City of Golden Shadow (18 page)

"Come to us, Paul."

He shrieked and leaped up, but caught his foot on the coffin handle and tumbled face-first back into the mud. He scrambled away, thrashing through the clinging muck like a wounded beast. She did not rise or follow, but her quiet, summoning voice trailed him through the fog until his own blackness swallowed him.

He was in a strange place, stranger than any he had yet seen. It was . . . nothing. The truth of No Man's Land.

Paul sat up, feeling curiously numb. His head still throbbed with the echoes of battle, but he was surrounded by silence, it wore a coating of mud inches thick, but the ground on which he lay was neither wet nor dry, neither hard nor soft. The fog through which he had crawled had thinned, but he could see nothing in any direction except pearl-white nothingness.

He rose on trembling legs. Had he escaped? The dead angel, the village of coffins-had those been a shell-shocked dream?

He took a step, then a dozen more. Everything remained as it was. He expected to see recognizable shapes appear through the mist at any moment-trees, rocks, houses-but the emptiness seemed to move with him.

After what seemed an hour of fruitless walking he sat down and wept, weak tears of exhaustion and confusion. Was he dead? Was this purgatory? Or worse, for one could at least hope to work one's way out of purgatory, was this where one went after death, to stay?

"Help me!" There was no trace of an echo-his voice went flatly out and did not return. "Help me, someone!" He sobbed again. "What have I done?"

No answer came. Paul curled up on the not-ground and pressed his face into his hands.

Why had the dreams brought him to this place? The angel had seemed to care for him, but how could kindness lead to this? Unless every man's death was kind, but every man's afterlife was unremittingly bleak.

Paul clung to the self-inflicted dark. He could not bear to see the mist any more. The angel's pale face appeared to his mind's eye, not cold and empty as it had been in the plundered graveyard, but the sweetly mournful visage that had haunted his dreams for so long.

Was it all madness? Was he even here in this place at all, or was his body lying in the bottom of the muddy trench or beside the other failures in the morgue of a field hospital?

Slowly, almost without his conscious attention, his hand stole across his muddy uniform blouse. As it reached his breast pocket, he suddenly knew what it-what he himself-sought. He stopped, terrified to move farther, for fear of what he might discover.

But there is nothing else left.

His hand dipped into the pocket and closed around it. When he opened his eyes, then brought it out into the dim light it shimmered, iridescent green.

It was real.

As Paul stared at the feather clutched in his fist, something else began to shimmer. Not far away-or what seemed, in this unfathomable place, not far away-the fog smoldered with a light like molten gold. He scrambled to his feet, fatigue and injuries almost forgotten.

Something-a kind of doorway or hole-was forming in the mist. He could see nothing within its circumference but shifting amber light that moved like oil on water, yet he knew with a sudden, unshakable certainty that there was something on the other side. It led to somewhere else. He stepped toward the golden glow.

"What's your hurry, Jonesie?"

"Yes, you wouldn't run off without telling your mates, would you?"

Paul stopped, then slowly turned. Coming forward out of the blanketing mist were two shapes, one large, one small. He saw something glint on one of the dim faces.

"F-Finch? Mullet?"

The big one honked a laugh. "We've come to show you the way home."

The terror that had dissipated now came flooding back. He took a step nearer to the golden glow.

"Don't do that!" Finch said sharply. When he spoke again, his tone was softer. "Come on, old mate, don't make it harder on yourself. If you come back peaceful-like-well, it's just shell shock. Maybe you'll even get a little time in hospital to pull yourself together."

"I . . . I don't want to come back."

"Desertion, is it?" Mullet came nearer. He seemed bigger than before, immensely round and strangely muscled. His mouth wouldn't close all the way because there were too many teeth. "Oh, that's very bad, very bad indeed."

"Be reasonable, Jonesie." Finch's spectacles threw back the light, obscuring his eyes. "Don't throw it all away. We're your friends. We want to help you."

