Skyward Inn, page 17
‘That’s right. In friendship. We choose friendship, at the end. Now. Those who do not choose it go elsewhere.’
‘I didn’t know any of this.’ He wondered how many people—humans—did know it. The planet offered huge diversity, and Qitans were a tiny part of that.
‘You are very young,’ observed the guide. ‘Perhaps they did not want to scare you either. Also, the young can be difficult. Sometimes they think separation is better. We have that on Qita, too. They think they’ll find answers that are special. They’re not like those that came before, are they?’ It stuck out its tongue.
Divisions between generations: another thing they had in common.
‘Can you draw it for me? Qita?’
The guide began to trace symbols on the ground, radiating out from the pole. It drew with speed and confidence, and where it touched, liquid welled up from the earth to fill the grooves. The liquid was silvery blue in places, and greener in others. It was impossible to tell what the colours meant.
It was a map.
The map grew and grew. So many marks. Fosse stood back as the guide worked, moving outwards in a spiral, counter-clockwise from the pole. The planet was a swirl that it created. It reminded Fosse of the whirlpools that he had seen forming on the side of the boat, and felt on his face as he walked the length of the tunnel. It grew larger and larger. At times the marks reminded him of mathematical symbols, or of Kanji, or English letters, but they never made sense. Shapes, too. A triangle, at times. A simple drawing of a cat, or maybe a house? He wanted to find meaning where none could exist, for him, except in the broadest sense—this was Qita. When the guide drew a circle around the whole, enclosing all the marks and stepping back from its work, Fosse knew it for sure. Qita, a whole: complex and diverse and so much more than he had ever been told, ever expected. His mission was to explore Qita, and he now knew that was an impossibility. It was as terrifying and magnificent and unknowable as Earth. The smallest part around Tung Base was all he could ever hope to visit.
He wished he could record the guide’s drawing, to keep forever. Then he remembered Coach, in his head, and was glad. This would not be lost. Coach could keep it, perfectly, and show it to the whole of Earth, enhancing everyone’s understanding of this planet. He knew he was being ridiculously optimistic, but he had to believe it. It was too painful to think this moment, this drawing, would mean nothing.
‘Hm,’ said the guide, then made harmonic sounds in its own language. ‘We’ll go further on the white path, and you’ll understand better. Let’s go forward.’
The liquid drained back into the ground and the marks faded. Only the pole and the leaflet were left.
HOW DO YOU tell someone that the thing they think is special is nothing but humanity being its usual self? Fosse wondered, as they journeyed over the mountains. The leaflet had created a path, a journey solemnly undertaken, and it was nothing but a piece of propaganda.
He thought about it a lot, as time passed. He was certain the same was true from the Qitans’ perspective, too; whatever encapsulated normality for them could only be amazing and strange to humanity. But surely there were moments, small individual happenings, where they could meet on neutral terms and understand each other properly and fully. Wasn’t that what he was doing with the guide? Or was he overestimating his own importance? He began to hate being human, particularly when the soft downy hair on his upper lip and chin turned hard and itchy, and began to form a beard. He pulled on it as it grew longer, and wished it would go away. It reminded him he was part of that other planet, Earth, no matter where he travelled.
He was learning, and ageing.
Am I a man now? he asked himself. He was no longer sure that it was a level that could be achieved: a plateau, a stopping point with a view over all that had gone before.
We offer the hand of friendship: the leaflet had said. The kind of friendship in which one side took everything they wanted, and the other side let them in the name of the promise given. He had experience of that. But his worst memories continued to fade, as did his best. Earth was very far away.
Fosse asked questions often as the journey stretched onwards and upwards to a high, clear peak that revealed endless seas ahead, all around, apart from a spit of land that widened into a settlement. The guide suggested they camp at the highest peak, looking down over the view, and then they started back down the other side of the mountain. Once, the guide had killed his own kind over such delineations as which side of the hill he lived, and who was older or younger. It seemed both ridiculous and utterly believable, and there was nothing to show for it.
