Camera Obscura by Lavie Tidhar Page A

sounds, the night's death, its cargo of misery. Rising, naked, from the bath, not bothering with a towel, she went through the door into her room and fell to bed, and closed her eyes amidst the silken sheets. No dreams, she thought. Please, no dreams. Holding on to a pillow she fell asleep.
     
 

INTERLUDE: Jungle Fever Boy
     
 
    Kai ran through the thick forest, heading deeper and deeper into the trees. Exhausted, fear kept him going – fear, and the voices that shouldn't have been there.
      The voices guided him. Here and there he could see signs of people – a hidden bird-trap up in the canopy, a long-necked bamboo basket with bait inside – the bird would crawl into it and be caged. There, a hint of cultivation through the trees – avoid.
      Would they be chasing him? He knew they would. They were. He had to disappear, to get away as completely as possible and never return. His life, the voices murmured helpfully, was over. His life as he knew it.
      Which meant what, exactly?
      Think of yourself as a wuxia hero, the voices suggested, though perhaps that was not so accurate to say. They didn't speak so much as hint, conjuring images, scents, markers to their meanings which Kai's mind translated into speech. A young wushu warrior. The evil faction had just killed your master. You are escaping, vowing revenge. Into the forest, where all things are possible, where young boys since time immemorial went to become men.
      Or, a part of his mind whispered, you're going crazy.
    Jungle fever.
      He saw mosquitoes hover but somehow they never bit him. He stopped by a brook and drank and lay, exhausted, against the thick, mottled trunk of a tree. In his mind he kept seeing the silent assassins with their loud guns, the black-clad monks fighting them – and losing.
      So much for the powers of wushu.
      Machines, the voices murmured. In his mind – guns. The voices: yes… machines have power.
      Then I will use that power, Kai said, and found that he couldn't rise, could not bring himself to run again. He lay by the brook and listened to the frogs. I will become a gun, if that's what I must do.
      For now, the voices said, you need to rest.
      When he closed his eyes the darkness wasn't absolute. He lay there, holding the grotesque statue still in his arms, this green jade lizard with its emerald eyes: it felt warm in his hands, against his body. Behind his eyes the darkness swirled in lazy eddies, lines and circles flashing and disappearing, forming into a vague grey vista of a world. He fell asleep holding the statue, and his dreams were filled with menacing hulking shapes and he cried out, and then the voices were there, soothing him, and he was walking through a grey landscape, as if through a thick mist beyond which everything was ill-defined. Somehow, it was peaceful.
      It was only when he woke up that he cried, and then he did it soundlessly, still afraid, though the voices murmured incomprehensible things about perimeter scans and body heat signatures and checksum routines returning satisfactory values.
      When the fever did take hold of him he thought he was going to die – not in glory, like a wuxia hero, but in pain and fear and horror, like a bit character, like the peasants who always got killed by marauding attackers or simply for being poor and unimportant. He felt hot and then cold and he shivered, holding on to the jade statue for warmth but not really feeling it, the cold coming from inside him. He sweated and he moaned and he voided his bowels and threw up, too sick to get up so that the contents of the last night's dinner lay inches from his face, driving him to be sick again even when there was nothing left.
      The voices recommended drinking plenty of water.
      At some point he slept, fitfully, waking with every unfamiliar sound, afraid they were coming to kill him, but there was never anyone there.
      He dreamed about his father, the steam presses at their shop, the