Silver Skin

by Joan Lennon

  That’s not firewood, he thought. That’s a real wizard’s staff, or maybe that should be witch … He frowned, trying to remember his reading on early belief systems. A witch’s staff … or broomstick … it’s broomsticks for witches … or have I got that muddled …?

  But he didn’t need to know what kind of stick it was to know the old woman was powerful. It surrounded her, coming off her as strong as her smell.

  ‘You don’t need to be pretty to have charisma.’ Who’d said that? He couldn’t remember, but it was clearly true. The old woman might be bent and wrecked-looking and badly in need of sanitising, but it didn’t change a thing.

  She was the one in charge.

  The peace he had felt on waking began to drain away.

  What kind of place is this? How am I going to get home?

  He lay back, letting the hide curtain drop back into place. For the first time he didn’t fall asleep immediately. For a long while he stared up with dry, burning eyes at the alien dark.

  How am I going to get home?

  Threaded through his fevered awareness were the sounds of people, from beyond the walls of this hut – the shouts of children, babies crying, adults calling back and forth to each other, muffled but somewhere nearby. From time to time there were odd scratching noises and Cait would go and crouch at the low doorway and murmur quietly with unseen visitors. Sometimes she would fetch something for them from the stone shelves, but they never came in, or lingered.

  Cait and the old woman were the only people he saw, and yet he was aware of others all around. Just like at home.

  Not like home at all.

  The waking times gradually grew longer.

  Sometimes the old woman was there when Rab opened his eyes. Voy was her name. She had a way of sitting and staring at him, not blinking, as if he were something that might be edible.

  Cait barely spoke to him if Voy was there. He found himself rather desperately trying to catch her eye during these times. But it was as if she’d gone way down inside herself where he couldn’t reach her.

  Once when Cait was helping him back from the toilet alcove, he whispered to her, ‘Who is she? Is she your mother?’

  Cait pulled away from him so abruptly he almost fell to the ground. Her eyes were furious, but before she could say anything they both heard the old woman’s hissing, sniggering laugh.

  ‘That’s right. I gave her life. That makes me her mother, wouldn’t you say? Wouldn’t you say, girl?’

  Cait’s fingers hurt him as she helped him back into bed.

  ‘My mother’s dead.’ Her voice was flat and expressionless.

  The mostly unconscious place in his head where his own mother was lodged suddenly leapt into focus. It hurt to think of her, so he pushed the thought away.

  Meanwhile, Voy went on hissing to herself, though Rab couldn’t understand what she was laughing about.

  There were so many things he didn’t understand.

  And then, late one afternoon, he woke to find his brain clear. It was the strangest sensation – light and cold and detached. Instead of the horrible jumble of feelings and fragments and shapeless fears, he felt he might at last have an instrument he could use. He’d almost forgotten what that was like.

  Where am I? No, that’s not right, because the suit only moves in time, not in space. He was pleased with himself for remembering that. So, WHEN am I? That’s what I need to know.

  He thought about the little information he had to go on. Where to start … The malfunction had happened in the 19th century. Victorian Age. First Industrial Revolution. Steam power. Birth of archaeology.

  Not like this. And none of the history he’d learned covering the period between then and his own time was anything like this either, was it? Not even during the worst days of the Nadir had things been so bad, so debased, that people had to live without even rudimentary electricity.

  So he must have gone even further back, even earlier than the 19th century.

  How far back?

  What did he know that would narrow things down? He’d been nowhere but in the sea, on the shore and inside this hut so far – and out of my head most of the time. He didn’t have to look around to remind himself – everything in the place was as clear to him as if it were incised on the inside of his eyelids. The square hearth, the bed boxes, the stone shelving against the wall. On the wall opposite that, the low, square door. Animal hides – on the beds, over the beds as canopies, made into clothes. Fleeces and felted materials. As far as he could tell, fire was their only power source. These were a primitive people, pre-industrial by a long shot. Now that he thought about it, had he seen anything made of any kind of metal about the place? Pots? Knives?

  Nothing. Unless metal was just for men … He’d only seen the two women so far and historically there were all sorts of distinctions between the genders – he’d had a whole series of lectures on that. But then he remembered one of these women was Voy. He shook his head. Nobody was going to tell her she couldn’t have something.

  So no metal … Just how far do you have to go back in time to get to people who only have stone to work with, and clay, and bits of bone …

  The Bone Age? No, it wasn’t called that …

  The Stone Age.

  ‘You’re awake?’ It was Cait. She was crouched by the bed box, looking at him. ‘How are you feeling? You look a bit strange.’

  Is that possible? Could I have been thrown so far back? Isn’t there some kind of limit on time-travelling technology? He couldn’t remember. His mind was starting to drown in panic all over again.

  ‘Here, drink this.’

  ‘NO!’ he shouted, pushing the cup away so hard the contents splashed up into Cait’s face. ‘No more drugs! You can’t keep drugging me! I have to be able to think!’

  Cait wiped the liquid from her cheek. ‘It’s water,’ she said. ‘That’s all. You’re human now, so you need to drink.’

