Time Past (26 page)

“Eleanor, we need to be able to decide these things for ourselves. That’s all. We might decide to continue with ConFleet protection. We might decide to provide businesses with bridging loans. We might decide to ask all traders to bring medical supplies as a condition of station use, I don’t know. The important thing is that we decide these things for ourselves.”

She sighed, unconvinced. “You could be right. And sorry to hit you with it when you’ve just come back.”

“Believe it or not, it’s something I thought a lot about when I was away.”

“You’d better go and find Murdoch. He’s not really going to arrest you, is he?”

“I don’t think he’s got much choice,” I said gloomily. “If he doesn’t, we can’t support his claim to have brought me back, and he may be charged with possession of jump-drive technology as well.”

“Was he in the same place you were?” She emphasized “the same place,” obviously annoyed at my secrecy.

“For a couple of weeks.”

“Thought so. Physically, he’s not as affected as you.” She raised her eyebrow speculatively at me, obviously wanting a report on our personal relationship, too, but I was tired and my mind was full of other, less pleasant things. Like the ConFleet cruiser waiting at our front door.

“Good night, Eleanor.”

“Good night, Halley.” She watched me go, one finger tapping the monitor frame.

I wish she wouldn’t do that. It confuses the input sensors.

Nineteen

I
left the hospital by its Alpha ring exit. Jocasta’s corridors seemed very enclosed after the skies of the out-town. The wide throughway glowed blue in the night light. We kept diurnal rhythm on the station by tilting the side mirrors on Gamma and Delta rings, and by tilting the main reflecting mirrors above Alpha ring. Most species needed the illusion of some kind of day and night, and on Jocasta we kept a rhythm of twelve hours daylight, one each of dawn and evening half-light, and ten hours of darkness.

The Security constable who had waited outside Jago’s office told me Murdoch had prepared one of the guest officer’s quarters on Alpha. Better than the brig, I quipped, but he simply said yes, ma’am, and looked straight ahead. He had a large nose that he kept wiping with a cleanchif and his collar was done up crooked below an unfamiliar face. Perhaps he’d come to the station while I was away. It increased my out-of-place feeling, and I didn’t say anything more as he escorted me back through Alpha ring. We passed through the neat streetscape of the sleeping business quarter, far removed from the bustle of lower-ring commerce, then along the Bubble’s main corridor with its maze of offices to either side. Our destination was the Con-Fleet and EarthFleet officer and guest quarters on the other side of the Bubble.

It was warm after Sydney’s winter, and the humidity up here in Alpha was comfortable, unlike down in Delta ring. The gravity was less, too, one of the benefits of living in the upper ring. Another benefit seemed to be satisfaction in being able to afford living where most of the station could not. Most of those who could afford it were from the Four. This caused much resentment despite the revenue that Alpha rent brought to the station.

It seemed so familiar. From the out-town, we could see the spires of the city and the highways curling across the skyline to the eastern coast, where those who could afford it lived a life that hadn’t changed significantly for fifty years. We’d never be able to do anything about similar divisions here until we got out of the Confederacy. Neutrality wasn’t an option, it was a necessity.

Small things caught my eye; a loose conduit that rattled, alien writing, the scents of food plus alien body odors, whiffs of cold machinery from maintenance panels, the rich, repellent smell of a recycling vent. In the Bubble, what seemed like kilometers of EarthFleet-blue walls, section headings, door signs, noticeboards. All familiar, but somehow removed from myself.

I kept remembering things from the out-town that I’d forgotten to do—a letter I forgot to give Florence, the milk bill that I was supposed to remind Grace to pay, Will’s science project that we’d only half finished... a band of grief tightened around my chest and made me stumble on nothing, because my vision was blurred with tears... surely this would pass?

My grandmother said grief doesn’t go away, it just gets older with you.

Murdoch had put my photoimage from Las Mujeres out on the desk of the guest quarters. The small rectangle stood alone on the polished surface; the interface monitor was built into the wall beside the desk and the controls into its top. The rest of the room was as impersonal as the desk. A small living area, a single sleeping room with narrow bed, a door off the sleeping room that contained a hygiene cubicle.

