Heaven's Edge

by Romesh Gunesekera

  ‘All ready?’ Zeng nudged me.

  ‘How did you get here?’

  ‘You too tired. Dropping off, eh?’

  My eyes hurt. ‘No. I expected you along the canal road.’

  ‘So, you want to visit the Carnival?’

  ‘I am looking for Uva.’

  ‘She’s there?’

  ‘You telling me, or asking me?’

  ‘Asking, asking.’

  ‘I don’t know. Our plans got a little upset. But she mentioned one or two people …’ I hesitated, then gave the only other name I knew. ‘Like Jaz?’

  Zeng did not seem impressed. ‘You know the Juice Bar?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ I don’t know why I lied. Panic, I suppose. Uva had told me so little.

  Zeng studied me. Was he too looking for some sign of commitment? It was not the politics of the island that had brought me. I had come for something much more primal. I wondered whether he could understand that. I wanted him to trust me, but I didn’t know how to show him that he could. I wished I hadn’t lied.

  His head moved slightly. Then he proceeded to explain that the Juice Bar had a blue lantern hanging outside it. Jaz, he said, was usually there. ‘He is now the Pin manager.’ He handed me a small laminated card. There was a metal barcode imprinted on it. Nothing else. ‘You know how to use this?’

  It was a familiar enough device but I had not come across any machines in Maravil that could use plastic cards. I rubbed the tag on my ear. ‘I’ve been a little … damaged.’

  Zeng dipped a finger in the greasy water of the fountain and drew a wet map on the stone ledge. He showed me how to get to the Carnival checkpoint in the evaporating slime. ‘You know it is underground. You must go straight to the metal box before the barrier. If there is a soldier there, don’t talk. Just insert the card. Everything is automatic. As soon as it comes out, take it and walk through the steel door that will open. Do not lose the card. You will need it to come out again. It will work only this one night.’ His lips tightened over the ridges of his teeth. ‘I do this for her, OK? You better be careful.’

  The box, luminous in the fast-failing light, whirred for ages before regurgitating the card. My whole body broke into a sweat. The soldier in his sentry-box was asleep. I should have been on the bus, going back. I didn’t know how long I had before someone would come looking for me, but I had to go in. My only chance now was to find her Jaz. The door slowly cranked open. I covered the tiny metal hospital tag pinned to my ear and crept in.

  Behind the door, a tunnel descended lit by a line of small round bulbs. Black dust frosted the top of each bulb and lay between the spiralling ribs of the concrete floor.

  Expecting at any moment to be challenged, I followed the tunnel down, tripping from one sphere of light to the next. It looked to me more like the ramp of a car park than an exclusive entrance. I came to a swing door that led to the upper gallery of the underground mall: it could have been something built under a hotel or an office block anywhere in the world – thirty years ago. It was still unfinished, and looked like it always would be. Most of the units were bare; there were cables sticking out of the concrete in twisted loops at every corner. From where I stood I could see galleries on two floors, with a few shops selling clothes, and the main promenade sporting a bakery and a couple of cafés. These looked to me no more inviting than the cafeteria in the market, but the people who were drifting around looked in better shape. My clothes, I reckoned, would not set me apart too much among them. The only problem was that there was no sign of a bar and not even a flicker of blue among the tiers of dull lamps. Pressed against the cold galvanised railing, not sure what to do next, I felt stupid for believing Zeng. Stupid also for taking the risk, and stupid for thinking Uva would really have come anywhere near such a place. Stupid and more than a little scared.

  ‘Fear is not cowardice,’ Eldon had always maintained. ‘To be brave, one must know fear and learn to overcome it. Release it, not instil it.’ It was a theory I wanted to subscribe to. I took the stairs down to the promenade.

  Only once I was down at that level did I glimpse the blue beacon, flickering beyond the empty atrium tubs. I hurried towards it, stooping so that my height would not be too noticeable.

  When I finally reached the Juice Bar, I lingered outside. I remembered how Uva had spoken of Jaz as though he belonged to a profane underworld I could never bridge. But why not? If she could, why couldn’t I?

