The Raft: A Novel

by Fred Strydom

  On the third day, you were finally ready to get Jai-Li and her child off the beach. Gideon had fixed the oar and a long, safe route had been mapped to the cove.

  On the morning of her departure, a perfectly dense, white mist had fallen. It was difficult not to see it as a sign—the cloak of a guiding force intending to ensure safe passage. A sign was just what you needed, so you took heart from it, and set off.

  You walked down the mountain, one behind the other. Ange-rona led the group, moving nimbly between the small rocks and tricky dips. Gideon and Theunis carried the boat and you had the oars on your shoulder.

  The bottom of the slope disappeared into a murky white mist. A nocturnal bird hooted its last for the night. Jai-Li checked on her baby. He was fastened to her back with a towel and sleeping soundly. She peeked over her shoulder at you and slowed the pace of her walking until she was beside you.

  She said: Kayle, I need to tell you the rest of my story.

  You looked at Theunis behind you and Gideon ahead. Nobody reacted to her words.

  Jai-Li’s face appeared older and paler, as if her blood had been drained out overnight. Her eyelids opened and closed slowly. She was exhausted, obviously. But she walked on, putting one foot in front of the other with dogged determination.

  Kayle, I need to tell you what happened next.

  The first escape

  Stupid, stupid animals, ringing in my ears. My father’s last words, screaming, thundering in my head. I was terrified. Excited. Frustrated. But still, from the cloudy chaos of my thoughts and emotions, one impulse shot out like a beam of light: it’s time to leave, right now.

  I ran from my father’s office and never looked back. The tube took me back down the tower and I sat and watched the floors flicker before me. I was breathing so violently I thought I’d pass out. The faster the tube raced down the tower, though, the greater the distance created between my father and me, and the better I felt. My mind began to calm, my breathing steadied. My fear drained away and by the time I reached our floor, I was already thinking about what I needed to do.

  I ran across the boulevard and burst into the house. I hurtled through the rooms, grabbing what I could, what I thought I’d need. I had no idea what that was, though; I hadn’t a clue where I was going, what challenges would be waiting on the outside. So I filled my rucksack with nothing but warm clothing, a two-litre bottle of water, dehydrated food cubes, and the only printed photograph of my mother in the house. I double-checked that her letter was still in my back pocket, swung the rucksack onto my back, and took a brief moment to look about the cold and hollow house.

  There had been life there once. I could still hear my mother’s laughter as we chased each other through the rooms. I could still smell her perfume—a trick of memory; I had long been denied her scent. Honestly, I told myself, there truly is nothing left here of home, no echo off the walls. The glints of light off the metallic surfaces, the glowing neon of the visual-glass, the drone of the air conditioner—they would buzz and shine on forever, irrespective of whether anyone was there.

  I ran from my childhood home. At the tube stop, a man was waiting for a ride. He was wearing a grey coat and hat, reading off his palm-plate. I slowed my run to a nonchalant walk. I waited next to him without looking up, but could see from the corner of my eye that he had dipped his head in my direction.

  You’re going to be in big trouble, young lady, he said.

  My hand tightened on the strap of my rucksack, my face filled with heat, my breath lodged like a stone in my throat. He didn’t know, I thought; he couldn’t know! Your teacher isn’t going to be happy you’re late for school, he added, returning his gaze to his palm-plate.

  I snapped up at him, saying that I didn’t go to school. Of course, that made him realise he was speaking to the daughter of the CEO. I regretted having said anything. I should have tried to leave without being recognised, but even at that point I suppose there was a remnant of childish pride left, of loyalty to my family’s name.

  Ms. Huang! My apologies. He tipped his hat. I didn’t recognise you. Of course you don’t. No, of course not.You have a lovely day.

  The tube doors hissed and parted. I smiled uneasily at him and went inside. He came in after me but I sat two rows above him, staring at the top of his head all the way down. I expected him to look up and ask me some question I couldn’t answer, like So where are you off to? or Does your father know you’re here? but a few floors later, he exited and I was taken by myself to the bottom of the tower.

