by Megan Crewe
“I believe that you can travel through time,” I say. “I believe that someone’s playing around with history. Why should I believe that running around in revolutionary France isn’t just more of that?”
He opens his mouth, and closes it again. Then his face brightens. “I can show you,” he says, grabbing the cloth-computer. “I can show you how much this matters to us—how committed we are to setting Earth free.”
He tweaks something on the lower half of the computer, and the Internet browser disappears. “Everyone who joins our group watches this recording,” he continues, a note of reverence creeping into his voice. “It’s a— I suppose you could say a mission statement. From a speech Jeanant gave a couple years before he came here to see his plan through.”
A clear image materializes on the screen. Win swivels it back toward me.
The recording is zoomed in on a man, catching him from the waist up, in front of a pale marbled background dotted with small indents. The angled edge of a shape I can’t quite place—but somehow looks furniture-ish—bisects the lower right corner of the image. That and the thin, seamless but ripple-textured fabric of the shirt the guy’s wearing give me the prickling sense that this could really be from another world, though the guy looks as human as Win does.
The guy—Jeanant, this leader Win’s been talking about—appears to be no older than his midtwenties. His curly black hair drifts over the tops of his ears as he nods, the even light glowing off his bronze skin. But it’s the way he stands that fixes my gaze on him. From the straightening of his shoulders to the tilt of his head, he exudes a firm purposefulness, as if he’s exactly where he needs to be.
Then he starts to speak, in a low voice that carries through the cloth’s invisible speakers in the choppy yet rolling syllables of what could be an alien language. After a second, a computerized English translation kicks in, its inflectionless tone blending into his voice.
“It doesn’t matter where they were born, who their ancestors are, what’s written in their genetic code,” Jeanant says. “Every thinking, feeling conscious being deserves our respect. Every one of them deserves the chance to determine the course of his or her own life, without outside manipulation. Because no matter what some of us like to tell ourselves, they have their own minds with their own unique visions of the universe, that are just as valid and meaningful as anyone else’s.”
He punctuates his point with a sweep of his hands.
“Look at these people, and remember they could have been our friends,” he says. “They could be our teachers, in a far better way than we use them now. But not until we make things right and release them from what’s all but slavery. And we can. There may not be very many of us, but if we’ve learned anything from all our centuries of study, it’s that a small group can make a difference. Again and again, across innumerable points of data, we’ve seen it happen. Every one of us in this room is valid and deserving too, and, working together, we can become something powerful. If we have the courage to take that chance, to question those who would keep us locked in the same old patterns, we can become something so incredible that we’ll set all our lives on a completely different course—one we can be proud of. Can anyone here think of a better goal than that?”
His words reverberate through me. No, I think. That’s what I’ve wanted more than anything, for as long as I can remember: to be powerful enough to fix all the inexplicable wrongs around me. To set my life on a new course without them.
The recording freezes in place. I manage to tear my eyes away. Win’s staring at the screen as if Jeanant’s speech has struck him just as deeply. I guess if there’s any guy you’d follow across the universe, that’s him. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone so palpably sure, and so passionate in his assurance.
“What do you think now?” Win asks quietly.
I think if Win’s helping Jeanant reach the goal he talked about, I’m all on board. I think the naked admiration on his face would be hard to fake. But I can’t help asking, “So why are you here? Why is it so important to you that you came all this way?”
“I agree with him that it’s wrong how we’ve treated this planet,” Win says, folding up the cloth and pushing it into his satchel. “And . . . putting an end to the Traveling will help our people too. Back home, we don’t have what you have here. The food—the trees—the sun! So much space . . .” He glances toward the window with obvious longing, and I remember my first glimpse of him at the school with his face turned toward the sky. “The way we live, it’s not how people are meant to. I don’t know how anyone can feel comfortable with it. Earth isn’t a real home either, but here I can at least feel more like myself. What it should be like.
“At least I get to have this now and then,” he goes on, “Everyone else, everyone who’s not a Traveler—my parents, my brother, my friends—if things keep on the same way, they won’t get to see or feel anything like this, ever. But when we destroy the time field generator, all the scientists up there will have to see it’s time to focus on improving our situation on Kemya instead. So we can all have a world like this eventually.”
I try to picture a planet without trees, without sun, without space. He makes his home sound horrible. Why would his scientists rather poke at us than fix the problems on their own planet, if it’s that bad?
The question must look like skepticism on my face. Before I can ask it, Win adds hurriedly, “And there would be some immediate benefits, for me and my family. Thlo’s going to have a lot of influence in the Council when this is over. If I’ve earned her respect, we’ll have so many more options. We’re not considered worthy of very much right now. I’m lucky they even let me into Traveler training—there’s no way I’ll advance very far unless I do something big enough for them to take me seriously.”
He lowers his gaze, twisting the strap of his satchel between his hands. I wonder if he’s embarrassed to admit his family’s standing, or that his motives aren’t entirely unselfish. The funny thing is, the admission shakes loose my last bit of doubt. He didn’t have to tell me that. He could have pretended it was all big heroics. If he were pretending.
