Alternities

by Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell

  He wanted to believe that the temptation of a second chance with Shan, the easy pleasure they had found in each other’s company and each other’s arms, was something that existed outside his troubles with Ruthann, that they did not touch each other, that they were not cause and effect, effect and cause. Even wanting to believe it, it was difficult to believe. Conscience pricked at the bubble of illusion.

  And yet, in fulfillment of what he had told Fowler, he had not broken it off. True, he had stopped himself from calling or writing through the ten days between that first morning after and his appointment at the gate, a breach of etiquette which might in itself be enough to accomplish the break. But to say, “I’m sorry, this was a mistake”—to himself, much less to Shan—that had been beyond him.

  Now restored to home, however briefly, he hoped to find the strength for such confessions. It was one of many hopes, sharp and turbulent within him yet beyond his capacity to articulate, for these seven days. There was a place within him that was hurting, and a place within him that was needful—for silent forgiveness for what he had done, for reasons to turn away from what he might yet do.

  If only Ruthann could provide.

  Within the Guard no job was held in lower esteem than that of property master—almost inevitably, since the domain of the propmaster was dotted with the likes of washing machines, sewing needles, and dirty laundry.

  The propmaster’s most visible task was to maintain the inventory of basic gate-safe clothing—blue pullover shirt, drawstring slacks, and hand-sewn slipover shoes—which could be assembled into transit kits for use by ferrymen and outstation staff. For the runners, the propmaster’s designers and seamstresses created individual wardrobes appropriate to their covers and clearances. Toward that end, the propmaster was expected to be the authoritative voice on fashion and fad in the various alternities.

  To make things worse. Operations had long used the PMO as a dumping ground for washouts and discipline cases. Virtually every male among the propmaster’s contingent of sixty fell into one of those two categories, meaning a Guardsman could look across the counter and confidently feel superior to the man on the other side. The nicknames bestowed on the PMO betrayed the contempt. Regardless of gender, the propmaster was “Mom”; the clerks “checkgirls” or just “girls.”

  But “Mom and her girls” had ways of extracting their revenge. The clerks were frequently surly, the counter line inevitably slow, and the transit kits randomly dotted with missized and even misassembled clothing. New runners learned quickly that to surrender part of their wardrobe to a checkgirl for maintenance was to risk its disappearance or destruction.

  Wallace had not dealt with the propmaster’s office on a regular basis for nearly a year, but he had not forgotten what to expect. He stood in line with the same sort of resigned patience seen on the faces of supplicants awaiting their audience in a post office or vehicle registration bureau. His transit kit was rolled up in a ball under one arm; it had done double duty as home-sitting clothes on the other side and was long overdue for an appointment with soap and water.

  True to form, the clerk took nearly twenty minutes to dispose of the three ferrymen who had been in line when Wallace arrived. When his turn at the counter finally came, Wallace placed the bundle of clothing on the wood sill and waited for the clerk to look up.

  “Drop.” Wallace said finally.

  “I need a number.”

  “I said a drop, not a swap.”

  “I still need a number.”

  “21618.”

  “And a name.”

  “Wallace.”

  The clerk looked up, and Wallace recognized him as a former runner. “Tough business, huh?”

  “What?”

  “Hasn’t anybody told you yet?”

  “Told me what?”

  “Shit,” the clerk said. “About your buddy.”

  “Who? Jason?”

  “I guess they didn’t tell you.” The semipermanent sneer faded from the clerk’s face. “He came up missing. On a run to Kiev, is what I heard.”

  Wallace stared. The words seemed to glance off some inner shield, leaving no trace on his emotions except a scorched surprise.

  “He was your buddy, wasn’t he?” the clerk prompted.

  “Are you sure it was Jason March?”

  “I’m sure. I knew him too, y’know. A little too impressed with himself, but a right guy. Yeah, I’m sure. Jason March. What a fucked operation, huh? Somebody should have told you.”

