“Everything on schedule, Captain?” asked Gurdit. Things had been set in motion; it was out of his hands now.
“Ballast seven has been emptied,” replied the captain. “We have but to empty eight and nine, and then we can start divestment and inflation.” He turned to the first officer. “Make sure the upper deck is clear and everyone is safe below.”
The ship rose as the ballasts emptied, pitching and rolling even in the quiet harbour. The first officer returned to report all was clear.
Captain Akhiro grinned. “All set, gentlemen?” he asked, and without waiting for a response, commanded, “Start divestment procedure.”
The first officer turned a massive wheel, grunting with effort. For a few moments nothing happened, and Gurdit held his breath. Then with an enormous clanking noise, the railings of the upper deck fell away, dropping into the water. The ship shuddered as she shed her weight. Balwant squeezed his eyes shut. They were all hanging on for dear life, but Gurdit realized he himself was singing. Singing.
The sky will be my home
The sun and moon my lamps
To light Your face.
“Open deck,” said Captain Akhiro. The middle of the upper deck cranked open, revealing gleaming pistons and valves layered into the middle deck.
“Gas board operational!”
The Komagata Maru shook and juddered as a vast, dark material billowed out of the open deck – gel-cotton, light and strong, that Gurdit had designed by simple use of film gelatine between two layers of cotton. Valves pumped hydrogen and the envelope ballooned above them, blotting out the starry sky.
Balwant’s mouth was open in a silent scream. Daljit’s lips moved as if in prayer. Gurdit hugged them both, trying to communicate his love, his conviction.
Daljit’s expression changed to horror as he looked over Gurdit’s shoulder. Gurdit twisted around to see what had alarmed him.
A military launch, bullhorn blaring, guards angrily gesticulating: Stop. Their illicit manoeuvre had finally caught the attention of the Port authority.
Daljit cupped his hands and shouted, “Do you think they will shoot?”
Gurdit shook his head. I don’t know. I hope not. It was not a possibility he had allowed himself to consider until this moment. Would the immigration guards be willing to have the death of four hundred innocent souls on their conscience? He had wagered all their lives on that answer.
“Start the engines,” yelled Captain Akhiro, his hat askew.
A deep vibration passed through the ship’s body and travelled up Gurdit’s, as if they were one and the same, the ship and its designer. Roaring filled his ears and the Komagata Maru rose above the water, carried aloft by two million cubic feet of inflammable hydrogen gas. Water wheels repurposed into giant propellers whirred beneath them.
“We did it,” gasped Daljit. “We’re flying!”
Gurdit crawled to the rim of the deck and peered below. Balwant caught hold of his legs and whimpered, “Pitaji, be careful.”
His heart leaped. Daljit was right. They were flying. About a hundred metres up, Gurdit judged, the dark swell of the Pacific to their left and the lights of Vancouver to their right. The launch below grew smaller, a tiny speck bobbing futilely in the harbour. A few moments more and they had left it far behind.
Gurdit drew back and stood to embrace Captain Akhiro, who was smiling smugly. “Congratulations, Captain,” he said. “Now all you have to do is guide the ship to the prairies, vent the gas and land us safely.”
Captain Akhiro laughed. “I will guide the ship, if you will guide the people. Yes?”
Gurdit thought of the hardships just ahead – the northern wilderness, the dark winters, the struggle to survive – and smiled. “Yes,” he promised. “As long as I live free.”
The Komagata Maru flew into the night, carrying its frail cargo of human lives and hopes.
BONES OF BRONZE, LIMBS LIKE IRON
RHEA ROSE
I remember being a young child the first time I saw a steam locomotive thick with the exhalation of its hot, giant clouds of breath. The engine, embroiled in its own storm, spewed and billowed wave after wave of white mist; a bell clanged and the giant black Cyclops rolled across the earth like a mountain falling down a valley. The train’s wheels screamed as if they were large trees ripped asunder by lightning, and the ground shook to the horizon. Headlights like meteors came to burn and blind us, and its tail grew into an endless line of cars that stretched to the other end of the world.
