She peered at him over the rim of her glass, and shook her head. "Your snonking mimicry is as bad as your snonking plan!" Her features softened. "But I'm on your snonking team."
He grinned. "That's our toast!"
Her brow knotted. "Snonking?"
"Team! Here's to Team Owl Monkey."
Her eyes flashed with laughter. "Team Owl Monkey."
They clinked their glasses, and drank. The champagne looked like pale, fizzy, liquid gold, and it tasted as sweet as the first warm sun of spring.
***
In Sydney, everyone piled off the ship after it docked at Circular Quay, and headed for the Opera House. Arima wanted to follow the swarm of photographers, hungry by then to catch that elusive perfect shot of modern beauty. Soro held her hand, and held her on the quay. She tugged at him, excited by the opportunity. "So many of my friends have come here on holiday, but I've never been here before. I can't miss a thing!"
He grinned. "You won't. We'll work our way around to the Opera House."
She stamped her foot like a little girl, and made her black book earrings swing back and forth. "But I want to go now!"
He took both of her hands, and looked into her eyes. He spoke in a low, calming tone. "The Opera House will still be there tonight, gleaming in the floodlights, brilliant as the moon against the backdrop of space. But the pack of crazed photographers will have got tired, hungry for food, and gorged with the beauty of that remarkable creation. And we..."
She gazed up at him, and her lips parted in a sigh of surprise and delight. "We'll have it all to ourselves."
They strolled along the quay, taking in the sights, sounds and smells of the metropolis. After touring the ancient cities of Athens, Rome, and beautiful, mediaeval Dijon, it came as a shock to stand in the shade of towers raised from concrete and steel, and faced with glass, burnished in the sun. Life on the ship had made them accustomed to the salty tang of the sea, and the oily edge of diesel. Here they also caught the aroma of exhaust smoke, and ozone from the trains that ran underground, and from the monorail that rattled overhead. They ambled through Chinatown, and smelled roasting duck, hot sesame oil, and a wash of spices. They passed through a playground packed with screaming, laughing children, clambering over climbing frames, through plastic tunnels, and rushing up and down on long swings. Beyond that, they came to Darlington Harbour, where a huge modern mall loomed over them, and countless tiny cafes nestled in the space between the walls and the edge where the pavement fell away to the sea.
***
"The key to a good picture isn't the light," he said. "Or the contrast between foreground and background. It's not in the use of a startling image; merely to arrest attention is work for an ad man, and not a true photographer."
She slurped her blueberry and banana smoothie, laced with piracetam and other nootropic drugs, and watched him with a playful tilt of the eyebrows and jaw. "No, master," she said. "Of course not. And we know there's no lower form of life than-"
"What's the purpose of a photograph?" he said, pursing his lips and squinting as if he couldn't quite bring her features into sharp focus.
Taken aback by the interruption, she jerked in her seat, and then she eased back into a comfortable position, and looked out, across the water, to the towering office blocks, and the slender spire, surmounted by a doughnut, of Centrepoint Tower. She waved her arm across the cityscape. "To change all that," she said.
"Change," he said, with a hint of a smirk playing about his lips.
"Yes," she said, nettled by his smug attitude, his condescending tone. "Change. We forgot what our life is based on, what it requires to sustain itself. We forget that the food we eat today was slaughtered yesterday, and alive before that, with hopes and dreams of its own."
"If a cow can dream. Or a sprig of corn."
She slammed her drink down on the table, so it sloshed and spilled a few drops into the waters of the harbour, perhaps to tease or forcibly evolve one or two of the box jellyfish that infested the harbour from time to time. "Alright, you snunky munkle. Cows don't dream, and corn grows without thought at all. But people dream, and we weave the cows and the corn into our dreams whether they like it or not. Take New Verity. Take your precious sakura."
"Be delighted," he murmured.
She ignored him."They've got tree DNA, and cut and sliced and spliced. Now they've got the perfect cherry blossom. Well hoddle my trumps, let's break out the dandelion ale!"
