Where Time Winds Blow, page 18
“A time squall, of course,” said Lena. Throughout Faulcon’s narrative she had sat stiff, silent, solemn, slightly irritated by the way he filled in on detail with which she was well familiar—that much was often apparent to Faulcon—but perhaps piecing together in her own mind the events of those many months back. “A time squall?”
“A swirlwind,” said Faulcon, “The first and last I ever saw. Maybe I had some survival sense working, I don’t know. But that wind came out of time in a flash. Those poor beggars down in the valley had about eight seconds warning, long enough for those closer to the ledge system to bounce up out of the valley. Three men got out. I forget how many died. I saw two go up on jet power, straight up into the air. It didn’t work, of course, they vanished into the squall … no, not like a squall; it was like a real wind, a real time wind, but generating out of nowhere and spreading out in both directions. To us, it seemed like a time wind that had come without warning. The brick building vanished. I dragged myself away from the edge, and all I could hear were screams, and the whining of the wind, and the exploding sound, the booming of atmosphere. It was so dark, like being trapped beneath a blackening sky. Ensavlion stood on the cliffs, looking down, watching the men die.
“Then the whole air was filled with a sort of golden glowing. It was like a bonfire at night, the radiant light filling the darkness, but not pushing it away. Ensavlion was saying things, incoherent things. I could hear him, but I couldn’t understand him. He kept standing there, staring down into the canyon. I crawled towards him, unable to get the rift suit to stand properly. I was still shaking, still crying I suppose, my eyes blurred with tears and dizziness. And I looked down into the valley and yes, I saw it: a tiny, tiny pyramid, giving off an immense amount of yellow light. There were shadows and movements in it, nothing I could discern, but then you often get that in the ruins that are time-swept …. you know, decorative, or the way the light passes through the different densities of crystal in some structures. I looked at that pyramid and I was watching it as it vanished, really abruptly, vanishing from that great swirl of confusion and time change happening around it. You couldn’t help thinking that it was the pyramid that was causing the wind, dragging things through time with it as it was afterwards talked about. But at the time I didn’t think of it as a time machine, or any sort of machine. It was just a magnificent, and beautiful, and awe-inspiring piece of time-junk.
“I backed off from the cliff edge again and managed to get the rift suit up to its feet. Ensavlion came running over to me and I realized the golden glow had gone. He started to shout at me, ‘You saw them, you must have seen them!’ I shook my head. I said I’d seen nothing. Everything about that vision was becoming just that … a sort of vision, a dream-like memory. I found myself not believing I’d seen anything. The sky brightened, a faint pink again. The sound of the wind had died away and my head was throbbing and felt slightly unreal. I watched Ensavlion standing, staring back at the rift. He kept saying, ‘Somebody must have seen them. Somebody, one of the others.’ At this time I didn’t know that more than half the team had been lost. He came up to me and started to question me about whether I’d seen anything. I agreed that I’d seen a golden light, but for some reason I didn’t admit to seeing the pyramid. I suppose I thought I hadn’t really seen anything, and didn’t want to get involved with what I detected as being an obsessive interest in this man, even then. But Ensavlion had seen more. He’d seen godlike figures, moving in and out of the pyramid through the very walls. I didn’t see any such thing, all I saw was shadows. But he insisted that those figures had appeared there, and he kept on about it, and sometimes, when I think back, I can resolve humanoid shapes from those shadows, and I wonder if he was right; but the more he insisted at the time, the more I hid what I’d seen. I kept thinking, I knew it was going to happen. I could have warned them, I could have shouted; or perhaps I did, and they died because they took no notice of me. I survived and they died. Every day that passed I got more ashamed. People kept coming up to me and asking me why I’d survived, a rookie—always the first to go—when their mates had been taken. Was I in the canyon, or skiving? I lied and lied. Others asked if I’d tried to help. I lied and lied. Others had heard about my panic, and they thought that was really funny. Ensavlion kept on about those stupid figures. The other three who’d survived had only seen the pyramid—so they said. And within a week they’d all got lost, one of them going up to the canyon’s edge and falling in. He hadn’t gone to find the pyramid, he’d just lost his mind. So it was Ensavlion. And me. And even Ensavlion came to believe I’d seen nothing. But I’d been close, you see … close. And so I got taken under his wing. Just like you saw him with Kris, so he was with me. Protective, friendly, fatherly. Concerned. And just like he was with me, so he had been with Mark Dojaan, and continued to be so after the event.”
Lena looked a little surprised. “I’ve gone adrift—wasn’t Mark one of those killed by the swirlwind?”
“He wasn’t with us that day. I met him a few days later, through Ensavlion. You were on the islands, remember? Poking around down there with some section or other, digging up fossils and not contacting me.”
Lena smiled thinly, rose from the ledge and walked to the soft vastness of her couch. She flopped down and put her feet up, staring at the ceiling. Faulcon watched her, wondering with irritating insistence what life would be like without a Lena featuring in it. He said, “The frustrating thing is, it probably wouldn’t have made a damn bit of difference if you’d known that I was scared silly, and saw that pyramid. Not a bit of difference.”
