Saltboy

Originally published in Bewildering Stories.

“I knew something was wrong when the gun spit flowers instead of bullets,” said Troy. He was sitting in the grass on a hill overlooking Brahmton, Mississippi. There was a zeppelin drifting overhead like a cloud, blocking out the sun. “Not flowers, exactly,” Troy went on. “Just some green vegetable thing. Turned out that any sudden impact in that version of the world was a catalyst for plant growth.”

“How unusual,” said father Van. He was tall and stooped and covered head-to-toe in a brown fur, thin as a boy’s first beard. In Troy’s old world he had been short, stocky, and bald.

“That’s not even the worst of it,” said Troy, tearing up handfuls of grass, like a child unsupervised, and letting them blow away in the wind.

Father Van gave an animal grunt and sat down across from Troy. “What is the worst?” he asked.

Troy stared down at the priest, and then out over the valley. “Sometimes it’s easy, getting back into things,” he said. “Sometimes not much is different. Here, at least, the sky’s the right color.” He looked up, as if to prove the point, but one of the zeppelin’s was blocking his view. An unfamiliar flag decorated its pellet-like body. Troy had been a pilot for the Air Force back home; it had been the thrum of broken air against his ears that had drawn him to that profession. He figured he wouldn’t have the patience to drive a zeppelin, at the mercy of the wind instead of being its ruin.

“I’m glad that you approve,” said father Van, scratching one of his legs with the other. “But I have two appointments yet this afternoon, and, as I can recall, you have not told me anything that requires absolution. Do you consider harming yourself?”

“No, father,” said Troy. “Do you remember — do you know Deseret?”

“I am not qualified to absolve sexual sins, mister Danagog. Cardinal —”

“It’s nothing like that,” said Troy.

“Then what?” asked father Van. When Troy didn’t answer immediately, the priest stood and brushed dust off his pants.

“You married us,” said Troy, blowing a handful of grass seeds into the wind. Some of them got stuck in father Van’s fur. “Sorry,” said Troy.

Father Van picked out the seeds and crushed them between his fingernails. He gave Troy a look under arched eyebrow. “Should I be apologizing? Are there problems between you and —”

“Deseret. No,” said Troy. “No, I don’t know what is between me and Deseret; I don’t know how much of it there is, either. That first time, with the gun flowers, I stood up, baffled. My muscles were twitching as though hooked up to a current, kinda the way you feel when a spasm jolts you out of a doze, you know. I went out into the kitchen, where Deseret had been making dinner, and found a strange woman there. Deseret was five-foot-nine. This woman was, uh, height-challenged.”

“A runt,” offered father Van. He made a gentle turn and began to walk down the hill in the direction of the steeple. Troy pushed himself to his feet and followed. At their walking pace, they remained always in the shadow of the zeppelin.

“Yeah,” said Troy. “I can’t tell you how strange it felt, right in my skin, and deeper.”

“I’d rather you didn’t,” said father Van. “I am quickly turned to nightmares.”

“Of course,” said Troy; then he laughed. “I’m sorry,” he offered father Van as explanation, though the priest hadn’t seemed curious. “It’s just little things that shock me, sometimes. Not even the fact that you’re covered in fur —” Father Van snorted — “not that there’s anything wrong with that! But it’s that the father Van I used to know sponsored Brahmton’s yearly Romero/Raimi marathon.” Father Van continued on, a minute shrug his only response. Troy caught up to him and buried his mirth. “We were married for a year,” said Troy, evenly.

“What happened?” asked father Van. They had reached the chapel. Troy stood with his hands in his pockets as father Van kicked at a thistle by the door, then retrieved his keys.

“I very nearly died,” said Troy. The chapel was cool and dark.

“The gun,” said father Van, dipping his paw into a font of holy water and making a circular design on his chest.

“It was an accident,” said Troy, dipping his own fingers in the water and making the sign of the cross. “I had been cleaning my pistol — my brother-in-law and I had been down at the range earlier — while Deseret fixed the steaks. She called me to come in and unwrap what was left of our wedding cake, you know, from all that tinfoil.”

