The Seeds of Time (8 page)

“Fine roommates you guys make,” Clio said. “Neither of you can cook.”

“We’re scientists,” Zee said.

Hillis laid out his bedroll and stretched out. Above, a few stars stabbed holes in the gathering darkness.

“Give us a science lesson, Zee,” Hillis said.

“Not dark enough. Later we’ll see something.”

They lay side by side, watching the stars gradually revealed. “We’ve been to some of those,” Clio said. “Ages ago.” A reverie settled over them, and they lay, struggling to understand what it meant, to have been there, ages ago.

“We travel to the past,” Hillis said, “but no one except the mathematicians understand how it’s possible. The rest of us poor nulls, we just go along for the ride.”

“You’ve got to have the math,” Zee said. “When you look at the math, it’s fairly simple. Once Vandarthanan worked it out, it all became so simple. It’s like Pomp and Circumstance. Sometimes I think, I could have written that, it’s so obvious.”

“Somebody still has to break past the Future Ceiling,” Hillis said. “You can still make a reputation.”

“But you can’t get to the future.” Clio said. Then, doubtfully, “Can you?”

“Well, no one’s worked out the mathematical proof,” Zee said, “but theoretically, it’s possible. Vandarthanan said that a traveler to the future would exist in a kind of quasi reality. They would be able to witness events, but not take part in them. He even said that this traveler might be invisible to those in the future, and might appear to them as a kind of apparition.”

“Ghosts?” Clio asked.

“Well, the theory can be wrong. Experimental proof is missing for so much of Vandarthanan’s work. Like traveling to the future and his other work on Cousin Realities.”

“The old parallel-universes idea,” Clio said. A shooting star, spectacular and brief, plunged across the night sky, connecting the dots of the stars Castor and Pollux in Gemini.

“Not exactly. Vandarthanan’s theories suggest that under certain conditions, a parallel universe may spring into being. Only he didn’t use the term ‘parallel universe.’ He called this a Cousin Reality. Because this reality, he says,
would exist in the known cosmos, our own known space, side by side with us.”

“This is the theory that discredited him,” Hillis said. “Poor bastard came up with one last big idea and the establishment pulled the plug on him.”

“It wasn’t the Cousin Reality concept that people found hard to swallow,” Zee said. “It was his ideas of cosmic dissonance. The idea that the two realities would be inimical to each other, setting up a dissonance that would move toward resolution. That one reality would gather strength and the other diminish until the weaker one died out. Toward the end of his life he came to believe that we
did
have a Cousin Reality, and the mess we’ve made of the planet was evidence that our reality was losing a life-and-death struggle with our Cousin Reality. It’s that part that the scientific community rejected. Called it mysticism, not science.”

“Called it bad politics,” Hillis countered. “Vandarthanan made the mistake of getting quoted in the newspapers instead of just obscure scientific journals.”

Clio propped herself up on her elbow. “So they shut him out for criticizing what’s wrong with the world?”

“Yes,” Zee said. “And for using math to do it.”

After that they lay quietly, their high spirits dampened. Finally, Clio struggled out of her sleeping bag. “Gonna go take a pee,” she announced. “You guys can continue the science lesson without me.”

She made her way into the brush, finding a tissue in the inside breast pocket of her jacket. The night was alive with sounds, the scraping and chittering of insects, the breezes splashing through the trees. Clio squatted down to pee.

When she stood up, pulling up her pants, she heard a noise in front of her, saw a movement of shadow, heard a man say, “Might as well leave them down, girl.”

In her surprise, Clio jerked back, hit her head against a tree, and tried to rise with her pants around her knees and her feet struggling to dig in and run. Then the man struck her, with a bruising slap to the side of her face. The blow sent her reeling back against the tree, where she toppled, stunned.

Her ears sang. For an instant she was only conscious of the pain of her body, of her head threatening to crack open and spill all that she knew, all that she was. Then he was smashing her into the ground, and his boots pushed her ankles apart, and she heard noises in the direction of the camp, shouts and trampling feet. His knee was wrenched into her groin, and she cried out in pain as he leaned harder into her, but her shoulders were free as the man fumbled with something, a flashlight.

