Cloud Permutations

by Tidhar, Lavie

  In the event, it was decided that Kal would be exiled. It seemed a reasonable enough decision, in light of what happened.

  The decision was reached, as was kastom, and as was right, in the nakamal.

  The nakamal was located just outside the village. Its hub was a giant nambanga tree, the first planted on New Epi, by the men and women of old Earth. Around the tree the ground lay bare, open to the sky. The people of Epi gathered there before sunset. The clouds, soft and white, glided against the dimming blue horizon. The first star appeared in the sky. Kava, that most precious of roots brought back from old Earth, was brewed into a sour brown drink and handed out in shells. Everyone drank. As the kava took effect a silence settled over the nakamal.

  ‘The boy,’ said Toro, who was chief of Kal’s village, and a second or third (Kal had never been sure which) cousin to Kal’s mother, ‘has become a liability.’

  He said it without malice. Kal was a problem. There had been a death. Worse, tabu had been broken. And the clouds … if clouds were capable of anger (which was still, centuries after landing, open to debate), then they had shown anger. Kastom had been ignored.

  With fatal results.

  Vira’s father, John Zebedee, stood up. He was a short man, running to fat, and his face was fatigued. ‘I do not ask for justice,’ he said, and there was a murmur of approval at his words. ‘I do not ask for justice, because justice is often cruel, and never dignified. We have learned that long ago.’

  Again, a quiet murmur of approval.

  ‘I ask only for peace,’ John Zebedee said. His left hand massaged his brown, balding scalp. ‘Peace must be maintained.’

  At this, Toro nodded. ‘Peace must be maintained,’ he said.

  ‘There can be no sori seremoni,’ John Zebedee said. ‘The boy is young. His guilt is strong. But it cannot change what has happened. Olgeta we oli i stap long skae—’ those who live in the sky, he said ‘— have been offended. My daughter—’ here he stopped, and his shoulders seemed to shake before he recovered ‘—my daughter is gone. The … the plane she and Kal built, it too is gone.’ He spread out his arms. ‘Only the boy remains.’

  ‘Yes,’ the chief murmured.

  ‘The boy must go,’ John Zebedee said, and he seemed to shrink into himself. ‘Mi sori tumas.’ I am very sorry.

  And he was. Kal was a nice young boy. But he could no longer stay. At that time, by reasons fortuitous or otherwise, the island of Tanna passed close by to Epi. It was … it could be said it was not kastom, that island, yet this was, after all, a new world, with new kastom alongside the old. In any case, the majority of people felt that whatever the Tannese did, it was, in the last count, up to the Tannese themselves.

  Tanna was a floating island.

  Where Man Efate and Man Epi and all the rest had merely found themselves suitable islands, hardy underwater mountains with their peaks peaking—as it were—out of the sea, the Tannese had preferred to construct their own abode. The story of the making of New Tanna—a story spanning just under a century, several violent deaths, at least one famous love affair, and recorded in several well-known songs and over one hundred sand-drawings, several of which were still secret and known only to the Tannese themselves—that story belongs elsewhere. Suffice it to say that, at the time of Vira’s death and the breaking of the kite—the time, therefore, of Kal’s exile from Epi—the island of Tanna passed close by, for reasons fortuitous or otherwise.

  In the nakamal, Kal’s grandfather, his face twisted in sorrow, was the first to propose it. ‘I have, as you know,’ he said, his voice wavering only slightly, ‘relatives on Tanna.’

  Several people murmured at this. The cloud cover that had hung over the island for over three days broke at that moment, and the moon’s white light shone briefly through. ‘My uncle’s second cousin, on my mother’s side, has married a Tannese man. I will speak to her family. Kal has offended olgeta blong skae—and Man Tanna, I think, understand their ways better than we do. They will take him.’ He stopped, looked at the silent, assembled people. His people. He was a grandfather, but he was Man Epi also, and had to do what was right for his people first. ‘Peace,’ he said heavily, ‘will be maintained.’

  ‘Peace will be maintained,’ his people replied.

