By Light Alone (46 page)

‘You
do
need to guard against despair,’ agreed Rageh, as if she hadn’t so much as mentioned the physical condition of thirst. ‘That’s the one thing that will sink us.’

Us
. ‘Will I get on a raft?’

‘Of course you will. The real question is what you do when you have come to the king’s palace.’

‘What king’s palace?’

‘New York, of course. You’ll come floating back in, like the big space-bubble baby in that book. But will you come to destroy, or save?’

‘Nonsense,’ she muttered, slipping past her physical discomfort into deeper sleep. She had a dream then, or had another dream, depending on whether her encounter with Rageh was or was not a dream. She was Moses going down the mountain with horns upon her forehead. She came down to discover that the water had flooded the whole world, but the horns upon her forehead meant that she could breathe under the water, like a deep-sea diver, they were magical like that, or they were technological like that: grasping her two ingots of stone to help her sink down, readying herself to encounter the grotesque forms that sealife takes upon the abyssal floor.

She was woken by rain. The sky was pre-dawn grey, but filled with shimmers and lines. At first she lay on her back with her mouth wide open, but this barely got enough water into her. She waved her bottle about, and cursed the idiotic design of bottles that made the mouth and neck so tiny compared with the belly of them. But cursing was fruitless. She got up and danced. Then she slipped out of her dress, sodden with water, and wrung it out into her mouth. Water had never tasted so delicious. The water was cold, and the air was cold, and so she shivered. But she danced nevertheless in an access of joy that amounted almost to ecstasy. Spreading her dress meant that it soon soaked with water again, and she was able to squeeze some into the bottle, although most dribbled down the sides. Finally the rain died away, and the silver-grey clouds brightened with full dawn. Issa dressed again, and hugged herself to try and prevent her shivering. Her dancing had worn her out, and there was little sustenance in the cloudy sunlight. But the water had had a reviving effect, and by midmorning she was able to gather herself and walk down the slope towards the waterside.

On her way she ran into Coco, the wandering man she had met when she first left the village. He was in a large crowd, and he recognized her straight away, although it took her a moment to place his intense blue eyes and wrinkled skin. ‘Fate means for us to be together!’ he said.

‘Oh, hello. Where’s your friend?’

He looked momently puzzled. The clouds were scooting through the sky behind his head. ‘I’ve got lots of friends. Oh, you mean the man I was with when we met last time?’

‘Yes.’

‘He’s away at sea. That’s where I’m going.’

‘A raft, is it?’

Coco stood up taller. ‘My raft. My cadre. My wife, too.’

‘You have a wife?’

‘I’m sure I mentioned that. But don’t let that put you off. Lots of men have more than one wife. Do you want to come on my raft?’

‘Yes,’ said Issa, and her heart galloped a little. But she took a deep breath, and let it out, and tried to get her pulse under control.

‘I’m the captain,’ said Coco. ‘You’d have to do what I said.’

‘You mean, I’d have to have sex with you.’

‘What else are wives for? But it’s more than that. We’re not a pleasure cruise, you know. We have a mission – we are Spartacists.’

‘What would Sudhir say?’

Coco’s eyebrows lowered. ‘Maybe you’d better come meet her.’

‘I don’t think she’ll be too keen.’

‘Oh, we need bodies! Bodies. Our strength is numbers, and numbers can always be bigger.’

He started down with his jerky little walk. Though she felt tired, Issa went after him. ‘What do you mean, bodies?’

‘I mean lots of people. I mean enough people to cross the river and retake West Stalingrad. I mean hordes and crowds of people.’

‘I don’t know where you mean by Western Lingrad,’ said Issa. But very soon they had come to a makeshift gateway: a barricade between two roofless buildings, and a great many hard-faced people. Coco talked to one of these for what seemed to Issa a very long time, and eventually they were let through. Down they went into the interior of a large building. People were actually up, pulling away rooftiles to let the sun into this space. A great impression of bustle, and action, although of course the majority of the people there were lounging about, trying to get as much sun on their heads as they could.

