by Various
I said, “Give me water and let me out, then, and I’ll do what I can.”
“Wait,” he said. He tried to look shrewd, but that is hard when you are as tired as he looked. “How have you lasted down there without water? Have they been bringing you water?”
I observed that I had only been down there about nine hours—longer than I had enjoyed, but not long enough to perish of thirst. Well, long story short, Jo, he was quite convinced he’d been lost out there alone for a week or more. We could not reconcile our accounts, and so being practical men of the world we forgot about it and moved on.
That was a long night, Jo.
Flood said, “Put this on.” It was the jacket of my white suit, which he had stolen and kind of ruined. I saw that it had brought him no joy.
He said, “Where do we go?” And I did not want to admit that I did not know either, so I started walking.
It is dangerous to walk in high and rocky places in the dark, but as I have said the moon was very bright. When I got out of the pit and started walking, what I saw was that the moon lit up the rocks of the peak of Big Witch, which are tall and jagged, like houses or at least like tents, and every single one of them is carved. There is something the Folk use in their carvings that is not exactly like paint. It catches the moonlight and sends it back. So everywhere out on the peak of Big Witch there were red spirals and loops and triangles and various other patterns and geometries, glowing softly and winking from every shadow. I have said to someone else that it was like being in church. Really it is like looking at a city at night from a high place. You think it should mean something if only you were smart enough to understand everything all at once, but I am not. Another thing you think is that it must have taken a thousand years for them to carve the peak like that, but then you think, well, look how big Jasper City or Keaton is and we built those in fifty, so who knows? Different kinds of Time. Anyway I got lost.
The Folk were hunting us. You could see them out of the corner of your eye. Sometimes Flood shot at them. And there were no clouds above, so you could see very clearly that the Vessels were following us too, half a dozen of them, looping and looping the peak at wide angles, in a long trailing V-formation like geese, only hideous and frightening.
I tried to lead us down, but we kept going up instead. I still do not understand why.
The Vessels went away to refuel, and came back. Hours passed and we kept walking.
We came to a place between two tall walls of rock. We could not go forward anymore because the way ahead was blocked by the Folk, and we could not go back, for the same reason.
I know you have seen the Folk before, Jo. There are a few chained ones who work in the fields of Disorder, I noticed. They are long-maned and long-limbed and very tall and bone-white. When you see them in their own places they are different from when you see them in ours.
They stood very still. I could not count their numbers, because some of them were shadows and I was not sure which ones. A lot, anyway.
“Move,” Flood said. “Talk to ’em.” He shoved me with his gun and I stumbled. “Do it.”
One of the Folk stood over me. I believe it was a woman. The long black manes are like robes. I looked up into her face, and it was all angles and planes and deep shadows. I could not read her expression.
Jo, you will not believe this, but I did not know what to do and so while my mind was thinking about it and mostly trying not to panic my fingers reached into the pocket of the white jacket and took out my last business card, and I smiled and gave it to her and said, “Hi.”
She held the card in her long long fingers, and turned it over. I had not noticed it before, but they have one more knuckle than we do, Jo. It is strange, though of course hardly the strangest thing that night.
Flood shot at the ground and said, “Tell ’em, Ransom. Tell ’em to let us go or else. Tell ’em they don’t know what they’re messing with.”
Jo, I am pretty sure that they did.
She turned the card over again. I wonder if she could read our language. I do not think that she could, but I think she understood everything all at once anyway. She didn’t say much, but her silences were expressive. I would swear that she was smiling at me. I did not bargain with her because I knew I had nothing to offer her.
Behind me I heard Flood scream. I did not look round; in fact I closed my eyes and soon it was over.
Without saying too much about things it’s better you don’t know, Jo, I will tell you that he deserved it, and nobody should be mad at the Folk for what they did to him; in fact I know that Disorder has some of the Folk in chains working their fields, and you should consider releasing them in thanks and maybe saying sorry as hard as you can. I don’t know if it would do you any good, but it couldn’t hurt.
Well anyway, when I opened my eyes again there was nobody there. I started walking again.
When I say there was nobody there I do not mean the Vessels. They were still there, all right.
They opened fire.
I started to run, but of course they are much, much faster than anyone can run.
That was when the rains began.
Jo, you told me how it was down in Disorder when the first drops fell. How you did not believe it at first, how no one in that crowd believed it, how you were all afraid to lift up your palms or turn your faces up in case you were all imagining it, and then when you did the next moment there was a torrent out of the purple evening sky and all the torches went out and you were all screaming with laughter and suddenly sliding in the mud. For me it was also a happy moment, because the thing is that the Vessels cannot fly in the rain, or at least not rain like that—it was like a whole sea got upended over the peak. I saw one of them go down. It was a beautiful thing to see.
