Nation (30 page)

Mau stopped and said, “No. Not another trap.”

But this is the way to the Perfect World!
said Locaha.
Only a very few have seen this path!

Mau turned around. “I think that if Imo wants a perfect world, he wants it down here,” he said. He could still see the beach around him, but it was indistinct, as if it was behind a wall of dark water.

This one? It’s far from perfect!
said Locaha.

“It’s a little more perfect today. And there will be more days.”

You really want to go back?
said Locaha.
There are no second chances—there are no chances at all. There is only…what happens.

“And what does not happen?” said Mau.

That? That happens, too, somewhere else.
Everything
that can happen must happen, and everything that can happen must have a world to happen
in
. That is why Imo builds so many worlds that there are not enough numbers to count them. That is why His fire glows so red. Good-bye, Mau. I look forward with interest to our next meeting. You turn worlds upside down…. Oh, and one other thing. Those others I mentioned, who have been shown the glittering path? They all said the same thing as you did. They saw that the perfect world is a journey, not a place. I have only one choice, Mau, but I’m good at making it.

The grayness faded and tried to take memories with it. Mau’s mind grabbed at them as they streamed away and the gray barrier faded and let the light rush back in.

He was alive, and that was a fact. The ghost girl was running along the beach with her arms reaching out, and that was another fact. His legs felt strange and weak, and that was a fact that was getting more factual with every passing minute. But when she held him as they watched the tragic cargoes unloaded, and did not move until the last war canoe was a dot on the never-ending horizon…that was a fact as big as the Nation.

M
AU AWOKE
. A
STRANGE
woman was spooning gruel into him. When she saw his eyes open, she gave a little shriek, kissed him on the forehead, and ran out of the hut.

Mau stared up at the ceiling while it all came back. Some bits were a little blurred, but the tree and the axe and the death of Cox were as clear to him as the little gecko watching from the ceiling with upside-down eyes. But it was as if he was watching someone else, just a little way in front of him. It was another person, and that person was him.

He wondered if—

“Does not happen!” The scream was like lightning through his head, because it came from a beak about six inches from his ear. “Show us your”—here the parrot muttered to itself, then went on, rather sullenly—“underthings.”

“Ah, good. How are you?” said the ghost girl, stepping inside.

Mau sat bolt upright. “You’ve got blood all over you!”

“Yes. I know. There goes the last good blouse,” said Daphne. “Still, he’s much better now. I’m pretty proud of myself, actually. I had to saw a man’s leg off below the knee! And I sealed the wound with a bucket of hot tar, exactly according to the manual!”

“Doesn’t that hurt?” asked Mau, lying back on the mat again. Sitting up had made him dizzy.

“Not if you pick it up by the handle.” She looked at his blank expression. “Sorry, that was a joke. Thank goodness for Mrs. Gurgle; she can make someone sleep through
anything
. Anyway, I think the man is going to live now, which is more than he would have with that terrible wound in it. And this morning I had to cut off a foot. It’d gone all…well, it was awful. Those captives were treated very badly.”

“And you’ve been sawing the bad bits off them?”

“It’s called surgery, thank you so very much! It’s not hard if I can find someone to hold the instruction manual open at the right page.”

“No! No, I don’t think it’s wrong!” said Mau quickly. “It’s just that…it’s you doing it. I thought you hated the sight of blood.”

“That’s why I try to stop it. I can
do
something about it. Come on, let’s get you up.” She put her arms around him.

“Who was that woman who was feeding me? I’ve seen her before.”

“Her real name is Fi-ha-el, she says…,” said Daphne, and Mau clutched at the wall for support. “We used to call her the Unknown Woman. And now we call her the Papervine Woman.”

“Her? But she looked completely different—”

“Her husband was in one of those canoes. She went right up to it and dragged him out by herself. I’m blessed if I know how she knew which one he was in. I sent her to look after you because, well, it was his leg I had to saw off.”

“Newton was greatest!” screamed the parrot, bouncing up and down.

“And I thought the parrot was dead!” said Mau.

“Yes, everyone thought the parrot was dead,” said Daphne, “except the parrot. He turned up yesterday. He is minus one toe and a lot of feathers, but I think he will be fine when his wing heals. He
runs
after the grandfather birds now. They really hate that. I’ve, er, started doing something about his language.”

“Yes, I thought you had,” said Mau. “What’s New-Tan?”

