Woman on the Edge of Time

“I’d like seeing anything but these four filthy walls, believe me. But could I get back?” She hooted with laughter. “Why should I care? Better if I get stuck anyplace instead of rotting here!”

“Sadly, you can’t get stuck in my time. A lapse of attent would probably break our contact.” Luciente rose gracefully and extended his hand for her to grasp. “As I’ve remarked, the appearance is not a physical presence, but is … as if it were. Now we’ll see if this trick works. To confess, I haven’t a wispy guess if I can really pull you into my time. But the worst that can happen is that we open our eyes and are still in this drab room. Only fit for a storeroom for machinery!”

“You ought to try it twenty-four hours a day. It breaks you, finally.”

“Then why did you come here? It seems inadequate.”

“I didn’t walk, you can count on that. I was dragged screaming. My brother Luis committed me.”

“Our madhouses are places where people retreat when they want to go down into themselves—to collapse, carry on, see visions, hear voices of prophecy, bang on the walls, relive infancy—getting in touch with the buried self and the inner mind. We all lose parts of ourselves. We all make choices that go bad … . How can another person decide that it is time for me to disintegrate, to reintegrate myself?”

“Here you get put in if your family doesn’t want you around or other people don’t, and that’s about the long and short of it.” She finally stuck out her hand and let Luciente pull her to her feet.

“The first time is supposed to be the hardest, but frankly, we’re the first contacts to try. That’s the theory anyway, for what it weighs. Here comes the practice, NINO.”

“Nino? Niño?”

“NINO: Nonsense In, Nonsense Out—that’s the motto on every kenner. It means your theory is no better than your practice, or your body than your nutrition. Your encyclopedia only produces the information or misinformation fed it. So on.” Luciente gently drew her against him and held her in his arms so their foreheads touched. “You’re supposed to be a top catcher and I’m supposed to be a superstrong sender … . As people say, with theory and a nail, you’ve got a nail.”

Pressed reluctantly, nervously against Luciente, she felt the coarse fabric of his shirt and … breasts! She jumped back.

“You’re a woman! No, one of those sex-change operations.”

“If you hop around, we’ll never get it right … . Of course I’m female.” Luciente looked a little disgusted.

She stared at Luciente. Now she could begin to see him/her as a woman. Smooth hairless cheeks, shoulder-length thick black hair, and the same gentle Indian face. With a touch of sarcasm she said, “You’re well muscled for a woman.” In anger she turned on her heel and stalked a few paces away. A dyke, of course. That bar in Chicago where the Chicana dykes hung out shooting pool and cursing like men, passing comments on the women who walked by. Yet they had never given her that sense of menace a group of men would—after all, under the clothes they were only women too.

“I’m not unusually strong.” Luciente’s face was screwed up with confusion. She still held out her hands to draw Connie to her. “About middling. We do more physical work than most people did in your time, I believe. It’s healthier, and of course you lugs were burning up all those fossil fuels … . You seem surprised that I am female?”

Feeling like a fool, Connie did not choose to reply. Instead she paced to the locked door with its peephole and then to the radiator. Luciente spoke, she moved with that air of brisk unself-conscious authority Connie associated with men. Luciente sat down, taking up more space than women ever did. She squatted, she sprawled, she strolled, never thinking about how her body was displayed. It was hard to pace with dignity in the tiny space between the stained mattress and the wall. Connie no longer felt in the least afraid of Luciente.

“Please, Connie.” Luciente came over and cautiously put an arm around her shoulders. “I don’t understand what’s wrong. Let’s give it a try. We didn’t even carry out our experiment. Do you really want to stay here all day? It doesn’t bottom you?”

“To the bone.” She stood awkwardly and let Luciente pull her close and lean their foreheads together. Hardly ever did she embrace another woman along the full length of their bodies, and it was hard to ease her mind. She could feel Luciente concentrating, she could feel that cone of energy bearing down on her. It reminded her of the old intensity of a man wanting … something—her body, her time, her comfort—that bearing down that wanted to grab her and push her under. But she was weary and beaten and she let herself yield. What had she to lose?

Although she could sense in Luciente a bridled impatience, the woman held her gently. A harnessed energy to be doing drove this plant geneticist with breasts like a fertility goddess under the coarse fabric of a red work shirt. A woman who liked her: she felt that too. A rough ignorant goodwill caressed her.