Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 106

by Sam J. Miller

  Nevertheless, he began to climb. The stairs were on the inside of the tower, winding clockwise, one loop after another, forming an unbroken chain of stone steps seemingly without end. The tower seemed to grow ever higher as he climbed, as if made from the same stock as the bracken fern trees which grew quietly in the sunshine outside, seeking to attain heights ever higher. Despite his best efforts, the priest was forced to sit and rest from time to time. Sitting, he found himself fascinated with the mural painted on the white inner wall of the tower. Terrible scenes were depicted in the painting, most likely of their pagan hell; aside from these images were drawings of knights in armor: one holding a sword, another some sort of musical instrument, finally the last holding some species of large rodent. There were dancing fairy maidens, trees laden with fruit, water lilies, and graceful deer; and beneath them all was the image of sleeping man. Probably it was meant to indicate that the world in all of its splendor was nothing more than a dream in the mind of the Buddha. Did not the ancient peoples of India believe that the physical world was in fact made up of dreams?

  Having spent a great deal of time to get there, when he reached the top of the tower the priest was surprised to discover an empty room. Large white stones surrounded a strange circular cavity which resembled a hothouse, or a womb. On the ground inside the stone womb the monks of the reclusive sect had left shallow depressions, accumulated from many years of sitting in this place. Three narrow openings were cut in the curved wall of the round room, serving as windows. Between the three windows hung six paintings, one of which immediately drew his attention: a group of emaciated men, with distended stomachs like drums, their eyes brilliant with hunger. Arms outstretched, they looked like spiders, taking, grabbing, begging.

  The tower of hunger. The four words sprang unbidden to the priest’s mind, filling him with dread. In a panic, he fled from the room.

  In the night the beast came again, breathing heavily outside the fence and spraying the air with that stench particular to carnivores, its eyes shining like two lanterns. The sound of the beast attacking the fence with terrible force echoed from the mouth of the valley throughout the night. So intense was the beast’s attack that the stones of the ramparts danced and the wooden posts wavered menacingly. The beast’s inability to break through the fence that night, however, let the hungry souls inside the valley finally breathe a sigh of relief.

  Now, the only task left for them to work on with a common purpose was the maintenance of the fence. The rest of their time was spent dispersed throughout the valley, madly searching high and low, going through every hut and every patch of bare land for something, anything to eat. The grapevine was the first thing to be eaten, and then all of their leather goods: leather shoes, leather belts, leather canteens. It was fortunate that this accursed planet was without worms or rats, otherwise they too would have been wiped out.

  The captain never told the priest if he should stop looking for food, and so he continued to drag his tired body up and down the valley. Once, in a dimly lit room, he came across the chemistry professor who was stuffing something wrapped in dried grass and sticks into the lining of his jacket. When he saw the priest his face turned red from embarrassment.

  The professor was a pale man, tall and thin, with a high nose and big eyes like two bright blue blisters, making him look as if he was always afraid of something. He blinked his eyes and handed two tubers to the priest good naturedly, saying that in China people used them for medicine. “Should be . . . good for . . . my malaria,” he said haltingly.

  After going through the featureless huts one by one, the priest became convinced that the secret of the reclusive sect lay inside the tower. Although he was even weaker than before, the priest resolved to climb the tower a second time to study the murals and the empty meditation room. He discovered that the materials used to build the tower were not the local sandstone, but instead that the tower had been constructed of white mica, quarried from some distance away. After careful inspection he concluded that it was different from the mica of Earth, with countless tiny grains of crystals flashing from within the rock, as numerous as grains of sand in the great Ganges River.

  The three windows of the meditation room were extremely narrow, just large enough to allow a man to pass through. They led to a small viewing platform which encircled the tower, from which one could see the wide and empty expanse of the desert beyond the valley. In the desert, the priest could see the wind playing freely, kicking up a sandstorm. Boundless and as empty as ever, the desert was silent, under a sky of unknowable heights. The sky, too, was broad and empty, azure blue. The three suns slipped through the sky giving off prisms of light. This forgotten corner of the universe was where they were to spend the rest of their days. For all intents and purposes though, he thought, they were the ones who had been forgotten.