A woman, as terrified as me, stood nearby reciting something biblical. “Behold, Behemoth, which I made as I made you; he eats grass like an ox. Behold his strength in his loins, and his power in the muscles of his belly…” I remember stepping behind her blowing skirt, a thin veil of fabric, for protection from the rolling monster.
* * *
This morning a red barn mysteriously appeared in an unused field.
The fallow land around the barn formed a bevy of graceful swells. These small hills were equally mysterious, having appeared over the last few weeks.
Tim, a helpful young man, was my neighbour’s son; each morning he gave me a ride to school on his horse and wagon. Tim went to town to do chores while I went to work as a teacher of a one-room schoolhouse.
When Tim eventually noticed the barn, he eased up on the horse. We examined the building. I regarded it through my spectacles. Tim blocked out the light to get a better look.
The barn sat quietly, red, round-roofed. Its slick and smooth metallic doors revealed some of the more subtle technological design gone into its engineering. I doubted that Tim had ever seen anything like it.
As strange as the presence of the barn was, to me it seemed oddly familiar.
Then, without a word, Tim sped up to get away while I wanted a better look.
There weren’t many buildings on the outskirts of the small town of Port Ingles in the late 1800s, in North West Saskatchewan. The school where I taught stood tiny but strong. Ten years and I still worked with the farmers’ and the miners’ children, teaching them how to spell and read, encouraging them to broaden their horizons, to further their education, so that they need not be held to this land.
* * *
I pushed the dust away from my apron and adjusted my bonnet as I walked into the school building, and when I looked up a strange man stood in the small room. He stood comfortably and read the school’s handbook.
I was tall, but he stood much taller.
I pulled out the curls at the side of my bonnet.
He seemed a quiet man, a bit of a dandy with his dark hair and grey bowler on his head. This suggested that he’d come from town. He wore suspenders over his pinstriped high-necked shirt and over that he wore a grey tweed jacket; the hue matched his hat exactly, and from his jacket pocket hung a watch chain. He had sharp eyes that were blue and made larger by the wire-framed specs he wore. He ran his hand up and down one suspender while he held the school handbook in the other. He liked a closely trimmed, black beard. His smile finally acknowledged my presence.
“Good morning,” I said, sounding overly cheerful, even to myself.
“Susanna?” He closed the book and put it down on a student’s table.
“Mrs. Susanna,” I corrected. He smiled as if I’d said something funny.
“Of course.”
Did he know me? Perhaps he was a relative of one of my charges and not a teacher.
He was strangely familiar.
“Grant,” he said, “Mr. Grant,” and held out his large hand to me. I didn’t know what to do with that hand, so I did nothing.
We were silent a moment as we sized each other up.
“Three…” I said, an attempt to break the tension and awkwardness of the situation.
“Three?” he repeated, and then looked puzzled.
“Wishes!” I said. “Grant – me three wishes,” I said, and hoped he had a sense of humour.
“Never heard that one before,” he replied with polite sarcasm.
/> He had a bit of an accent, an unidentifiable drawl that suggested warmer lands, perhaps slower days. Even though his dress suggested city slicker, I guessed that this was not his first encounter with small-town life.
I had no idea why a second teacher was dispatched to our small one-room school.
But secretly I was pleased.
I showed Mr. Grant the extra desk hidden in storage, and together we pulled it free and set it up in an appropriate place near my own.
“I’m to instruct the young men in games,” he said.
“Games?”
“Outdoor activities,” he explained.
I did remember a letter sent by the board of education. Sports activities were to become part of the curriculum.
“I see,” I said, then noticed a few small personal items of Mr. Grant’s on his desk. In the chaos of his minutiae, I observed a small figurine – a tiny, black glass dragon warming itself in a beam of sun streaking through the window. Light twinkled in the magical refraction of the dragon’s sheen, causing the dragon’s reddish and golden glow.