  I spotted the red button across from me, climbed on my seat, leaned across the tube, and stretched my arm out to push it. My chair clicked, whirred, and began its rise to the top of the tube, its descent on the opposite side.

  The doors to the secret floor slid away from each other, and the corridor rolled out ahead. I stepped out cautiously and my small shoes clacked on the tiled floors. The doors closed behind me and the tube raced back up.

  The sound of my breath was louder and harder in the narrow corridor. It seemed longer and wider, colder and more daunting, like one in a dream that would continue to lengthen no matter how quickly I ran along it. I wished my mother was with me. I dreaded having to continue all by myself.

  I remembered being down in the corridor with my mother that first time.

  But I hadn’t been with my mother. The robot had been holding my hand that day. So why did my memory say her, and not it? I’d filled in the gap between the machine and my mother, something I hadn’t been able to do at the time. The thought sickened me. How stupid I had been. The moment she’d taken her own life, that was when I had really lost her, when she had truly ceased to be. Before then she had been with me all the time and I hadn’t appreciated her for what she was, for the huge effort she had made on my behalf. All I had now was her letter, but the words of the letter would never change … they would never show me some new way.

  I pulled my rucksack up my shoulder and made my way along the corridor. I checked the paper for the number and punched it into the keypad. The door opened and I entered the underground house. Once again, light upon light flashed on in sequence, revealing each ornament and piece of furniture. It smelled musty down there, untouched by fresh air. There were probably fans and ventilators somewhere, but they weren’t on, and the place stank.

  I studied the map and keyed in the same code to enter the room behind the staircase. It was unnervingly cold and practical—a bunker, a panic room, a paranoid’s dream suite. Blue UV tubes lined the walls, saturating everything in their light: padded body-armour, large black guns slotted into metal brackets, holding out their many hands, insisting, Go on, take one. You’re going to need us where you’re going, little girl.

  Droplets of sweat were beginning to form on my brow. I scoured the wall, searching for a suitable weapon.

  What was I doing? As I tried to select a weapon I realised I had no clue—no idea of what lay ahead. All my life the outside world had been labelled a wilderness of nameless evils. There were predators out there, my father had once said to me, that’s why the tower had been built in the first place. To protect us. To keep us safe. And so once again questions peppered my mind in a shower of hot sparks: Jai-Li, what are you doing?

  I turned from the wall and studied the armour and the glass cubicles housing the gas masks.

  I should grab one of those, I told myself. What if the air outside was bad? What if I was poisoned as soon as I stepped out into the open? Maybe my mother had been wrong, maybe she knew no better, bless her. Maybe my father knew the awful truth. But I couldn’t go back.

  No, Jai-Li, a second voice chimed. You’re leaving here. You’re getting out of the tower. Don’t lose your courage or your hatred now, Jai-Li; you’ll need both for a while to come.

  I opened the cubicle door, quickly whipped the mask out, and gave it no more thought.

  My eyes narrowed as I scanned the blue map. I proceeded to the hatch door at the far left corner of the room, grabbed the handle, lifted it an
d peeked through.

  Beyond lay a short narrow tunnel, illuminated by a sequence of glowing glass floor tiles. I crawled through. My breathing began to quicken in that constricted space and my escalating heartbeat thudded in my ears. The hatch door closed behind me and after crawling a short distance I came to a large, dimly lit space.

  Several bright white lights flared at once, and for a moment I thought I had been lured into some trap, but the lights revealed only a cube of a room without doors or windows. In the centre of the room something shone bright and new and astonishing. On the map it had been labelled “air-pod,” but this was like nothing I had ever seen before.

