No Present Like Time

by Steph Swainston

  Each night, I stayed inside my cabin with the door bolted. I tried to meditate into the Shift, but every time I was unsuccessful and extremely frustrated. I tried to relax and empty my mind but I couldn’t concentrate for more than a couple of minutes before I started on another line of thought, for example Tern’s infidelity. After a week, I gave up.

  I put red and yellow wraps in my hair and threaded fat jade beads onto my dreadlocks. I swigged rum. I masturbated myself sore. I lived immersed in sensation for weeks on end until the scolopendium stashed in my paper wraps ran out. I tried to ration it but that just made the craving worse. Since I’ve been addicted in the past, my body recognizes cat and knows how to use it. I knew I could become quickly hooked again and had to be careful, but it was the only thing that stopped me thinking of Tern.

  I slid down the scrollwork to the orlop deck and started searching among the supplies. The strength of the craving is difficult to describe to someone who has never been an addict. It is like an intense hunger, the same deep, terrible need a starving man has for food. It gnaws all the time, from the moment of waking through to the night, a tiny whisper or a cold gale that will push you into the most bizarre behaviors. It made me creep down here to the lazaretto lockers at the stern. Most of my willpower was spent on coping with the constant fear of floating in the middle of the ocean; I no longer had the strength to stand against my yearning for cat.

  The ship’s medical supplies were in a wooden trunk. Unable to pick the lock, I took my axe to it. I sorted through all the various pieces of equipment, steamed-clean scalpels, folded bandages and ointment jars, and came across a cardboard box with struts separating corked glass ampoules. I ran my hand over them and they rattled. I pulled one out and looked at the label. A little skylark logo; Scolopendium. 3% aqueous solution. Do not exceed the dose prescribed. Export interdicted.

  Skylarks. I counted across a row and down a column; there were fifty tubes, a great deal too much for this ship to be carrying. I was convinced that the Sailor must expect a fight on Tris. There were also a number of slender glass syringes in clean paper packets. I tore the end off one and shook it out. It’s a better rush than I’ve had so far. No! God, honestly, Jant, you have no self-control. I put it down, feeling as if I wasn’t in my body, with denial so great I wondered if I were actually here at all.

  I have a choice. I’ll just use it once and then throw all these ampoules overboard. I gave in-yes, I’ll do it-and a flush of relaxation spread through me, a warm feeling of relief as if I had taken the shot already. I hadn’t even noticed how on edge I was, how tightly I had been holding myself.

  I hurried back to my cabin, braced myself in the lowest corner with my sinewy arm across my knees and looked at the inside of my elbow. I was in great shape and didn’t have to tie up, my veins were hard like cables under the skin.

  I felt guilty, then rebelled. Why feel remorse? If any other man aboard knew, the skylarks would be long gone. On the street in Hacilith we kids skillfully used guilt to hold each other back. Like little Eszai, we tried for any opportunity with all we had. But those few who succeeded were brought down by guilt, because they knew their friends were still in the gutter. I’m doing this because I can. Who would say no to such intense pleasure?

  The timbers creaked and I jumped. Every time a wave gulped under the hull I was sure it was about to split and spill us all into raging water. Mist told me that the boards are meant to yield slightly to make the ship flexible. In my mind’s eye the planks buckled, leaks sprayed between them. Frothing water races from the bilges into the hold, erupts through the hatchways; the ship tilts and sinks dreamily intact down to the seabed.

  My mouth was dry with anticipation and I concentrated so hard on measuring the dose that nothing else existed-no ship, no other immortals, none of the sailors in the rigging feeling the breeze through their open wings. I know what I’m doing is wrong. But just once, to get it over with, and that will be the last injection I ever take.

  When I’m hooked, which I’m not, I try to keep a little scolopendium in my body all the time. Drinking it is fine, to keep the level constant, but if it runs out and I dip below the basic amount, then I’m more likely to panic and…do this:

  I pushed the tip of the bright needle into my skin, which separated as the point sank in delicately; deeper. Dark red blood shot up into the barrel and started to diffuse. I want that back, I thought, and pressed the plunger down as quickly as I dared. I lay back with the needle in my arm. My hands spasmed. A wave of contortion passed over me-the ecstasy was almost unbearable.

