by Jinn, Bo
Two guards were waiting at the truck’s rear and the one bearing the mark of higher rank stepped forward with a gait, gun pressed against his chest. The dark visor retracted from the narrow slit over his eyes. His voice robotic through the amp of his mask: “Any extra cargo we should know about?”
Saul came up by Duke’s side.
“You may talk to me.”
“Who are you?” demanded the sergeant, eyes scowling.
“Martial Vartanian.”
The sergeant squared up, coming near enough to see the martial seal peeping out from under his collar. “Let’s see your signets.”
He obliged by removing his coat and rolling up the sleeves of his shirt.
When the blood-red signets flashed, the sergeant’s eyes enlarged behind his mask. The SG sergeant studied the signets closely and peered back up at him with a guarded glare, then turned and ambled up to the shutter over the truck’s rear. “The scanners picked up some suspicious cargo,” he said. “Is there anything we should know about what you’ve got here, Martial?”
The sergeant’s eyes cantered on him, thinning with suspicion.
His reply was a bow of the head and a reciprocal glare.
The SG sergeant turned to his subordinate.
“Open the back.”
Duke hobbled up to the truck’s side. His inward-curled hands swung ape-like with his gait and the burly ex-patriot banged a heavy fist on the switch. The shutter started to rise. Beams of light passed over the stacks of food supplies as the SGs flashed their torches and climbed up onto the deck of the dark carriage and squeezed past a column of packaged rations, tearing a hole into one of the packs.
“Canny there, yeh fuck…” Duke growled under his breath.
His gut squirmed wherever the searching lights drifted. The loud jangle and growl of a starting big rig in the next gate caused his head to jerk around with a start and he looked back just in time to see their lights stray right, then quickly jerk back … and stop … and fix on a single point.
“What is this?” he heard one of the SGs mutter.
The circle of white torchlight settled on a small form, pressed up against the inner wall. The light veered up, over the head of the little figure and the mess of blonde hair on its head. The circle of light narrowed. A cold hand reached out and grabbed firmly on a tuft of hair. The torchlight switched off.
“What the hell is this for?”
The SG returned to the rear of the truck holding up a dressed-up, 3-foot, blonde-haired mannequin – one of many inside the truck’s carriage.
“Sale,” replied Duke.
“Sale…” The sergeant tossed the mannequin aside.
“I’s a niche merket.”
“They are customs-approved,” Saul interjected.
The sergeant paused skeptically, then looked over his shoulder as his subordinate came from behind. “...It’s clean.”
Duke thumped down on the switch just as the SGs dismounted and the shutter fell shut with a loud rattle. The sergeant ran a scanner over the registration plates, pressed down on a switch in his gear and the red light over the security gate turned green.
The gates opened.
Economic necessity was the only cause for crossovers between the two worlds. Leaving the inner city any other way other than by the security checkpoints would invariably lead to capture long before some would-be fugitive could reach the limits of martial jurisdiction. Thus it was deemed – in every practical sense – impossible for citizens of either world to cross over to the other… All but for one little girl who lay noiseless, huddled deep inside the carriage, concealed among a host of fiberglass mannequins and draped over by a lattice of old bedding.
“Guid thing ah dinnae throw the wee things ou’,” murmured Duke as the doors of the truck slammed shut and the engine gurgled to a restart. “…Haste ye back yeh basterts.”
The green light turned red as the truck rolled through the gate and up the tunnel to rejoin the outflow of traffic. Saul exhaled a sigh of relief and nodded off just as the daylight burst in through the windshield again. A few kilometers on, they broke off the arterial road and were soon on the serrated paths meandering through the rural regions of outer Sodom.
He awoke as the sun broke over the saddle of the two mountains at the end of the valley. They rose higher into the woodland, leaving a brown fog in their path. Gravel and dirt crackled under the wheels and the light pierced through in thin white lances through the meshes of surrounding trees, broken from time to time by the fluttering of a startled bird. The winding dirt paths continued deep and long until the roads eventually leveled out, whereupon they turned into a narrow path.
Tree branches scraped the sides of the truck, rustled and shattered with loud, tearing snaps. A short distance onward and they emerged from the carnage of trees into a small clearing. The engine droned as they squealed to a stop at the edge of a high plateau, overlooking the whole length of the great valley, and to the north, was the prodigious skyline of South Sodom.
The engine switched off. Duke let out a long, groaning fog of breath, scratched the thick beard around his heavy, neckless jaw, and the varicose veins in his neck bulged as he yawned, wide-mouthed. “Here we are,” he announced after a brief silence. “…Fair sight isna it?”
The intermission was brief.
“Right. Lits git her out.”
Duke unbuckled the seatbelt. Four firm thumps and the doors whinged open.
Saul climbed up into the carriage as the shutter rose. The stacks of cargo boxes and vacuum-sealed food had toppled in the rough ride and he cleared a path through the deck. At the very back of the carriage, a sheet was draped over a stack of the prostrate mannequins. He pulled the sheet away and one of the pale little mannequin faces opened its eyes.
“Are you alright?” he asked.
“Yeah,” said Naomi. “…I kept quiet like you said.”
