Six Months, Three Days, Five Others Read online

  “At least they don’t think we’re spies,” said Ythna. “Or they’d have just executed us.”

  “They assume that nobody could ever get this far inside their security perimeter undetected,” said Jemima. “So they reached for the next logical explanation: we must be members of the galley crew, who tried to make a break for it. Instead of executing us, they’ll just send us up in one of those ships, probably in irons in case we actually are saboteurs.”

  “The Beldame told me that this campaign was a terrible waste. The whole assault force died without ever reaching Mars, because the colonists had superior weapons. They used technology that the Empire had rejected as impure,” said Ythna. “It was one of the Beldame’s lessons that she liked to tell: A just cause becomes unjust when it costs too much human life.”

  “The Beldame sounds like she was a wise woman,” said Jemima.

  Ythna was sure she was going to look up and see a sarcastic leer on Jemima’s sharp face, but there was none. Instead, Jemima just nodded, then walked to the window and studied the rocket they were soon going to be chained up in the belly of.

  “I don’t want to die in a pointless war that was lost before I was born,” Ythna said.

  “Really? I thought you didn’t want anything, one way or the other,” Jemima said, still facing the window. “Isn’t that what you said? And how is this different from what would have happened to you if we had never met? You would have been sent to work for some new master, who might have worked you to death in a year or two. Or you could have been marked for Obsolescence, and died sooner. This is the same.”

  “It’s not the same at all,” Ythna said. Just when she had thought Jemima was starting to treat her like an adult.

  “Isn’t it?”

  Ythna changed the subject. “So if everybody on board the rocket ship dies, can we use that to escape?”

  “No,” said Jemima. “Their deaths won’t be significant. Or terribly unexpected. I can only use a single sudden death that changes lots of other people’s fates.”

  “That’s a stupid rule.”

  Jemima shrugged. “It’s a science that won’t exist for hundreds of years. Like I said: causal torsions. Think of causality as a weave that holds all of us fast, and occasionally gaps appear that you can slip through.”

  “So how are we going to escape before they put us on that rocket?”

  “First things first.” Jemima came and stood in front of Ythna, so she was silhouetted by the setting sun through the small window, and put her right hand out, palm up and at an angle. “I really do want to help. So far, all I’ve done is make things worse for you. If you’ll let me, I’ll do whatever I can. You’re a smart person and you care about other people. You deserve better. And the Gaven Empire could use a million more like you.”

  “How does the Empire end?” Ythna said.

  “It dies,” Jemima said. “Everything dies eventually. You were born in the Golden Century, which was a relatively stable era. After that, there was a twenty-year fall into decadence and social decay, followed by the Glorious Restoration, which you saw. That lasted about fifty-seven years, and was followed by the Perfect Culmination, the most exact implementation of the ideal of Dja-Thun on Earth. Which lasted about as long as you’d expect. After that, there were about 150 years of slow decline, until the whole thing fell apart and your people begged the off-world colonists to come and save them. That’s the executive summary, anyway.”

  “Okay,” Ythna said, taking Jemima’s hand in both of hers. “I want to make a difference. Give me a new identity, and put me where I can make a difference.”

  “Very well,” Jemima said. “Done.”

  Jemima searched through what seemed to be a million hidden pockets sewn into the lining of her giant coat until she found a device, perhaps twice the size of your fingernail. With this gadget, she opened the lock on their cage, and then she used her tiny stun gun on the two guards in the hallway outside, who were already half asleep in any case.

  “Now what?” Ythna said. “Do we wait for that man in the helmet to arrive and murder someone else?”

  “He’s long gone, whoever he was,” Jemima said. “But we don’t need him to kill anybody. The Dauntless is launching tomorrow, which means I know what day this is. And someone very famous is going to die, all on his own, in the next couple days. Come on.” She unlocked the front door of the holding facility with her lockpick. “We’ve got a lot of distance to cover. And first, we have to break out of a maximum security launch site.”