In a way we want the same thing. To live like people are supposed to, in a world that’s right. I don’t know what’s happened to his planet that things are so bad there, but I know what it’s like to feel at odds with your surroundings, to have nothing you can count on, and I can hear it echoed in his voice. I know I’d do just about anything to fix that.
“She’ll be pretty impressed if you bring her this weapon all by yourself, yeah?”
“I’ll say.” He chuckles, and looks back up at me. “So you’ll check the books to see if you notice anything?”
Saving the world by going to the library. It doesn’t sound as grand as Jeanant’s speech, but I’m not sure I’m ready to handle anything grand just yet.
“I guess I can give it a shot.” I get up. “I can check the library after school today. Assuming your Enforcers don’t zap me first.”
It’s an attempt at a joke, but it comes out flat. Mainly because I’m pretty sure the pale woman will zap me if she happens to spot me again.
As I turn to go, Win stands. “Wait,” he says. “Here. You should take this.”
He pulls off his blazer and pushes up the sleeve of his T-shirt. A thin silvery band is wrapped around his upper arm. It looks like solid metal, but when he tugs it, it splits apart into a long strip that wobbles like a piece of linguine. He offers it to me.
“Put it around your arm, or your ankle,” he says. “If anyone who’s not from Earth gets within about a hundred feet of you, it’ll start vibrating, and it won’t stop until they’re farther away again. It’s how I knew the Enforcers had arrived outside the coffee shop yesterday before we saw them. They’ll be patrolling the city—this’ll help you stay out of their way.”
The material feels both soft as silk and firm as steel between my fingers. How
is that even possible?
Aliens, I think, and for the first time, it’s not followed by the urge to laugh. I can’t think of another explanation that fits.
I slide the strip around my right ankle. As soon as the tips touch, they fuse together. The soft metal band lies smooth and still against my skin.
“It’s not doing anything right now, and you’re within a hundred feet,” I point out as I pull my sock up over it.
“It’s tuned to me,” Win says with a little smile. “It wouldn’t work very well if I was setting it off myself the whole time.”
“Right.” Because this is his—he gave it to me off his arm rather than offering a spare. Which means he probably doesn’t have a spare. He did say he doesn’t have a lot of equipment. I pause with my hands still by my ankle. “Don’t you need it?”
“I can get away faster than you can, if the Enforcers find me,” he says, patting his satchel. “And you could be the key to tracking Jeanant’s clues—I wouldn’t risk something happening to you. I’ll be in here most of the time anyway.”
Waiting for me to report back. Like it all rests on me. I straighten up. “Don’t you have other jobs to do?”
“Not exactly. Mostly it’s just keeping an eye on things: following the news broadcasts, scanning the Internet. Just in case.”
“While everyone else is in France.”
His shrug looks forced. “Someone needed to be here. I’m the newest recruit. That’s the way it goes.”
The newest recruit and, from what he said, one his people expect less of for some family-related reason. From the tension in his stance, I wonder if he suspects it’s more the latter. “Well, thanks,” I say, glancing down at my ankle.
Win lays his hand over mine, where I’ve rested it on the top of my chair. “Thank you,” he says. “It’s because of you I’ve got a chance at solving this.”
A tingle passes over my skin. His hand is warm, but it’s not only that. It feels, inexplicably, more there, more real, than the edge of the chair under my palm, than the sleeve of my jacket brushing my wrist. As if his fingers might sink right into mine.
The thought makes me twitch, and Win jerks back.
“It’s okay,” I say. “This is just all so weird still. There’s something about you, and the Enforcers yesterday too. I guess it’s an . . . alien thing.”
He frowns. “What kind of ‘alien thing’?”
“I don’t know,” I say, waving my hand dismissively. I feel awkward now, like I’ve just pointed out an ugly birthmark I was supposed to pretend not to notice. “You just look, and feel, like you’re more here? More solid than everything else. It’s not a big deal.”
I’m ready to go, but the look on Win’s face stops me.
“Oh,” he says. “You can sense that too?”
A chill crawls up my back. “What? What is it?”
“One more reason it’s important that we stop the shifts soon.” He seems to search for the words. “You know . . . videotapes? Earthlings used to use those? And if you recorded footage from one to another, and then recorded a copy of that copy onto a third tape, and kept going— every time the video gets copied, it loses something. It starts to get fuzzy?”
“Yeah,” I say, thinking of the static on my grandparents’ home videos.
“It’s kind of the same thing with time shifts,” Win says. “Every time the world gets rewritten, the atoms, and their bonds, break down. So minutely you can’t even measure it when it’s just once or twice. But it’s been building up for thousands of years. The balance is starting to tip—more earthquakes, more droughts, more disease, more instability in every way.” His voice drops. “The fabric that holds life on this planet together is breaking apart.”
9.
I leave Win and his hotel room behind as I head to school, but I can’t shake the memory of his words. Morning mist lingers on the streets, hazing the city. I find myself touching things I pass—railings, telephone poles, tree trunks—to confirm that they’re still real. To reassure myself with their solid surface under my fingers.