“Of course,” said father Van.

Troy got the impression the priest wasn’t listening anymore, but he kept on, anyway. “So I wasn’t done cleaning, and I hadn’t pulled out the old clip, and somehow my thumb slipped onto the trigger, and —” Troy shrugged. “Boom. Flowers.”

“And the runt.”

“Yeah,” said Troy. “It was a boneheaded thing to do, I know. Went out to the kitchen, and nothing was the same. That was a year ago.”

Father Van nodded and disappeared into his office for a moment. Troy sat down on a pew and stared up at the altar. It was made of slat-wood panels painted a marbleized green. On his world, the altar had been white plaster. He thought about how Deseret’s dress had camouflaged her when they stood there to be married, how she had made him forget to blink.

“I have just clapped my hands to be sure,” said father Van, emerging from his office with a book in his hand,”but saw no resultant vegetation.”

“No,” said Troy, shaking off his reverie and standing. “That was in another world.”

“Ah,” said father Van. “I believe you may have chosen poorly to whom you confess.”

“I couldn’t take that world,” said Troy. “Not right off the bat. I went to the bridge, and I swear I didn’t even think about it. I jumped at low-tide.”

“I take it your efforts failed,” said father Van.

“I don’t think so,” said Troy. “I think, in some universe, it worked just like I planned. But I didn’t stay around to see it. Some other poor me got splattered in the mud flats.”

“Thank you for that image,” said father Van. There was a series of shouts from outside, like those of children on a playground. “My next appointment,” said father Van. “Or, I should say, my first appointment.” He put his arm on Troy’s shoulder and steered him toward the door. Just as he was reaching for the handle, the door flew open. There were two figures on the steps; the one holding the door screamed quickly and then covered its mouth. Troy couldn’t tell what gender either of the figures were; they wore the same trousers and loose shirts as father Van.

“I apologize, father Van,” said the one at the door. “Are we early?”

“No, missus Take, mister Take,” said father Van, nodding at them both. “You’re right on time. Excuse me for just one moment. Go on in; I won’t be much longer.” He grabbed Troy firmly by the elbow and escorted him down the stairs.

Once they had passed the Takes, Troy heard a low whisper, like the crack of a whip. It was mister Take. “You need to be more careful,” he hissed. Missus Take responded, but father Van had accelerated and left her words behind.

“Well, mister Danagog, I appreciate your coming to see me,” said father Van. “If you’ll allow me a moment of candor, though, I will say that it is disheartening to see someone maltreat religion as you do, and I do not find it funny.”

“I’m sorry,” said Troy. His lips had a natural curve in the corners, and even when somber he looked as though he were smiling. “I just wanted to talk to a familiar…” he trailed off, searching for the right word. He decided on “Name.”

“I’m glad I could be of service,” said father Van. “But if I leave the Takes unsupervised for very long, they’re liable to swear in the chapel.”

“Wait a sec, father. I do have a confession,” said Troy.

Father Van sighed, and to Troy it sounded like a horse’s neigh. “A direct confession?” asked father Van. Troy nodded. “A confession to be made under the sky, in the sight of God?” Troy nodded again and allowed his natural smile to broaden. Father Van ignored it. “Let’s hear it, then,” said the priest.

“Bless me, father, for I have sinned —” began Troy.

Father Van shook his head. “What is this? I can no more bless you than can you bless me.”

“It’s a custom on my Earth,” said Troy.

“Never mind,” said father Van. He glanced up at the sky. The zeppelin had made a slow curve around Brahmton and now was heading East; it would pass over them again in a few minutes. “What is your confession, my son?”

“I killed a man,” said Troy. Father Van said nothing. “Are you going to call the police?”

“Depending on the circumstances, I may be obliged to,” said father Van. “Though I might sooner call them after waking from a bad dream. Was this also an accident?” asked father Van.

