The Liminal War

by Ayize Jama-everett

  “I know how this ends, Healer. And I blame you.” The spirit departs Bingy unceremoniously, yet he’s the least shaken of us all. The entire council begins talking at once. But Mico isn’t hearing any of it. Instead he walks to me and offers his hand.

  “Friends?”

  “You sure I’m worth it?” I ask, shaking a strong hand.

  “You better be.”

  “Right then. How’s this work?” Tam asks.

  “Without me,” A.C. confesses. He looks like he’s aged viciously in the past few minutes. There’s no smile in his voice. “I can’t . . .this is just a phenomenally bad idea, Mico. The wind is pulling me away from you already.”

  “A. C.,” Mico almost whimpers. “You’ve gone in time before.”

  “I’m insubstantial, barely material. The northern wind is my God, and I learned long ago to follow its instructions. And it’s telling me to dissipate entirely from here.”

  “Your name will always be with me,” Mico says. “I will always remember you.”

  “Then maybe, if you survive, we will find each other again.”

  I feel my memories of . . . whatever was just here disappear before I lose sight of it. Whatever it was lives in that place where that favorite song, that awesome TV show, that joke you can never remember lives.

  Bingy, no longer infected by the God, walks away without a word to any of us. It feels like Sam is looking down at me even when she rests her hand on the place where Narayana stabbed my chest. I make sure there’s no filtering in place while I inhale her scent fully.

  “This is going to be hard for you to remember, Taggert, but please try.”

  “Okay.”

  “Your life has just as much value as Prentis’s and Tamara’s. At least to me. I need you to stay alive. I need you to come back.”

  “That’s the plan.” I try to smile.

  “Don’t delude yourself. There is no plan.” She kisses me hard on the mouth then leaves. I watch Narayana whisper into Mico’s ear then bow and leave. Finally it’s just Mico, Tam, and me in the room. My girl tags me with a psychic message.

  “Trust him now?”

  “Like we’ve got a fucking choice.”

  “You got a TARDIS or something?” Tamara demands as we make our way into the moonless night in front of the hotel.

  “The Manna chose me, or maybe ‘bred me’ is a better way to put it, to be able to make disperate connections. To link things, places, movements that usually wouldn’t join.” Mico clutches an acoustic guitar like a security blanket.

  “How?” she pushes.

  “Music,” I respond. “It’s why he’s such a good musician. DJ, even. He can put any two tracks together, right?”

  “Exactly. Music was my medium before I became conscious of the Manna. My God won’t help, but it’s also not taking any part of the knowledge of all those that have smoked before. I’ve got the memories of at least four chaos mages in my head.”

  “Wot, you on some magic now?”

  “You want science, liminal girl? If I say ‘Chirality,’ does that mean anything to you who defy classification?”

  “Not a bit.” I sit on the ground and prepare for a lecture.

  “The god of science then. The Big Bang sent every bit of matter that exists or will exist on a journey outward. Only there are no straight lines in nature. Everything is moving and turning at the same time. Sometimes things, be they planets, atoms, or states of energy, bang into each other. Something new is formed. Something old is re-formed, destroyed. Those impacts are different than the usual trajectory of matter. There’s movement and then there’s a stop. That’s like a beat, understand? The universe is wobbling, and it has a soundtrack. The earth itself hums at a discernable frequency. I can hear the stretching and squeezing of space. Everything is spinning in the same direction. Every molecule in concert, in union with everything else . . .”

  “Not the Alters,” I chime in, getting only the vaguest sense of what he’s talking about.

  “Exactly. They are the uncreated. Reality and creation literally spin around them, avoiding them as much as possible. They don’t harmonize with the atomic spin of this reality.”

  “’K, everything spins, save Alters. So what?” Tam demands.

  “So they disrupt in a very predictable way. That predictability rubs against the Big Bang reality in a known and familiar interval. It’s a discordant rhythm in space and time. I can listen for the disruption.”

  “So if you can hear the disruption in time, then you can hear where Prentis is?” I ask.

