Lighthouse Island (3 page)

On the edge of the Fourth Gerrymander were one-room shacks spaced precisely three hundred yards apart so that they dotted the landscape in endless squares. James wheeled himself out of the ambulance and down a ramp. He refused to use the electric controls so his arms and shoulders were very strong. He was somewhere in one of the old national entities that had been layered on top of another and older national entity. This had once been Mexico. Then the United States. Then the Western Cessions.

His attendants stood behind him in the unceasing wind among broken walls to look out at the wellheads that drilled for water in a landscape so simple it seemed to have just been made. Dirt. Sand. Rocks. They drilled for the gyppy fossil water of ancient seas that lay in the seeping layers of limestone at fifty-four thousand feet. At this particular place James could see great ships half buried in the sands. A gulf of the sea had drawn off and left them at some ancient port. Their rusted prows rose a hundred feet above gray dunes. The
Shunta Maru,
the
Ramik Fane
.

Maybe we are on Mars,
James thought. The wind tore at his short brown hair. That's possible. But then would the Big Dipper look the same? Would Polaris still be in the geographical north? His attendants went back inside the ambulance and played cards and then wrapped themselves in their coats and fell asleep around a catalytic heater. The stars emerged slowly and then James sat alone under a clear black heaven where the constellations took on a fierce intensity, and indeed they were all in their accustomed places with the Dipper on one side of the firmament and the Chair on the other and between the two, Polaris dimly shining.

 

Chapter 3

I
n the apartment building of the family that had been told to adopt her, there lived an older man named Thin Sam Kenobi who used to sit at the entrance of the apartment building and make disposable jewelry things out of the foil from cigarette packages and soy cheese packages.

Nadia, in the ardor of her orphan heart, decided to love Thin Sam like a father and to think about him and do things for him. She and Thin Sam had made themselves a bench by stacking volumes of scavenged hardback books and putting planks across them. Nadia's hands were short with blunt nails and still brown with last summer's sun. The winter was dry and arctic, so Thin Sam had made a rocket stove for them and they held their hands out to it.

It was only October and bitterly cold but sitting outside was better than inside, the TV on Deafening, all of them drinking up their gin allowance, the air clouded with people's breath and the walls sparkling with frost.

Every apartment was assigned about 20 kWh of electricity per month, which was enough to run the OLED television screen, flexible and thin as paper, and maybe a lightbulb for a few hours in the evenings. Communications and Entertainment made sure every human being in the megacity had access to television. Some people fought for assignments to apartments with a higher allowance, maybe 90 kWh a month, but then you had to pay for it with work hours and the electricity failed a lot. And then there were people who were adept at stealing it, and also tapping into the water pipes. Penalty: the cactus farms.

Throughout the apartment building at least twenty televisions were all broadcasting the same program. Soccer was over (men in shorts struggling in the frozen mud over a ball) and now it was
Early to Rise
, where a group of people in a recycle unit found weird things in rubble and argued with one another and had love affairs, but if Nadia watched the screen for more than five minutes she began to see sparks flashing and weaving through her vision.

So she began to read and memorize whatever came to hand. In abandoned upper stories she found novels, stories in which the characters' actions and thoughts were described and the plot proceeded with a happy continuity. The characters' behaviors were explained and motivations stated so everything fell together. She didn't need to
see
anything. She found herself so grateful for this phenomenon that she fell into novels as if into a well, and into poetry as if it were a river.

We're looking down into a valley, she said to Thin Sam. Under all the buildings there, right? “And travelers now, within that valley, through red-lit windows see vast forms . . .” of whatevers. I love to scare myself. Vast
stinking
forms. Eww. She lifted her dark eyebrows and smiled at him.

Nadia, Nadia, he said. He folded the delicate foil strips in his hard fingers. There used to be a lake down there. Standing water. Dirty but standing. It was called Blue Springs Lake.

Where did it go? She pressed out a foil strip between her cold hands.

