Other Earths Part 23

He relayed this information to Bian, who appeared relieved. "You can always change your mind. Bian don't care. She's a regular scout . . . ain't you, darling?" He reached out and chucked her under the chin. "You don't know what you're missing. She's got a real educated p.u.s.s.y." He settled back in the chair and gave me a canny look. "I bet you're a writer."

Surprised, I said, "Yeah," and asked how he knew.

"I didn't know know. Us Cradles tend to be literary types more often than not. And seems like the boys who ain't interested in Bian are mostly writers . . . though there's been a couple like to wore her out. But what I was getting at, seeing how you're a writer, maybe you can make sense of their scribbles. I got a whole bunch of their notebooks."

"You have their journals?"

"Journals . . . notebooks. Whatever. I got a bunch. The boys that stop in, they figure they're going to need food and water more than anything else. They buy provisions and leave their stuff for me to hold. If you want to check it out, it's in the back room there."

It took him two tries to lever himself out of the chair. Going with a rolling, stiff-ankled walk, he preceded me into the room and pointed out the possessions of other Cradles scattered w.i.l.l.y-nilly among crates of canned goods and stacks of bottled water and beer: discarded packs, clothing, notebooks, and the usual personal items. Copies of The Tea Forest The Tea Forest could be seen poking out from this mess, as ubiquitous as Lonely Planet guides in a backpacker hotel. I squatted and began leafing through one of the notebooks. The handwriting was an approximation of my own, and the words . . . The notebooks were a potential gold mine, I realized. If this one were typical of the rest, I could crib dozens of stories from them, possibly a couple of novels. It struck me anew how odd all this was, to be seeking clues to a mystery by poring over journals that you yourself had written . . . or if not quite you, then those so close to you in flesh and spirit, they were more than brothers. Intending to make a comment along these lines, I half-turned to the fat man and caught a blow on the head that drove splinters of light into my eyes and sent me pitching forward on my stomach into a pile of clothing. If I lost consciousness, it was for a second or two, no more. Woozy, my face planted in a smelly T-s.h.i.+rt, I felt him patting down my pockets, pulling out my wallet, and heard his labored wheezing. My right hand was pinned beneath me, but I was able to slide my fingers down until I could grip the Colt and, when he flipped me onto my back, I aimed the gun at the blur of his torso-my vision had gone out of whack-and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. My finger was outside the trigger guard. He grabbed the barrel, tugging and jerking at the Colt, grunting with effort, dragging me about, while I hung on doggedly, trying to fit my finger into the guard. could be seen poking out from this mess, as ubiquitous as Lonely Planet guides in a backpacker hotel. I squatted and began leafing through one of the notebooks. The handwriting was an approximation of my own, and the words . . . The notebooks were a potential gold mine, I realized. If this one were typical of the rest, I could crib dozens of stories from them, possibly a couple of novels. It struck me anew how odd all this was, to be seeking clues to a mystery by poring over journals that you yourself had written . . . or if not quite you, then those so close to you in flesh and spirit, they were more than brothers. Intending to make a comment along these lines, I half-turned to the fat man and caught a blow on the head that drove splinters of light into my eyes and sent me pitching forward on my stomach into a pile of clothing. If I lost consciousness, it was for a second or two, no more. Woozy, my face planted in a smelly T-s.h.i.+rt, I felt him patting down my pockets, pulling out my wallet, and heard his labored wheezing. My right hand was pinned beneath me, but I was able to slide my fingers down until I could grip the Colt and, when he flipped me onto my back, I aimed the gun at the blur of his torso-my vision had gone out of whack-and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. My finger was outside the trigger guard. He grabbed the barrel, tugging and jerking at the Colt, grunting with effort, dragging me about, while I hung on doggedly, trying to fit my finger into the guard.

Everything moved slowly, as if I were trapped beneath the surface of a dream. I recall thinking what a dumb son of a b.i.t.c.h he was not to knock my arm aside and use his weight against me; and I had other thoughts as well, groggy, fearful thoughts, a dull wash of regrets and recriminations. And I realized I should have known from the disorderly state of the various Cradles' possessions that the fat man was not holding them in safekeeping, that he had simply emptied their packs on the floor while going through them, and the men whose lives they represented were probably adrift in the ca.n.a.l . . . and then my finger slipped inside the guard. There was a blast of noise and heat and light, a searing pain in my hand, and two screams, one of them mine.

