Dancing with Eternity

by John Patrick Lowrie

  “To get to where you were?”

  “We’ve done marvelous things. Impossible things. Traveling from star to star is the least of our accomplishments.” Her gaze was intense; she leaned forward on her chair. “We don’t hate each other anymore. We can communicate in ways that are so intimate, so utterly revealing that it’s possible to actually experience another person’s perspective, another person’s point of view. Can you imagine what that’s like? I don’t think I could if I hadn’t experienced it.”

  “It’s true, daddy,” Alice said. “I’ve done it. It’s wonderful.”

  John sat back, taking it in, his suspicions supplanted by wonder. “I imagine it is, sweetheart. That is, I can’t imagine. But it must be. It sure would have helped me understand your mother. What she was going through.”

  Archie continued, “But things had to change when we gained these new abilities. Conquering death changed us, made us more independent of one another. Gave us less reason to depend on each other. We don’t have families anymore. Romantic love is ... unknown. Lots of things. I wanted to see what they were like in the context of ... a coherent ... a coherent social fabric ...”

  John’s skepticism had returned. “And where did Estelle and I fit in? In all this.”

  “You weren’t part of it. You were not any part of it. I swear. It just—”

  “I don’t suppose it matters anymore,” John said.

  “But it does matter,” Archie answered. “To me, it matters.” Anger drove her now. Anger at whom, I didn’t know. “I didn’t want to come back here. I thought it ill-advised, but now that I’m here I want you to know that I never intended to interfere in any of the indigenous population’s private lives. That was not part of the research. It was not part of the plan in any way.”

  “ ‘Indigenous population,’ ” John scoffed. “I don’t think I’ve ever been one of those before.”

  Archie started to respond, but Louise jumped in first: “I told you!” she said to John, “I told you you shouldn’t have had anything to do with those people! You see how they think of us? I told you they’d ruin your life and send your children to hell—”

  “Louise, what are you talking about?” John asked.

  “I knew all along what that woman was up to! I could see it in her—”

  “WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, LOUISE?” John shouted. “What the FUCK are you talking about?”

  Louise looked at John, shocked, her mouth moving. Then she gathered herself and said, relatively quietly, “How DARE you speak to me like that! In front of these people! After all I’ve—We took you in when NO ONE else would have you. No one!” Shaking with anger, her eyes brimming with tears, she turned and left the room.

  John looked after her for a long time. The rest of us looked for something to say. I wasn’t sure what I had just witnessed. A fight, but about what?

  “None of this ever made any sense to me,” John finally said. He turned and looked at Archie, “I’m sorry, maybe you better go.”

  “Daddy—” Alice began.

  “I’m sorry, honey.” He turned to her. “I—I’m sorry you had to see me like this. I didn’t used to be this way, I—I’m sorry.”

  “Could we—could we come back later? Maybe? When things have ... When you’re feeling ...”

  “Yeah, maybe that would be best.” He hung his head. “No, maybe you’d better not. I don’t know. Louise—she, I don’t know what she might do.”

  “What?” Alice asked.

  John looked at Archie. “Louise—”

  “Your aunt was the one who turned you in,” Archie said. “She told the authorities about your mother—what she wanted to do.”

  “Oh.”

  “Maybe we’d better get going,” Archie said. “I think your father’s right. I don’t think it’s wise for us to stay.”

  “But I—” Alice balked. Then, “Okay.”

  We started to go. At the front door Alice turned back to her father. “Would you like to see mom? I mean, if you could, if she were around? Would you like to get back together?”

  “Alice—” Archie admonished. Alice waved her off and took her father’s hands in hers.

  “Would you?”

  John Cheatham looked at his daughter for a long time before he said, “I don’t think she’d want to see me. The way I am now.” He shook his head, “No. I think I’d rather have her remember me the way I was, not this filthy, crazy, broken down old coot.” He looked at the floor. “Louise was right to get mad at me. I’m not worth anything to anybody anymore.” He looked back into his daughter’s eyes. “But I sure am glad you came to see me. I surely am glad.”

