The Lost Puzzler Page 17

  She looked down with open curiosity, but a few impatient shouts from the awaiting group stopped any questions about it. Without another word he followed her back to the waiting group, shoving his hand deep into his pocket.

  Luckily, no one else wanted to shake hands or greet him in any other way when he was introduced. Many of the boys glared at him, and Rafik instinctively understood why. He was a stranger, and his presence was tolerated only for the sake of the game.

  The game resumed, and Rafik quickly found out it was harder to master than it looked. He had to fight his instinct to touch the ball with his hands, and quickly realised that the game was as tough and physically demanding as Warriors and Infidels. Soon his team was down five points, mostly because of his mistakes. It was obvious his teammates were not happy. Rijana reassured Rafik that it was okay and that “These things happen,” which made matters even worse. Eventually she told him to move to the far end of the field, and almost immediately the ball landed at his feet. A boy from the rival team turned and charged. With growing panic Rafik tried to figure out who to kick the ball to. His teammates were running in different directions, trying to block, move, or open up a space, but there was no one available. And just then, in a blink of an eye, Rafik saw the pattern. The boys and girls were still running around the field, but to Rafik they became the moving symbols on the puzzle wall of his dreams.

  There, I can see it.

  The boy who challenged Rafik was almost upon him. Rafik saw his legs moving one after another, thumping the ground and raising small clouds of dust. He waited for the boy’s right leg to hit the ground and then he turned quickly to the left, passing the boy before he could turn and moving to the middle of the playing field. He could now see everything that was happening around him clearly, as if they were all moving slower than he was. Each player was a symbol moving in a different direction, and Rijana was running at him.

  Rafik kicked the ball just as another boy slammed into him, sending them both sprawling to the ground. He rolled on the ground several times. Within a heartbeat he was on his feet again, and he saw Rijana manoeuvring with the ball exactly where he thought she would be. She turned, kicked, and scored easily.

  That was the turning point of the game. Rafik realised that each player had a moving pattern, and he acted on reflex to find the weakest point of the pattern and snatch the ball away cleanly from under their feet and pass it to Rijana. The rival team was beginning to show frustration, and the game became rougher, but Rafik didn’t mind at all. He was a kid again, playing with other kids who didn’t know about his curse. It was so long since he’d actually run as fast as he could, and he dodged, moved, pushed, kicked, and even once won a point for his team.

  At some point it became too hot to wear Dominique’s glove. Without thinking, Rafik peeled the glove off and shoved it in his pocket. He didn’t care anymore—he was playing, running, sweating, laughing, and for a moment all felt as it should be. Perhaps Khan would agree to stay in this village for a while. He could play this game and maybe talk to Rijana, who beamed at him every time he passed the ball to her.

  Rafik’s team had just won another point when Khan came charging into the field. He grabbed Rafik by the collar and, without saying a word, hauled him back into the truck.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he shouted, his face red, after he slammed shut the truck’s door.

  “You can’t tell me what to do! You’re not my father!” Rafik heard himself shout back. “We were just playing.”

  Khan took three apples out of his pocket and threw one at him. “I just spent the entire afternoon haggling for some food for you, and I come back to see you running around without anything covering your hand. Do you know what would happen if they saw your tattoos? These people are no better than the rust buckets back at your village. Put on your glove. Now. I can’t believe you were so irres . . .”

  Rafik blocked out Khan’s angry words, leaned back in his seat and looked outside. Losing another member of the team to grown-up interference must have signalled the end of the game. The kids were already dispersing, with the exception of Rijana, who was staring at the truck, close enough to perhaps see the two silhouettes behind the dirty front window.

