Time Past (9 page)

He stood up suddenly, swung his arm around to indicate the tent. “Like long term, the Invidi helped us clean up this mess?”

I said nothing. I was thinking of Marlena Alvarez and her views on long- and short-term policies.

“Lots of nasty things can happen in the short term.” He echoed my thoughts uncannily. “Like living here.” He lowered himself onto the bed beside me. I saw it through his shocked, fastidious gaze—no more than an old door with stained and threadbare cloths folded on top. Like one of the dirty mounds people slept on at the entrance to the bus station.

“I don’t have any money.”

“But you’re from the future,” he protested. “You’ve got all this knowledge...”

“Most of which I can’t use,” I interrupted. “Because I don’t want to do anything that didn’t happen.”

“You’re not making sense. Whatever we do here is preordained? Suppose we... I dunno. Kill An Serat or something else that we definitely know didn’t happen? Are you saying something will happen to stop us?”

“Hell, I don’t know,” I snapped. “I’m an engineer, not a temporal philosopher. All I know is that when I got here I had no papers and no money to buy papers, and no papers means no job, which means you can’t earn money. If I make an official refugee claim I get sent off to a reserve somewhere away from the city, from where I can’t get out to meet the Invidi once they do arrive.”

He looked at me. Enough beams of bright morning sunshine shone through the cracks in the tent material to illuminate the dusty lines on his face and the hollows beneath his cheekbones. He must have walked all day and most of the night. I remembered how I’d wanted a second chance to tell him... Now that he was here, I found it hard to think what it was I wanted to tell him.

“Thanks for coming,” was all I could manage.

He leaned back on one elbow and smiled, a rare and delightful expression. “You... it was worth it.”

I didn’t have a reply. His presence meant I didn’t have to face getting back alone. It meant I hadn’t been dreaming about the future, and Jocasta and everything else. I caught my hand rubbing the implant and stopped.

Murdoch cleared his throat and rolled off the bed. He went to the door and stood looking out. I wondered at the way my eyes tracked his movement, lingering on things I never noticed before.

“Great opportunity to see the old town at its worst,” he said.

I winced at the distaste in his voice. In a way, I was responsible for him feeling like this; I brought him here. “It is pretty bad.”

“What happened to all the trees?”

“The trees you remember probably haven’t been planted yet.”

“What about the harbor?”

“You need a special pass to get into the inner city. I think they’re rebuilding parts of the harbor area to cope with the rise in sea level.”

“Special pass?” His distaste turned to disgust.

“For U.N. delegates, people in jobs associated with government, selected businesses. Supposed to be protection against terrorism.”

The door pipes clacked and the door swung open. Before I could even stand up, Will burst in.

“Hey, Maria, can I have breakfast with...” His vivid face darkened with almost comic swiftness when he saw Murdoch.

“Will, this is my friend Bill...”

“McGrath,” supplied Murdoch. “G’day, Will.”

“Is your name William too?” said Will, recovering. He was in one of his sunny moods.

“Uh-huh. But I had an uncle with the same name, so everyone called me Bill. Right from when I was a baby.”

As they chatted, I held my forehead in my hand and stared at the stains on the crate top. Murdoch’s here—I’m still trying to cope with that, and now it’s morning.

Six

T
hree days later Murdoch met Grace. She dropped in at the tent as I was about to leave for the Assembly.

“Hello, Bill McGrath,” she said. She must have heard about him from Will. She settled into the chair.

“Bill, this is my old, um, tent-mate Grace.” I’d told him about Grace losing her job and going to live with Levin.

“Hello, Grace.” Murdoch smiled.

“You’re not from Sydney?” Grace glanced at the pantry like Will did, but I wasn’t going to invite her to stay for a cup of tea. I had to get to work.

“No, up the north coast. You from round here?”

“I moved here when I was a kid. From out west.” Her eyes wandered over the mattress we’d borrowed from Florence’s brother’s best mate’s sister-in-law, placed on a board on the bricks where she used to sleep. “You staying long?”

Murdoch nodded seriously. He was completely at ease with Grace. Then again, the only people with whom Murdoch didn’t seem at ease were diplomats and Invidi.

