Blue Shifting (25 page)

Kim launched herself at Katia, almost knocking her off her feet. "Soldiers – soldiers got me!" she sobbed. "Greg saved me! Soldiers wanted shoot me!"

"Kim?" Katia stroked the distraught girl's hair, looked up at Janner.

He sank on to a chair. "She was stopped by a patrol for breaking the curfew. It was pure luck I heard them. I managed to convince them she was my daughter." He found himself laughing edgily, overcome with the thought of how close they had been to tragedy.

"Greg saved me!" Kim said, staring at Janner with tear-filled eyes.

"You saved us both," Janner corrected her. "An officer asked her who she was, where she came from. Christ, I thought that was it – but she spoke, she actually spoke..."

Katia held the girl at arm's length. "Where did you learn to speak English? Why did you not speak to us before now?"

Kim lowered her eyes, silent. Janner took her hand. "What's your name? I mean, your real name? Can you tell me?"

She looked up, shyly. "My name is Tan Yung," she said.

"Hey," LJ called, his mouth full of food, "pleased to meet you, Tan."

They ate for a while in silence, making in-roads on the pile of food LJ had ordered. Around them now, the city was like any other; distant traffic droned, people strolled through the park.

Janner said, "I guess we're in Africa somewhere?"

LJ flapped a paper, the N'Djamena Times – Chad. Banner headlines proclaimed continued civil unrest, a six till six curfew. From the sublime, Janner thought, to the ridiculous.

Katia indicated a multi-storey hotel overlooking the park. "LJ said we should stay there today."

"I reckon we deserve a little luxury," LJ said. "It's gonna get hellish hot later."

~

They booked into a suite of adjoining rooms after breakfast. Janner lay on his king-sized bed after taking a shower, luxuriating in the cool acres of the cotton sheets. But every time he closed his eyes and tried to sleep, his mind re-ran that morning's sequence of events. His imagination enlarged upon them, took off into unscripted, alternative possibilities: what if he hadn't happened along when he had; what if Tan had been unable to speak English?

He saw her lying dead in a pool of blackened blood...

Someone knocked on the door. It was Tan. "Katia wants you come quickly. She argues with LJ!"

Tiredly Janner hoisted himself from the bed, hurried into the next room. Katia and LJ were facing each other, silent and staring as if in some kind of impasse.

Katia flicked a glance at Janner, as if reluctant to take her eyes off LJ.

"What's going on?" Janner asked.

"You ask him!" Katia snapped.

Janner looked at the tall American, who was shuffling uncomfortably in the middle of the room. "LJ?"

"Like I told Katia," he mumbled, "I'm going to my embassy. I'm gonna tell them all about the crazy shit going on-"

"I said no," Katia interrupted. "I do not trust people in power. Who knows what they might do with us? I stopped LJ from leaving. I locked the door." She indicated the door to the hall behind her.

Janner said, "Why tell your embassy. LJ? What do you think they'll be able to do about it?"

LJ looked uneasy. "They might have experts."

"Experts?" Janner sneered. "Experts in what's happening to us?"

"It might've happened to others before us, only it was covered up then. They might know how to treat us."

Janner nodded. "Too right. They might just consider us all too much of a security risk and bump us off. I'm with Katia on this one. I don't trust Governments, and I especially don't trust yours."

LJ gestured feebly. "I don't know how much longer I can go on like this, Greg. Never knowing what's gonna happen tomorrow. Jesus, it's as bad as Nam. The uncertainty from day to day... How long will it be before we hit some war zone? What the fuck do we do then?"

"And you seriously think you'd help us by telling your Government?" Janner asked. "Do you think they'd believe a word you tell them? 'Excuse me, but overnight I've been mysteriously granted the ability to travel across the face of the Earth in an instant.' They'd probably lock you up!"

LJ grinned. "Good. Then they'd soon find out I was telling the truth. And the next city I find myself in, I'll go tell the embassy there, and soon they'll have all these reports on me from all over the world."

"And they'll round us up and cut us up into small bits just to see how we do this miraculous thing."

LJ hunched his shoulders. "Are you two gonna try to stop me?"

