removed.' To Traynor she said, 'If you think we can't enforce
this, ask Horn about Halo Central Authority and who they'll side
withcorporate wankers who can do nothing to keep this city
running, or us. Better yet, ask your machine.'
Traynor stood looking at them all, apparently doing just
that. For a couple of long heartbeats, everyone waited. Then
Traynor smiled through pain, like a man trying to hide a broken
bone. He said, 'We cannot prevent you from this unauthorized
connection to Aleph, but we can and will put on the official
record that proper SenTrax authority has forbidden this attempt.
Thus you must all be considered insubordinate, and as soon as
proper means can be devised, you will be removed from your
positions with SenTrax. Also, any further damage done to the
Aleph system or Halo City, directly or indirectly, must be
considered your individual responsibility, given that proper
SenTrax authority has forbidden your intended actions.'
'You take nice dictation,' Lizzie said. 'Consider your
statement duly noted and get the fuck out of here.
21. Drunk with Love
Waiting in the egg, Gonzales smelled strange smells and felt
electric quiverings of the flesh, saw an instant of pure blue
light, and with a sudden rush
He flew cruciform against the sky. The horizon's flat line
seemed thousands of miles away. Far below, people scurried
aimlessly across a sandy plain, and voices called in unknown
languages. Massive machinery lumbered to nowhere among the
crowds, metal arms thousands of feet long folding and unfolding in
random seizure, improbably threading their behemoth way among the
delicate flesh without harm.
The wind rushed across him, its force inflating his lungs.
Accelerating with a glad cry, he passed through an electric
membrane, a translucent, shimmering curtain that stretched
vertically from the floor below up to infinity and spread out
across the entire horizon. Beyond it, titanic figures loomed
above a landscape of rocks and hills. Next to a monstrous lute, a
head in profile reclined; from its mouth came a wisp of smoke that
curled into a curlicued ideogramwhat it meant or what language
it came from Gonzales didn't know. Twin white horses rose into
the air in unison and neighed as he passed. A nude woman lay
inside a shellboth woman and shell were colored pink and rose
and pearl. A giant cyclops strode toward him; its doughy head
seemed half-formed, its mouth just a slash, its nose a mere bump.
It called to him with inarticulate cries.
He passed through another curtain, and the world turned black
and white. Above a featureless sea, a head flew toward him; it
had dark curly hair and a beaky nose, and it was tilted forward to
look down on the sea, as if searching for something there. He
came to a bell that covered almost a quarter of the sky. A
skeletal figure with just an empty mask for a face hung beneath it
from the bell-rope; the figure lurched, and the bell's gonging
sounded through his bones.
He came to the final curtain. The sky had turned the bright
blue of dreams. Beyond, the Point of Origin towered, its sides
pierced by an infinite number of holes. Gonzales flashed through
the curtain and felt an electric buzz down to his bones, then he
entered a hole in the vast ramparts of the dark cube.
#
Sitting behind a low bamboo table, the old man spooned
noodles into a wooden bowl, then as Gonzales nodded his assent to
each choice, added coriander, fried garlic, bean crackers, chopped
eggs, fish sausage, and sesame nuts. He ladled fish soup over it
all, finished with a shake of chili powder and a squeeze of lime,
and handed the bowl to Gonzales with a smile. Gonzales gave a
handful of cheap-looking kyat bills to the man. Mohinga, this
breakfast is called, and Gonzales loves ithe has eaten it every
morning since he discovered it weeks ago.
Gonzales found a stone bench in front of a nearby pagoda and
sat eating with a pair of crude chopsticks and watching the
passers-by. Already the day had grown warm and humid, and he knew
that any physical exertion would make him sweat. A line of boys
filed by, led by a monk; their heads were newly-shaven, their
saffron robes bright and stiff, their begging bowls shiny. They
were twelve year olds who had just completed their shin pyu, their
making as monks, a ritual most Burmese boys still went through,
even in the middle of the twenty-first century.
After breakfast he had no desire to return to the shed he
worked in; he set out for a walk through the countryside around
Pagan.
Half an hour later, walking a cart track across the arid
plain, he came to a platform built high off the ground. On it
were garlands of bright flowers and plates of rice, offerings to
propitiate the nats, spirits that had animated this land even
before the arrival of Buddhism. They were mischievous and could
be quite nasty; in the past, they had demanded human sacrifice.
The nats were strong around Pagan. At Mount Popa, just
thirty miles away, Min Mahagiri, brother and sister, 'Lords of the
High Mountain,' ruled. Gonzales had heard their story but
remembered only that as humans these nats had been caught in an
intrigue of envy and murder, with a neighboring king as the
villain.
A young person came walking up the path toward Gonzales,
dressed in the usual Burmese 'western' garb of dark slacks and
white cotton shirt, head and face a shining sphere of light. Odd,
thought Gonzales. Wonder how that happened: this person has lost
both face and gender.
'Hello,' the young person said, and the two of them found a
low stone bench in front of a nearby pagoda and sat.
