Idols (22 page)
I turn to see the dark shadows move just beneath the surface of the water, flapping their pliant bodies. They swim the way I imagine birds used to fly, the way Grass festival dancers flutter their hands when they dance. Like a fish out of water, only in reverse. A bird out of the sky. It’s eerie, and I shiver.
Then I remember.
“How is that possible? Whatever that is, it must have—you know.”
Hearts. That can stop—or be stopped.
Those are the words left unsaid.
“Maybe it’s a miracle,” Lucas says. “Or maybe things just change.”
“Maybe it wears off, the effect of the Icon. Maybe it all comes back.”
“It?”
I shrug. “Life.”
The birds
, I think.
I reach into my chestpack and pull out the small silver bird. The pin. I study it as if it could talk.
The Bishop’s birds didn’t come back. Neither did the Padre—or my parents. How will I ever really know who or what will come back?
Or is it all just up to Fortis and his secrets?
I think bitterly.
Then Lucas touches my arm, bringing me back to him. I smile at him, and he leans forward, cupping my face with one hand, kissing me abruptly. Hard and soft.
Like so much of my life.
But the sunlight is warm on my arms and the humid air winds around me and I twist my body closer to him, as if we could dance and fly like miracles ourselves.
Secret, mysterious miracles. Irrational impossibilities. Birds in the water and fish in the skies.
Because maybe, in some small way, that’s what we are.
We stand at the railing, watching when the shore comes into sight. The crew is too busy now to notice us, though the majority of the Remnants—at least, those who haven’t been made to work the sanitation crews—are still belowdecks.
It’s an unforgettable sight—less of a shore and more of an optimistic outcropping of rock that just refuses to be sea; it won’t give in to the broad blue wash that surrounds us on all sides. You have to respect that.
I do.
Farther down the rock, I can see the outline of a Colony settlement along the nearest bay.
There are buildings in the distance, of course, reaching like fingers, like claws, high up toward the sky where they’ve had to build up instead of out, in a land where space is scarce and every shovelful of soil comes at a premium. They have the same vaguely dead look that the cities do, that the Hole did. Lights that don’t light, cars that don’t move. Literal powerlessness, meant to be not just evident but obvious.
But what I really notice are the trees.
Enormous palm trees—too many to count—sway their slender trunks out toward us, over the water, as if they were groaning bellies after a fat lunch. As if their backs will soon break.
Above them, the sky seems especially vast, now that there is a shoreline beneath it. Something about the smallness of human life makes the theater of the clouds above more immense, more spectacular—as if the important thing, here, isn’t human life—and as if it never was.
The scale is all wrong
, I think.
I think of the relative size of things as our ship draws toward the shore, bringing up the buildings, closer and closer, until they dwarf the sky itself.
Right now I have no idea how big or little I am.
We make our plan to disembark with the others, slipping inside the scraggly processional of human life that is the Remnants headed to the Projects. It’s the grimmest of parades.
Fortis stiffens as soon as he sees them. “Bugger.”
I look over. “What’s wrong?”
“Just look at them. They’re dressed up now.” He motions toward the Remnants, and I realize that he’s right. They’re in a kind of uniform, one they weren’t wearing when we all boarded the ship. It’s a faded blue-gray pants and jacket, vaguely regional looking. A SEA Colonies uniform.
Worse, they’re in chains—and we’re not.
“Keep your heads down,” Fortis hisses. He hurries to fall into line behind a cluster of Remnants, who act like they don’t even see us.
We follow.
I feel them now. I wish I didn’t, but I do. They’re hungry, most of them. Sick, at least half of them. Scared for their lives, nearly all.
“Stay close,” hisses Fortis. “And I said heads down.” Tima stumbles as he says it, but Lucas grabs her arm, and we press behind the others, so that you’d have to be looking to see us.
Looking more closely, to see a scruffy dog hidden inside Tima’s jacket.
I’m afraid they’ll see—that someone will notice the irregularity in the line. If someone is watching closely enough, they will.
I hold my breath.
One. Two. Three.
But no one is watching. At least, no one from the line of Brass shoving the Remnants into carts. Not this time.
Fortis motions and we follow him, walking, not running, until we reach the edge of the docks.
“Just do what I do,” Fortis says, pulling his jacket tight.
I nod.
And he jumps off the side of the pier.
The sound of the splash is lost in the clanking of the Remnants’ chains.
GENERAL EMBASSY DISPATCH: EASTASIA SUBSTATION
MARKED URGENT
MARKED EYES ONLY
Internal Investigative Subcommittee IIS211B
RE: The Incident at SEA Colonies
Note: Contact Jasmine3k, Virt. Hybrid Human 39261.SEA, Laboratory Assistant to Dr. E. Yang, for future commentary, as necessary.
