A Handful of Time (4 page)

Rule d‌—‌A man’s ego is his most precious possession.

“You are very strong,” Juba said, her eyes downcast, for he was bare again to the waist, and it had come to her that she would like to string her fingers through the hair on his chest.

“Runs in the family,” he said carelessly. “But come, I had dinner with you yesterday. Let’s have breakfast in my ship today.”

“I…” What was she afraid of? If he’d meant to do her any violence, he’d have done it already. And this would provide Juba’s opportunity‌—‌ “Yes,” she said. “I would be delighted.”

There had to be some talk, and perhaps something else, before she could make her request of him. They had to be friends of some sort before he was at all likely to agree.

It is difficult to make conversation with a man.

Finally Juba gave up trying to think of something interesting to say and asked, “What is your way of life, that you should be going around by yourself in a space ship?”

“My way of life?” He laughed. “It becomes a way of life, doesn’t it? Whatever we do ends up enveloping us, doesn’t it?”

For a man he was thoughtful.

“I’m a scout,” he said. “I don’t know that I chose it as a way of life. I was born into the Solar Federation and I was born male and I grew up healthy and stable and as patriotic as any reasonable person can be expected to be. When war came I was drafted. I volunteered for scouting because the rest of it is dull. War is dull. It is unimaginably dull.”

“Then why,” Juba asked, for she was amazed at this, “do you fight wars?”

Again he laughed. Is there anything these men don’t laugh at? “That’s the riddle of the sphinx.”

That is
not
the riddle of the sphinx, but Juba did not correct him.

“When you’re attacked,” he went on, “you fight back.”

“It could not possibly,” Juba said, “be as simple as you make it sound.”

“Of course, it isn’t,” he said, and he took two square sheets that looked like papyrus, and put them each in a bowl. “There is the question of what you did, or did not do, that you should be attacked.”

“And what did you do, or not do, that you should be attacked?”

He was pouring a bluish-looking milk over the papyrus thing. His hands were too large for everything he handled, and Juba wondered, if his hand were on her wrist, if he could crush it. Or, being able to crush it, if he would take care not to.

“Oh‌—‌trade agreements, immigration agreements, how many space ships can go where‌—‌who can say what either side did when or where to begin it all? Nobody is
making
it happen. Sometimes, perhaps. But not as far as this war is concerned. All I can say now is‌—‌O.K., for whatever reason I’m in a war. At this point, what can I do but kill or be killed?”

Juba mashed the papyrus into the milk with her spoon, as the man was doing. She took a bite. It tasted just like it looked.

“You could,” Juba said, “refuse to have anything to do with it at all. You could simply go away and…” She stood up and the spoon clattered to the floor and she could feel the bowl of milk spill cold and sticky along her thigh. Because that’s just what you can’t do. You can’t pull the thread of your life out of the general weaving.

She looked at her adversary, and he was as close to her as the darkness is to the evening.

“No,” he said. “Life flows. A person’s life or a civilization’s life or all humanity’s life. If it cannot flow forward it flows backward. Isn’t that true?
Isn’t
it?”

But she turned away from him, to recover herself a little. For she felt that he was right and her country and her foremothers were wrong and she was wrong and yet‌—‌she had made her choice last night, at the altar of Juno, and though she felt herself possessed by new understanding, she had to go on in spite of it, as though she fought wounded or blinded.

“You are perhaps right,” Juba said. “I am only a woman and I do not know. But still, can you not take a few days from your war? Must you think always on that and never anything else?”

He ate another of the paper things, not melting it first, and drank from the container.

“Look, Juba,” he said, “I’ve been thinking on other things ever since I got here, but first I want to…”

“First,” Juba interrupted, for here was her moment, “I ask one thing of you. Only that you radio incorrect coordinates back to your base. Say you have moved on, that this is a barren world.”

“Let me talk to you first,” he said. “I want to…”

“Please,” Juba begged, moving toward him. “It is no loss to you. Only a small favor, to protect our planet from outsiders, in return for… for whatever pleasures I can provide for you, or my sisters, if I do not please you.”