“Nope,” said Troy. “This was on purpose. After the gun and the bridge, I felt like a gag, like some trick pulled on other people. I went to a bar. In this world — the world in which the surface tension of water was enough to gently support my fall — the bars served this stuff that was like syrup, but burned all the way down. I couldn’t swallow it fast enough. I don’t guess I was thinking clearly when I picked a fight with the guy in the corner. I felt like a sick man, like there was bile in my throat. The guy wasn’t doing anything; he was just sitting there with a pint and an open book. I asked him what he was reading, and he said something like, ‘There is a balm in Gilead’. Didn’t even look up. That just pissed me off, like I can’t even tell you. I mean, what was wrong with this planet? No common decency.

“Something was creeping up into my skull, like the syrup had gotten into my blood, and my own heart was pumping it where it didn’t belong. I knocked the guy’s pint away, and then he looked up. He would’ve looked familiar to you — or, no, he wouldn’t have. Not to you. But he did to me.

“‘Father Van,’ I said. ‘What are you doing here?’ He closed his book and said something small; I don’t remember what.” Troy cast his eyes up and to the left and took a deep breath. “His was the first familiar face I had encountered, really. The first time I saw that in a separate universe, a parallel evolution had occurred, and must have occurred in countless other iterations. I say it calmly, now, I know, but the concept — it felt more like fantasy — hit me like some needle sinking through my skull. It was sharp and cold and I wanted to yank it out. I wanted to scrub him out, retribution for doing this to me. I didn’t blame him for the whole problem, just for giving me ideas. I was in no shape for ideas.”

The zeppelin’s shadow crawled down the lane, leaping over kick stones and smoothing down the summer colors. “I did it with my fists,” said Troy. “I beat him to death with my fists, and I hardly even noticed. Like slowly boiling water for a frog, it started out benign. Who could believe he had the power to kill a man with his fists? I mean, look at them.” Troy held out his fists, so they got hit first by the zeppelin’s shadow.

With the sun blocked out, the temperature dropped in an instant. “Wait,” said father Van. “Wait until God can see you again.” The priest stared at Troy, long and unblinking. Troy couldn’t guess his emotion. The zeppelin passed overhead, its only effect intangible. Troy blinked when the sun came out of eclipse.

“You do not belong in this place,” said father Van. Something in his voice was burning. “I can not absolve you of the guilt of murder; to do so would require you to have a contrite spirit, or for me to find you worthy of absolution. Neither are present.”

“Don’t take it personally,” said Troy.

Father Van turned on his heel and strode back toward the church. Troy trailed along behind.

“I need your advice,” said Troy.

“You need nothing from me,” said father Van. “And I wish you would leave. Whatever world you like to live in, it does not overlap with mine.”

“You’re absolutely right, father,” said Troy. “A Deseret is out there, I know, in a world in which everything has evolved the same as on my Earth, except maybe she never met me, or maybe I never took up shooting. But I don’t want her in this place. I prefer my women somewhat more shaved. Truth be told, I really just wanted to see what you were like in this world, if you were in this world, and to apologize.”

“Yes, well, I feel no more dead than usual, so your apology is unnecessary.”

“Not for that,” said Troy. “Behind your back, after our ceremony, I said you had a voice like Tweety Bird would have if he huffed helium. Your neck was a lot shorter in that world. I had to fight not to laugh all through the vows. Until death us do part,” mocked Troy, his voice cracking.

They were at the chapel door. Troy could hear the Takes arguing inside; there was a growl of frustration and then the tinkling of glass. Father Van paused with one hand on the latch. “It seems to me,” he said,”that deliberate actions are much easier to take back than are accidents. The Proverbs say that we must pay in fair measure for that which we take from the world, be it a wife or a loaf of bread. I could grant you a divorce,” the priest continued, opening the door. “But I do not believe I can help you with your loose tongue, nor your other… problems.” He ducked inside before Troy had a chance to respond.

Troy spent a few moments just gazing around at the strange, familiar geography of Brahmton, the hills, the brown fields, the buildings all white and concrete. The town was motionless, playing dead. Everything moved too slowly. Troy watched the zeppelin as it disappeared over the hills, heading toward Florida. He grew tired of standing still before the ship slid out of sight.

