You Shall Know Our Velocity (45 page)

“That’s not so—“

We were on a cobblestone side street. Riga was so tidy, everything reflecting the most delicate of European gestures, and yet I was—fuck—so stunningly cold.

“I know, it was how they put it,” said Hand, “that made it different I guess. Their point was that not only are you of the same blood as those in your bloodline, but you carry all of their memories with you. All of their
souls
. You carry their dreams and their pains and their anger and everything. Raymond was talking a lot about the bad stuff you carry. Like if your relatives died in some wrong way.”

“Jesus. Sounds terrifying.”

We stopped at a shop selling cheese and electronics. We were the only people walking in Riga, it seemed. When we did see people, they were alone and walking briskly, shrouded in fur.

“No, they made it sound okay. It’s like a density thing. Apparently they wanted that density of soul. The density is desirable. Apparently they see the soul the opposite as we do, where it’s the lightest thing, this wispy ghost thing. They think of it like a mountain. Like a mountain each of us carries around, and you want your mountain strong and dense, because that means your family has lived lives of great experience. But the trick I guess is to find a way to move around.”

“With your mountain.”

“Yeah. This is where I got a little lost. I love the part about the blood and the voices of everyone in your head.”

My feet were frozen. They felt like claws.

“You didn’t do the voices part,” I said.

“Sorry. Well, I guess you can hear from these people, the dead and the people who share your blood, your parents first and everyone else, aunts and uncles, on and on—on some level you share it all. In varying degrees, depending. Thousands of voices, millions maybe. This endless chorus. And it’s all there in the blood! I love that idea. I was thinking of fiber-optic cables, the way they can hold all that information—“

“Oh come on.”

“Let’s go this way.”

“Good.”

“Well so the point is, these are the people you’re responsible to. You’re literally carrying them with you at all times. You’re you but you’re also
them
, in a way that’s much more, you know, tangible than any Judeo-Christian way. And it’s not a reincarnation kind of thing—you’ll never really be you again, directing some body with any sort of control. You die and become of a chorus, a voice in a chorus. The way Raymond explained it, it sounded so beautiful. And so when we talk, you and I, we’re speaking on some level with the voices of thousands. And part of the challenge is to remember this, or I guess the point of their ceremonies and teachings is putting themselves in better touch with the chorus, searching for them and recognizing them, speaking with them.”

“Like channeling?”

“No, no. It’s more like
listening
. It’s con
si
dering. What was the word he used? It wasn’t an English word, it was Spanish, I think, and he couldn’t find a word for it in English or French. It meant speaking with the dreams of thousands, the judgment of a bloodline. Which I took it meant acting in a way taking into account this chorus.”

“Right.”

“I think that was it.”

“But—Wait, is that the hotel? The spire there?”

“No. We face the square, remember?”

“Right.”

“So …”

“Well, it sounds so limiting. It’s like having your whole family second-guessing every action.”

We were nowhere near the bar, or the Pepsi disco, but we did see the McDonald’s, which meant we were close.

“Let’s go in and ask the concierge,” Hand said.

We passed through the revolving door and were warmed in the tall white marble lobby.

“Were you high?” I asked.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Go on.”

The concierge was gone. We were at the desk. There were small maps of the city center. Hand took one. On the back were ads for restaurants and clubs. He located The Pepsi. We would go again and find them. We stood in the lobby, warming ourselves.

“We weren’t high,” Hand said.

“Fine. Go on. All the voices in the head.”

“Maybe I’m not explaining it right. The way Raymond put it—it was so perfect—it just seemed so rich, their being alive. They carried their blood and their voices with such grace, you know?”

I didn’t. “I don’t.”

“It’s just this illusion we live with, the illusion that we want to for
get
things. That we need to forget so we can live, because everything is too
much
, our burdens are so great we need to self-lobotomize, at least partially, chemically or whatever, right?”

“Sure,” I said.

“But these people
want
to carry around everything and everyone. They walk with thousands in each step, speaking with thousands with every word. They forget nothing, you know—they recognize
the weight of these mountains, everyone walking around with these mountains, or trying to walk around. Man, these guys were amazing.”

“I believe you. So is this a God-based religion? Did they have a main mountain-god entity guiding the rest, the mini-mountains?”

“No, no. That wouldn’t fit. Why would you need a central overseeing god when everyone has the wisdom of thousands inside? The accumulation makes all people have the wisdom of gods, the experience of immortals. Potentially at least.”

“They worship themselves.”

“No. No worship at all. It’s just these people carrying around their mountains, knowing the weight of their souls.”

“This is where the helium fits in?”

“Let’s go find the ladies.”

We braced ourselves and pushed through the door again and the cold punched us everywhere.

“So apparently,” Hand continued, “ages ago these people, a thousand years ago or whatever, were bird-worshippers.”

“Oh come on.”

“They were totally fascinated by flight, more than most ancient tribes, and of course they wanted to fly themselves—”

“But there’s a catch: they’re mountains.”

“Right, right. They were mountains, and so heavy. They knew this. So this was the primary problem of their civilization after a while. How to fly? How to fly with this weight? They would jump from small cliffs and try to fly, but would fall. Hundreds died that way, and they assumed it was because their souls were too heavy.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah, they would just jump and fall. It was horrible. They lost about a third of every generation. So many died. So they started studying what the birds ate and did, and sort of applied what they could to emulate the birds.”

“They made wings of feathers.”

“No. They weren’t allowed to harm the birds, their faith wouldn’t allow it, so they couldn’t get enough feathers. The main thing they figured out, I guess, was the concept of—”

He stopped.

“Didn’t we see that cheese shop before?”

“Can’t remember.”

He checked the map. He chose a way.

“So what did they say about the birds? They studied them for about a hundred years and came up with something. Something about air. Sucking in air.”