  It was bean-shaped, a vehicle of some kind—metallic, curved and immaculate—like a gigantic drop of mercury, with no windows or doors to break its smooth surface. The vehicle was inactive, but something was keeping it hovering off the grey tiled floor. Beneath, I could see no stand, no wheels, no platform. It was clearly sitting in a state of rest, as light as a cloud in the sky, as a bubble under water. This strange machine was, according to my mother’s map, what I would be using to make my escape.

  On the map, I had read “air pod—speak your name.” So I did. I said my name out loud and the side of the pod opened along seams so fine I hadn’t noticed them. The door rolled out and touched the ground, revealing the rungs of steel steps which led directly inside.

  As I took my first step towards the pod, I was encouraged by the strong sense that my mother was still guiding me. The thought gave me strength, filled me with hope. I was charged up, ready to go up those rib-like steps. Ducking my head, I slid into the miniature cockpit. Four red chairs were positioned near a panel of instruments. I took the front seat. The outside of the vehicle was mirrored, but from my seat I could see the entire room.

  The door rolled up and closed behind me. I surveyed the instrument panel. I had no idea what to push, what to pull, how to get the thing started and moving. I stopped my frantic thoughts, reassured myself. If it was that complicated, surely I’d have been given instructions? And sure enough, the door sealed of its own accord, securing me in the metallic bean. I heard the hum of a generator and steadily a vibration began to build in my seat …

  The vehicle lifted—I could feel it in my gut before I could see it—and as the ceiling of the room slid apart I saw rays of light.

  I tilted my head. I had never seen it or felt it before, but I knew what I was feeling and seeing.

  The sun. Rays of natural light. The powerful, incomparable sun blessed my face and I ascended slowly into it. This was the real sun, the one that had lassoed the planets, wrenched trees from the dust, man from the oceans. It felt like the real sun. The tower engineers had designed and constructed the sun-orb to generate heat and light, but this sun did something more than all that. It had designed and constructed us, and inexplicably, I knew the difference.

  Soon, the pod had emerged entirely from under the ground. I could see the boundless expanse of brown and orange desert sand. The sky was bluer than I had dreamed. The two peaks I had been able to see through my bedroom window were revealed as being two anonymous tips on a horizon of distant peaks … but the sand! The kilometres of flat sand! There was nothing out there. The desert stretched in every direction except one: directly behind me. There the glass and steel monolith that was Huang-345 sprang from the dirt, cementing itself just as firmly somewhere up in the clouds.

  The pod stopped rising and was now only humming and hovering. I had risen like Lazarus but had not gone anywhere yet.

  Yet.

  Without warning, the pod accelerated from its spot, racing at full tilt across the sand. It blasted off horizontally, low to the ground, whipping the fine sands into clouds. Nonetheless, not a hair on my head moved; the internal atmosphere of the pod was perfect. Looking down, the world flashed by in a formless blur. Twisting back over my seat, I watched as the tower shrank in the rapidly increasing distance. In a mere minute that “glittering megalith of human ingenuity,” that “city in the sky,” had become a needle pulled back into the earth.

  And I was alone.

  I still had no clue where I was being taken, though. I had been so ready to leave that I’d given my destination almost no thought.

  After a while I saw something else in that desert, far in the distance. At first I thought it was another mountain. It was an enormous machine of some kind. A machine or a ship, simply sitting in the desert as if it had crashed from the sky. I’d heard about such a thing. I’d overheard people in the tower talk about it. My father had mentioned it the moment I’d run from the office.

  Only much later in my life, looking back and puzzling together small pieces of information, did I come to know what it was: Chang’e 11, a spaceship my father’s company had once built.

  The small screen on the panel in front of me lit up. I took my eyes off Chang’e 11 and sat back in my seat. The screen bleeped once and an image appeared. It was my mother, looking young and beautiful. No hanging skin. No untidy, entangled hair.

  Hello Jai-Li, she said. For a moment I thought it was actually her, that she was alive and able to see me, but then she said, I have made this recording for you. I hope, for the moment, that it will be enough. You may have some questions. I cannot guarantee I will be able to answer all of them, but perhaps you will find some of the answers to your questions in the same way as we all try to do: through experience, over time, and with unfailing hope.

