“Can I help you?” Tran so Phengh asked when it became clear the god was not going to speak first.
“I merely bid you a good morning, sir. How’s the fishing?”
“Terrible.”
The god continued to stare with its tiny, unreadable eyes. “Sorry to hear that. But I see you’ve caught something there?” Indicating the disturbance in the water with a short arm, which emerged from beneath its tarnished shoulder plate. “What is that? A crab?”
“Yes,” Tran so said. “I’ve caught a sick crab.”
“Excellent. And would you like a food pak, sir, to go with it? I’m coming from the depot. They’re nice and fresh.”
“Fresh food paks?” Tran so Phengh almost smiled. “I don’t need any right now, thanks. Larders are full.”
“Well, how about a vial for copulation? Keep your cock nice and hard.”
“No.”
“Perhaps a dose of the remedy then?” Holding up a capsule, shaking it so the contents sluiced about. “Makes you feel right as rain in no time.”
What angered Tran so about these encounters was the naively positive attitude of the dispensing gods. Each time he wondered if the deities truly believed in the products they pushed or if they were all just good liars. “I am immune,” he said.
“Sir?” Unsure, the god paused, still proffering the capsule.
“I am not able to contract the Red Plague,” he explained, slowly. “My wife has it. And my friends have it. My infant son had it. He took your remedy every day, twice a day, with his milk, until he died. I, however, cannot get the sickness. As much as I try.”
The dispensing god clearly did not know what to say, remaining still for a moment, blinking. Finally, it rocked back and forth on its treads. It put the capsule away. “I see,” it said, nodding again. “You have no faith.”
The god seemed genuinely hurt but it did not want to argue. Gods and men both had tired of that. Turning away, the deity moved off; Tran so returned his attention to Lake Seven. Gods of dispensing, he decided, were too polite and not so smart. How intelligent would the lake god be, out there in its tank? At least there was only one of them, he believed, as opposed to the numerous dispensing gods. Perhaps a deity apportioned a finite amount of intellect throughout its representatives: the more entities of a particular variety, the thicker in the head they became.
As Tran so pondered this theory, the crab managed to pull itself onto a piece of floating garbage and, half out of the water — but still pinned under the wet net — it called out in a feeble voice. Tran so did his best to ignore the cries but when he thought he heard his wife’s name in the quiet, damp tones, he hunkered down and yanked the dripping net up to eye level.
“What did you say, crab? What’s that?”
Looking back at him from atop two eyestalks, both of which, poking up through the mesh of the holding net, appeared milky and cataracted, the crab said, “Me knowth.” A claw clicked, gesturing vaguely. “Fix wife, me knowth.”
“Know what? What do you know?” He shook the net.
Another lame movement of one claw, vaguely in the direction the god of dispensing had taken. “Them god no knowth.”
“You know something that our gods don’t?” Motioning his head up the embankment. “How can that be? Know what I think? I think you just overheard our conversation and now you’re trying to trick me into sparing your life. You’re stalling.”
“No no. Me fix wife. Fix frienth. Me know where.” Words were almost lost within the bubbles that frothed at the tiny mouthpieces of the desperate crab.
Tran so put his hand into the holding net and grabbed the creature in one fist. The crab protested and struggled. Tran so said, “I’ll kill you right here and now, if you’re stringing me along. I’ll crush you in one hand. Are you talking about the remedy?”
“Pleath, no hurth . . .”
“I asked you if you’re talking about the remedy. You know how to fix sick people? Is that what you’re saying?” Brine trickled his taut knuckles, dripping from seams and splits in the ruined structure of the carapace.
“Me tellth, me tellth! Me elp!”
Disgusted, Tran so threw the crustacean back into the net, where it thrashed about for a moment. He returned the holding net to the water so the crab could breathe. When the beast had righted itself and calmed somewhat — though it was still obviously agitated and in considerable pain — Tran so held up the net once more.
“If you tell me clearly what you’re saying, I might give you a chance to live.”
“Neth-work,” the crab hissed. “Man sleep. Man copy. Them have!”
