Juniper Time

by Kate Wilhelm

  “Another lie,” she murmured. “You’ve been able to access everything I’ve done.”

  “I didn’t lie,” he said stiffly. “I just started a program first with instructions to include all subsequent tapes.”

  “You didn’t lie,” she mocked. “You are a peaceful man with a gun, ready to shoot an innocent child.”

  “You can’t have peace with an armed enemy pointing a gun at you,” Ward admitted. “That isn’t peace; it isn’t even a truce. It’s a waiting period, never knowing when he’ll pull the trigger, wondering every day if this is the day he’ll shoot. I want space too, just as much as Cluny does. I’ve dreamed of deep space beyond Jupiter, beyond Pluto, the wonders and mysteries out there. I want to do good work, help make that come true, work that will mean something, that will live on after me. And I could, I could, Jean, if only I weren’t afraid of that armed enemy. I don’t want my work used in a bigger death machine, or blown to dust, or vaporized. The threat has to be ended! We can’t keep on living with it. This may be the last generation with enough strength and will to do it.”

  Jean looked at him now. “I don’t understand you at all,” she said. “You want peace, you hate war, yet you’re the one with the gun. I don’t understand.

  “If that message is a hoax, it means the Russians are behind it, getting ready to make their final move. But it isn’t a fake, is it? Jean, think! If we can communicate, when they come . . . Think what it would mean to all of us! They can’t find us an assortment of armed camps, ready to bomb each other out of existence. It has to be settled, over with, put behind us, before we’re mature enough to deal with an alien civilization that has achieved interstellar flight!”

  “I’ve been hearing talk like that all my life. That’s been the backdrop for everything we’ve ever done, all of us. We play our little games against the background of destruction until we can’t even see the canvas any more. It’s lost all meaning; it’s only a taking-off place for men with such hunger for power that they would risk total destruction to satisfy themselves.”

  Ward nodded. “Not only here, but also in Russia. Remember that, Jean. Also in Russia. Don’t you think they’re going through the same kinds of processes? The same reasoning? The same conclusions? If it were just here, I wouldn’t be part of it. I’d tell Davies and Barneveldt and Halprecht and all of them to go play war games somewhere else. But it’s happening everywhere. They have wind of the message also. They’re working on finding it. That’s why it’s imperative to get you to a safe place and keep you where they can’t reach you. Don’t you see?”

  “Have you read anything about the first transactions between the Indians in this area and the white traders?”

  Ward shook his head.

  “There were no chiefs to speak for the Indians,” Jean said. “Whenever a situation arose that demanded a decision, whoever was most qualified to act in that area assumed leadership that was temporary. When the situation was cleared up, finished, again there was no leader. Even then, the only power the leaders had was advisory and judicial; they could enforce nothing. Every village was autonomous. That was an impossible state of affairs for the traders to deal with. They had to make deals, to bargain for pelts, write up contracts. They forced the Indians to consolidate, to select chiefs in order to have one person to deal with and not every village, every tribe independently. They began forcing changes the day they arrived, and the Indians couldn’t resist. They had no experience to draw on to strengthen themselves with. Step by step they were forced to change, to adapt. That’s what you’re proposing now. The first step toward what? You don’t know. No one knows. And they aren’t even here, may never be here. But the pressure is here already.” She yawned. “I’m very tired. As you must be. Shouldn’t we all get some sleep?” Ward stood up. “We’ll make coffee, have a snack,” he said. “I’m afraid we’ll have to stay together the rest of the night. At dawn we’ll go down to the airport and wait.” There was no chance to get at him during the next hour as they made a fire in the stove, prepared coffee, found crackers he had supplied and a meat spread. He was wary of Doris, not allowing her to approach him at all, watching her closely whenever she moved. So Doris had told him about the defense classes, but probably she had not mentioned that Jean had participated also. Jean, after all, was like him, one of his kind; it was the other, the alien, he had to watch. Ward sat at the far end of the table and motioned them to sit together at the other end. Jean wished she had put her watch on. She had taken it off that day over a year ago when she had come home to take her final walk on the desert. She had left it upstairs in her drawer that day, and it was still there. She yawned again.

