For All Time

by Shanna Miles

  “Given the time of the attack and the proximity of the outpost to the next Republican allied base and the likelihood of survivors based on the hostility rating of the reb—I’m sorry, the Sueronese, our chances of rescue are approximately three million and twenty-four thousand to one, decreasing by an additional ten or twenty thousand every Sueronese hour,” I say.

  Interesting, he replies, as if I’ve just spouted the scientific names of all the visible native flora and not our imminent demise.

  “My point is that out here it is us versus them, and it doesn’t matter how rich their traditions are or how beautiful their music or food culture may be. They are the enemy and we are the good guys.”

  Do you feel like a good guy? he asks. I pause and take in those scrutinizing eyes and the curious half smile and know he’ll use my answer to further analyze me.

  I blink hard and stumble forward as a strong feeling of déjà vu blooms across my skin.

  He catches me. Our helmets clink a bit, and the pressure of his fingers against my suit seems grossly intimate. One second it feels like I’ve known him forever; the next I’m faced with a stranger and my stomach trembles with anxiety. I press my lips together and straighten myself back up to stand.

  This guy is in the spy unit. He’s literally in my head. And I’ve been talking far, far too much.

  35 FAYARD

  SHE DOESN’T LIKE ME VERY much, or it’s the fact that she doesn’t like being vulnerable around me. Whether it’s personal or general, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.

  She is strong.

  I like strong.

  The quiet presses down on us the farther we wade into the grasslands. I feel the silence like a person standing too close, holding their breath—waiting. The ringing in my ears has stopped now, and though the pain is still there, I realize that something is very wrong. I can’t hear myself swallow. I know my heart is still beating only because I’m still moving and the monitor on my helmet tells me so. I don’t need to be a doctor to comprehend that the damage is significant.

  She dances when she moves.

  Gravity levels are adjusted on base, but the standard g on Beta-Sueron isn’t that substantial, so there’s a certain way you have to walk to keep your pace without wearing yourself out. The Sueronese, obviously, don’t have to worry about that with their massive height and weight, but I’m struggling. She’s got it down. The sway you need to swim on land.

  “Try to keep up,” she says.

  I might do better if I knew where we were going.

  She nods her head into the distance. “There is a copse of rock formations just over that hill. I want to make it there before the suns rise. We’ll be less exposed, and the elevation might help us avoid the interference from the grass,” she explains.

  I don’t understand.

  “Sorry, I forgot you can’t hear it. The wind blows harder at night and makes the grass sing. With the storm coming in, it’s pretty loud. Shame you’re not able to listen. It can be musical.”

  I’m about to tell her about the bottle trees on my home planet, where the aunties hang bottles on the branches to catch wayward souls. When the wind blows, they clink like chimes. But then she holds up a fist and my back stiffens. I feel it, a vibration in the ground beneath our feet. We both drop to a crouch and I crawl closer to her. Even though I know she’ll hate it, I take her six, positioning myself behind her while she sifts, frantically, through her bag.

  Hold your breath, she broadcasts, not risking speech out loud.

  I don’t ask any questions. I swallow air as she detaches my helmet for the few seconds it takes to slide a thin metal stick across my neck, just above my chain. It’s cold, but my blood heats at her touch. Her lips spread into a sweet, almost innocent smile, and in this moment it’s hard to ignore the effect my cryo dreams have on me. I’ve been trying to fight off the feelings of recognition, the hallucinations that I’ve always chalked up as nonsense. This time it feels different. It’s her, not some random girl’s face but a real, living and breathing person instead of a dream, and my body is reacting.

  In the entrance exams I found out I had the eyes of a sniper. I can shoot anything, but I don’t have the heart for combat. I’m too emotional. And it’s my feelings that are getting in the way now—the overwhelming sense of desire now that I’m breaths away from her mouth, close enough to touch. I swallow and clench my fists as she closes my air seal again. This is not the time to wish for a romantic moment.