  “Big deal!” Tam shouts. “You can hear where she is. How will we get back there?”

  “You,” Mico tells her. “We only experience time linearly. It’s actually more like an extremely long-playing record, cycling through different iterations with slight variances over and over again. It’s possible for a strong enough telekinetic like yourself to adjust molecules from one time frame to another. Change our vibration, you change our location. It’s no different than moving something in space. Just think of it like matching the vibrations on a guitar string.”

  “So you point the way and she gets us there,” I say. “What do I do?”

  “Keep us alive, for one. One misplaced molecule, one excessive vibration, and our bodies could dissolve under the temporal strain. Plus, it will require an insane amount of will.”

  “Say again?” Tam says. Getting a sense of what’s going to be asked of her.

  “And keep us sane. Human beings are social creatures, in time as well as biology. Our psyches, brains, and the like are accustomed to this position in the flow of the universe. I don’t know what the mental consequences will be for the jump, but we’d be idiots not to expect them.”

  “Liked it better when I thought it was magic,” Tamara lets us know.

  I look around and see the unstated power of the Manna. Mico, formerly the most popular man on the island, is half a step above leper. His “followers” look at him longingly but keep a healthy retreat distance. Mico’s missing the most important element necessary to make this work. Confidence.

  “This isn’t going to work.”

  “Why not?” he asks.

  “You’re talking about directing us by what you hear. No good. We’ve got to hear it as well. Plus, you think Tamara is a spoiled brat.”

  “Hey!” she snaps, but Mico doesn’t object.

  “She’s not. She’s been through more than anyone her age has a right to and she reacts to it poorly sometimes. She’s also constantly managing the stray thoughts of the world. For the most part she deals with it in silence. But occasionally, yeah, she’ll have a verbal outburst.”

  “I’ll try to be more compassionate . . .”

  “You’re missing my point. I know where she is at all times because I can feel her neurons firing like old-school gangbangers in my head. There’s an intimacy between us that’s damn near cellular. Her telepathy makes it reciprocal. I can’t even imagine trying to lie to her. It’s this link that makes us such a problem for the Alters and others.”

  “You want to link him?” She finally gets it. “To . . . us?”

  “For Prentis, girl. It’s this or nothing,” I tell her.

  “Okay,” Mico says after some long-thinking minutes.

  As soon as Tamara links our brains, mine grows a billion dendrites just to compensate for the amount of knowledge and skill Mico has. I go down to the ground but only for a second. Tamara’s brain deals with the incalculable influx far better than mine. She’s used to incorporating people’s thoughts. What she can’t handle is the noise.

  “What the fuck is so loud?” she screams with her mind, inherently threatening the sanity of the island. But Mico rushes to her, physically holding her face between his hands.

  “That’s the sound of the universe. We’re on a planet that’s spinning, orbiting a sun at hundreds of thousands of miles a second. There’s bound to be some friction. It’s always been there. We live in the rhythm, the breaks in the sound.”r />
  Gravitational pulses from unstable pulsars billions of light-years away make Mico’s eyes throb. But he’s dealt with it, with all of this, for years. His entire body is a receiving vessel. Every atom of his body is reacting to what’s around him . . . or more, has the ability to shift like a stem cell. I can see my daughter’s suffering and mimic Mico’s ability in her. She breathes deeply and relaxes. Slightly.

  “Bloody Hell!” she says with her mouth, no longer shouting. “We there yet?”

  “Not by a long shot,” Mico reacts. But he begins to understand. Tamara knows everything he does. What needs to happen next, how much it will hurt, the ambiguity of success, and the repercussions of failure. But still she jokes.

  Mico listens. I hear. He listens, finding patterns, cadence, rhythm: the things that turn sound into music. Even being aware of all he’s experiencing, I can’t—couldn’t ever—find what he’s listening for.

  “There!” he shouts. Not pointing, just bobbing his head. “I can hear it. The discord.”

  Tamara does her best to share the rhythm with me, but I’m useless.

