by PAMELA DEAN
“We need but two more objects,” said Dominic, “to anchor us to the present, so that we may return at need.”
“Won’t the house itself do?”
“The house is old. Let it be your telescope.”
Gentian’s breath stopped. “Why?”
“Theirs not to reason why,” said Dominic, placidly, “theirs but to do or die.”
“This isn’t the army and I am not under your orders.” He’s doing it too, she thought, just like my father, just like Jamie. He’s laying down the law. Well, I won’t have it. Not to reason why, good grief, and about a science project.
“A mind not to be changed by place or time,” said Dominic.
“You’re not a place or a time, and I’m not handing you the most valuable thing I possess without a very good reason.”
“Oh, reason not the need.”
There he went again. Reason not. “Look,” she said, “I’m your assistant, I’m not your servant. Tell me why you want my telescope.”
“I have said. To anchor us in time.”
“Use something of yours, then. Or I’ll be happy to go buy a brand-new toaster or something.”
“Something too much of this,” said Dominic.
Some time later it occurred to her that she had neither looked at the Coma Berenices nor called Becky back. It would all be fixed in the end, would be as if it had never happened; only Becky was angry and worried and feeling deserted now, this moment, this day, this week, this month, whatever it was. Could you really undo such things altogether?
“I need to call Becky,” she said to Dominic.
“Need must, when the devil drives.”
Gentian thought of the Laurie Anderson song about the devil’s being a rusty truck with only twenty mile, and giggled.
The weather continued cloudy, but she knew that meant nothing. One gray day she said to Dominic, “Since we have all the time in the world, is there any reason I can’t have a bit of it off? I’d like to catch up on my astronomy.”
“Better not,” said Dominic, painting silver lines on yet another circuit board. “The means whereby I keep us undisturbed are tedious to me.”
“Well, I get bored too; that’s why I want some time off.”
“Tedious,” said Dominic. “Difficult.”
“Oh. You mean you can’t keep them up forever?”
“Yes.”
“It’s only after the point where the time machine works that we can start being profligate of time?”
Dominic raised his head for a moment; she thought he was going to quote something, but he only said, again, “Yes.”
Sometimes, since there was nobody else to talk to, she found herself talking to him of whatever she happened to be thinking. Now that Rosemary and Juniper had quit, she had work to do in the museum room as well. The objects there, which Dominic was always wanting arranged in a different order, continually reminded her of something or other; had it not been for discoveries made there she would probably have fled screaming with boredom long ago. It was not as good as astronomy; it was the wrong end of the telescope, not just the other end. Earthward the trouble lies, she thought, turning a small heavy Egyptian cat statue over in her hand.
“I miss my cat,” she said to Dominic, who had just come in with another box of fossils.
“Shoot at tax collectors and miss.”
“You’re not all here today, are you? I want to go see my cat.”
“Cats and monkeys, monkeys and cats—all human life is there.”
Why was she asking permission, and in her own house? “I’m going to go see my cat,” she said, putting the statue down and getting to her feet. “I’ll be back in a little while.”
“A little while will see the end of all.”
Gentian started for the door.
“She’ll love you better when all’s said and done.”
“When the soldering’s done, more like,” said Gentian.
She worked on soldering for some time, reminding herself that patience was required for astronomy too, and she could consider this as practice. She tried to think of it as sweeping for comets; she thought of Caroline Herschel’s register, ruled into squares representing a quarter of a degree, and how she had checked off, night after night, each tiny piece of the sky as her brother, at the telescope, did the actual sweeping.
“But I am not going to discover any comets in here,” she said aloud.
“When beggars die, there are no comets seen; the heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.”
“I thought they were supposed to blaze forth the birth of princes,” said Gentian idly; most of her attention was on a tricky bit of three-dimensional jigsaw work. Dominic had a bad habit of deciding that things should be added after a space was mostly full. “The Star of Bethlehem and all that. Though I guess the leading theory about that is that it was a supernova, only they can’t find it in the Chinese records.”
