Rogue Touch

by Woodward, Christine

  “He makes the most wonderful things, doesn’t he? Such a talented man. It’s why I fell in love with him.”

  Knowing that she’d understand me perfectly, I couldn’t think what to say. So I said the only thing I had to say to her, the only thing I wanted to know. “Where’s Touch?”

  “Ah,” she said. “My husband.”

  “Your ex-husband,” I said, a little louder than I meant to.

  She cocked her head and smiled, like this was the funniest thing I could have said. Then she repeated, “My husband. This was our home, you know. Where we lived together.”

  “I notice you’re using the past tense,” I said.

  “Ah,” she said. “But not for the reason you think. We’re moving on, Touch and I, to a grander station. The station we were born to have. Where our child was born to be raised. Would you like to see a picture?”

  For a moment I thought she meant a picture of their new, fancier house, but of course she meant a picture of Cotton. Their son. Alabaster didn’t have to fumble through her wallet to show me what he looked like. She just drew a square in the air next to her with the tip of her gloved fingertip, and a colored picture appeared, of a little boy with white-blond hair and Touch’s kind blue eyes. He was laughing and holding some kind of shiny beach ball. I could see the ocean behind him. He had his mother’s dimples. For some reason the picture made me feel deeply afraid, and not of anything that might happen to me. It scared me that Touch and Alabaster had something so important together, something so beautiful. Seeing the picture made it much more real than just knowing it.

  “His name is Cotton,” Alabaster said. “At least for right now. Here, in our time, we get our lifelong names at twelve years of age. Sometimes people keep their original names, if they suit them properly. Like me. I’ve always been Alabaster, since the day I was born.”

  I just stood there, blinking at her, suddenly terrified that she could read my mind. She laughed. “I can’t read your mind,” she said flatly. “Just your face. It gives away everything. That’s something you might want to work on.”

  I cleared my throat and straightened my spine, pulling myself to my full height, which had me towering over her, even though I was still in my jumpsuit socks, and she wore boots with big thick heels. Again, I said the only thing I had to say to her. “Where’s Touch?”

  She sighed. “A simple girl from a simple time,” she said. “One thing on your mind, I see, and it’s my dear, handsome husband. Don’t you know better than to demand to see another woman’s husband in her own home?” She pointed to the bed behind me, the one where I’d slept for who knows how long. “We made love in that bed, you know. Not that this is our room; we keep it for guests. But we’ve made love in every room in this house, even the kitchen. Is that too personal, this information?” She cocked her head, and I tried to erase my thoughts along with my reactions. Alabaster went on. “He’s a wonderful lover, Touch. But I suppose you know that.” She smiled again. She had very white teeth, just a little too big for her mouth, so that they rested on her bottom lip. It was charming. Sexy. I wanted to ball my hand into a fist and punch those teeth right in.

  “No,” Alabaster said, rethinking what she’d just said. “I guess you wouldn’t know. Would you?”

  I knew. I knew full well, even if I couldn’t make love to him in every room in the house, not the way she had. But still I knew all about him, and I would keep reminding myself of that, and not fall for this bait.

  “We used to know a man,” Alabaster said, “called Gordium. I believe Touch has mentioned him. He had the same gift as you. But he learned to control it and lead a very normal life.”

  I realized I was still standing, and sank down onto the bed. I wanted to ask her so badly what kind of normal life, but at the same time I didn’t want to ask her for anything.

  “Yes,” she said, as if I’d spoken out loud. “He could have relationships. Shake hands. Kiss. Make love. All of it. Just like a normal person. Except better than normal, because he had this power. Can you see how your power might be very useful, if only you learned how to use it?”

  My face wouldn’t stop reacting to what she was saying, no matter how hard I tried.

  “Gordium could grab hold of a person’s shoulders,” Alabaster said. “He could take out as little or as much as he wanted. A bit of knowledge here. A little ability there. He could leave enough for the person, if he liked. Or he could take it all. Just as he liked.”

