Time Past

by Maxine McArthur

  “I was going to stick around because of Irena, but then I thought she’d never settle in if I did. And at the time I didn’t know where I’d end up working. There were lots of problems with corruption in the force that year. Bloody mess it was. EarthFleet came round looking for high-level recruits and I thought it was time to get out.”

  He hadn’t seen his daughter for five years, most of the time that he’d spent on Jocasta. I knew that, because his record said he hadn’t taken Earth leave since joining Earth-Fleet. She’d be a young adult now. I felt obscurely guilty for keeping him away from her.

  “Do you miss her—Irena?”

  The board creaked again. His blanket flapped as if he was furiously rearranging it.

  “I did at first, because she... wanted me to go. She took her mother’s side, all the time. Then just before the blockade, she started sending me letters again. Said she was sorry and she wanted to see me when I came home again.”

  And now I’d dragged him a century further away from her. I felt definitely guilty about that.

  “Something to look forward to when we get back, eh?” His voice wasn’t as steady as usual, and I was glad of the darkness.

  “Maybe the Invidi will call us,” he said. We were walking along the paths from my tent to the Assembly. “Why bust yourself trying to contact them?”

  “The lack of time, for a start,” I said. “Assuming time passes there at the same rate it passes here, like with an ordinary jump point, in thirty-four days the neutrality vote goes through. Seeing that I sort of started it, I’d like to be there.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t know exactly what will happen once the Invidi arrive. Do you?”

  He nodded slowly. “I see what you mean. We only know general history, not the details.”

  “Yes, and this time we are the details, and the history files don’t tell us if we get home or not.”

  “You think the Invidi will help us get home?”

  “An Serat sent us here, they’re responsible for us.” If the Invidi had a similar concept of responsibility, of which I wasn’t at all sure.

  “They might just tell us to stay. It’s our planet, we should be able to fit in here.”

  I stopped and glared at him. “Are you just being devil’s advocate or do you have a point?”

  He stopped, too, and looked at me, not quite reproachfully, but in a way that made me turn my glare away. I shouldn’t snap. Our situation wasn’t his fault.

  “Why Valdon?” he said.

  “My father’s name.”

  “Writer, wasn’t he?”

  “That’s right. Why McGrath?”

  Murdoch began walking again. “McGrath is my brother’s name. He took my sister-in-law’s family name when they got married.” “I see.”

  “He’s a bit of a dead loss, my brother.”

  “Why?” I said, slightly shocked. As a child, I’d always wanted a brother or sister, and didn’t like the idea of not appreciating the one you had.

  “Sits around communing with the universe—that’s what he calls it, the rest of us call it being a slob—and painting pictures.”

  “I didn’t know you had an artist in the family.”

  “It’s not as much fun as it sounds.” He thought for a moment. “What about that ancestor of yours—Alvarez? Did you look up info on her?”

  “She wasn’t my ancestor. She was a friend of my ancestor. And she died five years ago.”

  “Yeah, I know. But she was famous, there must be a lot of stuff floating around about her.”

  The thought of Alvarez was almost painful—I’d been betrayed by my own expectations. “It’s funny, but she isn’t as well known now as she is in our time.”

  “You mean the Earth movement hasn’t got going yet?”

  “EarthSouth. That’s part of it, yes.” I’d come to the conclusion that the reason the EarthSouth movement took a long time to become a political force was because it was a genuine grassroots surge and the people at the grassroots were often, as Marlena said, too busy staying alive to play politics and too wise to expect anything to come of it. “It’s almost as if our history files manufactured Alvarez.”

  “You mean she wasn’t a real person?”

  “Of course she was real.”

  We stopped again to let a small boy drag a line of empty drink cans on a string across the path. He stared at us with solemn, dirt-encrusted eyes before toddling away, the cans rattling behind him.

