Across Carina (22 page)

His smile reminded me of Eden’s. It was earnest and peculiar, and it warmed me to my bones. Suddenly I knew that we could trust him.

Sal and I pushed off the ocean floor and followed.

We crossed the village. Everyone who saw us stared. I didn’t understand why. Minutes before, nobody had paid me
any
attention.

As we swam over the clone buildings, I noticed that the largest ones had triangles engraved on their roofs. I wondered if the shape distinguished between the homes and businesses. I didn’t know, and for once I didn’t ask.

Never had I seen so much blue, green, and beige. Even the plants and coral between the buildings blended into disregard. I wondered if the people ever grew weary of the colors. Not that they knew anything different.

Delight flickered within me when a school of orange and yellow fish blurred by, but my emotion went with them.

We swam beyond the village, where the water grew murky in the shadows of oversized plants. My heart beat with trepidation. I was expecting some chameleon-like creature to ambush us from between the leaves. I had adjusted to my tail enough to swim in the direction that I wanted, but I couldn’t bank on my ability to out-swim a predator. I was barely keeping up with Aswin.

A few minutes later, Aswin stopped swimming. The water was so dark that I didn’t know this until Sal and I suddenly caught up with him. He was floating in front of a stone wall that stretched from the ocean floor to the surface. The wall was disproportionately narrow and flanked by two plants that would have put redwood trees to shame.

Aswin sank to the ground. He took one step forward, another step to the left—and vanished.

Baffled, Sal and I swam to where he had been standing. We found a stone slab just large enough to conceal someone. It was positioned only a foot away from the wall, so at a distance it had appeared to be a part of the wall. Directly behind the slab was an opening in the wall, which we squeezed through.

We found ourselves in a cavern. Along the walls were shelves of rock—and they were all occupied. On each shelf there were two to three fish floating. Just floating.

I had never seen stationary fish before, much less hundreds of them. They were staring vacantly through the water, through each other and us. Their fins twitched involuntarily. They were sleeping!

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Sal whispered.

I didn’t respond. I didn’t want to wake the fish from their splendor. They were the most calming and curious sight, comprising a scale of colors. They reminded me of The Mango Sun.

Floating quietly before them with my own fins, I pervaded their sleep. Just by existing together in that moment, that hidden room of tranquility, we formed a shared dream; and in its stillness I became keenly aware of my breathing. I realized that I’d been breathing all my life, and while it seemed so obvious, I had forgotten it until now. The quiet had reminded me that my body worked day and night. There the fish worked to sleep, and I worked to watch them, but work did not mean it had to be painful.

Aswin cleared his throat, and I turned around. He was hovering over an opening in the floor. When Sal and I made eye contact with him, he nodded once and swam through the hole.

We followed him, descending into a room. It was small and round, with a perimeter of stone chairs. As we sat down, our tails retracted—but this time I was paying attention.

I was shocked as I watched my tail withdraw into a flesh band around my waist. I hadn’t noticed the band before. Of course, it was barely bulging. My fin was so lightweight.

I realized that my legs hadn’t been appearing and disappearing, but had been encased in my tail the entire time. It explained why I was still wearing the skirt the woman had given me.

It did not explain why initially I hadn’t just stayed in my clothes from Getheos. I began to ask Aswin about this, but I trailed off realizing that I hadn’t yet mentioned Getheos to our new friend.

“I know you’re not from here,” he said.

“How do you know that?” Sal challenged.

“I know of other worlds,” Aswin said simply. “And you two looked out of place when I found you. You’re the first people I’ve met who are not from here.”

“Well not everyone agrees with you,” I said, “that there are other worlds.”

“We are a divided people,” Aswin said. “No one agrees on who is in charge or who created our planet, if anyone. I know of Cruz—as do some others—but even we disagree on what he wants and asks of us.”

“Like different religions,” Sal said.

“Religion?” Aswin repeated.

“Yeah, how was your family raised?” Sal asked.

Aswin stared. “What is family?”

