White Time

by Margo Lanagan

  The whole group squirmed at its own wit.

  ‘Are you serious?’ said Dalma disgustedly.

  ‘Well, I have to admit, it’s kind of interesting,’ Sheneel apologized. ‘Seeing all the different aliens and so on.’

  ‘“And so on”!’ said Keanu. ‘Like, what else is there? Prayer meetings? Proofreading number sheets? Woo-woo!’

  ‘Is Liv around?’ Sheneel asked the boy at her feet.

  But he was too new. ‘Liv? Who’s Liv?’ She could see he wasn’t sure how much scorn to put in his voice.

  Joey tossed her an answer: ‘Liv got stuck at her dad’s, finishing off some stupid crumhorn or something.’

  ‘I might go over there,’ said Sheneel.

  Joey gave her a blind look – he was really listening to Dalma, who’d started talking about what so-and-so had said to so-and-so today.

  Timing was crucial; Sheneel mustn’t hover there; it must look as if she’d always intended just to drop by and walk on.

  Halfway to the old-town gateway, no one had called after her. She couldn’t even hear their over-excited voices any more – there was only traffic, and birds in the park trees, and the breeze passing her ears, endlessly, arrhythmically changing the air around her.

  She was in the elevator with Lon. It was her third morning with him and her last. If she didn’t ask him now, she’d have to do it in white time, with Rowan butting in, or in the canteen, when she’d be busy eating.

  ‘There are rumours about people who work with white time,’ she said.

  ‘Ah-huh. Wondered when you’d ask.’

  ‘About the travel perks.’

  ‘Yep.’ He pulled his eyes down to hers. She waited for something further, but of course he gave her nothing. That’s your answer: yes.

  ‘You’ve done it?’

  He nodded, his grey eyes drilling into her. She tried to think of a question that wasn’t frivolous. ‘Where did you go?’

  He kept drilling. ‘Lots of places. Or times, strictly speaking.’

  She wasn’t big on history, herself. ‘Did you go … ahead?’

  ‘Yup.’

  The way he was looking at her! Like, daring her to go on throwing these lumpish, gawky, teen questions at him. ‘How—’ Her voice caught. ‘Hrm. How far?’

  ‘Oh, a good long way,’ he said. His voice seemed to be getting softer. She wished she had a pip in, to hear him properly.

  ‘Like, millions of years?’

  ‘Like, thousands,’ he said. ‘No, not like. Really thousands. Really two thousand five hundred. Circa.’

  In her head she heard Dalma say, Did you really? This is ultima cool! Wow! What was it like? Tell me everything! She could see Dalma, in this elevator, hugging herself, stomping and grimacing with curiosity, asking and asking, flooding out questions.

  But what do you ask this man, those eyes? He’s on patches, for godsake – what did he see in that future? The elevator rumbled and shivered around them. She could ask anything – that was part of the problem. She couldn’t ask a Dalma question, and she didn’t know if she had any questions of her own.

  ‘Were we there?’ finally she said, in almost a whisper, horribly afraid. ‘People, I mean? Our kind of?’

  He kept it up with the eyes. He swallowed. The elevator changed tone, whined down, stopped.

  ‘Oh, people were there.’ He didn’t move from the rail, even when the doors opened.

  Sheneel looked to the opening and then back at him. His eyes were – dammit, she was so bad at this! Was he daring her, pitying her, laughing at her? That wasn’t a real smile, but the eyes, they had real stuff in them. His head was chock-a-block with it; he was ready, more than ready, to pour it out his mouth the way he was pouring it out his eyes.

  ‘That’s all,’ she said, in a little, light voice. Despite his eyes, she moved off the wall. ‘’T’s all I wanted to know.’ And she walked past him out of the elevator.

  Now she was good at attaching the suction cups, using the moisture-patch at her belt and placing them where Lon showed her. And she keyed in everything they told her, figure by figure – with only the vaguest idea of what each figure related to, although Rowan reminded her every time. But that was OK; she did it, without losing her cool, and capsules and creatures disappeared as they should. She tasted the occupation. She had hands-on experience.

  This last day she did it all. Rowan told her everything, and Lon just floated at her elbow and watched. Twice she chose not-so-great spots for the intake cup. ‘You won’t get a clear feed there, Sharelle,’ said Lon.

