Cloud Atlas, Page 28

  One rainy mornin’ Bro Munro’s littlest F’kugly came screein’ upgulch to find me huddlin’ ’neath ’brella leaves on Ranch Rise, fetchin’ direst news to me he was. My sis Catkin’d been line-fishin’ on Dog Rock Shore an’d trod on a scorpion fish an’ now she was dyin’ o’ shakes’n’heats at Munro’s Dwellin’. The herb’list, Wimoway yay, Roses’s ma, was tendin’ her, an’ Leary the Hilo healer was doin’ his inchanties too, but Catkin’s life was fadin’, yay. Strappin’ musclers don’t usually s’vive a scorpion fish, nay, an’ poor littl’ Catkin was dyin’n’d got two hours maybe three.

  F’kugly mindered the goats an’ I slid down thru the dogwood trees to Munro’s Dwellin’ an’, yay, there it was jus’ like F’kugly’d said it. Catkin was burnin’ an’ breathin’ chokely an’ she din’t know no un’s face. Wimoway’d tweezed out the poison fins an’ bathed the stingin’ in noni pulp an’ Sussy was pressin’ cool sops to calm her head. Jonas was gone prayin’ to Sonmi at the Icon’ry. Beardy Leary was mumblin’ his Hilo spells an’ shakin’ his magic tufty spikers to drive off evil spirits. Din’t seem Leary was helpin’ much, nay, Catkin was dyin’, the air smelled of it, but Ma wanted Leary there, see you’ll b’lief in a mil’yun diff’rent b’liefin’s if you reck’n jus’ one of ’em may aid you. So what could I do, ’cept sit there an’ hold b’loved Catkin’s burnin’ hands an’ mem’ry my stock-still useless self watchin’ Kona bullwhippin’n’circlin’ Pa’n’Adam? Now maybe the voice was Pa’s or maybe Sonmi’s or maybe no un’s but mine, but a hushly voice popped a bubble jus’ inside my ear: Meronym, it said.

  Yibber telled me Meronym was up Gusjaw’s Gulch, so there I ran an’, yay, there she was fillin’ littl’ Smart jars o’ water up Gusjaw’s Gulch in the steamin’ rain, see Wolt’d passed by her earlier’n telled the yibber. The Prescient’d got her spesh gearbag with her an’ I thanked Sonmi for that. Good aft’noon, called the Shipwoman when she seen me splashin’ upstream.

  No, it ain’t, I shouted back. Catkin’s dyin’! Meronym list’ned grief-some ’nuff as I telled her ’bout the scorpion fish, but she sorried, nay, she din’t have no healin’ Smart an’ anyway Wimoway’s herb’lin’s an’ Leary’s ’cantations was Big Isle healin’ an’ that was best for Big Isle sick folks, wasn’t it, nay?

  Dingo shit, said I.

  She shaked her head so sadsome.

  Slywise I speaked now, Catkin calls you Auntie an’ she b’liefs you’re kin. You surefire b’have in our dwellin’ like you’re kin. Is that jus’ ’nother fake for you to study us some more? ’Nother part o’ your “not the hole true”?

  Meronym flinched. No, Zachry, it ain’t.

  Well, then, I gambled some luck, I say you got spesh Smart what’ll help your kin.

  Meronym threw a spiker in her words. Why don’t you sivvy thru my gear again an’ thief my spesh Prescient Smart yourself?

  Yay, she knowed ’bout me’n’the silv’ry egg. She’d been fakin’ she din’t but she knowed. No point naysayin’, so I din’t. My sis is dyin’ while we’re standin’ here knucklyin’.