  A knot of ache and nausea was growing cancerlike behind Wallace’s ribs. “Yeah,” he said. “You got this?”

  The clerk collected the roll of clothing. “I’ve got it.”

  Nodding numbly, Wallace left the counter. Upstairs, in the dispatch superintendent’s offices, he found Deborah King at a desk. “Tell me about Jason,” he said hoarsely.

  She looked up from her work, and the empathy in her eyes struck a killing blow to Wallace’s self-control. “Come on,” she said, reading his pain. “Let’s go up to the grill.”

  Mercifully, the windows of the tenth-floor Tower cafeteria looked out on the Charles River and not inward to the gate house. They sat at a hideaway table, under an American Pride mural depicting a smoking tractor engulfed by wheat fields. He sat facing the corner, she in the corner facing him.

  “There’s hardly anything to tell,” she said slowly. “You know that. He was outbound to Black and never came through.”

  “When?”

  “Thursday. The 21:20 slot. I’m sorry, Rayne. It’s a shame.”

  “You bastards, he wanted out. If you’d let him out he’d still be alive.”

  She sighed. “We can’t have singles working long-term on the other side.”

  “We’ve got them in Red.”

  “Nobody’s happy about that.”

  “Why not?”

  “You really need an answer?”

  “I do.”

  She glanced past him briefly, then answered in a lowered voice. “Because Operations is afraid of defections.”

  “Damn it, Jason was as solid as they come.”

  “You put a man or a woman out there alone for six months and they might find reasons not to come back.”

  “Being married’s no insurance against that,” he said bitterly.

  Her eyebrow arched in curiosity. “Operations has to draw the line somewhere. Jason got a pass just making it to runner as a single.”

  “Because he had what you wanted. Because you needed him. But you didn’t care about what he needed.”

  “He was doing his job, Rayne. Solid, like you said he was. There’s nothing wrong with the way he died.”

  “You don’t know how he died,” he said hotly. “Nobody does, because the blinders are on. You think maybe this’ll put enough names on the memorial for somebody to start asking some questions?”

  She sat back uncomfortably. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “The hell you don’t. There’s something in there, between the gates. Everybody knows it. Jason saw it late last year.”

  “He didn’t report it.”

  “Because everybody knows that those kind of reports get you put out on the street with a psych release. Because everybody knows Operations doesn’t want to hear it. We don’t count for much up in the penthouse, do we?”

  “The Guard is a combat unit. That’s why you get paid what you do. You want to know what our casualty rate is? One death in every two thousand transits. That’s acceptable risk, Rayne.”

  “Yeah? How come it’s always the guys with nothing to lose who decide what’s acceptable?”

  Annoyance flashed briefly across her face. Then she reached across the table and squeezed his hand. “Go home to Ruthann,” she said, standing. “She’ll help you through this.”

  “How?” he asked, looking up at her helplessly. “I can’t tell her enough to make her understand. Am I supposed to make up a story about how he died?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “This is
all I can do.”

  He was silent for a moment. “You could—”

  “No. Don’t ask,” she said cutting him off. “That won’t help you. Go home to Ruthann.”

  “You stupid bitch,” he said, shaking his head in frustration. “I was going to say you could find out about his family.”

  “Were you?” she asked, skeptical. “All right. I’ll see. But I don’t see the sense. You can’t go knock on their door and say, ‘Mr. and Mrs. March, I was with your son in the Guard.’ ”

  “I know that,” he said, furiously blinking back phantom tears. “But just because you’re ready to forget him doesn’t mean that I have to.”

  Sunday was a family day, and the quad was appropriately quiet. “Annie?” Wallace called hopefully, pocketing the key and pushing the door open. “Katie-cat, Daddy’s home.”

  There was no answer. He checked his watch. Church was over; he wondered where else they could be. Dropping his coat on the couch, he walked slowly through the apartment. A doll rested by the television and two of Katie’s picture books lay on the coffee table, but with those exceptions the rooms were clean and tidy—the products of Saturday chores, enduring into Sunday.