  Kal’s future, then, and his journey to the tower (neither of which he knew anything of at that moment), were decided then, in the nakamal, the way matters had been for thousands of years, born out of a desire for peace. Kal, at that moment, was lying in bed. He had cried when Vira fell from the sky. But he did not cry now. Remorse mixed inside him with anger, and overwhelming both was simple fear. He did not know what would happen to him. He lay in bed and looked out of the window into the dark, cloudy sky.

  For a second moment, the cloud cover broke, and the moon shone through.

  It no longer rained. After three days of heavy downpour, a thick ropy rain that brought with it nightmares and unease, the rain had stopped. The air was still, unmoving, suffused with a dampening humidity that brought, on contact with one’s skin, the remnants of bad dreams.

  Kal’s dreams had been particularly bad.

  In his dreams, he was falling. The fall seemed never to end, as if he were falling from a great, great height—as if he were from the moon, and falling down towards an impossibly-distant ocean. He fell not like rain, but like a bird. In the dreams, he had wings instead of arms, or what felt like wings, yet he could not manoeuvre, could not rise or ride the air that came rushing at him. He fell, then, perhaps, like a wounded bird: unable to slow down, unable to straighten, aware only of its final, inevitable destination and the consequences of meeting it.

  Behind him rose a black tower.

  There was a path to his fall. It was not a random selection of the images of falling. It began in a black emptiness that was full of stars. As he descended, the black tower rose behind him, glimpsed as he twisted around, solid and smooth and impregnable. He fell from the place of stars and into blue, into the sky, and down, always down, yet so high that even the clouds—even olgeta blong skae!—were below him.

  In his dreams, he fell. The fall lasted for as long as he was asleep. The tower was always there, behind him, enormous and guarded.

  Always, as he fell, Kal screamed.

  — Chapter 5 —

  WAN PROFESI BLONG WOTA

  KALBABEN was an ancient Tannese name. It was the name of a local god, or the son of a god—after such a long time no one was quite certain any more—and there were stories associated with that name, and one prophecy of water.

  Kal came to the island of Tanna thirty days after the death of Vira and the loss of the kite. He came by boat, with only his grandfather for company. By then, the island of Tanna was quite close, a mere two hours away by a boat with an outboard motor.

  The sea was calm. The high clouds, which had gathered over the island of Epi like a council of war, seemed to be slowly dispersing. Kal watched them as he looked at the island recede in the distance. He wondered if he would ever see Epi again, which was a natural enough thought. He felt anxious. He also felt excited, which again was natural.

  What wasn’t natural, or was, at least, highly unusual, was the scene that welcomed Kal—Kalbaben—to the island of Tanna.

  The scene was this:

  On the shore of the island there stood a woman. Later, had he been asked to describe her, Kal would have been unable to do so. Her features, her presence, slid off of memory like water over a smooth round pebble.

  What he remembered, what he could remember, was her calm. She stood on the shores of Tanna like a pool of still, expectant water. She watched him approach. Beside Kal, his grandfather said something in a low voice. It sounded like a curse, or a prayer.

  As the boat approached its engine sputtered and died. The boat, Kal and his grandfather inside it, drifted.

  Behind the woman, far in the distance, the mountain of Tokusamwera towered. When the Tannese had built their island, they deferred at times to the old island, the
one left far behind in the vastness of space; and at times, too, they differed from the original plan.

  Mount Tukosamwera was one of those instances. Here, in the new Tanna, it was made in the semblance of a volcano. Smoke rose out of the mountain, and sparks of bright fire, but it was not magma that fought to escape from within it. Instead, the mountain was used as an enormous escape hatch for the heat and steam generated by the huge engines that lay deep within the island, powering its movement across the ocean.

  The mountain, then, lay behind the woman on the shore. It belched smoke like a magician. The woman raised her hand.

  The water the boat was drifting on seemed to subtly change. It became thick, like a blue, delicious jelly. The boat was stopped in it, fixed to one spot. Kal dipped his hand in the water and cupped some in his palm. He brought the water up. The woman watched him.

