Sand Glass (28 page)

As for Jared
himself, I listened to his ragged breath, and came close to trying
to wake him several times, so afraid was I that another expiration
of breath might take him with it for good. It was getting towards
eight thirty when he groaned once and moved slightly. I was by his
side in a moment. his eyes were flickering. And then he lifted his
hand to his face, perhaps a movement half in sleep. I waited a few
more minutes. He moved slightly again, and stirred as if about to
turn over. I touched his hand. There was a flicker of eye lashes;
then a tiny reflection of light. The lamp was behind and to my
left.

‘David…..’ it
was barely a whisper. It was pronounced in an odd way. I waited
then Jared suddenly breathed in and rolling towards me and tried to
push himself up onto one elbow.

‘Davey! It was
dark…it is so dark in here,’ he slowly rolled back down, and lay
staring up at me. I reached over and turned the lamp up a little.
Jared blinked a few times, and regarded me steadily. What he
thought I did not know. He breathed out then, a long sigh. His eyes
closed again. I waited a few minutes. His breathing was better,
more regular. A few minutes later, I found him staring at me again.
But this time his awareness was sliding into focus as he searched
my face. He found his voice out of that place where sleep erases
all worlds and floods the mind with forgetfulness.

‘Davey, how
long has it been?’ He reached his hand out and grasped mine.

‘Just wait a
moment,’ I said, ‘then sit up.’

‘Okay.’

I brought the
water carrier. Jared pushed himself up into a sitting position,
swayed slightly and gripped my arm rather firmly.

‘Oh! Some
night….Or something else. I feel like the jungle after a herd of
elephants has charged through it.’ He let go of my arm. He sat up
and rubbed his hands over his face; he accepted the water and
sipped it a little at a time. He handed it back.

‘How is the
head?’ I asked.

‘Really
great….better than average for a Friday night.’ He tried to smile
and looked pained, ‘So how long has it been?’

‘It was about
six hours.’ I said.

‘What time is
it?’

‘Eight thirty
just gone.’

‘Janey?’

‘She’s still
sleeping. She seems okay.’

‘Please wake
her Davey. Please do it. She mustn’t keep sleeping.’

‘Uh…alright.’ I
slid over to her. Jared put his head in his hands like he had a
really vicious hangover.

‘Janey?’ said
her name near to her ear. Nothing. I touched her hand. I picked it
up and held it in my palm. I knelt down and spoke in her ear.

‘Janey, time to
wake up now.’ She moved a tiny amount. He lips pursed and then
relaxed.

'Janey....' I
touched her cheek. She breathed in, her eyes opened; but it was if
she didn't see me.

'Jared?' she
called plaintively, 'Where are we? Talk to me Jared!'

I felt for the
briefest moment a choking sensation. Then I was dragged into what I
thought to be a vision so strong I could not escape it.

'Jared!' Janey
was calling. The sound was different. Remote. I stepped nearer.
There was the car, and the churned up tracks where it had left the
road. There were the distant sounds of other voices. And of other
cars stopping to help. I went forward.

This time I saw
her clearly. She struggled with the seat beat. I wanted to reach
out. To help her. I tried to cry out. I heard my voice, which I had
not expected. She was still struggling. Then she was out and round
to the driver’s side faster than I thought possible. The window was
already open. She reached inside and got the door open.

'Jared!' she
checked him with the rush of panic that surges through your veins.
She was panting, and talking to herself.

She unclipped
his seatbelt. Then I saw the broken windscreen. He was unconscious.
I wanted to help her. But I couldn't. Somehow, I didn't see how she
managed it, she dragged him out. On the grass banking she knelt in
the mud and breathed into his mouth. She was doing it text book.
Keeping the panic at bay, concentrating on what she was doing. I
saw her blood on her leg. I saw the cuts across them both where the
tree branches had whipped through narrowly missing Janey and I
believed hitting Jared a glancing blow on the side of his head.

Why wasn't
anyone coming? But it was those moments stretched out. Those things
that inside slow the clock of our internal landscape. Now I saw
Janey....in all she was. In her strength fuelled by love, she had
lifted her brother out. This slight little thing, in body only. Now
I understood. I urged her with words of encouragement to keep
going. I saw she was struggling, going into shock herself.