Dominic said nothing. This was not unusual. Gentian finished what she was doing and squirmed backwards out of the cave she had first made some weeks ago, or months. Dominic was still kneeling where he had been, a fossil in one hand and a pair of needle-nosed pliers in the other.
“Is anything the matter?”
“From the table of my memory I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records.”
“Be my guest,” said Gentian. “I think I’ll take a break and see what’s to be seen through the telescope.”
“The serpent, subtlest beast of all the field.”
“M16’s not very subtle, for a globular cluster,” said Gentian. There were clouds and snow outside, but the lights and all the humming, blinking, and chiming equipment made the attic hotter and hotter.
“We still have no present anchor,” said Dominic. “We need a poem of your fair friend Becky’s. It will be fresh, abundantly of the very present.”
“I don’t know,” said Gentian, slowly. “I’d have to ask her. And she’s mad at me.”
“Fair use,” said Dominic.
“Use all gently,” retorted Gentian, and realized that she was quoting instead of answering him.
“The law allows it.”
“I don’t care about the law. I can’t show you a poem of hers without asking her, and I can’t ask her until this confusticated device is done, because she’s mad at me, and with good cause.”
“If she is not to be angry with you forever, we must have the poem.”
“Which poem?”
“The last one she gave you.”
“How the hell do you know about that?”
“Which doesn’t matter, just that it be the newest.”
“Oh.” That would be the three-sonnet one about Betelgeuse, which was a weird one. It wasn’t one of her favorites; but it was about her and Becky, which very few of Becky’s poems were. “Well, you still can’t have it.”
“Poetry is not a career, but a mug’s game. Poets seek honor; this is one.”
“No.” Gentian thought about it anyway. No, he really could not have that one. But how could he tell which was the newest? She could give him a failure, maybe; the “Garbage In, Garbage Out” one Becky disliked so much. It would anchor them to the near past rather than the present, though; that might be a problem. Why, after all, was she thinking of handing over a copy of a poem as some kind of sacrifice, as if she would not have it after, as if Becky would not have her own copies?
“Would you have to read it?” she said.
“It would be our invocation.”
So much for the idea of using a bad poem. “No.”
“This is the crowning touch; it honors her. The subject matter of poetry is not that ‘collection of solid, static objects extended in space’ but the life that is lived in the scene that it composes, and so reality is not that external scene but the life that is lived in it. Reality is things as they are.”
“No.” The time machine was too chancy. For all she knew, it would consume its invocation. And what was a science project doing with an inv
ocation, anyway, as if it were a religious ritual? “I don’t mean by religion what you mean,” Dominic had said.
“You can’t have anything,” said Gentian, with renewed energy, “unless you tell me why.”
“Tell me why the stars do shine.”
“Nuclear fusion,” snapped Gentian. “You can’t riddle your way out of this. Tell me why or go away.”
“Away, and mock the time with fairest show.”
“You can’t compliment your way out of this, either.”
“The way is the way, and there’s an end on’t.”
“Fine. The end is on it, then.”
“If you would repair your rift with Becky, you will give me that poem; and if you would bid time return and make all as it was, untroubling yourself, you will give me your telescope.”
“That’s just blackmail. How dare you?” She sounded exactly like Juniper. Was this how Juniper felt much of the time?
“I dare do all that may become a man,” said Dominic.
“What did you ask us to help you for, then?”
“Since there’s no help, come, let us kiss and part.”
Gentian, knowing he was quoting and thinking he was being metaphorical, contented herself with rolling her eyes. Dare do all that may become a man, indeed. But Dominic walked up to her, took her by the waist, and kissed her on the mouth.
