David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas

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 waitin’ for sitters on balconies made o’ steel so our foots gonged. Even the Shipwoman was smacked wondersome by all this perfect Smart. She showed her orison ev’rythin’ we seed. The orison glowed’n’purred an’ windows came’n’went. It’s mem’ryin’ the place , ’splained Meronym, tho’ I din’t und’stand so good an’ I asked what that Smart egg was true-be-telled.

Meronym rested a beat an’ drank a mouth o’ brew from her flask. An orison is a brain an’ a window an’ it’s a mem’ry. Its brain lets you do things like unlock observ’tree doors what you jus’ seen. Its window lets you speak to other orisons in the far-far. Its mem’ry lets you see what orisons in the past seen’n’ heard, an’ keep what my orison sees’n’hears safe from f’gettin’ .

Shamed to mem’ry Meronym o’ my sivvyin’ I was, yay, but if I din’t ask then I may not o’ got the chance ever, so I asked it, The shimm’rin’n’beautsome girl what I seen in this … orison b’fore … was she a mem’ry or a window?

Meronym hes’tated. Mem’ry .

I asked if the girl was livin’ still.

Nay , answered Meronym.

I asked, was she a Prescient?

She hes’tated, an’ said she wanted to tell me a hole true now, but that other Valleysmen’d not be ready for its hearin’. I vowed on Pa’s icon to say nothin’, nay, to no un. Very well. She was Sonmi, Zachry. Sonmi the freakbirthed human what your ancestors b’liefed was your god .

Sonmi was a human like you’n’me? I’d never thinked so nor’d Abbess ever speaked such loonsomeness, nay. Sonmi’d been birthed by a god o’ Smart named Darwin, that’s what we b’liefed. Did Meronym b’lief this Sonmi’d lived on Prescience I or on Big I?

She was borned’n’died hun’erds o’ years ago ’cross the ocean west-nor’westly , so Meronym speaked, on a pen’sula all deadlanded now but its old-time name was Nea So Copros an’ its ancient one Korea. A short’n’judased life Sonmi had, an’ only after she’d died did she find say-so over purebloods’nfreakbirths’ thinkin’s .

All this shockin’ newness buzzed’n’busted my brain an’ I din’t know what to b’lief. I asked what Sonmi’s mem’ry was doin’ in Meronym’s orison hun’erds o’ years after.

Now I seen Meronym was sorryin’ she’d beginned, yay. Sonmi was killed by Old-Un chiefs what feared her, but b’fore she died she spoke to an orison ’bout her acts’n’deedin’s. I’d got her mem’ry in my orison ’cos I was studyin’ her brief life, to und’stand you Valleysmen better .

That’s why that girl’d haunted me so. I seen a sort o’ Smart ghost?

Meronym yayed. Zachry, we got many buildin’s to visit b’fore nighfall .

Now as we were crossin’ the ’closure to the second observ’tree, the boulders began speakin’. Oh, you was right ’bout the dammit Prescients first time, Bro Zachry! She’s fuggin’ your b’liefs’n’all up’ndown’n’in’n’out! I clamped my ears, but yay, them voices went thru these hands. This woman only saved Catkin’s life to cloudy your thinkin’ with debt’n’honor! Crampsome was them stones’ shapes’n’words. I clamped my jaw shut to stop me answerin’. She’s scavvin’n’sivvyin’ Big Isle Smart what truesome b’longs to Valleysmen! Grit devils got under my eyelids. Your pa’d not let no lyin’ offlander worm into his trust, bro, nor use him as a pack mule! Them words was so true I cudn’t argue back none, an’ I stumbled painsome.