Cloud Atlas

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.

The trees ended an’ the wind got musclier ’n’ angrier, bringin’ not a sniff o’ smoke, no farmin’, no dung, no nothin’ ’cept fine, fine dust. Birds was rarer too in them sheer ’n’ scrubby slopes, jus’ buzzards surfin’ high. By evenin’ we got to a cluster of Old-Un buildings what Meronym said’d been a village for ’stron’mers what was priests o’ the Smart what read the stars. This village’d not been lived in since the Fall an’ no more des’late place I’d ever seen. No water nor soil an’ the night fell, oh, fangy ’n’ cold, so we dressed thick an’ lit a fire in an empty dwellin’. Flamelights danced with shadows round them unloved walls. I was anxin’ ’bout the summit next day, so in part to blind my mind, I asked Meronym if Abbess spoke true when she said the Hole World flies round the sun, or if the Men o’ Hilo was true sayin’ the sun flies round the Hole World.

Abbess is quite correct, answered Meronym.

Then the true true is diff’rent to the seemin’ true? said I.

Yay, an’ it usually is, I mem’ry Meronym sayin’, an’ that’s why true true is presher ’n’ rarer ’n diamonds. By ’n’ by sleep hooded her, but my thinkin’s kept me awake till a silent woman came an’ sat by the fire, sneez-in ’n’ shiv’rin’ hushly. Her neckless o’ cowrie shells said she was a Honomu fisher, an’ if she’d o’ been living she’d o’ been joocesome no frettin’. Into the fire the woman uncurled her fingers, into the prettiest bronze ’n’ ruby petals, but she jus’ sighed lornsomer ’n a bird in a box in a well, see, them flames cudn’t heat her up none. She’d got pebbles ’stead o’ eyeballs an’ I wondered if she was climbin’ Mauna Kea to let Old Georgie fin’ly put her soul to stony sleep. Dead folk hear livin’s thinkin’s, an’ that drowned fisher gazed at me with them pebbles, noddin’ yay, an’ she took out a pipe for comfort but I din’t ask for no skank. Long beats later I waked, the fire was dyin’ an’ the stoned Honomu’d taked her leave. No tracks that un left in the dust, but I smelt the smoke from her pipe for a beat or two. See, I thinked, Meronym knows a lot ’bout Smart an’ life but Valleysmen know more ’bout death.

Fourth dawn was a wind not o’ this world, nay, it warped that brutal ’n’ ringin’ light an’ hooped the horizon an’ ripped words out o’ your mouth an’ your body’s warmness thru your tarp ’n’ furs. Summit trail from the ’stron’mers’ village was busted ’n’ roded diresome, yay, great mouthfuls landslipped away an’ no leafs nor roots nor mosses even jus’ dry ’n’ freezed dust ’n’ grit what scratched our eyes like a crazed woman. Our Valleys boots was shredded by now, so Meronym gived us both a pair o’ Smart Prescient boots made o’ I din’t know what but whoah warm ’n’ soft ’n’ tuff they was so we could go on. Four–five miles later the ground flatted out so you din’t feel you was on a mountain no more, nay, more like an ant on a table, jus’ a flatness hangin’ in nothin’ b’tween worlds. Fin’ly near noon we rounded a bend an’ I gasped shocksome ’cos here was the ’closure, jus’ like Truman’d said it, tho’ its walls wasn’t as tall as a redwood, nay, more a spruce high. The track leaded straight to the steely gate, yay, but its unbusted walls weren’t so endless long, nay, you could o’ walked round it in a quarter of a mornin’. Now inside the ’closure on rising ground was the bowls o’ temples, yay, the eeriest Old-Un buildings in Ha-Why or Hole World, who knows? How could we get to ’em tho’? Meronym stroked that awesome gate an’ muttered, We’d need a dammit diresome flashbang to get these off their hinges, yay. Out o’ her gearbag tho’ she got not a flashbang, nay, but a Smart rope, like the Prescients bartered sumtimes, fine ’n’ light. Two stumps stuck up ’bove the steely gate, an’ she tried to lassoop one. The wind was craftier ’n her aim, but I tried next an’ lassooped it first time, an’ up Old Georgie’s ’closure we scaled hand by hand by hand.

Inside that dreadsome place at the world’s top, yay, the wind hushed like a hurrycane’s clear eye. The sun was deaf’nin’ so high up, yay, it roared an’ time streamed from it. No paths there wasn’t inside the ’closure just a mil’yun boulders like in Truman Napes’s yarn, the bodies o’ the stoned ’n’ unsouled they was, an’ I wondered if Meronym or me or both’d be boulders by nightfall. Ten–twelve temples waited here ’n’ there, white ’n’ silv’ry an’ gold ’n’ bronze with squat bodies ’n’ round crowns an’ mostly windowless. The nearest un was jus’ a hun’erd paces away, an’ we set off for it first. I asked if this was where Old Uns worshiped their Smart.

Meronym spoke, marv’lin’ as much as me, they wasn’t temples, nay, but observ’trees what Old Uns used to study the planets ’n’ moon ’n’ stars, an’ the space b’tween, to und’stand where ev’rythin’ begins an’ where ev’rythin’ ends. We stepped caref’ly b’tween them twisted rocks. Round one I seen crushed cowrie shells from Honomu way, an’ I knowed it was my visitor the night b’fore. The wind bringed my gran’pa’s voice whispin’ from the far-far .?.?. Judas. Eerie, yay, but shockin’, nay, ’cos ev’rythin’ in that place was eerie .?.?. Judas. I din’t tell Meronym.

How she got that observ’tree door open, I ain’t knowin’ so don’t mozzie me. A sort of umb’licky cord b’tween the door’s dusted ’n’ rusty niche an’ her orison-egg worked in a beat or two. Now I was busy guardin’ us from the dwellers o’ that ’closure. My gran’pa’s whispin’s was now cussin’ half faces what dis’peared when you stared straight. A sharp hiss as the observ’tree door cracked open. Air guffed out stale ’n’ sour like it was breathed b’fore the Fall an’, yay, so it prob’ly was. In we stepped an’ what did we find?

Describin’ such Smart ain’t easy. Gear there was what we ain’t mem’ried on Ha-Why, so its names ain’t mem’ried neither, yay, almost nothin’ in there could I cogg. Shimm’rin’ floors, white walls ’n’ roofs, one great chamber, round ’n’ sunk, filled by a mighty tube wider ’n a man an’ longer ’n five what Meronym named a radyo tel’scope what was, she said, the furthest-seein’ eye Old Uns ever made. Ev’rythin’ white ’n’ pure as Sonmi’s robes, yay, not one flea o’ dirt ’cept what we tromped in. Tables ’n’ chairs sat round