Seasons Between Us

by Alan Dean Foster

  Olwen explained she’d followed the raiders, approached their camp. They had distrusted her at first—thought her an emissary—but she’d managed to convince them by explaining she’d seen the raid, had been living ten miles away, in isolation with her family. The raiders were moving on—they never raided the same town twice—and they were heading north, to Newtown, in convoy. For a gathering of other groups like theirs. Calling it a resistance was too grandiose. But it was the start of something.

  “I had to go, Alan,” she said. “It’s what I’ve been waiting for, what we’ve been waiting for. I’m sorry I couldn’t get word to you guys, but if I’d spent four days hiking here and back the raiders would have been long gone.” She linked her fingers with his. “I’m so sorry I worried you.”

  He could feel her wedding ring. Ran his thumb over her knuckle. An old habit. Feeling the scar there, from where she’d skinned it to the bone, climbing with him in Pembrokeshire. He felt the heat of the sun on his neck, the haziness of the day, the soft fog of the dandelion wine. It seemed to make sense. It did make sense. It was such a convincing and plausible story, and very like Olwen.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “We knew you’d come back.” He held her hand a while longer, held the feeling awhile longer. He was tearing up. Olwen’s face blurring as if from heat ripples. It almost had him. But not quite. Not yet.

  Then he said, “Bran—it’s time.”

  Olwen frowned, not understanding.

  There was no sound as Bran turned the box on. No obvious change to the patio air or atmosphere. But Alan saw it spread across her face: a relaxation, a realization. And her eyes. They seemed to come into focus. A brief dilation of the pupils. It was in the eyes after all, that he could see her coming back to herself.

  “Olwen,” he said.

  “Alan.”

  Her grip on his hand now was fierce, desperate. Real.

  “How did you know?” she asked.

  “Your accent. It was too crisp. You always sound more Welsh after a few glasses of wine. The Paradigm had everything right except that.”

  “It allows drinking,” she said. “But never to excess.”

  “How much do you remember?”

  “Of what we just said? Everything. It’s not that it blacks you out. It’s more like . . . it’s like a drug, I guess. You sense it affecting you, changing you. You don’t have as much control. But you don’t care. You’re perfectly happy. And I was genuinely happy to be back, to see you.” She shook herself, as if still emerging from the dream of the Paradigm’s influence. She looked beneath the table, guessing where they’d hidden her Yadaraf Box.

  “Bran finished it,” she said.

  “He’s a genius.”

  “He is, you know.”

  “He comes by it honestly.”

  Alan remembered: Bran wouldn’t be able to hear any longer, now that the box was activated, since it would disrupt their radio signals as well as the Paradigm’s. He turned in his seat, saw Bran watching through the curtains in the attic window, motioned him down. Summer was too far away, up in the lookout. But he stood and waved.

  As Bran ran down the stairs, Olwen said, “We don’t have much time.”

  “Bran said ten minutes.”

  “I’d hoped for a bit more.”

  “But we have enough time to save you,” Alan said. “Right?”

  Olwen looked past him, over his shoulder, to where Bran was coming out the front door. She released Alan’s hand and scrubbed tears from her cheeks and stood, letting Bran run into her arms, grabbing him, holding him, whispering to him, “My beautiful, wonderful boy.”

  Bran was not sobbing or even crying. But he was shaking, his arms locked behind his mother’s back, his expression frighteningly intense. He looked utterly shell-shocked. Still holding him, Olwen looked back at Alan and asked, “What about Summer?”

  “In the lookout.”

  “I have to see her.”

  Leaving Olwen and Bran, Alan went inside to the telephone, which wouldn’t be affected by the box. Summer was waiting on the line when he picked up.

  “It’s working,” he said.

  “How can you be sure?”

  Alan looked out the window, to where Olwen was holding Bran, whispering to him. Soothing and consoling him, presumably. Not converting him. She had to be herself. It had to be working.

  “I saw the change. She wasn’t quite herself, and then she was.”