“You’re undoubtedly right. I thought the revelation would hurt, but why should it? There is nothing nasty in it, nothing too shameful, nothing to make me think less of you, nothing to make me think that for those events alone you’d have kept quiet about it, told me nothing, upset me because of the fact of the deception, which of course is at the root of my anger. In other words, Leo, that’s not the whole story. In other words—and I realize you haven’t actually said ‘that’s all’—I expect to hear something else from you, something that makes it seem sensible that a man would deny even to himself the memory of such an event as glimpsing an alien time machine.” She raised her head and peered at him, then after a moment shuffled onto her elbows. “I imagine Mark Dojaan is about to rear his handsome head.”
“Mark Dojaan!” Faulcon exploded with bitterness as she spoke the name. Perhaps the baraas had reduced his emotional responsibility, but suddenly he was desperately angry, and the glass in his hand seemed functional only to be cast against the far wall of the room. The sound of the shattering vessel was wonderful, shocking. Fragments glittered and scattered about the room and Faulcon felt some of the tension drain from him. “I’m so sick of hearing that bloody name,” he said, his voice soft, icy. He stared at Lena who shrugged non-committally.
“It means very little to me. I hardly knew him.”
“And yet … though you didn’t know him he’s still there, behind you, overshadowing you. He’s in your life whether you like it or not. He’s like this bloody planet, always there, always watching, always with a finger firmly up the rear-end of your life. Mark Dojaan! How I wish to God he’d died before I knew him.”
Faulcon’s sudden anger fed Lena’s. She swung her legs off the couch and stood, walking to her sleeping closet and stripping off her night clothes. “No more lies, eh Leo? No more deceptions to be revealed.” Faulcon watched her coldly, partly wanting her as he stared at her nude body, partly afraid of her.
“There’s nothing more,” he said, but he knew she could hear the silent prayer he offered with that awful statement. She turned, dropping a flowing kaftan across her shoulders and billowing it out. There was no love in her face, no understanding. For a second she was silent, then she said, “What is it you’re so afraid of, Leo? That he might be listening from Othertime? Is that it? Are you afraid he’ll come back and dominate you again, make you feel like an idiot, laugh at you? That’s what he did, isn’t it? He got you under his thumb like a good little dog-like friend. Here Leo, there Leo, do this for me Leo, that’s not funny Leo, enter your ten-minute embarrassment phase. You followed Mark Dojaan about as if you were on a chain. Did you think I hadn’t seen? Do you think I’m blind?”
“It wasn’t like that. For a while we were close friends—”
Lena’s laugh was bitterly cynical. She walked towards Leo, standing in the bright light of the Kamelion day, and the expression on her face was malice. “You fool. You star-struck fool. Friendship? Do you know, do you really know what friendship is? Friendship isn’t coming back time and time again and forgiving. Friendship isn’t seeing who can vomit baraas furthest over the edge of the rift. Friendship is sharing the private part of you; sharing, Leo. Not giving, not taking, but exchanging. Friendship isn’t one way, one giving, one taking. And that’s exactly what you and Mark Dojaan were. I know that, Leo. I could feel it in you, and I heard it. I kept clear of you during that ’friendship’ because I was afraid that if I tried to interfere he could damage what you and I had far more than I wanted. Perhaps something inside of me was afraid of Mark, though I didn’t know him, perhaps I was warning myself against him all the time. Maybe you’re right, Leo, maybe he was more powerful than most people ever realize. He had his doggy friend, giving his all—did you give your all, Leo? And you were too friendship-struck to realize that he was using you, and baiting you, and making you do things that your better self must have been screaming objections to. And this is why you hate him now, you hate him because you loved him, and you loved him because you were afraid of him, and in awe of him, and you rationalized everything about your relationship by calling it ‘close friendship’, and there’s something about that bastard that lingers on, you’re right, Leo, it’s here, it’s all around, the power of his mind, because you’re standing here, your face white, your body shaking, your heart thumping, and you’re defending someone and something that just moments ago you were screaming hate for. He’s got you head over heels, Leo; you haven’t shaken him off even now.” She reached out and touched his face gently, then reached round to stroke the back of his neck. She came into his arms and felt the despair in him, and the rapidly surfacing tears.
“I loved him,” he whispered.
“I know you did.”
Faulcon involuntarily squeezed her tighter, and though she couldn’t see it his eyes were tight shut, and his teeth crushed together as he drowned out, and fought against, the sudden furious desire he felt to scream and hit out and cry like a baby.
Lena said, “I’ve been waiting for you to find the way of getting this off your chest. This is why I was so angry Leo, I’m sorry. I knew you had this terrible thing weighing on you, and even though you should know it’s not so terrible for me … I’m from New Triton, remember? Everybody believes in love without constraint there. But I knew you didn’t, and I knew this was hurting you, and I could see you had blanked it out. But I’m human too, Leo, and I couldn’t help wondering what else, what other deceptions were being gradually erased, buried in your super-active unconscious.”
