An Infinite Summer

by Christopher Priest

  “You have a husband?” I said, and she nodded. “Where is he?”

  “The whores took him.”

  “Whores?”

  “The enemy. They took him when they left, the bitches.”

  There had been sixteen hundred female troops in Winho Town during the occupation, and every man had been held in captivity. When the town was relieved by our troops, the men had been taken away as the enemy withdrew. Only the very old or very young had been left behind.

  “Is he still alive?” I said, when she had finished speaking.

  “I suppose so…how do I know?”

  She was sitting, naked still, on the edge of the bed. I expected her to cry again, but her eyes were dry.

  “Do you want me to stay?” I said.

  “No…please go.”

  “Shall I come again?”

  “If you want to.”

  The little boy in the next room was beginning to cry. I opened the door, went down the stairs, and a moment later was outside the house.

  * * *

  The following day I discovered that a ferry would be calling in the afternoon, and I decided to leave Winho. While I was waiting I walked slowly through the narrow streets of the town, wondering if I would see Elva.

  The day was humid, and I undid the buttons at the front of my shirt to let my skin breathe more easily. It was then I noticed that a tracery of fine scratches had appeared across my chest, and I remembered Elva’s sharpened teeth, delicately teasing at my neck and chest. I touched one of the longer scratches with my finger, but although it was a bright red, and raised like a weal, there was no sensation of pain.

  The town, languid in the heat, seemed to be moist and soft, and the air surrounding me was like the embrace of fur. It was only when I reached the harbour, and stood on the pier waiting for the ferry, that I realized I was suffering yet another synaesthetic attack. It seemed to be a mild one, and I tried to disregard it.

  I paced up and down the pier, trying to feel the real substance of the concrete surface through the rubbery, cushioned texture my sensations lent it. My mouth and throat were sore, tasting synaesthetically scarlet, and my genitals were hurting as if trapped in a vice.

  Glancing down, I saw that several of the scratches had opened, for blood was smearing where my shirt flapped against me.

  At last the ferry arrived, and I went along to its berth with the other passengers. Knowing I should have to pay the fare again, I reached for the wad of notes in my back pocket, but then remembered the difficulty I had had with the high-denomination notes on the outward journey. I still had the five silver coins that Elva had given me, and I reached into the breast pocket of my shirt.

  Something soft and warm wrapped itself about my two searching fingers, and I withdrew them at once.

  I found a hand gripping my fingers!

  It was a small, perfect hand. A child’s hand. It was pink in the bright daylight, severed at the wrist.

  I stepped back, shaking my hand in wild horror.

  The child’s hand gripped me more tightly.

  I let out a cry of fright and swung my arm frantically, trying to throw off the little hand, but when I looked again it was still there. I turned away from the bustle of the other passengers on the quayside, and took hold of it with my free hand and tried to wrench it away. I pulled and pulled, perspiring with horror and tension…but nothing I could do would make it relax its hold. I could see the effect on itself of the grip: a whiteness around the knuckles, and beneath the tiny nails.

  No one on the quayside was taking any notice of me, because there was much movement to and fro of other passengers. I stared round in anguish, feeling I should never be released from the nightmare of the severed hand.

  I made one more attempt to free myself by pulling with my other hand, then, in desperation, I put my trapped fingers on the concrete surface of the quay, and pressed down on top with my boot. I leaned forward, putting as much weight on my hand as I could bear. The child’s hand relaxed a little, and I pulled my fingers away. Suddenly I was free, and I jumped back.

  The child’s hand lay on the quay, still tightly clenched.

  Then the fingers opened, and the hand began to crawl towards me like a bloated pink spider.

  I stepped forward and brought my boot down on it with all my weight. I stamped again, and then again, and again…

  * * *

  There was another argument on the boat, and to avoid it I let the ferryman keep the banknote without paying me change. I was in no condition to argue with him: I was shaking convulsively, and the pain I had noticed earlier in my mouth and chest, and in my genitals, was growing worse every minute. When the business of the fare had been settled I went to the back of the boat and sat alone, trembling and frightened. The sea was clean; calm and blue and transparent in the windless heat.

  My shirt was now stained with blood in several places, and I took it off. I felt on the outside of the breast pocket to see if the coins were still there. I could not bring myself to feel inside with my fingers again. At last I held the pocket open upside down above the deck, but nothing fell out.

  As the boat moved out to sea, and the island of Winho became distant behind us, I sat bare-chested in the sun, watching one scratch after another ooze blood down my chest. I dared not try to speak to anyone, for my mouth was an open pit of pain.

  The boat went from one island in the Archipelago to the next, but I did not leave it until nightfall. By then we were at the island of Salay, and I went ashore. That night I slept in the local garrison, having to share a large room with sixteen other officers. My dreams were rich and textured with agony, and lurid colours, and an uncontrollable and unfulfilled sexual desire. In the morning, the sheets of the bed were stiff with the blood from my wounds.