  “But it’s as though...” I paused, embarrassed now. There were bound to be discrepancies between actual events in the past and our historical records. It didn’t matter to Murdoch if Alvarez was a hero or not—I was the one who’d made an icon out of the woman.

  “She’s not what you expected,” he said shrewdly.

  I looked at him, surprised and comforted by his understanding. “That’s right.”

  “This isn’t what I expected either.” He waved his hand at the potholed street and the ramshackle extensions that made a slum of once-neat bungalows. “But it doesn’t mean I was wrong when I thought of Sydney...”

  This time he paused, then caught my encouraging eye and continued. “On Mars I’d look up through the skylights and see those damn canyon walls and maybe a sliver of sky. And I’d think of this town, with the water and the bright sunlight and the trees. What I mean is, seeing Sydney like this doesn’t make that any less right. Any more than you seeing more of the real Alvarez makes how she helped you wrong.”

  He glanced at me. “End of speech.”

  “How do you know what I thought about Alvarez?”

  “I guessed.” In response to my skeptical frown, he continued. “I thought it was a good idea at the time. God knows, you needed some help. You never told any of us much.”

  It was true. I hadn’t talked much to anyone during the Seouras blockade. Murdoch didn’t know until the end how they communicated with me through the implant. It had hurt like hell. The implant was the main reason I’d been avoiding doctors since I arrived in the out-town. Its nonhuman origin would be obvious to them.

  I swallowed, feeling sick. “I don’t want to think about it.”

  The greatest shock from that whole chaotic episode was, for me, the realization that An Barik had not helped us when he could. Presumably he had the support of the other Invidi. The idea of Invidi as humanity’s benevolent benefactors lost much of its credibility for me after that.

  So when An Serat had explained his action in sending Calypso forward in time as being to help the Nine, including humans, get the jump drive, I questioned his real motives.

  An Serat’s action meant we did get a version of the drive, in the sense that my engineering team on Jocasta managed to put together Calypso II out of an old freighter and what remained of Calypso ’s engines. The core of those engines had been protected from the explosion. At the time, it had seemed an incredible stroke of luck. But I should have known better than to associate luck with a species that could see the future. At least, more of the future than we can.

  We turned the corner into Creek Road.

  “You know what was the worst part of it for me?” he said.

  I shook my head.

  “People dying. And watching you disappear inside yourself, not letting us help.”

  I stopped, shocked. “Bill, I... I didn’t know. You never said. Not that I would have listened, I was so wound up with tension the whole time.”

  He patted my arm. “Don’t do it to me this time, okay?” He smiled, and a woman in a blue cheongsam glanced at him as she passed and smiled, too.

  “I won’t,” I said, the sick feeling gone.

  We reached the Assembly and climbed the stairs to the office. Inside, I unlocked the cupboard beside the filing cabinet and pulled out a box from among the brooms and bits of string.

  “Is that it?” Murdoch caught my eye and added hastily, “It doesn’t look like I expected, that’s all.”

  Certainly the archaism “telescope” conjured image
s of sleek and sophisticated instruments.

  “Think of it as camouflage,” I said. “If it looks like junk, nobody’s going to steal it.”

  My telescope might look like a stubby bazooka on spider legs, but it worked.

  “Basically, I’ve programmed a digital signal processor— or I will have, by next week, to a wavelet-based comm system, otherwise we’ll have the rest of the planet listening in. I’ll connect it to the laser—when I get one. The computer here can control the tracking. There’s plenty of connecting line... they call it fiber optics. It’ll connect the inverted reflector to the laser.”

  “So what’s the plan?” Murdoch sat back on his heels, unimpressed with my clever design.

  “It depends what the Invidi do when they get this message. If you remember, their ships appeared in at least ten places, over major city centers on all of the continents except Antarctica. I’m assuming one appears over Sydney, seeing that it’s the seat of government and of the U.N.”

  Murdoch thought for a moment. “I think you’re right. I remember learning something like that when I was in school.”

