When they died, a toucan landed on his shoulder. He shook it off.
It was the type of bird that appeared in ads for ale, assuring you that the dark stuff was the best stuff. It was the type of bird whose beak swelled to more than twice the size of its body. It flew awkwardly but quickly: a colorful flash that appeared, disappeared, and always landed on his shoulder. He kept shaking it off.
The toucan’s first words to him, in a garble of part-Hindustani, part-Chinese, part-bird, were, “Are you going to eat that?” When he said no, the toucan arched its body around his head and snapped the dumpling into its mouth. He felt a hot rush of toucan breath on his fingers, felt the sharp beak crack against his cheek. He did not want to think about the toucan, but the toucan was always on the edge of his eyesight, weighing down his right shoulder, consuming his dumpling, watching the sunset with him.
It was not an unpleasant bird. It asked before eating. It commented on how lovely the hazy sky was. The toucan told him stories of flying up into great heights, where kingdoms of rolling clouds tumbled by. You could see things up there, the toucan said. You could see people floating up to heaven, you could see superheroes and atomic bombs and Lord Krishna. He never really believed the toucan’s stories, but he found himself listening, though trying not to, his ears prickling and his heart pounding. The toucan knew this. So it continued, and even if the man felt pained, the man listened.
At night the toucan left him, and he missed it. Suddenly the absence of everything pressed in on him, and four walls, a ceiling, and a floor became a prison cell on all sides. The mornings never came quickly enough. Dawn lingered on the porthole’s artificial horizon, teasing the sorrow out of him. Where was that bird?
“You might feel more comfortable if you get in the tub.” A woman’s voice.
Balbir Singh was standing in his undergarments. The room was white, sterile, and chilly. He was trembling. The toucan was perched on a ledge, examining its wing.
“Dr. Abbas, is that you?” Balbir’s voice shook from the cold. The walls were lined with monitors that buzzed static. Balbir addressed his question to the loudspeaker by the bird.
“Yes, Governor sahib.”
“Are you well?”
“Fine, thank you, Governor sahib. Our cabin’s pressure normalized before yours did, so I only went through quarantine. Please, Governor sahib, remove your pants and get in the tub.”
Balbir hesitated. He thought he saw the toucan smile.
“Don’t be embarrassed, Balbir sahib. My monitors show only the outline of your body heat. And they are showing several pockets of nitrogen in your right shoulder. The tub will fix that. You’ll find an oxygen mask and some headphones on the table.”
Balbir’s hands were clumsy as he tried to pull the mask’s elastic over his ears. It hurt to move, to think. Eventually, Dr. Abbas asked, “Would you like me to come in and assist you?”
“No! Please don’t, I’m naked.”
The tub was slim and deep, a white coffin filled with red goo. Mindful of the tubing which connected his oxygen mask to the tanks behind the tub, Balbir sat on the edge and swung his legs around. His movements were clumsy from the cold and the decompression sickness, so he lowered himself into the tub’s warm liquid faster than intended, bumping his head on the edge.
The tub’s liquid was thick and it smelled like cherry flavoring. He submerged himself completely. It crept into his ears, around his armpits and groin. When he had settled at the bottom, he heard the voice of Dr. Abbas in his headphones, scratchy and faint.
“Good. This tub will help your recompression along, it’s much more effective than the chamber. Now, breathe deeply and evenly. Don’t worry – the gel won’t penetrate the mask. And even if it does, it’s edible. You can open your eyes, if you like.”
Balbir noticed that he had his eyes tightly shut. He tried to open them, but failed. The gel was tingly. What was the toucan thinking?
“You can speak into the mask, as well. How does everything feel?”
Balbir struggled before answering. “D-Disgusting.”
Dr. Abbas gave a soft chuckle. “I can imagine. Don’t worry, only one or two sessions will do. Thankfully, it doesn’t look like the problems with the cabin pressure did too much damage.”
“How long is this session?”
“Three hours.”
