Woman on the Edge of Time

“I couldn’t face the day without coffee! That’s the worst thing I’ve heard about your way of living.”

Everyone looked glum and even Jackrabbit stopped staring at the offending panel. Five people started at once talking about protein and underdevelopment and the creation of hunger, when Dawn piped up, “People, listen! I have a dream this morning.”

Other conversation stopped. She preened in the attention, making her face serious. Morningstar’s head bobbed over her like a pale sun. “I dreamed I flew into the past. I flew to that river and kept that nuclear power plant from killing everybody in Philadelphia.”

“This was a waking dream or a sleeping dream?” Otter gave her a skeptical smile, arching her brows.

“Well, I was kind of asleep.”

“There’s nothing wrong with waking dreams,” Sojourner said in a reedy voice. “To want to save lives is a good desire.”

“Everyone has been making too much fuss about connecting with the past.” Luciente exchanged a wry look with Otter. “I myself am guilty.” They both smiled.

“Magdalena says it’s important,” Dawn insisted. “Says we may wink out!”

Bee—whose gaze Connie had carefully not met—rumbled from deep in his chest, “To plant beans correctly is important. To smoke fish so it doesn’t rot. To store food in vacuum. To fight well, as you did Saturday. To make good decisions in meeting. To be kind to each other.”

“But some things are more important!” Dawn stuck out her soft chin. “I want to do something very important. Like fly into the past to make it come out right.”

“Nobody can makethings come out right,” Hawk said, her straight nose wrinkled in disgust. “Pass the honey.”

“No one is helpless. No one controls.” Sojourner had a flattened leathery face and eyes that twinkled with a lively pleasure. “Wecan’t make things come out in the past. We can only speak to those who listen.” She winked at Connie.

“Are there many of us?” Connie asked. “Many who come here?”

“Mmmm … what?” Luciente was yawning again. “Who come? Only five so far. It’s odd.” Luciente’s hand made boxes in the air. “Most we’ve reached are females, and many of those in mental hospitals and prisons. We find people whose minds open for an instant, but at the first real contact, they shrink in terror.”

“Why are you contacting us? You said I’d understand but I forgot to think about it. It’s kind of a vacation from the hospital.”

A surge of discomfort passed around the table. “It’s hard to explain,” Bee said, frowning. “Nobody’s supposed to discuss advances in science with you. It might be dangerous—for you, for us. Your scientists were so … childish? Carefully brought up through a course of study entered on early never to ask consequences, never to consider a broad range of effects, never to ask on whose behalf …”

“But I’m no scientist. What do you want from me?” Her eyes touched Bee and withdrew as if burned, after-image of black on her retina. Suppose there was a price? Suppose they wanted something from her, something, anything. Vaguely she imagined herself smuggling back a weapon, a bomb disguised as a toothbrush. Why should they have been so nice to her if they didn’t want something? In her lap under the table her hands sought each other, coldly sweating.

Barbarossa cleared his throat. “We could put it: at certain cruxes of history … forces are in conflict. Technology is imbalanced. Too few have too much power. Alternate futures are equally or almost equally probable … and that affects the … shape of time.”

She did not like to be lectured by him, for he reminded her of other men, authorities in her time, even though she could see that in this setting he had no edge on the others. “But you exist.” Still she waited for the price, the stinger.

“Maybe. Maybe not.” Luciente smiled, her eyes liquid and sad. “It’s not clear. We’re struggling to exist.”

“I don’t understand,” she said resentfully.

“You move your hand. You wave it. Do you understand how?” Barbarossa too smiled, his blue eyes asking her to listen. “How does the decision in your brain fire your hand? Yet you move.”

Her glance fell on Dawn, pouting in her chair. “I wish I could let you fly away into the past with me. For a visit. You’d fix things for me anyhow. Make me so happy. But not to where I’m kept. No!” That child being wheeled to electroshock, her fine brown hair plastered to her scalp with sweat, her eyes so wide open staring at the ceiling that a ring of white circled her pupils.

“Dawn, it isn’t bad to want to help, to want to work, to seize history,” Luciente said, getting up to caress her. “But to want to do it alone is less good. To hand history to someone like a cake you baked.”

Connie looked across the table at Bee, meeting his gaze for the first time. “Are you really in danger?”

“Yes.” His big head nodded in cordial agreement. “You may fail us.”

“Me? How?”