  So much rivers’n’rain in the world it flowed by us. Fin’ly Meronym said yay, she’d come’n’see Catkin, but scorpion fish poison was quick’n’thick an’ she prob’ly cudn’t do nothin’ to save my littl’ sis an’ I’d best und’stand that truth now. I din’t say yay nor nay I jus’ leaded her quicksharp down to Munro’s Dwellin’. When the Prescient walked in, Wimoway ’splained what she’d done tho’ Beardy Leary said, Ooo … a devil’s drawn near … ooo, I sense her with my spesh powers …

  Catkin’d gone under now, yay, she lay still’n’stiff as an icon, jus’ a whispin’-breathin’ scratched in her throat. Meronym’s griefsome face jus’ said, Nay, she’s too far gone I can’t do nothin’, an’ she kissed my sis’s forehead g’bye, walked back sadsome into the rain. Oh, see the Prescient, Leary crowed, their Smart can move magicky ships o’ steel but only the Holy Chant o’ Angel Laz’rus can tempt back the girl’s soul from them despairin’ marshes b’tween life’n’death. Despair I felt, my sis was dyin’, rain was drummin’, but that same voice din’t shut up in my ear. Meronym.

  I din’t know why but I followed her out. Shelt’rin’ in Munro’s pott’ry doorway she was starin’ at the rods o’ rain. I ain’t got no right to ask you for favors, I ain’t been a good host, nay I been a pisspoor bad un, but … I’d ran out o’ words.

  The Prescient din’t move nor look at me, nay. The life o’ your tribe’s got a nat’ral order. Catkin’d o’ treaded on that scorpion fish if I’d been here or not.

  Rainbirds spilt their galoshin’-galishin’ song. I’m jus’ a stoopit goat herder, but I reck’n jus’ by bein’ here you’re bustin’ this nat’ral order. I reck’n you’re killin’ Catkin by not actin’. An’ I reck’n if it was your son, Anafi, lyin’ there with scorpion fish poison meltin’ his heart’n’lungs, this nat’ral order’d not be so important to you, yay?

  She din’t answer, but I knowed she was list’nin’.

  Why’s a Prescient’s life worth more’n Valleysman’s?

  She lost her calm. I ain’t here to play Lady Sonmi ev’ry time sumthin’ bad happ’ns an’ click my fingers’n make it right! I’m jus’ human, Zachry, like you, like anyun!

  I promised, It won’t be ev’ry time sumthin’ bad happens, it’s jus’ now.

  Tears was in her eyes. That ain’t no promise you can keep or break.

  Sudd’nwise I finded myself tellin’ her ev’ry flea o’ true ’bout Sloosha’s Crossin’, yay, ev’rythin’. How I’d leaded the Kona to kill Pa an’ slave Adam an’d never ’fessed to no un till that very beat. I din’t know why I was spillin’ this corked secret to my enemy, not till the very end, when I cogged its meanin’ an’ telled her too. What I jus’ teached you ’bout me’n’my soul is a spiker ’gainst my throat an’ a gag over my mouth. You can tell Old Ma Yibber what I telled you, an’ ruin me, any time you want. She’ll b’lief you an’ so she should ’cos it’s true ev’ry word an’ folks’ll b’lief you ’cos they sense my soul is stoned. Now if you got any Smart, yay, anythin’ what may help Catkin now, give it me, tell it me, do it. No un’ll ever, ever know, nay, I vow it, jus’ you an’ me.

  Meronym placed her hands on her head like it boomed up with woe an’ she mumbed to herself sumthin’ like If my pres’dent ever finded out, my hole faculty’d be disbandied, yay, times was she used hole flocks o’ words what I din’t know. From a lidless jar in her gearbag she got out a tiny small-as-an-ant-egg turquoise stone an’ telled me to sneak it into Catkin’s mouth so slywise no un seen, nay, nor even thinked they seen. An’ for Sonmi’s sake, Meronym warned me, if Catkin lives, an’ I ain’t promisin’ she will, make sure the herb’list gets the hooray-hooray for healin’ her, not that voodoo snake-oilster from Hilo, yay?

  So I took that turquoise med’sun an’ thanked her jus’ once. Meronym said, Don’t mention no words, not now an’ never while I’m livin’, an’ that promise I kept tight. Into my presh sis’s mouth I dropped it as I changed her sop-cloth, like Meronym’d telled me, so no un saw nothin’. An’ what happ’ned?

  Three days later Catkin was back learnin’ in the school’ry, yay.