We used it up. He took the strip from her hand. For manufacturing. Flushed our waste with it. Then the weather changed. Our ancient imperative for growth. It was supposed to be a good thing. Nobody asked, when does growth stop? And so here we are. This used to be called Kansas City but now it's just city most of the way to Denver and we are called Gerrymander Eight.

And where did the animals all go?

We ate them, he said. And we took up all their space. Except for rats, mice, and the hardier sort of bird.

Nadia handed Thin Sam another foil. She had to press them out smooth and then fold them longways; then he wove them together in diamond patterns. She loved being away from the television and the crowded rooms and passageways. From Thin Sam's cupboard where he lived and drank and had his being, a radio played.

Nadia kept her schoolbooks under the bench and only occasionally flipped through them because they were so boring. She also kept old novels there. Nobody cared if she read. Child welfare didn't care. So few people read that it was of no concern.

Thin Sam Kenobi was loose inside his layers of clothes, several shirts and a tattered sweater and a coat. His knuckles were round as marbles. From below came a deep rumbling. The transport trains. He had taken to instructing her in matters of life, things an orphan girl ought to know.

He said, Always, always hide food. Never, never sign anything.

Why? she said. She rested her pointed chin on one fist and her dark-red hair stuck out in sprays.

Because there are people who would arrest you and take you away. He turned a leaf of foil in his hand. You would be a happy child if only the world would let you be.

This left Nadia confused. Was she supposed to be happy all the time? Would people love her then?

Never mind. So. Thin Sam rooted around in his basket and came up with more foils and handed them to her. And you will see other girls who have parents and good lives, and when you find yourself getting angry, getting envious, say to yourself, Stop, stop. It's a waste of mind. Okay?

Yep, said Nadia. Will do.

From the alcove of the doorway to the Riverdale Apartments they could see down the street where it fell away into the great, broad valley covered in the parquetry of hundreds of thousands of buildings, the city without end. It fell into a haze in the remote distance, a fog caused by the heat inside millions of trashy little apartments. Many blocks were painted with portraits of agency heads several stories high with windows for eyes so it appeared that people lived inside all-seeing brains. Nadia heard the engine of a hang glider carrying a day-flight watchman in thick goggles, spying out trouble, especially young lovers who whispered on rooftops, wanting to be alone.

Sand and dust rose up out of the canyon streets in cold coils. It grew dark and the streets were emptied. Here and there someone walked home late with a pierced tin candle-lantern but most people were inside cooking dinner and watching the advertisements for vacation spots. Not that any of them would ever have enough work credits.

You'll never get there, he said. To Lighthouse Island.

Hey, why not? She shoved her auburn hair back from her face and reached for another foil. Her breath smoked from her nose.

You'll meet some guy. He'll say he loves you and that'll be the end of it.

I'll make you a bet, she said. She was suddenly furious. I'll bet you anything you want to bet.

Nah. If you ever ran away you wouldn't even know where to go. You wouldn't know to go north and find the old Ritz-Carlton building. You're going to take up with the first guy that pays any attention to you. That's because you're an orphan. It's the way of the world with orphans.

Nadia bit her lower lip against the feeling of weeping that crept up her neck and jaw. She was once again dressed in an oversized coat and dress, shoes like wastebaskets, clothing issued for someone her age by mechanical and repeated deliveries every year regardless of her actual size.

Run away? she cried. What do you mean, run away? The way of the world with orphans, oh ha ha.

Just remember what I said. Remember every word.

She crinkled up the foil strips and wiped her nose on her sleeve and felt as if her heart were breaking and from the breakage tears were going to spill out in an extravagant, dehydrating stream because Thin Sam Kenobi sounded like the voice of God. He was wise and old and knew everything. He used tools and made things and he had an actual homemade radio that sometimes worked. It broadcast a voice reading from antique books and poetry and also classical music. There it was now;
So then, they know it and we know it; the time has come for the kingdom of dreams to go on the offensive.