When Grant wasn’t looking, I put my hand around the beautiful little dragon and slipped it into my pocket.
* * *
I went home that evening and made chicken pie and served cut greens from the garden. My family loved my dandelion salad. They gobbled the meal without comment. My two beautiful boys, ages fourteen and fifteen, did not attend my one-room class. My husband, the area doctor and veterinarian, drove them by wagon into town each day for their studies and to learn trades; a forty-five minute ride east.
“There’s a new teacher. A Mr. Grant,” I said to my husband. “He’s – teaching the boys games.”
My husband nodded. He continued to read the almanac. “He gonna preach on Sundays?” he asked.
* * *
One day in the supply room, while I searched for the ever-elusive supply of ink bottles, Mr. Grant found me there.
“Tight squeeze,” he said, manoeuvring by me, careful not to make contact in the close closet.
“Yes,” I agreed. “Can’t you wait until I’m done?” I asked, feeling a little annoyed at his impertinence. I very nearly tipped the box of black ink bottles. “And you should really take that hat off when you’re in the school teaching,” I said, sounding more harsh than I’d intended.
He stopped his reach toward an upper shelf. He looked at me as if he saw me for the first time. In the cramped quarters with only the lantern for light, he resembled a spirit, something the local medicine man had called out of a dream to the land of the living.
“Trust me, Susanna. You and I, we – I’m different. I’m not from here. Please don’t be frightened. Do you – ever feel as if you’ve known…as if you know me?” he asked.
I did feel that way.
I knew him somehow.
I fished through my pocket for something. I didn’t know what I was looking for – a distraction of some sort. I found the black glass dragon.
I kept it hidden in my pocket as I turned it over and over.
* * *
That night I went home and my thoughts raced. What could he possibly mean ? I shouldn’t know Grant – and, yet, I did. I liked him. To quiet my mind I reread the school’s rulebook. It mentioned nothing about male teachers and hats. Then I read a hundred pages of an old bible I flipped through at random, but none of these gave me the comfort I sought. I stared at my sons and husband as they ate dinner. They seemed distant.
The black glass figurine I’d taken from Grant’s desk came to mind, and with it a vision of the red barn.
* * *
I thought of Grant all night. He haunted my dreams. I wrote him a few love poems, which I then crumpled and stuffed into the far end of my pillowcase.
* * *
A few days after our brush in the supply closet, Mr. Grant sat reading the local paper. On the front page was a picture of the mysterious barn. I was about to read the accompanying article over Mr. Grant’s shoulder when we were disturbed by Tim. He rushed in, his wagon parked awkwardly outside.
“Your husband dispatched me. He’ll pick up the boys this afternoon from their studies, take them to dinner and stay in the next town this evening and the next two evenings. Your sons will participate in the early morning weekend marching practices. I’m to offer you a ride home after school.”
It was Friday.
“Thank you, Tim, but I have my bicycle in the shed.”
Tim took this in.
Tim glanced at Mr. Grant, nodded a cursory hello and good-bye then fled down the stairs he’d rushed up. His britches white with road dust.
The two men could not have been more different. Tim, short, fair and a little heavy in old thin jeans, work shoes caked with dried mud. Mr. Grant, tall and well groomed, pressed pants, bow tie and teacher’s jacket and bowler. Not only were they from different stations in life, they seemed out of time with each other.
I caught Grant staring at me, regarding me as if I were a project he still needed to pull out of a box and put together.
“I can walk you home, Susanna.”
My heart pounded through my rib cage. I glanced at the newspaper in his hands.
“There’s a second bike, if you’d like. I’ll read the paper to you. Sit here.” He sat on the wooden bench, an old donated church pew. He patted the empty space beside him, which caused a miniature cloud of chalk dust to rise.
“The barn,” he said, pointing to the picture in the paper. I took the paper from him and I quickly read. The railroaders accused the barn builders of sneaking in to stake a land claim.