“Until death us do part,” he said, squinting up at the sun.

#

There was a desert; there was no wind. The sand was packed hard as glass. No amount of stamping on Troy’s part resulted in a footprint, so he walked uncertain, perhaps in circles, perhaps in a sharp line. Each option seemed equally pointless, after a time. There was no sun; the sky glowed like flesh pressed up against a flashlight, with no point of origin. Red sky in the morning, red sky at night, sailors take warning and sailor’s delight.

After some time, Troy felt his mind cave in, like a star collapsing. The gravity of his brain became unbearable. Memories, most of them caught up in words, tried to escape — he could feel them crawl through his skin — but they never got far. The strongest, the harshest, those born of hardship, made it as far as the open air before succumbing to the pull. Troy wished they wouldn’t try. As they entered the horizon of his thoughts, he heard them all again.

“It is useful as a tool for the purging of guilt,” said father. “This land is my land. It is an active response to a passive sin. We carefully screen our visitors for responses of pleasure. Security is standing by. Would you like to buy a ticket? There are demons to your right.”

#

“God has a great capacity for destruction,” said Haim. He was reclining in the trench, pillowing his head against a chunk of asphalt, drinking coffee out of a looted thermos.

Troy sat nearby, cross-legged, very carefully cleaning his sidearm. He had enlisted with the infantry by way of sneaking into a makeshift barracks at night and claiming an unused bunk. War isn’t hell, he had reasoned. Death is hell, or at least the first step on the path, and war simply a massively efficient means of inflicting death. Death not being much of a concern to Troy, he thought the actual fighting might be kind of fun, and he would get to meet some interesting people.

He had met Haim during an impromptu chapel service in the basement of a besieged office building. Jewish in both ethnicity and religion, Haim seemed always fascinated with the concept of a creator, and spoke of his convictions as though they had been validated by the good Lord himself, perhaps with a large, red, rubber stamp. He was a delight to bicker with. Troy might once have called it surreal, arguing semantics of the pharaoh’s words to Moses while flipping dense-weave protective mats over live grenades, but no longer. Even Dali turned his art to habit.

“It’s man,” said Troy. “Man has the capacity for destruction.”

“God has it in him, too,” said Haim. “He knew about nukes long before Canada made ’em.”

“God’s unstuck in time,” said Troy. “That’s a bad example.”

“If he can imagine it, he might as well have made it,” said Haim.

“First time I saw my wife, I daydreamed what amounted to raping her,” said Troy.

“The feminists would have it that that’s just what you’ve done, if you married the girl.” Haim grinned. His teeth were dark at the gums from chewing on tobacco. “Listen to us, man; we go at it worse than atheists versus agnostics. I didn’t know you had a wife.”

“Yep,” said Troy.

“Where’s she hiding?”

“I have no idea,” said Troy. “I’ll find her sooner or later.” Something about the rumble of the mortars in the distance, and the mutant woodpecker sound of friendly assault rifles, made Troy feel introspective. He finished messing with his gun and set it carefully down in the mud, its barrel pointing away from him. “I think God’s got a great imagination,” he said. “I mean, who’d have guessed that the biggest threat to our nation would have come from Montreal?”

Haim gave him a confused smile. “Well, ever since the French —”

“Where I’m from, I mean,” said Troy. “I’m not up on your history around here.” Haim nodded and chewed thoughtfully on some cud. “That doesn’t just take imagination, that takes a sense of humor. Same kind of humor that puts me in these places that look and sound so familiar. Every time, it’s something I know I’ve seen before, like seeing some nameless actor in a show, and trying for hours to remember what else you’ve seen that he was in. And not one of these worlds has Deseret. It’s kind of sick. Kind of a sick humor. I don’t think it’s getting better.”

Haim swallowed and spit. He held out a leaf of tobacco. “You want some, man? It’ll help you come down.”

“I’m fine,” said Troy.

