Luka and the Fire of Life

by Salman Rushdie

  “We must be going now,” Nobodaddy interjected, ushering Luka, Bear, and Dog along the riverbank. To the Fire Bug he said, politely, “Farewell, bright spirit.”

  “Not so fast,” the Fire Bug blazed. “I sense something smoldering here, under the surface. Somebody here, namely that individual, there”—and it pointed a little finger of flame at Luka—“said something about a certain Fire whose very existence is supposed to be a Secret, and somebody else here, namely myself, wants to know how this other Somebody found out about it, and what this Somebody’s plans might be.”

  Nobodaddy placed himself between Luka and the Bug. “That will do, you Insignificant Inflammation,” he said in an altogether sterner voice. “Be off with you! Sizzle till you fizzle!” He took off his Panama hat and waved it in the incandescent insect’s direction. The Fire Bug flared up, offended. “Don’t trifle with me,” it cried. “Don’t you know you’re playing with Fire?” Then it burst into a bright cloud, singed Luka’s eyebrows slightly, and vanished.

  “Well, that hasn’t made things any easier,” said Nobodaddy. “All we need is for that dratted Bug to raise the Fire Alarm.”

  “The Fire Alarm?” asked Luka. Nobodaddy shook his head. “If they know you’re coming, your goose is cooked, that’s all.”

  “That’s not good,” said Luka, looking so dejected that Nobodaddy actually put an arm around his shoulder. “The better news is that Fire Bugs don’t last long,” he consoled the young fellow. “They blaze brightly, but they burn out young. Also, they blow with the wind. This way, that way; it’s in their nature. No constancy of purpose. So it isn’t very likely that he’d make it all the way to warn …” and here Nobodaddy’s voice trailed off into silence.

  “To warn whom?” Luka insisted.

  “The forces that must not be warned,” Nobodaddy replied. “The flame-breathing monsters and fire-starter maniacs who wait upriver. The ones you have to get past, or be destroyed.”

  “Oh,” said Luka bitterly. “Is that all? I thought you meant there might be a serious problem.”

  The River of Time, which had been flowing silently along when Luka first set eyes on it, was now bustling with activity. All manner of strange creatures seemed to be afloat upon it and bobbing up from below the surface—strange, but familiar to Luka from his father’s stories: long, fat, blind, whitish Worms who, as Nobodaddy reminded him, were capable of making Holes in the very fabric of Time itself, diving below the surface of the Present to reemerge at an impossibly distant point in the Past or Future, those mist-shrouded zones which Luka’s gaze could not penetrate, and pale, deadly Sickfish, who fed upon the lifelines of the diseased.

  Running along the bank was a white rabbit wearing a waistcoat and looking worriedly at a clock. Appearing and disappearing at various points on both banks was a dark blue British police telephone booth, out of which a perplexed-looking man holding a screwdriver would periodically emerge. A group of dwarf bandits could be seen disappearing into a hole in the sky. “Time travelers,” said Nobodaddy in a voice of gentle disgust. “They’re everywhere these days.”

  In the middle of the river all sorts of bizarre contraptions—some with bat-like wings that didn’t seem to fly, others with giant metal machineries aboard like the innards of an old Swiss watch—were circling uselessly, to the rage of the men and women aboard them. “Time machines are not as easily built as people seem to think,” Nobodaddy explained. “As a result many of those would-be intrepid explorers just get stuck in Time. Also, on account of the odd relationship between Time and Space, the people who do manage to time-jump sometimes space-jump at the same time and end up”—and here his voice grew darkly disapproving—“in places where they simply don’t belong. Over there, for example,” he said as a raucous DeLorean sports car roared into view from nowhere, “is that crazy American professor who can’t seem to stay put in one time, and, I must say, there is an absolute plague of killer robots from the future being sent to change the past. Sleeping there under that banyan tree”—he jerked a thumb to indicate which tree he meant—“is a certain Hank Morgan of Hartford, Connecticut, who was accidentally transported one day back to King Arthur’s Court, and stayed there until the wizard Merlin put him to sleep for thirteen hundred years. He was supposed to wake up back in his own time, but look at the lazy fellow! He’s still snoring away, and has missed his Slot. Goodness knows how he will get home now.”