  Three days! Well, I stopped lookin’ for ev’dence that Prescients was spyin’ to slave us. Leary from Hilo crowed to the toads on the roads an’ the hole wide world, no healer was greater’n he, not even the Prescients, tho’ folks mostly b’liefed Wimoway’d done it, yay, not him.

  Coneys’n’roasted taro we was eatin’ one supper ’bout a moon after Catkin’s sick when Meronym made a s’prisin’ ’nouncement. She meant to climb up Mauna Kea b’fore the Ship returned, she said, for to see what she’d see. Ma speaked first, ’ready worrysome. What for, Sis Meronym? Ain’t nothin’ up Mauna Kea but never-endin’ winter an’ a big heap o’ rocks.

  Now Ma’d not said what we was all thinkin’ ’cos she din’t want to look barb’ric’n’savage, but Sussy din’t hold back none. Aunt Mero, if you go up there Old Georgie’ll free
ze you an’ dig out your soul with a cruel n’crookit spoony an’ eat it so you’ll never even be reborned an’ your body’ll be turned into a frostbited boulder. You want to stay here in the Valleys, where it’s safe.

  Meronym din’t mick Sussy none, she jus’ said Prescients’d got Smart what’d ward Old Georgie away. Climbin’ Mauna Kea was ne’ssary to map Windward, she said, an’ anyhow, Valleysmen needed more lowdown on Kona movements over Leeward’n’Waimea Town. Now time was, such words’d o’ roused my s’picions buzzin’, but I din’t think that now, nay, tho’ I was diresome worried for our guest. Well, the yibber was busy for days when this news jumped out. The Shipwoman’s climbin’ Mauna Kea! Folks dropped by warnin’ Meronym not to go pokin’ her nose into OG’s ’closure or she’d never come back down. Even Napes visited, sayin’ climbin’ Mauna Kea in a story was one thing, doin’ it for real was cracked’n’crazed. Abbess said Meronym could come’n’go where she pleased, but she’d not say-so no un to guide Meronym up, jus’ too unknowed’n’risky that summit was, three days up’n’three more down, an’ dingos’n’Kona’n’Sonmi knows what on the way, an’ anyhow prep’ration for the Honokaa barterin’ was needin’ all hands in the dwellin’s.

  Now I s’prised ev’ryun, yay, me too, when I settled to go with her. I weren’t known as the bravest-balled bullock in the barn. So why’d I done it? Simple ’nuff. One, I owed Meronym for Catkin. Two, my soul was ’ready half stoned, yay, surefire I’d not get rebirthed, so what’d I got to lose? Better if Old Georgie ate my soul’n someun else’s who’d get rebirthed else, yay? That ain’t brave, nay, it’s jus’ sense. Ma din’t act pleased, a busy ’nuff time in the Valleys ’cos o’ harvest comin’n’all, but come the dawn Meronym’n’me set off she gived me journey-grinds what she’d smoked’n’brined an’ said Pa’d o’ prouded to see me so growed’n’gutsy. Jonas gived me a spesh sharp’n’fine rockfish spiker, an’ Sussy gived amulets o’ pearlshell to dazzle’n’blind Georgie’s eye if he chased us. Kobbery my cuz was over to minder my goats, he gived a bag o’ raisins from his fam’ly’s vines. Catkin was last, she gived me a kiss an’ Meronym too, an’ made us both promise we’d be back in six days.