Paul's breath grew short. Finch's voice seemed to pull at him. "But. . . ."

"I know you've had a bad time," the small man said. "You've been confused. Felt like you were going mad, even. You just need rest. Sleep. We'll take care of you."

He did need rest. Finch was right. They would help him, of course they would. His friends. Paul swayed but did not retreat as they came nearer. The golden glow flickered behind him, growing dimmer.

"Just give me that thing in your hand, old mate." Finch's voice was soothing, and Paul found himself holding the feather out to him. "That's right, pass it here." The golden light grew fainter, and the reflection on Finch's spectacles grew fainter, too, so that Paul could see through the lenses. Finch had no eyes.

"No!" Paul staggered back a step and raised his hands, "Leave me alone!"

The two figures before him wavered and distorted, Finch growing even leaner and more spidery, Mullet swelling until his head disappeared down between his shoulders.

"You belong to us!" Finch shouted. He looked nothing like a man any longer.

Paul Jonas clutched the feather tightly, turned, and jumped into the light.

CHAPTER 7

NETFEED/NEWS: Fish-Killer Feared in Pacific

(visual: Scottish fishermen in port, emptying nets)

VO: The dinoflagellate parasite responsible for the North Atlantic die-off that killed hundreds of millions of fish a decade ago has reappeared in mutated form in some Pacific Ocean spawning grounds.

(visual: dead fish with severely ulcerated skin)

UN authorities fear that this version of the organism may be resistant to the laboratory-constructed virus with which the dinoflagellate's reign of terror was halted last time. . . .

Stephen lay motionless, sunk in the smeary depths of the plastic tent like a fly entombed in amber. He had tubes in his nose, his mouth, his arms. He looked, Renie thought, as though he were slowly becoming part of the hospital. Another machine. Another appliance. She clenched her fists hard, fighting the swell of despair.

!Xabbu put his hands into the gloves attached to the tent wall, then looked up at her, asking permission. All she could do was nod her head. She did not trust herself to speak.

"He is very far away," the little man whispered. It was strange to see his light-skinned Bushman features peering from behind a plastic faceplate. Renie felt a pang of fear for him, a sudden spike that punched through even the misery of seeing her brother's unchanged state. VR, quarantine-every new experience she gave !Xabbu seemed to demonstrate another way not to touch. Would it all sicken him? Was his spirit already weakening?

She pushed the thought away. !Xabbu was the sanest, most well-grounded person she knew. She was worrying because her brother and her friend were much the same size, and both were sealed away behind layers of plastic. It was her own helplessness pulling at her. She moved forward and touched !Xabbu's shoulder with her gloved hand. In a way, since he was touching Stephen, she was touching her brother also.

!Xabbu's fingers traced the lines of Stephen's sleeping face, their movements careful and precise in a way that suggested doing something rather than merely feeling, then moved down his neck to his breastbone. "He is very far away," he said again. "It is like a powerful medicine trance."

"What's that?"

!Xabbu did not reply. His hands remained on Stephen's chest, just as hers stayed on the little man's shoulder. For long moments all the parts of the small human chain were still, then Renie felt a gentle motion: within the baggy confines of the Ensuit, !Xabbu had begun to sway. Gentle sounds, like the sonorous hum and click of insects in tall grass, rose and mixed with the mechanical noises of life support. After a few seconds, she realized that !Xabbu was singing.

The little man was silent as they left the hospital. At the bus stop he remained standing when Renie sat down, staring at the passing cars as though looking for an answer to some difficult question in the patterns of traffic.

"A medicine trance is not easy to explain," he said. "I have been to city schools. I can tell you what they say-a self-induced hypnotic state. Or I can tell you what I grew up with in the Okavango Swamps-that the medicine man has gone to a place where he can talk with the spirits, even the gods." He closed his eyes and was quiet for a time, as though preparing for some trance state of his own. At last he opened his eyes again and smiled. "The more I learn of science, the more I respect the mysteries of my people."

