Wonders of the Invisible World (41 page)

“Yes, but,” Kel, his eyes closed, heard himself say, “that was two thousand years ago. The shelf-life of a country’s soul is two generations after the revolution that formed it.”

Aika, waking, snorted sleepily. “You Tatians. How would you know? Everyone knows you are born lacking souls.”

“Maybe. But whatever soul Khaat has, it’s tearing into bloody pieces now.”

“Maybe,” she said softly, turning away from him, “that’s why I want to go.”

If he didn’t talk about it, he figured later, maybe she would forget. He began to know her, the way her pale hair fell across her brows to snag her eyelashes, the way he could change her habitually brisk, humorless expression, the way her eyes caught light sometimes and turned so clear they held only the memory of color. Her white skin smelled of almonds; the perfume she sometimes wore smelled of apricots. She had a lovely laugh, like water running in a forest on a hot day, like distant bells of some unknown metal. He loved to hear her laugh. But no matter what he did to distract her, the thoughtful, distant look would return to her eyes, and at those times she would not hear him say her name.

“But why?” he asked helplessly. “It would be like going into a burning house when it’s simply too late to rescue anything.”

She sighed. “If there was a child in the burning house?”

“If it’s too dangerous even for that?”

“Suppose this happened in Tatia—you had such a civil war. At what moment would Tatia no longer be Tatia? And you no longer be Tatian?”

“That’s different. You want to go back and rescue something that might have existed in a poem. Tatia can be rebuilt. Tatians grow anywhere, like grass or mold. They don’t worry about carrying their souls with them.”

She propped her chin on her hand, sighing. “Do you know what the Khaati word for Tatian is?”

“I can guess.”

“Cloud.”

“What?”

“You are cloud people, we reach right through you. You have no past.”

“Sure we do,” he protested. “Everyone does.”

“You have no gods, no magic. No myths, no shadows.”

“We had myths. We never liked shadows.”

“You don’t like secrets. You don’t like anything you can’t take apart, put back together. You explore everything, try to know everything. If you know everything, where is the shadow to rest in?”

“What shadow?”

“The shadow you need crossing the desert of knowing everything. The shadow behind the language.” But she was laughing at herself, now, or at whatever he had been doing to her.

“I know enough,” he said, “to get along.”

But her words clung to him; he considered them at odd moments. Past was only a way of getting to the present, myth and magic were a pair of shoes too small to walk in any longer. Learning everything was a busy-minded civilization’s way to survive. It was a road that increased in proportion to its traveled part. Still, he wondered, what in Tatian culture made its people seem like clouds? Insubstantial, always changing form... They were thinkers, creators, they built roads across deserts, they did not waste time sitting under shadows. They pushed back the night; it was busy with artificial lights blazing against the background of stars. They even counted stars, they were so busy. They counted everything: people, nuclear particles, cold viruses, board feet, time.

You have no past.

Sure we do, he thought, and it’s as bloody as everyone else’s.

The shadow behind the language...

Aika left him finally, as he knew she would. She did not ask him to come with her.

He missed her sorely. He watched endless news-holos of the distant war, hoping and fearing for a glimpse of her face on some schoolteacher, soldier, nurse. Gradually the ache lessened, became bearable. He pursued his fragmented, kaleidoscope existence; he cooked soya-chili at a restaurant, tended bar at another; he cleaned floors at the Aquarium at night and watched the octopus brood. He drank wine sitting on the curbs with wizened Khaati grandmothers, who needed to get away from their bustling families. They taught him a few Khaati words, he taught them a little Tatian.

Then he received an order from his father: Come home.

Home was a city in the north full of Tatians, a structure of glass and steel and light, light everywhere, always. We landed in the desert, Kel thought, confused, as he stepped off the air-shuttle. But it was only the Tatian preference for sun in the chilly north. The golden, hairless faces, his own face, after a street filled with Khaati, startled him.