The thought of being stuck in red goo for three hours -
“Oh. Your heartbeat just spiked. Even breaths, Governor sahib. In, out. In, and out. Good. Don’t worry. I’ll be here with you. If you’d like, I can put a sedative in the tank.”
“Yes, do that, please.”
“Coming…” Dr. Abbas’ voice faded.
“Wait, Dr. Abbas!” Balbir exclaimed. His nose and mouth were sweating from the mask’s suction grip.
Dr. Abbas returned to the microphone, louder. “Yes, Governor sahib?”
“I have… another problem. I wanted to tell you.”
“Yes?”
“It’s a psychological thing.”
Dr. Abbas was silent.
Balbir tried to laugh through the knot in his throat. “I think I’m going insane.”
“I doubt it,” Dr. Abbas said, kindly. “Why do you think that?”
“I’ve been having hallucinations.”
“Hallucinations?”
“Yes. Of…” He wanted to say: of his family. Of his wife, his daughters. The bomb. Of all the people who had died on New Peshawar. That would have sounded less crazy. Instead, he said, “A bird.”
“A bird?”
“A toucan. I saw him fly on board when we were evacuating. I thought it was strange that no one mentioned it. But when I spoke with Saeed sahib, well, apparently no one else can see him. He’s, uh, he’s actually in the room now. I don’t suppose your monitors are picking him up.”
Dr. Abbas sighed. “Balbir. We have just been through a very traumatic event. We are all exhausted and grieving.” Her voice was shaking. She paused, and then continued evenly, “You are not insane. You are emotionally injured. If you’d be in agreement, I can refer you to Dr. Rai. He has said that he’ll be available for psychological services.”
Balbir was crying.
“Governor sahib?”
He tried to keep silent.
“Balbir?”
“Yes, that’s fine, that sounds good. I think that might help. I don’t know. Thank you, Dr. Abbas – Naziah. Can I get that sedative now, please?”
The current custom was to drop a thousand atomic bombs on your adversary’s colony in a pattern. The most typical Chinese pattern was the peony, their historical emblem, though sometimes the mushroom clouds erupted in broad strips and edges, making Mandarin characters like War, Victory or Cowards. Some Chinese generals left signatures.
When the Chinese ships arrived in New Peshawar’s orbit, the mushroom clouds exploded into the pattern of a lotus flower. Why they chose the lotus flower baffled Balbir. Who used the lotus? The lotus was the Buddha, it was peace and sitting cross-legged under banyan trees. It had no place in war. Balbir’s wife, Mirabai, used to make oil paintings of lotuses. Had the Chinese somehow known?
The bombs had exploded within seconds of each other all over New Peshawar’s northern hemisphere. There was a flash in the night sky, then a thousand flashes, like stars awakening, followed by aurora-like waves sweeping overhead. Then: inhaled silence and a rumbling roar. Balbir had been attending a clone concert a hundred miles away with his ministers and other high-ranking officials. It was a stupid way to survive.
“Survivors, two hundred and twenty-seven. Seventy-three are in critical condition. We’ve taken over the residential quarters for now. There isn’t enough space in Med Ward. And thank God for Dr. Abbas. If she hadn’t been at the concert, I don’t know how Nurse Patel and I would have coped.”
Balbir was only half-listening. The toucan tapped him with its beak and said, “You know, I’m dying for a drink here.”
“…rest are suffering from relatively non-critical injuries. Many with decompression sickness. Some New Peshawar bugs were brought aboard. We’ve washed everyone out in quarantine, just in case. Psychological trauma, of course, though I don’t have enough time for everyone yet. I’ve deferred several to the net’s services and some officers are organizing group counseling sessions as well.”
