Time Past

by Maxine McArthur

  The screen cycled rapidly through reports in search of fresh news. I wanted to look at some of the aerospace and astronomy reports, but Grace kept flicking between the two channels we could receive.

  “They want to take over completely,” said Eric. He’d been giving the matter some thought. “I reckon they’ll declare a state of emergency and crack down on the unions...”

  Murdoch stared at me and I shrugged. Eric never knew quite who “they” might be, but he had definite and often conflicting views on what “they” would do in any situation.

  “Tell you what.” Phuong grinned. “They’ll have to change the immigration laws now. ‘Illegal alien’ will take on a whole new meaning.”

  They all chuckled. I jiggled my feet and wondered where I’d get a shortwave radio at such a time. No money to buy one—I still owed people for the laser. A trip to the dump might produce one, but how to fix it? My tools had been taken from the Assembly office.

  ... amateur astronomers informed this site that...

  “Hang on.” I shot forward and stopped Grace’s hand on the controls.

  ... at two twenty-five eastern standard time. This larger mass is in a geosynchronous orbit at twenty kilometers and appears to be of a different configuration to the smaller ships.

  So they’d found the main vessel.

  I’d have to keep watching to find out the coordinates of the ships’ first appearance. Since I knew where the jump point from Earth to Central had always opened, this information would confirm whether or not the Invidi came from Central.

  NASA believes information from their deep-space probes may have been blocked. It is now available.

  They all looked at each other, the beginnings of real fear in their eyes.

  “D’you think we should get out?” said Phuong softly.

  Silence for a moment. Then Eric laughed. “Where to?”

  “They said they came in peace,” said Grace dubiously. “Besides”—she took a swig—“if they are a threat, there’s fuck-all any of us can do about it. But I reckon Eric’s got a point too. If we’re not careful, the government’ll use this as an excuse to crack down on us.”

  “Why?” said Murdoch, genuinely curious.

  “I dunno.” Grace looked embarrassed. “Keeping their act clean in front of the aliens, that kind of thing. Making sure we don’t complain to them about what shits the government are.”

  “Maybe it’ll force the government to give the out-towns better services, to prove to the aliens they are humane. Or they might be so busy with the aliens they’ll leave us alone,” said Murdoch.

  The others guffawed good-naturedly. “Better services, sure,” sniffed Grace.

  Phuong wriggled into a more comfortable position. “All over the world people will be doing this. Watching and wondering what’s going to happen.”

  I thought of my great-grandmother in her village. “You mean the fifteen percent of the world who can afford vidscreens.”

  I left them for the illusory peace of the street outside. Come to think of it, my great-grandmother had always seemed quite calm about the Invidi arrival—perhaps she didn’t find out until later. Something to be said for living in the country.

  “What’s eating her...” Phuong’s voice faded.

  The house emptied and filled throughout the night with neighbors, Grace’s ex-workmates, Will’s friends, and finally some distant relatives of Grace’s who had trekked from a different out-town. Some believed the aliens were real, some didn’t, but they talked, ate, drank, slept in front of the vidscreen, woke, and talked again. Levin came back with a group of men and they spent hours talking in the inside room. Murdoch went to sleep on the floor next to four small children. I sat and nursed a headache through news reports and a thousand eager speculations about whether the aliens were real or a hoax, what they might look like, and what they wanted. A hundred years later we still haven’t figured out that last one.

  Some of the news reports grew increasingly hysterical. Army reserves were called out. The air force flew patrols beside no-fly zones around the Invidi ships. Presidents of at least four nation-states assured their populaces that their defense networks were intact. The head of state here appealed for calm and exhorted everyone to stay at home and not to stockpile goods. It hardly applied to the out-town. What goods? And where could we go?

  Before dawn, I walked around the back of the house and out into the street. It was still full of people. Nobody wanted to go inside, to shut themselves off from the reassurance of other people, the reassurance that we, at least, had not changed.

