Cloud Atlas (45 page)

———

Now Mauka Stream falled snaky n’goshin’ down dark Mauka Valley, yay, it watered only five–six dwellin’s in the hole valley ’cos it weren’t no friendsome’n’summery place, nay. No Mauka dwellin’ did goatin’, so the track was strangled by creepers’n’thornbushes what’d whelk your eye out if you din’t watch close, an’ hard goin’ it was for the horse. I got clawed fierce after a quart’ mile even shelt’rin’ b’hind Meronym. The last dwellin’ upvalley an’ the first we comed to was Saint-Sonmi’s Dwellin’, whose chief was a one-eye named Silvestri who farmed taro’n’oats. The yibber reck’ned Silvestri was too fond o’ his many daughters’n was nat’ral an’ skank-mouthed him for not payin’ no fairshare to Commons. Laundry was scattered round the yard an’ the daughters’d been taken, but Silvestri’d not gone nowhere, his bladed head was up on the pole watchin’ us as we rided up. Some time he’d been there, see, he’d gotten maggoty an’ a fat rat’d scamped up the pole an’d eaten thru one eyeball as we rided up. Yay, the whiskery devil twitched his sharp nose at me.
Howzit, Zachry, don’t you reck’n Silvestri looks handsomer now’n b’fore?
But I din’t pay him no mind. A cocklydoo ’rupted from the chimney pot an’ nearly shocked me off the horse, see, I thinked it was an ambush yell.

Now we’d a choice o’ sorts, to farewell the horse an’ spider up the crumbly ridge over to Pololu Valley, or to follow the Mauka Trail down to the shore an’ risk runnin’ into stray Kona moppin’ up their attackin’. Dwindlin’ time choosed for us to stay on the horse, see, we’d to get to Ikat’s Finger by noon what was still ten miles far from Silvestri’s. We missed Blue Cole Dwellin’ an’ Last Trout too, see, we wasn’t reccyin’ no more. A tide o’ rain skirted us downvalley from the Kohalas, but we got to the shore without no ambush tho’ we seen fresh Kona prints b’neath the knife-finger palms. The ocean was no pond that day, nay, but nor so hilly a craft’ly oared kayak’d overtoss. A Kona conch churned in the near-far an’ vibed me uneasy. I heard my name in its churnin’. The air was drummed tight, an’ I’d ignored my second augurin’, I’d knowed I’d be payin’ for that life I taked what weren’t ne’ssary to take.

Where the rucky beach rocked up into Medusa Cliffs we had to wind inland thru banana groves to the Pololu Track, what leaded out o’ the northliest valley into No Un’s Land an’ fin’ly Ikat’s Finger. The track squeezed thru two fat black rocks, an’ we heard a whistlin’ what was more human’n bird. Meronym reached in her cloak, but b’fore she’d got the shinboney two sharky Kona sentries’d leapt down both sides on both rocks. That was four cock’n’primed crossbows aimed right at our heads from inches. Thru rubbery trees I spied a hole dammit Kona platoon! A dozen horsemen or more was sittin’ round a tentment, an’ I knowed we was finished so near the end an’ all.

Pass code, horseman?
barked one sentry.

What’s this, soldier, an’ why?
Another jiggered his crossbow at my nips.
A Valleysboy’s ass smearin’ a good Kona horse? Who’s your gen’ral, horseman?

I was fearin’ diresome, an’ I knowed I looked it.

Meronym did an eerie’n’angry yarlin’ growl an’ looked thru her helmet at the four, then ’rupted a shout out so blastsome, birds skimmed off krawlin’ an’ her tongue-slant was buried under furyin’ noise.
HOW DARE YOU DAMMIT RAT-SHAT HOG-SLITS ADDRESS A GEN’RAL IN THAT MANNER! MY SLAVE’S ASS’LL SMEAR WHEREVER AN’ WHATEVER I SAY-SO! WHO’S MY GEN’RAL? MY GEN’RAL IS
ME
YOU DAMMIT WORMS’ BLADDERS! OFF THAT ROCK
THIS SPLIT-BEAT
AN’ BRING ME YOUR CAPTAIN NOW OR I VOW BY ALL THE WAR GODS I’LL HAVE YOU PEELED’N’NAILED TO THE NEAREST HORNET TREE!

