by Kim Falconer
‘What are you doing?’
‘Going on a hunt.’
She wrinkled her nose. ‘What for?’
Shane’s onto it, Maudi. He’s going to swim up the inlet and see if it offers a way out. These time traps are usually very circumscribed. I’m optimistic.
‘You’re always optimistic.’ Rosette smiled as she cupped her hands in the water and tasted it. She immersed the waterskin, filling it to the brim.
That’s because I know some things you don’t.
Like time traps are circumscribed?
Yes. Like that.
‘Actually, no,’ Shane replied, thinking she’d spoken to him. ‘I’ve become increasingly more and more pessimistic. Depressed, even.’
‘Really? I hadn’t noticed.’ She tried not to smile.
‘I have. It’s a habit now. I look at the worst possible outcome to everything. It’s probably a dead end.’
‘Charming, Shane, but I was talking to Drayco. He thinks we have a good chance.’
‘I have doubts about that. Worth a try, though.’
She shook her head. ‘When were you born?’
‘What?’
‘I don’t know your constellations here on Tensar, but I sense something a little on the dark side of the moon. Like a Saturn transit or a Saturn return. You’d be the right age?’
‘I’m twenty-nine.’
‘Figures.’
‘Are you saying Saturn makes me depressed?’
‘Not at all.’
‘Don’t tell me it makes me happy. I won’t believe you.’
‘It doesn’t make you depressed. It doesn’t make you happy either. Saturn doesn’t make you anything. It just coincides with a time of intense evaluation of your life so far…relationships, love affairs, professional achievement. Things like that. Have you been pondering a lot lately?’
He gave her a quick look and turned away.
‘What is the symbol associated with your birthday? Do you know it?’
He nodded, and started undoing his pants.
‘Are you going to tell me?’
‘It’s called the water dragon.’
She closed her eyes. ‘Does it have a stinger? Poison? Does it transform?’
‘It has three forms—the sea snake, the water dragon and the eagle. The snake is venomous.’
‘Sounds like Scorpion to me.’
‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Transformation, please,’ she murmured.
‘I didn’t hear that.’
‘It means your world is as dark as you like to make it.’
He glared at her, naked now, his clothes in a pile next to him. ‘That’s cryptic,’ he said.
‘It’s meant to be.’ She brightened, taking in his shape and the reptilian images tattooed on the sides of his torso. They came up from the sea, through a band of fire and into the clouds. The colours were striking—sunny sky blue, greens like gemstones and vermilion red. It was so vivid, maybe from lack of exposure, or perhaps they were new.
‘What’s the problem now?’
‘I’m definitely feeling more optimistic,’ Rosette said, gazing at his body.
‘How’s that?’ he asked, ignoring the scrutiny and lowering himself into the pool.
‘You’ve got quite a physique, Shane.’
‘What do you mean?’
She squatted down by the edge of the pool. ‘I’m saying, you’re fit—very fit. And I know from your flute playing that you have good lungs. These things bode well.’
‘How so?’
She shook her head. The guy did not know how to receive a compliment. ‘Just take a deep breath and find us a way out of here.’
He winked at her before gulping in the air and disappearing under the surface.
Hold your breath, Drayco, while I count.
She’d got to fifty-nine when he resurfaced. He braced his hands on the edge of the pool and levered himself out in one smooth motion. Water ran off his glistening body as he wiped his face with his shirt. ‘That’s warm in there. It must be fed by hot springs.’
‘And is there a way out?’
He grinned. ‘Aye.’
‘Where does it lead?’
‘That’s the strange part. I didn’t recognise it. But the good thing is, the pool’s fed by a short inlet; just a few strong kicks and it opens into a canopy of rock over a stream. Plenty of air, though I don’t know how he’s going to go.’ Shane tilted his head towards her temple cat.
‘How far up did you swim?’
‘Far enough to see daylight. It’s not a dead end.’
‘Can we walk once…’
‘No.’ He interrupted her with a wave of his hand. ‘It’s a swim, the whole way.’