  This pod was created for an emergency, a kind of life raft in the event that we ever had to make a quick escape from the tower. But by now I’m sure you know your father will never abandon his tower. Like the captain of a sinking ship, he will go down with it, if necessary.

  And so, now, this vehicle is yours. Your life raft. Your quick escape. And if you are watching this, it is serving its precise purpose. This is the Silver Whisper, my dear. May it serve you well and take you far …

  The voice continued as the vessel sped across the surface of the sand. The range of mountains rose high ahead of me. The sun beat down from a blue infinity. Time and space warped, boom by sonic boom.

  Her words trickled out: … you are probably wondering where this pod is taking you. Well, my child, there is a place, a very safe and special place, where you can stay as long as you need to. This destination has been programmed into the vessel. In this place, are people who can take care of you. It is a place I know well, and have known since I was a young child. It means a lot to me, has changed me in ways I could not hope to expect. It has remained in my dreams for as long as I can remember. Some may try to convince you otherwise, say it is a mythical, imaginary place, but I can assure you—it is real. It may even be the last real place on earth. It is a place to which I have been indebted my entire life.You know this place. I have told you about it. For certain reasons I feel I should not record its exact location. That is a chance I cannot afford to take. But I am sure, if you think hard enough, you will remember it.

  As soon as my mother said this, I was disappointed. I did not remember it immediately. As the vessel raced across the land, I trawled my memories for something my mother might once have mentioned. I forced myself to relax, take a deep breath, and all at once it came to me. A story. It was utterly obvious. Not only a story, but the one story. The story she had told me a few times, not onlybecause it was my favourite, but, as she often reminded me, because it was true.

  It was the story of something that had happened to my mother when she was young. As I watched the world outside roll itself out, the details of her story fell into place like a puzzle I had done many times.

  I remembered my mother sitting on the edge of my bed, pulling my duvet up to my shoulders. I saw myself snuggling into the warmth, listening …

  It always began in the same way: with my mother reminding me that, unlike my father, she had been born into a very poor family, nothing like the tower in which I was born. Her concept of luxury was having more than a single meal a day. Her concept of power was watching her father—my gran
dfather—labour continuously for the Chao-Bren Glass Factory. Sometimes he’d get no more than three or four hours of sleep a night. Her family lived in a shanty house in the village of Yihezhuang, deep in the mountains between Hebei province and the city of Beijing. She remembered the streets smelling like dust and burning metal, how putrid the village was, drab and dilapidated, but it was her home, and she knew no other. Her father worked long and senseless hours for a meagre income. He would often come home early in the morning, having walked a great distance from the factory, and sometimes, she said, she’d lie awake listening to him as he sat in the dark room, dry-coughing and mending the soles of his shoes with wire thread. She never wanted to let him know she was awake, it would upset him, she thought. The time he worked—nineteen hours a day was his sacrifice to her and her mother. He wanted to know that they were well rested, strong, as healthy as he could never be.

  It was around this time, she said, that people were becoming agitated about a particular problem. Old men talked about it in the streets, she read it on the communal news board. Later she learned that the problem was widespread, not restricted to their village alone. Scientists and doctors were noticing a sudden increase in cancers and nervous disorders. They all had different theories about the cause, but most surmised that the launch of a series of experimental military x-ray grid-satellites was generating dangerous levels of radiation. More than a thousand of these interlinked satellites were bombarding the earth with rays powerful enough to look through the rooftops of buildings and down into underground bunkers. This was all taking its toll on the earth’s atmosphere. Babies were being born undeveloped or deformed. Tumours were sprouting in people’s bodies like mushrooms on wet forest floors. The air was being poisoned, not only by chemical pollution, but electronic pollution too. Devastating physical effects were becoming more and more prevalent.