My eyes squeezed shut, clutching my wrist; it was all I could do at first to manage the pain. I knew the Colt had exploded, and my sole concern was the extent of my injuries. Though it bled profusely, the wound seemed minor-the explosion had sliced a chunk out of the webbing of skin between my forefinger and thumb. My ears rang, but I soon became aware of a breathy, flutelike sound and glanced at the fat man. He lay sprawled among his victims' dirty laundry, head and shoulders propped against a crate, staring at me or, more likely, at nothing, for his eyes did not track me when I came to a knee; he continued to stare at the same point in s.p.a.ce, whimpering softly, his pinkish complexion undercut by a pasty tone. He, too, was clutching his wrist. His hand was a ruin, the fingers missing, except for a shred of the thumb. With its scorched stumps and flaps of skin, it resembled a strange tuber excavated from the red soil of his belly. His lower abdomen was a porridge of blood and flesh, glistening and shuddering with his shallow breaths-it appeared that swollen round ma.s.s was preparing to expel an even greater abomination from a dark red cavity in which were nested coils of intestine. I'd never seen anyone's guts before, and though it was a horrid sight, the writer in me took time to record detail. Then his sphincter let go, and revulsion overwhelmed me.

I staggered to my feet and spotted Bian frozen in the doorway, watching the fat man die with a look of consternation, as if she had no idea how to handle this new development. Dizzy, my head throbbing, I stepped over the fat man's legs. I could do nothing for him; even had there been something, I wouldn't have done it. Bian had retaken her chair in the front room and was fingering her 45s, the image of distraction. I sat opposite her, removed the first-aid kit from my pack, and cleaned my wound with alcohol. A thought occurred to me. I pulled out my English-Vietnamese dictionary and found the word for key.

"Danh tu?" I said, pointing to her chain. I went through several variant p.r.o.nunciations before she grasped my meaning. She said something in Vietnamese and mimed plucking something from a hip pocket.

"Okay, I get." She made a keep-cool gesture. "I get."

I bandaged my hand, and as I secured the bandage with tape, the fat man, emerging from the safe harbor of shock, began pleading for G.o.d's help, babbling curses, lapsing now and again into a fuming noise. Bian selected a record, fitted it onto the spindle, and his outcries were buried beneath the strings and fauxpomp of "MacArthur Park." The music started my head to pounding, but it was preferable to hearing the fat man groan.

The sky had opened up, and rain was falling, a steady downpour that would last a while. I saw no reason to hang around. I repacked my rucksack and nodded to Bian, who responded in kind and gazed out the door, tapping a finger in time to the beat. As I walked down a weedy slope toward the park ranger's shack, I could find in myself no hint of the profound emotion that was supposed to come with taking a life, with having violated this most sacrosanct and oft-breached of taboos, and I pondered the question of whether I would feel the same if I had killed a non-Cradle. I'd had a bond of sorts with the fat man, yet I had a minimal reaction to his death, as if the life I'd taken were mine by rights, thus negligible . . . though he might not be dead. Another song, "Nights In White Satin," began to play, presumably to drown out his cries; yet I thought Bian might be unmindful of his condition and was simply luxuriating in the lush, syrupy music that she had taken refuge in during her months of enslavement. I marveled at the calmness she displayed upon exchanging captivity for freedom. Perhaps it was an Asian thing, a less narcotized appreciation of what Riel had known: Someone was always using you, and thus freedom and captivity were colors we applied to the basic human condition. Perhaps what was a clich' in our culture bespoke a poignant truth in hers.