Something landed in the trench in front of Haim. With the flair of a magician, he flipped one of the mats overtop it. There was a muffled explosion and a few tendrils of dark smoke leaked out from under the mat’s edge. It still didn’t give Haim enough time to think of what he wanted to say, so there was a stretch of silence, or rather, a stretch in which neither of the two men spoke.

“You treat the universe like it’s God’s alone, man,” said Haim. “That’s just depressing. This is our place. You can run for a thousand miles without running into God.”

“Yeah,” said Troy.

“You’ve got to take what you want from the world, because God’s gonna dole it out to some guy who will use it, otherwise. There’s a cliché about it; maybe a parable, too.”

“Yeah,” said Troy. His head was lolling.

“Now you’re just agreeing with me,” said Haim. “You aren’t listening.”

“What?” said Troy, snapping his eyes up.

Haim shook his head and grunted out a laugh. “You, my friend, are a monkey in the classroom. You’ve got all the tools of learning in front of you, but can’t figure how to use them.”

“Are they edible?” asked Troy.

“Look at ’em,” said Haim, rising to a crouch and peering over the lip of the trench. Troy joined him. The remaining buildings looked like rotten teeth; the ground looked as if it had been chewed on. There were bodies, and sections of bodies, lying near craters. Troy started to count the bodies; he may as well have tried to count stars. The repetitive nature of the task made his eyes droop, but his brain kept firing, imagining a new world for each full body.

“I’m not sure I can take much more of this,” he said, more from his brain than his eyes, and sat back in the trench. Further down the line, somebody was shouting orders. A monstrous growl came from across the bleeding gums of the city, quiet at first, but building in a crescendo of some hunger.

“You won’t have to,” said Haim. His head jerked back, his arms forward. He looked as though he were giving a belly laugh. A cone of what looked like chocolate pudding erupted from his helmet, coalesced into individual drops, and plopped into the mud, where they promptly vanished. Haim’s body continued in the direction of his head, sinking against the trench floor. His helmet slipped off. It bounced over to Troy, its momentum deceptive, like that of a rolling cannon ball. Troy reached out to stop it and felt his palm start to bleed. He lifted the helmet and turned it to see what had cut him. A seven-pointed, irregular star had gone nova dead center rear; its points reflected all the light there was to be had.

Somewhere, thought Troy, there is a world in which helmets are made of stronger stuff, or soldiers are. Somewhere, bullets are obsolete and have been replaced with… what? Try as he might, Troy couldn’t imagine what might take the place of bullets. Fists, feet, gases, and more; these tools had already been invented.

#

There was a desert; there was no sun. The featureless sky met the featureless Earth and, had it had any glimmer of intention, it would have dared Troy’s imagination to make something — anything — of the perfect shapes. It was like being trapped inside an Easter egg, painted on the inside by a thin, persistent brush.

Troy had been walking for long enough that he had had to stop and sleep twice, but with no nightfall, no sunup, he couldn’t be sure if he had slept for hours or minutes each time. His bare feet had formed blood blisters, which had popped. Any hope he had of tracking his progress by the red splotches he left behind was sucked up, along with the blood itself, by the insatiable ground. Troy wondered if, next time he lay down, he would, too, be pulled under.

He tried not to sleep after that, instead just sitting and resting his legs when he felt the weariness rising in his bones like radiation. Without the rhythm of his feet beneath him, the voices escaping and falling back into his head were louder and impossible to ignore.

“You are like an ox,” said the man that Troy had never known. “Look at the flag. This land is my land. You march to that flag, and you don’t look at your feet. You hear me? Absolutely. Absolutely. The flag is your wife. You can not walk a straight line. We value your service.”

Troy thought that maybe he should go to sleep, choke himself on the ground, and wake up elsewhere, or right here.

* * *

“You really let yourself go,” said Troy. He had been psyching himself up to it for the entire month since he had found Deseret and first visited her San Diego apartment.

“I’ve been on a diet,” said Deseret. “I love it.”

They were on the small deck her complex afforded Deseret, playing a game that reminded Troy of chess. He had to keep asking her how the pieces moved, but he would have had to do that with chess, too. She had music playing out of her bones, some choral piece that made each turn of the game that much more dramatic, as though staged.

