The Raft: A Novel

by Fred Strydom

  Quon narrowed his eyes, a slitted smirk curling and tightening on his mouth. I held my resolve and offered no expression at all. He could read my mind but I’d never give more than I needed. I needed to be calm. Patient. Confident.

  “He’s here,” Quon said, nonchalantly. “In the commune. I knew you’d be coming for him so I had him brought here. Always make sure you’ve got your bargaining chip close at hand—it simplifies transactions, yes? I had a feeling about your little visit. And, as it turns out, I was right. As usual.”

  Andy. Right outside. There was a swell of exhilaration, and my heart walloped, but I remained calm, controlling my actions since I knew I could not own my thoughts.

  “Now,” Quon said. He rotated his lower jaw and winked an eye. “It’s your turn.”

  I waited again. He was fidgeting in his seat now, hands clutching the rests, his long neck extended like a turtle’s from its shell, his head lolling.

  Gideon and I didn’t move. I held my poise, took a breath and said, “Before I tell you, I want to give you something.”

  I grabbed the shoulder strap of the bag on my back and lowered it to the ground.

  “Oh, this is most interesting, Mr. Kayle!” Quon said.

  I glanced up at him, got down on my haunches and opened the bag. I pulled out an object wrapped in paper: the apple Klaus had given me.

  (It’s from the jungle. Of course, I don’t have to tell you not to eat it. You know that. But trust me when I say I think you should keep it. It won’t go bad. It won’t rot. It’ll last for as long as you need it. And something tells me you will need it)

  I held the shiny green apple out to Quon.

  “An apple,” he said. Was that a surprised look on his face? I couldn’t tell.

  “That’s right,” I said, rising.

  He sat back in his seat. “I’m very tempted to read your mind, I must say.”

  He stared at me intently.

  “You can if you like.” I held his gaze. “It wouldn’t change a thing. But if you want to keep playing …”

  “I’ll play,” he said.

  “This is what I know about you, Quon. You’re bored.”

  Quon paused and twitched his head to the side. “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  He sat back in his seat, turning his head and biting his knuckle in contemplation. “That’s all?”

  “All and everything.”

  He burst out laughing. “My terrible secret! That I’m bored!”

  “And you’re becoming more bored by the day,” I cut him off. “It’s growing in you. And I know why. You may have people’s memories, but that’s all you’ve got. You can only know what everyone else already knows. Nothing more. That’s not omniscience, Quon. Not even close. It’s nothing but a trick. A cheap one. And that’s why you haven’t figured this out—because nobody has been able to tell you.”

  He waggled a long-nailed finger at the apple. “And you want me to eat that, do you?”

  “It’ll show you everything you are, everything you have and don’t have. Truth. That’s all I’m offering. If you don’t believe me, go on, do your trick, read my mind.”

  “I already have.”

  “Then you already know.”

  “You’re putting a lot of faith in that apple, Mr. Kayle, hoping it will end me, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why should I eat it?”

  “Because you need to eat it. You need to know the truth, whatever that truth is. It’s the only thing you’ve got left. If you don’t eat it, you’re just another old man, scared of nothing more than himself.”

  “The truth could be that I am destined to be God.”

  “It could. There’s only one way to know.”

  “But you don’t think so.”

  “It doesn’t matter what I think, that’s why your mind-reading means nothing,” I said steadily. My heartbeat had slowed to normal and I knew as surely as I had ever known anything that these were the right words to say. “You see, you thought killing Shen would complete you. Give you all the power. But there’s something missing, isn’t there? And it haunts you. And you’re afraid it always will. Because life is the will to connect, and there’s nothing to connect with, is there? You’re at the top. Alone. Stagnant. And with nowhere else to go, you’ll crumble, deteriorate, and slowly, slowly … waste away.”

  Quon paused for a moment, making sure I was done speaking, then threw his head back and chuckled. “Nicely done, old chap! Very convincing!” He clapped his hands twice. “This is all very familiar, isn’t it? The forbidden fruit. The promise of knowledge. Very, very good, old chap. I know precisely what you’re hoping for and, I must say, I appreciate the offer, but will have to decline.”