Writers tend to romanticize the sordid. They like to depict a junkie's world, say, as edgy, a sc.r.a.ped-to-the-bone existence that permits the soul of an artist to feel life in his marrow and allows him to peer into the abyss. Many of them believe, as did Rimbaud, or at least tout the belief, that derangement of the senses can lead one to experience the sublime; but for every Rimbaud there are countless millions whose senses have been deranged to purely loutish ends, and I am inclined to wonder if le poete maudit le poete maudit achieved what he did in spite of drugs and debauchery, not because of them. Whatever the case, I was convinced, thanks in part to the example set by my gargantuan pod brother, that the sordid was merely sordid. I might be disagreeable and sarcastic, but my efforts to bring forth my inner Cradle had been pretty feeble: kinky s.e.x and a smattering of mean-spirited thoughts. Those were minor flaws compared to murder and enslavement. If the trait for which the "animal" needed us had anything to do with our innate repulsiveness, that might explain why I felt its call less profoundly than the others. achieved what he did in spite of drugs and debauchery, not because of them. Whatever the case, I was convinced, thanks in part to the example set by my gargantuan pod brother, that the sordid was merely sordid. I might be disagreeable and sarcastic, but my efforts to bring forth my inner Cradle had been pretty feeble: kinky s.e.x and a smattering of mean-spirited thoughts. Those were minor flaws compared to murder and enslavement. If the trait for which the "animal" needed us had anything to do with our innate repulsiveness, that might explain why I felt its call less profoundly than the others.

It was midafternoon when I set out for the tea forest in a motor launch left by (if the fat man were to be believed) one or another returning Cradle, with the rain falling hard, drenching my clothes, and the sky as dark as dusk. Rain pattered on the launch, hissed in the reeds, and had driven to roost the birds that-so my guidebook attested-normally stalked the wetlands. I followed a meandering watercourse through marshes toward a dark jumbled line in the distance. My head was bothering me. I felt cloudy, vague, gripped by a morose detachment, and a.s.sumed I had suffered a mild concussion. Images of Kim, of Lucy and Riel (most of them erotic in nature), were swapped about in my head, as were concerns about the new novel, about my health, about what would happen now that the end of the journey was at hand, and a belated worry that Bian would report me for killing her captor. However, as I drew near the forest, a feeling of glory swept over me. I was on the brink of doing something n.o.ble and essential and demanding self-sacrifice. The feeling seemed to come from outside myself, as if-like mist-it surrounded the forest in drifts through which I was pa.s.sing, emerging now and again, returning to my confused state.

At the verge of the forest, I cut the motor and glided in, catching hold of a trunk to stop myself. The melaleuca tea trees (there must have been thousands, their lovely fan-shaped crowns thick with leaves, extending as far as the eye could see) were between twenty and thirty feet high, and I estimated the depth of the water to be about four feet, lapping gently at the trunks. They cast an ashen shade and formed a canopy that s.h.i.+elded me from the worst of the rain. A smell of decomposition fouled the air-I wrapped a T-s.h.i.+rt about the lower half of my face to reduce the stench. Peering through the gloom, I spotted other boats, all empty, and bodies floating here and there, bulking up from the dark gray water, their s.h.i.+rts ballooned taut with ga.s.ses. The trees segmented my view, offering avenues of sight that were in every direction more or less the same, as if I were trapped in some sort of prison maze.

I restarted the motor and had gone approximately two hundred yards into the forest when I noticed a thinning of the trees ahead and a paling of the light that might signal a clearing; but I could not discern its extent or anything else about it. The bodies that islanded the water near the boundary of the forest were absent here, and this gave me; pause. I cut the engine again and surveyed the area, I could discern no particular menace, yet I had an apprehension of menace and reacted to every sound, jerking my head this way and that. Unable to shake the feeling, I decided a retreat was in order. I swung the boat around and was about to restart the engine, when I spotted a gaunt, bearded man sitting in the crotch of a tree.

At first I wasn't sure the figure was not a deformity of the wood, for his hair and clothing were as gray as the bark of the tree, and his skin, too, held a grayish cast; but then he lifted his hand in a feeble salute. He was lashed in place by an intricately knotted system of rags that allowed him a limited range of motion. His features were those of a Cradle, yet whereas the Cradles I had met with previously were of the same approximate age as me, he appeared older, though this might have been the result of ill usage. "How's it going?" he asked. His voice, too, was feeble, a scratchy croak. I asked why he had lashed himself to the tree.

"If I were you I'd do the same," he said. "Unless you're just going to turn around and leave."