'Janey! Don't
give up!' I yelled it as loud as I could. At that moment people
came running. And the sound of emergency vehicles rushing to the
spot.

In 30 seconds
the paramedics were there. They took over seamlessly. Janey
collapsed in the arms of one of them. The place was swarming it
felt, with the people who could save them. The police were there
doing their job. I saw the other car driver being also treated.

A few minutes
later the area was controlled by police, the ambulances having
roared off into the night. The area around Janey and Jared's car
was taped off. Witness statements were being taken. Other cars had
to wait. They were made to turn back the way they had come. In the
star strewn night, as the moon rose, I saw some curious onlookers
who had gathered beyond a narrow bridge just before the point in
the road that Jared had lost control of the car.

One of them was
vaguely familiar. I stared really hard, but could only make out the
general build. It was just the stance I recognised. But if they
turned….. wait, no! the edges of my vision got darker. And then I
was kneeling in front of Janey. I drew breath and coughed until my
eyes watered.

Janey reached
out to me. And Jared was by my side. She looked at Jared and smiled
so clearly; as if she had not seen for such a long time. She let go
of me and reached for him.

‘I thought you
would not wake up! They told me you wouldn’t. But now I know I
lived a different time. In it you were alright again after three
days…. They said you were alright. Tell me it is so. Jared; do you
remember?’ she searched his face. He seemed quite bewildered.

‘My head still
hurts. Janey, I can’t quite see it.’ Jared glanced at me, ‘maybe
Davey can tell us.’

‘I don’t know
what happened after that night,’ I said, ‘but it was different from
before wasn’t it? Janey got out of the car and pulled you out.’

‘Yes, Yes!’
Janey insisted, ‘It was different. You have to be alright. Please
be alright!’

Jared shook his
head, ‘I…. don’t know Janey, please let me think a moment.’ he
tried to detach himself from her. I could certainly see why, she
was overwhelming when she was on a tack of being so insistent.

‘No. Jared.
Look at me.’ She put her hands on each side of his face. He calmed
down, and relaxed. I heard some scuffling along the tunnel but they
didn’t notice.

They stared at
each other face to face. Janey spoke calmly then, her voice was
deeper; of a different timbre: ‘I am here, now. I love you. Do you
remember Jared?’ I watched his face. Something oddly puzzled about
his expression. He seemed to be thinking hard. He looked down. Then
at her face. She spoke again: ‘Remember…. Just before we came on
the first expedition; what seems like years ago. I was telling you
that you were special to me. You know the evening before…. We all
had champagne, just like with this expedition. Too many
bubbles?’

‘Yes?’ he
looked as if it was coming slowly back; ‘everyone went to their
bunks. And we stayed and talked…’

‘Yes. We did,’
something lighted on his face, and again he glanced at me.

‘No. Davey
didn’t know me then, not from his point of view. I was the angry
girl who had left Summerland. And that moment all things were
real…. Except one. I love you Jared. Remember?’

His expression
changed from puzzlement; to astonishment; to an odd smile. Yet it
still flickered with uncertainty.

‘Remember a
girl… who did not remember herself; or anything else. You were they
only one I could see. I felt no connection to anything else.’ She
put her head slightly to the left as she spoke. A gesture I
recognised.

‘You wanted to
stay with me?’ Jared looked as if the memory was sliding out of his
mind again.

‘Yes,’ she
said, ‘And I will tell you. My dear prince, to wake you. I will
tell you this.’

She drew him to
her, closer and closer. Jared seemed quite nervous of her
certainty. He was blinking a lot. Janey always had that effect on
me.

She suddenly
kissed him. Mouth to mouth, not letting him go. He resisted
slightly, and then relaxed and they slid into each other’s embrace.
He let her hold her lips on his for a few moments.

‘Janey!’ Jared
gasped pulling away, ‘I’m…. I’m…. what happened?’

