This ward was peculiar, because it was like a hospital ward. The mental hospital had always seemed like a bad joke; nothing got healed here. The first time in she had longed for what they called health. She had kept hoping that someone was going to help her. She had remained sure that somewhere in what they called a hospital was someone who cared, someone with answers, someone who would tell her what was wrong with her and mold her a better life. But the pressure was to say please and put on lipstick and sit at a table playing cards, to obey and work for nothing, cleaning the houses of the staff. To look away from graft and abuse. To keep quiet as you watched them beat other patients. To pretend that the rape in the linen room was a patient’s fantasy.
But this was a real hospital, even if an ancient one. There were fifteen women on her side of the ward. Her bed was a hospital bed that went up and down, more comfortable than anything she had slept in for years, since she had been the mistress‑secretary‑errand girl‑servant‑housekeeper to Professor Silvester. Feeling like an old hand, she smiled at Sybil as they began figuring how they would make do here, the space that might exist, the fringe benefits that could be squeezed.
Tuesday morning she was confined to her bed, as if she were sick. The doctors were to come in the morning. Monday afternoon they had been sent through a whole battery of tests–blood, urine, reflexes, all fussed over by Dr. Morgan. Redding had not been there. He taught someplace. He was connected with something called NYNPI. He was an important man. She was beginning to feel that his actual appearance was ominous. Better when he was being busy elsewhere. On others. There were others. Patients in the hospital in the city. Unsatisfactory in some way. Outpatients slipped away. They could not be depended upon. Their families butted in. They, tucked now in beds in their rows, were to be in some way more satisfactory.
She dozed in her bed, groggy on drugs. Casually in the early morning ward she cast an invitation to Luciente. She felt shy, embarrassed. Tentatively she opened her mind and sensed Luciente’s response. How easy it had become to slip over to Mattapoisett. She did not return exhausted. As if her mind had developed muscles, she could easily draw Luciente, she could leap in and out of Luciente’s time.
Luciente’s family–Bee with his head tilted back beaming at her, the old woman Sojourner on his left, Barbarossa, Otter in long braids looking Chinese, the slight blond man Morningstar bent over Dawn, Jackrabbit staring at one of the decorated panels with a dreamy frown, Hawk thoughtfully picking her nose, Luxembourg about to say something and visibly remembering she was no longer Hawk’s mother and still on the silence taboo–were seated around a table in the fooder, breakfasting on whole grains, nuts, sunflower seeds, blueberries, yogurt. The milk tasted full of flavor, like milk from her grandmother’s. The teacher said raw milk made you sick; grandmother said it made you strong. Herb tea in large pots steamed.
“You don’t have coffee?”
“To start meetings. In the middle if they run long. Same with tea.” Luciente yawned. “When we get up running early, to harvest.”
“But you don’t drink it every day?”
Bee shifted as if he might respond, but Barbarossa was ready with an answer. “Coffee, tea, sugar, tobacco, they all took land needed to feed local people who were starving. Now some land is used for world luxuries, but most for necessary crops. Imagine the plantation system, people starving while big fincas owned by foreigners grew for wealthy countries as cash crops a liquid without food value, bad for kidneys, hearts, if drunk in excess.”
“I couldn’t face the day without coffee! That’s the worst thing I’ve heard about your way of living.”
Everyone looked glum and even Jackrabbit stopped staring at the offending panel. Five people started at once talking about protein and underdevelopment and the creation of hunger, when Dawn piped up, “People, listen! I have a dream this morning.”
Other conversation stopped. She preened in the attention, making her face serious. Morningstar’s head bobbed over her like a pale sun. “I dreamed I flew into the past. I flew to that river and kept that nuclear power plant from killing everybody in Philadelphia.”
“This was a waking dream or a sleeping dream?” Otter gave her a skeptical smile, arching her brows.
“Well, I was kind of asleep.”
“There’s nothing wrong with waking dreams,” Sojourner said in a reedy voice. “To want to save lives is a good desire.”
“Everyone has been making too much fuss about connecting with the past.” Luciente exchanged a wry look with Otter. “I myself am guilty.” They both smiled.
“Magdalena says it’s important,” Dawn insisted. “Says we may wink out!”
Bee–whose gaze Connie had carefully not met–rumbled from deep in his chest, “To plant beans correctly is important. To smoke fish so it doesn’t rot. To store food in vacuum. To fight well, as you did Saturday. To make good decisions in meeting. To be kind to each other.”
“But some things are more important!” Dawn stuck out her soft chin. “I want to do something very important. Like fly into the past to make it come out right.”
“Nobody can makethings come out right,” Hawk said, her straight nose wrinkled in disgust. “Pass the honey.”
“No one is helpless. No one controls.” Sojourner had a flattened leathery face and eyes that twinkled with a lively pleasure. “Wecan’t make things come out in the past. We can only speak to those who listen.” She winked at Connie.
“Are there many of us?” Connie asked. “Many who come here?”
“Mmmm … what?” Luciente was yawning again. “Who come? Only five so far. It’s odd.” Luciente’s hand made boxes in the air. “Most we’ve reached are females, and many of those in mental hospitals and prisons. We find people whose minds open for an instant, but at the first real contact, they shrink in terror.”
“Why are you contacting us? You said I’d understand but I forgot to think about it. It’s kind of a vacation from the hospital.”
A surge of discomfort passed around the table. “It’s hard to explain,” Bee said, frowning. “Nobody’s supposed to discuss advances in science with you. It might be dangerous–for you, for us. Your scientists were so … childish? Carefully brought up through a course of study entered on early never to ask consequences, never to consider a broad range of effects, never to ask on whose behalf …”
“But I’m no scientist. What do you want from me?” Her eyes touched Bee and withdrew as if burned, after‑image of black on her retina. Suppose there was a price? Suppose they wanted something from her, something, anything. Vaguely she imagined herself smuggling back a weapon, a bomb disguised as a toothbrush. Why should they have been so nice to her if they didn’t want something? In her lap under the table her hands sought each other, coldly sweating.
Barbarossa cleared his throat. “We could put it: at certain cruxes of history … forces are in conflict. Technology is imbalanced. Too few have too much power. Alternate futures are equally or almost equally probable … and that affects the … shape of time.”
She did not like to be lectured by him, for he reminded her of other men, authorities in her time, even though she could see that in this setting he had no edge on the others. “But you exist.” Still she waited for the price, the stinger.
“Maybe. Maybe not.” Luciente smiled, her eyes liquid and sad. “It’s not clear. We’re struggling to exist.”
“I don’t understand,” she said resentfully.
“You move your hand. You wave it. Do you understand how?” Barbarossa too smiled, his blue eyes asking her to listen. “How does the decision in your brain fire your hand? Yet you move.”
Her glance fell on Dawn, pouting in her chair. “I wish I could let you fly away into the past with me. For a visit. You’d fix things for me anyhow. Make me so happy. But not to where I’m kept. No!” That child being wheeled to electroshock, her fine brown hair plastered to her scalp with sweat, her eyes so wide open staring at the ceiling that a ring of white circled her pupils.