Chapter 30

30.

         “Hello,” Valreck said calmly to the man standing before him, “I suppose you have some questions for me.” He put down the book he had been reading and got up from his chair, taking a second to note how his shadow blended with the chair’s, changing it into something unrecognizable, a shape not even human. “That’s understandable. You want to know why I did what I did, what I have been doing. To you. To all of you.”
         The man stood there, in the doorway, the sunlight casting half a shadow over his features, a jagged line dividing his face, his eyes clear and his face impassive. He appeared to be waiting for something. Valreck regarded him for a second, as if trying to achieve a sort of unspoken communication. If that communication transpired, Valreck gave no sign. The man certainly didn’t.
         “It probably makes no sense to you . . . what happened,” Valreck stated, keeping his words even and his tone measured, “because people who do what . . . I and my companions can do, those types of people do not exist around here and thus the . . . the things we can do . . .” pausing, he gestured in a conciliatory fashion at the man before continuing, “it’s not that you can’t conceive these things, it’s just that you’ve never had to regard the world from that perspective, to factor in the fact that people like me . . . exist.” Clasping his hands together in front of his stomach, he looked down, briefly at a loss for words. “I know, I know it was hard for me when I first . . . realized what I could do, what I had . . .” a smile laced with old, discarded humor crossed his face, “as a child my mother bought me a gift. As a surprise. I knew what it was before it was even in my hands. You told me, I said to her. I heard you. I heard you say it . . .” those last few sentences were spoken in a clipped monotone, a cursory summary of memories long ago filed away. “I heard you,” he said again, and this time it wasn’t clear it was still recounting from the past.
         “You could probably ask me,” he said to the man, “if any of this made my life easier, in the end.” The man appeared to consider the question. Valreck didn’t doubt its validity. “And I think it did . . . I think I was able to do a lot of things that I wouldn’t have been able to do . . . certainly I wouldn’t have been able to pursue my interest in . . .” he broke off, glancing suddenly at the man. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly, bowing his head politely. “This isn’t what you want to hear. I know. You want answers. You want to know what was done.”
         Stepping over to the window, he put one hand on the glass, feeling the heat seeping into his fingers. “I believe in destiny,” he murmured, his hand curling into a fist which he pressed against the glass. “I believe that actions choose us and we are unable to do anything but let ourselves be carried forth.” Spinning on the man sharply, he said in a more normal volume, “But I do not believe that we are simply automatons, reduced to going through the motions in accordance with some script we will never see. There is some freedom of movement in our actions, but in the end we have no choice but to move in the direction the Universe wishes us to go.” He locked gazes with the man for another minute before shaking his head and looking down again. “And yes, you don’t care, I know. None of this makes any difference to you . . . that was our arrogance, I believe . . . to think that all this talk of destiny and free will really made a difference . . .” Valreck took several steps closer to his chair, the man’s eyes following him silently the whole time. “We were fighting a war, you know, but it was the useless kind, the type that people like you, so far away, would never know about. If we had won, would your lives be any different? Or even if we lost? Even now I can’t tell, I left before the outcome was decided and there’s just . . . there’s no way to tell.” As if struck by a sudden pain, he massaged his forehead, closing his eyes tightly and sitting down without further comment. The man stood by and watched him, without comment or judgement.
         When Valreck did speak again, his hands were on his knees and his voice was low, almost inaudible. “I cannot . . . you see, I left because I didn’t agree, I didn’t believe and . . . I came here to make things right, to . . .” he inhaled deeply, let the breath out with a mild shudder, “don’t you see, if we lose all this, if it all comes crashing down, then I was wrong . . . that’s what it means. I had a choice and I want to have chosen the right one, but what if this isn’t right . . . the other wasn’t, it couldn’t have been . . .” he clasped his hands together, the knuckles slowly being leeched of color, “I’m afraid neither will be right. And then what? Then what do I do? That’s what I don’t understand.” His shoulders hunched, he ran his fingers over his head, the digits curled into claws, the muscles in his neck bulging. “I had to do it to you, I’m sorry. All of you. You didn’t know, you never will. I took from you everything you ever had, because I don’t want to be wrong. I’d do it again. I’m sorry. I know, it doesn’t make any difference. I’m sorry, I’m sorry . . .”
         His plea was only met with silence. The only sound was the hushed rasp of Valreck’s deep breathing.
