The Other Tree (26 page)

Chris and Luke tramped towards what appeared to be the canyon entrance, a weather-washed opening in the rock which spoke of gushing water and ancient rivers. There were fresh tracks in the sand, suggesting multiple pairs of boots.

He was here
, thought Chris, a tightness gripping her stomach. What would happen if they bumped into each other? At the least, it would be awkward. At the worst…

Chris glanced at Luke as they trod carefully into the canyon, the rocky walls rising around them. Millennia of rushing water had carved away the soft sediment, leaving only the harder deposits of rock. Permutating shades of colour on the rough pillars revealed layers of amber granite beneath the golden sandstone, while traces of dark-blue shale still crusted the surface. Glinting red limestone capped the higher walls, with traces of fossilised sea creatures patterning the surface.

A patch of shadow on a nearby wall caught Luke’s attention. About two metres from the ground, a symbol had been carved deep into the stone. It was a series of straight and wavy lines, about the size of a shield. Although weathered and stylised, Luke recognised the image.

“Proto-cuneiform,” he murmured.

“Did you say something?” asked Chris, who crouched beside a small, defensive-looking plant wedged between two rocks.

After some wrangling with tweezers, Chris finally managed to pluck off a small sprig, dropping it into a specimen bag. She looked over at Luke, who was leafing through a thick sheaf of photocopied pages. Chris caught the words
Cuneiform for Fun
.

“The words of our fathers…” muttered Luke. “It’s the precursor to cuneiform. I can’t read it.”

“Hey, do you reckon it says something like ‘Duck!’?”

Luke turned slowly to Chris.

“No.”

He turned back to his wad of papers.

“I was just—” began Chris.

She caught sight of another shadowy squiggle on a far wall. She trotted over to it, finding another proto-cuneiform symbol carved into the rock. Something about it triggered a sense of familiarity, like a face you should somehow know, even though it was longer, squarer, and sadder than you remember.

Meanwhile, Luke’s finger ran down a vocabulary list, trying to find something that resembled the pictogram in front of him. His finger stopped at a neat series of lines and wedges. He looked from the printed symbol to the wavy carving on the wall. If you tilted your head and squinted, and maybe went back in time ten thousand years, maybe…

“Back?” murmured Luke.

He turned to look for Chris and spotted her standing further down the path, beside a sloping pillar of sandstone.

“I know this one,” said Chris.

Her eyes traced the furrows, thick as a finger.

“Ti,” said Chris. “In Sumerian, it means ‘life’ or ‘rib.’ Kind of like how, in Cantonese, ‘ma’ can mean mother, horse, numb, or twins.”

“Since when do you read cuneiform?” said Luke. “Because it would have come in handy last week.”

“I just know this word.”

It had been in the study notes for the
Epic of Gilgamesh
, discussing the section in which a goddess took part of the hero’s ‘ti’ and used it to give life to another. There had been some debate among linguists as to whether this had referred to life-force or rib, with most scholars agreeing that substituting the word ‘rib’ here would have been just silly.

“Back and life,” said Luke. “Or back and rib.”

“Back as in ‘Go back from whence thou came?’”

“Back as in ‘I lifted something without bending my knees and now I’ve injured my back.’”

Chris swept her gaze around the smooth, sandy walls. Gritty paths ran like riverbeds around islands of rock. A world within a world. A map within a map

“They’re body parts,” said Chris, concentric circles rippling through her mind.

Head, heart, and spirit.

“We have to find the coordinates using the symbols on the walls,” continued Chris.

Luke looked up at the white-hot sky. It was well past midday, and even with the truck, they weren’t equipped to spend the night in the open.

“We’ll cover more ground if we split up,” said Luke.

“Sure. How about you take the road to certain death, and I’ll head towards a horrible demise?”

“Fine,” shrugged Luke. “Lead the way.”

After close to an hour of winding through sandy gorges, it was actually Luke who found the next symbol. Or rather, what was left of it. Chris stared at the scratched and gouged carving with horror. The symbol had been all but obliterated, with no recognisable trace of what it might have been.

“SinaCorp?” asked Luke.

Chris looked at the ground beneath the symbol. If there had been rubble and sand, it had been blown away long ago.

“More likely the cryptoconservationists,” said Chris.