There was floodwater in the channels of the peak, and I was not safe, of course. I ran and slid through mud and water. I slid down a side of Big Witch I had not seen before, which was not bare of trees but covered in pines, green and wet and fragrant, and, well, now you know the rest, because that is about when I stumbled out through the trees and then through what it turned out were only flat and painted trees and out onto the Founding Day Stage, where it was the night of Founding Eve and you were all gathered for the celebration and so it turned out two weeks had passed while I was up on Big Witch, which was a lot more than I had bargained for and even more than Flood’s guess, who knows how or why, and Adams the hotel owner jumped up in the rain and pointed and shouted “One of them! Get him!”—meaning I guess he figured I was one of the Folk creeping through the woods. Or maybe not—I do not know exactly what he thought I was—but anyway I am very grateful for your intervention at that point, to stop me from being lynched and also to make sure I got my three 300 dollars for bringing the rains.
Which you will now understand I did not really do. In fact I do not understand at all what I did, except for blunder about and do my best to do my best and somehow not get killed. Perhaps that is all we can ever do until a better world is made and we can see by a clearer Light, but regardless I do not feel right about taking everyone’s money. The important thing is not always to understand but to do right and be happy, I say, and Carver agrees.
Now there is more of it—the money, that is. I invested it in a new wagon and a new horse and a new prototype of the Apparatus. Also I advertised in a town called Black Ankle for a new assistant, and who showed up but Carver! I said, Where were you? and What happened to you? and What did you do up there? and Loyal assistant, my ass! but he just smiled and looked wise—you remember how he does. It is maddening, but he is good with the Apparatus, which works better now than ever, by the way. And so we found new investors in Black Ankle and in a town called Something-or-Other that came after Black Ankle, and long story short 300 has become 600, and half of it plus a fair rate of interest is waiting for you in the Bank of Melville City if you ever make it there, which you should—it is a great city. There is something about the movement of money up and down the Rim bringing life
and energy with it which reminds me of Light moving across the valleys or maybe rain clouds or people, too, I guess, but I do not have time to think about that now or explain what I mean, if I even know what I mean, because Carver is banging on the door of the wagon and the crowd outside is expectant and it is time to go out and put on a show for wherever it is this time. And so,
All the best,
Harry Ransom, Lightbringer, &c &c
In the town of Whatever-it’s-called
Books by Felix Gilman
The Half-Made World
Thunderer
Gears of the City
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Xareed had been waiting for the water truck for two days, seated in the dirt at the edge of the camp, his family’s plastic ten-liter water-jug tied to his ankle.
He didn’t like being on the edge of the camp. Except for the piece of cardboard he carried impaled on a stick there was no shade. The poet Sayyid had said, “God’s Blessing are more numerous than those growing trees,” and Xareed hoped so, for there were no trees in the camp or outside. So the blessings had better be more numerous, not less.
Being on the edge of the camp, especially on this side, was also bad because rebels would occasionally fire into the tents from the far side of the old lakebed, or set up mortars among the folds and gullies in the bottom.
Bad enough, but when the government troops came in response, the rebels would be long gone, and the troops would say they were hiding in the camp and there would be searches and arrests and summary executions.
It was safer deep inside the camp where Xareed lived with his mother and grandfather and sisters. Back when they’d come here, after the rebels had killed his father and burned their farm, there’d still been a little water in the lake and a lot of mud, so his family actually had a house, just a one-room building, but made of thick sun-dried bricks that kept the family cool in the heat and which had, on more than one occasion, stopped stray bullets and shrapnel that tore through the tents that most of the refugees lived in.
It had been Xareed’s idea, one of the few things he’d gotten from school that meant anything here. That, and enough English to talk to the foreigners who helped at the camps.
But Xareed really missed the shade of trees. His last memory of their farm, as they fled, was not the burning house and fields, but the flames consuming the wide canopy of their umbrella thorn acacia tree.
When the strangers showed up at the clinic tent, rumors and questions flew up and down the water line.
“How did they get here?”
“I don’t know. Maybe a truck on the far side of the camp?”
“Maybe they came on a water truck?”
This was nonsense since the entire camp knew within minutes when the water truck had been sighted.
“Could it be a new supplies convoy?”
“Maybe a new drilling machine?”
The camp’s three wells, drilled two years before, had dried up in the previous month. There was still some water in the clinic’s tanks but it was being strictly rationed. One of the NGOs had sent a new drilling rig but it had been confiscated by the government and sent south.
Everyone was dry-mouthed and angry and all the young ones kept saying “Waan domonahay” (I’m thirsty) over and over again. Many had woken to find their water bottles stolen and accusations had flown, followed by fists.
“Maybe there was a helicopter?”
Sometimes the IRC got copters in with medical supplies.
“I heard they walked.”