  “They’ll know someone is here, because they’ll detect my ship on the moon. I can set a beam-splitter to bounce their reply to us if they send one.”

  “They can locate the source of the signal if they want to.”

  “Of course.”

  “What if they don’t notice it?”

  “I told you, the signal won’t be affected by radio wave disturbances...”

  “No, I mean what if they don’t realize what it is? You said the short-range comm system is used for service bots. Maybe the opsys will just filter your message before an Invidi sees it.” He grimaced. “Or put it in their In file. Knowing Confederacy bureaucracy, they’ll get back to you in a century or so.”

  “There is no Confederacy yet,” I snapped.

  “Anyway, even if they do respond, how are we going to go and see them if we haven’t got IDs?” He ran a finger along the barrel of the scope.

  “I don’t know. Not having an ID has been my main problem since I arrived here.”

  “Black market?”

  “Too expensive. IDs and addictive drugs are the main revenue of the gangs. They keep the price of both high. It would take me two years at this rate to earn enough.”

  “This money thing’s a bugger.”

  I nodded and tweaked a connecting cable absently.

  “Right.” He stood and stretched. “I’m off to the school. Might have a bit of a look around, too.”

  “What, out there?”

  “I’m a native, remember?”

  A thought struck me. “What if you meet your great-grandparents?”

  He waved the possibility away. “They’re still up on the coast, both sides of the family.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. It was my grandmother who moved. We’ve all been here ever since. Will be here,” he corrected. “Jeez, plays hell with your tenses, doesn’t it? Anyway, what does it matter how many of my family we meet? We can’t change what’s already happened.”

  He reached the door, but then turned back toward me.

  “How about Griffis and the others?” he said curiously. “They must have electronic profiles somewhere on infonet.” The three survivors of Calypso ’s journey should have been well into their preparations by now. They had planned the journey for years; An Serat’s help was merely a bonus.

  “I thought about it.” I had looked them up. Hannibal Griffis, the leader of the Calypso crew, was listed under several organizations dealing with human rights and environmental issues, position “retired.” Not true, of course. By now he’d be working with the secret space exploration group that coordinated the Calypso expedition. Rachel Dourif, the youngest member, was a student in Paris. And I’d found Ariel Kloos, one of their systems engineers, in a list of contributors to conference papers on AI systems.

  “But the Sleepers never met us before,” I reminded Murdoch. “They’d have remembered us when they arrived on Jocasta if they had.”

  “Shouldn’t we try to warn them? Break this causal loop, or whatever you call it?”

  “It’s already happened.”

  He dragged his hand down his cheeks in frustration. “No, they won’t leave for another three years...” He considered. “D’you reckon something would happen to stop you if you tried to meet them?”

  “I don’t want to tempt Fate, or whatever gods of time-space work the Invidi magic.”

  He grinned. “That’s the scientific attitude, all right.”

  “It’s a principle of engineering,” I said coldly. “If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.”

  “Anyway, can’t you work your way around their computer systems? You’re supposed to be the engineering genius. You could give yourself a huge bank account.”

  I wasn’t sure if he was serious or not. “Other way around. Sophisticated equipment is expensive. To buy it you need cash or a bank account. To get a bank account you need an ID. But you can’t make the ID without the equipment or pay someone else to do it without money.”

  “I get the point.”

  I stood up, knee joints stiff, and went over to one of the desks. “Hacking into their systems is not that difficult in itself, if you can adapt to how primitive the interface is.” And, I reminded myself as my hand searched for the wall switch, if you remember to turn it on.

  “But the tracking protocols in this time are efficient,” I went on. “If they track me to this terminal it’s a jail sentence. If I’m in jail, I can’t contact the Invidi. And we can’t get home.” The computer on the desk made its usual preparatory clicking and whirring noises.