  A shiver went through me at the thought of wielding this kind of power on purpose. It was bad enough to do it on accident! The only thing I knew for sure was I didn’t want to be taking Alabaster’s word for anything.

  “Where’s Touch?” I said again.

  “Touch is where he’s always been. In his workroom. Designing wondrous inventions.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I said.

  “Inventions like the one that allowed him to send me messages when he was away, and summon me back to your time.”

  “That’s a lie,” I said. “He was trying to escape from you.”

  “He told me to come,” she said flatly, “and to bring the wildebears.”

  “Why the hell would he want to do that?” But even as I asked, I felt uneasy, remembering the way he’d brought me to the Anasazi ruins, and Tawa.

  “Why indeed. He summoned me a second time. To rescue you from the caves.”

  “Rescue us?” I said. “That’s not exactly how I think on that incident.”

  “But you’d be dead,” she said, “if we hadn’t arrived.”

  I couldn’t think of an answer to that. I couldn’t think of much of anything. “Where’s Touch?”

  Alabaster stepped aside and opened the door. Beckoned to me with her hand. “Come, impatient girl,” she said. “I’ll take you to him. You can see for yourself.”

  I stepped out into the hall, expecting to get blasted with heat. Instead it felt only a little warmer than it had in the room. Meanwhile Alabaster started taking her clothes off and hanging them on a rack of hooks outside my room. There were several hooks, with bigger clothes, for men I guess, and at that sight fear finally started to settle in around me. It was bad enough for your boyfriend’s ex-wife to be able to barge on into your room without knocking, any old time she wanted. But the thought of strange men having that same privilege? That didn’t set well, in this time or any other.

  Once she’d taken off all her cold weather gear, Alabaster stood there in front of me, wearing a white lace bikini and a light little short-sleeved shrug. She kept on her clunky boots, though. I hate to say she looked pretty fantastic. I put my hand to my forehead, testing the temperature.

  “You’re not going to feel the heat,” Alabaster said. “It’s the garment. Touch designed it. It regulates body temperature, keeps the air around you at the precise temperature where you’ll be most comfortable.”

  She started walking down the hall. The roof over our head was low and round. If most buildings in our world were constructed around angles, the buildings here seemed to be constructed through curves. I followed Alabaster down the hall. The house looked like it had been sculpted from one big piece of clay rather than connecting walls and floors.

  I let Alabaster walk a few steps, then hurried to catch up with her. “Touch made this suit?” I said. “He knows I’m coming?”

  “He designed the material,” she said, ignoring my second question. “It was I who made the suit for you. We’re a team, the two of us. Touch and I.”

  “That’s not true.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth I regretted them.

  She stopped and turned toward me. I tripped up short, then righted myself. “It is true,” she said. “It’s always been true. That’s why he didn’t go to get you himself, you know. Because I didn’t approve. Knowing how you felt about him.” All I could do was blink at her. She smiled a little. “Never underestimate the power of a wife,” she said, and started walking again.

  I had been afraid of plenty in the last thi
rty-six hours or so. But now I also felt afraid about Touch, whether everything between us would be the same when I saw him. Never underestimate the power of a wife. That was exactly the sort of thing Wendy Lee’s memories had been trying to tell me.

  My hand brushed the silky fine material of the suit. I wondered how Touch could have invented this material when they’d only taken him yesterday. How would Alabaster have had time to make the suit? Of course Touch could’ve designed it before he left, but then why wouldn’t he have made himself a suit to bring back to our time? It sure would’ve come in handy for him there, keeping him from being so cold.

  Walking behind Alabaster, I wondered if she was swaying her hips like that for my benefit or if that was how she always walked. She reminded me of something that would pop out of an ancient lamp; she didn’t seem quite real. I tried to shut out the image of her and Touch and every room in their round house, concentrating instead on the fact that I was going to see him. That is, if Alabaster was telling the truth.