He looked at her, a quizzical expression on his face. Sometimes her dialect of English became impenetrable. He thought of asking for a translation, or perhaps a phrase book, but the light in her eyes could well have been fire.
"I'm not saying the natural order is right, and we should go back to it. I'm saying we keep changing things and calling it progress, when really we have no idea where we're going. Once, we thought we were heading for Eden. Then we found New Zealand, and that dream became obsolete."
He choked on his fizzling ginger ale, and she laughed.
"But without Eden, or the kingdom of Heaven, where are we going?"
"My nose tingles in the presence of rhetoric," he said. "Go ahead, answer your own question."
"I can't."
He blinked. "All that spiel, and you say 'I can't'?"
She shrugged. "I don't know either. But I know an abuse of power when I see it. And so would anyone else, if they bothered to look. I'm not the only one. I'm not the saviour. I'm one girl out of a big crowd of people who want to show the world every bad, dangerous experiment that's going on. If we show them, if we keep on showing them, there's a chance that the people who need to see, who do understand where we're heading, will notice our signs, and give us the guidance we need."
She leaned back in her chair, her chest heaving, sweat prickling on her flushed cheeks.
"Wow," he said.
"Wow?"
"I understand why you wear those little books on your ears. They're bibles, tiny black bibles, aren't they?"
She blushed harder.
"You're a true believer. You're honest enough to admit that you don't have a solution for all the world's problems, humble enough to believe that there are people smarter than you, and devout enough to hold faith that they will appear and do their work, as long as you keep to yours."
She lowered her eyes, and nibbled the end of her tongue. She looked upset and embarrassed. "I talk too much," she said.
"No," he said. "This is a new side of you. I haven't seen it before, and I like it. I didn't understand why you went to New Verity, or why you entered the contest. I understood why I did those things, but not you. It makes sense now."
"Gee, I'm glad you figured me out," she said. "But you still make no sense to me."
He gave her a wry grin. "Arima, I'm not so difficult to understand. What's this contest called? The 'Beautification' right? That's a dumb name."
"Not if we-"
"Wait. I haven't finished."
She sucked on her straw, and nodded for him to continue.
"The world doesn't need a hundred photographers to beautify it."
"There're only-"
"Details. The world, even this poor, ignorant, all-devouring blind wanderer of a modern world, as you would have it, doesn't need a makeover. It doesn't need a takeover. All it needs is for people to wake up for a second, look around them, and notice what's always been here. You asked how and why I take pictures, emphasis on the whatinthehell, I suspect. All I do is look, and the world shines in its own glory. When I look through the viewfinder, I don't see a smoky, stained, stunted heap of wreckage. I see glory. When I shoot a flower or a face, I don't see pretty yellow petals, or long dark eyelashes. I mean I see those things for a moment, but then as I focus, I come into a clear, peaceful place, where there's just me and the flower. Then, when I'm ready to take the shot, even those things disappear. There's no face, no flower. There's no camera, and no intervening space. There's nothing and no one around me, and no 'around me' at all. There's no me." He paused
, and his face twisted as he struggled to find words to express something that couldn't fit, that spilled out from anything so clumsy as speech. "There's no me. There's no you. There's no space and no time. I'm not there anymore, and there's no there to be. But it's not nothing. It's the most alive, wonderful, magical state, when a flower unfolds and opens a window on eternity."
He sat back, his eyes distant, and though he faced her, he seemed to be looking into deep pace. He paused, and the sun played on his face, then it passed, and he sighed, and looked at her with his usual humour. "Then my finger twitches...programmed reflex I guess, and I'm back on planet Earth, with one more j-peg on my memory card."
She gazed at him, and perhaps it was the smart drugs, or the warm, peaceful day in a strange yet beautiful city, but she gave him a look that seemed to carry deep compassion.
"So," he went on, pursing his lips, "you were right when you told me I toss aside my pictures without thinking where they go, or what use people make of them. I do that, and worse. I give them to people for whatever money I can get, and I don't give loyalty to anyone. I'm already loyal, loyal to my vision. Every time I take a picture, I want it to be the last. Because..."