I let the boat come to rest against the trunk of a tree close to his.

"Seems a waste," he said. "Coming all this way and then not sticking around for the show."

"What show?"

He made an elaborate gesture, like a magician introducing a trick. "I don't believe I could do it justice. It's something you have to see for yourself." He worked at something caught in his teeth. "I think this'll be my last night. I need to get back to Phnom Penh."

Nonplussed, I asked why he hadn't gone farther into the forest.

"I'm not a big believer in an afterlife."

"So you're saying the ones who continue on past this point, they die?"

"Questions of life and death are always open to interpretation. But yeah . . . that's what I'm saying. There's two or three hundred of us left in the forest. Some cross over every day. They're half-crazy from being here, from eating bugs and diseased birds. Stuff that makes your insides itch. They finally snap." He glanced toward the clearing. "It's due to start up again. You'd better find something to tie yourself up with. What I did was strip clothes off the corpses."

"I've got something."

I secured the launch to the trunk. The crotch of the melaleuca was no more than a foot above water level and, once I had made myself as comfortable as possible, I removed the coil of rope from my pack. The man advised me to fas.h.i.+on knots that would be difficult to untie and, when I asked why, he replied that I might be tempted to untie them. His affable manner seemed sincere, but we were no more than fifteen feet apart, and my visit with the fat man had made me wary. I kept the knots loose. Once settled, I asked the man how long he had been in the forest.

"This'll be my fifth night," he said. "I was going to stay longer, but I'm almost out of food, and my underwear's starting to mildew. I want to leave while I'm still strong enough to top off that fat f.u.c.k in Phu Tho."

"I wouldn't worry about him."

"Oh, yeah?"

"I dealt with him," I said, wanting to give the impression of being a dangerous man.

"He tried something with you?"

"I didn't give him the opportunity."

I asked if he lived in Phnom Penh, and as the light faded, he told me he operated a small business that offered tours catering to adventure travelers interested in experiencing Cambodia off the beaten path. He went into detail about the business, and although his delivery was smooth, it seemed a rehea.r.s.ed speech, a story manufactured to cover a more sinister function. I let on that I was also a businessman but left the nature of the business unclear. Our conversation stalled out-it was as if we knew that we had few surprises for the other.

The rain stopped at dusk, and mosquitoes came out in force. I hoped that my faith in malaria medication was not misplaced. With darkness, a salting of stars showed through the canopy, yet their light was insufficient to reveal my neighbor in his tree. I could tell he was still there by the sound of his curses and mosquito-killing slaps. I grew sleepy and had to struggle to keep awake; then, after a couple of hours, I began to cramp, and that woke me up. I asked how much longer we had to wait.

"Don't know," the man said. "I thought it would be coming earlier, but maybe it won't be coming at all. Maybe it's done with us."

Irritated, I said, "Why the h.e.l.l won't you tell me what's going on?"

"I don't know what's going on. I've got some ideas, but they're pretty d.a.m.n crazy. You seem stable, a lot more so than most of the pitiful b.a.s.t.a.r.ds left out here. What I was hoping was for you to give me your take on things and see if it lines up with mine. I don't want to predispose you to thinking about it one way of the other. Okay?"

"The fat guy, he said he thought that whatever it is-the animal, he called it. He thought the animal wanted our help because the Cradles were bada.s.ses."

"Could be. Though I wouldn't say bada.s.s. Just plain bad. Rotten." I heard him s.h.i.+fting about. "Wait and see, all right? It shouldn't be much longer."

I spent the next hour or thereabouts hydrating and rubbing cramps out of my legs. One night of this, I told myself, was all I was going to take. The cramps abated, and I began to feel better. However, my mind still wasn't right. I alternated between alertness and periods during which my thoughts wandered away from the forest, wis.h.i.+ng I had never left home, wis.h.i.+ng Kim was there to steady me with her cool rationality, wis.h.i.+ng that we could make a real family and have babies, wondering if I would see her again, not because I felt imperiled and believed I might not survive the tea forest but because of my commitment-phobic character and faithless heart. It was in the midst of this reverie that the man in the tree beside me said, "Here it comes."