A desp’rate an’ freakbirthed plan, yay.

Meronym’s bluff vic’tried jus’ one beat, an’ one beat was nearly ’nuff. Two sentries paled an’ lowered their crossbows an’ jumped down in our path. Two more dis’peared the back way.
Ksss! Ksss!
Them two Kona b’fore us din’t get up no more, Meronym suddenwise heel-digged, an’ our horse whinnied’n’reared’n’bolted’n’my balance was busted. Sonmi’s hand stayed me on the saddle, yay, ’cos if hers din’t whose did? Shouts an’
Stops!
an’ conches ruckused b’hind us, an’ the horse galloped an’
a fisssssssss-kwanggggggggg
as the first crossbolt bedded into a bough I ducked under, then a crackle o’ pain flamed in my left calf jus’ here an’ I got that sick’n’calm shock you get when your body knows sumthin’s way too busted for an easy mendin’. Look, I’ll roll my trousers an’ you can see the scar where the crossbolt tip bedded … yay, it hurt as much as it looks it hurt an’ more.

We was gallopin’ down Pololu Track now over knotty’n’rooty ground, faster’n surfin’ inside a roller an’ as hard to stay balanced, an’ there was nothin’ I could do ’bout that seizin’ agonyin’ ’cept grip Meronym’s waist tighter’n’tighter an’ try’n ride the horse’s rhythmin’ with my right leg or I’d be tossed right off, yay, an’ there’d not be no time to mount me on again b’fore the Kona an’ their bone-drillin’ crossbolts catched us up.

The track leaded thru the scalp-brushin’ tunnel o’ trees to the Old Uns’ bridge over the Pololu River’s sea mouth, what marked the Valley’s northly bound’ry. Now we was jus’ a hun’erd paces shy o’ this bridge when the sun unclouded an’ I looked ahead an’ its worn plankin’ burned bright’n’gold, an’ its rusted struts was shaded bronze. My pain shaked loose a mem’ry, yay, my third augurin’:
Bronze is burnin’, let that bridge be not crossed
. I cudn’t ’splain to Meronym on a gallopin’ horse, so I jus’ yelled in her ear,
I’m hit!

She pulled up the horse a yard shy o’ the bridge.
Where?

My left calf, I telled her.

Meronym looked back anxin’ diresome. Weren’t no sign of our chasers yet, so she swung down to the ground an’ peered at the pain. She touched my wound an’ I groaned.
Right now the shaft’s pluggin’ the wound, yay, we got to get to friendsome ground first then I’ll
—

Drummin’ o’ vengesome hoofs was nearin’ up Pololu Track.

I telled her then, we cudn’t cross that bridge.
What?
She twisted to fix my eyes.
Zachry, are you sayin’ that bridge ain’t safe?

Now so far’s I knowed the bridge was strong ’nuff, see, I often taked Jonas gull-eggin’ northly when he was littler, an’ McAulyff o’ Last Trout went seal-huntin’ over it with his handcart most moons, but an’ Icon’ry dreamin’ din’t lie, nay, not never, an’ Abbess’d made me mem’ry my augurin’s for a spesh day an’ that day was now.
I’m sayin’
, I said,
Sonmi telled me not cross to it
.

Fear made Meronym sarky, see, she was jus’ human like you’n’me.
An’ did Sonmi know we got a furyin’ swarm o’ Kona on our tail?

Pololu River is wide at its sea mouth, I teached her, so it ain’t whooshin’ deep nor its current so sinewy. The track forked b’fore the bridge right where we was, yay, an’ it leaded down jus’ a stretch away where we could ford the river. The hoofs drummed closer’n’closer, an’ soon the Kona’d be seein’ us.

Well, Meronym b’liefed my loonsome say-so, I cudn’t say why but she did, an’ soon the bright’n’cold Pololu was up numbin’ my wound but the horse was slippin’ diresome on the shingly riverbed.
Padddooom padddooom
, three Kona galloped onto the bridge an’ seen us, an’ the air round us quavered’n’slit with one crossbolt, two, the third hit the water an’ sprayed us. Three new Kona catched up the first three an’ din’t stop to shoot, nay, they was padddooomin’ ’cross Pololu Bridge to cut us off on the far bank. Desp’rate I was, cussin’ myself,
Yay, we’re died lardbirds no frettin’
, I was thinkin’.

