Crystal Rain (23 page)

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Authors: Tobias S. Buckell

BOOK: Crystal Rain
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Far above Jerome the booming of waves against the rock was a distant and constant sound that permeated every conversation, whisper, and sound in the underwater caves. Sometimes the water flowing by the entrance to the cave would cool, and fog would creep in over the sand. Jerome would huddle in a pit of sand close to the rocky walls. There he could feel the thud of water against the small of his back.
The week went on, and Jerome realized how long they would be here for. Troy and other men came and went, diving out with scudder-fish to scout.
So Jerome explored the back of the large cavern while Troy was gone. He did it cautiously, scared of being yelled at. But no one did. Far from the fire and the green waterpool they couldn’t see him.
With his hands Jerome felt his way around the walls, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dark. Within several minutes of walking around the cavern, farther and farther from the flickering orange of campfires and the steady babble of hushed Frenchi voices, he encountered several large lumps of metal sticking out of the rock. Flakes of
corroded metal fell off when he brushed his hands over them.
“What you doing?” Sandy whispered.
Jerome leapt up, his heart thudded. “Why you following me?”
“Sorry. I just see you going off, so I thought I come over keep you company.”
She moved between him and the light and made a silhouette.
“I looking around. You know what this is?” Jerome took her hands and placed them on the metal lumps. Her fingers scratched over the metal and flakes dropped to the sand.
“It old,” said Sandy. “We don’t have much time to explore when we does come out to the cave, usually.”
“So you never been here long?”
“Actually”—Sandy shifted, her silhouette sitting down—“I never been in here in this one. There some other small caves us children learn to dive into, but this one supersecret.”
“Oh. Then you know as much as me about this place.”
“I guess.”
Jerome moved along the wall again. Sandy kicked sand around as she stood up to follow him. “You didn’t seem surprise,” Jerome said. “About the rusty metal.”
“Nah. That in all the cave them I see. I don’t know what they is.”
Jerome walked along. “Who made these?” he wondered aloud.
“The old-father. A place to hide from the Azteca, deep below. Some say these thing go deeper and stuff. No one really know. Is called Tolor’s Chimney. Is why we live out on the reef, ready to break down and go under any moment.”
She grabbed Jerome’s hand. He stopped and turned toward her shadow. “You should talk to Troy. He know all this stuff good.”
“Okay.” Jerome turned to pull away from her, but Sandy held on.
“Jerome?”
“Yeah.”
“No one here can see us.”
Jerome’s mouth dried out, and he stepped from foot to foot. Sandy stood right in front of him, her long hair framed in dark shadows.
“You ever kiss?” Jerome asked.
“Yeah. One of the other boy them.”
“Oh.”
Jerome kicked at the sand. “Don’t mean I don’t want kiss you, though.”
She leaned forward, and Jerome brushed her lips with his, the puzzle of the rusty metal lumps forgotten.
The sound of a woman yelling startled them. Dinner was ready. Now. She sounded impatient, and Jerome knew that if he missed eating now, he would not get anything later.
They both paused for a second, looked at each other, then ran across the dark sand toward the flickering fire.
 
Jerome soon realized that the old ladies
were
keeping up with him. Every half hour they would step around the camp with a good idea of who was where. And if he was missing, out in the dark edges of the massive cavern, they would give him a stern sermon. “What you doing over there, boy? You ain’t scared the dark or nothing? Stay close to we fire so we see you. We go cook up some hot soup for all of you.”
So his expeditions were quick, and hurried. But Jerome found that each of the metal lumps was spaced several feet apart. There were four of them at the back of the cavern, and if he spread his arms, he could reach two at the same time.
There were no buttons or levers on them. Nothing but featureless lumps of metal. He wished he had a torch.
On many of his excursions he waited for Sandy to catch up to him. They had ten minutes before the old ladies would check up on them, calling out their names.
It was enough time for him to discover a great deal about kissing.
 
