The Space Between Her Thoughts (The Space in Time Book 1)

by Marie Curuchet

  “True, you cannot issue commands, but the Wall knows your presence and it can also respond to my commands. And as I watch you, the Wall responds to my thoughts, on your behalf.”

  “Is it dangerous?”

  “The Wall?” Sergio laughed.

  “You’re walking on it with your bare feet. But go ahead and touch it,” Rovada replied.

  Margot stopped. “Serge,” she said, “hold on a minute!” Margot reached out and touched the surface of the Wall. It felt rough and appeared porous, much like a small green square of foam that held a bouquet of flowers.

  “What’s it made from?” she asked, as Sergio pulled her forward.

  “It is made of the materials of this planet," Rovada responded.

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Margot, look!” Sergio screamed excitedly.

  Margot’s eyes had been following the ground and wall, to this point. She didn’t notice that in the last few meters, the corridor width had begun to expand. Her eyes drew up, and she fell back unexpectedly, awed by the vastness of what she saw. Her hand reached back to get her balance. The Wall responded and slid beneath her, catching her before she fell. Margot lay on a makeshift chair in a stupor.

  An hour past dusk. The bats are flying around the streetlight, catching moths, bugs, cicadas. They live in the mountains nearby. They must. There is no place in this flat desert for them. I lay back in the lounge chair. What a night! Bats and such a horrible storm approaching in the distance. A wonderful night. Alive and electric. I can smell the rain already as the storm approaches. Water vapor in the air. The lightning strikes, relentlessly tearing at some poor soul’s palm tree. Poor soul. Poor tree. There should be no palms in this desert, anyway. I only want my natives, so go ahead and strike them all down, those too tall trees. This chair, it’s metal. Safe out here in the open? I need to put on my flip flops, rubber flip flops. They’re safe. I’m safe with those on. Oh, under the chair. There they are. Check to be sure no spiders or scorpions. Safe now. I can get back to watching, no worry about lightning with my flip flops. The thick, hot air is cooling, just a little. It is much more humid than ten minutes ago. The wind is blowing, blowing hair into my eyes. Gritty teeth. God, if you exist, then you are the master of this oddly-colored sky. That huge cloud of dust, coming my way - and the rain so close behind! Which will come first? Rain, you always speak last, but dust, sometimes you die in the race. Pop, crackle, roar. You are the thunderous beast. You are my desert lion. You are swallowing my desert with your terrible rumble and mouth that sparks. But you are not my fear. I have my flip flops. Mom and Dad are inside. Besides, if you struck me I’d survive. Why, I’m impervious to electricity! Look at the fork I shoved in the outlet at two! Stopped my heart! You tried once already, but it didn’t work. It started again, all on its own. Those two minutes, you thought you had me. You thought you’d take me down with you, to the ground, to your ground. But you didn’t. Nobody helped. It started up again, on the way to the hospital. They didn’t even breathe in my mouth. No CPR. You could not defeat me, flash of light, charged particles, bolt of fear. I have been immunized now, and no more can your electrons still my heart. I am the conqueror, the conquistadora, the fearless mistress of the Sonoran Desert. I fear not you, the lightninged sky.

  Yet I will not taunt you. I do remember the pain. My first memory of life. I will watch you with caution. Lady jumps back at your crackle, crying, growling. I laugh. No reason to fear, Lady. I’m wearing my flip flops, and you’re with me. I am the same Margot you know who walks in the desert among the rattlesnakes, aware of them but not afraid. I am here, my desert. Off the trail now. More dangerous among the creosotes and cacti, among the spaces between the brush, in the rocks of the arroyos and dry creek bed. No sweat. No sweat. You know I’m coming, and I can hear you. We hear each other. Watch out for me, I have my stick. I will rap my stick on my desert floor to warn you that I am coming. This is my rattle, and I am much stronger than you, so dare not to strike at me. Instead, run, glide your way to a safe place, or test me with my stick should you come at me. I fear no thing of the desert for the desert is me, and I do not fear that which is me. This thunderstorm is the desert, and the desert is me. This creosote stick is the desert and its smell rubs off on my hands. You see, the desert is now a part of the cells in my hand. This humid air and gritty dust I have taken into my lungs, and my veins are engorged with the swell of your storm. The desert cannot hurt the desert. You, rattlesnake, slinking below some large stone I walk upon, you are the desert as am I. You are the left hand, I am the right. I have my flip flops. I am not concerned.