  Primitive did not mean easy to use. I hated the inefficient, limited tools they called computers, hated the inorganic quality of them. Superficially, the interactive surfaces were similar to ours. No holoviewers or voice activation here in the out-town, but the screens weren’t too hard on the eyes. Some miniature versions were like our handcoms, although clumsier. The keyboard input mode threw me at first—we tapped in commands to our interfaces on the station, but not on keys. Or we used audio or visual modes.

  The user interfaces were confusing and getting inside them carried all the frustrations of being blindfold in a two-dimensional maze—every few paces I’d come up against another blocked path. In the Confederacy, interface use at anything more than an everyday level was more like a conversation. You’d discuss with the system what could be done and what couldn’t.

  “See you later, then,” said Murdoch, and left.

  Seven

  Will was the only person who enjoyed dinner on Saturday night. Grace and Murdoch sat in Levin’s backyard cooking sausages until the mosquitoes became too savage, then retreated to the house. A single-story brick veneer, it backed onto the shop front of Levin’s “business” and boasted three rooms down a long hallway and a main room down the shop end, in which sat a televid, sofa, and dining table.

  I arrived late, bad-tempered because a deal on a laser had fallen through. It was the wrong kind, hopeless for what I wanted. Who’d have thought it could be so difficult to get my hands on such a simple tool? And yet something like fiber-optic cable was practically lying around waiting to be taken away. Impossible to predict what would be easy in this century.

  “Where’s Levin?” I said. I might just have to take him up on his offer to find a laser for us.

  “He’ll be in soon,” said Grace. “Have a sausage.”

  “They’re good,” put in Murdoch. His plate held nothing but greasy smears and some sauce. Both he and Grace were drinking beer. Having fun, while I wandered around getting hot and filthy looking for the essential component we needed to get home.

  “Hi, Maria,” yelled Will from in front of the televid.

  “Hello, Will.”

  I poured myself a glass of water. If I did have to negotiate with Levin, I wanted a clear head.

  “How many slices of bread?” said Grace.

  “One.�
�� It was thin, tasteless stuff, smelling of its plastic packaging.

  “You oughter eat more.” She shook out a slice of bread, placed two blackened sausages diagonally across it, and smothered the lot in tomato sauce. “Blokes might pretend they like skinny women, but really they want a bit of backside to grab on to.”

  “You...” should know, I started to say, then changed it to, “you been busy today?”

  “Oh, yeah, real busy. I haven’t got a job and it’s a holiday.” She smiled at Murdoch to show it was a joke, and popped the top of another can of beer.

  I folded my bread around the sausage and watched the sauce dribble out. “I only asked because we could do with a hand at the Assembly. Getting posters out before the march, that sort of thing.”

  “Yeah, I’ll give you a hand,” she said expansively.

  Levin came in.

  He entered through the shop door. We could hear the key turn in the lock, the door open, close, and the key click again. Then footsteps down the hall. Heeled boots, not sandals.

  He made a good entrance, standing for a moment in his black jacket as though he were part of the darkness behind him.

  I stood up, mainly because I didn’t want to finish the sausage.

  “Levin, this is an old friend, Bill McGrath. He’s in town for a while and he dropped by.”

  “Evening,” said Murdoch. He stood too.

  The two men were about the same height, although Levin might have been taller if he didn’t stoop. Murdoch weighed at least ten kilos more.

  They faced each other with a sense of caution that nobody could have mistaken for politeness.

  Grace padded in bare feet to the refrigerator and took out a beer, which she passed to Levin automatically. He took it without looking at her and sat down beside her, opposite Murdoch.

  Murdoch and I sat down again. I glanced at the clock— only eight-thirty. Maybe if I pleaded a headache we could go.

  “Where are you heading, Mr. McGrath?” Levin often spoke with strange formality. “Nowhere special.” Murdoch stared at Levin around a slow mouthful.

  I hoped he wouldn’t antagonize Levin before I had a chance to ask for help procuring a laser. I glanced at Grace to see if she’d noticed the tension, but she was half watching the televid over Levin’s shoulder.