She measured us, skeptical but indulgent, like we were errant children. “Well, I hope you find who you’re looking for. The folks down at Nazareth will treat you right. Presbyterians, mostly, but nice people.”
When we got a little ways down the street I turned to the rest of them. “Well, that went really well. Are you guys ever going to talk? I felt like I was all alone in there.”
Steel said, “Well, what about you? ‘My grandmother kept them in a shoebox ...’ Where did you get that?”
“Where did I get it? I don’t know, from one of Yuri’s old movies, I guess.” Then I got huffy: “What do you mean where did I get it? I pulled it out of my butt. I was making it up as I went along. What did you want me to say—‘Sorry, my wife forgot to take into account the effects of time dilation when traveling close to the speed of light for thirty years’? That would have gone over real well.”
“Keep your voice down!”
“I am keeping my voice down!” I whispered. “ ‘The Methodist retreat burned down,’ ” I quoted. “Is there any part of our cover story that holds up? How the heck did you pull this off last time?”
Archie leapt to Steel’s defense. “Last time we spent two whole years observing these people before we ever made contact.”
“We just didn’t have time this time,” Steel added. “I was just hoping it would work out.”
“Great,” I said, shaking my head. Then I noticed Alice looking kind of defeated. “I’m sorry, Alice. We’ll find your parents. I know we will. We’ll make it work, one way or another.”
“I know,” Alice smiled at me. “I know.” But she didn’t look convinced.
“That woman didn’t believe us,” Archie put in, “but she didn’t try to stop us either. I think she felt sorry for us.”
“You don’t think she’s calling the cops right now? Or the Synod or the Star Chamber or whatever it is they have around here?”
“I don’t know.” She looked crestfallen. So did Alice. So did Steel.
I regretted taking the wind out of their sails. “Well,” I tried to buoy things back up, “Let’s go see what Bob has to say.”
We headed down the street.
Chapter 23
Bob had a car and he took our money. If he thought anything strange about it he kept it to himself. Maybe the woman at Sam’s Cafe called ahead about us. Maybe he was a collector, who knows.
The car was quite something. I recognized the design. It was a BuckyMobile: a six-meter long teardrop with the blunt end serving as the windshield, two wheels set far apart up front, two little wheels set close together behind. Based on a two millennium-old design by a quirky architect and mathematician, it was huge. We could have fit ten or eleven people in it.
An alcohol-fueled reciprocating engine powered it: hundreds of moving parts, valves and pistons flopping back and forth. It sounded like a big flatulence when we started it up. The clutch took a while for me to master (I told Bob that I’d always driven “an old four-banger with automatic transmission and good rubber”) but I eventually got the hang of it and we lurched off across the rock.
From the comfortable confines of the BuckyMobile the desert was entertaining rather than daunting. Still, the vastness of it pointed up the scale of the challenge these people had taken on. Terraforming a world is hard enough when you have the full resources of an interstellar civilization behind you. To cut themselves off the way they had and then try to carve out an ecosystem, I didn’t know how they did it. Even considering that the planet had started with a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, a twenty-six hour day, and gravity that might as well have been the same as Earth’s—I couldn’t tell any difference (hence the name ‘Eden’)—it was a planet where an isolated population could just barely hang on by its teeth and toenails and create a world, a home.
The road wasn’t much—we just rolled across the rock from cairn to cairn, trying not to get lost. Late in the afternoon we saw the windmill fields poke up over the southern horizon and we knew we were getting close. Steel and Archie got more agitated; Alice got quieter.
On either side we passed windmills, arms turning lazily in the afternoon, like a colony of hydras. Even then we couldn’t see any interruption in the endless rock. Slot canyons are a rather unique geological formation. They can be two hundred meters deep and only two meters wide all the way to the top, caused by water slowly eroding downward through rising sandstone. I’ve never seen the ones in western North America, but I hear they’re very beautiful.