“No riddles.”
“Man sleep! Below. Them have! Elp wife! Elp wife!”
“I’m going to take you home and boil you in water. Crack you open. Eat you with garlic and rock salt.”
The crab wailed as if it had already been plunged into boiling water. “No no noooo!”
Then an idea struck Tran so Phengh. An idea so audacious and simple he wondered why he had never thought of it before. “Maybe,” he whispered, “you can help me.” He stood. “Yes, maybe you can.”
“Yeth,” the crab echoed, clearly relieved. “Me elp, me elp.”
Tran so Phengh took two steps into the foul water. Under his feet, the slimy beach levelled off, sloping more gently toward deeper areas. Filthy water licked at his knees and debris clung to his calves. Chunks knocked gently against his legs. A small cut on his heel began to sting.
“Crab,” he said, “you’ll take me to where the lake god lives.”
“God?” The crab was baffled. “No god.”
“Yes god. You’re going to show me where it lives.”
Retrieving a slat from the water, Tran so steadied himself. The slat was soft and black and on the side that had been submerged in the lake, pinworms writhed and dropped between his fingers. “You will take me to the tank of the lake god,” Tran so told the confused creature again, “and then I’ll spare your life.”
“Me take? But man sleep — ”
“We’re going to meet your maker, crab. Because I don’t believe you know anything that the gods don’t know. I wanna go straight to the source.”
“No fix wife there. God no fix!”
Not far from where Tran so stood floated a fairly worthy-looking raft: four red plastic canisters lashed together and covered with a rigid, perforated plastic sheet. This craft had been bobbing, unmanned, in the vicinity for months, maybe years. Tran so waded out to it now, holding his net in one hand and his fishing rod in the other. He clambered aboard and stood, feeling proud, defiant, and somewhat absurd. In the net, the crab was silent, probably trying to come up with a new strategy for escape or at least some way to understand this unfortunate turn of events. Tran so chuckled under his breath. He felt his pulse, felt the beats of his own heart. He drew a deep breath and felt his lungs fill.
In the centre of the raft’s deck was a circular opening about twenty centimetres across — for a mast, a toilet? — through which Tran so could see water. He placed the holding net over this hole in such a fashion that he could also see the crab, suspended now, just beneath the surface.
“So, which way?” Tran so bent at the waist, hands on his hips. The crab struggled and glared up at him. “And if we’re not over the spot where the lake god lives in half an hour, you’re dead. You’re as good as dinner. Is that clear?”
“No eat,” the crab sputtered, coming up to speak. “No kill!”
“Which way?”
Turning awkwardly in the net, legs flailing, the crab said, “Me no seeth. No seeth god. No net? Let swim? You follow?”
Tran so Phengh laughed. “Nice try, crab. I can see this isn’t going to work. Let’s go home and boil you.”
“Here here!” One claw had come free, gesturing across the water, towards the east. Hand to brow, Tran so looked in that direction, saw more decrepit boats, more grey lake, more grey shacks crammed against the shore that ran parallel to the great wall. Not long ago, th
e lake had extended beyond where these shacks had been haphazardly built. Some of the older ones, raised up on stilts, originally constructed for access by boat, now loomed high and dry over the others. Farther away, the entire vista vanished into mists, but Tran so could just make out a phantom shape of the massive, tubular structure — imaginatively known in Hoffmann City as the tube — stretching up from water to ceiling. Within this tube, they said, lived the god of all gods. Or was a passageway to the god of all gods. So they said.
“You sure it’s that way?” Tran so Phengh asked.
“Yeth.” If a crab could sound despondent, this one did.
Beginning to pole away from the beach — using the slat he had previously claimed — Tran so pushed the raft through flotsam, which piled under the blunt nose of the craft and spilled to the sides. He shoved larger pieces away. Behind, the wake of open water quickly closed in again. His familiar spot on the beach slipped away.
Some of the vessels they passed showed evidence of ownership; a tiny man, slumped in an equally tiny canoe, watched Tran so pole by. More dead than alive, skin blistered with growths, like fish roe. The black eyes followed.
