Blue Shifting (26 page)

Katia whispered. "You've never said anything, until now?"

Tan nodded. "Nothing I say, until now. Too frightened."

Katia pulled Tan to her chest. "It's okay, it is all okay now. You are with friends." She lifted the girl on to the bed.

"I will set the alarm for four-thirty, Greg," Katia said in a whisper. "I will give you a call."

Janner nodded and retired to his bed.

Later they emerged from their respective rooms, sat on the floor knee to knee without a word. LJ quietly joined them, avoiding their eyes. Only as they linked hands at one minute to five did LJ speak. He squeezed Janner's fingers. "Hey, I'm sorry, man. Okay?"

When the blue light took them, Tan's seemed brighter than ever before. Janner stared into the light that emanated from the little girl, and saw that she was laughing, as if in rapture. He was overcome by an intense surge of sadness, and then joy.

5

The sun warmed his skin, and when he opened his eyes the blue sky dazzled. A formation of wild geese flew high overhead. He was sitting on the bank of a rolling greensward. Perhaps a kilometre away was a stretch of sparkling water, and beyond it the high-rise blocks of a futuristic-looking city, a million windows returning the morning sunlight in a fiery furnace glow.

Two hundred metres to his right sat LJ, looking around him. He saluted when he saw Janner. There was Katia, perhaps three hundred metres directly before him, on the opposite bank of the hollow. Janner looked to his left, to where Tan should have been – but he had an intimation as he looked for her that he was searching in vain.

Katia climbed to her feet, set off in the direction of the fourth – Tan's – corner. She halted when she reached the approximate position where Tan should have been, and looked about her. She called Tan's name.

Janner shouldered his rucksack and walked through the short grass, down into the hollow and up the other side. He approached Katia.

"Greg..." She gestured around her. "Where is Tan?"

"She didn't make it this time, Katia."

She began to cry. "I want to know where she is! I want to know that she is safe!"

Hesitantly, Janner drew her to him, held her while she sobbed against his shoulder. "I think she is safe," he said.

She stared at him. "What do you mean? How can you know?"

Janner shrugged. "I think that Tan had to go through the catharsis of reliving the events of the 15th all those years ago. For the first time, she could speak about what happened. As a consequence, as a reward or whatever, she left this repetitive cycle. Didn't you feel it, back in the hotel room? Didn't you see her glow?"

"I felt her joy, but I didn't know what it meant."

LJ was shuffling uncomfortably from foot to foot. "Ah... I'll go and try to find out where we are, okay?" He moved off up the greensward.

Janner and Katia sat on the grass in the morning sunlight, arms around each other. It was a paradox too strange to plumb, he thought; in real terms he hardly knew the woman, yet in terms of knowing how she felt, of communicating with her on some subconscious, maybe even intuitive, level, he felt as though he had known Katia Constantin for a long, long time.

She dried her eyes on the cuff of her blouse, drew a strand of hair from her face. She gazed out across the water to the city. "Where do you think we are, Greg?"

There was no one about to give them a clue by the colour of their skin, no hoardings or other advertisements in sight. "Europe?" he guessed.

"Paris? London?"

"Not London. Too many skyscrapers. It could be Paris, or what about somewhere in North America?"

Katia laughed, covering her mouth with the back of her hand.

"What's so funny?"

"Often at home I dreamed of travelling the world, of visiting the USA."

"Your dream's come true, then."

"I suppose it has," she said, and asked him if he had ever dreamed.

I dreamed once of living in the mountains and never seeing another human being for as long as I lived, he thought. "When I was a boy I dreamed of visiting Nepal, climbing in the Himalayas. You never know," he said, "I might make it yet."

He lay back on the warm grass, and Katia joined him. He closed his eyes against the sunlight, aware of Katia beside him, the scent of her hair. He dozed off.

He was awoken by the sound of someone clearing their throat. He opened his eyes, grimacing as he tipped his head forward and squinted at the perpetrator. LJ grinned back at him, hoisting a litre carton of milk in salute.

Katia awoke beside him, sat up.

"Breakfast!" LJ called.

Janner stretched, yawned. "What time is it?"

"Almost eleven. You've been asleep for hours."

