Time Past (12 page)

“Only three ways he could have gotten this laser,” I said when I was breathing normally. “He’s got access to old stocks, or to people who have access to old stocks. And there aren’t many. Or he’s got black-market connections, which is what I thought anyway. Black-market electronics is a huge business. Or...” I wasn’t sure of this last one.

“Or?”

“Or he’s got contacts in the official defense industry, because now it’s the only place this type of laser is used. They need it for some of the older weapons.”

“That might be how he supplies the gangs,” said Murdoch with distaste. “He probably does know people in the industry. Does he really believe you need the laser for a telescope?”

I stretched. “What else might he think?”

“He could be worried you’re working for a competitor, making weapons. Homemade stuff.”

“He might be worried because you’re snooping around.”

“Good job I did, now we know what he’s like.”

“The deal with Levin’s finished, stop worrying about it.”

The pale apricot stillness magnified the sounds of a door banging, voices raised in the neighboring street, the mutter of people roused too early from sleep. In the background, the ever-present hum of the city, the irregular beat of the motorway. The out-town was peaceful at this hour. Tin roofs, wired window frames, crude verandas, all softened by the gentle light.

“But why is he helping you? Doesn’t make sense.” Murdoch persisted. “He could be setting you up.”

“For what? The police aren’t going to arrest me because I’ve got a homemade telescope.”

“No, but they’ll arrest you for being an illegal if Levin informs on you.”

“I know that. But we’ve only got until Friday. Three more days, counting today. I didn’t have time to look anywhere else.”

“I suppose it’s safe,” he grumbled. “But I don’t trust him.”

“Forget Levin. Where did you go yesterday? More snooping?” He’d stayed out until nine or ten P.M. I’d struggled unsuccessfully against worry that he’d been mugged.

“Talking with Vince.”

“Why?”

“He’s not a bad kid. Him and his mates are pretty typical, I reckon. They’re loyal to their small group and damn everyone else. But from another angle, they’re just making themselves a safe place because nobody else will make it for them. Sensible, really.”

“Most of Vince’s behavior doesn’t strike me as sensible.”

“Doesn’t mean there’s no logic behind it. You just gotta figure out what it is.”

“Like an alien species.”

“Yeah. You might not sympathize, but at least you’ll understand a bit better.”

“Or like donkeys,” I said absently.

“Wha-at?” Murdoch gaped at me.

“It’s an old story.” I wished I hadn’t mentioned it. “My great-grandmother used to tell us this story about donkeys.”

“Go on.”

“She said that when a donkey stops in the middle of the road, you give it a whack with a stick, right? But the donkey doesn’t learn not to stop on roads; it learns that by stopping it can make you angry.”

Murdoch grinned. “A different logic.”

“Yes. It used to remind me of K’Cher. You have to find out how that logic works or you end up expending a lot of energy for no purpose and both of you get frustrated.”

It’s strange, the things that remain in your memory from childhood conversations, from details and scenery you never realized you were noticing at the time. These things bridge time and space as successfully as Invidi jump drives.

I came back to the tent late that night after fitting the laser. I’d have liked to do a test run, but the glue on the fitting had to dry more and I needed to be there in the morning before Florence arrived, to pack it up out of her way and safely away from prying eyes. Now that I’d finally put it all together, we couldn’t risk theft or damage.

Murdoch was already asleep, sprawled facedown on his mattress, the light on and a newspaper by his trailing hand as though he’d fallen asleep reading it. I’d sent him back to the tent when he came to pick me up at about ten o’clock. He didn’t complain, but he looked tired—perhaps the twenty-first-century viruses were undermining his immune system too.

I turned off the light, undressed and got into bed, but couldn’t sleep. My thoughts kept scurrying around in familiar circles. When I shut my eyes I could see the details of the telescope assembly. Every creak of the tent pole, every distant thud or clatter seemed magnified. I found myself listening to Murdoch’s regular breathing. He sounded so comfortable, I was overcome by a callous urge to disturb him. I imagined sitting beside him on the bed, sliding my feet beneath the tattered blanket, putting one hand on the back that rose and fell so peacefully...