  As Khan kept berating him, Rafik lowered his gaze, spreading his fingers in front of his face. His hand was trapped in Dominique’s glove for so long he only saw then that the markings were larger since the last time he’d examined them. The triangle, two crescent moons, and three balls were still there, just larger and more distinct, covering his fingertips and stretching down to his palm. To a casual observer it might have looked like a blotchy ink stain, but it took only one clear glance to see that it was more than that. It was due only to the intensity of the ball game and perhaps sheer luck that the other kids did not notice his markings. What would they have done if they had? The image of Eithan, his best friend, throwing a rock at the pony cart flashed before Rafik’s eyes and he shook the memory away with disgust. When Rafik looked out again, Rijana moved a little closer to the truck, looking hesitant, as if waiting for something to happen. He wanted to talk to her, to explain why . . . or just to talk to her, but he couldn’t, not now, or ever.

  With a new surge of anger, Rafik suddenly leaned forward and pressed his hand against the dirty glass. “Why should I keep it a secret?” he shouted, “I’ve done nothing wrong, and you just want to keep me so you can sell me later.”

  Khan was dumbstruck for a moment, then he snatched Rafik’s hand away from the window. “Rust, boy, did anyone see you?”

  Rijana was already running away. There was no way to know if she saw the markings. “Let me go, let me go!” screamed Rafik, still struggling.

  Khan let go of one of his hands and then struck Rafik, hard. “You bastard! You freak! You left me with nothing, nothing, you hear? My bar, my house, my Dominique, Martinn, you took it all from me, and now you’re going to get me killed!” He hit the cowering boy once more. “I have the right, you hear? I have all the rights in this goddamn rusting world. Your family threw you out because they didn’t have the guts to kill you themselves. I took care of you, I fed you, I gave you a bed, and you cost me everything!”

  Khan opened the door, climbed out of the truck, and pulled Rafik after him so violently that he fell down and scraped his knees. Khan dragged him between the villagers, who were now openly staring at them. When he got to the hut that Jeremiah was in, he kicked the door repeatedly until it opened and the trucker came out, looking as if he had to get dressed in a hurry.

  “What do you want?” he barked angrily.

  “We’re leaving. Now.” Khan was panting with rage.

  “Go rust. You don’t tell me where and when to go.”

  “The kid, someone—” Khan hesitated only briefly. “In a matter of moments we might all get lynched.”

  The look on Khan’s face must have been convincing enough, because Jeremiah swore and ducked inside for a moment, then came back with his boots in his hands. A baby was crying inside, and a woman swore at the top of her lungs as the door slammed shut. They ran back to the truck, climbed into it, and Jeremiah began manoeuvring the heavy vehicle while shouting obscenities at Khan and Rafik. They were already driving up the main street when they saw the gathering of men walking towards them, led by Rijana.

  Jeremiah stepped on the acceleration pedal, and the truck coughed black smoke and lurched forward. The mob began to run down the street shouting angrily. Rafik heard “Show him to us!” “You brought a fiend into the village!” and even one “Hang them” before another cloud of black smoke reduced the shouting mob to coughing fits. Fortunately, the guards were still unaware of the situation, and they opened the gates as the truck approached.

  A few miles later, Jeremiah stopped the truck, and an angry shouting match between him and Khan ensued. Jeremiah accused Khan of being the cause of their situation, while Khan claimed he could not have been in two places at once and if the trucker would have kept his “damned rod” in his
pants for a little while longer, all of this could have been avoided. They were shouting and swearing. At some point, the trucker threatened to leave them both at the side of the road, to which Khan replied that he would then find his way to Jeremiah’s village and have a word with Jeremiah’s wife. Both men ran out of steam shortly after that and went quiet. Sometime later Jeremiah cursed the world in general and his bad luck in particular and resumed driving. The rest of their journey was much quieter.

  26

  Khan woke up Rafik with a light squeeze to his shoulder. “See this?” He pointed at the silhouettes of the town’s buildings on top of the hill. “This is Regeneration.” For the first time since the fight at Dominique’s bar, Khan actually smiled as he added, “My fat little hog of a brother lives here. He and I do not get along too well, but we’ll pay him a visit,” he patted Rafik on the head. “You know the old saying, ‘Blood’s thicker than lard, eh?’” He chuckled at his own joke. “From here on it’s gonna be an easy ride all the way.”