Sal and I exchanged looks.

“How did you come into existence?” Sal asked.

“I was born from a woman,” Aswin replied.

“Just some woman? You didn’t know her?”

“We are born and sent to the schools.”

“Who feeds the children? Who clothes them? Where do they sleep?”

“The schools. Does this upset you?”

Sal opened and closed his mouth, at a loss for words.

I interjected. “We’re not upset. It’s just that our world is different. We’re from Earth.”

Aswin smiled. “Yes, I have heard of Earth. I would like to visit one day. It is hard for me to see land in my mind. So what is religion? What is family?”

“Those are loaded questions,” Sal said.

I laughed, but Aswin didn’t see the humor. He peered at me, waiting.

“Have you ever had a child?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“Have you ever fallen in love?”

“Love . . .”

He opened his hands like he might find the answer within them.

“How long has Lendon existed?” Sal asked.

“A few hundred years,” Aswin said.

These people have hardly evolved.

I suddenly felt sorry for Aswin and the others, for their lack of basic concepts and emotions. As Aswin began to describe their lifestyle, I realized that if I could have associated an entire world to how I felt when I was floating, Lendon would have been that world.

There were not two species coexisting as I had thought. The people were hybrids. They were more human than anything else, but fit for the water. They could walk or swim at will.

Adults fended for themselves. Children lived in the schools from birth to puberty. The teachers’ dedication to their students sounded reminiscent of love, but Aswin said it was duty.

The people conceived only to maintain their population. There were no relationships, so sex was a onetime thing. Since love and hate were not understood, emotions seemed generally scarce.

Lendon had four suns that gave endless light. The people slept, but dark nights did not exist. The suns were far away in Carina as to not overheat the planet.

The people lived off the plants and fish caught with their spears. Aswin didn’t seem to understand the irony in them eating fish. They were even less evolved than I had thought.

When I asked about sharks, Aswin looked confused. He didn’t understand my use of the word “predator,” so I tried “bad animals” and then “bad people.”

He said that there were bad people on Lendon. He spoke about a group that traveled from village to village brainwashing the inhabitants and sometimes taking prisoners. They used the divergence over Cruz to their advantage, claiming that if he lived he would not allow confusion in the hearts of his people. The group meant to sway everyone into disbelief, and Aswin sensed their imminent arrival.

He knew a lot for someone in a new world. I considered that he was delusional or one of the brainwashers himself; yet he seemed too simple for that.

“Well I really need for Cruz to exist,” I said. “We need to talk to him.”

Aswin’s eyes widened at my request.

“You do?” he asked.

Sal and I briefly detailed our travels to Aswin. We explained that we had to contact Cruz in order to reach El. Aswin quieted and glanced at the hole in the ceiling. He whispered that he had spoken to Cruz before. I looked at Sal, my head barely shaking.

“It’s true,” Aswin said. “I never saw him, but I did talk to him.”

“What did he say?” I asked.

“That I should wait for further instruction. I think he’s going to tell me about the group that’s coming.”

“He instructed you to wait for instruction?”

“Why would I lie?” Aswin asked. “I gain nothing from telling my story. Those I’ve told it to think I’m a fool. But I keep telling it, because it’s true.”

It was then that I realized the stares we had received while crossing the village had been aimed at Aswin and not at Sal and me.

“People on Earth lie all the time about having visions,” I said.

Sal whipped his head around at me.

“You might be referring to cult leaders,” he said. “Aswin doesn’t appear to be leading a cult.”

“Cult?” Aswin asked, but Sal steered the topic elsewhere.

We didn’t speak any more of Cruz. We lingered in the cavern awhile, making small talk, before we swam to Aswin’s house. Even after my insinuation, he was kind enough to offer his spare room to Sal and me for the night.

One night bled into three. Sal spent his time latched onto Aswin, questioning him about Cruz. I kept my distance. Aswin’s stories terrified me, and I worried about trusting anyone on Lendon.