  Hiding my fists in my pockets, string bag swinging, I entered. Inside, scarab lamps burned in a dozen miniature alcoves. As my eyes adjusted, I made out a cluster of young men and women, preening and clucking. On a small mirrored stage, a troupe of nubile, genderless creatures with shaven bodies gyrated to the hard relentless noise of a dance machine. Two girls and a bleached boy detached themselves from the huddle and crowded around me. ‘Happy … ?’ the boy mewed through lips of gilt and glitter. I missed the other word as the drums intensified.

  ‘Happy tea,’ the high-booted girl echoed cuddling up. I held her at bay and shouted out Jaz’s name, trying to raise my voice above the racket. The boy smiled knowingly and passed me a bowl of mist. I took a sip and felt, for an instant, that my head had come apart; the mouthful spread through me deadening each cell in my body, one by one, until my flesh unreeled from my bones. Someone struck a flint and flames streaked across the room lighting a river of spirits to burn what looked like spunk off the floor.

  I asked for water, plain water.

  ‘Try the bar,’ the girl pouted and pushed me towards the back of the room. The deranged electrons around me had no rhythm, no anchor. I was spinning.

  Then behind the bar, I spotted Jaz.

  He was unmistakable. A radiant face, embellished by the glossy curved lips of a charmfish; dark eyes twinkling over a rococo amethyst necklace, and a bare body of thin light muscle enmeshed in the filigree chain-cloth of a silver waistcoat laced on each side. Around his middle he had a tiny pleated tangy-green sarong tied with a fantail bustle at the back. ‘Speak up, darling.’ He cupped a hand to his left ear, distinctly larger than his right, compensating the twist of his taut body as he leaned over, exposing a gleaming buttock and exuding the scent of cinnamon and honey. ‘Into my ear, will you?’ he coaxed.

  ‘Are you Jaz?’

  The machine music faded.

  ‘And who are you, gorgeous?’ Jaz fluttered his malachite lids luxuriously. He was younger than me, but knew exactly what he could do with his body.

  I shook the echoes out of my head and looked around; I was sober again. I moved nearer. ‘Uva said you were her friend.’

  The mention of Uva made him straighten up in surprise. ‘Oh, you must be the darling new lover then? Tall one, huh?’

  I was relieved; she must have told him about me. ‘Do you know where she is?’

  ‘Marc, isn’t it?’ He reached across the bar. ‘Nice hands. Very nice.’

  ‘Do you?’ I repeated. I was beginning to doubt that he could help me. ‘Do you know what has happened?’

  Jaz feigned an exaggerated concern. ‘Why, you haven’t already had a little tiff, have you?’ He moved my hand gently aside and swatted a small red termite with a coaster. His arm, his bare hairless chest, his face all shone with what looked like serum. He seemed incapable of understanding the danger she might be in. I wondered whether he was really a friend, or just a kind of doll she liked to play with. How much could I safely say to him?

  ‘They found her … place.’ I tried to form the words into small, hard pellets in my mouth. ‘She hasn’t been here then? She hasn’t told you?’

  His ebullient face lost its shape. Jaz closed his eyes for a second; he began to breathe faster. His girlish breasts swelled and subsided within the flaps of his shimmering waistcoat. Then he looked again at my face. ‘How did you get in here?’ His voice dropped.

  ‘A mutual friend.’ Although there was no trace of suspicion in his question, I really could not be sure of him. I felt I couldn’t trust anyone.

>   Jaz reached up to a shelf above and took down a pair of glasses. From behind he got a bottle of Pin and poured out two drinks. He slid one across. ‘I think I need a drink.’

  I picked up the glass warily. ‘You have plain water?’

  He rolled his eyes, but passed me a pitcher and another glass.

  I poured myself some water. ‘I’ve been in a compound. I thought she might have got in touch with you. She told me that you were the one who could get almost anything done here.’

  ‘Such an exaggerator.’ Jaz shrank back, turning coy. ‘I haven’t seen her in ages. I just heard about you on the grapevine.’

  I checked to see if he’d said that because somebody was listening in. There was nobody near us.

