Falling Sky

by Rajan Khanna

  A woman comes over to me, short black hair tucked under a weathered bandanna. “What can I get you?” she says.

  “What do you have?”

  “Dark ale or light ale.”

  I think back to that first beer and know what it has to be. “Dark.”

  She returns with a cup of an ale so dark I can’t see through it in the cup. I sniff at it and can smell something earthy and roasted. Then I take a sip. A flavor like the smell, something with a smoky, woody flavor at first, then a deepening almost chocolaty bitterness that finishes slightly sweet. It’s remarkable. The bubbles leave my mouth feeling crisp.

  I realize that my eyes are closed, so focused am I on the flavors.

  As I toss back the mug again, taking care to try to disassemble the flavors in my mouth, I open my eyes and realize what’s so different about Tamoanchan. People are walking around with their faces uncovered. I suppose it makes sense—entry is carefully controlled. Everyone here is confident they can’t get the Bug. I find it almost dizzying. I scan the faces all around me, drinking them all in.

  Then I see one staring at me. Frowning at me. Diego. He gets up and walks toward me. Maybe it’s because I’m sitting down, but he looks even taller and broader than I remember. He takes the seat opposite me.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” he says, his eyes hard.

  “Look, Diego—”

  “You didn’t tell me you were bringing that thing with you.”

  I shrug. “I figured we’d keep you out of it. Clear it with the inspector first.”

  “And how did that go?” he says sarcastically.

  I shrug again. “I’m here.”

  He shakes his head, his mouth tight in a frown. “I vouched for you. I said you were bueno. Clean. That stunt you pulled reflects back on me.”

  “Look, I’m sorry,” I say. “Yes, you stuck your neck out. But it’s sorted now.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “Give it a little time,” I say. “Once they see that the boffins are no threat, this will all die down.”

  Diego slams his fist on the table. More than a few heads turn to look at us. “Damn it! This is my life.”

  I look down at my beer, then finish it in one long draft. I think about how I would feel if our situations were reversed. I wouldn’t much like it. “I’m sorry,” I say. “Like I said—we were desperate. And believe me, I asked them to dump that thing more than once. But . . .”

  He raises his eyebrows. “But?”

  “Miranda’s a crusader.”

  He purses his lips. “So why aren’t you with her?”

  “We had to part company,” I say. “I’m just trying to figure out my next move. I need to get back into the sky.”

  “You just got here!”

  “Yes, but I’m no good on the ground. I’m a zep. I belong in the sky with a ship around me.”

  He harrumphs and shakes his head.

  I lean forward. “C’mon. You said there were opportunities for pilots around here. You said you needed me.”

  “That was when you had a ship,” he says.

  Ouch.

  “That was also before you fucked me,” he says. For a moment, I think he’s going to hit me. Then he stands up. “Whatever you do from here on in, leave me out of it.”

  I sag back in my chair.

  He turns before walking away completely. “You may want to get back into the air,” he says. “But do you really think anyone’s going to take a chance on you now? After what happened?” Then he leaves.

  I feel like shit warmed over. That’s it, Ben, the voice says. Keep making friends.

  It’s after my third beer, bought with the corn kernels from the farmhouse, that I realize I don’t have a place to stay. And I didn’t really plan on finding one. I was only hoping to be here long enough to find a ship to take me back out.

  Of course Diego rightfully squashed that idea. Seems like Miranda’s Feral has made me radioactive. And I can’t imagine them trusting me to leave after that.

  So I’m still grounded and I lost my one shot at getting back into the air.

  So I buy a fourth beer and nurse it for as long as I can. Like most of these types of places, the people there stick around as long as they can manage. Dad used to tell me there were regular hours for bars back in the Clean. I can recall reading about that somewhere, too. In the Sick, though, if you have the barter, they’ll serve you. Barter is just too damned important.

  So it’s a can of beans for a cup of the light ale and a long march toward the morning. At some point all the beer catches up with me and I have to dash outside for a piss. The Frothy Brew has its own outhouse, which I’m sure sees a lot of use. So I piss, this time without fear of a Feral biting off my cock, and then, as I walk back inside, I hear something I haven’t heard in years.

  I hear someone speaking Hebrew.

  Dad drilled me in Hebrew growing up. Mom probably, too, though I don’t remember that. I learned it just as I learned English, and for a while I never questioned it. It was something my father was teaching me—that was enough.

  It wasn’t until I got a little older that I started asking him. What it meant. Where it was from. Why I needed to know it. It’s not like we ever met anyone who spoke it.

  He responded by giving me a copy of the Torah. Which was in English. But I was captivated. I’d never read anything like it. He explained its significance, started teaching me about Judaism. What it used to mean to people back in the Clean.

  The story of Noah was probably my favorite. Followed by Moses. I was captivated by the image of God using water to cleanse the earth. I became convinced it would happen again. That God would wash away all the chaos and blood and tears of the Sick and we would sail through the air above it, safe on our own little ark, until the world was clean again.

  Needless to say that never happened.

  When I was older I wondered if maybe the Bug was the Flood. Not a literal washing away but a figurative one. Drowning humanity and leaving only mindless Ferals behind.