She didn't need to hear any more. "Because one day you'll take the perfect picture, and you won't come back. You'll have found, not a sninky little peephole, but a door, a door into eternity."
He bowed his head, though he peered up at her, like a penitent sinner. "I still love the world, you know," he said. "It's just...already beautiful. More beautiful than we could make it."
Her eyes widened, and the flush returned to her cheeks. She ran the tip of her tongue along the curve of her lip. "Take my picture," she said.
He blinked.
"Take it now."
He raised an eyebrow. "But there are so many people here."
"Let them watch."
His eyes flashed with humour, and zest. He ran one finger along the top of his camera.
She moaned. Take it, Soro. Take it now."
He grinned. "Call me Song."
***
And then the sun shone through the mist on the Charles bridge, and painted the statues in golden light, if only for a moment, and at the right angle, because burnt black stone cannot glow except when the magic is there, but the magic cannot last, it comes out in shards and flashes, as long as the lightning stands still in the sky. She walked through the mist, and the dawn rays gilded her skin, and set the leaves of her black bibles glowing, and more, her blue green eyes shimmered, iridescent, like weeping opals.
They greeted the stars by the Sphinx, counted constellations older than the stone eyes that gazed beyond them, through them, into deep time, into blinks and splinters of time wide enough to swallow the times of flint, of bronze, and of iron.
They ran hand in hand through the fields of flowers at Grass, all reds, yellows, sultry oranges and velvet purples, and they tasted nature's sweet scents, and man's work of refined essences and aromas, the honeydew, the ambergris, the distilled scent of celestial nectar.
They stood by the docks at Hamburg, and looked out across the river, wide as the sea, wide as the ocean, and watched muscular men with broad shoulders and mighty backs haul lumber and raw iron up from the decks, load them on trucks, and troop back to the waiting ships, lazy and rocking on the water.
Many nights they returned to the waiting staterooms, the long tables bedecked with food, the lounges and bars and constant vibration of the New Dawn, to sail on to the next port. On other days, when the route lay across land, they rode coaches or trains, always in the most exquisite luxury, but never free to wander off-course; they were guided by the dictates of the lottery, and when the captain named their next destination, many laughed or sighed, or ground their teeth in exasperation at the thought of yet another long voyage, yet another night of travel, yet another chance to win a great photo, or have it done better by a rival.
Soro cared nothing for the contest, and he cared less for the lottery. He would go where he was sent, and if the lottery told him to go from Djakarta to Ahmadabad and back, he'd shrug, and wink, and hold Arima's warm, pleasing hand. Every day of travel took him further from his old life, and closer to his brother, so he prayed, it brought him closer to his brother.
Their days and nights were pleasant and bountiful, but they could never escape the sense of threat, if not fear, then tension that could turn to anxiety that gripped the heart with sharp claws, and then to fright, painful fright, as the heart so gripped jumped and kicked. They spoke no more with Typhoon, and very little with Triolet, who seemed content to hold everyone in disdain. Jack Johnson proved a kind man, but he never got over the stiffness that had marked him from the start. He and the other contestants concentrated on their mission of gathering pictures, and if they noticed that Soro and Arima had paired off, they accepted it. Probably, thought Soro, they welcomed it, for as long as the two of them were caught up in each other, they were less likely to catch the beautiful images that would decide the winner of the contest.
Typhoon remained a brooding presence, a shadow on the fringes, the borderlands of their life. He did not vanish, neither did he close in. Instead he lingered around the edges, to be seen from the corner of the eye, and then to fade when looked at face on. If he knew of Soro's plan, he did not show it.
"It's dangerous," said Arima one morning, as they lay in bed, waiting for the ship to dock at Crete. "The more time he has, the more likely he is to figure it out."
Soro laughed. "He won't figure it out. He thinks he has us beat."
"And you think you have him beat! We need to be careful."
He scratched his ear, and his nose, and then his back. "How long is it since they changed these sheets? I think I'd better call down to the laundry."
