The Seeds of Time (41 page)

“I never read it. Was it in paperback?”

A brief, jabbing smile. Tandy absently ran his fingertips along a silver-framed picture on the end table. Within the frame, a woman with a tentative smile, pale blue turtleneck, and strand of pearls just dipping to the swell of her breast. “Paperback,” Tandy said. “No, not in paperback. Milton lived in the sixteenth century. But nothing’s been written since to compare with him. My opinion. Anyway, my point here is that you’ve lost the war, Clio. Like the fallen archangel in
Paradise Lost
, your principles had to give way to superior ones. But you still have much to live for, isn’t that right?”

“Who’s the woman? Your wife?”

He made as if to answer, stopped, leaned forward, fixing her with an earnest gaze. “Clio, if this is hell to you, make it a hell worth living in. We make our reality, Clio.”

“Earth is dying. I didn’t make that.”

He shook his head. “You miss my point. You don’t control the big things, but you can control your attitude toward what happens to you, you see?”

“Yeah. I can make excuses for myself, like Satan did. Convince myself that hell isn’t so bad. Play classical music, fly the big ship, sleep like a baby.”

Across the purple span of carpet, his face took on a florid cast, like anger. But he spoke calmly. “That’s very good. You see Satan is an apologist, all compromise, no principles. That can be argued.” Tandy stood up. “Can be
argued. And yes,” he said, glancing at the portrait, “my wife.”

He walked to a low table in front of the viewports, returning with a large parcel wrapped in twine. He handed it to Clio.

She felt the soft, dense package, resting her hands on the twine. “My clothes, right?”

“Try them on.” His eyes gestured toward his sleeping cell.

Clio rose, clutching the bundle. Without meeting his gaze, she walked past the privacy wall into his sleeping nook. A double bed, the first she’d ever seen on a ship, and she’d seen a good number. Lamps to either side, fixed onto the wall with real cloth shades, and at one side, a nightstand with several comm buttons, a miniature viewscreen, and a hardbound copy of
Donne’s Sonnets
. Off to one side, the head, with plenty of room to walk right in and turn around, and with towels hanging, the same wine red of the carpet.

Clio sat on the edge of Tandy’s bed, picked at the string of the parcel. A lethargy crept into her arms and back. Maybe she would lie down, shut her eyes here, in this cozy room with its comforting soft bed, lamps, and towels. Easy, of a sudden, to sleep. Instead, her fingers slipped the wrapper off the package, and it fell away revealing the green jumpsuit of Biotime, pilot’s bars, black beret, socks, underwear. The underwear looked too small. Putting them on, they hugged against her ribs and buttocks. She looked down to where her belly should be. Its rounded slopes were now sunken, flat, like those of the models in magazines. Her legs protruded like stalks from the underpants, but her breasts refused to flatten out under the shirt. Hurriedly, she drew on the jumpsuit, plumping it up over the stretch belt. She tucked the pant legs into zippered boots, washed her face at the sink, dried off, and slapped the beret on without looking in the mirror. Then she rolled the army fatigues up, leaving them on his bed, a shed chrysalis.

She walked back out to see Tandy seated on his divan, arm resting along the top, waiting for her. “Excellent,” he
said, appraising her. “Not beaten. Not by a long shot. Just like the old days, eh Clio?”

“Yeah.” This was the worst thing, to think that nothing had changed. “Just like the old days,” she said. Her feet tingled in her boots as the deck beneath the carpet rumbled. “Ship’s powering up, Colonel. Niang then?”

His smile slowly faded like a balloon losing air. “Yes, Niang. We’re headed out, Clio. And we’re waiting for you to make up your mind. Whether to Dive or die, so to speak.”

“Why me, Colonel? Tell me why you’d put quarry meat like me in charge of a multibillion-dollar spaceship.”

Tandy cocked his head. “Because you’re the best. The best Dive pilot we’ve ever had. Think we want some greenhorn trying to steer the
Galactique
through Dive?”

“You let a greenhorn like Lieutenant Voris steer her through normal space.”

“Lieutenant Voris?” He smiled a lopsided smile. “Watch her sometime. She’s fast as a computer and could fly a troop freighter through the eye of a needle. But she’s not a Dive pilot.” Tandy watched Clio, his smile fading. “Why do you think you hold the record with sixty-two Dives, Clio?”

