Neon Leviathan Read online

  Bazza was a veteran as well. He’d fought with the allies in the battle of Taipei, when the U.S. military had been broken once and for all. But he never spoke about it, which was the way it should be. So they talked about horses and gambling and sometimes their childhoods. Just the easy memories, of course. When Bazza found out Chi was looking for work, he gave him a job as a guard in the van he owned.

  Chi had given him a gift wrapped in bright red rice paper as a thank you. Bazza refused to accept it until he found out it was whisky, and then demanded they open it right away and share it. It was as close to the thing you’d call friendship as he’d had since he arrived in Australia, and Chi found it was good enough.

  Chi entered the club and took his usual seat. The place was half full, the patrons inside either watching the races or playing the slot machines. It smelled of the sour smell of the inveterate gambler. That, and tempeh parmigiana. Outside, white-clothed old people played games of lawn bowls and do you remember so-and-so. The clinking of the heavy balls as they struck each other on the green could be heard through the glass.

  Without asking, the waitress put a cup of coffee and a glass of brandy on his desk. It was the brown-haired American girl with dark eyes. He was the only person she served at the table—everyone else had to stand over at the bar. She smiled at him like she always did; he pushed the hair out of his eyes and sipped his coffee. She sighed and walked away.

  Chi pulled a plastic bag of sunflower seeds from his pocket and began cracking them open and popping them in his mouth. He looked at the flame tree on the other side of the bowls field as he did so. A shock of vivid red leaves that contrasted starkly with the green of the pitch and the grey of the houses behind.

  They were bigger, here, the flame trees, less subtle than the ones back home. Still, to Chi they brought back memories of the flame trees scattered along Tay Ho. Where he’d walked hand in hand with Kieu, along the water’s edge. Before the war, when hope still existed, where it still existed, when all he had to do was time-travel backward in his mind. All he had to do to escape the infinite present was travel back to that time when he recited earnest poems he’d written for her, and she laughed first then kissed him second.

  “Stop daydreaming, Gazza. What race is it?”

  Bazza groaned with relief as he slumped down in the chair next to Chi, schooner of beer in hand.

  Chi glanced up at the screen. “The third at Flemington.”

  “Nothing going on there,” grunted Bazza. He took a long sip of his beer. He looked down at the sunflower husks piled in front of Chi. “Don’t get any of those bloody things on my side.”

  Chi cracked a sunflower and dropped the shell on Bazza’s side.

  Bazza glared.

  He put a second one there, as well.

  The old man looked at Chi. “I’ve eaten bigger bunnies than you.”

  Chi suppressed a smile and sipped his brandy.

  They sat in silence, comfortable, while Bazza watched the races and Chi cracked his sunflower seeds.

  But Chi was never allowed to feel comfortable for too long, and after a time felt something hard, a knot of pain right under his heart. He drained his brandy.

  “Bazza.”

  “What?” The old man was annoyed. His finger hovered near the implant behind his ear—he was probably just about to make a bet.

  “Do you ever wish . . .” Chi trailed off.

  “Aaaaahhhhh.” Bazza made his cranky sound. “Don’t give me half a story. Out with it.”

  “Do you ever wish you could go back, before the Battle of Taipei?”

  Bazza’s caterpillar eyebrows bounced quizzically. “Go back?”

  “I mean,” Chi said, trying to grasp the words, “go back.”

  Bazza looked at him for a long ten seconds. “No,” he said, less gruffly than usual.

  “No, I don’t, mate. You keep going back to the past, one day you’re going to get stuck there.”

  The old man kept his gaze on him, and when Chi said nothing, returned to making his bet.

  Later that afternoon the doors to the club slid open and two large men walked in: Caramel Mike and Ha-Ha Gillespie. Mike was a stand-over man, drug-dealer, old-school racist, and connoisseur of caramel lattes. Ha-Ha never spoke, so it was hard to say what he was. Mike had long, lanky brown hair and perpetually angry eyes. Ha-Ha wore T-shirts that emphasized all the growth supplements he took.