  The water wobbled in his hand. He brought it to his mouth. On an impulse (had he been asked, he would have been unable to explain it) he tasted it. Then he smiled in surprise: it was sweet.

  Kalbaben, something said. It had the voice of wind, or water, or the rustle of leaves in a wind. He looked up. The world was hazy and bluish-pink. He felt a smile trying to split his face in half.

  Woman like water, speaking in riddles … the water before Kal changed again, smoothed out like paper. The woman stood above them, looking down. Her finger, pointing, moved, and as it did lines formed in the water like a script.

  ‘Wotadroing,’ Kal’s grandfather said. Kal nibbled on some more of the water in his palm and grinned spontaneously. He couldn’t stop.

  Later, when he had first tasted kava, Kal tried to describe that sensation. It was a little like kava, the way the body was numbed, the senses calmed. But it was much, much stronger. Different, too: it made him into a small child again, enchanted by the interplay of light and water. That was it, the word he searched for. Enchantment.

  Perhaps, then, the woman was kava. It was a long-standing belief of the people of the archipelago that kava—that root that, brewed, gave peace and allowed speech and gave some the power of prophecy, too—was a woman.

  But it is unlikely. In fact, records kept by the Tannese show that the woman was named Moli Solomon, wan woman blong wotadroing— that is, a woman who drew in water. Those same records, were they to be pursued by an historian, show that the first instances of wotadroing appeared during the first century of settlement. They were, in a way, a product of a much earlier Earth tradition, which was that of sand drawings. Sand drawings were ancient kastom: elaborate, beautiful patterns in the sand, that told the secret stories of the people and, sometimes, worked as magic: magic for marriage, magic for last rites, magic for fertility and magic for peace.

  Water drawings were … somewhat similar.

  Kalbaben, something said again, and it had the voice of the ocean. On the sluggish water before him, Kal could see a complex pattern slowly emerge as the woman moved her finger and drew. The image began as several straight lines, which were then woven through with increasingly complex, interlocking vortices, the whole thing at first wonderfully abstract, until one final line rose, emerged, completed something and the whole image became suddenly visible, so obvious that you might wonder how you had never seen it before.

  The thing Moli Solomon was drawing in the water, Kal had suddenly realised (though still he could not stop giggling!), was a tower.

  The tower emerged out of the circles and lines, drawn in still water, rising and rising ahead of Kal like an alien monstrosity. Pausing, the woman on the shore lifted her eyes to him. It seemed to him she may have smiled. Then the pointing finger pressed forward, one small sharp tap, and the drawing was complete: a small dot, a smudge really, free-falling against one side of the tower.

  Kal swallowed. And choked. The jellied water, sweet only a moment before, was now turned back to salty liquid. For a moment, the water that stood between the boat and the shore wavered. Then the waves rushed back in, the drawing disappeared, the engine came back to life and the boat moved again, almost ramming the shore. By the time Kal and his grandfather landed on the beach and pulled the boat to safety, the woman had disappeared.

  — Chapter 6 —

  LAEF BLONG BIGFALA TAON

  WHAT, THEN, of this tower, this dark tower, this thing prophesied in water and revealed in dreams of rain? Over the next couple of years, as the island of Tanna sailed the endless sea and carried Kal with it, Kal tried to learn of the tower.

  He didn’t, really, have much of a choice.

  Kal lived in the city that sprawled all around Port Cargo. It was called Jon Frum Town. Jon Frum was an ancient Tannese prophet, or rebel, or perhaps both. The transition from Kal’s village on Epi to life in the big city was an … education.

  At that time—the time of Kal’s journey to the tower and his yearning to fly—Port Cargo was busy with maritime traffic. The island of Tanna sailed the archipelago by its own power, drawing to it the trade of a hundred smaller islands. With trade came forged links. Sometimes people fell in love. Sometimes they married. Often, they stayed on. Jon Frum Town was a hub for the different people of Heven. Kal’s grandfather’s uncle’s second cousin (on his mother’s side), for instance, had indeed come to Port Cargo at a time when Tanna and Epi passed each other, had fallen in love, and had married a Tannese man. Her name was Grace, and she was a computer technician in charge of a sub-section of the island’s engines (South Side). She and her husband (a quiet, comfortable man who worked as a teacher) cheerfully took Kal in. They had three children of their own living there, and another one who was grown up and had gone to live on the distant island of Futuna.