“I’m surprised you’ve remembered this much.”

“Oh I remember everything. But I can’t believe I’m not remembering their name. There was an Indian name and an English nickname—Oh!”

“What?”

“I remember the air thing. So they watched and studied the birds, and came to the conclusion that the birds ate air to stay afloat. They see the birds fly with their mouths open, like I guess whales eating plankton or whatever, and because their village was so high on this ridge, the birds they saw, hawks and falcons I guess, were gliding, using upward currents. So to these people the wings weren’t seen as crucial.”

“The wings weren’t crucial.”

“To them it was about air intake. They figured—you know, come to think of it, their science was pretty naïve, but it was ambitious in a way. They were really trying to figure things out. So they theorized that the birds were taking something from the air that they weren’t, or processing it differently, or something. They saw these birds as vessels for gases, like balloons, with the wings just guidance tools. So they figured that they could be vessels for gas, too. Lighter than air. So they started jumping.”

“They’re lunatics.”

“Well, they see the birds gliding around their valley, and gliding down and then up again, and they start thinking it has something to do with the angle of intake. They’re really just experimenting, and they’ve already been jumping off the cliffs to their death, so now they just jump from lower levels, trying to get themselves full of this special air. They’re jumping like crazy. They’re jumping, and they’re running, and it becomes just part of their daily routine, leaping around and darting from place to place.”

“They’re trying to what? Build up their helium content?”

“Something like that. They start mythologizing it all, claiming that some day their tribe will fly. They figure with enough jumping and the proper special air intake, maybe three generations away, there’ll be enough helium in their mountains to fly.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah, but of course it doesn’t really work, and they start realizing, deep down, like Christians have with the Second Coming, that maybe it’s not going to happen after all. But that doesn’t mean the lessons aren’t valuable. The one goal has all these nice byproducts. In this case they started liking all the jumping around, I guess. It was part of their culture. They saw a hill, they started leaping down. They saw a green valley, they’d run like mad to the other side. And they had sex like mad, but I take it that was just some clever cleric’s idea. Anyway, I guess it all looked pretty goofy to the Spaniards, all these people running and hopping around with their mouths wide open, like they were completely surprised or in awe all the time, so these people were always considered a little flaky.”

“So they would just—”

“The Jumping People!”

“What?”

“That’s what they called them. The Spanish found these people and they were jumping around all the time, going up hills and crests and jumping all the time, so they called them the Jumping People.”

“The Jumping People.”

“The Jumping People, yeah. They really liked to jump. It became a rite of passage, a big jump from the ridge, and they incorporated the whole custom with their mountains. They held onto the helium notion, or maybe it was hydrogen, but instead of flying they saw it as a way to lighten one’s load, to leaven one’s mountain. So they’d do all this leaping and running and swimming and stuff, just running and running around sometimes, to lighten the weight of their mountains. It became essential to their functioning at all. They figured in the need for not only food kind of nourishment, but also a helium kind of nourishment.”

“And so they still live there?”

“In Chile? No. They were chased around by the Spaniards, I think. They were dispersed all over the place. But they were relatively nomadic in the first place, so it wasn’t a huge deal. I think most ended up assimilating, though. Raymond thinks he’s descended from them but there’s almost no way to prove it.”

“Oh.”

“But get this. This is the best part. Or one of the best things. The conquistadors at some point are mounting a siege on their main village, high on a jagged ridge. It’s Masada, basically. There’s about three thousand Jumping People there, and maybe fifteen hundred Spanish, but the Spanish have the artillery, so the Jumping People know it’s a lost cause.”

“So they killed themselves.”

“No! No, no. They don’t do that. Never.”

“Oh.”

“Never!”

“So?”

“So they ran!”

“They ran.”

“These guys think they’re the fastest people on Earth! They think they can outrun anyone, barefoot. So they’re going to wait for a while, see if the Spanish go away, and then they’re gonna haul ass. They’re going to fly, basically. Take their mountains and go.”

“So they just left?”

“There wasn’t anything there worth fighting about, from their perspective. I mean, they’re just sitting there one day, and the next second there’re these people who want to kill them or whatever. They just had no way of processing that.”

“So they ran.”

“The other thing they believed, which goes way back into their history and philosophy, is the impermanence of place. They didn’t ever stay anywhere all that long. They weren’t constantly nomadic, like moving every other week or whatever like Indian buffalo hunters or anything, but they had a curiosity about place, knew there were other places to go, and so when these guys are after their land, they’re not thrilled about it, but they also don’t feel like they own it or anything either, so—”

“They left.”

“They moved on. They kept moving. There was a lot to see.”

“And the conquistadors got the land or money or whatever.”

“Yeah. But the Jumping People left this one message on the cliff above their village, carved it in for the conquistadors. This basically turned into the motto of the Jumping People, even though I don’t think it makes all that much sense. I mean, it does and it doesn’t. Raymond admitted that this has been translated from the original Jumping People tongue, into Spanish, and back again, and then into English, so who knows how accurate it is. There was another American scholar who polished the words, I guess, a guy at the University of Chicago, so at least it sounds like
something you’d carve on a cliff over a village under siege, so your invaders would see it after you’ve left.”

“Give me the fucking message.”

Hand took a breath and opened his palms, as if accepting the gift of rain. “YOU SHALL KNOW OUR VELOCITY!” he bellowed into the cold exhausted city.

Ten minutes later we found it: The Pepsi was about a hundred yards in front of us.

“Good,” said Hand. “I’m numb everywhere.”

There was no one at the door and we descended a wide staircase into a low-ceilinged club, with red lights and barstools of dull copper. It looked like someone’s basement, converted for good times at home. In the first booth, Oksana and Katya. Katya, facing the door, brightened when we finished the stairs and strode toward them.