Paris Adrift

by EJ Swift

  “But I changed something,” I say. My lungs are losing capacity, the panic muscling in. Wanting a piece of me. I can see the bigger picture opening up and I am powerless to stop it. Léon’s voice is relentless.

  “You were meant to. There was a war, in the future. In my time. A catastrophic war. We had to avert it, or it would have been the end of the human race. The changes we needed were in Paris. There was no other way.” He looks at me, and this time I can’t escape the anguish in his face. It’s an abyss. I turn my head away.

  “Merde,” he says. “I wish it hadn’t been you.”

  I listen, cold despite the sun, as he tells me about Rachel Clouatre, the young genius who gave up music after she lost her cello during the occupation of Paris. Rachel married, had children, led a conventional life. Centuries later, it was her descendent who made the incendiary speech on the steps of Sacré-Coeur, detonated the first nuclear device, and started the war that would rip the world apart. The incumbents gathered. Agreed that for this one time they had to break the code of practice. And it worked. The chronometrist has been back to the future, Léon tells me. The war never happens.

  “After that, I was meant to tell you who I was. Induct you into the code of practice. My job was to make sure you left Paris and never came back.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  I can feel his gaze. I keep my eyes down. To meet that gaze is to look at something broken beyond repair. I don’t think I can survive seeing it.

  “Because of you, Hallie. Because I broke my bloody rule. I got involved. Because I’m a fucking idiot.”

  Tears, at the backs of my eyes.

  “But it was all a lie,” I say.

  “Not this. Not us—”

  “All those stories—everything about Australia, was any of that even real?”

  “Oui. Some of it. I spent years there, after Janus got me out. But the things you have in this century are gone in mine. The Great Barrier Reef. The Daintree Rainforest. We had zoos, and aquariums. You know, part of me hoped I’d die in the transportation. Or that our plan wouldn’t work, we’d all be wiped out. It might have been better, I thought. We’d done enough damage, let someone else have a turn. But I found something here, in Clichy. People who were worth something. And you, Hallie. I saw so much of myself in you: the loneliness, the need to escape. I saw you were running, even if no one else did. I guess I thought together we might be able to stop.”

  All these things he has never said. It turns out Léon has more layers than I could have imagined. It must change you, I think, to hold back so much. But I can’t process it. All I can think about is the intimacy we shared, the trust we had, shattered.

  “I told you about volcano day.”

  He reaches across the table, takes my hand. I pull away, but he holds on.

  “I tried to tell you, Hallie. So many times. I—”

  “How can I believe that? All this time you’ve known who I was, what I was, and you never said a word! You were working with that psychopath—god, that time you turned up at my studio, telling me about Sacré-Coeur—it was all a plan, wasn’t it?”

  “You kept secrets too—”

  “Don’t go there. It’s not the same thing. Not even close.”

  “I didn’t want to come here, okay.” Léon sounds frantic now. “I never wanted to travel again. Janus needed me. And then I landed in this century, started living this life—this lie, okay—months and years waiting for you to arrive—and I felt normal for the first time since I could remember. I felt like I belonged. Putain de merde, I should have told you, I know that. I fucked up.”

  I push back my chair, my eyes blurring.

  “I need some space.”

  “Hallie—”

  “I can’t hear this.”

  I push through the terrace, head out into the street. I’m paying no attention to where I am going. Just walking, faster and faster as my anger builds.

  “Hallie—”

  Léon is following. I increase my pace. He catches up, moves to block me.

  “Hallie, wait!”

  “Fuck you, Léon! Fuck you!How could you do this to me? If the anomalies are that bad, how could you let me carry on? Knowing what you know? Do you know what it’s like, hearing it all the time, not being able to respond, not being able to get there—being shut out?”

  “Yes,” he says quietly. “I’ve felt the same thing every day of every year I’ve been in Paris. The unanswerable call. I know what it’s like.”

  “Fucking hell!”