  The captain also climbed the tower once to survey it, but he found nothing of interest in the empty meditation room. Now he was busy leading the others in the upkeep of the fence, where it seemed as if a sort of war had erupted between the men and the beast. At night it would attack and by day they would reinforce the structure. Eventually, a night crew was necessary to keep the wall maintained, as the beast’s attacks became ever more frenzied. Having bitten the weaker tree trunks in two and torn up the needle-tree net, it began to use its body to batter the fence, shaking the structure and causing those stationed on top to tremble with fear and forget the burning hunger in their stomachs.

  The boiler tender was especially fond of this battle, having painted his face like an Indian brave and taking up a sharpened pole which he shoved through the chinks in the wall, stabbing wildly at the beast. Singing and dancing, his wild antics motivated the group. He really was quite brave. The others shouted along with him, weaving strong nets of pliable branches to fill the gaps, and backfilling the fence with heavy stones. Other gaps were filled using dirt, and the vines of an unknown alien plant were pressed into service to braid the wooden posts together, creating a firm and immovable barrier.

  But they still hadn’t found any food. Others had begun to climb the tower to take a look for themselves, although they were not many. To ascend a hundred meter tower for a starving man robbed of his strength was, after all, a terrible challenge. The professor was one of the weak ones, half dead from hunger, having passed out sixteen times on the way to the monastery, and having been forced to treat himself twice for malaria. Upon arriving at the top of the tower, the professor squinted his eyes tightly, and knowingly scanned the empty stone room. He even explored the viewing platform outside, but was powerless to mask the expression of disappointment on his face. He explained to the priest that it wasn’t that he didn’t believe the priest’s account of the empty tower, but simply that he wanted to exorcise something of the gnawing sense of responsibility he bore for their plight.

  After the professor descended from the tower, few others came to disturb the priest’s work. The priest was becoming more and more intrigued by the cavity in the middle of the chamber. He had read that the high priest of the reclusive sect had spent more than one thousand years on this very seat. Perhaps someone had become a Buddha and ascended to the heavens here. Out of boredom, he sat on the seat and attempted the famed meditation techniques of the reclusive sect. Due, most likely, to the perfect roundness of everything in the room, the priest felt immediately at ease and quickly slipped into a dream-like state, very nearly falling asleep. In his dream he heard the breathing of the beast, and saw his demonic yellow eyes, his claws coming within inches of the priest’s throat.

  When he came to, the priest’s head was pounding and his mouth felt parched. It was probably due to his own imagination, but it seemed as if the mediation room was filled with the stench of the beast. Dizzy, he walked to the base of the tower where he was told that the previous evening the beast had finally broken in, killing three. Of them, they had managed to wrest the corpse of Ma Xiu from the beast’s grasp. Eighteen years old, Ma Xiu’s struggle to free himse
lf from the maw of the beast had been as futile as a moth beating its wings. Fortunately though, the gap in the fence was small enough that the beast hadn’t had enough time to pull the corpse through to the other side before the captain could spring into action and take hold of Ma Xiu’s leg. Meanwhile, other members of the group fired on the beast from the top of the fence, stabbing it in the mouth and forehead with sharpened branches. Ma Xiu died not long thereafter–in the course of trying to pull him free they had accidentally broken his neck.

  When the suns rose the next morning, the beast took what remained of his plunder back with him. According to the professor, the sun was an enormous ultrasonic amplifier which interfered with the beast’s sense organs.

  Ma Xiu’s funeral was relatively simple. Lying on the ground, his ragged clothing revealed his emaciated hips and bony chest. One arm had been bitten off by the beast. Looking like a roughhewn tree stump, the mangled flesh emerged from the sharp wound, his broken skin and muscle lying exposed on the earth. Looking upon that pale, tender white flesh, the eyes of the assembled men seemed to shine with a green light. As the priest was saying a prayer, a dark and unspeakable current passed through his unconscious mind. The men began to whisper among each other, perhaps taking a secret vote, and in the end they decided not to bury him. The captain just nodded, and the priest simply shut his eyes, not saying a word.