  I didn’t mention that theory to my father, though.

  I remember once hitting a small town when I was a teenager. Foraging in small towns was often made more difficult by the overgrown vegetation that quickly took them over. It made them less desirable targets. Not to mention they were almost always infested with Ferals. But both those things meant they usually still had valuables, and when you were desperate, they sometimes seemed like a good idea.

  So we went down and used our machetes to hack through the plants to get into a stretch of stores to see what we could find. I remember there being some reasonably good salvage but not what it was. We also stumbled into a Feral nest.

  They came for us. At us. All limbs and teeth. The strobing of our muzzle flashes lit up the dark interior. I could barely see a shape before it was on me, pulling the trigger of my pistol again and again. Reacting mostly on instinct.

  My pistol went dry. Then my backup. And I began using the machete, the only other weapon I had, conscious of the blood flying everywhere, hoping none was hitting me or Dad.

  Then . . . it was done. We stood there, the only moving objects, heaving, sweating. I turned to look at Dad and saw his expression—a mix of relief and fear, but fear unlike any I’d seen before. His eyes were wide, haunted, as if he were still seeing the attacking Ferals.

  Then I looked where his gaze was and saw them. Tiny broken bodies. Young Ferals. Bleeding. Torn up by bullets or machetes or both. Some were maybe my age, but many were younger. I remember understanding then the ferocity of the attack. They were defending their offspring. I knew they were Ferals. I knew they wanted to kill us, but . . . I felt numb.

  Then Dad grabbed me and turned me to face him, checking me for blood splatter, for wounds. The strange detachment still had hold of me as his gloved fingers examined me, as his flashlight shone in my face. Then, when he was satisfied that I was okay, he pulled me to him and held me for a time. My father wasn’t a cold man, but
that kind of thing wasn’t common. I let him hold me until the numbness started to fade, then we grabbed our findings and prepared to leave.

  As we were getting ready to climb the ladder to the Cherub, Dad stopped suddenly, his gaze on the building next to us. “Dad?” I asked. “We should go.”

  “Wait,” he said. And I worried. Had he been infected? It wasn’t like him to be so distracted. But he walked toward the building and hacked his way through to the door. As I followed him, I realized that I could read the words above the entrance, and that they were in Hebrew.

  It was a synagogue. Long wooden benches filled it, with a raised podium on one side. “People used to pray here, didn’t they?” I asked.

  Dad nodded. “Ben, go back to the ship,” he said.

  “Dad?”

  “I’ll just be a moment. Take everything up to the Cherub.”

  “Okay,” I said. Usually I did what he told me to without question. Only this time I didn’t. This time I hid in the entrance to see what he would do.

  He moved down the aisle until he was right in front of the raised podium. Then he fell to his knees.

  I have no way of knowing for certain, but I’m sure my father was praying. The man who didn’t believe in God was praying. And it unnerved me. I hurried out to the ladder and our stash and headed back to the Cherub.

  I never asked Dad about that. Never felt comfortable bringing it up.

  But right here on Tamoanchan, right now, hearing the Hebrew drifting on the night air, I wish I had.

  I follow the sound, not too far from the Frothy Brew, to a simple wooden building with a Star of David hanging above the door.

  Inside, there are rows of wooden benches and a scattering of people sitting on them. Up at the front of the room stands a man in traditional rabbi garb. He wears a wide-brimmed flat hat and hair curls around his ears almost merging into his long beard.

  The words he’s speaking are artifacts from another time. I can hear them, with my father’s voice, his inflections, this kind of solemn weight they always carried. Like magic words from a story.

  We were never really good at figuring out what day it was—either by date or by day—but every so often, we would observe the Sabbath, repeat the ritual words as our ancestors had done.

  And then there was the Star of David.

  My father had told me that his mother had given it to him when he was just a boy, an heirloom passed down through her family. It was made of gold, a worthless metal in the Sick but worth something once upon a time. I always thought it was special because our surname was Gold. Family names might also be worthless in the Sick, but Dad made sure ours wasn’t.

  He wore it all the time. Even when he bathed he had it next to his skin. I was always worried that he might lose it, but somehow he always kept it safe for all those years.

  Ultimately, I was the one who took it from him.

  I can still see those moments so clearly. See it gleaming around his neck, in that same moment that I saw the light of reason go out in his eyes. I didn’t know that Dad had got the Bug. I don’t know if he knew. But I realized, in that moment, what was happening.

  I suppose I panicked. I don’t even know what I was thinking. But I reached for the Star hanging around his neck and snapped the chain pulling it to me.

  Then? Then I ran. I ran as far away as I could. It’s a moment I relive again and again in my mind. A moment I’m still unsure of. For a long time I told myself there was nothing else to do. I couldn’t shoot my father.

  But there are times that I think I allowed him to live on like that. Like a thing. Allowed him to become what we’d always hated. Out there, with the ability to infect others. To hurt others. Killing him might well have been a kindness, to others as well as himself. But . . . that’s not the way things happened.

