place herself, whether she was living at all. Her thoughts travelled while her body remained. Inward her flesh roamed, perhaps seeking a new form. She was buried, dispersed, riding currents of wind and water, slipping through her own fingers.
Schilling, she dreamed, rescue me.
twelve - oracle
He woke with a stiff shoulder, a soreness bridging the gap between index finger and thumb, the muscles of his right arm tired. The fire was out, the drizzle persistent, the bark sail sagging overhead. Listening for Johnson’s so-called issue, Schilling massaged his aching pinion.
According to Soapy and Knox the pilot had gone to further investigate a settlement around the coast to the west. He was expected back this morning. Of the stunted progeny there was no sound. He crawled out into the open and stretched, feet cool in the rough grass. The sky was a deep blue. The planet’s ring arched, the orbiting detritus of the fallen grille, outsized particles that had somehow escaped the tyrannies of weather and gravity. It occurred to him they might be shepherded, the circling hulk of a former yawbus a leash to their roaming.
Vacated? Observing? He did not know, his own patchy affairs but a drop in the vast company ocean.
Neck complaining, he grunted and lowered his eyes to the horizon. He pictured the tree, its verdant foliage, the dead hanging like diseased fruit from its branches. It had grown from the sunken island, his private Atlantis, with Schilling its sole function; the others, his extended family, unreal yet sophisticated reproductions whose purpose was to illustrate one possibility, to boast of such potential, a micro-society the physical presence of which was more than illusory.
He still felt the pain of that separation. But a greater pain subsumed it.
A shout rang out, spinning off toppled walls. He turned to see the clumsy figure of Knox Hog running toward him, waving his arms as if to fly, the quicker to reach the camp.
Schilling kicked himself mentally, in despair at his empty brooding. A moment later Knox crashed into him, knocking him flat as he blathered news of Johnson’s return. The big man laughed, raised them both, and together they walked in the direction the pilot would be coming.
Soapy waited in a sprawling bush just over the rise, ensconced like a nestling, a brass telescope pressed to one eye.
‘Who knows?’ Johnson said later when Schilling asked about the pair. ‘They’re good at finding things,’ he explained, dismissive, wishing to talk of telephone boxes, old ladies knitting and the drawings he’s made. ‘I’m no artist,’ he said, ‘but I know how to make a pencil behave. I did a stint flying map-makers on Harold The Boar. Shy creatures; always drinking beer. They showed me how to do reliefs, contours...’ He trailed off. ‘Anyway, the last time I saw you you were going over the side in search of Courtney Island. Would it be remiss to ask if you found what you were looking for? You were acting pretty weird at the time.’
Schilling digested that, along with the kippers the pilot had brought. ‘The mine,’ he said, nodding. ‘I was shaken up. I don’t know. I was looking for anything - she means a lot to me, I suppose.’
The nod infected Johnson, who copied, saying, ‘Easier to think than talk.’
‘Right. I’m still some way behind.’
‘It’s a different world.’
‘Always is.’
‘Don’t I know. You’ll find her some day.’
‘Right...’
‘Cigarette? No, I forgot, you don’t. I stole these from a post office. Can you believe it? Whoever’s orchestrating this pageant really knows their stuff.’
The burly ex-trooper scratched his head. ‘I used to dream of a life free of worry, a kind of perfect existence where my actions weren’t directed by the company. Now it seems my existence is the company. It’s as if I’ve become part of something I only used to belong to.’
Johnson punched him theatrically, comradely. ‘We’re all in this together, eh?’
‘Something like that.’
He ate some more, in silence.
Johnson smoked. Then, ‘You know, you look different.’
Schilling thought a moment. ‘You too,’ he answered.
‘Maybe it’s the thinning beard.’
‘Nah.’
‘The breasts? They’re real. You can touch them if you like.’
‘No. Thanks. I mean, yes, the breasts; they’ve changed you. Am I blushing?’
‘A little,’ replied Johnson. ‘Hard to tell.’ He snapped his fingers, grinning broadly.
‘What?’ queried Schilling. ‘What is it?’
‘Your colour!’
‘What about my colour?’ He was agitated, uncertain.
‘You were white, blue-eyed, yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, you’re still blue-eyed, but the rest of you has turned the shade of cheap stationery. You look a hundred years old!’