Rosette started unbuttoning her leather vest. ‘Let’s do it before another shaker comes and we have to discover it all over again.’
‘What makes you think this is the first time?’
She pulled her top off over her head. He glanced away. ‘You think it isn’t?’
He let his exhale turn to a whistle. ‘I think I’d remember if it was.’
‘Now you’re being cryptic.’
He bundled his clothes together and stuffed them into his pack. He slipped it on, his sword in his left hand. ‘Are you ready?’ he asked.
‘Almost. Dray? Do you understand what we have to do?’
Swim under?
‘Have you ever done that before?’
There was the shipwreck, of course. We were under for a long time. I hated that. I don’t like the salt water.
‘This is fresh water, warm and clean. It’s a short swim under. Can you picture it?’
Her temple cat stood at the edge of the pool, staring into the dark water.
Swimming like a platypus.
‘That’s right. You don’t breathe while you’re under. You hold your breath in.’
I got it, Maudi.
Rosette bundled her clothes and boots and tied them to her pack. She slid her sword out of its sheath a short distance, checking for rust. It was perfect, though what this underwater journey would do to the metal she knew too well. She hoped there would be time to treat it properly on the other side. As she lowered herself into the water, Drayco splashed in beside her, dog paddling in circles. The cave fish disappeared into the rocky crags. Rosette wondered what else lurked in the nooks and cracks. ‘Lead the way,’ she said to Shane. ‘Before…’ A tremor rolled through the water and the walls of the cavern began to shake. ‘Go!’ she shouted.
Gulping in a deep breath, she followed Shane, her familiar swimming beside her.
EARTH—TIME: BACKWARD
CHAPTER 10
Everett lowered the window and stuck his head out, checking the sky. He knew he wouldn’t see any stars. Those could only be viewed in planetariums or computer simulations, but he stared up through the glaring streetlight anyway, the muddy vault impenetrable. This must be where the saying ‘clear as mud’ comes from. At least the rain had stopped.
The air burned his lungs, the smell of wet asphalt and insecticide filling the car. Rubbish compactors were working this time of night, the drone of the engines and the scrape of bins crashing in the background as dinosaur-size machines stomped people’s waste into thin sheets of amalgam. He wrinkled his nose and quickly closed the window.
He’d planned to duck home for a few hours’ sleep, but when his hand touched the ignition, he hesitated. He let go of the keys and they swung like a pendulum, slower and slower until they stopped. Plastic scrunched as he tried to get comfortable. He couldn’t decide what to do—he couldn’t stay and couldn’t go. His thoughts paralysed him.
An ambulance whined in the distance, the sound releasing adrenaline like a shot of strong coffee on an empty stomach. It was coming this way. More work. More lives to save. There wasn’t much point in going home, though he knew the night shift could cover it. The chief resident was on call. She could handle anything with her hands tied. Go home, old man, and get some rest.
Who was he kidding? His sleeps were fitful at best, leaving him more exhausted than if he worked through the night. He watched the flashing beacons of a jet descend towards the east. The red and green lights blinked, candy drops in a brown bowl. He closed his eyes and shuddered, Jane Doe’s comatose face appearing in his mind. Why does she want to die?
He forced himself to dismiss the vision before he could ponder it, but even as he did she came seeping back into his awareness, like water oozing through footprints in the mud. It was inappropriate, of course, to feel this—to feel anything at all save clinical interest—for a patient, especially a Jane Doe. Yet she was an enigma, and he found it hard not to speculate. What was her origin? She was marked so bizarrely—a tattooed woman. She was not of the Allied States, perhaps not even of this world. That’s ridiculous. What other world could there be?