LJ had a cardboard box beside him, stacked with fruit juice, apples and oranges, and small white bags containing bacon and egg sandwiches. Janner smiled at the American's reliance on the reassuring balm of food.

"You've done well, LJ," he said, biting into a sandwich.

"Even found out where we are, too," LJ said, pulling a newspaper from his pocket. He held it to his chest, hiding the masthead. "Any ideas?"

Katia prized open a carton of orange juice. The writing on the side was in English. "New York?"

"Chicago?" Janner guessed.

"Not far off, both of you. Ottowa, Canada." He passed Janner the Ottowa Tribune. Janner looked for the date. It read the 15th of July, as he'd expected.

LJ hadn't mentioned it, so remembering the American's outburst last night, Janner kept quiet.

Katia took a covert peek at the masthead, frowned to herself.

Cheeks bulging, LJ waved a half-eaten sandwich in the direction of the water. "See those A-frames on the shore? Thought it'd be kinda great to rent one, so I did. The middle one of the three down there. We can move in any time."

Katia shook her head. "It's beautiful," she said.

LJ shrugged. "Had to rent the damned place for a whole week. Guy in charge wouldn't let by the day. I guess if I go on spending like this I'll have to rob another bank in... oh, say a month or two."

Janner smiled to himself. LJ had obviously not realised that Tan's non-appearance signalled the beginning of the end.

~

When they finished the meal, they packed up their belongings and walked down to the A-frame. It was luxuriously appointed on the water's edge, with a large verandah overlooking the lake and a motor-boat moored alongside for their use.

That afternoon, Janner took them out for a spin around the bay. They tied up at a downtown wharf and dined at an expensive restaurant, joking and laughing about nothing in particular – everything today, for some reason, seemed funny. It was as if they knew that their time together was coming to an end, and that they had better make the most of the few hours they had remaining.

They arrived back at the chalet as the sun was setting behind the erratic skyline of the city. A little drunk and clutching bottles of wine, they clambered on to the verandah and settled themselves into comfortable chairs to watch the sun go down. Janner found a corkscrew and glasses, and they toasted each other in the warm summer night.

As the sun finally sank and the stars appeared, LJ ceased his chuckling and grew quiet. As if he had been considering it all day, but had been unable to broach the subject until now, he said, "It's the fifteenth again today." His words hung heavily in the air between them.

"I know why this is happening to me," he said. "It's punishment." He stopped there, collecting his thoughts, ordering his words.

"I never told no one this before," he said, then stopped.

Katia leaned forward, touched his hand. "Go on, LJ," she said.

He took a deep breath. "It was the fifteenth of July when we went out on that patrol. We took the chopper low over the jungle, and like I just knew something was gonna come down... I was high on fear and I just wanted to get in there and out again in one piece." He snorted a laugh. "Christ, I can't recall now what the fuck we were doing out there – don't know rightly if I knew too well at the time."

LJ paused. Janner didn't move, not even to lift his glass. LJ held him and Katia in the grip of his words.

"So we dropped and the chopper left us – saddest sound you ever heard, sound of blades fading away... We filed through the jungle and heat and shit, jumpy and thinking every second some gook was gonna jump out and blow our balls off. So we patrolled all day and saw nothing and made it back to the rendezvous point, only the chopper didn't show. Like an hour passed and Powers on the radio was yelling, screaming for the fuckers to hurry it up – and then we heard the sound of the blades, coming for us. It was sunset. The chopper came down, stirring everything around us, and then something flashed from the jungle and hit the chopper and hell it just went up in one fucking big ball of flame and hit the ground and set everything alight all around and we like just ran, got the fuck outta there. A miracle we stayed together. We found cover and Powers got through to base to send us another chopper. Fear, man? Fear? The VC were out there and we didn't stand an earthly."

He stopped there, swallowed, gathered himself.

"When the firing started it was every man for himself. Twelve of us and I saw six buddies ripped open in the first five minutes. We fired back, of course – but it was like firing at ghosts. All I really recall is running and emptying my machine gun into the darkness...

