I hadn’t been out of rehab all that long myself when I heard from friends that Tisha Rho was out of the hospital and home with her family in Charity-the-city. I was down on the breaker beaches, working any job to make enough of a stake to get myself back into space, but when I heard that, I put in my notice, picked up my pay, and hitched a ride to Charity with a nephew of my sister’s husband. He dropped me off at the midlevel entrances, and I started the long climb to find my cousin Bubba Hassan.
It’s always wet in Charity-the-city. Wet and loud. The channeled river roars through the lower levels, spinning the turbines that feed the city, pooling in the great holding basins to mitigate the summer droughts. Condensation drips from the arched ceilings and little streams collect and murmur under the grates; sometimes, at the equinoxes, the lowest levels generate their own rain, and you can hear it tapping under your feet and gurgling away down the drains. It’s not until you get to Deck Fifteen that things start to dry out. That’s where Tisha Rho’s family had their shop, and where my cousin Bubba had his office-apartment.
Everybody has a cousin like Bubba Hassan. He’s the one the family deplores—the one who ran off to space, or went into a brokerage, anything with a lot of risk and a faintly shady reward. He’s also the one you turn to when things get weird. I’d called him from the dock, and he was waiting for me at his open door; a broad shouldered, dark-eyed man about my own height, with a belly that was starting to strain his loose shirt. We embraced—here in Charity, the observances are less strict, and anyway, we’re family—and he flipped the sign on his door to closed as he beckoned me inside.
“So you’re back from the beaches, Junie,” he said. “What brings you to me?”
“I need your help,” I said, as if he hadn’t guessed, and Bubba gave a crooked smile.
“Tisha Rho?”
“I heard she was out of rehab,” I said. “I need to see her.”
He waved me on ahead of him, through the little office where he brokered the spoil from the wrecked and salvaged starships that landed on the beaches of New Corinth’s southern sphere, through the tiny, formal reception room, and on into the kitchen that was at the back of the apartment. It was crowded, homey, smelling of peppers and the oil a chicken had been fried in. I took a seat at the work-scarred table. He turned to the stove, moving a copper pot from a back burner to the front, and I smelled coffee and chicory and the coarse black sugar they grow in Moss Point. He made the coffee without speaking, concentrating on the rhythm as it boiled and subsided and boiled again, then finally poured us each a tall glass and set them, foam-topped, on the table.
“Tisha Rho,” he said, and I nodded.
“I need to see her.”
“What if she don’t need to see you?” he asked, and wrapped his big hands around the heavy glass.
“They had no right to write me out,” I said. “We were lovers, she and I, and they can’t change that—”
“Even if she don’t remember it?” Bubba asked. “That makes it the same as it never happened.”
I stopped, scowling, silenced by a fear I hadn’t dared to name. Suppose she didn’t want to remember? Suppose she wanted to be the person her parents made her? She’d said, before, that she was sorry sometimes to have disappointed them. Was I right to try to change that? But she’d chosen me as much as I’d chosen her; we’d been happy together. Surely I had the right to try for that again. “They edited it out. It still happened. Not saying so doesn’t make it disappear.”
Bubba nodded slowly. “All right, I grant you that. But she still don’t remember.”
“I’ve been doing research,” I said. That was a small word for the hours I’d spend in the women’s dormitory at Allie’s Point hunched over a pocket pod, plugs stuffed in my ears to drown out the constant chatter. I’d had to learn to read the medical files, and then learn to understand them, but I’d finally found an answer that gave me hope. “Achronia is the inability to form new memories, right? And the inability to access memories previously formed. But achronics usually show some ability to care for themselves, to walk and talk and dress themselves, things like that.”
Bubba nodded. “Yeah.”
