Legends of Lemuria

Chapter 2: Nadika-1

Chapter 2: Nadika“Father,” Nadika asked, “how long until the Lemurians return?” She secured the last screw and looked up from the repairbot.

Her father, Governor Prasad Weligama, cleared his throat and looked at her over his spectacles, one lens green and the other blue. “Nadika Weligama, how dare you question the wisdom of ancient Lemuria!”

“I wasn't questioning them at all, Father. I was merely asking,” she said lightheartedly, more so than she felt.

The question had niggled at her for more than a year, since the brigand attack. The depredations of time and intermittent attack were all around her. The flowers in the garden flaked paint from their metal petals, the pop-up gnome beside the waterfall only popped halfway out of his hole, and the waterwheel at the base of the falls only creaked back and forth now. And for every half-working item within range of her vision, she could list ten others in need of overhaul or repair.

In the distance, the Ferrous Wheel squeaked obstreperously when used; now it was so rusty, Nadika had changed its name. The rocket-drop waved useless cables in the wind, its rockets having long since broken loose. The empty rails of the comet-coaster ended abruptly in mid-air. The galaxy needle pierced the sky with one lift dangling precariously by a single chain. Some of the attractions had fallen apart by themselves, their pulleys and winches worn and rusty; others had arrived at their demise through misadventure, the victim of malicious destruction by roving bands of miscreants. The repairbots had done what they could, but they weren't able even to repair themselves. Without replacement parts or simple supplies such as paint and lubrication, most of the machinery wouldn't last.

Nadika sighed, not sure why she and her father continued to keep the place running.

“We were granted this sacred purpose and obligation,” Governor Prasad said, speaking as though addressing a courtyard full of followers. The steel flowers and half-visible gnome listened with attention as rapt as Nadika's. “The Kings of Lemuria passed down to us the blessings of a verdant planet, full with clement climes and bountiful food, rich with fascinating amusements and scintillation displays of wonders beyond imagining. These amusements were entrusted to us to maintain until they deem it wise and fit to return. Their powers were legendary: They could make themselves weightless, or transmit themselves across the galaxy in seconds, and it was rumored that they could even stop time.”

Nadika waited for him to go on, his oratory as bombastic as it was grandiloquent.

But he'd stopped. “It's time we enter the temple and pray.” He stood to his full six-five height and moved across the garden.

Carrying the repairbot, she fell into step beside him, just a few inches shorter than he. The ancient script described their forebears as more stout but less tall than they, an effect attributed to the “point-eight” gravities of their world, Bentota. Nadika wasn't sure of the link between these gravities and how tall and slender her people were, the scripts asserting that engineers knew such things. The engineers who drove their trains were given to little speech, except perhaps to exhort passengers to board and disembark. Occasionally, the one working train might be heard, its whistle piercing the afternoon air, followed by the admonition, “All aboard!”

Nadika followed him into the temple, the building once brightly painted, but like most the structures, the paint had long since flaked away to expose the bare wood or steel underneath. Atop the temple stood turrets, their onion domes still proudly proclaiming their people's fealty to their Deity, the supreme God Fallah. Some domes remained intact, they too having suffered the depredations of time and vandals.

Inside, a spider web of scaffolding soared overhead, steel girder laced through with the rays of sun penetrating the ill-repaired domes. Hanging from the girders was a hemispherical pendulum, a solid black half-shell against the ceiling, a mere blot, as though light would not penetrate nor reveal the fuscous object.

Nadika set down the repairbot and knelt on her prayer mat. Her father was adamant about praying toward the Sacred Mountain five times daily and had been known to chide her for days if she missed just once. Sometimes, she sought reprieve in repairs that took her far afield, where without his scrutiny she might pray or not as befit her mood.

Mostly not.

And he'd harrumph and scowl if he didn't see evidence of prayer at the knee of her skirt when she returned from her forays.

The bot she set down skittered off and climbed the wall, pulling itself into its cradle.

Adorning the walls were figurines in varied dress and some undress, whose faces ran a gamut of colors, whose bodies varied from plump to slim, short to tall, and in between. On either side of the alter stood statues having the likeness of Nadika and her father, deep-brown skin like tanned leather, the male's bearded face looking oh so like her fathers', and the female's skin so soft and silky brown. These two lead figures were distinct from the other figurines in one other way: each wore a crystal, the older man with a heart-sized crystal dangling at his breastbone, the young woman wearing crystals over her eyes. Their beatific faces were turned toward a nodule on the wall which, although dark now, would burst with brightness in just moments.

Once, Nadika had rushed toward the temple too late to pray, and had stopped outside the door, stunned at the sight she beheld. The onion dome and tower had sprouted spears of light in all directions, the beams either hitting an amusement or reflecting off a series of mirrors until it hit its intended amusement.

Since then, she had watched the hemispherical pendulum and the nodule surreptitiously from her supplication. Had her father caught her, he would have punished her roundly. The light was beamed at the pendulum by the nodule on the wall, she'd seen, and once she got the opportunity, she'd examined the nodule more closely. Like its larger cousin dangling from the ceiling girders, the nodule was hemispherical—what she could see of it—and looked to be opaque except when alight. She couldn't tell by touch or sight what material it was; it felt too smooth to be glass and exerted little friction when she stroked it with a finger.