  ‘Sheneel, Lon,’ said Rowan and she in unison.

  ‘Looks like my job’s on the line, Ro,’ said Lon, after the third entity had disappeared.

  ‘Looks like it, Lon. She’s got the touch.’

  Sheneel tried not to feel pleased. They were just bored and jollying her along; it would be childish to congratulate herself. ‘What’s next?’ she said.

  Rowan reeled off sector and subsector co-ordinates, and the entities glowed near and far.

  She dispatched a tiny capsule no bigger than her head.

  ‘A DONNY,’ said Lon.

  ‘You got it, Lon,’ said Rowan.

  ‘What’s a DONNY?’

  ‘Whew,’ said Rowan, ‘what’s a DONNY, Lon? You explain to Sheneel while I get you over to that flagellate thing.’

  ‘Dubious Or Not … not previously encountered or something. What are the other initials, Ro? Doesn’t matter. Means it’s new. Analysis will have to put their little thinking caps on. Here we are, Shania. A piece of string. Zap that.’

  With some difficulty, she did.

  ‘Won’t be needing me around much longer,’ said Lon. ‘Looks like I can retire now.’ Sheneel was getting used to his repeating things, too. She’d done it herself a few times.

  Rowan spilled more numbers. Sheneel pointed her face towards where she thought he meant, and was gratified to feel the cable reorient her to face that way – the numbers were starting to mean something. She moved her shoulders to search with her chest-light. Something glimmered at her in response.

  Then there was a loud hissing in her voice-pip. Through it, she heard Rowan swear. ‘Lon, what the hell?’ The pip was dead of Lon’s breathing.

  Rowan’s rushed in to fill the space, loud and fast. ‘Sheneel. I’m turning you to Lon. I want you to clamp hold of him with your legs and do whatever I tell you.’

  Lon hove into view, spinning. ‘What’s happened? What’s he done?’ His cable was coming after him, the unsnapped end of it probing at his revolving middle.

  ‘Grab him. You got him?’

  She pincered Lon’s knees with her legs. He didn’t move. She couldn’t see his face.

  ‘The cable hole, Sheneel. Can you get the cable back in? You’ve got a little time with the reserve oxygen – heck, no you haven’t! Why didn’t I notice – What can you see through the cable hole?’

  ‘Huh? Are you talking to me? Who are you, anyway? Where are we all?’

  ‘You are Sheneel. I am Rowan. Lon is the man in front of you. Look in his cable port. What do you see?’

  ‘Checks. Shirt. What am I doing here?’

  ‘You’re doing fine. Sheneel. Push the shirt aside. Output cup. Wet it on the belt-patch, Sheneel. Stick it on him. Stick it on Lon’s skin.’

  ‘Skin? What—? I’m confused here.’

  ‘That’s OK, Sheneel. Output cup, Sheneel – moisten at the belt. Lon’s cable port, Sheneel. See the shirt? Pull the shirt out, Sheneel. Expose some skin as quickly as you can.’

  Skin? This isn’t skin. Purple-silver, and finely, finely pleated, like shrinking balloon-skin – Oh, a scar. The cup won’t stick to it. I’ll have to put it to one side – ‘It’s on.’

  ‘Stick the— it’s on? You’re right! We’ve got him. Input this, Sheneel. Carefully.’

  She keyed and keyed. ‘This is a long calacku-curliculication—’

  ‘Seven, five. Repeat them back to me, Sheneel.’

  ‘’S, S
ir!’ And she keyed and keyed, until Lon snapped away, with a suddenness that made her reel and grope for balance, the suction cups flailing in front of her eyes.

  ‘I’m bringing you in, Sheneel. Remember me? Rowan.’

  ‘Rowan. Rowan? Rowan!’

  ‘I’m bringing you in. You see the door, Sheneel?’

  ‘I see the door. Rowan, where is he? What’s hap—’

  ‘I’m bringing you in the door. You’ll feel better there. It’ll be all right.’

  Sealed in the transition chamber, Sheneel found the tabs of her helmet by touch and tore it off. There was easily room. Something was miss— Lon was missing! She slammed herself against the black door. Her chest-light caught something – but only an entity, one of those streaky patches of vapour. What had happened? Where had she been?