  One or the other would usually be sitting at a small table near the slot machines, watching the players. Bazza had told him that they were looking for degenerate losers. They’d offer to clear their gambling debts in return for work as drug mules. Often Mike had been the one to lend them money to gamble in the first place.

  This time they walked straight up to Chi and Bazza. Ha-Ha was wearing a tight green singlet with the letters VB printed on the front.

  “Bazza and Gazza,” said Mike. “The two stooges.”

  “Mike,” replied Bazza. “Not known for your wit, mate. A reputation well-earned.”

  “Old fuck,” spat Mike.

  Chi sipped his brandy. Bazza’s eyebrows bobbled. “What do you want?”

  “Money,” said Mike, pupils like pinpoints as he stared down at the old man.

  Bazza waved the stare away. “I said you’d get it next month.”

  Chi hid his surprise as he glanced over at Bazza. The old man had been surlier than usual the past couple of weeks. Now Chi knew why.

  Mike cracked his knuckles. “You’ll give it to me now, you senile old bastard. You can’t pay, we’ll take your van and its route. That should cover it.”

  “Piss off. I’m not selling my van.”

  The big man indicated Chi with his chin. “You can’t keep running a charity service for your retarded friends, Barry. You got obligations.”

  “You’re not getting my van,” repeated Bazza, but there was as a quaver in his voice.

  “Lai chú mình.”

  Mike looked at Chi, lip curled in a sneer. “Speak English.”

  “I said: leave Uncle alone.”

  Mike looked at Ha-Ha, and then back down at Chi. “The fuck? You don’t get to talk to me, Chinaman.”

  “He’s Vietnamese, idiot,” said Bazza. “He fought the Chinese.”

  Mike kept staring down at Chi. “Vietnamese? So he’s a coward, then, running away from a fight.”

  “Mike—”

  “Shut up, old man. They’re all cowards.” Mike jabbed a finger at Chi. “They all run away, and they come here, bringing all their fucking problems with them. Take our jobs and sit around on welfare talking their fucking babble-talk.” Mike’s teeth showed under his sneer. “But they don’t take our women. Do they, Ha-Ha?”

  Ha-Ha shook his head no.

  “Nah,” leered Mike. “They don’t take our women. Because they want real men, our women. They want someone who knows how to fight. Not some skinny yellow coward who came here on a fucking boat.”

  Chi stood up. Mike’s eyes widened.

  Everyone at the club had stopped talking, watching while pretending not to watch the altercation. The only sound was the rapid murmurings of the race caller coming from the Tai screen, and the repetitive tunes and ringing of the slot machines in the next room.

  When Chi stood up the people in the club didn’t see the small Vietnamese man anymore, the one who sat with old Barry Stillwater every Sunday to watch the races. The man they saw wasn’t as short as they thought, and his shoulders were much bigger. Now they saw the veins stand out on his neck and the white scar on his cheek blazing, like it was hot.

  Chi hit Mike and the big man went down. Ha-Ha stepped in and Chi hit him as well. The man’s eyes rolled up and his head cracked against the table as he went and stayed down.

  Caramel Mike was groaning on the floor, trying to push himself up. Chi kicked him hard enough for the ribs to break, and for everyone in the room to hear the breaking. Mike cried out and started coughing as he tried to breathe. Chi dragged the thug by the hair over to the doors, ignoring Bazza, the old gambler’s face creased with fear as he said something. Chi pulled Mike up the concrete steps to the bowls green. The old people nearby in their pressed whites gasped and moved away.

  Chi threw the man onto the ground, picked up a heavy bowls ball, and brought it down on the man’s head.

  The first blow cracked the eye socket.

  The second blow hit the forehead with the sound of a bamboo rod striking soft flesh. The heavy ball came away wet.

  The third—

  —was slowed by someone hanging on his arm.

  He turned angrily, lashing out. The person fell backward, landing awkwardly. An old man, saying something, arm outstretched. Chi stood over him, bowl gripped fiercely, like he was hanging on to a ball of his hate.

  One blow was all he’d need to end this doddering old fool. Then he noticed the old man was shaking. Bazza was shaking. The wind blew gently against Chi’s face, bringing the sound of a woman crying.

  Then the moment passed.

