The Raft: A Novel (50 page)

Gideon and I moved away as he strained towards the sky in praise of himself. I thought I had made a terrible mistake, but then I told myself to wait, just wait, because there were two sides—always two sides—and the other would come down like the ill-fated head of a flipped coin.

“Nothing and no one more powerful than me! Nothing and no one …” His laughter resounded through the hall and the iron plates creaked and groaned again. “Nothing and no one! Nothing and no one! Nothing … and no one!”

(
Stupid, stupid animals … stupid, stupid animals
)

The veins in Quon’s neck bulged as the muscles tautened within the hard circular rim of his collar. His jaw cranked open, baring his big teeth. Saliva flew from his mouth as he bellowed, triumphantly, manically.

His words rolled on and on, becoming louder and louder: “Nothing and NO ONE! NOTHING AND NO ONE!”

Finally, he paused and breathed weightily, clenching his teeth, his bulging eyes flitting to the dark walls of broken machinery folded in the shadows.

“Nothing … and no one,” he said under his breath. Something was slipping away from him. His own words were no longer a praise song, but a blunt reminder of what he had left in his life, whom he had left to conquer: “Nothing and no one …”

(
My father shook my mother and told her to come around, come around baby, but her gaze turned on my father and all he could see in her eyes was fear. Fear like he’d never seen in anyone before, and it sent him reeling backwards in shock. A deep, deep panic grew and grew in her until she was screaming and she held up her hands and her hands were like gnarled claws
)

Quon’s grin began to shrink and wilt, but his eyes continued to race around the room. He was beginning to panic, fear sprouting within him, growing like a rampant weed from the seed of his own insecurities. He twisted his limbs, panting, frenziedly looking for an escape from the prison that had shot up around him. “Nothing …” he said with mounting fear. “No one. Nothing … and
no one …
”

He grabbed the rim of his steel collar and pulled on it, extending his neck, ricking his head up to the skylight (
of the weak old sun, right Quon?
) and shutting his eyes. He screamed—a scream of absolute terror, and loneliness, and acceptance of the truth. The damning truth: the dead end of absolute power …

(
The rest of it, the levels of crazy, that’s all you, man.Your deepest fears and insecurities brought to the surface, where you get to see how ugly and awful they are … horrible things in the basement of our s-suh-suh-souls, Raft Man
)

“Nothing and no one …” he bawled.

Gideon slung the bag off his back, unzipped it and pulled out the knife we’d taken from the abandoned town. Quon didn’t notice him. Quon was entombed in the hell of his own making, ripping out his hair and scratching his face with his long fingernails, just as Burt had done amid that swarm of angry hornets …

Gideon walked forward slowly, got down on one knee and placed the knife on the floor before Quon. The knife glittered in the light from above. Gideon got up and walked back towards me. “Come. There’s nothing more to see. He’ll end it when he’s ready.”

We walked towards the exit of the hall and I looked back to see Quon, contorting, trying to rip off his suit with his hands. The bulky gear seemed to be tightening around him, straining the air from his lungs.

“Nothing and no one … and no one … no one …”

Gideon and I exited the hall, turned, and sealed the heavy iron door behind us. Quon’s screams rippled, echoing through the metal bones of the ship. And his screams were the voice of Chang’e 11 itself, the countless wails of stolen memories.

“He was a silly man,” Gideon said dryly.

We walked back through the dim corridors of Chang’e 11. The way out was far easier than the way in, and finally we were at the exit, where the light of day was waiting like the warm and benevolent hands of something greater than ourselves.

Some true god.

The members of the commune were frenzied. Quon’s anguish was being channelled through them, and they spun and twisted, ripping off their clothes and shrieking and digging their fingers into their own flesh. They clawed at their skin as if they could reach down to their true selves, layered beneath their fat and muscle. Some of them were curled on the ground in foetal positions, trembling and twitching and yowling.

Gideon and I walked down the lowered iron door and passed through the communers. There was nothing that could be done for them—nothing until Quon finally picked up that knife and put it to his throat, or across his wrists, or directly into his heart.

I searched for my son. I looked from tormented face to tormented face. My son would be older than the last time I’d seen him, but how old?

