by Andy Cox
DARK ON A DARKLING EARTH
T.R. NAPPER
Illustrated by Richard Wagner
Mist turns to jade-white ice that scars and wilts the maple trees. I follow the Stomach of the White Tiger, shimmering overhead in a moonless sky, taking me towards the capital on the sea. I carry a dying solar torch in one hand and the pistol in the other. My joints ache from the cold and I’m ten times the age of this sleek young weapon, my hand shaking as I try to hold it horizontal. It would be better if I knew what the buttons did, but that doesn’t really matter. It’s not like I’m going to be shooting anybody.
The white sand path is slender, curling its way up into Wu Mountain, a thin pale line in the darkness. I just need to walk this path, then I am home. Just this path and I see my sons and my wife again. My too-young wife with her crooked mouth and crooked hair, and my too-energetic sons and their scraped knees and faces pressed into my skinny thighs. Just this path, and a thousand more like it, five thousand Li of winds and mists and cold as the world turns to winter.
That’s all.
My numb fingers lose their purchase on the torch and it clatters at my feet, turning itself off in the process. “Ah,” I mutter, “your mother!”
I lean forward, preparing to groan mightily as I bend my beleaguered back, when the snick of a twig breaking straightens me up. I jump as a large shadow moves onto the path, and accidentally press one of the buttons on the side of the pistol. It makes a spitting sound and sparks fly at the point where the needle strikes the shadow. I jump again at the fact I managed to fire the pistol and drop it as I turn to run. My escape, unfortunately, is short-lived. I step on my robe and trip myself up, sprawling, face bump-and-sliding against the cold hard path.
The shadow stands over me and a voice comes with it, deep and angry: “Silly old son of a bitch.” There is a clack-clack as preparation for my execution takes place.
I turn onto my back and put my hands over my face. “No! Please don’t kill me – please. I am an Omissioner, an Omissioner!” If I were a prouder man, I would be embarrassed by the pleading, the begging in my tone. If I were a prouder man.
A second voice from the shadows, a woman’s, lands with the steel rod of authority: “Wait.”
The big shadow over me pauses, the stars above glinting on the gun barrel as he lowers it. A torch blares into my eyes and I blink rapidly into the beam. The small circle of light ranges over my body until it alights on the chest of my robes.
“Look,” says the woman.
The man’s shadow reaches down and grabs the front of my robe roughly, at the insignia. “You’re an Omissioner?”
“Yes,” I say, for the first time being pleased to admit it. “I was cut off from my—”
“—we can’t have this conversation here, we’re too exposed,” says the woman. “Bring him, Corporal; we’ll see what is truth and what is the lie back at camp.”
He grabs me, far more roughly than required.
I am pushed and shoved for a dark and cold ten minutes up a steep thin path, the mist returning to press against us. We arrive at a campfire set in a clearing among tall trees, the tops of which I cannot see. I’m thrown down in the arc of flickering orange light. Despite the jarring in my old bones, I am glad of the warmth on this bitter night. I put my hands out to the heat of the fire and glance around the clearing.
There are bedrolls here and a silver dome tent, and I smell the tantalizing smell of cooking rice. Boots scrape behind me and I turn to see the man I shot, the Corporal. He glowers above, cracking his knuckles. His uniform is a faded green, his black armoured vest worn and scratched (with a new scratch courtesy of me) and his jawline looks like standard-issue military – extra-large size. His brow is as low and thick as his voice: “Don’t try anything.”
A woman with a sergeant’s insignia stands next to the Corporal. She removes a dented black helmet to reveal hair as short as the Corporal’s. Her mouth looks like it hasn’t laughed in a long time and she’s as lean as she should be, given the way of this world. Everything about her – her posture, her way of speaking, the way her black boots gleam in the low light – speaks to a woman who suffers no fool.
A third soldier stands nearby. She’s much younger – a private by the look of it – with long, ragged dark hair she wears down, an ironic smile, and a pistol she lets ride low on her hip.