Janner sighed. "I'd like to, LJ, for your own good. I don't want to see you hurt. But I can't stop you-"

"Greg!" Katia remonstrated.

"If he doesn't tell them today, then he'll just not meet us tomorrow and inform the embassy then." He looked back at LJ. "You can go, but do me a favour. Don't mention us. Tell them about yourself if you must, but leave the rest of us out of it."

LJ nodded. "Fine, okay."

Reluctantly, Katia dropped the keys into his palm, stood aside as he made for the door. He turned. "I really need to tell someone about this," he said. "I want to know if they can do something for me. I want an end to it." He closed the door behind him.

Janner appealed to Katia. "What else could I have done?"

She smiled. "I just hope he keeps his promise and does not tell them about us."

~

Hours later, Janner opened his eyes and rolled over in bed. The room was in darkness. Beyond the curtained windows the city, under curfew, was still and quiet. Janner dressed and made his way to the next room. The smell of food made him hungry.

Katia was sitting on the floor, the remains of a meal before her. "Greg, here is some for you." She indicated a serving trolley. "I ordered enough for everyone."

Tan was stretched out on the bed, intent on the comics page of the paper LJ had bought that morning.

Janner yawned. "What time is it?"

"Almost ten."

"Have you slept?"

She nodded. "I am feeling awake and ready for a new city."

Janner selected a plate from the trolley, sank down beside her and ate. The chicken salad was good, and he was famished. He had to admit that he'd eaten better over the past few days than when he'd cooked for himself over the last ten years.

"No sign of LJ?"

Katia shook her head, without comment, and poured two glasses of red wine.

Suddenly, Janner felt uneasy, no longer safe – as if expecting a dozen CIA agents to invade the room at any second.

"It'll serve him right if they've locked him up," he said.

"You do not really mean that, Greg."

Janner looked up. She was watching him. "No, actually I don't."

"Why do you try to hide your feelings so much?" she asked.

Because, he said to himself, not to hide my feelings would be to admit that I have feelings – and that would make me vulnerable. It was difficult, after ten years, to discover things about himself which he thought he'd long since lost.

Perhaps sensing his unease, Katia asked, "Tell me about your job as a forest ranger, Greg."

He shrugged. He told her about his job, the daily routine, the natural beauty of the mountains. By the time he'd finished, he realised he'd compressed the highlights of years into just thirty minutes.

"That sounds so exciting," Katia said.

Janner laughed. "Don't you believe it. You probably had more excitement in one week at school than I had in a whole year."

"Oh, no – you cannot be serious. If only you knew what it was like."

"You sound almost glad to be out of it."

"In a way, I suppose. Since my father died, I threw myself into it. It was my whole life. Perhaps it was unhealthy."

He asked her to outline a typical week in Leningrad, and she laughed and fell to the task with humour. Is it, Janner wondered, merely the fact that Katia is the first woman I've spoken seriously to in ten years, or do I really find her – as a person – attractive?

She was interrupted by a quizzical grunt from the bed. Janner looked around. Tan was sitting up, staring at them. "I not understand," she said.

"What do you not understand?" Katia smiled.

Tan shuffled off the bed, dragging the N'Djamena Times and the Townsville Gazette with her, the pages like sails in her small fists.

She wafted them on to the floor, smoothed them out. "Look," she said, pointing at the dates on the masthead of each paper.

Janner looked.

The date on the Townsville Gazette was the 15th of July.

The date on the Times – today's newspaper – was also the 15th of July.

"Something is wrong," Tan said.

"But it's impossible," Katia said. "It was the fifteenth when we first... shifted. That was five days ago." She looked up, her eyes wide – and Janner saw something of his own shock reflected in her expression.

The 15th of July had been the day, ten years ago, that Janner had turned his back on civilisation.

He said, "Everything's impossible – our shifting around the world, the fact we arrive at five
everywhere
, and now this."

"Perhaps the Times made a mistake," Katia said, standing and moving to the phone.

"
And
the Townsville Gazette?" he asked.

Katia got through to reception and asked for today's date.

She waited, Janner and Tan watching her.

Silently, she nodded. She replaced the receiver.

"It is the fifteenth," she whispered.

Tan frowned down at the newspapers.

