I waited for Murdoch in Sydney by the bay where the airport used to be, although the runway where the Invidi ships landed was gone. There was a strip of sand surrounded by mangroves and shrubs, like the rest of the bay. The water still winked and glittered in the sunlight as it had on the morning Will died one hundred years ago. The seagulls still swooped, dopplering in and out of earshot.
I’d come to this place because I had something left to do here. In between the asylum hearing, which was successful, and the EarthFleet inquiry, which was not, I’d gone over to Homebush and seen where the out-towns used to be. I said my good-byes to Grace there. Not at her grave-side, which was well maintained thanks to Vince’s descendants, but in the tidy streets that fronted onto the green expanse of mangrove park that had regrown over the dirt and the chemicals. The best tribute to the out-towns was that they no longer existed.
Lorna was right about EarthFleet—they hadn’t been pleased at the damage we caused to Sigma 41 when Murdoch’s plan worked. They refused to take into consideration our effort to save lives on the station, or the positive effect on Confederacy morale of three Q’Chn deaths. They also demanded I repay all the funds used on the Calypso II project.
External Affairs had to accept my application for asylum, so I was safe from ConFleet court-martial, but they included a mobility restriction clause, which meant I couldn’t leave Earth for a year.
The idea of being stuck on Earth away from Jocasta appalled me, and I almost wished I’d taken my chances with ConFleet. Then when the year was over, the deferred payment for damages to Sigma 41 was waiting. Unless, Lorna said, she managed to get the charge dropped in the meantime. Or unless I joined EarthFleet or some other branch of Earth’s planetary government.
A whole year. Stuck here while the station moves on. I couldn’t even be there when the neutrality vote went through. After all I went through in the past to get home in time for it. But neutrality passed. Thanks in a large part to Dan Florida’s boisterous publicity of the Farseer affair—he criticized the Confederacy for meddling in the governance of a neutral star system and the Invidi for interfering in Earth’s past. No formal accusations were ever made. But when the votes were counted, Abelar and Jo-casta went on record as the only neutrality petition to ever pass without direct support from one of the Four.
Sarkady had voted yes for Earth, but she lost her Council post soon after. The other yes votes were the Dir, Neron, Tell, Achel, H’digh, and, surprisingly, the Leowin. Which left the Four on the no side, plus Stegg and Chehgiru, which were distant relatives of the K’Cher and a Bendarl colony, respectively. Neutrality by one vote, but that one vote was enough.
The Invidi denied all of Florida’s accusations and ignored the little evidence we had. They insisted An Serat was acting by himself and that Calypso had somehow gone through Central. The gravitational disturbance we witnessed when the jump point destabilized they called an unfortunate result of his experiments. Nobody else was at risk. The idea of off-network jumping was laughable, they said. A theoretical and practical impossibility.
How did Murdoch and I get to the past, then? We could have asked. But there was no proof we did go. The Calypso II records were well and truly gone, and Eleanor’s medical records were open to interpretation. We agreed not to make a fuss, for the sake of the newly approved neutrality and for the sake of Murdoch’s career—he still had one, at least.
And there was plenty to occupy us all in the present. Venner’s New Council ship was still somewhere in flat-space. ConFleet hadn’t found them yet, but were blaming the New Council for the loss of Vengeful. They were demanding stricter penalties for New Council sympathizers within the Confederacy, which were likely to come into effect, so the New Council had achieved little by helping Serat, and they’d lost a large number of Q’Chn. We all hoped they’d think twice before creating more.
I intended going back to Jocasta when my enforced stay on Earth was over, sooner if I could get the decision repealed or the time shortened. I didn’t mind being a civilian or employee of the new administration, or whatever. But I wanted to be a part of the new Jocasta.
The interim administration, which was basically the arrangement of Residents Committee, old administration, and staff on loan from EarthFleet, would have to decide whether to take a defense contract with ConFleet. When I spoke with him before I left, Veatch seemed keen to do so. He thought that ConFleet’s defeat by the Q’Chn and the loss of Vengeful would bring the price down, and they’d also be keen to prove themselves again and therefore extremely efficient.
“How about the New Council?” I said. “Do you offer them docking rights as well?”
Veatch’s antennae twitched with shock, but not at the prospect of hosting terrorists. “Any application will be considered if it uses the appropriate protocols.”
I thought he might have difficulty getting Rupert Stone to agree with this. To everyone’s surprise, Stone had stayed on Jocasta on secondment from External Affairs, as joint acting head with Veatch of the interim administration.
“I couldn’t leave things in such a mess,” he told me when I asked him why.
“Veatch likes the mess,” I said. “He knows exactly where everything is but nobody else does.”
“We’ll see,” said Stone.
I spoke with another old Jocasta resident before I left. An Barik came back to the station and asked to see me. He had escaped through the jump point before the Q’Chn took over Vengeful, as we’d suspected. Nobody was particularly pleased to see him again—he’d run away and left us to cope with the Q’Chn. Left us to confront An Serat for him. Barik’s behavior made me reflect that although An Serat had his problems, at least he did things for himself.
