Time is the Fire

by Connie Willis

  “Alice?” I said. “They’re sure he said Alice and not August?”

  “Yes, because the chemistry teacher’s name is Alice, and she thought he was talking to her, and the chairman of the school board did, too, because he looked at her and said, ‘Alice? What the heck does Alice have to do with intelligent design?’ and Didlong said, ‘Jamie sure could write, though, even if the bastard did steal my girl. You better be careful I don’t steal yours.’ Do you know what that means, Rob?”

  “Yes,” I said. “How long does it take to get a marriage license in Tennessee?”

  “I’ll find out,” Kildy said, sounding pleased, “and then the chairman said, ‘You cannot use language like that,’ and, according to the chemistry teacher, Didlong said . . . wait a minute, I need to read it to you so I get it right—it really didn’t make any sense—he said, ‘You’d be surprised at what I can do. Like stir up the animals. Speaking of which, that’s why the baby was stashed in the icebox. Its mother stuck it inside to keep the tiger from eating it.’”

  “I’ll be right there,” I said.

  Afterword for “Inside Job”

  I really miss H. L. Mencken. I have spent the last forty years (since Nixon and Watergate) following politics, observing my fellow humans, and saying, “Where is Mencken when we need him?” And wishing desperately that he’d come back from the grave to say all those things that desperately need saying.

  Like:

  “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”

  And:

  “In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for. As for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.”

  And:

  “It may be hard for the average man to believe he is descended from an ape . . . Nevertheless, it is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.”

  I also miss him because he loved language. His book The American Language is a masterpiece, and he was the first to document what Mark Twain had understood, that “American” is not “English” but a language all its own.

  Most of all, I miss the Mencken who loved women and music and a good, stiff drink and who wrote: “Life may not be exactly pleasant, but it is at least not dull. Heave yourself into Hell today, and you may miss, tomorrow or next day, another Scopes trial, or another War to End War, or perchance a rich and buxom widow with all her first husband’s clothes. There are always more Hardings hatching. I advocate hanging on as long as possible.”

  I wish he had hung on a bit longer.

  But at least we still have his books. And the occasional not-quite-as-phony-as-she-thought channeler.

  EVEN THE QUEEN

  The phone sang as I was looking over the defense’s motion to dismiss. “It’s the universal ring,” my law clerk Bysshe said, reaching for it. “It’s probably the defendant. They don’t let you use signatures from jail.”

  “No, it’s not,” I said. “It’s my mother.”

  “Oh.” Bysshe reached for the receiver. “Why isn’t she using her signature?”

  “Because she knows I don’t want to talk to her. She must have found out what Perdita’s done.”

  “Your daughter Perdita?” he asked, holding the receiver against his chest. “The one with the little girl?”

  “No, that’s Viola. Perdita’s my younger daughter. The one with no sense.”

  “What’s she done?”

  “She’s joined the Cyclists.”

  Bysshe looked inquiringly blank, but I was not in the mood to enlighten him. Or in the mood to talk to Mother. “I know exactly what Mother will say,” I told him. “She’ll ask me why I didn’t tell her, and then she’ll demand to know what I’m going to do about it, and there is nothing I can do about it, or I obviously would have done it already.”

  Bysshe looked bewildered. “Do you want me to tell her you’re in court?”

  “No.” I reached for the receiver. “I’ll have to talk to her sooner or later.” I took it from him. “Hello, Mother,” I said.

  “Traci,” Mother said dramatically, “Perdita has become a Cyclist.”

  “I know.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I thought Perdita should tell you herself.”

  “Perdita!” She snorted. “She wouldn’t tell me. She knows what I’d have to say about it. I suppose you told Karen.”

  “Karen’s not here. She’s in Iraq.” The only good thing about this whole debacle was that thanks to Iraq’s eagerness to show it was a responsible world community member, and its previous penchant for self-destruction, my mother-in-law was in the one place on the planet where the phone service was bad enough that I could claim I’d tried to call her but couldn’t get through, and she’d have to believe me.