He pressed his temples. He could imagine her awake, the few moments of consciousness he’d observed extrapolating into vivid scenes in his mind. He could hear her talking in that strange accent, angry as she pushed her long red hair back, flashing those hazel-green eyes, gesticulating, fervent, exciting, erotic. She looked to him like a dancer or an artist, a siren out of myth with her slender body and graceful fingers, the nails painted the colour of blood. But she carried the scars and images of another culture—perhaps an ancient tribe not unaccustomed to the hunt, battle, or ritual journeys. What are you thinking? There are no such things any more.
He’d studied it, though, knew they had existed once. He’d found texts and sacred documents that suggested a people long ago who might have looked like her, been like her. Images of those tattoos were found on cave walls and stone slabs thousands of years old. Could she have been kept in cryo? Perhaps discovered in some frozen archaeological site and reanimated? That might explain the peculiar physiological response—or lack of response—to his treatments. It would explain a lot of things. But if someone had found her, it posed a more difficult question. It would mean there were scientists either outside of ASSIST’s auspices, acting on their own, which was dangerous enough, or they were ASSIST-sanctioned and he didn’t know about it—worse still. What secrets are they keeping?
He sensed in his Jane Doe something familiar, something compelling. He had to investigate. He had to find out. Could she have been born outside the State? When? How had she survived? Where was her family? If she doesn’t recover, we’ll never know.
He sighed. Maybe he was wrong about her. Maybe she was a rebel who had spent time in the underground. He shook his head. The fleeting glimpse of her when she awoke carried a sense of power. It reached up towards him, without words. It grabbed him, throttled him. Just like before…It was so much like before, it was uncanny, though that was many years ago. Wasn’t it? His memory could play tricks at this age. He rubbed his brow, the old ache returning.
There had been a case like this some time ago, but the strange thing was, when he went to look up her records, they were gone. He couldn’t cross-reference, and he couldn’t be sure of his recollection. Was it accurate? He knew how selective ‘memory’ could be. Besides, you could buy a memory these days for less than a week’s wage. Could he have been tampered with? Was that other woman, that other case, real at all? He could recall only fragments.
Before he’d become head of his department, when he was a young intern, the medtechs had brought her in. At least, that was how he saw it in his mind. The similarities were so striking he’d have thought them almost the same person if it hadn’t been so many years earlier. Both women were unconscious. Both had very long hair, wide-set eyes, unusual costumes, and skin tattooed with strange, compelling images. Though the artwork was different, they looked to have been done by the same artist, or the same type of artist.
The first Jane Doe had a profoundly beautiful image of an extinct species on her upper arm, a large feline with tall ears and glinting eyes. Its tail wrapped around her bicep, an embrace. The current Jane Doe had different body art. Her images looked more mythical than real, but both of these women had heart conditions that did not respond to treatment. The first woman had died almost immediately, leaving him no wiser as to her origin. Everett scratched his head, a flash of memory returning.
He’d put her straight into cryo, and when he tried to sign her up for donor dispersal it was as if she’d vanished. The staff at Medical Records couldn’t find her file. No one, even those attending at the time, could recall her. Was this how ASSIST dealt with death? They erased memories?
He didn’t press the matter. Why bring it to attention? If the staff’s memories had been tampered with, so had his, though not thoroughly enough. He could glimpse her, as if out of the corner of his eye, in the wings of recollection. Not wanting to draw attention to himself, he’d kept quiet. He’d held onto the disjointed thoughts and images and acted as if he also knew nothing of his first Jane Doe. His plan was to save his investigation for a time when he had the power and resources to conduct it himself. It occurred to him now that the time was well past due. There has to be a record somewhere. There would have been samples from the autopsy. Unless he was going mad, and she never existed after all. He mopped the sweat off his forehead with his sleeve.
Sitting under the orange haze of the parking lights, he fidgeted. He turned his ring around his finger, trying to pull it off. It got close to his second knuckle and wouldn’t budge. There was only one way to get it off. Of course, if he did that, he wouldn’t have the ring any more. It mattered little, really, but he still couldn’t quite let it go. He chuckled. I hang onto what’s not there and search for what may never have existed. Some life this is I’m leading. The irony was knowing his ‘life’ was going to last forever.
