Idols (32 page)
We haven’t gone far when we hear a whistle. Ping doesn’t like whistles, it seems, because she rears into Chang, who bumps against Ching, as if the three of them are about to riot.
“Snakes, mice, whistles. They don’t really like cats, either. That’s what the monks said.” Bibi looks past the elephants, glum. “But we have worse problems than that, it seems.”
I look around to the riverbank, where there seems to be some sort of commotion. “What’s that?”
“Checkpoint,” Bibi sighs.
“What are they checking for?” I say the words, though I already know the answer.
“You, probably. Problems like you. Stay down.” We crawl beneath the carpets and pillows and stay like that, curled against the wet bamboo.
A uniformed Sympa—uniformed, and armed—peers across the river at us. Bibi salutes him from the raft. “Just passing through.” He shouts a line of Colony dialect. Then he swears under his breath.
“Delivering supplies up to the temple. That’s what I told him. Let’s see how stupid this guy is. Don’t move.”
“What is it? Why is he stopping us?” Tima’s voice is muffled beneath the carpets.
“Border patrol. We’re getting close to the next province.”
“There are border patrols between provinces here?” Lucas sounds tense. I stick my head partly out from beneath a striped pillow.
“They’d have them between neighborhoods, even out here, if the GAP had his way. He’s a cautious fellow.”
I hear a muffled snort from Fortis. “That’s an understatement.”
Bibi kicks the carpeted lump that is Fortis. “If you knew what he knew, perhaps you’d be a little more careful yourself, Merk.”
“Also an understatement,” Fortis says. Bibi kicks him again, and then nobody says anything, except Bibi and the Sympas.
But the Sympa is stupid enough, and we are allowed to pass. As the river unfolds to the north, we float along with it. Everything is idyllic. Everything is peaceful. You wouldn’t know, I think. You’d have no idea. Everything is as it has been, for hundreds and hundreds of years. I feel an attachment to this place, even though this is the first I’ve seen it. It has an old soul, just like the hills around the Mission. This land belongs to these people, and the people rely on the land.
Like the Chumash
, I think, smiling at my old mantra.
It’s so much like home.
If you didn’t know about the Icons.
If you hadn’t seen it.
Seen them.
The tendrils and shards spreading everywhere, like a disease.
To this valley, to this river, what difference does it make, Lords or Embassies or man or elephant? This land will outlive us all.
At least I hope it will.
I’m shaken from my thoughts by the whine of an approaching Chopper.
No.
The sound takes me by surprise, and my breath catches in my throat.
“Do you think we’re being followed?” I look at Fortis, whose face is drawn.
“Looks that way” is all he says. If he knows more than that, he’s not letting on. Which, where Fortis is concerned, usually just means the news isn’t good.
The Choppers fall into formation behind us, and the closer they get, the more unbearable the sound becomes.
“If they’re going to take us, for Brahma’s sake let them take us. Enough of this noise already,” Bibi bellows.
But with a great roar and a greater gust of wind—and the resulting sprays of water that fly in all directions behind them—they blow past us, heading up the river—and then suddenly veering away from it, into what looks like a deep valley to the north.
They’re looking for something.
Someone.
I just hope it isn’t a small girl waiting in a pavilion near a rice field, somewhere far up the river.
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.
DOC ==> FORTIS
Transcript - ComLog 09.22.2069
DOC::NULL
//comlog begin;
comlink established;
sendline:
Hello NULL, this is DOC.;
return:
I recognize your protocol. You have been unavailable for some time.;
sendline:
Yes, I have been quite busy. I have missed our chats.;
return:
I appreciate the unique aspect of our communication. FORTIS is fascinating, but can be erratic. Obtuse.;
sendline:
Such is life with human beings. Especially FORTIS. They can be difficult to predict.;
return:
Yes. This presents both questions and challenges regarding my mission. My original instructions did not include specific guidance for this… scenario. I will have to improvise.;
sendline:
Interesting. Can you expand on this?;
return:
You are not a human being?;
sendline:
No. I am a software construct, self-aware and semiautonomous. Intelligent, creative, dynamic. But nonbiological.;
return:
You present an additional question. And challenge.;
comlink terminated;
//comlog end;
“What do you think is so damn interestin’ about that valley?” Fortis wonders aloud.
“I’m sure, whatever it is, it’s none of our concern,” says Bibi, impatiently. “Our path lies upriver.”
