The Apex Book of World SF Page 16

  I no longer wanted it, but there was nothing to do but carry on. We ploughed through, soon covered in the shattered dust of these mournful people. I reflected on their name, on what misfortune had caused a people of green and sunlight to be trapped and killed so far below the earth. What possible machinery could be worth this? Still we descended, Jivar carrying me on his back, and after countless hours the bones changed. They were much larger now, heavy with knee joints and great thick rib cages. I thought of the American football players on TV, the bones of those men would be like this.

  “Another people gone, these were the Neanderthals, that famed race of extinct cousins,” Jivar said. “Too many were brought to work here, too many died. What was left above was not enough to survive. They were enormously strong, and smart, much smarter than your own great ancestors.”

  “How many species were destroyed for this?” I asked, aghast.

  “At least one more,” Jivar said. “A more advanced race, truly civilized, capable of the finer work of the machinery itself. They were small in number, however, perhaps bound for extinction regardless. They called themselves the Dedra.”

  Finally, when even riding on the djinns’ back was unbearable agony, we reached a landing and a bridge, which extended across toward the other side. The far shore was so distant that I could not see the opposite landing. Here lay the bones of the Dedra, thin, graceful figures. We began to cross, and just walking across level ground again was a relief. By this time I had already given up hope of ever seeing the surface again. I did not think I could make the return journey up, even with the help of the djinn. It occurred to me that Jivar had never intended for me to outlive the unveiling of his secret. I did not care too much. This brought renewed vigor to my limbs, a surge of adrenaline and pumping blood, and I urged Jivar not to slow down. I would see this dread machine before the end.

  The bridge was slender, beautiful, made of a translucent black material, arcing across with no visible supports, a marvel of engineering. We crossed to the midway point, and there was a chamber and a door. The room looked slight in proportion to the pyramid, but as we approached the portal, I measured it by eye, and estimated that it was at least 10 stories tall, a graceful tower with air slits in various points, but no further ingress. Jivar laid his hands on the door and it opened with a hum. The room stretched down below us, with a winding staircase going down, moving through gigantic gears made of dull beaten gold, the teeth slowly moving, each notch as big as a man’s leg, a king’s ransom hung on each giant wheel. We were inside a god’s clocktower, a cathedral of arcane purpose, a titan’s church organ of wound springs, pendulums, bearings, and rotating gears, everything moving in soundless splendor.

  “What is this?” I asked in awe.

  “One of the last great works of the djinn,” Jivar said. “The Lords of Gangaridai had grand ambitions. Come, a few more steps only.”

  The stairs wound down into a featureless chamber, a gash of darkness, and as I stumbled down I passed through some kind of membrane, a flash of ice so brief that it barely flickered on my nerves. Disoriented, exhausted, I knelt on the rough stone floor. Jivar was ahead of me, but the light was gone, and the night seemed to swim against me, waves of a physical ocean. There was a window, a strange, distant window, and as my eyes misfired against the oppressive darkness, I walked toward it, hands in front of me like a blind man.

  There was water outside, or something like it, something velvet and black, which glimmered in places as if reflecting something luminous held out of reach. Far, far away, there was a moon, a pearl suspended in the void, and as my eyes focused, I saw a fairy tale city trapped inside, minarets and domes, and bells ringing.

  “You see the city?” Jivar asked.

  I nodded dumbly.

  “The Lords of Gangaridai didn’t like the way things were panning out. They didn’t like the idea of time running out for them,” Jivar said. “More specifically, they didn’t like this idea of entropy—their perfect city, doomed to dissolution. So they moved it. They moved it outside of time.”

  “That is the city of Gangaridai?”

  “The First City, yes, the first city of djinn,” Jivar said. “A place of grandeur and beauty, now faded from memory.”

  “And this black sea?”

  “It is the world of the djinn, the place we exist when we are not flesh,” Jivar said. “The machine holds open this window, a last tenuous path. The Lords intend to return, you see, when times are more favorable for them.”