He gripped the steering wheel, leaving imprints in the spongy plastic. Who was he kidding? He wasn’t going anywhere while his Jane Doe still breathed. She might wake again. She might speak. His strange patient had disturbed him, shaken him up like he hadn’t been shaken in decades. It took all his strength to repress the demons swirling around in his mind. He had to remain professional, natural—act like nothing was amiss, or Admin would get onto it and shut him down, or worse, re-erase his memories.
Now that would be death, wouldn’t it? He laughed, a humourless sound. Just be regular, Everett. He schooled himself. Give them nothing to notice, nothing to take exception to. For him, being regular meant being considerate, empathic and kind—smart, hardworking and non-confrontational. But tonight he felt nothing like that. Tonight he felt like going for throats. Just let Admin try and shut her down. I’ll tie them up in so much red tape they’ll never find a way out.
He thought about that for a while, smiling. But what his mind wouldn’t ponder, couldn’t give credence to, was his Jane Doe’s only request. She had asked for something. He’d heard it loud and clear, no denying it, but he couldn’t bring himself to honour it.
‘Let me go…’ She had whispered the words after beckoning him closer.
‘Let you go where?’
‘You know.’
‘I assure you, young woman, I don’t.’
‘Let me go…Let me die.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You do.’
He jumped at the tap on the glass. Heart pounding, he lowered the window, making room for the bulbous nose and ruddy cheeks of the emergency charge nurse.
‘Thought you’d still be sitting here,’ she said, pressing her face closer. Her breath smelled of coffee and stress.
He nodded, keeping his manner calm. Be regular, he reminded himself. ‘What’s happening? I didn’t get a page.’
‘Not for lack of trying. You must have it switched off.’
He flipped his wrist over and looked at the subcutaneous implant. He didn’t have to pretend to be surprised. ‘My mistake.’
‘No matter. I found you anyway.’ She leaned against the door. ‘I figured you’d want to know, Dr Kelly. Your Jane Doe woke up again.’
‘And?’ He pulled off his glasses and polished them, holdi
ng his breath.
‘She looked around and slipped back under like a stone.’
‘Did she say anything?’
‘Not that I heard.’
‘Vitals?’
‘Stable for now, save the arrhythmia and a slight fever.’
‘I’ll just be a moment.’ He nodded at the nurse and triggered the window. She had to pull her head out to keep from getting pinched. Everett rubbed his face. Those eyes! He couldn’t imagine how he’d respond if they were awake, conscious, and focused on him again. He certainly didn’t handle it well the first time.
He grabbed his keys. There were still some hours before dawn, the start of his next shift. He might as well spend them here at the hospital. He’d need to check her anyway. If she woke up once, she might do it again, and he wanted to be in the building if that happened. He scooped up the tubes of freshly drawn blood sitting on the passenger’s seat and dropped them into his pocket before opening his door. ‘Are you sure she didn’t speak?’
‘Not to me, Dr Kelly, but maybe to someone else. Your student might know more. He was there.’
‘Thanks.’ He strode back into the hospital, feeling the nurse’s eyes on him.
‘Have you eaten today?’ she asked.
He frowned. ‘I don’t remember.’
‘Get a bite.’ She waved him towards the cafeteria block. ‘That’s where the med students will be this time of night anyway.’
‘Good idea. Thanks.’ He thrust his hands deep into his pockets and headed down the hall.
GAELA & EARTH—TIME: FORWARD
CHAPTER 11
‘Where are we?’ Shane whispered. He stood naked, gazing into the distance.
‘Gaela,’ Rosette answered. ‘Above the Dumar Gorge.’
He whistled long and slow. ‘It’s magnificent.’
The water glinted like gems spread across a glass surface. Walls of white granite, rippled with veins of rose quartz and gold, led down to the lake. The distance held rolling green hills backed by snowcapped mountains. A warm breeze brushed her face, bringing with it the scent of daffodils and lilacs.