“Been out of the country. Got back recently, thought I’d drop in and see Maria,” he said.

“Bit out of yer way, though, wasn’t it?”

“I didn’t mind.”

Grace raised her eyebrow at me in what she probably thought was a meaningful way. “Ah-huh.”

I hefted my string bag, but Grace didn’t take the hint.

“Is she easy to live with?” said Murdoch, with a sly glance at me. His mouth twitched.

“We had our ups’n downs,” said Grace. “Didn’t we?”

“Do you want to walk over to the Assembly with me?” I said finally, giving up on subtlety.

“I don’t mind.” She heaved herself to her feet. “Hey, Bill, is it true yer doing some work on those school grounds?”

“That’s right.” Murdoch had gone with me to take Will to school yesterday, after Will appeared yet again after breakfast, and ended up chatting with one of the teachers on duty in the playground. He’d been appalled at the rubbish, the graffiti, and the lack of repair of the buildings and fences. That’s public education for you, said the teacher. I’m part of the public, said Murdoch. And he volunteered to do a couple of hours’ work there.

“Good stuff,” said Grace. “About time somebody cleaned the place up. Bone lazy, them teachers.”

I resisted asking why she didn’t volunteer herself. “Let’s go. See you later, Bill.”

“Ta-ta, Bill.”

Murdoch waved solemnly from the sagging screen door of the tent as we walked up the lane.

“Nice bloke,” said Grace. “Got the hots for you, too, I can tell.”

“We’re old friends,” I said, picking my way around a line of broken plastic and filthy rags that spilled from a torn plastic bag. “We used to work together. I’m letting him stay until he finds a place of his own.”

“Not your type, eh?”

All too easily, my imagination presented me with a situation in which I confirmed that Murdoch was “my type.”

“I mean,” went on Grace, heedless of my red face, “I did notice the extra bed. If I had a hunk like that staying with me, I wouldn’t make him sleep in another bed.”

“How’s Levin?”

“That’s it, change the subject. He’s okay.” She glanced at me. “I don’t expect it to last, y’know.”

“With Levin, you mean?” It didn’t surprise me, but Grace’s acknowledgment was unexpected.

“Yeah. With his money and...” she started to say something but changed her mind. “He should be able to pick up younger women. But he reckons mature women know how to keep quiet.” She flashed me a grin. “So I better, eh?”

We walked past the backyards of the houses on the street before Creek Road. One of them contained four, no, five now, rusting cars. And a modular storage shed, with a line of washing beside it.

“Why do you stay with him?” Stupid question, I thought immediately.

Grace looked at me as though she was thinking the same thing. Then she shrugged. “You not having kids, I guess you don’t understand. I can’t think only about meself.”

We turned into Creek Road, the Assembly building last in the line of houses. The betting shop was just opening. The proprietor swept the dirt away from the entry and gave us a smile.

“Good morning, ladies.”

Grace grinned. “G’morning, Mr. Deshindar. No ladies here.”

They chatted happily. I stood and rattled my keys and stared at fresh graffiti that had blossomed on the side fence during the night.

During the night, when I lay awake, listening to Murdoch’s heavy, even breathing. The day Murdoch arrived I realized how awkward the situation in the tent could become. Murdoch would be here for another ten days at least, more if we didn’t contact the Invidi as soon as they came. An awkward situation not because I didn’t want to sleep in the same bed as Murdoch. Quite the opposite—the more I thought about it, the more it appealed. If, that is, I wasn’t mistaking the signals he sent to me.

But that was the problem—the more attractive I found Murdoch, the less I could consider sleeping with him. Henoit got in the way.

I was married to my H’digh husband, Henoit, for two years. Then I left, because I didn’t agree with his extremist politics. He was involved with the anti-Confederacy group New Council of Allied Worlds, and their terrorism didn’t seem to bother him. For seven Earth years we’d had no contact after I left him. Long enough to satisfy both Confederacy and Earth conditions of being legally estranged. I put him out of my mind.

Then he appeared on Jocasta in the middle of the crisis at the end of the Seouras blockade. He told me that, as far as he was concerned, nothing had changed. H’digh law and custom do not recognize estrangement, not even when one of the partners dies. I thought this was ridiculous and said so. He said that it was because the marriage vow continues beyond the death of either of its participants.