“It varies, of course. Some people have more skills left than others, but nearly all of them have some; it’s called implicit memory. It’s a connection made in the brain a different way, usually for things that you’ve done so often that you don’t even think about knowing how to do them. When I was in therapy, doing jump-and-jostle in the sims was like that for me. So I’m thinking, we were together long enough—ten years, almost; if we get together, meet face to face, she’s going to know she knows me. Somewhere down inside she’s going to know me, and she’s going to love me like she did before.”
“Sims ain’t real,” Bubba said. “And you weren’t as bad hurt as her.”
“I’m not just talking from me,” I said. “They’ve done studies; I’ve got the files—”
He waved them away. “No, I believe you. Aw, hell, you deserve the chance.”
I was quiet for a moment, not knowing how to say I was grateful. “What I’m looking for is a place I can meet her. Without her folks knowing and making a fuss.”
He nodded, thinking, then pushed himself up from the table. “You sit. I’ll see what I can do.”
In the end, it took him a couple of days to find the right event, but at last he called me with the news. I sat up cautiously in my cubby in the tube hotel—even in Charity-the-city, I couldn’t stay with him without scandalizing both our families—and squinted at the face in the communications screen.
“Tisha Rho is going to be at a Sisters’ Dance tomorrow night,” my cousin said. “I’ve got you a ticket if you want one.”
The Sisters’ Dances were usually for women who were too young for marriage or who were opting out for some other reason, a place to go and dance and have a good time without the pressure to make a connection. It wasn’t exactly the right place to try to remind Tisha Rho of who I was and what we’d been. In fact, it was exactly the wrong place; but, on the other hand, it was the one place her family was likely to let her go to on her own. I nodded before I could change my mind.
The dance was held at one of the old hotels on Level Eighteen, one of the ones built before the terraforming stopped, when we thought there would be tourists coming to New Corinth to see the amazing things we’d made. It had held up better than most, the carved facade that channeled a waterfall in nearly perfect repair, and the dancing lights that spelled out Manning’s Rainwater all intact, shifting from blue to green to gold and back again. I had dressed as best I could, fumbling with styles and makeup I hadn’t worn for fifteen years, never had worn, really; the Edge is nothing like Charity. I was nervous as I made my way under the bubbling water-arch and presented my ticket to the doorman. He touched two fingers to his forehead, and as I passed him I caught sight of my reflection in the polished stones behind him. A tall woman, with skin that said she’d worked out-of-doors in all weathers, short hair wrapped in a bright scarf. I looked country, and that was what I needed now. I managed a smile for the woman in the mirroring wall, and climbed the stairs to the ballroom.
My aunt Pete had sent me to the girl dances in Coldwater when I was twelve, and for an instant it felt as though I’d stepped back in space and time. The room was full of women, clustered at the buffet and along the walls. The air was full of music and bird-call voices and waving hands and scarves, and I was a girl again, new-wrapped in a woman’s scarf, eager and half afraid of desires I didn’t then know how to name. I’d always loved to dance—I’d met all my lovers at dances, except for Tisha Rho. I shook those thoughts away, and smiled at the nearest hostess, who advanced on me with outstretched hands.
We exchanged names and cool, cousinly kisses, half-shouting to be heard over the music and the clamor of conversation. She pointed out the buffet, much grander than anything the girl dances had managed, with an abstract ice carving and a service bar pouring tiny glasses of something thick and dar
k gold, then beckoned to another woman in from the breaker beaches. She asked where I’d been working, how I’d found it; the Sisters’ Dances are good for money if not for love, and I gave fair answers, but all the while my eyes slid past her, looking for Tisha Rho. The breaker woman sensed my inattention, made a polite excuse, and left me.
I wandered toward the service bar, not really wanting a drink, but needing to stay moving. The room was a whirl of color, bright scarves, bright dresses, a LaFate Township woman with her hair dyed peacock blue, a daring girl who’d let her scarf slip to her shoulders, baring sleek copper hair. The music pulsed through the conversations, the singer’s words lost in the wail of strings. And then I saw her. She was standing with a group of women, yet not part of them, looking away while they talked among themselves. A woman my own height, her skin faded from tan by her time in rehab. The rustred of her dress, long-sleeved, like mine, to hide the hospital scars, had been bought to suit her darker skin. She looked tired, shadows smudged beneath her almond eyes, and yet she was unmistakably herself. I made myself breathe, and breathe again, and then I made my way through the crowd to her side.