“You’re a railroad man?”
“In a way.”
I stayed quiet, wanting to know more.
“I’ve borrowed some of their railroad material – you might say – but I’m not really like any of them,” he said very mysteriously. “I need to show you something special. I made it for you.”
“I’m not sure,” I said. I got up and took a step away from him, but he followed closely. His eyes held my attention as he cornered me.
Grant slowly shook his head. “Remember, even just a little. There’s no time left,” he said in a desperate tone. “Mrs. Susanna. I’m from the future – we’re from the future, you and I, the twenty-fifth century – thirty billion are trying to survive there. There’s nowhere to go but backwards.”
And then he took a small step back.
He pulled out his pocket watch and glanced at it.
“Backwards?” I asked, having nearly lost my voice with fear. My heart pounded.
“Immigration – backwards – in time. It will start soon. There’s no room in the future; it only gets more populated. Resources nearly extinguished. There’s room here, in Port Ingles, we’ve made it a retro-temporal hub for now. There are other time-habitats – but these stops are temporary. There’s another world, a planet beyond this one, many can go to – but it’s far – very far,” he said, impassioned.
Finally, he stopped talking and stepped aside.
* * *
At the end of a long day teaching, we headed for the shed where the bicycles were stored. We didn’t speak. Grant pulled the old wooden door open. It took a few moments for my eyes to adjust to the cool dark. He took a few steps inside and banged into something.
“Damn it.”
I blushed at his language. He took my hand and pulled me in after him. The door swung shut behind us.
I became very still, quiet, as I lost my sense of bearing.
“Susanna, I know you took my desk ornament.”
I pulled my hand from him.
“It’s alright. I made it for you.”
“Me?” Incredulous, I thought.
“Yes. I build things, make things,” he said. His voice was ahead and above me in the dark.
“Like barns?” I asked.
“Like barns, but other things, too.”
“What other things?”
“Transport – to distant places.”
The small light f
rom the cracks in the walls gave me my bearings, the sheen on his bowler, a glint from his watch chain. I reached into my pocket and touched the figurine right away.
“It’s glowing,” I said, truly amazed, as I pulled it out.
“Yes, it is. The radium, tritium makes it glow.” He put his hand over the exquisite ornament and put it into my tote.
“I’ve missed you,” he whispered.
* * *
As we approached the barn on our bikes he slowed down. The barn looked exactly the same, deserted, the sky overcast.
He looked at me.
“Did you really build it?” I straddled my bike, both feet planted firmly on the ground. He nodded a quick, small smile. He stopped his roll forward and whispered in my ear, “With love,” he said.
“Why? Who am I then, if I’m not Susanna?” I asked, bewildered.
He parked his bicycle and walked all the way to the barn doors, then he went inside and I waited.
Two minutes passed.
Finally, I headed to the barn.
* * *
The faint smell of lavender and something else – Grant called it ozone – wafted through the barn’s interior. I inhaled deeply soft lavender breezes, then ozone, which made me think of thunderstorms.
“It isn’t a barn at all,” I exclaimed.
Grant locked the doors behind us. The interior looked crammed with junk, neatly organized forests of metal parts, iron logs and metal barrels in which two people might sit comfortably, but nothing was assembled. “This,” he said, and pointed to a beautiful brass tub, “is a firebox and this, over here, is a boiler.” I looked around and saw that the mechanical components Grant pointed out sat inside small animal pens. Within the pens, near several bales of hay, lay black iron bolts, the size of small frying pans; many heavy, metal wheels, much larger than the ones on our bicycles, rested on the floor outside the pens. Metal tubes, long and narrow like the naked trunks of poplar trees, leaned against a wall, while several brass boxes, bronze rails, rivets and wrought-iron knobs were scattered like rocks. Grant pressed a lever near the locked barn doors, and the barn’s incredible electric lights began to glow and cast low shadows. “There are fields in this area with huge caverns below them,” he said.
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