Red Zone - 17
A Novel
5
Aye-ya-ya-ya-ya-aye.
The worshippers walk down in their throng of thousands to bathe in a muddy river, down the grey-brown steps, saris and robes pressed to their bodies by the winds, and then clinging to their bodies from the water.
Aye-ya-ya-ya-ya-aye.
Some are wearing pants, some shirts, some sarongs, some robes. Some wear nothing at all, rolls of fat bouncing with each step-down. step-downhips that flounce slightly. Or thin hard muscles that twist and spring. Or old bones that turn and creak. The multitudes of many multitudes come in waves to touch the sacred mire, which will give them the sacred sickness.
Aye-ya-ya-ya-ya-aye.
Boats float on the water, some of wood, some grown, some of modern aerogels. They bump and collide. They create the wash of water behind them, with slapping spatter from fish that churn in their wake, and birds that dive to scoop up the fish. Some old women grasp at the fish because it brings luck.
Aye-ya-ya-ya-ya-aye.
Woosh-slap-junja-slap.
A few walk down in groups, chanting and wailing. A drummer unslings his drum and begins to play to tap the side of the drum. It is concave to fit between his legs, and the head is white. It is made of grown materials, not natural, but it is worn and old nonetheless. Perhaps a century, because it has year ties around it that spiral two or three times. Each one lovingly fitted on the sacred day. Tied with fingers but pulled tight with teeth.
He slaps his fingers on one side, and his palm on the other.
Ba-bump-ba-bop-bopa.
Aye-ya-ya-ya-ya-aye.
Woosh-slap-junja-slappa-shing.
Above two lanky robotic carriers, with legs rather than wheels, their banks rising and falling with each step, are being moved to the river to take on water to carry. As they are walked back, the vibrations will shake and help filter the water. The boy driving them uses a single white stick-like controller, the places he touches make them swerve left and right, or at least as quickly as a 3-meter long, one meter high, six-legged robot can. The robot is dun-colored, and is spotted with age, and dented here and there.
The bells on the robot jingle in great cascading shakes.
Chin-chingle-chin-ching.
Ba-bump-ba-bop-bopa.
Aye-ya-ya-ya-ya-aye.
Woosh-slap-junja-slappa-shing.
As the people come, so come the buzzing insects, the flies, the things that bite, the things that sting. And behind them come the dragonflies that hum. And soon the birds are rousted from the ancient stone lintels upon which they nest. And then the larger hawks that circle. Mobbed by the crows that caw and swoop for corn of grain between runs behind the hawks.
Chin-chingle-chin-ching.
Ba-bump-ba-bop-bopa.
Aye-ya-ya-ya-ya-aye.
Woosh-slap-junja-slappa-shing.
Bzzzzz-whappa-aww-aww-reaash-aww-aum.
And the mothers tell their daughters to stand up straight and tell their boys to stick close and not wipe their fingers after eating a sugary sweet. They chatter about their husbands or the husband's other wives. Or with the other wives about how the husbands have been too lazy.
Yababa-yaba-ya-yabba-ya.
Chin-chingle-chin-ching.
Ba-bump-ba-bop-bopa.
Aye-ya-ya-ya-ya-aye.
Woosh-slap-junja-slappa-shing.
Bzzzzz-whappa-aww-aww-reaash-aww-aum.
And on the steps, one lonely boy sits, and he stares at a girl whose mother is leading her down the steps. He soaks in the sounds, and the sights, and wonders why they have picked her for him, or him for her, and why they have crossed paths on this holy festival day.
For a moment she turns, and her black eyes meet him, and she smiles.
Yababa-yaba-ya-yabba-ya.
Chin-chingle-chin-ching.
Ba-bump-ba-bop-bopa.
Aye-ya-ya-ya-ya-aye.
Bzzzzz-whappa-aww-aww-reaash-aww-aum.
He feels a strange movement in his heart, the beating comes hard and close. He feels somehow that he is like a dog, tied to a stick, outside a door, and baying at a hidden moon, hidden in the sun's great glare, but he can feel it so.