“Come,” he said carrying her to her feet. “You must see this.”
Naomi stopped on the lip of the carriage with her arms outstretched for him to take her. He came to the edge of a cliff, facing the valley. The sunlight shone upon the pale crests of her face and set the moonstone eyes alight with the view of a deep, wide and iridescent sea of green and russet. The shoals of birds circled the bottomless crevasse below.
“Wow,” she whispered. “It’s… beautiful.”
A breeze swept up from below sending her radiant hairs fluttering like gossamers. He lowered her to the ground. She wandered around in awe and her bright eyes enlarged with sudden, wild excitement.
Just across the small clearing, two small trees flanked with green- and red-speckled hobblebushes bowed into each other, forming an arched gateway into the nearby wood. A swarm of fireflies floated like animated stardust over the ingress of hanging vines.
Naomi toddled forward, mesmerised.
A lone butterfly with rainbow wings emerged from between the branches, fluttered down like a falling leaf, settled and then came toward her.
“Naomi…”
She was mute with fascination, following the lone butterfly with gaping eyes as it circled and then returned through the hanging vines over the gateway. Summoned by the butterfly’s mystical dance, she was drawn in slowly at first, then stopped and, in the next moment, rushed forward with a gasp.
“Naomi!”
She disappeared into the wood, the vines swinging about in her wake.
“Ah, let the lass go. No harm’ll come to her here.”
Old Duke clipped off the end of a petit corona and hobbled out to the edge of the plateau, casting his sights east along the valley. He straightened out his old back with a series of sharp cracks and a painful groan. Thick clouds of smoke streamed from his dry lips and followed the wind to the sun. His heavy head rose with the hull of his great chest and his breaths were weighty, wheezing and wearied. He had never looked so old.
“Megstie me,” he sighed, “long syne since ah bin i’ these parts. Fair sight.”
Saul
came up by old Duke’s side and took out a roll of notes from his inner pockets.
“I thank you for this,” he said.
Duke eyed the roll of dimitars and, somewhat grudgingly, took the money.
“Aye, well,” old Duke sighed, “wadnae dane it if ah warn’ deesp’ret.”
“Desperate?”
“Aye.” Duke drew from his cigar and his brow knotted gravely. “Dinnae think the mess isnae ginnae last much longer. Nae mo’ money comin’ in from the civils … Commission dinnae give a toss nae more n’onie ither bodie. These fawk – they’ll jist leave any puir bastards teh die out n’ clean up ‘fore the rats come.”
“That is the way of this world.”
“Aye… Nae mercy f’ th’ weak.”
Duke’s voice declined into an incomprehensible grumble. He huffed and puffed. He looked a broken man, a defeated man. One could see the last vestiges of the old world dying its slow death with the old ex-patriot, the last of a bygone era in which life, like war, had been a struggle for forlorn self-superseding causes once more binding than any law of man or nature. Never had the image of the lost struggle appeared plainer to him.
”Well,” said Duke, holding up the roll of dimitars and tucking them away, “this should give us a wee bi’ more time a’least.”
He hummed wistfully and blew another cloud of smoke, rubbed his grizzled beard and stared into the sun. “Ah’ll be waitin’ when yer ready teh leave, lad,” he murmured, somberly. “Nae hurry burry.”
He waited silently, a moment of commiseration. Then, seeing that old Duke might prefer to be left alone, turned and went after Naomi.
He passed under the arching tree branches and swept away the hanging vines like the strings of a beaded curtain. The chaff of fireflies dispersed from his path. When the last curtain of vines swept away, he stopped, awed.
He stood at the brink of a natural temple, received by the solitary warble of a waking wren. The wind stilled and the air enriched with lilies of the valley. Morning dew drizzled from the green branches and sparkled in sunbeams spilling through a vast dome of interlocking trees, and the lofty trees roofed a serene pool, surrounded by knolls and ridges, ascending higher and higher like the walls of a pantheon. Above the enclosure, the clear blue sky shone through an oculus of golden red and green and mirrored in the glass-water.
A faint voice stole upon the peace: “…I had a dream last night.”
He looked to his right. Naomi was crouched over the pool. A gentle ripple pulsed across the still water from the tip of her gently twirling finger.
He approached her, quietly, and listened: “… I dreamt about Dad and Mom… I think you were there too…”
The detritus crunched underfoot and the twirling finger rose from the glass water. She turned and flashed her radiant smile, then looked away, lifted her closed eyes up to the oculus, whispering “I have to go now. Saul is here … Thanks again for taking care of us… Tell Mommy and Daddy that I love them, wherever they are.”
She opened her eyes again and stood and came toward him.
“I can leave you alone…”
“No, it’s OK.”
Naomi set her sights high up, following the sunbeams to their source.
“Saul.” She lifted a pointing finger. “Can we go up there?”
He followed the aim of the finger up a sloping ridge. A natural stairway appeared to have been carved into the moss-covered rock. The stairway was gilded with light and the top of the ridge was concealed behind the treetops, but it looked surmountable.