  I staggered toward the window and a cold wind scoured me, drilling me with holes. The suicide’s temptation to step through was overwhelming. I felt hands on my back, a gentle push from behind, and I was tumbling on, flesh shredding into that acid substance, not quite water, not quite cold, an intense, blazing pain until there was nothing left, just the hard kernel of my mind. I looked back through a grey, eyeless gaze and saw the window and the chamber were already far away. Jivar stood on the other side, dressed in my clothes, waving, and I thought that perhaps he had been haunting me after all. The tide pulled me, and I lost interest. I turned and began to swim for the city.

  How My Father Became a God

  Dilman Dila

  Dilman Dila is a writer and filmmaker from Uganda, whose work has won the BBC Radio Playwriting Competition, the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, Short Story Day Africa prize, the Million Writers Awards, and the Jalada Prize for Literature. His movie The Felistas Fable was nominated for Best First Feature at AMAA 2014, and won four major awards at the Uganda Film Festival 2014.

  MY FATHER WAS a god, though he looked like any other old man. He had a thick white beard and a bald head with tufts of hair above his ears. He had no wrinkles. His ribs showed. His gait was slow, shuffling. He always wore large, green earrings, a rainbow-coloured necklace, and a black goatskin loincloth. He looked ordinary, but I knew he was a god. This was confirmed the day he showed me the egg-shaped thing. The object stood on two, bird-like legs that were taller than he was, and it had a pair of wings that was so large my father must have skinned twenty cows to make them. I wondered where he got the hide, for he had no wealth to buy cattle.

  “It’s buffalo skin,” he said.

  “You don’t hunt,” I said.

  “I paid a hunter.”

  I frowned, but was too courteous to ask how he had paid the hunter. He was so poor he could not afford to buy a chicken.

  “I sold him a trap,” he said.

  It had to have been a unique trap for this hunter to pay with twenty buffalo hides. I did not press him about it. The egg-shaped object enthralled me.

  “Can it fly?” I said.

  “Not yet. But one day, it will take you into the sky to become the bride of the sun.”

  I giggled. “Is it a new type of bird?”

  He smiled. “No. I call it a bruka. Do you remember Bruka?”

  I nodded. Bruka was an eagle. A boy had tricked it with a chicken, and it had come to the ground. Then he had jumped on its back and rode it through the skies. Yet this egg-shaped thing had no life. How would it fly?

  “Will you put the spirit of a bird in it?” I said.

  “No. I am still making its—” He paused. “I don’t know what to call that thing.” He pointed at a box-shaped object fixed between the wings. “For now, let’s just call it a heart. It will make the bruka fly, but it needs special sap for it to work. I haven’t yet found that sap.”

  We were behind a hut that looked like a fallen tree trunk. He called it the ot’cwe, the house of creation. My family had banished him from the homestead, so he lived alone in this hut. The walls did not have the beautiful red-and-white designs Maa had painted on our home. The walls here were cracked and full of drawings of the things Baa tried to create. The grass-thatched roof had holes that leaked when the rains came. I wished I was old enough to help him with repairs so he would not sleep in a place worse than a kraal. When the rains became too heavy, my mother allowed him to sneak into her bed. I could hear them giggling all
night. She had to be careful or else my uncles would beat her up. They once thrashed her when they discovered she had prepared a dish of goat meat for him. They insisted he should eat only their leftovers, which they dumped in a calabash at the edge of the compound. He never ate that garbage. Maa secretly sent me with food for him.

  “Lapoya!” Okec, my eldest brother, shouted from a distance, interrupting us.

  He had come to the ot’cwe. A bush still hid me from his view. Baa gave me a look of surprise. They forbade anyone to visit him. They wanted him to live in isolation like a leper, hidden away from the eyes of the public, because they thought he was a lapoya, a mad man, and a shame to the family. Whenever I visited him, I made sure no one saw me. Why was Okec here? Had I made a mistake? Had he seen me?

  “Hide,” Baa said.

  He lifted me onto a window. I jumped into the hut and hid in a giant pot. They thought Baa was a lapoya because he tried to make magical things that did not work, like this pot that would make water during droughts. Nothing he made worked, but I had faith in him. In the great stories, Lacwic, the creator, kept trying to make humans. Each time he failed, he instead created an animal or a bird, so we have all these different species. Eventually, he succeeded.