She turned at my approach, and in spite of knowing what I should expect, it hurt to see her look at me with that small, unrecognizing smile. I was a stranger to her. I who’d shared her bed for ten years. The reality of it knotted my fists before I made myself relax.
“Hey,” I said. “One of the hostesses mentioned you were in jump-and-jostle.”
“I was,” she said, and touched the prosthesis where it peeked out behind her ear. “My name’s Tisha Rho.”
“Prosper Larkin,” I said. “Junior. My friends call me Junie.” She nodded at that, neither accepting nor rejecting, and I guessed I’d gone too fast. “Are you working at all these days?”
She shook her head. “Not, not just at the moment. I had a runner, and I’m waiting to see if things resolve.” She paused. “And yourself?”
It was politeness, not real interest, but I answered anyway. “I had the same problem. I’ve been working the breaker beaches to build up a stake again.”
“Oh.” She relaxed a little, as though that explained my approach.
“Was it a bad one?” I asked, after a moment, and she frowned for a fleeting instant before she understood.
“Bad enough. Achronia. I’m still waiting to see what comes back.”
That was better than I’d heard, but I didn’t dare hope. “Do you dance?”
She paused, and I could guess what was going through her mind. She would consult the prosthesis, see if it had the files she needed, or if it could find the memories, then weigh that time-lagged assistance against the possibility that muscle memory could carry her through. I was holding my breath, and made myself stop, take one breath, two, then three, before she smiled.
“Why not? But I warn you, I may be slow.”
“Me, too,” I said, and hoped it wasn’t true.
There was a line dance forming, and we found places side by side in a middle row. Everybody knew the tune, and the dance, though the band did a nice job of making it seem fresh. I hooked my thumbs in my sash and let my feet follow the music, turning, dipping, Tisha Rho at my side for the first time in almost a year. She didn’t know me, yet, but it was still enough to make me giddy, make me throw in a flourish here and there, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Tisha doing the same. She smiled at me when the song ended, the wide, inviting smile I’d noticed first about her years before. I wanted to laugh and sob aloud all at the same time.
I didn’t do either, of course, and she turned from clapping the band to say, “That was fun. Thank you.”
“You’re a good dancer.”
There was a fleeting look of puzzlement on her face, as though I’d triggered something the prosthesis couldn’t handle, but then it vanished. “Thanks.”
“They’re playing a double-line,” I said. “Shall we?”
Her smile returned. She nodded, and we took places facing each other in the forming lines. A double-line isn’t that much different from a regular line dance, except that the lines of dancers stand face to face. We rested hands on hips, watching each other, then caught the beat and were off. For an instant it was all wrong, Tisha frowning as she tried to think, and the prosthesis gave her answers half a beat behind, and then she flung her head back and fixed her eyes on me, and we fell abruptly into the old pattern. She knew what I’d do almost before I did it; I saw her hands move, her hips shift, and knew how to answer, so we went spinning and turning down the length of the line like stars tumbling around a common point. I caught her hand, coming back, and we ducked and twirled under the others’ lifted arms and came at last, breathless and laughing, to lift our hands and let the next pair pass. Her fingers were cool on mine, and she held my hands a fraction of a second after the music ended. Her smile had vanished, and I could see the questions forming on her lips. I could see a hostess looking our way, too, visibly wondering if this was more than was permissible, breaking the sisterhood of the dance, and I took a half-step back.
“I need a breath of air,” I said, dry-mouthed.
“But—” She stopped abruptly, scowling, not at me but at something inward, something only she could see. I took another step away, and she said, “Wait.”