She harrumphed. "You take it too lightly," she said. "All he has to do is watch us when we go out for pictures."
"That's exactly when he won't watch us," he said. "It's when we're not nabbing snaps that he gets worried."
She shook her head. "I hope you're right."
The New Dawn traced an invisible line around the world, the line of an alcoholic snake, searching, ever searching for an equally smashed, blindly scampering mouse. It wound from the cold north to the colder south, from the Amazon delta to the congested shipping lanes of the North Sea. It went on so long it began to feel like a ride on the world serpent, a never ending spiral. But like every journey, no matter how long or winding, it wends its way back, at last, to the beginning.
"I'm afraid," said Arima.
"I've taken care of you so far," he said.
"That's not what I mean," she said. "We're coming to the end."
"Of a cruise. Don't be afraid, it's just a cruise. And a contest."
She shook her head, and tears started in her eyes. "It's more. It's more than that. This is the only world we've known together. What if we return to land, and the magic remains at sea?"
He put an arm around her. "We first met on the land," he said. "Under the boughs of a tree, with deep, strong roots, and bright pink blossom, eternal blossom. If we came under a spell, it didn't begin on the New Dawn. It began in the sacred grove of 'original truth'."
"I remember," she said, her voice falling to a whisper. "I was scared."
"But you were not alone."
She wrapped her arms around him, and hugged him with all of her strength. "We're going back," she said. "We're going all the way back."
"If we have to," he said. "All the way back."
He kissed her then, and later, he took her picture, with her camera.
And at last the snake returned upon itself, the winding trail finished its circle of spirals, and the humming, floating deck turned to firm land under his feet. And again he stood in Belle Stakker's office, and breathed air laden with sugar and artificial sweeteners, and the musty smell of old paper files, mouldering in metal cabinets, and he noticed the pleasing smell of pine, and the chemical tang of glue, that rose from the large model building that crouched on he
r big desk.
"Panopticon," she said.
He frowned. The word seemed familiar, but he couldn't remember what it meant.
"We're pleased with your work," she said, looking up from the glossy prints that lay on her desk. She pushed aside a torn package of strawberry creams, brushed crumbs from her hands, and stood up. She gave him the ghastly grimace that passed for a smile, and he noted the bulging, toad eyes.
"Still no computer, huh?"
Her awful smile became a genuine grimace, as she shuddered, and shook her head. "Oh no," she said. "I can't put up with those terrible machines. But that's immaterial. Your pictures are remarkable. The Beautification will make excellent use of them."
He blinked, and cocked his head. "Use. Use?"
She grinned. "Ah yes, we were going to come to this someday. I feel I owe you an apology, but you, like the other contestants, have been kept in the dark about certain aspects of our project."
He frowned. "I guess I have. And I guess it's time for a little light." He looked around, at the old fashioned office. "Perhaps you have a candle."
She gave a fake sounding laugh. "You are such a clever fellow, like he said."
He gave a start. He wanted to ask her about that, but she rattled on, oblivious.
"You're correct, indeed. It is time to reveal the true scale of the project." She rubbed her hands together. "I've been looking forward to this for so long. I've been waiting for the chance to talk about it for such a long time. It's been so hard to keep my mouth locked down, let me tell you! I get so excited about our project, I can feel my heart leap!"
"Yes, well, you don't have to endure that any longer," he said, taken aback.
"No," she said. "I do not. It began a long time ago. When I was just a sophomore at college, I read Jeremy Bentham. At the same time, I recall I was annoyed at the amount of time my roommate spent watching asinine TV shows. I thought to myself, if I have to waste one more minute of study time because she can't miss a single episode of Apprentice Celebrity Nun, I'll go insane. Just then I noticed something; I was all about public service, from a very early age. My father raised me up right! How many people shirk jury duty, ignore city council elections, how many can even name their mayor? And yet, night after night on these infernal TV shows, ordinary people from every city and town in the country, in the entire world, volunteer to be humiliated, to be ridiculed and disgraced, all for a chance to parade before the camera?"