Time Past

by Maxine McArthur

  Why did I marry him? I was flattered, I suppose, even though later he said that the attraction felt by two bond-partners was not the same as ordinary sexual attraction. I was curious, too, about H’digh sexuality and society. I wanted a stable relationship—eternity sounded pretty long term. And maybe I was also feeling what he felt.

  Could it be true that Henoit was my soul mate and we were still bound together even after his death? Even as my rational engineer’s mind laughed at the idea, Henoit’s voice echoed in my head, the words just beyond hearing. The tone, regret. Or perhaps that is what I wished the tone to be.

  I don’t know how to get rid of him. Or if I want to. How can you get rid of someone who isn’t there?

  The day before the hoped-for Invidi arrival I was flat out at the Assembly, preparing for the May Day march. Nobody knew, of course, that it would be the last official May Day in human history, although the name remained in popular usage until nearly the turn of the century. I remember my grandmother calling it May Day, not First Contact Day, which she said reminded her of a tasteless joke about adolescent dating.

  The Assembly had no funds to prepare information pages or elaborate placards for the march, but some of the neighborhood youths had been bribed with bottles of carbonated drink to letter a plank with the words “Assembly of the Poor” on one side and “EarthSouth Movement” on the other.

  One of the youths was a graffiti virtuoso, and his lettering angled perfectly. The background to the letters was covered completely with a dense carpet of flowers. At least, they looked like flowers until you got close, when you realized that it was a stylized vulva. The placard was finished in time, though, and Florence didn’t notice the “flowers” at all.

  A wild dry wind blew all that week, and the placard’s surface was gritty where sand had blown into the wet surface. That same dry wind scattered refuse and pieces of loose building material all over the tracks and made walking in the dark dangerous.

  We spent that day coordinating the groups who would come on the march with us, and giving people instructions on how to behave, that is, how to stay away from police. The police, it seemed, took even local May Day marches quite seriously. The riots of 2010 and 2012, when thousands of police and demonstrators were killed worldwide, still smarted in their memory. For years, Florence said, they banned gatherings of more than twenty people, but recently they’d been more lenient.

  Tomorrow the Invidi would arrive. They’d better. I’d waited so long for this, and now I wanted some answers to my questions. Why did Calypso II not arrive in the past in the same year that Calypso jumped, in spite of using the same jump point—does this mean the Invidi have been lying to us about the jump points and the jump network being fixed? Will we be able to return to Jocasta in our own time using the Calypso jump point? How did the jump point get there in the first place?

  Not that “first place” has much meaning. The dominoes are stacked in a circle and touching any one brings them all down. All the events are interconnected. I wondered if that’s how the Invidi see the universe—as endless interconnection. No wonder they sound obscure to us linear creatures who see time flowing neatly from past to future.

  Flowing from today to tomorrow. And none too soon, as far as I was concerned. The future on Jocasta may have its problems, but it was nothing compared to life in the out-town.

  By the time Murdoch came to pick me up at eight, I’d set up the telescope, ready to activate the signal as soon as we knew the Invidi were within range. I didn’t want to risk starting sooner, there was too great a chance one of Earth’s security forces would pick up the signal and trace it, especially after that airport incident. Once the Invidi arrived, confusion should make this worry unnecessary.

  I was ready for a little advance celebration. We’d survived this far—it seemed cause enough to congratulate ourselves.

  We sat beside each other on my bed in the tent and ate greasy chips, washed down with cold beer that rapidly warmed, leaving pools of condensation on the crate top. I looked sideways at Murdoch and let the reins on my imagination loose for a while. He was so close and warm. The muscles of his jaw tightened smoothly as he chewed. I let my eyes drift down his arms.

  The never-forgotten feeling of H’digh arousal surrounded me. I could feel my heart beat faster, and somewhere a voice was saying, Feel with me …

  “I’ll be glad to get back. This place stinks.” Murdoch carefully smoothed the cellulose wrapping that the chips had come in, put the wrapper beside the kettle, and sat on the edge of the bed. I was sitting farther in, with my back against the wall.