         Even the soft scuff of boots in the doorway didn’t force him to look up.
         “Valreck,” a woman’s voice said.
         Something about the tone penetrated his sunken reverie. Blinking, he looked up to see Junyul standing there, the sunlight shrouding her features into something unreadable.
         “Yes?” he asked, though he could have sworn she asked, “Are you busy?” simultaneously. But he didn’t see her lips move. She stayed in the doorway and didn’t come any closer.
         “What do you want?” he asked, standing up from the chair. His legs ached, as if he had been sitting for hours. Perhaps he was getting older. It certainly felt that way. Even basking in the sunlight, he felt cold, wrapped in layers of insulation. Valreck wondered why he didn’t feel anything. He wondered why he thought he should.
         “I was going to ask . . . to tell you,” she said and he didn’t know if the change was deliberate or not, “we’re going to move the prisoner. He’s been where he is for too long now, he’s going to get comfortable, come up with ways to escape. He needs to be put somewhere else.”
         “I see,” Valreck replied plainly, strolling over to the window. “And I take it your questioning of him has proven fruitful?” He didn’t even wait for her to hesitate. “Don’t bother lying, of course it hasn’t . . .” he told her with a grim smile. “He’s tougher to crack than you thought, I take it?”
         “It’s hard to break a man who can’t be hurt,” Junyul told him, her voice somewhat tight. “He’s cunning, keeps changing the rules . . . you didn’t tell me you were starving him,” she said, her tone accusing.
         He answered with a curious glance. “Starve him? Why would I do that? He hasn’t asked for any food. Why, did he complain he was hungry?”
         Junyul flushed, and a flower in her mind exploded in a burst of foul dust. The impression was extremely brief before she clamped down on it. “No,” she said, in a quiet voice. “He’s been just fine.” Biting her lip, she gently hammered a fist into the doorframe, a motion Valreck could only see in the vague corners of his peripheral vision. Her body language was rigid, controlled, afraid to reveal even the tiniest details. This was not how you used to be, Valreck thought sadly, remembering times not so long removed. But that person is gone now, I fear. She couldn’t be sustained, not in this world. “His name . . .” she continued, her voice a whisper coming from deep in her throat, “he said his name was Joe.”
         “Hm . . .” Valreck said, without looking at her. Constellations melted in her thoughts, forming a language he couldn’t speak. “At least we know what to call him now.”
         “Yes . . .” was the response, as quiet as before. He still didn’t look at her, staring instead at a house across from his home, the windows dark, the inside impenetrable. From the outside, he might believe someone was still there. But it was empty. The silence was a bare wind, an absence similar to going deaf. What were you doing, that night? Any of you? Did you know? Did you have any idea what was happening? Nearby, only a day before, a couple had been making love, emotions flooding the invisible airways in waves, drowning out all other sounds. Even when it wasn’t there, he could see it. Even when it didn’t exist, it was there. Emotions never ceased to amaze him, their combinations strangely endless in all their permutations. I could have lived vicariously, just listening, for years. But it would not be right. He wondered what would happen to the house now, that everyone was gone? To all the houses? The quiet weighed heavily on his mind, a grim density that refused to cease pressing down on his mind. He could bear it. He had to. Would this place just sit empty for years until it decomposed and faded, bodies deprived of the things that maintained them. Or would travelers come across this decaying exhibit and attempt to restore it to life? He didn’t know. There was no way to know. Nothing he knew could reach that forward into the future. Perhaps it was best. Either way, Valreck suspected he would not be here to find out, one way or another.
         A flurry of quick footsteps and suddenly Junyul’s blurred form appeared at the edge of his vision. He could barely sense her presence, she was closing herself off again, sealing her mind away behind a diamond facade. For all the glittering beauty, nothing got in and nothing got out. And yet there was a jittery sort of nervous vibration to her posture, almost out of time to the pulse of her thoughts. It was unlike her, nearly another person entirely. The mental assault had affected her, to the exclusion of all else. Part of Valreck wished to know what was truly wrong and perhaps help her overcome the damage that was done to her. But the truth was, he just did not care anymore.
         “Valreck, I have to ask . . .” and her voice was still quiet, oddly breathless, as if the cadence of her thoughts had exhausted her. “. . . what are you trying to do here? Holding this man, playing these games with the Time Patrol. What is the point? We are keeping this man as a hostage, yet we have made no attempt to contact them.”
