Crematorium for Phoenixes (11 page)

The thicket in front of them was twisted
with saplings that had formed an impenetrable hoop. It was
surrounded by only a few goat paths that ended up being dead
ends.

To reach their goal, the men often faced
ravines and waterfalls that were surrounded by crumbling, fragile
soil. They would carefully peel down the obstacles and once
transferred to the other side would again continue on. Sometimes
they came across small broken totems, which like chips dusted in
savanna meadows protruded up in the middle of nowhere. They were
often surrounded by small gnomes that wiggled their eyes and were
hardened like monstrous beasts.

The fellowship jumped those high places that
froze the hearts, but they became more and more frequent, filling
the entire jungle with millions of lizard eyes that stared like
mummies on All Saints’ Day.

And unlike the trick and requests for candy,
there was nothing childish about this journey. There was only a
frozen force that had been processed by the hands of evil, which
started with a holy omnipresent force; it felt as if such a thing
had emerged in their very own souls.

No matter how hard they sought cover in this
eternal game of hide and seek, something had found them and it
flowed into their hearts like the poison sting of a spider. They
felt despondent because no amount of conversation, no kidding, not
even a prayer could drive it away.

However, the man destined by the Creator to
be the two most difficult things in the world—a saint and someone
who is loved—will not find any convenient alcoves in life, only
anguish.

And the men walking on him just hope that
the end will be worth it.

Thus, whether walking or sailing in boats
that they made for themselves, with that compressed time that
occurs equally, they traveled hundreds of miles inside the jungle.
And somewhere out there, a stone’s throw away, barely protruding
its head, ranging, risen, and perched upon by flocks of crows, were
the ruins of a city.

Chapter
Seventeen

The reeds trimmed each other at their stems
and made noise like locusts.

Before them, the sapphire-blue waters were
dragging and being cut by dozens of small fish that deviated here
and there, scared away by the herds of hippos that were entering to
chill themselves.

Slightly further, like a dozen venflons,
Archimedean screws were mounted in the water. Like an insatiable
creature they were pumping it out, creating systems of irrigation
facilities.

They were like blood vessels invigorated by
liquids that they then poured into the black as bitumen soil,
giving it life—and what a life!

Emerging beside the gateways that guided the
water, the fields were growing with abundant fruits that were
harvested, threshed, crushed, and served “as food for man and his
children,” a statement that would appear in one manuscript from
another era.

And among that grace that sprouted green
leaves all the way up to the horizon, ending in the Nile, there
stood obelisk-yellow fishing villages. They were filled with people
stretching their nets like sails on a ship. Nearby other activity
was plastered everywhere. Barns and cowsheds stood among frayed
canvas workshops that were courted by foreigners who had come from
overseas islands and even from the Faiyum Oasis. Step by step
Tammuz, Sharukin, and the others proceeded on to the threshold of
what historical geographers would call Lower Egypt.

They had heard much of this country, so
probably just as you, dear reader, they now admired its beauty
since they stood before it.

For this reason, but perhaps also somewhat
from those precautionary measures taken by foreigners coming from
abroad, they presented to the vendors abundant fragrances, making
expeditions within commercial districts. They even went to the
countries of Kush and Punt, into the marketplaces located next to
the large temple complexes.

And in front of each stall covered with
samples of that attracted flies, sun-baked pots with a capacity of
up to several hundred pounds stood filled with various spices,
freshly caught and slaughtered pink birds, livestock, poultry and
fish, heaps of grain, clusters of garlic, and leeks—I would say the
environment was similar to Scheherazade’s stories. Everything was
available to the company, along with the buggies that were carrying
straw to the ships that sailed through the thousand miles of the
Nile.

They refused to be pulled in by the
frequently shouting vendors. Instead, they gave such people a
copper penny, and the traders, stunned for a moment, would then
press them to take a cargo of goods.

Strange in abundance, the man thought of
scarcity, but here in almost every corner, counting the songs with
beating breasts, were singing beggars huddled in rags. Some leaned
on a stick and had a caged bird at their feet. They stretched their
free hand, requesting charity in a country that buried the dead
with untold riches.

And because of that, the more the men
looked, the more signs of weary work and scour seemed to fill the
face of the locals.

Some men stretched their arms for hours in
the curved claws of shadufs, irrigating the heated as sinister
ceramics land.

A little further on, in large stock breeding
farms in the Delta, thousands of bred oxen pairs were driven for
the large-scale construction in the south.

Beyond that, in the salt oases of grass,
looking a lot like mill dams, countless villagers gathered the
works of the poor soil, taking them and giving them cheaply, as we
have already mentioned, in the rush of the big city.

Widespread rumors about extraordinary taxes
and services accrued from squads of Nubian and Libyan warriors.
These people made callous from the desert and worried from labor
just wanted to survive.

It was said that the south had begun
construction on a new pyramid, an event that, in the words of
Herodotus, for the most religious people on the planet created an
irrevocable debt, associated with many tears, deprivation, and
death.

Indeed, buyers of labor in the pubs were
making the drunk sign over their lives. The alcoholics would not
last a week at work but that did not matter because the mega
construction required a steady flow of labor. Excavated trenches
ended uply being rivers of mass graves.

Having heard these rumors, which shook the
millennia-rooted beliefs in the subconscious of religious
veneration, the men decided after making some bribes to go that
way. There was talk of the new nest of the gods that was being
built on the plateau of Giza. The bribes themselves had been
necessary because only the lit had the right to approach the divine
abodes. They would pose as priests, sentenced to eternal asceticism
with the inability to make a living another way.

And as happens with the ease of narrative
shows, they found a ship or a vessel that may be better described
as a floating barge nudged from the staves of such passengers. The
flowing river from the south to north splashed water about and
created an exact copy of itself in the very sky.

