Janus Read online

  A small e-photo album.

  He moistened his lips before pulling it towards him and stepping down its menu.

  Bright faces, party crowds, portraits of two or three under trees, in thick-carpeted living rooms with mahogany furniture, on the steps of a beige stone building. Faces. Grinning, polite, severe, friendly, laughter-distorted, anonymous faces.

  His jaw clenched. When he tilted the album towards him, he caught sight of the scars on his wrist, and stopped. He closed his eyes and did not breathe.

  His hand went up to sweep the table clear.

  He shuddered and brought it down slowly. His breath came out in a ragged sigh.

  With fingers that shook, he squared the album parallel to the corner of the table, stacked the letters and other papers back in the folder beside it, and pushed himself to his feet.

  Methodically he took his clothing out of the bags, one item at a time, carried each with his head lowered, and placed it in the cupboard. When he had finished, he stood motionless in the same hunched position, and his breathing grew harsh. He straightened up then and fastened his coat and went out, quietly pulling the door shut behind him.

  Hands jammed in pockets, he walked slowly in the midday darkness, listening to the gravel under his boots, concentrating on the sights and sounds that reached him, the half-familiar tang of the alien forests—trying not to think. Something whistled in the trees.

  At one point a man and woman passed him from the opposite direction, talking quietly together. Grebbel thought he heard the man say, “Who knows what he was like back then?” and laugh. And he found he had swung round, his breath surging, his hands ready to seize and twist.

  He checked himself and watched as the couple walked on, oblivious, the cold air pressing against his face like a steel mask.

  Then his ears were filled with the sounds of his own body, breathing again, walking.

  He stopped when another sound grew to dominate them, and found he was overlooking the site of the dam again. White water thundered before him under the lights. The earth seemed to shiver under his feet. He stared at the water that piled up, that churned and lathered and forced its way through the narrow sluiceways. Its frustrated urgency made his muscles tighten and quiver.

  On the far bank a dump truck emerged from a lighted tunnel entrance with a load of rubble. That would be where they were preparing to install the new turbines. Upstream was the tangle of steel pipes and tanks that was the cryoplant. He turned away from the river and looked up the valley wall. Among partly cleared timber above the little estate where his building was, there was a cluster of lights that meant more housing. And upstream of that, a white thread of moonlit water came down from the upper slopes. It vanished into the woods, glittered here and there among the trees, and evidently joined the river somewhere beyond the landing field.

  He found himself wondering what the little stream would look like from above, from beyond the upper row of buildings. He tried to picture the fall of the valley from that perspective, the dark forest on the slopes below, down to the sharp division made by one of the larger roads. . . .

  A siren sounded on the worksite. The icy wind was forcing itself through his coat. He fumbled to close the top button and caught another glimpse of his scarred wrist as the siren sounded again and fell quiet.

  Something jarred in his mind.

  Up there—or on a slope like that—he seemed to see a large isolated building, and lights spilling across the snow. In this valley, it would be up near the source of the stream. If he were there, looking down that slope, standing where that imagined building had been, the—memory—might return.

  He would have to climb the slope as far as he could.

  But not yet. Later, when this darkness felt more like evening.

  Obscurely satisfied, he started to turn away. And the rage he had carried from his room sprang up again. He seized a rock the size of his skull, swung it over his head in both hands and heaved it out into the river. Before it splashed he had snatched up cobbles and begun hurling them—throwing furiously with either hand, stone after stone, until his arms ached and his breath sobbed in his ears. And then, as suddenly as the fury had come, he was calm again. He breathed heavily and stared at the water.

  In the cafeteria he ate something that was called a cheese sandwich, paid for with a plastic card he found in his shirt pocket, then remembered his appointment at the Administration building. That turned out to be a low prefabricated structure, like a half-cylinder on its side. He wondered if it was part of a shuttle fuel tank. He followed a handwritten sign to the labour coordination office. The door was ajar and inside were a man and a woman working at small computer keyboards. Grebbel rapped on the open door and introduced himself.