  Eastly o’ Sloosha’s we din’t climb the Kuikuihaele Track, nay, we trekked inland southly up Waiulili Stream, an’ I cogged the clearin’ by Hiilawe Falls where I’d s’prised the Kona what killed Pa five–six years b’fore. Overgrown now it was, jus’ traces o’ bygone campfires scorchin’ the middle. In Hiilawe Pool’s shallows I spikered a couple o’ rockfish with Jonas’s gift, to last out our grinds. Rain fell so the Waiulili Stream gushed too fierce for footin’, so we bushwhacked up thru sugarcane, yay, a hard half day’s goin’ it was till we cleared the Kohala Ridge; the windy open made us gasp an’ thru riftin’ clouds we seen Mauna Kea higher’n the sky, yay. Now I seen Mauna Kea from Honokaa b’fore, o’ course, but a mountain you’re plannin’ on climbin’ ain’t the same as the one you ain’t. It ain’t so pretty, nay. Hush ’nuff an’ you’ll hear it. The cane thinned to tind’ry pines an’ we got to Old Uns’ Waimea Way. Sev’ral miles ’long this ancient’n’cracked road we clopped till we met a fur trapper an’ his laughin’ doggy restin’ by a slopin’ pond. Old Yanagi was his name an’ he’d got mukelung so bad by’n’by Young Yanagi’d be takin’ over the fam’ly bis’ness, I thinked. We said we was herb’lists sivvyin’ for presh plants an’ maybe Yanagi b’liefed us an’ maybe he din’t, but he bartered us fungusdo’ for rockfish an’ warned us Waimea Town weren’t so friendsome as it’d been once, nay, Kona say-soed’n’knucklied ficklewise an’ you cudn’t guess their b’havin’s.

  A mile or so eastly o’ Waimea Town we heard shod hoofs cloppin’ an’ we dived off the track in the nick b’fore three Kona fighters on black stal’yons an’ their horse boy on a pony galloped by Hate’n’fear quaked me an’ I wanted to kill ’em like prawns on a skewer, but slower’n that. The boy I thought may o’ been Adam, but I always thinked that ’bout young Kona, they was wearin’ helms so I cudn’t see too sure, nay. We din’t speak much from then ’cos speakin’ can be heard by spyers what you can’t spy. Southly thru shrubby heath we tromped now till we got to wideway. Wideway I’d heard o’ from storymen an’ here it was, an open, long, flat o’ roadstone. Saplin’s’n’bush was musclin’ up, but wondersome’n’wild was that windy space. Meronym said it was named Air Port in Old Uns’ tongue, where their flyin’ boats’d anchor down, yay, like wild geese on the Pololu Marshes. We din’t cross wideway, nay, we skirted it, there wasn’t no cover see.

  By sundown we tented up in a cactusy hollow, an’ when it was dark ’nuff I lit us a fire. Lornsome I felt to be away from my Valleys’n’kin, but in that no-man’s-land Meronym’s mask was slippin’ an’ I was seein’ her more clear’n I’d ever done b’fore. I asked her straight, What’s it like, the Hole World, the offlands over the ocean?

  Her mask’d not slipped right off tho’. What d’you reck’n?

  So I telled her my ’maginin’s o’ places from old books’n’pics in the school’ry. Lands where the Fall’d never falled, towns bigger’n all o’ Big I, an’ towers o’ stars’n’suns blazin’ higher’n Mauna Kea, bays of not jus’ one Prescient Ship but a mil’yun, Smart boxes what make delish grinds more’n anyun can eat, Smart pipes what gush more brew’n anyun can drink, places where it’s always spring an’ no sick, no knucklyin’ an’ no slavin’. Places where ev’ryun’s a beautsome purebirth who lives to be one hun’erd’n’fifty years.

  Meronym pulled her blanky tighter. My parents an’ their gen’ration b’liefed, somewhere, hole cities o’ Old Uns s’vived the Fall b’yonder the oceans, jus’ like you, Zachry. Old-time names haunted their ’maginin’s … Melbun, Orkland, Jo’burg, Buenas Yerbs, Mumbay, Sing’pore. The Shipwoman was teachin’ me what no Valleysman’d ever heard, an’ I list’ned tight’n’wordless. Fin’ly, five decades after my people’s landin’ at Prescience, we relaunched the Ship what bringed us there. Dingos howled in the far-far ’bout folks soon to die, I prayed Sonmi it weren’t us. They finded the cities where the old maps promised, dead-rubble cities, jungle-choked cities, plague-rotted cities, but never a sign o’ them livin’ cities o’ their yearnin’s. We Prescients din’t b’lief our weak flame o’ Civ’lize was now the brightest in the Hole World, an’ further an’ further we sailed year by year, but we din’t find no flame brighter. So lornsome we felt. Such a presh burden for two thousand pairs o’ hands! I vow it, there ain’t more’n sev’ral places in Hole World what got the Smart o’ the Nine Valleys.