As she prostrated herself to the flashing God, Nadika cast an eye toward her father.

On his face was a scowl. He jerked his gaze toward the alter, and she knew he'd admonish her for weeks for not giving Fallah her full attention.

Chastised, she felt her cheeks color and wished briefly she were rid of this annoying ritual.

Brilliance flooded the room, and Nadika trembled, afraid that Fallah would smite her for inattention, as the scripts attested the Almighty did for infractions far less severe.

She glanced to one side and saw a beam of light lance the repairbot from the overhead pendulum. The repairbot lit up briefly and then shut off. Nadika hoped it had charged this time, the battery having drained two days ago in spite of its being in its cradle.

The brilliance died, and Nadika sat back on her haunches.

“Praise be the Spirit of Fallah,” her father said, and he was echoed by the pantheon of figurines adorning the walls around them.

One voice squeaked out of time and off pitch.

Nadika looked toward the figurine. Its mouth moved jerkily and its eyes twitched with a strabismus. The repairbot skittered from its cradle, swinging from the girders over to the figurine, and got to work. In minutes, the bot had the figurine back together, then it whistled a sequence of tones.

“Praise be the spirit of Fallah,” the figurine said, its mouth moving normally, its voice pitched almost identically to the others, and the eyes managing the mechanical equivalent to a smile.

Her father left the temple abruptly.

Startled, Nadika followed him.

Outside, he whirled on her. “How dare you keep silent during the sacred incantation?!”

Stars exploded in her left eye, her head spun to the right, and a coppery taste burst in her mouth. Nadika spun and stared at him.

“Oh, Nadika, I'm so—” He reached for her.

“Fallah blast you to hell for all eternity!” she roared, then stalked off, blinking back her tears, nearly trampling the half-exposed gnome before finding the path.

She heard his voice behind her, but kept going, disbelief and betrayal threatening to send tears down her face.

She headed for the east exit, where the sign thanked her for her visit and encouraged her to come again soon, the one working figurine saying something similar in Tamil. The flat, w**d-infested access promenade offered no sanctuary. On the far side was a promontory, where a group of well-known characters from the park's major attractions beckoned to non-existent passersby, encouraging them to see “The Most Extravagant Theme Park on Bentota.”

Nadika climbed to the top and nestled herself in between Beruga the black bear and Praveen the panther, and there, she wept disconsolate sobs that she couldn't hold back any longer.

* * *

Nadika saw Sameera coming from a long way away. She crouched even lower between the two figurines, not wanting him to find her like this. He won't understand, she thought, knowing there was nowhere to go.

She'd wept for twenty minutes, then had stared off into the distance for another twenty minutes, wondering what she'd done in a previous life to deserve such a miserable rebirth. Her father would have been shocked to learn of her thinking, devout in his faith in the afterlife.

But Sameera wouldn't. The child of another establishment owner, Sameera Botha spent most of his days as Nadika did, tending to an amusement park whose attractions functioned sporadically, if at all, and struggling to slow the inexorable degradation with inadequate materials and not enough time.

“Hi, Nadika,” he said, stopping at the base of the knoll.

“Hi, Sam,” she said, trying not to look at him, not wanting to acknowledge that she'd been crying.

“Uh, I'll go away if you want me to.”

It was exactly what she wanted, but she didn't have the heart to tell him. He'd be crushed, and she liked him too much to do that to him. “No, I don't want you to do that. I don't know what I do want, but not that.”

Sam looked at the ground, shuffled his feet, looked off into the distance. “Can I come up?”

“Sure.” She nodded, still not looking his direction.

He scrambled up on all fours, and settled on the far side of Beruga's hind leg, peering at her from under the fake fur belly. “Argument with your father again?”

She sighed and nodded. “This time he slapped me.”

Sam caught his breath, his eyes wide. “What did you say to him?”

Nadika scowled.

“Uh, I mean, uh—”

She sighed and waved it away. “It wasn't anything I said or did. It was this.” She gestured over her shoulder.

“Yeah,” he said, looking glum.

That's what she liked about him. He knew what she was talking about, without her having to explain it. “This” was the constant struggle to keep things working and the constant slide into disrepair of everything around them. And her father's helplessness to stop the slide was as much at cause in their dispute as Nadika's irreverence and apostasy. Nadika felt the same way as her father, hopeless in the losing battle to keep things working, and helpless to stop it.

“And then I asked him when the Lemurians were returning.”

Sam grimaced and nodded.

“I could throw myself off the Sacred Mountain.” Softy she began to weep, not out of despair that her world was literally crumbling around her, not even out of betrayal that her father had struck her, not even at his punctilious rigidity in observing the tenets of his faith.

But because she was losing faith.

Sam moved next to her and pulled her close.

“I don't think they are coming back.” And she wept anew, letting go of all those balmy evenings in which she and her father had sat atop this hill under a sky full of stars and tried to guess which constellation or star was Lemuria, the home planet of their forebears, or what day of the year they'd appear on, or what they'd be wearing, whether they could still understand their language, and how different they would look from Nadika and her father.