Now you know when you adze down a tree for lumber? The noise after the last stroke, o’ fibers shriekin’ an’ the hole trunk groanin’ slowsome as it falls? That’s what I heard. See one or two Valleysmen crossin’ hushly with a handcart was one thing, but a gallopin’ horse was another, an’ six–seven–eight gallopin’ Kona armored warhorses was too much. That bridge busted like it was made o’ spit’n’straw, yay, struts snapped an’ plankin’ split an’ worn cables pinged.

It weren’t no little drop, nay. It was fifteen men high or more was Pololu Bridge. Down fell the horses, spinnin’ belly-up, the riders catched in their stirrups an’ all, an’ like I said the Pololu River weren’t a safe deep pool what’d catch ’em an’ buoy ’em up, nay, it was a crowded river o’ fat tabley’n’pointy rocks what busted their falls bad, diresome bad. None o’ the Kona got up, nay jus’ two–three sorrysome horses lay writhin’n’kickin’, but it weren’t no time for animal doctorin’, nay.

———

Well, my yarn’s nearly done’n’telled now. Meronym’n’me forded the far side, an’ I prayed my thanks to Sonmi tho’ there weren’t no Valleys Civ’lize to save no more, she’d saved my skin one last time. I s’pose the rest o’ the Kona platoon was too busy with their died’n’drowned to come trackin’ us two, yay. We crossed the Lornsome Dunes an’ fin’ly reached Ikat’s Finger with no ax’dents. No kayaks was waitin’ yet, but we dismounted an’ Meronym used her Smart on that crossbolt-mauled calf o’ mine. When she pulled the bolt out, the pain traveled up my body an’ hooded my senses so true-be-telled I din’t see the Maui kayaks arrivin’ with Duophysite. Now my friend had a choice to settle, yay, see, either she loaded me in that kayak or left me on Big Isle not able to walk nor nothin’ jus’ a short ride off from Kona ground. Well, here I am yarnin’ to you, so you know what Meronym settled, an’ times are I regret her choosin’, yay, an’ times are I don’t. The chanty o’ my new tribe’s rowers waked me halfway ’cross the Straits. Meronym was changin’ my bleeded bindin’, she’d used some Smart med’sun to numb its pain a hole lot.

I watched clouds awobbly from the floor o’ that kayak. Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies, an’ tho’ a cloud’s shape nor hue nor size don’t stay the same, it’s still a cloud an’ so is a soul. Who can say where the cloud’s blowed from or who the soul’ll be ’morrow? Only Sonmi the east an’ the west an’ the compass an’ the atlas, yay, only the atlas o’ clouds.

Duophysite saw my eyes was open an’ pointed me Big Isle, purple in the sou’eastly blue, an’ Mauna Kea hidin’ its head like a shy bride.

Yay, my Hole World an’ hole life was shrinked ’nuff to fit in the O o’ my finger’n’thumb.

Zachry my old pa was a wyrd buggah, I won’t naysay it now he’s died. Oh, most o’ Pa’s yarnin’s was jus’ musey duck fartin’ an’ in his loonsome old age he even b’liefed Meronym the Prescient was his presh b’loved Sonmi, yay, he ’sisted it, he said he knowed it all by birthmarks an’ comets’n’all.

Do I b’lief his yarn ’bout the Kona an’ his fleein’ from Big I? Most yarnin’s got a bit o’ true, some yarnin’s got some true, an’ a few yarnin’s got a lot o’ true. The stuff ’bout Meronym the Prescient was mostly true, I reck’n. See, after Pa died my sis’n’me sivvied his gear, an’ I finded his silv’ry egg what he named
orison
in his yarns. Like Pa yarned, if you warm the egg in your hands, a beautsome ghost-girl appears in the air an’ speaks in an Old-Un tongue what no un alive und’stands nor never will, nay. It ain’t Smart you can use ’cos it don’t kill Kona pirates nor fill empty guts, but some dusks my kin’n’bros’ll wake up the ghost-girl jus’ to watch her hov’rin’n’shimm’rin’. She’s beautsome, and she ’mazes the littl’ uns an’ her murmin’s babbybie our babbits.