  The warm, sexy feeling disappeared with his words, then crept back. His shoulder was close enough for me to reach out and touch. The T-shirt stretched taut over its roundness. Like a tune on the edges of hearing, I could feel Henoit’s presence.

  So what? What are you afraid of? That Murdoch will think you’re possessed or something? For all you know, you could die tomorrow and not meet the Invidi. Then you’ll regret never having slept with Murdoch...

  I said the first thing that popped into my head. “Are you sorry you came?” He didn’t laugh. He looked steadily at me, and I felt heat rise up my neck and face. “Why do you think I came?” He reached over and traced his forefinger up my arm. I held down the shiver it provoked. “Because you needed to arrest me?”

  “Because I couldn’t bear not knowing what happened to you,” he said. And climbed on the bed so he straddled my outstretched legs. “Because I couldn’t bear maybe never being able to do this.”

  He leaned forward. I leaned forward. We kissed. Pleasure ran into my gut like fire. Murdoch made a short sound that was between an exclamation and a moan.

  Crash.

  The door banged open and Will ran in.

  Murdoch and I pushed each other aside clumsily.

  Will stopped, seemed about to run out again, then said, “Hey, Maria. Can I stay with you?”

  I was breathing too fast. “Does Grace...”

  Will looked down. “She said it was okay. She and Levin were... um, busy. She said you can bring me to the march tomorrow. Vince brung me most of the way here. Oh, hi, Bill.”

  Surely not even a ten-year-old could be that ingenuous. He must have fled Levin and Grace “mucking around,” only to find Murdoch and me doing the same. We could hardly turn him away.

  “H’lo, Will,” said Murdoch weakly. He let himself flop back on the board. “Oh, boy.”

  I rubbed my arms, where the hairs stood on end. Damn.

  Murdoch and Will dropped off to sleep quickly. My breath began to catch and I sat up, sucking in air.

  Tomorrow—no, later today—the Invidi would be here. Blue shafts of floodlight played on the walls of the tent like echoes of patterns in spacetime I could not begin to understand. A friend once said to me that the Invidi held the index to the book we were all living. Today we’d be given our first glimpse of the entry that was our own history.

  No, thank you. I punched the blanket lightly. When the Invidi come, they won’t be expecting humans from this era to be familiar with their systems. Their security will be geared toward other, more physical threats. Hannibal Griffis had mentioned an assassination attempt. This was as good an opportunity as ever to get our hands on information about the jump drive.

  I wanted Calypso II back, and I was prepared to take as much other information as I could. Much of my adult life I had used technology I did not understand, was not given the opportunity to understand. When I finally acquired what I thought was a jump drive, it turned out to be something different. I’d been literally taken for a ride. I did not intend to return to our own time empty-handed.

  Nine

  In the dream I chase an elusive figure along a street in a place like the out-town. Overhead in the apricot sky hovers an Invidi ship. But the underside of the ship is the same color as the sky and nobody else notices. If I stop to tell someone about the Invidi, I’ll never catch my target. And Henoit, blast him, keeps whispering in my ear, N
or death shall us part, Nor death shall …

  I didn’t know why I woke. The only sounds in the tent were Will’s soft wheeze, Murdoch’s rumbling snore from his mattress, and an intermittent tap-thud from the roof as the wind lifted a loose corner and set it down again.

  Will’s leg weighed on my stomach like a girder. I pushed at it and squirmed away. He twitched once, then flung his arms wide and took up more space. I slid out of bed. Murdoch’s wrist timer, placed on the crate, showed two A.M. Too early for the Invidi, surely. May first had only just begun to crawl across the Pacific.

  When I opened the door, the growl of the city sounded louder in the darkness, punctuated by sounds muted during the day—overhead roar of high-flying planes, the whine of vehicles from the motorway to the south.

  The sky was its usual dull brown-gray, orange on the horizon. Not a star to be seen, not even straight overhead. Around me, the irregular shapes of shacks and tents. The smell of open drains, strong enough to have shape itself. And another smell I couldn’t quite identify.