His own mouth was soft and sweet. He was so uninsistent that it took her a moment, or several, to think that she still wanted to make him stop. Then she thought, but this is my first kiss, and given what a mess this has all been I’m not at all sure I plan to kiss anybody else ever again. It’s awfully interesting, though—it’s like living in your body instead of in your head. She was thinking whether she should kiss him back, so as to have gotten both sides of the experience, when he flung his hands away from her and stepped back so violently that he knocked one of the shortwave radios—the future one, she thought—onto the floor.
Gentian put a hand backwards and steadied herself on one of the monitors. I can see it’s better to be the one who stops, she thought. Dominic was pale and sweaty and looked remarkably sick. Could kissing somebody be as much effort for him as using his own words?
“I am sick,” he said, “and full of burning.”
Gentian knew it was inane, but she said it anyway. “Did you eat something that disagreed with you?”
Dominic’s head came up. “Gentian,” he said.
“Yes, what?” Gentian was becoming alarmed; should she think of calling an ambulance?
“Juniper. Gentian. Rosemary.”
“Should I applaud?”
“Hear the world applaud the hollow ghost,” said Dominic. “Juniper, that hung by the door will keep out the witch unless he count every needle of it. Rosemary, herb of remembrance, whose vigorous growth means a woman rules the household, whose sprigs, laid under the sleeper’s pillow, ward off evil dreams and the visitation of demons. And Gentian. Bitterwort, felwort, wild symbol of ingratitude that dies under cultivation. I know my enemies, but not in such guise. What is worse nor woman was?”
It was the question he always asked, with everything he said and did.
“Is that a riddle?” said Gentian, out of a white-hot and pure fury. “I’ll answer you. You are. You’re worse than all of us put together, you, yourself, alone and nameless.”
Dominic, with a blank face worse than an angry one would have been, stepped towards her. Gentian backed away, reminding herself that there was a hammer lying in the narrow corridor just outside the door. She moved more quickly, jumped through the door, and grabbed it. She put her back against the door into the house; that was better than being trapped in the attic, and she might have time to get it open.
Dominic came out of the control room, but did not follow her farther. In the overbright light all his colors were exaggerated: black hair, black eyes, white face, red lips. He grew bright himself, and brighter, and blazed up, without flames, into such a white cold, blue-white, colder light, brighter than Rigel or the blue giants of the Orion Nebula, that the tears ran out of Gentian’s eyes. He turned and walked away from her, growing brighter still, and larger even as he moved away. She could see nothing, but she heard the drag of the door to the balcony opening, and then the brightness went out.
Gentian sprang forward, retaining the hammer, and went as fast as she could to the front of the house, and so out onto the balcony. It was whitened with ash, or with light. She craned over the railing, not touching it; the cold of the shingled floor was already burning through her shoes. The air was crisp but not so cold as that; the front steps and walk were covered with red leaves. She looked down and to her right, to the Hardys’ house.
There was no house. There were no gardens, no miraculous restoration; there was no lawn, nor any gaping foundation. There was a flat white expanse, like concrete under heavy frost; but other lawns were green, or red and yellow with leaves. A white mist rose from it, like the clouds that billowed out when you opened the freezer on a warm day.
She had used a quotation against Dominic at the last, she realized. She had quoted Tolkien at him, Tom Bombadil’s question to Frodo. “Who are you, alone, yourself, and nameless?” It was still a good question.
She turned back into the attic. The huge bright Sirius lights were out. The forty-watt bulb shone dustily on the heaps and tangles of the time machine. Gentian wandered among them for a little while. All the lights were out, all the monitors and other equipment silent. It was as if Dominic had taken all the power when he went. Feeling that only system would save her, she found her flashlight where she had left it in the Museum Room, and went to check connections.
There were none. She did not ever catch anything in the act of disappearing, but whenever she looked closely at something, she saw less of it than there had appeared to be from further off. It was as though a deep-sky object should show as a rich spiral galaxy, blazing with the individual jewels of its blue and white giant stars, flinging its long spirals of stars and dust across half the field of view, to the naked eye, but then shrink and dwindle and fall together into a single hazy point of light as you used larger and larger telescopes to look at it.