Sit down a beat or two.

Hold out your hands.

Look.

Then who
was
Hae-Joo Im, if he was not xactly who he said he was?

I surprised myself by answering that question: Union.

Hae-Joo said, “That honor is mine to bear, yes.”

Xi-Li, the student, was xtremely agitated.

Hae-Joo told me I could trust him or be dead in a matter of minutes.

I nodded assent: I would trust him.

But he had already lied to you about his ID—why believe him this time? How did you know for sure he wasn’t abducting you?

I did not know: I was not sure. My decision was based on
character
. I could only hope time would prove it well founded. We abandoned the ancient Cavendish to his fate and fled to our own: down corridors, thru fire doors, avoiding lites and people where possible. Hae-Joo carried me down flites of stairs: we could not wait for me to navigate them unaided.

In a subbasement Mr. Chang waited in a plain ford. There was no time for greetings. The vehicle screamed into life and accelerated thru tunnels and empty ford parks. Mr. Chang glanced at his sony, reporting that the slipway still appeared to be accessible. Hae-Joo ordered him to proceed there, then got a flickknife from his pouch and sliced off the tip of his left index, gouged, and xtracted a tiny metallic egg. He threw it out of the window and ordered me to discard my Soulring similarly. Xi-Li also xtracted his Soul.

Unionmen
really
cut out their own eternal Souls? I always thought it was an urban myth …

How else can a resistance movement elude Unanimity? They would risk detection whenever they passed a traffic lite otherwise. The ford rounded a ramp when a blizzard of phosphate fire shot in the windows; glass filled the air, metal panels groaned; the ford scraped along walls, jarring to an abrupt stop.

From my crouch I heard coltfire.

The ford wailed and sped into motion. A body thumped off the vehicle.

A human wailing, of unendurable pain, rose from the front seat: Hae-Joo held a handcolt against Xi-Li’s head and fired.

What? His own man?
Why?

Unanimity dumdums combine kalodoxalyn and stimulin. Kalodoxalyn is a poison that fries the victim in agony, so his screams give his position away; stimulin prevents him from losing consciousness. Xi-Li slumped over into a fetal position. Hae-Joo Im the cheerful postgrad I had known was gone, so thoroly that I wondered now if he had ever really been there. Rain and wind blew in. Mr. Chang drove at hi speed down a garbage alley barely wider than the ford, ripping out drainpipes. He slowed as he joined the campus perimeter road. Ahead were red-and-blue flashes at the campus gates. A hovering aero thrashed the trees, sweeping the traffic with a searchlite; loudspeakers gave incoherent orders to who knew whom. Mr. Chang warned us to brace, killed the engine, and swerved off the road. The ford bucked; its roof whacked my head; somehow Hae-Joo wedged me under him. The ford gathered speed, weight, and weightlessness. The final drop shook free an earlier memory of blackness, inertia, gravity, of being trapped in another ford. Where was it? Who was it?

Bamboo splintered, metal tore, my ribs slammed the floor.

Silence, finally. The ford was dead. Next, I heard insect songs, rain on leaves, followed by urgent whispers drawing near. I was crushed under Hae-Joo; he stirred, groaning. I was bruised but unbroken. Needlelite hurt my eyes. An outside voice hissed, “Commander Im?”

Mr. Chang responded first: “Get this door open.”

Hands lifted us out. Xi-Li’s body was left where it lay. I glimpsed a succession of anxious faces, resolute faces, faces that rarely slept: a company of Unionmen. I was carried into a concrete shack and lowered down a manhole. “Don’t worry,” Hae-Joo told me, “I’m right here.” My hands gripped rusty rungs; my knees scraped along a short tunnel. More arms lifted me into a mechanic’s shop, then lowered me into a smart two-seater xec ford. I heard more orders issued, then Hae-Joo swung in and started the engine. Mr. Chang had disappeared once again. Ahead, garage doors jerked open. Next, I remember gentle rain, suburb back-lanes, then a jammed thruway. The fords around us held lonely commuters, couples on dates, small families, some placid, some rowdy. When Hae-Joo spoke, finally, his voice was cold. “If a dumdum ever scratches me, euthanaze me as quickly as I did Xi-Li.” I had no response. “You must have a hundred questions, Sonmi. I beg your patience a little longer—if we are captured now, believe me, the less you know the better. We have a busy nite ahead of us. First, we’re paying a visit to Huamdonggil.” Do you know that zone of the conurb, Archivist?