  Luka noticed that Nobodaddy was not as transparent as he had been a while earlier, and also that he was sounding and acting more and more like the overtalkative Rashid Khalifa, whose head was always full of all sorts of nonsense. “Time,” he was singing under his breath, “like an ever-rolling stream, bears all its sons away.…” That did it. That was all Luka was prepared to hear. As if it wasn’t bad enough that this, this creature from the Nether World was slowly filling up with more and more of his beloved father, which meant, of course, that Rashid Khalifa, Asleep in his bed at home, was getting emptier and emptier; and that as Nobodaddy’s Rashid-ness increased Luka was confusingly filled with emotions of fondness for him, even of love; but now the strange entity in his father’s vermilion bush shirt and Panama hat had actually started singing in Rashid’s unbearable singing voice, the second-worst singing voice in the known world, second only to the fabled tuneless tones of Princess Batcheat of Gup. And what a song to choose! “They fly forgotten, as a dream—”

  “We’re wasting Time,” Luka interrupted Nobodaddy angrily. “Instead of singing that stupid hymn, how about suggesting a way for us to travel up into the Fog of the Past and find what we’re here to find … i.e., the Dawn of Time, the Lake of Wisdom, the Mountain of Knowledge, and the—”

  “Shh,” said Bear, the dog, and Dog, the bear, together. “Don’t say it aloud.” Luka flushed a deep red at his near-mistake. “You know what I mean,” he finished, much less commandingly than he had intended.

  “Hmm,” said Nobodaddy thoughtfully. “Why don’t we use, for example, that incredibly powerful-looking, off-the-road-worthy, river-worthy, strong-as-a-tank, and possibly even jet-propelled, eight-wheeled-slash-flat-bottomed amphibian vehicle moored to that little pier over there?”

  “That wasn’t there a minute ago,” said Dog, the bear.

  “I don’t know how he did it,” said Bear, the dog, “but I don’t like the look of it.”

  Luka knew that he couldn’t afford to pay attention to his friends’ worries, and marched down to the enormous craft, whose name, written in bold letters on the stern, was the ARGO. His father was fading as Nobodaddy solidified, and as a result, the quest had become even more urgent than before. Luka’s head was full of questions to which he did not know the answers, difficult questions about the nature of Time itself. If Time was a River, eternally flowing—and here it was, here was the River of Time!—did that mean that the Past would always be there and the Future, too, already existed? True, he couldn’t see them, because they were wreathed in mists—which could also be clouds, or fogs, or smoke—but surely they had to be there, otherwise how could the River exist? But on the other hand, if Time flowed like a River then surely the Past would have flowed away already, in which case how could he go back into it to find the Fire of Life, which burned in the Mountain of Knowledge, which stood by the Lake of Wisdom, which was illumined by the Dawn of Days? And if the Past had flowed away, then what was back there at the River’s source? And if the Future already existed, then perhaps it didn’t matter what he, Luka, did next, because no matter how hard he was trying to save his father’s life, maybe Rashid Khalifa’s fate had already been decided. But if the Future could be shaped, in part, by his own actions, then would the River change its course depending on what he did? What would happen to the story streams it contained? Would they start telling different stories? And which was true: (a) that people made history, and the River of Time in the World of Magic recorded their achievements, or (b) that the River made history, and people in the Real World were pawns in its eternal game? Which World was more
real? Who was finally in charge? Oh, and one more question, maybe the most pressing one of all: how was he going to control the Argo? He was a twelve-year-old boy who had never driven a car or stood at the helm of a motorboat; and Dog and Bear were no use, and Nobodaddy had stretched out on the deck, put his Panama hat over his face, and closed his eyes.

  “Okay,” thought Luka grimly, “how hard can it be?” He stared at the instruments on the bridge. There was this switch, which probably put the wheels down for driving on when the Argo was on land, or up when the Argo hit the water; and this button, which was pretty obviously green for “go,” and this one next to it, which was just as self-evidently red for “stop”; and this lever, which he should probably push forward to go forward, and maybe push farther forward to go faster; and this wheel, which would do the steering; and all those dials and counters and needles and gauges, which he could probably just ignore.

