Cloud Permutations

by Tidhar, Lavie

  ‘I have a weak constitution,’ Bani said.

  ‘What about your friend?’

  ‘He has a bad stomach.’

  ‘Oh? Afraid of heights?’ She was definitely smiling. But it wasn’t, Kal thought, a nice expression. Though he had to admit it had a certain magnetic quality to it. He wondered again about kissing her. Bani, beside him, nudged him with an elbow, rather hard.

  ‘Afraid of you, more likely,’ Bani said.

  ‘And so he should be.’

  ‘Excuse me.’

  For a moment they both ignored him. Was it really him speaking, he wondered? His voice sounded like another’s. ‘I’m not afraid of heights.’

  He felt blood rising to his cheeks. He sounded to himself like a petulant school-child. The woman arched her eyebrows, which were perfectly painted. ‘Oh? And what are you afraid of, Kalbaben?’

  So she knew his name. What else did she know? He said, with sudden insight, ‘Why are you afraid?’

  For a moment they stared at each other. The woman’s face came into sharp relief for him, her halo of black hair framed against her throne, and he thought—she’s my age.

  Woman—girl—queen—she stared at him and said, ‘Do you know who I am?’

  Kal said, ‘No.’

  There was a silence. Then, with a loud sound like an explosion in the depths of the room, the girl burst into laughter.

  Kal caught Bani’s sideways glance; it seemed envious. He said, ‘Well, I don’t—’, feeling defensive for a reason he couldn’t quite articulate. ‘I don’t even know why you’ve kidnapped us and taken us here. What business is it of yours where we’re going, anyway? It’s against kastom to interfere—’

  He probably would have gone on in this vein, self-righteous and indignant, for a quite a while, but Bani’s elbow, once again, jolted him, this time into silence.

  The girl had recovered from her laugh. She had nice eyes, Kal decided. They seemed to twinkle, not like the rubies around them, but like something alive and vital, like a reflection of dancing beside a fire. She said, ‘It’s my business, Kalbaben of Epi, because this is my land, and your ship has entered my territory without my permission. Which is against kastom, is it not, Kalbaben?’

  She seemed to expect an answer from him. He mumbled something which she took for assent. ‘It is also my business, because you aim to reach the tower, and you do not know why or with what consequences. You paddle through a sea of ignorance as if not knowing was a blessing. Are you really as stupid as you look?’

  He ignored the insult. He turned his back on her. Instead of a wall, there was glass here, and the entire enormity of her world was spread out before him, the ocean far below, the branches of the tree protruding out level after level, a whole civilization hidden within its branches. There was no escape from there, apart from flying.

  He turned back. She waited, still, eyebrows poised. She had the grace of a sailor, as if dry land wasn’t her natural habitat. Kal took a deep breath. ‘Mi stap insaed tufala han blong yu, misis,’ he said, as if he were a traveller from some ancient storybook. I’m in your hands, my lady. The words of flattery felt unfamiliar in his mouth. ‘Yu telem mi wanem yu wantem widem me mo mi mekem hemia blong yu.’

  Ask of me what you will …

  He would have bowed, but thought better of it. The girl looked at him. She didn’t laugh this time. ‘Sir Kalbaben of Epi,’ she said, and there were undercurrents in her voice he couldn’t quite pick up, ‘you try gallantry, of all things? I am flattered.’

  ‘What are you doing?’ Bani, hissing beside him.

  ‘I don’t know!’ Kal, hissing back with half a mouth.

  ‘And you place yourself in my hands … Would you do whatever I ask of you?’

  This time Kal did bow, though Bani gave him a shove and he nearly fell. The girl laughed. ‘And you, sir Bani of Tanna? What do you have to say?’

  ‘My friend,’ Bani said, ‘is not familiar with gallantry, though he does have the capacity to surprise me. I can do no less, of course. My life is in your hands—and my heart’—he grinned, like a white shark—’too, if you can find a use for it anywhere.’

  ‘Perhaps mounted on one of the walls?’ the girl said. Bani bowed with far more grace than Kal. ‘If you so wish,’ he said, with the curled smile that had sent the girls of Tanna reeling. Kal wanted to kick him. Captain Desmon, who had taken a seat, unbidden, on a bench of wood and wrought metal, watched them from the side with a pained expression.