  We traveled on. The days became indistinguishable. The days smeared into each other. And the sun rose over and over again.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I woke up horrified to find myself still on the ship, and another whore of a day stretching out in front of me exactly like the last. I reached under the pillow for another vial and with the help of scolopendium managed to stall its inevitable onslaught for a few more hours.

  April. Needle scars were making a calendar on my arm. I kept my long-sleeved T-shirt on to cover them. An occasional shower refreshed us and filled the barrels, but overall the heat was oppressive and all the deckhands worked barefoot and stripped to the waist. Our clothes were faded by the sun and mine were patched. I was slightly more shadowy around the eyes, but not so anyone would notice. It suited me, anyway, and cat kept my weight down. The first thing any drug abuse removes is the part of your mind that gives a damn about your health. And there’s an advantage to addiction-cat was a protection. All my anxiety was concentrated on one problem so I dealt with the rest of the world without concern.

  I went to lounge on the foredeck, seeing the ocean plunge away in all directions the same. Wrenn and I watched Stormy Petrel sailing as close to the wind as possible, canted with all canvas out, three hundred meters ahead of us on the right side. Lightning climbed up to her aft castle and waved to us from the rail. He was tanned, and the sunlight had bleached his fair hair.

  He strung a gold-banded compound bow and flexed it, loosing an arrow that looped high into the air. Wrenn ducked and shouted, “Look out!”

  The arrow plummeted straight at me and appeared sticking out of the deck plank not ten centimeters away from my left hand. I sprang up. “Saker! What do you think you’re doing?”

  He couldn’t hear me. He waved cheerfully and pointed at us, then at the horizon.

  “What is that flash bastard on about?” The arrow had a letter tied to it. I broke the thread and unspooled the paper that Lightning had wrapped tightly around its shaft.

  Comet

  By Mist’s calculations you should be able to see the Island of Tris now, if you fly to a height four times the mainmast and stay close to the ships. Look due east. Come and tell us if you see anything.

  LSM

  While I read it, Lightning, who now had Wrenn’s attention, proceeded to show off. He shot an arrow skyward and Wrenn watched it describe a high parabola while Lightning rapidly took another arrow and sent it after the first, shooting straight out in a flat trajectory. As his first arrow came down the second one hit it, spinning it head over flights. A second later we faintly heard the crack they had made as they collided. Lightning did this again to prove the first time wasn’t a fluke.

  “He can hit an arrow in the air!” Wrenn said.

  “Yeah.” Lightning had been passing the last couple of weeks by sitting on the crosstrees and shooting at albatrosses. He halved their feathers to make more arrows. Only the dwindling numbers of seabirds slowed him down. “You should see his trick with an arrow in a cork and a wine bottle.”

  I gave Wrenn the letter, spread my wings and arced up from the stern. I climbed steeply, forcing my fifty-eight kilos into the air. I sensed every ripple in the breeze Melowne distorted with her massive cream sails.

  The ships diminished quickly. I was terrified of losing sight of them in such a vast expanse. I tried to stay above the mainmast of the Petrel, although there was no lift at all. I cou
ld easily outpace them, and then I would be crossing and recrossing the same area of ocean, trying in vain to find them, until I fell from exhaustion and drowned.

  I searched ahead, and saw nothing but more water, so I flew higher until the ornate Petrel was the length of my index finger, trailing rainbows in her bow wave. The ships’ wakes were two Vs around their prows and white veils stretching behind them for hundreds of meters. I glided into a shallow spiral to rest. Either Mist’s calculations are incorrect, or the island does not exist at all.

  I chandelled up, higher still, and looked out east. On the horizon, raised on haze, a dark green patch seemed to float. A mountain! A mountain in the sea! I kept climbing, aware that I was the second immortal ever to set eyes on Tris. The island emerged, summit first. I felt a firm companionship with it, as if it had been set there especially for me. Fluffy white clouds hung over it, and I could just see their shadows on the smooth mountainside. The crest was pale gray with distance.

