Forever the Road (A Rucksack Universe Fantasy Novel) (4 page)

Rucksack sighed and drained his pint. “There was a time I would’ve been able to read every one o’ those lives wandering by, helixes to heads. I would have known them all.” His fingers touched the paper in front of him. All the bluster, the bombast, the big smile, and the bigger words all vanished. He looked away from her. “I can’t do that anymore.”

The rest of him seemed as withered as his hand. Jade’s confusion turned to pity. She pulled out the chair and sat down. “Maybe. Maybe not,” she said, getting her mind out of the way and letting her instincts, her training, take over. “But I know what you can do.”

“What?”

“You can help me figure out what that was.”

Rucksack shrugged. “Things happen that don’t necessarily mean anything.”

“Tell that to anyone in western Ireland just before The Blast,” Jade replied. “That meant a lot.”

“What does The Blast have to do with any o’ this?” The letter crumpled beneath his fingers.

It happened so long ago,
Jade thought.
Why does it bother him so much?
Instead she leaned forward, locked her gaze onto him, and said, “From every person and animal and object, the helixes trailed away like paths. They should flow like bright water.”

Rucksack stared at the wrinkled sheet of paper and nodded.

“Then tell me, Faddah Rucksack, why did so many of them wither into black and ash and nothing?”

He turned to look at her, his left hand closed tight. “We don’t know,” he said.

“We don’t,” Jade said kindly. “But I think we owe it to these people to find out. It just might save their lives.”

For a while, Rucksack said nothing. The city wandered. The sun blazed. A meandering cow walked by and left behind a steaming pile of dung.

Forget it,
Jade thought. She started to go back into the pub, when at last he spoke.

“Whatever changed just now,” he said, “we’ll figure it out.”

Jade turned around. “Where should we start?”

Something in Rucksack relaxed, as if he were relieved. When his gaze held hers, earth turned to stone and a fire blazed up inside his brown-and-black eyes. “I’m going to start right here, have a think and a pint. There’s tales o’ this city I need to remember. That… and I need to wait for something.”

Jade nodded. “Okay,” she said. “It’s a start. What should I do?”

“Make sure you have a bed available,” Rucksack said. “And bring me another pint o’ GPS. I need to see clearly.”

“I thought you were staying a few blocks away?”

“I am,” he replied. “It’s not for me. We’ll find out who it’s for soon enough.”

“Then I’m going to get back inside and see what else the day brings.”

She walked to the door, thinking of helixes. Then it hit her—the last thing she’d seen before the helixes had faded from sight. They had trailed from every person, every object, every animal. So many of them flashed like bright chains, only to blacken, char, and disappear.

Except him.

Rucksack had sat there, staring out at the still crowd, at the shimmering helixes. But no helix had come from Rucksack. No chain of destiny, no flowing paths of decisions and possibilities. The Management was right. Rucksack was like a ghost yet alive. Wandering but without a path.

His voice stopped her at the door. “Who were you before?”

Jade looked down at the cracked, somewhat-white pavement. Years and lifetimes coursed through her like blood. She opened the door and said, “Who were you?”

Neither answered.

A
POTHOLE
sent Jay lurching to the right, and he nearly tumbled from the rickshaw. A chunk of asphalt bounced the three-wheeled putt-putting bumblebee into the air and flung Jay back into his seat. Through the open sides of the rickshaw, the blazing blue sky for a moment took on a silvery glow. The world seemed to pause, as if holding its breath, but Jay realized that it was just him not exhaling yet.

The wheel smacked back down onto the pavement. Like a punch in the stomach, Jay doubled over as the impact knocked the air out of him.

He gasped and coughed, seeking air amidst bumblebee exhaust and the scent of cow manure. The driver smiled over his shoulder. “Welcome to Agamuskara, my good friend!” he said. “We are now in the city proper!”

“How can you tell?” Jay asked, coughing again.

