The Second Wave (26 page)

Some insisted they had been abducted by
aliens. Some mused they had moved underground and stayed out of
sight for reasons unknown. Perhaps the harbingers or other wild
creatures had slaughtered all of them. Or perhaps the entire first
wave colony had got caught in one of the random unrelated time
events. The common assumption, though, and the one theory Rochester
thought sounded plausible enough, was that somehow they had all
died.

The question that kept him from sleeping
peacefully at night was: if a whole colony of people died with no
one around to watch it happen—surely there should be bones
somewhere.

* * * *

The flat of Elizabeth Burke was in a building
right in the middle of the pedestrian precinct in Rome. Set between
a boutique and a veterinarian, hers was the apartment directly
above a small Chinese takeaway. It was always busy in that part of
the city, especially because the restaurant was open around the
clock, therefore serving as a popular meeting place for those who
dreaded going home for the night.

She didn’t recognize the place at first, so
little time had passed here. When Elizabeth opened the door and
stepped into the neatly furnished hallway, she almost choked on her
breath. Everything was exactly how she had left it when she had
gone to work on the birthday that was five years in her past, but
little over ten hours here. The mail on the elegant chest of
drawers was the same she had brought in that morning. It piled up
neatly next to the designer bowl where she kept her keys. In the
light of dawn that streamed in through the window on the other end
of the hall, the metal keys glistened as if they were but figments
of a strange dream.

She had almost forgotten the sound her feet
made on her carpet. She listened to it intently on her way through
the next door that lead her into the kitchen and to a tired looking
woman sitting at the breakfast table.

“Apple!” The words all but fell out of her
mouth.

The woman, tall and elegant, stylishly
dressed and carefully made up, turned her head. Hazel eyes smiled
at Elizabeth. “There you are, love. Happy late Birthday! I wanted
to wait for you, but you’re late.” She indicated the set table and
the crumbs on her plate apologetically.

Somewhere in her head Elizabeth found the
memory that fitted this scenario—before she had left for work, she
and Apple had set a breakfast date for the next morning. The next
morning that was happening now, but should have happened five years
ago. Elizabeth found the strength to repeat her wife’s name once
more, before she walked up to her, wide-eyed and relieved. Apple
got up and they greeted each other with a short embrace in the
middle of the room. A bit too tight on Elizabeth’s part, as if she
wasn’t merely back from work, but had returned home after a long,
strenuous trip.

“You look different.” Apple stated. She
glanced her over. “Did you change your outfit at work?”

“I’m not coming from work.”

“Well, never mind. Sit down. Eat. I must
dash, though, I have a client first thing this morning.”

Elizabeth sat, every movement slow and
attentive. She listened to Apple chattering about her client and
the case and the general imponderability of being a lawyer and a
philanthropist in a world that was mostly populated by unreasonable
idiots. Her high heels clicked nervously over the tiled floor all
the while, until they faded away on the carpet and vanished out of
earshot altogether when the apartment door closed behind them.

Into the silence that followed Elizabeth
allowed herself to breathe. She stared at the chive sprinkled curd
cheese on her plate for a long time. Five years ago this had been
her favorite meal. No, she decided now, it had never been her
favorite, but it was the healthiest meal she could imagine, which
had turned it into her favorite; despite the dull taste and the
queer texture. No fat, no sugar—staying slim and pretty used to be
the big constant in her life.

The kitchen was more pompous and elegant than
Elizabeth recalled; all shiny, made by the best designers she and
Apple could afford to buy. It didn’t matter that some of the
utensils, which were gathered like exhibits in a museum on cupboard
tops and the counter, required too much energy to run and so were
useless. They still
looked
important, it was all that
mattered. At least it used to be all that mattered. But viewed from
a five-year long distance, Elizabeth hardly remembered why this
display of status symbols had once been so important to her.

After three more minutes that felt like five
years of staring down at the curd cheese, Elizabeth got up and went
downstairs. To see if the Chinese takeaway had anything decent to
eat at this hour.