They passed threshold after threshold and
often listened to songs around kindled fires in the camps. Bearing
the singsong of the defeated man in the desert, they stopped here
and there to buy new victuals of wheat bread and fish, and again
they were tolerated by the river. It spread its mottled
vermilion-yellow colors, a cosmic serpent that swallowed the sun on
the horizon.

After a few days that it seemed to have
fused into a moment, they began to catch up with other barges that
carried the tranquility of everything. It was a jammed parade
filled with blocks of snow-white limestone and crippled piles of
timber logs.

Slipping between them, aware of all the
shoals and sand bars, they passed the last few tens of kilometers
and soon, revealed as a beetle, were the deep river quays and
berths of Memphis, inundated with their multi-ton loads and crowds
and crowds of people.

Chapter
Eighteen

The sodium-yellow lamps with their wrap
around safety nets were hissing with the directional flow of
electrons. Several Geiger counters were doing their job as insects
buzzed in the heat in the summer swelter.

The corridors, trapeze, and escalator spaces
were covered with protective props like pierced swords that
branched and interfered with the clockwork perfection, rattling its
parts.

On them, wearing streamlined,
pneumatic-assisted radiation suits, were Takeshi, Akuma, and the
others. They were striding with that incredulity that only the
fictional Aladdin who had stepped into the cave with treasures may
have felt.

They were, as we will recall, in the core of
the spacecraft that had crashed into the heart of the jungle.

Returning to our description leads us to the
winding parallel escalators, which trembled like an excretory
system. They descended like an endless chute, leading to
progressive or millennia-old catacombs. We will say that here is
where our heroes were timidly and uncertainly clustered, caught in
the midst of a cathedral-like needle in space that had been lowered
down and down.

They descend into the aircraft, which
obviously due to its staggering size was rather like an orbital
colony whose presence here was a mystery that was necessary from
them to unravel.

So, piled in the orbital, bathing in lights
like faded fireflies, the men were searching for any signs of
life.

Their way often collapsed, folded into tin
can walls or it was impossible to extend due to the expiry
radiation or thousand volts of electricity. They made a turn upon
arriving at training rooms that had been paved with carpet and
packed with all kinds of pulleys and benches. Everything there
stood scattered all over like the torn rags of foams. They passed
kitchens where destruction had occurred. The mess had a cold
simplicity about it. They passed through common toilets that even
now, after some time, still emitted a mint flavor thanks to the
hygroscopic-resembling, tiled surface. Eventually they ended up in
game rooms that were lined with psychotronic helmets. They were
outdated and now resembled broken shower cabinets, but they were
still capable of generating such dreams or delirious states that
the strong-willed could live as he pleased. Ultimately, they
circled back to the floor illuminated by elongated bottleneck
corridors.

From time to time, the cockroaches
scrambling in the safety glass that had become as enlarged as golf
balls frightened the men. They cast their giant shadows at you as
if sharpening one of their suckers. Sometimes capes of cobwebs,
heavy like the draperies of the savanna also challenged the
subconscious with horrors that powered all sorts of fantasies about
the ceiling being full of hairy spiders that hissed from being
baited by pokes.

Fortunately, aside from the webs, their
fortitude was entertained by a brief exchange of thoughts and
holidays. They did not indulge in such things because of fatigue
but did so to support the brittle, cracked bit of creamy chocolate
that Takeshi gave them instead of answers.

Yet they were being careful—alpha, beta, and
gamma radiation sure were a lot more dangerous and real enemy than
anything else they had come across. They moved at a sign from
Takeshi; they weren’t loitering a lot.

However, in one of those moments of
relaxation, sitting in a cage as hazy and dark as a cave formation
in space, they found something useful. Perhaps the room had once
been a communication center but no disturbance had come from the
outside or inside in a while.

What they found was the name of the
station.

A nickel-plated piece of metal with bright,
shiny skin, much like snake skin, read “Data Center.” Across its
brownish magnetic bands, clearly written in neon-yellow letters was
the name “Tiamat.”

After the men discovered the name, they
convened a council.

“It is time. From the boiled substance,
called our trip, to resurface any answers. What is this?” Akuma
asked first.

“The story you will hear is unusual because
it is made up of thousands of events merged into one,” Takeshi
said, tinkering with his tattoos that were playing with the eye by
changing imperceptibly as illusions took shape.

“After a long time, more than you can
imagine, humanity will live beyond the heavens, where in the stars
there are facilities like this one.

“I say so with certainty, because I come
from there, from a time when the last had died in battles that even
the imagination finds difficult to reproduce.

“There were only two cities. My own,
‘Marduk,’ and the other one that I saw for the first time,
‘Tiamat,’ as distant ruins that had been burned into starry space
like pieces of metal.

“We had maintained contact, as far as our
strength allowed, but we were too small.

“Then one day, after constant
experimentation with living space, we were succeeded and faced a
great feature. It was something that we could use to fix
everything, to step back in time.

“And as with all work, new stations appeared
from nothingness to nothingness. There were new destinies for which
even perhaps the Creator Himself probably had not presumed would
come into being.

“So mankind multiplied and executed almost
nothing breathlessly. We created empires whose purpose was to be
destroyed before they existed. Thus, civilizations are being
created and destroyed. Sometimes they existed for thousands of
years or more. They were all short moments in the timeline, an
ever-changing matter whose complexity is beyond anything that is
imaginable.

“Gradually, we were back to what had started
it all—the two cities. They died in a vacuum, and the goal changed
again. Instead of armies, the procession changed over countless
seasons. We began to send small groups of people whose cause
resembled the first in order to achieve the same fate.