“You are not truly in Agamuskara,” the driver said, “until you see the river.” He pointed west, to their right.

For a moment Jay thought back to his time traveling through England, the only place in the world where people drove on the left. Madness, he’d figured at the time. It was absurd, but you couldn’t give the Brits too much flack.
Given how the entire island was nearly wiped out by The Blast,
Jay thought,
the Brits can drive on whatever side of the road they want.
But here in India, Jay was glad the traffic went on the right. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to see the river.

After the truck had passed through the Nepal-India border and resumed its bouncing, jostling ride toward Agamuskara, Jay had passed some kilometers looking through his guidebook, Guru Deep’s
India Through the Third Eye
:

Agamuskara shares its name with the river that runs through India’s holiest city, which is also its unholiest. While no records survive to tell us when Agamuskara was founded, local lore maintains the area was settled by the first people to come to the Indian subcontinent. History also does not explain why the city and the river should be named what, in the Hindi, translates as “smiling fire.”

As Jay stared at the wide river, he understood how it could be mistaken for a smiling fire. The ruddy water glowed harsh and golden in the sun, and it burned Jay’s eyes to look at it too long. Even the ancient river flowed sluggishly in the heat, but the driver was right. The Agamuskara’s bends and straightaways, every curve and line, held a majesty that belied the brown water. As they drove, the river coursed along with them.

The map in the guidebook had shown that the river flowed from the north, out of the Himalayas. At Agamuskara the river’s course turned sharply west, then curved south and east, creating a nestle of land where, it was thought, the original riverside village had been founded. As the city had grown, it had built up on the north side of the river. Then the city crossed south and continued growing. Today, the Agamuskara bisected the city then emptied into the Ganges farther east.

“It is beautiful,” the driver said, looking more at the river than the road in front of them.

Jay turned to agree. Then he saw the cow standing still in front of them and instead he screamed.

The driver hardly turned his head, but he pounded on the horn. The cow blinked but did not move. Not bothering to look, the driver swerved right. Jay looked over. Beside them, chains flapped from the yellow bed of a large truck. Red wheel wells blurred as they turned. Jay grabbed the supports of the rickshaw.

I’m going to die,
he thought.
And I only just got here.

As the horn blared, a hole opened between the truck and another vehicle. The rickshaw swung into place with inches to spare on either end.

As they passed the cow, Jay was certain it winked at him.

The driver spat at it. “Bloody cows.”

“Aren’t they holy?” Jay replied.

“Cows give us many gifts,” the driver said. “Milk and butter to nourish us, dung for our fires. We do not eat them and we do not hurt them, but it doesn’t mean we like them.”

“Since they think they own the road?”

The driver laughed. “Yes, my good friend. I like how you say that.” One foot on the gas and one hand on the bleating horn, the driver swerved, zipped, and putted. The rickshaw swerved in and slipped out of every scant space not possibly big enough for it, yet somehow there was always just enough room.

Jay stared at the river as they traveled farther into the city. Had this water come down from the Himalayas at the same time that he had? As the rickshaw zipped in and out of meandering livestock, bell-ringing bicycles, grumbling trucks, and horn-tooting taxis, a breeze passed over Jay. It wasn’t particularly cool, but it felt good on his skin. If his clothes couldn’t dry out in the soggy hot air, at least they didn’t feel as sticky. And the drive was certainly not boring. Jay let go of the rickshaw supports and sat back in his seat.

The river disappeared behind some buildings. Jay’s backpack sat quietly on the floorboards between his knees, and he rested his hand on top of it. As they passed the white walls of the city center, the close buildings reflected the light and trapped the heat. The weight of gods and ages pressed on Jay, compressing humanity and humidity in a slow boil.

Out of the corner of Jay’s eye, in front of a copy-machine-and-long-distance-calls shop, a blue humanlike figure sat proud and smiling on a cow. Dressed in gold, the figure was maybe male, maybe female, but it definitely had four arms and held some sort of staff. It winked.