“I can’t.” Couldn’t, because if I stayed, I might take her in my arms, remind her physically, the only way she could remember me, and that would damn us both. I turned away, though my feet felt numb, head and heart disconnected from my body. There were curtained arches on the far side of the room that would lead, I knew, to a long hallway. I pushed through the nearest, smelling dust in the heavy cloth, and found, as I’d hoped, a set of doors that would open onto one of the Rainwater’s waterfall balconies. It was unlocked—that was a surprise—and I half expected an alarm to sound as I pushed open the door. There was no alarm, just the sudden rush of water, falling over the bubble that covered the narrow balcony. The water deflected the lights of the facade, turned the space odd, dim shades of blue and muted gold; it roared and clattered against the bubble, and the floor shivered beneath my feet. It was cold, too, the walls damp. Probably there had been heating, once, but not any more. I closed the door behind me, and leaned cautiously against stone, my hands folded at the small of my back to protect my dress. If she would follow, if she would only follow me. But there was no reason to think she would, and I shoved hope away. I had seen her, she hadn’t known me: what now?
Then behind me I heard the scrape of the door latch turning, and pushed myself away from the wall. It would be one of the hostesses, surely, come to send me away, but the door opened, and it was Tisha Rho.
She came onto the balcony quietly, closing the door behind her. “I knew you’d be here,” she said in a voice that was not smug or satisfied but only surprised. “That’s the first thing I’ve known in a year. Why?”
“We were lovers,” I said. The words came out harsh, too loud, from fear, but she didn’t seem to notice. “Ten years we were lovers, we had a ship together, working the sweet-not-yet, but then we wrecked….”
She didn’t say anything for a long moment, visibly turning the words over in her mind, asking the prosthesis and getting no answers that were any help at all. Then her dark eyes focused on me and she gave her old, half-rueful smile.
“You’d better show me,” she said, and took my face in her hands, and kissed me.
My lips parted for her. We swayed together, bodies meeting, shifting without thought or memory to fit as we had always done, and she made a small, soft sound; surprised content. Her hand slid to my breast, where it had always gone. I cupped her buttock, familiar, soft, and then she was straddling my thigh, her hand slipping from my breast to tug at my dress. Her fingers trailed across my belly, between my legs, and I came too soon, felt her shudder moments later to the same conclusion. We clung together a moment longer, letting our legs steady, and then Tisha Rho gently pushed herself away. I could feel the damp seeping through the back of my dress where
my shoulders had been pressed against the wall.
“Well,” she said, and smiled. “I guess that settles that.”
“I hope so,” I said.
“Prosper Larkin Junior,” she said, tasting the words the same way she’d tasted my mouth. “Junior?”
“It’s a long story.”
“We’ll make the time.”
*
MS: I first began thinking about diseases of time and the sweet-not-yet at ConFusion, a marvelous convention held just outside Detroit, where I was guest of honor in 2003. First, the science guest of honor, Jack Cohen, gave a talk in which he mentioned a concept called the “adjacent possible.” Although he was kind enough to send me the paper that explained it properly, what I understood, and what I worked from, was the notion that there is a sort of place outside regular space/time that contains things that haven’t yet happened, or could have happened but didn’t, and it seemed to me that there was a space drive somewhere in that. Then the artist guest of honor, Alan M. Clark, had some wonderful pieces in the art show, including a very strange piece in which faces seemed to grow from strange stalactites, painted in a palette of glowing blues that reminded me of Maxfield Parrish. At the time, he was soliciting writers for a collection to be based on paintings of his, and asked me to contribute something based on the painting I had been admiring. I agreed, and ended up writing a story called “The Sweet-Not-Yet,” which was published in Imagination Fully Dilated: SF. However, while I was working on that story, I considered a subplot involving someone’s parents editing out a disapproved-of lover, but quickly realized it needed a story of its own. This is that story.
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