  After that the inquisition, if that was what it was, eased off, and so did, for the moment, any talk of the tower. They were taken to an adjacent room, sumptuous with carvings and furs of a kind Kal had never seen before. It was a dining-room, with the same overwhelming view over the distant ground and the ocean whose size, at least, had always remained a reassuring constant. Long wooden tables bisected the room. Electric light glowed from bars on the ceiling. Unseen fans brought a cool breeze into the interior.

  ‘Consider yourselves guests,’ the girl said. She sat at the head of the table. ‘Only, we’d prefer it if you didn’t try to leave.’

  Captain Desmon spoke little, and ate heartily. He seemed less than surprised by everything that had happened. Perhaps he was used to surprises. Or perhaps, Kal thought, with a suspicion that surprised him, the old Captain had expected them to arrive here.

  But, for the moment at least, he put aside speculation and concentrated on the food. Like all Man Vanuatu, Kal loved fish. But spending all that time at sea with only fish for breakfast, lunch and dinner … when the smells of the food began arriving through the door of what he presumed to be the kitchen—the smells arriving first, heralding the coming of the food—his stomach made one of those loud rumbling sounds that are quite at home amongst men on board yet a little embarrassing in mixed company. When the food itself arrived he lost all self-consciousness, however. None of them talked much. They ate, the three of them, like starved sailors, and the girl, making a fourth, matched them, though she stopped occasionally and examined each of them with a half-smile that was both possessive and speculative.

  The menu of that meal has been recorded for posterity. It is a popular choice at official functions, often reproduced on significant anniversaries and in the houses of the more entrepreneurial entertainers. It was a meal that had barbarism and civilization vying with each other like jealous cousins. Foods came and went with no special order. There was flying fox, its testicles cut and placed inside its belly, cooked in red wine sauce. There were seven different kinds of laplap, that Vanuatu speciality of ground root crops made into thick slabs of puddings and cooked and baked for hours on a leaf-covered fire: there was laplap manioc and laplap taro and laplap yam, their colours ranging across the spectrum. There was pijin, several kinds of birds none of which Kal knew, some roasted, some stewed, some grilled and tasting of charcoal. There were coconuts to drink from (there were no glasses), there was pineapple and watermelon and grapefruit and even Tanna’s Frum Wine, which Kal declined though Desmon sipped at it surreptitiously. There were big jugs of fresh water and big slabs of buluk meat and mussels with mushrooms, roasted with coconut milk inside long hollow bamboos. There were banana cakes, and there was tea and coffee, at long last, and then there was silence, interrupted only by Desmon’s snores. A sense of peace settled like dust on the table. Outside the ocean was a calm blue interrupted by lines of white in the distance: far-away waves, the only hint of a disturbance. Then Bani fixed his calm pale eyes on the girl and said, with a note of genuine puzzlement, ‘But where do you come from?’ and the girl smiled at him and picked her teeth and said, ‘The Hilda Lini,’ and then, into Bani’s incredulity: ‘We did come back again, you see,’ and fragile peace was wiped away like dust.

  — Chapter 18 —

  WAN WO ANTAP

  THERE WAS GUNFIRE in the lower branches, and a ball of flame rose over the sea where one of the attacking ships had been. Kal’s face was grimy, sweat dampening soot. He wondered what he looked like—a tamtam m
ask, perhaps, with wild eyes staring out of a monstrous face. He wanted Moria to take his face in her hands and wipe away the dirt and tell him he looked fine, just fine, but the princess of the giant Migdal tree was preoccupied and her hands were busy with a silver-and-green machine-gun that spat continual rounds of fire.

  A lot can happen in two weeks. The girl’s name was Moria. The tree was, she said, a Migdal tree, a seed taken by the Hilda Lini from a faraway desert world where humans lived uneasily with transcendence. When the ship came back from its travels, laden with cargo, Moria’s people had planted the seed and, gigantic before on its home-world, here its growth was phenomenal and unexpected. There was a symbiotic relationship going on with the tree and its human occupants, Bani claimed. But then Bani had become agitated and highly volatile in the two weeks since they were captured. For one thing, he claimed Moria’s story was, ‘Ludicrous, Kal. And more than that—impossible.’

  ‘But why?’ Kal wasn’t possessed of Bani’s imagination. He found it hard to picture giant spaceships or even a desert, so found either equally believable.