  That day, they built a fire, and set a large pot above it. The fragrant aroma wafted in all directions from the square. Using the axes and saws they divided up the boy’s body. With a steady hand, the captain cut the flesh straight and true. The boy’s chest was split open like a melon. Beneath his withered flesh was a thin layer of yellow fat, speckled with red. After cutting through the cartilage between the ribs, the boy’s viscera slid out onto the ground like a pile of twisting red snakes. His organs and head were then placed into the pot to make a stew, while his three limbs and muscles were dried over the fire to be rationed for later.

  Lining up to be served, they brought vessels of all kinds: glass bottles with tops knocked off, hats, and plastic bags. Those who had eaten their leather shoes felt a certain amount of regret when the fragrant odors left their mouths filled with bitter bile.

  Using a large ladle, the boiler tender stood with his pants held up by a grass cord, doing his best to carefully dole out an equal share to each man. This simple kind of equality was just about all his mind could handle at this point, and he ignored all other thoughts. One always ends up envying practical people like this, because they always seem to find a way to stay happy until the bitter end.

  Some were so excited that they began to vomit bile, gripping their plastic bags tightly. Despite the lack of salt or garlic, this bland, albeit sumptuous lunch was unthinkably extravagant. Although it is impossible to say for sure, but perhaps some of them said a silent prayer to the Lord, the one that thanks Him for giving us food to eat.

  That afternoon, they went to the fence with renewed enthusiasm. Given food, their energy was restored one-hundred fold, and they were filled with confidence.

  The priest however, had not taken part. Hunger gnawed at his organs like spider chewing on a thread, but he did not take his share of the meat.

  Truth be told, the captain was actually rather fond of the young priest. Handsome and charismatic, the priest had a sensitive face, white as sandstone and just as weak. The first time he had seen him, the captain had been convinced that he had seen the man somewhere before. In some distant place, obscured by the smoke and dust of time, he had already met a wan and slender young man just like the priest, who had been willing to sacrifice his own life to save others. He had met many young men like this, actually, while in the army, or in other places, and to the last he saw them swallowed up in the conflagrations of war.

  “How could the Lord blame us for wanting to survive?” the captain pleaded.

  “I understand, of course I understand,” said the priest, nodding his head. The captain had brought him some smoke-cured meat. The meat looked clean, and was cut into neat slices, thick with a dark aroma. They really had done an excellent job with the smoking.

  “The way you’re acting, you’re making everybody uncomfortable, you know. They think that you’re judging them,” the captain urged him good naturedly, “Just take the meat, okay?”

  “ . . . I understand,” the priest replied, after obvious hesitation. In the end, however, he refused to take his share, and the captain sat, helpless, staring at the priest for a long while.

  The priest continued to climb his tower, the tower that filled men with boundless desire. Even now he didn’t know what he hoped to find there, but strangely, he didn’t feel hungry. In the darkness the white stones gave off a gentle glow, their tiny crystals vibrating weakly. Was it possible that meditation had helped the members of the reclusive sect engage in fasting? Sitting in one of the shallow depressions, he traced the characters on the wall with his finger. The ancient pictures were like hieroglyphics which one could only try to understand.

  For a fleeting moment a strange and terrible feeling of prescience suddenly overtook him. Although he did his best to take hold of the impression it left on him, the better to predict what was yet to come, it quickly passed. The bubble fish floated in the sky, their skin stretched taut, a transparent membrane like a bubble, now vermillion, now orange, now the blue of a clear lake, now flashing gold.

  Despite strict rationing, the food was quickly devoured by the hungry men. Something was different from before, however, about the emaciated stick-and-bones men who patrolled the valley. Their cheekbones seemed higher somehow, and the hollows of their faces deeper. Their eyes meanwhile swept the ground, unwilling to meet the gaze of the others, afraid of what they might find there.

