’s because of the dam upriver,” Junco said. “They get big winter rains up in the mountains, and the water collects in the dam. They let it out slowly.”
“If they didn’t do that, there would be no water in the canyon?”
“Probably not, except a few times a year, and then there would be enough to wash all the sand and vegetation away.”
“There is less water every year,” the young pilot said.
Junco nodded, his expression distant.
We re-boarded the craft and continued on.
We saw no other people at all. No other craft in the sky that I could see, and no settlements on the ground, except for a few… shacks that might not even be inhabited. Everything looked abandoned from up here.
For quite a while, we flew over this canyon that grew more and more intricate as the cliffs grew taller and the rocks at the various levels changed colour. The river down there looked so small, that I couldn’t imagine that it had created this incredible landscape over millions and millions of years.
Then we arrived at the main visiting point: a lookout on the top of the southern end of the canyon.
The two craft landed in a patch of abandoned concrete that was being reclaimed by nature. Clumps of grass grew in the cracks between the paving, and sand had blown across, providing a footing for moss and small plants.
Along the edges of the paving were signs of human activity, past and present, with paths and roads and the remains of fencing. A small shop looked like it might open during busy times. A couple of tradesmen were working in a building that looked like a hotel. Closed right now, obviously, but maybe one day they’d offer tourists accommodation here, and this would become a little tourist enclave like the New World park.
We all got out of the craft.
A chilly wind blew across the deserted field.
Junco led us across the field to the lookout.
“Not very busy here,” I commented to him while we walked.
He snorted. “It used to be very different. You see all the space here?” He gestured around where we stood. “This used to be a carpark, and every summer there used to be thousands, hundreds of thousands of people coming here. It was so busy that they had to pre-sell tickets because the lookout got too crowded.”
“I presume that you’re talking about a period before the Second Civil War?”
“Before that, before the great depression, before the other wars, before the border closure, people from all over the world used to come here.”
“Are you sad they stopped coming?”
He shrugged. “Whether or not I’m sad about it, there is nothing I can do.”
This was true.
Another craft had landed a bit further down, with five or six people standing around their guide. The latter was handing out drinks. His charges all wore blue shirts.
“Are there a lot of other people bringing tourists?”
“There are a few.”
“Why are they all wearing those shirts?”
“Those guys take random tourists who can book in pairs or go alone, if they want. The guides are thinking about their safety. It doesn’t look very good for us when accidents happen.”
“Accidents?”
I felt uncomfortable. We were out of our depth. We were vulnerable. People could make us disappear if they wanted to.
“This canyon here.” He pointed, while we were going down a flight of crumbling stairs to a viewing platform. “It’s responsible for many thousands of deaths. People who fell down, planes that crashed, people who drowned, people who thought they could climb the fence for a picture and slipped. People who got bitten by snakes.”
“I can’t imagine there being too many snakes here anymore.”
“They are around, if you’re unlucky.”
We arrived at the viewing platform. Larrana was the last person to come down. The steps were low enough for his wheels, but he needed to make sure he didn’t roll down the crumbling path by holding onto the railing. I asked if he needed help, but he said he was all right.
We stood at the edge of the platform. On the rocky shelf in front of us stood a dead tree. There was a bit of straggly vegetation on the ground, but most of the landscape was utterly arid. The wind was gritty and cool, and Nalya was clamping his arms around himself. He would not be used to the cold.
“That wind comes straight off the mountains,” Junco said.
“Do you get snow?”
“A bit, sometimes, not enough to go skiing. It’s rain, mostly.”
I looked over the landscape, alien and beautiful as it was, I couldn’t imagine anything more like a desert in the world. The idea that not so long ago thousands of people had come here to see this site, and now the visitor numbers were reduced to a handful per month, was difficult to comprehend.
“It’s such a desolate place,” I said.
“You could be mistaken. People still live here.”
“Really? In that dilapidated town we just saw?”
“No, you won’t see them from the air. People have built underground shelters, and others live in the town back where you changed planes.”
And that was such a dusty hole that I couldn’t imagine a full community living there. Not even the mushroom gatherers who lived in the aquifers of Athyl inhabited such poor surroundings. Or the zeyshi who lived in the old structures under the ground. Most of those people at least had a nice place to live in, like the humid aquifers with their fields of crops and deep pools in between rock walls covered with plants, or the extensive and very comfortable caves where they lived.
Maybe it was because I was looking at this landscape from such a great height, and I couldn’t see the nice places like the creek beds where there was water and vegetation. Although we’d landed on that beach and the stench of the green algae and dead fish in the stagnant pool still lingered in the back of my nose.
Up here, I only saw the remnants of a place that many people once visited: cracked paving, sagging fencing propped up with makeshift posts. Buildings that were no longer in use and had fallen to pieces. An old toilet block with discoloured walls where water seeped out of a crack in a wall and a squirrel came to drink from the puddle of dubious water.