Coco led Issa to a corner, told her to wait, and went off. She sat for a while, and then took a sip of the water in her bottle. It tasted strange, iffy, but she drank it anyway. Shortly she dozed. She woke to somebody kicking her foot. It was Sudhir. ‘You’re persistent,’ she said. Issa sat up, and Sudhir sat beside her. ‘Tell me why you want to go on one of our rafts,’ said Sudhir.

‘I want to go to New York,’ said Issa.

‘Now, why would you think the raft is going to New York?’

‘I don’t suppose it is. But it’ll surely take me closer. Maybe it’ll take me all my life to get back there. If it does, it does. If I can’t go on the raft, I’ll walk.’

Sudhir seemed less hostile than the last time they had met. ‘Sit down my dear,’ she said, and the
my dear
didn’t seem hostile or ironic. They both sat on the floor, with their backs to the wall. ‘You understand why I’m anxious?’

‘You think I’m a spy.’

‘I can’t be reckless. I can’t take risks. To be a Spartacist is to be dedicated to the struggle. Do you know what that means?’

‘It means your life,’ said Issa, gravely.

Sudhir looked closely at her. ‘It does,’ in a quieter voice. ‘This is the great war of our age. The wealthy have the hardware, and they are ruthless. But we have the numbers, and justice belongs to us. And those are the two most important things. The rich have realized, although it is only belatedly, that they must eradicate us, or perish themselves. And so they are planning eradication. The latest thing is a targeted disease, one that affects only longhairs. That is only the first of what will be a whole series of assaults. They are planning the greatest genocide the world has ever seen. Should we not fight back?’

Issa thought about this. ‘Is it really so dire?’ she said.

‘You don’t think Triunion showed that it was dire? You don’t think Florida did?’

‘I know where Florida is,’ said Issa, unsure what else to say, since she still didn’t know what had actually happened at those places – beyond her general understanding that they had been places of massacre. ‘What
did
happen there?’ she added, feeling it better to ask than to carry on in ignorance.

Sudhir did not answer this. Instead, she said: ‘If you are a spy, then you have been extraordinarily poorly prepped for your mission. Or perhaps it’s a sort of brilliance. Maybe it’s a brilliant strategy.’

‘Or maybe I’m not a spy.’

‘I know what you mean when you say that,’ said Sudhir. ‘You mean that I am looking for spies, because I crave the attention of my enemy.’ Issa had neither meant that, nor, really, understood what Sudhir meant by it. But she didn’t interrupt. The older woman went on. ‘It is demeaning to think that my enemies have such contempt for us that they’re not even bothering with counter-espionage. But I prefer to see that as their weakness. Will you commit your life to this struggle?’

‘Hmm,’ said Issa, looking at the floor. ‘What struggle, precisely? What commitment am I being asked to make?’

‘You see,’ said Sudhir, ‘a spy would immediately say yes, yes, I commit. And a spy would have some prepared boilerplate about the horrors of Triunion.’ She poked at one of her own teeth with a forefinger, wobbled it. ‘Except, except.
You
mentioned New York.
Why
would you mention New York?’

‘I am the only living Queen of that city,’ explained Issa.

‘Let me tell you this, Issa,’ said Sudhir. ‘I’m lowly.’

‘Lowly?’

‘I’m very far down the hierarchy of the organization. I’m very far from being at the heart of this operation. So if this is some elaborate attempt to infiltrate the mission, then you’ve picked the wrong person.’

‘I don’t know anything about that.’

‘Do you
want
to go on Coco’s raft?’

‘You mean, do I want to have sex with Coco? Of course not.’

At this Sudhir laughed, and her face was transformed. All the severity and suspicion vanished. ‘Oh well said!’ It took her a moment to gather her serious face again. ‘So it comes down to a judgement,’ she said. ‘Conceivably my enemies are stupid enough, or think they are playing a cunning enough double bluff, to send a half-wit right into the Spartacist camp babbling about New York. If so, I should probably kill you.’

‘Probably?’ echoed Issa.