Listen, he said. It's Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky.
Memories of the Future
. It's into the Russians now.

I don't understand any of it. She wiped quickly at her gray-green eyes.

It's too old for you.

Where does it come from?

From an old satellite, suspended up there, twenty thousand miles overhead.

Jeez, fascinating. She blinked back tears. Thin Sam Kenobi had made a definitive pronouncement on Nadia's life and against this declaration she had no appeal.

He reached behind the bench into the paper sack of foils and brought out a quart bottle of water. It was partly frozen and wrapped in a woven koozie, strips of bright rags.

Here.

Thank you.

Not a problem. Don't ask where I got it.

Very well.

Very well. He imitated her stiff, choked voice. That's so you can cry. You need more water than you're getting. A young girl shouldn't end up wrinkled like an old woman. You should be able to cry any time you want.

His eyes were Baltic pale and he turned slowly to look at her where she sat wrapped in her layers of knit clothing, a canvas coat and fingerless gloves and her wizened adolescent face.

She said, there's
plenty
of water at Lighthouse Island. I could drown myself in it.

Oh again. Again again. Okay, that's what the TV says. But where is it? He laughed and showed a bridge of ill-fitting steel teeth. It's close to the graveyard, where the daughter of Oceanus watches over the sea. Remember every word.

It's northward, said Nadia. Now, Sam, you show me where the North Star is. Her heart was apparently not broken yet or maybe it had repaired itself in the last few minutes.

You show me first. Go ahead and guess.

There. She pointed to a brilliant light rising over the rim of the valley and all the distant apartments with a pale and somewhat dirty forefinger.

That's an advertisement, he said. And the light expanded, threw out glowing arms that formed into spirals. It's the sky ad for Savory Circles.

Well, then, where is it? She turned up the bottle of water, drank as much as was unfrozen, capped it, put it under the bench.

Hide that better, he said.

She covered it with her book bag.

It's dim, said Sam. He handed her two bracelets and then began to fold other foils into star shapes. It's between two big bright constellations. You're so smart, I thought maybe you knew.

Nadia put the foil bracelets into a basket woven from electrical wire that Thin Sam then carried into the streets and sold to women and girls who had neither jewelry nor coins to buy anything but these foil bracelets and rings that would sparkle for a short while, would lift spirits for a week or so. It was not illegal so far but you never knew. When the people at the top decided, they'd let you know. She clasped her hands under her armpits to warm them. I
am
smart, she said. And you know it and I know it.

All right then, what are these? He laid out the star-shaped foils.

That's the Big Dipper and the Chair and I guess the little one is the North Star.

Good! Okay now, where in the sky is it?

Over Lighthouse Island.

He swept up the foils and crushed them and began folding bracelets again. I told you, he said. You'll never get there.

Oh, how do
you
know! She put both hands in their tatty fingerless gloves over her eyes and fell, finally, into abandoned and hopeless weeping.

I know, he said. He looked down at her. Nadia wiped her eyes and took deep breaths. His thick eyeglasses made his cloudy eyes shift and glint. It's life.

Somebody called, Nadia! Sam! Come inside!

Because the wind is becoming stronger and stronger and supper is ready. Come in. Get away from the street. Hide from the cruising pickup vans. Come in where it was safe from the dark and the things that paced nervously in the dark.

Sam, tell me, she said. If I just
act
happy all the time, will I be okay in life?

You don't know how to be, he said. Orphan child. You don't know who you are. He patted her on the top of her head and it was like being softly beaten with a baseball glove. Just hold out your two hands and pretend there's a light there, and it's all yours forever, and there are these huge stars on your left and your right, whose job is to look out for you.

Nadia thought for a moment. Yes, wait, here, I got it. My mother and dad live on Lighthouse Island. They're waiting for me to get there. She looked up at him with a delight in her own audacity.

He sighed. Okay, he said. Okay, okay.