“I used to be able to pick you up in one arm,” said Troy, capturing one of Deseret’s weaker pieces.

“Never,” said Deseret. “Stop trying to fake me out. I’m kicking your ass. Just suck it up.” She grinned. Troy thought that her lips looked like rubber, rubber that nothing ever bounced off of. He sat back and stared at the game board. He wasn’t sure he liked this world. It was a bit like how he imagined heaven would be: boring, flat, bright. Joy may come from selflessness, but satisfaction comes from sin.

“It’s our anniversary,” said Deseret, kicking lightly at his shin under the table.

“What?” said Troy.

“We’ve been going out for two weeks,” said Deseret.

“We haven’t gone out, yet, Des,” said Troy.

“You know what I mean.” She gave him a hopeful smile and, when he didn’t return it, moved her weakest piece. “It was two weeks ago when you — you know —”

“Got drunk,” said Troy.

“No,” protested Deseret. She had a glare like a mother. “When you kissed me.”

“I know what you meant,” said Troy. He made a capture. “It was the same night.”

One piece of music ended. Another began. “I always wanted a boy to pursue me,” said Deseret. “Instead of the other way around.”

“That’s because you’re lazy,” said Troy.

Deseret kicked him under the table again, a little harder this time. “You know what I mean. It makes you feel worth something, because you are to someone.” She put her hand on a piece, moved it, then moved it back to its original square and bit her lip. “I had a secret admirer in college,” she said. “He — I think it was a he — sent me silk roses in the mail. Not a bouquet, never that many. Just one red, plastic rose in my campus mailbox every Wednesday for six months.”

“That’s a lot of money,” said Troy. He had a good move coming up, and was impatient for Deseret to just commit her damn piece to action.

“Then they stopped coming,” said Deseret. “One week, there was one on a Thursday, and then after that, nothing. I was so bummed. Midterms were coming up, and I couldn’t even concentrate on them, I was thinking so much about the smallest things that I had done, trying to decide which one, or string of ones, had stopped the flow of plastic roses.”

“Probably a hidden camera crew; they got bored of watching you,” said Troy. He wasn’t looking at her, but he would have sworn he heard her sad smile; she sighed when she did it, and some reluctant curve of her lips bent the sound just so. She didn’t say anything else.

“I think you’re right,” said Troy. “I’m not sure — the calendars keep changing — but I think it’s been a year.”

“Since when?” asked Deseret. Troy didn’t answer. She began to pout, to push her lower lip out. It looked like a pink caterpillar had settled on her mouth, like she had taken a whorish injection of collagen.

“Put that away,” said Troy. She sort of giggled, and then did it.

“Why won’t you tell me?” she asked him. “What happened a year ago?”

Troy laughed through his nose. A lot about this world seemed funny to him. He thought maybe it was the slapdash similarities between this and his first world; he thought maybe the atmosphere was full of nitrous oxide. “You’re nothing like her,” he said. “She was quiet and she had a laugh like a kitten’s purr. She was a vegetarian, and she hated playing games.”

He stood up and turned away from the board. He faced the city and raised his hands as though presenting it to Deseret. “This — this isn’t a heaven here, with you. This is purgatory, a place where work is rewarded by a diminishing torment. But even I don’t believe that! There’s no circle to the universe, no curve; I could keep going forever and never find my Deseret.”

His voice was a hail of punches, each word its own discrete and weak wound, but compounded, like fists, they had the power to make her bleed; it was like the first gentle, distant rumble of artillery.

“I can’t even pretend,” he said. “You’re fat and ugly and, once I’m gone, you’ll cease to exist. Chew that up.” He shoved away from the game board and leaned on the railing, head bowed. There was nothing penitent or humble about the posture. He was just trying to think of how long it might take him to reach the ground.

Behind him, strings swelled. “I wish,” said Deseret,”that I had a thousand tongues to say, You don’t deserve me.”