  They found themselves almost wishing for the beast to attack. But the fence held strong, and the beast could only pace outside, breathing heavily. Like them, it had gone without food for several days now, and hunger revealed the lines of its ribcage through its withered fur. Studying the men behind the fence with bloodshot eyes, it was powerless. Turning suddenly, it disappeared. Most likely it was retreating and abandoning these men who were no less hungry than it was. The men behind the fence felt an indescribable sense of disappointment.

  Two days later, the food had once again reached a critical point. The stronger members of the group led by example, stealing the bones of the dead boy, and breaking them open to devour the marrow inside. Even so, it wasn’t nearly enough food to save them.

  The next morning the captain led a group to rebury Seoni. The previous night, someone had dug up his grave, hoping to pillage the corpse. His body, however, had long since begun to decay in the fierce heat, leaving behind a pile of hard to swallow rotten flesh. By daybreak, the fetid smell of his exhumed corpse had filled the valley. Lying on the red dirt of the grave, his eyes bulged like two big blue blisters, and dark splotches of rot sprouted there. His teeth emerged in a grimace, and owing to the contraction of the skin it looked as if he was smiling, with his eyebrows raised high in delight. Few among them were willing to criticize the atrocious act. Instead they simply dug a deeper pit and buried him a second time. The worst thing about it to the men who watched was seeing so many calories, amino acids, and protein rot and go to waste.

  The others were not idle, however, having decided to try and eat the bracken fern trees. They cut one down and removed the spines from the bark, cutting them into fine slivers which they boiled over the fire. The stench produced was even worse than that of Seoni’s rotten corpse. Others, ignoring the warnings of the chemistry professor, attacked the bubble fish. When two diamond miners from Arcturus managed to spear one, its transparent stomach exploded, spraying ammonia gas into their eyes, blinding them. Their faces ruined, they lay by the fountain, moaning throughout the night.

  The seemingly endless stairs of the tower left the priest feeling as if he was climbing a gigantic structure that ascended to heaven itself. God is eternal, all powerful, all knowing, and his com
passion is freely given to all beings in existence, the priest thought. How could it be that an all powerful being like God, with His boundless wisdom, could have become afraid when people of times past tried to build the tower of Babel? Where, after all, is heaven? Is it up? In this ever expanding universe of ours, is it still up? With every scientific advancement, at first it has always seemed as if religion was on the verge of being overthrown. Eventually, though, people always seem to find a way to compromise. Does this mean that science will never be truly able to save humanity?

  Only now, none of these questions were as important as the question of where they might go next to find food.

  The priest reflected back on his memories of receiving communion for the first time, during mass. The bread and wine symbolized the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ. By eating and drinking Him, then we allowed Him to be one with us. His belt was old and tough, impossible to chew, but he managed to cut it into smaller pieces, which he swallowed one by one after soaking them in his saliva. Kronos ate his children, the cyclops roasted the companions of Odysseus, Zhang Xun cut up his concubine and fed her to his soldiers during the siege of Suiyang, and Count Ugolino ate his own flesh and blood in a high tower—in history, people have long since eaten one another, and even today they are still eating one another. Schools of bubble fish floated outside the tower watching him, as if the sky outside the narrow window was an enormous fish tank.

  The stench lingered in the valley.

  After the two miners died the would-be hunters became prey for the others. This was the banquet that the men of the valley had been waiting for. A great fire was lit, and the water in the pot was brought to a frothy boil. Drawing strength from the self-sacrificing spirit of the two minors, they managed to survive for another week, but rescue seemed to be just as distant as before. Miraculously, the priest managed to survive, finding the tubers that the professor had given him to have boundless applications, with a single slice providing him sufficient calories to last a great while. The professor himself had become thin and emaciated, his eyes bloodshot. A slight breeze was enough to bring him to the ground, but his spirits remained strong, and his complexion unusually ruddy. Drinking water non-stop, a row of blisters had sprouted on his cracked lips. This was most likely a side effect of the treatments he had given himself for malaria.