I grabbed people by the cuffs of their shirts and turned them over, hoping to recognise my son. They did not resist me; they were too caught up to realise I was there. I saw a boy lying on the hard ground, scraping away the chalky dust of the desert with his feet, his right hand shoved almost all the way down his throat. His eyes rolled up in his head as he spewed over his arm. I pulled out his arm and looked at him closely. No, it wasn’t him. He was too young.

I spun around. Gideon was there in the distance, standing among the chaos like the last sane man alive, a rock amid the crashing waves of spinning, retching, scrambling people. He looked back at me through the crowd. I knew he couldn’t help. There was no way to describe Andy. I could barely recall the boy myself. If he was under Quon’s control, then he was on the ground somewhere, tearing himself apart like everyone else.

I looked to my side.

At the far end of the commune a number of huge trees reached up into the sky. They looked entirely out of place, thick towering trunks sitting flush against the side of Chang’e 11. The foliage was sparse but the branches stretched out on the sides like crooked arms. Perhaps they grew along the edge of a water source, an oasis that provided for the commune. My eyes ran up their trunks and then I noticed that one of them ended precisely at an elevated entrance in the side of Chang’e 11. An old docking station perhaps, or a runway for an escape pod. The cavity was about fifteen or twenty feet from the ground.

Gideon’s eyes followed mine, and we hurried through the communers towards the base of the trees. I pushed and pulled people from my way, ran between the tents and found myself on the edge of a shallow body of water. I craned my neck and looked up at that one tree. (
I’m walking in a beautiful forest. That’s how it starts. How it always starts. There are many tall trees. But I see one tree in particular in the centre of the forest, enormous in width and height. It’s wider and taller than the rest
)

Gideon stayed by my side as I walked toward the base of the tree, my eyes fixed on the open mouth of the iron cavern.

“He’s up there,” I said. “I know it.”

As I approached the base of the tree I spotted a red object lying between the surface roots and tussocks of grass.

(
At my feet, a red shoe is lying in the dirt. It’s a child’s shoe. I recognise it as my son’s, then look up and consider the possibility he dropped it while climbing that very tree
)

I was staring at a shoe—a red shoe at the bottom of the tree—the one I had seen in my recurring dream.

“How do know you he’s up there?” Gideon asked.

“I’ve always known,” I said, turning my gaze to the top of the tree once more. “Right since the start. Shen’s very first clue.”

And then I put my hands up to the tree and, grabbing the first broken branch, pulled myself up and began to climb.

Xerox print test

I
looked down from the great height of the tree and saw the clumsy sprawl of tents, shacks and people. Ahead, there was the flat and endless horizon. My hand clutched another branch and I heaved myself up. Sweat ran from my face. I gripped harder so that I wouldn’t slip; I pulled myself up with a strength I should not have had. I hoped from a place in my heart I no longer knew existed.

I lifted my foot and rested it on another knobby protrusion, and pushed up to the next branch, and the next. I looked down over my shoulder. Gideon was climbing up behind me, one careful branch at a time.

We were far from the ground, and for an instant my fear of heights took hold of me, challenging my determination. I paused and closed my eyes. I took a deep breath and expelled it gently. I counted backwards from ten, filtering away my doubt, and then I opened my eyes and continued up, promising myself I would not look down. It was all behind me, and I would not fall back. Not this time.

Finally, I was at the top.

I stopped and watched as Gideon made his way to where I was crouching: near the mouth of the entrance into the high side of the vessel. I inched along the large branch that bridged the gap to the entrance and slid onto its iron grate. The wind lashed across us, one cold wave after the other. Gideon followed closely behind me.

We walked along the clanging iron grate until we reached a black wall. In the centre of the wall was a door standing slightly ajar, a faint glimmer of light shining through the gap. I reached for the handle and pulled it slowly open.

A room. A familiar room.

There was a grey box, rumbling a familiar sound, innumerable white wires extending to a chair in the centre of the room. The chair was turned away from us, but I could make out the shape of someone sitting in it, white wires attached to a shadowy head. Beyond the chair was a long empty table, hidden in the shadows.

