The Seeds of Time (35 page)

He turned to the kneeling guard. “Move out, mister.”
He looked intently into Clio’s eyes. The guard gathered himself up, moved carefully, slothlike, to the door. He was gone.

Clio surveyed the man’s bars. A colonel. Yes, high-brass military. That old enemy. Came after her Dive ship, limping home with Niang riddling the bulkheads, came after the ship with surviving crew, going to gun it down. Kill the Niang seeds and every man and woman aboard. Reward for bringing home the green. Kill it before it spreads. Reward for surviving the jungle and Harper Teeg tracking her down, reward for escaping the camp massacre. Welcome home.

“You got a gun?” Clio asked. Her heart, a flat stone.

He spread his hands.

“Get a gun.” Once you make up your mind, the rest is easy. Life isn’t always the best thing, despite what they say.

She waved the rifle barrel toward the door.

He hesitated, sighing.

“A pistol, fully loaded.”

He went to the door, talked a moment with someone outside, came back with a .45.

“Put it on the bed,” she ordered, indicating with her eyes the bunk in front of her. He did so. She crawled forward and took it. Heavy, a .45. She slid the rifle down and pushed it against the wall. Rita whimpered.

“You can kill me with the rifle, but it’s rather hard to kill yourself with one, isn’t it?” he said. “But it’s not necessary, Clio. I’ve come to take you out of here. Out of the quarry.”

Clio heard him, but as in a movie, a scene from someone else’s life.

“That’s a hard way to go,” he said. “A forty-five puts a big hole in you. And not necessary, Clio.” He smiled: a brief, jabbing pull at his lips. “You’ll have trouble trusting me, of course. And I’m not telling you you’re off scot-free. You are a criminal, from any viewpoint. But I’m offering you a chance for recompense, for rehabilitation. A chance not many people get, Clio.”

Clio moaned. A tiny stab in her chest, an unwelcome twinge. Something returning to her, a dread twinge of hope. She cocked the gun. Get it over with, damn stupid bitch.
Swung the gun to her temple. No more of this, no more of that rattling voice, no more promises, no more goddamn hope.

“Clio, I’m going to stand up now and come over to you, and I’m going to take that gun from your hand. And you can kill me or kill yourself, either way. But that’s what I’m going to do. You don’t have to do anything, decide anything. I’m going to decide for you, because right now you are too tired and scared to decide anything, too tired and scared. I’m going to protect you. Nothing will hurt you now. If you let me come sit by you. So easy … I just come and sit by you.”

He stood up and started walking toward her. She saw his trousers walking, saw his shoes, spit-shiny black like right out of the box. He took the gun. Knelt down beside her, an arm around her shoulder.

“Get out,” he said to Rita.

A shuffling, and then the door shut behind her. He settled down on the floor, back against the wall, arm tucked around Clio.

They stared off into the end of the barracks while her life slowly, oh so slowly, crept back to her.

He wrapped a rough barracks blanket around her shoulders and slowly led her outside. In the brightness, Clio saw the world in all its parts: people, buildings, ground, trees and sky in a strange mixture of acuity and peace. They crossed the main yard, all silent around them. The smell of vegetable broth mixed with mud. A car waited, black, sleek. She allowed herself to be helped into the backseat.

The colonel took a seat in the front with the driver, leaving Clio alone in the backseat with its buttery brown leather and her reeking blanket. She clutched the blanket around her. The gates opened, guards looking after them, and they sped away from the Issaquah Quarry, the car running smooth as flight.

Through the shaded windows she watched the outside world slide by. Ordinary things had been out here all the while as hellish things had worked their course inside the quarry. That was the way of things. Chaos and peace both commanded their realms without troubling, even, to contend with each other. And no one cares, the world doesn’t care. Case in point: the Issaquah Quarry and this creamy smooth limousine.