  Palely Loitering

  I

  During the summers of my childhood, the best treat of all was our annual picnic in Flux Channel Park, which lay some fifty miles from home. Because my father was set in his ways, and for him no picnic would be worthy of its name without a joint of freshly roasted cold ham, the first clue we children had was always, therefore, when Cook began her preparations. I made a point every day of slipping down unnoticed to the cellar to count the hams that hung from steel hooks in the ceiling, and as soon as I found one was missing I would hurry to my sisters and share the news. The next day, the house would fill with the rich aroma of ham roasting in cloves, and we three children would enter an elaborate charade: inside we would be brimming over with excitement at the thought of the adventure, but at the same time restraining ourselves to act normally, because Father’s announcement of his plans at breakfast on the chosen day was an important part of the fun.

  We grew up in awe and dread of our father, for he was a distant and strict man. Throughout the winter months, when his work made its greatest demands, we hardly saw him, and all we knew of him were the instructions passed on to us by Mother or the governor. In the summer months he chose to maintain the distance, joining us only for meals, and spending the evenings alone in his study. However, once a year my father would mellow, and for this alone the excursions to the Park would have been cause for joy. He knew the excitement the trip held for us and he played up to it, revealing the instinct of showman and actor.

  Sometimes he would start by pretending to scold or punish us for some imaginary misdemeanour, or would ask Mother a misleading question, such as whether it was that day the servants were taking a holiday, or he would affect absent-mindedness; through all this we would hug our knees under the table, knowing what was to come. Then at last he would utter the magic words “Flux Channel Park”, and, abandoning our charade with glee, we children would squeal with delight and run to Mother, the servants would bustle in and clear away the breakfast, there would be a clatter of dishes and the creak of the wicker hamper from the kitchen…and at long last the crunching of hooves and steel-rimmed wheels would sound on the gravel drive outside, as the taxi-carriage arrived to take us to the station.r />
  II

  I believe that my parents went to the Park from the year they were married, but my own first clear memory of a picnic is when I was seven years old. We went as a family every year until I was fifteen. For nine summers that I can remember, then, the picnic was the happiest day of the year, fusing in memory into one composite day, each picnic much like all the others, so carefully did Father orchestrate the treat for us. And yet one day stands out from all the others because of a moment of disobedience and mischief, and after that those summery days in Flux Channel Park were never quite the same again.

  It happened when I was ten years old. The day had started like any other picnic-day, and by the time the taxi arrived the servants had gone on ahead to reserve a train-compartment for us. As we clambered into the carriage, Cook ran out of the house to wave us away, and she gave each of us children a freshly peeled carrot to gnaw on. I took mine whole into my mouth, distending my cheeks, and sucking and nibbling at it slowly, mashing it gradually into a juicy pulp. As we rattled down to the station I saw Father glancing at me once or twice, as if to tell me not to make so much noise with my mouth…but it was a holiday from everything, and he said nothing.

  My mother, sitting opposite us in the carriage, issued her usual instructions to my sisters. “Salleen [my elder sister], you’re to keep an eye on Mykle. You know how he runs around.” (I, sucking my carrot, made a face at Salleen, bulging a cheek with the carrot and squinting my eyes.) “And you, Therese, you must stay by me. None of you is to go too close to the Channel.” Her instructions came too soon; the train-ride was of second-order interest, but it came between us and the Park.

  I enjoyed the train, smelling the sooty smoke and watching the steam curl past the compartment window like an attendant white wraith, but my sisters, especially Salleen, were unaccustomed to the motion and felt sick. While Mother fussed over the girls, and summoned the servants from their compartment further down the train, Father and I sat gravely beside each other. When Salleen had been taken away down the train, and Therese had quietened, I started to fidget in my seat, craning my neck to peer forward, seeking that first magical glimpse of the silvery ribbon of the Channel.

  “Father, which bridge shall we cross this time?” And: “Can we cross two bridges today, like last year?”

  Always the same answer: “We shall decide when we arrive. Keep still, Mykle.”

  And so we arrived, tugging at our parents’ hands to hurry them, waiting anxiously by the gate as the entrance-fees were paid. The first dashing run down the sloping green sward of the Park grounds, dodging the trees and jumping high to see along the Channel, shouting disappointment because there were too many people there already, or not enough. Father beamed at us and lit his pipe, flicking back the flaps of his frock-coat and thrusting his thumbs into his waistcoat, then strolled beside Mother as she held his arm. My sisters and I walked or ran, depending on our constitutional state, heading towards the Channel, but slowing when awed by its closeness, not daring to approach. Looking back, we saw Father and Mother waving to us from the shade of the trees, needlessly warning us of the dangers.

  As always, we hurried to the toll-booths for the time-bridges that crossed the Channel, for it was these bridges that were the whole reason for the day’s trip. A line of people was waiting at each booth, moving forward slowly to pay the entrance-fee: families like ourselves with children dancing, young couples holding hands, single men and women glancing speculatively at each other. We counted the people in each queue, eagerly checked the results with each other, then ran back to our parents.

  “Father, there are only twenty-six people at the Tomorrow Bridge!”

  “There’s no one at the Yesterday Bridge!” Salleen, exaggerating as usual.

  “Can we cross into Tomorrow, Mother?”