I could see no sign of "it," only darkness and dim stars, and asked in which direction he was looking and what he saw.

"Don't you feel that?" he asked.

"Feel what?"

The next moment I experienced a drowsy, stoned sensation, as if I had taken a Valium and knocked back a drink or two. The sensation did not intensify but rather seemed to serve as a platform for a feeling of groggy awe. I saw nothing awe-inspiring in my immediate surrounding, but I noticed that the darkness was not so deep as before (I could just make out my neighbor in his tree), and then I realized that this increased luminosity, which I had a.s.sumed was due to a thinning of mist overhead, was being generated from every quarter, even from under the water-a faint golden-white radiance was visible beneath the surface. The light continued to brighten at a rapid rate. In the direction of the clearing, the trees stood out sharply against a curdled ma.s.s of incandescence and cast shadows across the water. I began to have some inner ear discomfort, as if the air pressure were undergoing rapid changes, but nothing could have greatly diminished my concentration on the matter at hand. It appeared the forest was a bubble of reality encysted in light-light streamed from above, from below, from all the compa.s.s points-and, as its magnitude increased, we were about to be engulfed by our confining medium, by the fierce light that burned in the clearing, a weak point in the walls of the bubble that threatened to collapse. Filamentous shapes that might have been many-jointed limbs materialized there and then faded from view; bulkier forms also emerged, vanis.h.i.+ng before I could fully grasp their outlines or guess at their function . . . and then, on my left, I heard a splas.h.i.+ng and spotted someone slogging through the chest-deep water, moving toward the clearing at an angle that would bring him to within twenty or twenty-five feet of my tree, reminding me of the man portrayed on the cover of The Tea Forest The Tea Forest. As the figure came abreast of the tree, I saw it was not a man but a woman wearing a rag of a s.h.i.+rt that did little to hide her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and with hair hanging in wet strings across features that, although decidedly feminine, bore the distinct Cradle stamp. She pa.s.sed without catching sight of me.

What prompted me to attempt her rescue, I can't say. Perhaps a fragment of valorous principle surfaced from the recesses of my brain and sparked sufficiently to disrupt my increasingly beatific mood. More likely, it was the desire to learn what it would be like to (essentially) f.u.c.k myself-would I prove to be a screamer or make little moans? Or perhaps it was the beatific mood itself that provided motivation, for it seemed to embody the concept of sacrifice, of giving oneself over to a higher purpose. I undid the knots that bound me to the tree and jumped down and went splas.h.i.+ng after her. She heard me and wheeled about, and we stared at one another. The light had grown so intense that she was nearly cast in silhouette. Dirt was smeared across her brow and cheeks and neck. She had a wild, termagant look.

"I won't hurt you," I said, hoping to gentle her. "I promise. Okay?"

Her expression softened.

"Okay?" I came a step forward. "I want to help. You understand?"

She brought her right hand up from beneath the water and lunged toward me, slas.h.i.+ng at my throat with a knife. She had me cold, though I saw it at the last second and tried to duck . . . but she must have slipped. She fell sideways, and I toppled backward. The next I knew, we were both floundering in the water. I locked onto her right wrist, and we grappled, managing to stand. Turned toward the source of that uncanny light, she hissed at me. Droplets of water beaded her hair and skin. They glowed like weird, translucent gems, making her face seem barbarous and feral. Her naked b.r.e.a.s.t.s, asway in the struggle, were emblems of savagery. She kneed me and clawed and, whenever our heads came together, she snapped at my cheek, my lip; but I gained the advantage and drew back my fist to finish her . . . and slipped. I went under, completely submerged, and swallowed a mouthful of that stew of filth and decomposition. When I bobbed back up, I found her standing above me, poised to deliver a killing stroke. And then there was a flat detonation, blam blam, like a door slamming in an empty room. Blood sprayed from her elbow, and she was spun to the side. She staggered and screamed and clutched her arm, staring up into the tree to which the gaunt man was secured-he was aiming a snub-nosed pistol. Cradling her arm, the woman began to plough her way toward the clearing, hurrying now, glancing back every so often. I clung to a trunk and watched her go. The man made some comment, but my ears were still blocked by the changes in air pressure, and I was too disoriented to care what he said.