  “Hold on, everybody,” he announced. “Here goes.”

  Something then happened so rapidly that Luka was not entirely sure how or what it was, but an instant later the jet-propelled amphibian craft was flipping over and over in the middle of the great waterway and then they were all in the water and a whirlpool was sucking them down and Luka just had time to wonder whether he was about to be eaten by a Sickfish or other watery beast when he lost consciousness; and woke up a moment later back at the little pier, climbing into the Argo, thinking “How hard can it be?”—and the only sign that something had happened was that the counter in the top left-hand corner of his field of vision had gone down by one life: 998. Nobodaddy was snoozing on the deck of the Argo again, and Luka called out, “A little help?” But Nobodaddy didn’t move, and Luka understood this was something he would have to work out for himself. Perhaps those dials and gauges were more important than he had thought.

  On the second try he managed not to turn the Argo over, but he didn’t get far before the whirlpool started up and whirled the craft around and around. “What’s happening?” Luka yelled, and Nobodaddy lifted his Panama hat and replied, “It’s probably the Eddies.” But what were the Eddies? The Argo was spinning faster and faster, and in a minute it would be sucked down again. Nobodaddy sat up. “Hmm,” he said. “Yes. The Eddies are definitely in the neighborhood.” He looked down into the water, cupped his hands around his mouth, and shouted, “Nelson! Duane! Fisher! Stop playing now! Go torment somebody else!” But then the Argo was pulled underwater, and there was the blackout again, and they were back at the pier with the counter at 997. “Fish,” said Nobodaddy briefly. “Eddyfish. Small, speedy rogues. Causing whirlpools is their favorite sport.” “And what’s to be done about them?” Luka wanted to know. “You have to work out how it is,” Nobodaddy said, “that people manage to reach back into the Past.”

  “I guess … by remembering it?” Luka offered. “By not forgetting it?”

  “Very good,” said Nobodaddy. “And who is it that never forgets?”

  “An elephant,” said Luka, and that’s when his eye fell upon a pair of absurd creatures with duck-like bodies and large elephant heads who were bobbing about in the water not far from the Argo’s mooring. “And,” he said slowly, remembering, “here in the World of Magic, an Elephant Bird as well.”

  “Full marks,” Nobodaddy replied. “The Elephant Birds spend their lives drinking from the River of Time; nobody’s memories are longer than theirs. And if you want to travel up the River, Memory is the fuel you need. Jet propulsion will do you no good at all.”

  “Can they take us as far as the Fire of Life?” Luka asked.

  “No,” said Nobodaddy. “Memory will only get you so far, and no farther. But a long Memory will get you a long way.”

  It would be difficult, Luka realized, to ride on the Elephant Birds the way his brother, Haroun, had once ridden on a big, telepathic, mechanical hoopoe; for one thing, he wasn’t sure that Bear and Dog would be able to hold on. “Excuse me, Elephant Birds,” he called out, “would you be so good as to help us, please?”

  “Excellent manners,” said the larger of the two Elephant Birds. “That always makes such a difference.” He had a deep, majestic voice; obviously an Elephant Drake, Luka thought. “We can’t fly, you know,” said the Drake’s companion in ladylike tones. “Don’t ask us to fly you anywhere. Our heads are too heavy.”

  “That must be because you remember so much,” Luka said, and the Elephant Duck preened her feathers with the tip of her trunk. “He’s a flatterer, too,” she said. “Quite the little charmer.”

  “You’ll be wanting us to tow you upriver, no doubt,” said the Elephant Drake.

  “You needn’t look so surprised,” said the Elephant Duck. “We do follow the news, you know. We do try to keep up.”

  “It’s probably a good thing they don’t bother with the Present where you’re going,” added the Elephant Drake. “Up there they only interest themselves in Eternity. This may give you a helpful element of surprise.”

  “And if I may say so,” said the Elephant Duck, “you’re going to need all the help you can get.”

