Woman on the Edge of Time

“God damn it,” Sharma said. Something she wouldn’t have said if the attendants had been in earshot Patients were punished for unladylike behavior. “I like this soap opera, ‘Perilous Light.’ I always watch it at home. Anyhow, at one-thirty I went to ask Richard to unlock the set and turn it to channel five. I waited for half an hour while they yakked. Then they finally let Lois out to her job and they got out the mop—they even lock up the mop!—for Glenda to use. Then Mrs. Stein had a question about her meds. She said the doctor changed it They argued with her for ten minutes. Finally they looked it up. They shuffled papers for ten more minutes. Finally they agreed the doctor signed a change. Then they beat that around for a while. By the time I got Richard to put on channel five, it’s the end of the serial anyhow. There’s this other woman who’s after Maggie’s husband, I want to see what’s happening. It’s like my husband—women are always after him.”

She mumbled sympathy, half out on her feet. The set flickered, giving a cover to sitting in the dim room. She took a chair at the back and nodded out. She was sinking into the stuffy sleep of Thorazine when she felt Luciente’s presence and lurched unsteadily to meet her.

“It’s raining here too,” she said with disappointment in her thickened voice.

“You don’t farm, Connie, or you wouldn’t feel bad about rain.” Luciente peered into her face. “You’re so drugged you’re not quite with me. May I help you?” Luciente put her warm, dry hands beside Connie’s temples and pressed carefully but firmly. She began a series of exploratory pressures over Connie’s head. “Here, sit on the bench.” Luciente spoke to her in a low compelling tone. “Relax, relax. Yes. Open up. Yes. Flow with me. Relax.”

She knew she was being hypnotized and that the iron cage around her brain was lifting. The heaviness slid from her.

“Zo. Better?” Luciente handed her a closely woven hat to keep off the rain, broad enough to protect her shoulders and, unlike an umbrella, not requiring a hand to hold it. Off they started along the slick paths of the village. “Come, we’ll bike to the Grange—a beautiful three-hundred-year-old wooden building!” On the end of the village beyond the fish breeding tanks stood racks of bicycles.

“But I haven’t been on a bike in years! I can’t!”

“Good. We’ll take a two-seater. I’ll pedal and you’ll do what you can.”

“I’ve seen lots of wooden buildings, Luciente! I’ve seen buildings a lot older than that in Texas.”

“You wanted to see ‘Government.’ It’s working today.”

“The town government? Like a mayor? A council?”

Luciente made a face, throwing her slack-clad leg over the bike. “Look at it and then we’ll figure out what it’s like, okay?” They set out along a narrow paved way wandering a pleasant route over a high curved bridge across the river, under big and little trees, past roses drooping under the load of the rain, past willows, past boats and corn patches with pole beans and pumpkins interplanted, past the edge of another village marked by a bike rack.

“This is Cranberry,” Luciente said hitting the brakes so they squeaked to a stop. “Everybody’s always making lists of what I ought to show you. Every lug in my base, my mems, everybody at council. Even my defense squad—I’m practicing on my belly and everybody’s giving me lists what I should show you. Harlem-Black flavor village.”

“I see gardens. Windmills. People. Greenhouses. Where are the huts?”

“Below.” Luciente left the bike by the big maple and helped her off. “We’ll stop by Erzulia.” She used her kenner. “Zuli! It’s Luci. I brought the woman from the past. Meet us at your space to show a Cranberry dwelling, favor?”

“No such,” said a voice that sounded much more like a black from her own time than anybody she’d heard here. “Got a mean pelvic fracture, old person from Fall River. You drop right by my space and show it your own self.”

“Erzulia and Bee are sweet friends,” Luciente said. “Erzulia has tens of lovers. Person never stales on anybody, just adds on. Over there!” She pointed to a two-story building. “The hospital where Zuli works—hospital for our township. That great big greenhouse is one where they breed the spinners—those single-celled creatures we use for fences and barriers.”

“Creatures! They’re alive!”

“Fasure. They mend themselves.”

As they walked, she saw that courtyards were dug into the earth the level of an ample story, surrounded by dense, often thorny hedges—blackberries, raspberries. An animal or a child couldn’t push through. At ground level trees grew, gardens flourished, paths wound, swings hung from trees and people trotted and biked by. Goats and cows grazed, chickens ran pecking, a cat played with a dying baby rabbit. The solar heat collectors and the intakes for rain-water cisterns studded the surface like sculpture, some of them decorated with carved masks, others scalloped, inlaid with shell and glass mosaics.