  A dog barked a couple of lanes away. The skinny yellow creature that guarded the iron scrap gatherer’s cart. Another dog, farther away. Then another, closer. In the next lane maybe. Too many dogs barking.

  I looked up. Could the animals sense an alien presence?

  A sleepy voice yelled shut up at the dogs. Then more voices yelled, several blocks away. I realized that the other smell was smoke. Coming on the wind, which gusted dust and heavier particles into my face. A hot, dry wind, blowing from the west.

  I turned back to shake Murdoch awake, and far off somebody yelled the word.

  Fire.

  “Get up, Bill.”

  He sat up and automatically groped for his trousers. “Whatsup?”

  “Fire. Don’t know how bad.”

  “Shit.” He rolled over and grabbed the two water bottles. “You got anything important here?”

  “No.” I grabbed my inhaler from beside the bed and shook Will. “It’s all at the Assembly office... Will, come on. You have to get up.”

  More voices outside, slap of sandals on the earth. Tap-thud from the roof. “Move it.” Murdoch shoved the bottles at me and picked up the still-groggy Will.

  I stepped outside and was nearly bowled over by a woman and two men running. The woman held a scrunched-up blanket and was sobbing.

  “Which way’s it coming from?” Murdoch said behind me. I could hear more noise from the riverside. “We go this way.” I pointed south and went ahead.

  People milled about in the light from open doorways. Only a few moved purposefully like us. The comments we overheard were merely curious, and I wondered if we had been premature in fleeing.

  What’s going on?

  Fire down the road.

  Not that bloody bonfire again. I told ’em I’d report that...

  What is burning?

  I turned to Murdoch. He put Will down and held his hand.

  “Where are we going?” said Will. “Is it a real fire?”

  “I don’t know how big it is,” I said. “Maybe it’s only a small one, but you can’t be too careful.” Twenty-five years of living in enclosed artificial environments had given me a healthy respect for fire and the way it sucks away oxygen.

  “You’d better go to Levin’s,” I said to Murdoch. “Grace will be worried.”

  “What about you?” His voice was sharp.

  “I’m going along to the Assembly. See if I can get the telescope out.” I held out one of the water bottles and started to go back past them, but Murdoch got in my way.

  “Hang on. We don’t split up. Too much chance we never find each other again.”

  “Bill, the scope’s our best hope of contacting...”

  Will was staring confusedly from my face to Murdoch’s. Down the way we’d come there was a loud crash. More people began to run. In the distance a siren sounded.

  “It’s today,” I pressed. “I won’t have time to make...”

  “That’s why we got to stay safe.” Murdoch had to yell for me to hear him over the crashing, crackling sound and the babble of voices. When I looked back, smoke billowed upward, lighter gray against the dark brown-gray sky.

  He picked up Will again and shoved me. “Go on.”

  I hesitated.

  “I didn’t come all this way to lose you now,” growled Murdoch, and shoved me harder.

  “Maria, let’s go,” whined Will.

  We fled with the rest of the out-town. We started off in the direction of Silverwater Road, thinking we’d walk south along it to Levin’s house where Grace would be waiting, but with thick smoke in our eyes we became confused in the maze of small lanes. People pushed us the other way, toward the river.

  Will kept his eyes squeezed almost shut, whimpering. My feet were sore and battered from tripping on stones and rubbish. The water bottles dragged at my shoulders until we had to pass along a lane, where the heat and crackling loomed from both sides.

  “On his hair.” Murdoch directed me to soak Will and then we dribbled the rest on each other and ran through the lane.

  We ran for what seemed like hours, but it was only a few minutes. The noise of the sirens grew behind us but the smoke had thinned. Those who’d run, like us, now mingled in the street with the residents of shacks and houses who came out to see what was happening.

  “Where are we?” I croaked.

  Murdoch shook his head. When he tried to speak, he doubled over coughing.

  “I want to go home,” said Will.

  “Which way is it?” I said.

