Woman on the Edge of Time

In the orange and beige patient lounge, Alice sat in front of the TV, smiling in a slack way. She watched whatever moved in front of her. Connie thought that if she crept up to shut the set off, Alice would go on watching the blank screen with that same blank smile. The staff kept telling Alice she would be released soon, but they were cautious because of Skip. Alice ate a lot. She would not start eating until the attendant got her started, but then she methodically ate everything. She was gaining weight.

The next Monday, after they had wheeled out Captain Cream and Tina to be implanted, she cast herself on her bed and flung herself toward Luciente, she did not care how. The going over was rocky. For a time the ward dimmed and yet she did not arrive in the future. She passed out. It was more like fainting than falling asleep. But at last she stood with Luciente’s hands on her shoulders in a small clearing. Outcroppings of gray‑green stone. Pine needles lay everywhere, drifted against the rocks. Luciente wore a brown and green jumpsuit uniform.

“Where are we?”

“Near the front,” Luciente said. “We’ve gone up.”

“Is that why I couldn’t reach you?”

“Communing’s been harder. Something is interfering. Probability static? Temporal vectors are only primitively grasped … . I tried to reach you before we shipped out, but since then I’ve been too jammed.”

“Where’s your kenner?” She stared at a band of pale brown skin on Luciente’s left forearm.

“Back at the foco. We take them off for fear we’ll use them without thinking. They can home on the frequencies. We use these for locator‑talkers.” Luciente touched a small netted egg around her neck. “I myself, I confess, I feel naked without my kenner. It’s part of my body. I only take it off to couple or sleep.”

“Suppose it got lost?”

“I’d lose two‑thirds of my memory … . Marigold at Treefrog had an accident in which both left arm and kenner were destroyed. Arm we could restore but not kenner. Marigold killed perself … . For some it’s only a convenience. For others part of their psyche.”

Bee came pacing along a trail toward them, carrying a piece of equipment on his back. He looked larger than ever here, and unusually alert. His smile still spoke of luxurious calm and sunny energy. “G’light, Pepper and Salt. I forgot to tell you last time I believe you should trade that wig in on a porcupine.”

“It’s beginning to grow out. It kind of itches.” On impulse she took off the tipsy reddish brown wig and showed him her crew cut. She could feel a bald spot at the plug of cement, but the rest of her scalp was growing hair straight up.

Both Bee and Luciente giggled without malice and petted her, exclaiming how stiff and bristly the half‑inch hair felt. She did not mind their teasing because it carried affection and besides, she knew how funny she looked. This ward had a real mirror in the bathroom.

Bee clucked over the plug in her scalp. “This can’t be good. What have they in there?”

“Something to control me. A machine.”

Bee looked wasted with sadness, that expression from the beginning of Jackrabbit’s wake. “We’re all at war. You’re a prisoner of war. May you free yourself.” Gently he hugged her.

She laughed shortly, disentangling herself. “How can I?”

“Can I give you tactics?” Bee turned her chin back toward him. “There’s always a thing you can deny an oppressor, if only your allegiance. Your belief. Your cooping. Often even with vastly unequal power, you can find or force an opening to fight back. In your time many without power found ways to fight. Till that became a power.”

“But you’re still fighting. It isn’t over yet!”

“How is it ever over?” Luciente waved a hand. “In time the sun goes nova. Big bang. What else? We renew, regenerate. Or die.”

“But you don’t seem to believe really in more–not more people, more things, or even more money.”

Luciente leaned against a pine, her fingers playing with the ridged bark. “Someday the gross repair will be done. The oceans will be balanced, the rivers flow clean, the wetlands and the forests flourish. There’ll be no more enemies. No Them and Us. We can quarrel joyously with each other about important matters of idea and art. The vestiges of old ways will fade. I can’t know that time–any more than you can ultimately know us. We can only know what we can truly imagine. Finally what we see comes from ourselves.”

“Do you think I don’t know you, Luciente?”