by Tim Lebbon
String looks at me, then his face splits into an infectious smile. I feel myself mimicking him, and it appears that Tiarnan was born grinning. I look at Jade. She smiles back at me, but I still don’t know her quite well enough to read the expression. I wonder once more whether everything bad has happened, or if there are still terrible things left for me to see.
“That’s true, Gabe,” he says. “Because I’m going to cure you.”
v
An hour later, when I am feeling stronger, String takes me on a walking tour of the village. It is larger than I first thought, stretching back along the course of the shallow valley and into a ravine formed by a small stream. The waters have long gone, but the streambed seems fertile and lush. Vegetables and fruit grow in profusion. I taste my first red-berries in years. String tells me it is the fertiliser they use.
There are hundreds of people here, going about their daily routine with a calm assurance. Some huts serve as meeting places or stores, but most of the people appear to live in tents, either self-serving or abutting old cars, lorries and buses. I see no active motor vehicle of any kind. Some of the residents throw a curious glance my way, but seem to sense why I am here — perhaps it shows in my tired walk, my hopeful eyes. They turn away again, though I cannot tell whether it is from respect or simple disinterest. I wonder how many people like me they see. I ask String, and the answer surprises me more than it really should.
“Most of them are people like you. Or they were, until I cured them.”
I become more aware of the layout of the colony, and realise that it is far more established and self-sufficient that I first assumed. The glass moat merely encircles the front portion of the village, ending where sudden cliffs rise from the ground and soar towards the sun. The bulk of the dwellings and other buildings exist further into the ravine, sheltered from both the sun, and casually prying eyes, by the sheer cliffs on both sides.
“We’ve been here a long time,” String says. “We’ve created quite a little oasis here for ourselves. Not just one of food and water, but ... well, I like to think of it as an oasis of life, an enclave of what little civilisation remains.” He smiles sadly, and for the first time I really believe how genuine he is. “Where do you come from?”
The sudden question startles me. “Britain.”
“I’m from the Dominican Republic. Ever been there?”
“No, of course not. Isn’t that where...?”
String is still staring directly at me, as though he can read the constant unease in my face. “Voodoo? No, that’s Haiti. Different country. Though I believe some of my ancestors were Haitians.” He leaves it at that, though my query feels unanswered.
“What state is Britain in?” he asks. The change of subject distracts me, and I cannot believe that he does not know. He seems the sort of man who knows everything.
“Britain is dissolving.” The word appears unbidden, but it suits perfectly what I am trying to say. “It’s regressing. The army has taken control in many places. Rumour has it there is no central government anymore.” I think of my last few days there, making my way to Southampton through a countryside ripped apart by flaming villages and sporadic, random battles. At first, I had thought the gunfire was army units taking on looters and thieving parties, but then I saw that they were really fighting each other.
“On my last day there, I saw a woman raped in the street my three men. One after the other. It was terrible. But the worst thing wasn’t the crime itself, but the fact that the woman stood up, brushed herself down and walked away. As if she was used to it. As if...it was the norm. Isn’t that just gruesome?”
“It’s a sad new world,” String says. We stroll for a few seconds, each lost in our own thoughts, most of them dark. “What of the culture?” he asks
“What do you mean?”
String stops walking, smoothing his shirt. He is not sweating. I am soaked. I wonder whether it is my Sickness bleeding the goodness from me, or whether String is so used to the sun that he no longer perspires. “The culture; the history; tradition. The soul of the place. What of that now?”
I suddenly feel sad. I wish Della was here with us, I am certain that she and String would talk forever and never become bored or disillusioned. “It’s gone,” I say.
String nods. I am sure he already knew. “I thought so. That cannot happen.” He motions for me to follow him and we walk towards the cliff face, passing into the shadow of the mountain. He starts climbing the scree slope without pause, and I suddenly wonder whether he intends to haul himself to the top. I look up, see the thin wedge of blue sky high above, reminding me of that first day in Jade’s courtyard.
“Here,” he says. I look. String is standing at a split in the rock, a crevasse that could easily be the doorway to a cave. Its entrance looks like a swollen vulva, and I wonder whether it is man-made. I also ponder what is inside, in the womb of the rock, hidden in shadows. As I near String he holds out his hands, halting me.
“Gabe, Jade brought you here. She’s a good woman, though I’ve told her before she should leave this dying place. She’s too independent to join us here, more’s the pity.” He stands framed by the cave entrance; his skin shines in the shadows as if possessed of an inner light. I feel completely insubstantial. “I’m going to cure you. You can be assured of that, though I know that until it’s done you probably won’t allow yourself to believe me. But I cannot cure everyone. There’s not enough medicine for the billion people with the Sickness. And there really aren’t that many people who I think deserve curing.”
I go to say something, but he waves me down.
“I’ve already decided that you’re worthy. Jade is a good judge of character. But we’re only a small community, and we treasure what we have. We have to. Because we have treasures. Do you have faith?”
“Yes,” I reply without thinking. He has a way of springing questions without warning, the only way to find an honest answer.
“In what?”