She twisted her shoulders, punching into his fleshy gut, and screamed with all the breath she could muster, but it sounded like a scream under water. When he flicked on a light, aiming it into her eyes, she stopped screaming and froze as he grabbed at her shirt and clawed his hands across her breasts.

“Pretty, too,” he said, with a twist in his face. He pierced her cheek with a needle, no, not a needle, a scratch pack, and in her thrashing it went in deep. She could smell the man’s cologne: a sweet, vinegary scent that, crazily, reminded her of her eighth-grade boyfriend, Keith Irving. The man held the scratch pack under the flashlight, watching for the color to turn, and when her smear of blood turned into deep purple, like a bruise, he said, “You’re clean,” in a friendly voice, “lucky for you. Well, now, let’s have us some fun.”

Something in the man’s words. In her wooziness, Clio heard
Have us some fun, have us some fun
, and she wanted to strike the words from his mouth. Her right arm flew up to his face and she jammed her thumb into his left eye, and for a moment he reeled backward—just in time to receive her foot in his groin. She rolled away from him, onto her hands and knees, scuttling fast for the brush until she felt a fierce pull on her ankle with a strength that dragged her back, back, and she heard him spit out, “Son of a bitch, son of a fucking bitch,” and then she felt herself whipped over onto her back.

A voice and a flashlight came from above as someone appeared beside them. “Get off her, Cole, you dickhead.”
Another man was standing at their side, shining the flashlight in Clio’s eyes.

“You gotta be kidding! At the point I’m at? You can have her next, asshole.” He pushed her legs wider apart. The other man lunged at him, toppling him off her. They argued, leaving her on the ground, still aiming the flashlight at her so she couldn’t see, but only felt the rocks against her back.

She heard the second man say, “She’s Recon, you know that? Biotime for chrissakes.”

“I wasn’t going to kill her, I was just going to fuck her.” He punctuated the word “fuck” with a kick into her ribs. The flashlight switched away from her face as the men moved off. She heard the second man say, “Don’t want to hurt the merchandise, shithead.”

Clio crawled away from the spot where she had lain, pulling on her clothes, unable to stand. The woods were quiet except for the dry leaves crunching under her hands and knees. She heard a small barking sound. Realized it was coming from her as she emitted short, staccato gasps. She stifled herself, kneeled in the underbrush, and listened for her attackers.

She heard someone call her name. Zee. Zee calling her name. “Here,” she said, but it was more of a croak. Then Zee was crashing through the undergrowth and found her, and knelt down and pulled her into his arms, which were shaking harder than she was.

“Did they hurt you?” he asked. “They didn’t hurt you did they?”

“Yes, he hurt me. He tried to rape me, but the other one stopped him. But he hurt me, a little.”

“My God, my God,” Zee kept saying.

An owl hooted in the blackness. “Is Hill OK?” Clio asked.

“He’ll be OK. They beat him up, but he’ll be OK.”

“Have they gone?”

“Yes, I think so.” Zee pulled her head deeper into his shoulder, surrounding her with his arms. She burrowed, then pushed away as though suffocating, gasping for breath. Shaking hard.

She pulled on his hand. “Let’s go find Hill.”

They went back to the camp where Zee had left Hillis covered with a sleeping bag. He was curled up, on his side, holding his stomach, his ribs, where they had beat him. He cursed softly as Clio examined him for broken ribs. “Assholes,” he muttered, “fucking Nazis.”

“I don’t think anything’s broken, Hill.”

“Sons of bitches kicked the shit out of me.”

“They beat me up too, Hill, they …”

“Goddamn Nazis stole the Leery sapling, that’s what they were after, the plant specimen.”

“So they were DSDE.”

“No, not DSDE, why would narcs care about a stalk in a baggie? Listen, they were Biotime security; followed us from the farm, the assholes.” He winced in pain as he sat up. “You OK?”

“Biotime
did this?” Clio gaped at him.

“No, she’s not OK,” Zee was saying, “they tried to rape her, they mauled her. So she’s not OK, OK?” He was stuffing their gear into the packs, throwing everything together, sleeping bags, eating utensils, shoving it all together. His voice quavered. “And neither am I. We’re getting out of here, let’s get this stuff in the car.”

They made three trips down the road, then walked Hillis down. “They can’t do this,” Zee said. “They can’t just go beating up people, raping women. This isn’t LA, this is America. You can’t just take people into the woods and kick the bejesus out of them. We’re scientists.”