My breathing caught again, not from asthma, but from the feeling I used to get when Henoit, or any H’digh for that matter, walked into a room and the effect of their pheromones hit me. As though the slightest touch of anything upon my skin would be the signal for immeasurable pleasure.

Imitations of H’digh pheromones were exchanged galaxy-wide as aphrodisiacs, and it was said that humans who experienced sexual acts with them were forever “tainted”— they retained enough of the pheromone to send other humans mad with desire. It was also said that these tainted humans did not live long, as they became quickly insane. I had always dismissed this as space-talk, particularly as I had neither gone mad nor sent other humans crawling up walls.

Now, I wasn’t so sure. Maybe I had enough pheromones left in me to activate the pleasure center of the brain. Not that it felt like the brain had much to do with it.

Images of Henoit kept popping into my mind; Henoit on Jocasta, appearing out of nowhere, arrogant and unrepentant at his terrorist activities. I hadn’t seen that lean, muscled figure for seven years, but he’d looked as young as ever. Henoit when I first met him, an exotic unknown who couldn’t quite explain why he’d chosen me to be his mate; Henoit saying we were destined to bond; Henoit’s eyes meeting mine for the first time on our first night together... but here I stopped.

Any further and I’d embarrass myself by waking Murdoch, and embarrass myself further by not caring.

Humans have spent over a century trying to dispel the romantic notion that two people are suited to each other and each other only, drawn together by Fate. Then we find that the H’digh have built a whole society around that same notion. And it works nicely, thank you. For them.
Nor death shall us part,
ran part of that damn couplet Henoit used to quote at me from a marriage song.

Why did I marry him? I was flattered, I suppose, even though later he said that the attraction felt by two bond-partners was not the same as ordinary sexual attraction. I was curious, too, about H’digh sexuality and society. I wanted a stable relationship—eternity sounded pretty long term. And maybe I was also feeling what he felt.

Could it be true that Henoit was my soul mate and we were still bound together even after his death? Even as my rational engineer’s mind laughed at the idea, Henoit’s voice echoed in my head, the words just beyond hearing. The tone, regret. Or perhaps that is what I wished the tone to be.

I don’t know how to get rid of him. Or if I want to. How can you get rid of someone who isn’t there?

The day before the hoped-for Invidi arrival I was flat out at the Assembly, preparing for the May Day march. Nobody knew, of course, that it would be the last official May Day in human history, although the name remained in popular usage until nearly the turn of the century. I remember my grandmother calling it May Day, not First Contact Day, which she said reminded her of a tasteless joke about adolescent dating.

The Assembly had no funds to prepare information pages or elaborate placards for the march, but some of the neighborhood youths had been bribed with bottles of carbonated drink to letter a plank with the words “Assembly of the Poor” on one side and “EarthSouth Movement” on the other.

One of the youths was a graffiti virtuoso, and his lettering angled perfectly. The background to the letters was covered completely with a dense carpet of flowers. At least, they looked like flowers until you got close, when you realized that it was a stylized vulva. The placard was finished in time, though, and Florence didn’t notice the “flowers” at all.

A wild dry wind blew all that week, and the placard’s surface was gritty where sand had blown into the wet surface. That same dry wind scattered refuse and pieces of loose building material all over the tracks and made walking in the dark dangerous.

We spent that day coordinating the groups who would come on the march with us, and giving people instructions on how to behave, that is, how to stay away from police. The police, it seemed, took even local May Day marches quite seriously. The riots of 2010 and 2012, when thousands of police and demonstrators were killed worldwide, still smarted in their memory. For years, Florence said, they banned gatherings of more than twenty people, but recently they’d been more lenient.

Tomorrow the Invidi would arrive. They’d better. I’d waited so long for this, and now I wanted some answers to my questions. Why did
Calypso II
not arrive in the past in the same year that
Calypso
jumped, in spite of using the same jump point—does this mean the Invidi have been lying to us about the jump points and the jump network being fixed? Will we be able to return to Jocasta in our own time using the
Calypso
jump point? How did the jump point get there in the first place?