Human culture, ancient artefacts, would have held no value to them. Only life was worth protecting, and only
some
life, at that. Legacies of language, art, creations of human imagination and inspiration, were just things—constructions of an arrogant culture bent on reckless consumption and self-glorification.

Chris traced her finger along a scraped section of the vandalised carving. They didn’t understand that the human need to connect extended not only across geography, but also through time. Understanding that vivid, full lives existed before you, and would exist after you, gave you a sense of perspective, a sense of meaning.

The next symbol they found had also been destroyed. It had been roughly hewn away, as though with a pickaxe, leaving a ragged hollow in the rock face.

“It could have been any of these,” said Luke. “How many do you think they found?”

Chris’s jaw clenched. Too many.

She looked hard at the symbol, as though she could reconstruct it by sheer will alone. She wasn’t sure where this left them now, without a map, without coordinates, in a canyon the size of, well, a sizeable canyon. And man, was it hot.

Three gunshots suddenly rang out in the distance, cracking through the air and bouncing off the rock. Chris and Luke stared at each other with a mixture of fear and curiosity.

“Do we run towards or away?” asked Luke.

At the same time, they both sprinted towards the gunfire.

* * *

“Formation Zero Nine Seven! Formation!” yelled Docker. “Form a perimeter!”

Bale stood in the pathway, gun drawn, his back to Docker. Emir stood at the other end of the sandy space, weapon raised towards an empty trail. Roman quickly swapped the Argon-L scanner for a shotgun, taking her place close to Docker.

Docker crouched beside Lien, who lay crumpled on the gritty floor of the canyon, a pool of blood seeping into the sand. Large gashes covered her left side and her right shoulder, her body suit ripped open at the thigh. She was pale and shaking, choking as she tried to breathe. Docker gently inspected the wounds, looking grim.

He pulled a small bottle from his jacket, holding the dropper to Lien’s mouth.

“Swallow,” said Docker.

Lien cringed as the colourless liquid dripped through her lips.

“What are you doing?” said Emir sharply.

“Keep your eyes out,” snapped Docker. “Does this look like a training sim?”

Grudgingly, Emir turned back towards the path, gun raised to shoulder height. Roman shadowed Docker closely as he draped a blanket over Lien.

“Move out,” said Docker.

Emir looked sharply from Lien’s shivering body to Docker.

“That’s it?” asked Emir. “We’re not even going to—”

“She’ll be airlifted out,” said Docker.

“When?” demanded Emir.

Docker placed a pistol on the ground beside Lien, then straightened up again.

“You don’t get it,” said Docker. “We get the job done, or none of us go home.”

He turned around and snapped, “Fall in!”

Roman gave Emir a cool look of understanding.
Get the job done
, it said.
That’s why you’re here
.

* * *

The echo of gunshots had died away, and Chris and Luke weren’t sure whether to take this as a good sign or a very bad sign.

“You don’t suppose the conservationists followed us?” said Luke, remembering their arsenal of guns and spiders.

“I guess we’ll find out,” said Chris, peering around another corner.

“Before or after we get shot?”

As the sun travelled lower in the sky, certain parts of the canyon started to give a little shade. Luke took another drag from his bottle of water, feeling it instantly evaporate through his pores. He stopped abruptly as something seemed to flash down a side path, and he pressed himself quickly against the wall. Evidently, Chris had seen the same thing, and had already crouched behind a boulder.

About twenty metres down a curving side trail, Luke could see a scrap of something velvet-black on the ground, obscured by several spires of sandstone. It didn’t appear to be moving. Luke and Chris exchanged a look, then crept carefully into the side passage. As they approached, the scrap of black remained motionless, and revealed itself to be a gloved arm in a black bodysuit. Closer still, and they could see that the arm extended to join a body lying beneath a khaki field blanket. A whip of impossibly silky hair trailed out.

“Lien?” said Luke, kneeling beside the figure.

Chris stared at the scarlet-coloured sand spreading towards her feet.

Luke’s fingers pressed against clammy skin.

“She’s alive,” said Luke, as Chris pulled bandages from her pack.

“What the hell happened?” asked Chris, gently drawing back the blanket to reveal deep gashes through flesh.