Schilling touched his face and shrugged. He waited for the pilot to stop beating his thighs and settle down.
‘Interesting.’ Worrying the loose skin round his neck and feeling its stiffness.
Johnson had the giggles. ‘I think maybe I was always a woman; you know, deep down inside...’
‘Sure. And I was always a manila envelope.’
i
It was out of character, this watching the sunrise. Shades of purple, crimson and blood. Maybe he had unzipped himself from one body and zipped himself into another. A darker hue. It struck him that if the planet’s metamorphosis had been subtle he never would have believed the evidence of his eyes, ears, nose and tongue. Far from being a spectacle, the intrinsically thaumaturgical devices here employed presented an often bland, holistic front; yet they were an undeniable presence in Schilling’s wayward head. Changes were obvious if universal.
It was real. Had to be.
There was no other choice.
Johnson yawned behind him, muttered and stood. The worldly issue were off scavenging. Schilling wondered if they ever slept.
The pilot avoided his gaze. An unsettling experience.
He busied himself untying and rolling up the sail in preparation for the agreed trip south. There was a continent to explore, a wilderness of unknown rocks and ridges, people and insects. Already they were south of the equator. But had the equator, previously vacillating, permanently shifted? Did this new world tilt? Another question. Another missing link. The temperature on the promontory hung between ten and twenty degrees, even at night. If anything it was too comfortable, as if each individual, himself included, supported their own environment.
The quiet after the storm? He coughed, a compromise, unsure whether to groan or laugh. Shouldering the string-pull bag he asked Johnson if he could play backgammon.
The pilot considered, scratching his face, the action more a consequence than a cause of the depilation he was undergoing. ‘Sure,’ he said, finally relaxed, beard wispy and face less angled. ‘Smoked or unsmoked?’
Schilling farted. Too early in the morning for bacon jokes.
They walked across the promontory to where an ancient stairway regulated the granite descent, worn steps bringing them to a crude wharf set on the strait dividing the mainland from what had been Base 2, the same breadth of ocean Schilling and Johnson had crossed in the opposite direction, utilizing a berg after crashing the economy flyer. The distance was greater now, close to a kilometre, the hover berthed with Knox and Soapy stretched out on its hull. The issue saluted grimly, lips parallel, their innate double-act a throwback to some early Earth monochrome two-reeler. Schilling made the appropriate rejoinder and they piled below deck, where Johnson handed him the axe.
There was a reverential silence, a spectrum of fractured light.
Soon broken.
‘I can’t say for sure how far inland we’ll get,’ Johnson said. ‘Depends on the country.’
The hover rumbled to life.
‘Fuel?’ queried Schilling.
‘Eight, nine hundred kilometres. If we follow the coast hopefully it won
’t be too long before we find an estuary. Perhaps we’ll get lucky. Perhaps not. A solid line of trees and we continue on foot.’
The axeman registered assent.
‘Okay,’ said Johnson. He sent Knox Hog topside to release the mooring. Water cut under the filling skirt, droplets spattering the windscreen just one of many changes from the sea of old.
Schilling sat in his remnants of chewed and hammered bark. On a whim he raided a host of storage cabinets, coming up with a reinforced jumpsuit. Faded black, some Ologist’s frontier fetish. He emptied his boots and secured his feet inside, paced a while, squatted, bending his salt-stiffened toes and abrading his heels before dispensing with the tan containers once and for all, preferring the touch of air and floor. Johnson was nonchalant at the controls, feigning absorption. The issue lay on the deck, watching. Schilling pulled a face, high on pretended weightlessness, sure of the hydrogen in his bones. They hugged the coastline, the admixture of scenery at the continent’s lip. There was no sign of human settlement. Rocks dominated, toothing shadows and sitting motionless and round at the water’s edge, smoothed over fake centuries. The pilot outlined their course, roughly matching the ebb and flow of the land, then overlaid the topography of pre-storm Oriel. He guessed the sea’s nadir to be around 150 kilometres southward, a point they reached by midday.
Eyes peeled, Schilling moved up front. The land was flatter here, the bay curving much deeper than the charts indicated. The pilot shrugged at the possibility of a river they might navigate. Nearby a small boat drifted, upturned, marked by some