Starlight's Edge

by Susan Waggoner

  Discouraged and hungry, Zee bought a sandwich and sat on a bench outside a café near Harrods. That, at least, was one thing that hadn’t changed. Brompton Road was still full of shops. If anything, it looked more like London than the London she’d lived in. There was a definite Dickensian look to the place. Because most vehicles ran on the skyways, the streets had been narrowed and repaved with cobblestones. There were far more pedestrians than vehicles, and old-fashioned lampposts and tubs of spring flowers marked the way. And there was still a Harrods, with animated window mannequins strutting the latest fashions. It was quite a bit smaller than the one she remembered, probably because merchandise wasn’t created until someone wanted to buy it. That was one big plus of nanotech—no need to make anything ahead of time or keep a big inventory.

  Zee took a bite of her sandwich. It was fresh. Bland, but fresh. Then she took her cube out and checked for messages, hoping one of the care centers she’d visited had reconsidered her proposal. Despite the comfort of the familiar setting, she felt a growing sense of desperation. Of course she wanted to use her skills to help people, but she had also begun to worry about those skills. She had not forgotten the disquiet that coursed through her body when Paul took her hand at the party, the feeling of ill health and something amiss. Yet no one in the family seemed to think there was any problem at all. Surely David would know if the brother he had looked up to for so many years had changed in some fundamental way. She must have misread him. It occurred to her that people on New Earth differed in subtle ways from the people she had lived and worked among, and it would take her time to absorb these subtleties and become as skilled as she’d once been. She needed to work again, or her talent would slip away.

  No one had responded to her, but the cube flashed with a message from David. She tapped the cube, and his video expanded.

  “Good news and bad news, I’m afraid. A team from the Alliance is coming tomorrow morning to hear a preliminary report on our research mission. I’ve been asked to be the presenter, which is kind of a big deal, so I can’t miss it. That’s the good news. Bad news is, the presentation is here at Reykjavik at nine sharp, and I’m going to have to pull an all-nighter to get everything together. Even with Mia here helping me, it’s going to be a tight squeeze, so I won’t get home tonight. Miss you like fire, but I’ll be home in the morning, probably a little after eleven. Love you, Zee.”

  I love you too, Zee thought, having just enough time to touch the image of his face before it vanished.

  Suddenly, there was a commotion on the street and Zee saw a young girl hurtling toward her. For a moment, she thought it was some sort of street theater or hologram, because she looked completely out of place in her long dress of heavy velvet trimmed with elaborate lace. Then Zee saw the terror in the girl’s eyes and a gang chasing her.

  “Timey! Timey! Timey!” they taunted. “Go back to the swamp you came from! Shove off! You don’t belong here!” One of them snatched an apple from a stand and hurled it at her.

  Zee caught the girl and stopped her. David had warned her of such incidents, and warned her never to wear the clothes from her old life outside the house. Dress like a New Earther, blend in, and they’ll leave you alone, he’d cautioned.

  But apparently this girl hadn’t gotten the message. She didn’t blend in at all. Her dress, billowing around her like a ship in full sail, was a walking advertisement for the past. Zee stepped in front of her so firmly and abruptly the startled gang halted.

  “Who are you?” the leader demanded.

  Zee still had her cube in her hand, which she raised and pointed at the leader. “I’m the person who’s taking your picture,” she said. “Now, should I send it over to the police or are you going to go away?”

  Caught, the gang turned and walked sullenly back toward Harrods. Zee motioned the girl over to the bench. Only now she saw this wasn’t a girl at all but a young woman some years older than Zee herself. It was her delicate bones, wide blue eyes, and long waves of blond hair that gave the impression of youth.

  Zee had hardly touched the lemonade that came with her sandwich and now offered the cup to the woman. As she took it, their hands brushed together, and Zee felt an instant flow of emotions. Despite her outward trembling, the woman’s fear was abating, being replaced by relief.

  “Thank you,” the woman said, taking a sip of the lemonade. “Oh! It’s so tasteless! Just like everything else!”

  Zee couldn’t help but laugh. “Just what I thought. How can a country be so advanced and have such terrible food?”

  The woman looked at Zee with fresh curiosity. “You also? You came here from…?”

  “The twenty-third century. And you?”

  “The fifteenth. France. My name is Melisande. Was Melisande. It doesn’t fit in here, so we changed it to Meli. But I’ve been here almost five years, and I still don’t fit in. I don’t think I ever will.”

  Zee looked at her dress and saw now that the velvet was worn in spots and the hem was frayed. A wide section above the hem and a narrower band around the bodice looked as if they had once been embroidered, but the embroidery had been carefully picked away. Only the lace on the billowing sleeves and underskirt looked new. Meli saw Zee staring and tried to hide the frayed hem. Tears seeped from the corners of her eyes. “Oh, it’s all so terrible. I want so badly what I can’t have.”

  “You’re homesick?” Zee asked.

  “No, it’s not that at all. Home was—a land of wars. My mother died when I was young. My father and brother fell in battle. The man who killed them wanted to marry me. Then Henri brought me here.”

  Zee was shocked and slightly thrilled, her imagination running wild. “Did he kidnap you?”