“All right,” he said, turning to his communication equipment. “If that’s the only way you’re going to let me speak to you.”

“Your tape,” Juba said. “Turn on your tape.”

“Tape!”

“I do not speak Newlanguage. I will have to have it translated.”

The man looked at Juba hard and worked at the corner of his mouth with his tongue.

“All right,” he said flipping a switch. He turned to his equipment and spoke his strange language into it. It was rough and she liked it.

“Now,” he began.

“Give me the tape,” Juba interrupted.

He jostled a flat box out of the wall, held the tape up to the light and snapped off a small portion and handed it to Juba.

“Come outside,” she said, taking his hand. “My world is more beautiful than your space ship.”

“Can’t deny that,” he said, watching the branches of the Untouchable Bush draw away as they walked through it.

“Now,” he said, when he was stretched out on the undulant moss. He felt at the patch of moss sprouting under the warmth of his palm, and watched while an exploratory tendril curled around his little finger. “Now‌—‌do you know what it is I want of you?”

“I have,” Juba said, “some idea.” She hadn’t known they talked about it. She thought they just did it.

“Well, you’re wrong.”

“Oh,” she said, and stood up and walked over to the brook so he would not see her face. For she wondered wherein she was lacking and she was embarrassed. “Then,” she asked, “what
do
you want of me?”

“There is, as I said, a war on. I am, as I said, a scout. I’m looking for a communications base halfway between a certain strategic enemy outpost and a certain strategic allied outpost.”

“Why?”

“Why? I don’t know why. Does the grain of sand know where the beach ends? And if I did know, what would it matter?”

“But why
this
planet? There are other systems. Even other planets in this system.” The moss curled under her feet and pricked at her. She was not doing this right. What did she care about his war? But she did not know what to do. She had been prepared for Seduction, Step II, and had even thought up a few things to say, though conversation is not included in the manual, because there is usually a language barrier. It was his speaking the language that made the difference.

“This is the only immediately habitable planet. You don’t realize how expensive and cumbersome and logistically difficult it is to set up the simplest station on an abnormal planet. Tons of equipment are needed just to compensate for a few degrees too much temperature, or a few degrees too little, or excessive natural radiation, or a slight off balance of atmosphere. Or even if a planet is
apparently
habitable, there’s no way of being absolutely sure until there have been people actually living on it for a while. There isn’t time for all this. Can’t you just believe me?”

“I believe you,” Juba said, “and the answer is no. It is not my decision to make. I cannot decide for my people. And if I could, the answer would still be no. That is exactly why we cut ourselves off from the rest of civilization. To stay out of your wars, to carry on civilization when you have laid it waste. That is why we are a planet of parthenogenetic women.”

“Is it?” he asked. “Was it to carry on the torch for civilization or to flee from it? Life flows, Juba. If it doesn’t flow forward, it flows backward. Which way does your world go?”

Which way? The little stream scrambled over its bright rocks, flashing the sunlight like teeth laughing.

Which way? The servants, the pets, the gladiatorial contests. The old goddesses. Were we becoming weary with time? Juba wondered. What sense did it make? What future did it mold?

The Man got up and came to put his arms around Juba, crossing his arms over her chest and putting his hands on her shoulders. He leaned down until she could feel his breath on the back of her neck.

Then it was that Juba could feel from his strength that everything he said must be right, because he said it, and that he was the name for all those things inside her which had no name.

“I cannot bring you in for the Ceremonies,” Juba said. “Whatever you are and whatever I am‌—‌these futures must lie with the goddesses. But sacrifice you I cannot.” She turned in his arms. “Go,” she said. “And quickly.”

He kissed her. “I will not go,” he said, and she wanted very much for him to stay, but not for the Ceremonies.

“I was to draw you into the gladiatorial contests,” she said, “with rich promises. But I cannot. For those who die it is bad. But for those who live it is worse.”