  His work schedule was still hanging on the front of the refrigerator, though nearly lost under later additions to the family bulletin board. You knew I was coming, he thought. Is that why you’re not here? He saw that neither mail nor newspapers were awaiting him in their accustomed places.

  What did you do, Annie? Run home to Hagerstown? I’ve tried that. It doesn’t work.

  All the places that he might have expected to find a note—kitchen counter, dresser, the pillows of their neatly made bed—he found nothing. Wallace stood for a long minute in front of the closet, trying to decide which, if any, of her clothes were missing. His memory—was not equal to the task, even without the several new garments to confuse him.

  Think, think. Out of habit, he had checked the mailbox on the way in. Empty. Friday is mail day. So she’s been here sometime in the last two days. Belatedly, he thought of the Spirit and turned back to the bulletin board and the rotation schedule. In the box for Sunday, February 12 was the name FINCH. She doesn’t have the car.

  He went to the bathroom to splash water on his face and found the towels damp. She was here this morning. You’re being silly, he told himself, and went out into the quad to knock on Rebecca’s door. She opened the door only a few inches when she answered.

  “Hello. Rayne. Back for a while?” Her smile seemed forced.

  “Yeah. I was wondering if you’d have any idea where Annie is.”

  “Did you check at the clinic?”

  “The clinic?” Among the facilities in the Block core was an eighteen-bed three-doctor Federal Health Clinic—more insurance against the war the Block was supposed to survive. “What would she be doing there? Is Katie sick?”

  “Katie’s in with my daughter, napping—”

  “Katie’s here?”

  Rebecca allowed the door to open another foot, “I told her she ought to tell you.” she said, frowning. “Annie’s working at the clinic.”

  “Working?”

  “As a nurse’s aide. Try to understand. She really needed to get out of the apartment, Rayne.” Rebecca said earnestly.

  “Why do you think I won’t understand? What’s she been telling you? I wish she was here instead of there, sure. I haven’t seen her for five weeks. But if she wants to put in a few hours of volunteer work now and then, that doesn’t bother me. It’s not doing Katie any harm, after all. When did Annie say she’d be back for her?”

  Rebecca looked inexplicably nonplussed. “Six.”

  “That long?”

  “Rayne, Katie spends Saturday, Sunday, and two nights a week here.”

  “Why?”

  A frown. “Maybe you’d better go up and see Annie.”

  “Maybe I’d better.”

  They caught sight of each other at opposite ends of the clinic’s main corridor. There was no hug. Her hands were clasped in front of her and fluttering nervously. His hands were jammed flat-palmed in his back pockets.

  “Hi, Annie.”

  “So you are here.”

  Her tone was a needle. “You had the schedule. You should have known I’d be home today.”

  “I didn’t think I should count on that.”

  “What, so you didn’t even tell Katie? You want me to be some sort of surprise visitor?”

  The hands fluttered, but the gaze was cool and steady. “I can only talk for a few minutes. They left me a long list of things to do.”

  “What’s this all about? Rebecca said Katie’s there half the week.”

  “I’m working C shifts until there’s an opening on A.”

  He shook his head sharply. “Your job is taking care of Katie.”

  “That’s your job, too. So where are you?”

  “You know where I am. Earning a living for the family.”

  She tucked her hands under her elbows, against her side, as though to smother and still them. “I don’t have the first idea where you are,” she said. “I don’t know where you go or what you do. You tell me I’m not supposed to ask, it’s important, official, like I’m not good enough or smart enough to know. I’m just supposed to carry the load and wait, and jump up and smile when you walk through the door.”

  “I never—”

  She took a step toward him. “Well, to me you’re just away, and do you know what? It’s getting to where I don’t hardly miss you. In fact, it’s getting hard to see what spaces you used to fill. And I found something else out. There are more ways of feeling good than getting one of your little pats on the head. They say I’m doing a good job here, and I get checks with my own name on them, and both of those things feel just fine.”