Fosse felt changed; changed again.
He ran out of supplies and switched to Qitan food and drink, which the guide was happy to supply; it showed no signs of running low. The sticks were spicy, and the drink was warming, pleasant. Still he continued to ask questions, but he could not shape them to fit into the lock of the guide’s knowledge, and eventually he gave up trying. They played word games instead. Words that sounded the same and meant different things. Two and too. Seen and scene. Not and knot.
‘THIS IS NOT a knot,’ says Isley. ‘It’s not a knot.’
I don’t want to open my eyes. I want to stay on Qita, with Fosse, inside Isley, floating in both homes. I was becoming and belonging. Everything is there to be known.
‘It’s not a knot. Not yet,’ he says, and pushes me away. Our hands break apart and I fall to the floor. The connection is broken, and it hurts, it hurts to be back in the Skyward, and the cellar is very cold and very damp. I can hear water running, somewhere close. I feel empty, thirsty. I want a drink. Human concerns. I could happily leave them all behind. Is that what’s happening to me? Am I leaving humanity behind?
‘Jem?’
A woman’s voice, familiar, coming from upstairs. Calling for me. It’s my name. I remember, yes, it’s my name.
‘You’d better go,’ says Isley. ‘But come back soon, okay? Come back soon.’ He smiles at me. He’s in a playful mood; I can’t remember seeing him like this before. As if a weight has been lifted from him. I feel I know him so much better, but not in the usual way, as one face talking to another. From the inside out.
It’s too much, it’s overwhelming. It makes no sense, and I can’t understand why that doesn’t bother me more. But I can’t give it up now. I reach for him again—
‘Jem? Dom?’ calls the voice.
‘Go on,’ he tells me, and I make my way upstairs.
A person is standing in the bar. It’s night, and the moonlight through the open doorway is not enough to help me identify them; it’s the dog that does, the patient sturdy dog standing by their side who could only be Bailey.
‘Hi Freya,’ I say.
‘I had to come,’ Freya says. ‘My house is underwater. It’s flooded. The village is flooded.’ She says this with wonder, pleasure. Freya, who lived for decades in that house, giving herself to the community to protect this idea of perfect rural life. Is it so easy to give up on this way of life? Surely she should mourn it. But then I remember that her husband is dead, and I think I can understand why she has decided to mourn no longer.
Bailey is wearing socks on his paws, held up with string. He looks clownish, and also wise, and very pleased to see me, in that way only dogs can manage. He wags his tail, and I go to him, and stroke his head.
‘I saw Doctor Clarke’s message,’ Freya goes on, ‘It said to come here, but I knew that anyway. Bailey knew it too. Where’s Dom?’
My brother really is the hub of this village. I hatch a new theory: whatever this disease is, he’ll be at the centre of it, battling it from the inside out. Dealing with it. ‘He’s not here. Fosse is gone too.’
She nods, as if that makes sense, or possibly she’s not really listening to me. There are things she wants to do and say. ‘Am I the first?’
‘The first for the treatment centre? I haven’t really—there’s not a space that—’
‘Come on, Bailey.’ She pushes past me, and Bailey follows, through the bar, into the hall. She glances up the stairs, then turns to the cellar. ‘Down, I’m guessing.’
‘No, Freya, there’s nothing…’ I don’t want her to go down there. But this feeling, this feeling that the future is no different to the past and neither of them can be altered, is taking me over; no matter how we tell it, how the limbs grow or are amputated, how the mouths move or the eyes see, the spirit remains the same. Is that the right word for it? Spirit? I find myself wanting to believe that something inside remains intact.
‘I don’t want to be alone,’ she says, at the top of the stairs. She’s waiting for something. For me. ‘But I’m scared, Jem. I have to admit I’m a little bit scared.’
‘I don’t know how to describe what’s down there,’ I tell her. It’s as honest as I can be. ‘I don’t know if it’s good or bad. I don’t think those definitions apply.’
