Woman on the Edge of Time

Then she smelled salt in the air, a marsh tang. A breeze ruffled the loose rag of dress, chilling her calves. Under her feet she felt stone. A gull mewed, joined by another somewhere above her. Luciente relaxed her grip. “Home free. Will you stand there all day with your eyelids bolted down? Look!”

Rocket ships, skyscrapers into the stratosphere, an underground mole world miles deep, glass domes over everything? She was reluctant to see this world. Voices far, near, laughter, birds, a lot of birds, somewhere a dog barked. Was that—yes, a rooster crowing at midday. That pried her eyes open. A rooster?Fearfully she stared into Luciente’s face, broken open in a grin of triumph. “Where are we?”

“You might try looking around! This is where I live.” Luciente took her by the arm and swung around to her side. “This is our village. Roughly six hundred of us.”

She looked slowly around. She saw … a river, little no-account buildings, strange structures like long-legged birds with sails that turned in the wind, a few large terracotta and yellow buildings and one blue dome, irregular buildings, none bigger than a supermarket of her day, an ordinary supermarket in any shopping plaza. The bird objects were the tallest things around and they were scarcely higher than some of the pine trees she could see. A few lumpy free-form structures overrun with green vines. No skyscrapers, no spaceports, no traffic jam in the sky. “You sure we went in the right direction? Into the future?”

“This is my time, yes! Fasure, look how pretty it is!”

“You live in a village, you said. Way out in the sticks. Like if we went to a city, it’d be … more modern?”

“We don’t have bigcities—they didn’t work. You seem disappointed, Connie?”

“It’s not like I imagined.” Most buildings were small and randomly scattered among trees and shrubbery and gardens, put together of scavenged old wood, old bricks and stones and cement blocks. Many were wildly decorated and overgrown with vines. She saw bicycles and people on foot. Clothes were hanging on lines near a long building—shirts flapping on wash lines! In the distance beyond a blue dome cows were grazing, ordinary black-and-white and brown-and-white cows chewing ordinary grass past a stone fence. Intensive plots of vegetables began between the huts and stretched into the distance. On a raised bed nearby a dark-skinned old man was puttering around what looked like spinach plants.

“Got through, uh?” he said to Luciente.

Luciente asked, “Can you see the person from the past?”

“Sure. Had my vision readjusted last month.”

“Zo!” Luciente turned, hopping with excitement. “Good we were cautious in your time. I may be visible there too—that could bring danger!”

“Why isn’t it dangerous for me to be seen here?”

“Everybody knows why you’re here.”

“Everybody except me.” The roofs of the huts—that’s all she could call them—were strange. “What’s on top? Some kind of skylights?”

“Rainwater-holding and solar energy. Our housing is above ground because of seepage—water table’s close to the surface. We’re almost wetland but not quite, so it’s all right to build here. I’ll show you other villages, different … . I guess, compared to your time, there’s less to see and hear. That time I came down on the streets of Manhattan, I’d thought I’d go deaf! … In a way we could half envy you, such fat, wasteful, thing-filled times!”

“They aren’t so fat for me.”

“Are you what would be called poor?”

Connie bristled, but then shrugged. “I’ve been down and out for a while. A run of hard times.”

Luciente put an arm around her waist and walked her gently along. A gaudy chicken strutted across the path, followed by another. The path was made of stone fitted against stone in a pattern of subdued natural color. Along it mustard-yellow flowers were in bloom. Low-growing tulips were scattered like bright stars on the ground.

She caught the whiff for a moment before she saw them. “Goats! Jesús y María, this place is like my Tío Manuel’s in Texas. A bunch of wetback refugees! Goats, chickens running around, a lot of huts scavenged out of real houses and the white folks’ garbage. All that lacks is a couple of old cars up on blocks in the yard! What happened—that big war with atomic bombs they were always predicting?”

“But we like it this way! Oh, Connie, we thought you’d like it too!” Luciente looked upset, her face puckered. “We’d change it if we didn’t like it, how not? We’re always changing things around. As they say, what isn’t living dies … . I’m always quoting homilies. Jackrabbit says my words run out in poppers.” Luciente saw her blank look. “The miniature packaged components of circuitry? Jackrabbit means all in a box.” Luciente was still frowning with worry.

“So you have some machines? It isn’t religious or anything?”