‘But I don’t think so. You can come on the main raft.’ She stood up. ‘Our strength is in numbers, but numbers mean nothing without unity.’

Issa, who didn’t like Sudhir standing over her, stood up too. ‘I don’t know what you mean by that.’

Sudhir, about to turn away, looked back with amused astonishment. ‘What?’

‘What do you mean, unity?’

‘Ha! Wonderful. I’m surrounded by people who use that word all the time, and never question it. But you ask a good question, of course you do. By unity I mean all of us working together. No.’ She put her hand to her cheek. ‘No, I mean all of us
fighting
together. I mean putting an end to ten thousand different movements, to Islamicist longhairs and Christian longhairs and Marxist longhairs and Capitalist longhairs and neoCasteians and Gandhians and Abdullans and Chavists and Ferdinandists and Wedgers and Moral Forcers.’

‘The Seafolk?’ offered Issa.

‘Oh they have a point. It’s only a point though. We do thrive at sea, provided we have only a float and a desal device. But we’re vulnerable there, too.’

‘I saw Maguelone speak,’ said Issa.

‘Who?’ said Sudhir. ‘Never mind that. If we could coordinate all the longhairs in the world to act
as one
, then we would be unstoppable. Do you know what is the most profound piece of political wisdom ever uttered?’

This pricked some distant memory inside Issa, something buried under the glacier weight of her day-to-day existence. ‘Do as you would be done by?’ she suggested?

Sudhir looked frankly astonished at this. ‘You need to learn not to interrupt so much,’ she said. ‘At your age! Listen and learn. Don’t speak so much. The most profound piece of political wisdom ever uttered. It’s attributed to Neocles himself. It’s this, in English:
Ye are many, they are few
.’

Issa digested this. The sound of a dozen or so people singing was audible outside. It wasn’t clear what they were singing. ‘What’s
ye
?’ she asked.

‘You understand the English then?’

‘Yes. Apart from
ye
.’

‘It means: there are many more of us than them. Many more. If we all act together we will beat them, even though they have the machines and the money. Do you see that?’

‘Well,’ said Issa. ‘Not wanting to interrupt, or anything. But it seems to me that people are too awkward to get them to do what you want.’

Sudhir looked at her again. Then she said. ‘Where did you learn to understand English, then?’

‘New York,’ said Issa.

There was just enough of a pause before Sudhir started laughing to indicate that she had decided to take this harping on the name of the city as a running gag. ‘Come along,’ she said. ‘You can come on
my
raft.’

There were two weeks of waiting, down by the waterside, before Sudhir made good her promise. But they were weeks with plenty of water to drink, and many interesting conversations to eavesdrop upon. This was a camp, a group organized towards one large-scale project, and the levels of excitement were unmistakable. Issa began to understand that there were pleasures in submerging one’s individual self in the larger group. Everybody around her seemed so purposeful! Several of the men made advances towards her, of course, but none of them pushed themselves physically upon her, and most of them took her rejection in good temper. A couple more lectured her about her outdated, shorthair morality, and advised her that having sex with many people was the truly revolutionary behaviour. ‘When we’ve overthrown the shorthair tyranny,’ a man called Kal told her, ‘when we’ve driven them out of the tropics to live in the arctic deserts, then we’ll all spend our days sunbathing and fucking.’ He was a tiny man with ricketed armbones that curved like ribs, but there was a sparkle in his eyes. Issa smiled and nodded and didn’t believe a word of it.

Lots of people talked about Florida, and the strategic lessons to be learned from that
débâcle
. She thought
débâcle
was an English word until somebody explained to her that, actually, it was French. A few people claimed to have access to the higher echelons of the movement: to be privy to the secrets of the campaign. A broad assault on the eastern coastline of the United States, millions of people pouring from the sea to the land – but all this only a feint, a ruse, a piece of distraction. The actual aim was a single man, a token, a figure of enormous symbolic potential. To capture him, and use him to unite all the longhairs of the world. To connect the movement with the aura of Neocles himself. ‘Neocles is dead, though,’ said Issa. Nobody contradicted her.