‘Maybe we’ll be better off without all that,’ she tells me, surprising me. I’ve underestimated her. I’ve been thinking of her as a little old lady, trapped in the thoughts of the generation before my own, but now I catch a glimpse of strength and flexibility. Such a rare combination. I wish I’d known her better, all this time.
On impulse, I put my arms around her and hug her. She hugs me back, tightly. I’m a true human being in this transaction. I have no idea of what she is really thinking, but I try to express my warmth and respect, and I hope she feels it through my skin, somehow.
Then I lead the way down to the cellar.
Won and Isley are playing a game. She puts an ankle to his. Where their bare skin meets, it fuses. Then she pulls her foot back and the skin holds, creating a tunnel that joins them, a fragile, membranous circle, that then breaks apart. A few drops of fluid fall; it has already created a small puddle on the floor. They are both smiling. I wonder if I should feel jealousy, or horror, but emotions like that aren’t coming easily to me. I’m calm. I feel far away, with my son. Only a very small voice is saying, over and over: What’s happening to me? What’s happening?
‘Hello,’ says Freya, warmly, her best smile in place. ‘I don’t think we’ve met properly before. I wasn’t really a pub person. Tom came sometimes, with Bailey.’
‘Yes,’ says Isley. ‘Tom. I knew him. I was so sorry to hear of your loss. And Bailey, yes, I know Bailey. Hello, Bailey. You can take his socks off now. Although they are very smart.’
‘He looks handsome,’ says Won.
‘They did the trick,’ Freya says. ‘I don’t think he would have walked all the way here otherwise. It was Dom’s idea, you know.’ She kneels down and unties the strings, and the socks slump down. Bailey lifts each paw in turn, patiently. ‘I put my hands in the mud and it said to come here. Mud, speaking to me in my head. They had a word for that when I was young: touched, they would have said. But here I am, and I’ll be touched if that is what’s next, because I felt certain it was Tom’s voice. Can you tell me—was it Tom’s voice? I suppose it couldn’t have been.’
‘Has the liquid risen far?’ says Won.
‘Oh, yes.’
‘It won’t be long, then,’ Won murmurs, to Isley, and he nods. They are so calm. Perhaps they know where this all ends.
‘You don’t mind?’ he asks Freya.
‘Why should I mind? This way I get to be with Tom again, don’t I?’
‘Not exactly,’ says Won. ‘It’s more that nobody will think they’re with anybody except everybody.’
‘Keep the mumbo-jumbo,’ says Freya, and a little part of me cheers for her. We’re still human. We’re not quite done yet. She straightens up, balls the socks, and puts them in the pockets of her coat. ‘Us Devon folk don’t really care for that.’
‘I thought this was the Protectorate,’ says Isley.
‘It’s always been Devon to me. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.’
‘But you can!’ says Won, and holds out her free hand to Bailey, who trots over willingly and puts his nose to her stomach. He allows her to tousle his ears. Freya comes to them and does the same, kneeling down to put her head beside him, on Won’s lap. Won strokes the grey hair at her crown, too.
I’ve been so quiet, in the corner of the cellar, watching this choice, trying to understand. It’s terrifying to watch it happening. How can she give up her separation, her humanity, to become part of this thing, this mess, this collection of existence? Isn’t it better to fight?
I think of Doctor Clarke, and his commitment to resistance. He believed in the village above all else. I can’t live that way either.
Isley catches my eye, and he smiles.
‘Come back to me,’ he says.
We love each other. We have, for the longest time. I’m not sure it matters now. But I feel the power of those years in which we were part of nothing but this inn, because we could not bear to belong anywhere else. Do they count for nothing, now?
‘There’s everyone and everything inside me, but nobody else fits here but you,’ he says, holding out his hand, beckoning to the space where I’m to stay. I could still say no. He’s promised me that.
Dom. I call to him, in my mind. Dom, where are you now?
I take my spot. We will be captured, held in place. I think of Toulu, and the creatures in the rock. Is that our destiny?
‘TOULU,’ SAID THE guide.
It wasn’t a word Fosse had come across before.