  “Good afternoon,” said the woman, brushing back a lock of brown hair with one hand and feeling for a pencil among the pile of papers with the other. “Come on in. Mr. Grebbel, you said?” She copied something from the computer screen onto the corner of a yellow sheet of paper that had seemed to have no useable space left on it. “Just give me another moment and I’ll be right with you.” Her hands were rough and reddened, with grime under the nails. We’ve only got another hour and a half, Mike and I”—she nodded towards the balding moonfaced man, bent over his computer as though mesmerised by it—“then we’ve got to help with the potato harvest. Things do get a bit hectic at times.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “I’ve got your work detail here,” she said, still concentrating on the screen, “somewhere. Fourteen,” she muttered, “in Zone Three, and they wanted . . .” She groped with her left hand among a stack of folders, pulled one out and handed it to him, without apparently turning her eyes from the computer. “You can save time by looking over that profile and filling in where it asks for information. We’ve been short one body for three weeks now, and no replacement in sight. Not even you, though I bet you’d love to work here, wouldn’t you?” She paused briefly. “They’ll have to take eleven and like it.”

  Grebbel found a pen on the corner of her desk and worked on the form. He was finishing when she finally turned from the keyboard and faced him.

  “Let’s have a look,” she said, and ran her gaze over the page. “Ah, that’s close enough. If there’s anything wrong, they can always go and ask you, can’t they? Okay, here’s what we’ve got for you. In their wisdom, they’ve decided that the biggest priority is to get the dam finished for the celebrations. So any cases with doubtful qualifications—that’s you—are assigned to construction work. Ever remember driving a truck? They tell me it’s not hard to learn. Just shifting gravel from one point to another, nothing too complicated. Here’s a map. Here’s who you report to. Hmm, starting tomorrow. Not much time to find your way around, but I suppose we can’t all have cozy desk jobs. That okay? Any problems, drop in and see us again. The hours are on the board in the entrance.”

  She was back at the keyboard before Grebbel reached the door.

  So he had travelled from one universe to another to learn to be a truck driver.

  Grebbel’s hands had clenched into fists, so hard they hurt; with an effort he made them open.

  He found it took an hour to walk round the perimeter of the settlement. Hours, they’d said, were unchanged at least.

  A pair of winged creatures was moving in slow circles over the lights on the landing field. Suddenly their wings furled and they plummeted towards the dark woods beyond the perimeter. He imagined the scream as their talons struck flesh.

  Waiting to catch sight of them again, he considered what he knew about his existence.

  One. He was. Whatever he doubted, some fundamental core of him had existed continuously from birth until now, bridging universes.

  Two. That hidden self might know more than he knew. It might be circling in some vaulted space, awaiting the moment to plunge and strike. Why else did he find himself in the grip of sudden angers and pains he could not explain?

  Three. His hands . . .

 
His hands that clenched into knots of pain, and hurled rocks, and bore scars . . .

  The thought slipped away before he could complete it. He shook his head, then flexed his shoulders and headed on to the cafeteria.

  In the lineup, he heard talk about a leaflet that had been passed around recently. He tried to get details, but none of the people he asked knew or were willing to say much more. One of them, a grizzled man in the silver astronaut costume, with his legs encased in a black composite exoskeleton, shook his head at Grebbel. “New here, aren’t you? Safer if you get the official line on things here, before you go making guesses. Open council meeting at seven—why don’t you drop in and see what you think of the ones who run this place before you get fed too many rumours?”

  Grebbel ate quickly, still preoccupied, and then walked out onto the main street. A painted wooden sign lit from below identified it as Unter Den Linden. It was surfaced with asphalt, presumably for the trucks, although at the moment only pedestrians were using it. Along the edge of the road, mercury lights on wooden posts lit piles of grimy snow. He went past a general store and a barter shop specialising in homemade ceramic and wooden craftware. The lights ended and the street curved around a wide pond in which the reflected moons rippled. He leaned on the fence, watching as wisps of vapour curled above the surface, and below the moons, carp idled among dark weed.