“Yeah, well —” said Troy, and he jumped. His eyes were forced shut by the rush of air, the sting of tears. The wind in his ears died gently and he rubbed his sleeve across his lashes, wicking up the water, staining the fabric. He was still standing on Deseret’s deck. The game board was still there. Bizarro Deseret was not.

All right, Troy thought. Who runs this place? A tiny magnet of boredom rested at the bottom of his thoughts, drawing the others down.

#

There was the desert; there was a wind. The hard-packed ground remained unmoving. A light smudge grew on the horizon, like a pool of melted, colorless tallow. The sky’s hot breath went down Troy’s neck, his sticky shirt, his eyes and throat. Particles of dust too fine to see dug into his skin like blown ice, but Troy’s blood burned at the points of contact. He tried walking backwards, but the bare skin at the nape of his neck caught fire and he felt his shirt begin to tear along its seams. He raised his eyes and caught a glimpse of unnatural light on the horizon, back the way he had come. It looked as if it came from a spotlight or a skyscraper.

He made an effort at cursing, but it came out as croaking. He thought that maybe he could run in the direction the wind was blowing, and thereby avoid the slashing of the crescendo storm. He made it four slow steps and then his legs gave out. He pulled his head against his thighs, presenting as little of himself to the wind as possible.

Voices echoed in and out of substance, driven through his skull by the combined forces of the storm and his own gravity.

“I have left five husbands behind,” said Deseret. “And I left them all crying. From one end of this land to the other. I own fifteen percent of everywhere I’ve been. This land is my land. Four of them cried when I left. Big, wet tears in the garden. Too much salt in the water. A bed of roses died. I’ve never been good with plants.”

#

“My god,” said Troy. “This place is incredible.”

“It’s funny,” said Commander Beresford. “That’s the word that everybody uses. First time I bring a guest up here, it’s incredible. I’m starting to doubt my own trustworthiness.” Beresford grinned at Troy, whose muscles were too limp to do anything but gape and slouch. The quick ascent felt as though it had shook his insides to water and pulp. “I’m glad you like it,” said Beresford.

“I remember,” said Troy. He paused for a long moment, his hands on the plexi-glass that separated his body from the vacuum. “Washing out,” he said. “I remember washing out of the program.”

“Physical trials?” asked Beresford.

Troy shook his head. “Two tours, I proved I could handle anything from a chunk of styrofoam on up to the flying villages. Spent four hours in the air on a paper plate, damn it. It was the psychiatric exam,” he added. “Four hours in a chair — they ain’t as comfortable as you’d think — and that was it. Grounded. From space, anyway.”

“And from up here,” mused Beresford, “even the passenger airlines look like slugs.”

“Yeah,” said Troy. “Listen, I really have to thank you for giving me the tour.” There was a wash of hot blood through his forehead and he felt sour liquid crackling through his tear ducts. It wasn’t a reaction he had predicted.

“Don’t mention it,” said Beresford. He seemed to be debating whether or not to sit down. He ended up leaning against the bulkhead, inserting himself into Troy’s peripheral vision. Troy’s eyes had the look of polished ball bearings, damp and heavy. “When you were in the fourth grade,” said Beresford, “did your teacher put your names up on the board?”

“Like,” Troy coughed, “you mean like if we were misbehaving?”

“That’s it,” nodded Beresford. “For my class it was first offense, name on the board; second offense, check mark by the name; third offense, circled check mark; fourth offense, sit facing the corner.”

“Fifth offense?” asked Troy.

“Bull whip to the groin,” said Beresford. “This one day, can’t have been too long before Christmas, I was goofing around, showing off for a girl, and got my name on the board for spitting. Damn near twelve feet, I swear. The threat didn’t bother me; I liked the way my name looked, all slapped up with chalk. So, I keep showing off, rocking my chair as far as it would go. Got the check mark for knocking little Frannie Calico over backward and spraining her finger. Then I got the circled check mark for saying the F-word. That day, I tell you, that day was all mine. Not another name up on the board.” Beresford waited for Troy to smile before continuing. “Fourth offense was me telling Frannie Calico her finger brace looked stupid. I didn’t think saying so was as bad as saying the F-word, but there you have it. The teacher scooped me up in his two big hands and dropped me on a stool with my back to the class.