  I need your DNA signature, she says quickly. Her eyes linger on mine for a beat longer than if I were just another soldier, or so I think. A second later she’s back to business.

  Her fingers fly so fast I barely register what she’s doing, but from the way her teeth are digging into her lip and the rattle of the ground below, something big is getting closer. Her face lights up like the desert sunrise as she finds what she’s looking for. It’s slim like a stylus, with a trigger. She raises it high above her head, but her arm doesn’t reach above the grass line. It doesn’t matter. She squeezes one eye shut as she focuses and shoots. A puff of yellow air dissipates in a second, and then I feel her hand press hard against my chest.

  Breathe, she says, much more calm than she seemed to be a few seconds ago.

  For a split second I can’t remember how to draw breath into my lungs.

  It’ll tingle at first, and then it’ll feel like you’re running full out. It helps if you hum.

  I blink hard. I want to ask her if she’s serious, but I know she is. She’s a field soldier.

  What’s the melody? I ask.

  She sings a bit. It doesn’t make much sense, but the rhythm is easy enough. I get the hook after the third repetition, just in time for my blood to heat as she said it would. It feels like lightning in my veins, and suddenly the grass seems bluer than blue and the few peeking rays of sunrise break through the sky before the explosion.

  Tap the beat on your chest. Your heartbeat will sync with mine.

  “… these expensive, these is red bottoms,” we sing.

  I don’t stop the melody in my head. The ground is rocking so badly we’re knocked backward. Even through the grass I can see the Sueronese warrior above us. He’s maybe three meters, short for Sueronese but still big enough to crush either of us. His hands are over his ears and his eye is bleeding. My heart is beating faster than I’ve ever felt it beat before.

  Hit the store, I can get ’em both! she shouts in my head, repeating the lyrics.

  I shout too and pound my fist across my chest to the rhythm. If we can keep the rhythm, we can control our heartbeats. That’s how sound missiles work: they send out a pulse that your heart connects to and then keep accelerating it until it explodes. I’ve heard that some soldiers hack theirs to songs, so they ride the pulses instead of being overtaken by them, but hearing and experiencing aren’t the same at all.

  The Sueronese warrior opens his mouth wide and I know he’s wailing. Tamar’s hands fly up to her helmet and she stops singing. It’s the Sueronese death cry.

  I pull her close to me just as the warrior falls to his knees. I grip her hands in mine and fold my fingers over hers to bring them to her chest. I yell as loud as I can to guide her back to the rhythm, to bring her heartbeat down and out of danger. If I can’t get her to sync with me, her heart will explode.

  “Focus on me!” I shout.

  She’s shaking. Her body feels small tucked under mine and I want to fold myself around her to keep her safe. She’d probably kick a mudhole in my chest if I tried, but the instinct is there. I keep the rhythm until the final tremble when the Sueronese soldier plummets to the ground. I wait two full minutes before I reluctantly let her go. Her heart rate is still elevated, but I don’t want to put her off. To my surprise she doesn’t scramble to get away from me. Years seem to pass before either of us speaks.

  “That’s an interesting meditation device for a death screamer,” I say.

  “Songs are easier to remember than calculations,” she rep
lies.

  “I don’t think I’ll be able to forget that one,” I say, trying to take in the fact that we were almost toast.

  “Are you taking a jab at me?” she asks. She jumps to her feet and rolls her neck as if she’s just been out for a run.

  “You could have died, you know? Screamers are banned for a reason,” I say, not wanting to dwell on this any longer, except she scared the crap out of me.

  She shoves a hand into her pack and places something into my hands.

  “A knife? Eh? Analog,” I say, trying to put a little levity into my voice.

  “It’s small, approved for transport, and can cut through bone. Let’s check out big boy.”

  The warrior is still breathing when she severs his head with a much bigger blade she assembles from her pack. She does it quickly and without commentary. The cut is clean and my mind says that this is a kindness, that to leave him here to die slowly and alone would have been more barbaric, but I’m not completely convinced. He didn’t attack us; he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Does that have to be a death sentence?

