A longer post today because my last one was delayed! Below I have a special treat, a short essay by Yuris Okan, but first do remember that my reading at Rain or Shine is this week, thursday the 20th, at 6:30. Please do come and please do invite whoever you like! This is an all ages/all types event and I would love to pack the house! And with out further delay, here is a bit from Okan, co-author of my next book "Coming Home"
***
Waiting at the Ume-Hoffbrau
Yuris
Ookan had several drafts for Coming Home. Much of the work was
simplified, synthesized, or reworked and made it into the final
version. A few pieces were cut from the final draft but returned as
separate articles. The following first appeared in the 2466 edition
Autumn of Trans-Solar, which focused on Gardenza's post war
transformation into a tourist destination and manufacturer of
prescription drugs. It's provenience within Coming Home is uncertain
and it may be a fabricated event, or cut from chapter four to
maintain a sense of suspense.
+ + +
The
delay for the train to Ume-Hoffbrau proved an ordeal. After three
hours of waiting people began to get restless. The platform was a hot
white slab of calcicrete that reflected the sun back upward. The buzz
of off balanced cooling fans in the depot mixed with the distant
sounds of traffic, a radio from the ticket booth, and waves of
conversation amid the crowd. Now and then the wind would kick up,
bringing wafting scents from the choked jungle across the train yard,
but the air it brought was also hotter, and smothered with its
humidity. At first, the lines were cut throat, individuals losing
their place for the slightest infraction with bickering or bribery as
the only recourse. After six hours the mercenary tone subsided a
little. It was down to skeleton crews, individual families and
friends taking turns to wait on the baking hot platform while their
fellow travelers ran out to find food, water, or entertainment. Solo
travelers, like me, were beholden to the kindness of these strangers,
and after a few tries I managed to flag down a young girl careening
through the crowd and beg her to refill my water bottle.
“Yeah,
fine, it's done,” She consented with a deep country accent, the
sort that seems pushy in adults but is still cute in children. When
she returned I realized I had walked into a punchline. She wouldn’t
release my bottle without something in return. I managed to stir up a
few coins forgotten in a back pocket, paying probably more than five
times what bottled water would have cost for what was certainly a
portion of unsafe tap water. At that time it no longer mattered. It
was late afternoon and the stench of sweat had flooded out all other
smells. A thick pall of it mixed with tobacco smoke and the syrupy
sweetness of Cadia fruit, brought by a local vendor who was
apparently the first in town to hear that the trains were late. She
must have had hundreds of them for sale, and her children ran rampant
through the station selling as fast as they could hand them out. By
the eighth hour of waiting, as evening fell, everyone who had nothing
else to eat had bought one. This included me, even though I hate
Cadia fruit. It’s an egg shaped thin skinned fruit not unlike a
Sunten or, maybe more distantly, a well bruised peach. Underneath the
semi firm skin, your fingers sink into it deep enough to find its
seed pod, a segmented collection of semi-transparent blue hued pips
that are almost too sweet to eat. The taste of the flesh is syrupy
sweet, a thick and lasting aroma that is wonderful until it
overwhelms you (which for me, happens almost exactly half way
through.) But to tell the truth, I make it sound worse that it was,
because after eight hours of standing in the heat with nothing but
rust tasting water, that Cadia fruit was the best thing I had ever
eaten. Even the soft texture, normally something that makes me
wretch, seemed supple and inviting, and I ate even the crumpled skin
cherishing the scent that had made me feel ill before I had been
eating.
Every
hour the time board would flip over to denote another hour delay in
our train. All the same, we future passengers watched eagerly, trying
to wait until the last moment to look at the board rather than be
stuck staring at it for ten or twenty minutes and thus hardening the
disappointment. I marveled at this. In Pearth people would not be
this patient. After an hour, most would have been banging down the
office door. After two, they might be seeking a different route. But
here, it seemed like part of the daily routine. Even with the
bickering over spots, it seemed like everyone knew the train would
get there when it got there. As the sun went down, that patience
ended all at once. A station steward ventured out of his office, only
to be overwhelmed by questions and surrounded so closely he couldn’t
get out his piece. Within seconds he abandoned his cause as the crowd
surged to surround him. He pushed his way back to his office,
frightened and throwing elbows to get through the mob of riders. A
few moments later, he emerged from a second story window, flanked by
an older (and probably wiser) steward who had chosen not to subject
herself to the crowd. With waved hands and a little shouting he
managed to silence the questions from below and raising his voice to
be heard over the general drone of the station, explained that there
was fighting further up the tracks, and that the train would not push
through until it subsided. I, along with many others stared off to
the west as if we expected to see explosions and melee that we had
somehow missed for hours in the heat distorted horizon. There was
nothing but empty track, of course. He explained that the train would
push through as soon as the fighting died down, that it would have a
repair crew running hard ahead of it to assure the tracks were clear,
and that we should stay ready to get on board with little notice.
It
was after this that things calmed down a little, if it could be said
that they could get calmer than a line of waiting people. As the sun
went down people began to abandon their spots in ones and twos, some
opting to find a place to lay down with their packs, others arranging
to leave and find a more suitable dinner for themselves and their
families. As the first of the evening lights came on, and the bugs
began to descend on our helpless herd, two twenty-somethings who had
met each other in line broke out their guitars and started playing
together. Then on the far side of the platform someone turned up a
radio tuned to dance music. One by one people began to break out
pastimes. Cribbage sets, books, and phones loaded with pirated films
emerged one by one, like the stars on a clear summer night, slowly
filling the platform with chuckles, loud children, and occasional
shouts from a skunking two games down. The whole time I had been
standing, along with a few others afraid of losing our spots;
undesirables, miners, old men, or the truly stubborn people that
assumed they would not be extended the fairness granted to other
passengers. But as the evening set in, even we threatened travelers
began to leave the front of the platform and find a place to sit.
It
was one of few kindnesses in that wartime world. I think of how many
like us sat waiting not for a journey, but for something darker. The
soldiers that sat waiting a check points for an insurgent attack. The
protesters who stood stalwart as they watched peace officers load
their guns. The disappeared, the dissidents, the genetic pariahs, all
those millions who stood waiting at the camps knowing full well that
no one would be released. It was a kindness that we were left to wait
for a train, not for the madness, in inhumanity that had rule of that
place. It is a kindness we wait now, angry when we are made to wait
on the platform before a flight. We are so frustrated by even twenty
minutes delay before take off, so angry. Did we forget that we will
travel between the stars when the flight begins? Did we forget when
we wait for a busy kitchen that we are assured to never starve? Did
we forget, when forced to restart our Personal Screens that we are
free, alive, and bestowed that most precious gift? The gift of
continued existence? Of stability? Of Peace?
It
was a kindness that wait at Ume-Hoffbrau. I think as the crowd joined
in games and stories, as we became a community rather than a mob, as
we returned with good order to our spots when at last that train did
arrive, I think we knew it. I think we knew that being made to wait
can be a gift.
