Lament for the Fallen (23 page)

‘No one, though,’ his eyes gleam, ‘would assist the Chinese by allowing them to use their space elevators.

‘As the leaders debated, the fighting in Tibet was growing ever more oppressive. China declared they would not fire nuclear missiles, but that left many other options. They fired a test missile at Lhasa. One hundred and fifty thousand people were killed. The city was dust. The Potala Palace, which had stood for more than six hundred years, was destroyed.

‘Samara’s Uyghurs were incensed. They attacked the compound outside the city of Shigatse where the missiles were based. The Chinese were waiting. They slaughtered them. Samara was badly injured, but Symon saved him.

‘Two missiles were fired. Yuèliàng was an orbital city, unarmed and defenceless. Seven hundred and fifty thousand people were killed instantly. The explosion created a massive debris cloud. Two small nearby orbital cities, Cuthbar and New Kuwait, were destroyed. Another nineteen thousand people were killed.’

Sarah and David have gone pale. Joshua has clenched his fists. Daniel, Abishai and Jason stare downcast at the table.

‘A wave of debris spread out around the earth. It became suicidal for any craft to enter high earth orbit unshielded. The remaining cities had to respond quickly or they would also be destroyed. Some were able to amplify their fusion reactors to generate a safety field. Some borrowed reactors. Some broke orbit and moved out into the solar system. Some were not so fortunate.

‘The orbital cities adapted. There was migration as smaller cities emptied, their people moving to the biggest. Achenia gained one hundred and fifty thousand new people in ten years. The cities that chose to remain in orbit created shielded channels through which they could transfer ships and goods. They covered their cities in gravel and rock that they harvested from the moon. They made themselves safe from the debris cloud, but they have not felt safe ever since.’

‘That is the metal that the militia collect when it falls from space? The remains of the dead?’ asks Abishai.

‘Indeed, my daughter,’ says Ismael.

‘And what of the great leaders? Did they do nothing?’ asks Joshua.

‘The United Nations collapsed. People lost faith in their leaders. Worse followed. The orbital cities refused to trade. China had, in one act, murdered most of its great thinkers and academics. Far from bringing order, the Chinese state disintegrated. Trade collapsed. Many nations followed, losing access to borrowed goods and capital, and falling apart. And the result to your nation you know.

‘There was another effect, though. Much of the Earth’s space-based infrastructure was in higher earth orbit. Satellites were destroyed. Most of the connect went with them. A land-based connect was rebuilt, but it is not the same, not as ever-present as the old. Many regions are left outside, such as Ewuru. Maybe that is a good thing?’ Ismael raises his eyebrows.

‘There were many space elevators,’ he shakes his head. ‘The debris chopped through most of them, leaving only three. It is expensive to keep them safe against the debris but, even though they are not much used, these elevators are still there. Japan’s Hokkaido city, Achenia’s, and that managed by the US, supporting their Tartarus prison.’

‘Where Samara was,’ says Jason.

Ismael touches his nose, nodding.

‘In the aftermath, we griots made a decision. We would leave the orbital cities and return to Earth. We will document the turning of the seasons – become an ancient memory as in times of old. The original griots were a people’s knowledge of themselves. We can aspire to no less.’

‘There are many of you?’ asks Sarah.

‘Enough,’ he smiles.

‘And Samara?’ asks Jason.

‘That I do not know. You may ask him, perhaps he will tell you?’

Ismael rises from his seat. ‘Thank you for your company. Now, I must go and earn my keep,’ he says.

The restaurant has filled. People are still arriving and cramming into spaces along the walls and around the stage. A pleasant buzz of friendship and expectation.

‘So that is why he had to come down to Earth and not stay in orbit to cross to his own people,’ says Daniel. ‘I could not understand that choice, but this makes sense.’

‘It also makes sense why his people would take such care before – what is the term he used? – cutting the umbilical,’ says Abishai.

‘I think we should eat,’ says Joshua.

‘Yes, I am starving,’ says Jason.

‘I cannot eat,’ says Sarah. Her face is haunted. ‘Those poor people.’