  He followed a group of people towards what must be the Council Hall.

  A group of children ran out from between two buildings ahead of him. They passed Grebbel, shouting and chasing each other along the rim of the pond. They were all behind him when the shouts suddenly changed and there was a heavy splash. He started to turn, but the woman ahead of him had stopped and swung round so sharply he almost walked into her. Her face, for an instant, was so stricken that he stared at her.

  “All right?”

  She was looking past him. “Yes, I think so,” she said after a moment. “Yes, it’s just a soaking, it’s not even knee-deep there.”

  The boy was pulling himself over the rim, dripping water, but evidently unhurt.

  Grebbel turned back to the woman. She was blonde, with a few strands of hair straggling from the hood of her blue parka. Short nose, wide mouth, light brown eyes. He had seen her that morning on the way from the landing field. “I meant . . . Never mind.”

  “They’re hard as diamonds at that age—or so they tell me.” Her face changed. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen . . . ?” She looked at him. “No, of course, you wouldn’t have, you just arrived today, didn’t you? I mean, strangers tend to be conspicuous around here, in any case, but I think I saw you on the way to the clinic this morning.” She gestured along the street. “Have you had chance to look around?”

  “A bit. I wanted to climb higher up the hillside, but there wasn’t time.”

  “Up there?” She pointed. “That’s where all the best people live, except when we’re down here slumming. You look as though you’re heading for the Council meeting. I suppose it’s something you should see once. I might even go myself, but I’m meeting someone.” She shifted from foot to foot, her gaze flickering from the street to his face and back again. “I’d better let you go. You can’t get lost in town—just look for the Tree in the Square. Oh—keep your distance from the vegetation if you go hiking in the dark. Most of the animals seem to have learned they can’t eat us—while I’ve been here, more people have got lost than have had trouble with animals in the woods—but the trees haven’t caught on yet—spikes and thorns.”

  Grebbel stood and watched her walk off and then found his way into the hall. Seated at a long table on the stage were a dozen men and women. Dr. Henry sat in the centre. Grebbel had evidently arrived in the middle of a discussion. He caught references to preparations for some forthcoming celebrations, and questions about budgeting priorities and the assignment of labour from basic research to the hydroelectric project.

  He waited to hear some discussion on the rumours he had heard of at dinner. When someone did stand up and ask about them, Dr. Henry, who had been quiet and efficient in directing questions to other members, took the microphone himself. He dismissed the matter as a practical joke in poor taste, warned of the danger from suspicion and paranoia in a small society, and went on to the next item.

  Grebbel slipped out of his seat and left the hall. The great whorl of cloud covered most of the sky. One of the moons had vanished behind its wall. The glow of the other was making jagged white cutouts of the mountain peaks. He headed to the path up the mountain. On either side were low bulbous trees, with vague frond-like foliage.

  The cold gripped his flesh. He wished he had thought to bring gloves and the flashlight. He could hear the wind now. Through a gap in the trees he saw a pale glittering bridge stretching out from one of the white peaks, and realised it was the wind tearing snow away and flinging it out into an arch. A faint orange glow pulsed in the sky beyond the snow bridge.

  Ahead and to his left were lights and buildings, and instinctively he shunned them. Whatever intuition had brought him here inclined him to the woods at his right. He considered turning from the path and cutting through the undergrowth, when a track appeared leading in the direction he wanted to go. He turned onto it, stepping round a pool of mud. The track was shaded by the lacy fronds of trees shaped like beer bottles. The pale green spheres he had glimpsed from beside the river now bobbed among the fronds like tethered balloons, pulsing with light. Pink stars glowed among the undergrowth.