  “No, you won’t,” I continued without hesitation.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’ll eat it,” I said. “They say you have our memories. But for what? A single man doesn’t even have enough years on this earth to explore the expanse of his own consciousness, and yet here you are, laying claim to billions of them. You must only be skimming the surface of who we are. You’d have to live ten billion lifetimes to understand all the intricacies, the details of each one of us—every one of our dreams and hopes and fears. But you don’t have that kind of time, do you? After all, you said it yourself, all hopes and desires are crushed by the weight of time. So what am I offering you? A catalyst. A chance to go from the highest peaks of our collective hopes to the lowest pits of our fear. To see what ten billion people truly desire, what they truly fear, and who we all really are. But I can’t fool you. You’ve seen what this apple can do … to an ordinary man. An ordinary man’s incapable of facing the paradox of his own existence. He might have to take his own life just to come to terms with his own realisations. But if you’re a god, well, then there’s nothing to worry about. You’d survive it. You’d thrive on it. If you’re a god, then what I’m offering you is precisely what you want. The full spectrum of your supreme consciousness in a single moment, without the waiting, the dull figuring out, the time to sift through this, through that, to see which memories should be tossed back to us like small fish. A chance to confront the paradox of existence, the stuff that gods are made of, and come out the other side, Quon, more powerful than you are now. Right here. In my hand. All in a bite.”

  Quon nodded. “Everything you say is true. I can’t fault you on your logic. And yet … you don’t believe that, do you?”

  “I don’t think you’re a god at all. I think you’re just a man. But the question isn’t whether I believe this; it’s whether you do.”

  The chair lowered itself to the ground and Quon stood up slowly. Ponderous and awkward in the heavy suit, he made his way towards me. His white boots thumped on the ground. I could now make out the features of his face. A man, like any other man. Greying around his ears. Dark, tapered eyes. Cracked lips and rubber skin. I didn’t move, just stood there, keeping the apple up, urging him to take it.

  “Such a simple thing,” he said. “Ridiculous, really.”

  Quon paused and studied the apple, the large shiny apple. He was thinking about what I had said, and knew it was true. He’d never go on without knowing; his obsession was with knowledge itself—a delusion of acquiring omniscience—and he’d take whatever knowledge he could get, even though, paradoxically, it was the very knowledge he secretly knew would destroy him.

  But there was something else in his eyes. He was being compelled by something more primal than a need for knowledge. The irrational compulsion of ordinary men and women. And in Quon’s case, billions of ordinary people, in that one place and one moment, desiring one more thing—just one more—as always. It was the scent of the apple. That sweet, sickly sweet scent. His lips began to work and his eyes began to bulge. His tongue flicked from his slit of a mouth. His nostrils flared and his torso heaved as his breath grew restless in his chest.

  “Don’t do it,” he said, although I could not tell whether he was talking t
o me or to himself. There seemed to be a panel of voices, each fighting for its turn. “I must do it. No, that’s what he wants and you know why. He doesn’t know these things … he doesn’t know things the way we know things, he’s only hoping. This is a mistake. It’s not a mistake. This is what we need … no more secrets … no more waiting … it’ll destroy you. It won’t! Oh yes it will! Look at it! You know he’s right. No, you’ll survive the truth. And then you’ll see … you’ll see that I was right all along. And you will be satisfied. Complete. And there’ll be no more questions, no more doubt …”

  I remembered the power of the fruit from my time in the jungle, but wasn’t as overwhelmed by it as I had been that first time. Gideon wasn’t reacting to the apple at all, but Quon …

  Quon was reacting.

  His desire to consume it, coupled with the need for its secrets, began to bubble up, rising in him like magma from beneath a cracked mantle.

  Then, like the man in the woods who’d snatched Moneta’s sandwich, Quon grabbed the apple from me and tore through it with his teeth. He took enormous bites, chewing and chomping and slurping it down. The juices ran over his chin and along his hands and arms. I took a step back.