  “Me, too, Daddy.”

  “Just to hear you call me that,” he smiled. “I know I probably smell bad, I—I should have taken a bath—”

  Alice shook her head. John asked her, “Do you suppose I could just ... hold you for a minute? Just for a minute.”

  Alice put her arms around him and laid her head on his hollow chest. He rested his head on hers. They stayed that way for a time—forever, maybe, or maybe not long enough. Then they parted. He looked at her and said, “I want you to go out there and take the world by the tail and shake it till it makes you happy. Don’t take no for an answer. Don’t you ever settle. You understand me?”

  Alice nodded.

  “I love you, sweetheart. I always have and I always will.”

  “I love you, too, Daddy.”

  “Every time I look up into the night sky I’ll think about you, what you’re doing, where you might be.”

  “I’ll think about you, too.”

  They looked at each other. Then he said, “You go on, now. Remember what I said.”

  We turned and walked down the wooden steps, down the sandy path. Just before the path curved behind a stand of cane, Alice turned to wave to her father one last time. He waved back.

  “We have to get out of here,” Archie spoke quietly but urgently. “We have to get out of here now.”

  I leaned against the door of our room, making sure that no one outside in the hallway could hear us. Alice sat on the floor in the corner, withdrawn and stony. Steel sat on the bed, fighting to keep her composure as she said, “Did he ask about—”

  Archie had had enough. She cut her off, “Look, we did what we came here to do.” She turned to Alice. “Didn’t we, Alice? We found your father. I never thought we would, but we found him.” Alice nodded. Archie drove on, “Louise is going to turn us in. She did it before; she’ll do it again. It was a risk we took, going to her, but I just couldn’t think of any other way to find him. We found him, but we have to leave now. John will try to keep her from going to the police, but I don’t know how much fight he has left in him.”

  Steel was in really bad shape. She looked at Alice, she looked at Archie, she looked at the ceiling. She put her head in her hands. “I don’t know ...” she started.

  Archie sat on the bed beside her. “Captain, this is your expedition. We’ve come a long way toward our goals, but we still have many things to accomplish.” She looked at Alice again, but Alice was still stoic. “I completely understand why Alice wanted to come back here. Of course she would want to see her family again. It was something that needed to happen—”

  “I don’t think I have a family,” Alice said.

  “Alice!” Steel implored, “Of course you have a family. You grew up in a family, more than any of us did.”

  “That’s what makes it easy for you,” Alice replied. “You don’t have anything to lose. You just fly around doing experiments on people—”

  “Now, Alice, that’s not fair. We didn’t experiment on anyone, we simply observed—”

  “What about me? Aren’t you experimenting on me?”

  “We’re trying to save your life—”

  There was a strange popping sound that seemed to come from far off somewhere, followed by a thundering echo. It brought us up short, but we’d heard other things like it in the past few days. The acoustics of Nazar
eth’s unique setting occasionally made it sound like something was happening next door when it was actually happening across town. The echo died away but there was a pause in the conversation. I took the opportunity to jump in.

  “Maybe Alice doesn’t want us to save her life,” I said. Everyone stopped and looked at me. “It’s her life, I mean.” Alice looked so ... small. So vulnerable. I couldn’t imagine the universe without her, but still, maybe it was her decision. Maybe no one had really given her the opportunity to make it for herself. “What do you say, Alice? Do you want us to leave you here? Do you want to stay?” I couldn’t believe I was asking her these things. Staying meant suicide, but it was a strange suicide, one that would take decades to play itself out. On the other hand, maybe she was right. Maybe the experiment had gone on long enough. I just didn’t like seeing her so unhappy.

  Steel stared at me like I’d committed mutiny on the high seas, but then her expression softened. I think she realized that these were questions that had to be asked, that only Alice could answer.