  “No, he saved me. He was a stable groom, or so I thought, and I loved him even before my father was killed. When he told me who he really was and where he really came from, it was too much for me to understand. All I knew was that he had saved me from the man who killed my father and I loved him. I would follow him anywhere.”

  Then why, Zee wondered, was this young woman so unhappy? Unless—“Does Henri still love you?”

  “Yes, that is the trouble. He loves me so much he doesn’t want to leave me alone. He quit the Time Fleet to be with me. But there aren’t any jobs, and we never have enough money. In France, my father was a count. We owned castles and orchards and fields full of cattle. Our peasants made a certain kind of cheese that was famous throughout the country. I ate fresh pears that tasted of sunlight and oysters that tasted of the blue sea. Nothing but the smoothest silks and finest linen touched my skin. Now we are so poor I have picked away all the pearls and gems that once adorned this dress and sold them to pay our expenses. No one will offer him a job, and we will be on the bottom forever. This dress is nothing but rags, except for the lace, which I make myself, as all highborn girls were taught. Worn as it is, it is still finer than anything new I own. So I come here to look at the windows, nothing more. I do not go in. I do not presume to buy. I do not bother anyone. Yet still I am taunted. What is to become of us? If I cannot fit in, I am a stone around my love’s neck.”

  A few weeks ago, Zee might have found the talk of clothes shallow. Clothes were just clothes. Except that sometimes clothes weren’t just clothes. She remembered how right she’d felt in her party dress, and how much of an outsider she would have felt without it.

  Mistaking Zee’s silence for disapproval, Meli lowered her head. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “This is not your problem. You were very kind to rescue me.”

  She gathered her skirts and stood to go. She’d gone no farther than a block before she was again surrounded by the chanting gang. Zee sprang up, feeling slightly guilty that she’d let Meli go off alone. When she caught up with them, she took Meli firmly by the arm so she too faced the gang.

  “Do you have any idea who this is?” Zee asked, aiming her gaze at the tallest boy, who she thought was the leader. “This is the only lace maker on New Earth. Look at this sleeve. None of your g
rotty nanolace—this is real lace. Made by hand. It costs three thousand Emus a meter. I’ve waited three years for this woman to trim my wedding dress, and you are not going to get in the way.”

  It was fun, playing bridezilla. No wonder girls got into it. Exhilarated, Zee continued. “There are brides waiting for this woman’s work all over London. Brides with important fathers. Brides with a lot of money. Do you really want them mad at you? Because if you harm her in any way, you’re likely to find yourselves in a new time zone. Do you understand me?”

  This time the gang scattered for good. Zee and Meli sat on a bench, laughing with relief.

  “Three thousand Emus a meter?” Meli asked, her eyes suddenly bright.

  “I have no idea how much that is,” Zee said. “I was making it up as I went along.”

  Zee touched the cord around her neck and drew out the silken pouch. This was the right time, she was sure of it. Carefully, she shook a single large stone into her palm. “Do you know what this is, Meli?”

  “It’s sparkling. And clear. Some kind of nano gem?”

  “No, it’s a diamond. A real one.”

  Meli stared at her. “It can’t be. There are hardly any diamonds that size left.”

  “But it is,” Zee said.

  “Then you’re rich,” Meli said.

  “No, you are.” Zee dropped the stone into Meli’s palm and closed her fingers. “Take the diamond. Buy the things you need and start over with Henri.”

  “I can’t take it. It’s too much.”

  “But this diamond was meant for you. I know it was. There’s just one thing. You must promise never to tell anyone where you got it. Say it was sewn into the hem of your dress, make up a story. No one will be able to prove otherwise.”

  “But I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to repay you.”

  “I don’t want you to repay me. These diamonds were given to me as a gift to be shared.”

  Meli stared at her. “Your kindness is as much a gift as this diamond.” She smiled suddenly. “There’s a meeting on Wednesday afternoons many of us go to. Time immigrants from all over the centuries. Sometimes it’s fun, sometimes we cry on each other’s shoulders. But always—always—we have real food. One of our group is a chef, and he misses cooking as much as we miss tasting, so we give what we can and he searches the markets for whatever we can afford. There is real food on New Earth, but it’s hard to find and expensive. Yet even if all we have is parsnips, Marc always makes something delicious from it. And sometimes he finds things like fresh strawberries and cream.”

  Zee’s mouth began to water. “I’ll be there,” she said, and tapped the information Meli gave her into her cube.

  “See you then.”

  Zee stayed alone on the bench watching her go. She tilted her head back and looked up through the canopy of pale new leaves on the trees.

  “Well, Mrs. Hart, is this what you had in mind?” she asked, and felt her body fill with warmth and light.

  * * *

  Ellie Hart had been Zee’s favorite patient from the moment they met. Despite her involvement with the tragic Neptune’s Tears diamonds, there was nothing remotely tragic about Mrs. Hart. The misadventure with the diamonds had cost her dearly and changed the direction of her life, yet Mrs. Hart never seemed to regret it. In fact, she wore the jewelry she’d designed, made of false diamonds, as if they were her most treasured possession. When Mrs. Hart learned she was dying, she’d asked for Zee to continue as her empath, helping her through the pain. Zee felt the same way about the afternoons they had spent together as Mrs. Hart felt about the diamonds—they represented loss, but also something special and irreplaceable.