“I’m dying,” his father said abruptly, when they were settled in the vast apartment overlooking out of all sides most of the north end of a continent. Kel took a large gulp of brandy, opened his mouth; his father continued without letting him speak. “It’s a congenital virus. My mother had one of the first known cases of it. There’s no cure yet, it hasn’t been around long enough. You show no signs of it in your system, I had them check. They would have found the virus in you by now, if you were going to get it.”

“I—” Kel said, and coughed on brandy fumes.

“Let me talk. You have this thing about being a poet.”

“I—”

“So you go and live on a street full of Khaati. I don’ know you too well, but you’re one of three people I trust, and the other two don’t have your connections. One’s dead anyway,” he added surprisedly. “There’s a drug the Khaati make. It’s lethal, but in my case it doesn’t matter. It will kill the pain, which does matter. They give it to their old people when they don’t want to live anymore. I want you to get me some. Will you?”

Kel was still swallowing brandy fumes. “You want me—” His head finally cleared, along with his throat. “You want me to give it to you because you don’t want to live anymore.”

“I do want to,” his father said. There was no expression in his big, stolid, golden face. None in his voice. All in his words. “I do,” he said again. “But I won’t. And this will give me some hours, days maybe, without pain. Then pouf. Finish.” He added, with a shade of amusement in his voice, “Anything else I take they can cure me of. But not this. That’s why it’s illegal. Do it for me? You can write a poem about if afterward, I don’t mind.”

“If I don’t wind up in jail,” Kel said. He was regaining control; his hands were trembling but he kept them locked around the brandy glass. “How’d you know about that stuff anyway?”

“Dr. Crena told me,” his father said. His face seemed more peaceful, less implacable, now that he knew Kel wouldn’t fuss, need things from him. He smiled slightly at Kel’s expression. “He’s known me since I first swore at him coming out of the womb. He has a right to advise me how to go back in. He knew I’d never betray him. And I know you won’t.”

“I’m just surprised,” Kel said, and swallowed more brandy. “How does he know about it?”

“It’s no secret, it’s just illegal. It’s not a street drug or a party drug, it’s what you take to die. There’s no popular demand for it.”

Kel shifted. He felt, suddenly, intensely uncomfortable, as if his head were the wrong size, or his bones were trying to outgrow his skin. It was an idea forcing itself into him, he realized; he had to chew and swallow and make it part of himself. It was like trying to eat a stone.

“How can you be so calm?” he burst out finally, furiously. Again the expressionless, tawny gaze, reticent, impersonal.

“Don’t shout,” his father said mildly. “Doesn’t do any good. I know. I’ve told you what will help me. Will you help me?”

Kel stared back at him. He could feel it then: shadow between his bones and his skin that had been there since the day he was born. “All right,” he said, thinking of clans, the Khaati grandmothers, the thin, thin secret paper walls. “All right.”

Bu. That was what the drug was called. Just that.
“Bu?”
he said to one of the grandmothers or great-grandmothers who had come out in the night to get a moment’s peace, look up at the three stars showing above the city, smoke a cigarette smelling like ginger. She said nothing, stared at him as she drew in smoke, her cheeks hollowed. Her blue eyes looked sunken, pale. He repeated the word; the cigarette was replaced by a very old finger pressed against her lips. “For my father,” he explained.
“Na babas.”
But she was gone, she was a trail of smoke and a shadow, motionless, inside the open door.

The next evening, as he walked late through the quiet streets after sweeping the Aquarium, he was jumped.

He hit the pavement on his back, too surprised for a moment to realize what had happened. Then he saw the silver sun, looking like a demented sunflower, dangling from a chain in front of his nose. He saw the Khaati face above it. He felt the hard street pushing at his back, his skull.

“You want Bu, Tatian?” the young man murmured. He had a drooping white mustache and a tic near one eye. Kel remembered seeing him pulling down the awnings at one of the shops. He slid one hand around the back of Kel’s neck, tightened his fingers. Stars, more than were ever seen in the night sky above the city, roared down around Kel. He tried to see, tried to scream, could do neither. Someone said something; the stars dulled, a thick night faded away like fog.