Gentian poked into corners and crawled under things that were not there when she stood up again, and in a very short time found herself standing in the control room, surrounded only by the original objects she and her sisters had carried up to the attic and put there, on the first day of the new year. She walked across the empty, dusty, echoing boards to the museum room. There were two boxes of fossils. She found her fern, a mere etching on gray rock; the ammonite, whitish against gray; the trilobite, rusty brown on brown; a rough oval that might have been the dinosaur egg, or merely a roundish rock.
“Fairy gold,” said Gentian. “Changeling technology.”
Chapter 21
Gentian pushed the short wide door open, slowly, and entered her part of the attic. The hall rug was gray with dust. Dust balls lay in the corners. She opened the door to her own room. It was dusty too, and in the bright sunlight that came through all the southern and western windows, she saw loops and whorls of cobweb. Her bed was unmade. The room was cold, colder than the outdoors. They must be having a warm spell after a frosty one, not uncommon in the fall, and the house had not yet warmed up again.
Maria Mitchell wouldn’t like that much. Gentian went into the bathroom to see if she was hiding under the radiator in there. No cat. The water bowl was dry. The food bowl was empty. Gentian stood in the cold bathroom and felt her heart freeze. She tried to open her mouth to call, but she could not move.
When had she last gone to see her cat? She remembered talking to Dominic about it, but not finding and petting Maria Mitchell, let alone feeding her. The last thing she remembered was Murr’s rising wails from the bedroom, as Gentian sat in the attic with Dominic learning to solder.
Gentian ran down her stairs, calling. She looked in the second-floor bathroom, where Murr would sometimes sleep in the laundry hamper. No cat. She
looked in the sewing room, where Murr would sometimes sit to watch the birds in the crabapple tree. She looked in Rosemary’s room, in her parents’, in her parents’ bathroom.
The doors to all these had been standing open. The door to Juniper’s room was shut. Gentian put her mouth to the crack between door and frame and called again. The thought of going into Juniper’s room was a sore one, as if there were a bruise in her mind. The sun was setting, it was fall, maybe Juniper was home. Gentian knocked. She called, “Juniper!” She called Murr again. She opened the door.
The light of the setting sun dazzled her eyes. In a heap on Juniper’s bed, in the last patch of sunlight, was a mass of cat fur, legs, tails, ears, noses. Black, white; it was Yin-Yang, or rather, Yin-Hang and Pounce. Gentian walked over automatically to pet them, and saw a checkerboard pattern of black and orange, and one orange ear rimmed with white.
“Murr,” said Gentian, and rubbed the top of her head.
Maria Mitchell sprang out of the cat-heap, scattering Yin-Yang and Pounce to opposite ends of the bed. She flattened her ears and hissed at Gentian. Pounce curled up and went back to sleep. Yin-Yang crouched, tail puffed up, making a sound somewhere between a growl and a wail. Gentian reached out a hand to Murr and got a deep scratch for her trouble. Murr vanished under Juniper’s bed.
Gentian sat down on the floor and cried. My cat’s not dead but she hates me. And she’s Juniper’s cat now. And it serves me right, she thought. After a while she got up and took several tissues from the box on Juniper’s bedside table. While she was wiping her face and blowing her nose, Murr came ostentatiously out from under the bed and sat with her back to Gentian, staring up at the computer as if it were the only object in the room.
“I’m sorry, Murr,” said Gentian.
Maria Mitchell growled.
“All right. I’ll come see you again later.”
Maria Mitchell whipped her tail once, and went on staring at the computer. An old reflex stirred sluggishly in Gentian. She was in Juniper’s room; she could look at the teen echoes, or look at Junie’s diary. It would fill in the gaps in her memory, it would tell her what her family thought had been happening. She thought of Dominic’s monitors and their repeating loops. She left Juniper’s door ajar, and went downstairs.