  “That other earth,” I said, moving slowly away, “it knew. It had everything. But it sent you back here for a reason, Quon. A reason you never figured out. As powerful as that earth was, as complete in itself, it was alone. It needed to connect with something else. So it sent you here to advance this earth. To help it connect with something new, with us … and now you’re in a similar position, aren’t you? Powerful and stuck.”

  Quon was still grinding and shredding off huge chunks of the apple, trying to swallow it all, but chunks were spilling from the sides of his mouth. After finishing the apple in his hand, he got on his knees and ate the remains from the floor like a dog.

  “Yes,” he said faintly, and then louder. The fruit was streaming through him, flooding him with awareness. It took almost no time at all. “Yes! I was right! I am! Oh yes, I am a … god.”

  Quon got to his feet. He was grinning from ear to ear, his eyes wide with horrific delight. He held up his glistening hands and threw out his chest. A laugh bellowed from deep within him.

  “I am … a … god,” he said, his voice a loud croak. “I am a god! There is nothing and no one above me! Nothing and no one!”

  Gideon and I moved away as he strained towards the sky in praise of himself. I thought I had made a terrible mistake, but then I told myself to wait, just wait, because there were two sides—always two sides—and the other would come down like the ill-fated head of a flipped coin.

  “Nothing and no one more powerful than me! Nothing and no one …” His laughter resounded through the hall and the iron plates creaked and groaned again. “Nothing and no one! Nothing and no one! Nothing … and no one!”

  (Stupid, stupid animals … stupid, stupid animals)

  The veins in Quon’s neck bulged as the muscles tautened within the hard circular rim of his collar. His jaw cranked open, baring his big teeth. Saliva flew from his mouth as he bellowed, triumphantly, manically.

  His words rolled on and on, becoming louder and louder: “Nothing and NO ONE! NOTHING AND NO ONE!”

  Finally, he paused and breathed weightily, clenching his teeth, his bulging eyes flitting to the dark walls of broken machinery folded in the shadows.

  “Nothing … and no one,” he said under his breath. Something was slipping away from him. His own words were no longer a praise song, but a blunt reminder of what he had left in his life, whom he had left to conquer: “Nothing and no one …”

  (My father shook my mother and told her to come around, come around baby, but her gaze turned on my father and all he could see in her eyes was fear. Fear like he’d never seen in anyone before, and it sent him reeling backwards in shock. A deep, deep panic grew and grew in her until she was screaming and she held up her hands and her hands were like gnarled claws)

  Quon’s grin began to shrink and wilt, but his eyes continued to race around the room. He was beginning to panic, fear sprouting within him, growing like a rampant weed from the seed of his own insecurities. He twisted his limbs, panting, frenziedly looking for an escape from the prison that had shot up around him. “Nothing …” he said with mounting fear. “No one. Nothing … and no one …”

  He grabbed the rim of his steel collar and pulled on it, extending his neck, ricking his head up to the skylight (of the weak old sun, right Quon?) and shutting his eyes. He screamed—a scream of absolute terror, and loneliness, and acceptance of the truth. The damning truth: the dead end of absolute power …

  (The rest of it, the levels of crazy, that’s all you, man.Your deepest fears and insecurities brought to the surface, where you get to see how ugly and awful they are … horrible things in the basement of our s-suh-suh-souls, Raft Man)

  “Nothing and no one …” he bawled.

  Gideon slung the bag off his back, unzipped it and pulled out the knife we’d taken from the abandoned town. Quon didn’t notice him. Quon was entombed in the hell of his own making, ripping out his hair and scratching his face with his long fingernails, just as Burt had done amid that swarm of angry hornets …

  Gideon walked forward slowly, got down on one knee and placed the knife on the floor before Quon. The knife glittered in the light from above. Gideon got up and walked back towards me. “Come. There’s nothing more to see. He’ll end it when he’s ready.”

  We walked towards the exit of the hall and I looked back to see Quon, contorting, trying to rip off his suit with his hands. The bulky gear seemed to be tightening around him, straining the air from his lungs.