  “Great. How do we get there?” I ask.

  Mico starts strumming on his guitar. “It’s all metaphor,” he tells us. “If we-us, the mover, and me—can conceive it, we can do it. Just feel it.”

  I see Mico clearly now—attached to everyone, feeling connected to none save a dick of a tuber god. This is the first time he’s ever felt supported. A tune I’m vaguely aware of begins issuing from his guitar.

  “Let your attention go. Let a second equal a minute, a millisecond, a century. Doesn’t matter. It’s all about the relationship between the notes.”

  I’m doing my best to keep my body—all our bodies—relaxed, but I’ve never felt gamma radiation as music in my bones before. I try to switch our respiratory systems over to autonomic control, but Tamara stops me, pointing out Mico’s need to sing. Breath control. She’s seeing the complex relationship between his verses and the modulation of the guitar. I flip my instincts and put all our autonomic biological impulses into our shared conscious control. It works.

  Tamara has total molecular control over our bodies . . . and the world. She and I both jump with the implications, but Mico’s strumming and singing bring us back into control. His mind reminds us, “You will tear yourselves apart trying to reverse all of time.”

  He’s right. I can imagine the effect and the glorious burning of our bodies and consciousnesses. Still, all Mico does is sing. We are a three-person nervous system generating a consciousness aware of the subatomic clockwork of reality, and he’s just strumming.

  Tamara’s annoyance at me is palpable. She thinks I should understand by now. As a clue, she co-opts my power and drains all my ear wax. Stupid and childish, but I get it. Tamara and Mico are younger than me. They naturally hear higher frequencies. I adjust my ears, and the resonance hits me. There’s a pattern that, if it were replicated, if our molecules were vibrating at we’d be someplace else.

  “We’re not reversing the album, just popping the needle,” Mico thinks at us, whatever that means. Tamara gets it. She keeps her focus on our molecules. The first shudder she attempts feels like an attack, only this intimacy gives it a suicidal tinge. Mico gets more deliberate in his strumming as a response. I check us over physically for damage and find none. No one said this would be easy.

  The sky blinks blue and black. Hot air licks us then goes cold again. Something happened.

  “Two days!” Mico’s thought is excited and frightened. “Try extending the verse. Find the beat between then and now.”

  “You want to try?” Tam would be having a seizure if not for her newly efficient brain, thanks to Mico. Still, she’s burning through synaptic bridges by the trillions. But I get it now. The echo of the Big Bang—each moment is just a physical expression of it. Find the cycle, and we can go anywhere. Just find the time when the echo sounded like whatever Mico is playing. Tamara’s been polluted with too many sci-fi flicks. She’s thinking about going backwards. The universe doesn’t do that. Everything is happening, being created constantly. Yesterday didn’t happen. It’s happening right now. Same with tomorrow. Everything is happening, being created constantly. We hear it. We see it. We can be there.

  I get it. Mico knows it. Tamara—she feels it. We travel in directions I don’t have names for. And we’re gone. All the while Mico plays his damn song.

  Almost sounds like Marley.

  ACT II

  1971 London

  Chapter Eight

  This was the worst idea ever. I don’t know how long I was out when we “landed” in the same spot we “left,” but I come to before Mico and Tam. Only bit of luck thus far. They’ve both stopped breathing . . . and thinking. That’s the first problem. Second is my skills are . . . muted. Laying hands on Tamara’s heart nearly gives me an aneurysm. I’m slower with Mico’s healing, and we both come through the better for it. Restarting Tam’s brain is even easier. One word. “Prentis.”

  High-end Mods and low-level rockers walk by us on their way to the fully furnished non-torched Eel Pie Island Hotel. It’s a fully functioning hotel. The place the old folks on the isle still wish it was. It’s the land of pleated miniskirts and super-tight black sweaters. New rock that calls forth old blues screams nearly inarticulate from the door of the hotel. What they see, saw, of us landing obviously didn’t make much of an impact. Tam still doesn’t have the strength to mask us so I let the ’70s progressions of cool march by us as I focus on Mico. His brain is firing on that low hum it always does, but he’s barely conscious. His eyes are blinking out of sync with each other. His breath is labored then protracted. Our three-way link is broken, but I can tell the issue. He can’t hear the music of his god, of the universe. He can’t sonically acquire the world. He can hear, but only with his ears. Even that’s not the biggest issue.

