Ian McDonald - Desolation Road

He kicked his fire of redwood cones. Sparks fled up the chimney into the gathering darkness.

“This here tree” (he patted the root ridge on which he sat) “he’s called Sequoia Senipervirens -means ‘Everliving’ in old old language, and that’s what he is… he was planted here first day of the manforming by St. Catherine herself and the forest grew up around him. But great Father Tree, he’s the oldest and the wisest. Oh, yes, wise and with a very long memory. Trees are alive, and aware, they know, you know, they feel, they think. You have any non-dreams out there? Sure you did; that’s the forest learning about you, absorbing your memories to add to the great memory of Father Tree here. But they’ve also been absorbing all the fear and hate and shit and spunk that’s been going on out there and it’s made the forest dark and scary and not a little dangerous. What worries me is that it’s poisoning the trees-not like slopping weedkiller on the roots, anything like that, but poisoning the soul of the place. Me and the machines can do only so much and there’s whole areas of woodland dying and new growth coming up stunted and deformed. That’s bad. That scares me, because if it keeps happening, the world’s soul’s gone.

“Sorry to go on so long. Don’t get the chance to talk much. So, old JeanMichel Gastineau make your head spin? Too much philosophy? Sure you’d like some sleep now; usually turn in about this time myself. By the by, you might have some funny dreams tonight, don’t worry, it’s only the Big Tree up there feeling you out, trying to communicate with you.”

They slept around a charcoal brazier that night. The red glow pushed back the night and the exiles’ eyes rolled and flickered with the rapid movements of human dreaming. Rael Mandella Jr. dreamed he woke and the waking dream carried him out of the little wooden house among the roots into the night. A sense of holiness overcame him and he stood for a long time with his face lifted to the sky, turning round and round and round. When he grew dizzy with his turningturningturning so that the stars spun and the boles of the redwoods seemed to tumble upon him like matchsticks, Rael Mandella Jr. sank to the ground and pressed his cheek to the cold damp soil. For a long time he remained thus and then he dreamed he heard a voice humming a tune. He raised his head and saw Santa Ekatrina standing in a shaft of skylight.

“Are you a ghost?” he asked, and in his dream his mother replied, “A ghost, yes, but not dead. There are living ghosts as well as dead ones.” Then his father stepped out of the darkness.

“What do you think you’re doing here?” Limaal Mandella asked irritably.

Rael Mandella Jr. opened his mouth to speak but his words had been stolen by night birds.

“Answer your father,” said Santa Ekatrina.

“You’re running away, aren’t you?” accused Limaal Mandella. “Don’t try and bluff me, son. I know what it’s all about. You can’t face up to failure and you’re running away.”

Rael Jr. readied to shout back that hadn’t he, Limaal Mandella, the Greatest Snooker Player the Universe Had Ever Known, acted no better when he fled to Desolation Road, when one by one familiar figures emerged from the moonring shadows and joined his parents. They wore the faces of his life: his workmates from Shift C at the foundry, the girls he had danced with at the Saturday night socials, friends from school, faces of Belladonna; sharks, hustlers, whores, agents, Glenn Miller with his trombone under his arm; they looked down at him kneeling on the soft brown needle duff with infinite pity.

“What are you going to do,” they said. “What are you going to do?”

“You brought it all down on yourself,” said his own brother, covered in blue bruises. “Are you Mandella enough to hold it?”

“You were responsible,” said his mother.

“You still are responsible,” said his father, failure, exile, coward.

“If only I hadn’t run out of tricks!” said Ed Gallacelli, resurrected from ashes, his tongue glowing like embers.

“Stop stop stop stop!” cried Rael Mandella Jr. “Stop the dream! I want to wake up!”

And he did wake up and found himself alone in the holy place among the trees. The moonring twinkled on high, wind whispered in the branches, and the air was still, sweet and godly. In a shaft of starshine the light curdled, thickened, and took on solid human form. A tall, moustachioed man in a long grey coat sat himself down on the tree root next to Rael Jr.

“Fine night,” he said, searching through his multitudinous pockets for his pipe. “Fine night.” He located the pipe, charged it, lit it, and took a few meditative puffs.

“You’ve got to go back, you know.”

“No more dreams,” whispered Rael Jr. “No more ghosts.”

“Dreams? The Xanthic mystagogues believe that existence ended on the third day and that our world is only the dream of the second night,” said the grey stranger. “Ghosts? Pah. We are the most substantial things in the world, the foundations of the present. We are memories.” His pipe made a little red glow-worm dot on the night. “Mnemologues. We are the things that make up a life; only here, in this one place, do we have body and substance. We are he dreams of the trees. Do you know what this tree is? Of course you do, it’s the Tree of World’s Beginning. But it is also the Tree of World’s End, for every beginning must have an end. You’ve unfinished business in my town, Rael, and until you make an end of what you have begun, your memories won’t give you peace.”

“Who are you?”

“You know me but you’ve never met me. Your father knew me when he was a boy, your grandfather, too, and you’ve been carrying me around on your back these past days. I’m Desolation Road’s oldest memory. I’m Dr. Alimantando.”

“But they say you’re travelling in time, chasing some kind of legendary creature.”

“And so I am, but the memories remain. Listen; though it pains me, a gentleman of science, to have to say this; you have the magic in you. If the land here is strong enough to give body to your memories and fears, might it not also be strong enough to give body to your hopes and desires? And if that is the case, maybe then that strength is within you, as I was, and not tied to any one place, no matter how special. Think about that.” Dr. Alimantando rose and placed his pipe in his mouth. He took a long look at the sky, the stars, the trees. “Fine night,” he said. “Fine fine night. Well, so long, Rael. It was nice meeting you. You are a Mandella, no mistake. You’ll get by.” Then he folded his arms and walked into the starlight shadows.

The sound of jean-Michel Gastineau’s radio woke Rael Mandella Jr. Like it, he was poorly tuned, somewhere between a programme about the edge of the universe and a popular early morning music show. Light streamed through the ill-fitting planks that made up the wall. There was a smell and chuckle of eggs frying on the brazier.

“Good morning good morning good morning,” said jean-Michel Gastineau. “Up and at it, we’ve a long way to go today and you can’t be going anywhere without a decent breakfast.”

Rael Jr. knuckled sleep from his eyes, not quite comprehending.

“Going. Today. Got the call. Last night. While you were busy with your mnemologue, I was busy with mine, the Blessed Lady, well, at least her memory; anyhows, she told me this was the time, that I was to go with you. Apparently you’ll have need of my special talents. Might even be why you were brought here in the first place. These things have hidden connections.”

“Aren’t…”

“Aren’t I the least little bit upset to be leaving all this? Well… only a little. It’s temporary, soon as I’ve finished the Holy Will I can have my old job back. Anyhows, she told me if I didn’t go, there wouldn’t be no forest to mind. What they call an Event Cusp; there’s a lot of futures hanging on a few individuals, and that includes the future of the Forest of Chryse.”