  There was movement at the other window, a crowd of green-smocked people. ‘Are they doctors?’ she said dazedly.

  ‘Yes. You’ll have to stay in there, Sheneel, for transition.’

  ‘And is that Lon’s feet?’

  ‘Yeah. He needs a bit of work.’

  She watched the row of backs, the lowered faces. She thumped on the door and a face looked up. She made an asking face, and the woman put her hands together and looked up to the ceiling.

  ‘She’s saying pray for him? What happened? Tell me! Rowan? You there?’

  ‘You’ll be told. Don’t worry. There’ll be a counsellor—’

  ‘I don’t want a bloody counsellor! I want you, Rowan, to tell me, Sheneel, what I did, what went on, what you made me do!’

  ‘Just … you shifted him forward a little, that’s all. It’s an … it’s an Approved Emergency Procedure. It’s written up on the wall here. I just read it off—’

  ‘Procedure for what? How’d he come unplugged? How come no one said that could happen? How come no one told the school it was so dangerous? D’you people think you can—’

  ‘No, no. Sheneel. Sheneel. He unplugged himself.’

  She stopped thumping the chamber walls. She stood waiting for the sense of the words to come through. ‘But he was always really fussy about seals …’ She sat down with a thud.

  ‘I know,’ apologized Rowan. ‘He just – it just happens sometimes. In the field.’

  She watched the doctors. They were nothing but green-coated backs. Rowan went off-line to manage other parts of the crisis; now only the music played in her head, aimless and tranquil and madly irritating. She snatched the pips out of her ears.

  She could only wait until transition was over. This was the last time she’d be in here – she’d better take notes. She stood up and ran her gloved hands around the curved grey ceiling and walls. Really, it was like being inside a front-loading washing machine; she wouldn’t be surprised if the thing started to spin. She went to the dark side and made her hands into blinkers against the glass; now she could believe that the chamber did spin, just slowly, that her legs were sliding up over her head, and down the other side, and up again, over …

  A synthetic bell dinged softly. Transition was over. Sheneel turned and freed the heavy door and stepped out.

  The doctors all had their backs to her. Their murmured conversation came to her as if through a pip:

  Is there a wife I should call?

  A wife? Lon’s not married!

  He’s not?

  Hell, no. Don’t you remember his last little excursion?

  Jamal wasn’t here then. But they’ve got a few like Lon down in your southern reservoirs, haven’t they, Jamal? Time bunnies?

  Don’t tell me – he went forward? How far?

  Forty-five hundred-odd. That was the limit, then.

  Aargh, that’s nasty stuff. That’s the Sect Wars. We lost a woman there; she came back, she was just tatters.

  Lon wasn’t much better. Caught in some crossfire. Put him right off marrying, he said.

  How come?

  Women want children, he says, and then children want children, and before you know it they’re there in the fifth millennium, signing up for whatever battle did him over.

  There were indulgent chuckles all round.

  Any next of kin, then?

  Jamal, it’s not that bad. She got to him good and quick, that girl—

  And they turned and saw her, and started to speak too loudly, instead of slightly too softly.

  ‘Just stretcher him up to Sick Bay’

  ‘I’ve already called them.’

  The praying woman stopped rolling up fine cable and gave Sheneel a thumbs up. ‘Don’t worry, love. Strong as an ox, is our Lon.’

  One of them still knelt beside Lon, holding his forearm. ‘Don’t worry, mate,’ she was saying. ‘We all make mistakes. We’ve got you back, and that’s the main thing.’

  ‘Yeah, for you,’ came the croaky answer.

  Lon’s suit was cut open neck to belt, chopped electronics trailing and biologicals leaking to the floor. They’d slashed open his checked shirt; it lay sodden either side of him. His chest was smudged with the pale-green sterile grease of some doctor-procedure, and moved without any rhythm that Sheneel could see.

  She looked closer. One side of Lon’s abdomen was chewed into detailed purple-and-silver knots. His chest was starred in several places with puncture marks the size of dollar coins, healed over shiny.

  ‘Where’s Sharelle?’ he said.

  ‘Sharelle?’ said the doctor.