Joshua reaches across the table and holds her hand. She looks up at him. ‘My daughter, you must eat. We must honour the dead, but we must also care for ourselves.’

She takes a deep breath and slowly eases it out. Nods and squeezes his hand.

Up on the stage, Ismael is seated on a three-legged cellulosic stool. He straddles the wide calabash base of a kora, the twenty-one-string harp of West Africa. He looks out at the room, beaming. He extends his forefinger on to a string and begins to rub it up and down.

He releases it, and the strident rhythm continues. He plucks harmonies and melodies. Each adding to the former. He taps on the calabash, creating a percussive beat. The sound rises, takes shape, a force that envelops the room. People are dancing, stamping their feet, an ecstatic pandemonium.

He stands, leaving the kora. The music still plays. He jumps off the stage, dancing amongst the people. His arms at his shoulders, his bottom out. He touches plates, glasses, spoons, setting up new melodies, new harmonies.

Then he begins to sing, a rap-beat at first, adding new voices. He is a choir of one.

An ugly man in a bad hat tries to hit him as he passes. Ismael turns the punch into a dance and touches the man lightly on the nose. The man in the bad hat, completely against his will, stands still and begins to sing in a deep baritone. Ismael continues, touching each of the ugly man’s companions until they are all singing.

They join him in his dance and follow him back on stage where, despite the horrified anguish in their eyes, they continue to dance and sing as Ismael conducts them and the laughing, jubilant audience.

People are crowding in from the streets. The Celebration of the City has never been heard in Ewuru, and Joshua, Sarah, Daniel, David, Jason and Abishai dance, their souls open with joy.

29

He has a distorted vision of a plain white room. Three single beds, one double. ‘What’s that?’ asks Samara.

Then he is back in the warehouse, a lathe before him, metal pipes on the bench.

Now that they know the exact dimensions of the rocket engines, he is able to build tubes to contain them. This leaves little space for the gyroscope. He begins turning long aluminium bars into the gimbals he will need. He will have to crouch inside.

He builds, tracking down heat-reflecting tiles, bearings and other components. It takes three days to complete.

Seymour and Henry have been waiting for a fourth. ‘Seeing as how you’re eating, mister, would you like to join us to play a few hands?’

‘Yes,’ he nods, ‘I would enjoy that.’

Sancho has never played. He learns as they bid.

‘No, no,’ says Henry, only slightly frustrated with his partner, ‘if I open you have to bid. Return it to me so I can choose a suit.’

Samara has diplomatically instructed Symon to interfere with his game-play so that he performs rather worse than the abject Sancho.

Just as diplomatically, the others rotate partners so that each gets a chance to win.

‘I hope that there ship flies better ’n’ you play, mister,’ laughs Seymour.

‘Me too,’ he says.

Samara has measured his food intake carefully. Work for three hours, eat for an hour, repeat. He never sleeps.

While the men go back to other card games, or perform chores, or simply stare at him, Samara works.

The most complex mechanism, after the gyroscope and rocket controllers, is the spring-loaded bearing ring. This will grip the space elevator cable and adjust to its varying diameter. An electromagnet connects it to the pod. The umbilical itself provides energy to the mechanism.

‘It looks like a propeller, mister. You going to be able to get that through the double seal?’ asks Seymour.

‘It should just fit,’ says Samara, picking it up and carrying it to the doorway. He is almost up to his target weight, and the floor seems to bend slightly at each step.

‘Mister, where all that food going? It never comes out,’ observes Sancho.

‘Where it needs to,’ he smiles.

‘You’re real strange, mister, but we like you,’ says Seymour, beaming. ‘When you going?’

‘Eighteen hours,’ he says. ‘I’ll be at full weight by then.’

‘Well, then,’ says Henry, ‘we have time for a few more games.’

Samara inspects the pallet beneath the conveyor. There is a pressure switch there that opens the doors and starts the exit process.

‘I’ll remove the boxes, place the pod on it. When I get to the other side, I’ll discard the pallet so that it doesn’t attract attention. Just place the boxes back on a pallet and the systems will never know.’

They play cards, and Samara continues eating one packet after another.