The suburban countryside sped past the window at her elbow: gas-station signs perched on hundred-meter poles, freeway lane upon freeway lane bearing long, finned cars. Brown-tipped evergreens sagging under the invisible UV glare, sere grasses on vacant lots with signs to rent, build, buy, make hay while the sun shines. And as an antidote, perhaps, banners on homes proclaiming religious messages,
and lavender-fuzzy in the distance, a church with its neon cross, proclaiming a better world in the next.

The car stopped, idling. Then the motor stopped. Clio tried the button on the window. Didn’t respond. A blur directly outside her window resolved itself into a grasshopper, resting on the lip of the window ledge. Its glistening, black body looked like it was struck from metal. Not a grasshopper. A piranha nymph. A fly that took the wrong moment to inspect the remains of an insect on the window was snatched up in an instant. The nymph’s mandibles twitched. Then, leveraging with its huge hind legs, it jumped into the air and disappeared.

“Could call in a chopper, sir,” the driver said.

“No, Lieutenant. They’re a target, too easy. Better to melt into the crowd, eh?”

Eventually, a tap at the window. DSDE stop-and-search. The window rolled down.

“Driver’s license, health certificates,” the man said, while his eyes swept the inside of the car.

The lieutenant pulled down the visor, slipped out a card. “U.S. Army Command,” he said.

The DSDE agent scrutinized the card, and frowned at Clio. “And her?”

The colonel leaned into the conversation. “My custody.”

The agent’s gaze took in the rank insignia. “Yessir. And we’ll want her ID, just for the record.” Looked back at Clio.

The colonel smiled, the briefest of stabbing smiles. “Negative, Agent … Kern. National security. Check with your HQ, then I’ll expect clearance to jump this queue.” The colonel handed forward his own ID card.

Clio saw the agent’s name sewn over his breast pocket. Saw his deep scowl of uncertainty. Saw Kern looking at her shaven head, dirty blanket. She smiled at him. A quiver on the edge of his mouth, then. He pulled back from the window, stood up and disappeared past their window, striding toward the cluster of roadblock cars with that black-shirted DSDE swagger.

•   •   •

Clio and Petya pressed forward against Dee Dee Mullen and her husband, craning their necks to see the procession, just now passing Third and Maple. Dee Dee looked down at Clio, brought her arm around Clio’s shoulders. “Here, honey,” she said, nudging her forward, curbside
.

Clio squinted against the metallic glare of sun and the simmering asphalt. No one could remember a hotter April, never had Easter morning boiled the ladies’ flowered hats as this year, or browned the planting strips on Maple. Clio slid off her sandals and buried her toes in the grass where her body cast a noon shadow. Across the street, Kevin Reiner’s snow cone fell onto his chest in a raspberry cascade as he tipped it back for a hit of ice. Mrs. Reiner yanked on his ear, but his cry was lost as the crowd’s voice, in a rolling wave of sound, surged their way, breaking finally into many individual murmurs and shouts
.

Now Clio could see four DSDE blackshirts striding behind two naked men, stumbling along in front. No, not naked, wearing boxer shorts and holding hands, except, as they neared, Clio could see that their wrists were tied together on one side. One man had crew-cut red hair, same color as Clio’s. With a small jerk in her stomach, she saw that it was Neil Kiepe, the fifth-grade teacher at Sherwood Elementary. The other man was John Crivello from down at AA Rentals. Mr. Kiepe saw her and for a moment she stood alone, with time stopped the way it does when you have to stand in front of everyone and answer the question, but you don’t know the answer. The sunlight surrounded her in a nimbus, broiling the surface veins in her skin, and still she looked at him and wished for an earthquake or tornado to disrupt this moment, but the peaceful, hot noon stayed and stayed
.

Then time started up again with Dee Dee’s voice: “Look at that,” she said, “in their shorts.” From the other side of the street, Kevin threw the funneled snow cone cup at John Crivello. As he missed, his father glared at him. Kevin was usually a better shot than that
.

“They’ll get sunburned, sis,” Petya said
.

Dee Dee’s brow folded in the middle, like it always did when Petya said something stupid
.

Clio elbowed her brother to be quiet. “Shut up,” she said, her voice attempting harshness, but coming out in shreds. Dee Dee had been watching them, but now turned back to the procession
.