Then he was killed in the battle at the end of the blockade. It shocked me, but he chose to betray us for the New Council, so I didn’t spend a lot of time mourning. Afterward, the situation on the station settled down and I began to work on
Calypso II.
Then I started to get “visits” from Henoit. It happened every time I had any sexual pleasure— even just release of tension alone at the end of a long day. All my physical reactions were the same as when he was there. Perhaps I had some of the infamous H’digh pheromones left in my system. But this time, unlike when he was there in the flesh, I didn’t need to worry about compromising the safety of the station or the personal consequences of losing control or what he really wanted.

It was as though my pleasure sent a signal that was bounced back at greatly increased power and in a changed form—like when I made love with Henoit. His signature all over it. All over me.

I didn’t know if it would happen when actually making love with anyone else, because I hadn’t had a chance to find out until now. But since Murdoch arrived, every time my thoughts about him drifted in a vaguely lustful direction, I’d get that feeling of Henoit looking over my shoulder. If I allowed my relationship with Murdoch to become a full-blown passion, I was certain I’d feel as though I was also responding to Henoit.

Murdoch would not understand, especially as he’d met Henoit on Jocasta and knew what a bastard he was. I knew what a bastard he was too, but that didn’t stop me getting off on his memory. Or whatever it is.

What could I say?
Sorry, but when we make love I’m doing it with someone else as well.

No, it was better for both of us if Murdoch slept in a separate bed. “Maria?” Grace’s voice seemed out of place for a moment.

“Sorry, yes?”

“I’m off. You and Bill come over for dinner on Saturday, eh? Anzac Day special. See you later.” She slouched up Creek Road toward the main street.

I smiled at Mr. Deshindar, who was now setting out his noticeboards, and unlocked the side door. It annoyed me how Grace disappeared as soon as work was due to begin. She could give me a hand sticking envelopes or something.

I hadn’t shared living space with someone for a long time, and the next few days saw some more awkward moments, caused mainly by two adults trying to live in such a cramped space. Where to get changed? In the shower block when we could, but often the other people in the row wanted to use it. Who would get up first? There wasn’t much room to maneuver around the tent.

In the end, Murdoch turned over while I got up and changed, then I went outside while he did the same. He was a tidy man, and my habits occasionally eroded his temper.

“Bloody good thing you don’t have more than two changes of clothes,” he grumbled, fishing these items from among blanket folds or off the back of the chair. “You put your tools away, why not these?”

We talked. About the Invidi coming. About Jocasta and the future. About his past, of which I knew embarrassingly little. As Security chief, he knew my background, but I felt I should have made more of an effort to know more about his than the basics of where he worked before coming to Jocasta.

“I was on Mars the job before Jocasta,” he said from his side of the tent one night in the dark. “They resented me—an upstart from Earth coming in and ordering them around. Mind you, that was why they picked an outsider for the job—too much corruption, everyone in one another’s pockets. I was fighting my own people more than the criminals.” He was silent again.

“The girls didn’t like it, either. That’s my partner and my daughter,” he added. “Irena.”

“How long were you on Mars?”

“Standard three-year secondment. The girls went back after two, though. No fun for them. Irena was thirteen. The Martian colonists are too proud, sometimes. Their way of being independent, I guess. Anyway, when my three years finished, I left too.”

“You went back on Earth?”

“For a while. Then I joined EarthFleet.”

“Why did you join EarthFleet?” He’d been in the civilian police force long enough to have had a senior position.

He turned over, the board creaking under his weight. I couldn’t see his face in the darkness and wondered if it had been the wrong question.

“She... my partner. She found someone else, been living with him the whole year I wasn’t there.” He paused.

I was going to say,
I’m sorry,
but that seemed ridiculous. I was glad he came to Jocasta. So I said nothing, and after a moment he spoke again.

“I was going to stick around because of Irena, but then I thought she’d never settle in if I did. And at the time I didn’t know where I’d end up working. There were lots of problems with corruption in the force that year. Bloody mess it was. EarthFleet came round looking for high-level recruits and I thought it was time to get out.”