Jay’s head snapped to the right to look more closely, but only the cow remained.

He’d barely seen it, but since of course there was no way it could have been there to begin with, he hadn’t seen it anyway.

I’m so tired and dehydrated,
Jay thought.
I’m starting to hallucinate. That’s all.
Jay swallowed dust.
I need a beer. Even a Deep’s Special Lager would be good enough for right now, though I wouldn’t really call that beer. I’ve drunk more flavorful water and passed tastier piss.

The rickshaw squealed to a stop. Jay folded forward. Five years of traveling clamped his hand to the top of the pack so it didn’t tumble out of the rickshaw. The driver stomped the brakes and cut the engine. Jay tried to ignore the
shr-shr-shr
, but the outline of the thing pressed into his hand.

Hundreds of people banged instruments, sang songs, and paraded down the cross street in front of them. Jay couldn’t understand the words, but he understood the feeling—a hope for tomorrow, a wish for the next life, a joy in spite of today. The singing cooled him like water, like a spring night back home. He sighed. For a moment, his addled weariness faded. The
shr-shr-shr
seemed louder.

Another flash of blue turned his head. So did flashes of gold, brown, white, and red.

Cows flanked the rickshaw. Taxis, bicycles, and large trucks all stopped at the edge of the procession. When Jay looked directly at any of the motionless cattle, he saw only cows. When looking from the far edge of his peripheral vision, though, Jay thought he saw more figures, multi-armed and gold-adorned, aiming inscrutable smiles at the parade. But whenever he turned to look directly, he saw only cows.

Jay tapped the driver’s shoulder. “What is the parade for?”

“For the gods, my good friend.”

“Which one?”

The driver shrugged. “All sing to all, and all listen, and all praise.”

Jay wished he didn’t suck so badly at languages. Other than a rough French
bonjour
, the only other language Jay knew was the “I’m not dangerous” smile, the “where’s the nearest toilet?” anguished leg scrunch with side-to-side wiggle, and the cupped fingers raised to the mouth that could serve for “hungry” or “oh great keg in the sky do I need a beer.” But this? This was all Hindi to Jay.

Hundreds upon hundreds of paraders passed. All of their disparate songs should have been disjointed caterwauling, but they weren’t. The upbeat danced around the slow. Low, mournful notes fell low in Jay’s ear, but songs of celebration leaped over them. Jay picked out harmonies and tunes; they blended, played side by side, built on each other’s pitch and cadence. His hand pressed harder on top of his backpack as he leaned out of the rickshaw to better see the procession.

Out of the corners of Jay’s eyes, all the multi-armed, multi-colored blurs turned to look at him. Before he could cry out, the tune and the lyrics skipped his ears, stunning him silent as the paraders’ songs sang directly into his mind.

“Let the love of ages be the love of my heart…”

“A hot meal and a warm thigh, a hard kiss and a soft sigh…”

“May my sons be as the sun and my daughters as the earth…”

“Return the life to the flame and to the Smiling Fire, be the cinders and the burn of the life of the world…”

Jay sat up, banging his head on the rickshaw’s roof. His hand flung from the pack to the top of his aching head. The song vanished. Out of the corners of his tearing-up eyes, he saw nothing but stalled traffic and shuffling cows.

The driver turned around at the noise. “Are you okay?”

“I think so.”

The driver smiled, looking at Jay’s head and the slightly dented roof. “Not the way one usually sings, my friend, but then, you tourists have strange ways.”

“I’m not a tourist,” Jay said. “I’m a traveler.”

The driver bobbed his head side to side. Jay didn’t need to speak Hindi to know that this meant, “Maybe yes, maybe no, maybe maybe. All the same to me.”

The parade ended, its fading songs mere whispers to the words sung and singed into Jay’s mind. The pain faded only once the street had cleared and they could continue again.

The driver soon stopped at a nondescript hotel. “Here we are,” he said, getting out and reaching for Jay’s backpack.