  Months after Mrs. Hart died, when Zee was going through deep uncertainty, wondering whether or not she would be able to accompany David to New Earth, there had been a night when Zee fell asleep alone in her room at the empaths’ quarters. She had a dream, and in it, thought she heard the repeated thump of the cane Mrs. Hart had used when she’d became too weak to walk. But when Zee woke, she realized it was someone at her door and she’d mistaken the persistent knocking for the sound of the cane.

  The man introduced himself as Mrs. Hart’s lawyer, delivering the mementos she’d left her friends. He handed Zee a small box and left. Inside the box was a folded letter and the silk pouch Zee now wore around her neck, filled to bursting, hard and rather lumpy. Zee unfolded the note and read.

  You will do me a great favor if you accept these, Zee. I never lied to you. The diamonds I wore were indeed false. But there were also real diamonds, genuine Neptune’s Tears, that Tiffany’s gave to me as compensation for all that happened. To tell you the truth, I didn’t want them, but refusing them would only have created more bad feelings and more sadness, so I accepted. I couldn’t imagine using them or selling them—it would have seemed like blood money—and thank goodness I never had real need of them.

  But now that I am about to rejoin the great dance of souls, I must find a place for them, and a purpose. They would only be a burden to my daughter, as they have been to me, so I have decided to pass them along to you. Although we didn’t have much time to be friends, I think we are of like mind. I know you will use them wisely and find a way to return them to the universe, where they belong.

  Zee reread the letter twice. It was almost as if Mrs. Hart knew, in some way, what she had had no way of knowing—that Zee would end up on New Earth.

  When Zee finally got permission to accompany David, she’d made one last visit home and left half of the diamonds in her sister’s underwear drawer, hoping they would somehow help her family through the dark years ahead. The rest she had worn here to New Earth. Like Mrs. Hart, she could not imagine spending them on herself, and now that she had found a purpose for one of them, she felt as light as the air around her.

  CHAPTER SIX

  MEET THE PARENTS — AGAIN

  The feeling of lightness Zee had after giving Meli the diamond stayed with her. She began to meditate again, to divest herself of her own ego so healing energy could flow through her—all the things she had done every day as an empath. She imagined building healing bridges made of color and light. It felt good just to move through the exercises, to feel again her purpose and her calling, even here on New Earth, even though there was no opportunity to use it.

  And Meli, whether she knew it or not, had been the start of it. Zee went to one of the time immigrants’ meetings to thank her, and almost left when she saw that Meli wasn’t there. Quickly, a woman from the eighteenth century took her hand and drew her into the group. Zee ended up staying and listening to their stories. There were none exactly like hers, and the person closest to her home zone, as they called the centuries they’d come from, was born two hundred years before her, but that didn’t seem to matter. She felt connected to anyone who was part of the history she’d learned in school.

  Work and lack of money were the problems that people mentioned the most. That and the general feeling of being a perpetual outsider.

  “I don’t get the jokes,” one man complained.

  “I miss paper,” a twentieth-century woman said. “I miss the books and the magazines and even the newspapers. I miss letters!”

  Abrupt silence fell. Letters were a painful subject. Everyone had left family and friends behind, telling them a plausible story about traveling to a distant land to live happily ever after. But there communication ended. Messages from home, New Earth authorities had discovered, only prolonged homesickness and made it harder to adjust. Professional writers were hired to study endless samples of each immigrant’s syntax and expressive style, and take over communications. They crafted descriptions of new lives, wove in details like marriage and children, and created stories that kept the family happily expecting a reunion but never really having one. The messages were translated and delivered in whatever form was common to the era—messenger, letter, email, hologram. For the immigrant, these partings were so painful they were seldom spoken of.

  The room was re
scued from its silence by a woman who said she’d lived on New Earth for three years, and though she loved her husband, she’d almost given up on feeling she belonged here. Then she had a baby, and the birth of her daughter changed everything. Each day as her child grew, so did her sense of belonging.

  “You’re saying I should have a baby to feel better?” a younger woman asked.

  “No. I’m saying not to give up. It’s never too late for things to change, just when you least expect it.”

  The meeting ended with Marc, the chef Meli had told her about, unpacking a basket laden with food whose ingredients he’d traded and bartered for with a small group of old-schoolers. A real roasted chicken. Salad greens he’d grown himself. Sable cookies flavored with almonds and orange. Zee hadn’t tasted such food since she arrived and held each mouthful on her tongue as long as possible to savor the taste. She told Marc that his food made her feel more at home than anything else on New Earth had.

  “Me too,” he confided. “Before, I was chef de cuisine to the Count of Anjou. I commanded a kitchen of more than a hundred. Cooks, junior cooks, the boy who scaled the fish, and the girl who scrubbed the pots and pans. Only for my loved one would I have given it up. And still, how I miss it all!”

  Later that night, Zee made sure to transfer some Emus to Marc’s account so his cooking could continue.