Woman on the Edge of Time

She found she was gripping something like a gun, although it was aimed by peering through a scope and focusing her eyes. Nervously she practiced with it. It responded quickly but she could not quite get the knack of stopping it. She was supposed to lock it in position somehow before she looked away from the target, but she kept stopping it too late.

More and more metal figures flitted clumsily through the trees, getting ready to attack in force across the water. “Hold your fire,” Luciente whispered again emphatically. “Pick off the ones that get through the barrage.” The she added in the tone of a prayer, “Forgive me, if you are living and I kill you.”

Bee and Otter mumbled a similar prayer, before Otter whispered, “Do you suppose any of them are people?”

The troops were massing in the far woods, preparing to break cover. More and more moved up into position. Finally they came clanking out, running pell‑mell in waves down the shallow embankment to jump the small stream. Silently they came, except for the clanking of their metal parts. They did not scream or whoop.

Suddenly she was standing in the living room of the apartment where she had lived with Martin. Hot. Sweat ran down her back and collected under her breasts. The air was so thick and sulfurous she began to cough. She was frightened, her stomach ached with fear. Why? Martin was down there somewhere. Yes, in the street he was barricaded behind turned‑over cars, throwing bottles and rocks at the police. The riot police, the TPF, armed with rifles and shotguns and pistols and tear gas canisters and gas grenades, came clanking down the street, stiff and mechanical. But their voices bouncing off the houses were course with the joy of fury: Motherfuckin cocksuckin nigger spics!

She stood at the window watching, clutching herself across the breasts in her flower print summer dress. Martin was out there somewhere, screaming helpless rage and about to be murdered, as the police gunned down a fourteen‑year‑old they said had stolen a car, starting this riot. Then one of the police had turned and, seeing her at the window, raised his gun and shot right at her. The window shattered inward. In terror she screamed and fell to the floor among the breaking glass. For two days she had picked bits of glass out of her arms. But he had missed her. They had missed Martin too that time.

“I think she’s coming to, Doctor.”

“Patty, did you get hold of Redding? Get on it Find him.”

“Doctor, his secretary says he’s on the way over.”

“If we lose this implantation, it won’t look good,” Dr. Morgan muttered. “When did she say he left?”

“Ten minutes ago, Doctor.”

“Did she say he was driving straight uptown?”

“She didn’t say, Doctor.”

“And you didn’t ask,” he said with sour satisfaction, glad to find somebody to blame for something. “What about Dr. Argent?”

“I couldn’t get hold of him, Doctor. He’s guest lecturer this morning at Dr. Sanderman’s pathology class. His secretary expects him in his office around eleven‑thirty.”

“She expects! Why doesn’t she trot her … self over there and give him the message. You call her back and tell her to step on it. She can speak to him as soon as he finishes the lecture. These women are too lazy to get off their chairs and stop powdering their noses. You tell her to hand‑deliver that message to Argent.”

Nurse Roditis cleared her throat. “Doctor, should I do something about an operating room downtown?”

“That has to be Redding’s decision … . Where is he? I bet he stopped with one of those university types for coffee. He drinks coffee all day long, it’s a medical miracle he has kidneys left. I drink it by the gallon when I’m around him. If I keep it up, I’ll end up with ulcers like his. Where the bleeding hell is he?”

“If you do want to operate, she had breakfast this morning, but she hasn’t taken anything since.” Nurse Roditis popped a thermometer under Connie’s tongue. “Now don’t bite down, that’s a good girl.”

Hawk gripped the controls of the floater. Luciente hunched poised at the forward weapon and Connie was in the backseat with another weapon, mounted so that it could swivel through one hundred eighty degrees in any plane.

Hawk was making the floater climb abruptly. They were over the sea, gray waves far below like scales of an enormous fish. The sky was overcast; the puffy bellies of clouds hung over them. They skimmed along just beneath, dodging through fog banks. The floater bobbed corklike in the tides of the air, and she felt a little ill. Hawk looked happy at the controls, singing something Connie remembered hearing before, yes, the night of the feast. She had been walking with Bee, his arm around her. Abruptly her flesh recalled his big warm hand, the thumb gently brushing her breast naked under the flimsy. “How can anybody sing about fighting on such a night?” He had answered her that on such a night people died fighting, as on any other.

“How good to fight beside you

friend of our long table,

mother of my child.”