It had all been confusion. The clones had been halfway through a song and dance number. These were fully-registered, first-quality clones of Puranas film stars. Only the government and the rich could afford tickets. A thousand people had been there. A crazy crowd, cheering madly, forgetting all about the expected humorless dignity of their caste. The clone tours only visited the planet every five years. Balbir had been sitting with his ministers in the front row, politely clapping, thinking about what his daughter, Pooja, had said: she wanted to marry a Muslim offworlder (not a problem, necessarily) mechanic (big problem). The boy was eight years older than her (bigger problem) and – Balbir had learned, to his horror – the boy had had an illegitimate child from a previous relationship. Now how to convince Pooja that he was bad news? How to convince her that he, Balbir, wasn’t being a conservative and communalist?
Meanwhile, the spotlights had swerved drunkenly. The clone Shalu had swiveled her hips and mouthed along to blaring lyrics. Oh, how do you do (you you you!) My heart kicks – my heart kicks – with love for you (you you you!) -
Then there was noise, light, and the ground had rippled under Balbir’s feet like a carpet being yanked away. They had left the music on while they had fled. Balbir never heard the bombs that killed his family, but only felt them in his jerking joints and hot skin.
They were flying in Chinese space; a dangerous thing to do. But the refugees of New Peshawar and the officers of the ship were desperate. They had gone down an invisible, unmarked Drop near New Peshawar and they had arrived in this new place. After a quick scan had revealed three planets, they had tried their luck and sent off a wave of greeting. In reply, one of the planets had sent a distress signal. In Chinese. Now what to do?
The competing empires of China and Hindustan used the official, registered Drop network, but everyone knew that rogue Drops were constantly being created – by nature, by man, by something. A rogue Drop was a dangerous thing: low survival probability, twisted and folded space. Most rogue Droppers ended up exploding into fragments halfway to their destination.
Balbir had always assumed the Hindustani intelligence services knew about these Drops and used them for spying on the enemy, but when the Rahu Ketu – his rescuer – fell into one by mistake, he realized that the military was just as ignorant as the civilians. (So who made the Drops?) According to legend, the rogue Drops expanded out into reaches of space untouched by the empires. They were also said to go all the way back to Earth. You could go leaping back to the motherland, avoiding the official arteries altogether.
Balbir was in the command room when the Chinese signal came in. The toucan was reading a paperback, Glories of the Kingdom. It was lazily turning the pages with a feather finger. Balbir wondered how many ways existed to kill a toucan.
Meanwhile, the Rahu Ketu’s captain, Asadullah Khan, was pacing in front of the monitors. Asadullah’s hair was graying. He smelled like alcohol.
“Balbir ji,” Asadullah said, “I don’t know what to do. I just don’t know. The life support systems are at seventy percent capacity. And I’m not in the business of picking up prisoners of war.”
The toucan had started to mimic Asadullah’s gait and hunched shoulders.
“Balbir ji?”
Balbir flinched, startled. “I – oh… ji? I’m sorry.”
Asadullah sighed. He gave Balbir a heavy pat on the shoulder. “I can’t pretend to understand what you’ve been through, bhai. But I need your help now. What do we do?”
“Maybe they can tell us how to get back to the Drop network?”
Even as their cultures had grown apart, humanity was humanity. And all of humanity – Chinese and Hindustani – used one word for atomic bomb victim: hibakusha. In the twentieth century, before Earth was revered as sacred space, the United States of America had dropped two atomic bombs on the people of Japan. All those affected were called the hibakusha. The word had survived to this day. Balbir was live hibakusha. His family was dead hibakusha. And, by the sound of that distress signal, this mysterious Chinese colony was hibakusha as well.
Balbir leaned heavily on his elbow, sloshing the drink around his cup. The parlor was empty. He sat against large embroidered cushions. He had accidentally short-circuited the remote control earlier by spilling liquor on it, so now he couldn’t order up any entertainment. Nor could he dim the lights, so he sat and grieved under bright neon pink.
In a week, they would be visiting the former Chinese colony of Her Shining Freedom. They were in a renegade part of the universe, where empires did not go and revolutionaries had ripped space open to set up failed utopias. Anyway, hibakusha was hibakusha, and most of the colony of peace-loving spiritualists was dead.