I walked forward slowly, careful not to alarm the motionless figure in the chair.

“Andy,” I said softly. I took another step forward. No response. I turned to inspect the grey box that groaned on the side of the room. It was similar to the one we’d had on the beach—the mind reader that had drained us of our thoughts. I ran my hand over the box and saw a number of buttons:
Start. Cancel.
a4. a3. a2.
Multiple copies.

I lifted the thin plastic lid that covered the top of the box. Sheets of paper sat in a tray to the side. I grabbed a sheet and read: fx443—XEROX PRINT TEST (0076). fx443—XEROX PRINT TEST (0077). fx443—XEROX PRINT TEST (0078).

I dropped the pages and edged towards the chair, then circled until I was facing the person. Light brown hair. Darkly tanned skin. One missing red shoe.

It was him. Andy. My son. My boy. My
boy.

I slid hurriedly down on my knees in front of him and laid my hand on his thin, cold hands. He looked through me, gazing into nothingness.

I took him by the shoulders and shook him gently.

Nothing.

I stroked his face, tapped him on the cheeks. “Andy? Wake up, big guy.
Jesus
, what did they do to you?”

Sluggishly and without blinking, Andy turned his head to face me.

“That’s right,” I said. “That’s right, kiddo. It’s me. Your father. Blink. Blink your eyes.”

Andy did as I told him. He blinked once, mechanically, and paused before blinking once more.

“It’s me,” I said reassuringly. “It’s
me.
I’m here. I’ve come to get you.”

Gideon approached the chair and Andy turned his gaze on him, studied him. His eyes widened. He would not turn back to me, no matter how much I coaxed him, no matter how tightly I held his hand.

“Dad?” Andy murmured.

Gideon said nothing. He did not move.

Andy began to breathe deeply, emotion finally welling up within.

I didn’t understand.

Andy grabbed the wires attached to his head and plucked them from their plugs. His eyes did not stray from the tall man with the long dreadlocks—the friend who had come all the way with me. The friend I had encountered in the abandoned town—
an exceedingly improbable coincidence—
I squashed the thought.

I released Andy’s hand as the young man grabbed the side of the chair and got to his feet.

“You came,” Andy said to Gideon. “You came for me.” He threw himself into Gideon, wrapping his arms around him, clutching him firmly.

I rose from my knees.

And as Gideon’s arms tentatively lifted from their sides and wrapped around Andy, I knew … I knew an excruciating truth. My heart clenched and I struggled to breathe.

It can’t be. No, it cannot be …

I waited for something to confirm that Andy was muddled, projecting on Gideon in some way, but the confirmation didn’t come.

And Gideon—his expression was changing too. The look of bafflement was lessening, replaced by something else. Painful awareness. Relief. Joy.

I edged back, away from the chair—away from Gideon and Andy, embracing each other as I had hoped to be embraced. I tried to accept what I was witnessing. The longer they held each other the more obvious it all became.

The room began to spin. Everything blurred. My face was hot, my arms and legs were numb, and then there was a heaviness—an aching heaviness I had felt only once before, a long time ago, in another place, as another person.

A wave of memories washed over me like the water in the room in my dream.

Jack Turning

J
ack Turning did not appreciate his little meetings with the representatives from Huang Enterprises. They always sent some weedy, humourless man in a creaseless suit who never knew more than the information he had been sent to give. Jack had met one earlier that day, in an empty hotel conference room. The man was like all the others, dressed as if he was about to climb in his coffin, with a disposition just as cold and bloodless.

Jack had joined The Borrowed Gun with a belief in the cause—a powerful statement to the world that third-world countries would no longer tolerate the rape of their land and their dignity—but somewhere along the way, things had become complicated. Suddenly it was a non-profit movement backed by the most profit-hungry corporation on the planet. But they needed the corporation. Its intelligence. The weaponry. The money. They were consorting with the devil to buy a ticket into heaven, he knew. But the pressure from his Borrowed Gun comrades was growing too. It needed to be done, he was told. The Borrowed Gun was now larger than ever, with factions arising in cities across the world. The price they had to pay to save the rest of the world would have to be their few souls.