table. Snaps the case shut. Puts the cigarette in his mouth.
“Crazy thing! You have one idea what is humanity? Eh, crazy thing?”
“We can learn.”
The unlit cigarette dangles from his bottom lip, bouncing as he speaks.
“Hah… You
learn
to ride bicycle. You
learn
to speak lingischt. You no
learn
to be human being. No, you are what you are, and you—hah—”
He takes the cigarette out and points it at us.
“You are a monster. Crazy thing. Big scary monster.
Not
a human being. Dust with legs.”
We pick our teeth and glower at him.
“We want to change,” we say.
“Dust with legs. We give you skin, you be chipper chap?”
He sucks on the cigarette and we sniff the air. There are deeper scents than echoes here, dead things with more flesh. In the lockers, we think. Not just echoes. Shadows and reflections too. A fireman pulling bodies from a burning plane wreck, going in again one time too many. A soldier fighting for freedom, or for oil fields belching smoke out in the desert. A shopkeeper reaching for the alarm under the desk holding an open cash register. A little girl running out onto a road toward an ice cream van, naked, skin blistered and burning from the napalm, dropping as the bullets spray her back.
“We can walk on from someone else's steps,” we say. “We want… a past.”
We wait for the serious questions to begin, the forms to fill out, citizenship pledges. In the echoes that we traced here through the wild black storms of Hinter, we found passports and papers, immigration visas and ID cards, biometric data, holograms and thumb chips. We expect this.
Instead he simply flicks through a sheaf of papers and pulls out a yellowed page. His chair scrapes noisily on the wooden floorboards of the stage as he pushes it back, stands up and leads us over to the filing cabinets and lockers, the keys on his belt jangling as he walks. More like a janitor than a general, we think. He fumbles the right key into the right lock and clanks the locker door open.
“Crazy thing,” he says. “Here. Take. Through door, go uphill.”
The skinsuit hangs on the hook like a wet raincoat, thin and pale pink with the gravings of a dead man's soul across its chest. Shabby and pathetic, giving only the limp impression of a shape, we still feel a pang of longing as we look at it, to live and breathe, to have hopes and fears rather than to
he
them. A darkPinocchio, carved out of thought instead of wood, we want to be a real boy. We reach out to touch it, stroke it, hold its glove of skin against our hand, palm to palm. If we kissed that slack mask, could we wake it into life with a breath?
He holds the yellow page of someone else's life at arm's length, squeezing his eyes to read it.
“We call you Jack now, crazy thing. Jack Carter, dead man, no need name no more.”
He doesn't know, we realize, that we are all dead men, dead women, dead children, even a little animal perhaps, dressed in our suits of skin to walk again as we once did when we were flesh. We slide the skinsuit on, smooth skin around our arms and legs, and feel it form us, firm us. Will we also now forget, like him, in payment for this dreamtime, an exchange of memories of death for memories of life?
“Through door, go uphill,” he repeats. “Remember,
up.
You go to Circus. Pipe up name with a salute. They give you past and future. All you want, crazy thing.”
He hacks and rasps again as he hobbles to a fire-exit door, clatters the bar of a handle down and swings it open.
Outside, inside or just
beyond
, the Haven waits for us, no novagrad of dust where shabtis scuff their feet through windblown echoes of humanity, but the real thing. Kentigern waits for us, a city sunken in the overgrowth of ruined reality. We see a park of darkness. Buildings glimpsed through a rustle of leaves. A world lying in state, it waits. We hesitate.
“Go, crazy thing,” he says behind us. “Go, Jack Carter. Go home.”
We step out into the dark of parkness,
“Crazy thing! You have one idea what is humanity? Eh, crazy thing?”
“We can learn.”
The unlit cigarette dangles from his bottom lip, bouncing as he speaks.
“Hah… You
learn
to ride bicycle. You
learn
to speak lingischt. You no
learn
to be human being. No, you are what you are, and you—hah—”
He takes the cigarette out and points it at us.
“You are a monster. Crazy thing. Big scary monster.
Not
a human being. Dust with legs.”
We pick our teeth and glower at him.
“We want to change,” we say.
“Dust with legs. We give you skin, you be chipper chap?”
He sucks on the cigarette and we sniff the air. There are deeper scents than echoes here, dead things with more flesh. In the lockers, we think. Not just echoes. Shadows and reflections too. A fireman pulling bodies from a burning plane wreck, going in again one time too many. A soldier fighting for freedom, or for oil fields belching smoke out in the desert. A shopkeeper reaching for the alarm under the desk holding an open cash register. A little girl running out onto a road toward an ice cream van, naked, skin blistered and burning from the napalm, dropping as the bullets spray her back.
“We can walk on from someone else's steps,” we say. “We want… a past.”
We wait for the serious questions to begin, the forms to fill out, citizenship pledges. In the echoes that we traced here through the wild black storms of Hinter, we found passports and papers, immigration visas and ID cards, biometric data, holograms and thumb chips. We expect this.
Instead he simply flicks through a sheaf of papers and pulls out a yellowed page. His chair scrapes noisily on the wooden floorboards of the stage as he pushes it back, stands up and leads us over to the filing cabinets and lockers, the keys on his belt jangling as he walks. More like a janitor than a general, we think. He fumbles the right key into the right lock and clanks the locker door open.
“Crazy thing,” he says. “Here. Take. Through door, go uphill.”
The skinsuit hangs on the hook like a wet raincoat, thin and pale pink with the gravings of a dead man's soul across its chest. Shabby and pathetic, giving only the limp impression of a shape, we still feel a pang of longing as we look at it, to live and breathe, to have hopes and fears rather than to
he
them. A darkPinocchio, carved out of thought instead of wood, we want to be a real boy. We reach out to touch it, stroke it, hold its glove of skin against our hand, palm to palm. If we kissed that slack mask, could we wake it into life with a breath?
He holds the yellow page of someone else's life at arm's length, squeezing his eyes to read it.
“We call you Jack now, crazy thing. Jack Carter, dead man, no need name no more.”
He doesn't know, we realize, that we are all dead men, dead women, dead children, even a little animal perhaps, dressed in our suits of skin to walk again as we once did when we were flesh. We slide the skinsuit on, smooth skin around our arms and legs, and feel it form us, firm us. Will we also now forget, like him, in payment for this dreamtime, an exchange of memories of death for memories of life?
“Through door, go uphill,” he repeats. “Remember,
up.
You go to Circus. Pipe up name with a salute. They give you past and future. All you want, crazy thing.”
He hacks and rasps again as he hobbles to a fire-exit door, clatters the bar of a handle down and swings it open.
Outside, inside or just
beyond
, the Haven waits for us, no novagrad of dust where shabtis scuff their feet through windblown echoes of humanity, but the real thing. Kentigern waits for us, a city sunken in the overgrowth of ruined reality. We see a park of darkness. Buildings glimpsed through a rustle of leaves. A world lying in state, it waits. We hesitate.
“Go, crazy thing,” he says behind us. “Go, Jack Carter. Go home.”
We step out into the dark of parkness,
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