I think of Della; not only my utter faith in her goodness and knowledge, but also what she said to me. If you know someone’s faith, you know their soul...You may need it one day. “In a friend.”
“What’s her name?”
“Della.” I am not surprised that he knew the sex of my friend, He reminds me of Della in many ways, and she would have known.
He asks no more. I feel that I am about to swoon, but String is there before my body can react to the thought. He grabs me around the shoulders, and his touch seems to strengthen me. I have the unsettling certainty that he knows everything about me, understands that my feelings for Della lie way beyond simple friendship or even love. He knows my soul. But I am not worried, I have no fear. I think he deserves to know.
He points to the cave. “I’m going to take you in there, and show you some things. They’re things I show everyone I cure, once, but never again. They’re precious, you see, and precious things are coveted. Especially in the shit new world we inhabit. And ironically, that’s why I’m showing you. So that you know how special what we have here is. So you know that knowledge of good things shouldn’t always be shared, because too many bad things can dilute good things. Do you understand?”
I nod. He confuses me, his words twist and turn into obscure, half-seen truths. But I also understand him, fully, and it pleases me to think that there are still the likes of him living on our dying world.
“I can’t deny the power there is in me,” he says. “You may think I’m some sort of ... magician? Witch doctor? I’m none of those things. In the old days, before the Ruin, I may have been called charismatic. But now, I’m a funnel for a power of a more fundamental kind. The real magic, my friend, is here.” He stamps on the ground, coughing up a haze of dust around his legs. He squats, grabs a handful of the dried soil and looks at it almost reverently. “The power of the greatest magic flows through my fingers with the dust.” The breeze carries trails of dust from his hand and into the cave entrance, like wraiths showing us the way. “The po
wer of Time; the immortality of Gaia.”
I feel frightened, but enlivened. The Sickness sends a warm flush into me, but for once my body combats it, cooling the fever as if the atmosphere of the cave already surrounds me. String possesses me with his words, and I feel no repulsion, no desires to flee. My skin tingles with a delicious anticipation. I wonder what is in the cave, and I am sure that it is beyond anything I can imagine.
“This is holy ground, Gabe,” String says. “I don’t mean religious-holy. I don’t care for religion, and have none save my own. Similarly, you have your own faith, and that’s how things should be. But this site is powerful. It has a holiness that precedes any form of organised, preached religion. It has the power of Nature. It is the site of a temple, a shrine of rock and dust and water and sky that pays constant, eternal homage to Nature itself. See, up there.” He points to the strips of sky between the cliffs.
I look up and see the birds there, circling, drifting on up-drafts of warm air from the ravine. I sigh and feel any remaining tension leave me, sucked into the sky by the soporific movement of the birds, swallowed by the sight of their gentle movement.
“The temple is a place of faith, worship of the cosmos. The site of a temple was often ascribed by the flights of birds, their cries, their circling. As if they knew more than man of the powers of creation. And why shouldn’t they? Man has long distanced himself from the truth, even though there are those who profess to seek it. He distances himself even more by worshipping gods who suit him, gods who tell him that he is set above the animals, and they are his to lord over. Man has denied Nature. That’s why he no longer knows true holiness. But the birds, now. See the birds. They know.
“This is Nature’s temple. Come inside. Let me show you wonders.”
* * *
PART FOUR: FROM BAD FLESH
i
We enter a tunnel. It smells damp and musty, the walls sprouting petrified fungi and lank mosses. True darkness never falls before light intrudes from above. It is cool this deep in the rock, and the air seems to possess something more of the climate I am used to: moisture. I breathe in deeply, relishing the coolness on my lungs, hearing String laugh quietly to himself in front of me.
The floors are uneven and the ceiling low enough in places to make me stoop. String is short, so he can walk through normally. A smell reaches us from further in, a waft of something familiar yet long lost carried on warmer currents of air like dragon’s breath. I cannot quite place the scent, but I do not feel inclined to ask String. He is going to show me, anyway, and I am almost enjoying the adventurous mystery.
Looking up, I can make out where the light is coming from — natural vent-holes that reach high up to the top of the cliff — and in doing so I miss the abrupt change from tunnel to cave. I stop, stunned by the sheer size of what lays before me.
The cave is massive. I can see that it has been hacked from the rock by crude tools, their marks still peppering the wall and ceiling like the timeless signatures of those who did the deed. It could be recent or ten thousand years old, there is no real way of telling. There are no vents in the ceiling here, but the walls are inlaid with a strange glowing material which gives out a muted light. It looks like glass, feels like metal, and it’s warm to the touch as if heated from within. String stands in the centre of the space, smiling and staring around as if wallowing in the grandeur of whatever has been achieved here. And just what is that? What is the smell that tickles my memory once more, encourages me to silence, comforts me, conjures a million facts from a million minds other than mine?
“Books,” String says. He holds out his arms, indicating the hundreds of boxes stacked around the edges of the cavern. “About two hundred thousand in all. Mainly factual, though some fiction. We want out descendants to know our dreams, don’t you think?”