  The Liberation has freed us from all sorts of indignities and scourges, including assorted Saddams, but mothers-in-law aren’t one of them, and I was almost happy with Perdita for her excellent timing. When I didn’t want to kill her.

  “What’s Karen doing in Iraq?” Mother asked.

  “Negotiating a Palestinian homeland.”

  “And meanwhile her granddaughter is ruining her life,” she said irrelevantly. “Did you tell Viola?”

  “I told you, Mother. I thought Perdita should tell all of you herself.”

  “Well, she didn’t. And this morning one of my patients, Carol Chen, called me and demanded to know what I was keeping from her. I had no idea what she was talking about.”

  “How did Carol Chen find out?”

  “From her daughter, who almost joined the Cyclists last year. Her family talked her out of it,” she said accusingly. “Carol was convinced the medical community had discovered some terrible side effect of ammenerol and was covering it up. I cannot believe you didn’t tell me, Traci.”

  And I cannot believe I didn’t have Bysshe tell her I was in court, I thought. “I told you, Mother. I thought it was Perdita’s place to tell you. After all, it’s her decision.”

  “Oh, Traci!” Mother said. “You cannot mean that!”

  In the first fine flush of freedom after the Liberation, I had entertained hopes that it would change everything—that it would somehow do away with inequality and patriarchal dominance and those humorless women determined to eliminate the word “manhole” and third person singular pronouns from the language.

  Of course it didn’t. Men still make more money, “herstory” is still a blight on the semantic landscape, and my mother can still say, “Oh, Traci!” in a tone that reduces me to pre-adolescence.

  “Her decision!” Mother said. “Do you mean to tell me you plan to stand idly by and allow your daughter to make the mistake of her life?”

  “What can I do? She’s twenty-two years old and of sound mind.”

  “If she were of sound mind she wouldn’t be doing this. Didn’t you try to talk her out of it?”

  “Of course I did, Mother.”

  “And?”

  “And I didn’t succeed. She’s determined to become a Cyclist.”

  “Well, there must be something we can do. Get an injunction or hire a deprogrammer or sue the Cyclists for brainwashing. You’re a judge. There must be some law you can invoke—”

  “The law is called personal sovereignty, Mother, and since it was what made the Liberation possible in the first place, it can hardly be used against Perdita. Her decision meets all the criteria for a case of personal sovereignty: It’s a personal decision, it was made by a sovereign adult, it affects no one else—”

  “What about my practice? Carol Chen is convinced shunts cause cancer.”

  “Any effect on your practice is considered an indirect effect. Like secondary smoke. It doesn’t apply. Mother, whether we like it or not, Perdita has a perfect right to do this, and we don’t have any right to interfere. A free society has to be based on respecting others’ opinions and leaving each other
alone. We have to respect Perdita’s right to make her own decisions.”

  All of which was true. It was too bad I hadn’t said any of it to Perdita when she called. What I had said, in a tone that sounded exactly like my mother’s, was “Oh, Perdita!”

  “This is all your fault, you know,” Mother said. “I told you you shouldn’t have let her get that tattoo over her shunt. And don’t tell me it’s a free society. What good is a free society when it allows my grand-daughter to ruin her life?” She hung up.

  I handed the receiver back to Bysshe.

  “I really liked what you said about respecting your daughter’s right to make her own decisions,” he said. He held out my robe. “And about not interfering in her life.”

  “I want you to research the precedents on deprogramming for me,” I said, sliding my arms in the sleeves. “And find out if the Cyclists have been charged with any free choice violations—brainwashing, intimidation, coercion.”

  The phone sang, another universal. “Hello, who’s calling?” Bysshe said cautiously. His voice became suddenly friendlier. “Just a minute.” He put his hand over the receiver. “It’s your daughter Viola.”

  I took the receiver. “Hello, Viola.”