  “Jaysis,” Tamara keeps shouting whenever a stray racist thought goes through her. Good to know our connection is still solid.

  “Block them out.” I’m trying to get Mico to stand.

  “It’s not just the racists. There’s a trace in the air, a big liminal spark. There.” She points northeast. I’m playing piano with mittens on when it comes to my liminal skills, but even I feel it. Maybe liminal, but definitely powerful. Eel Pie is totally unfeasible as a base. Time to move.

  Mico follows us with childlike compliance, contributing nothing save a sad and confused face. After ten minutes crossing Turkenham River Bridge, Tam “convinces” a cab to carry us after the power trail. First evidence I get of her diminished capacity is the cabbie’s refusal to take us any farther into Notting Hill.

  “Thought this was nothing but shops and half mill flats?” she protests as we exit the cab on to boarded-up tenement houses and the remains of blownout cars.

  There’s a siege mentality on these streets that I can feel. Everyone is strong in their eye checks, assessing for familiarity or threat.

  “Give it forty years,” I tell her.

  Tam goes to her training—my training—and finds an empty flat for us. On the third floor—half a roof, really. There’s no heat, but the water is still on. Abandoned mattresses smell musty but are clean enough. There are even some linens left in a closet. This was an eviction. A brutal one, if the broken dishes and blood in one of the bedrooms is any indication. It’s a good location for us: at least three angles of exit if necessary, and we can see anyone coming at us. Tam gets excited for a second when she finds a rat in a cupboard. She’s hoping for that half head cock of a Prentis animal. Instead it just scurries away through a hole in the wall.

  I take first watch, as Tam can barely keep her eyes open. When it’s my turn to rest, whispers of Samantha’s voice call from some deep aquatic place. Whether it is threat or warning, dream or liminal reach, I can’t say.

  When I wake, Tam is sitting in a lotus position, back against a paint-chipped wall, eyes closed and mediating. I’ve never smelled so many different curries on Notting Hill la
nes, never seen so many black faces. This flat is around the corner from a café called the Mangrove. Apparently, it’s public enemy number one for London police. This is all according to my girl, picking up on stray thoughts. The tension does her no good, but she’s a trooper and doesn’t complain. When she speaks her voice is smooth and focused.

  “I feel her . . . impact.”

  “Got a location?”

  “Maybe if I had some help.” She opens her eyes to gesture toward the man-child on the dingy mattress in the corner.

  I make my way to him across the floor, reaching out with my skill. Our former intimacy still calls to me. But I’ve looked into his body and found nothing wrong. Behind him the early morning sun begins to warm the pavement outside.

  “You ever have some coco bread, Mico? Coco bread and ginger beer is the best breakfast ever. Want to go get some?”

  “You sure that’s a good idea?” Tam asks, not moving. “The block is kinda hot right now.”

  “Me and the man can handle it, right?” I say, helping him to his feet.

  On the street we’re marked as strangers by our twenty-first century clothes. But even in his stupor Mico emanates a kind demeanor. Maybe it’s the dreads. Little girls and boys running to school slow down around him. One even pets his hand. He smiles gently, unsure of the gesture’s meaning.

  I lead him through an alley to find a Caribbean market and instead find five skinheads, complete with leathers and Iron Crosses, jacking up a little black girl not yet twelve wearing a Catholic school uniform. The blades are in my hands before I think. Their desire to slice and stab infects me in one step toward the assholes. Before the second step, Mico makes his first voluntary move and grabs my wrist with epic strength. He shakes his head slowly but confidently. I don’t want to fight him, but the blades do.

  “Piss off, Wogs, or you’ll get the same.”