  ‘He means Sheneel. That’s me.’ Sheneel squatted opposite the doctor, and put her face above Lon’s.

  ‘He’s just had a heck of a jolt,’ said the doctor. ‘Don’t take anything he says too seriously.’

  ‘Ah, you,’ said Lon. ‘Yes.’

  Now, on top of everything else in his eyes, Lon had illness – body-illness, not mind. It didn’t stop the eyes doing that thing they did, though – asking, speaking, meaning stuff. Expecting her to see, to know – and she didn’t. She waited for him to tell her.

  ‘I’m torn three ways,’ he said, then faltered.

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Sheneel.

  ‘Between saying sorry and saying thank you … and saying bugga you.’

  God, he was so pale, so grey, so old. So different from the Lon that had sealed her into her suit this morning. So … storm-tossed, and small.

  A tear went tick! on the wrist of her suit. Her head jolted up in surprise. ‘You don’t have to do any of those things,’ she said. ‘I just happened along. I just did what I was told, whether it was a favour to you or not.’ Babble, babble.

  He put his hand on her knee and her wet sleeve, so close to her face he could have just lifted a finger and touched a tear. ‘Don’t get into this game, Sheneel.’

  Breathe. Sniff. ‘’Kay. Like I would’ve anyway.’

  ‘Promise me – make it a promise.’

  ‘OK, I promise.’

  ‘Because someone’ll suggest it for sure, you’ve done so well. And your mind might change. Promise me good.’

  Green-clad doctors were moving in on her peripheral vision, with a gurney. ‘I promise you good.’ It sounded like a joke, somehow – as if she were rudely imitating him – and she gave a little, uncomfortable laugh.

  He didn’t wink, or pat her knee and look away. He didn’t crack any brave jokes, or say a neat goodbye. His eyes were warning beacons flashing darkness instead of light, and his hand was a stone hand.

  Then they were lifting him, and he had to close his eyes with the pain. She stood back and watched him go, her heart thumping. For a second there she’d been a colleague, she’d been a fellow, and she wasn’t ready to be the fellow of someone like that. She was too whole and healthy; she was too young – couldn’t he see that? She didn’t know anything!

  They wheeled Lon into the elevator, and the shining doors rumbled closed. Sheneel stood in her white time suit among the milling doctors, blinking back tears, all trembly with shock.

  What was the highlight of your occupation-tasting experience?.

  Sheneel,

  I wa
s looking forward to a report that was not about the release party, so I’m a little disappointed that there’s such a lot of white space in this account of what must have been an absorbing and varied occupation-tasting experience. Your impressions of visiting white time would, I’m sure, have been valid and interesting, and I would have appreciated some insight into the scope and nature of the work undertaken at the Commonweal’s lab – not to mention your feeling for the purpose and value of this aspect of the Commonweal’s work.

  I hope your summer session on the programme yields fuller results.

  – Sir

  DEDICATION

  ‘Today of all days, Harmon!’ said Nella. She closed the door behind the palace messenger and turned to me, wringing her hands.

  She was like this now, always anxious, always wanting me nearby. When we first wed, she was immensely sure of herself; at the twins’ birth I had been cowed by her strength. But now she was much more like a child herself, often needing direction and calming. She followed me to my wardrobe. ‘Can you not plead busyness?’

  ‘It’s the king’s daughter,’ I said. ‘Our children are only our children. The palace does not see them.’ I was a little flustered myself, putting on my palace clothes.

  ‘Should we postpone our dedicating, then?’

  ‘No, go on without me, Nella. I’ll be as quick as I can. How long can it take to dress a motionless body that doesn’t care how it looks?’

  ‘But how does all this fit together?’ She fluttered her fingers towards the nursery, the laid-out raiment, our babies only half dressed for their dedication at the temple.

  ‘Call for my mother. She will know. I must be at the palace.’ And I left without kissing babies or wife.

  As I hurried down the avenue, the day took on a strangeness like a birthing-day’s. How could our princess be dead? Only a year ago I had been faithfully serving her, for those few dazzling months I spent as dresser under her wardrobe man Kinner.

  ‘But Kinner has been ill,’ this morning’s messenger had said. ‘His wife said the news itself might kill him, let alone the dressing of her. She says you will know what the princess liked, what will suit her.’