We pulled into the parking lot at the north rim of the slot; at that point it was nothing but a narrow, sinuous gap in the softly rolling rock. There were several other cars there, but no people. Nazareth was below us but unseen, protected from the blistering sun at the bottom of the slot.
“Has it changed much?” I asked, more to break the tension than anything else. No one answered. No one moved. “Are we sure we want to do this?” I added.
Steel said “Yes” as Archie said “No.” Alice looked out the windshield at the sinuous ripple in the rock and said nothing.
“It’ll be all right,” I said. I had no idea if it would be all right. “I mean, we came by car on the same road anyone else would take. It won’t be like Lawson’s Crossing. We’re—we’re—”
“Let’s get going,” Steel said, steely determination adding extra percussion to her consonants. Then more lightly, “Come on, Alice. Let’s go find your—” She rose out of her seat and opened the door, then turned back to us. “Let’s go.”
Alice followed Steel out the door. Archie still hesitated. When they were out of earshot I asked her, “What the hell happened the last time you were here?”
She turned and looked at me for a moment before she said, “You’d better watch your language. Around here.” She got up and walked out into the heat. I followed her.
It was hard to believe we were just a hundred meters above a bustling village. The rock was as barren as a fashion model’s smile. The slot itself was no more than two or three meters wide, winding and twisting across the fleshy skin of the planet—capricious, unhurried, wandering tunelessly to a sea it could not conceive of.
Steps were carved into the side of the canyon, descending from the merciless glare of the desert into soft, rose-colored coolness. Eons of water had carved the sandstone into fantastical swirls, bowls and hanging sculptures. Its color varied from a golden buff to the deepest, bloody maroon. The stairs wound down deeper and deeper in their own carved groove, open to the sinuous twists of the slot through hand-hewn windows, suffusing us in the pink light of a primeval womb.
Reaching the bottom was like entering another world. Just a few hundred steps away from a boundless, baking plain, we stood beside a golden brook that gurgled gently over rounded stones. We could have leaned across it and touched the other wall, glowing sensually, inviting caresses. The air was cool and moist. The cobalt sky was a banished memory, reflecting down the swirling stone walls and transformed into soft kisses. Everywhere was soft, smooth, curving—the arms and breasts and lips of an infinitely forgiving lover who existed only to enfold and nurture. I found myself constantly placing my palm on the rock. It was dry and cool, its granular surface tickling each individual nerve ending in the mated swells and recesses of my flesh. As I touched it to more intimately grasp its texture and shape, it informed me of my own. It was my teacher, my mentor, my mirror.
A few meters of winding through the narrow, twisting passage deposited us abruptly in a wide amphitheater. It had been carved out by the gushing plume of a tall, narrow waterfall we could make out at the upstream end. A blue banner of sky hugged the vertical north wall of the canyon, allowing a thick slab of sunlight to bounce off its capstone layer of rich, red rock, flooding the amphitheater with soft reflection. The south wall arched over so far that it almost met the north, turning the amphitheater into a cavern, a rose cathedral. Above the waterfall the canyon was wider and shallower. There it was flooded with sunlight: slanting onto the walls, buff, white and rust, i
lluminating them like stained-glass windows.
The floor of the amphitheater was an unexpected garden—a rich green jungle shockingly out of place in this womb of rock. Feathery tree ferns and thick bamboo sprouted from the sandy soil. Vegetable gardens and dwarf fruit trees intermingled with dusty herbs and rambling berry patches. Sandy gaps were connected by wandering trails. An arched footbridge crossed the stream at one point, leading to a small wooden gazebo.
Half the village was carved into the rock itself. Ovate doors and windows looked out of the rock walls in tiers reached by wooden ladders or steps carved in stone. Other wooden and stone buildings were scattered along the edge of the garden, modest bungalows clean of line and devoid of ornament. A steeple topped with a wooden cross rose above the other roofs not far from the waterfall. As we walked farther we could see that a second canyon branched off at the upper end of the amphitheater, leading to more dwellings, more garden. The entirety was bathed in the rose-golden glow of light reflected off rock—the light you glimpse through the flesh of your fingers when you hold your hand up to a bright lamp.