  In the small circle of light outside the house opposite, several dark figures pointed upward. A tiny point of coruscating color hovered in the murky glow above the city. It must be the Invidi ship, higher than it had been during the day and lit so as to be visible to human eyes. Obliging of them. The display should convert many of those who still thought it was a hoax.

  A chorus of excited voices rose inside the house. A scrum of Grace’s relatives burst out and left, waving.

  “What now?” I asked Grace, who emerged last.

  She yawned. “They’re going to land.”

  “Here?” I looked up stupidly, half expecting to see the green glow of Invidi levitation fields above my head.

  “Yeah, ’coz the U.N.’s here and all. I reckon it’ll be the biggest party since the millennium.”

  “When?”

  “Day after tomorrow, they said.” She put her arm around my shoulders, and after a moment, I slipped mine around her waist. We stood and watched the one bright point in the starless sky.

  “It’s like someone dying,” she said finally. “Pulls you out of yerself. Things you thought was important aren’t anymore.”

  A bereavement—the death of humanity’s loneliness. Of its independence, some would say.

  “This morning seems a long time ago,” I said.

  “I’m glad we went on the march. It was sort of like farewell to everything up to today.”

  I nodded.

  The sky far beyond the city was lightening, and my spirits lightened with it. The Invidi were here. We’d survived so far, and somehow, we’d be able to contact them.

  “Or a new beginning,” said Grace. “What’s it going to be like for Will’s generation now?”

  I squeezed Grace’s waist and turned to go back inside. “We’d better get some rest.”

  “Sleep?” She laughed. “S’pose we should. Seems weird.”

  “We’ll probably find everything’s pretty much the same tomorrow.”

  “Dunno if that’s a good thing or not.”

  I couldn’t afford for everything to stay the same. The Invidi were here, and I had to ask them how to get home. Tomorrow I would look for a shortwave radio, and when I found one, set it up to send a signal. Somehow I’d have to differentiate the signal from all the other noise the Invidi would be getting from Earth. The day after that, we’d go and watch them land. Even if we couldn’t get near them at first, surely we’d get some clue as to how to go about it.

  On Jocasta time was passing too. In twenty-nine days the neutrality vote would be passed and we’d see if the Confederacy trusted one of their “out-towns” to look after itself. I had to get back by then.

  Thirteen

  “We should’ve stayed at home and watched it on televid,” said the man next to me. He wiped sweat off his upper lip with a disintegrating tissue and glanced at my feet as if debating whether to throw the tissue there. “You can see more.”

  “It’s not some football game,” said his companion. “This is history.” He took the last cold beer from his cooler, replaced the lid, and folded his chair, ready.

  Murdoch and I were part of a crowd that had come to see the Invidi land, spread for hundreds of meters along the beach that looked across Botany Bay to the airport. I was glad of the break, as I’d spent the previous day and night trying to modify a couple of old radios we found out back of the local electronics shop. With no success. I couldn’t na
rrow the signal enough. The only reply I got was from a curious gentleman speaking what sounded like a Central Asian language. We were both frustrated to learn that the other wasn’t the Invidi.

  From the beach we could see, with the aid of binoculars, the huge expanse of the north-south runway and the cluster of airport buildings behind it. This was blocked off from the public with rolls of wire, troops, and vehicles, including a heavy armored vehicle with treads that Murdoch called a “tank.”

  The Invidi would land on the east-west runway, which stuck out into the bay like a long finger. From the point of view of the authorities, this runway was easy to cordon off and keep under surveillance. From our point of view, it was easy to see from the beach. The opposite bank of the bay would be even better, but it was closed off to the public, as were most of the roads leading into Mascot, Rosebery, and Sydenham, suburbs around the airport. We’d have needed a pass to go by bus or train into those areas anyway.

  Instead, we’d taken a bus south to Hurstville, trekked through Rockdale, and walked all the way up the beach at Brighton-le-Sands until we couldn’t go any farther due to the press of the crowd and also the police checkpoint on this side of Endeavor Bridge. The army held the other side of the bridge and the control tower.