On the tenth day since Brungstun fell, Jerome sat on a chair of sand by the edge of the water. A smaller fire crackled
next to him, and he sat with a stick poking at it. Fog rose off the water.
“You been exploring?” Troy asked. Troy sat crosslegged across from him, back from scouting. “Around the edge of the cavern?”
“Yeah,” Jerome admitted. “So what them thing is? The metal thing?”
“Mmm.” Troy poked at embers, stirring up pieces of ash that flew around in circles and landed in the sand. “Not any of the Frenchi remember what it really is; they think this a secret place to hide.” Troy got up. “Come with me.”
He walked across the sand, into the dark, without even a light. Jerome struggled to follow him.
They reached the wall, and one of the metal humps. Troy placed his hand over it. It glowed, and the rock in front of them scraped aside. There was dark now, but not the darkness of rock. An unlit passageway inside the rock. A tunnel.
Troy walked forward. His voice came from in front of Jerome, who could hardly see. Troy grabbed his shoulder. “Come, child, I ain’t go do nothing to you, but I have to show you something.”
Jerome stepped in—and jumped as the rock closed back behind him.
Eerie green lights lit up along a floor, and he could see Troy standing in front of him. Troy’s eyes were all gray for a moment, a trick of the light, Jerome thought, and then Troy blinked.
They walked a good hundred feet, and then into a room. There was a desk and two chairs. Troy walked over and sat down with a sigh.
“I come every year.” He motioned for Jerome to sit. “Make sure everything work still.”
“What is this?” Jerome asked, still in shock. He sat with a thump. The chair wasn’t too soft or hard. His spine aligned just right.
“Protected bunker,” Troy said.
Jerome looked around. “For the old-father them?”
Troy nodded. “For me. I am a old-father.”
“But …” It wouldn’t take that long, Jerome realized, to become comfortable with that idea. He’d met Pepper. The idea that men like this existed was becoming a part of Jerome’s new understanding of the world.
“I almost four hundred year old,” Troy said. “I come to Nanagada. To retire. Pretty land, good fishing, some garden. They tell me I could have any land anywhere. I choose to settle down near other Caribbean people-them.”
“The Frenchi don’t know you a old-father?”
“I change me last name, claim to be me own son. There always a Troy here. Plus, the Frenchi is the Frenchi because of me.”
“What you mean?”
“Most of the Frenchi me descendant, from a couple wife me first while here. That why I single now. Can’t marry me own family.”
Jerome looked around. It was incredible. “Why you tell me this?”
Troy leaned on the desk, and Jerome looked down at it. There were screens of glass in it, he noticed for the first time.
“Because of you father, Jerome. He like me. He old-father.”
“No.” Jerome shook his head. “My dad can’t be that,” he protested.
“Think about it. In all you life, you ever see you father age? You see any picture of him when he first came here? He look exactly the same. But you mom, Shanta, you see the gray in she hair?”
Jerome sat there. “If you know them thing, you been lying all along.” He looked up at Troy. “You could have help him. You could have show him all this. Why wait? He hurt so much, not having he memory!”
Troy avoided Jerome’s accusative glare. “I make a choice, Jerome. I can’t give he he memory back, all I could do is tell him thing. And getting tell thing ain’t memory. I could have been lying for all he had know.” Troy took a deep breath. “You father did something, something really, really hard to do. I think the memory of it, it probably almost kill him. I believe for himself to survive, he forget it
all. A way of defense. And you think I could force them memory back without something bad happening? No. I stay quiet, watch him, and make sure that if them memory start coming back, I would be here to help.” Troy leaned back in his chair. “But maybe I was mistake. I done sneak into Brungstun for a night, and I can’t self find him. And even he make it out and head for Capitol City, I still worry about him. Some of the Councilmen in Capitol City does know he still alive, and they might try and tell him thing that go bring back he nightmare-them.”
Jerome shifted. “What nightmare? What go be so horrible?”
Troy looked across the smooth, shiny desk at him.
“I four hundred year old, Jerome. And I had spend most of that time free. I had come to Nanagada and were able to do anything I want. Even after Hope’s Loss, when most of all we technology and machine fall and stop, even then, I could still live here in the island. But imagine if you was trap, trap somewhere for most of all that time, and you was awake the whole time. Can you imagine being in a small room like this here for three hundred year, or even something smaller?”
Jerome looked around. Just this time in the cavern had been hard for him.
“Imagine hundred and hundred year of being trap in a small thing, not much larger than this room. That is why you father don’t remember nothing. And I wouldn’t either, if I were him.”
Troy got up. “I have more, Jerome. But not now. I go let you have this time to adjust, seen?”
“Seen.” Jerome nodded, shaken.
Everything around him was changing. His perception of his dad, something that had always been unshakable and set in stone, was now shattered.
“Okay, good,” Troy said. “Now, put you hand here, on the desk.”
Jerome did so. The desk flashed and blinked a green square.
“Now, if Azteca find we, and you need to escape, put
you hand on the panel out there, like I had done, and it go let you in now. It didn’t before, but I told it you allowed in. Understand? I want you to stay safe. There a whole bunch of passage in here, place for you hide and escape, okay?”
Dad was old-father. Dad was hundreds of years old.
“Okay,” Jerome said.
What did all this mean?
 
