by S. D. Unwin
Gallie nods. “General Penrose is a reasonable man it turns out. He went along with the possibility of something very nasty coming from the sky.”
“My TMAers?”
“All intact. Worse for wear most of them, but alive.”
“The barn–”
“Yes, I’d say Prasad was off in his calculations. But we’d gotten them out of there.” I turn my head toward Gallie and wince.
“The arsenal?”
“The missile his its target spot on. Gone. Don’t know about Asmus.”
“We acceled here just before the hit. He was alive then.” Talking hurts.
“We didn’t see him.”
I hazard a few shallow breaths. At least the arsenal is gone. But Asmus is at large. How big a problem is that? Would he really bother to go through all of that again? To rebuild his empire of barking madness? Maybe he’s old enough to settle down to just having unhinged thoughts by a roaring fire. Maybe.
“So we can go?” I ask. “Go home?”
“Not broached that with the general yet, but he’s being a charming host,” Gallie says.
For the first time, I scan my surroundings. I see TMAers looking back at me. Jenn, Mack, Ramuhalli, and others too far away to get in focus. “When Prasad comes in,” I whisper, “he won’t find what he expected. What’s ...” I lose my question and the weight of my eyelids shuts me down again.
I count two days and two nights, and with each the pain diminishes provided I avoid any rapid movement. I can sit up, and along with everyone else in the TMA marquee, I speculate on the timing and tactics of our rescue. I share with Gallie and Zhivov my conversation with Asmus, or most of it, and we agree to analyze it later. There are different priorities for now. Unlike the others in this tent, for me going home is no matter for elation. A few cracked ribs will heal soon enough, but the prospect of being sent to a home a-quarter-of-a-century from Gallie is the real agony.
On the third day I hear a commotion outside the tent along with soldiers barking orders at each other. The tent flap is lifted and in ducks Penrose. He doesn’t have an entourage but just one soldier who waits by the flap. Penrose approaches me, tall and formidable in his blue and gold.
“Are you feeling better Mr. Bevan?” he asks.
I look at Gallie and Zhivov. “I am, General. Thank you.” He nods his acknowledgment.
“I wish for you to meet some people,” he says, and turns to signal the soldier who then lifts the tent flap. A man enters, then a woman, another woman and another man. They’re in eighteenth century attire but their bulky backpacks are not contemporary. Hushed conversations break out. Gallie, Zhivov and I exchange panicked looks. They’ve captured the rescue team. Penrose studies me. “I believe these are your colleagues here to take you home.” I stare at him, then at each of the rescue team, ideas for escape shooting through my brain as if I had the strength to make any of them happen. “I shall leave you to do your work,” he says. He’s about to turn when Zhivov speaks up.
“Thank you General,” he says. Penrose nods slowly, turns and walks toward the flap. But then he stops and looks back. “You should be where you belong with the things that belong to you. And we should be where we belong with the things that belong to us. This is the natural way.”
Knowing that all of this mess was the doing of nature did not temp me to contradict him.
“General,” I say on an impulse. “Are you going to win this thing?” He stares at me for a moment until a brief smile of comprehension crosses his face.
“I do believe we shall prevail, Mr. Bevan. I do.”
The backpacks are full of wrist accelerators. The marquee billows in the wind as if with laughter, disbelief, and joy. In ones and twos we pop and the sounds of excited conversation taper out. Prasad had the devices preset and my team accel to 2021. That’s what the immutable laws of TMA had dictated, and what Prasad demanded. They’re set to arrive shortly after the destruction of the array.
“I’m sure they’ll pick up the pieces,” Gallie says.
“They’ve got the leadership to help them through it,” I say, looking at Boris. He agrees without a hint of cognizance. He really doesn’t know. Zhivov, Gallie and I are the last to be handed our accelerators. I tap mine to display the destination. 1996. I exhale and smile. Gallie is watching me.
“Prasad needs your debrief, Joad,” she says dolefully. “That’s all.”
“One day at a time, Gallie. Prasad can have his one second per second, but you gotta let me be happy one day at a time.”
FIFTY-FOUR
A few days in hospital got me on my feet again. I was declared free of blast lung, eye rupture and brain injury, which came as little relief because I hadn’t been informed enough to worry. Prasad and Abioye had no patience for a written report and spent several hours a day in my hospital room, Prasad using two fingers to prod my words into his chunky laptop. I gave them the whole story, at least as much as I could remember, but for one exception: Asmus’s theory that I was special–a manufacturer of magical chemicals. That didn’t make it into Prasad’s laptop. I hadn’t told Gallie or Boris either. I’m not sure why I held this back, but it seemed like sharing it would be nothing but trouble. Maybe the time would come, but I was just not in the mood for it.
It was during a visit from Boris that I learned Bess had escaped. This made me smile. She had told me she’d be fucked if Prasad would send her back to her twenty-first century misery, and it turned out he didn’t and she wasn’t. I was a little surprised by it but then I was surprised at my surprise. This is Bess, after all. I asked Boris how she could have escaped and he reminded me that she was being kept at the TMA site, not San Quentin. Stealing keys and driving away didn’t take a Houdini.
And Gallie was with me when the others were not. We said little. There was little need. We spent time watching the TV together in my hospital room, or her telling me about acceleration detection events of the day. I even learned how to express credible interest in her cat’s health. With that, I had Zhivov at a disadvantage.