  * * *

  Beldame Thakrra’s grave wasn’t nearly as fancy as the Tomb of the Unknown Emperor. They had built her a big stone sphere with a metal spike sticking through it, befitting the rank she’d attained in the moment just before she died. And there was a bust in front, with a close enough likeness of her face, except that she looked placid and sleepy, instead of keen and on the verge of asking another question. The sphere was a little taller than Ythna, and the spike soared over her head. The tomb was surrounded by other, grander memorials, as far as Ythna could see.

  The sphere and the bust of Thakrra were both covered with a thick layer of grime. Nobody had visited the Beldame’s tomb for decades. Maybe never. Ythna pulled a cloth out of her new, sharp-creased black uniform trousers and started to wipe the tomb so it looked fresh and clean, the way the Beldame had always kept her house. “It’s good to see you again,” she whispered.

  Jemima came up behind Ythna while she was still wiping. “Here.” She handed Ythna a stack of official-looking cards. “It’s all correct. You’re a Vice Officiator named Dhar. That’s your name from now on. You were part of a secret mission for the Vice Emperor Htap, and everybody else who knew about that mission is dead now. Such things were common in the final days of the Perfect Culmination, sad to say. In any case, you can present these anywhere and if they need a new Vice Officiator, they’ll take you on.”

  “Thank you,” Ythna said. “But I can’t go anywhere until I finish the ritual of mourning for the Beldame. I’ve waited much too long as it is.”

  “There’s no rush whatsoever,” Jemima said. “In fact, if I were you, I would lay low for a few more weeks before trying to travel. Oh, and if anybody asks you about the past hundred years of history, just pretend you have a head injury from that secret mission.”

  “What about you?” Ythna said. “Are you going to risk traveling right now?”

  “Can’t hang about,” Jemima said. “This is the furthest forward in time I’ve reached in forever. And there’s a death next week that I’m hopeful will send me even further ahead.” She looked out at the rows of ziggurats, spheres, and statues, stretching out past the misty horizon. “I’ve jumped through time twenty-nine times. Twenty-nine times, and each time I find myself stuck in the Gaven Empire. There’s something I’m doing wrong, and I can’t figure out what it is.”

  “Maybe if you find that man with the helmet,” Ythna said, “you can ask him.”

  “If I find that man again,” Jemima said, “I shall have to kill him. Goodbye, Ythna. Have a great life. For me.”

  They embraced. Ythna watched Jemima walk away across the rows of memorials and reliquaries, the rulers and saints of the Empire resting in glory. Jemima’s long black coat swished as she strode, jauntily, like someone who knew just what she was about. One arm swung back and forth, as if she had an invisible cane swatting aside the ghosts of this place. Ythna stared until all she could see was Jemima’s red curls and black hat amidst the big gray shapes. Then she turned back toward the Beldame, whose stone face still looked much too complacent. Ythna wiped the bust down one more time, then sank to her knees and began the slow, mournful chant of indelible grief.

  Six Months, Three Days

  The man who can see the future has a date with the woman who can see many possible futures.

  Judy is nervous but excited, keeps looking at things she’s spotted out of the corner of her eye. She’s wearing a floral Laura Ashley style dress with an Ankh necklac
e and her legs are rambunctious, her calves moving under the table. It’s distracting because Doug knows that in two and a half weeks, those cucumber-smooth ankles will be hooked on his shoulders, and that curly reddish-brown hair will spill everywhere onto her lemon-floral pillows; this image of their future coitus has been in Doug’s head for years, with varying degrees of clarity, and now it’s almost here. The knowledge makes Doug almost giggle at the wrong moment, but then it hits him: she’s seen this future too—or she may have, anyway.

  Doug has his sandy hair cut in a neat fringe that was almost fashionable a couple years ago. You might think he cuts his own hair, but Judy knows he doesn’t, because he’ll tell her otherwise in a few weeks. He’s much, much better looking than she thought he would be, and this comes as a huge relief. He has rude, pouty lips and an upper lip that darkens no matter how often he shaves it, with Elvis Costello glasses. And he’s almost a foot taller than her, six foot four. Now that Judy’s seen Doug for real, she’s re-imagining all the conversations they might be having in the coming weeks and months, all of the drama and all of the sweetness. The fact that Judy can be attracted to him, knowing everything that could lay ahead, consoles her tremendously.