  Her eyes flick over to me as she cuts the locator from his embroidered chest plate.

  “This will help us navigate our way back to base camp,” she explains. “From the look of his boots I’d say he was on foot, so there’s no chance of any transport. Help me get his boots off.”

  She drops down to her knees and tucks the locator into her bag.

  “His people will come looking for him soon. Those stones set in his nose bridge means he’s betrothed. His partner shouldn’t find him like this,” she replies.

  I didn’t think she’d want to take the time to do this for an enemy, but it does ease my conscience a fraction. She stands and chews her lip for a moment like she’s thinking, and then bends again to start to unlace. It takes longer than I thought we had time to spare, but the laces are intricate and her slim fingers far more deft than mine.

  “Do you play an instrument?” I ask.

  A smile ticks at the corner of her mouth before she drops it.

  “Not anymore. I played pinalyn for six years. I had an opportunity to take the exam for the Interplanetary Oirchestra, but my chances weren’t high. Why?”

  “Your fingers. They look… like musician’s fingers,” I say.

  She doesn’t comment. Whatever emotion she has, she’s keeping it for herself. We work in silence for a few minutes, but I know she’s thinking about something. Her brow furrows in a way that tells me it isn’t just the laces she’s concentrating on.

  “When they called us up to fight, did you know I was a girl?” she asks.

  “I had a suspicion.”

  “Did you go easy on me?”

  “No. I had a cracked rib. I couldn’t afford to be gracious. Besides, I didn’t think a girl who’d won her last two matches would appreciate something like that. And while we’re on the topic, thanks for going easy on me.”

  “I didn’t go easy on you.”

  “You knew I had a cracked rib. You could have done some real damage,” I add.

  “I was just being… fair.”

  When we finally get the boots off, our helmets adjust to level-six filtering. The smell must be pretty bad.

  “We’ll set them here next to his head. I’ve seen it done in observations, although I’m not sure why,” she says.

  “They believe you can’t walk into the afterlife with your boots on. Ideally, a family member would remove the boots; there’d be a ceremony,” I tell her.

  “We don’t have time for that, and who knows how long it’ll take for them to find him without his locator. This is better,” she says, her mind made up.

  “If they can find him without the locator, they can find us. Can’t they?” I ask.

  I can tell she’s drawing in a deep breath by how her chest rises. “Yup. Sucks, don’t it,” she says. Then she crouches down and waves for me to follow her before sprinting into the grass.

  I don’t hear the dart—I can’t—but I feel it, sudden and sharp as a snakebite, with venom so potent I don’t even get a chance to turn around.

  36 FAYARD

  I SMELL THE RIVER BEFORE I see it, moving water that reeks of life and death. When I open my eyes, it rushes below me at the bottom of the hill, gray like the sky above it. Glass explodes nearby. Soon the scent of the river gives way to char. My nose stings from the fumes, and I see smoke rising from a city in the distance. I don’t recognize it. Too much wood, too much stone. The architecture is all wrong. Uneasiness and disorientation steel my spine, and I try to stand, but a dainty gloved hand holding a pair of delicate binoculars presses down on my thigh to stop me.

  It’s Tamar. Her biosuit is gone, and she’s in a purple dress with a high collar and small buttons trickling down from her neck to her chest. She’s holding a white lace umbrella over her head in the other hand.

  “Where are we?” I ask.

  The corners of her mouth turn down in a frown as she adjusts the binoculars and considers something in the distance.

  “Paris, 1789,” she mutters. “Earth.”

  “Earth!”

  “Oui, monsieur. There is about to be a revolution. See?”

  Her dainty hand points to a couple across the river. They’re arguing.

  “The boy in the plum-colored waistcoat and stockings is you, and the girl in the periwinkle frock is me. He’s trying to convince her to come with him to New Orleans.”