Faulcon relaxed his grip. He drew away from her and kissed her lightly on the lips. She smiled and kissed him back, long, hard, trying to express in that simple action the depth of her love and regard for him, no matter what, despite all.
Faulcon walked up to the window and leaned his forehead against it, staring out across the city, looking at the activity, but not seeing it.
“He was a criminal; he was a mercenary, merciless, power-struck kleptomaniac son-of-a-bitch. He looted the valley and he got me to loot it too. We used to go in there in our suits and hide anything small, and commercially saleable, in the spaces in the legs and body. It made the suits difficult to operate, but we walked carefully out of the valley every time and over a few weeks we got quite a little export trade, working through another friend of Mark’s, a shuttle pilot operating a food drop, the sort of thing that gets a dismissive glance from the port guard. God, he had that so well worked out. It seemed such a good idea … give the Galaxy a bit of VanderZande’s World … Why the hell should it all be stuck in one city, with only a fraction on display in the museum. By what right did the Federation prohibit the removal of artifacts off-world?
“And then one day we were working a standard rip-off, ostensibly part of our routine examination of ruins, and as usual we’d slipped ahead of the team a bit, and I went up the slope keeping an eye on the leader, while Mark darted in and out of the ruins, looking for removables. And a bloody wind came. Well, we had the usual notice, several minutes. I was damned glad to be up the side, and I called the warning down to Mark in case his suit was being screened from the sirens. He popped out of the ruins he was in, looked into the distance, checked my estimate of time before it struck—we reckoned five minutes—and went back in. He’d found a pile of small objects that looked like they had machinery inside them. He was loading his suit. He took two minutes. The sirens were going and I could see the rest of the team making an orderly ascent of the canyon. Mark was easing himself out of the jumble of metal and crystal structures when suddenly he called out that he was stuck. ‘What d’you mean, stuck?’ I shouted. ‘Get the hell out of there!’ ‘I can’t,’ he shouted back. Some of the junk had dropped through his suit and was jamming a mechanism somewhere. He was caught there, in his suit, unable to move. I just stood there feeling sick, feeling terrified, and thinking to myself, the travellers … they might come back, Ensavlion’s godlike creatures. In a split second I became obsessed with seeing the pyramid again, following in the wake of the wind. Mark’s screaming faded away, just like the sirens, and the clatter of wind-sound on my suit’s sensors. That bloody wind struck, and the moment it struck I turned away. I didn’t even watch him go; I can’t even remember what abuse he was shouting as he was cut off in mid-word.”
“So you killed him, and you killed your guilt, and then you had to live with what you’d done, and you killed that too.”
“I guess so. It hardly took any time at all to erase Mark Dojaan from my mind, to put what I’d done aside, to regard it as a dream. Then Kris came, and it all came back, really intensely and frighteningly. I felt so torn with him, so close on the one hand, and so afraid, so distant on the other. And I sensed his tie with the wind, when it happened, a few days ago, and that hasn’t helped.”
Lena put her arm around him. “I think it might perhaps be as well not to tell Kris any of this. You re right when you say he has an image of his brother, a good image, the image of a man of courage and honour. Kris shouldn’t be punished for Mark Dojaan. What do you think?”
Before Faulcon could answer, however, there was a loud, almost angry knock at the door. Faulcon turned, puzzled, and Lena shrugged and walked to the door switch. “Who is it?” she called.
“Kris. Let me in, will you?”
Exchanging an uneasy glance with Faulcon, Lena nevertheless opened the door to her apartment.
It all happened almost too quickly for Faulcon to comprehend. Kris swept into the room, his face white, his whole body rigid with tension. “You bloody lying bastard!” he screamed, and ran at Faulcon. He punched Faulcon hard on the mouth, then slapped him about the head until he sank to his knees. “You’re a liar! A bloody liar!” And he kicked viciously up at Faulcon’s chest, sending his team mate toppling back towards the window. Lena was suddenly behind the youngster, and one jerk of her arm had Kris sprawled on the floor. He jumped to his feet and smiled with a sort of triumph. There was blood on his lip. Faulcon had stood up as well, clutching his chest and breathing with difficulty.
“Get out of here,” said Lena to the boy.
“Mark was a good man,” said Kris, speaking slowly, deliberately. “I don’t know why that bastard said all those things, but they’re lies, and he’s a liar, and he’s hiding something, and if he says one more word about my brother I shall kill him. And you’d better believe that, Mister Leo liar Faulcon.”
Lena took a step towards him and slapped him hard and stunningly on the face. “I told you to get out of here.” Kris turned about and ran from the apartment. Lena swore softly and went to a drawer, searching around among the junk until she found a small metal box, a detector. In a second she had found the small needle, fixed above the door, with which Kris had heard their every word.
“How the hell did he get hold of that?” said Faulcon. “Unless Ensavlion gave it to him.”
“Damn,” was Lena’s only comment as she snapped the needle. “He must have hidden it there when he came looking for you.” She looked anxiously at Faulcon. “Do you really think Ensavlion would have okayed him eavesdropping?”