I stand, gingerly, and push the mane of grey hair back from my face. “I am Omissioner Du Gongbu, formally of the Thirty-Third,” I say, bowing at the Sergeant. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
She doesn’t return the bow. “Thirty-Third – are we at war with you?”
I point at the faded army markings on the breast of her armoured vest. “You’re from the twelfth special brigade,” I say, and then I lie: “We are allies, having fought the battles of Huaihua and Shaoyang together.” I have no idea whether we were allies, of course, or whether either army had fought in those battles. But they are all too young here to remember who was meant to be fighting who.
The Sergeant steps over to me, limping slightly, and stands a foot away, eye to eye. Up close she smells of honest sweat and rifle grease. She holds out her hand. “Let me see your Memento of Office.”
Without hesitation I pull at the heavy gold chain around my neck, removing the badge from under my shirt. It glints chrome as I place it in her hand, the symbol of the paradise flycatcher, feet grasping the 智. The state of the world is such that even fools like me are given the mark of wisdom, intelligence and knowledge.
She pauses, mouth a fixed line, while she studies my claim. I’ve thought about throwing the Memento away a hundred times. My indecision may yet prove beneficial. The magnum-jawed Corporal tries to say something but she holds up a hand, cutting him off. She stares at it for another long half-minute, before the tension eases ever-so-slightly from her shoulders.
She takes a step backwards and bows, deeper than the one I gave her. “Then it is an honour to welcome you, Omissioner. I am Sergeant Hu. This is Corporal Zhong.” She points with her chin at the man I shot. His eyes still hold an undisguised desire to snap my old man’s neck. “This is Private Xu.” The young woman nods at me and sits on a nearby log, resting her forearms on her knees. There’s the flash of the devil in her eyes.
“This is our cook and his son, On.” A man emerges from the shadows, smiling at me, open and unreserved. He wipes his hands on a dirty white cloth and his son grasps his leg, looking out at me from behind his father’s thigh. The son is slim, the cook has the face of a fat man but the same lean body everyone else has here.
“Have you eaten?” asks the Sergeant.
“Pleased to meet you all,” I say, with a flourish of my faded red-ragged robe. “Not in three days, Sergeant Hu.”
They make concerned noises, even though such a thing is quite common. The cook disappears and soon comes back to place a bowl in my hands. It is a small bowl of rice, some bamboo shoots and a few drops of fish oil. It’s the best meal I’ve had in months, I bring the chopsticks from bowl to mouth with unseemly haste, still standing, gulping it down in a short minute. My stomach twists when the food hits it, partly with pleasure, partly in shock.
The cook passes me a bucket and scoop when I finish. I hand him the empty bowl and drink deeply of the fresh water, slurping it from the wooden scoop.
There was a time when my hunger would have brought me shame, and shamed others to see one of my rank brought so low. But those days are long gone. The cook simply nods, smiling, and takes the bucket and bowl away when I finish. The rest take their seats around the fire and look at me with that familiar air of expectancy; with that yearning that has followed me across this cold earth ever since I donned the Omissioner’s robes.
I sit down on one of the blackened trunks near the fire. “Tell me Sergeant, do you have wine?”
“No,” grunts Corporal Zhong.
“We’ve been saving a bottle we found,” says the cook, earning a glare from the Corporal.
“
What do you need it for?” asks the Sergeant.
“Wine is a gift from the gods, to warm our hearts and make us speak the truth,” I say. Then I lie: “The first rule when meeting an Omissioner is this: give them wine. Do this, and they will speak the truth of your memory, and do so with a warm heart.”
“I don’t remember that rule about the Omissioner,” says Private Xu, eyes twinkling.
“Of course you don’t, child. Someone as young as you remembers nothing.” I say it stern enough so she blushes and drops her gaze for a moment.
The Sergeant watches me, face like iron, then directs her voice at the cook. “Pour the Omissioner some wine.”
The cook disappears into the shadows at the edge of the fire.
“Why did you leave the Thirty-Third?” asks the Sergeant.
I lie: “We were ambushed by the Fifty-Eighth, in a pass down near Qingshen. They fired the camp, saying we brought contaminated food and bodies from the cities.”