The rock was huge, in the centre of the still lake. It was split in two as if struck by lightning, the sides around the injury scorched, and inside were many patterns, fossils: small shelled creatures held in a frozen moment forever more.
‘Are these your ancestors?’ Fosse asked.
‘What does that mean? They are not part of us. They did not want to become us.’
A form of life that died out, then. Evolution was not a straight line on Qita after all.
The white leaflet was not attached to the rock itself, but to a nearby tree. It was the same as the one at Shanlingu: a generic, multi-language message designed to keep the peace.
‘Is this still the white path?’ he asked. ‘We’re following a trail of Coalition leaflets? I thought it was something historical.’
‘Do you mean old?’ asked the guide. It had rolled up the legs of its suit to its knees, and was paddling in the lake next to the rock. ‘Like me? Rude in polite company?’
‘Made up of years of happening,’ said Fosse. He felt quite pleased with his definition.
‘Toulu is that,’ it agreed. ‘Things that were before. We can sleep here.’
‘No,’ Fosse said. He didn’t like the place. The fossils, the traces of creatures who had died in some surprise attack—from nature itself, perhaps—unsettled him. The rock cast a long shadow, and when he stood in the darkness, beneath it, he could almost touch a difficult memory, down in the damp, of people, crouching, waiting. He had been very young, he suspected. He had been one among many. It summoned the same feelings of disgust, danger. ‘Let’s move on.’
‘Yes, we can move on. We can travel fast from here, be in town soon.’
A town. Many Qitans, gathered. So far, Fosse had only seen a few figures at a distance, soon disappearing from view again. He’d had the feeling they were avoiding him. But he wanted to be among them in a meaningful way, to record what life was like for them faithfully, realistically, to be conveyed back to Earth. And he wanted the guide to take him, and explain it to him in its own inimitable way.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘How?’
THE ANSWER WAS a canyon, the entrance no wider than their shoulders, almost hidden under an ivy-like growth. They pushed past the leaves and entered the shaded walkway, and immediately Fosse missed the sun. The darkness was not absolute, but he found himself struggling to see far; his eyes had become accustomed to permanent light, even when sleeping. Now he felt vulnerable, weakened. He remembered how he once used to like the night. It was strange how any change could be accepted. No doubt he would adjust to this, too.
A stream cut along the bottom of the canyon, and spongy life sprang up in it. Slippery stuff. It reminded him of seaweed. He concentrated on placing his feet, his Coalition boots proving to be waterproof, and put his hands on the smooth high walls to help him keep his balance. When he looked up, the sky was only a thin strip of light, high above.
It was impossible to talk. Occasionally the guide—permanently ahead of him, as there was no room to walk side by side—would mutter something that Fosse didn’t catch. At first he said, ‘What?’ but the guide never elaborated, and he soon stopped asking.
Old feelings started to return to him—weights that he hadn’t really understood he had carried for years: the surety that he was in the wrong place, that he didn’t belong, and a particular and bone-deep loneliness. How could those feelings have found him here, so far from Earth and from the boy he had been? He began to feel afraid of more than the dark. He feared regression: returning to what he once was. With fear came anger, and that terrified him too. These emotions fed off each other, got bigger, and it seemed inevitable that they would erupt in violence. He would hurt the guide. He dreaded it, and resented the broad back ahead of him as time passed and the canyon stretched on.
It came to him that the devices implanted within him by the Coalition could no longer be working properly, and as soon as he’d had that thought he lost all confidence in their ability to keep the worst memories away. They poured back in, along with guilt. He talked to himself, blamed himself, begged Cee and Annie and Victoria for forgiveness. And his uncle, and his mother, and everyone he had simply abandoned. It must have hurt them all deeply. He practised conversations in which he asked for their forgiveness, and when he found no replies or answers inside himself, he began to shout. The guide did not turn around, no matter how much noise he made.
He pictured holding the axe again.
He wanted it, to feel safe and strong.
He imagined swinging it once more, connecting with tree, with body, with the guide. He was so scared.