  From ahead came the muffled rush of a stream—perhaps the one he had seen from near the dam. He could see the moon through the upper fronds. Stretches of the track still had patches of grimy snow. Footprints crossed one patch.

  The trees thinned out and the path curved. Splashes of moonlight lay across it, on boulders that pushed through the soil, and then on the glitter of running water.

  Something pale and winged, the size of his two hands, fluttered over his head, zigzagged towards a tree. It glimmered for a moment in the light of one of the spheres. There was a hiss and a harsh rustle, and the fluttering stopped. Grebbel listened, thought he could hear a slow dripping. He stepped away from the tree and moved on.

  Tumbling over a hidden ledge, the stream rushed down to his right. He moved towards it, to see its course, thinking of winter constellations and wooded hill slopes. In the water, five, flat white rocks broke the current and formed a series of stepping stones to the far bank. He wondered how far down the slope he would be able to see from the middle stones, and then someone moved from the shadows on the far bank, and stepped carefully onto the first stone. It was a woman, and as she stepped into the moonlight, Grebbel recognised her from outside the Council Hall that evening. She moved to the centre stone and peered at the water glittering past her feet.

  Grebbel coughed and stepped into the light. “Have you lost something?”

  She looked up quickly. “Who is it? Where did you come from?” She laughed shortly. “Our new arrival. Is this the best they can do for you, letting you wander around in the dark?”

  Grebbel shrugged and introduced himself.

  “Elinda Michaels,” said the woman.

  “I got restless,” he said. “I needed to get outside and look around. Were you looking for something just now?”

  She gave another short laugh. “The meaning of life, would you believe? Actually I’d started out following footprints, but it got too dark. . . . Why? Did you want to help me?”

  Something in him started to unwind. “I must admit,” he said, “I’d never have thought of looking for the meaning of life there in a stream. Have you had any luck?”

  “In a moonlit stream. I’ve never tried here before. I was looking for—something else, and I’d just decided to give up. But you’d be surprised what you can see, sometimes, in running water with the moons reflected in it.” Her voice trailed away as she looked down at the water again, and quietly she added, “What you remember.”

  He stiffened, and she looked up at him agai
n. “Or maybe you wouldn’t be surprised.”

  Something held him from speaking. He felt the earth quiver with the rush of water. When she spoke again, her voice seemed to come from the stream. “Beta’s clear again—the other moon. Come and see. Step carefully; the rocks are getting icy.”

  He joined her in the middle of the stream. Their forked shadows interlinked and undulated on the water. Grebbel looked down where the stream had carved a way through the woods down to the scale-backed snake of the river. He moistened his lips. “What is it you find here?”

  “I’m not sure. There’s often something—something about the reflected moons, whenever I see them. But here, now, it’s something else. The valley slope and the stream running down it . . . I’m looking down, and I know it’s winter, but I’m not cold, because—because I’m inside, looking out of a high window.

  The moons bounced and shattered about their feet. Silver corded the stones. Slowly Grebbel said, “A wooded hill. Snow and dark trees. The sky’s clear. The room I’m in must be dark, because I can see Orion in the sky quite easily. The slope falls away like this one, with the gully cut by the stream, but at the bottom, where the river is—”

  “—a road and a fence with lights.”

  They looked at each other and did not speak. Tree shadows shifted across the path. The water hissed and splashed and leapt.

  “Maybe it’s not real,” Grebbel said finally. “Maybe we fed each other bits of daydreams and we imagined the rest.”

  “You don’t believe it’s a real memory?”

  He said nothing.

  “Actually,” she said, “if it is real, it’s wonderful news. I gave up the therapy months ago, and this is the first sign that I haven’t lost all my past. And you’ve recovered something on your first day here. It is wonderful. We should both be overjoyed.”

  “Right.”

  “So why are we scared?”

  Grebbel knelt and plunged his right fist into the water. Shards of light flashed from it. When he stood up, his hand opened and closed spasmodically, the fingers dripping diamonds. She reached for it.