I cannot talk. It is not simply the sight of so many boxes, but the effort that had obviously gone in to bringing them here. And not only that, but the thought and experience and life that has been poured into making every book here. Billions of hours of struggle, work, strife, pained effort in creating, writing, producing and then dragging these books through a dying world to build a library for the future. It is staggering. It is so huge that I can barely comprehend it.
String has a proud glint in his eyes, the look of a father for his adoring children. “Philosophy, biology, psychology, botany; maps, travels books, cultural works, histories; stories, poems, novels, plays; even some religious works — much against my better judgement, but who am I to chose what people will believe in the future?”
“You’ve got it all here, in your hands,” I manage to say at last. The enormity of what is here makes me slur. “You can shape the future from this place.” For the first time I am truly frightened of String, this man who Della only vaguely heard of and who now holds my soul, as well as my fate, in the palm of his hand, to do with as he will.
“Not only this place,” he says. “And it’s not me who will shape it. There will be people in the future — two years, fifty years, who knows — who will feel the time is right. Now ... to tell the truth, it’s still all in decline. I’ve merely brought these things together, protected them from the random destruction that’s sweeping the globe. It’s happened before, you know? The Dark Ages were darker than many people imagine.”
“So we’re heading for a new Dark Age?”
String sits on one of the boxes, lifts a flap and brings out a book. It is a gardening guide, splashes of forgotten blossoms decorating the cover and catching the strange light from the walls. “Maybe we’re already there. But when it’s over, I hope it won’t take long to get light again. I hope all this will help.”
“Who are you?” I ask. The question seems to take him by surprise, and I feel a brief moment of satisfaction that I have tackled him at his own game.
“I’m String. I’m just a lucky man who found something wonderful. I’m doing what I can with it, because ... well, just because.”
“You found all this?” I say, aghast. “You must have. No man could do all this.”
He shakes his head, a wry smile playing across his lips. “Faith can move mountains,” he says, and for once I see that the saying can be literal. “I dragged all this here. Some I had with me when I arrived, most of it I went out and recovered. Before it was destroyed.”
“I saw them burning books in the streets in England,” I say quietly, the memory of the voracious flames eating at my heart. I remember thinking that the fire had always been there, waiting for its chance to pounce on our knowledge and reduce it to so much dust, restrained only by whatever quaint notion of civilisation we entertained. In the end, all it took was a little help from us. Wilful self-destruction.
I come to my senses. “So what else is it you want to show me?”
He nods to the far end of the cavern, where another dark tunnel entrance stand inviting us enter. “I found it soon after the crash,” he says. “I crawled in here to die. Then I realised I was in a very special place — had the power of life in my hands, quite literally — and the rest just happened.”
“Crash?” Disparate shreds of his story seem to be flowing together, images from the last few hours intrude, as if they mean to tell me something before he speaks.
“I was a Lord,” he says. “I flew a Lord Ship. As far as I know, I’m the last one left alive.” He stands and heads towards the dark mouth. I follow.
ii
“Some people are not what they seem,” Della said. It was cold, the chill November winds bringing unseasonable blizzards from the North and coating Britain in a sheen of ice. Thousands would die this winter, freezing, starving, giving in. The national grid had failed completely six months previously. It had been a severe inconvenience then, rather than life threatening. Now, though, as frost found its way into homes and burrowed into previously warm bones, it was mourned more than ever. Only the week before, in Nottingham, an old theatre full of people had burned to the ground. They had been huddled around a bon
fire on the stage, like a performing troupe acting a play about Neanderthal Man. The heat of their final performance melted the snow in the surrounding streets, and when it re-froze the local kids began using it as a skating rink. Surprising, how well children adapt, as if they’re a blank on which the reality of the moment can imprint itself.
I handed her a dish of curry from the vat she constantly kept on the go above the gas fire. The smell had permeated the whole house, ground its way into furniture and carpets and Della herself. I loved it; I loved her. I never told her.
“Hmm,” she mumbled, “not enough powder. Next time, more powder.”
I nodded my assent, hardly able to sit still with the acid that seemed to be eating away my tongue and lips. My chest felt warm. I had seen the discoloration there for the first time the week before, but I still had not told Della. It was as if telling her would confirm my worst fears to myself.
I had been told that the army was seen dumping bodies into a dry outdoor swimming pool and burning them. They’d even rigged up some sort of fuel pump, pouring petrol into the pool through the old water pipes. It meant that none of them had to get too near. I did not want to be one of those dead people, burnt in a pool, bodies boned by flames and whisked into clogged drains.
“Take old Marcus, for instance,” she continued. “You know Marcus?”
“The old guy who sits in the park pissing himself?”
“That’s right, the scruffy old tramp who lets kids kick him, lies under a bench because he’ll only fall off if he sleeps on it, eats grass and dandelions and blackberries and dead dogs.” She nodded. “Marcus was a pilot, years before the Ruin. He flew in the Gulf war. Did they teach you about that in school?” I nodded. Della shrugged as if surprised. “What do you think of him now?”
I could only be honest. “He’s an old tramp. I suppose ... I suppose every tramp is someone. Had a life before they took to the streets. Before, anyway.”