  Once I saw him, he would explain. Better yet he would look at me, and I would look at him, and then no matter what happened, everything would be OK.

  Downstairs, the house was like a nicer, cleaner, rounder version of Joe Wheeler’s log cabin—not huge, but airy and comfortable and very, very pretty. Gleaming wood and tile everywhere, and high domed ceilings. I noticed there were no lamps or lightbulbs, just lots of windows, with that ultra-strong sun pouring in. The walls were empty of electrical outlets; nothing had wires. If Touch had been there, I might have teased him that it looked primitive, except I knew this world was running on energy that didn’t cost anything, or take away from anything else.

  We went downstairs, into an open, rustic area, with a comfortable-looking living room and what must have been the kitchen, although it didn’t have any stove or refrigerator, just lots of cabinets of varying sizes. My stomach rumbled, and I wondered if they were ever going to feed me.

  Outside, we walked across a dusty yard. When I turned to look at the house where I’d been staying, it looked like no building I’d ever seen, a small series of rising domes. The broad sun reflected off its walls so that it almost became invisible—a pale shimmer, like a mirage. I could feel that same sun’s heat on the top of my head, but the suit Touch designed kept me nice and cool. There was no grass underfoot, but all around were lots of wildflowers and low little bushes. It was real pretty. Alabaster didn’t seem worried about me running away, even though she knew firsthand how fast I could go. She just sauntered on ahead of me, confident that I would follow her anywhere as long as she told me Touch was waiting.

  If I found out anything had happened to him, she wouldn’t find me so easy to lead. Right then and there I would grab her by the shoulders and press my cheek against hers, using all my wildebear strength to hold her as long as possible. Then all her memories—all her everything—would belong to me. And she’d be gone.

  As we approached the long, low outbuilding, a portion of the wall disappeared so we could step through. Inside it looked as industrial as the house had looked cozy, with cold, hard floors made from a material I didn’t recognize. It seemed much bigger than I’d imagined it, with door after closed door, each with a tile and a little symbol on it. Finally Alabaster stopped at one door and waved her hand in front of it. When that door disappeared into thin air, she walked through the opening. After a second of uncertainty, I went ahead and followed her.

  The room was huge, with a high, curved ceiling and the same cold, industrial floors. Light seeped in through slats near the floor, so it wasn’t as bright as the house had been. From the outside I would’ve imagined the whole building was about the size of this room. It was divided in the middle by a glass wall that went all the way to the ceiling and spanned the entire length. On the other side of the glass it was a whole lot homier, with wood floors and a braided rug like the one up in my room. Also a little living area, with a couch and chairs and a coffee table. Sitting in the big comfy armchair was Touch’s father. And on the couch, his hands clasped together like he had nothing to do but wait, was Touch.

  He looked well. Rested and well fed. He was dressed like I’d never seen him before, in kind of loose, light long pants and a short-sleeved shirt. He wasn’t shivering or bothered by the temperature. He looked perfectly comfortable.

  I ran to the glass. I pressed my whole body against it and yelled as loud as I could. “Touch! Touch!”

  Alabaster rolled her pretty eyes. “Very romantic. But he can’t hear you.”

  I turned toward her. “I thought you didn’t have any prisons in this world.”

  “This world has changed.”

  Just then Touch looked up. For a moment I felt afraid that he wouldn’t be able to see through the glass, but right away he got to his feet and walked toward me. I waited to see that twinkle in his eye, the little bit of devil that couldn’t help shining through at the sight of me. Instead he looked like he could hardly believe what he was seeing. He walked real slow, and somehow I knew—if I could’ve torn my eyes away from Touch’s—that his father and his wife were both smirking as they watched him.

  Touch stood there, right in front of the glass. He raised his hands and pressed them against mine, our palms separated by the layer of glass, truly no closer to touching than they’d ever come. I pressed my forehead against the glass, too. It felt hot. And somehow I knew in that instant, Touch hadn’t designed the material of my suit before he came to Jackson, any more than he’d designed it for me, so I could live comfortably in his world. He’d designed it for himself. So that maybe he could come back to me.

