Wonders of a Godless World Read online

  4

  But even though the foreigner was now safely isolated and confined in his cell, the orphan couldn’t put him out of her mind.

  Why that should be, she didn’t know. For all his mystery, he was just another patient, one of dozens that she had to attend to in her rounds. Among them were inmates she’d known for years, inmates who talked to her and laughed with her; inmates who played hide and seek with her when it was shower time, who loved to play in the mud when it rained, who did a thousand interesting things that the foreigner didn’t; inmates she liked and inmates she hated. But at the end of each evening, as she lay in her bed, the only face that came into her thoughts was his.

  True, she spent considerable time with him. Someone had to spoonfeed him his mush and give him water. Someone had to change his sheets, and sponge his body down, and wrestle him into a wheelchair for toilet trips. If the nurses were busy—and they were always busy—many of those tasks fell to the orphan. Indeed it seemed that most of the tasks involving the foreigner fell to her. But that didn’t explain her fixation. She dealt every day with patients who were likewise unconscious, and sad as it might be, such inmates were little more than bodies to her—an anonymous collection of mouths and bowels and bladders that merely needed to be fed and cleaned up after.

  The foreigner was different. From the moment she entered his cell, bent on one chore or another, she was aware of him—in the same way that she might be aware of a spider sitting high in a corner, one of the big hairy jungle spiders that came into the wards sometimes. It was not that the spiders were a threat, they weren’t poisonous, but they made her uneasy, and she always knew if one was there. It was the same with the sleeping man.

  He was no physical danger. She’d already proved that to herself. He was naked in the bed, and while changing his sheets she had studied him from head to toe. His body was slight and soft and pale—his new skin clean of blemishes—and quite defenceless. She could do anything to him. She had bent his fingers back until they cracked, she had pinched at his nipples, she had even clutched his hairless balls for an instant and squeezed hard…nothing elicited any response. But still, some instinctive part of her remained wary of him, no matter what her reason told her.

  And there was another thing. The vibrations had come back—the buzz against the orphan’s heels, the machine humming far underground, the same tremors that had first appeared on the very day the foreigner arrived at the hospital. They had faded away again on that occasion, but the morning after he was moved to the crematorium, the vibrations returned. Only subtly to begin with, but as the days went by, they grew ever more intense. And even though she could not have explained how, the orphan was convinced that in some way the foreigner was to blame.

  It became so bad she could hardly sleep. Even masturbating did nothing to relieve the tension. Yet she knew too that the buzzing was only imaginary. She studied tubs of water in the laundry, looking for some ripple of confirmation, but the liquid’s surface was always smooth. Crockery on shelves didn’t rattle, neither did windowpanes. Walls didn’t creak or groan. Her bones might twitch, and the earth might feel as if it was crawling underfoot, but everything around her was solid and steady.

  So it had to be madness, and only that. And the foreigner could have nothing to do with it. But then one morning, as the orphan worked with her mop, hiding how frantic she felt on the inside, a nurse came to her with a message.

  It had been arranged, the woman said, that the patients in the crematorium were to be taken outside, to sit in the sun for a while. It would be the orphan’s job, and her job alone, to ensure that the sleeping man joined them.

  The orphan leant on her mop and stared. What was this? Yes, sometimes patients were taken outside for an airing. But it was always done in the afternoon, never in the morning. Moreover, it was only done in fine weather, and on cooler days. This particular morning was hot and humid, and heavy showers of rain were crossing over the hospital periodically. Besides, the other four crematorium patients were free to go outside whenever they liked. They were never taken. They didn’t need to be taken. Who had ordered this? For what purpose? And why had they included the foreigner, when he was supposed to be in isolation?

  But she could enunciate no such questions, and the nurse seemed to think the outing an entirely innocent affair. Indeed, ever since the sleeping man had been shifted, the staff were satisfied that the problems with him were over. The odd behaviour in the catatonic and geriatric wards had ceased, everyone agreed. And nothing unusual had happened anywhere else, not even in the crematorium.

  That was—thought the orphan—until now.

  But she did as she was told. She collected a wheelchair and pushed it through to the foreigner’s cell. The nurse was getting the other patients ready; the orphan could hear her snapping impatiently, and the witch shrieking, and the duke muttering in annoyance. This wasn’t part of anyone’s schedule. But in the little furnace room, cocooned by thick walls, the foreigner waited silently in the dark. The orphan hesitated, feeling the floor buzz under her feet. She could see the gleam of his open eyes.

  It couldn’t have anything to do with him, could it?

  She pulled back the sheet, dressed him in pyjamas, then heaved him from the bed into the wheelchair. It was a familiar enough task, and easier than it might have been. He was not a big man, she was a strong girl, and his arms and legs went where she put them and stayed there. But then in the dimness she thought she saw, very faint on his lips, a momentary smile.

  No. When she looked properly there was nothing. He was not capable of smiling. He would not even know that he was being moved. She pushed him along the hall and out through the dayroom, following the nurse and the others.