  “Or the Paradigm faked the change.”

  “We have to believe, Summer.”

  “Believe in what, Dad? Has it got you, too?”

  He shook his head, even though she couldn’t have seen him from her vantage point.

  “If you want to see your mother, you have to come down.”

  “I’m fine where I am, thanks. I can see the reunion through my scope.”

  “Summer . . .”

  “Get out there, Dad. Don’t leave Bran alone with her.”

  Alan put down the receiver and stepped back outside—on edge, watchful, but not even quite knowing what he was watching for. Whatever Olwen had said to Bran seemed to have had the desired effect; he was calming down. They were talking about the situation, about what could be done.

  “As soon as the power goes,” she was saying, “I’ll go too. I’ll be back under its influence, and it will know what you did. Will store that information. Save it. Use it.”

  “We can save you,” Bran said.

  Olwen touched his face, his cheek—as if not quite believing the reality of him.

  “It didn’t take any chances with me, Bran. There’s no way we can remove the nano-particles. They’re fused to my cells—all through my body.” She held up a hand, spread the fingers. From Alan’s perspective, the evening sun was directly behind, so it looked as if she held it in her palm. “The Paradigm isn’t just in me,” she said sadly, “it’s part of me now.”

  “Ol,” Alan said, took a faltering step toward her.

  She went over to the table, poured herself more dandelion wine.

  “But then what’s the point of the box, Mum?” Bran said, his voice cracking. “I built it because you told me to. I built it so we could save you.”

  She took a sip. “I didn’t know enough about the Paradigm,” she said. “How it works, how it converts. How invasive its control mechanisms are. But we got the chance to say goodbye, didn’t we?” Then she looked up at the look out, frowning. “Where’s Summer?”

  “She’s coming, I think,” Alan said. Worried, now.

  Bran muttered something, shook his head. “Where’s the implant?” he asked Olwen.

  She looked at her son, curious.

  “It must have put a transceiver in you. Something to receive and transmit information, feed it back to the Paradigm, and locally control the nanoparticles.”

  She smiled. “My clever boy.”

  “We could remove that,” Bran said, in his rapid-patter way, “Cut it out—even when the Yadaraf Box fails—the Paradigm’s signals resume—you won’t have anything in you to respond—the nano-particles will be useless to it without the transceiver.”

  “It’s a wonderful idea, Bran,” she said, sounding sad, “but the implant is here”—she tapped her chest—“near my heart. About the size of a pacemaker. We don’t have the means or time to remove it, and there’s a failsafe.”

  Bran made a frustrated, enraged sound. Clenched his fists, turned away.

  “So what do we do, Ol?” Alan asked.

  Olwen went to embrace him again. “Just enjoy it. Enjoy the few minutes we have, to be us, to be a family.” She looked again to the lookout. “If only Summer were here, too.”

  Alan felt a tingling, then—that prickling of the forearms. Was it Olwen or wasn’t it?

  “I’ll double-ch
eck,” was what he said.

  He returned to the telephone inside, picked it up. Summer was still there.

  “Summer, listen. I want you to look at her through Bran’s infrared sensor.”

  “What am I looking for?”

  “The implant. She said it’s in her chest, near her heart. It will show up as a cold patch in her heat signature. A piece of metal, like the ones we find in birds, but bigger.”

  There was a pause and a clatter as she put the phone down, then rustling and sounds of movement. Soon after, Summer picked up again. “I see something,” she said. “But not near her heart. Higher up. Beneath the collar bone.”

  “She might have been wrong about where they put it.”

  “Or she might be lying.”

  A pause. Alan watched Olwen talking to Bran, the silent movement of her mouth. Away from her, shielded by a pane of glass, Alan more readily sensed the strangeness of her—the not-quite-right impression. Her voice—so soothing—had veiled it. And his desire to believe in her, and Bran’s invention. He didn’t doubt it worked. But she’d mentioned a failsafe—maybe that was deliberate? Maybe there was a failsafe: something that kicked in when the implant got cut-off from the Paradigm’s transmissions. A localized control mechanism. Meaning she would be closer to her real self right now, but not fully herself.