Balbir drank, imagining toucan-shaped holes in his heart and lotus-shaped afterglows. Where was that bird?
“Toucan,” Balbir slurred.
“Governor sahib,” Toucan said. The bird appeared, flapping, from behind a curtain.
“Now, why… why do you call me that? That’s so formal. Aren’t we tu by now?” Tu was the most intimate you, the you of children, friends, God, surely imaginary birds.
“We can be you (tu) if you (aap) want us to be.”
“Toucan, just tell me something. Did I make a mistake?”
“Define.”
“Is this wrong? Me being here? I shouldn’t be here. Mahatma Jesus ji!” Balbir exclaimed. He covered his face with his hand, sloppy. “You know, I used to hate flying.”
“The best way to overcome a phobia is to face it.”
“And grief? Toucan, I—I…”
“‘Tu’—’tu’—please don’t finish that sentence. This is war, this is life. You’ll survive again, don’t worry.”
“What a stupid way to survive.”
Music played gently from the room’s sound system. It was an old film song, heavy on the tabla. Something from the Puranas. Oh, how do you do (you you you)! My heart kicks – my heart kicks…
There was movement by the door. Balbir wiped his eyes and his nose and saw it: the Shalu clone, looking sympathetic and angelic with the light behind her. The last time he had seen her was on New Peshawar, when he had been sitting in the audience and she had been onstage, swiveling her hips.
She jingled when she walked. She was beautiful, but clones were clones, and Balbir stifled his tears, embarrassed to be looking so human in front of something like her.
“You’re Balbir Singh,” the clone said, approaching. “The governor.”
“Yes, I am.”
“I’m very sorry about what happened during our concert for you.” She had that weird, clone way of talking – as if she was still in a film. A bad one.
“Mmm hmm,” Balbir managed.
“Did your family get aboard safely?”
Balbir started crying again. The Shalu made a face. She quickly came over where he could smell her (jasmine and sunshine) and placed a soft little hand on his arm.
“Oh, no,” she said. “Please don’t do that. I’m sorry. Does this mean they’re…?”
“They weren’t at the concert. My youngest wanted to come, but I wouldn’t let her,” he sobbed harder.
“I’m so sorry.” This sounded genuine. Balbir hiccupped, looking up into her wide, kind eyes. She was intimidatingly beautiful.
“You’re so…” he slurred, searching for the word, “healthy.”
“Ji? Oh. Yes. Our cabin pressurized before yours. I’m sorry about that, too.”
“Please, don’t be. If you hadn’t been there, we would have all…” he paused, collected himself. “How are your people? Is everyone well?” He indicated for her to sit. She gathered up her sari and sat in front of him on the carpets. She looked so small and quiet in front of him now; not like her onstage persona at all.
“Some are well, some are unwell,” she said. “The Shahrukh has broken his knees again. He was in your cabin, the one that failed to pressurize. Now his knees are all swollen. But he is an older generation than me. He is almost at retirement age. He has lots of health troubles.”
Balbir remembered: he had been sitting wedged between Shahrukh clone and the escape hatch. They had both been thrown back against the windows when the cruiser had fled from New Peshawar’s atmosphere. With a sonic boom of fear, the cruiser had shot up into the stars, leaving everyone else behind, burning them in their engine’s trail. They had fled so quickly that the cabin pressure had not normalized in time, and nitrogen had bubbled up in their bodies like champagne: in their joints, under their skin, burning through their spinal chord and lungs. The change in pressure had snapped Balbir’s inner ear. Fluid had poured into his middle ear, causing vertigo, and he had vomited, and the Shahrukh had been screaming, and -
Balbir drank.
Anyway, the Shahrukh didn’t seem that old. He looked maybe thirty. But then Balbir had never understood clone aging. Were they supposed to be like dogs or like toucans?
“Governor sahib…” the clone began tentatively. She had her eyes lowered. She looked exactly like one of those old posters of the original Shalu.