  ‘Because it would have taken centuries. Millennia. It makes no sense. And as for finding another human world—the probability of that happening is so small it’s practically non-existent.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Kal said. To be truthful, he wasn’t that interested in the conversation. Moria’s dark, mischievous eyes held a much stronger fascination for him. They did for Bani, too—it was obvious, really, and Kal resented him for it even if he couldn’t blame him—but for Bani Moria was not just a challenge but an argument, and one he had picked up continually, whether she was there to argue back or not. ‘Maybe they travelled really fast.’

  ‘Your head is like a coconut crab,’ Bani said. ‘Metal-hard on the outside, soft and squishy on the inside.’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘What I’m saying,’ Bani said, ‘is that they’re lying. She’s lying. I don’t believe they came from the ship. I mean, do they look like space travellers to you?’

  Kal had to admit that they didn’t. They used leaves to fly. It was hardly advanced space-faring technology. And their treasures—masks and furs, gems and carvings—were the treasures of barbarism, not civilization.

  ‘They’re artefacts,’ Moria said that same night. The three of them were sitting together in the empty dining hall. She and Bani were arguing again. Kal said little, but inside he welled with happiness and good will, even towards Bani: Moria had her hand in his, under the table. ‘They’re museum pieces, you kruked.’

  ‘I’m so sorry for not humbly accepting your frankly ludicrous version of events,’ Bani said smoothly, ‘but yufala don’t exactly look like anthropologists.’

  ‘Oh? And what do we look like, then?’

  Bani waved his hand. It was a surprisingly expressive gesture. It seemed to encompass the tree, the wooden houses, the rope ladders, the kites, and cast them with that one gesture into insignificance, even a kind of sordidness. ‘You look like kids in a treehouse.’

  Moria laughed. ‘It takes a lot of sophistication sometimes to act like a kid. Though in your case I think it’s just a simple refusal to grow up.’

  It wasn’t the kind of argument you could win. And now, it seemed, it might never be answered: for there was a war, which is another kind of argument, and it can only be won with death and with pain.

  Far below a house caught fire, and thick black smoke rose into the sky and stung Kal’s eyes. He could see figures running out, and one—he must have been a boy, like the ones who had kidnapped the Sanigodaon—was burning. Kal could not hear what sound the boy made. He could only watch as the boy, wrapped in flame, ran silently across the massive branch that must have been his home— and plunged down, his arms outstretched in flight, like a cannonball aimed at the attackers. Kal watched him go: the boy fell, fell, down and down alongside the giant tree that had been his home. He did not hit the attacking ships. His flame fell into the sea and was extinguished.

  ‘We have to get out of here,’ Bani said beside him. His face was taut; there were dark patches of skin where the fire had licked it. Kal himself had blisters on his arms, wet smooth round things that rose like dough. As yet, they didn’t hurt.

  ‘I’m not leaving Moria,’ Kal said.

  For a brief moment, anger suffused Bani’s face. He said, ‘She isn’t yours to protect.’

  ‘Oh?’ They were both angry now. It was as if a subterranean current of lava had been slowly building up, leading to this. Below the fighting continued, the ships shelling the giant tree, the dark young boys darting over them with their parachutes of leaves, and the sound of machine guns and the flashes of other, silent weapons coming from the upper branches. ‘You think you have rights? You think she likes you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Bani said. And there it was. Kal stared at him. Willing him wounded, but no—he did not want him to get the glory a wound would necessarily entail. He said, slowly, deliberately, ‘You’re wrong.’

  ‘Step aside, Kal.’

  The noise of the fighting below faded. Kal looked and saw Bani. Behind him clouds rose, wispy white smoke that curled into a knowing smile. Migdal, he thought. Moria had said that the word meant tower. The tower. He stared at Bani. They were locked like this, each waiting for the other to make a move. There were two of them, the dark and the light, bound by some unknown fate to go on this journey. What did Bani’s prophecy tell him? For him, Kal, there was nothing but a fall, an endless descent through clouds down to a waiting ocean below, its touch a slap that crushed bones and turned blood to dust. There was nothing there about love, or friendship. And what did Bani’s prophecy say? Glory and fame? And as for Moria …

  ‘Step aside, Kal.’ Bani’s voice was calm, reasonable. Cold. His dangerous voice. Kal said, ‘Fuck you, waetman.’