Their eyes are caught, and so entangled, and they hover on each other as the dragonfly hovers in the air, and as the hawk stares down at the fishing bird, and the hovering fisher down at the wailing fish. And all the sights die away. He cannot see them, only the tunnel that is the eyes that connect them, as if some river flowed from her into him.
Yababa-yaba-ya-yabba-ya.
Ba-bump-ba-bop-bopa.
Aye-ya-ya-ya-ya-aye.
Bzzzzz-whappa-aww-aww-reaash-aww-aum.
And all the language disappears, the words subside, and all the music becomes a tangle, he can only feel a draining in his heart that is like a song, in that a song reaches the ears but falls into the body. It cries. It cries. It cries.
Chin-chingle-chin-ching.
Ba-bump-ba-bop-bopa.
Aye-ya-ya-ya-ya-aye.
He rattles in his head, like a dish filled with ceremonial coins, that beggars rattle because they seek salvation in the begging.
And all the sounds die away. He cannot hear them, only the beating of his heart, which beats and skips. Beats and skips. Beats and skips. He shakes, frightened, and paralyzed of any voluntary movement. He shakes. And falling from his memory, as if he were a tree, and all the small scraps that his boyish mind has retained are round yellow fruits to fall on the ground, falling from his memory, is what it is like, to feel good when he is alone.
Ba-bump-ba-bop-bopa
Pause.
Ba-bump-ba-bop-bopa.
Pause.
Ba-bump-ba-bop-bopa.
Pause. Pause.
Aye-ya-ya-ya-ya-aye.
This is India, in the future. And he feels it, as he groggily makes to the sun, and feels his wife next to him. She wanted to be here rather than in one of the half-dozen cities either in the home country or in the far wide world. And what could he say, at the time he loved her? But that is over and done, now he just feels duty. The duty of the rising Sun.
4
He opened his eyes, still asleep, seeing himself like an old picture, his hand around a serpent, that coiled around his legs. His shoulders were square to his vision, and his face impossibly squared, like a cartoon.
And then he awoke, on a bunk, in a deep sweat. This wasn't the memory, it was the memory of dreaming he remembered it. It wasn't the memory that he had forgotten. How could I forget the first moment I saw Pritha?
You can't, and never will.
You are right K. I can't and never will.
Is that why you are going back to her? Some half-remembered dream from the River Ganges.
It is that something about her is the source of who I am, the snows on the mountains that feed the river that is my life.
Every river reaches the sea sometimes.
Not every river. I have seen one that doesn't, it dies in the desert.
Perhaps that's your love for me, it is destined to die in the deserts of Mars.
Is that what you are afraid of, K?
No. I'm afraid you will leave me here, looking up into space. Alone.
You will never be alone Keisha, people love you.
The more people love you, V, the more you are alone.
He could feel his breath, but it was as a memory that was being filled in to suit a conversation that was taking place in the flutter of a rem. The quality of this was distinctly different from a real breath. First, he knew how it was going to feel before he felt it.
Then this is some different meaning of the word love.
Celebrity, V, is the kind of love people feel for me. That or their masturbatory desire to penetrate me.
A desire you allow them.
In return for much, much more, V.
You know I could never get used to it K, not really.
You have a wife. I was supposed to get used to that?
I'm sorry about that. I am so so sorry.
That you have a wife, or that you want me?
I am so sorry for hurting you.
Isn't that what you do? Hurt people?
Isn't that what revolution does?
I never wanted a revolution.
It seems that is irrelevant because you have birthed one.
That's what barren women do. If they can't have beautiful babies, they give birth to beautiful things. If we don't create, we destroy.
So, I am seeing. So, this is an old story K?
No, V, we are the oldest story. A square, four parts: high and low, man and woman. The prince marries the princess, but lusts for the whore, the whore takes up with the wild man, brute from the desert, or off from the mountains. The prince loves his wild man, in that way you men don't like to talk about, the wild man is shamed by the princess, who dreams of his cock between her loins.
And what happens?
You know. They kill the low man and the prince morns. Bilgamesh and Enkidu, Achilles, and Company. It's all the same.
Perhaps because people have not changed.
In old earth, they thought there would be a singularity, where the future and the past would be so different, as to be beyond understanding.