I said I’d talk to Barik and we met in the half-dismantled “observation lounge” in Level Three of the center. I asked Barik if Serat’s research remained, and what he and the other Invidi would do with it.
“The one possesses not,” he said. “Good.” I didn’t like to feel pleasure at knowledge lost, but if we couldn’t have it, I was glad they couldn’t either. “Some of Invidi wish Serat’s work. The one does not. Your path-decision is the most open.”
“I’m not really glad I helped you,” I said. “Do you ever help us? Or is it all part of some self-serving plan?”
“The one is not all Invidi.”
“Don’t give me that crap.” We were still cleaning up after the explosion and the fire extinguisher incident, and I was tired. “You must have known about Serat’s research for decades.”
“The one sees only the paths of clarity.”
“You mean you didn’t know about it?”
He hesitated.
My feet hurt in my new boots so I righted one of the remaining chairs and sat on it. The chairs were lying at various angles all over the room where they’d fallen when the gravity field was restored after the explosion on Level Eight.
“The one moves,” he said, “but Serat moves also and evades the one. He is correct in some ways and some of Invidi help him.”
“Help him change human history by coming to Earth.”
His voicebox sounded puzzled. “Invidi change nothing. Your history is always your history. Invidi cannot change that which is.”
He’s right, of course. We’ll never know what might have happened if the Invidi hadn’t come. The only way to change history is when it’s happening.
“The one envies you. Your species,” said Barik.
I blinked. Envy? The only Invidi I’d ever seen express anything like desire was Serat. As far as we knew, the rest of them were as unworldly as Buddhist saints.
“Why?”
“You possess infinite... what you call ‘now.’ ”
“But your people can see further than we can. By the time we’ve thought of the moment, it’s over. And we can’t experience the next one until it’s here and gone.”
“Within one moment all may be.”
I swore under my breath and didn’t bother to hide my frustration. �
��I don’t understand you. So how about I tell you my theory of what happened, and you can say either yes you’re right, or no you’re wrong.”
He swayed a little. “Acceptable.”
“There was one pair of jump points. One of these was at coordinates close to Earth’s solar system and one was near Jocasta,” I began. “This jump had a ninety-nine-year correspondence. An Serat sent Calypso through those points in 2027, so it should have arrived in 2126.
“It didn’t, because the Tor ships that were blockading Jocasta in early 2122 dragged the jump point back four years so that Calypso arrived at Jocasta in early 2122 instead. There was never a pair of jump points with a ninety-five-year correspondence. It just looked that way.”
I paused and contemplated Barik. He might be asleep for all I knew. “How am I doing?”
The answer came immediately, so he wasn’t asleep. “Continue.”
“You don’t know why the Tor wanted Calypso, do you?”
“Tor want Invidi drive. As Serat wants Tor drive. Greed is downfall.”
There must have been better ways to get hold of Invidi technology, I thought. But the gray ships were acting on the programming of long-dead Tor. Maybe they weren’t thinking straight.
“Anyway, when the Tor dragged the jump point back four years at this end, the other end moved too. So it would now open four years before 2027 if anyone tried to go through it. As I did with Calypso II, and ended up in 2023. So did Murdoch. When we tried to go back to Jocasta in Farseer, though, we overshot the coordinates of that jump point. Farseer, using its Tor hybrid technology, opened a new set of jump points between Earth and Jocasta. Same ninety-nine-year correspondence. For a couple of days, there were two pairs of jump points.”
I was ticking items off on my fingers as I went, and drawing invisible diagrams on the arm of the chair to help me get my facts straight.
“There is not old and new jump points,” said Barik.
It took me a moment to work out what he meant. “You mean there’s no first cause.”
“Yes, no first, no second.” He added with probably intentional emphasis, “No lines.”
“I know. All the jump points exist simultaneously, right? But my mind works linearly so that’s how I explain it.” I paused, remembered where I was.
“Right. Two pairs of jump points, we went through the Farseer one. History files show a surge of radiation two days later in 2023 near those coordinates. This indicates one of the points in 2023 destabilized. Ninety-nine years later, the position of the other side of the jump point as it destabilizes here indicates it was the old point that destabilized, not the Farseer one. So there is now only one pair of jump points at those coordinates near Earth and near Jocasta. One point, which Farseer created, and through which Serat would send Calypso several years later. Then the Tor would drag it back, etcetera.”
This was the strange bit. “So according to my calculations, there’s still a jump point at the coordinates near Jo-casta where Farseer brought Murdoch and me from 2023. This point will stay there for another four years until 2126, when it will disappear because the Tor have already pulled it back to last year to allow Calypso to arrive. Does that make sense to you?” I was asking myself as much as An Barik.
The Invidi’s tentacles curled into a complex pretzel, then relaxed again. “The one thinks you will not find such a point.” He should know better than to throw me a challenge.
Murdoch and I walked along the path between the sea and the road. Vehicles ran quietly behind a thick belt of scrub. Out in the bay some white pleasure sails skidded over the water and a long ferrytrain glinted in the distance.