  Jeremiah snorted to himself but said nothing, busying himself with manoeuvring up the hill and around the multitude of trucks, carts, and people walking on the the narrow road. Khan, on the other hand, was in a rare chatty mood, and so Rafik learned that Regeneration was not just the biggest human-built, post-Catastrophe town; it was also the closest one to the Tarakan City of Towers. On a good day you could even see the outlines of the south towers melding into the heavens. It must have been a foreboding sight for the new, desperate settlers, for it was common knowledge that many babies born close to the Tarakan city would have terrible deformities or bear the mark. So much so that other communities dubbed Regeneration “freak town.”

  In the old days, when the invisible barrier surrounding the City of Towers still barred humanity from entrance, people got sick and died just from foraging food too close to the city. Yet the founders of Regeneration were as resilient as they were desperate, for most of them simply had no other place to live. Life on the edge meant the people of Regeneration had to work together and accept everyone who was willing to help. For a time, it became the only place where humans who bore the mark could walk freely, a fact that Khan repeated to Rafik several times.

  “You mean I could walk around without wearing Dominique’s glove?” Rafik asked, still struggling with the idea.

  “Oh, no,” Khan quickly replied, patting lightly on Rafik’s gloved hand. “Keep it on, kid. Even in this town, you never know . . . you just never know . . .”

  Surprisingly enough, Regeneration had no protective walls but the natural defence of the hill it was built on. It was far enough away from other settlements and close enough to the dangerous air and soil of the City of Towers to deter raiders. Yet, even without walls, Regeneration had heavily armed guards, a roadblock, a gate, and something called a toll, which Jeremiah had to pay. This all took time, so it wasn’t until midday that they drove into town.

  “Look up.” Khan pointed once they entered the narrow streets of Regeneration.

  Rafik had to lean out from the open window to see Regeneration’s most prominent feature. In the past few weeks he had seen a man whose face was half metal, and ridden in a SuperTruck on a Tarakan highway. He was sure he had seen it all, but what Rafik saw now left him speechless. Two long rows of metal bars, human-sized in length and twice a man’s width in thickness, were miraculously suspended in midair above the town. Facing each other in pairs and evenly spaced, the rows of metal bars began above a high metal platform in Regeneration and disappeared into the distance.

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” Khan remarked. “They go all the way to the City of Towers. Of course, when the first settlers discovered the platform, they didn’t know of it. They only wanted the metal.” He chuckled. “But they soon discovered you don’t mess with Tarakan devices. The platform was charged with some kind of energy that could fry a man in a heartbeat, and the bars were too high for anyone to reach, so after they made a few attempts the people of Regeneration left the platform and the metallic bars alone.

  “Then one day, this long tube appeared on the platform and opened its doors. A few dozen fools walked in, and the doors suddenly closed and the they found themselves flying all the way to the City of Towers.

  “From then on, the Long Tube continued to go back and forth, connecting Regeneration with the City of Towers. This really changed things around here. From a place no one wanted to visit, Regeneration became the easiest way to get in and out of the City of Towers. I mean, on a good day, you can even see the city from here. You wouldn’t believe the house prices now . . .”

  Unfortunately, Rafik missed the view of the City of Towers when they finally arrived at the center of Regeneration, because the skies were thick with grey clouds. Jeremiah didn’t even bother to say farewell. As soon as they were out of the truck he sped off, leaving them hopping in thick mud, trying to escape the polluted cloud he left behind.

  Regeneration reminded Rafik of Newport, except it was even bigger and dirtier. They walked in the rain for what seemed like an eternity until finally, soaked to the bone and shivering, they reached a small wooden house with a large backyard filled with all kinds of junk. A scary-looking dog warned them off until its owner came out to see who was loitering in his yard.