Katia sat next to the phone, her expression stricken. When someone knocked on the door of the far room, she stood and hurried off to answer it, as if to distract herself from her thoughts.

Seconds later LJ staggered into the room, a concerned Katia behind him. He reeled against the wall, slumped to the floor and regarded them. The neck of a whisky bottle protruded from the pocket of his lumber jacket.

Janner helped him up and into a chair. The big man came compliantly. Katia knelt beside him. "What happened, LJ?"

He stared straight ahead, drunkenness giving him a lugubrious, hang-dog expression.

"Did you get to your embassy?" Janner asked.

"They wouldn't listen to me," he said at last. "The bastards wouldn't even listen!"

Katia clasped his hand. "Perhaps that is just as well."

"No!" LJ bellowed, frightening both Janner and Katia. "No... We need help, all of us. If it is aliens... we need help. We can't cope alone, just the four of us. What can we do against all these... these
aliens
?"

Janner and Katia exchanged a look.

"I will make you some coffee," Katia said.

"I don't want any fucking coffee!" LJ cried.

"LJ," Janner said – if he couldn't reason with him, then perhaps he could shock him to his senses: "LJ, does the 15th of July mean anything to you?"

LJ looked up, focused on Janner with difficulty. "What d'ya mean?"

Janner grabbed the papers, thrust them at LJ. "It's the 15th, LJ. Every day, for the past five days, we've been living through the same day – or rather the same date."

"The fifteenth," LJ repeated, and closed his eyes.

Janner wasn't prepared for what happened next. LJ exploded to his feet, knocking Janner off balance. Raging and roaring, he strode out of the room, through the connecting door to his own room. Janner picked himself up and gave chase. The American had flung himself on his bed, face down. Janner reached out. "LJ, look... It's the same for all of us. If you can talk about it-"

LJ roared and lashed out, catching Janner a sideswipe across the cheek. "Leave me alone. Just get the hell out!"

Janner stared down at the big American as LJ sobbed into his pillow. He left the room silently, closing the door behind him.

Katia looked up as Janner emerged. "Perhaps we'd better do as he says, leave him alone" he said. "He'll be sober by morning." He wanted to ask Katia what significance the 15th had for her, but he was shaking from the exchange with LJ – sorry that he'd provoked such an angry response from the American. He had no desire to cause any more emotional trauma.

He was about to return to his own room when he saw Tan's expression. She was kneeling on the floor before the spread papers.

"Tan?" Janner said. "Tan, what's wrong?"

The girl's mouth was open and tears streamed down her cheeks.

Katia moved to her side and took Tan in her arms. "Tan, please, tell me..."

In barely a whisper, Kim said, "On the 15th of July,'76 or '77, my mother, father – they were teachers..." She stopped there, unable to go on for the sobs that constricted her throat.

"What happened?" Katia asked.

Touching the newspaper before her, Tan said, "My mother and father... When Khmer soldiers came to my town, they kill many people. They come in my house one morning. We were eating, all together. My father, he sees soldiers coming, he tells me to hide. So I go into small cupboard. A long time I wait, and then soldiers come into house. They take my mother and father..."

She hung her head, her mouth open in a silent sob. Katia stoked the girls hair, looking up at Janner with pain on her own face.

She took a deep breath and went on, "Soldiers, they take my mother, my father into the street and make them kneel and shoot them –
phitt
,
phitt
– in back of head. I stay in house a long time, but soldiers find me..."

Janner closed his eyes, recalling Tan's terror that morning when confronted by the soldiers in the alley.

"I think, they will kill me now, like they kill my mother and father. But they don't. They beat me and throw me in river again and again so that I nearly drown, so that I think each time I will die, but they pull me out and ask me questions. They ask me who were my parents, and I want to tell them – more than anything I want to tell them – but I know if I do, they will kill me too." She gave another sob, her shoulders shaking.

At last she went on. "They take me in truck a long way, then leave me with many other people in prison camp – a re-education camp. I no speak, never. In Khmer camp they kill me if find me educated, like they killed my mother, my father. So I keep quiet. Say nothing. Later I escape with other people, walk to Thailand. I live three years in refugee camp, say nothing."