My ministry would xpel me if I were ever Eyed in that untermensch slum. But please describe it for my orison
.

Huamdonggil is a noxious maze of low, crooked ramshacks, flophouses, pawnshops, drug bars, and comfort hives, covering perhaps five square miles southeast of Old Seoul Transit Station. Its streets are too narrow for fords to enter; its alleys reek of waste and sewage. ShitCorp goes nowhere near that quarter. Hae-Joo left the ford in a lockup and warned me to keep my head hooded: fabricants stolen here end up in brothels, made serviceable after clumsy surgery. Purebloods slumped in doorways, skin enflamed by prolonged xposure to the city’s scalding rain. One boy lapped water from a puddle on his hands and knees. “Migrants with enceph or leadlung,” Hae-Joo told me. “Hospitals drain their Souls until they’ve got only enough dollars for a euthanasia jab—or a ride to Huamdonggil. These poor bastards made the wrong choice.”

I could not understand why migrants fled Production Zones for such a squalid fate. Hae-Joo listed malaria, flooding, drought, rogue crop genomes, parasites, encroaching deadlands, and a natural desire to better the lives of their children. Papa Song Corp, he assured me, seems humane if compared to factories these migrants ran away from. Traffickers promise it rains dollars in the Twelve Cities, and migrants yearn to believe it; the truth never filters back, for traffickers operate only one way. Hae-Joo steered me away from a meowing two-headed rat. “They bite.”

I asked why the Juche tolerates this in its second capital.

Every conurb, my guide answered, has a chemical toilet where the city’s unwanted human waste disintegrates quietly, but not quite invisibly. It motivates the downstrata: “Work, spend, work,” say slums like Huamdonggil, “or you, too, will end your life
here.”
Moreover, entrepreneurs take advantage of the legal vaccuum to erect ghoulish pleasurezones for upstrata bored with more respectable quarters. Huamdonggil can thus pay its way in taxes and bribes. MediCorp opens a weekly clinic for dying untermensch to xchange any healthy body parts they may have for a sac of euthanaze. OrganiCorp has a lucrative contract with the city to send in a daily platoon of immune-genomed fabricants, similar to disastermen, to mop up the dead before the flies hatch. Hae-Joo then told me to stay silent; we had reached our destination.

Which was where xactly?

Xactly, I cannot say: Huamdonggil is not gridnumbered or charted. It was an overhanging mah-jongg house with a high lintel to keep the drainwater out, but I doubt I could identify the building again. Hae-Joo knocked on a reinforced door; an eyehole blinked, bolts unclacked, and a doorman opened up. The doorman’s bodyarmor was stained dark and his iron bar lethal looking; he grunted at us to wait for Ma Arak Na. I wondered if he wore a fabricant’s collar under his neckplate.

A smoky corridor bent out of view, walled with paper screens. I heard mah-jongg tiles, smelled feet, watched xotically clad pureblood servers carry trays of drinks. Their hassled xpressions morphed to girly delite every time they slid open a paper screen. I copied Hae-Joo’s xample and removed my nikes, dirtied by the Huamdonggil alleyways.

“Well,
you
wouldn’t be here if the news wasn’t bad.” The speaker addressed us from the ceiling hatch; whether her webbed lips, crescent eyes, and thorny voice were the results of genoming or mutation, I could not guess. Her gem-warted fingers gripped the hatch ridge.

Hae-Joo addressed Ma Arak Na as Madam. A cell had turned cancerous, he updated her, Mephi was under arrest, Xi-Li was dumdummed and killed, so yes, the news could hardly be worse.

Ma Arak Na’s double tongue uncurled and curled once or twice; she asked how far the cancer had spread. The Unionman replied he was here to answer that very question. The madam of the establishment told us to proceed to the parlor without delay.