“A purist line?” questions the Sergeant. “I thought the south was dominated by eco-revisionists.”
“Don’t you mean eco-rightists?” someone asks.
The Private pulls her memory card from her pocket – a translucent golden square glowing with its own internal luminescence – her face softly lit in its deep yellow backwash. “No – the opposition in the south are holders of the Liu-Deng line, in league with the American eco-reactionaries.”
While they argue over imaginary foes, the cook gives me a bamboo cup half-filled with wine. I nod and smile up at him, hiding my frustration at the miserly portion.
“Americans?” someone says, “There’s no Americans left. There’s not even an America anymore.”
“What role do the Rixin-Kong line holders have in all of this?” asks Corporal Zhong.
“Who are they?” asks Private Xu.
“I met them on the road when I was travelling to join the Thirty-Third,” he says, looking at the Sergeant, even though the Private had asked the question. “They said they were comrades of ours, collecting funds for the war effort. One of them showed me a memory card listing us as allies. I helped them out as much as I could.”
The Sergeant shrugs: “I’ve never heard of them,” and looks at me. “Omissioner?”
I looked up from the dregs at the bottom of my cup. “Rixin-Kong? Never heard of it.”
“But you’re the Omissioner,” says the Private, with ironic politeness that apparently only I hear.
“I know.” I look over at Corporal Zhong. “Tell me, what did the Rixin-Kong look like?”
He squints into the fire. “I just remember that name. I wrote it down after.” He takes out his memory card, tapping his finger on the glowing golden square, looking for the entry. “I’ve written here they were a ragged group of soldiers, close to starvation. Only one had a gun. Six men and a woman, the woman was the one that spoke to me. She wore an armoured vest, dark blue with a silver dragon.”
“They weren’t Rixin-Kong line holders.”
“No?” he rumbles, “What were they then?”
“Bandits.”
He lowers the memory card slowly.
“There are no Rixin-Kong revolutionaries. By your description it sounds like deserters from the Guangxi campaign – the Third Flying Squadron – convinced you they were on your side. Such occurrences are common these days. They carry around memory cards that show them as allies with just about everyone.” I could have left it there. But my hip still hurt from where he had flung me onto the ground, and my wine cup was empty. “Being gullible is one thing. But gullible in a world without memory is fatal.”
The Corporal stands, a deep rumbling coming from somewhere in his chest. I smile up at him; now they’ve confirmed me as an Omissioner he can’t lay a hand on me.
“Enough,” says the Sergeant, her voice as flat and smooth as a pond of ice. Just one word is all she needs and the Corporal sits, and the smile is gone from my face. “You’ve had your wine,” she continues, indicating my cup with her chin. “Now earn your keep. Tell us our stories and our history: tell us who we are.”
I nod my head at her in an outward display of complete agreement. Inwardly I wonder how many bottles of this wine the cook has secreted away. “What would you like to hear?”
“Tell us of great events. As Omissioner, you would have dined with generals, with the poets who weave the common memories of our nation, with the princes and princesses who seek to bring unity.”
I lie, partially: “Yes.”
“Then tell us of the great men and women who lead this campaign. Tell us of what this war means to them,” the Sergeant asks. There is something in her eye as she asks it, but I don’t quite catch its meaning.
I look into the fire. I tell the truth: “The generals complain all day long and watch plays at night, they eat three full meals a day and fart, then go to sleep in warm beds. That’s what the war means to them.”
I expect a rebuke from the Sergeant, but instead she almost smiles – or smiles as much as a person who never smiled could – and says, “Tell us then of this place.” She indicates the darkness around us with her eyes.
“This is Wu Mountain,” I say, and she nods in reply. She pulls her gold-shimmering memory card from her pocket so she can record the key facts; they all do, except the Corporal. It is Wu Mountain, this is true. As always, the rest I say is a lie:
“Here is where the Xia Emperor, dressed in his dragon robe and carrying a great golden axe, swept past with his mouth filled with fire, scattering the deviationist tribes of Chiang Kai-Shek.
“But I’m not going to tell you that story.