  Outside, the latest burst of rain had just passed, and steam was rising from the ground. Blue sky showed through broken clouds. The wheelchair splashed in puddles. They came to an open area next to the laundry, right up against the back fence of the compound, where the jungle reached down from the mountainside, and where a few old wooden benches and chairs were arranged about a concrete slab. It was here that patients were normally taken on fine days, to sit quietly in the sun.

  The absurdity of the whole exercise hit the orphan again. The crematorium patients would never sit quietly. And yet to her great surprise the duke and the witch and the archangel and the virgin all suffered themselves to be led to the benches and chairs. The nurse fussed about them for a few moments, and then—after announcing that she would be back in an hour—she made off again to the wards.

  The orphan pushed the wheelchair to one end of the slab and set it there so that the foreigner was facing all the others. A hot silence enfolded them. Even the laundry had fallen quiet. This was becoming more and more weird. The orphan could feel the vibrations so intensely through the cement that she had to keep shifting her weight from one foot to the other, like a child who needed to go to the toilet. Why were they there? What were they meant to do? Whose idea had this been?

  And then she realised that the four inmates were watching her. No, they weren’t watching her, they were watching the foreigner, sitting in his chair in front of her. They were doing so shyly, secretly, the witch glancing from under her brows, the duke pretending to study the sky. The archangel wasn’t looking in any direction at all, but for once his book lay unopened and unheeded on his lap, his attention elsewhere. And although the virgin’s gaze was as blind and indifferent as ever, her body leant forward, as if trying to gauge the foreigner by sound.

  It occurred to the orphan that none of the four had seen their new wardmate out in the open until now. He had always been alone in his cell, behind a shut door. Naturally they would be curious about him. But this wasn’t natural. She had seen the way inmates behaved when they were curious, especially ones like the witch and the duke. They investigated, they intruded, they intimidated, they poked and prodded and picked fights. They didn’t simply watch in this silent, timid manner.

  Was there a low throb in the air? An u
nheard thunder?

  And then, at last, she saw it. Off to the side of the concrete was a muddy puddle, and the surface of the water was juddering in a series of tiny waves.

  The vibrations—they were real!

  But there was no time for wonder, because a rumbling was suddenly audible, like a hundred trucks driving past the hospital. The ground shook and the orphan, startled, looked up, over the foreigner’s head, to the mountain. She saw that a giant fist of grey smoke had appeared from nowhere and was rising into the sky, and that it came, amazingly, from a high cleft near the mountain’s peak.

  Boom! A great, grinding detonation came rolling down.

  Linkages flared in the orphan’s mind, one after the other. The mountain, that was the answer! That’s where the vibrations had come from all along. They had been a warning of this event. But what was happening? What process? What violence within the mountain was driving it? And with that thought—using her new awareness, sharp and alive, and without even knowing how—she reached out and felt at the earth.

  Sensations filled her head. Pressure. She could detect an awesome pressure, way down below, far beneath the jungle and dirt, deep under layers of rock, at the buried roots of the mountain. Pressure, and heat, and a squeezing, tortured dome of glowing material, boiling and churning slowly. She could picture it down there almost as if the earth was transparent. And above the molten mass were rents and tunnels and cracks in the rock, leading up into the mountain’s heart, filled now with surging steam that roared and rumbled and set the ground trembling, far above.

  A volcano. The word was there inside her suddenly, from where she could not say—a memory, perhaps—but she knew it was the right word for what she saw. Such a terrible thing, and she held it all in her mind, livid and ferocious. Even as she watched, another explosion of steam ripped up through the mountain and blasted, in another boom of thunder, out from the cleft.

  The orphan laughed her croak of a laugh. She could hear frightened shouts behind her, and sensed a confusion of people milling out of the hospital, but she didn’t take her eyes from the volcano. She wasn’t scared. She was exhilarated. All the tension of the last few days was being burnt away. She watched the pillar of smoke rise and rise into the sky. So much energy! So much power! Cracking sounds rang out, and on the edges of the cloud the orphan could see black shapes spinning upwards. Boulders. Chunks of rock. Flying. And people were screaming now.

  Why were they afraid? She studied the boulders as they sailed outwards. She read the weight of each stone, the curve of each arc, and knew exactly where each and every one of the rocks would land. None of them would hit the hospital. They would all fall short. There was nothing to fear. Although one of them…

  The orphan ran forward to the jungle’s edge, and watched as a boulder the size of a table came tumbling down from the darkness above. It seemed it must hit her, but instead it smashed into the trees just outside the fence, exploding a wet slap of wind and leaves and mud across her, plastering her face and clothes.

  Ha! It was wonderful!

  But, ah…too soon, she could see, it was going to end. The pillar of smoke had already lost its upward thrust. The high levels were growing vague, dispersing in the wind, and the lower levels were collapsing upon themselves. Her acute gaze bore into the earth and saw that the rush of gas was spent. The molten dome remained trapped, far down. There was more energy there, yes, but for the moment the mass had merely let off a burst of steam to relieve itself. She laughed again, sadly now.

  The mountain had burped, that was all. It had farted.