“Ji, please,” Balbir encouraged.
“Governor sahib, some of us are wondering about the concert. No, please don’t worry, I don’t mean payment. We have filed the concert under Emergency Acts, and the central bureau will be sending us our payment. But, some people have been telling me… They say we are not in the Empire anymore. That we’re lost.”
“Yes, well, we’re not totally lost… we’re in a Chinese system.”
“Oh.” She didn’t seem very alarmed. After a moment, she said, “My people have been telling me that the tour is finished.”
“Yes. I don’t think you’ll be putting on any more concerts for the moment. Perhaps when we get back onto the Drop network.”
“When will that be?”
“Uh…” Balbir stared into his drink. When he took a sip, it spilled down his chin. He felt exhausted. And he just didn’t care about anything anymore. “I imagine our new Chinese friends will help us get back onto the network.”
“They will? Funny, I didn’t think they liked us very much. They’re our new friends?”
That made him smile. “No, I mean—I—don’t clones watch the news? We’ve been at war with them since…”
“Ji, I know… I just, hmm. I’m not very good with people and talking.”
She was an It and not a She. He trained himself to think that: It, It, It. She could never be a She. Balbir wouldn’t let her (it!) worm her (its!) way into his heart. His heart was black, the war had burned it that way. He was walking hibakusha, alive-dead, buried with his family on New Peshawar. And she (it!) was just a thing, an organic toy who looked and smelled and felt like a human. So what if she expressed sympathy? Sympathy could be faked; he knew enough about that. No, she was not a person, she was a thing. And a thing provides pleasure and physical comfort, and there is no sin in loving (only in the physical sense) a thing.
“Governor sahib,” the toucan said, flying overhead. “There’s something special between you and the clone girl, na?”
“What?” Balbir hissed. The corridor was crowded. His fellow refugees were huddled against the wall, waiting for dinner.
“I’ve just noticed… you know, a little something. A little heart thing.” The toucan smiled. “She’s very pretty.”
“Shut your beak!” Balbir turned the corner and made his way to his rooms.
But in his rooms, he found his thing. And she was beautiful and sparkling and coy, just as he liked her. She took his sherwani suit and unbuttoned each button and led him to the couches. She poured him wine and stroked his hair and was generally very agreeable. She didn’t seem embarrassed if he cried, or spoke only about Mirabai and his daughters, or ignored her altogether. Every time he entered his rooms, she would be there, providing company and, if required, physical release.
On the ground of the Chinese colony, Balbir found himself thinking about her. He thought about her when he gazed over the vast landscape of death, a post-atomic graveyard studded with the skeletons of monuments. It was all emptiness and breezy silence. The toucan circled overhead like a vulture, and Balbir felt his feet moving, carrying him forward, wandering into the rubble. Everywhere was debris, and his footsteps crunched loudly. Some of his retainers and ministers – survivors of the New Peshawar blast – trailed behind him. Their footsteps crunched in the distance. One of them eventually called, “Please, sahib, go no further! The Geiger readings are very high here! We should return to the ship!”
Balbir pretended not to hear and kept moving. It was a sunny, cloudless day. The Buddha’s broken face lay on its side, large blank eyes staring at the horizon. In the distance, mountains. Balbir wondered what this colony must have been like before the bombs. He closed his eyes and imagined green.
When they landed, the Chinese leader had stood at the end of the landing ramp with a peace offering: hands folded in the Hindustani greeting, Namaste. Captain Asadullah Khan had returned the greeting and then raised his hand to his forehead in the Muslim salutation: salaam. Peace be with you. God be with you. Khan and the Chinese woman spoke in a mixture of Hindustani, Mandarin and English, and Balbir heard the woman say that the Hindustani imperial army had dropped atomic bombs here in the pattern of the Om. Om used to end prayers, and some evil general had used it to kill these people. There were crowds of Chinese watching them. They were emaciated, injured, quiet. They stared at the small Hindustani party, and Balbir found himself staring back. To break free, he turned and walked, following the toucan as it flew into the distance; away from the ship, the crowds, the staring. Awkwardly, the New Peshawar retainers had followed.
