Mind’s Eye was drowning, and he didn’t think much of it. Face down in icy water, unable to move any of his limbs due to the paralysis spell the zebra peasant had lobbed at him, Mind was not so much dragged below the waves as he was carried along by the fierce current. The Pongola River was a crashing torrent of white water which pushed boulders along with ease and had no difficulty sending the small disoriented unicorn on a bumpy spinning ride.
Mind figured that soon enough he would perish, and that would be better than being on Papua New Whinny. He wasn’t particularly concerned when cold water began to fill his chest and a deep darkness encroached upon him.
For some time Mind felt to be at peace. The aches and pains in his joints were gone and no longer did thoughts of torment enter his mind. Until the pain came back to him and he began coughing violently, spewing water up from his lungs and belly, Mind was rather comfortable.
“Oh, bother. He’s alive now, ain’t he?” A voice said.
Mind wasn’t quite sure that was true, even when he opened his eyes at looked at the face above him. It was a zebra, her face thinner than what Mind had seen and painted with various markings that formed an intricate pattern stretching across her whole body. There were several others present as well who bore similar features and complexions.
“I don’t suppose we should kill you now, should we?” The zebra smiled and from the look on her face Mind could tell it was no idle suggestion.
“Thank you,” Mind said weakly and staggered to his hooves. The other zebras cautiously watched him and although they never said it out loud, Mind could tell they were clearly disgusted at the sight of him.
“Can you tell me if I’m near - well, anywhere?”
The female zebra let out a hearty laugh. “No, you’re in the middle of nowhere and near everywhere.”
Mind sighed, the concept of space and navigation was foreign to the zebras it seemed. “Oh, I see. Well who exactly are you then?”
“We are the Perissodactyla tribe,” the zebra replied. “My name is Zwide.”
Mind introduced himself. “I’m a senior clerk for Lord Goldenhoof’s Building Commission. I came to this island with the intention of resolving issues with commerce but I’ve lost my agenda. I haven’t met with any of my contacts, the Shakas of Port Maresby…”
“Pompous, assimilated, aristocratic, slaver hypocrites.” A smaller Perissodactyla with yellow paint muttered with some feeling.
“…And now I’d just like to go home.”
Zwide smiled, her face curling upwards like a party host about to send off an unwanted guest. “Zqutu will guide you.”
Zqutu, it seemed, was the bitter little creature in yellow, and none too excited at his given task. With surprising strength he hoisted Mind up and for a second the unicorn recalled when Silver Slider had placed him in the sinkhole leading to the Underground Express, only this time the zebra shoved him onto a paper thin raft bobbing in the water.
Mind eyed the craft suspiciously as he boarded and was all too certain it would crumple underneath their combined weight. Mind seated himself at the front and Zqutu came on afterwards without incident.
“This is how you travel?” Mind asked.
“We don’t have the broken wagons and dying oxen of our brothers on the outside,” Zqutu replied, rolling his tiny eyes. “We don’t know any better.”
The small zebra sat down at the back of the craft and used his whip-like tail to propel it forward. They glided across pools of slime that stank from centuries of putrefaction, over waste and debris carelessly dumped in the river and under bridges that at one point may have been steel and iron but were now merely rust.
“Everything on the island flows towards the south.” Zqutu said.
While sliding across the water, Zqutu explained that the Perissodactylas were one of the many zebra tribes inhabiting the island. His group lived in the interior of the island, preferring it over the outside. Mind was lucky to have been found by them, the monstrous Tokolosh or savage Tengus would have killed him on sight.
There were other creatures too to be avoided. Though there were few natural predators in inner Papua New Whinny, the scavengers that rooted in the garbage seldom shied away from a living meal. Amphipteres circled overhead, like the ones Mind had seen in the North.
Zqutu fell silent and stopped the raft completely, waiting for something.
Mind looked in the direction Zqutu was watching, and saw nothing unusual in the filthy water. Then, he realized that the pool of green slime in front of them was mobile, and moving with speed, from one bank to the other. It sluggishly rippled across the front of the raft, up into the reeds and disappeared. Mind winced as he saw piles of bones float up to the surface where the ooze had passed through.
"Ectoplasmer," Zqutu explained, cautiously propelling them forward once more. "Big word. It'll strip all your flesh by the second syllable."
Mind, not terribly impressed with the sights and smells that surrounded him, thought it a good time to compliment his pilot on his excellent vocabulary. It was particularly impressive, given how far from civilization they were.
"They tried to erect a Temple near here, in Ulundi, twenty years ago," Zqutu explained, and Mind nodded, remembering reading about it in the files before they were lost. "They all perished quite dreadfully of swamp fever in the first month, but they left behind some excellent books."
Mind was going to inquire further when he saw something so huge, so horrifying, it made him stop, frozen.
