The GoldenCity

If the train carried him to a new area, he might find it difficult to return to the passageway. As the harvesters began to climb onto to the flatcars, Michael looked around for landmarks and saw a rusty handcart that resembled an old-fashioned rickshaw. At night, he could follow the railroad tracks back to this point and then retrace his steps to the sticks he left in the water.

His new friends waved their hands and called to him. “Hurry up, Tolmo! We’re leaving!”

Michael jumped onto one of the flatcars, and the rickety train started down the tracks. They followed the perimeter of the water-fields, stopping every ten minutes or so to pick up another group of harvesters. Although the flatcars were moving about as fast as a Sunday jogger, there was a lively, excited feeling in the group. Everyone knew each other and people shouted jokes back and forth about the amount of spark each group had harvested that day. The wheels clicked with a quick rhythm as the wind of their passage ruffled the women’s hair and the hems of their skirts.

Michael sat at one end of the flatcar with his hat pulled low over his face. He thought again about the summer he and Gabriel worked at the cattle feedlot. They didn’t have money for gasoline so, at the end of the work day, an older man named Leon would give them a ride home in the back of his pickup truck. It was just like this: rolling down a road past the countryside.

Forget all that, Michael told himself. Focus on the present situation. Listening to the conversations around him, he figured out the system of two-syllable names used by the servants. Verga was also called “Verga sire-Toshan”-which meant he was the father of the man named Toshan sitting a few yards away. Mothers added their oldest daughter’s name, and so the woman next to him was called “Molva san-Pali.”

In the distance, huge white shapes seemed to emerge from the ground. As the train grew closer, Michael saw that they were approaching a cluster of triangular buildings with steep roofs. The steam engine blew its whistle loudly, the engineer pulled back a brake lever, and the entire train screeched to a stop. Everyone jumped off the train, and Michael followed Verga across the tracks. A line of rail cars had been left on a side track; some of them held wire hoppers filled with harvested spark. A few cars carried stacks of bricks and a work crew was unloading them into wheelbarrows.

A pathway led them to a central courtyard surrounded by the triangular buildings. The courtyard was dominated by white brick structures that were as large as the barns back in South Dakota. Near a machine shop, men were repairing a vehicle that Verga called a “dry crawler.” It looked like a nineteenth century stagecoach with a driver’s box and a steam engine in front. But there were also three-wheeled carts pulled by shaggy ponies with blunt noses and hand carts pulled by the older children. An open cooking area was at one end of the courtyard; women scooped out the pale orange pulp of the spark plant and molded it into loaves which they baked in an outdoor oven.

“Stay with my boots,” Verga said, and Michael followed the old man through the crowd to one of the barns. He found himself in a cavernous room where sunlight streamed in through high windows. The building was used as a dormitory for all the men in the community. There was a mound of straw at the center, pegs for hanging blankets and clothes, and a trough for waste that was continually flushed out by the water flowing from the bathing area. Imitating the old man, Michael washed his face and hands beneath a stone spout.

“Some say guardians could never cut spark in the waterfields,” Verga announced. “But you carried your blade better than that thief ever did.”

“What happens now? Do we eat?”

“Eat all you want, Tolmo. And then it’s the night for the visionary…”

Michael nodded as if he knew what the old man was talking about. They returned to the courtyard and followed the crowd to a trellised area where stew was being served in metal bowls. No spoons or forks were on the tables so they ripped off chunks of gunder-spark and used them to scoop up their food.

Verga led him over to a long table where their work crew was eating dinner. As they approached the others, Michael was startled by what he saw. About a hundred yards from the dining area was a screen as big as a billboard with a shimmery gold surface. The screen was about six feet above the ground, and benches and stools had been placed in a semi-circle in front of it.

The faithful servants gobbled down their food, laughing and gossiping, but Michael stayed quiet and studied a line of black and white circles on the surface of the screen. Every few seconds, the circles changed their configuration, like an odd clock keeping time.