I didn’t know what to say.
Junco had probably never left this region and would have no idea that such places existed as my father’s farm in New Zealand where it was so green that your eyes hurt, and where the little community that he and Erith were part of lived independently off the land with all the animals in their fields and their own energy generation plant.
Or even the Nations of Earth complex, where an army of gardeners did everything to keep the grass and the trees alive, or the little enclaves surrounding Rotterdam where, although much of the surrounding countryside was under water, farmers still grew flowers and vegetables.
This place looked so miserable, so poor, and so much like I’d accidentally taken a flight to Ethiopia or any of the Central African belt where large tracts of land were no longer habitable, but where people did things like generate huge quantities of electricity and turned electricity into hydrogen which they exported or used in local factories.
This land was just... empty, and war-torn, abandoned.
Junco was expecting me to say something about the view.
I didn’t want to give the impression that I pitied him, because he was probably not to be pitied.
He was proud, adapted to the landscape, resilient and self-sufficient, the best he could do in this lousy situation.
“It’s very nice,” I said.
“Best view in the world.”
“Yeah.” And I left it at that. The view was nice, if you ignored the sagging building to the right and the collapsed walkway that had once led to it, if you ignored the skeletons of dead pine trees or you didn’t think about the time they had been live trees.
I still didn’t know what to think, or even what I had expected to find here.
I might have hoped to find a vibrant community that proved that not belonging to Nations of Earth was no disaster and that it was wholly possible to remain independent as a country.
Instead, it was just as bad as I had feared and I was overwhelmed with the desire to walk through that other desert valley, outside Athyl, where we discovered little plantlets in places where there had not been life for a long time, and where the creek flowed across the rocks from rains upstream that had started again after thousands of dry years.
And somehow I felt it should be possible for humans to fix this place, but it was impossible in conflict and when the locals saw nothing that needed to be fixed.
“Hey, are you all right?” Thayu came to stand next to me. She carried Emi on her arm, looking around with her big eyes.
“Yeah. Just thinking.”
Thayu couldn’t hear what I was thinking because we had no feeder connection.
“You look sad.”
“I am sad. This part of the world has been forgotten and neglected. It’s dying. Nature is dying. People are leaving. They can’t live here anymore.”
“Isn’t that their own fault for not wanting to be involved with Nations of Earth?”
“It is, but there is more to it. All my life, I’ve heard stories of people coming here. I’ve seen it in movies and articles. This place is part of the natural heritage of this world. It shouldn’t just be up to one country to look after it. We should all look after it.”
“Clearly, they don’t want anyone else here.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
On a level below us, Ynggi and Jaki kept a close watch on the older children to make sure that no one came close to crumbling edges and rickety steps. The younger kids were getting bored, but Nalya walked along the fence taking pictures. Larrana followed him as much as he was able, but I thought he was getting bored, too.
“What do you mean, you’re not sure?” Thayu asked.
“They took our money quickly enough. Someone in their government says their borders should remain closed, but clearly not everyone agrees with that. They need visitors to come and they’ve set up businesses for those visitors. They know what’s happening to the land and even name their kids after plants and animals that have died out. Their governments might not be aware of it, but some people look ready to talk.”
Chapter Nine
Junco and his young assistant pilot served a late lunch consisting of sandwiches with very appropriate toppings for each of us. There was no meat except fish for the Pengali and plenty of spicy offerings with clear handwritten labels that said what each box contained. I wondered which servant in Mariola’s household had been responsible for these. There was also hot water for tea and juice for the children.
We ate at a picnic table overlooking the top of the canyon and the walkways of the lookout.
The weather was cool, thanks to a blustery wind laced with dust.
Junco said it was likely that a dust storm would whip up later in the day or tomorrow.
Our group was going to split up after this, and I spent most of lunchtime talking to Thayu and Emi. They would go back to the city to spend a few extra days on the beach while trying to contact Dekker.
Larrana had already asked me about the beach. He said he was cold up here and hated how the sand blew in his eyes.
To be honest, the kids looked tired and bored. They were ready to go home, even if they had also behaved very well. There had been no mishaps with fences or—heaven forbid—bubble machines inside the aircraft.
I told Thayu we’d be back tomorrow. I told Emi to behave, although I doubted she understood me.
Nicha was saying goodbye to Ayshada, who was not happy about having to leave his father.
I gave a few last-minute instructions to Deyu, who was going to keep trying to get onto Dekker or anyone else at Nations of Earth. By now, I was also getting uncomfortable that I had heard little from Amarru. It was disturbing how much we relied on communication.
We were about to go deep into unknown territory and I feared that Dekker was going to want to contact me while I was out of range, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell him what we were doing here. He would berate me that I hadn’t applied for a million permits before travelling to this area, all layers of bureaucracy designed to stop people coming here.