  “She doesn’t look too interested in the deal,” I say, beating back my confusion to follow the thread of conversation. I look behind me, under the bench, lift up my feet to test the gravity, anything to help me determine whether this is a dream or a simulation. Nothing gives me anything to go on.

  “The Civil War is nearly seventy years in their future. Louisiana is notorious for its treatment of slaves, the gens de coleur as well if you consider the Knights of the White Camelia. A Paris in flames might be better than all that. There is also the opportunity for her to train under the famed composer Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges.”

  “Long title.”

  “Oui. He was one of the queen’s favorites, as close to the nobility as a Black man can get, back when that meant something. He’s in London at the moment, so chasing that dream is a bit reckless.”

  “But—”

  She places a gloved finger to my lips, and my mouth vibrates from the contact, like it’s a button that she knew just how to push.

  “Wait. This is the good part.”

  The guy, or the other me, gets down on one knee. I can’t hear what he’s saying, but I can assume by the way the other Tamar wraps her arms around his neck that he’s gotten her to agree to whatever request he’s made.

  “Ah! Young love,” Tamar says.

  “Great. Happy ending. Can you tell me why we’re here? What all this is?”

  She looks at me, eyes full of laughter, like I’ve just told her a funny joke. “Happy ending? Silly boy.”

  I pull her hand from my cheek and hold it in my lap. She’s acting very strange in what is disconcertingly an even stranger situation.

  “Why are we here?” I ask, my voice soft, my gaze searching for an answer hidden in her expression. I’ve heard of mind worms that can extract information from your subconscious. Make you see things that aren’t there. This isn’t like any dream I’ve ever had. I’ve never watched myself from the outside.

  “I don’t know,” she replies with sincerity.

  “Is this real? A vision? A dream?”

  “A memory, maybe,” she says, her eyes looking past me to something I cannot see. Then she shakes her head. “I don’t know.”

  “What do you know?” I growl, suddenly angry but trying hard not to scare her.

  She leans close as if she’s going to tell me something, her expression shining with a secret. “You need to wake up.”

  “What?”

  “WAKE UP!”

  My body jerks as I sit up straight, eyes wide open. Restraints bite i
nto my wrists, and my stomach roils with the aftereffects of what I can only imagine is poison.

  They got us.

  I knew the moment she looked at me that something was wrong. Maybe if I’d heard it, I could have known they were flanking us, I would have known where to run. But as my commander would say, if wishes were fishes, we’d never starve. They hit us both with tranquilizer darts. If they were bullets we’d be dead; synth lasers and there’d be nothing left of us but bones.

  They’ve dragged us to some hidden rebel outpost. Who knows how long we’ve been out or how far they’ve dragged us from our original location. A Sueronese woman, tall and lean with skin the color of bellflowers, pushes a communication device in front of me.

  “It won’t work,” I tell her, trusting that the old tech is translating correctly. It’s not a Republican design, but I’ve seen some similar to it, if a little bit newer. “My ears are injured.”

  She shakes her head and says something in return, but I can’t make out the shape of the words; her lips are hidden behind her beaded headdress. The communicator lights up, but the translation is jumbled and the grammar is off as it scrolls across the screen. I’m getting frustrated, and by the way she kicks the dust in front of me, she’s downright angry.

  I switch to the little Sueronese I know, rolling my r’s and hitting my consonants extra hard. I lower my pitch at the ends of my sentences to show deference, and grant her the honorific of “grandmother,” though I am sure she’s still a maiden by her people’s standards.

  “Grandmother, I beg your forgiveness for my existence. My sister and I are only travelers.”

  She stops in front of me, but I don’t look up. I keep my eyes planted on her toes, stained an even darker shade of blue from walking barefoot on the mowed grass. Her large hand grips my chin and thrusts it upward.

  “Speak, child,” she says, or possibly, “Confess, insect,” or some other combination. The words light up and scroll very quickly. The vines are digging into my wrists, and Tamar is still unconscious beside me. At least they’ve turned her onto her side so she won’t choke on her own vomit.