I peered in the doorway of the sleeping quarters and was surprised to see my other possessions: a red, gold, and orange scrap quilt, folded on the bed beside a small pile of nonregulation clothing, including a pair of battered running shoes. Someone had also laid out my paper books, a couple of small ornaments, and a red lacquer box inside a clear case. The lacquer box contained medal ribbons, a couple of old coins, a magnetic stud from my first construction job, and an old locker key.

Nice of Murdoch to try to make me feel more at home. But like the unfamiliar faces in the corridors, it merely heightened my feeling of being out of place. Part of me wanted to linger in the past. It had only been a couple of hours, for goodness’ sake. Less than a day since Will died. Less than a day since I’d been a hundred years away. Less than a day since I’d been so desperate to get back here, where I’d imagined I belonged.

I paced from desk to wall, around the comfortable chairs and the convenient low table. On twenty-first century Earth they called the disturbance in people’s diurnal rhythm when they traveled from one time zone to another “jet lag.” So what was I experiencing now? “Time lag”?

The photoimage on the desk caught my eye and I stopped to look at it properly. Speaking of the past...

It was a monotone, 2-D photograph; the only thing my great-grandmother left me. The paper inside the clear casing was in its original form, faded and tattered around the edges.

Five women stood together on dusty ground beside a great fig tree, in front of a rough concrete wall. My great-grandmother, tall and scowling at the camera. Marlena Alvarez, plump and calm. Three others who had risked everything to say to the militia and the police and the gangs, enough is enough.

Five women beside a tree. In a town that had nothing. During the last decade of Earth’s purely human history. In seven years the Invidi would arrive and everything would change.

The photoimage was as familiar as the reflection of my own face. I’d looked at those figures all through the blockade and drawn comfort from them. But then I went to their century and saw the world behind the image. Instead of a window into another world, the photoimage was now a facade covering a world not so very different from our own.

Alvarez seemed to look directly at me, a frown creasing her heavy brows.
If our world is like yours,
she seemed to say,
what are you going to do about it?

It’s all right for you, I thought. You never had any problem with the difficult choices. You never did anything and wondered later if you’ve screwed up completely.

In the out-town, Jocasta’s neutrality problems had seemed a long way away. Now they loomed immediate and complex. So what? a voice inside me scoffed. Like Stone said, you’re not head of station anymore. You should have known they’d find out about
Calypso II,
the voice persisted, and relieve you of duty, but you went ahead with it anyway.

I went ahead with it because getting the jump drive to the Nine is important. In the long run. I wondered if Alvarez would have seen the logic behind trying to keep hold of the Invidi ship. I didn’t want to look at her photoimage. She wasn’t the person I’d imagined, and even then I couldn’t live up to her.

I turned to the bed and picked up each item of clothing, the books, the box. My hand shook as I held it and the things inside rattled. Things that were memoirs of a time when it was all right for me to be just an engineer.

Maybe it’s not Alvarez who isn’t the person I thought she was.

We couldn’t have stayed in 2023 and explained to Grace, could we? It wouldn’t have worked. An Serat knew what I’d do because I’d already done it. The whole thing, the whole stupid loop was a setup. That’s what Invidi do— they let you act, and it turns out to be for them. No use thinking if I hadn’t entered the competition, if I hadn’t trusted Levin, if I hadn’t salvaged
Calypso,
if we’d stayed...

A brief vision of what it might have been like flashed through my mind. What if we could have helped the police catch Levin? We could have helped Grace cope. The many-colored kaleidoscope of possibilities opened, then shut, leaving the gray present shutting tighter around me.

With a spasm of anger I hefted the box, ready to throw. Anger at An Serat, at the Confederacy, at myself... I didn’t know what, but dammit, I wanted to smash something.

We had to choose—go or stay. We had to choose—clean up that mess or deal with the mess in our own time. And how I was going to do that, I didn’t know.

My eyes met those of Alvarez and I let the box drop back on the bed. “Well, what do you think I should do?” I said idiotically, and began to cry.