The truth was that I would have told someone at Nations of Earth what we were planning and why, if only someone with a sympathetic ear had wanted to listen. Yes, Nations of Earth had their own issues to deal with, and a rogue decaying space ship ruin that was at least fifty years old buried in a remote rainforest on a faraway planet was probably not high on the list of priorities. But it was on mine. This was why I was here. It was none of Dekker’s business.
Junco and his assistant packed up the lunch things.
Then I noticed that all the kids were standing around one of the gyrocopters, looking into the cabin. Two Pengali tails wriggled excitedly in the air, like black-and-white banded snakes. That was not a good sign.
“What’s going on, kids?”
“Look,” Larrana said. He pointed into the cabin.
I looked.
A grey squirrel sat on its haunches on the pilot’s seat, tail held high above its head. It had acquired a piece of bread, which it held in both forepaws. Another squirrel had discovered the box of empty wrappers and was rummaging through it, scattering paper over the floor.
Junco came towards the craft. “Oh, for crying out loud, who left the door open? Shoo! Shoo!”
He jumped into the cabin. At least four squirrels skittered out, much to the delight of the kids.
The animals ran across the paving to the toilet block, scampered up the dead tree next to it and then onto the roof.
The Pengali kids ran after them, their tails straight up into the air.
Huh, that was weird.
As young as they were, the kids were trying to communicate with the squirrels in tail language, without even realising they were doing it.
“Those things are like ringgit,” Veyada said, picking up wrappers the squirrels had scattered, and which were threatening to blow over the railing, adding to hundreds of years of plastic rubbish already scattered there. “They get into everything you’re not watching.”
The squirrels watched from the roof while Junco and his assistant finished packing up lunch and most of my team climbed into the larger of the two craft.
Jaki had to call the Pengali kids several times before they could tear themselves from their fellow tailed creatures.
Pykka wanted Nalya to take a picture of him and Amay with the squirrels. Nalya did this, very much like they had seen the tourists do. Pykka was disappointed that you could barely see the animals on the roof. Because clearly, to his mind, they were much bigger.
They all finally got into the craft.
The door shut.
I waved to Thayu with Emi on her lap behind the window.
Off to the beach. They’d loved that area, with its street markets and little shops and street performers. Larrana loved the roller skaters along the boulevard.
I almost wished we could go with them. It was a fun area, with lots of tacky Mexican hat references, colourful street theatre in Spanish, loud music and street painting.
But we would have some time off. I’d planned a brief holiday to see my father for just myself, Thayu, Emi, with a few others for security, because my father was keen to see his granddaughter.
We waited until the craft had departed, with Nicha wavin
g to Ayshada who had wanted him to come. This would be easier on Nicha if he had a partner, but even if I’d said several times that I thought he should have someone, Nicha seemed happy to look after Ayshada by himself.
We then climbed into the other craft. I sat next to Junco and watched him start up the engine.
The last I saw of the lookout was the dusty roof on the toilet block. Two squirrels watched us, seated on their hind legs.
For a while, we followed the canyon rim.
I looked out the window into the dusty air and the tiny stream far below in the deepest part of the canyon.
Then the craft veered right, taking a shortcut over red-tinged desert. There was not much to see anymore, so I studied the craft’s controls, figuring that Evi on the bench behind me was doing the same. It would probably help Evi if I asked where Junco had obtained the craft, but I wasn’t sure how to frame that question in a manner that would not sound too political. There would be enough political stuff once we got to our destination.
After a long silence, Junco asked me, “So, tell me, that beautiful wheelchair the boy had, he did get that from over there, you know, off Earth?”
Out of all the questions I’d expected him to ask, this wasn’t one.
“Yes, he did. I’m not sure exactly where, because you don’t see a lot of disabled people over there.”
Junco nodded and was silent while he adjusted some settings on his instruments.
I was still wondering why disabled people were so rarely seen in Coldi society and suspected that expectant women considered those children too costly and not meeting their contracted partner’s expectations, so they aborted the pregnancy. This left me with all kinds of uncomfortable questions, like how badly affected a foetus needed to be for parents to take this action and whether there were laws regulating what you could and couldn’t do. Could they test for mental conditions which didn’t show up on a scan?
Taking away the kids born with disabilities left the kids who had accidents, like Larrana, but you never saw too many of them either. In theory, that meant either Asto was a very safe place and people didn’t have accidents, or the medicos were much more reluctant to save people who could never return to their previous life. I could not argue in favour of the “safe place” option because I knew Asto was no safer than other places, but the alternative made me sick. Or were they really good at fixing damage to human bodies? I didn’t think so, because on Asto, the Aghyrians ran a lot of advanced medical stuff, and if they had an altruistic bone in their body, I hadn’t discovered it yet.