  There was another pop followed by another roll of thunder. “What is that?” Archie asked. “What’s going on out there?”

  Steel shook her head. “If the place is caving in, I’m sure they’ll send someone to tell us.” She turned back to Alice, calmer, softer, determined to do the best thing, the right thing. “Alice,” she started, “I’ve tried to—We, we’ve tried to ... to educate you, to integrate you into the world, the ... the larger world out there, to make you feel ... feel welcome. Loved. We ... we all ... care deeply for you and your happiness and—not just me and Archie, but Yuri and, and Marcus and all of us. Even Ham.” She smiled.

  Alice smiled at her shoes, “I think Ham understands me better than any of you.”

  Steel allowed herself a small laugh. “Maybe so. Maybe so. He’s a pretty understanding guy.” She became serious again. “I don’t think any of us really remember what it was like being only a couple of decades old. We’ve lived for centuries. Mo has lived for more than a millennium. We are looking at living for many, many more centuries. Millennia. We don’t know how long. We may never d-die, but maybe, someday, we will. We don’t know.”

  “It’s a fetish with you people, you know?” Alice shot back. “Avoiding death. It’s like this sick fixation you have. People around here don’t have it. They accept things the way they are. They live their lives and don’t worry about it.”

  “We don’t worry about it either,” Steel answered. “We’ve fixed it. That’s all. We’ve solved the problem.”

  Something occurred to me. “I don’t think this is about death. I don’t even think death is about death.” They turned to me. “I think it’s about losing people.”

  “What do you mean?” Archie asked.

  “We don’t like to lose people. Nothing hurts worse. Nothing scares us more. Not even the prospect of our own death.” I thought of Yuri, I thought of Drake. I thought, of course, of my wife. “We’ll sacrifice ourselves to keep from losing other people. We’ll sacrifice everything.” I looked at Alice. “Steel and Yuri and all of us are willing to sacrifice everything we have to keep from losing you. Everything. We’re willing to go to the one place we know of where we might die just to keep from losing you. You’re that important to us. The problem is—” I laughed. “The problem is that in order for us not to lose you, you have to lose everyone here. On Eden. Your father, your aunt, your mother, wherever she is. Your culture. And I know, it hurts. It hurts to lose people.”

  An orphan’s tears came to Alice’s eyes and I could tell, in that moment, that she knew she was loved. By all of us.

  “I don’t mean to be such a big problem,” she said, her voice squeaky from her tears.

  “Oh, Alice,” Steel said as she melted on to her. But she was just an instant ahead of the rest of us. We all collapsed on her and held her like, indeed, like we would never let her go. We stayed that way for a while, a puddle of people on the floor.

  Finally Alice said, “It’s just so hard. I don’t think Dad will be alive the next time I come here. If I ever get back here.”

  This was progress. It was the first thing she’d said that sounded like she was adjusting to the idea of leaving.

  “I don’t know, sweetheart,” Steel answered. “We don’t know how long it’s going to take us to finish up, to get you well.”

  “ ‘Get me well,’ ” Alice snorted. “I don’t feel sick.”

  “Well, to find a way to ... to fix it, to fix you. I don’t know how you want to put it,” Steel replied.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Alice answered, “That part doesn’t matter at all.” She looked at her Captain, her guardian. She was a member of the crew again. “I’ll be all right. It’s just hard to say goodbye. That’s all.”

  I knew how she felt. I think we all did.

  “I guess we’ll leave in the morning, huh?” she asked.

  Archie and Steel referred to each other. Archie said, “The sooner the better.” Steel and I nodded in agreement, then looked back at Alice.

  She dusted her hands and got up off the floor. We did the same. “Okay,” she said. “Okay.” She started for the door. As she reached it she turned back to Steel and said, “Let’s go fix me.” Then she opened it and was gone.

  It was maybe a couple of hours later when a knock came at the door. Steel and I had just drifted off to sleep when we heard it.

  “Now, who could that be?” Steel asked.