“Here is Wu Mountain, where the stone monster, whose scales move with the autumn winds, and whose feet are larger than elephants, stopped to rest on his journey east. The monster that was lured to the caves with promises of warmth and protection by the treacherous Gang of Four and their leader, the beautiful witch Jiang Qing, who drugged the tea she gave to the monster when it sat down at her table.”
Private Xu narrows her dark, gleaming eyes at me when I say this. The rest look on in wonder, as all do when an Omissioner gives the gift of truth.
“But I’m not going to tell you of this.
“I’m going to tell you of Lao Zi, who tried to walk against the lines of the earth, who attempted the journey west from Wu Mountain, through the purple mists of the pass.”
I speak low enough so they have to lean forward.
“Lao Zi, the great warrior of the fourth epoch, carried the silver crossbow of the Jiayu Pass. Lao Zi was the assassin who shot a silver bolt ten miles to strike the heart of the foul dictator Joao Ferreira the Black. Lao Zi was the master tactician who played Go against the Mongol General for two years, deliberately prolonging the game until the Mongol’s superior army deserted and his campaign against Lao Zi’s homelands collapsed.
“Lao Zi walked here in the shadow of Wu Mountain. Then, as now, swallows that should have migrated swooped around his head, frightened and confused. It was here that he came across a grey turtle, old and weeping, making its way slowly east.
“Lao Zi stopped and said: ‘What is wrong, old man?’ The turtle replied: ‘Lao Zi, do not head west. All roads there now lead to the city of Chang-an; all passes and all ways must run through it. That city is now a city of ghosts. The ghosts play the same games they’ve played for a hundred years. They play them over and again, living out the dreams of others, remembering the memories of others: lives and memories that they swap each and every day. But you will never live to see that bleak place, Lao Zi. The trail between here and there is long and harsh and even such as you, with all your talents, will perish.’
“Lao Zi placed his hands on his silver crossbow, and said: ‘You know my name by my reputation; as do all in this land. But you don’t know me, old man.’
“The turtle sighed and said: ‘The gibbons will tell you three times the truth, and three times you will know it. But arrogant in your easy competence, you will ignore them.’
> “Angry, Lao Zi said: ‘Arrogance? It is you who are arrogant to speak to me like this, old man. Why take your word and not another? There are a thousand fools between here and Chang’an, only a fool would pay heed to even one.’
“The grey turtle replied: ‘I know Lao Zi, because I am you. I am you, living in the sixth epoch, a thousand years from now. If I speak with arrogance, it is what pride still lingers from the folly of your youth. If I seem mournful, it is the knowledge of what that arrogance cost me. Turn back now or you will be forced to walk the road east for all eternity, a million Li on turtle’s feet, doomed to repeat and repeat again. Turn back, Lao Zi, for my sake, for yours.’
“Lao Zi ignored the turtle, leaving without a word. He walked until he stood near a deep gorge. In this place the gibbons bounced and watched him from the trees and called to him. And he found it was true, the things they said, and he wept. Three times they called to him, yet three times he failed to heed them, the only fool on the path to Chang’an.
“He walked to the West, until the purple mist crossed the pass. Lao Zi was consumed by it, as was foretold. When you look West, friends, think of him. And know that if the turtle is slow, it is because he knows he will never arrive at his destination.”
They were silent after that, their faces flickering orange from the fire, all turned to me.
“West?” asks the Corporal, looking over at the Sergeant.
The Sergeant still looks at me. “We were heading West, Omissioner. Are you saying it is a mistake? Are the purple mists…are they real?”
I give her an ambiguous raised eyebrow, the sort that suggests I know all the answers, but I was, in my wisdom, encouraging them to work it out for themselves. I was quite pleased with myself after the story. Except for the turtle-from-the-future part, which I often used in these tales, I’d made everything up on the spot. That’s the thing about stories that are lyrical and vague, filled with familiar symbols and primal dreams: anyone can read anything into them. So I spin my tales while the listener weaves their own truth to each one. They let me have my wine and I let them have their fictions. This is the circularity of the dead world I now walk through, and it is enough for me.