  “I wanted us to go to Rome—”

  “Rome? Rome!” I start to laugh wildly. “Some kind of idyllic paradise with both of us hiding the biggest secret of our lives?”

  “It was worth trying,” says Léon stubbornly.

  “It was never going to work.”

  “I love you, Hallie, all right? Je t’aime. You understand?”

  We’ve never said that.

  “Not fair,” I say. “Not fair.”

  “I’d have done anything not to see your face when you found out who I was.”

  I look at him and see it’s the truth. I turn away. Keep walking. Léon follows. After a while I realize he’s not going to stop until I stop. After a while, I’m too tired to carry on. Exhaustion shrouds me. I’ve been tired for so long and all at once it feels malignant, cancerous. It takes something. I come to a halt. Look about me. We’re just around the corner from the Clos Montmartre. I can smell the grapes on their vines, just beginning to ripen. How ironic.

  “Hallie, please listen. There’s more.”

  “How can there be more? What else is there to say?”

  “Please. This is important. It’s about the Moulin Vert.”

  I stare at him, blinking away the tears.

  “When the chronometrist came back—when she told me our plan had worked, the war never happens, now was the time to tell you—I asked her if there had been any repercussions. And she didn’t give me a straight answer. So I went forward—a few decades from now.”

  My stomach overturns. That bloody windmill. Some part of me always knew it would return to haunt me.

  I sit down where I am on the pavement. Léon sits next to me. Neither of us is in any state to care about the odd glances we attract from passing tourists.

  “What did you find?”

  “A disaster. And Janus won’t break the code again. It doesn’t matter to them if a few generations are fucked over, as long as humanity survives in the long run. But this will happen in your lifetime. And even if you leave Paris, which you must, it will affect everyone in Clichy that we care about.”

  I dash a hand over my eyes. Gather what’s left of my faculties. A merciful numbness is descending. This is survival, I think. Evolutionary defence mechanisms slotting into place. Not thinking. Not processing. Just—existing.

  “You’d better tell me,” I say. “And this time, don’t leave anything out.”

  Part Eight

  A New Bohemia

  Chapter Forty-One

  Paris, 2070

  LÉON WAKES AMONG the dead. Their skeletal mass surrounds him, the rounded tops of skulls beneath his legs, his head resting upon a pile of tibia. He cannot see, but he can feel them, shifting beneath him. The fear sweeps in. Always the same terrible fear, with an underground transportation. Is the way out shut? Have the catacombs been closed? Will he be buried alive in bones and earth?

  He moves carefully, not wanting to crush the remains, but it is impossible for him to get to his feet without shattering them. As his eyes grew accustomed to the greater darkness, he focusses on a patch of grey. The edge of light. Light means civilization. Light means people. He begins to wade through the piles of bones. This part of the catacombs, clearly, has been left to dereliction.

  As the end of the tunnel draws near, the light increases and he hears the sound of voices. Gradually, his heart slows. People means a way out. He stops, listening. Moves closer. A crack on the floor as something snaps. Slow shuffle. The bones peter
out, and now he is walking on dirt and stone. The voices come from a party of tourists. He can make out the boastful tones of the guide.

  “…greatest ossuary in the world, a feat of engineering unparalleled by other civil societies. Note the intricate stacking of the bones—the strategic placement of the skulls. Forgive me, ladies and gentlemen, if I say only a true Frenchman could have combined art and mathematics in such a seamless way. Now, in the next chamber we will show you…”

  The voice tails off. It is tempting to leave the tunnel and join the back of the tour as he has done many times before—join the living—but Léon waits. Something about the guide makes him wary. The arrogance, perhaps, or the shepherding of the tourists.

  Léon waits.

  Hours pass.

  He waits.

  Five more guided tours pass through, but the footfall is very different from Hallie’s time. Then, visitors were allowed to walk freely through the tunnels, exploring the ossuary at their own pace.