  What does she mean, ‘You’re human now’? Scut – if she thinks I’m human now, what did she think I was before?

  Remember the lectures …

  Before World Unification, he’d been taught, different groups of people each felt that they were proper humans, and that the members of other groups were … something else. Lesser. His lecturer had said this was a defining feature of Earth history. Some of the groupings were geographical, some religious, some based on gender or sexual orientation or racial characteristics. There had been all sorts of rules against inter-breeding – before the Alexander Decision, sex had preoccupied his ancestors to an extraordinary degree. Rab remembered thinking how odd it was that they could be so interested and yet not understand how stupid the fetish about purity was. How long it had taken them to understand that humans came out best, the more genetically mixed they were.

  That could be it. She could think I’m from some other tribe, a not-quite-human-because-it’s-not-hers tribe. But now for some reason I’ve maybe been awarded honorary human-ness.

  Just because it was stupid didn’t mean it wasn’t true. If he was right, and this was the Stone Age, what other sorts of things might they believe in?

  And then something horrible erupted in his mind.

  If technology to them meant bashing rocks with other rocks, what would they think of the Time Wender – his Silver Skin?

  Sudden sweat trickled down his back. It was his only way home, and they might not even have noticed it. They might have left it to be washed out to sea. Or they might have destroyed it … it might be gone forever …

  He tried to clear his throat. ‘When you found me, was there, you know, anything with me? Any sort of, um, clothes?’

  She shook her head. ‘No clothes.’

  Red crept up his neck, as he tried not to think of the number of times she must have seen him naked. Concentrate, Rab – this is important!

  ‘Are you sure? It wouldn’t have looked like the kind of clothes I’m wearing now. It was a suit, like—’ he tried to make shapes with his hands ‘—and it was
shiny. And silver?’

  She let her pale hair fall forward over her face. ‘You mean your skin.’

  ‘Yes – that’s it – the Skin – the Silver Skin.’ It didn’t occur to him to wonder how she knew its name. ‘Where is it?’ He tried to sound casual, but when she turned away without answering he couldn’t stop his voice from cracking. ‘WHERE IS IT? I need the suit – I mean, the skin – I need it back!’ Tears pricked hotly at his eyes. It might be too damaged to take him back but he might still be able to use it to send a message. ‘It might help me, you see. Help me to talk to my people – I need to tell them I’m all right – I’m not dead!’

  He stopped, appalled at the words he’d not even clearly thought before.

  What if they think I’m dead?

  Eventually that was what they would think. They’d think he was dead and they’d stop looking for him and he’d be trapped here forever. And then he’d grow older and older until it would be true, because he’d die here, in this awful hole, surrounded by stinking savages who didn’t know anything about anything. He’d be dead and in the real world – his world – his time – they’d forget all about him. It would be as if he’d never lived. Even though, all the time, I’d be right here.

  All the time. The words didn’t make any sense any more.

  Nothing made sense any more.

  They’d be looking for him – of course they would. He was only supposed to be away for two hours. Then, when he didn’t come back, his mother would start to worry. And then she’d start to panic. She’d raise the alarm, and they’d start looking … but they’d be looking in the wrong place – no, not place, time – the wrong time. He was lost in time, and that was so much bigger than even the whole world. Grain of sand on a beach … grain of sand …

  That was all he was now.

  Without help, they would never find him.

  Unless I can let them know I’m here. Unless I can get hold of the suit and activate my Com and send them my location. I’ve got to get the suit back.

  He tried to turn back the wave of fear that threatened to engulf him. He tried to not think about the fire. He tried to not think about the malfunction or how badly damaged his Com might be.

  If I can just get my hands on the suit, everything will be all right …

  His head hurt and when the hot tears came he found he hadn’t the strength to wipe them away.

  Cait brought another cup. ‘This isn’t water,’ she said.

  ‘Thank you,’ Rab said humbly. He took it and, in spite of the bitter taste, drained it dry.

  Just before dawn, he woke again. The pain in his arm had worsened. He gritted his teeth and tried not to move, but he couldn’t help a whimper escaping. The Old Woman’s snoring filled the room, but Cait heard him. She knelt by the bed and took his arm in her hands.

  ‘This needs re-dressing. It will hurt. Try to think about something else.’

  There was only one thing to think about. Getting away. Getting home.

  Break it down, Rab. One step at a time.

  How had he got here, in the first place?

  What actually happened, back there, in the sky? It was hard to remember – it seemed so long ago – scut, it felt like forever. Not knowing what time it was, what day, what week – it made him want to scream. He pushed the panic away and tried to concentrate.

  What went wrong?

  There had been the brief visit to the Deluvian, but his Com had seemed completely at ease, and there’d been no hint of a Silver Skin malfunction …

  He shook his head. It was after. It was when we tried to get to the 19th-century date. To 1850.

  He’d assumed that the noise and the blinding light had been a part of the suit malfunctioning, but what if they had been what had caused the malfunction?

  Think about when you were then. Victorian Age. Long before Cloud Control.