“Shut up, Zee,” Hillis said. He was holding Clio in the backseat, brushing her hair with his hand, over and over. “Just drive.”

Clio tried to cry, wanted a good cry, but all she could do was shake. She had thought she was going to die, they would rape her and kill her, she thought. They had come back for her, down the years, to avenge their man. She had allowed herself to feel safe, after all the years; the event ripple had spread so far and thin, it hardly registered in the present. But events don’t disappear, the future doesn’t carry you away from the past. The past is always there, just
behind you, and then it reaches out and touches you on the shoulder. You turn, and you face the thing you did, and it leers into your face and drives a needle into your cheek.

It was Petya who got Clio to put down the gun. She had been standing, pointing the weapon at the jacket and trousers of the body, because it had jerked once, even after the head was gone. Clio stared at the collar, still pointing the gun, and Petya had come and pried her fingers loose. And then they were running into the darkness, away from the house, its windows still lit bright. She felt the light on her back, saw herself running across the tall grassy pasture, getting smaller and smaller, she and her brother, like they were entering a new land where everything they had before was dead. It was a dreamland, where Petya was finally all grown up. He took charge, kept her hand grasped in his, ran ahead, leading her to a flight of stairs down into the earth, down past where graves were. And then he closed the doors and they huddled in the darkness until dawn, when old Mr. Reesley came down into his basement and found them, and took them up into the kitchen and gave them soup and Fig Newtons, as though they were children. And Petya cried as he ate, but Clio didn’t cry. Her eyes were rigid, made of glass, and the sap of her body pooled way down, in her ankles, her feet
.

They drove through the night. The gas tank was nearly full, and they were grateful that they wouldn’t need to stop. They felt safe as long as they kept moving. Clio dozed off in Hillis’ arms.

Hours later, she became aware that the car had stopped. She fought off the moment of waking, not wanting to remember. It was dawn. Hillis slept next to her, curled tightly into his half of the seat.

“Where are we?”

“We’re headed into downtown. Traffic’s backed up,” Zee said.

“I’ll drive for a while.”

“Don’t bother—since you two are so cozy back there.”

“I said I’ll drive.”

Zee turned around. Traffic was at a dead stall. “Never mind. I’ve driven this far, I’m going to finish it. Besides, you’re not such a hot driver, to tell the truth.”

Clio wound up to lob a response back, then stowed it. Something was going on here and not a driving contest, either. Well, it was obvious. Zee was jealous of Hillis.

After a stony silence, Zee managed to say, “Just kidding, OK?” He reached his hand back to find her, other hand on the wheel, inching the car forward in the line. Clio grabbed his hand, feeling tears surging. He cupped his hand around her head, pulling her forward, closer to the front seat, stroking her hair.

Police sirens wound their way past the line of cars. Then the
whup-whup
of a helicopter.

“Something’s up,” Zee said. “Maybe its a sabotage.” It was still too dark to see anything up ahead. Hillis woke, moaning.

“I think he’s got a broken rib,” Clio said. “We’ve got to get him to a doctor, could have punctured a lung.”

“Why are we stopping?” Hillis asked. “This hurts like hell.”

“Police are all over the place. Something up ahead.”

Hillis groaned in answer.

Clio leaned forward to see the readout on the dash: no alternative routes available, everything was clogged, with people abandoning the freeway, seeking bypasses. Predicted delay: undetermined. This meant it was an incident.

Zee tuned in the radio, and the broadcast was full of the story. Freeway sabotage, a bombing. Dozens of cars mangled. Old Greens taking credit, claiming another victory against the automobile.

“Hope they shut the fucking freeway down,” Hillis said.

“We’re driving this freeway too,” Clio said hotly. “These folks have as much right as we do to drive.”

“Well, we drive once a year, these people practically live in their cars.”

“So just blow them up?”

“Just set an example with a few of them.”

“Christ, Hillis,” Clio said softly.

“Shut up,” Zee said. “I’m calling Biotime.” He was on the car phone.

“What the hell are you doing?” Hillis demanded.

“I’m invoking some privileges. You’ve got a serious injury, Clio’s been beat up, I’ve been driving all night, and I’m getting a chopper. Biotime can damn well pay for it and be grateful we don’t want anything else.”