There was a singularity, but the more things have changed, the more they have remained the same. You can't step in the same stream twice.
You cannot even step in the same stream once. But you can never really step out of it either, K.
You know the kind of inside I want. You know what I mean, what I, mean.
I know what you mean to me.
No, V, I am a symbol, a word, a wring, an utterance. And you know what I mean.
You are written on my mind. You are written to me. It is you who are baptizing me in the river of my memory. I am flowing backwards, to a source that I do not understand, and it is you who are drawing me there. Is this not enough to know how I feel, K?
I can see how you feel, I am standing above you and can see the whole course of the river, back to the spring that is its source.
You sound as if you hate me.
Then you don't know the poison that a woman's hate can bring. The old goddesses killed with plagues and brought a thousand-fold troubles down.
Before the troubles came, after the Pegasi, we had not had a plague in many years.
But we have them now.
Yes, we have them now.
Isn't that enough to know how we feel?
About what?
When you are back in the flesh, I will show you, I will show you the flesh of my flesh.
I am so sorry K.
Sorry means nothing.
I am almost nothing, there is almost none of me left. I feel as if I am slipping down a spiral that has no end.
Nothing is what you must become before you become anything at all. The parallel lines must converge.
And then what?
You will see there is a line straighter than straight.
And when I follow it?
You will reach its end.
And then?
You will break free, to the other side.
He heard in his ear, an old song, from old Earth. He tried to remember who wrote it.
Ah, yes. Thedorse. Thedorse wrote it. I wonder what else he wrote.
He hummed in his memory: “Break on through, to the other side. Break on through, to the other side.”
Sleep embraced him, and he fell into it's enfolding arms, bathed in a warmer sense, than any other he had ever known.
The alarm hit his body, stronger than any mere sound could have, and forced his eyes awake. They felt like they were bleeding. He waited for the spin hammock to slow down. It left him in free fall. He turned on the screen and waited for the message to come in, he knew he was going to have a gap, here beyond the moon's orbit, but it would not be too bad. Two seconds perhaps?
“Hello, my son.”
There she was, her features rounded a bit by prosperity, but it was still his mother.
“Yes, mother.”
“I have wonderful news for you, your marriage is approved.”
He felt an itch in his ear. He was not sure how this was good news.
“Yes, mother.”
“This has been arranged for a long time.”
He stayed silent, one more assent would be suspicious.
“And there is another thing.”
“And that is?”
“They have approved the conception of an immortal out of the pairing.”
This, again, was a tiding whose gladness escaped him.
“The cost of liberties will be very high.”
“Nonsense, for a perpetual stake in the Dominion leadership, it is worth working your whole life.”
Which is about right, she has probably done the math as well.
“Of course, I will do what is best for the family.”
Which might not be this, perhaps my bride-to-be can be persuaded of this.
“That is a good boy. You will get orders to come home for the wedding.”
Orders, that's interesting, not leave, orders. I keep forgetting how well-placed Pritha's family is in the Union of India's hierarchy.
That is, not that's. He corrected himself.
“And another thing.”
“Yes, mother?”
“Doctor Kamalnath Chandra will oversee the child's development. Isn't that wonderful news?” His mother brought her hands together and had an overflowing happiness on her face. Her life's ambitions were nearly complete.
“Only the best.”
“Yes. Now work, work, work. The expense will be enormous, but it will place our family among the first families of the Dominion.”
No, it will leave us burdened with debt to the Dominion forever and mean that I will barely see my first child.
“Thank you, mother. Out.”
He used that cold word meaning to sting, but he could see that she was already turning away and giving instructions to someone when the transmission cut.
It was too late to try and sleep again, so he decided to prepare himself for the day. A vision of Pritha, his wife to be flashed in front of his memory's eye. She was so nobly cut, so clearly made.
Work. Work. Work. It will be 30 years before I have a day that I owe to myself again. Since that is more time than I have had in this world, I truly cannot imagine it.
He was woken, floating there in free fall, when the reveille was sounded, still drifting in a dream. A dream where all of the women in his life were chattering at him full speed, and not one was contented with who he was, and what he had done.