“Well, now you have told me and I will not be drawn,” he said with that grin. “Who said women are not barbarous? It is up to you,” he went on, “to free your world from its deadly isolation.”

He kissed her by the vein in her neck, the heavy one, where the blood beats through. And there flashed through her head the instructions for Seduction, Step II, and she wondered that other women had been able to remember printed pages when this happened.

“You must go,” Juba said, holding him so that he would not. “What do you want me to do?”

He lost his fingers in her hair, “I like blondes,” he said. “And I like a slender waist.” There was a tension in the muscles of his lower lip and his eyes seemed to lengthen, and by this Juba knew what he felt at that moment.

But he said, “I want you to switch off your planetary directional diverter. Even if you had let me radio in the coordinates I had they would have been wrong, wouldn’t they?”

“Yes,” Juba said. “But the directional diverter diverts only in certain patterns, so that it might be possible to figure out…”

“I know. Maybe and maybe not. I want you to turn it off long enough for me to get up beyond your whole system and have my instruments take a fix on your orbit. Then we can planet in blind, if necessary, to set up our station.”

“But as soon as you take off,” Juba said, wondering if she would really do such a thing or if she would suddenly wake as from a dream and find her wits again, “they’ll be on me with their questions. And what could I say to them?”

“You won’t have to say anything to them,” the Man said. “You’ll be on the ship with me.”

“With
you!”
The thought went all through Juba, as ice water does sometimes, and bubbled up into her ears. “With you.” When she looked at him she really couldn’t see what he looked like any more. Only a sort of shine. “You mean you’ll take me away with you?”

“Do you think I could leave you?” he asked, all shiny. “Smash the thing,” he said. “They’ll repair it, but by that time it’ll be too late.”

She sat down on the moss, and he was over her, his face urgent, as for Step III. But he said, “Go ahead. Go now. And hurry.”

She got up hastily, planning in her mind how she would arrange her face, so as to appear calm if anyone should see her and what excuses she would make if there were anyone about the Machine House. They had no guards and kept no watches, for why should they?

It was at the market place, near the fish stalls, that she met her mother.

The mother tugged at Juba’s robe as she went by. “It is not easy for you, is it?” she asked, low, so that no one could hear.

“No,” the girl said. “It is not easy.” Was it not written all over her? Was it not on her breath and shaken out of her hair?

The mother looked closely at Juba and felt at her forehead. “Perhaps it is forcing you too soon,” she said with a hesitant frown which for a moment made her look like someone else. “It is not too late, Juba, to get someone else. Even now…”

“It is too late,” Juba said, and pulled away, afraid to talk more. But although the mother’s face, Juba knew, was set, and her mind winding unhappily through surmises, she would not follow the girl, out of pride.

Pride.

The machine was alone. Juba cut it off and pulled the handle of the switch out. She then opened up the face plate and jerked out all the wires in sight. She reached in and broke off all the fine points of the compass settings and pulled out everything loose she could reach.

Then she walked back quickly through the market place, so as not to seem to be skulking.

“Juba…” the mother said, standing in her path.

“Later,” Juba said. “It will soon be done. Mother… I love you. All of you.” And she went around the mother, quickly.

“It is done,” Juba said, giving him the switch key as thought it meant something all by itself. “You have at least several hours, even if they find out at this moment. And they won’t. There will be no real suspicion until you… our ship takes off.”

After he had made love to Juba, she could see the sun was wheeling high, and in the temple they would begin to wonder a little. “We must hurry.” she said, and she broke a budded branch off a laesa bush, so that later, when everything was strange, this bit of what she had been would be with, her to surprise her. In strange places, but with this man.

She turned to smile at him, for her heart was full of love, and she felt that he was as much within her as he was within himself.

It was then that he grabbed her hands and tied them, and he tied her feet, and he lit a cigarette and stood for a moment, looking at her and laughing a little with his eyes.

Juba’s mind was dark, very dark, as dimness after bright sunlight in the eyes. She spoke to him with her brows, afraid to ask out loud why he had done this, though there could be only one reason.