Balbir was alone. His retainers had hovered at a distance, but now they were shuffling back to the ship. Balbir stood by a small canal. The footbridge to the other side had been blown away. The toucan perched itself on an uprooted plank of bent aluminum.
“Now what?” Balbir muttered.
“Find another way.” The bird shrugged.
“Is that supposed to be philosophical?”
The toucan just smiled.
“How many people did we leave on New Peshawar, Toucan?” Balbir asked.
“Well, there were over a thousand people at the concert…”
“A thousand potential survivors, and so few managed to get on the ship.” Balbir swallowed. He thought of his guru, buried under rubble: life hurts. “How many are here?”
“More than that.”
“What do you think about undoing sins, Toucan?”
The bird shrugged. “A good deed is a good deed.”
Back by the crowds and the staring, Captain Asadullah Khan was looking as harried as ever. His hair stood out at odd angles from where he kept running his hand through. He paced, cutting a straight path through his circle of officers. When Balbir returned from his walk, the older man’s eyes looked expectant.
“Balbir bhai, there you are. Bhai. Help me. I can’t make this decision.” The Captain said softly, hand in hair. The officers pretended not to hear.
“What decision?”
“Do we leave them? Do we just leave these people and go? Ya Allah, look at them. They’ll die. But – some of the officers – well, the war, I… Whatever you say, I’ll do. I just don’t understand anything anymore. Hibakusha law.”
“I…” Balbir paused, hesitating. He looked above; the toucan circled. “We’ll do what the bird says.”
The Captain didn’t bother to look up, but his face fell. He put a hand on Balbir’s shoulder.
“No, no,” Balbir shook his head. “I’m sorry, that’s not what I meant. We should—they’re hibakusha. We should take them. Bring them aboard. The war will be over for us. Who knows where the hell we are, anyway. The war probably ended thousands of light-years ago.”
The Captain cocked an eyebrow. “Just like that?”
“Bring them aboard. Batches of fifty each. Bring the doctors planet side and check out who needs medical attention now.” Balbir glanced up at the sun. “I’ll see if I can shake off the idiot.”
He left the toucan on the colony. He walked in circles in the rubble, he darted around fallen buildings and hid in the broken awning of a pagoda. He crept back to the landing site.
The doctors arrived and picked their way through the crowds. The officers attempted to register everyone on their DNA cards. Children wailed (young sons and daughters, living and breathing still), people gathered up their belongings.
Balbir took the final shuttle back, sharing it with Captain Khan and a pair of female officers. He looked out the window and saw the toucan’s tiny form, circling endlessly over the hibakusha colony. He hid his tears.
On the Rahu Ketu, there was chaos. There was shouting and shoving and chaos. The officers pushed against the New Peshawar refugees. Make room! Make room! Corridors were being locked off. The war was following them aboard. People were angry, insane. Heckles and jeering. Someone spat at a Chinese woman. Balbir escaped up to his rooms, exhausted, and found her there.
The Shalu clone was sitting at the window, staring at the glowing atmosphere of the Chinese colony. Her skin was flawless, her hair like shining silk.
“Oh, look at you,” she said, cheery. “You’re all dirty.”
“The bird’s gone. I left him there.” Balbir’s voice shook. The Shalu came to him, smiling vacantly. “I’ve traded one insanity for another. Will you stay here in my rooms?”
“If that is what the Governor sahib wishes.” The Shalu lowered her eyes. It was all a performance, but Balbir melted. He touched her cheek tenderly.
“We’ll start again, here on board. You’ll stay with me. We’ll make do.”
She smiled, visibly filling up with joy. Seeing her, he could almost convince himself.
“Make me forget them all, Shalu.”
“Ji, I’ll try.”