"That's when I shot Powers. We were heading for a back-up rendezvous point, and I thought I saw this gook shape on the path ahead of us, beyond Powers. So I just opened up and I cut Powers in half before I knew what I done, and I can't remember much more, except me and this other guy got back to the clearing and waited till another chopper came in for us."

LJ stared into his glass. "That was '70," he said in a whisper, "and I never told no one I was responsible for Powers' death. I mean, we all feared dying. We feared the VC killing us all that way from home, but for Powers it was his best buddy did it to him... He'd've got out, but for me. He'd still be alive today... Man, you see now why I'm living through the fifteenth again and again? Do you see?"

Janner reached out, took LJ's hand.

"I think you might be right, Katia," LJ said. "It ain't anything to do with no aliens. It is God – God's punishing me for what I did."

"LJ," Janner said. "You didn't mean to do it. It was an accident, right? It just happened." Janner paused, aware of how inadequate his words were. "It was a filthy war and accidents happen and Powers would've done the same were he behind you."

"But he wasn't! I killed him and I'll never forget it... that sick, gut feeling..."

"LJ," Katia said, "you've told us now. You have gone some way to atoning for what you did."

LJ held his head in his hands and sobbed. "But why the fuck am I reliving today? Why? It's driving me crazy!"

"I don't think this will go on for very much longer," Janner said. "Don't you see, it was as if we all had to go through this... We all had to meet and trust each other enough to face the fears that haunt us. From today, LJ, you can put the past behind you."

At five in the morning, the light that surrounded LJ radiated a blinding, sapphire brilliance. The last Janner saw of the big, sad American, he had his head tipped back in rapture, smiling.

6

Janner panicked.

He was sitting in a red-bricked courtyard surrounded by tall, four-storey buildings of the same baked brick. Wooden shutters were closed over windows. There was the smell of dung and woodsmoke in the air – the stench of Asia.

For a second he feared he had materialised alone, that Katia had vanished like Tan. Then he realised that it had been LJ's light which had shone like Tan's – that, if this phenomenon followed its logical course, then LJ would no longer be with them.

A plump, brown-skinned old woman in a
shalwar kameez
waddled into the courtyard from the street, a brass urn slopping water balanced on her hip. She saw Janner, hissed like a goose and hurried past him.

He shouldered his rucksack and made his way through the arched exit into the street. He turned right and halted when he came to a main road. Battered blue and white single-decker busses carried citizens to work, and grey cars pumped fumes into a grey dawn. Across the street, a poster advertised a brand of cigarettes in a script strange to Janner. Asia, almost certainly. But which country?

Then his curiosity was displaced by the need to find Katia.

He entered a shop selling electric fans, asked an old man behind the counter the directions to the nearest GPO. The old man stared at him, nodded animatedly and disappeared through a doorway hung with stringed beads. He appeared seconds later with a young boy in a school uniform.

Janner repeated his question.

The boy pointed. "Down street, yes? Turn left first street. Two minutes, you see."

The old man patted the boy on the head, saluted Janner.

He left the shop and followed the directions, realising as he turned down the street that his heart was hammering.

Katia was waiting for him outside the GPO.

They embraced, held on for longer than was necessary, like lovers reunited after years, not just friends meeting again after a separation of – what? – five minutes?

"Christ, I thought I'd arrived here alone!"

"I, too. I thought you had gone with LJ."

He pulled away from her, aware that she was crying. "Come on, let's find a hotel." He put an arm around her as they set off. "Any idea where we are?"

"Istanbul, Turkey – it said so above the door of the Post Office."

"We'll head for the old part of the city, find somewhere quiet and..." He trailed off. Had he been about to say 'romantic'?

They booked a room on the top floor of a guest-house overlooking the chocolate brown waters of the Bosphorus, choked this morning with every conceivable kind of sailing craft, from barges to junks, ferries to what looked like coracles, piled with produce and steered by old men in khaki capes and white lace skull-caps.

All day they lay on the bed with the windows open, and talked. They questioned each other minutely about their pasts, their parents and childhoods, hopes and fears, likes and dislikes – the catechism almost frenzied at times, as if they realised that, unlike conventional lovers with all the time in the world in which to get to know each other, their time together was limited, circumscribed by the rigorous logic of the phenomenon which had brought them together and would soon tear them apart.