Half submerged in the water ahead was a mountain of spines, lying on nine-foot-long claws. White eyes stared blindly forward until the whole creature convulsed and lurched, the jaw of its mouth jutting out, exposing tusks clotted with gore.
"Swamp Leviathan," Zqutu whistled, impressed. "Very, very dangerous."
Mind gasped, wondering why the zebra was so calm, and more, why he was continuing to steer the raft forward towards the beast.
"Of all the creatures in the world the rats are sometimes the worst," said Zqutu, and Mind noticed that the huge creature was only a husk. Its movement was from the hundreds of rats that had burrowed into it, rapidly eating their way from the inside out, bursting from the skin in spots.
"They are indeed," Mind said, relieved, and his mind went to the New Whinny files, buried deep in the mud, and the four decades of work it represented.
The two continued southward through the heart of New Whinny.
Zqutu showed Mind the vast complicated ruins of the Kambula capitals, fields of ferns and flowered grasses, quiet streams under canopies of blue moss, and the most astonishing sight of Mind's life—a great forest of full-grown crystal trees. They never saw a living soul until they arrived at the edge of the Commerce Road just east of Port Maresby, where Guile, Mind’s Pegasus guide, was waiting patiently.
"I was going to give you two more minutes," the Pegasus scowled, dropping the last of his food onto the pile at his hooves. "No more, sir."
The sun was shining bright when Mind’s Eye sauntered into the equine city, and as it caught the morning dew, it lent a glisten to every building as if they had been newly polished for his arrival. It astonished him how clean the city was and how few beggars there were.
The protracted edifice of Lord Goldenhoof's Building Commission was the same as it had always been, but still the very sight of it seemed exotic and strange. It was not covered in mud and the ponies within actually, generally, worked.
Lord Goldenhoof himself, though singularly squat and squinty, seemed immaculate, not only relatively clean of dirt and scabs, but also relatively uncorrupt. Mind couldn't help but stare at him when he first caught sight of his boss. Goldenhoof stared right back.
"You are a sight," the little fellow frowned. "Did you get dragged backwards through Papua New Whinny? I would say go home and fix yourself, but there are a dozen ponies with problems here to see you. I hope you have solutions for them."
It was no exaggeration. Nearly twenty of Canterlot’s most powerful and wealthiest ponies were waiting for him. Mind was given an office even larger than Lord Goldenhoof's, and he met with each.
First among the Commission's clients were five independent traders, blustering and loaded with gold, demanding to know what Mind intended to do about improving the trade routes. Mind summarized for them the conditions of the main roads, the state of the merchants' caravans, the sunken bridges, and all the other impediments between the frontier and the marketplace. They told him to have everything replaced and repaired and gave him the bits necessary to do it.
Within three months, the bridge at the northern excise office had disappeared into the muck for the last time; the great caravan had collapsed into decrepitude; and the main road from Port Maresby had been swallowed up by swamp water. The zebras began once again to use the old ways, their personal rafts and sometimes the Underground Express to transport the produce in smaller quantities. It took a third of the time to arrive in Port Maresby, none of it rotten.
A unicorn philanthropist was the next client Mind met with. A kind-hearted pony, horrified by the tales of zebra mothers selling their children into slavery, he pointedly asked Mind if it were true.
"Sadly, yes," Mind replied, and the unicorn showered him with bits, telling the clerk that food must be brought to the island to ease their suffering, and the schools must be improved so they could learn to help themselves.
Within five months, the last book had been stolen from the deserted monastery in Ulundi. As the Shakas went bankrupt, the slaves returned to their parent’s tiny farms. The backwater zebras found that they could grow enough to feed their families provided they had enough hard workers in their enclave, and the buyer’s market for slaves sharply declined.
Ambassador Mbuyazi, concerned about the rising crime in northern New Whinny, brought with him the contributions of many other expatriate zebras like himself. They wanted more guards on the border and commerce routes, more magically lit lanterns posted along the main roads at regular intervals, more patrol stations, and more schools built to allow young zebras to better themselves and not turn to crime.
Within six months, there were no more Tengus roaming the roads, as there were no merchants traveling them to rob. The thugs returned to the fetid inner swamp, where they felt much happier, their constitutions enriched by the rot and pestilence that they loved. Mbuyazi and his constituency were so pleased by the crime rate dropping, they brought even more gold to Mind’s Eye, telling him to keep up the good work.
Papua New Whinny simply was, is, and always would be unable to sustain a large-scale, cash-crop plantation economy. The zebras, and anyone else, the whole of Equestria, could live in New Whinny on subsistence farming, just raising what they needed. That was not sad, Mind thought; that was hopeful.
Mind's solution to each of their dilemmas had been the same. Ten percent of the gold they gave him went to Lord Goldenhoof's Building Commission. The rest Mind kept for himself and did exactly nothing about the requests.
Within a year, Mind’s Eye had embezzled enough to retire quite lavishly, and Papua New Whinny was better off than it had been in forty years.
END