Xareed peered across the baked earth toward the nurse’s station. The strangers were a white man and woman, wearing practical khakis and baseball caps. They didn’t look like they’d walked. It was possible, but it was thirty dry kilometers to the next village. These people looked fresh, almost moist, like the reeds that grew by the stream in his old village.
“It’s like they sprouted from the ground.”
There was laughter at this, but only quiet laughter. Everyone was too hot and thirsty to laugh loudly.
“Xareed,” one of his friends said, “you go ask.”
Xareed translated to English for anyone. “They could be French or German or Norwegian. You go ask. Nurse will know.”
A boy further down the line saw the tanker truck first, by the dust it threw up, while it was still kilometers away. It was coming by the lake road, winding along the old shoreline. Some of the newer refugees surged to their feet, but the old hands sat stoically. Time enough to stand when you could hear the diesel motor, hear the creaks of the springs as it bounced in and out of the road’s potholes. Even then there would be some delay as they put the dispenser hose on the tank and filled the clinic’s tanks first.
Xareed shifted his cardboard parasol as the sun tracked across the sky. It was one of the few things he owned and he had to watch it carefully. As shade it was valuable enough but during the cold nights any number of his campmates would steal it to burn. Fuel was not quite as rare as water. You could get it by walking far enough from the camp but the rebels or government troops might find you and that never ended well.
The sound of grinding gears was plainly audible and he had untied the string around his ankle and was thinking of standing when the truck hit the mine.
He jumped to his feet, his mouth open in dismay. The rebels must’ve planted it in the last two days. This same truck had used the same route the week before with no problem. The diesel was burning and he was pretty sure he’d seen water spray from a tank rupture before the swirling dust had engulfed the vehicle.
He was running, sprinting forward, almost without thought. The water. Even ruptured, the tanker could take some time to drain, if he could get to it in time—
It was at least six hundred meters to the truck and he slowed almost immediately to a steady jog. While speed was of the essence, it would do no good if he collapsed on the way to the truck or was too weak to carry his filled water can back.
Or if I step on a mine, he thought, and shifted his course off the dirt road.
If he could just fill his can. His sisters complained all day long about the thirst but his grandfather, who never complained, was weak and feverish.
He glanced behind. He’d clearly had the element of surprise but now a general rush was on, other boys and men and a few girls, enough that dust was rising into the air from their passage. Ignore them, he told himself.
A tall thin boy sprinted past Xareed, running for all he was worth, a twenty-five liter can in each hand and two more slung over one shoulder, banging against his back and chest.
For an instant Xareed was tempted to match his speed, to sprint as he did, but he kept himself to the steady jog. His resolve was tested as two more men dashed past. He was over halfway now, but the truck still seemed small in the distance, shrouded in dust and dark smoke, and the tall, skinny sprinter seemed almost there, but that had to be an illusion.
He hoped it was an illusion.
It was. The tall sprinter collapsed a hundred meters short of the truck and the other fast men were reduced to a staggering walk. They were bent over, gasping for air as Xareed jogged past them.
Xareed was also gasping for air by the time he reached the truck. He circled wide around the front where the fuel tank, behind and below the driver’s side, had been ruptured by the mine and a puddle of diesel burned, flames licking up the driver’s door. Even from eight meters away the waves of heat were painful and he held his card
board parasol out to keep the worst of it off his face.
He glanced back. The rest of the crowd was still coming and the cloud of dust had grown but he still had a fifty-meter lead over the closest. As he got around to the passenger side his eyes were on the water pouring out of the rents in the tank and he dropped the parasol and began fumbling with the screw cap on his jug.
And that’s when he heard the cries.
Someone was still alive in the truck cab.
The water was already slowing as it poured out of the ruptured tank and the others were so close. With a curse, he dropped the water jug and scrambled up on the step and clawed for the door handle.
The door came open about six inches and jammed. He braced his foot against the side of the truck and pulled and it creaked, then gave way suddenly and he fell to the ground, but he was back up on the truck step without thinking about it.
On the far side the driver was clearly dead, his clothes aflame, but there was a woman in the passenger seat moaning and staring about with wide eyes. Her face was bloody and her clothes too, but he couldn’t tell if it was her blood or the driver’s. She was fumbling with her right hand, reaching across her body, trying to reach her seat belt release. Her other arm was hanging, apparently useless, and her shirtsleeve was starting to smoke.
Xareed reached for the buckle and screamed as it burned him. He reached again, and instead of grabbing it, punched two fingers into the release button. The tab slid out and he pulled her, by her good arm, and, toppled back down onto the ground, her weight pinning him to the ground.
“Christ, she’s on fire.”
The weight came off of him and he saw the stranger, the white man, stripping off his shirt and smothering the flames that had started on the passenger’s sleeve. Then the other stranger, the woman, was there suddenly. Xareed thought he must’ve passed out; for one moment she wasn’t there and then she was. She looked angry and scared.