  But standing there on the other side of the glass, he didn’t smile or look happy to see me. He didn’t look much of anything, really. Just blank. And I couldn’t hear him when he spoke, or even read his lips, since no doubt he was talking in his beautiful, whistling language.

  I sure didn’t want to ask Alabaster. But she was the only one there, and I wanted to know so badly. “What?” I said. “What is he saying?”

  She said, “He says now that the last weapon is here, we can move to the castle for good.”

  “Last weapon!”

  “Yes. The last weapon in the war against Arcadia.”

  “War against Arcadia,” I repeated, real slow, hating the way the words sounded.

  Alabaster smiled. She had a very sweet smile. A believable one. So that it gave me even bigger chills when she said, right on the tag end of that smile:

  “And now that you’re here. Once and for all, Arcadia will fall.”

  I turned back toward the glass, hoping that Touch’s face might tell me something different. But he only stood there, beautiful as ever and—to my eyes at least—impossible to read.

  What did I care, really, about a world that had nothing to do with me? Arcadia. No more than a word. A concept. An unattainable ideal.

  Ten thousand years from now, all our country’s edges—the edges that it has today—will be under water. I’m not talking about California and Florida falling into the ocean. I’m talking nothing left but the Rocky Mountains and the desert surrounding them, maybe three states’ worth of land remaining. Same situation on every other continent except for the ones—like Europe, Australia, and Antarctica—that will be totally submerged. Everything that remains will be just a fraction of what it used to be, floating in the middle of a great blue-green sea. They won’t have different names for different oceans. It will just be one, The Sea, that takes up most of the planet, making land seem more or less an afterthought.

  But showing me the map wasn’t the first thing Touch’s father did when he came to talk to me in my room. First, he asked me my name.

  “You don’t know it?”

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “I think you know it.” We sat there for a minute, staring at each other, and then I caved. Which probably was not a good sign.

  “My name’s Rogue,” I said.

  “The name Touch gave you.”

  “It’s t
he only name I have.”

  “Well then, Rogue. You may call me King.”

  “King?”

  He smiled, like my aversion to this was the funniest thing in the world. “It’s the only name I have,” he said, with just the teeniest trace of sternness. Then he showed me the map of what the world had become.

  Staring at that image, I felt a huge sadness in my chest for everything that used to be. But I tried not to let King see. I hated the way he watched me, looking for reaction or emotion. Remembering what Alabaster had said, about how my face gave everything away, I tried real hard to just stare blankly. I reminded myself that, rising seawater or not, nothing lasts ten thousand years. Everything I ever knew would’ve been gone by now no matter what.

  But to not even leave a trace of ourselves? I mean, think of everything our own anthropologists had found. Dinosaur bones, and the fossils of people who lived hundreds of thousands of years ago. The Anasazi villages like the one Touch and I’d walked through, those would remain. Whereas apparently, even under water, we’d manage to destroy all our tall cities, and all our little towns, so this new civilization, it didn’t even know we ever existed. Not until Touch accidentally stumbled upon us. It was our greed, I felt sure, our greed and our blindness that had wiped us all out without leaving a trace. And now these people—Touch’s family—wanted to wipe out Arcadia and head themselves in the same direction.

  Anyway. I could certainly understand why Touch hadn’t been able to read my Rand McNally atlas. The map King showed me was like the photo Alabaster had brought up of her and Touch’s son. Hovering in the middle of the room was a great big picture of the ocean, and he could zoom in to different spots. As he went east, away from what was left of North America and toward what used to be Europe, I tried to imagine Mississippi as nothing but the ocean floor. No bayous, no gators, no river. Did the loblolly pines and tupelo trees still sway down there in the water? It was a hopeful image, but of course trees need a whole lot more sunlight than ever makes its way down to the bottom of the ocean.