         “How can we?” he asked with a calm that felt imposed from an outside source. “He has not said.”
         “Said what?”
         “That he is Time Patrol,” Valreck responded coolly. “Unless his name is some codeword that I am unaware of. If so, please enlighten me.” His words echoed dully in his head. There was nothing but space there anymore. Where did you all go? But he knew.
         “But . . . but we know,” Junyul replied harshly, echoing his own thoughts, his view of her somehow going out of focus briefly. “What else can he be? Nobody contests that he is Time Patrol. It is clearly what he is. It doesn’t matter if he admits it or not.” The sharp snare in her voice returned, clawing its way back to life. He didn’t expect it to stay around for long.
         “Very well, then,” and this time he turned to look her directly in the face. She was closer than he had realized. “If you know, go contact them. Let them know you are willing to parlay. In fact, my dear Junyul, you may even set the terms.”
         She caught his gaze, rejected it, turned away, her face taut. A spark skidded across the surface of her mind, burnt out before it could achieve any sort of flight. He had no idea what it meant. All the symbols meant something different these days.
         “What do we do then?” not so much asking as demanding, daring him to prove that there were courses of action still open to them. “What would you like us to do?”
         “Where are you moving him to?” he asked, as if responding to an entirely different conversation. The contrast between their voices interested him, far more than the words themselves did. Junyul’s voice danced and darted in between the silences that were left by the loping rhythms of his sentences. Together they formed a strange cohesive cadence, somehow avoiding gibberish. It happened every day, in every conversation. He wondered why that was. So much to study. So much we do not know. So much I will not know.
         “One of Maleth’s homes.” He suspected that was the location, but didn’t expect her to admit it. Perhaps it was not worth lying to him anymore.
         “Have you moved him yet?”
         “No, I wanted to tell you first . . . to let you know . . .”
         “Just you? Not Maleth?” he asked with a brief smile, knowing how rhetorical the question felt. “No matter.” Turning back to the window, he added, “I wish to speak to the prisoner . . . to Joe, before he is moved. I have some questions that I think he might answer now.”
         Junyul nodded. “If you want. But . . .” she paused, testing the question, “. . . why ask him now? Why not after he’s moved?”
         Valreck only smiled again, tapped his head with one finger. “Now, now . . . as Rathas might say, the walls these days are positively sprouting ears.”
         Junyul stared at him for a moment, confused. Then her expression relaxed and she laughed softly, barely a noise at all. Valreck didn’t move, unsure of what else to do. Everything about her was still closed to him. He didn’t think she would say anything more to him at all.
         Her hand brushed against his arm. The motion was unexpected and by the time he realized what had happened it was already trapped in the past. She wasn’t looking directly at him. Threads of fire streaked across an opaque sky, leaving behind only the veiled wailing of ghost images. A copy is not the original. Echoes will never tell the story. She only told him what she wanted him to know, but it worked both ways.
         “How are you doing?” she asked, the distance between them was great enough that even shouting wasn’t sufficient. Her voice never rose above a whisper. Perhaps it was just her tone. “Are you holding up?”
         There was no answer. She expected one anyway. She had no right to it. His eyes couldn’t stop staring at the deserted home across the way, as if it might suddenly spring to life. They had a child, yes. I remember. He used to play in front, near the door. Everyone always had to walk around him. Surely it didn’t affect him, as well. “I am . . . fine,” he said, to her, to the house that held no voices. It was a lie. He was lying. He never lied. Her touch was already descending, entering a land of myth. Some things never happen, even as we watch them occur. “It is quiet, now, that’s all. Just something to get used to. One more thing. That’s all.”
         “Yes, I . . . noticed.” How diplomatic of her. “But will you be . . . okay?” He had no idea why she was asking him these things. It certainly wasn’t comfort. Perhaps she was testing him, probing his points of vulnerability. Well, let her. Let them. He had nothing to hide. They had already seen what he could do, what he was more than capable of doing again.
         “I suppose,” he said, and it was as honest an answer as any. Shrugging, he added, “I see no reason why not. And if I am not, then . . . what of it? Then I am not.” He tried to remember if the child from the house had been a boy or a girl. He had assumed a boy but his memory was not so clear now. “I do not think the full impact of what I have . . . done has reached me yet. I imagine it will soon. I doubt it will be all that pleasant.” His smile was cutting, and meant only for himself. “When that happens, you are free to ask me again.”
