Desolation Road

10

“Tell me again, Father, why are we going to this place?”

“To get away from the unkind people who say bad things about you and about me, away from the people who want to take me away from you.”

“Tell me again, Father, why these people want to take you away from me.”

“Because you are my daughter. Because they say you are unnatural, a freak, an engineered experiment, my little singing bird. Because they say you were born contrary to the law, and because of that I must be punished.”

“But tell me again, Father, why should they punish you? Amn’t I your daughter, your little singing bird?”

“You are my little singing bird and you are my daughter, but they say that you are nothing more than… a doll, or a machine, or any other made thing, and it is against such people’s law for a man to have such a daughter, a daughter he has made for himself, even though he loves her more than life itself.”

“And do you love me more than life itself, Father?”

“I do, my little cherry pip, and that is why we are running away from these unkind people, because they would take me away from you and I could not bear that.”

“Nor could I, Father, I couldn’t not have you.”

“So we will be together, eh? Always.”

“Yes, Father. But tell me again, what is this place we are going to?”

“It is called Desolation Road, and it is so tiny and far away that it is known only because of the stories that have been told about it.”

“And that is where we are going?”

“Yes, kitten-bone, to the last place in the world. To this Desolation Road.”

Meredith Blue Mountain and his daughter, Ruthie, were quiet people. They were plain people, unremarkable people, unnoticeable people. In the third-class compartment of the slow Meridian-Belladonna cross-desert stopper they were invisible under piles of other people’s luggage, other people’s chickens, other people’s children, and other people. No one talked to them, no one asked if they could sit beside them or pile their luggage chickens children selves on top of them. When they got off at the tiny desert station, no one noticed for well over an hour that they were gone, and even then they could not remember what their travelling companions had looked like.

No one noticed them step off the train, no one saw them arrive in Desolation Road, not even Rajandra Das, the self-appointed station-master who greeted every train that arrived in his ramshackle station, no one noticed them enter the Bethlehem Ares Railroad/Hotel at twenty minutes of twenty. Then something very much like a sustained explosion of light filled the hotel and there, at the epicentre of the glare, was the most beautiful woman anyone had ever seen. Every man in the room had to swallow hard. Every woman fought an inexpressible need to sigh. A dozen hearts cracked down the middle and all the love flew out like larks and circled round the incredible being. It was as if God Himself had walked into the room.

Then the God-light went out and there was a blinking, eye-rubbing darkness. When vision was restored, everyone saw before them a small, very ordinary man and a young girl of about eight who was quite the plainest, drabbest creature anyone had ever seen. For it was the nature of Ruthie Blue Mountain, a girl of stunning ordinariness, to absorb like sunlight the beauty of everything around her and store it until she chose to release it, all at once, like a flashbulb of intense beauty. Then she would return again to dowdy anonymity, leaving behind her an afterimage in the heart of unutterable loss. This was Ruthie Blue Mountain’s first secret. Her second was that this was the way her father had created her in his genesis-bottle.

The remarkable goings-on in the B.A.R. were still talk as Meredith Blue Mountain and his daughter went up to see Dr. Alimantando. The great man was at work in his weather-room, filling the walls with illegible algebraic symbols in black charcoal.

“I am Meredith Blue Mountain and this is Ruthie, my daughter (here Ruthie bobbed and smiled the way her father had patiently rehearsed her in their hotel room). I am a livestock breeder from Marsaryt sadly misunder stood by his community. My daughter, she means more to me than anything but she needs shelter, she needs protection from cruel and hurtful people, for my daughter is alas a poor and simple creature, arrested at the mental age of five. So I am asking for shelter for myself and my poor daughter.” So pleaded Meredith Blue Mountain.

Dr. Alimantando wiped his glasses.

“My dear sir, I understand perfectly what it is to be misunderstood by one’s community and I can assure you that no one is ever turned away from Desolation Road. Poor, needy, persecuted, despairing, hungry, homeless, loveless, guilty, consumed by the past, there is a place for everyone here.” He consulted the master Five Hundred Year Plan on the weather-room wall, threatened by encroaching mathematics. “And your place is Plot 17, Cave 9. See Rael Mandella about tools for farming and Mr. Jericho about building a house. Until it’s built you can stay free of charge at the town hotel.” He handed Meredith Blue Mountain a scroll. “Documents of citizenship. Fill them out in your own time and return them to me or Persis Tatterdemalion. Now, don’t forget the two rules. Rule one is knock before you enter. Rule two is no shouting during the siesta. Keep those rules and you’ll be happy here.”

So Meredith Blue Mountain took his daughter and went to see Mr. Jericho, who promised a house in one week, with water, gas from the community methane plant, and electricity from the community solar plant; and Rael Mandella, who lent them a hoe, a spade, a mattock, an autoplanter and assorted seeds, tubers, rhizomes, cuttings and rootstocks. He also gave them some accelerated-growth cultures for pigs, goats, chickens and llamas from his stock of cells.

“Father, tell me, is this the place where we are going to stay forever?”

“It is, my little kitten-bone, it is.”

“It’s nice, but it’s a bit dry, isn’t it?”

“It is indeed.”

Ruthie did say some dumb and obvious things, but what could Meredith Blue Mountain expect from a girl with the mental age of a five-year-old? Anyway, he loved her dumb questions. He loved her devoted dependence and utter adoration, but sometimes he wished he had designed her with a higher I.Q.