  Bani swung.

  The fight was short and vicious. Bani’s fist connected with Kal’s jaw. Kal reeled, lost balance, fell down. As he fell he kicked out, caught Bani on the knee. They rolled down on the floor, kicking, biting, punching. They fought like children.

  Then the rain came.

  Rain madness. Kal had tasted it before, but it was worse this time. There were voices in the dark, and they were shouting, a babble of speech, a storm of shrieks, a gathering of screams. Large drops, large like leaves, hot like a body beside you, large drops falling from an angry sky.

  Or was it angry? They were incomprehensible, tasteless, a dragon’s hoard of alien sensations, and he drowned in them, not knowing who he was, what he was, only that he was being carried by a sea larger than he, by winds for whom he was a mere leaf, to be blown this way and that. He floundered, felt the pull of the water dragging him down, fought it. Dimly, he thought he heard his name, felt a dull throbbing pain, fought and kicked and bit and screamed. He was a child again, Vira dying while he stood helpless and watched. He fought, he cursed but his mouth wouldn’t obey him and move, he lashed out but couldn’t find a thing to hit.

  ‘Kal!’ A scream, from far away. He ignored it.

  He was hot, too hot, the heat was consuming him, and with it came a horrible humidity, water clinging to his skin, his hair, his eyes, blinding him, suffocating him. There were fragments of thoughts, here, many-sided mirrored things like insects’ eyes, insects’ thoughts, and he saw himself set down on the water, a seed cast out from a tree and borne away to find land …

  ‘Kal, they—!’

  The rain washed him and made him naked and small. He was a baby again, and the wind was howling outside and he was afraid. He heard his grandfather, talking some distance away in a low voice, and heard the words Olfala Bigwan for the first time, this moment forgotten until now, and the names of his parents, and after that a great big silence, and the strange sound of someone crying. He was small and alone, and it was raining, raining, raining outside in big lush drops of a thing pretending to be water. He screamed.

  ‘Kal! Leggo!’

  He let go.

  It was as easy as that. One minu
te he was subsumed, consumed. And now his fighting had ceased, and with it came … peace, he thought. He knew himself again—I am Kal, I wish to fly, I wish to soar between the heavens, I want to be as heavy as a cloud—and he knew that it had all been a mistake, Vira’s death, the prophecy of water, just a misunderstanding, and the tower itself the source of confusion, itself not what they had thought, a stone thrown into a pool and disturbing the water.

  He opened his eyes. It was still raining, but he no longer felt it: it was merely water, falling from the sky.

  He was much lower down the tree than he had been. There was still sporadic fighting, but the fires had all died down and of the attacking ships only two remained. Bani was beside him, with a swollen lip. He said, ‘The Guardians stormed the tree in the rain. They’re hunting for us.’ Neither of them mentioned their own fight.

  ‘What do we do?’

  ‘You’re coming with me.’ It was Moria, hair tied back in knots, green battle fatigues dirtied, machine gun still in hand. Smiling despite it. ‘Here.’

  She pressed a section of the tree and the bark seemed to shudder and slid aside and there was a dark opening. ‘Quickly.’

  They followed her in.

  The inside of the tree was dark and the surface was a little slippery but the walls, when Kal ran his fingers along them, were sticky, as if this space, this wound in the giant tree, was only recent. They followed down steps. The noise of the outside had disappeared, leaving them to walk in silence, as if their senses had been muted. At some point during the descent Kal heard a noise, as of a great insect scuttling in the dark. He felt Moria tense close up to him, but she didn’t fire, and they continued on. He wondered what else lived inside that tree, did entire lives exist and perish within its flesh as they did outside? He had not seen much of Moria’s world. Perhaps inside the tree was an entirely different kingdom altogether, its humans ignorant of or merely unwilling to explore the outside.

  They walked down stairs and along corridors (and all the while he was wondering—what was happening outside?) and the walls turned dry and smooth, older, and here and there he could smell human smells, of faded cooking and once of excrement, but again growing faint, as if these places of habitation (if that’s what they were) were hastily abandoned. At no point did anyone speak. Their fight had been … postponed, at least, if not abandoned. And Moria was with them still.