  “I just talked to Grandma,” she said. “You will not believe what Perdita’s done now. She’s joined the Cyclists.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “You know? And you didn’t tell me? I can’t believe this. You never tell me anything.”

  “I thought Perdita should tell you herself,” I said tiredly.

  “Are you kidding? She never tells me anything, either. That time she had eyebrow implants she didn’t tell me for three weeks, and when she got the laser tattoo she didn’t tell me at all. Twidge told me. You should have called me. Did you tell Grandma Karen?”

  “She’s in Baghdad,” I said.

  “I know,” Viola said. “I called her.”

  “Oh, Viola, you didn’t!”

  “Unlike you, Mom, I believe in telling members of our family about matters that concern them.”

  “What did she say?” I asked, a kind of numbness settling over me now that the shock had worn off.

  “I couldn’t get through to her. The phone service over there is terrible. I got somebody who didn’t speak English, and then I got cut off, and when I tried again they said the whole city was down.”

  Thank you, I breathed silently. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

  “Grandma Karen has a right to know, Mother. Think of the effect this could have on Twidge. She thinks Perdita’s wonderful. When Perdita got the eyebrow implants, Twidge glued LEDs to hers, and I almost never got them off. What if Twidge decides to join the Cyclists, too?”

  “Twidge is only nine. By the time she’s supposed to get her shunt, Perdita will have long since quit.” I hope, I added silently. Perdita had had the tattoo for a year and a half now and showed no signs of tiring of it. “Besides, Twidge has more sense.”

  “It’s true. Oh, Mother, how could Perdita do this? Didn’t you tell her about how awful it was?”

  “Yes,” I said. “And inconvenient. And unpleasant and unbalancing and painful. None of it made the slightest impact on her. She told me she thought it would be fun.”

  Bysshe was pointing to his watch and mouthing, “Time for court.”

  “Fun!” Viola said. “When she saw what I went through that time? Honestly, Mother, sometimes I think she’s completely brain-dead. Can’t you have her declared incompetent and locked up or something?”

  “No,” I said, trying to zip up my robe with one hand. “Viola, I have to go. I’m late for court. I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do to stop her. She’s a rational adult.”

  “Rational!” Viola said. “Her eyebrows light up, Mother. She has Custer’s Last Stand lased on her arm.”

  I handed the phone to Bysshe. “Tell Viola I’ll talk to her tomorrow.” I zipped up my robe. “And then call Baghdad and see how long they expect the phones to be out.”

  I started into the courtroom. “And if there are any more universal calls, make sure they’re local before you answer.”

  Bysshe couldn’t get through to Baghdad, which I took as a good sign, and my mother-in-law didn’t call. Mother did, in the afternoon, to ask if lobotomies were legal.

  She called again the next day. I was in the middle of my Personal Sovereignty class, explaining the inherent right of citizens in a free society to make complete jackasses of themselves. My students weren’t buying it.

  “I think it’s your mother,” Bysshe whispered to me as he handed me the phone. “She’s still using the universal. But it’s local. I checked.”

  “Hello, Mother,” I said.

  “It’s all arranged,” Mother said. “We’re having lunch with Perdita at McGregor’s. It’s on the corner of Twelfth Street and Larimer.”

  “I’m in the middle of class,” I said.

  “I know. I won’t keep you. I just wanted to tell you not to worry. I’ve taken care of everything.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. “What have you done?”

  “Invited Perdita to lunch with us. I told you. At McGregor’s.”

  “Who is ‘us,’ Mother?”

  “Just the family,” she said innocently. “You and Viola.”

  Well, at least she hadn’t brought in the deprogrammer. Yet. “What are you up to, Mother?”

  “Perdita said the same thing. Can’t a grandmother ask her grand-daughters to lunch? Be there at twelve-thirty.”

  “Bysshe and I have a court calendar meeting at three.”

  “Oh, we’ll be done by then. And bring Bysshe with you. He can provide a man’s point of view.” She hung up.