  “We did that last year.” Salleen, still disgruntled from the train, kicked out feebly at me. “Mykle always wants to go to Tomorrow!”

  “No I don’t. The queue is longer for Yesterday!”

  Mother, soothingly: “We’ll decide after lunch. The queues will be shorter then.”

  Father, watching the servants laying our cloth beneath a dark old cedar tree, said: “Let us walk for a while, my dear. The children can come too. We will have luncheon in an hour or so.”

  Our second exploration of the Park was more orderly, conducted, as it was, under Father’s eye. We walked again to the nearest part of the Channel—it seemed less risky now, with parents there—and followed one of the paths that ran parallel to the bank. We stared at the people on the other side.

  “Father, are they in Yesterday or Tomorrow?”

  “I can’t say, Mykle. It could be either.”

  “They’re nearer to the Yesterday Bridge, stupid!” Salleen, pushing me from behind.

  “That doesn’t mean anything, stupid!” Jabbing back at her with an elbow.

  The sun reflecting from the silvery surface of the flux-fluid (we sometimes called it water, to my father’s despair) made it glitter and sparkle like rippling quicksilver. Mother would not look at it, saying the reflections hurt her eyes, but there was always something dreadful about its presence so that no one could look too long. In the still patches, where the mystifying currents below briefly let the surface settle, we sometimes saw upside-down reflections of the people on the other side.

  Later: we edged around the tolls, where the lines of people were longer than before, and walked further along the bank towards the east.

  Then later: we returned to the shade and the trees, and sat in a demure group while lunch was served. My father carved ham with the precision of the expert chef: one cut down at an angle towards the bone, another horizontally across to the bone, and the wedge of meat so produced taken away on a plate by one of the servants. Then the slow, meticulous carving beneath the notch; one slice after another, each one slightly wider and rounder than the one before.

  As soon as lunch was finished we made our way to the toll-booths, and queued with the other people. There were always fewer people waiting at this time of the afternoon, a fact that surprised us but which our parents took for granted. This day we had chosen the Tomorrow Bridge; whatever the preferences we children expressed, Father always had the last word. It did not, however, prevent Salleen from sulking, nor me from letting her see the joys of victory.

  This particular day was the first time I had been to the Park with any understanding of the Flux Channel and its real purpose. Earlier in the summer, the governor had instructed us in the rudiments of spatio-temporal physics…although that was not the name he gave to it. My sisters had been bored with the subject (it was boys’ stuff, they declared), but to learn how and why the Channel had been built was fascinating to me.

  I had grown up with a general understanding that we lived in a world where our ancestors had built many marvellous things that we no longer used or had need for. This awareness, gleaned from the few other children I knew, was of astonishing and miraculous achievements, and was, as might be expected, wildly inaccurate. I knew as a fact, for instance, that the Flux Channel had been built in a matter of days, that jet-propelled aircraft could circumnavigate the world in a matter of minutes, and that houses and automobiles and railway-trains could be built in a matter of seconds. Of course the truth was quite different, and our education in the scientific age and its history was constantly interesting to me.

  In the case of the Flux Channel, I knew by my tenth birthday that it had taken more than two decades to build, that its construction had cost many human lives, and that it had taxed the resources and intelligence of many different countries.

  Furthermore, the principle on which it worked was well understood today, even though we had no use for it as it was intended.

  We lived in the age of starflight, but by the time I was born mankind had long lost the desire to travel in space.

  The governor had shown us a slowed-down film of the launching of the craft that had flown to the stars: the surface of the Flux Channel u
ndulating as the starship was propelled through its deeps like a huge whale trying to navigate a canal; then the hump of its hull bursting through the surface in a shimmering spray of exploding foam, and the gushing wake sluicing over the banks of the Channel and vanishing instantaneously; then the actual launch, with the starship soaring into the sky, leaving a trail of brilliant droplets in the air behind it.

  All this had taken place in under one-tenth of a second; anyone within twenty-five miles of the launch would have been killed by the shockwave, and it is said that the thunder of the starship’s passage could be heard in every country of the Neuropean Union. Only the automatic high-speed cameras were there to witness the launching. The men and women who crewed the ship—their metabolic functions frozen for most of the flight—would not have felt the strain of such a tremendous acceleration even if they had been conscious; the flux-field distorted time and space, changed the nature of matter. The ship was launched at such a high relative velocity that by the time the technicians had returned to the Flux Channel it would have been outside the Solar System. By the time I was born, seventy years after this, the starship would have been…who knows where?

  Behind it, churning and eddying with temporal mystery, the Flux Channel lay across more than a hundred miles of the land, a scintillating, dazzling ribbon of light, like a slit in the world that looked towards another dimension.

  There were no more starships after the first, and that one had never returned. When the disturbance of the launching had calmed to a degree where the flux-field was no longer a threat to human safety, the stations that tapped the electricity had been built along part of its banks. A few years later, when the flux-field had stabilized completely, an area of the countryside was landscaped to create the Park and the time-bridges were built.

  One of these traversed the Channel at an angle of exactly ninety degrees, and to walk across it was no different from crossing any bridge across any ordinary river.