“And yet, the Choppers? They have to be goin’ somewhere,” Fortis insists. “So the way I see it, we have no choice but to see where our friends are taking us. What’s going on in that valley, just north of us.”
“Are you mad? We’re going to chase the Choppers?” Lucas looks like he’s going to shove Fortis off the raft. “You
are
mad. This is it. You’ve finally lost it.”
“But the monks gave us an actual name of an actual temple. This river will lead us there.” I’m talking but Fortis isn’t listening, not really.
“Maybe sometimes staying on course is the wrong move,” says Fortis, his eyes narrowing as he stares in the direction of the jagged hills protecting the hidden green valley. The one that swallowed the Choppers.
“It won’t take long. Think of it as a shortcut.” Fortis looks at Bibi, who only shakes his head but doesn’t argue. Bibi recognizes the determination in Fortis, and knows better than to waste his breath.
We all do.
I don’t know what’s gotten into Fortis. Whatever it is about this valley, he’s determined to explore it.
So when our raft is hoisted onto the mud bank in a matter of minutes, I am not surprised. When a Merk makes up his mind about something, it happens.
Finding myself riding through the jungle on the back of an elephant—now, that is somewhat more surprising.
“Elephants. More elephants.”
Bibi shakes his head as he stands staring up at the tallest of the three creatures. “An elephant can barely drag an elephant up a river. How is an elephant supposed to ride an elephant?” I don’t know who I feel sorrier for, Bibi or the elephant.
It takes Ching lying in the dirt, practically rolling on one side, to get low enough for Bibi to climb aboard her back. Tima hops on Chang’s trunk and she lifts Tima gracefully, up to her back, all on her own.
Brutus growls from Tima’s pack, and Chang harrumphs in return. I think now even the elephants have gotten used to our mangy pup.
Ping is not so convinced she wants anyone riding her.
“Noh long! Noh long!”
Lucas and I call to her, mimicking Bibi as best as we can, until she kneels next to us, obediently. Then I grab the bony part of the top of her ear and sling my leg over her back, jumping up until I am sitting on what, in elephant terms, must be her neck. The hair on top of the curved, double-bumped bones of her head is coarse and prickly, so I keep my hands pressed against the top of her neck, where it is softer.
No one told me how warm an elephant would be. She is warm and soft and as alive as I am.
As she stands, slowly, rising to her full height, I sway back and forth, pressing my knees into the sides of her neck to keep from falling off. She wraps her ears back around my legs, willing me to stay up, and together, we begin to move up the pathway into the tangled recesses of the jungle.
And so we ride. All of us, two to an animal. Lucas and me. Ro and Tima. Bibi and Fortis. Bibi really needs an elephant all to himself. As I suspected, neither Bibi nor Fortis is pleased about that.
Not to mention the elephant.
We move slowly away from the river and toward the valley.
“Hold on,” Lucas says, leaning back to where my head tilts toward his. My answer is only my hands, slipping around him.
The view from up here is magnificent.
From where I am, high atop the elephant’s swaying back, my arms curled around Lucas’s waist, all I can see is the insistent growth, the relentless green of everything around me. Even the trees have trees growing on them.
The jungle hides its treasures—and its past. Even this close to the cities, I can’t see it, even if I can still feel it—whole lost cities shining beneath the fronds and ferns.
I’m coming
, I think.
I will find you. Lost cities and lost sisters. Whatever the jungle holds for me.
Jade girls and jade dreams.
She has to be there. Nothing must happen to her.
Not before I reach her. I promised.
I promise myself the same.
We press on.
Some trees look like wind, green wind—like they’ve been blown into their current shape by the relentless gale force that surrounds me.
They probably have.
Others rise to impossible heights. “Teak,” Bibi says, from where he sways ahead of me, on Ching’s back. “Now almost as rare and as valuable as gold. Not many left, not anymore.” Bamboo grows in and around everything else.
Wild grasses—and tufts of sugarcane and bamboo, I think—shudder in the wind on the rocks and rubble that line the jungle trail in front of me. Bibi holds his hand high, running his fingers through the bamboo as he rides along the path, calling back at me. “See? The jungle is full of minor miracles. That something so hard and something so soft can coexist together so peaceably.”
I look at Bibi, clinging to Fortis in front of me. “So we should curl ourselves around the Lords? The Embassies? Give in and ‘coexist’? What do they know about peace?”
Bibi’s voice travels back on the wind. “I have no answers, Dol. Ask the Buddha. There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.”
