“We call the same place Holtanatan. But on my version of Earth it is very hot, very humid, rainy, full of swamps, and overrun by insects. No one lives there.”
Mary lifted her eyebrows. “Over eighty million people live there in this reality.”
Ponter shook his head. The humans of this version of Earth were so…so unrestrained.
“And,” continued Mary, “a war was fought there.”
“Over what? Over swamps?”
Mary closed her eyes. “Over ideology. Remember I told you about the Cold War? This was part of that—but this part was hot.”
“Hot?” Ponter shook his head. “You are not referring to temperature, are you?”
“No. Hot. As in a shooting war. As in people died.”
Ponter frowned. “How many people?”
“In total, from all sides? No one really knows. Over a million of the local South Vietnamese. Somewhere between half a million and a million North Vietnamese. Plus…” She gestured at the wall.
“Yes?” said Ponter, still baffled by the reflecting blackness.
“Plus fifty-eight thousand, two hundred and nine Americans. These two walls commemorate them.”
“Commemorate them how?”
“See the writing engraved in the black granite?”
Ponter nodded.
“Those are names—names of the confirmed dead, and of those missing in action who never came home.” Mary paused. “The war ended in 1975.”
“But this is the year you reckon as”—and Ponter named it.
Mary nodded.
Ponter looked down. “I do not think the missing are coming home.” He moved closer to the wall. “How are the names arrayed?”
“Chronologically. By date of death.”
Ponter looked at the names, all in what he’d learned were known as capital letters, a small mark—a bullet, isn’t that what they called it, one of their many words that served double duty?—separating each name from the next.
Ponter couldn’t read English characters; he was only beginning to grasp this strange notion of a phonetic alphabet. Mary moved in beside him, and, in a soft voice, read some of the names to him. “Mike A. Maksin. Bruce J. Moran. Bobbie Joe Mounts. Raymond D. McGlothin.” She pointed at another line, apparently chosen at random. “Samuel F. Hollifield, Jr. Rufus Hood. James M. Inman. David L. Johnson. Arnoldo L. Carrillo.”
And another line, farther down. “Donney L. Jackson. Bobby W. Jobe. Bobby Ray Jones. Halcott P. Jones, Jr.”
“Fifty-eight thousand of them,” said Ponter, his voice as soft as Mary’s.
“Yes.”
“But—but you said these are dead Americans?”
Mary nodded.
“What were they doing fighting a war half a world away?”
“They were helping the South Vietnamese. See, in 1954, Vietnam had been divided into two halves, North Vietnam and South Vietnam, as part of a peace agreement, each with its own kind of government. Two years later, in 1956, there were to be free elections throughout both halves, supervised by an international committee, to unify Vietnam under a single, popularly elected government. But when 1956 rolled around, the leader of South Vietnam refused to hold the scheduled elections.”
“You taught me much about this country, the United States, when we visited Philadelphia,” said Ponter. “I know how highly Americans value democracy. Let me guess: the United States sent troops to force South Vietnam to participate in the promised democratic election.”
But Mary shook her head. “No, no, the United States supported the South’s desire not to hold the election.”
“But why? Was the government in the North corrupt?”
“No,” said Mary. “No, it was reasonably honest and kind—at least up until when the promised election, which it wanted, was canceled. But there was a corrupt government—the one in the South.”
Ponter shook his head, baffled. “But you said that the South was the one the Americans were supporting.”
“That’s right. See, the government in the South was corrupt, but capitalist; it shared the American economic system. The one in the north was Communist; it used the economic system of the Soviet Union and China. But the northern government was much more popular than the corrupt southern one. The United States feared that if free elections were held, the Communists would win and control all of Vietnam, which in turn, would lead to other countries in southeast Galasoy falling to Communist rule.”
“And so American soldiers were sent there?”
“Yes.”
“And died?”
“Many did, yes.” Mary paused. “That’s what I wanted you to understand: how important principles are to us. We will die to defend an ideology, die to support a cause.” She pointed at the wall. “These people here, these fifty-eight thousand people, fought for what they believed in. They were told to go to war, told to save a weaker people from what was held to be the great Communist threat, and they did so. Most of them were young—eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one years old. For many, it was their first time away from home.”
“And now they are dead.”
Mary nodded. “But not forgotten. We remember them here.” She pointed discreetly. Ponter’s guards—now members of the FBI, arranged for Jock Krieger—were keeping people away from him, but the walls were long, so incredibly long, and farther down someone was leaning up against the black surface. “See that man there?” asked Mary. “He’s using a pencil and a piece of paper to make a rubbing of the name of someone he knew. He’s—well, he looks in his midfifties, no? He might have been in Vietnam himself. The name he’s copying might be that of a buddy he lost over there.”
Ponter and Mary watched silently as the man finished what he was doing. And then the man folded the piece of paper, placed it in his breast pocket, and began to speak.
Ponter shook his head slightly in confusion. He gestured at the Companion embedded in his own left forearm. “I thought you people did not have telecommunications implants.”
“We don’t,” said Mary.
“But I do not see any external receiver, any—what do you call it?—any cell phone.”
“That’s right,” said Mary, gently.
“Then who is he talking to?”
Mary lifted her shoulders slightly. “His lost comrade.”
“But that person is dead.”
“Yes.”
“One cannot talk to the dead,” said Ponter.
Mary gestured at the wall again, its obsidian surface pantomiming the sweep of her arm. “People think they can. They say they feel closest to them here.”
“Is this where the remains of the dead are stored?”
“What? No, no, no.”
“Then I—”
“It’s the names, ” said Mary, sounding somewhat exasperated. “The names. The names are here, and we connect with people through their names.”
Ponter frowned. “I—forgive me, I do not mean to be stupid. Surely that cannot be right, though. We—my people—connect through faces. There are countless people whose faces I know but whose names I have never learned. And, well, I connect with you, and although I know your name, I cannot articulate it or even think it clearly. Mare—that is the best I can do.”
“We think names are…” Mary lifted her shoulders, apparently acknowledging how ridiculous what she was saying must sound “…are magical.”
“But,” said Ponter again, “you cannot communicate with the dead.” He wasn’t trying to be stubborn; really, he wasn’t.
Mary closed her eyes for a moment, as if summoning inner strength—or, thought Ponter, as if communicating with someone somewhere else. “I know your people do not believe in an afterlife,” said Mary, at last.
“‘Afterlife,’” said Ponter, serving up the word as though it were a choice gobbet of meat. “An oxymoron.”
“Not to us,” said Mary. And then, more emphatically, “Not to me.” She looked around. At first Ponter thought it was simply an externalization of her thoughts; he presumed she was seeking some way to explain what she was feeling. But then her eyes lighted on something, and she started walking. Ponter followed her.