“Newton,” Daphne corrected absentmindedly. “Remember I told you about the Royal Society? He was one of the first members. He was the greatest scientist there has ever been, I think, but when he was an old man, he said he felt that he had been like a little boy playing with pebbles on the beach while a great ocean of truth lay undiscovered before him.”

Mau’s eyes widened, and she was shocked to realize that it had been a long time since she’d seen him look so young.

“He stood on this beach?”

“Well, er, not
this
beach, obviously,” said Daphne. “Possibly not even any beach. It’s what trousermen call a metaphor. A kind of lie to help you understand what’s true.”

“Oh, I know about
those
,” said Mau.

“Yes, I think you do.” Daphne smiled. “Now come out into the fresh air.”

She took Mau’s hand. There were a few nasty grazes that he didn’t remember getting, his whole body felt stiff, and there was a ragged wound where the flesh of his ear had been, but it could have been a lot worse. He remembered the bullet in the water, slowing down and dropping into his hand. Water could be hard—you only had to belly flop from a height to know
that
—but even so…

“Come
on
!” said Daphne, dragging him into the light.

The Women’s Place was full. There were people in the fields. The beach was busy. There were even children playing in the lagoon.

“We’ve got so much to do,” said Mau, shaking his head.

“They are already doing it,” said Daphne.

They watched in silence. Soon people would spot them and they would be back in the world again, but right now they were part of the scenery.

After a while the girl said: “I remember when it was…just nothing, and there was a boy who didn’t even see me.”

And the boy said: “I remember a ghost girl.”

After a longer silence, the girl asked: “Would you go back? If you could?”

“You mean, without the wave?”

“Yes. Without the wave.”

“Then I’d have gone home, and everyone would have been alive, and I would be a man.”

“Would you rather be that man? Would you change places with him?” asked the ghost girl.

“And not be me? Not know about the globe? Not have met you?”

“Yes!”

Mau opened his mouth to reply and found it choked with words. He had to wait until he could see a path through them.

“How can I answer you? There is no language. There was a boy called Mau. I see him in my memory, so proud of himself because he was going to be a man. He cried for his family and turned the tears into rage. And if he could, he would say ‘Did not happen!’ and the wave would roll backward and never have been. But there is another boy, and he is called Mau, too, and his head is on fire with new things. What does he say? He was
born
in the wave, and he knows that the world is round, and he met a ghost girl who is sorry she shot at him. He called himself the little blue hermit crab, scuttling across the sand in search of a new shell, but now he looks at the sky and knows that no shell will ever be big enough,
ever
. Will you ask him not to
be
?
Any
answer will be the wrong one. All I can be is who I am. But sometimes I hear the boy inside crying for his family.”

“Does he cry now?” asked Daphne, looking down at the ground.

“Every day. But very softly. You won’t hear him. Listen, I must tell you this. Locaha spoke to me. He spread his great wings over me on the beach and drove the Raiders away. Didn’t you see that?”

“No. The Raiders ran as soon as Cox went down,” said Daphne. “You mean you met Death?
Again?
”

“He told me that there were more worlds than there are numbers. There is no such thing as ‘does not happen.’ But there is always ‘happened somewhere else’—” He tried to explain, while she tried to understand.

When he’d run out of words, she said: “You mean that there is a world where the wave
didn’t
happen? Out…there somewhere?”

“I think so…. I think I’ve almost seen it. Sometimes, at night, when I’m watching the shore, I almost see it. I nearly
hear
it! And there is a Mau there, a man who is me, and I pity him, because there is no ghost girl in his world….”

She put her arms around his neck and gently pulled him toward her. “I wouldn’t change anything,” she said. “Here I’m not some sort of doll. I have a purpose. People listen to me. I’ve done amazing things. How could I go back to my life before?”

“Is that what you’ll tell your father?” His voice was suddenly sad.

“Something like that, I think, yes.”

Mau gently turned her around, so that she was looking at the sea.

“There’s a ship coming,” he said.

The schooner had anchored outside the reef by the time they had got down to the lagoon. Daphne waded out as far as she could, regardless of her dress floating up around her, while a boat was lowered.

On the shore, Mau watched as the man in the prow of the boat jumped off as soon as it was near her and, laughing and crying together, they helped each other up the slope of the sand. The crowd moved back to give them room as they embraced—but Mau was watching the two men climbing out of the boat. They had red jackets on and held complicated sticks, and looked at Mau as if he was, at best, a nuisance.