  A short while later the two Elephant Birds had been harnessed to the Argo and began pulling it smoothly upstream. “What about the Eddies?” Luka wondered. “Oh,” said the Elephant Drake, “no Eddyfish would dare trifle with us. It would be against the natural order of things. There is a natural order of things, you know.” His companion giggled. “What he means,” she explained to Luka, “is that we eat Eddyfish for breakfast.” “And lunch and dinner,” said the Elephant Drake. “So they give us a wide berth. Now then: where was it you wanted to go?—no, no, don’t remind me!—ah, yes, now I recall.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Insultana of Ott

  THE MISTS OF TIME were getting closer when the Argo passed a strange, sad land on the River’s right bank. Its territory was barred to River travelers by high barbed-wire fences, and when Luka did finally see a scary-looking border post, with its floodlights on high pylons and its tall reconnaissance towers containing lookout guards wearing mirrored sunglasses and carrying powerful military binoculars and automatic weapons, he was struck by a large sign reading YOU ARE AT THE FRONTIER OF THE RESPECTORATE OF I. MIND YOUR MANNERS. “What kind of a place is this?” he asked Nobodaddy. “It doesn’t look very Magical to me.”

  Nobodaddy’s expression contained a familiar mixture of amusement and scorn. “I’m sorry to say that the World of Magic is not immune to Infestations,” he said. “And this part of it has been overrun, in recent times, by Rats.”

  “Rats?” Luka cried in alarm, and now he realized what was wrong with those lookouts and border guards. They weren’t people at all, but giant rodents! Dog, the bear, growled angrily, but Bear, the dog, who was a gentle-hearted soul, looked upset. “Let’s move on,” he suggested quietly, but Luka shook his head. “I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m starving,” he said. “Rats or no Rats, we have to go ashore, because we all need something to eat. Well, all of us except you,” he added to Nobodaddy in an aside. Nobodaddy shrugged Rashid Khalifa’s familiar shrug and smiled Rashid Khalifa’s familiar smile and said, “Very well, if we must, we must. It’s been a while since I passed through the O-Fence.” He saw Luka’s frown and explained, “This barbed-wire contraption. The O-Fence goes all around the Respectorate of I—it gives the place, you could say, its I-dentity—and, as the sign warns you, many of its present occupants take Offense very sharply indeed.”

  “We don’t plan to be rude,” Luka said. “We just want lunch.”

  The four travelers entered the border post, leaving the Argo in the care of the Elephant Drake and Elephant Duck, who passed the time diving for Eddyfish and other morsels. Inside the border post, standing at a counter behind a locked metal grille, was a large gray rat in uniform: a Border Rat. “Papers,” it said in a squeaky, Ratty voice. “We don’t have any papers,” Luka honestly replied. The Border Rat went into a frenzy of screeches and squawks. “Absurd!” it finally yelled. “Everybody has papers of some sort. Tur
n out your pockets.” And so Luka emptied his pockets and found there, among the usual clutter of marbles, swap cards, elastic bands, and game chips, three sweets still in their wrappers and two small, folded paper airplanes. “I never heard anything so rude,” the Border Rat cried. “First he says he has no papers. Then it turns out he has papers. You’re lucky I’m the understanding kind. Hand over your papers and be grateful I’m in such a good mood.” Nobodaddy nudged Luka, who regretfully handed over the swap cards, the airplanes, and the orange sweets in their transparent wrapping. “Will that do?” he asked. “Only because I’m the forgiving type,” the Border Rat replied, pocketing the objects carefully. He unlocked the grille and allowed the travelers to pass through to the other side. “A word of warning,” he said. “Here in the Respectorate we expect visitors to behave. We’re very thin-skinned. If you prick us, we bleed, and then we make you bleed double: is that clear?”

  “Absolutely clear,” said Luka politely.

  “Absolutely clear, what?” the Border Rat screeched.

  “Absolutely clear, sir,” Nobodaddy answered. “Don’t worry, sir. We will most definitely mind our p’s and q’s. Sir.”

  “What about the other twenty-four letters of the alphabet?” asked the Border Rat. “You can do a lot of damage with those, and never use a q or a p.”