  There were some crags around the shoreline. Maybe they were cliffs, I couldn’t tell. I stared until my eyes watered. The haze began to dissipate, the perspective suddenly clicked, and I realized I was looking at a town. The white buildings resembled a slope of scree, tumbling from the mountainside down to the coast and perching on what must be lower buttresses of the peak. It was incredibly beautiful, so wonderful I found myself laughing. I whooped, somersaulted in the air and dived down to Stormy Petrel.

  “Oh, my god. Oh god, Mist, you’re completely right! You’re a genius, Mist. I take back all I’ve ever slandered. It’s there, where you said it’d be, and it’s magnificent. Magnificent! I mean, even Awia never had anything like this-”

  “Can you see it?” asked Lightning.

  “He can see it,” said Mist, hanging on the wheel.

  I aligned myself in the wind flow, beside the railings, facing toward her. “I’ve never seen anything like it! It’s so pretty it’s just not true. Like…” Like a piece of the Shift in the Fourlands. I paused, and described it more calmly. A scout is useless unless he gives sensible reports. At sea level, the heat was stronger; it annoyingly slowed my thinking. “I can see the town, though at the moment it’s just a speck. I can see the island’s whole west face-actually Tris is a huge mountain growing up out of the sea!”

  Mist carefully noted a compass reading in her ledger with a pencil stub, and snapped her telescope out from its case. This was utterly fantastic-a new part of the Empire we-

  A gust nearly sent me into the waves. I was losing too much height. I gestured to Lightning, “Chuck me that…and that,” pointing to a water bottle and a hunk of bread. He threw them from the back railing one at a time. I dived and caught them. “I can’t wait to scale the summit. I’m going for a closer look.”

  “No!”

  Try and stop me. I said, “Don’t worry, I’ll be back before your heart beats twice.”

  I half-folded my wings for strength, pulled them down through the air resistance. Mist had said the town was called Capharnaum. I repeated that word aloud as I cruised, the only wholly Trisian word I knew. I couldn’t wait to speak to the islanders in their ancient language. That is, if they didn’t run away at the sight of me. I was used to flatlanders staring, or their outright hostility. Once in a Hacilith café the waiter put a bowl of milk and a fish skeleton on the floor for me when I ordered beer and a sandwich. My gang returned the following night and burned the café to the ground.

  Nowadays I give Zascai something to stare at; I dress up to the role. But surely no Trisian would have heard of a Rhydanne before. I was very tempted to scare them on purpose. I’d have an eager audience, no doubt about that! They will just have to take me as I am, I concluded. After all, they’re part of the Empire and I’m their Messenger as well.

  Over an hour, the island grew larger and details appeared. Dark green bushes on the mountainside became twisted trees, an olive grove. A rugged shape in the center of the town became an outcrop, and on its summit, fifty meters higher than the town’s rooftops, a bright white complex resolved into a series of elegant, airy buildings with fluted columns, much bigger than I expected. It could be the manor house. The outcrop seemed to move across my field of vision faster than the mountainside behind it, so I could tell that it was a pinnacle standing out alone.

  Black flecks on the sea became big canoes with five to ten men paddling in each, riding the surf with great dexterity. They even drew their paddles in and went flying down the funnels of the waves. A white strip underlining the town was a harbor wall of admirable workmanship, nearly three times larger than the lighthouse quay at Awndyn. Rolling surf broke and peeled along it. Elsewhere on the coast, cypress trees extended right down to high-water mark, where the rocks were yellow with lichen and stained black by the sea. The trees were small and gnarled; the Trisians had no chance of ever building a caravel. Breakers boomed on the shingle, deepwater rollers thundered in parallel lines. Above their reach, an amber band of seaweed and a white band of shellfish striped the boulders.

  Capharnaum was like a model. Closer now, and the model came alive, men and women in the streets. A winged lad in a straw hat cast a fishing line, and paid no attention as my shadow sped over him. I soared up, and marveled.