  “What time is it?”

  “Four-thirty.”

  “My God! No wonder I’m tired.”

  “Have some more coffee. You’ll be able to sleep all day. A nice quiet room of your own, with running hot water, all the luxuries.”

  “Ward, I want to talk to you alone.”

  He shook his head. “We stay together.”

  “Let her go, Ward. She doesn’t know anything about all of this. You know she doesn’t. Let her go find her people.”

  “It’s not my decision,” he said.

  Jean turned to Doris and put her hand on the girl’s cheek. “I’m sorry,” she said, near tears. “You are my sister and I’m responsible for all of this, for the danger you’re in. . . . You are . . .” In the same tone, with no change in emphasis, she said in Wasco, “When we clear the table, stay on that side. Be ready.” She bowed her head and withdrew her hand.

  “What did you tell her?”

  She shook her head, not looking at him. “It’s untranslatable. I said that she’ll soon join her ancestors, that it’s my fault, that if she can forgive me . . . I can’t translate it.” She stood up, picked up her cup, began to walk around the table toward him. “They’ll kill her, won’t they? What use will they have for a poor Indian girl? She’ll just be in the way.” She heard the desperation in her voice and knew it was convincing, because it was real. Now, she knew. Now or never. She reached for his cup, not looking to see where Doris was, what she was doing. He was pushing his chair back, starting to rise, when she suddenly flung her remaining coffee into his face, and hooked her foot around his chair leg, gave it a hard yank, upsetting it. He fell with the chair and Doris leaped on him from the other side and hit him in the throat.

  They tied him up with his own belt and a clothesline. He was starting to moan before they finished.

  “Listen carefully,” Jean said then, in Wasco. “Get the horses. You go find Robert and tell him what happened here. Tell him he has to stop the bus and get Cluny off before it gets to Bend. Tell him to tell Cluny where Skeleton Cave is. I’ll hide the van and the tapes there.”

  “Why can’t you come with me? Robert can hide you so no one can ever find you.”

  “No. I’ll take the van. I have to hide it so they won’t find the tapes. They’ll think we’re trying to escape in it. They’ll be searching the roads. It’ll give Robert time to get Cluny off the bus. After I get rid of the van, I’ll go to Wesley’s camp. They won’t find me on the desert.”

  As they talked Jean hurried into the pantry and picked up two water bags; she collected a packet of dried meat and another of dried fruit. Four days, she thought. She added the chocolate bars that Steve and Pat had given them. She swung her backpack off a hook and was ready. Her hat. She raced upstairs and got her wide-brimmed hat. Doris had gathered a few packages also, and they left together. Ward was struggling feebly. Jean embraced Doris quickly and kissed her, then they parted.

  Ward’s keys were on the van dashboard. She drew in a deep breath and turned the key. The motor started instantly.

  Ten minutes, she thought. They had killed ten minutes already. It would be daylight in an hour.

  She had dismissed the idea of going to Steve and Pat for help as soon as it occurred to her. They would be totally ineffectual against men like these, she knew. Also, she could not have the
van on a road when a plane arrived; the search would be over before it even began.

  She drove through the back streets until she reached the highway, and then turned south. She felt too conspicuous with the headlights on, but when she tried driving with them off, she could see nothing at all. The dirt road she sought was four or five miles out of town, and she had to drive very slowly to find it. There were driveways, subdivision entrances, businesses with their drives and parking spaces . . . all dead and black now. All the mouths opened to the highway looked alike.

  Just when she decided she had passed her turnoff, she saw it, with a boarded-up Dairy Queen on one corner, a gas station opposite. She turned and she was glad it was still dark, for the cloud of dust her wheels raised pointed like an arrow. The next turn was onto a ranch road, narrower, dustier than the county road; it was a zigzag course among rocks and boulders, now following a dried stream, now crossing the rocky bottom, making a steep climb up the other side. . . .