  When it is clear that the day’s viewings are over, Léon leaves the tunnel and begins to make his way through the curated passages. How many times has he walked this route, waiting to emerge, newborn? Countless. And now the exhilaration of being back in the game begins to take over. His stride grows confident. He greets the bones like old friends. He used to have names for them, back in the day. It seemed unkind to leave them as strangers. Hello, Sofie. Hello, Pierre. Henri, you’ve barely aged a day!

  This is a new era. A new world. He lived for this. For years, it was his life. Nothing else mattered.

  He is nearing the end of the tourist route, beginning the ascent to ground level, when he hears the sound of footsteps. A distant echo, but coming his way. Another group? No, surely not. It’s hours since the last. There’s another sound too. A dragging sound, that reminds him of the carts. The carts! What a day that was, all the way from Les Halles to here, the bodies rich with graveyard dirt. Terrible, but wondrous.

  The carts.

  A dreadful transportation. He never went back that far again. Besides, when you’re anything other than white, there’s not much point in going back further than the twenty-first century in this city.

  The sound is growing closer.

  Léon retreats into one of the disused tunnels—he knows them all—and waits. He’s an expert in patience.

  Two gendarmes appear, dragging a heavy sack about two metres long. Every few metres they pause, grunting with the effort. The first wipes the sweat from his brow. Léon stares at the sack as it is shunted through the chamber. He has seen sacks like that before.

  When they are far enough ahead, he begins to track them. The gendarmes take the body bag some way into one of the disused tunnels. He hears the crunch of bone as they sling it down, then their footsteps, making their way back out. Once again Léon conceals himself. The two gendarmes are in much better spirits now they have completed their drop. They chat amicably. One of them lights a cigarette. The smell of smoke trickles back.

  Léon retraces their steps. His torch illuminates the tunnel, a branch very similar to the site of his anomaly. Only a small proportion of the catacombs are maintained for visitors. The remainder sprawl under the surface of the city, home to the bones and the rats. Here, too, the bones lie in disorganised heaps, many crushed into fragments that line the tunnel floor. The body bag has been slung up onto a stack of skulls. The material is thick and rubbery, no doubt designed to contain any smell as the process of decomposition begins.

  Léon raises his torch, revealing at least thirty other bags, reaching back into the tunnel. Some of them are very small.

  LÉON SPENDS THE night underground, and when the public entrances are opened in the morning, he makes his way outside. It’s early morning, a clear spring day, almost obscenely bright. He does not know the date, but it must be around the year 2070. That was what he was fixing on.

  He was half-expecting to find derelict scenes, similar to the one where he left Inga, several centuries in the future, if not so extreme. But all looks familiar. The city is beginning to stir. Shutters open, people lean out to greet the day. Every balcony holds plants and flowers. People are out walking their dogs, the dogs wearing bright collars and in some cases little capes that change hue as they trot decorously along. The dog-walkers wave hello to each other. To Léon.

  “Greetings, neighbour!”

  He returns the greeting.

  A chihuahua stops to take a shit. The owner tugs at its lead, walks on. Moments later a small robot scurries out onto the pavement, scoops up the offending excrement, and retreats. Léon looks about. The streets are very clean. The six-storey facings have a buttery sheen, the street plaques are polished to a shine. There is bunting strung between buildings. A festive air. Léon feels it infect his mood. New again!

  The street gives way to a larger boulevard where snail-shaped cleaning robots squelch up and down window fronts. Awnings extend, chairs and tables drop down onto the pavement in pre-set formations. The brasseries are opening. The aroma of coffee awakens Léon’s hunger. His belly rumbles. He will need to find food before long. He has forgotten about the hunger. There are of course things you forget, some deliberately, some not. Strains of music spill from the brasserie fronts, cadences of accordion and the occasional mezzo voice. A crocodile of children winds down the street, dressed in uniform. Léon doesn’t remember schoolchildren wearing uniform in Hallie’s time. But then, as far as he knows, no one is stashing bodies in the catacombs in Hallie’s time either.