The forest brightened further, and the light around me gained the unearthly l.u.s.ter favored by artists of the late Italian Renaissance that you sometimes get when the afternoon sun breaks through storm clouds, and the break widens and holds, and it appears that everything in the landscape has become a radiant source and is releasing a rich, spectral energy. Close by what I presumed to be the edge of the clearing, the trees-both their crowns and trunks-had gone transparent, as if they were being irradiated, s.h.i.+fted out of existence. As the woman approached these trees, a tiny dark figure incised against the body of light, she suddenly attenuated and came apart, dissolving into a particulate ma.s.s that flew toward the center of the light. I could see her for the longest time, dwindling and dwindling, and this caused me to realize that I had no idea of the perspective involved. I had known it was vast, but now I recognized it to be cosmically vast. I was gazing into the depths of a creature that might well envelop galaxies and minnows, black holes, Ch.o.m.olungma, earth and air and absence, all things, in the same way it enveloped the tea forest, seeming to have created it out of its substance, nurturing it as an oyster does a pearl. And this led me to a supposition that would explain the purpose of my journey: Like pearls, the Cradles were necessary to its health . . . and it may have been that the whole of mankind was necessary to cure it of or protect it from a variety of disorders; but for this particular disorder, only Cradles would serve.

I did not reach this conclusion at once but over the course of an interminable night, watching other deracinated Cradles-twenty or more-cross the drowned forest to meet their fate, repeating the transition that the woman had made. The druggy reverence I had earlier felt reinst.i.tuted itself, though not as strongly as before, and I felt a compulsion to join them, to sacrifice my life in hopes of some undefined reward, a notion allied with that now-familiar sense of glorious promise. I believe my fight with the woman, however, had put me out of that head enough so that I was able to resist-or else, having nearly run out of Cradles, the thing, the animal, G.o.d, the All, whatever you wished to call it, needed survivors to breed and replenish its medicine cabinet (giving the Biblical instruction "Be fruitful and multiply" a new spin) and thus had dialed back the urgency of its summons.

Toward dawn, the light dimmed, and I was able to see deeper into the thing. I noticed what might have been cellular walls within it and more of the ephemeral, limblike structures that I had previously observed. At one point I saw what appeared to be a grayish cloud fluttering above a dark object-it looked as if one of the lesser internal structures had been coated with something, for nowhere else did I see a hint of darkness, and there was an unevenness of coloration that suggested erosion or careless application. The fluttering of the cloud had something of an animal character-agitated, frustrated-that brought to mind the approach-avoidance behavior of a mouse to a trap baited with cheese, sensing danger yet l.u.s.ting after the morsel. I recalled my opiated vision aboard the Undine Undine , the gray patch that had been chasing after the luminous void-dweller, and I thought the coating must be the blood and bones of countless Cradles reduced to a s.h.i.+eld that protected it from the depredations of the cloud. Soon it pa.s.sed from view, seeming to circulate away, as though the creature were s.h.i.+fting or an internal tide were carrying it off. , the gray patch that had been chasing after the luminous void-dweller, and I thought the coating must be the blood and bones of countless Cradles reduced to a s.h.i.+eld that protected it from the depredations of the cloud. Soon it pa.s.sed from view, seeming to circulate away, as though the creature were s.h.i.+fting or an internal tide were carrying it off.

A deep blue sky p.r.i.c.ked with stars showed among the leaves overhead, the last of the light faded, and I continued to squat neck-deep in the water, staring after it, trying to find some accommodation between what I thought I had known of the world and what I had seen. While I was not a religious man, I was dismayed to have learned that the religious impulse was nothing more than a twitch of evolutionary biology. I could place no other interpretation on the event that I had witnessed. The parallels to the peak Christian experience were inescapable. I was dazed and frightened, more so than I had been in the presence of the creature. My fear had been suppressed by the concomitant feelings of awe and glory, and though I knew it had not truly gone anywhere, that it still enclosed all I saw and would ever see, now that it was no longer visible, I feared it would return . . . and yet I was plagued by another feeling, less potent but no less palpable. I felt bereft by its absence and longed to see it again. These emotions gradually ebbed, and I became eager to put that oppressive place behind me. I splashed over to the tree where I had tied up the boat and began fumbling with the line.