“Dumb luck?”

“There is no such thing as luck. You have the tolerances. You tolerate Dive and you tolerate the medications. You’re the best there is, Clio.”

She thought that over for a while. No one ever said a thing like that to her before. She felt a surge of pleasure. Then squelched it.

“Besides,” he continued. “I like you. You’ve got spunk. Sometimes a person gives a hand up to a younger player. Call it mentoring, if you like.”

“What happens to me after the mission? After you retrieve the ship? That FTL ship. Back to the quarry?”

Tandy sprang from his chair, clenched his fist in a victory gesture. “Yes! By God yes, Clio! That’s the spirit. Life may be worth living, after all, eh?” He walked to the credenza, poured a drink from the crystalline decanter, then swirled the drink in his glass and sipped, savoring it. “We
retrieve the FTL and what happens to Clio Finn? What happens?” He tossed the drink off, slapped the glass down on the credenza. “Whatever you want, Clio.
You
decide. I know how to show gratitude. And I like to keep the good players near me, if you want a place on my team. You’re a player, Clio. DSDE can’t touch people like you and me. They control the masses. Not the players.” He raised his eyebrows at her, letting that sink in. “It’s as I said, Clio, you make your destiny.”

“Make heaven out of hell.”

Tandy’s eyes crinkled in the smallest of internal smiles. He nodded in slow motion.

Then she heard herself saying, “I want to see Petya.”

“Yes. It’s time, isn’t it?” Tandy said. He walked to his desk console, pressed a switch. “Bring Petya to my quarters, Lieutenant,” he said.

Clio went over to the viewport, stared unseeing through
Galactique’s
great starboard eye. Her hands left damp imprints on the silky synthetic of her uniform as she wiped them on her thighs. She pressed her hands against her temples, where too many things were stuffed. You had to press things down so they didn’t explode, sometimes.

The night the DSDE agents came, Mother heard them first. She must have had a sixth sense, because all the sound she heard was footsteps on the porch, maybe a car door closing, but she was hurling some words at Clio and Petya, jabbing with her finger at the staircase. In slow motion, Clio glided up the stairs with Mother’s voice behind her, “Go, go!” In memory, the staircase stretched forever, as Clio ran for her freedom, her life, and Mother guarded the hallway below, a tall, stalky woman with short black hair and a chin set hard enough to keep back creditors, spooky dreams, prying neighbors, and DSDE all those years. But not tonight. The night when the ceiling flew off, and all the protections escaped, and the promise broke of Mother living to see you on your way in life. That night was upon them. When Petya finally joined her at the secret window, Clio pulled the wall panel in place, taking care to slide it all the
way shut. And they sidled out onto the roof and into the broad arms of the big blue spruce, just as they had practiced all those times, those other nights so different in kind from this one
.

She and Petya ran and ran until they collapsed. Then, fatefully, and against all Mother’s exhortations, they turned back. Like horses set free but no longer wild, they turned back to the house to lie in the tall grass and watch the lighted windows with Mother’s words echoing in their heads: Run and never look back, hon. You both just run and Petya you help your sister keep up, you hear? The men inside were dark blotches against the shades, and Mother’s screams roamed the house, leaking through every chink and crack and finally through the fabric of the plaster and siding, transformed by this passage into the woody bellow of the house itself
.

Then when the man with the gun found them and forced Clio to her feet, Petya hit him with the shovel. Then he was lying dead, with his head gone, and the gun was in Clio’s hand, so she knew she had killed him. Then they ran. And though she and Petya had been separated, she had been running ever since. And in all that time Clio pretended that Petya had escaped and was living somewhere, free in ways that she was not. Free enough for both of them. It was the kind of fantasy that became more real with the passage of days, as the fantasy became memory of the fantasy and then purely memory
.

A knock on the door. Clio turned.

He stood in the doorway, her brother, with Lieutenant Ryerson behind him. Petya filled the doorway, dressed in blue overalls with yellow plaid shirt underneath. He took in the room with the swift, furtive gaze of those trained not to make eye contact, then stared at the carpet. He had seen her. Clio came forward, stood a few paces from him.

“Petya,” she said. “It’s me.”

He looked at her quickly, then down at the carpet. “You get to wear a uniform?” he said. “They’re green,
because Space Recon is green. They collect plants?” Petya’s fair hair was shaved close, like a convict’s.