  Judy is nattering about some Chinese novelist she’s been reading in translation, one of those cruel satirists from the days after the May Fourth Movement, from back when writers were so conflicted they had to rename themselves things like “Contra Diction.” Doug is just staring at her, not saying anything, until it creeps her out a little.

  “What?” Doug says at last, because Judy has stopped talking and they’re both just staring at each other.

  “You were staring at me,” Judy says.

  “I was. . .” Doug hesitates, then just comes out and says it. “I was savoring the moment. You know, you can know something’s coming from a long way off, you know for years ahead of time the exact day and the very hour when it’ll arrive. And then it arrives, and when it arrives, all you can think about is how soon it’ll be gone.”

  “Well, I didn’t know the hour and the day when you and I would meet,” Judy puts a hand on his. “I saw many different hours and days. In one timeline, we would have met two years ago. In another, we’d meet a few months from now. There are plenty of timelines where we never meet at all.”

  Doug laughs, then waves a hand to show that he’s not laughing at her, although the gesture doesn’t really clarify whom or what he’s actually laughing at.

  Judy is drinking a cocktail called the Coalminer’s Daughter, made out of ten kinds of darkness. It overwhelms her senses with sugary pungency, and leaves her lips black for a moment. Doug is drinking a wheaty Pilsner from a tapered glass, in gulps. After one of them, Doug cuts to the chase. “So this is the part where I ask. I mean, I know what happens next between you and me. But here’s where I ask what you think happens next.”

  “Well,” Judy says. “There are a million tracks, you know. It’s like raindrops falling into a cistern, they’re separate until they hit the surface, and then they become the past: all undifferentiated. But there are an awful lot of futures where you and I date for about six months.”

  “Six months and three days,” Doug says. “Not that I’ve counted or anything.”

  “And it ends badly.”

  “I break my leg.”

  “You break your leg ruining my bicycle. I like that bike. It’s a noble five-speed in a sea of fixies.”

  “So you agree with me.” Doug has been leaning forward, staring at Judy like a psycho again. He leans back so that the amber light spilling out of the Radish Saloon’s tiny lampshades turn him the same color as his beer. “You see the same future I do.” Like she’s passed some kind of test.

  “You didn’t know what I was going to say in advance?” Judy says.

  “It doesn’t work like that—not for me, anyway. Remembering the future is just like remembering the past. I don’t have perfect recall, I don’t hang on to every detail, the transition from short-term memory to long-term memory is not always graceful.”

  “I guess it’s like memory for me too,” Judy says.

  Doug feels an unfamiliar sensation, and he realizes after a while it’s comfort. He’s never felt this at home with another human being, especially after such a short time. Doug is accustomed to meeting people and knowing bits and pieces of their futures, from stuff he’ll learn later. Or if Doug meets you and doesn’t know anything about your future, that means he’ll never give a crap about you, at any point down the line. This makes for awkward social interactions, either way.

  They get another round of drinks. Doug gets the same beer again, Judy gets a red concoction called a Bloody Mutiny.

  “So there’s one thing I don’t get,” Doug says. “You believe you have a choice among futures—and I think you’re wrong, you’re seeing one true future and a bunch of false ones.”

  “You’re probably going to spend the next six months trying to convince yourself of that,” Judy says.

  “So why are you dating me at all, if you get to choose? You know how it’ll turn out. For that matter, why aren’t you rich and famous? Why not pick a future where you win the lottery, or become a star?”

  Doug works in tech support, in a poorly ventilated sub-basement of a tech company in Providence, RI, that he knows will go out of business in a couple years. He will work there until the company fails, choking on the fumes from old computers, and then be unemployed a few months.

  “Well,” Judy says. “It’s not really that simple. I mean, the next six months, assuming I don’t change my mind, they contain some of the happiest moments of my life, and I see it leading to some good things, later on. And you know, I’ve seen some tracks where I get rich, I become a public figure, and they never end well. I’ve got my eye on this one future, this one node way off in the distance, where I die aged 97, surrounded by lovers and grandchildren and cats. Whenever I have a big decision to make, I try to see the straightest path to that moment.”