The light reflected off Alice’s face and she returned the favor. This was where she’d been born. Where she’d spent the first part of her life. Recognition flickered across her features as she pointed out familiar things to Archie or Steel, things they recognized too. But she remained reserved; she seemed reluctant to commit to this place as being hers or representative of her. She seemed glad to see it again but distant. Not judgmental, perhaps waiting for someone else to be.
“Is it good to be home?” I asked.
“Well, this isn’t really my home,” she hedged. “I mean, I haven’t lived here in a while. I was pretty little when we left. But, yeah, it’s—it’s—it’s pretty weird, I guess.” She laughed in a small expression of self-deprecation, maybe embarrassment. More even than in Lawson’s Crossing she seemed to be floating, detached from the ground, detached from her own history, as brief as it was.
Above the distant rush of the waterfall and the soft babbling of the stream another sound came to us, as if out of a half-remembered dream. High-pitched and complex, it echoed around the curving walls. It reminded me of something—birds, maybe, or wind chimes. It pulled at me. There was something primal about it, as though I had always known it. It brought back memories of my earliest life, of schools, teachers, scraps and contests, bloody noses and scraped knees. As we got closer it resolved into a gentle mosaic of small voices: squeals and shrieks, shouts and laughter—but small shouts, small laughter, pealing and cascading, getting lost and then returning, rising and falling in response to its own internal rhythm.
Emerging from behind a stand of bamboo, we came upon its source. My chest ached at the sight and unbidden tears shocked my eyes. It had been a thousand years. More. Not since the corps had taken over production of the labor pool had I seen anything like it.
Miniature people frolicked and played on swing sets and slides, ladders and matrices of pipes, patterns laid out in the sand by means of chalk dust or the dragging of a heel. They were watched over by attentive women—stern, casual, alert, relaxed.
I couldn’t move. I stood and watched, amazed, enchanted, frozen in time—time that was sixteen centuries old. I looked at Steel and tried to speak. I could not. Emotion filled my chest and clogged my throat. I looked back at the playing children. The little playing children. The tiny, uncivilized, immediate and unedited motions and emotions of children.
Alice and Archie caught me under my arms as my knees buckled. Steel soothed me, caressing my forehead with her hand. “It’s all right,” she said, and Archie echoed her. “It’s all right. It struck me the same way the first time. Let’s just sit down over here and collect ourselves. You’ll be all right.”
She kept smoothing my hair and face as they half-carried me to a nearby bench. We sat looking at the children as my chest heaved and tears rolled down my cheeks. Alice hugged me and put her head on my chest. Archie rubbed my shoulders with her remaining hand. Steel kissed my temples and hugged my head.
“Mo, oh … Mohandas. It’s all right,” Steel sighed, almost singing, her tears wetting my temples and joining my own. “It’s all right.” And even though she was right, even though it really was all right, the ache in my heart wouldn’t subside. Archie’s tears fell on my shoulders. We grieved the ancient loss of families.
Alice rested quietly on my chest, her arms around me. She held me, but when I looked into her eyes they were dry. She looked uncomfortable, awkward. She didn’t know how to act, what to feel. She knew we were upset. Perhaps she was upset, too, but her features remained blank. Whatever she was feeling was too expensive for her to reveal—to us, to herself.
A teacher had noticed us. She came over to the edge of the playground. “Are you folks okay?” she asked.
“Yes, we’re fine,” Steel responded. “We lost a child not too long ago, that’s all.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” the teacher said, and I grieved that we were lying to her. “A boy or a girl?” she asked.
“A boy,” Steel responded. “Jacob. He was only thirteen.” Looking into Steel’s sad eyes I knew we weren’t lying after all.