  “I thought you were volunteering, to get out of the apartment for a few hours—”

  “Why? Because you didn’t think anyone would want to pay me?”

  He did not have the energy to answer or even parry her challenges. “You’re getting ready to do without me.”

  The hands had climbed all the way to her shoulders, wrapping her in a self-hug. “I can’t depend on somebody who’s not here.”

  A voice inside Wallace was screaming, Who is this person? Who is this stranger who looks like Annie? He gaped, blinked, opened his mouth and heard himself say, “Neither can I.” Felt his feet carry him out of the clinic and toward the exit doors and the transit stop beyond. Wished that he could make the clock jump forward a week to his next date with the gate.

  And understood that Shan, strange and wonderful Shan, real or shadow, was all that stood between him and being completely alone.

  Washington, D.C., The Home Alternity

  Ellen O’Neill did not notice when her husband left their brass-railed blanket-heaped bed. But stirring in her sleep in the silent hours between midnight and dawn, she became aware of the empty space beside her and came fully awake. The glowing hands of the alarm marked the time as a few minutes after two.

  Sitting up, she listened for a moment for telltale sounds from the bathroom adjacent or the kitchen below. Hearing none, she threw back the covers and went looking. Collar and tags jingled at the foot of the bed as their terrier raised his head in sleepy curiosity.

  “Stay, Roscoe,” she whispered as she glided out of the room. Seeing the wisdom of that suggestion, Roscoe obeyed.

  She found Gregory in the darkened living room, sitting sideways in his robe on the couch. “Honey? What’s wrong?”

  He looked up, then made room for her beside him on the edge of the couch. “I’m trying to find a way to undo a mistake,” he said softly.

  “Can I help?”

  “You can hug me.”

  Though he accepted her embrace gratefully, as a child accepts the hug of a mother, he remained distant. Something had taken him far away, and his body jangled with the rawness of the pain which had driven him into retreat.

  Wrestling demons. That was how she thought
of such episodes. There had been few of them in recent years, far fewer than suffered by the earnest and troubled young man she had married twenty-six years ago.

  She waited, knowing that if he chose to share more, he would do so without prodding.

  “There is an imperative in the blood,” he said slowly, “which compels a parent to save the life of his child at any price, even his own life. Look at our values of noble sacrifice. The woman who goes back into a burning building for her baby. The man who dives into the surf to save a son being dragged out to sea by the rip current.”

  “We make heroes of them, even if they fail,” she said.

  He nodded, sought a hand to hold. “And we judge them hard if they stand by and do nothing, if they let the baby burn, watch the boy drown. I wonder how God judges them, whether the dictates of biology mean as much to Him as to us.”

  “Parents are charged with caring for their children,” she said. “Maybe part of the charge is in our genes.”

  “Perhaps,” he said. “But is it an absolute? Should a parent steal to feed a hungry child, lie or cheat to protect a defenseless child?”

  “Are you asking the parent, or God? The parent would say yes. I would say yes. I would have done that for David, or Sara, or Mark. You would have, too.”

  “Yes,” he said. “It amounts to risking your soul, instead of your life, for your child. God would put the sin on one side of the ledger and the good on the other.”

  “The good would count for more, I think.”

  “But what if a man could save his own children’s lives by accepting the deaths of other children as the price? How does that one sit on the scales?”

  “Is that what you’ve done?”

  He drew her close, until his arms enclosed her and her head rested on his shoulder. “I went along with something I didn’t believe in, to protect us and ours.”

  She drew back from him, alarmed. “Went along with who? Who threatened us? Please tell me that you’re not compromised—”

  His expression soured. “Would that be worse? Do you really think patriotism is a higher value? No, don’t answer. These children we’d do anything to save, we proudly send them off to die as soldiers. So we must think country counts for more than family. Though I don’t think that’s what Jesus had in mind when he said ‘Render unto Caesar…’ ” He smiled sadly. “No, Ellen. I’m not compromised—not in the way you’re thinking.”