  Jaz rested his face on his fingertips for a moment. Then he said quietly, ‘If she has been taken in, the information will be posted on the official database.’ A slight note of mischief pinked his voice again. ‘There is a terminal I think I can access. Come with me.’ Jaz strapped a pouch around him and slipped out from behind the bar. He snaked across the room to a young man standing with his face fixed on the emasculated dancers gathering back on stage. Jaz sidled up to him. ‘Hi, you are the Warden’s guest?’

  The young man looked startled.

  ‘Where is she?’ he cooed.

  ‘She’s just gone to the salon …’

  ‘First time in the Carnival? Your aura, you see. I knew it. Is it art you have come for? Or a bit of our serendipity … ?’

  The young man shifted, embarrassed, and looked down at his feet.

  ‘Oh, but I love the way you bite that zunge. Has anyone ever told you just how sexy that is?’

  I was getting a little irritated and cleared my throat, but Jaz ignored my interruption.

  ‘Oh, what a darling little thing.’ He stroked the young man’s placid hand and then hooked an arm around his waist, ‘This is a wonderful spot for you. You’ll love it here.’ As he chatted Jaz fussed with his victim’s wrists, collar, strip-line lapel and the plastic toggle of his zipper, opening and closing it to the buzz of the resumed dance music as though massaging the linings of his suit. The young man struggled at first, but seemed unable to release himself without slipping completely out of his jacket. I watched mortified as he finally succumbed.

  Jaz then steered the young man to a chair and kissed him firmly on the lips. ‘You’ll have a fine time here. The juicers are simply divine, especially that ravishing bleach boy.’ He tipped a spirit lamp into a ring of fire around the tightly crossed feet. ‘Ciao, for now. You’ll be really primed, darling, when the flames go down.’

  Jaz turned to me. ‘Let’s go. We have to be quick.’ He led the way, out through the back, into an unlit wasteway. ‘He is the Warden’s new boy.’

  ‘Warden?’

  ‘Although this is a leisure zone, there still has to be some authority: that’s the Warden. She runs all the pleasure parlours here for the District Commander and has a terminal in her hut.’ He showed me a silvery card, ‘And we needed this from that boy to get in.’

  ‘How did you know he’d have one?’

  ‘I too was one of her favourites.’ Jaz’s teeth flashed in the dim glow of a paper moon pinned to the ceiling. ‘A member of her inner circle. But she took away my card last time.’

  ‘Why? What did you do?’

  ‘Nothing, sweetie. That was the trouble. I knew she wanted to change her pleasure puck, so I was a little ungenerous. Withholding, you might say,’ he sniggered. ‘Let’s go quickly. I feel kind of odd out here.’

  Jaz’s legs were bare. Thin and shaved. His feet were squeezed into gimcrack clogs that announced each step he took with a hollow clip and a clop. He went ahead, teetering, until we came to a separate unit painted black with several aerials sticking out at different heights. ‘This is the hut.’

  ‘Won’t there be guards?’

  ‘No. The card is the guard. We can get in. She’ll be in the salon for ages before meeting up with the boy, and he will be completely out of his head, poor thing.’

  Using the stolen card, Jaz let us in. The reception room was bare. There were paper-screen doors on two of the walls. Jaz knew which to open and took me down a hall to a large office. He went straight to a chunky computer console that looked like it belonged in a museum. He quickly donned a small headset. ‘This must be one that still uses passwords,’ I said.

  Jaz grinned. ‘Yep. She’s a lazy cow. She never changes them.’ He activated the screen with his fingers.

  Watching him log on, I thought this couldn’t possibly work. Even such old junk must have some built-in security. I was wrong. A couple of anxious minutes later Jaz had located the prison gazette. The knot in my stomach tightened. He searched for her name. Nothing came up. He flitted from one icon to another. ‘No sign of her,’ he said. He had reached the exit-box. Then he checked the news items. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Is there a command site?’ I asked. ‘Can we check who they are hunting?’

  ‘Hunting is all they ever do, my dear. They hunt everything here.’