A little girl (What a marvelous phrase! ‘A little girl.’) came over, transcendentally beautiful. She walked like a tiny goddess, her posture defying gravity, bolt upright, perfectly balanced. Her hair shone like spun ebony and her blue eyes were absolutely clear, unclouded by history or pain or anything at all, expressing nothing, expressing everything. In a small, shy, bell-like voice she asked the teacher, “What’s wrong with those people?”
The teacher patted her hand. “They’re just sad, that’s all. Just sad. Let’s leave them alone, okay? Go back and play.” She herded the little girl back to her friends, but the little one kept looking at us. She stared unblinkingly over her shoulder at us as she went, before turning and running back to one of the games.
I didn’t want her to leave. I wanted to talk to her, ask her things, teach her, protect her, bathe in her innocence and purity of desire. There must have been twenty-five or thirty of them—riches beyond measure: thug-like little boys harassing and laughing, bossy little girls prescribing and posing, innocent little angels hesitating on the sidelines, brooding misfits spoiling for a fight. Potential people, future people, little people.
Who had this experience anymore, besides professional caregivers? Newbies were protected and isolated from the capricious malevolence of adults. They were far too valuable to the corps to risk being psychologically damaged by untrained amateurs. They were painstakingly raised, instructed and nurtured by people who knew how to do it best. It made me wonder when it was we started to think that we weren’t good enough, just as we were, to raise children. But it didn’t matter: no one could afford it anymore. There were too many other things to pay for, too many other things to do.
It struck me that the corps raised newbies to be good workers, not necessarily to be good people. I thought about it. The SyndicEnts in New Spanaway weren’t people at all, not in the fullest sense of the word, yet the people of Kindu, at Matessa’s party, at the dock on that river of luminescent flowers, they certainly were people, wonderful people. Kind, expansive, creative. Yet Matessa wasn’t one of them anymore; she had been altered, diminished, made pliable and docile, less than herself: an unthinkable crime. But that crime made it possible for her to live forever. And so my thoughts went, circling and circling and finding no rest.
Eventually I came to realize that we couldn’t stay sitting there forever, although I wanted to—to simply sit, watch and absorb. We got out handkerchiefs, blew our noses and wiped our eyes. The amazing thing about crying is that it really does address grief. Somehow squirting out some salt water makes your chest feel better. I wonder if anyone has ever figured out how it works.
Archie called to the teacher, “Ma’am?”
“Yes?”
“We haven’t been in Nazareth in quite a while. We were looking for a place to stay. Is Mrs. Fogarty stil
l running her boarding house?”
“Her daughter runs it now, but she’s still there. We keep trying to get her to retire and let one of us take care of her, but she won’t hear of it. She’s just as independent as she can be.” She smiled.
“Is that right? Is it still in the same place?”
“No reason to move it. Just on the other side of the river.”
We set off, but in a different country than I had been in just moments before: a country where people spent the few decades allotted to them raising children, knowing those children, too, had only a few decades to live. They did it all in the hope and belief that they and their children would go to a better place when they died. It struck me again that everyone here died. They died. They lived for a little while and then they stopped living. All those beautiful children I had just seen would be dust in only a few short years. And their children and their children, generation after generation until the end of time.
My wife appeared before me. My heart stopped. She was young and healthy, radiant and serene. No, she was radiant and kind of feisty, like she’d always been. She spoke to me. She told me that the children were with her now, that they were fine, they were happy. I wanted to ask if she was happy, but I couldn’t get a breath to speak. I wanted to ask her where she was, if my father was there, my sister, my mo– my mo– I couldn’t. She smiled at me. I was unworthy of her smile. She smiled again. I was still unworthy. I tried to reach out to her, but my arms were dead, inert. Did she look sad? I couldn’t tell, but she had to leave. She turned, glanced back over her shoulder, and ...
“Mo? Mo, are you all right? Mo!”
“What?” Steel had cupped my face in her palms. She was looking into my eyes. Archie and Alice were behind her. “No, I’m okay.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m okay.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m okay.”
“You kind of faded out on us.”
“I’m okay. I— uh—” I couldn’t think of how to explain. “I’m okay.”
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