  Anxin’n’proudful at one time hearin’ them words made me, like a pa, an’ like she an’ me weren’t so diff’rent as a god an’ a worshiper, nay.

  Second day fluffsome clouds rabbited westly an’ that snaky leeward sun was hissin’ loud’n’hot. We drank like whales from icy’n’sooty brooks. Higher to cooler air we climbed till no mozzie pricked us no more. Stunty’n’dry woods was crossed by swathes o’ black’n’razory lava spitted’n’spewed by Mauna Kea. Snailysome goin’ was them rockfields, yay, jus’ brush that rock light an’ your fingers’d bleed fast’n’wetly, so I binded my boots’n’hands in strips o’ hide-bark an’ did the same for Meronym. Blisters scabbed her foots, her soles’d not got my goat tuff see, but that woman weren’t no moaner, nay, whatever else she was. We tented up in a forest o’ needles’n’thorns an’ a waxy mist hid our campfire but it hid any sneaker-uppers too an’ I got nervy. Our bodies was busted by tiredness but our minds wasn’t sleepy yet so we talked some while eatin’. You really ain’t feary, said I, jerkin’ my thumb upwards, o’ meetin’ Georgie when we get to the summit, like Truman Napes did?

  Meronym said the weather was way more scaresome to her.

  I spoke my mind: You don’t b’lief he’s real, do you?

  Meronym said Old Georgie weren’t real for her, nay, but he could still be real for me.

  Then who, asked I, tripped the Fall if it weren’t Old Georgie?

  Eerie birds I din’t knowed yibbered news in the dark
for a beat or two. The Prescient answered, Old Uns tripped their own Fall.

  Oh, her words was a rope o’ smoke. But Old Uns’d got the Smart!

  I mem’ry she answered, Yay, Old Uns’ Smart mastered sicks, miles, seeds an’ made miracles ord’nary, but it din’t master one thing, nay, a hunger in the hearts o’ humans, yay, a hunger for more.

  More what? I asked. Old Uns’d got ev’rythin’.

  Oh, more gear, more food, faster speeds, longer lifes, easier lifes, more power, yay. Now the Hole World is big, but it weren’t big ’nuff for that hunger what made Old Uns rip out the skies an’ boil up the seas an’ poison soil with crazed atoms an’ donkey ’bout with rotted seeds so new plagues was borned an’ babbits was freak-birthed. Fin’ly, bit’ly, then quicksharp, states busted into bar’bric tribes an’ the Civ’lize Days ended, ’cept for a few folds’n’pockets here’n’there, where its last embers glimmer.

  I asked why Meronym’d never spoke this yarnin’ in the Valleys.

  Valleysmen’d not want to hear, she answered, that human hunger birthed the Civ’lize, but human hunger killed it too. I know it from other tribes offland what I stayed with. Times are you say a person’s b’liefs ain’t true, they think you’re sayin’ their lifes ain’t true an’ their truth ain’t true.

  Yay, she was prob’ly right.

  Third day out was clear’n’blue, but Meronym’s legs was jellyfishin’ so I lugged ev’rythin’ on my back ’cept for her gearbag. We’d trekked over the mountain’s shoulder to the southly face, where the scars of an Old-Un track zigzaggered summitwards. Around noon Meronym rested while I gathered ’nuff firewood for two faggots ’cos we was in the last trees now. Lookin’ down t’ward Mauna Loa, we squinted a troop o’ horses on Saddle Road, their Kona metal spicklin’ in sunlight. So high up we was, their horses was jus’ termite-size. I wished I could o’ crushed them savages b’tween my finger’n’thumb an’ wiped the slime off on my pants. I prayed Sonmi no Kona ever turned up this Summit Track ’cos fine places there was for an’ ambushin’ an’ Meronym’n’me cudn’t knuckly hard nor long I reck’ned. I din’t see no hoofprints nor tentin’ marks anyhow.