“It so happened he got me set up right in front of the blackboard. No chalk was in reach, but the felt erasers were both close enough to grab. It was silent reading time, so even the teacher had his head down. I snapped up those erasers and just started beating the hell out of them, against each other. Raised this big old cloud of chalk dust. You like that smell?” Troy shook his head. “It’s one of those smells that some people like, some people don’t, like gasoline,” said Beresford. “Anyway, I looked like a ghost by the time the teacher wrenched those erasers out of my hands. I couldn’t fight him off because I couldn’t see. The chalk dust had drifted right into my eyes. Someone else was sobbing — maybe one of the girls at a desk near me, and the teacher, he said, ‘See what you did? You made her cry’.

“I got sent home. Developed a rash — turns out I was allergic to chalk dust. All over my body, these things like chicken pox itched like the dickens. It was miserable.

“It wasn’t the first time I got sent home, so my parents had a meeting with the principal, who suggested counseling. I spent some time in one of those obnoxiously sadistic chairs you mentioned, age nine, exploring myself. I didn’t get to learn what we found, the counselor and me. He gave the report to mom and dad, so I had to sneak up on them to hear it. Counselor thought I had difficulty adjusting to additional stimuli, that I could only manage one familiar set at a time. Kind of a low-level autism.

“Proved them wrong, didn’t I?” said Beresford, tapping the plexiglass and looking down on Africa.

“It’s incredible,” said Troy. “But I believe it,” he added. He waited through an interval of smile and nod before asking, “Do I want to know about my application?”

Beresford bent his eyebrows into apology. “Not if you’re anything like me,” he said. “Sorry, son,” he went on, hooking his thumbs in his coverall’s pockets. “Wasn’t my decision in the end.”

Troy nodded. He fixed his eyes on empty, sparkling space, which could swallow a lifetime of warm sorrow, freeze it, and render it neutral. “Why,” he said.

“Psychobull,” said Beresford. “You were under serious consideration, I know, but someone — you want to hear this?”

“Yeah,” said Troy.

“Someone wrote that you seemed to have undue difficulty focusing during stressful situations.”

“Didn’t seem to be much of a point,” said Troy.

“I’m sorry,” said Beresford again, though it sounded less like a sentiment and more like punctuation.

“Don’t matter,” said Troy. “Just a childhood dream, you know.”

Beresford knew. He clapped Troy brotherly on the shoulder. “Well, drink it in,” he said. “You don’t have to come down for hours, yet.” He turned to leave Troy alone.

“Sir,” said Troy over his shoulder. “Thank Des for setting this up, would you?”

“She was happy to do it,” said Beresford.

“Thank her anyway. Part of a dream come true, at least.”

Beresford triggered the door open; it gave a mechanical sigh. “Drink it in, son.” The door was silent when it closed.

#

There was a desert; there was the woman. She had two voices, and they sang together, scraped together like the hind legs of a cricket, one against the other, the other against one. The air hummed and she hummed and she provided all the echoes she could need.

Troy stood in front of her, reflecting her song back into her lips. “This land is your land,” she said. “This land is my land.”

She disappeared. Twilight fell in an instant; or Troy’s thirst had destroyed him and taken him to a world in which the Earth hid half her face behind a modest lock of shadow. The relief from the heat lasted only long enough for the blisters to remind him of their hot pain.

He walked. The first person he met was a kid, waist deep in a pit of mud. The kid was pulling handfuls from a shuck of straw that sat on the harder ground beside him. He pulled those handfuls under the surface of the mud, and his legs pumped like deliberate pistons. He looked up when Troy gasped for water, but didn’t say anything. Troy bent to the mud and thrust his lips into it.

“Hey, man,” said the kid. “You ain’t supposed to be here.”

Troy lifted his head to see what the kid looked like. He waited for the kid to say something else, but the kid just shrugged and drew another fist of straw under the surface. Troy watched it disappear.

“No,” said Troy.