‘I’m telling
you.’ she said, and this time he did not fight her. It was the one
insight I had into the strangeness of the sandglass experiment.
They had met as two strangers and were drawn together in a way that
seemed so obvious, and yet was clouded with no certain story.
Hadn’t we just changed the past? Jared kissed her back briefly
then, as the one she once was. A long time ago she had simply been
Janey the science girl, who charmed you and mesmerised you with her
untamed nature. He sat back looking bemused. He rubbed his
fingertips down the inside of her left wrist.

‘Janey, I
remember these things.’ he said.

She smiled at
him, and then looked at me, ‘Do you understand how the experiment
began?’

‘Do I
understand what?’ I thought I might, but I wasn’t sure how to put
this into words. Something Jared had said to me once, a half
forgotten thing. But I thought it better to let it go.

Jared stroked
her cheek, and kissed her on the forehead, ‘It’s alright,’ he said,
‘I know. I do now. And we shall be what we are because of our
friends. Dear sister, let us choose now, to go home.’

I went over to
my pack, and checked the drugs case that I and Marcia had stowed
there earlier. I got out the smaller epi pens and clicked in the
short dose of time stablisation serum with some of the "A" case
small uppers. As I came back to Janey she turned her right arm to
me without questioning what it was. I took it, and simultaneously
realised that there was a cloth binding round her other forearm:
the left.

‘I have taken
the mark together with you all. Leanna told me about the time you
were there; and how her father had spoken to you Jared.’

‘You know what
he said?’ Jared said, and looked at me again in that curious
way.

‘It was about
Marcia.’ said Janey.

‘Yes,’ said
Jared, ‘so it was. And now we need to find her.’

I was
mystified. I reckoned that the best way to deal with this was to
let it be, until one or both of them explained what they meant. I
saw Janey looking at me levelly. ‘Do you hold anything against me?’
she asked, I had to wait a long time. Enough time to repent of my
former behaviour. I know that the sequence of the experience is
different for you.’

‘You are you?
There is only one now?’ I asked, ‘you came to Base and did all
those expeditions? And then this one. And then here we are
now?’

‘Yes….just
about.’ She let my hand go.

Could I get my
head round the fact that I had been dealing with the same person;
but a different version in time and space. So what had happened to
the girl who went back? Did she get her revenge? Was there still
something they didn’t know that only I remembered? There was really
no point in making things too complicated. This place did that for
you without any extra effort.

‘Okay.’ I
said.

‘You are
looking for another version of me,’ she said, ‘I tell you that only
one remains in the end. It is the way of all things.’

‘She was….?’ I
thought of the girl and her mystery vendetta.

‘A possible
world,’ said Janey, ‘my world. We can only know that myriad of
others when all this is over. I believe; although I don’t have any
proof; that then I will know the truth about myself. Jared and that
girl….well, I think that she felt….how can I put it?’

‘You are very
devoted,’ I said, ‘and that is not something I could ever reproach
either of you for in any way.’

‘She was the
other one I wanted to be.’ And as it narrows to a point, and each
possibility is played out….all things pass through the lens of
circumstance. In this place we are the unsolved equation. The
reaction that is not complete. The soul that has not chosen heaven
or hell, or any place in between.’

‘And what have
I chosen?’ Jared asked Janey, ‘why sister did you look for me?’

‘Because,’ she
said, ‘I will die without you. I will die by slow degrees a little
each day. Until the silence takes it all. I could not bear that
waiting, that my other self endured. She made a model for every
day; and every time there was news she wrote down a few words in
her diary….like our journal. We talked a little….Jared, she missed
you. And that is why I must go back now. So she can rest. So she
can fold into me, that other part. The soul divided must find a way
in time. Heelio understood it all a lot better that I supposed. He
is a very wise man.’

‘Yes….’ Jared
looked thought ful, ‘Do you think we will see him again?’

‘I believe so.’
said Janey.

‘Everything is
possible.’ I said.

Jared hugged
Janey and then got to his feet. ‘I think we need more tea.’ He
said.

Janey laughed,
‘You and your tea! You always said it could work wonders. Perhaps
we should tell Davey about the special birthday present I got you
for that other birthday?’