A bus pulled up and disgorged a weary-looking group of passengers who all seemed to hobble, shuffle, or limp as they made their way up the ramp toward the hospital. Renie squinted at the bus until she located the route number. It was not the one they wanted. Obscurely angry, she turned away. She felt unsettled, like the sky before a storm.

"If you mean that science is useless, I can't agree with you . . . unless you're talking about medical science, that is. Bloody worthless." She sighed. "No, that's not fair."

!Xabbu shook his head. "I do not mean that at all, Renie. It is hard to express. I suppose it is that the more things I read about the discoveries of scientists, the more I respect what my people already know. They have not come to these understandings in the same ways, in closed laboratories and with the help of thinking machines, but there is something to be said for a million years of trial and error-especially in the swamps or the Kalahari Desert, where instead of just spoiling an experiment, a mistake is likely to kill you."

"I don't . . . what understandings are you talking about?"

"The wisdom of our parents, grandparents, ancestors. In each individual life, it seems, we must first reject that wisdom, then later come to appreciate it" His smile returned, but it was small and thoughtful. "As I said, it is hard to explain . . . and you look tired, my friend."

Renie sat back. "I am tired. But there's lots to do." She moved, trying to find a comfortable position on the molded plastic bench. Whoever made them seemed to intend the things for something other than sitting: no matter how you arranged yourself, you were never quite comfortable. She gave up and slid forward to perch on the edge, then pulled out a cigarette. The flame-tab was defective, and she wearily groped in her bag for her lighter."What were you singing? Did it have something to do with a medicine trance?"

"Oh, no." He seemed mildly scandalized, as if she had accused him of a theft. "No, it was merely a song. A sad song made by one of my people. I sang it because I was unhappy seeing your brother lost and wandering so far from his family."

"Tell me about it."

!Xabbu let his brown eyes drift to the crush of traffic once more. "It is a song of mourning for the loss of a friend. It is about the string game, too-do you know it?"

Renie held up her fingers in an imaginary cat's cradle. !Xabbu nodded.

"I do not know if I can make the exact words in English. Something like this:

"There were people, some people

Who broke the string for me

And so

This place is now a sad place for me,

Because the string is broken.

"The string broke for me,

And so

This place does not feel to me

As it used to feel,

Because the string is broken.

"This place feels as if it stood open before me

Empty

Because the string has broken

And so

This place is an unhappy place

Because the string is broken."

He fell silent.

"Because the string broke for me. . . ." Renie repeated. The quietness of the sorrow, its very understatement, made her own feelings of loss come rushing up inside her. Four weeks-a full month now. Her baby brother had been sleeping for a month, sleeping like the dead. A sob shook her body and tears forced their way out. She tried to push the misery back, but it would not be suppressed. She wept harder. She tried to speak, to explain herself to !Xabbu, but couldn't. To her embarrassment and horror, she realized she had lost control, that she was having a helpless crying fit on a public bus bench. She felt naked and humiliated.

!Xabbu did not put his arms around her, or tell her over and over that things would be fine, that everything would work out. Instead, he seated himself beside her on the smooth plastic seat and took her hands in his, then waited for the storm to pass.

It did not pass quickly. Every time Renie thought it was over, that she had regained control over her emotions, another convulsion of misery broke across her and set her weeping again. Through tear-blurred eyes she saw another busload of passengers delivered to the curb. Several stared at the tall, weeping woman being comforted by a little Bushman in an antique suit. The idea of how odd she and !Xabbu must look tripped her up; soon she was laughing as well, although the weeping had not stopped or even weakened. A small, separate part of her that seemed to hover somewhere in the center of the maelstrom wondered if she would ever stop, or if she would instead be stuck here like a hung program, switching back and forth from hilarity to grief until the sky grew dark and everyone went home.