  He dredged up from his memory the lectures on rogue weather. They’d put a lot of emphasis on how much earlier ages were at the mercy of meteorological events. It was hard to imagine a world where rain, wind, thunderstorms, hurricanes, all happened at random, and where trying to guess what might come next was the best anyone could do.

  Cloud Control had been an essential science, developing concurrently with the original housing stack designs. Otherwise the towers would have been under frequent, deadly lightning attack as the tallest structures in the landscape.

  What if that was it? What if I was struck by wild lightning?

  The suit’s first priority would be to protect him. The next would be to protect his Com. In the split-second of a lightning strike, it would have automatically focused all power on defence – making itself not be there in a different way to the way it hadn’t been there before … Rab groaned. He’d never understood quantum relevance. He tried desperately to dig through half-remembered and never-entirely-digested equations and expositions.

  Maybe the combination of the lightning’s power and its own quantum activities had thrown him sideways wildly into the past – not sideways, exactly, but whatever the temporal equivalent of sideways was – short circuiting, unless it was over circuiting he meant, the fine tuning. Some almost infinitesimal linking to the time he’d ended up in must exist, or maybe this was just as far as the suit got before it completely conked out. In which case he should be grateful the Silver Skin hadn’t carried him any further back. There were worse things he could have been facing now than bad smells and too much fish to eat.

  Dinosaurs … primordial ooze … nothing but lava and volcanic ash … Rab shuddered. He was lucky to arrive when there was air to breathe.

  So. Best guess: he’d been hit by lightning. Next question: what kind of havoc did something as powerful as lightning wreak?

  All kinds. He had to face it. There was every chance his Com was dead. And if it wasn’t, even if it was just damaged, what made him think he could fix it? He didn’t know the first thing about fixing Coms. At home, they had Coms to do that.

  Think, Rab, think! Stop focusing on all the things you don’t know – what DO you know?

  He frowned. He was getting a headache and the skin of his injured arm was pulsing again, objecting to Cait’s handling.

  Skin …

  What had his Com said? It draws energy from your specific electrical field … That’s why he’d had to strip off, all that time ago, in his bedroom. It needed to be in contact with his skin to draw power. Maybe, just maybe, that was all it needed. An energy source. Him, in fact. If he could just get his hands on it, put it on again, maybe that was all he had to do. Give it some juice and maybe it would repair itself …

  Maybe getting away from this hole was going to be simpler than he’d feared.

  All he had to do was get himself and his suit together again.

  ‘There. Go back to sleep.’

  Cait had finished dressing the burn and was gathering up her pots and pastes. He had to ask her now.

  ‘Where is it?’ he whispered to Cait, grabbing her arm to keep her from leaving him. ‘Where’s my skin?’

  She froze for an instant, then gently extracted herself from his clutch. At first he thought she wasn’t going to answer, but then she moved her eyes deliberately, slowly, towards the bed box on the other side of the room, and then back to him. Rab raised his eyebrows and she gave the barest nod.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She breathed the words but he didn’t hear her. He had already lain back, his heart pounding.

  I know where it is! he thought to himself. I know where it is.

  Cait: Skara Brae

  Cait was restless. As she went about the first of the day’s tasks, she could hear the wind in the thatch. It would be good down on the shore this morning. Salt-tasting wind and waves and sky – they would help clear away all the sick-room smells that had been filling her head for so long. They were what she needed.

  Maybe she’d even have time to go to her cave. It had been too long.

  Voy had left already, at daybreak, without a word. And, after anoth
er broken night, the selkie now seemed to be sleeping soundly.

  That’s right – you sleep. It will do you good. Help you heal. Tomorrow I’ll get you out in the sun. Or maybe even later today. I think you’re almost ready.

  She opened the roof window to let in the air. Then she ducked out into the passage, shutting the door behind her and putting the bar across, so no one would come scratching and disturb his peace. And she put him out of her mind.

  Rab: Skara Brae

  He didn’t know how long he had slept.

  He’d lain still, as if asleep, even though his nose itched and he could feel a cramp coming in his left leg, until, finally, Cait finished pottering about the place and left. He waited for a long moment, to be sure she wasn’t going to suddenly remember something and come back … No. She was gone.

  He got up too fast and had to grab the edge of the bed for a moment till the sparkling lights cleared from his eyes. He breathed deeply, looked to the head of the hearth, where the Old Woman’s seat waited with its mantle of fur. At the stone shelves behind it, stacked with clay pots, nameless bits of bone and rock, rolled-up animal skins. At the weird little carved rock things. Anywhere but at his goal.

  Hurry up – what’s the matter with you? Go ON!

  He forced his foot to edge forward – and then his heart leapt into his throat at a sudden scream overhead.

  His knees went weak and he cursed out loud, but it was only a gull – he could see it through the hole in the roof, high over the village, a white shape in the blue. Just a stupid bird. It couldn’t see him, down here in the dark. It didn’t know what he was doing.

  You’re not doing ANYTHING, you idiot! Get ON!

  He staggered round the hearth in an awkward rush and stopped short by the old woman’s bed. There were carved marks on the edge of the stone side – they leapt out at him, menacing in a way scratches on rock had no right to be. Get a grip, Rab! He made himself lean across the marks.