  “I don’t know.” He began to cry.

  “It’s okay.” Murdoch rubbed his back and held him close, in between coughs.

  The smoke-filled dark whirled around us. I asked a man in yellow pajamas which way was south, and he pointed back the way we’d come. Surely that can’t be right. I felt sick and put my head down, one hand on Murdoch’s shoulder.

  “Vince!” squealed Will.

  Murdoch and I whirled around and there was Vince, puffing and coughing like us. He didn’t look singed or hurt, but his face was shiny with sweat and at the sound of Will’s voice his teeth flashed in a grin.

  “Hey, you got out too.”

  He led us easily away from the edges of the out-town through streets gradually clearer of smoke, then under the motorway crossing to Levin’s place, chattering with what must have been relief at finding someone he knew.

  “I got stuck back there, was visiting Mikey over near the racecourse. You remember Mikey, Will? Used to dunk you in the water tank. Come and hold hands, mate. Yeah, and then all shit breaks out, they reckon it was somebody smoking and all that dry rubbish went up. Fire engines took their time. I reckon they couldn’t care less. They prob’ly think, good way to get rid of the rubbish and all that crap.”

  I followed, too exhausted to query Vince, Murdoch holding my hand instead of Will’s. Behind us a cacophony of sirens, voices, wind, and the breaking-up of flimsy dwellings. How could the Assembly office have survived this? Today the Invidi would arrive and I was back to square one.

  Be grateful we’re alive, said the voice of common sense. We seemed to walk for much longer than we’d run from the flames. Houses around us.

  Grace’s voice in the darkness.

  “Will? Thank God.” She grabbed him in a fierce hug. I looked back in the direction of the river flats and the sirens, but couldn’t see anything except a faint glow in the sky above the ridge of the motorway. A shift in the wind brought a whiff of burning rubber, stronger than the smell that permeated our hair and clothes.

  “You two okay?” she said. “Come inside.”

  “I’m okay too,” said Vince pointedly.

  “Thanks, darl.” Grace bestowed a wet kiss on his cheek and Vince recoiled.

  “Yech. I’m off.” He started to slouch away, then turned back. “Levin around?”

  “He went off about nine,” said Grace distractedly, and shooed Will inside.

  I grabbed Murdoch’s a
rm as he went to follow her. “Bill, we need to go back and check the Assembly. Maybe the fire didn’t go that way.”

  In the glow from the open doorway I could see the sympathy on his face. “Wait a little while. When the fire’s out we’ll go and see if it’s safe.”

  “But the telescope...”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  I didn’t want sympathy. I wanted to smash something in rage at the unexpected contrariness of things.

  Ten

  Grace shut the door of the bedroom and sat with Will until he went to sleep. Murdoch and I washed off the worst of the grime and soot in Levin’s bathroom.

  I watched the brownish gray water swirl around the old porcelain of the hand basin and couldn’t help thinking of hopes being washed away. Today the Invidi would come, and I had no way of contacting them. I would grow old— the pale, haggard face in the mirror seemed to confirm it— in this cursed century, while in my own world the neutrality vote finishes one way or another and Jocasta moves on, with the Four Worlds continuing to dominate the Confederacy, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.

  I couldn’t get the smell of smoke out of my hair without having a shower, and using Levin’s shower was not something I wanted to do. Not rational, but I preferred to leave the stink in there, a symbol of my defeat.

  In Levin’s living room reporters on televid told us what was going on two kilometers to the north. Sirens blared and we couldn’t tell if they were outside or on the screen. Behind the reporter’s circle of light, fire trucks siphoned water from the river onto what looked like a huge bonfire, and dark figures moved in front of the flickering light. It looked like the shanties of the main out-town over on the old oil company site. Made of old construction material, wood, and canvas, they must have fed the flames like tinder.

  .. for years, surrounding communities and charity groups have been telling local government about this fire hazard. Miraculously, there have been no reports of fatalities. Dozens of people have been taken to hospital with minor injuries and smoke inhalation...