David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas

By sundown we tented up in a cactusy hollow, an’ when it was dark ’nuff I lit us a fire. Lornsome I felt to be away from my Valleys’n’kin, but in that no-man’s-land Meronym’s mask was slippin’ an’ I was seein’ her more clear’n I’d ever done b’fore. I asked her straight, What’s it like, the Hole World, the offlands over the ocean?

Her mask’d not slipped right off tho’. What d’you reck’n?

So I telled her my ’maginin’s o’ places from old books’n’pics in the school’ry. Lands where the Fall’d never falled, towns bigger’n all o’ Big I, an’ towers o’ stars’n’suns blazin’ higher’n Mauna Kea, bays of not jus’ one Prescient Ship but a mil’yun, Smart boxes what make delish grinds more’n anyun can eat, Smart pipes what gush more brew’n anyun can drink, places where it’s always spring an’ no sick, no knucklyin’ an’ no slavin’. Places where ev’ryun’s a beautsome purebirth who lives to be one hun’erd’n’fifty years.

Meronym pulled her blanky tighter. My parents an’ their gen’ration b’liefed, somewhere, hole cities o’ Old Uns s’vived the Fall b’yonder the oceans, jus’ like you, Zachry. Old-time names haunted their ’maginin’s … Melbun, Orkland, Jo’burg, Buenas Yerbs, Mumbay, Sing’pore . The Shipwoman was teachin’ me what no Valleysman’d ever heard, an’ I list’ned tight’n’wordless. Fin’ly, five decades after my people’s landin’ at Prescience, we relaunched the Ship what bringed us there . Dingos howled in the far-far ’bout folks soon to die, I prayed Sonmi it weren’t us. They finded the cities where the old maps promised, dead-rubble cities, jungle-choked cities, plague-rotted cities, but never a sign o’ them livin’ cities o’ their yearnin’s. We Prescients din’t b’lief our weak flame o’ Civ’lize was now the brightest in the Hole World, an’ further an’ further we sailed year by year, but we din’t find no flame brighter. So lornsome we felt. Such a presh burden for two thousand pairs o’ hands! I vow it, there ain’t more’n sev’ral places in Hole World what got the Smart o’ the Nine Valleys .

Anxin’n’proudful at one time hearin’ them words made me, like a pa, an’ like she an’ me weren’t so diff’rent as a god an’ a worshiper, nay.

Second day fluffsome clouds rabbited westly an’ that snaky leeward sun was hissin’ loud’n’hot. We drank like whales from icy’n’sooty brooks. Higher to cooler air we climbed till no mozzie pricked us no more. Stunty’n’dry woods was crossed by swathes o’ black’n’razory lava spitted’n’spewed by Mauna Kea. Snailysome goin’ was them rockfields, yay, jus’ brush that rock light an’ your fingers’d bleed fast’n’wetly, so I binded my boots’n’hands in strips o’ hide-bark an’ did the same for Meronym. Blisters scabbed her foots, her soles’d not got my goat tuff see, 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 .