‘We sure gonna miss playing bridge. Ain’ really work without four,’ says Sancho.

The men sleep as he polishes down the outer shell. Eventually, everything is done.

He wakes them before he goes. He shakes their hands. Seymour’s eyes are red, moist.

Slipping off his cloak for the last time, Samara picks up the wing and steps on to the pallet. The pressure sensor is triggered, opening the inner entrance door, and he is pulled smoothly into the airlock. The door closes behind him and seals.

A few moments as the antechamber is reduced to a vacuum. Samara stops breathing. His body changes, silver fluid diffusing out of his skin, filling his mouth, ears, nose, every pore and space. His eyes are now unblinking solid hemispheres of silver. His fingers and toes appear to be encased in silver gloves. He can feel as the great mass he has built up focuses in density around his surface, protecting him from the vacuum of space. His body completes its adjustments to the pressure change.

The opposite door rolls open, and he is drawn out into the cargo bay.

Empty clear-plastic stretchers from prisoner arrivals are piled against the walls. The palette stops against a stack of boxes. There is gravity here, but no atmosphere.

Samara picks up the pod and carries it to the opening. The umbilical cable is suspended a platform’s length away. This is where the elevator arrives, sealing the space.

He returns to the empty pallet, picks it up and flings it out and away from the entrance. It tumbles, drifting off to join the rest of the debris cloud.

He stares down the safe channel.

[Any words of return?]

‘No.’ He looks only at the planet below. There is a very long and lonely journey ahead.

He opens the escape pod hatch, holds the inside with one hand and the door handle with the other. Orientating the wing ahead of him. He walks to the edge.

And leaps.

He grabs the cable. Slots the bearing ring about it. Orientating the pod to face straight down, he carefully climbs inside. The door seals closed as he slips inside the rings of the gyroscope, crouching and pushing his back into the moulded body-rest on the inner gimbal. His hands grip two short crossbars, his feet slip inside two brackets. Magnetic fasteners clamp shut about his arms, legs, wrists, ankles, forehead and torso. He is immobilized.

A rocket fires.

His mind goes blank.

30

‘I am awake,’ says Samara, disbelief in his voice.

Daniel and Jason are flat on their backs, snoring loudly. David is lying in the double bed, alongside Jason, his arms crossed behind his head. They lost a game of akamokwu – war fingers – and were forced to share when they returned last night. He turns his face to Samara and grins.

Joshua emerges from the bathroom, a towel around his waist and an old scar visible diagonally across his chest. ‘Welcome back, my friend,’ he smiles. ‘We have much to tell you.’

Joshua dresses and, while David showers, starts to fill Samara in on what has happened over the past few days. David returns and, ungraciously, drizzles water into Jason’s open mouth as he lies snoring.

‘That is for keeping me awake all night, you sack of frogs,’ he says, laughing.

Daniel rolls over and covers his head with his pillow as Jason splutters and howls.

Joshua ignores them and continues. ‘Symon arranged the battery, and I hope you will know if it is fully charged?’

‘Not as well as if we were still associated, but I should be able to tell.’

‘Come, shall we have breakfast? David, please see if Sarah and Abishai are ready to join us,’ says Joshua, rising and opening the door.

Behzad is downstairs looking pleased with himself. Would that the Marabout would visit every night.

‘My friends, I had no knowledge that you were friends with the Marabout,’ he greets Joshua and Samara as they come down the stairs past the reception counter. ‘How wonderful for you.’

‘We know him as the Balladeer,’ says Joshua, ‘and you are doubly blessed that he chooses your restaurant to perform.’

‘Ismael was here?’ asks Samara.

‘Ah, but he left this morning,’ says Behzad, looking curiously at Samara. Something is different about him today. ‘Come, have breakfast. I bring you tea and sweet breads.’

David and the others join them. Daniel wandering down the stairs, bleary-eyed, a few minutes later.

‘I’m sorry I missed him,’ says Samara. ‘When I was a boy, he would stay with my parents and tell me the funniest tales. We would both laugh so much I thought I would burst.’

‘He told us the strangest story. I think it was about his people,’ says Abishai. ‘Who are they?’