He looks up at the bare masts and imagines the sails unfurled and full, the ship once more making its way through the clouds and nebulae of deep space.
But the ship sits idle. The clouds of space scud slowly around them, and until the rudder is fixed, they are going nowhere. Until then, here they must stay, suspended in an azure limbo of no time and no space.
And until then, they have all the time in any world.
Bark slowly calculates a trajectory, and then watches as the piece of fruit follows it, up, and then down, over the side of the ship, into the void. He idly plays with one of his earrings for a minute, then goes back to sleep. Bark has never been in a hurry, and he’s not going to start now.
* * *
PASSING REINA, THE UN CONVOY drove into town. People stopped to look. The only time there were so many vehicles on the main street these days was when the army was passing through.
The vehicles, and the soldiers in them, were from all over the world. There were Syrians, Israelis, Russians, Koreans and Africans, and there were Americans. Months ago, the children had run to hide, but now they gathered in small groups and pointed and waved at the soldiers. Some of the soldiers waved back, and threw sweets to the children. The adults stood and crossed their arms and looked on with expressionless faces.
The main part of the convoy – the soldiers and their heavy trucks and all their equipment – drove straight on without stopping, heading along the road that would take them around the harbor to the sand dunes opposite town.
The officers consulted between the two black shiny cars on their cell phones, and decided to stop for a break. They pulled into the parking lot beside the Red Lion, and the officers emerged from behind the tinted windows, blinking in the sunlight as they put on their sunglasses.
They went into the bar and sat around one of the white plastic tables in the beer garden. From here, they had a clear view across the water, where outcrops of volcanic rock dotted the sand dunes like raisins on a cake. From here, the only sign of human activity was the small dark mass of tents, buildings and fences.
It was a hot day. The sun was strong, and despite the shade provided by the umbrellas of the beer garden, the half dozen starched white collars quickly became limp with perspiration. The talk was of politics and careers.
After a while they leaned back in their seats and marveled, each one to himself, at the wonderful and important things that were happening beneath the sand and rock across the water, and how fortunate they were that history had chosen them to do this work.
Except the General, of course; he had chosen himself. He sat silently while his subordinates talked, tapping his fingers lightly against the side of his glass. If there weren’t appearances to keep up, he might even have been smiling to himself.
* * *
A long way from the garden bar at the Red Lion…
ON THE SHIP, Thead is unconcerned by the fact that they have been unable to continue their voyage, and is equally uncaring about the success of Onethian and Sahrin. He has his own project to think about, and he feels one of life’s important moments approaching. It is the crossing of a threshold – a tide reaching its high-water mark. This has been a long time coming, and the moment belongs more to him than anyone else; it is the unraveling of the secret of the map.
Thead sits back and runs his hands though his thinning shoulder-length hair. His skin, rough and pockmarked, is shiny with sweat from his exertions, even though they have all been cerebral in nature. His eyes, normally thin and constantly shifting, widen momentarily as he makes a connection on the maze before him. He smiles to himself and leans back over the map.
It was given to one of the ship’s former crews, at a place they visited so long ago that its name has long been forgotten. Since then, it has taken on great importance to all the crews of the ship, from those whose names are lost in antiquity down to the six who make up the crew of the present day. A rich mythology has formed around the parchment. The mysterious territory which has its features drawn on the faded surface is part ancestral homeland, part legend.
The map has long been Thead’s obsession. Long after the curiosity of others has turned away and settled down into a collection of comfortable and reassuring myths, he still studies it relentlessly.
He crouches down among the tall, gangling structures of the ship’s foredeck, in a makeshift study created from barrels and boxes and sheets that he has taken from the cargo hold. Here he spends his days, and here he is today, sheltered from the wind and the distraction of his crew mates, bent over his precious parchment.
When he is sure of a new realization, he makes the faintest of marks on the parchment – a circle, a line, an arrow – in soft graphite that can easily be removed, his touch is so deliberate and light.
The maze of symbols and labels are sometimes in a language familiar to him, but most of them are in a foreign script, the slow deciphering of which has been his work. Its flourishes and curlicues never cease their whispering to him; sometimes he hears the voices through the night as he dreams. Sometimes his dreams have form, as though they are populated by entities, and those nights are not easy. It is better when the dreams don’t come.
The rest of the crew is happy enough to leave Thead to his musings. And Bark, of course, is happy with things that way as well. There are members of the crew with whom he has easier relationships.
It makes sense that there should be someone working on the map, and it is as well that it is Thead. Practical tasks have never suited him, and the rest of the crew would be distracted if Thead were to spend too much time with them. There is something about him that makes them uneasy.
The hull of the ship creaks as it floats, moving listlessly in the gentle current.
Apart from Onethian and Sahrin, who are busy with the new rudder, the crew has nothing to do. Bark is still asleep on his pile of sacks. The Senator is working on another one of his speeches that he will never deliver, and Kali is below decks, in the galley.
Thead feels a rush that surges through his whole body. Steadying his hand to keep it from shaking, he makes a faint mark on the map.
The final piece of the key falls into an ancient lock.
He has it! He leaps up and runs the length of the ship, shouting, waving the map above his head. Idiot, Onethian thinks.
At first no one else understands the reason for the disturbance, but they soon recognize what he is holding. They drop what they are doing and follow him, even Onethian. This must be a good day. First the rudder being fixed, and now this...
Thead crouches down beside Bark and spreads the parchment out on the deck. The others gather around and watch intently, without understanding, as Thead guides Bark through the glyphs and symbols.
When Thead finishes speaking, his finger is slowly circling a small and insignificant looking set of marks on the map.
