Woman on the Edge of Time

Valente paused, stood in the hallway looking in. Connie left at once and went to make her own bed. At breakfast Sybil mouthed to her, “Consuelo, you frighten me. Don’t give up. Please don’t give up!”

“I’m not. For me this is war. I got to fight it the only way I see. To stop them. Don’t ask me more.” Her voice stuck in her throat. “I wish you a good life, Sybil. Hate them more than you hate yourself, and you’ll stay free!”

Tuesday night, in spite of the sleeping pills she lay awake, her eyes wearing themselves raw on dim shapes. She tossed, she thrust her head into the pillow, she counted and tried to blank her mind. Her thoughts ran round and round like dogs trapped behind a fence, to and fro until they had worn a bald track in her head.

She tried to open her mind to Luciente. In weary boredom, in fear of the next day, wanting a little something nice, she tried. Her mind was rusted shut. It would not open. She pushed on herself, she tried and tried. Sweat stood out on her forehead, sweat gathered under her arms and under her breasts. Once she almost felt something, a presence. That made her go on battering her mind. She lay panting as if she had run up a flight of steps. Please, she begged, please! What had been so easy was hard and painful, hard as dying. Dying into distance. Where there had been only air, something solid stood, solid as bone, as prison walls. But she went on. What else did she have to do this night? What else but touch her fears like the beads of a cold, oily rosary, again and again. She went on trying.

Finally she felt a brush of presence, hard, hard and heavy. Yet she could tell almost at once that this time the pain was coming from Luciente. No, the pain was from the terrible effort. Luciente too strained toward her. Together at last they forced weak contact.

“I feared you were dead,” she thought at Luciente.

“I feared they had done something … final to you. Tried … many times!”

“Bring me over!”

Luciente tried for a long time. “Very hard … need help. A moment. I’ll call Diana or Parra or Zuli … . Wait!”

Finally, roughly, she stood shaking in the meetinghouse. As on the nights of the feast and of Jackrabbit’s wake, many people circulated, but dressed now in ordinary clothes. Their voices were subdued.

Luciente hugged her tight. “How long! We missed you running hard. To reach you has been … like trying to walk through walls!”

“Yourself? How did you get out of the burning floater?”

“What?”

“At the front. With Hawk.”

Luciente peered into her face. “I don’t comprend. Hawk’s over there.” She pointed. “What stew is this of floaters and fronts?”

“We weren’t together at the front? Fighting?”

“Not in my life, Connie. Not in this continuum … . With that device in your brain, maybe you visioned it. You’ve been redded for visioning over the last months, grasp, from all this going over.”

“Pues … never mind. It felt so real … . How are you, Luciente?”

“I feel in you some large resolve. You plan some action?”

“I don’t want to talk about it, please. Just tell me about yourself. Bee. Dawn. How you are.”

“The Shaping controversy builds. I think we’ll call a grandcil this March to decide it. I’ve been arguing myself empty. It’s one choice to breed carrots for our uses–especially leaving wild and variant gene pools intact. Is another to breed ourselves for some uses or imagined uses! For all we know, a new ice age comes and we might better breed for furriness than mathematical ability! I speechify! Pass it.” Luciente hugged her again. “I feared never to see you. Hard bringing you over. We’re fading contact.”

“How is Bee?”

“Look!” Luciente pointed. “Bee is explaining about agribusiness, cash crops, and hunger.”

“He’s teaching a class?”

“A memorial. Tonight.” Luciente waved at the booths, the tables, the holies and exhibits. “It’s winter games … . Traveling spectaclers are visiting us this week. We all played roles. Divvied into rich and poor, owners and colonies. For two days all us who got poor by lot fasted and had only half rations two other days. The rich ate till they were stuffed and threw the rest in the compost. I know in history they didn’t, Connie blossom, but it’s not right to destroy, we just can’t do it. We’ve been feeling a class society where most labor, others control, and some enjoy. We had prisons, police, spies, armies, torture, bosses, hunger–oh, it’s been fascinating. Now we’re discussing to know better before they go on.”

“Is this a feast?” She stared at the people wandering through the room and out into the square, stopping to examine objects laid out, watching holies, arguing over graphs and exhibits.