Desolation Road

20

Limaal and Taasmin Mandella, Johnny Stalin, and little Arnie Tenebrae, six days past her second birthday, were up at Desolation Point building paper gliders and launching them over the bluffs when The Hand came. They did not know it was The Hand then, not at first. Taasmin Mandella, whose eyesight was keenest, thought it was just a trick of the heat, like the hazy thermals that spiralled the paper gliders up into the heavy grey clouds. Then everyone noticed the thing and were amazed.

“It’s a man,” said Limaal Mandella, who could barely distinguish its shape.

“It’s a man of light,” said Taasmin Mandella, noticing the way the figure shone brighter than the cloud-hidden sun.

“It’s an angel,” Johnny Stalin, seeing the pair of red wings folded on its back.

“It’s something much much better!” squeaked Arnie Tenebrae. Then all the children looked and saw not what they wanted to see but what was there wanting to be seen, which was a tall thin man in a high-collared white suit upon which moving pictures of birds, animals, plants, and curious geometric patterns were projected, and the wings upon his back were not wings at all but a great red guitar slung across his shoulders.

The children ran down to meet the stranger.

“Hello, I’m Limaal and this is my sister, Taasmin,” said Limaal Mandella. “And this is our friend, Johnny Stalin.”

“And Arnie Tenebrae, me!” said little Arnie Tenebrae, bouncing up and down in excitement.

“We’re called The Hand,” said the stranger. He had a strange voice, as if he were speaking from deep down in a dream. “Where is this place?”

“This is Desolation Road!” chorused the children. “Come on.” And the two grabbed hands and one ran outrider and one ran van and they galloped up the bluffs and through the green tree-hung alleys of Desolation Road to the Bethlehem Ares Railroad/Hotel, for that was the place all strangers came to first.

“Look what we’ve found,” said the children.

“He’s called The Hand,” piped Arnie Tenebrae.

“He’s come all the way across the Great Desert,” said Limaal. A rumble passed among the clients, for only Dr. Alimantando (lost in time chasing a legendary green man, God be kind to him in his folly) had ever ever ever come across the Great Desert.

“He’ll be wanting a drink then,” said Rael Mandella, and nodded for Persis Tatterdemalion to draw off a glass of cold maize beer.

“Thank you kindly,” said The Hand in his funny faraway voice. The offer of acceptance was made and received. “Might we take off our boots? The Great Desert’s hard on feet.” He unslung his guitar, sat down on a table, and the glow from his picture-suit cast odd shadows over his shark features. The children sat around him, waiting to be praised for their wonderful find. The man called The Hand pulled off his boots and everyone gave a cry of consternation.

His feet were slim and fine as ladies’ hands, his toes long and flexible as fingers and his knees, his knees bent backward as well as forward, like a bird’s.

Then Persis Tatterdemalion spoke and calmed the storm “Hey, mister, play us a tune on your guitar, will you?”

The Hand’s eyes sought out his questioner, far away in the back-bar shadows. He stood and executed a complex bow, impossible for any less flexible than he. Time-lapse images of flowers blooming passed over his picture-suit.

“Because the lady asks, we think we will.” He picked-up his guitar and struck a harmonic. Then he touched his long slender fingers to the strings and released a swarm of notes into the air.

There was never such music played as played that afternoon in the Bethlehem Ares Railroad/Hotel. The music found notes in the tables and the chairs and the mirrors and the walls; it found melodies in the bedroom and the kitchen, the cellar and the shithouse, and dragged tunes out of the places where they had lain hidden undiscovered for years, found them, took them, and made them part of the greater self. There were tunes that made feet tap and tunes that brought out bouts of dancing. There were tunes that kicked over the tables and tunes that made the glassware rattle. There were tunes to make you smile and tunes to make you cry and tunes that sent delicious shivers down your back. There was the grand ancient music of the desert and the airy, breathy music of the sky. There was the music of dancing firelight and the infinite whistle of distant stars, there was merriment and magic and mourning and madness; music leaping, music crying, music laughing, music loving, music living, music dying.

When it was finished no one could believe it was over. No one could believe that just one man, with a guitar lying in his lap, could have made such mighty music. A ringing stillness filled the air. The Hand flexed his curious fingers, his curious toes. Desert sunsets glowed red and purple on his picture suit. Then Umberto Gallacelli called out, “Hey, mister, just where do you come from?”

No one had heard Mr. Jericho enter. No one had seen him take a seat at the bar. No one even knew he was there until he said, “I’ll tell you where he’s from.” Mr. Jericho pointed at the ceiling. “Am I right?”

The Hand stood up, tense and sharp-edged.

“Outside, right?” Mr. Jericho pressed home his reasoning. “The feet, that’s the way they’re born for use in open gravity, isn’t it? Extra hands? And the picture-suit, that’s a universal tool among ROTECH orbital personnel for reviewing visual information at a glance: I reckon it’s just running a random test pattern in the absence of data, am I right?”

The Hand did not say yes or no. Mr. Jericho continued.

“So, what are you doing here? Exclusion orders prohibit space adapted humans from coming to the surface except under permiso. You got a permiso?” The man called The Hand tensed, ready to flee, his red guitar held defensively before him. “Maybe you should have a talk with our district supervisor, the mayor Dominic Frontera. He can have the ROTECH boys in China Mountain check you out.”

Not even the prodigious experience of Mr. Jericho’s Exalted Ancestors could have prepared him for what The Hand did next. A screaming powerchord from the red guitar twisted the world away and tore at the mind with chromium teeth. Under cover of the guitar-scream, The Hand was gone, the children with him.