  He whizzed in and out of screens until he found a page of index photos. ‘These are the ones in purgatory. Maybe they put her in a camp like yours.’ Jaz simpered and zoomed in. It was my mugshot fixed against a red background. The caption gave the information about my capture and suspected involvement with a subversive. Underneath my number – 1661 – was a link to another page. ‘Maybe that link is the one we want.’ He clicked on it. I shut my eyes: green, green, let the background be green. When I opened my eyes I saw her: her face sucked in, one eye half-closed, her hair tied into a flare against a pea-green background. The information was that she had been last seen at the Palm Beach Hotel. ‘That is a really old photo,’ Jaz laughed and turned around. ‘Your little angel is still free.’ I put my hands on his back, too grateful to think. Then he hit the reverse button. ‘Now with this one,’ he tut-tutted, ‘they should have taken a three-quarter shot and caught that little cheekbone of yours, at least.’

  Seconds after he spoke I heard a screen-door open. Jaz’s hands froze. I heard a squeak in the hall. I pressed the cancel button in front of Jaz and slipped off my stool, down behind a tall metal cabinet. A moment later two burly security guards peeped into the room. Looking through the steel mesh between the shelves, I could see they were combat-trained: they wore cat’s eye helmets, unlike Nirali at the hotel, and gripped their automatic weapons firmly, with both hands. One of them greeted Jaz by his name. Neither seemed surprised to find him there. But Jaz was clearly rattled. He pulled off his headphones and asked how they got in.

  ‘The door was open. We knew she wasn’t here, and thought we better look. So you are back in now?’

  ‘Waiting, you know …’ He managed a salacious grin.

  I tried not even to breathe. It might have been better if I hadn’t hidden; we could have bluffed our way out. One of the guards stepped a little closer and glanced at the console in front of Jaz.

  ‘How do you get the movie channel?’ Jaz’s voice jumped an octave. ‘Do you guys know how to do that?’

  The guard twiddled a knob and ran his hand over the buttons. The other guard paced around the room, his boots creaking as if about to split with his ponderous weight.

  My heart was a steel drum. I wished I could muffle it.

  Jaz started gabbling again, nervously pulling at the hem of his mini sarong. ‘Do you know when the Warden is coming back? I thought she was going to be here. She told me to come …’

  The guard next to him tapped another button on the console and the screen sprang into life. Uva’s face stared out. The guard stared back. The second guard shunted over and craned his neck to look.

  ‘Why is she there?’ Jaz’s voice rose in astonishment. ‘What’s it mean?’ He rushed the words too fast.

  The guards studied him but didn’t say anything. The first one picked up a headset and put it on. The picture shifted. There was information there about Uva and the fact that she was wanted. He scratched his c
hin listening; the other one was beginning to look impatient. His face twisted as he tried to understand what might be going on. Jaz gripped the edge of the desk to stop his hand from shaking. When the data flow stopped the guard put down the headset and stared at Jaz. ‘Where?’ he growled.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘She hasn’t come down here for ages. I haven’t seen her.’

  ‘Why are you looking then?’

  Jaz fidgeted about. ‘I …’ he faltered. ‘I was just messing about and …’

  The other guard stomped over. ‘Searching, no?’

  Jaz sucked in his big lips. ‘Look, I was looking for some pictures. The Warden showed me before, but I couldn’t work out …’

  The smaller guard pulled his communicator out of its holster and pressed a button. The other man watched him. ‘Warden’s not answering,’ the one with the communicator grumbled.

  As he clicked another button, I realised that it was up to me to somehow disarm them. I rocked back, tensing my muscles. I held my breath, and then shoved the cabinet at the two guards. It crashed into them and sent them sprawling on the floor. I scrambled out, grabbed one of their fallen guns and pointed it at the heaving flab. The gun was much heavier than Nirali’s; I had to step back a couple of paces to keep my balance. ‘Shoot, shoot,’ Jaz hissed. I hesitated. My finger was on the trigger, but the cat’s eye in the centre of the nearest soldier’s forehead stopped me. I heard Eldon scolding my father for becoming an air warrior, for wanting to bury a bullet in someone’s brain.

  Rope, rope, I needed rope and their surrender. Then there was an explosion as the other guard snatched back a gun and fired. Half a dozen bullets riddled the ceiling. A siren went off outside.

  I yanked Jaz by the arm and we took off. ‘You should have got them while you could,’ he whined. I banged the door behind me and we ran down to the corner and hid in a doorway.

  On the main promenade people had gathered together, frightened by the siren.