The parlor?

A gaproom behind a roaring kitchen and a false wall, lit by a weak solar. A cup of ruby lime waited on the rim of a cast-iron brazier that surely predated the building if not the city. We sat on well-worn floor cushions. Hae-Joo sipped the drink and told me to unhood. The planked ceiling thumped and creaked, a hatch flipped open, and Ma Arak Na’s face appeared. She xpressed no surprise at seeing me, a Sonmi. Next, the ancient brazier hummed with xtremely modern circuitry. A sphere of dark sheen and refracted silence xpanded until it filled the parlor, aquifying the kitchen noises. Lastly, a piebald light above the brazier morphed into a carp.

A carp?

A carp, as in the fish. A numinous, pearl-and-tangerine, fungus-blotted, mandarin-whiskered, half-meter-long carp. One lazy slap of its tail propelled the fish toward me. Roots of water lilies parted as it moved. Its ancient eyes read mine; its lateral fins rippled. The carp sank a few centimeters to read my collar, and I heard my name spoken by an old man. Hae-Joo was barely visible through the murky underwater air.

“I am sorely thankful to see you alive”—the 3-D’s transceived voice was cultured but muffled and splintered—”and truly honored to meet you. I am An-Kor Apis of Union.” The fish apologized for the visual dramatics; camouflage was necessary, since Unanimity was combing all transmissions.

I responded that I understood.

An-Kor Apis promised I should understand much more very soon and swung toward Hae-Joo. “Commander Im.”

Hae-Joo bowed, reporting that he had euthanazed Xi-Li.

The senior Unionman said he already knew, that no anesthetic xisted for Hae-Joo’s pain; but that Unanimity had killed Xi-Li, and Hae-Joo had merely spared his brother an ignoble death in a prison cube. Apis then xhorted Hae-Joo to ensure Xi-Li’s sacrifice was not in vain. A short briefing followed: six cells had been compromised and twelve more firebreaked. The “good news” was that Boardman Mephi had managed to suicide before neuro-torture could began. An-Kor Apis then ordered my companion to xit me from Seoul thru West Gate One, to proceed to the northern camp in a convoy, and to reflect well upon what had been advised.

The carp circled, vanishing into the parlor wall before reappearing thru my chest. “You have chosen your friends wisely, Sonmi. Together, we may change corpocratic civilization out of all recognition.” He promised we would meet again soon. The sphere then shrank back into the brazier as the parlor restored itself. The carp became a streak of lite, a dot, finally, nothing at all.

How was Hae-Joo planning to pass thru a city xit without Souls?

The Soul implanter was ushered in just minutes later. A slite, anonymous-looking man, he xamined Hae-Joo’s torn finger with professional disdain. He tweezered the tiny egg from his gelpack, bedded it into fresh tissue, and sprayed cutane over the top. That such an insignificant-looking dot can confer all the rights of consumerdom on its bearers yet condemn the rest of corpocracy to servitude seemed, and seems still, a bizarre obscenity to me. “Your name is Ok-Kyun Pyo,” the implanter told Hae-Joo, adding that any sony would download his fictional history.

The implanter turned to me and produced a pair of laser pliers. They would cut steel but not even scratch living tissue, he assured me. First he removed my collar: I heard a click, felt a tickling as it pulled away, then it was in my hands. That felt odd: as if you were to hold your own umbilical cord, Archivist. “Now for the subcutaneous bar code.” He swabbed anesthetic over my throat, warning me this
would
hurt, but his tool’s damper would stop the bar code from xploding on contact with air.

“Ingenious.” Hae-Joo peered.

“Of course it’s ingenious,” retorted the implanter. “I designed it myself. Sickening thing is, I can’t patent it.” He had Hae-Joo stand ready with a cloth; a jagged pain tore my throat. As Hae-Joo stanched the bleeding, the implanter showed me the old identity of Sonmi
451, a microchip in a pair of tweezers. He would dispose of it himself, he promised, carefully. He sprayed healant over my wound and applied a skin-tone dressing. “And now,” he continued, “a crime so novel it doesn’t even have a name. The Souling of a fabricant. How is my genius rewarded? A fanfare? A nobel and a university sinecure?”