  The best way to uncover an era’s secrets is to eat and eavesdrop. Léon selects a brasserie, not too busy, not too quiet, and takes a seat on the terrace. Time for breakfast. As his buttocks touch the chair, a primitive holographic menu revolves into being before him. He orders an espresso, then remembers he has no method of paying for it. Well, he has something from a few centuries ahead. That might work. It has proved useful with cash and card machines in an emergency.

  Looking about him, he feels disoriented, out of time in a way he has forgotten, and he can’t work out why. There’s that jaunty music again. His stomach churns. A rush of dizziness overcomes him. How ridiculous. This can’t be right. Then the world sways, darkens. A face is suspended before him, a human face, concerned, asking if he is all right, if he can see, if he can hear—

  “Can you hear me, neighbour?”

  “Yes,” he manages. Keeps his face carefully neutral. He’s angry, not because he passed out, but because he has put himself at the mercy of strangers. Once again he has wiped out all memory of the toll a travel takes. Worse each time. Worse after rehabilitation. An addict always forgets. He remembers Inga telling him that, on what was left of a beach in Sydney. The sea is higher in his time. The planet is a mess, actually. That was part of the lure of going back.

  When he gets to his feet, he sways again. Parisians crowd around, expressing concern. An unusually friendly era. Someone places a glass of water in his hand. He has a memory of Hallie, unconscious outside the catacombs, his conversation with the chronometrist. The rage he felt, seeing Hallie hurt.

  A hand at his elbow steadies him. A man is at his side, escorting him with some difficulty through the brasserie, into the living quarters behind the public front.

  He finds himself on a sofa.

  Slowly, his senses recover. The initial rush of transportation is fading now, the shadow of a headache bedding in. He looks about him. He is in a fourteenth arrondissement apartment in the year 2070, or thereabouts. The apartment is large, neat, comfortably furnished. Homely. Concessions to automation are not immediately obvious. There is the smell of coffee and cooking eggs. A woman is in the kitchen, stirring the eggs in a pan. A child sits on the floor in front of an entertainment console, wearing a headset. Léon’s stomach growls again.

  “This poor neighbour fainted on us!” declares the man who brought him inside.

  The woman—his wife, Léon presumes—gives Léon a sympathetic glance.

  “I am very sorry to hear it! Are your iron
levels low, my dear? You know how important it is to take your daily supplements.”

  “I’m not sure what happened. It might be a delayed concussion. I was mugged, you see, outside the station.”

  The proprietor shakes his head.

  “A terrible crime. But they will catch the perpetrators when you file your memories, never fear! This is the safest of cities.”

  His wife reprimands him gently. “All the cities are safe, Charles.”

  “Yes, of course, Hélène. They are all of the highest security. We are very fortunate. Here, have a seat. We’ll get you back on your feet.”

  “That’s kind of you—”

  “Of course! Who would not help a neighbour in distress?”

  Lots of people, thinks Léon, but it would be impolite and probably unwise to say so. The woman finishes turning the eggs. She lays out four plates and four sets of cutlery.

  “He can have mine,” says the child, speaking for the first time. Her hair falls to the base of her spine in a single blonde plait. “I’m not hungry.”

  “But these are republican eggs.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  Her parents exchange worried glances. Hélène dishes the eggs into three identical portions, and places one of them in front of Léon. He wants to gorge the whole plate in a few mouthfuls, and has to force himself to exercise restraint.

  “Fantastic eggs,” he says.

  “Oh, my dear. You are too generous. But not the best. A republican egg is a republican egg.” She beams. “You are new to Paris?”

  “Yes, I’m from Toulouse.”

  “You must have done well in your citizenship exams,” says Charles, with an approving nod. Léon offers a modest smile, as if embarrassed.

  Hélène leans forward eagerly.