Win’s people have supposedly been shifting our planet’s history for thousands of years. It’s held together this long. It’s not as though we’re all going to disintegrate with one more tweak.
But I can’t help thinking of all the natural disasters that have hit the news in the last few years. Catastrophic climate change, new strains of flu, tsunamis and hurricanes. The balance is starting to tip. How fast will it tip all the way over, now that it’s on the verge? Everything Win does, every shift his group of rebels makes, every ripple the Enforcers cause while trying to catch them, those are all one more rewrite, aren’t they? I might have already relived this walk to school a dozen times, and not know it.
The idea makes me queasy. I reach into my pocket for my bracelet and spin through all ten beads. After I’ve finished, I keep holding it pressed against my palm, as if it can anchor me to this place. This now.
Maybe I can do more this time. More than escaping into my numbers and rituals and waiting for the unpleasantness to be over. I don’t want to stand by and let the world fall apart.
And if Win’s right and I can notice some clue in the past—if finding it for him means he and his group can put an end to all the shifts, all the rewrites, and the wrong feelings will go away—then once I’ve done this, I wouldn’t have to pretend to be normal anymore. I’d just be normal.
My mind trips back to Jeanant’s speech. We can become something so incredible that we’ll set all our lives on a completely different course . . .
I hope that’s true.
The sight of heavier traffic up ahead jerks me back to the present. To get to school from the Garden Inn, I have to cross Michlin Street, where the Enforcers chased us yesterday.
I stick to the side streets until I’m five blocks past the cafe, and then dart across, peering up and down the road. No sign of the pale woman or her henchman. I head into the residential neighborhood on the other side and veer around another corner. As soon as the shops are out of view, I relax. Okay, home free!
I’ve taken two more steps when the band around my ankle starts to shiver.
I flinch, and then freeze in place. There’s a man coming out of a house down the street with his preteen daughter, but it seems unlikely that Win’s Enforcers would be traveling with kids. He said the range for the alarm was about a hundred feet. The alien, whoever it is, could be out of sight around an intersection or down a driveway.
My arm twitches where the pale woman shot me. What will they do to me if they see me again?
The band’s vibration hits a higher pitch. I’m going to guess that means they’re coming closer. I spin around. I don’t know which way they’re coming from. The trees and shrubs look far too exposed, but halfway down the block, I spot two cars parked close together near a garbage can left on the sidewalk.
I sprint over and duck between the cars. With a yank, I drag the bin in front of the gap between them. Now I’ve got cover on three sides, at least.
The quivering at my ankle has become a silent but frantic buzz. I crouch there between the bumpers, the sour smell of old garbage mixing with the oily scent of the cars. A gate creaks. An SUV rumbles by.
Brisk footsteps thump against the concrete, heading toward me.
I sink lower, clutching my bracelet. All I need is for them to walk right past me. Just walk on by, and everything will be fine.
The steps sound as if they’re almost on top of me when they come to an abrupt halt. For a few seconds, there’s only distant traffic noise.
I peek through the narrow space between the garbage can and the maroon sedan’s fender, and my pulse stutters. It’s the man who was with the pale woman yesterday—I’m almost sure of it. My attention was mostly on her, but he’s wearing a similar peacoat, his navy blue. And he stands out against the lawn behind him as if he’s in color a
nd it’s only black and white. Even if he’s a different guy, I’m going to guess he’s not human.
His head is turning, tracking something across the street. His hand slides under his coat to where I suspect his weapon is hidden. I tilt over just enough to see down the opposite sidewalk. A young woman with light brown hair is ambling along as her Yorkie sniffs the lawns.
I glance back at the man in time to see his expression shift from wariness to disappointment. His hand drops from his side. He thought she was someone he might need to shoot, but—
Someone tall, young, and female with light brown hair. I bite my lip. The woman is a little older than me, and her hair’s longer and more ashy, but from a distance, considering he only caught a glimpse of me before, I can see how he wouldn’t be sure.
They’re definitely not just looking for Win.
I hunch down, my cheek against my knees. If the man looks over the garbage can . . .
His footsteps pass me, and then stop again. But it’s only a quick pause before he’s walking on. I stay there, in a tight little ball, as the sound of his steps fades away. The metal band’s quivering dies down with them. After a minute, it goes still. I count out another sixty seconds before I peek over the trunk of the car in the direction the man went. He’s gone.
I take a slightly roundabout route the rest of the way to school, jogging along the streets and then making a dash for the front doors. The alarm band doesn’t shiver again. Inside, I lean against the wall and catch my breath. I feel as wrung out as if I did spend the last hour at cross-country practice.
It hasn’t even been a whole hour yet. I wasn’t with Win that long, and even after the close call with that Enforcer, I’m here twenty minutes early.
I kind of want to slip into the bathroom, shut myself in a stall, and just sit and breathe undisturbed for a while. But as I peel myself off the wall, my eyes catch on the sign down the hall above the library door.
