Free Time Past by Maxine McArthur Page A

only things of value on
Calypso II
were the engines, which had come from
Calypso
and An Serat in the first place.
    “The only reason I could think of for him to send me after you,” Murdoch continued, “was that he’d met me in the past and knew I had to get here. But why didn’t he say that when he first met us on Jocasta?”
    “He didn’t want us to know. Because we’d know and maybe prepare against being sent here.” I thought again. “No, it’s already happened, hasn’t it. Unless when we meet him in the past we tell him that he didn’t tell us...”
    “Bloody hell. You really understand this?”
    I looked around at the tent. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. We need to separate the history of the history files from our personal histories. Our
desadas.
”
    He groaned. “No mystic terms, please.”
    Desada
was one of the many Invidi words we knew but did not understand. The usual translation was “fate” or “pivotal life-moment.” Quartermaine, my late friend who was also an Invidi expert, had thought it meant an experience that influenced the rest of one’s life. I didn’t agree.
    “I’m redefining it. Think how pleased the linguists will be when we get back. I don’t think
desada
is a single experience. It’s the way the Invidi keep track of their own inner timescapes.”
    “Experience always runs the same way?”
    “Sort of. If they’re always jumping in and out of different places and times, it would be necessary to keep their own timelines.”
    Murdoch shook his head. “Hang on. Say I come back in time and start living my life here. I’m forty-four, right? Bill Murdoch in this history won’t be born for another fifty or so years. What happens when that fifty years is reached?
    Will there be two of us? Which is the real one?”
    “I guess you’re both real.”
    “What happens when that child turns forty-four? Will he then travel into the past, and over and over?”
    “I don’t think so. You both have your own lives. Your
desada.
”
    He opened his mouth, shut it again. Rubbed his hand over his head and blinked tiredly.
    “Unless it’s a different universe,” I added. It wasn’t a theory I thought about often, for the simple reason that if it was true, we could do nothing but start over in this century.
    “And the Invidi don’t come, you mean?”
    I nodded.
    He snorted. “Then we’re gonna find out the answer to the question that’s been bugging everyone for a hundred years.”
    What would have happened if the Invidi hadn’t come? Or, as far as we’re concerned, what will happen if the Invidi don’t come?
    A wave of cold sickness made me shiver, and I drew my legs closer. If the Invidi didn’t come, we’d be stuck here. Stuck in this place where the struggle to survive consumed the lives of those who had nothing, and the knowledge of their own futility diminished the lives of those who had everything.
    No wonder they idolized people like Mandela and Alvarez. There was so little hope otherwise.
    I shivered again and leaned back against the wall of the tent, feeling it give slightly, cool against my back through the thin shirt. Murdoch watched me, his face unreadable. His presence filled the tent. I could feel his warmth, reaching out across the bed, banishing the shiver. A strange feeling. Almost like the flush of H’digh pheromones... But that was ridiculous. Not here, not now.
    “When did you find out it was this year?” said Murdoch. He turned the chair around and sat on it properly, stretching his legs out beside the bed with a grunt. “I didn’t realize until I saw a newspaper on the fishing boat. A newspaper, would you believe it? Sort of brought it all home to me when the ink came off black on my fingers. Anything that messy had to be real.”
    “I tracked Earth communications when I was coming into the solar system,” I said, ignoring the strange feeling of warmth. “That’s why I had to come down to the surface and wait for the Invidi to