  “Nothing and no one … and no one … no one …”

  Gideon and I exited the hall, turned, and sealed the heavy iron door behind us. Quon’s screams rippled, echoing through the metal bones of the ship. And his screams were the voice of Chang’e 11 itself, the countless wails of stolen memories.

  “He was a silly man,” Gideon said dryly.

  We walked back through the dim corridors of Chang’e 11. The way out was far easier than the way in, and finally we were at the exit, where the light of day was waiting like the warm and benevolent hands of something greater than ourselves.

  Some true god.

  The members of the commune were frenzied. Quon’s anguish was being channelled through them, and they spun and twisted, ripping off their clothes and shrieking and digging their fingers into their own flesh. They clawed at their skin as if they could reach down to their true selves, layered beneath their fat and muscle. Some of them were curled on the ground in foetal positions, trembling and twitching and yowling.

  Gideon and I walked down the lowered iron door and passed through the communers. There was nothing that could be done for them—nothing until Quon finally picked up that knife and put it to his throat, or across his wrists, or directly into his heart.

  I searched for my son. I looked from tormented face to tormented face. My son would be older than the last time I’d seen him, but how old?

  I grabbed people by the cuffs of their shirts and turned them over, hoping to recognise my son. They did not resist me; they were too caught up to realise I was there. I saw a boy lying on the hard ground, scraping away the chalky dust of the desert with his feet, his right hand shoved almost all the way down his throat. His eyes rolled up in his head as he spewed over his arm. I pulled out his arm and looked at him closely. No, it wasn’t him. He was too young.

  I spun around. Gideon was there in the distance, standing among the chaos like the last sane man alive, a rock amid the crashing waves of spinning, retching, scrambling people. He looked back at me through the crowd. I knew he couldn’t help. There was no way to describe Andy. I could barely recall the boy myself. If he was under Quon’s control, then he was on the ground somewhere, tearing himself apart like everyone else.

  I looked to my side.

  At the far end of the commune a number of huge trees reached up
into the sky. They looked entirely out of place, thick towering trunks sitting flush against the side of Chang’e 11. The foliage was sparse but the branches stretched out on the sides like crooked arms. Perhaps they grew along the edge of a water source, an oasis that provided for the commune. My eyes ran up their trunks and then I noticed that one of them ended precisely at an elevated entrance in the side of Chang’e 11. An old docking station perhaps, or a runway for an escape pod. The cavity was about fifteen or twenty feet from the ground.

  Gideon’s eyes followed mine, and we hurried through the communers towards the base of the trees. I pushed and pulled people from my way, ran between the tents and found myself on the edge of a shallow body of water. I craned my neck and looked up at that one tree. (I’m walking in a beautiful forest. That’s how it starts. How it always starts. There are many tall trees. But I see one tree in particular in the centre of the forest, enormous in width and height. It’s wider and taller than the rest)

  Gideon stayed by my side as I walked toward the base of the tree, my eyes fixed on the open mouth of the iron cavern.

  “He’s up there,” I said. “I know it.”

  As I approached the base of the tree I spotted a red object lying between the surface roots and tussocks of grass.

  (At my feet, a red shoe is lying in the dirt. It’s a child’s shoe. I recognise it as my son’s, then look up and consider the possibility he dropped it while climbing that very tree)

  I was staring at a shoe—a red shoe at the bottom of the tree—the one I had seen in my recurring dream.

  “How do know you he’s up there?” Gideon asked.

  “I’ve always known,” I said, turning my gaze to the top of the tree once more. “Right since the start. Shen’s very first clue.”

  And then I put my hands up to the tree and, grabbing the first broken branch, pulled myself up and began to climb.

  Xerox print test

  I looked down from the great height of the tree and saw the clumsy sprawl of tents, shacks and people. Ahead, there was the flat and endless horizon. My hand clutched another branch and I heaved myself up. Sweat ran from my face. I gripped harder so that I wouldn’t slip; I pulled myself up with a strength I should not have had. I hoped from a place in my heart I no longer knew existed.