FORTIS ==> DOC
Transcript - ComLog 06.13.2060
//comlog begin;
FORTIS:
We need our countermeasures ready. Like, yesterday. NULL will be here before we know it. Have you completed the genome analysis?;
DOC:
Yes, I believe I have.;
FORTIS:
And the reprogramming of the limbic design and neocortex is feasible?;
DOC:
Yes, the theory is sound. In practice, well, biological processes have a way of being unpredictable.;
FORTIS:
That’s what keeps life interesting, mate. Okay, I’ve selected candidates for implant. NULL is fast approaching, and we need to put this plan in motion.;
DOC:
I believe I can provide you the “recipe” soon. As for the legwork, well…;
FORTIS:
Yes, I understand, you don’t have legs.;
DOC:
Or hands.;
FORTIS:
Sigh. I’ve spent some quality time in the lab refining the DNA manipulation process and once you give me the code, I believe I can prepare the candidate eggs in time for complete gestation prior to NULL’s arrival.;
//comlog end;
The water is freezing. It’s pulling me down and dragging me under, with a violence I normally associate with the intention to kill.
It’s just water.
Move.
But my legs are slow and my lungs are burning, and by the time we have all pulled ourselves up the rusting dock ladder on the far side of the Porthole, I feel at least wounded, if not dead.
We are a sorry, bedraggled mess—all of us. Fortis, spluttering in his soggy overcoat, seems worse off than the rest. I think for a moment of the now-waterlogged book in his pocket, the one he pretends not to have, drowning all his secrets.
As if anything will make them go away.
Even Brutus shakes out his fur, bristling as he sprays us, doubts and all.
But once we catch our breath, for these few moments of first shore sunshine, it’s like none of it ever happened. I want to fling myself on the grass—actual grass—that lines the boulevard leading inland from the port.
A Porthole, I think with a sad smile. How different this one is than back home. As I watch the foaming blue-green waves, all I can think of is the garbage floating in the gray dishwater of the Hole’s own Porthole Bay. I smell things growing here in the Colonies—strange things, blossoming things, things with colors and scents and flavors. I can only think of things dying, back in the Hole. Cars and people and whole city blocks.
Human debris.
Inhuman debris.
Not here.
Not yet.
The difference is striking.
But for how much longer?
Fortis makes us keep moving, though at the first street, we stop long enough to toss half our clothing into a large tin trash bin. It’s too hot for more than the drawstring pants and thin undershirts we’ve stolen from the laundry room belowdecks.
“What’s the plan?” Tima asks, scanning the road around us.
“We head north,” Fortis says. “City center.”
“Is that where your alleged friends are?” I toss my overshirt into the garbage bin while I ask, straightening my chestpack with a shove.
Fortis nods. “Believe it or not, I know a few of the local authorities.”
“You mean you’re getting us arrested?” Lucas is impatient.
“No. I mean I’m getting you cleaned up. At least, I should. We’ve got a date with a monk.” Fortis grins. “Come on. I’m starving.”
“No more bread,” Tima groans as we fall into step behind him.
All around us, in the streets that lead into the city center, an open market crowds along the street corners. Passersby hurry through the blasting sun, hiding under colorful sun umbrellas or broad, pointed straw hats. Bougainvillea grows over tin rooftops and curving brown dried-leaf rooftops and long dried-grass rooftops. Some are draped with fabric, a bright golden-yellow and white. Beneath the rooftops, in the warm shade, stalls of improbable objects—homemade brooms, bolts of colorful cloth, brightly sectioned umbrellas—compete with larger ones hawking fruits and vegetables and flowers—bright orange poppies and gold carnations and red roses, sculpted into necklaces and wreaths.
A wagon rattles past us. It’s made of colored tin, with open sides beneath a domed ceiling—like it’s meant to keep passengers shaded from the blasting sun.
I look from my bare feet on the hot concrete to Fortis ahead of me, but I don’t even bother to ask. There’s no way he’d let us put ourselves on display like that. We just escaped one processional, there’s no time for another parade. We will cross this city on foot.
The air smells ripe. “Jackfruit,” says Fortis, breathing deep as he fingers a spine. “Smells like udder rot from an old heifer.”
“So you like it,” Ro says.
“Of course. And jujube. The little green one. Like a cross between a pear and an apple.” Fortis points. “Jujube. Guava, the bigger round green one. Mangosteen. Sapodilla. Longan, the one that looks like a dry yellow grape. Lychee.”
“Why do you know the name of every fruit in this marketplace?” I ask, examining a prickly fruit, plumed in pink. Tima shoots me a look. She’s been thinking the same thing, clearly.
“That’s dragonfruit.” Fortis shrugs. “I can’t help it. So I like fruit.”
So you really have been here before
, I think.
Just like the Bishop said. Why haven’t you mentioned that?
But I let it drop, because it’s clear he’s not going to elaborate. Instead, I smile. “It’s all so alive. Like the Earth hasn’t given up yet.”
“You can’t stop growth from growing. You can destroy everythin’ in sight, I suppose. But it always grows back. That’s Earth for you.” Fortis grins, the first I’ve seen him smile today.
The sun keeps rising, isn’t that what Lucas tried to tell me?