  The road wound upward steadily. She had not remembered that it was this far to the next turn, or this steep, the curves this sharp. Hurry, hurry, hurry! she thought. There was the next turn, another ranch road, even steeper, even narrower. Her hands started to hurt from clutching the steering wheel too hard.

  Straight ahead, the gaping hole of Skeleton Cave came into view. On the eastern horizon there were streaks of silvery gray. She passed the cave, made a sharp right turn and saw the overhanging cliff where her grandfather had taken her years ago. He had driven his truck under the rocks into shade where they had had a picnic lunch. She drove in now until she felt the van scrape the side of the cliff, and then she stopped and pulled on the hand brake.

  As far as any searchers would be able to tell, the van had disappeared. No amount of searching would reveal it; only hikers, or someone driving by the opening of the overhang, would ever see it here.

  She went to the entrance of the shelter and sat down crosslegged and watched the rising sun. The silver streaks had yielded to broad bands of gold, rose, vermilion, pale green, and marine blue. The colors flared, turned the desert into a land where gold became pink as if by magic, with no transition period. The desert glowed, pink with magenta shadows, gold highlights. The sky was alive with color in motion. Then the sun climbed the cliff of the horizon and called the brilliant colors back to itself. Jean closed her eyes and felt the first rays on her skin like a kiss, like a benediction on this, the most holy moment of the new day.

  CHAPTER

  17

  “CLUNY, what are you doing here?” Murray asked impatiently. They were walking along the Potomac; the day was very warm and still, the sky solidly overcast.

  The signals were all wrong, Cluny thought. The sky was like a winter sky, the day like a summer day, and at this time of year neither was right. He kicked a stone. “I told you. I was bored. I wanted to know what’s happening.” “Okay. So read a newspaper. Watch the nightly news.” “You know that isn’t what I mean.”

  “On Alpha? Nothing. Not a goddamned thing.”

  “What about the draft? Will it pass?”

  “It looks like it. Bledsoe has his forces lined up in tight formation. He’s got the votes.”

  Cluny kicked another rock, harder this time. Two men approached from the opposite direction, and they all passed each other silently. They would wire the paths, Cluny thought. How many decisions were being made these days along the banks of the scummy Potomac? How many classified secrets were passed? How many careers started and ended?

  “I want to go back to work,” Cluny said then and was surprised at his words. He had not thought of returning to the satellite for weeks.

  “I thought so. Can you deliver the girl first?”

  “Where, when?”

  “We’ll have to arrange something.” He glanced at Cluny thoughtfully. “You know Alpha is where it’ll all start.”

  Cluny nodded. Whoever made the first move would make it there, try to seize Alpha, rid it of the others. “When?”

  “I wish to God we knew. Before Christmas, that’s the word. We need that message, Cluny. Real bad.”

  “She doesn’t think she’ll make anything out of it for months.”

  “Change her mind then. Cluny, you know that if either side makes a move, we’re all in it, every man jack of us, with no holds barred. If either side takes Alpha, it’s going to be bad, but it’ll be worse if the Russians do it.”

  “So what else is new?” Cluny said bitterly.

  “I’ve got to get back,” Murray said then. “See you in the apartment later.” He turned to retrace their steps, then paused again. “Almost forgot—your father-in-law left a message for you to call him if you showed up. See you, Cluny.” Cluny watched him walk away, a pudgy man with a bad heart, bad coloring. Murray thought they had lost already. It was evident in his walk, his speech, his manner, his eyes, which had become wistful and too sad for a man rising in his chosen career as he was doing.

  He called Mr. Davies from a pay phone and was invited to dinner that evening. Davies was in town for a month, he said; there were affairs to be discussed, things to be settled, if Cluny felt up to it. From time to time Cluny had received papers from Mr. Davies’ lawyer, and he had signed them with little or no interest. When he had been informed that he had inherited over four hundred thousand dollars from Lina’s estate, he had not grasped the meaning of the words, still had not fully realized what they meant. It wasn’t his money, would never be his money, but it was in his name— stocks, bonds, cash, certificates of deposit. He hoped Mr. Davies had the proper papers for him to sign to return it all.