Murdoch shaded his eyes against the glare and sniffed the salt breeze. His face was as familiar as the sunlight and yet I felt as if I were seeing it for the first time. It had been a long week. He’d been held up at Jocasta, finishing his reports. Then he’d been held up at Central, waiting for confirmation of his extra leave, then on Titan when his transport’s thruster exhaust malfunctioned. Even though he’d sent me regular messages once he arrived in the solar system, it wasn’t the same as having him here.
I missed him during the lonely, boring hours of my trial and asylum hearing. I missed him when I walked the streets of an Earth I barely knew. I missed him at night as I tossed on my EarthFleet bed in my monitored quarters and tried not to relive the mistaken choices of previous months over and over again. I wondered, too, if Henoit would finally leave us alone or if I’d have to spend my time with Murdoch trying to ignore his presence. Henoit had helped me when I tried to disconnect Farseer from the opsys, but he hadn’t interrupted on the few times I’d been in physical contact with Murdoch during the crisis.
Unfortunately, Murdoch and I hadn’t had a chance to talk properly in the few days between An Serat’s death and my departure with an EarthFleet escort. I didn’t know where his next transfer would be. He’d said something about being sent back to Earth. Which would be good for me, as I was going to be stuck here. But maybe EarthFleet had changed its mind. Or maybe Murdoch would prefer somewhere out of the solar system, or at least on another planet.
“In 2085 they decided to restore the harbor to pretty close to its original state,” said Murdoch. “I must’ve been about ten. Took ’em years and years.” He looked away from the water to me. “You heard about the vote.”
“We should congratulate ourselves.”
“You don’t sound very happy.”
I scuffed the toe of my boot deliberately on the gravel path, sending chips skipping into the grass. “I’m delighted. I just wish I could be there to help implement it.” I looked at the sea. “About here?”
“Bit farther. Might as well do it right. We’ve come this far.”
We certainly had. A century and hundreds of light-years. A long way to find that death is final and that time always wins.
“About here,” said Murdoch after another twenty meters or so. He leaned on the rail and watched me.
I held out the bunch of flowers I carried. “You want to help?”
He shook his head. “I already said good-bye.”
On the other side of the rail, short grass and spindly trees clung to a stony slope, ending in yellowish rocks that stuck out into the water. The waves slapped spray over the farthest of these and swirled into near crevices.
I ducked under the rail. Stones turned under my feet and the sun beat hot on the back of my neck. The first rocks were dry and gritty with blown sand. Then I slipped on spray-wet areas until, breathing hard, I stood on the flat surface of a large rock. Up close, the waves looked rougher than they looked from the path, showing cream-veined undersides as they lifted to the wind.
The flowers emerged fresh and moist from their layer of wrapping. Small yellow and orange faces smiling at the sun. I scrunched the wrap into my pocket and untied the line that bound the stalks together.
The sun’s heat on my head and hands, cool salt air against my cheek, slip-slop of waves. Only the sea and the moment forever itself and eternity. I said Will’s name and threw the flowers outward. The wind laid them in a pattern on the waves where they floated with the foam.
I wiped my face, then turned around and walked back to Murdoch and the path.
He reached out to help me under the rail, then kept hold of my hands. He cleared his throat. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”
I felt my face reddening and it wasn’t the sun. I gripped his hands tight, half apprehensive. If Henoit was still around, this was the moment his voice would start whispering and sending shivers of pleasure at me.
“I accepted the Earth transfer,” he said.
“You want to stay on Earth?”
His hands were sweaty. “Thought I could see a bit more of Irena, too. And we could... I mean, shit, you made me sleep in a separate bed last time we lived together. The least we can do is try properly.” He must have taken my silence for indecision. “You might enjoy it.”
I wasn’t silent because I didn’t like the idea. I was e
njoying the feeling of being alone. No voice in my ear. No, nor death shall us part or flush of uncomfortable passion. Henoit wasn’t there. Was it because I didn’t need him anymore? He might be waiting in eternity—but I suppose I’ll deal with that when the time comes.
It didn’t matter. He’d gone, and Murdoch was here, now.
I pulled one of Murdoch’s hands around my waist and smiled. “Are you sure you want to stay with a known galactic criminal?”
He smiled back. It made the memory of mistaken choices less painful and future choices seem easier.
“I’ll take the risk,” he said.
“I’d love you to stay with me.”
I reached up around his neck and he drew me into the kiss.
About the Author
Maxine McArthur was born in Brisbane, Australia, in 1962. Her father was an engineer and the family moved from town to town when she was a child. Perhaps in reaction to this, after leaving school she spent sixteen years in Osaka, Japan, studying and working as well as making a family. She moved back to Australia in 1996 and settled in Canberra. She has always loved reading, mainly genre fiction such as crime and SF/fantasy, and enjoyed creative writing at school, but only began writing seriously after returning to Australia. Her first published work, the science fiction novel Time Future (1999 Random House Australia, 2000 Warner Aspect) won Transworld Publisher’s 1999 George Turner Award for best unpublished SF/fantasy manuscript by an Australian author. Time Past is the sequel, and features many of the same characters. Maxine has two children, a dog, and a part-time job at the Australian National University, and does far less reading than she’d like to.
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