  A warm, delicious breeze blew constantly in from the sea, like the updraft from the hypocaust rooms in an Awian bathhouse. It’s certainly difficult to find lift this good on the mainland. I was flying automatically, so occupied in staring around that I hadn’t realized how little effort I was putting in. I rode the same current with several gulls, who watched with an attitude that said: You can’t be serious. We whirled around each other, but they were the better gliders and they gained height. I peeled out of the thermal to look at the town.

  I glided as slowly as I could without stalling and constantly made tiny adjustments with my legs acting as a forked tail, counteracting the air currents that now came from all directions. Even so I flew too rapidly to see much detail and I could only look down on the roofs.

  Two main streets intersected in the center of Capharnaum. They were surrounded by smaller roads that ran in a neat crisscross pattern, like a grid. The houses were spaced very regularly; it was bizarre, completely different from Hacilith’s sprawl and unlike the graceful curves in which Awians build. Cypresses flanked empty avenues leading north and south into the countryside. Roughly at five-kilometer intervals along the roadside there were tall black and white posts like gibbets, with short planks nailed at right angles to them. Probably some kind of flagpole.

  At the edges the street grid lost coherence and the houses were jumbled together. Trees invaded between them. All the villas were exactly the same size, square and whitewashed, dazzling and clean. The terracotta tiles on their shallow roofs looked like overlapping feathers. Their square windows had alabaster screens instead of glass; their shutters were open. They had porticos surrounding square peri-style lawns or dark green gardens, some with statues. They faced out to sea. It was quiet, unlike Hacilith, it was tranquil. I could see no poor section of town, no slums, no kids standing on street corners. It did not resemble any town in the Fourlands, but maybe when Micawater was founded it looked like this. If I flew any lower I risked being seen. With an acute sense of unreality I wheeled above the town. It’s a dream, I assured myself. It’s all a damn dream.

  Here the warm wind smelled of sage and thyme, herbs growing wild. Shrubs among the boulders bore yellow flowers. At the far north and south extremes of the island, on the gentle slope before the mountainside became steep maquis, there were two other towns, smaller than Capharnaum. Both seemed connected with the sea, but pale green terraced hillsides stepped above them.

  Thin air at last, I thought. I had a brief glimpse of the mountaintop-my god-is that snow on the summit? I wanted more than anything to investigate the white gleams and see if they were snow patches, and roll in them if they were, but Mist would not receive my report kindly if it focused on conditions at the peak rather than in the towns.

  T
he mountaintop was not a sheer arête as in Darkling-it didn’t come to a point. It was a smooth, arid ridge that leaned over into a big bowl-shaped hollow not visible from sea level. It was veiled with chutes of small gray stones. Clouds formed on the edge of the bowl and blew eastward.

  That side of the island looked uninhabited, although it was too far to see any detail. Decaying cracks split the sheer sea cliffs, a drop of at least three hundred meters around which white birds swirled and dived. The black, denticulate reefs below them were like a half-submerged wolf’s jawbone; churning water smashed over the narrow serrated molars and canine points. I determined to warn Mist. But calm and remote, far off in the eastern ocean, two other peaks of smaller islets emerged in a line.

  Tris was fresh, quiet and, it seemed to me, content. My duty to bring news of the Empire to the island will probably be the most important task I will ever have as Messenger.

  I winged back to the ships, which were still scudding stoically toward Tris. The weak wind did not affect the enormous rollers they rode. Petrel’s deck rose up to my feet as I landed next to Mist. “Tris is an archipelago,” I said. “I flew right over; there are more islands on the other side.”

  “Did anyone see you?” she demanded.

  “No. I saw ladies in smocks selling food from the porches of townhouses and boys drying green fishing nets on the harbor wall, but not one of the Capharnai saw me,” I said with dignity, coining an Awian word.

  “When we arrive you must not fly. I don’t want them to know; I mean, you’ll only frighten them. Did you see any vessels other than canoes?”

  “Don’t think so…”

  “What about signs of Insects? Any Walls? Paperlands?”