As the group passed, folks in back of Clio surged forward, pressing her into the road, rolling over her sandals, leaving her barefooted on the asphalt. The bottoms of her feet screamed. She stepped in the red footprints of one of the prisoners
.

She tried swimming back to the curb, pushing her brother sideways, and finally cutting a path with him as pilot ship. She sat on the grass and rubbed the soles of her fevered feet. Petya brought her sandals to her. “Let’s get out of here,” she said
.

As they turned up their street, even the shade of the elms wasn’t enough: she wanted the screening walls of her house, the darkness of her room
.

When they came up the front walk of the house, Mother threw down her cigarette and ground it out with her heel like it was a bug. “So, you got an eyeful, huh?” she said
.

Clio shrugged
.

“DSDE was mean to those men,” Petya said
.

Mother slapped him in the face. It made a pink mark on his cheek, despite him being a foot taller than her. Petya stood stock-still, until gradually his face toppled into a grimace, Petya’s silent way of crying
.

“Don’t you ever call DSDE mean,” she said. Her left eye narrowed like it did when she meant business, and that would have been enough. You didn’t go against that narrow eye. Until today, it had always been enough. But nothing seemed normal today
.

Clio raised her voice: “It was my idea, I took him to the procession. You didn’t have to hit him.”

Mother turned that squeezed up gaze at her daughter. “Get in the house,” she said
.

She and Petya shuffled into the hallway, while Mother quietly shut the door. She turned to them, eyes full open
now, but cold, like a stranger’s eyes. “Never say anything bad about DSDE outside this house.” The bell in the hallway rang from the patient upstairs. Mother turned and went up, her shoes clacking on the old wood stairs. It was the first time Clio understood the way of secrets. If you tell them out of place, out of time, blows will fall
.

“I hate her,” Petya said, rubbing his cheek
.

“She should have hit me instead.” Wishing she had. Clio reached up to him and hugged him around the chest, waiting for him to hug her back, waiting for something to be normal, wondering when things had stopped being so. Wondering why it had taken her so long to figure out that normal hadn’t been around for a long time
.

Finally he hugged her back. “A-OK?” he said
.

Clio made an “o” with her thumb and index finger behind his back. “A-OK.”

Presently the agent came back. As the window rolled down, he handed the colonel’s ID card back through. “Suggest you travel with license-plate insignia in the future, Colonel. Avoids confusion.”

“Confusion is the whole point, Kern. DSDE ought to know that better than anyone.” The colonel tucked the card away. “And thank you for your courtesy,” he said, waving the lieutenant to proceed. They pulled out of line, fast enough to throw Clio back. The window rolled up. “Moron,” the colonel said.

Clio let herself breathe again. She looked closer at the colonel. Sandy brown hair, worn just long enough to push the edge of military standard. He turned slightly. An old-fashioned wave at the forehead, giving him a jaunty look. A trim, masculine profile, suitable for a coin, as in Roman times. Mouth held in an unself-conscious, arrogant, almost-smile. Not afraid of DSDE, this colonel. But maybe the Department of Social and Drug Enforcement was afraid of
him
.

The car sped into the Mercer Island tunnel, past graffiti reading,
MOTHER EARTH ABHORS A TUNNEL
, and
YOUR CAR, YOUR COFFIN
, and
WHAT A FRIEND WE HAVE IN JESUS
, where
“Jesus” was crossed out and “Texaco” painted in. Where 1-90 merged with 1-5, their limo stalled in congestion once more, until they slipped off toward what Clio saw was Boeing Field. Now, on the surface streets, they flew along, barely slowing for red lights. The gates of the airfield rolled open and they sped toward a Quonset hut in the distance, where they stopped. The colonel’s aide hustled Clio out of the car, and hurried her toward the hut. Nearby raged machine gun fire and the smoke from burns. As the aide shuffled her down the hallway, Clio craned her head around to shout at the colonel, who was entering one of the first offices, “What about Rita and the baby?” But he was already gone.