“Let me look at you,” said His Excellency, standing back. “Why, you look—What happened to you? There’s blood on your shoulder! We have a doctor on board, and I’ll get him to—”

Daphne glanced down. “It’s just a splash,” she said, waving a hand. “Besides, it’s not mine. I had to saw a man’s leg off, and I haven’t had time to wash.”

Behind them a third soldier got out of the boat carrying a thick tube, which he began to unroll. He looked nervously at Mau.

“What is happening here?” snapped Mau. “Why do they have guns? What is this man doing?” He stepped forward, and two bayonets barred his way.

Daphne turned her head and pulled away from her father. “What’s this?” she demanded. “You can’t stop him from walking around in his own country! What’s in that tube? It’s a flag, isn’t it? You brought a flag! And guns!”

“We didn’t know what we were going to find, dear,” said her father, taken aback. “After all, there are cannon up there.”

“Well, all right, yes,” muttered Daphne, stumbling over her own anger. “They’re just for show.” The rage flamed up again. “But
those
guns aren’t! Put them down!”

His Excellency nodded at the men, who put their muskets, very carefully but also very quickly, down on the sand. Milo had just walked onto the beach to see what the fuss was about, and he tended to loom.

“And the flag!” said Daphne.

“Just hold on to it, Evans, if you would be so kind,” said His Excellency. “Look, dear, we mean no harm to these, er”—he glanced up at Milo—“
nice
people, but we must back up our claim to the Mothering Sunday Islands. We hold that they are just an extension of the Bank Holiday Monday Islands—”

“Who’s we? You?”

“Well, ultimately the king—”

“He can’t have this one!” Daphne screamed. “He doesn’t need it! He can’t have it! He hasn’t finished with Canada yet!”

“Dear, I think the privations of your time on this island may have affected you in some way—” His Excellency began.

Daphne took a step backward. “Privations? There is nowhere I would rather have been than here! I’ve helped babies to be born! I killed a man—”

“The one whose leg you sawed off?” asked her father, mystified.

“What? Him? No, he’s doing very well,” said Daphne, waving a hand dismissively. “The one I killed was a murderer. And I’ve made beer. Really good beer! Father, you must listen right now. It’s very important that you understand
right now
. This is the other end of the world, Father, it really is. This is the beginning. This…is the place where you might grant God absolution.”

She hadn’t meant it to come out. He stood there, stunned.

She added: “I’m sorry. You and Grandmother were shouting so loud that night and I couldn’t help overhearing,” and, since there was no point in being deceitful at a time like this, she also added, “Especially since I was trying hard to.”

He looked up at her, his face gray. “What is so special about this place?” he asked.

“There’s a cave. It’s got wonderful carvings in it. It’s ancient. It may be more than a hundred thousand years old.”

“Cavemen,” said His Excellency calmly.

“I think there are star maps on the ceiling. They invented…well—practically everything. They sailed all over the world when we huddled around our fires. I can prove it, I think.” Daphne took her father’s hand. “There’s still some oil in the lamps,” she said. “Let me show you.
Not you!
” she added as the guards sprang to attention. “
You
will stay here. And no one is to take over anyone’s country while we’re gone, is that understood?”

The men looked at His Excellency, who shrugged vaguely, a man who had been thoroughly daughtered.

“Whatever she says, of course,” he said.

His daughter took his hand and said, “Come and see.”

They started off up the path but were not out of earshot when Pilu walked up to the soldiers and said, “Would you like some beer?”

“Don’t let them drink it until they have spat in it and sung ‘Baa, Baa, Black Sheep’ sixteen times”
was the order from on high, followed by, “and tell them we need lamp oil.”

The first thing her father said when he saw the gods was “My goodness!” Then, after staring at things with his mouth open, he managed to say, “Incredible! All this belongs in a museum!”

She couldn’t let him get away with that one, and she said, “Yes, I know. That’s why it is, in fact, in one.”

“And who will look at it down here?”

“Anyone who wants to come and see, Papa. And that will mean every scientist in the world.”

“It’s a long way from anywhere important, though,” His Excellency observed, running his fingers over the stone globe.

“No, Papa.
This
is the important place. It’s everywhere else that is a long way away. Anyway, that wouldn’t matter to the Royal Society. They would swim up here in lead boots!”

“
Down
here, dear, I think,” said her father.

Daphne pushed the globe. It rolled a little way and the continents danced. But now the world was turned upside down. “It’s a
planet
, Papa. Up and down are just ways of looking at it. I’m sure people here won’t object to copies being made for all the big museums. But don’t take this place away from them. It’s
theirs
.”