Cloud Permutations (15 page)

Authors: Lavie Tidhar

Kal did. The blue man had been mocking the magician of Epi, who after that went on to marry a girl from Malekulah and took up farming and was never seen in Epi again. ‘Solwota—’ Kal said, ‘hemi go ap, hemi mekem klaod—’ he had smiled then, because the blue man had been making fun of the magician, with his tale of the blue handkerchief that became water became cloud became rain, but he wasn’t smiling now ‘—mo man, hemi semak.’

‘Man is the same,’ the blue man agreed.

‘How?’ Kal said.

The blue man shrugged. ‘Ocean makes cloud, clouds make rain, rain makes an ocean come back again,’ he half-sang. Below the map of clouds shifted, ridges appearing and disappearing, and somehow there was the suggestion of a face, as large as a continent, and it slightly resembled Moria, whom Kal had loved, and Vira too. This suggestion of a face, the imposition of order on the random shape of a cloud, seemed to be smiling.

‘I can show you,’ the man said. He stood up gracefully, raised his arms in the air, and fell towards the world below.

Everyone knows the ending of the story, if that is the ending. Kal, too, stood up. He looked down for a long moment, and he smiled. He stretched his arms to the sides, left them extended. Then, like a plane taking off, he rose from the edge of the tower and flew below.

We do not know the true ending of this; for, though we can now go into space, though we can theorise and write books and do many things which once seemed like miracles, we still cannot talk with, nor understand, clouds.

LAVIE TIDHAR GREW UP IN ISRAEL and South Africa, but it was his experience of the South Pacific, and the remote islands of Melanesia, that inspired this book. When he wasn’t climbing volcanoes or riding in canoes and boats (or tending his little tomato patch!) Lavie wrote in his tiny bamboo shack on the island of Vanua Lava. He speaks fluent Bislama—the pidgin language of Vanuatu and another major influence on his writing. Lavie’s first novel, The Bookman, was published in January 2010 by Angry Robot Books. Forthcoming from PS are another novella, Gorel and the Pot-Bellied God, and the groundbreaking alternate history novel, Osama.

CLOUD PERMUTATIONS

The right of Lavie Tidhar to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Originally published in printed book form by PS Publishing Ltd in July 2010. This electronic version published in December 2011 by PS by arrangement with the author. All rights reserved by the author.

FIRST EBOOK EDITION

ISBN 978-1-848632-32-5

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

PS Publishing Ltd

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Hornsea / HU18 1PG

East Yorkshire / England

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