         Junyul only made a small noise without words. She didn’t move and for a second he thought she was going to say something else. The rhythm of her pulse was steady. It was the first time he had noticed it. Not everything was in the mind. One of his instructors had told him that once. No, not his instructor . . . Tolin had said it. Somebody had once said it to him. Details like that were important. If nobody remembered, then it became lost.
         “Valreck . . .” someone said.
         Junyul turned to walk away.
         “Were you going to say something?” he asked her, before she turned away.
         She thought for a moment. “No,” she said finally. “No, I wasn’t. Good day, Valreck.” Then she was moving across the room, toward the door, the angular sunlight darkening her features and reducing her to little more than a shadow, flitting away, seconds from disappearing, gone before he could hope to grasp it.
         “Junyul . . .” he called out, his voice barely crossing the gap.
         In the doorway she turned, the sun catching her eyes. It reminded him of sand caught in his eyes, refracted by the light and distorting the world. It had stung, even as the world split into a million colors. In its own burning fashion, it had been brilliant. Sometimes there were aspects to this world that reminded him of those times and their painful brilliance. But most of the time, those reminders were not what they seemed.
         “What is Maleth planning on doing with him?” he asked, and it wasn’t the question she was anticipating. Or perhaps she was, but still didn’t know how to answer it.
         “I honestly do not know,” she said, the fabric of her shirt rustling as she shrugged slim shoulders. A quirk of her lip betrayed a loyalty she would never reveal. “But I do not imagine it will be pleasant.”
         “No, I do not either,” Valreck admitted. “Wish her the best of luck for me, will you?”
         If she responded, he didn’t hear. When he looked up again some time later, she was gone. He hadn’t heard her leave. Perhaps she had walked some distance away, to preserve the silence, out of some strange deference to him. But she didn’t understand, the quiet was what he wanted to break. It needed to break.
         Without a word, he crossed the room to his chair, aware of the quiet balancing on a fragile pin, with any false motion fully prepared to shatter it by sending it spiraling down. It had to happen. It would happen. But not now.
         Sitting down in the chair, he took a deep breath, pressed his hands together with the fingers spread and glanced up at the doorway, his expression guarded and tinged with sadness.
         “I’m terribly sorry,” he said, in a resigned tone, “where were we before we were so rudely interrupted?”

* * * * *

         When you first met him it was from across the river. He was fishing, standing in the center of the creek. It was impossible to take your eyes off of him. When he looked up at you and smiled, you ran. It was just like you to not realize what was happening.
         She stood in the washroom. Every morning she did this. She stood before the polished glass that reflected what had to be her face. As far as she could tell, she had a nice face. It was certainly nothing to be ashamed of. And she wasn’t.
         This morning, she leaned forward and breathed heavily on the glass. Part of the glass instantly became opaque, condensation forming a lumpy circle before her eyes.
         The first time you danced he held you close and you noticed that the beat of his heart was exactly in time with yours.
         With one slim finger she deftly began writing a name.
         One night you sat outside and watched the stars appear. He told you stories all through the night of the people who might live around them. His voice echoed with laughter as he spun one tale after another. You hoped it would never end.
         J
         When you told him that you loved him it was dark and you were covered in sweat but inside there were flowers of pleasant heat bursting inside you and even if you didn’t say it outloud somehow you knew that he could hear you. It was in his eyes. The way he looked at you. It was always there.
         J u
         You had the contours of his hands memorized, and every callous and every line and every ridge was etched into your mind and even if you were struck blind and deaf you would still know it was him. You had no choice. He was branded to your soul.
         J u l
         The look on his face when he first felt the baby kick was amazing, he became a child all over again. It’s ours, he kept saying and over again. It’s really ours, like he was startled that he had managed to create something so beautiful. His excitement was contagious. Even if you wanted to, you could never stop loving him.
         J u l a
         Your parents wholeheartedly supported your marriage, of course, even encouraged it. And it was the right thing to do. The right time. When you find the perfect person, you would have to be insane to let them go.
         With a sure, sharp motion, she wiped the name off the glass.
         Because, of course, with all your soul, you love him.
         Pressing one hand to the glass, the other hand gently touched her face. The motion was repeated with opposite exactness by her double.
         Of course, you love him.
         “He said . . .” she breathed. You love him. Her fingers began to delicately trace a word again. The effort left no mark. “He said my name was . . . Fiona?”