  Gandir turned out to be a fatter, balder, older, and meaner version of Khan, and if any brotherly love still remained between the two, it was too subtle for Rafik to detect. He reluctantly let them into his crumbling house and did not react well when Khan asked him for a very large sum of coin. In fact, he was so angry, Rafik was afraid he might set his dog, aptly named Fangs, on them. Rafik, still wet, was sent to another room so the two brothers could argue.

  The smaller room doubled as both a bedroom and a bathroom with the help of a hole in the floor, which was obviously too small for its intended use. The smell was so bad he gagged several times and would have thrown up if he’d had any food in his stomach. Rafik ended up standing with his back to the door, as far away as possible from the bog hole. He wanted to pray, but he was too disgusted to touch the floor. Instead he leaned on the door and took his mind off the cold and hunger by listening to the two brothers shouting obscenities at each other.

  “You can’t march in here after all these years and with a boy and demand coin.”

  “I ain’t demanding. Brother, I am asking. Blood is thicker than la . . . water.”

  “Oh, now you are telling me about blood? I piss on your blood. You took off with that fat bitch and left me with Ma, and never a coin did I see from you.”

  “Say another word on Dominique and I’ll break all of what’s left of your teeth. And don’t whine about Ma. I remember she died very quickly after I left, from the cold, you said, and you live in our home now. Did I see a rusting coin from you? No. But I need my cut now.”

  There was a sound of furniture being moved and a chair falling on the floor, as the two brothers must have gotten up to their feet. “You rusting gob, you think you can tell me what to do anymore? I’ll tear you limb from limb and let my dog chew on your scrawny bones. I’ll feed him that ugly kid of yours too.”

  Khan was obviously trying to keep control of himself. “Oh, sit the fuck down, Gandir, or you’ll hurt youtself. Look, you’re already sweating like a hog. Let’s eat something. Fine, if you don’t want to help me out of brotherly love, I got a business proposition for you.”

  It took some time but Gandir eventually relented and agreed to give Khan the coin, only after being promised double in return. He even had the level-headed idea of buying the travel slips to the City of Towers himself so that Khan and Rafik would not need to spend too much time out in the open, but he flatly refused when Khan tried to press for extra coin.

  “I need food and shelter for the boy,” argued Khan, “as well as ammunition for my pistol. I’m out of bullets.”

  Gandir snorted dismissively. “You were always quick to pull the trigger.” This led to yet another bout of shouting, but eventually Gandir relented and gave Khan t
wenty steel coins, promising to buy ammunition as well as Long Tube tickets.

  After that things calmed down, and soon the brothers got very drunk. Khan spun his own version of their adventures, which made him look courageous and just. There were also some differences between the way he described the chase on the highway and the way Rafik remembered it, but he was hardly listening anymore. He found a fairly clean rag, spread it in the corner of the bedroom farthest from the hole, and lay down. Soon sleep conquered hunger.

  Morning came late, as both brothers were sprawled on the floor in a stupor. Rafik tiptoed between empty casks and rolling mugs and found a few smoked strips of dried meat. They tasted as if they might have been meant for the dog, but he was too hungry to be fussy about what he ate. By midday the brothers woke up and Khan went out “on business.” Soon after that, Gandir went out as well, locking Rafik inside the hut and warning him that Fangs would tear him apart if he tried to get out.

  Time slowed, and eventually, out of sheer boredom, Rafik began cleaning the house. Both brothers came home in the middle of the night, completely drunk and barely standing. They immediately resumed their bickering and completely ignored Rafik, who curled up in his corner and tried to fall asleep. All in all, it had been a boring day, but just before he fell asleep, Rafik decided it had been a good day because nothing really bad had happened. The following day would be very different.

  27

  At high noon the next day Kahn and Rafik were standing close enough to see the Long Tube arriving at the platform, which was about 250 paces away. Even after the wonders of the SuperTruck, Rafik’s mouth opened in awe when he saw the silvery tube sail between floating metal bars as blue and red lightning bolts jumped from one floating bar to its top surface and the tube descended silently from the top of the platform.

  “Where is he? Rust,” muttered Khan impatiently as he searched the crowd.