  Mr. Davies had a permanent suite in the downtown Ambassador, six rooms on the top floor with a magnificent view of the city from three window walls in the oversized living room. There were several other men already in the room when Cluny was admitted. He recognized Senator Bledsoe and General Barneveldt, but had met neither of them. He felt his stomach tighten when he saw Luther Krohmeier standing at one of the floor-to-ceiling windows, talking to Roderick Gris, whom he’ also knew slightly. Roderick Gris was on the President’s science advisory staff.

  Mr. Davies met Cluny effusively, introduced him to the people he didn’t know, put a martini in his hand, and then resumed a conversation that had been in progress when Cluny arrived.

  “It’s the logical thing to do, Senator, even if it would rouse them to wrath, as you suggest.” He turned to Cluny. “Don’t you agree that we need to draw up new lines of representation now that half the states west of Ohio are virtually uninhabited?”

  Cluny shook his head. “Hadn’t given it much thought, to tell the truth,” he said. Bledsoe was very red-faced. Texas, Cluny thought, or Arizona. He couldn’t remember which state Bledsoe represented.

  “And let BLM take care of it all?” Gris asked. “The bureau would love it, I’m sure.” His voice dripped irony.

  This was all phony, Cluny told himself. They were playing with him, biding their time to get to the real reason for this dinner party. He sat down to wait them out. Or, he thought, perhaps he had not been planned on, perhaps they never would get down to business this night. He sipped his drink and listened to Mr. Davies make a case for turning the West back over to the Bureau of Land Management. He made a very good case.

  Cluny studied the men. Bledsoe was the silver-haired debonair man of charm who always looked so good on television that he was one of the first to be called for whatever came along: debates on treaties, the draft legislation, his view of the Russians’ sudden increase in armaments. . . . And Bledsoe was deferring to Davies.

  The general also was well known. He had the knack of being in the right place at the right time to gain publicity, with no effort on his part. Ex-presidential adviser, ex-NATO commander, ex-chief of staff of the Joint Armed Forces Command, he could call a news conference with the same aplomb as the President himself, or he could duck forever under the National Security blanket. He was six feet tall, every inch military, from his posture, to his steady bright bl
ue eyes, to his sandy hair, which would always be just a trifle shorter than fashion dictated but noticeably longer than the military demanded. It was simply the toss of the political coin that had made him ex-every post of importance at this time. He had backed the wrong man in the last election. Next time he would be on the right side again.

  Roderick Gris was one of the bright lights from Harvard, called from his cloistered halls to advise this President in these trying times. But that was only the popular version, Cluny knew. Actually Gris was adviser for so many committees and think tanks and special commissions that he had put in more time on government business than the senator himself, who boasted of thirty years. Gris was fifty, author of a string of popular science books, politically an eel who could slip under any door to land in the midst of any group without discomfiture.

  Cluny didn’t once look at Luther Krohmeier, who in turn was studiously avoiding him.

  Dinner was a buffet. Davies hated servants and waiters fussing about him while he ate. The food was excellent, cold dishes in bowls of crushed ice, hot dishes on warming trays, an assortment of wines on the sideboard. Nothing of consequence was discussed at dinner.

  When they returned to the living room, coffee service had been arranged on a side table, and there was brandy and glasses on the coffee table between two leather-covered couches. It was like being in the Beast’s castle, Cluny thought, with invisible hands arranging everything before them. He was pouring coffee with his back to the others when Davies said:

  “This week we reinstate the draft, Cluny.”

  Cluny turned. “We?”

  “Oh, I helped a little bit with it. Not much, not enough, but a little bit, talking here and there with people I know.”

  Cluny nodded.

  “Actually you might consider this a recruitment committee right here in this room,” Davies went on. He glanced at the other men sitting now with coffee or brandy, or both. “Our own first little recruitment committee. We want you, Cluny.” He held out his hand, pointing a finger straight at Cluny, and they all laughed.