“Aika knew him,” he heard. The name echoed: Aika, Aika. He could finally see. The fingers were still there, feather-light. The blood sang in his ears. Behind the Khaati bending over him, he saw others: one watching, smoking, one with three suns in one ear, one smiling a thin, crooked smile.

“That’s the poet,” he heard and someone laughed. Poet, poet. He tried to speak; a thumb licked his throat slowly and the words froze.

“Aika said he reads Coru.”

“Who is Coru?”

“Ignorant Sun. You dumb kid.” There was a brief dance, flashes of knife-light, a good-natured laugh. Someone else said:

“Why does he read a Khaati poet?”

“Ask him.”

“Why, Tatian?”

“Why do you read poetry?”

“Why do you want Bu?”

“For my father,” he said through the ice-floe in his throat. There was silence. His head thudded back on the pavement; he closed his eyes, seeing stars again. “For my father,” he whispered. Then the silence became empty; he opened his eyes and saw no one.

He tried to write a poem about that: about the dancing suns and the wild stars and the hard, cold hand of the world against the back of his head. But the memories kept intruding between him and the words. I saw the dead-end of time, he thought. I nearly died. On an empty street in a Khaati neighborhood. Died of not being able to speak. I would have been a body and a stack of poetry. They would have put the body in the ground and the poetry in the garbage. That’s it. End. Finis. Poof. He couldn’t sit still, he was too aware of his body, the amazing, continuous beating of his heart despite all odds against it. I should be able to write this, he thought. But he couldn’t.

Poet, poet.

Give it up, he thought the next morning. You don’t have to get Bu. You don’t have to kill your father.

But that evening, as he walked home from a bar, a woman stepped out of a doorway and beckoned to him. She was back-lit, a sketch of a woman, a seduction of familiar lines: long, long hair, no face, a lithe body stylized as a cave drawing, to be recognized until the end of time. She lifted a slender hand; rings flashed. He turned mid-step, followed her. He heard the silken whisper of the traditional tight-fitting sheath that covered her from throat to ankle. Birds flew across it, spiraled around her body to hide within her hair. When she finally turned, he was startled at how old she was.

She smiled slightly, young-old, knowing. They were in a small room behind a restaurant; he smelled spices, heard plates clatter, meat sizzling. Her face was very delicate, paper-pale, a country of small, secret roads. Her eyes were outlined in black, her hollowed cheeks flushed with pink powder. She smelled of ginger cigarettes and the perfume Aika wore. The perfume and her graceful, tapering fingers confused him. She was Aika, she was not Aika. She was young, she was old. Birds circled her. Her hair was dead-white, her eyes were beginning to sink a little into her head. Her body looked supple as a child’s. He wanted her, he did not.

The smile-lines deepened under her eyes, beside her mouth. “Do you know,” she asked him, “how much death costs?”

“No.” He had to say it twice before he could hear himself. “No.”

“It is not cheap.”

“No,” he agreed, though privately he considered death the cheapest thing in the universe. Hell, it was free. It handed itself out to anybody, anywhere. He cleared his throat again. “How much—” He thought of his meager salaries and shook his head. “I mean, it doesn’t matter. My father will pay. There’s nothing else he wants to buy.”

“He wants it? Or you want it for him?”

He stared at her, then realized what she was asking. “Do I want to murder my father, you mean? No, not really. Do you want me to bring you a note from him?” He felt himself trembling and wished he could sit. But it was like sitting in front of a goddess. The goddess pulled a battered chair out from the table and gestured. She sat across from him and lit a cigarette. She narrowed her eyes, at her smoke, or at something she saw in the smoke. She no longer smiled.

“This is business,” she said. Her voice was low, slightly grainy from the smoke; if he closed his eyes she would be the faceless woman in the doorway, eternally young, beckoning with her voice.