On my first morning alone, I swam past the village to the cavern of sleeping fish. I found an empty shelf and took refuge in the fish’s dreams, where the only concerns were what to eat and how to survive.

Lendon was like these fish—devoid of relationships, love, religion, and all else that was messy. On that shelf my mind was lovely and uncomplicated for just a moment.

But then my thoughts magnified on my breathing. I remembered that my body was always working, whether or not I was conscious of it. I realized that maybe for a fish, something so much smaller than me, breathing
was
a conscious effort, and that its constant search for food and safety was an obstacle as great as my own. An obstacle like losing . . . wait . . . I had forgotten his name.

My brother. What’s his name?

Deep within myself, I had managed to lose my outer shell. I had burrowed so far that I couldn’t see my own life—who I had been or who I was becoming. I was simply a breather made of flesh and bone, no better than the fish.

I left my shelf. There was a fish waiting for it anyway. It was a small, blue fish, hard to see in the water. I almost swam into it, but the unusual movement of its fin caught my eye. Up and down, up and down—it was waving at me!

I burst into tears. I pushed out of the cavern so quickly that the kind fish was smacked against the wall.

On my way back to the village, fear wedged into me. Aswin had dismissed the idea of sharks, but I knew he wasn’t omniscient. Lendon was a young world, and like any other, sure to be brimming with the unknown. There was no telling how many creatures were lying in wait, there in the foggy water.

My limbs began to prickle, to fall asleep. My mind was tiring, too. And suddenly breathing became difficult. I could feel it. It was a conscious effort, working up my thoughts and eyes.

In a second, the jaws of an eel were gaping at me. I didn’t know if it was real. I leaned back and slapped the eel with my tail, but it was strong. It coiled around me, compressing my stomach—forcing my flesh into my rib cage.

We collided on a jagged rock that carved into me. Physically pressured from all sides, I writhed in the eel’s grasp. I was going to explode. I was going to burst into countless pieces, never to reassemble. For if even one piece of me were devoured by the eel, then I would be lost. Lendon would claim my soul.

I saw my choices: simplicity without emotion or complexity with the richness of life. I wouldn’t decide right away; I needed time.

I pushed off the rock and grabbed the eel’s head, twisting it off. It fell in the sand. Then I darted through the gray toward the village.

For the next two days, I wandered the village and practiced the use of my tail. I could swim well back and forth, but I struggled to move up and down. Just as I had during my rock climb on The Mango Sun, I used my arms too much.

I met a few teenage girls. They were floating behind some rocks, laughing at a group of men and women in a circle. When I asked what was going on, they said that the men and women were worshipping Cruz.

It was a form of worship I hadn’t seen before. It was slow and unenthused—public for all to see. There, just outside of someone’s house, five men and five women were moving clockwise in a slow two-step around a simple, blue flower. On the outskirts of the circle, people were chanting. They clapped with every other word.

“Cruz lives. We know. Cruz lives. We know.”

It was the closest form of community I’d seen on Lendon.

“I don’t thank people I can’t see,” one of the teenage girls quipped. “If this god wants thanks, then he should show himself. I never asked my teacher for food and then ran away. Who would she have given the food to?”

I cringed at her comparison. It lacked sense, just like the rest of the planet. I didn’t understand how these girls could show disdain for others—how there could be hate, but not love.

“That woman is so fat,” another of the girls said. “I wonder how big her tail is.”

“Which one?” asked the third.

“Her name is Delora,” answered the first. “I saw her talking to Aswin the other day.”

All three girls laughed and scrunched their noses. They were as ugly as pigs.

I picked Delora right out of the group. Her neck, stomach, and thighs were one bulging mass. She was dancing slower than anyone else, but she was smiling.

Briefly the men on either side of her paused, and she circled them in the figure of an eight. When she returned to her place in the circle, the group resumed dancing.

After a minute, she inched her hand toward the man on her right. It was a timid, but clear gesture. Although the man didn’t respond, his eyes begged to know her intention. His interest was obvious to me, but not to Delora. She let her hand fall and looked away.