 
Oaxyctl scrambled up a set of ropes, not daring to look down. The steady pace of a blimp was preferable to this. The rope netting under his feet swung loosely, and the whole boat pitched.
“Hurry, hurry,” the man at the top yelled down at him.
They said the steamer needed sails to help it along. He didn’t understand that; either they had an engine or they did not. Oaxyctl saw sails and masts only as another mess of lines to trip over.
“Look him go!” Someone cackled from the other mast. “Slow like the turtle. Be steady, you might win the race yet!”
Oaxyctl looked down at the deck far beneath him. His feet slipped and he dangled in the netting.
At this rate he was going to die.
What else could he do but this? Oaxyctl thought about that question on a number of different levels. He had to stay by John deBrun’s side. This time if a chance presented itself, he would strike. He could spirit John away in a lifeboat, though Oaxyctl knew nothing about sailing.
The luck of the Ocelotl had struck him with a vengeance.
Oaxyctl closed his eyes. The ropes burned into his wrists where he hung, and the sun blazed down on his neck.
“You all right?”
Someone scrambled down next to him. Another set of
feet shook the ropes, and hands grabbed him from either side. Oaxyctl opened his eyes. The man in front of him winked. “We here to help.”
“Thank you.” Oaxyctl was lifted up. He grabbed the netting, balancing his feet, free once more.
“No,” said the man. “We here to help
you
.” He let go of Oaxyctl.
Oaxyctl understood. The man didn’t look Tolteca, but maybe he’d been raised on the other side. One didn’t have to be brown-skinned to believe in the gods. “How do you know?” Oaxyctl asked.
“Several god came to the city.” The man pointed at the harbor water. “Came for we. Told we, ‘Be ready, to join this expedition.’ Some of we couldn’t get through, some did. Like you, we ain’t leave the ship since joining. But we was waiting for you. Yeah. We know who you is.”
“Thank you.” Oaxyctl’s heart dropped. A god? Here in Capitol City? Were they everywhere?
Any thoughts of trying to give up on his responsibility, even though he was trapped on this boat and almost powerless, dissipated. He was still trapped, he still had the god’s bidding to follow.
“Hey,” the man said. “What a
tlacateccatl
is?”
“A leader of men,” Oaxyctl said. “Like a commander.”
The man nodded. “That good. I go be a leader of men, with much gold and women for me, when this all done.” He grinned. Oaxyctl wanted to ask his name, but he jumped up the rigging away from him toward the top.
Oaxyctl followed with a lighter heart. He had hidden allies on board. How many, he didn’t know. Now he had to be aware, come up with a plan, and figure out who was who aboard this ship.
When Oaxyctl reached the top of the mast, three men lounged around the steel crow’s nest. “You make it.”
“Come in.”
As Oaxyctl crawled over the strips of metal, he saw a skiff approaching. It was decorated with ribbons and bright yellow and red paint. “What’s going on?”
“I think it getting time for we launch this boat for real,” they said. “That the minister boat.”
The man closest to Oaxyctl, the same one who had helped him up, looked out over the water. “Look at them.” He pointed with his head.
Oaxyctl followed the nod, puzzled. A huge flotilla of dinghies, small sailboats, and barges filled with people were approaching them.
“Who are they?”
Everyone shrugged.
Below them Oaxyctl saw the minister getting out, a lady dressed in red. Behind her others climbed out, including John deBrun. John deBrun wore a new blue uniform, had an extra step in his stride, and his hook had been polished so that the sun seemed to strike it and flash at every opportunity.
He was in John deBrun’s world now, Oaxyctl realized. It would be a hard journey.
But Oaxyctl had the gods on his side, he realized, looking up at the sun and the man by his side. And he was a strong man. He would triumph here, and honor the gods.
He would obtain the secret codes from John deBrun. He could still do this and bring them back to the god.
Oaxyctl believed it. He hung on to it.

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