“Language,” said Luke distractedly. “Maybe they fought amongst themselves.”

He started to cut away at the shoulder of the bodysuit, peeling it back from the ripped skin. Luke grabbed a roll of bandages and started to wind it firmly around Lien’s upper arm.

“Do you think it got the others?” asked Luke.

“No,” said Chris, quickly dressing Lien’s side wound. “I think they just left her here.”

Lien moaned faintly, trying to open her eyes.

“Don’t move,” said Luke. “You’re going to be okay.”

“You couldn’t tell a kidney from a spleen,” said Lien, her words slurring slightly.

Luke’s mobile phone suddenly started buzzing violently. Lien glared at Luke through groggy eyes.

“You have reception?” whispered Chris.

Luke stared at the phone in surprise and pressed a button.

“Hello?” said Luke.

“Luke,” said Thena, her voice almost drowned by crackling. “You’re in danger.”

“I think that’s been happening for a while now,” said Luke.

“Do you want some privacy?” said Chris, raising an eyebrow at Luke as she cut away the fabric from Lien’s wounded leg.

“They knew SinaCorp were going to the canyon,” said Thena. “They left Bunsen there.”

“Bunsen?” asked Luke.

“She a full grown
Verhkoyanskiy
tiger and very—”
Crackle
. “—rous.”

“You’re dropping out,” said Luke, standing on his toes in the hope that this would somehow improve reception.

“There’s a command—” Crackle. “—to stop—”

Crackling filled the phone.

“Thena?” said Luke. “Thena?”

“—use the command, but for heaven’s sake just get out of—”

There was a burst of static, like a home crowd losing on a bad call. Luke pressed the phone to his ear, closing his eyes in concentration. The ghost of her voice was carried away like a pigeon in a hurricane. There was a sharp beep, and then silence.

Lien tried to move her good arm, wincing as she reached.

“Don’t try to move,” said Chris.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” said Lien hoarsely, gritting her teeth as she reached into her ripped vest. “Damn, this suit cost me two grand.”

With a groan, Lien pulled a bloodied photograph from her vest. She thrust it at Chris with disgust, before letting her arm fall limply back to her side. Chris looked at the creased photograph. It appeared to be a large slab of sandstone carved with pictograms of body parts.

“It’s a map of the canyon!” said Chris.

“Now let me die in peace,” coughed Lien.

Chris looked from the map to Lien.

They had just left her here. They hadn’t even bothered to stop the bleeding.

“It’s some kind of tiger,” said Luke, his gaze sweeping the various tracks leading away from them. “If we stay here, it’ll find us.”

Luke leaned close to Chris, his voice low.

“I don’t know what else we can do for her. We could risk moving her, or we could try to go for help, but…”

It was true, Luke couldn’t tell the difference between a kidney and a spleen, but he had ministered to the dying. And some of them had looked in better shape than Lien.

“Or we could find the Tree of Life,” said Chris.

And nobody dies.

Chris reached into her pack and pulled out several bunches of blue-grey sprigs with scalloped leaves. Luke wrinkled his nose at the pungent odour, watching as Chris covered Lien with the silvery leaves.

“Cats don’t like rue,” said Chris.

Luke bit his lip. He felt that now was not the time to mention they were dealing with a
Verhkoyanskiy
tiger, not Hello Kitty. Chris straightened up, hefting her pack onto her shoulders.

“We’re coming back for you,” said Chris.

“Spare me,” said Lien weakly, her eyes closed.

Chris took one last look at Lien’s limp figure, lying under the blanket, covered in shimmering sprigs. She looked at the map in her hands, orienting it north.

The truth lay within reach, but Luke had never felt so far from Paradise.

* * *

The head and the heart had been easy to identify, although there had been a brief debate over whether it was actually a heart or a badly etched lung. The spirit, however, had been more of a challenge. Luke was convinced it was the pictogram shaped like a bird, whereas Chris believed the “bird” was in fact a uterus.

“I studied biology at uni,” said Chris.

“And I studied pagan divination of entrails and animal sacrifice at the seminary,” said Luke.

“But you didn’t actually do any animal sacrifice.”

“And how many large mammals have you dissected?”

“The organs of large mammals are surprisingly similar to the organs of small amphibians and some crustaceans.”