  “You’ll have to go to lunch with me, Bysshe,” I said. “Sorry.”

  “Why? What’s going to happen at lunch?”

  “I have no idea.”

  On the way over to McGregor’s, Bysshe told me what he’d found out about the Cyclists. “They’re not a cult. There’s no religious connection. They seem to have grown out of a pre-Liberation women’s group,” he said, looking at his notes, “although there are also links to the prochoice movement, the University of Wisconsin, and the Museum of Modern Art.”

  “What?”

  “They call their group leaders ‘docents.’ Their philosophy seems to be a mix of pre-Liberation radical feminism and the environmental primitivism of the eighties. They’re floratarians and they don’t wear shoes.”

  “Or shunts,” I said. We pulled up in front of McGregor’s and got out of the car. “Any mind control convictions?” I asked hopefully.

  “No. A bunch of civil suits against individual members, all of which they won.”

  “On grounds of personal sovereignty.”

  “Yeah. And a criminal case brought by a member whose family tried to deprogram her. The deprogrammer was sentenced to twenty years, and the family got twelve.”

  “Be sure to tell Mother about that one,” I said, and opened the door to McGregor’s.

  It was one of those restaurants with a morning glory vine twining around the maître d’s desk and garden plots between the tables.

  “Perdita suggested it,” Mother said, guiding Bysshe and me past the onions to our table. “She told me a lot of the Cyclists are floratarians.”

  “Is she here?” I asked, sidestepping a cucumber frame.

  “Not yet.” She pointed past a rose arbor. “There’s our table.”

  Our table was a wicker affair under a mulberry tree. Viola and Twidge were seated on the far side next to a trellis of runner beans, looking at menus.

  “What are you doing here, Twidge?” I asked. “Why aren’t you in school?”

  “I am,” she said, holding up her LCD slate. “I’m remoting today.”

  “I thought she should be part of this discussion,” Viola said. “After all, she’ll be getting her shunt soon.”

  “My friend Kensy says she isn’t going to get one, like Perdita,” Twidge said.


  “I’m sure Kensy will change her mind when the time comes,” Mother said. “Perdita will change hers, too. Bysshe, why don’t you sit next to Viola?”

  Bysshe slid obediently past the trellis and sat down in the wicker chair at the far end of the table. Twidge reached across Viola and handed him a menu. “This is a great restaurant,” she said. “You don’t have to wear shoes.” She held up a bare foot to illustrate. “And if you get hungry while you’re waiting, you can just pick something.”

  She twisted around in her chair, picked two of the green beans, gave one to Bysshe, and bit into the other one. “I bet Kensy doesn’t. She says a shunt hurts worse than braces.”

  “It doesn’t hurt as much as not having one,” Viola said, shooting me a Now-Do-You-See-What-My-Sister’s-Caused? look.

  “Traci, why don’t you sit across from Viola?” Mother said to me. “And we’ll put Perdita next to you when she comes.”

  “If she comes,” Viola said.

  “I told her one o’clock,” Mother said, sitting down at the near end. “So we’d have a chance to plan our strategy before she gets here. I talked to Carol Chen—”

  “Her daughter nearly joined the Cyclists last year,” I explained to Bysshe and Viola.

  “She said they had a family gathering, like this, and simply talked to her daughter, and she decided she didn’t want to be a Cyclist after all.” She looked around the table. “So I thought we’d do the same thing with Perdita. I think we should start by explaining the significance of the Liberation and the days of dark oppression that preceded it—”

  “I think,” Viola interrupted, “we should try to talk her into just going off the ammenerol for a few months instead of having the shunt removed. If she comes. Which she won’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Would you? I mean, it’s like the Inquisition. Her sitting here while all of us ‘explain’ at her. Perdita may be crazy, but she’s not stupid.”

  “It’s hardly the Inquisition,” Mother said. She looked anxiously past me toward the door. “I’m sure Perdita—” She stopped, stood up, and plunged off suddenly through the asparagus.