  “So I’m a stepping stone,” Doug says, not at all bitterly. He’s somehow finished his second beer already, even though Judy’s barely made a dent in her Bloody Mutiny.

  “You’re maybe going to take this journey with me for a spell,” Judy says. “People aren’t stones.”

  And then Doug has to catch the last train back to Providence, and Judy has to bike home to Somerville. Marva, her roommate, has made popcorn and hot chocolate, and wants to know the whole story.

  “It was nice,” Judy says. “He was a lot cuter in person than I’d remembered, which is really nice. He’s tall.”

  “That’s it?” Marva said. “Oh come on, details. You finally meet the only other freaking clairvoyant on Earth, your future boyfriend, and all you have to say is, ’He’s tall.’ Uh uh. You are going to spill like a fucking oil tanker, I will ply you with hot chocolate, I may resort to Jim Beam, even.”

  Marva’s “real” name is Martha, but she changed it years ago. She’s a grad student studying 18th century lit, and even Judy can’t help her decide whether to finish her PhD. She’s slightly chubby, with perfect crimson hair and clothing by Sanrio, Torrid, and Hot Topic. She is fond of calling herself “mallternative.”

  “I’m drunk enough already. I nearly fell off my bicycle a couple times,” Judy says.

  The living room is a pigsty, so they sit in Judy’s room, which isn’t much better. Judy hoards items she might need in one of the futures she’s witnessed, and they cover every surface. There’s a plastic replica of a Filipino fast food mascot, Jollibee, which she might give to this one girl Sukey in a couple of years, completing Sukey’s collection and making her a friend for life—or Judy and Sukey may never meet at all. A phalanx of stuffed animals crowds Judy and Marva on the big fluffy bed. The room smells like a sachet of whoop-ass (cardamom, cinnamon, lavender) that Judy opened up earlier.

  “He’s a really sweet guy.” Judy cannot stop talking in platitudes, which bothers her. “I mean, he’s really lost, but he manages to be brave. I can
’t imagine what it would be like, to feel like you have no free will at all.”

  Marva doesn’t point out the obvious thing—that Judy only sees choices for herself, not anybody else. Suppose a guy named Rocky asks Marva out on a date, and Judy sees a future in which Marva complains, afterwards, that their date was the worst evening of her life. In that case, there are two futures: One in which Judy tells Marva what she sees, and one in which she doesn’t. Marva will go on the miserable date with Rocky, unless Judy tells her what she knows. (On the plus side, in fifteen months, Judy will drag Marva out to a party where she meets the love of her life. So there’s that.)

  “Doug’s right,” Marva says. “I mean, if you really have a choice about this, you shouldn’t go through with it. You know it’s going to be a disaster, in the end. You’re the one person on Earth who can avoid the pain, and you still go sticking fingers in the socket.”

  “Yeah, but. . .” Judy decides this will go a lot easier if there are marshmallows in the cocoa, and runs back to the kitchen alcove. “But going out with this guy leads to good things later on. And there’s a realization that I come to as a result of getting my heart broken. I come to understand something.”

  “And what’s that?”

  Judy finds the bag of marshmallows. They are stale. She decides cocoa will revitalize them, drags them back to her bedroom, along with a glass of water.

  “I have no idea, honestly. That’s the way with epiphanies: You can’t know in advance what they’ll be. Even me. I can see them coming, but I can’t understand something until I understand it.”

  “So you’re saying that the future that Doug believes is the only possible future just happens to be the best of all worlds. Is this some Leibniz shit? Does Dougie always automatically see the nicest future or something?”

  “I don’t think so.” Judy gets gummed up by popcorn, marshmallows and sticky cocoa, and coughs her lungs out. She swigs the glass of water she brought for just this moment. “I mean—” She coughs again, and downs the rest of the water. “I mean, in Doug’s version, he’s only 43 when he dies, and he’s pretty broken by then. His last few years are dreadful. He tells me all about it in a few weeks.”