"Hey, brother," said the man in the tree adjacent to mine. "Take me with you."

Anxiety floored the superficial nonchalance of his tone. He still held the pistol, though not aiming it at me. I told him to find his own boat-there were plenty around.

"I don't have the will to leave," he said. "And if I don't leave, that thing's going to get me." He offered me the pistol. "You have to help me. I won't try anything." He laughed weakly. "The shape I'm in, it wouldn't matter if I did."

I knew he had been playing me, that his every word and action had been designed toward this end; but he had had saved my life. I took the gun and told him to bind his hands as tightly as he could manage. When this was done, I helped him down from the tree and into the boat. He was frail, his skin loose on his bones, and I guessed that he had lied to me, that he had been in the forest far longer than five nights. I checked his bonds, settled him into the bow, and climbed in. The man seemed greatly relieved. He pressed his fists to his forehead, as if fighting back tears. When he had recovered, he asked what I thought about things now that I had seen the show. I summarized my reactions and he nodded. saved my life. I took the gun and told him to bind his hands as tightly as he could manage. When this was done, I helped him down from the tree and into the boat. He was frail, his skin loose on his bones, and I guessed that he had lied to me, that he had been in the forest far longer than five nights. I checked his bonds, settled him into the bow, and climbed in. The man seemed greatly relieved. He pressed his fists to his forehead, as if fighting back tears. When he had recovered, he asked what I thought about things now that I had seen the show. I summarized my reactions and he nodded.

"You didn't carry out the metaphor as far as I did," he said. "But yeah, that pretty much says it."

I asked him to explain what he meant by carrying out the metaphor.

"If you accept that our bad character is what makes us useful to it . . . or at least is symptomatic of the quality that makes us useful. Our psychic reek or something." He broke off, apparently searching for the right words. "You saw that gray, swarming thing? How it seemed reluctant to come near the part that was treated? Coated, as you said."

"Yeah. So?"

"Well, given that we were the element holding off the gray thing, and that our one outstanding characteristic is our essential crumminess, my idea is that the animal used us for repellent."

I stared at him.

"You know," he said. "Like mosquito repellent. Shark repellent."

"I got it."

"It's just a theory." He obviously a.s.sumed that I disagreed with him and became a bit defensive. "I realize it trivializes us even more than how you figured it."

I unscrewed the gas cap and peered inside the tank-we had enough fuel for the return trip.

The man chuckled and said, "It's kind of funny when you think about it, you know."

All journeys end in disappointment if for no other reason than that they end. Life disappoints us. Love fails to last. This has always been so, but the disappointment I felt at the end of my journey may relate more to a condition of our age of video games and event movies. To have come all this way and found only G.o.d-there should have been pirates, explosions, cities in ruins, armies slinking from the field of battle, not merely this doleful scene with a handful of Cradles and a glowing bug.

A better writer than I, the author of The Tea Forest The Tea Forest, once said, "After you understand everything, all that's left to do is to forget it." I doubted my understanding was complete, but I saw his point. I could return home and lash myself to a tree and never leave again; I could make babies with Kim and subsume my comprehension of the world, the universe, in the trivial bustle of life. Perhaps I would be successful in this, but I knew I'd have to work at it, and I worried that the images I retained from my night in the forest would fatally weaken my resolution.

During the ride back, the man became boastful. I empathized with this-it gave you a heady feeling to have abandoned G.o.d, to have left Him in His Holy Swamp, trolling for Cradles, and though you knew this wasn't actually the case, that He was still big in your life, you had to go with that feeling in order to maintain some dignity. When we reached Phnom Penh, the man said, I'd be treated like a king. Anything I wanted, be it women, drugs, or money, he'd see I got more than my share, a never-ending bout of decadent pleasures. Could he be, I wondered, the Ur-Cradle, the evil genius at the center of an Asiatic empire, the crime lord before whom lesser crime lords quailed? It was possible. Evil required no real genius, only power, a lack of conscience, and an acquisitive nature such as I had seen at work in the tea forest. Men were, indeed, made in Its Image . . . at least writers and criminals were. Whatever, I planned to put the man ash.o.r.e at the nearest inhabited village and then head for Saigon and, hopefully, Kim.

