White and Other Tales of Ruin

I can feel it, an implied vibration that enters my holed shoes and seems to shiver my bones, fingering its way through my marrow and cooling everything it touches. I want to shout, but something prevents me. It feels like a hand over my mouth, but I can still breathe. I want to run, but I am restrained. Something holds me where I am, though String is standing several steps away.

Then I can go, and I do. I turn, shout incoherently, and run. String tries to hold me, but grabs only my attention.

“Not that way,” he hisses. I realise that I had been heading towards the blank, strange wall of the cave. I spin, throw his hand from my arm and sprint into the tunnel. The darkness seems more welcoming than the polluted light of that place.

It takes me several minutes to find my way out. Emerging from the cave is like a re-birth. The daylight is wonderful. I keep running until I am far from the ravine, almost at the moat of broken glass, and there I collapse into the dust and stare up at the sky, eyes closed, while the sun slowly burns my face.

IV

“Did you see it all?” Jade says. There is an unfamiliar weakness in her tone. I open my eyes. She is standing over me and moves forward to block out the sun.

“Christ Jade, is there any more? Anything else you’re waiting for me to find out on my own?” I can feel the coolness of tears on my face, soothing the sunburn that stretches my skin across my skull. I’d been crying a lot recently. It was not unusual, lately, not only for me but also for the world in general. If tears could heal we’d all be a damn sight better than we were before the Ruin. But tears could only hurt and haunt, and remind us of our eventual, inevitable weakness.

“You saw the library? And the…” She cannot say it. I feel a sudden burst of anger.

“The what? The library and the what?” Perhaps she thinks I really had not seen it, but I’m sure she can see way past my anger. I’m sure she knows all there is to know about me. I feel transparent, the same way I am with Della. Only with Della, I like the feeling. She comforts, she does not confuse.

“The tomb,” she mutters.

I nod, anger draining with my sweat and tears. “Yes, I saw the library, and the tomb. Or whatever it is. I hated it.”

“It’s not bad, it’s — ”

“How the fuck do you know what it is? How do you know it’s not bad?”

Jade recoils from my outburst and I revel in a momentary glee at the brief panic in her eyes. “String healed me, Gabe. I told you, I showed you.” She put her hand to her chest, as if to hold in the goodness that had replaced her Sickness.

I sit up. “With the aid of whatever lies in there?”

Jade nods. “It’s something old and powerful. We can’t pretend to understand it, just as Christians don’t presume to understand God. He frightens them, maybe, but they can’t ever hope to explain Him. It’s like that with this place. It has something wonderful, and there’s nothing wrong with using it. String has found out how to do that. He’s doing some good in the world. You know as well as I do, there’s precious little of that going on anywhere else.”

I begin to laugh. I stand up, feeling the fear being cooked away by the sun. Or if not removed altogether, then diluted somewhat. Fear is a strange thing when you’re dying — sometimes, it seems so pointless.

“I’ve come this far.” Jade and I walk slowly back to the large tent in the middle of the settlement, a great sweeping structure held up by steel stanchions and sheltered from the outside by two layers of light, soft material. Suddenly something clicks into place. The colour of the tent raises an uncomfortable sensation in my guts.

“This is a Lord Ship,” I say. “What’s left of the ship he crashed in.”

“He used it to build the whole settlement,” Jade says.

“Always thought the Lords were an evil bunch of bastards, in it all for their own gain.” Della’s words echo: The worst thing, kiddo, is that they’re going to be gods.

Jade shrugs. “What you were meant to think, I suppose.”

“No,” I say. “No, it’s something I was told.” I feel an incredible sense of disquiet as I realise that my future — my life, my soul, my continued existence and well-being — now relies upon Della being both right and wrong. I hope the Lords were not all as selfish as she made out; and, in whatever strange way it may be possible, I hope that String is a god.

I wonder whether she knew that String was a Lord when she told me of him.

V

String is in the large tent, sitting at a table in the corner. The space beneath the main canopy is divided by swaying curtains of the same material. I touch it, rub it between my fingers, surprised at how light it is. It feels almost oily to the touch, yet I can see through it.

“It’s extremely strong,” String says. “It’s all that survived the crash. Apart from me, of course.”

“What about the motors, engines? Weapons?”