Not that “first place” has much meaning. The dominoes are stacked in a circle and touching any one brings them all down. All the events are interconnected. I wondered if that’s how the Invidi see the universe—as endless interconnection. No wonder they sound obscure to us linear creatures who see time flowing neatly from past to future.

Flowing from today to tomorrow. And none too soon, as far as I was concerned. The future on Jocasta may have its problems, but it was nothing compared to life in the out-town.

By the time Murdoch came to pick me up at eight, I’d set up the telescope, ready to activate the signal as soon as we knew the Invidi were within range. I didn’t want to risk starting sooner, there was too great a chance one of Earth’s security forces would pick up the signal and trace it, especially after that airport incident. Once the Invidi arrived, confusion should make this worry unnecessary.

I was ready for a little advance celebration. We’d survived this far—it seemed cause enough to congratulate ourselves.

We sat beside each other on my bed in the tent and ate greasy chips, washed down with cold beer that rapidly warmed, leaving pools of condensation on the crate top. I looked sideways at Murdoch and let the reins on my imagination loose for a while. He was so close and warm. The muscles of his jaw tightened smoothly as he chewed. I let my eyes drift down his arms.

The never-forgotten feeling of H’digh arousal surrounded me. I could feel my heart beat faster, and somewhere a voice was saying,
Feel with me
…

“I’ll be glad to get back. This place stinks.” Murdoch carefully smoothed the cellulose wrapping that the chips had come in, put the wrapper beside the kettle, and sat on the edge of the bed. I was sitting farther in, with my back against the wall.

The warm, sexy feeling disappeared with his words, then crept back. His shoulder was close enough for me to reach out and touch. The T-shirt stretched taut over its roundness. Like a tune on the edges of hearing, I could feel Henoit’s presence.

So what? What are you afraid of? That Murdoch will think you’re possessed or something? For all you know, you could die tomorrow and not meet the Invidi. Then you’ll regret never having slept with Murdoch...

I said the first thing that popped into my head. “Are you sorry you came?” He didn’t laugh. He looked steadily at me, and I felt heat rise up my neck and face. “Why do you think I came?” He reached over and traced his forefinger up my arm. I held down the shiver it provoked. “Because you needed to arrest me?”

“Because I couldn’t bear not knowing what happened to you,” he said. And climbed on the bed so he straddled my outstretched legs. “Because I couldn’t bear maybe never being able to do this.”

He leaned forward. I leaned forward. We kissed. Pleasure ran into my gut like fire. Murdoch made a short sound that was between an exclamation and a moan.

Crash.

The door banged open and Will ran in.

Murdoch and I pushed each other aside clumsily.

Will stopped, seemed about to run out again, then said, “Hey, Maria. Can I stay with you?”

I was breathing too fast. “Does Grace...”

Will looked down. “She said it was okay. She and Levin were... um, busy. She said you can bring me to the march tomorrow. Vince brung me most of the way here. Oh, hi, Bill.”

Surely not even a ten-year-old could be that ingenuous. He must have fled Levin and Grace “mucking around,” only to find Murdoch and me doing the same. We could hardly turn him away.

“H’lo, Will,” said Murdoch weakly. He let himself flop back on the board. “Oh, boy.”

I rubbed my arms, where the hairs stood on end. Damn.

Murdoch and Will dropped off to sleep quickly. My breath began to catch and I sat up, sucking in air.

Tomorrow—no, later today—the Invidi would be here. Blue shafts of floodlight played on the walls of the tent like echoes of patterns in spacetime I could not begin to understand. A friend once said to me that the Invidi held the index to the book we were all living. Today we’d be given our first glimpse of the entry that was our own history.

No, thank you. I punched the blanket lightly. When the Invidi come, they won’t be expecting humans from this era to be familiar with their systems. Their security will be geared toward other, more physical threats. Hannibal Griffis had mentioned an assassination attempt. This was as good an opportunity as ever to get our hands on information about the jump drive.

I wanted
Calypso II
back, and I was prepared to take as much other information as I could. Much of my adult life I had used technology I did not understand, was not given the opportunity to understand. When I finally acquired what I thought was a jump drive, it turned out to be something different. I’d been literally taken for a ride. I did not intend to return to our own time empty-handed.