Elizabeth rarely set foot in Meister Wang’s
Delicatessen, but the cook, who was serving something greasy and
unrecognizable to a teenaged customer when she entered the shop,
recognized her immediately. He collected the money the kid gave
him, then turned his tiny but sturdy frame to the woman who felt
more than five years wearier than the world today.

“You! No welcome!” The fat man yelled,
exposing more gaps than teeth. “You destroy Wang’s business!”

The six or so customers turned their heads to
see what the sudden commotion was about. It was a small restaurant,
with four raggedy tables surrounded by random chairs and stools in
all shapes and sizes. The walls were covered with ancient posters
and Chinese advertisements, some even displaying the long
out-of-use
hanzi
, the Chinese logograms of old.

Meister Wang, whose actual name was Bernardo
Gazpacho, stood behind a brass and glass counter in all his short,
bald splendour; arms akimbo, a grease-spattered shirt askew over a
protruding belly, brow furrowed. He disliked Elizabeth; not as an
individual, but as a person who had tried to remove his business
from this location with any means necessary ever since he had
rented the place.

Elizabeth held up her hands to signal truce.
“I am sorry, Mister Gazpacho. I came to eat and to apologize.”

“I don’t trust you. This is evil scheme of
yours, yes?!” He squinted at her and added more low key, “And don’t
call me Mister Gazpacho in my own restaurant, please. I am Meister
Wang here.”

As there was no food fight going to happen,
or anything similar entertaining, the heads of the customers turned
back to their meals one by one. Elizabeth approached the counter.
The smell of deep fried things teased her nose and made her stomach
growl in approval. How her tastes had changed, she quietly mused
for a moment.

“I apologize for my behavior. It was a long
time ago. Believe me, things have changed.”

“Three weeks not so long. But Meister Wang is
forgiving and gentle. He take back restraining order, when you take
back official complaint.”

“Consider the complaint null and void. Now,
may I order?”

Deeply satisfied with this outcome, the
pretend Chinese cook nodded generously.

“Do you have anything sweet?” Elizabeth asked
while she scanned the huge lettered menu on the wall.

“Ah, a woman of good taste. You try
kuih
—very sweet, very tasty. Also, I sell candy—many shapes,
many flavors.”

Elizabeth bought some of everything he
offered her, quickly becoming Wang’s new favorite customer.

When she was down to her last rice pastry,
most of the old customers had left without being replaced by new
ones. Wang inquired about what had brought about her change of
heart. He buffed the counter with a dirty cloth while he listened
to her story. Maybe because he was almost a perfect stranger and
didn’t know a lot about the old Elizabeth Burke, she trusted him;
and thus told him about her five years on another planet.

“I am trapped,” she admitted finally. Her tea
was cold and her plate as empty as the restaurant. “I was given a
second chance, but now I must choose between this world and that.
Between the life I lived before and the life I was forced to start
from scratch.” The spoon she was toying with suddenly demanded all
of her attention. “So now I’ve been to the other side, and do you
know what? The grass really is greener there. What do I do?” she
asked the crumbs on her plate. “Face the person I used to be, or go
back and be the person I became?”

Meister Wang nodded in sympathy. He was an
understanding man, that was why he chose to open up a takeaway
rather than work in an anonymous kitchen in some fancy restaurant.
A takeaway cook was like a hairdresser and a bartender combined as
far as the level of trust was concerned. His customers told him
stories and he kept them to himself, or retold them to other
customers in some form or another. People always liked a good
story. But he knew there was a time for a good story and there was
a time for a good fortune cookie wisdom. That’s why he told her,
earnest and solemn, “The time comes, when one must kindle the near
fire with a flame from afar.”

“Indeed,” she agreed with a pensive heart,
although she had no idea what he meant by that.

* * * *

On Alternearth the harbingers passed, and in
their wake they revived the spirits of the villagers. Especially
those of the children, who, confronted with the realisation that
winter was ending, suddenly found new games to play in the snow as
long as it was still there. The village quickly awoke from its
comatose sleep. While the younger children went sleigh riding from
dawn till dusk, the rest of the settlers began preparations for the
next season: among individual tasks, the animal pens had to be
cleaned, the canteen made ready for reopening, and the fence around
the village checked for any damage by frost or storms. It was work
the settlers were used to by now and, reopened wormhole or not,
they went about their daily routines as they had done the last five
years.