  But right now, with those words in the air, so much more musical than they ever were before, I can’t help but feel him beside me, as if he were right there on the bench. Something loosens inside of me, some tension I didn’t realize was there, and tears spill from my eyes.

  I sit like that for a little while and when I open my eyes again, I realize the others have gone and the rabbi has stopped speaking. He’s looking at me curiously.

  “I’m sorry, Rabbi,” I say. “I’ll get out of your hair.”

  “No need for that,” the rabbi says, shaking his head. “I haven’t seen you here before.”

  “That’s because I’m brand-new in town,” I say.

  “That’s not an insignificant achievement,” he says.

  I smile a bit. “I’m well aware of that.”

  “I’m going to take it from your reaction that you’re a Jew,” he says.

  I nod. “The last in a long line. My father, he taught me some of the prayers. I hadn’t heard them in a long time.”

  “Well, I’m glad you came to sit with us, then,” he says.

  “Me, too.”

  “We have regular services every Shabbat,” he says. “We would love to have you join us.”

  “I’m not sure I’m the praying kind,” I say.

  “Yet you’re here.”

  “True,” I say. “I just wanted . . . needed something from my past right now.”

  A half smile curls his lip. “Why does it have to be in the past?”

  “I just mean it reminds me of my father.” I look at my hands, clenched in my lap. “I’ve lost him and practically everything he gave me.”

  “Surely not everything.”

  “Almost,” I say. “His airship, even his Star of David.”

  The rabbi frowns. “How do you lose an airship?”

  “It was taken from me,” I say, feeling fire spark in me.

  “Oh, I see.” He places a comforting hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry. And what of the Star of David?”

  I frown and look away. “I lost that in some trouble a while back and . . .” I don’t tell him the rest. Don’t tell him I kept the revolver and lost the Star.

  He holds up a hand. “Please,” he says. “Wait here. I have something I think can help.” He shuffles off into a back room and comes back a few minutes later. He holds out his hand, and sitting in it is a coil of gold, upon which sits a Star of David. “Please,” he says again.

  I look at him, surprised. “You want me to take this?”

  “To replace what you lost.”

  “Rabbi, I can’t—” It’s true it wouldn’t be worth much as barter to your average person, but it definitely has value and significance.

  “It is mine to do with as I like, and I would like for you to have it. Or do you wish to offend your new rabbi?”

  I exhale, then reach forward and take the Star. “Thank you,” I say.

  “Just consider coming back again. That will make it worth it.”

  I nod. “Okay, Rabbi. It’s a deal.”

  “Your father would be proud of you,” he says.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because he obviously cared enough about our culture to teach it to you. That you’re here, that you still care about these things, well, wouldn’t it please him?”

  I nod again, this time more slowly. “I suppose it would.” Then I shake my head. “But what’s the point, Rabbi? I don’t have children; I’m not likely to.”

  “You still have some time left.”

  I stand up. “In this world? I don’t know that I even want that. And so whatever’s been passed on dies with me.”

  He flashes that half smile again. “Then I suppose it’s a good thing you’re not the last Jew in the world.”

  Then I smile. I suppose the future of the Jewish faith doesn’t reside in me.

  “Can I ask you a question, Rabbi?”

  He says, “Of course. But let me guess. How can I still believe in God in this world? With all this going on around us?”

  I wince. “I guess you get that a lot.”

  “Probably even more than you think.”

  “And what do you say?”

  He s
its down next to me. “People wonder how God can let all of this happen. The infection, the chaos, the death. They see it as a sign that He—or She, however you want to look at it—doesn’t exist. That if He did, He would stop it.”

  “Wouldn’t He?”

  “And if He did? Then what? He fixes everything for us and then what do we do? Come to depend on God to make things right all the time? People said the same in ages past. Through all the persecutions, the expulsions, and the genocides. Why didn’t He stop them? Maybe it’s as simple as we were given this world and allowed to act with free will in it. And maybe, just maybe . . .”

  “Yes?” I ask.

  He smiles, and his teeth are surprisingly clean and even. “Maybe He’s even rooting for us. Maybe He still has hope because he believes in us. Wouldn’t that be interesting? Maybe He wants to see us do it on our own.”

  The rabbi’s argument hasn’t convinced me by any means, but it has given me a lot to think about. A different perspective. Here I am, expecting for someone to fix this or flush it away. Always someone else’s problem. My own concern has always been survival.

  “Do you have a place to stay here in Tamoanchan?” the rabbi asks.

  “I’m afraid I don’t,” I answer. “I wasted too much time sitting in the bar.”

  “Then why don’t you stay here for the night?”

  “Really?” I just manage to stop shaking my head. “You’d do that?”

  “I have a small room back here with space enough for you to sleep. I can’t offer great comfort, but I have some soft pillows, a blanket.”

  “You don’t even know me,” I say.

  “No. Not yet. But I’d like to. And you need to sleep.”

  Have I really become so calloused from the world that I’m on the verge of refusing this offer? But my fingers run over the edges of the Star in my hand and instead I say, “Thank you. That would be a big help.”

  I stand up. He stands with me and I shake his hand. “I don’t even know your name,” I say.