Bark straightens and looks up. He is wide awake now. He stretches as he contemplates the clouds wrapping themselves into cool wreaths around the ends of the ship’s masts. All around them, hills of denser cloud lie stacked one upon the other, reaching as far up and as far down into the depths below them as anyone can see. The more distant clouds move slowly, carried by the most gradual and impartial of tides.
But something apart from the clouds is moving. Bark can feel it. It is their future that is spread out before them on the deck.
But do they complete their mission, and deliver their long overdue cargo, or do they follow the course that Thead has discovered on the map?
All of them feel the answer. It isn’t long before the rudder is in place, and as soon as everything is ready, they set sail.
It exhilarates them to be moving again. The sight of the billowing mountains of cloud in movement lifts their spirits, and even the ship itself seems to rejoice as it carries them along.
They follow Thead’s directions. The seductive joy of submission to a higher purpose spreads through the crew. The wind seems to catch their enthusiasm, and it picks them up, bearing them along confidently. They sail down narrow byways and across vast uncharted wastes of space. They cross darkness and light, places where there are no clouds, and places where there is nothing but cloud. They see strange creatures in even stranger skies, such that no one would believe. They see signs and wonders. The cargo lies forgotten in the hold.
Finally, after a long time, and several adventures that in normal circumstances would themselves be considered sufficiently unusual to warrant retelling, they arrive above a new land.
* * *
A CENTURY AGO, THE HILLS ACROSS THE HARBOR from Barker’s Mill had been covered with forest. Giant trees, hundreds of years old, towered over dense confusions of bush. Then a new type of human arrived, different from the ones who had lived there before. The original inhabitants’ small numbers and simple lifestyle had not lain heavily upon the land, unless you counted the extinction of a few species of large flightless birds that were good eating and easy to catch.
These new humans wore heavy clothing to protect themselves against the weather, and they wore boots on their feet. Their horses pulled carts through the mud of the paths that they cut through the forest. They chopped down the trees and cut them up and put the lengths of wood on the carts. They left behind piles of burning branches, and all the rubbish that followed them everywhere. The hills were soon becoming bare.
They took the cut wood around the harbor, to where an individual named Barker had built a timber mill and where houses were appearing in clearings carved out of the forest. Soon there was a town, with a store and a school. The town came to be known as Barker’s Mill.
The people of Barker’s Mill built themselves a church in which they gathered to celebrate their good fortune.
For the next few decades, the town amassed a degree of wealth by removing the rest of the trees from the hills around the harbor and selling the timber to anyone who would buy it. When the forest was gone, the mill closed down. The sons and daughters of the Barker family, now rich, moved elsewhere.
Where the forest had once been and where there was now none, the hillsides gave way under the rain. The topsoil, now dust, muddied the water as it ran down to the sea, or it was lifted by the wind and carried away, falling to the ground as a fine layer of annoying gray dust that discolored everything. After a few years, the sand and rock that had supported the topsoil were totally exposed.
Once the sand was uncovered, there was nothing to stop it from sliding off the hillsides. Streams became choked and then dried up altogether. Their beds disappeared under the sand. It was said by the locals that somewhere under the sand were buried the remains of an old village in which a few natives and settlers had lived together even as the forest was disappearing. No one knew the identities of the people who had lived there, just as no one knew where they had gone after the sand had flowed over their houses. There were stories, though.
There was another story as well, a much older one, which belonged to the indigenous people. Their legends told of another race that had lived in the area, long ago. But those stories were ancient now, and almost entirely forgotten. A few of the old people remembered fragments of them, and the young didn’t care.
They didn’t care because the legends were from the past, from the old world of spears and weaving flax and cooking food in the ground, and this was now. Most of the young people moved to the city and never came back. The area had its own history now, and the people who lived and worked there were fourth, fifth, and sixth generation. They were the locals now, and anyone who rolled through here in a convoy, army or otherwise, in trucks or shiny cars, was an outsider.
When she got into town, Reina pulled up outside the Red Lion. It was hot and dry, and she had time for a drink before unloading at the buyer’s. Crossing the street, she saw the black cars sitting in the car park. If it weren’t for the two uniformed drivers leaning against the side of one of them, talking and smoking, it would have looked as though the mob was in town. She went in.
Bryce was sitting at the bar.
Reina sat beside him. She dropped a note on the bar and pointed at one of the taps. The woman behind the bar put a beer in front of her. “Thanks, Denise.”
“What do you make of these?” Bryce nodded towards where the officers sat, sweating in the shade.
“Their trucks passed me on the way in. Big ones, covered with tarps. Machinery or something,” Reina replied. “I suppose they’ve gone over to the dunes?”
“Yeah, the trucks and the other stuff shot straight through. This lot must think they’ve earned a break. Pretty, aren’t they? Nice braid, shiny medals...” He was talking deliberately loud. A couple of the officers turned and looked coldly in their direction.
“Jesus, keep it down…” Reina laughed, not really caring whether he did. She was well acquainted with his ideas about the military, authority, and the system in general. He was an anarchist, and he didn’t mind who knew it.
Bryce stared back at the officers, goggle-eyed, daring them.
Reina picked up her beer. “Give it up, shithead. What do you think it’s about?”
“You mean none of the theories we’ve come up with have impressed you? You’re a hard woman to please. Shall we go over and have a look?” He nodded towards the open doors. Through them, the dunes on the other side of the harbor were visible.
“Yeah, we haven’t been over for a while, have we. Not now, though. I’m working, as we speak. What about this weekend? After netball?”