Twenty

F
rom where I sat on the bed, the time indicator on the interface panel in the other room was a green blur. I wiped my eyes on the back of my ConFleet blue sleeve—dark navy, not EarthFleet sky blue. For years I’d resisted changing my Engineering corps maroon for this color, now I was stuck with it, for a while anyway.

When I focused, the green numerals said 0800. That couldn’t be right. I’d only sat sniveling here for a few minutes.

The door buzzed.

“Door open,” I said, then hurriedly wiped the rest of my face.

Murdoch peered inside, then came in. He carried a handcom and wore a nonregulation soft shirt over fatigues trousers, which made him look more like Bill McGrath of the out-town than Chief Murdoch of EarthFleet Security. I wasn’t sure if that was a good idea. Right now I needed Chief Murdoch’s advice rather than Bill’s.

He stood in the doorway of the sleeping room. “You still up? It’s 0300 here.”

I peered at the timer again. The eight was indeed a three. “That would mean something if we knew how much time passed while we were in the Invidi ship.”

“A hundred years or so, wasn’t it?”

“You know what I mean.”

He looked at my red eyes, then dropped his own sympathetically. “Yeah. Felt like a couple of hours.”

The pain in his voice was too close to how I’d been feeling. I looked away so I could blink back the tears without Murdoch seeing. A sharp-edged lump blocked my throat when I tried to swallow. Talk. Talk so the lump will have to go away.

“Bill, why did Levin do it?”

His mouth was tight, holding in emotion. “I told you, I don’t know. Could’ve been trying to see how strong the Invidi were. An attack on U.N. authority. A way to get rid of us…”

Levin had used us and there was no way we could get back at him. We’d been made fools of by a dead man.

“Is there anything in the files on him?” I said.

“Nope, I already checked. Doesn’t mean he never did anything worse, though. Just that he never got found out. Or that the records were lost in the crashes of the thirties and forties, like a lot of that official stuff.”

“But they didn’t catch him for the bomb?”

“Like I said, we don’t know. The records aren’t good enough. We knew there’d been some kind of assassination attempt. But no details.” His voice roughened suddenly and he cleared his throat. “What are we going to do about this ship?” He put the handcom on the desk. “That’s an update on our situation with ConFleet, by the way.”

He turned his back on the monitor and sank into one of the low chairs with a groan of tiredness. “Basically, if they come and get us, all we can do is file a complaint with the nearest EarthFleet rep from inside our Confederacy cells.”

I left the sleeping room and sat in the chair opposite him. “What about you? Weren’t you transferred?” He grimaced. “Officially I’m still on leave. I’m hoping they’ll accept me bringing you back as proof that I’m a good lad and listen to my request for the transfer to be rescinded.”

But if I have to be tried under Earth law back on Earth, I want you there,
I nearly said.

“You know, Halley.” He leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees and his hands clasped loosely between them. “You might be able to wriggle out of the
Calypso II
charges with only a fine. After all, there’s no proof now that it was a jump drive. And as for appearing on that ship, I can say an Invidi lent it to us after setting it to arrive here. But if we hang on to it now, we’ve got no excuse.”

“I know,” was all I could come out with. All my reasons and excuses had disappeared.

“I reckon we’ve got twenty-four hours at most,” he said. “That’s how long it took them to respond when we had the Danadan warship here, and after you told them about the treaty.”

“Bill, you know how important it is that the Nine gain access to the jump drive,” I finally managed. I glanced at the photoimage of Las Mujeres, but it was at an angle where I couldn’t see the front.

“Yeah, I can see that. And I’m no fan of the Four.” He reached out and grasped my wrist. “But how important is it to the station? Stone was right in one way—how is this going to help the neutrality vote?”

I wished he hadn’t done that. The warmth of his touch triggered feelings that were inextricably linked with Henoit’s presence.

“Stone is worried about the reputation of the station if we don’t do what the Confederacy wants us to,” I said. “But the Confederacy is the one that should be worried if they force their way in here.”

“You mean, if they break the neutrality provision? It hasn’t been confirmed or ratified yet.”

“I know. But if the Four, represented by ConFleet, were seen to be interfering before the whole Confederacy Council has considered the case, maybe it would get us sympathy votes.”