On another raft, two thin men jerked each other off.
Tran so nodded cursory greetings. His gesture was not acknowledged.
Soon the water was too deep for the slat to touch bottom, but Tran so was still able to maneuver his raft, pushing off the assortment of floating or submerged obstacles. Before much longer, they were out on the open lake, bobbing under the dim lights of the ceiling, negotiating wrecks and huge, floating masses of flora that looked like worn brown carpets. Dried flotation bulbs of these growths provided more than a day of delirium and feverish sexual appetites, memories of which forced Tran so to painfully recall his wife’s lost passion; now, Minnie sue’s body had withered to nothing more than a frail, hot skeleton, housing a blackened heart. A heart kept beating long after everything else had died.
Shuddering, Tran so Phengh looked over his shoulder, as if he might see his wife as she once had been, perhaps waving from the beach, but it was only Hoffmann City, sprawling as far as he could see, masses of shacks and lean-tos and communal housing disappearing into the haze. A fire burned somewhere in the whores’ district. Smoke hung over the quartier, rising slowly, forming a vortex whose peak rose, whirling, to be sucked up into a massive vent. Was the smoke coming from a pyre, he wondered, where diseased bodies of the dead burned, or had atheists struck again, an act of terrorism in the faces of the many gods?
Above the city, up near the ceiling, skirting the funnel of smoke, circled a small group of what appeared to be some form of aerial creature. Perhaps an unfamiliar deity? Though these entities were remote, Tran so Phengh was sure he had never seen their likeness before. Perhaps they were gods called in from another city to try to extinguish the conflagration, searching for the cause of the disaster? Though Tran so did not condone violent acts of defiance — for innocent people had died in previous explosions, and more than enough death crawled Hoffmann City — there had been many times since Minnie sue had become sick when he’d thought that perhaps destruction of the world would be best.
He sighed.
Not often had he been so far from the shore before. The air actually smelled a little like he remembered air smelling when he was a child. As he looked down at the crab, it immediately ceased its futile attempt at escape.
“We going the right way?”
Muttering a curse, the crab pointed its claw in the direction they were heading.
“How deep is the water here?”
“Me swim? Come back? Tell man?”
Smiling, Tran so shook his head. To starboard, a bloated corpse floated facedown in the water. A man. Tran so sang a song under his breath, one he had not sung in ages, a song from his youth, and he pushed at the corpse with his stick; pustuled flesh fell loosely off the yellow bones.
The crab, meanwhile, splashed noisily from the recess in the deck; Tran so pulled up the net.
“Here god. Let swim? Let free?”
Tran so shook his head again. “Not yet.” With his knife, he cut a length of fishing line, tying one end to a loop in the waistband of his shorts and the other around the squirming crustacean.
“No no no,” the crab said. “Let free! Let free!”
“Me and you are going for a swim. Together.”
Tran so Phengh stepped over the side of the raft, plunging into the tepid water of Lake Seven. He surfaced, one hand grasping the plastic float, and shook water from his hair. He drew several deep breaths. The crab found occasion to angrily pinch Tran so’s fist with its claws but Tran so was merely steeled by the sensation and he flung the weak creature to the end of its tether.
“I am a good swimmer,” he told it. “I can dive and hold my breath for a long time. You will be tied to my side until I encounter this lake god. Don’t underestimate me. I have nothing to lose.”
Turning in the water, he dove, kicking with powerful strokes. The crab dragged behind, helpless on the line. All around was murky. The water hurt Tran so’s eyes. He saw very little. Not much light penetrated the water, and dark sediment clouded his vision. He continued swimming downward until his lungs and legs hurt. He could not distinguish a thing, could not see the bottom, no forms at all.
Returning to the surface, he breached, gasping, twenty metres or so from the raft. Treading water, he flung snot from his lip, struggling to regain his breath. He did not know what he would say to the lake god if he ever encountered it, nor how he would communicate with the deity, but these questions seemed almost irrelevant now. He pulled the crab up by the fishing line and shook it.