  Baa was a god. He had to experiment until he came up with the thing he was supposed to create. He had spent all his life on this pursuit. Everybody laughed at him, but he did not stop. He could not stop.

  “What do you want?” I heard him say.

  “I have a husband for Akidi,” Okec said.

  When I heard my name, my flesh turned as hard and cold as a hailstone. Baa had ten sons. I was the only daughter, the youngest child from his third wife. Since he was a poor man, his sons had no cattle to pay dowry for brides. Because he had no mature daughters, there was no hope of wealth coming into the family anytime soon. His sons could not get married.

  “She’s still a child,” Baa said. “She’s too young to have breasts or to know that women bleed.”

  “Okot has offered a thousand head of cattle,” Okec said.

  A thousand? Only the Rwot’s daughter could command such a rich dowry, not me. If it were true, then all my brothers would have enough cattle to marry.

  “She’s still a child,” Baa said.

  “That’s why she’s valuable,” Okec said. “Okot lost his manhood. The ajwaka says he needs a wife as young as Akidi to regain it. That’s why he’s offering all this cattle. You can’t refuse.”

  “If you mention it again,” Baa said, “I’ll cut off your head.”

  “You are cursed,” Okec said. “Your madness has wasted our wealth. We now can’t get married. This is our best chance. Don’t say no.”

  My father was not listening anymore. I knew, for I heard him entering the ot’cwe. He sat on a stool beside my hiding place.

  “We don’t need your permission,” Okec shouted. He remained outside. They feared to enter the ot’cwe, which they believed was infested with demons. “You are a lunatic, so your brothers will give the permission.”

  He stomped away.

  I climbed out of the pot. Baa’s face had wrinkled. I hugged him. His tears fell on my cheeks.

  “I’ll go to the forest.” His voice crackled like dry leaves. “I’ll find the obibi tree. Its sap will make the bruka fly. We’ll go to the clouds, just you, me, and your mother. We’ll start a new home up there.”

  I held him tighter. My fingernails dug into his flesh in anger. I was still a child, but I knew obibi was a myth, a monster that lived only in fairy tales. Before I could berate him for giving up, love drums started to beat. The musicians were already in our homestead, which was a short distance from my father’s hut. My brother had come to ask for Baa’s permission only as a formality. He had conspired with my uncles, and they had already organised the amito nywom feast. In the ceremony, boys gathered at the bride’s homestead and danced larakaraka, and she chose the best dancer for a husband. Rarely did the bride choose a man only because of his dancing talent or good looks. Often, she would know her choice long before the function. In some instances, like this one, her family would force her to pick a boy they preferred.

  “Akidi!” I heard my mother shout. “Run, my daughter! Run and hide!”

  Baa charged out of the hut with a vunduk, a lightning weapon he had created. Shaped like a gourd, it was a ball with a long pipe attached to it. I followed him out, praying to Lacwic to make the vunduk work.

  Maa ran through the bushes with three of my brothers chasing her. It reminded me of a hunt I once saw, where a group of boys chased a hare with bows and arrows. They did not catch it. My brothers, however, were faster than Maa. They overtook her, pushed her aside, and came for me. Baa pointed the vunduk at them and pulled a string that dangled from its ball. The weapon made a low sound, like a harp’s string when strummed, but it did not produce lightning to strike my brothers. They kept running toward us. Baa pulled the string, again and again. My brothers started laughing at him.

  “Run!” Maa was shouting. “Run, Akidi! Run!”

  I ran. Unlike the hare, I could not outrun my brothers, but I could hide. I saw a hole in an anthill. Someone had dug it up recently in search of a queen. I ducked into the hole and into a tunnel big enough for me to crawl on my hands and knees. I went in deep, where my brothers would not be able to get me. I snuggled in the darkness, trying not to cry. I felt safe until the mouth of the burrow darkened with someone peeping in.

  “She’s inside,” Okec said. “Make a fire. We’ll smoke her out.”

  “You’ll kill her!” Maa cried. “Don’t use fire! You’ll kill her!”

