Free Triptych by J.M. Frey Page B

made Evvie’s throat tighten and she tried to open it again with more tea. “So they’re…they’re coming back in time to…get rid of you?”
    “The Specialists’ personnel records would have been easy enough to liberate from any office in the Institute — we don’t exactly keep our identities secret from each other.”
    “But why do this?”
    “So we’re not there when they go back.” Gwen stopped, thought for a moment, chewing on her thumbnail. “That’s sort of stupid, though, isn’t it? I mean, if it’s not me it’ll just be someone else. And that means they must have something that keeps them free of the regular flow of time, something so that their memories aren’t altered to account for the missing people. It’s just not clever .”
    Evvie watched the horror spread through Gwen’s posture before the realization swelled into her face. “We’ll just pop out of existence, one by one,” she whispered softly and this time she didn’t seem to be clamping down on the shakiness of her voice. “We’ll just be gone . Maybe the Institute, hell, maybe everyone . And we won’t just disappear because we won’t ever have existed. No one will remember us and no one will know we’re missing, because no one ever met us. The whole human race, maybe, just…just poof. ”
     Gwen shook once all over, convulsive and revolted, then went tense and white and blank-faced; Evvie thought for a panic-stricken moment that she was going into a seizure. Then Gwen reined herself back in and her unwanted military training took over, breaths slowing and regular again.
    The weariness that was merely bone-deep before, now seemed to stretch all the way into Gwen’s soul. The tenseness melted and with it seemed to go her rigid posture. She sagged back in her seat, tipped her head up and rested it against the back of the chair, throat bare in the moonlight that came through the window over the sink. There was a small purple hickey peeking out of the collar of her tee-shirt, mostly-faded, and Evvie tried very hard not to be shocked by it.
    “How many friends have I lost? How many people have winked out of existence around me, how many people couldn’t I save because I had no memory of them? What if I’m next?” Gwen raised her head and looked down the stairs at Basil’s broad back, bent over a large piece of circuitry which he seemed to be stabbing repeatedly with a screwdriver. “God, what if he is?”
    ***
    Evvie left Gwen to her thoughts and her misery.
    She took her confusion, her worry, and her shuddering heart upstairs. She needed quiet, needed space to (fall apart) think. To process it.
    Mark was already in the shower, washing off the sweat and grime and dirt of a day’s worth of dusty work in the barn. The room held the faint hint of barnyard and next spring’s harvest. His clothes were draped over the wicker chair in the corner. Evvie suspected that he had helped Basil and Gwen bury the spaceship: there were long dark streaks of soil that ran up the shins of the jeans. Keeping one ear open for Gwennie, Evvie tidied the bedroom, putting Mark’s clothes into the laundry hamper, turning down the sheets. She refolded the laundry on the foot of the bed, put it all away, dusted the top of the dresser with a sock destined for the wash.
    Anything to keep her hands busy and her brain occupied.
    When she’d run out of things to do, she sat on the edge of the bed and waited. When Mark came out of the bathroom he was in a fresh tee-shirt and jeans. Neither of them wanted to drop into unconsciousness just yet.
    Not with strangers (soldiers) in the house.
    Not with this new world under their roof.
    “How you feeling?” Mark asked, sitting beside her. He smelled like soap and cheap shampoo. Evvie locked her hand with his, grateful for the warmth and support and solidity of him, the blunt fingers, the rough bitten-down nails. He didn’t seem ruffled at all, which Evvie knew was mostly just the stoic farmer act.