  “Could you shoot it?” he said. “The transmitter?”

  A pause, as Summer considered. Then, she said, “Yes. But I need her with her back to me, and still. Preferably sitting.”

  “I’ll get her in the chair.”

  Then, realizing what he was asking of her, he said, “Summer . . .”

  “Just do it. I won’t miss.”

  Alan put down the phone, his hand trembling. Tried to get his face together before heading back out. A final performance. A last act. From beneath the sink, he grabbed another bottle of their wine: by chance taking one from the year Summer was born. Bran had scratched out the year and added “Discontent” instead, so the label read “Summer of Discontent.” Carrying the bottle in one hand and a glass for Bran in the other, Alan strode out, smiling tearfully, feeling hopeless and desperate, having tasked his daughter with the impossible, and exposed his son to possible conversion, and convinced now his wife was lost. And having to pretend otherwise—to pretend it was all okay, it would be okay. But then, that was what fatherhood had been for him, from the beginning—and all the more so since the Paradigm Shift. Forced optimism, painful joviality.

  And now for the finale, it came to him easily: well-practiced and well-rehearsed. Uncapping the bottle, announcing grandly that he’d had a eureka moment and solved their predicament, while Bran looked at him worriedly and Olwen stared at him with what might have been wariness. But on her part, or the Paradigm’s?

  “I have a plan,” he declared.

  “Dad,” Bran said. “No offence—but you don’t know enough about the tech.”

  “He’s right, cariad,” Olwen said gently. “If Bran and I can’t figure it out . . .”

  “Skeptics!” Alan said, planting the extra glass for Bran, and liberally pouring a drink for his son, before topping up his and Olwen’s glasses. He raised his, as if making a toast. “You haven’t even heard what I have in mind, and already you’re doubting. That’s just like you—just like this whole family. I’m only the bumbling father who holds it all together.”

  “Dad,” Bran said, “are you okay?”

  “I know this is hard,” Olwen added. “But we don’t have much time.”

  “We don’t have any time,” he said. He went around the table, pulled back her chair—acting the part of host, while ensuring that it was angled, as near as he could tell, toward the lookout. “So you need to listen to me. Sit down and let me lay it all out.”

  She sat, and he moved her chair in, and then—to make it seamless—circled the table to do the same for Bran. Sitting, Bran reached for his wine and took a sip and immediately coughed. Alan laughed heartily, patted his son on the back. “It’s your sister’s vintage,” he said, in his joking voice, “astringent and bitter.”

  “Speaking of Summer . . .” Olwen said.

  “She’s hurrying down now, cariad. She’ll need to hear this too.”

  Bran shifted in his seat, restless. “What’s the deal, Dad?”

  “The deal is, son, that life is short, time is precious. Before we save your mother, I just wanted us to sit together. Now close your eyes, both of you.” He did so, then peeked at them—knowing they wouldn’t follow suit immediately. “Close them! Good. Now, listen. Hear that?” In the distance, coincidentally, a buzzard shrieked. “Now breathe in deeply.”

  “Dad . . .”

  “Okay—open them. Here’s my plan. We just sit like this, together, and wait.”

  Bran frowned. “Wait for what?”

  The shot rang out, and Olwen jerked and a spatter of blood sprayed across the table. Her wine glass shattered like a light bulb. The bullet had gone clean through. Bran screamed and Alan staggered up, circling the table to catch Olwen as she slumped sideways, fearing his idea had been insane, that Summer had missed, that he’d unwittingly tasked her with killing her mother, that this truly was the end of everything.

  Until he felt Olwen’s panting, knew she was alive—for now, at least—and turned her over to lie her down. She put a hand to his face. “Alan—it’s you.”

  “And it’s you.”

  And it was. For the first time since she’d returned, she was fully herself.

  Bran knelt on the other side of her. “Summer tried to kill her.”