  He dropped the ball to the green and walked away.

  Chi sat under the shade of the flame tree, by the road. He took out the small silver key and turned it in his hand, leaning against the trunk. The tree was firm against his back, solid, while everything else around was indistinct. The people on the green were white blurs, the houses along the road grey smudges against a blue horizon.

  Chi Cong Nguyen understood then that the flame tree was a gateway between this world and the other. Between the past and the present. He understood then that Barry Stillwater was wrong, that the only way to live was in the past. The only way to escape the eternal present was to an unchanging past. So he rested his back against the tree in this world, like he did in that other world, on the shores of Tay Ho, with Kieu sitting across
his legs. One time and place in superposition with the other.

  He sat there until the police came, and when they did, he didn’t resist.

  * * *

  A week later, two burly policemen dragged Chi into the doctor’s office. She watched with sadness as they pushed him down into the Kandel-Yu machine. There were straps at the legs, arms, and waist that Chi had never noticed before.

  Chi was silent as they strapped him in. The police stood by the door until the young doctor insisted they leave. One of the officers looked at her and said: “We’ll be right outside the door if you need us.”

  She sighed and walked over to where he lay. Her face was a mask of concern, and Chi believed it this time.

  “Oh Chi,” she sighed. She reached down and pushed the hair back from his eyes. “What have you done to yourself?”

  “Sian,” he said quietly. “You can’t take away my memories.”

  “I don’t have a choice, Chi. There are two dozen memory-feed recordings of you beating an unarmed man into a coma. You have to have this procedure. It’s the only way, now.” She smiled a strained smile at him. “Everything will change, after this. You’ll be a new man.”

  Chi was looking right through her when he started speaking, softly:

  “When I heard my village had been bombed, I left basic training and went there immediately. I had no leave pass, and no one would drive me for fear of the consequences, so I stole a bicycle and rode. It took me two days. I arrived, exhausted, after creeping past roadblocks in the darkness.

  “It was the Moon. I was in my village, I was sure of it, but I was walking on the surface of the Moon. Puffs of ash with each step, nothing but craters and grey dust as far as I could see. But I could see enough of the melted roads to find the place where the village had built a bunker. A good bunker, too, made of plascrete and reinforced with carbon nanotubes.”

  The doctor leaned in close, straining to hear his words.

  “A nova bomb is an amazing thing. There is nothing like it in nature. Tornadoes follow the blast; tornadoes of fire that roll across the landscape, eating all the air, gorging on it. Everything burns, everything. I dug all night at the spot where the bunker should have been. Dawn came and I had dug out the entrance. I hadn’t slept in two days, hadn’t eaten; I was dizzy, seeing things.

  “I tried the heavy door, and to my surprise it popped open, easily. When it did, it sounded like the earth was drawing in a long, deep breath. I stepped inside. My village was sitting there, in that bunker, untouched. I smiled, a big smile, water in my eyes, and said hello.

  “But no one moved. Not an inch. They were statues. Frozen at that one moment in time, one eternal moment.

  “Dead.

  “Dead, every one, like they’d all passed peacefully in their sleep. The oxygen had been sucked out of the bunker by the nova weapon. My fiancée, Kieu, was sitting on a bench, her head leaning on her mother’s shoulder. Her eyes shone as she looked at me. I knelt in front of her and spoke to her for a time, in there, among all the staring, untouched dead. She was so sad to have died. Kieu had dreams, you see, bigger dreams than could fit into so short a life.

  “I wanted to stay and talk to her, console her, but the spirits down there were angry and frightened by what had happened to them. And I was a coward. I kissed her and said goodbye.

  “But she wouldn’t let me leave. Not until I promised. Kieu had been at work when the sirens sounded, you see. Hadn’t had time to get her rare, beloved, yellow-beaked songbird. Hadn’t understood what had happened above. Couldn’t understand. So she gave me the key. You can’t keep it locked up, she said, and made me promise to release it. War is no place for my bird. I promised.

  “I had nothing to cremate them with. So I shovelled the dirt back over the entrance and left them, just like that. I fear that they will always haunt that place, as I did not clean the bodies, had no food to leave them. Kieu, her family, will never rest.”