I returned to TMA and Prasad informed me of my departure date. He thought it better not to linger. The next day I’d be in the place TMA has deemed my home, and the rules were immutable: that’s where I’d be going.
I awake to see Gallie looking up at me. Her head is on my shoulder and her arm draped across my chest.
“Good morning,” she whispers. But it really isn’t.
“Hi.”
We’re squeezed into the cot designed to barely accommodate one adult, but the fit feels warm and comfortable. “We can do it, you know. We can do what Bess did. Get in a car and we’re gone.” Gallie sighs.
“You’re no Bess. And neither am I.”
“No.” We lie quietly. “Do you think it’s really as screwed up as we think? As Asmus says it is?” She seems to be pondering it.
“I don’t know, Joad. I suppose he would say that. Maybe it is, maybe it’s not.” She strokes my chest. I should want to make love but my thoughts are too heavy. I kiss her forehead and sit up.
“It feels like I’m going to the gallows. But without having my favorite meal first.”
“Is your favorite meal a muffin?” Gallie asks.
“Yes!” I say in a how did you know? voice.
“Then I have a silver lining for you,” she says, clambering over me to get down from the cot.
We meet with Boris, Prasad and Abioye in the conference room. There’s no chatter. Everyone knows what they’re about to do to me, and to Gallie. And they know we accept it. I’m handed a wrist accelerator and I put it on. Prasad had at least allowed me to pick my arrival point and I’d chosen the place on the Columbia River bank from where I’d first set out. The accelerator had been programmed to return here after I’d removed it.
I don’t hold Gallie, not here. I’m not that strong.
“We’ll meet again, Toad,” I hear Boris say. He’s right.
Then I’m bathed in bright sunlight and a chilled breeze hits me.
FIFTY-FIVE
The thought of returning to the dank and dismal place my home had become was too dispiriting and so I had checked into a hotel on the riverfront. From my window, I watch the kayaks and power boats go by, the children playing on the grassy banks, and couples strolling or cycling by together. In the evenings I walk out onto the pier behind the hotel and watch the darkening sky. A few miles north of here is the TMA site which I’m sure is in the process of being rebuilt, but I have no appetite for being there. Not yet. I receive phone calls from my TMA friends: my barnmates. Some sound as they always have. Some are changed.
We’d made an agreement, Gallie and I. It was an agreement to something neither of us really had the power to ensure. I would take a month to reach the right decision. A month to catch my breath in the place I’m from, to weigh up the bizarre circumstances, and then to do the proper thing. I agreed to the month. After all, for Gallie it was twenty five years, so it was the least I could do. I didn’t need the month. I didn’t need an hour. And the days passed sluggishly.
It’s the morning of the day. I’m early and I pace slowly around the path that follows the perimeter of the small park–my magical park that never was. I’d paced it a dozen times over the previous month as if to practice for today. I see a group of little kids chasing each other around the central rectangle as their parents watch on, laugh and chat. In the center of the rectangle is a pale, basalt column. To pass time I cross the grass and walk up to it. It’s about two feet in diameter and ten feet tall. On it I notice a bronze plaque and I read it.
This park is dedicated to Dave and Bess Levinsky
whose generous support of the City of Risley Park Foundation
has made possible this and other places of beauty.
I look away, take a breath and then read it again. I smile. “It wouldn’t surprise me,” I whisper to myself. “No one has given me more surprises than you.” I read it one last time and then turn to walk back toward the path.
It’s then that I see her. It’s her, unmistakably. She’s standing by a park bench and she’s looking at me. My pace quickens to a jog, and then a sprint. I grab Gallie and hold her to me. Then I pull back to look into her face. It’s a face that I see aged by my single month apart from her rather than by the years she must have counted. The second kiss lasts longer–much longer.
“I was terrified you wouldn’t come,” I say. She smiles and strokes my cheek.
“So was I–that you wouldn’t.” We sit down on the bench together, eyes locked, holding hands.
“Don’t tell me anything yet, I just want to look at you.”
“Okay,” she whispers. “Can I tell you just one thing?” She looks away from me and I realize after a few moments that she’s looking at the man approaching us. Oh no. No, no. It’s the husband of twenty years. But as he approaches, I see he’s a young man in no more than his twenties. He’s slender and his gait is graceful and fluid. His light brown hair is drawn up into a bun on the crown of his head and his eyes are blue and sharp. I look at Gallie in surprise and then stand to be introduced. He holds out his hand and I grasp it. I look into his eyes. They’re the eyes in my mirror. And no introduction is needed.
“Gallie,” I whisper. She stands.
“Are you okay?” she asks. I look at her, then back at this young guy.
“Come on, let’s go” she says and the three of us walk toward the park gate.
“Any other surprises for me?” I ask as we follow our son along the path.
“No,” she says. “Oh, the cat died.”
“That’s sad,” I say, and we begin to catch up, one second per second.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
S. D. Unwin started out as a theoretical physicist searching for the Holy Grail of a quantum theory of gravity. He later turned his mathematical skills to analyzing and communicating catastrophic risk, from nuclear mishaps to climate change. One Second Per Second is his first science fiction novel. He lives on Bainbridge Island in Puget Sound.
SDUnwin.com