  Grace wouldn’t come. She wouldn’t let us bring Will, either, despite his pleading. Perhaps she still thought it was a hoax, or was worried that the aliens might come and scoop us all up.

  She was not alone. Many people were panicking. Even in the out-towns, many shacks had been vacated in the past few days. The rich didn’t need to run—they felt safe in their protected retreats in the north and on the coast. The poor couldn’t run. Those in the middle wavered, not wanting to leave their hard-earned possessions but terrified of the unknown if they stayed. As this was a Sunday, many of them had decided to at least get away from Sydney for the day. Just in case. Roads and trains out of the city were packed.

  The Invidi would land on the runway, where they’d be met by a select party of biologists, astronomers, and other specialists deemed suitably impressive but expendable in case anything went wrong. The major political leaders were keeping well back until their security services approved. Major religious leaders were being equally cautious.

  “The welcomers will be from around here,” said Murdoch.

  I must have looked puzzled, because he explained. “You know, representatives of the original owners of the land. Have to say nice to meet you, welcome to the harbor, our place is yours. That sort of thing.”

  “Oh.”

  “The Invidi, if they’ve got any nous at all, will say thanks, pay their respects to the custodians of the land. You don’t do this sort of thing at your place?”

  “Not in Las Mujeres, no. We never had many guests.”

  There was no public access to the landing site itself. Despite well-advertised complaints, media reporters were confined to carefully escorted groups right back in the terminal buildings. Those who felt cramped by this drove up and down the foreshore roads, or rode in helicopters around the no-fly zone. They complained, too, because their satellites could not cut through the electronic interference. The authorities would allow only a few press representatives at the actual landing.

  We were close to another large group that milled around the bridge on this side. It was hard to see where the ordinary crowd ended and they began, but they seemed to be a curious mixture of inner-city types dressed in sleek grays and outer-suburb workers of both sexes. They yelled at the soldiers on duty at the gate and waved placards at the press. The signs pleaded for their carriers to be allowed to meet the aliens. One sign said WE ARE THE CHOSEN. I wondered if they had any chance of being let in.

  Murdoch saw me staring at them. “Nope.” He kept his voice low. “You’d need a foolproof ID and a reason to go in there. Unless you can prove you’re an expert in alien physiology... ?”

  I could make an attempt at it—we knew more about actual alien physiology than anyone else on Earth at the moment. But I’d have to explain from where I arrived, why I didn’t have an ID, and how I got the knowledge, or at least give a plausible reason for being unknown to the rest of the scientific community. I spent a few minutes imagining Murdoch masquerading as an eccentric biologist, then returned to craning over the heads of those in front of me. More waiting.

  “They haven’t absorbed it yet.” Murdoch leaned back and lowered the lenses. “It takes a while to sink in. Then the trouble starts. People realize the implications. Remember the riots in Europe and North America? They had whole towns denying alien existence for decades.”

  “I know. Is it time yet?” The landing was due at noon and we’d arrived early to make sure of a place. Some people had camped here overnight. Murdoch and I had taken turns through the morning to sit on the sand and doze. I was sunburnt, even with a hat on, and red-eyed from staring at the bright waves.

  The man on our other side yawned with an irritating yelp. He’d been doing it all morning. “I don’t think they’ll come,” he said. “It’s a hoax.”

  “It’s only five to twelve,” Murdoch said to me, after glancing at his neighbor’s wrist timer.

  The woman beside me bumped her broad bottom on my hip as she turned to speak to someone behind her. The brim of her sunhat scraped the top of my head yet again.

  “Have a biscuit, luv?” She offered me a gingernut from the box passed along to her.

  “No thanks.” I leaned away from the hat.

  She began to munch.

  Somehow I’d expected the first historic meeting between human and Invidi to be more... momentous.

  “Maybe they’ll be late,” said another voice. A couple of people laughed behind us.

  I shook my head. Invidi were never late. Or early.

  “I remember the Olympics,” someone said. “Squeezed in like this.”