But Spring didn’t come.

* * * *

Back in the flat, Elizabeth, invigorated by
her meal, picked up the phone and dialled the law firm. The
secretary promised Apple would call back once she was out of the
meeting. Elizabeth waited next to the apparatus, which rang
precisely twenty-eight minutes later.

“I thought we agreed never to call each other
at work.” Apple’s voice sounded hurried. She was probably somewhere
between her lunch break and the next client. Elizabeth didn’t know
what to say, or even why she had felt she needed to call. In the
end she settled for, “I just wanted to hear your voice.”

Apple gave a short, almost humourless laugh.
“Well, there you go, then. Is there something the matter? You
didn’t quite seem yourself this morning. Did something happen at
work? You’ve never pulled an all-nighter before.”

“Indeed it did. It’s no good speaking over
the phone about it. Would you come away with me, if I asked
you?”

A sigh. Her wife mumbled something about
appointments and reschedules, then asked Elizabeth to wait while
she checked her calendar. Finally she said, “I’ll see what I can
do. But definitely not this weekend; I have four hearings next
week.”

A weekend getaway was not what Elizabeth had
in mind, but her explaining got cut short because Apple’s lunch
break was over and the doorbell rang. They had to postpone their
talk.

When she opened the door, she was more than a
little surprised to see General Fatique standing there, looking
slightly relieved that she was at home, and also a bit lost. He had
never been to her flat, and had almost got lost in Rome’s
labyrinthine pedestrian precinct.

“You immediately left the Headquarters after
your return,” he explained his house-call. He gratefully accepted
her offer to make tea. They went into the kitchen where she put the
kettle on while they talked.

“I didn’t even get to talk to you about what
happened.”

She shrugged. “Everything is in the reports I
gave you.”

Elizabeth had kept track of everything during
the five years. Even when she had given up hope of ever returning
to Earth, she thought she owed it to the future to chronicle their
beginnings.

“Yes,” admitted Fatique. “But I wanted to
bleak to you personally. How are you feeling?”

“How do you think I’m feeling?” she asked
back to gain time.

He smiled warmly, the smile an old father
would bestow upon his young daughter. “You haven’t corrected me
once since I got here. So either my conditioner has mysteriously
changed overnight, or something has happened to you over
there.”

When she didn’t answer but busied herself
with preparing two cups of tea, he chuckled good-naturedly. “But
I’m prying. You don’t have to tell me anything about your personal
life, of course. What I would like to know is what happened on
Alternearth. And how is it even possible that five years could have
passed in the course of a few hours?”

“You didn’t read my reports?”

“I’d rather hear it from you.”

“Where do I start?” She sighed. She handed
him a steaming cup, then guided the two of them into the living
room, where they sat down on a couch that looked like it belonged
in the showcase of a luxurious furniture shop. Usually very
cautious not to get any creases or smudges on it, Elizabeth now
flopped unceremoniously onto it.

“We had a few weddings,” she began, getting
as comfortable as the almost sterile living room allowed. “A couple
of births and two funerals. We expanded the village, because
buildings were added, so the fence had to be moved. We now mostly
use hounds on the fields and the horses only for riding. But you
probably want to know primarily about Eugenia Gust, the mysterious
stranger from the woods.”

Fatique nodded. He sat in the recliner that
matched the sofa, sipped his tea and listened intently.

“I don’t think she really is who Summer
claims her to be. Fact is, shortly after I came to Alternearth, the
girl disappeared in an explosion that caused the mountains to
crumble, which in turn led to a small but tempestuous tidal wave
that flooded the whole village. It’s a miracle that nobody died
back then. The following years I tried to find out more, but there
really wasn’t much to find out about. She seemed to have some sort
of relationship with one of the settlers, John, I never got his
last name; but he refused to talk to me about it.