  “No,” he said, “I told her to shoot.”

  Alan was tearing open the collar of Olwen’s shirt, exposing the bullet hole. The exit wound was just below her collar bone, and not clean; it had burst outwards, most likely due to the shrapnel caused by hitting the implant. It was bleeding profusely. But no organs and no major arteries. Summer’s shot was as perfect as could be, as perfect as always.

  Olwen clung to him. “The implant,” she said, wonderingly.

  “That was the idea. Now we’ve got to make sure you don’t bleed out. Bran, get me towels, boiled water, a pan. The First Aid kit. We need to clean and disinfect the wound.”

  His son stared at him blankly, mutely.

  “Bran—now!”

  Bran went. Alan couldn’t do anything related to technology, but he could do this. He gripped her hand fiercely, feeling the slippery heat of her blood between their palms, told her repeatedly they were going to save her. In the middle of that, he realized she was trying to tell him something too: that the Paradigm didn’t just learn from its converts; it worked both ways. She had learned from it. She knew what it was, how it functioned.

  “We have a chance,” she said. “We’ve got a chance here.”

  Whether true or a delirium he couldn’t tell, not then. Bran came back with the towels first and Alan grabbed one and held it to the wound, staunching the flow of blood. There was a scrambling sound from the slope behind the cottage. Summer was coming down, leaping over the cascading shale like some mountain goat, the rifle slung over her shoulder.

  Seeing her, Olwen’s face lit up, her eyes shining with tears and pain and love. “Summer’s finally here,” she said, in wonder.

  And their daughter descended, reckless and hell for leather, landing on the grass at the base of the shale slope and shucking her rifle and running straight to them, demanding to know what she could do to help—not even asking if the bullet had been on the mark, so confident in her own abilities. And Bran came rushing out with the water and pan and First Aid kit and it was only when they were all there, working together, that Alan truly believe they could save her, they would save her, and they would fight this thing, they would be a family again—even if only for a short time, even if one of the last in history.

 
Author’s Notes to My Younger Self: My story contribution is largely about being a parent, and being a parent has really taught me that we are simply a biological organism: miraculous, extraordinary, and constantly changing—from fetus to baby to toddler to child to youth, and further. So I think that’s what I’d tell my younger self: life is a series of stages of growth, and all we can do is embrace the stage we’re in, relinquish the ones we’ve outgrown, and prepare for the ones ahead—right up until the last. And to be kind, of course. To everybody. Including yourself.

  A Grave Between Them

  Karina Sumner-Smith

  The man in the black mask says this is what he has heard: that it must be her hand on the shovel, her breath and her earth; so no, he won’t help her dig. He won’t fall for her tricks.

  He’s wrong in the details—wrong in the head—but there’s blood on his hands, more with each passing moment, and he has the gist of it close enough.

  Avery nods, quick and afraid. “I’ll do it,” she says. “Whatever you want. Just let my family go.”

  He doesn’t, of course. Instead he binds them tight and locks them in the basement, then bars the door while Avery watches, trembling. Her mom and Aunt Jenny she doesn’t worry about as much—they’re bound, but beneath the duct tape and bruises their anger burns hot. They’ll have themselves free by morning, one way or another. No, it’s the kids that concern her: Katie with her head held defiant, little Matthew sobbing into his stuffed dog, Lucas so silent and still that Avery knows he’s hidden himself away in the dark corners of his mind. She wonders how long it’ll be before she can coax him to return.

  “You can let them out yourself,” the man tells her. He adjusts the ski mask over his face, then bends down to pick up the blanket-wrapped body he brought to their door, struggling with the weight. “When you’re done.”

  He’s lying, but maybe she needs the lie.

  “This way.” Avery clasps her hands tight so she can’t do anything she’d regret, and leads him into the backyard.

  When the doorbell rang—when Aunt Jenny opened the door to a black-clad figure with a dead body in his arms—this is how Avery thought it would go: they’d invite him in, send the children upstairs to bed, then put on the kettle for tea.