  She felt the pleasure drain from her body. Smoke was tumbling in a slow, billowing avalanche down the mountainside. The orphan heard more screams, and wondered why people were so dimwitted. Surely they could see, as she could, how fast the energy of the cloud was dissipating, how it was cooling and slowing, how it would barely reach the hospital. There was no danger.

  Calm, she watched the grey wall come. The jungle was engulfed before her, and then a cloud of ash and warm pungent air settled over the compound. The last rumbles from the mountain died away. Rain began to fall.

  The orphan turned back. The hospital buildings were barely visible through the haze. She could see no one moving there, nor hear anyone. Sounds were muted, by the rain, by the ash. The benches still waited around the concrete slab, and she saw that the duke and the archangel must have both run away. But the witch remained. She was on her knees, staring up towards the invisible mountain, her lips moving soundlessly. The virgin was there too, dazed, crawling on the wet concrete. And the foreigner sat upright in his wheelchair, where she had left him.

  His eyes stared placidly.

  Something stirred in her. She realised that, inexplicably, it was fear. Now, when it was all over, she was afraid. Not of the volcano, but of him. She felt herself drawn reluctantly forward. He had not caused the vibrations, he had nothing to do with the mountain at all. She was certain of that now. And yet…

  Why did she feel that he had known it was going to happen? Why did she feel that he was the one who had arranged it so they would all be outside, ready and waiting for the eruption to begin? It was impossible—he couldn’t even speak, let alone manipulate the staff into doing what he wanted. And yet…

  She stood before him, dripping wet, streaked with ash. He sat immobile in his chair, as wet as her, but unable even to wipe away the mud that was dripping down his face. He was helpless. Dependent.

  Was there a hint of a smile on his lips?

  The orphan got down on her knees to look directly into his eyes. Did they see her? Could they see? She stared into nothingness, then suddenly there was a spark, an instant of connection, and his pupils opened like black pits.

  Now you, girl, said a voice, are a surprise.

  5

  She was falling.

  Darkness was rushing about her, or perhaps she was moving at great speed through the air, the orphan didn’t know and hardly cared. She was too stunned with pleasure, because of the voice. Such a voice.

  For the first time in her life she had understood speech instantaneously. Oh, words had always entered her ears clearly enough before, but always they had then been waylaid by the fog that enveloped her mind, forcing her to strain to discern their meaning. But just this once—the sweet clarity of language. It had been only a single short statement perhaps, but what a dazzling beam of light, cutting through the mist.

  Now you, girl, are a surprise.

  It must have been the foreigner. The voice was his, surely. She had been staring at him, and his gaze had come alive, and he had spoken.

  Except…why hadn’t his lips moved?

  A doubt rippled through her, and abruptly she wasn’t falling anymore, she was standing upright, and she was cold.

  The orphan opened her eyes. The volcano was gone. The patients were gone, the hospital too, and the compound, and the jungle. She was standing on the rocky floor of a long and narrow valley. Naked mountains rose steeply on either side, their flanks grey under a night sky, their peaks capped with white. A shallow river ran noisily beside her, and a freezing wind scudded across the stones.

  She turned a slow circle, her head tilted to the empty slopes. It was all so alien that she didn’t feel afraid. Was she dreaming? Had she fallen over and hit her head? That could explain it. And yet she had never dreamt anything like this before. Her dreams were about the hospital, about places and people she knew, distorted perhaps, and bizarre, but still recognisable. There was nothing she recognised here. She had never known cold like this, she had never seen mountains like these, she had never stood in a landscape so stripped of trees or grass or plantations.

  Perhaps it was her madness, then. She knew what it was when people saw things that weren’t there. The nurses called it hallucinating. But surely hallucinations weren’t like this. Not so concrete. She had weight here, the sharp stones bit at her feet. She heard this place, she saw it and felt it and tasted it.

  But at the same time there was an
unreality too. A distance. She sensed this was not a place that was now. This was not the present.

  Correct, said the voice.

  Her heart lifted. It was the same voice, the foreigner’s voice. And he sounded pleased with her, applauding her instinct.

  This is the past. This is ninety-two years ago.

  He wasn’t there. She was alone in the wasteland. But it was him all the same, and once more the sheer thrill of speech elated her. His voice was the most enchanting thing she had ever heard. It came from nowhere, from all around, it encompassed her. She had felt herself falling into his eyes—so was she inside his head now? Held somehow in his mind? In his memory? No, it had to be madness. She was sick. But it felt so good, when he spoke. His approval was as warm as basking in sunshine.

  Follow the river, he said.

  She walked obediently. He meant upstream, she knew, deeper into the valley, where the mountains crowded together like knives. She waited for him to speak again, but a long time passed and the only sounds were the water and the wind. She tripped on stones, and stared up at slopes so steep and high they made her dizzy. The chill sank into her skin, and slowly, without his voice for company, she did become frightened. How would she ever get back to the green, living warmth of her home?

  She trudged on, shivering. A full-moon shone from above, lonelier than an empty sky would have been. But by its glow the orphan saw eventually that she was following a track—two wheel ruts, thinly worn into the rocks, running along the bank of the river. So people did come here, at least sometimes.