“I didn’t see anything.”
“More down. But god not know. Man sleep. Many more down. More dow — ”
On the second dive, Tran so changed his trajectory, passing on his descent long, twisting fronds that meant, to him, the bottom could not be far off. Still, he saw no detail. He forced himself to go deeper and deeper but the ache in his lungs caused him to turn around once more and reluctantly resurface.
Several attempts, with similar results, and his gut was churning, his thighs cramping. His chest constricted with bands of pain. He could hardly see, even when he lifted his head above the surface. He had swallowed water and knew there would be a price to pay for doing that — people had died drinking from Lake Seven.
Clambering atop the raft, he rested on all fours, panting, then collapsed onto his side, contracting into the fetal position. There were leeches on the skin of his stomach and groin that left bleeding ulcers when he tore them off. The brief-lived euphoria, buoying him prior to taking his first dive, had certainly vanished.
Nearby, the crab floated on the surface, feeling cocky as it mocked and derided Tran so; through clenched teeth, Tran so vowed to kill the beast, but instead vomited seawater and mucus over the edge of the raft, his stomach roiling as if waves churned Lake Seven when in fact the water remained perfectly calm.
Eventually, he lapsed into sleep. When he came to, it was as if his limbs and head were aflame. He could hardly move, and though it must have been close to noon, his vision had faded so much that the day appeared darker than night, no matter how much he rubbed at his eyes. In fact, something — a parasite of some kind — moved sinuously behind his left eyeball.
And the fishing line hung limp from his waist; the crab had escaped.
Again he turned to look toward Hoffmann City, unsure if what he saw was a thicker veil of smoke over the landscape or tricks played on him by his damaged eyes. Standing up on the rocking raft, forcing his arms to bend, he worked like a madman on his thighs and knees, pounding his fists against his tightened muscles.
Like he had told the crab, he had nothing to lose. So he dove again, anger impelling him. This time, at last, after forcing his body down, and down, he imagined he saw some details: tiny lights of various colours danced beneath him, beckoning him deeper still. Beyond these lights, outlines shifted, dark against dark. He strove to re
ach these amorphous forms but could not, for they receded at the same pace he swam.
Kicking with all the strength remaining to him, clawing his way through the water, Tran so dragged himself farther and farther down. Tiny explosions of white, set off in his mind, shook his entire musculature. His ears popped. The water had become cold, his body, colder still.
Was that a voice, calling softly?
His body pounded with the pressure.
Adjacent to him now was a smooth, vertical surface. He had not seen this appear from the gloom and could make out few distinctions: ridges on paneling; clusters of black mussels and barnacles; two parallel pipes? Was this the tank in which the lake god lived?
Either way, there would be no returning to the surface now; Tran so knew he would expire long before reaching the air. He heard the voice that had called to him previously, and he welcomed it. He imagined his baby son down here, at the bottom of the lake, smiling his first smile as he watched his father approach. Tran so Phengh’s dead friends were here, too, the boys and girls he had once played with in the alleys and schoolyards of Hoffmann City, long before notions of mortality or disease ever clouded their perceptions and polluted their young bodies. Eternal and youthful, his friends swayed, side by side in the same peaceful currents that stroked the lining of the lake floor and the weeds that grew there. Minnie sue would soon join him, firm and pretty, uniting their family forever.
Now light filled his head. He fought an urge to draw water into his lungs, tried hard to stay focused, but liquid fists clenched him, and to suck in lake water would surely bring unity, peace, and silence.
Travelling through a tunnel now. Pulled along, in a current, hardly moving his limbs —
To spit, suddenly, out of foul water, coughing and rasping, puking up bile, sliding to a stop on a gently sloping floor. He lay in a shallow puddle, gasping. There was air here, the smell of mildew. Stagnant water all around. This air was charged with the scent of gods. His head hammered. His lungs were like two stones in his chest. He coughed more and water ran from his nose and mouth. Retching, he tried to sit up.
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