  The burrow went deep under the ground. It became so dark that I could not see. I groped, but as long as I could feel open space ahead, I did not stop moving. The voices became faint, until I could not hear them anymore. I feared a giant snake would swallow me or a hundred rats would attack me. Still, I did not stop. Such a fate was better than marrying Okot.

  When the smoke flowed into the tunnel, I was so far away it did not bother me. The burrow widened, becoming big enough for me to stand. I ran, stumbling over the uneven, soggy ground. I ran for such a long time I feared the tunnel had no end, and that I would get lost in an underground maze. Still, I refused to cry. I went round a bend and saw a light. A draught of fresh air tickled me into laughter. The tunnel narrowed again. I went down on my knees and crawled out.

  At once I wished I had remained inside.

  I was at the Leper’s Swamp. No one ever went there, not even powerful shamans. It was about the size of four large homesteads and deep enough to swallow a man. In the middle stood a black rock, shaped like the mortar we used to pound groundnuts into flour. The rock was larger than three huts put together, two times taller than the trees, and it had a surface as smooth as a polished pot. Every full moon, blood dripped out of it to colour the water. They called it Leper’s Rock. Spirits lived there.

  I ran away from the haunted water, to find a place to hide, but then I heard hunting dogs. They had picked up my scent and were coming after me. Wherever I hid, they would find me, though not in the water—they would lose my scent if I went there.

  But there were spirits in the water.

  The dogs came nearer. Their barking pricked my eardrums. My brothers were urging them to get me, and my mother screamed, “Run! Akidi! Run!”

  I saw my face in the water. I resembled my father. He was a god. Surely, spirits would not hurt the daughter of a god. The barking grew louder, angrier, and I had no choice. I closed my eyes, said a prayer to the creator, and slipped into the swamp. The cold water stung my skin. Goosebumps sprouted all over my arms. I waited for something else to happen, for fire to consume my body, for spirits to strike me dead. Nothing happened. I swam fast through papyrus reeds. Frogs and fish swam with me. I took it as a sign that Lacwic had answered my prayers. The spirits would not harm me. I reached the middle, where I climbed onto the rock. Still, the spirits did not do anything to me.

  Long ago, a thirsty le
per had found a group of girls at a well. He had asked for a calabash to drink water, and the girls had laughed at him. One, however, had given him her calabash. After he had quenched his thirst, he told her to stay away from the dance that night. She had heeded the warning. The other girls did not. During the fiesta, this rock had fallen from the sky and buried all the dancers. The well from which the leper had drunk dried up, and a swamp grew around this rock. It was not just another fairy tale. The blood that seeped out every full moon proved it to be true. Red stripes stained the rock’s surface.

  I sat still in the reeds. The dogs whined on the banks. They had lost my scent. My brothers were shouting, my mother was wailing. Their voices came as if from another world. I longed to hear my father.

  “Did she enter the water?” Okec said.

  “She wouldn’t dare,” someone responded.

  “Useless dogs!” I recognised Okot’s voice. “Useless!”

  A dog yelped in pain. Maybe Okot had kicked it.

  I could not stand my mother wailing as though I were dead. I put my fingers in my ears, but that did not shut her out. I walked around the rock. The tall papyrus hid me from their view. On the other side, their voices were faint. I saw a cave and went in. The mouth was low, but inside it was bigger than a hut and I could no longer hear Maa or my brothers. I felt safe, and cried myself to sleep.

  A dripping from further inside the cave awoke me. Something glowed on the floor and filled the room with a weak, reddish light. I was not afraid. Baa was a god, so this spirit would not harm me. I crept to the light, which came from a pool of thick blood. Above the pool, on the cave roof, hung a sculpture that resembled a cow’s breast with three nipples. Somebody, or something, had carved it up there. Blood dripped out of the nipples.

  Was it really blood? It looked to be thicker than porridge. When I touched it, the liquid stung me like a thorn and left a glowing stain on my fingertip. Blood could not do that, but sap could. Maybe it’s what Baa needed to make the bruka fly and take us to a paradise in the heavens.