  The doctor was shaking her head, eyes wide, mouthing: oh no, Chi.

  “Later, when I deserted my unit and was trying to make my way to Saigon, I was walking alone in a smashed forest. Trees were snapped, and the stands of bamboo were tinged red, like they were bleeding. There was one finger of dawn on the horizon—I’d walked all night and desperately wanted to sleep, but all night, in that broken place, I’d heard sobbing whispers and howls carried on the wind.

  “I thought I saw a bridge in the distance. It was strange, as there were no rivers, no water, save the drying mud under my boots. I was parched, lips cracked, so I hurried over. There was a bridge. But the supports on either side were gone. I didn’t understand, didn’t understand how it was hanging there, in the air. Then as the sun rose and the centipedes crawled past my feet, I saw the shadows under the bridge were thick shadows. Solid shadows. People, bodies and bodies piled up on top of each other, wedged under the bridge, holding it up in the air. The Chinese had blown a dam up somewhere, miles back.”

  The doctor shook her head, eyes glistening.

  “The flies were everywhere, everywhere. Swarms of big black flies. I swallowed one accidentally. That night, I dreamed of water, bearing me down, crushing me. I woke up and tried to scream, but I was choking. I was choking on water and then throwing it up. I was full of it. The fly must have been on one of the bodies, inside the mouth of one of the victims. Then into my mouth, bringing the spirit of the dead into me. That’s why I chose this town inland, away from water. That spirit inside me cannot bear to be near it.

  “The road south was tough. Gene-scramblers had destroyed all the food crops. Chinese troops were everywhere, villages and towns razed to the ground. I could travel only at night, in the mountains and the jungle. I ate bark and bamboo root when I could find it. But I couldn’t find much. My skin was tight over my ribs and had started to peel away, every step was agony on my joints.

  “Late one night, deep in the jungle, I saw a flickering light. Just a small little thing, so small I thought I was imagining it. But I staggered down through the undergrowth until I could hear voices. I was so hungry, I didn’t care anymore whether they were Chinese or not, ghosts or not, and went right in.

  “It wasn’t ghosts. It was a medical camp. There was a young doctor, so young, younger than Kieu even. She was gaunt, but her smile was the most beautiful thing I had seen in months. There was a nurse there as well, and three soldiers on stretchers. It was a miserable camp. Mosquito nets under tarpaulin, the smell of something ripe, rotting, coming from one of the patients, dried blood on the doctor’s smock she’d never had time to clean.

  “I begged for food. The doctor just shook her head. She said I was healthy, and they needed everything they had left. They didn’t know if they would find food again, when relief was coming. If it was coming, ever. She smiled and called me little brother, and told me to be strong.

  “I pushed her onto the ground. I could see bamboo food containers and went to them. The nurse told me to stop, but I pointed my rifle at her and she backed away. There was so little food in those containers, so little. I stuffed some of the rice into my mouth, crammed it in, washed it down with dirty water. It seemed like a feast.

  “I had gathered the other containers and was turning to leave when the doctor hit me in the face with an iron stake. I was knocked backward, into one of the tent poles, blood running down my face. I came back at her, in anger, and struck her in the temple with the butt of my rifle. She fell down and just lay there on the ground, eyes staring up at the mosquito net.

  “The nurse cried and the patients begged me to leave the food. I took it anyway. I took it all. Left them there with nothing, but the body of the doctor.”

  He was finished. As Chi had spoken, the tightness below his heart had grown, weighing him down into the chair.

  He looked up into the doctor’s face, fully aware of her for the first time since he had been brought into the room. There were tears in her eyes.

  She was shaking her head. “Maybe the doctor didn’t die,” she said in a thin voice. “Maybe the patients made it.”

  Chi thought about the young doctor, eyes staring and unblinking. “No,” he said. She died. I killed her. And without food, the patients would have died, too.”

  “Chi,” she said, struggling to keep the emotion out of her voice.

  “You know what it is to kill medical staff, like that?” he asked, and there was no emotion in his. His voice had as much life in it as those bodies, preserved in the bunker. “A war crime.”