  “I’ll see,” I said, playing the role of the Edenite patriarch. I pulled on my pants and went to the door.

  It was Samuel Morgan, the man with the pretty wife and eight or ten or a million children. He looked concerned about something, not worried, really, but concerned.

  “What can I do for you, Samuel?” I asked.

  He said, “Sorry to wake you. Do you suppose I could talk to you for a minute?”

  I looked around at Steel. She had her robe on and was getting out of bed. “Uh, yeah. Where do—uh, would you like to come in?”

  “No, maybe we’d better talk out here in the hall.” He glanced over my shoulder into the room. “No need to concern the womenfolk.”

  What a strange culture, I thought for the thousandth time. I turned to Steel. “Excuse me, mother, I’ll just be a moment.” I stepped out into the hall and closed the door, my mind racing, trying to think of any taboo we might have broken, any slip we might have made. “Anything wrong, Sam? I hope we haven’t disturbed anyone, done anything—”

  “No, no, nothing like that. The, uh, the sheriff is downstairs.”

  Sheriff! Oh, boy, now what?

  Samuel went on, “There’s been a—well, you said you and your folks went to see a Mrs. Lockridge, right? You were telling us at dinner.”

  Adrenaline surged through me. I tried to look calm. “Yeah, we went to see her. We stayed over there most of the afternoon. Why? What’s the matter?”

  “Well, that’s what I thought you said. I told the sheriff I’d come up and get you. He just wants to ask you some questions. I guess something bad happened over there this evening.”

  “What? What happened? We’ve been here since supper time.”

  “Yeah, I know. That’s what I told the sheriff. I think he just wants to talk to you. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news ...”

  “No, no. That’s all right. Just let me get dressed and I’ll be right down.”

  “Okay, I’ll tell him you’re coming. I just thought it might be nicer if I came up and got you, you know. No need to upset everybody.”

  “Yeah, yeah, thanks.” I let myself back into the room.

  “What’s wrong?” Steel wanted to know.

  I started getting dressed as I answered, “I don’t know. The sheriff is downstairs. He wants to talk to me.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think I did anything.” The culture of Eden was infectious. I found myself wanting to protect Steel from any unpleasantness, to keep her home and safe while I went o
ut to do battle. “He just wants to talk to me.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “NO.” I stopped her. “I don’t think that would be a good idea. I’m the head of the family, remember?”

  She nodded, but she didn’t like it.

  “I’ll go down and see what he wants. If it’s something that you need to deal with, I’ll come back and get you. Let’s not turn this into anything bigger than it is.”

  “You’re right,” she agreed. I turned to go. “Wait!” She stopped me, “Do you remember where we’re from?”

  “What?”

  “Our address. He’s a policeman, he’ll probably want to know where you live.”

  “Oh, right, right. 17 Forest Avenue, New Bethlehem.”

  “Good. He just ... might want to talk to the rest of us. I want our stories to mesh.”

  “Good idea. All right, I’ll be back. Try not to worry.”

  “Don’t volunteer any information, just answer his questions.”

  “I’ll be all right. I’ve dealt with police before.” I slipped out the door before she could give me any more advice.

  I spoke with the sheriff maybe fifteen or twenty minutes. He asked me how I knew Louise Lockridge and John Cheatham and I told him who we were, our version of who we were. When I finished the story he nodded and said it made sense and I asked him what had happened. He told me.

  A couple of hours earlier John Cheatham had killed Louise Lockridge and then taken his own life. “He shot her once in the chest and then turned the gun on himself,” the sheriff said. “You might have heard the gun shots.”

  Disbelief and bottomless sadness dragged me into a chair. John and Louise ... Alice’s father ... What was I going to tell Alice? How was I going to tell Alice? Then realization pulled me back to the sheriff’s face.

  “The gun shots—” We had heard them—those popping sounds, followed by thunder. I had heard Louise Lockridge die. Then John. Alice had heard it. “Oh, no ...” was all I had in me to say.