  “My God, Sergio,” Margot quivered, grabbing the boy’s hand and squeezing hard. “What am I seeing?”

  Margot stared, shocked at the sight of hundreds of Das flying effortlessly in the air, gliding past one another. No pattern was evident. The top of the huge cave roared with occasional thunder, while an electrical jolt would grind against the center of the cave. Margot was astounded by its size, maybe a half mile long. She was at the ground level, looking up at least for a mile. This huge cavern was thick with water vapor, and the smell of sulfur burned Margot’s nostrils.

  “What’s that?” she muttered as two Das met wings in the sky, and the lightning crackled at the top of the cave.

  “The Das, they love to fly,” Sergio laughed. “And they make lightning when they touch wings up there. It’s funny!”

  God, what am I watching? What am I watching? I see huge birds, horrible and ugly heads, cockroach bodies, bat-like wings, flapping and gliding through this putrid air. Tell me this is not real. I still beg you. These are not creatures You created. It is an elongated dream or some mentally distorted psychosis from a fall that I really did take. Is this my life now? Is this what is left? These bugs? You know how I hate bugs! You know that I wanted to be cremated just to keep the bugs from eating me. The thought of bugs eating me, my God, this must be what my own personal hell is, to live with them! You remember when I found that cricket in my underwear, after I had taken them off? Gross! And all over the house. That’s why I loved the bats. They were fearless, they’d eat it all, many times their weight every day. My great bug hunters of the desert sky. So why this? What did I ever do? Is this hell?

  “Margot,” Rovada interjected, “can I help?”

  Go away!

  “But you know!” he said. “You see your hands, you smell the air. You have touched me. This is far too extended to be a dream! It is reality! You are here! Face that which is, don’t deny this continued discovery from your senses.”

  Margot stared at Rovada’s bulbous eyes. She circled her head around, watching the many Das flying above her, squinting to see if any looked different than Rovada. She could distinguish no differences.

  “Is this what I have to look forward to? Bugs with angular heads, this stench, this foul air?” she said aloud.

  Before Rovada could answer, Sergio was yelling at her. “Margot, Margot, come see Roger. He’s over there!” Sergio pointed to an outline of a lone human, sitting on a ledge overlooking the huge cavern about five hundred meters away. “See!” he shouted. “He’s the only one wearing clothes. Do you see him?”

  Margot squinted, her eyes not yet accustomed to focusing. “I see something white – over there?”

  “Yes!” Sergio grabbed her hand and pulled her forward to an exit from the huge cavern.

  “Do you know how to get over there?” she asked, her heart began pounding rapidly at the thought of another human. Maybe an adult, one who could confirm all of this that accosted her. She squinted hard before she left the cavern, waiting to see if the washed-out figure in her eyes would move. “This is one of us?” she stuttered.

  “Yes, yes,” said Sergio excitedly. “He says things I don’t understand, but he’s nice to me. C’mon!”

  Sergio scurried forward, almost running. “Wait!” cried Margot. “You are going way too fast. Hold on, Sergio! I’m not ready to move this fast!” she demanded. Margot could feel the muscles
in her hips cramp as she began to ascend through the tunnels. She did notice, though, that the rate at which she ascended did not tire her thighs like a normal mountain climb.

  “What gives?” She turned to Rovada, who was gently pushing himself, to and fro, up the incline. “Why do my legs feel so light?”

  “It’s the gravity of this planet and the Wall’s adjustments. It’s at about seventy percent of your own earth’s. I am surprised you just noticed.”

  “Just noticed!” Margot repeated disgustedly as if that was all she was forced to absorb.

  By the time they fully ascended, they had traversed the entire cavern. Margot’s lungs were heaving and sweat dripped profusely. She lowered her head down to sniff under her arm.