  “Yeah, the rich bastards got the best seats then, too.”

  We all laughed. Then silence. Murdoch’s neighbor spoke again.

  “We’re gonna look pretty stupid if it is a hoax.”

  A media copter burred too close overhead and everybody covered their faces from blown sand. A couple of pithy comments whirled away in its slipstream and my neighbor waved.

  “We’ll be all over the world,” she said, and waved again, but the copter had veered up and away to focus on the Invidi ship as it descended with little ceremony and less noise onto the runway.

  The ship was a typical single-pilot barque, bigger than the little yacht our resident Invidi on Jocasta maintained, but smaller than the chemically powered shuttles humans used in this time. It hovered, reflecting green off the concrete, then settled with a sigh that actually came from the throats around us.

  The glow around the vessel’s base dimmed, and without further ado the hatch opened.

  I leaned closer to Murdoch. “They haven’t got much style, have they?”

  “Nope,” he said, also low enough for our neighbors not to hear. “K’Cher would’ve razed the landing zone and given us some fireworks.”

  “Mind you, K’Cher wouldn’t care who was underneath the thrusters.”

  “True.”

  I looked around—all the faces showed such wonder. Some recoiled in disgust or horror, but most were lost in contemplation of the incredible.

  “It’s true, it’s really true.” Tears streamed down the biscuit woman’s face.

  Behind us someone prayed. “Lord, thank you for letting me live to see this.”

  I felt so alone. Everything changes now, I wanted to scream at them. It will never be the same again.

  But in that moment, when three Invidi rolled down onto the runway under a bright sky, nobody was thinking of the future. The present held enough wonder.

  We threaded our way back among the groups of people who still lined the sand. Nothing had happened after the short welcome ceremony. Two Invidi trundled off to a large tent set up near the barrier that divided the east-west runway from the rest of the airport. According to the t
elevid programs, that tent was where the initial talks would occur. We assumed the authorities were worried about disease or perhaps that the Invidi might do something drastic if let inside a real building. In any case, there didn’t seem much more happening today, so Murdoch and I agreed to head home.

  “So that’s how it happened,” said Murdoch. “I always wondered what it was really like.”

  I nodded. For a brief moment the Invidi had seemed unfamiliar, as if seen through my ancestors’ eyes. Tall, thick, irregular shapes in silvery suits that draped, skirtlike, to the ground so that we couldn’t see how they moved so smoothly in any direction. No distinct head, no features. Long, prehensile appendages in protective silver coils.

  “We could go by boat.” I noticed the sails far out in the bay for the first time. “It’s not far across that channel.”

  Murdoch shook his head and pointed to the sleek shapes of Customs ships dotted around the bay. “Plus they’ve probably got the whole perimeter wired. And see those poles on the fence?”

  “The thin ones?”

  “Yeah. Those probably have visual pickups, with infrared for night vision. Pretty primitive, but good enough to keep us out.”

  “Bloody hell.”

  A young couple beside us drew back a little and eyed me worriedly.

  Murdoch edged closer to me so there was no chance of us being overheard. “Let’s think what we’re going to say to them.”

  I didn’t bother dropping my voice. It didn’t matter if I was overheard—there were plenty of UFO-lovers around today. “We’ll say to An Serat, you made sure we’d get here and now we want to go home. We’d like help with repairing our ship and getting it back through the jump point.” I rubbed the Seouras implant in my neck impatiently. “Get me in there to talk to them, Bill. We’ve only got twenty-seven days until the neutrality vote goes through.”

  “I’ve been thinking. If we make it back to our time, what are you going to do?” he said.

  “We will make it back. We don’t belong here.”

  “Then we need to work out a way to keep you a free agent when we do,” said Murdoch. He held my arm as I skidded down the side of the dry-grassed verge and onto the hard black of the road. “As soon as you enter Abelar space, EarthFleet Security is going to hold you for questioning about Calypso II. And I guess ConFleet will be waiting to find out where you’ve been without leave for five months.”