He carried her and her arms instinctively latched round his neck. He lifted her up to the edge of each crest of rock before climbing himself and repeated the process until they were past the trees and stopped on the very peak of the ridge, high above the valley.
“Wow… it’s am-a-zing!” she marveled.
“Do not stand too close to the edge.”
Behind them, the woodland was spread out like an ocean of green speckled with the red and gold of the imminent season. Ahead, the great valley stretched out to the Sodom skyline and an airship sailed overhead and became a solitary fly among a swarm, hovering about the great Milidome in the centre.
They sat upon a large throne of rock on the edge of the ridge. Naomi settled on his lap. After a long and mystical silence, he regarded her with inquiry.
“So,” he said, “has your friend told you his name yet?”
“No…”
Her answer was as a shamed confession. The sidelong glance of shame on the pale little face made his intent seem more roguish than he had wanted. He immediately hated himself for asking.
“Well…” he said, “maybe he is afraid.”
“No, I don’t think that’s it,” she replied. “I don’t think he has a name.”
“Oh … How is that?” he asked, with sudden and genuine interest.
“Well, Mommy and Daddy gave me my name,” the girl said. “But, I don’t think he has a mommy and daddy.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I guess he’s like… the phoenix.”
“The phoenix?”
“Yeah,” she said. “You know, the phoenix? Mom told me about them once: Mom said that a phoenix has no mommy or daddy. She said that for a phoenix to be born, it has to die. So, I guess, maybe he’s like that, because phoenixes don’t have names either.”
He smiled at her vaguely.
“Maybe,” he said.
There was a solemn silence.
“You … talk to him,” he said.
“Mhmmm.” The little head bobbled.
“What do you talk about?”
“Lots of things.”
“Does he talk to you too?”
She paused, thoughtfully.
“Yeah,” she said. “But it’s different…”
She spoke with such extraordinary frankness about the mysterious friendship that for an absurd moment it actually seemed as though she were talking about someone real.
“How is it different?” he asked.
“Hmm… Well,” she pondered, “…it’s not with words.”
“No words?”
She shook her head.
“How do you understand one another?”
The thoughtful silence was longer this time. Then the girl looked up at him and spoke, and the words rolled off her tongue: “You know how sometimes you want to say something to somebody, but you can’t because you can’t think of the words, and you wish that they could feel what you wanted to say, so that they could understand without the words?”
He paused, and after long consideration, was shocked to find that he understood her perfectly.
“Yes,” he said, with mild disbelief.
“Well… I guess I can do that.”
Naomi looked wistfully away once again.
“Where is he – your friend?” He surprised himself with the sincerity of his question.
“I think he’s everywhere,” she replied.
“How can he be everywhere?”
“…I don’t know.”
Then, he asked: “Could you show him to me?”
“I don’t think so.”
He was oddly riled by her answer.
“How can I know your friend if I cannot see him the same way I see you?”
There was another long and thoughtful silence. She hummed.
“Well… he’s like…” She slowly raised her hands in front of her face and stared at them, bathed in the sunlight. “I guess he’s like … light,” she said, finally.
“Light?”
“Yeah … Light can be everywhere too, right?” she said. “And you can’t really see light. It has to shine on something else … right?” Naomi held her sunlit hands up in the air. “See. I – am – light,” she smiled.
A shudder of reverence rocked him to the soul.
“…I see,” he said.
They fell silent again.
“I didn’t know the city was so big,” said Naomi, looking out beyond the valley. “Saul, where�
��s home?”
He lifted his head and set his sights toward the view of South Sodom, seeking out the edges of Haven District. He raised a finger pointed the northeast.
“Over there.”
The girl rose to her knees and put her hand over her forehead, straining to see.
“It is far away…”
“I think I see it,” she remarked. “Hey!” she burst with sudden excitement, startling him. “I have an idea! This could be … our ‘place’.”
“Our … place?” he repeated.
The gay smile disappeared from her face and the little head hung.
“It’s silly,” she pouted.
He lifted her head up gently by the chin.
“Tell me.”
She looked away bashfully and started swinging her dangling feet back and forth.
“Well...” she said. “Close to the other city – where I was before – there was a place just like this … It was high up in the woods over the city. Dad used to take me there. You could see the whole city from there, too, just like this.”
Her shimmering eyes widened with her melancholy smile. “One day,” she continued, “we were up there and, well … Dad and me made a promise…”
She paused again. “We promised that if something ever happened to us – if we ever got lost – that we would always come back to the ‘place.’ And that we would wait at the place until we found each other again,” she said. “… I know… It’s silly.”
“No,” he said sternly.
Naomi looked up at him and her smile wilted again.
“Alright,” he nodded. “This will be our … place.”
She beamed.
“Really?”
He palmed the top of her golden little head.
“If you are ever lost, you will come here. I will wait for you.”
“And I’ll wait for you.”
“Yes.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
She safely nestled her head in his chest for sanctuary.
They remained on the peak of the ridge until the sun climbed above the mountain top and Naomi had been quiet a long time before he looked down again. The crown of her head appeared so much more ashen than he remembered. She appeared to have fallen asleep. Then, she suddenly coughed two quick successive coughs, then three long ones, then four.