  Jesus! This guy is going to think I’m a sweaty pig.

  Her knees felt weak as she approached the man. Sergio was already at his side, and the man stood up.

  Margot stopped, her heart in her mouth. She was afraid she couldn’t speak or hear due to the crackle of the large beasts and their thunder and swooshing overhead.

  She noticed a fine line of spittle running down the both sides of his mouth. His face was pale but magnificently dark starting at the cheek line from a clean shaven but heavy beard. He was stocky, about five feet eight, dark gray hair mixed with black, curled out from under his hat.

  God, what is this person? A beret? Jesus! What if this guy doesn’t speak English? Jesus, I never thought they might get someone from outside the U.S.!

  “Port wine!” his voice boomed. Margot was surprised and distracted by the fact that the man’s lips uttered a different sound than what she heard.

  “Who said that?” she asked.

  “Roger did, Roger did,” Sergio responded. “It’s so funny that it’s hard getting used to.”

  “What?”

  “The Wall. It makes what’s in his head come out. But it is always something funny.”

  Margot turned to Rovada. “The Wall interprets what is on Roger’s mind, to the greatest extent possible. He says one thing in his own language, the Wall cancels out his words with a counter-sound and interprets it for you.”

  Margot stared from a distance into the man’s blue-gray eyes. She was afraid to approach him. He did not hold out his hairy hand in greeting her but simply stared back at her, expressionless.

  This man is large. He eats too much. Must be two hundred fifty pounds or more. At that height, too!

  She noticed the small, chubby chin and large-bridged nose. His skin was milky-white in the few places that were not covered by his white clothes or hair.

  “Rovada?” Margot turned to her side where Rovada was standing. “Rovada, why do his lips move differently again?”

  “Something you’ll have to get used to, sorry. He was picked up in France, Southwestern France, near a technical facility. Bayonne, France. He speaks no English, but Basque, apparently, and . . ..”

  “Bast?”

  “Yes, Basque.”

  “What the hell is bast?”

  “Basque. You don’t know it. It is an old language from your earth, a few million people spoke it in France and Spain. Different from other languages on earth. We failed to catalog it properly, at least his dialect, though we managed to get most of the other languages. What he says makes little sense, so the Wall interprets what he thinks, to the extent he still thinks, and changes it to your English.”

  “Margot!” Sergio pleaded, again grabbing her hand and pulling her towards the man. She held her ground firmly.

  “How does it delete his words?”

  “Sound waves. We’ll get into that . . ..”

  “Margot, look!” Sergio screamed louder.

  The man stepped back. Margot saw his foot slip on the ledge behind him as the man threw his arms back. Margot instinctively thrust her body forward to catch him. Slowly, grotesquely, she saw the man fold his arms on his chest and close his eyes as he fell backwards into the body of the cavern, quickly approaching the floor a few hundred feet below.

  “Guy!” she yelled. That’s all that she could think of saying. “Guy!” she yelled again at the top of her lungs.

  The plastic! It’s caught! It’s caught in the rubber track! It will take my dress! My new dress! I told my friends at work I’d wear my new dress! Jesus, it’s slick. It’s over the edge! The floor, the floor is screaming at me. The chair. God, a beautiful chair, I wish I had it in my apartment. Why am I thinking this? The chair is rushing towards me, I am rushing towards it! Pain, the horrible pain! What’s this in my neck? Someone’s knee? Why a knee? Why can’t I move my neck?

  “Come back here!” Sergio laughed nervously.

  Margot crawled up and peered over the ledge, expecting to see nothing but a mangled body at the bottom of the cavern. The man was being gently carried to the ground by the Wall which had reached up to catch him and absorb his fall.

  Margot was stunned. “What the hell just happened?” she asked, tears pouring down her cheeks.

  “He’s done it many times before, Margot,” Rovada replied. “Bad balance. Nerve damage. He’s been caught numerous times. He appears to do this mostly when he’s nervous.”

  “But why do you let him in here?”

  “The Das are always here, and the Wall will see him fall. It ensures that he is not harmed.”