Clio took his hand, led him to the couch. She sat him down next to her, waiting for him to look her in the eyes, then let go of that intimacy for now. “I’ve really missed you, Petya,” she said. Her voice was small and throttled, like a hand was clasped around her throat.

Petya opened the great paw of his left hand. A key on a slip ring. He turned the key along the ring until the ring fell off. “Oh, oh,” he said. He put the key back on.

“What’s the key, Petya?”

“I keep my tools and no one goes in except if they use a key.” He looked up at her. “You have a locker, sis?”

Clio couldn’t speak. She shook her head.

“I have a locker, and no one’s supposed to go in there. Sometimes they go in there?” He looked up at Colonel Tandy, who sat opposite them, watching. Petya looked back down quickly. “Rudy’s dead now. Dogs only live sixteen years. Mrs. Looby said, dogs only live sixteen years. He had a good life?” He looked at Clio.

“Sure. Dogs do, mostly.”

“I rode on the space shuttle with bunk beds. People sleep there?”

“Some people do. Some people sleep on this ship too.”

“Do you sleep here?”

“Yes.” A whisper.

“Do you have a bunk bed?” he asked.

“I haven’t seen my room yet, Petya. I’m a prisoner. They make me fly the ship. But I’d rather be back home with you.”

“We don’t talk about that. We’re not supposed to ask?” He looked up at her, pale blue eyes finally making deep contact with hers. He looked at her pilot’s bars. “You fly this ship?”

“Yes.”

Now and again Petya stole a glance at Tandy.

“That’s Colonel Tandy, the one in charge.” Clio said.

Petya peered intently at his key ring. He was nine years older than when she had last seen him, but the years hadn’t
made their mark on his face. Tempting, for a moment, to imagine that the years hadn’t happened, that she and Petya had never been separated, as it was always difficult to imagine other’s lives when separate from yours; that people woke up, went through their days, slept and cared about the stack of events they were dealt—without you. Still, the years had slipped past them both, cheated years, that come not again. It would have been better, easier, if he’d aged, if the time apart had left footprints of lines. Something convincing. It hurt to breathe, now. Her throat had nearly swollen shut.

“Who is Mrs. Looby, Petya? Someone you stayed with?”

He nodded twice, up-down, in his deliberate way.

“Was she … good to you?”

He didn’t respond.

“Because if she wasn’t, I’ll go punch her.”

A smile started to break out on his face, then retreated.

“She’s never been on a space shuttle?” Petya said.

“But you have.”

“She wouldn’t like the noise?”

“How come?”

“At the home, we don’t make noise. Noise is bad?”

Tears came up, but Clio managed to send them down her throat instead of her cheeks. She swallowed hard. “Remember when Holland Lumm farted in church that time?”

Petya smiled broadly. “Pastor was really mad?”

“Yeah, but he got mad at
me.”

“Because you laughed?”

“I’m still laughing about that. Sometimes it’s OK to make noise, Petya. Sometimes you’ve got to make noise, if something needs laughing at, or if something needs saying. Sometimes being quiet is bad.”

The smile slid off Petya’s face. He examined the maroon carpet as though searching for it there.

Tandy came forward, put a hand on Clio’s shoulder. Petya jumped. Startled.

“You can see Petya later.” He turned to her brother. “Time to go, Petya.”

Petya put his key in his right breast pocket, buttoned the pocket, then rose. Clio rose too, and put her arms around him. Her nose came up to the key pocket.

Petya folded her up into his great, beefy arms, the kind of arms that could ward off a battalion. But his squeeze was light. Clio long ago taught him how to hug and not crush, and his body remembered this now.

“I’ll see you later, OK?” Clio said. But the whisper was barely audible.

Petya shuffled out with the aide in that way of patients on meds.

Tandy came back and sat on the couch, opposite her, hands folded in his lap. He watched her, as always. Through her most intimate feelings, he was always watching.

“You bastards,” Clio said. “Fucking bastards.” An impossibly large swelling in her chest and throat now surged out of her mouth in words. “Keep us like farm animals, take our lives and keep us to serve you. Keep my brother—fill him with meds—and tell him what he can and can’t ask about.”

“Clio,” Tandy began softly, “he was kept by DSDE, not army.”

“Does he even know our mother is dead? Was he ever told I was alive? Did he ever have freedom to come and go?”