  The people of Tanna did not fear clouds. But they respected them. They had taken Kal in, but there was to be no talk of flying. Kal went to school. He helped in the family’s garden, growing Earth-brought breadfruit and pineapple, taro and yams and tomatoes (alongside local food plants, of which the most curious, perhaps, was the Frum Grape, a plant that grew upwards in the shape of a cross, its colour blood-red. Its fruit hung like nails from the cross. Once, Jon Frum had been a religion. One of its symbols was a red cross. It was by far the most popular fruit on Tanna, though not, it has to be said, on any of the other islands. The fruit that came from the cross was small and had a sharp, citrus-like taste. Once a year, the fruit were gathered, and pressed into wine. Like kava, it did not taste particularly good. It had to be drunk in small doses, but gave rise to powerful visions).

  Kal, then, went to school. He worked in the garden. He walked along the beach, and caught krab, which were similar to Earth crab but for having powerful tentacles instead of pincers.

  While he wasn’t doing any of that, the city provided its own education.

  It was not, of course, anything like the giant metropolises of Earth; neither was it like the packed ring-cities of Earth-space, or the densely-populated bubble settlements on Mars and the Jovian moons. This was a city by default. Elsewhere, it would not have merited consideration as a small town. But here, it was the place the urban drift, such as it was, drifted to.

  One of those drifters was Bani Voko Voko Leo: young, presentable, fluent in the languages of a dozen islands, and an occasional thief. In a land of plenty, where one rarely lacked for anything material or otherwise, Bani was a thief by reasons of ideology—such as it was—and not of need. Kal first met him at the place called Naetsaed.

  Night Side was an area that sprawled on the outskirts of the harbour, along the road that led to Anchor Bay, the massive industrial complex where the island’s anchor was maintained. It was an area of late-night eateries and darkened movie theatres, of kava bars and stores that sold liquor and cigarettes; originally a warehouse district, its spacious storage areas had been converted into clubs that drew— with their pounding music, their flashing flickering lights, their clouds of smoke and incense and body sweat—young people like planetary bodies towards a black hole.

  Languages filled the streets like a cloud of fluttering moths. Only the univ
ersal language, the old language of the islands of Earth, united them. Bislama, a language that had evolved from English vocabulary and Melanesian structure, the Esperanto of the South Pacific Ocean back on old Earth.

  Amidst the warehouses narrow lanes had formed in shadow and sprouted stalls like mushrooms rising from the damp. The place drew tourists (such as there were), sailors, the curious, the young and those who liked to still think of themselves as young. Bani Voko Voko Leo stole from them all. He was young and cocky, a lord of the Naetsaed; and he knew of Kal before Kal knew of him.

  Kal was passing by the Lukaot Naetklab when Bani dropped out of the shadows behind him. Bani’s boys materialised at the end of the narrow lane, blocking the only way. Bani said, ‘Yu go wea, boe blong profesi?’

  The question—where are you going?—was said casually. But it was the title he had given Kal—the boy of the prophecy—which made Kal stop and turn with wary suspicion. He had been on Tanna for a year by the time he first met Bani. His grandfather had hugged him, and said goodbye, and then left. The episode on Epi was not discussed. And there had been no witnesses (none that he knew of) to that eerie moment when the waters shifted and changed and a future he did not ask for was drawn on them as if they were sand. Kal said, ‘Mi go long haos,’ shifting his weight from one foot to the other, and Bani laughed. He had a nice laugh. A lot of girls thought that. Some boys too. Laughter can be deceptive. Bani said, ‘Your house is a long way from here,’ and made a sign with his hand. The two boys blocking the alleyway started to come closer. Kal was trapped in between.