Another pa.s.sage from The Tea Forest The Tea Forest occurred to me: occurred to me:

". . . He had tried to make an architectural statement of his life after the tea forest, to isolate a geometric volume of air within a confine whose firm foundations and soaring walls and sculptural conceits reflected an internal ideal, a refinement of function, a purity of intent. Though partially successful in this, though he had buried his memories of the forest beneath the process of his art, he became aware that the task was impossible. One journey begat another. Even if you were to remain in a single place, the mind traveled. His resolves would fray, and, eventually, everything he had accomplished and acc.u.mulated-the swan of leaded crystal keeping watch from the windowsill, the books, the Indonesian shadow puppets that haunted his study, the women, his friends, the framed Tibetan paintings, the madras curtains that gaudily colored the bedroom light, his habit of taking morning tea and reading the Post at Damrey's stall in the Russian Market, the very idea of having possessions and being possessed-these things would ultimately become meaningless, and he would escape the prison he had fas.h.i.+oned of them into the larger yet no less confining prison of his nature, and he would begin to wonder, What now? When would the monster next appear and for what purpose? How could he, who had been granted the opportunity to understand so much, know so little?"

It was a dreary prospect that Cradle Two painted, one I chose to deny. Unlike him, I had performed a redemptive act by saving the man-that signaled hope for improvement, surely-and I believed that, with Kim's help, I could shape a world that would contain more than my ego and ambition. I would learn to make do with life's pleasures no matter how illegitimate they were. And if I thought too much about the forest, why then I could write about it. The Tea Forest The Tea Forest need not be a stand-alone book. A sequel might be in order, one that further explored the nature of the animal; perhaps a trilogy, a spiritual odyssey with a well-defined and exalting ending. I smelled awards, large advances. Small things, yet they delighted me. need not be a stand-alone book. A sequel might be in order, one that further explored the nature of the animal; perhaps a trilogy, a spiritual odyssey with a well-defined and exalting ending. I smelled awards, large advances. Small things, yet they delighted me.

The sun was up and the air steamy, baking the weeds and the little houses, when we came to Phu Tho. A putrid stench proceeded from the pale green house where the fat Cradle had died, and the innumerable ruined and stranded boats looked almost festive in the morning light, like the remnants of a regatta at which too good a time had been had by all. We had reached the banks of the ca.n.a.l when I remembered something. I told the man to wait, that I had left certain of my possessions in the fat man's house. He sank to the gra.s.s, grateful to have a rest. I walked back to the house and peeked in the door. Bian had fled and taken her records. I tied my T-s.h.i.+rt about my nose and mouth to cut the smell and steeled myself. It promised to be a disgusting business, retrieving the notebooks of my dead brothers, but I had my career to think of.

NINE ALTERNATE ALTERNATE HISTORIES.

Benjamin Rosenbaum

1. The point of convergence. If any given event may have two subtly different alternate causes, perhaps both may obtain. If history books from two alternate timelines that arrive at the same place have different reasons to tell the same lies, convergence is possible, maybe inevitable.

2. The point of convergence, theological. Perhaps we evolved from apes, from shambling lichen molds, were molded out of corn after the destruction of our elder mud siblings, coalesced out of wishes, lost our way in the unused back service hallways of the fifth floor of a metadepartment store in the dreamlands and took the wrong elevator, were created by a loving G.o.d, were trapped here by an evil demiurge, were banished here to unlearn false ideas, are dreams in the mind of the Red King, made up this game and forgot we were playing it. Or all these at once, and this is the point of convergence, the point at which the histories become indistinguishable, and, as of today, it no longer matters what story we tell.

3. The point of divergence, personal. It's raining now in Freie Stra.s.se. Without moving my head, I see five hundred new white explosions every instant: rain-drops punis.h.i.+ng the dark sidewalk, the dark street, five hundred tiny fists, and then five hundred more. Had I left Starbucks fifteen minutes ago, I would be at the office now. Dry.

We humor ourselves that these decisions matter.

Or else we console ourselves that they don't.