  “Let’s go down and see him!” Sergio said. He lowered himself to the floor and poked his head over the precipice. “Roger!” he yelled. “We’ll come down there!” Roger just stared back at him, still trying to figure out what happened.

  “Can’t you fix him?” Margot scowled at Rovada as they began their descent.

  “It’s a story that could take some time. We have the tools to fix some of his problems, but we couldn’t get him back to where he was before his accident. We cannot know what his memory was. Even so, to fix him would violate the principles we Das follow, specifically rules regarding interference with other living beings. That goes for humans, rats, ants, other creatures, even plants and microbes.”

  “I like how you put us all in the same bucket, as if evolution doesn’t matter! What the hell is wrong with you? Won’t you fix him?”

  “It’s too much to explain right now,” Rovada replied calmly. “You can talk with our species specialist, but I don’t think you’ll get what you want.”

  “Species specialist?” Margot stopped walking.

  “A scientist who researches beings and life forms from other worlds, who gets into the detail of them.”

  Margot shook her head. “Too much to learn! Jesus, I don’t want to learn your stupid rules. They sound stupid! They are stupid! You killed my planet, and you won’t help the few remaining humans!”

  “Margot,” Rovada replied, “your planet killed your planet. It happens to almost all planets with living things, eventually, anyway.”

  “You could have saved us?”

  “The mechanics were vast, our resources were few. But regardless, even if we had all the resources at our disposal, we have rules.”

  Sergio tugged at her arm and she relented. They arrived at the base of the One. “Roger!” Sergio ran to see his friend. Roger rushed towards him, picking him up with a thick arm. He stood face to face now, a few inches from Margot. She could smell his body.

  And I worried about my armpits!

  “Port wine! Irube. Green pastures.”

  “The Wall has certainly had problems interpreting him,” Rovada explained. Margot could smell his salty breath that hung heavily in the thick air. Rovada continued, “His language, combined with his injury. The Wall does the best it can.”

  Suddenly the man rushed forward and grabbed Margot, placing his large, thick arms around her. He kissed her on the face, once on the left side, once on the right side.

  Margot was startled and tried to wrestle out of his arms, but not before Roger let out a big staccato laugh that reverberated through the cavern. Margot stepped back and reached instinctively to locate a chair behind her. Instantly, the Wall obliged.
<
br />   “He kisses everyone like that,” Sergio laughed.

  “Green pastures,” he repeated, his lips moving out of sequence with the sound.

  Margot looked up at Rovada. “What’s he saying? Can’t you read his mind too, bug? You seem to do so well with mine.”

  “The thoughts are too broken up. I guess he sees something in you that reminds him of green pastures or port wine. Irube is lost on me. The Wall is only interpreting what his thoughts color, since the language is not well-catalogued.”

  “But can he understand me?”

  “Oh, yes he can understand a little. Say something to him.”

  “What is your name?” Margot asked, looking at Roger.

  Roger smiled. “Time clock,” he replied.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Margot, like I said, I cannot make sense of his thoughts. They are quite jumbled.”

  “Don’t you know what happened to him?”

  As she said the words, Roger bent down, with his back to Margot, facing Sergio. Sergio moved to jump on his back, and the man’s beret slipped from his head. Margot then noticed a large, deep depression on the back of his skull.

  “So you see,” Rovada said. “Extensive head trauma. However, his head is unusually large for a human. Some brain mass was affected, but worse yet, there was considerable nerve damage throughout the synaptic connections.”

  Margot felt a tightening in her throat as she saw the man skip lightly away with Sergio clutching to his back. “God, you lifeless bug, you’d think with all of your technology you could do something to help him. I mean, Jesus, if you could get us here, then you surely could help him.”

  “Margot, I’m so sorry. You just need to understand. There’s not all that much more technology in our lives than there was in yours on earth. In fact, if you look at the Wall as one ‘thing’, we have a lot fewer things than a typical human had on earth.”

  “You know that’s not what I mean. You know that the quantity isn’t the matter here. Mary, mother of God. What do I have here? I have a little Mexican boy, a Basque did you say, with half a brain gone? Why didn’t you just pick some more people up from U.S. hospitals?”